BobTheGirl's blog: "A Taste of Madness"

Rape - Don't Just Blame The Victim, Prosecute Her

She screamed RAPE - so they raped her again!

Via Kevin Hayden--who's known the victim all her life--this truly degrading holiday story about a 17-year-old girl went to police at the urging of her friends after she was allegedly gang-raped by three men, including her boyfriend. The men testified that the act was consensual. After reviewing all the information and statements, prosecutors decided they didn�t think they could prove a rape allegation, and so declined to prosecute the case.

Instead, they later prosecuted the victim for filing a false police report.

Their stories didn't match up, and of course they also didn't match up to the story she told, which was that they raped her. There were "inconsistencies" in the stories that she and each of the three alleged rapists told. Note that "The three men testified Thursday that the acts were consensual"--that is, they don't deny that they all three had sex with her--they just claim that she consented. To sex with all three of them. He also said he relied on the testimony of a Beaverton police detective and the woman's friends who said she did not act traumatized in the days following the incident.

This is obviously pretty troubling. If everyone agrees there were significant disputes over the facts, how was it possible to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman's version of the story was the false one? The Oregonian provides only this brief explanation:

[Judge Peter] Ackerman explained his decision, saying there were many inconsistencies in the stories of the four, but that he found the young men to be more credible. He also said he relied on the testimony of a Beaverton police detective and the woman's friends who said she did not act traumatized in the days following the incident.

The woman, who is 19 now, could be sentenced to 30 days and a $1,250 fine.

Kevin Hayden, who was present at the trial, made the following comments.




P.S. Oh, and as to "not acting traumatized"??--yuh, well, one of the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder is--numbing. Is there supposed to be a "Rape Profile" for Police to test for credibility?

The inmates are SO running the USA asylum.

And btw, I believe this is what you'd call an activist fucking judge.

The Ten Internet Commandments Just a little something to keep in mind, going into the new year. 1. Thou shalt not buy merchandise found in pop-up ads or spam. 2. Thou shalt not post thy email address, phone number, address or social security number to the internet, nor shalt thou post anyone else's. 3. Thou shalt not forget to update thy Windows every second Tuesday. 4. Thou shalt not connect to the internet without installing an antivirus, nor shalt thou begin a scan without checking for updates. 5. Thou shalt not connect to the internet without installing a firewall. 6. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's credit card number, nor his bank routing number, nor his social security number. 7. Thou shalt not enter thy credit card number without seeing the tiny padlock icon on thy status bar. 8. Thou shalt not reply to the email from the Nigerian banker. 9. Thou shalt not forward chain letters to thy friends and family. 10. Thou shalt not use "password" as thy password, nor thy birthday, nor thy children's names.

by Glenda "Five US soldiers have been charged in a rape and multiple murder case that has outraged Iraqis, as proof emerged the rape victim was a child of 14, and not over 20 as US officials insist. The 14 year-old teenager lived in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Iraq will ask the United Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the human rights minister said on Monday. Although U.S. military has claimed the girl allegedly gang-raped by five U.S. soldiers was an adult over the age of 20, documents show the girl was just 14. Reuters news agency authenticated the rape/murder victim's age on Sunday by examining her birth certificate and identity card. By Friday though the military backed away from those claims as Reuters and others began probing the matter. On Friday Army spokesman Paul Boyce said the U.S. military now believes the alleged victim was between the ages of 14 and 20. In addition to raping and murdering her, the soldiers allegedly killed both her parents and 6 year-old sister, and burned the house to cover their crimes. However a Multinational Corps Iraq news release, which announced the preferring of charges against five more U.S. soldiers in relation to the matter, and was issued as late as Sunday, described the rape victim as, "a young Iraqi woman." What is the advantage of the US pre-emptively naming the victim as an adult? It makes it easier to blame the victim. We’ve all heard it before in every rape trial in America. You know she wanted it, what was she wearing, she was leading them on, she said no but meant yes. It’s harder to accuse a child of provocative behavior. When a child is raped and murdered, setting up a defense for the soldiers becomes tougher. Under the equivalent laws in the US, no American girl of 14 would be named as an adult or "a young American woman." Let's call this victim what she was, a child. Her dead sister, aged 6 was also a child. American soldiers entered her home and killed two adults and two children. This is a fine way to bring democracy to Iraq, raping and killing children."

