Which side are you on boys, which side are you on?

Dedicated to all the uniformed lackeys of the global establishment.

Which side are you on boys, which side are you on?




Originally part of this post: Occupy Wall Street Protest: Democracy Now Video

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Women's Reproductive Rights: America The Next Nicaragua

Generally speaking, men shouldn't be within a hundred feet of issues surrounding women's reproductive rights. Politicians shouldn't be within a thousand yards, and US politicians shouldn't be within a thousand miles of them. Because there is a no more disingenuous festering bowl of pus on this earth than the American politician.

One only has to remember the case of Terri Schiavo to have that confirmed. For those not familiar with that appalling spectacle; Terri Schiavo was a cabbage, a carcass kept functioning by purely artificial means. A carcass that is until she became cause celebre and political tool for every cheap huckster in congress. Congress in actual fact being recalled to make cheap politics over the affair. George Bush cut short his holiday to fly back to Washington to get involved, that should tell you enough, fuck me! he didn't manage to do that when Louisiana was drowning.

And the bottom line to all this, when they finally autopsied the woman? She had an atrophied brain the size of a walnut, she had been clinically dead for years. Government involvement in the Terri Schiavo case

Watch these three short clips and then tell me that men should debate women's issues. Nor for that matter, batshit crazy evangelical, concerned vaginas for America




Frist Diagnosing Terry Schiavo on Senate Floor

George W. Bush Discusses Terri Schiavo: Today millions of Americans are saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo. Laura and I extend our condolences to Terri Schiavo's families. I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others. The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life. The most solemn duty of the American President is to protect the American people.

George W Bush on the value of life!

Michele Bachmann refers to Terri Schiavo as a "healthy" woman. The audience clearly disagrees.

Do I need to highlight the involvement of Satan's spawn in all this, the Holy Order of misogynist arse bandits, boy buggerers extraordinaire? No, one only has to read the Nicaragua post to lay the blame at the right door.

Congress Contemplates Brutal Anti-Abortion Law
By Rick Ungar
Oct. 12, 2011

In what would be a major and potentially deadly change in American healthcare policy, The House of Representatives will take up H.R. 358 —The Protect Life Act—this week. The bill would permit federally funded hospitals to refuse abortion services even to women who would likely die without the procedure.

As the law currently stands, hospitals are required by EMTALA to provide emergency care to anyone who walks through their doors. If a hospital is unable or unwilling to perform a necessary procedure, it is obligated to stabilize the patient and then transfer the individual to a facility that can perform the procedure and agrees to do so. As a result of the EMTALA requirements, the 600 plus Catholic hospitals in the nation who are unwilling to perform abortions on religious grounds, even in life-threatening circumstances to the mother, are obligated to transfer that patient in need of such a procedure to a hospital that agrees to perform the required operation.

If The Protect Life Act were to pass, this would no longer be the case. Hospitals that do not care to perform abortions, for whatever reason and even when the procedure is required to save the life of the mother, would be legally permitted to simply do nothing.

While one might anticipate that hospitals refusing to perform abortions would transfer a patient in life-threatening circumstances to a facility willing to perform the abortion, I wouldn't be so sure.

In 2009, a Phoenix-based Catholic bishop excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride, an administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital, for authorizing an abortion in the case of a woman who was suffering from pulmonary hypertension and was likely to die without the procedure. In stating his reasons for this extreme act, the Archdiocese issued a statement saying, in part:

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic.

Given this line of thought, should The Protect Life Act become the law, it seems unlikely that such a Catholic institution would voluntarily send a patient over to another facility knowing that an abortion was going to take place.

And the bill doesn't stop at allowing hospitals to let mothers face death. It would also deny federal funding to a health care plan that offers to pay for abortion services even in life-threatening circumstances.

Dawn Laguens, executive vice-president for communications at Planned Parenthood, summed it up quite nicely:

This is just a demolition derby for women's health care. To first say, 'We won't even treat you if you show up needing a life-saving abortion,' and then to eliminate health insurance that might have saved your family from bankruptcy is a real one-two gut punch to women in these tough economic times.

