Sunday, August 21, 2005
Profane Constitutions
As Cindy Sheehan remarked (see Huffington Post) at the national Veteran's for Peace Convention the night before she set out to Camp Casey, "I got an email the other day and it said, "Cindy if you didn't use so much profanity... there's people on the fence that get offended."And you know what I said? "You know what? You know what, god damn it? How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence?""
Part of the answer to that rhetorical question might be found in a report on college application test scores cited by Brilliant at Breakfast:
"About half of test-takers lack at least some reading-comprehension skills, suggesting they would struggle in courses such as history, sociology or literature. Just over half (51%) had scores high enough to suggest they could succeed in college-level social science courses."
Meanwhile, Billmon at Whiskey Bar observes that--like here in the US--constitutions in Afghanistan or Iraq are pieces of paper that make good targets for the best-armed street gangs in the world, thanks to US intervention. And with their penetration into the Pentagon's paramilitary army/police, they can now carry out kidnapping, extortion and assassination with tanks and assorted heavy weaponry while exercising their fundamentalist terror over a completely unprotected citizenry.
As both of these illustrious bloggers point out, women--who once lived in the most socially-advanced secular society in the region--are now largely banned from working, wearing modern dress, or participating in public discussion without risking the punishment of rape, death, or disfigurement carried out by fanatics turned loose on the population by the occupation authority.
Part of the answer to that rhetorical question might be found in a report on college application test scores cited by Brilliant at Breakfast:
"About half of test-takers lack at least some reading-comprehension skills, suggesting they would struggle in courses such as history, sociology or literature. Just over half (51%) had scores high enough to suggest they could succeed in college-level social science courses."
Meanwhile, Billmon at Whiskey Bar observes that--like here in the US--constitutions in Afghanistan or Iraq are pieces of paper that make good targets for the best-armed street gangs in the world, thanks to US intervention. And with their penetration into the Pentagon's paramilitary army/police, they can now carry out kidnapping, extortion and assassination with tanks and assorted heavy weaponry while exercising their fundamentalist terror over a completely unprotected citizenry.
As both of these illustrious bloggers point out, women--who once lived in the most socially-advanced secular society in the region--are now largely banned from working, wearing modern dress, or participating in public discussion without risking the punishment of rape, death, or disfigurement carried out by fanatics turned loose on the population by the occupation authority.