July 2006 - Accounting For Taste: Verstimmt Over Klimt On June 19th, 2006, a painting by the renowned artist Gustav Kilmt sold for 135 million dollars. Hold on. Before you go on, read that last sentence again. I'll wait... read it as many time as you need to in order to grasp the full magnitude of what it is conveying. Done? Good. I just wanted you to read it several times so that you know that you didn't misread it. And also so that you know that it wasn't a misprint. And in case you had heard about this aleged news story before, I wanted the full impact to sink in to your already full brain. To reiterate, on June 19th, 2006 a painting sold for 135 million dollars. Now just to answer all your questions, I looked into it. The painting is just that...a painting. It's not also a combination bookshelf/ spice rack/ 250 acre mansion in the hollywood hills. And although the paint is apparently flecked with Gold, the painting itself is not diamond encrusted or chocalate covered. (C'mon...chocalate covered. that would be cool). And the canvas is just regular old canvas. It's not even that big of a canvas. You'd think for 135 million large that you could get the painting on a wide screen, plasma canvas that also got Bravo and the Discovery Channel. Also the painting is just a normal two dimensional painting of a woman. It's not like one of those cool hologram paintings that follow you around the room. It's not like one of those pictures from when you were a kid that when you look at it back and forth really quickly it looks like Donald Duck is waving at you. And finally, it's not one of those pictures where you stare at it for a long time eventually you see a beautiful sailboat. It's just a painting. The painting is some turn of the century aristocratic woman named Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the painting is named, wait for it.. Adele Bloch-Bauer 1. The name alone proves that there ain't 135 milllion bucks worth of creativity in this pic. Hell, apparently somewhere there's an "Adele Bloch Bauer 2". That alone should bring down the retail value. Now I'm sure Mrs. Adele Bloch-Bauer was an icredible woman of much accomplishment, but nobody, not nobody's image is worth 135 million dollars. Heck, Angelina & Brad only got 20 million dollars for their pictures of new baby, Shiloh. and that baby is the closest thing we have to a messiah. What about the materials? Well, although the paint itself is gold flecked, the canvas is apparently just a canvas. It's not believed to be the lost part of the Shroud of Turin. It's just a canvas. I looked up the retail prices of canvas, and a roll goes for about $120. So, adjusting for the price of inflation...after all it was painted in 1907...No. On second thought...let's not adjust for inflation. Let's assume that Klimt paid top dollar for his canvas and his gold flecked paint. with $120 worth of canvas and, oh let's say a milion dollars worth of the finest Sherman Wiliams Gold Fleck, that still leaves us $1,333,999,880.00 short of the price. Now, everyone wants to make a profit but DAMN! But I'm ultimately not here to indict Klimt, as a struggling artist myself I am all for every artist getting everything they can. Klimt was born in poverty and through hard work and good fortune he ended up being the painter behind the most expensive painting on record. (Picasso had the old record, a measly $104 million.) Good for Klimt. It's just too bad that he's not aound to see any of the money. Ultimately , my problem is with the buyer of the painting, one Ronald Lauder of the Estee Lauder cosmetic company. I just don't understand what posesses a person to place that much value on something that many people would walk past while mumbling, "Ew..too yellow." I'm not anti-art. I'm not anti-capitalism. I'm just pro the human spirit. And I believe that when the media reports that some rich guy spent money on ANYTHING that totals 135 million dollars, and that thing is nearly completely frivolous, in a world full of problems and pain and politics, then a piece of the human spirit dies. Now I'm not saying that I can't concieve of a painting that expensive. I'm just saying that I would imagine a very different painting. for my money, the only name fitting would be, "The Greatest Painting of All Time". It would have to be on a canvas that was so large that it could only be seen properly from the space shuttle. The canvas would be flecked with peanut butter M&M's. and instead of some aristocratic lady, it would have to be a truly epic scene. How about something like Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Krishna, Vishnu, ra the Egyptian Sun God, a coyote, and L. Ron Hubbard turning their back on George W. Bush? Well I dont even know if I'd pay 135 million dollars for that, but then I dont know art, I know what I like. -W. Kamau Bell

V For Vendetta is the most dangerous film of 2006.

If youre an idiot or a fascist, that is. Remember that when people begin complaining about this film, and try to figure out which of the two categories they fit in. Or maybe theyll fit in both!