So, how is it that the sponsors and backers of this bill happen to be the same people who constantly rail against government intruding in our lives yet would now empower medical facilities to allow a woman to die if their respective religious beliefs do not match up?

Demolition derby, indeed. motherjones

Related: Of Abortion, and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil by Arthur Silber

- - -

A re-up from October 2007

"Here there is a lot of religiosity but only a little Christianity." : Nicaragua

Why I hate Religion, chapter Six Hundred and Sixty Six.


Last November it became a crime for a woman to have an abortion in Nicaragua, even if her life was in mortal danger. So far it has resulted in the death of at least 82 women. Rory Carroll reports on the fight to have the law changed

González was not stupid and did not want to die. She knew her chance of surviving the butchery was small. But being a practical woman, she recognised it was her only chance, and took it. The story of why it was her only chance is an unfolding drama of religion, politics and power that has made Nicaragua a crucible in the global battle over abortion rights. This central American country has become the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalise all abortions. It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies.



Pope Benedict XVI welcomed the ban but added that women should not suffer or die as a result. "In this regard, it is essential to increase the assistance of the state and of society itself to women who have serious problems during pregnancy."more

And with those words washed his hands of all moral obligation to women.

it is essential to increase the assistance of the state and of society itself to women who have serious problems during pregnancy."

It's Nicaragua you disingenuous fuckdog, the second poorest country in Latin America.

"Something Has Started": Michael Moore Occupy Wall Street : Democracy Now

Two segments from Democracy Now. The first, where Michael Moore discusses the implications of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The second and much lengthier piece, (link only) is a chat between Moore and Amy Goodman, where Moore talks about his formative years, his film making and his new book, Here Comes Trouble. Towards the end of the piece there is a clip of Moore accepting his Oscar for Bowling For Columbine, the ruckus his acceptance speech caused, and its consequent effects on Moore's life, and the threats to that life.

I posted excerpts from Here Comes Trouble that covered that period of his life in a post entitled Michael Moore Croissant-Eater.

"Something Has Started": Michael Moore on the Occupy Wall St. Protests That Could Spark a Movement

Oscar-winning filmmaker, best-selling author,and provocateur laureate Michael Moore joins us for the hour. One of the world’s most acclaimed — and notorious — independent filmmakers and rabble-rousers, his documentary films include Roger and Me; Bowling for Columbine for which he won the Academy Award, Fahrenheit 9/11, SICKO; and Capitalism: A Love Story. In the first part of our interview, Moore talks about the growing "Occupy Wall Street" protests in Lower Manhattan, which he visited on Monday night. "This is literally an uprising of people who have had it," Moore says. "It has already started to spread across the country in other cities. It will continue to spread. ... It will be tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people ... Their work ahead is not as difficult as other movements in the past ... The majority of Americans are really upset at Wall Street ... So you have already got an army of Americans who are just waiting for somebody to do something, and something has started." Democracy Now

"Here Comes Trouble": Michael Moore Tells The Formative Tales Behind His Filmmaking, Rabble-Rousing

For more than two decades, Michael Moore has been one of the most politically active, provocative and successful documentary filmmakers in the business. We talk to Moore about his new memoir, "Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life," which comprises 20 biographic vignettes that capture how his political and sociological viewpoints developed. He also discusses the numerous attacks and death threats he received after speaking out against former President George W. Bush, after winning a 2003 Academy Award for his film, Bowling for Columbine. He first discussed these fears and necessity to hire a security team on Democracy Now! last year, which ultimately encouraged him to write publicly about these incidents in his memoir. Watch Democracy Now

Having more respect for, than I had knowledge of, I rectified that shortcoming by reading Amy Goodman's bio on Wiki. Link here if you are of a like mind.

