Bahrain names Jewish ambassador

Great:

Bahrain's king has appointed a Jewish woman as the country's envoy to the United States.

Houda Nonoo said she was proud to serve her country "first of all as a Bahraini" and that she was not chosen for the post because of her religion.

She is believed to be the Arab world's first Jewish ambassador.

Ms Nonoo, 43, has served as a legislator in Bahrain's 40-member Shura Council for three years and is head of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch.

...Bahrain has one of the world's oldest and smallest Jewish communities. It was, at one time, home to as many as 1,500 Jews. Today the community has a synagogue and numbers around 50 people.

Bahrain is a close US ally but has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

It has a Shia Muslim majority, roughly 65% of the population, but the ruling elite is Sunni.

Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Gag me. If there is an interest in promoting tolerance and peaceful coexistence to eliminate poverty and challenge conflict--why must be it be presented through a framework of "faith"?

These are issues that can be explored through diversity and reason.

Blair remarks, "Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century."

That is alarming. If religion became any more significant, I might consider purchasing my own island.

Oldest live birth

From BBC:

A fossil fish uncovered in Australia is the oldest-known example of a mother giving birth to live young, scientists have reported in the journal Nature.

The 380 million-year-old specimen has been preserved with an embryo still attached by its umbilical cord.

The find, reported in Nature, pushes back the emergence of this reproductive strategy by some 200 million years.

Until now, scientists thought creatures from these times were only able to develop their young inside eggs.

Saturday's DNC Rules Committee Meeting

Despite the fact that all hell will break lose on Saturday when the DNC rules committee attempts to figure out what to do with Michigan and Florida, Taegan Goddard offers some pre-game analysis:

While the room will be packed with lawyers, everyone should realize the decision will be less about actual rules than the politics and perceptions of the Democratic primary process. There is no way the DNC will let a rules committee decide the victor of the nomination.

Don't expect many fireworks. The Obama campaign is urging its supporters to stay quiet and protests by Clinton supporters could backfire and cause the committee to reject the challenges entirely.


The most likely outcome is that the rules committee will reinstate 50% of the Florida and Michigan delegates. According to a memo, party lawyers don't believe they have the authority to do any more than that.

The twist, as First Read notes, are the "uncommitted" delegates from Michigan's primary. "If the Rules committee decides to accept the January primary results then it's not clear, via the DNC charter, that it's within the party's rules to assign uncommitted delegates to Obama."

Although she will probably have succeeded in changing the "magic number" for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton will still likely be disappointed by the committee's decision. The math doesn't work for her now and won't work for her after Saturday either.

Political junkies will be dissapointed because, despite the hype, the decision will not materially influence who will win the Democratic nominatio

since I just blogged about male privilege, here is another real life example

Male privilege means that, as a female, whenever I offer assistance in efforts involving physical strength, I will be mocked.

funny

Detroit mayor vetoes resolution to impeach him

male privilege

I was recently asked to explain male privilege, and while I have mentioned it in blogs, I have never really explored the concept on The Colonic. Male privilege is characterized by normalized feelings of entitlement and access among men, coupled with socio-political structures of power that are overwhelmingly dominated by men, and generally represented with male imagery and language.

What keeps male privilege in tact is obviously male participation, but more curiously, constant female participation. While a group would clearly maintain a climate that favors its own group's advancement, it is bizarre that the oppressed class actively participates and upholds its own disenfranchisement. I will not dwell on the matter, but it is obviously correlated to ingrained female gender roles that have been both romanticized through history, literature, and culture, but also hailed as biologically determined and/or religiously mandated.

In an older post (actually, a favorite with a fun follow-up), I focused not on how omnipresent male privilege is, but on how women unknowingly reaffirm it. I vaguely describe male privilege as:

I am male, and I deserve access to all women unaccompanied (or "claimed") by other men at all times. Unclaimed women, you are always my business, and you are always available for my pleasure.