I cannot bring you a review of this film, since my name is not Harry Knowles or Drew McWeeny and this sites initials are not AICN (no hate to these fine fellas and their site, it just chafes when I walk out of a screening and get the no reviews until release reminder and know that the film has been already reviewed on other sites. Thats a whole different editorial, though!), so this is not my review of James McTeigues V For Vendetta, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Rather this is an editorial about this brilliant piece of work.

Its shocking that a film like V For Vendetta, in which the hero can be described in no other terms but terrorist, has been made by a major movie studio, which is itself a part of a major, world-dominating corporation. Either the folks at Warner Bros and Time-Warner werent paying a lot of attention or they just dont think that a movie will make any bit of difference at this point. I couldnt disagree more, and I have to tell you that if I was still actively working as a political organizer I would be standing outside theaters showing V and handing out anti-Bush and anti-Iraq War pamphlets to exiting moviegoers. Sure, this film is about a fictional fascist state that denies its people basic liberties and makes them live in fear, and sure its set in the London of the future, but theres no hiding the fact that the films timeline is one that begins today.

AICNs Drew McWeeny wrote a piece about the film where he said that the right-wingers who are already bristling about the movie (and feel free to check out some of these goose-steppers over at the Libertas forum, where they hurl invective at a film they havent seen and say the main character looks gay. Hey, isnt it interesting that the fascistic future rulers of England corralled and exterminated gays in the film?) should check themselves the movie is anti-fascism, and not taking on a particular current American ideology. Hes right. Sort of. But its no accident, no mistake, that the fascist government of this film is a conservative Christian one.


The film is being very specific the policies that we are pursuing have one end-point, and that is a society where our basic freedoms are curbed for supposed security and comfortable routine. We see it now the right to privacy is under astonishing attack, and the only thing more worrying than how much our government wants to listen in on our conversations and know what books we check out of the library is how little the people care. I dont have anything to hide, is the refrain, a bit of sick logic that implies the person who wants privacy does have something dark to hide.

Of course theres also a universality to this while the specific circumstances that lead to the creation of the world in the film are undeniably rooted in the Bush Administrations Orwellianly infinite war on terror, the suppression of rights for security has long been a hallmark of American politics. Hell, John Adams, the second president of the United States, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which used fears of the new French revolutionary government to ban spoken or written criticism of the government, the Congress and the president. I once thought that, right or left, all Americans with a serious love for liberty could agree that limiting freedom is no way to save it. The last few years have proved me right in that those who would limit freedom, who would support illegal wiretaps or endless detentions, must despise liberty. So yes, the basic concepts and warnings of this work, which were crafted 25 years ago, could be easily adapted to deliver the same message in a timely way throughout history. But this film has been crafted to deliver that message specifically in relation to the world we currently live in.

Whats really freaking conservatives out, though, and will probably send such evil blowhards as Bill OReilly through the roof is the fact that V For Vendetta is a film in which the protagonist is a terrorist. Again, theres no getting around that. You can call the guy a freedom fighter or an urban guerilla if you like, but essentially hes a guy who wants to force political change by blowing things up. What will give these guys strokes is the fact that it works.

Whats happened in the world in the last few years is that weve had our dialogue taken away. Remember when
conservatives freaked the fuck out about the PC movement where they took offense at the idea that maybe it wasnt cool to use unpleasant racial or sexual remarks? When they decided that being polite was some kind of liberal conspiracy? Well, we live in a world which has become PC times a thousand, where to even question the US occupation of Iraq or the way that the War on Terror has been fought is to be un-American. If you try to even begin to understand why a huge percentage of the Middle East hates us, youre a jihadist sympathizer. Why do you hate America so much with your questions and refusal to just accept the party line? But for the love of God, dont tell me I cant call gays faggots, because thats PC nonsense. V For Vendetta seeks to dynamite open that blocked dialogue and to confront us with many issues what is our security worth? Is terrorism inherently evil? What the hell is terrorism anyway?