John Pilger: Insurrection in Britain (Illustrated)

Damn It Or Fear It, The Forbidden Truth Is An Insurrection in Britain
By John Pilger
August 19, 2011

On a warm spring day, strolling in south London, I heard demanding voices behind me. A police van disgorged a posse of six or more, who waved me aside. They surrounded a young black man who, like me, was ambling along. They appropriated him; they rifled his pockets, looked in his shoes, inspected his teeth. Their thuggery affirmed, they let him go with the barked warning there would be a next time.



For the young at the bottom of the pyramid of wealth and patronage and poverty that is modern Britain, mostly the black, the marginalised and resentful, the envious and hopeless, there is never surprise. Their relationship with authority is integral to their obsolescence as young adults. Half of all black British youth between the ages of 18 and 24 are unemployed, the result of deliberate policies since Margaret Thatcher oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in British history. Forget plasma TVs, this was panoramic looting.



Such is the truth of David Cameron's "sick society", notably its sickest, most criminal, most feral "pocket": the square mile of the City of London where, with political approval, the banks and super-rich have trashed the British economy and the lives of millions. This is fast becoming unmentionable as we succumb to propaganda once described by the American black leader Malcolm X thus: "If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing."



=As they lined up to bay their class bigotry and hypocrisy in parliament, barely a handful of MPs spoke this truth. Heirs to Edmund Burke's 18th century rants against the "mob rule" of a "swinish multitude", not one referred to previous rebellions in Brixton, Tottenham and Liverpool in the 1980s when Lord Scarman reported that "complex political, social and economic factors" had caused a "disposition towards violent protest" and recommended urgent remedial action. Instead, Labour and Liberal bravehearts called for water cannon and everything draconian:

More Spiegel

among them the Labour MP Hazel Blears. Remember her notorious expenses? None made the obvious connection between the greatest inequality since records were kept, a police force that routinely abuses a section of the population and kills with impunity and a permanent state of colonial warfare with an arms trade to match: the apogee of violence.



It hardly seemed coincidental that on the day before Cameron raged against "phony human rights", NATO aircraft - which include British bombers sent by him - killed a reported 85 civilians in a peaceful Libyan town. These were people in their homes, children in their schools. Watch the BBC's man on the spot trying his best to dispute the evidence of his eyes, just as the political and media class sought to discredit the evidence of a civilian bloodbath in Iraq as epic as the Rwanda genocide. Who are the criminals?



This is not in any way to excuse the violence of the rioters, many of whom were opportunistic, mean, cruel, nihilistic and often vicious in their glee: an authentic reflection of a system of greed and self-interest to which scores of parasitic money-movers, "entrepreneurs", Murdochites, corrupt MPs and bent coppers have devoted themselves.



On 4 August, the BBC's Fiona Armstrong - aka Lady MacGregor of MacGregor - interviewed the writer Darcus Howe, who dared use the forbidden word, "insurrection".

Armstrong: "Mr. Howe, you say you are not shocked [by the riots]? Does this mean you condone what happened?"

Howe: "Of course not ... what I am concerned about is a young man Mark Duggan ... the police blew his head off."



Armstrong: "Mr. Howe, we have to wait for the official enquiry to say things like that. We don't know what happened to Mr. Duggan. We have to wait for the police report."



On 8 August, the Independent Police Complaints Commission acknowledged there was "no evidence" that Duggan had fired a shot at police. Duggan was shot in the face on 4 August by a police officer with a Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine gun - the same weapon supplied by Britain to dictatorships that use them against their own people. I saw the result in East Timor where Indonesian troops also blew the heads off people with these state-of-the-art weapons supplied by both Tory and Labour governments.



An eyewitness to Duggan's killing told the Evening Standard, "About three or four police officers had [him] pinned on the ground at gunpoint. They were really big guns and then I heard four loud shots. The police shot him on the floor." (watch 6m 15s mark)



This is how the Metropolitan Police shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes on the floor of a London Underground train. And there was Robert Stanley and Ian Tomlinson, and many more. The police lied about Duggan's killing as they have lied about the others. Since 1998, more than 330 people have died in police custody and not one officer has been convicted. Where is the political and media outrage about this "culture of fear"?