This is only one of many aspects of the overall social condition of male privilege. In terms of dominant cultural scripts (that is to say not everyone, but certainly more common ideologies reaffirmed through social institutions), men are given the privilege of only considering themselves, and the privilege to not think twice about it. As their counterpart, women are generally socialized to consider all others first. While these two life philosophies are at odds with one another, our culture strangely enforces compulsory heterosexuality, and then squawks about the divorce rate.

Other examples, taken from a fairly comprehensive check list, are quite compelling. I find the first most poignant, "I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege." I tried to cherry-pick from the list:

• If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
• If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.
• If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent.
• If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.
• If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press.
• My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.
• When I ask to see “the person in charge,” odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.
• As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
• As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.
• As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.
• If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether or not it has sexist overtones.
• I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented, every day, without exception.
• If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.
• If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
• I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial.
  
• The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.
• If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
• My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.
• I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.
• The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.
• If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

Keep in mind these examples may apply to varying degrees to varying populations of men (these do intersect with white privilege and class privilege--but of course, all groups unite in their oppression of women).

And of course, there is dispute as to how privileged men really are (e.g. "men have the privilege to grow in a society that encourages boys to be tough, dads and moms buy war toys, 64% of adolescent boys hit or beat-up another kid in the past year").

I will never deny that sexism and male privilege ultimately harm men--this is why I consider myself as a humanist and not a feminist (and because people are more than genitals). However, what distinguishes the harm done to men and women is this framework of entitlement and access that men so freely experience, and therefore, they are greatly privileged. Hence the term"cocky." Entitled, with a phallus.

Quitting is contagious

Easier to quit smoking in groups, and when friends quit, they decrease smoking among their friends. Influence works both ways.

This really is not rocket science. It's called support.

House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Rove

From the New York Times:

The House Judiciary Committee pressed its investigation of possible political influence in Justice Department prosecutions on Thursday by issuing a subpoena to Karl Rove, the former chief political operative at the Bush White House.

Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the committee chairman, said the subpoena was necessary because Mr. Rove had explicitly declined an invitation to appear voluntarily. Mr. Conyers and fellow committee Democrats say they want to question Mr. Rove about the dismissals of several federal prosecutors and ask whether he knows anything about the decision to prosecute former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat.

Climate quote

"Some people think that cutting carbon means denying ourselves the things that make life enjoyable - no shopping, no fun - but I see it differently.

Tackling climate change isn't about self-denial, it's about reinvention; reinventing towns and cities, redesigning the way they work, and changing the way we all manage our lives." (source)

The secret lives of married men--and women

In his article featured in the Huffington Post, The Secret Lives of Married Men, the author describes the Spitzer situation as no surprise, but instead a common need for sexual variety felt by married men. Then he quotes a psychologist that explains how honest and open relationships are happier than those ridden with guilt and lies, or those truly monogamous ones that are crippled with resentment and boredom.

That is all fine and dandy, but I am offended that this is labeled as simply a male desire. While true statistics of infidelity will never be available, if there is a disparity, it is only because women are socialized to suppress and be shameful of sexual desire and fantasy. Not to mention this is coupled with a sense of self that is predicated on satisfying others and never one self. Therefore, a typically socialized female could in theory be less likely to act out her desires for sexual variety, as she had traumatized her sexual exploration long ago, and may be more compelled by the romance of "happily ever after" than her need to tap someone else.

But this is one scenario for a woman who has absorbed the typical female script, and regardless, lots of women cheat.

The need for sexual variety is valid in all sexual beings, despite genitals or gender identification.

Also, the author finishes his slanted piece by romanticizing himself as a polyamorist, which he confuses with the practice of getting lots of ass aside from his spouse. Polyamory is characterized by multiple meaningful relations--it's not a pretty word for swinging.

16% of science teachers are Creationists

Despite a court-ordered ban on teaching creationism in school, 1 in 8 teachers are teaching god, Adam, Eve, a snake, and a magic apple as science. Read more.