V isnt the only place these questions are being asked. Last weeks episode of Battlestar Galactica impressed me as it showed heroic human resistance fighters on Cylon-occupied Caprica blow up a caf full of quite possibly innocent human-looking Cylons. Show creator Ronald Moore and his writers are no dummies they took the characters we sympathize with, that we understand, who have been almost driven to extinction by the unspeakable aggression and brutality of the Cylons, and put them in the position of a Palestinian terrorist. We never saw what any of the Cylons killed in that explosion had done before. They may have been administrators or accountants at least one was a barista. But the human resistance didnt care if they had had a direct hand in the attempted genocide of the human race they were complicit, guilty by association. And brilliantly the show puts us in the mindset of a terrorist. That's the beauty of what art can do, and how it can present to us new ways of looking at issues we thought we had already covered.

Some would say thats glorifying terrorism; smarter people would say thats examining how terrorism happens. Which is V? I think in the end its riding a fine line; its not explicitly condoning terrorism, but it is making the argument that sometimes the people need to commit violence against the state. Ironically, this is a statement that conservatives should agree with its the basis, they say, of their impassioned defense of the Second Amendment. Violence against the state will always be classified as terrorism by the state. If the modern concept of terrorism had been in vogue in 1776, I can guarantee to you that that would be how the Revolutionaries would have been smeared by the British. Instead they had to stick to the usual old-fashioned lines of treason and such. In the end the American Revolution was the illegal use of violence to make political change and if you dont believe it
was illegal, I suggest you do some reading as to find out why the signing of the Declaration of Independence was such a big deal. Each man who signed that document essentially signed his own death warrant, should he be captured the British didnt recognize American sovereignty and saw the Revolutionaries only as traitors who would be hung.

Much of Vs anti-conservative stance boils down to the meaning of the word conservative. The meaning in America today is eerily similar to the meaning it held in Thatchers dark Britain of the early 80s, the time this work was originally created in serial comic format. V is a film that confronts the lie of modern conservatism, showing that its not a movement about individual liberty and smaller government if anything, its quite the exact opposite. It reminds us that those who wish to take away our liberties for safe-keeping are the true enemy. I keep waiting for true conservatives to wrest back the label from the (barely) crypto-(mostly)fascists who wear it today. Of course I'm still waiting for an actual liberal to stand up and take a bow on the national stage.

Most inspiring of all, though (and the movies climax is incredibly inspiring), is the films final statements that while violence against the state sometimes, in extreme circumstances, must be done with gunpowder, it can also be done with ideas and words. Thats why our dialogue has been so restricted for the last few years the people in power, the people seeking more power by the day, know that their ideas of tyranny and fear cannot beat our ideas of hope and freedom. V For Vendetta is a dangerous film for these people and those who support them; it exposes their every trick. It gives the audience who perhaps hasnt second-thought the continuing assaults on liberty and the rule of law in this nation a safe, action film shaped space to explore new concepts about where this country is going. And whether or not they like the inevitable destination.


Read the whole article Here.>

Defeat Hillary by Being a Skank By: Earl Bockenfield Defeat Hillary by Being a Skank Indeed, there's nothing Hillary Clinton fears more than being mauled by a brigade of Republican hookers. Of the advertisement (above) to be found on many a Right Wing website, Brad R. writes: "Indeed, there's nothing Hillary Clinton fears more than being mauled by a brigade of Republican hookers." I know I know, it's juvenile, but it's funny. I mean, how the Big Tent of the Right covers the nuts who tried to prolong Terri Schiavo's suffering, those who seek to change gays, the tax-cutting fundamentalists, normal folk who pay little attention and like the color red better than the color blue, the global war fanatics, AND the beer-swilling tailgaters who create these ads, is beyond me. I'm just shocked that any Repub would wear the hammer and sickel without a big Ghostbusters NO symbol around it. I mean, they aren't known for understanding subtlety - as evidenced by the rest of the shirt... On usflag.org, I learned that the US Code, Title 36, Chapter 10 tells us of the patriotic customs associated with Old Glory. Under the section "Respect for the Flag", we learn that "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery." And yet this model is wearing hot pants made from a flag. Go figure. So I'm unpatriotic if I burn the flag but it's patriotic to leave skid marks on it. Cool. Ummm, good thing it's the liberals and not the cons who continue to pollute our culture with sexually suggestive pictures, movies, music and videos. Are these the same folks who are always whining about Britney Spears and scanty attire? Bet she won't look so great in that T-shirt when she's been barefoot and pregnant for a few years in a row. Isn't that the IDEAL Repug woman these days?!!! I guess she will obtain her birth control or abortion one way or the other - even after the Repugs outlaw it ALL!!!!!