"Funny, too," noted the journalist Melanie MacFadyean, "that the police did nothing while some serious looting went on - surely not because they wanted everyone to see that cutting the police force meant more crime?"



Still, the brooms have arrived. In an age of public relations as news, the clean-up campaign, however well-meant by many people, can also serve the government's and media goal of sweeping inequality and hopelessness under gentrified carpets, with cheery volunteers armed with their brand new brooms and pointedly described as "Londoners" as if the rest are aliens.



The otherwise absent Boris Johnson waved his new broom. Another Etonian, the former PR man to an asset stripper and current prime minister up to his neck in Hackgate, would surely approve. John Pilger

- - - - -

Why persecute the poor for being poor?

Raquel Nelson's conviction for causing her own child's death by jaywalking shows America's indifference to the cost of poverty

This story is a follow up to this one.

Fred Reed: Killing Afghans Matters More Than Feeding Granny in Spokane

Fred Reed is a star, he really is, he has such a way of telling it like it is. And that includes with no small amount of humour.

Slouching Toward Guatamala
Reflections on the Impossibility of Government
By Fred Reed
August 04, 2011

God it's wonderful—really diverting in a macabre sort of way, at least if you have a diseased sense of humor and enough Padre Kino red. Which I do. As I write the world's only delusional superflower, perennially in love with itself, navel-gazing as narcissistically as ever, ignorant, self-indulgent, gurbling like an insane relative in the attic and fondling electro-trinkets from Japan, is broke. Yes, we see a beautiful dive from the high board, two somersaults and a half-twist, into the Third World. And so richly deserved.

Congress, a collection of whores, con-men, and penny-ante sharpers from East Jesus, Nebraska, ponders the Great Question: Default now, and admit manfully to being the economic lepers everyone else already knows we are? Or raise the debt ceiling, keep spending like a spoiled Swarthmore sophomore with daddy's credit card, and collapse a bit later?

It's just lovely. The World’s Greatest Economy holding out the begging bowl to China. “Alms? Alms for the poor?” Maybe I don't have enough Padre Kino after all. Maybe there isn't enough.

On the lobotomy box, congressmen come and go, not talking of Michelangelo, like mayflies but without the brains, calling each other names. They seem to think that they are in an off-year election. I mean, it's only the future of the country. What, me worry? What if a huge cosmic flyswatter came down on Cap Hill and turned them into barely historical smears? How the hell do you start a cosmic flyswatter?

The Republicans want to protect the wars, the rich, and the military companies. The Democrats want to protect the entitlements. Well, ok, I guess killing Afghans matters more than feeding Granny in Spokane. Unless of course you are Granny. Who really cares? I mean, how many “defense” contracts does she have?

But actually the Dems have the best of the argument of national security. Entitlements are our friend. Welfare is the price we pay for not having the cities burn. Mailbox money is our protection, (see below) not gaudy aircraft carriers like the USS Thundertrinket, zooom-kerpow.

It's the Empire, stupid. You want spending cuts? Easy, if you don't want to rule the world for three more years before going down history's cloaca. Pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Japan, and NATO tomorrow. Pull out. Pull out. Coitus interruptus. Stop wasting precious engineering talent and non-existent money on pointless funsy weapons of no utility: the F35, the Airborne Laser.

Come to think of it, don't bother. It's too late. The only sensible answer is cheap Mexican red. The US really is poised to enter Central America. You know, continental drift. It can't be stopped. South Korea and Finland among others are far more advanced in their internets. Health care in America is first-priced and second-rate. The country is thirty-third in infant mortality. Schooling would be pathetic if we could raise it to that level, the universities largely farces. The Russians and Chinese have manned space programs; we don't. Industry flees Gringolandia or has fled. The great moiling gerbiltry out there hasn't figured it out. Wait.

I hear babbling about “the recovery.” Which recovery is that? There ain't none, boys and girls. There won't be one. We are not in a temporary recession or correction or what have you. We are going poor. The last dance just finished, and the band is leaving.

