Month: October 2005

Jerome Armstrong has graciously offered to refund the 100 dollars I sent to him after I having been so unceremoniously banned… for a yet unspecified reason.

I take Jerome’s offer and ask him to send it to either one or divide the 100 dollars between both:

The Lilith Fund

Texas Equal Access Fund

As per Moiv’s incredible diary: The Katrina Aid That Dare Not Speak Its Name

How many young women did we all see on our TV screens, bedding down on the floor at the Astrodome in Houston or Reunion Arena in Dallas with their babies and toddlers, surrounded by crumpled plastic bags that held all they had left in the world? There seemed to be thousands of them, and then more thousands.  As in any population of young women, many of them were pregnant.  And for a great number of those young women–the ones for whom unexpected and unwanted pregnancies represented a second disaster–the devastation that their lives had become was worsened by the anxiety of wondering how they could find the help they needed to have a desperately desired abortion.  

Fortunately, they didn’t have to depend on FEMA.  Low-income women who are residents of Texas and who cannot afford the cost an abortion are able to rely on two sources of help–the Lilith Fund and the Texas Equal Access Fund–volunteer nonprofit organizations that immediately expanded their previous scope to offer all possible assistance to displaced women who were relocated to Texas in the aftermath of Katrina.   Lilith and TEA typically provide somewhere from $50-100 in assistance, and as providers, we generally find a way to make up the rest.  

I also enocurage any one else to give to this fund… you will be helping a lot more than giving to some Republican Democrats who want to take push women back to the stone age.

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cross-posted from dembloggers and my blog

I actually found a wonderful piece over at Worldnet Daily, believe it or not.  It’s an older article, but tremendously relevant at the moment.

A photo essay on the White House website shows President Bush had a hands-on role in “revising” January’s State of the Union speech that included a now-disputed allegation about Iraq’s alleged nuclear-weapons program. It also indicates he scribbled notes beside various passages of text in the margins of the speech drafts.

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this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

in special recognition today of over 2,000 US soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqis dead

4 images, prayer, and poem below the fold

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(Crossposted from my Real History Blog)

I talked to an intelligence analyst not long ago who told me to keep an eye on Syria. He said we couldn’t get to Iran until we first secured Iraq, and the only way to do that would be to secure the borders, i.e. Syria, through which aid flows to insurgents in Iraq. (And I apologize for using the term “insurgents.” I’m sure they’d describe themselves as “freedom fighters.” Language carries amazing force, and is seldom neutral.)

Combine this with my long experience with government cover-ups, and you can imagine how skeptical I am of the UN Report, informally called the Mehlis report after lead Commissioner Detlev Mehlis, implicating the Syrian government in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. This seems to me to be the next “yellowcake,” the next “sexed-up” intelligence leading us to yet another war.

Is my skepticism warranted? You bet, and I’ll get to the specifics in a moment. Bear with me while I lay in some context.

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The Religious Right rose to power while most of the nation remained somnambulant. Books and articles were written; film documentaries broadcast; and activist and scholarly seminars and conferences held — but most of our leading institutions have had little to no response. Fortunately, this is changing.  Leaders of major religious and secular institutions are beginning to speak out — and to lead their institutions into the central struggles of our time.

Last week Rev. John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ, spoke out against the attacks on the mainline churches — including his own. This week, Dr. Hunter Rawlings, interim president of Cornell University called on the Cornell community to address the “invasion of science by intelligent design.”

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