And it is self-inflicted. There is, I grant you, a pleasing monumentality about truly phenomenal stupidity. A certain brilliance is needed to be so witless. In this sense the American political system is a work of genius, relying on the principle of Sufficient Ditz-Rabbitry.

You don't need to fool all of the people all of the time. Enough of the people, enough of the time is entirely adequate. Lincoln knew this but, being a politician, didn't point it out. Here is the basis of what Americans believe to be a democracy. Curious: Mexicans know they have a corrupt government, but Americans don't. In the US, books are written about the scams and cons and rips practiced on the public. Few read them, though, and those who do already know what is in them. Enough of the people, enough of the time. If the talking heads on the blinking hamster-diverter don't talk about the swindles, the rubes never know. more Fred Reed

Graphic from: Chinese Sub Pops Up In Middle Of US Fleet

Socialism In a Caring/Uncaring Society

......It is down to something else that America has no shortage of, the fuck you attitude, and more specifically, the fuck you attitude of the politicos who are feverishly stripping away any kind of safety net, not just of the underprivileged, but of the working Joe, the middle classes. (Look no further than Hartman's news piece, Obama trying to placate the Repubs with his social spending cuts so he can pay for his wars.)

The point I'm trying to make is, just what kind of jungle do the Pols and policy makers is going to result out of this deliberate attempt to return America to a Dickensian society? Isn't the writing on the wall writ large enough already to what a breakdown in society looks like?

What is happening in America today, could quite easily be adopted to compose the first half, if not the first three quarters of a post-apocalyptic movie script. All that is waiting to be scripted is the ''Underprivileged Spring'' when the have nots, raise up en mass and take it all away from the haves. And let's be realistic here, it won't be a sticks and stones uprising, every motherfucker will already be armed, if not, they soon will be. more me

USA: ''Apart from killing people, we really don't do anything anymore''

The header included, there's not much I could argue with in this Mike Whitney article.

One thing that did catch my eye, but which might have been meaningless had I not my own metric for regarding the question thus: So, how can you sustain a middle class on a measly $9.50 per hour? prompting me to do a little research on the issue.

Firstly, my personal yardstick. Imagine one edge is measured in years past and the opposing edge in dollars and cents. Travelling back forty years on my rule, the opposite number would be $8 (Canadian) What a dollar then bought back in 1971, I couldn't be too sure of, but what seems to stick in my mind from 1967, the year I first landed there, is 55c. A gallon of gas 55c, a pack of cigarettes similar, and not that I smoked cigars, but a pack of five King Edwards 55c. The King Teddies only sticking in my mind, because to purchased a pack in the UK at that time would have required a second mortgage. What's my point here? well I guess it's that a buck did actually buy a bit of something back then, but I hate to think what it would purchase in this day and age.

The first thing in trying to get an accurate picture of what's what, is to leave out the word average in any search terms, it's the median we are concerned with. The following piece, courtesy of Mother Jones, is about the most concise I can offer. Although we do end up with an average income, circa $32,000, this is the median for ninety percent of the American population. Wealthiest Americans Dramatically Increase Income

It hardly takes an economist then to come to the conclusion, given this $32,00 average, that indeed this figure of $9.50 is quite realistic. But in some cases, Walmart for instance, it's not unusual to see the figure of $8. Forty years on.

Our Goose is Cooked
By Mike Whitney
June 02, 2011

This must be what it was like in Russia before the Soviet Union collapsed. The government's so crooked that nothing works right, the infrastructure's in a shambles, millions of people are scraping by on government handouts, and everyone's on a permanent downer. Welcome to the Soviet States of America 2011.

I mean, seriously, things are really looking bad. Apart from killing people, we really don't do anything anymore. We have a humongous, over-bloated military that lumbers from one war to the next spreading misery wherever it goes, and meanwhile, back at home, things continue to go to the dogs. How long can that go on?

You can't get a job anymore, because all the jobs have been shipped off to Guandong Province or someplace South of the border. The best you can hope for is some part-time gig jerking double-tall-mochas or steering folks towards the red-dot special on Aisle 9. So, how can you sustain a middle class on a measly $9.50 per hour? It can't be done.

And just look at Washington. What a joke. The White House is just a protection racket for big business. And Congress, well, what can you say about congress? We'd be better off if they just packed their bags and went home for all the good they do. Then at least we could turn the House of Representatives into a homeless shelter or something that had some practical value for people. At any rate, we wouldn't have to listen to the bloviating of numbskulls like Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid anymore. That's got to be worth something.

You know our goose is cooked, don't you? You know we're not going to get out of this, right? The country is disintegrating. It's obvious. It isn't even America anymore; it's like we're on some kind of movie set where everything looks real, but it's all just props. Everything is perfectly placed to make you feel like you still live in a free country, but you know you don't. You know the government spying on you and going through your mail. You know if you stand in front of the state-house with a peace sign you'll get rousted or pepper-sprayed or something. You know if your name turns up on the wrong list, you'll either get bounced off your plane or dragged off to some far-flung blacksite where they keep you in a 6 ft. box until they want to waterboard for the millionth time. Yeah, everything still looks the same, but it's all changed. Everything's different now.

You watch news, right? It's all propaganda, every bit of it. In fact, they all read from same script. Maybe you went to some toffeenose college so you prefer PBS's Jim Lehrer News Hour, because you're smart and you want more "in depth" coverage. So, you get two brainy experts on each segment. But, there's one little problem, isn't there? Both experts are from corporate-funded think tanks, and both of them have exactly the same views on every single issue. But you think, "Hey, at least public TV airs different opinions." Right.

It's all George Orwell. It's all 1984. You know that. That's why we're all so frustrated. It's bad enough that the country's going to Hell in a handbasket, but it's even worse that they have to lie to you about it 24-7. That just reinforces the feeling that we're all goners; that the whole society is just propped up on one big freaking lie.

Have you looked around lately? Have you noticed the women at the grocery store who keep their head's down at the checkout stand while they load the boxes of mac n' cheese onto the conveyor-belt hoping like Hell that one of their credit cards will be accepted? Have you noticed that there are more kids at school showing up like ragamuffins and piling into the cafeteria for a free lunch. Have you been to a state park lately and seen the people who sleep in their cars at night and then spend $.50 to shower in the public restrooms. Have you taken a look under the freeway overpasses where small encampments are turning into tent cities.

I'm telling you, our goose is cooked.

The other day my bank shut-down after 30 years in business without any sign they were in trouble.
Whoa. You talk about shattered confidence; that'll do it every time. There I was in a long line of nervous-looking 50-somethings chewing on their lower lips and scowling while they made their way through the front door of the bank.

"Er, Mr. Bank Teller, could you tell me; do I have any money left?"

Don't kid yourself, when your bank goes under, it changes your world view. And it changes your feelings about America, too. Forget about security; it doesn't exist anymore. They'll fleece you out of your life's savings without batting an eye. Bankers are all crooks, every last one of them. And we're all just chickens for-the-plucking.

There was an article in USA Today that really sums up how bad things have gotten. The article is titled "Feds chase more student loan defaults". Here's a clip:

"The government increasingly is threatening to sue people who've defaulted on their student loans to get the money back. The number of loan defaults that the Education Department has referred to Justice Department lawyers for possible legal action has risen dramatically since before the recession and nearly doubled from 2009 to last year....

If the government does sue, it can go after wages and bank accounts, put liens on people's property and hold parents responsible for their children's debt if they co-signed the education loans. "The most important thing to remember is we want the loans repaid," says Jane Glickman, Education Department spokeswoman.

Can you see how sick this is? Since when has the Justice Department become a collection agency for private industry? Let the banks hire their own goons for Chrissake. They'd probably like that better that anyway.

And why is the DOJ shaking down our kids when the guys on Wall Street who created this mess are still slurping Bordeaux and figuring out new ways to ripoff Uncle Sugar? The whole thing is backasswards.

Any country that preys on its kids to make a few bucks is on it's last legs.

America has lost its way. Sooner or later we going to wind up in the same dustbin as the Soviet Union. ICH

Once again, might I remind you of the comments section.

Three arrested, accused of illegally feeding homeless Orlando

Floridians will have to submit urine, blood or hair samples for drug testing before receiving cash benefits from the state

Global war on drugs 'a failure' (link soon)

Previous related.
Louisiana's Fucked Up (The Arse) Laws
Peripheral (priorities)
The Big Vibrate Inn and Sex Is Icky Page

Louisiana's Fucked Up (The Arse) Laws

Louisiana's Fucked Up (The Arse) Laws

But it isn't just Louisiana is it? It starts with the Federal Government and filters down to each and every state. What am I talking about? getting fucked up the arse. I guess I am, in a literal sense as far as Louisiana goes, and metaphorically regarding the country as a whole.

Am I being fair if I call it, the Constitution of the United States, the biggest crock of shit ever written, after all it was only a bit of politicking when all said and done. Well if it wasn't a crock when it was written, every subsequent administration since, has done damnest to ensure it is one now.

....dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Well that fucker can go straight in the bin for a start.

But for my purposes today it is this line that is of interest, specifically the last bit.

...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Government for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Well old love, just like yourself it perished long ago, only whereas you are duly boxed and buried, this one's still around stinking up the place with its fetid carcass. That it should have long ago joined you under the earth there is no doubt. But shabby Pols keep the thing handy, wheeling it when occasion warrants, to serve some self interest, or to foster in the plebs the illusion of democracy, a democracy that stinks more than than the long dead promise itself.

For there is one thing you can be sure of, this is no government for the people. Governments for the people don't toil endlessly, bringing to the statutes every petty, mean, insidious, unjust law that they can dream up, and every one of those laws aimed at ruining the lives of its citizens.

And not just ruined for whatever unjust and over-long period of incarceration that it can inflict on its hapless citizens, but ruined forever by implementing legislation, so deliberate, that it ensures any kind of return to normality by a once convicted felon, is virtually impossible.

No government for the people, spends in such proportions, time and money to entrap its citizens and then try to pass it off as law enforcement. And its not just the hooker and john merrygoround that springs to mind, how about Operation Lucky Bag, justice! fuck me you couldn't make it up. Here, have bit more, a story to get your dick out for, or maybe not. America The Shabbiest Country On Earth

No government for the people brings before the court its citizens on charges, so petty, so mean, that these charges would be laughed out of court in the majority of industrialised nations. Laughed out of course, if they were ever to be brought, but first they would have to be on the statute books.

No government for the people sets mandatory minimum sentences, sentences so arbitrary, so draconian, so utterly unjust, that they make a mockery of the very word justice.

No government for the people, goes to such measures to extend its punishment of felons, post release. Felons have done their time, who have paid their debt to society, as we see in this example below. Going so far as to deny them a bite to eat no less. But look at the whole thing, no welfare, no shelter, no food, and as much a chance of getting a job as a snowball in hell. What then he going to end up doing in order to try and feed himself?

Under federal law persons with drug convictions like Garner are permanently barred from receiving financial aid for education, food stamps, welfare and publicly funded housing.

But only drug convictions trigger these exclusions under federal law. Violent bank robbers, white-collar criminals like Wall Street scam artists who steal billions, and even murderers who’ve done their time do not face the post-release deprivations slapped on those with drug convictions on their records, including those imprisoned for simple possession, and not major drug sales. more Mass Incarceration Creates Costly Disaster Across America

Right so, we will leave the government of the people and take look at the government of Louisiana, who by strange coincidence I featured the other day in an article, The Five Most Ruthless Police States in America, you wouldn't like to hazard a guess to who came out on top would you?

These aren't axe murderers, they're sex workers for fuck's sake.

Those who have been victimized by this law must carry a state identification card with the words "sex offender" printed below their name. If they have to evacuate because of a hurricane, they must stay in a special shelter for sex offenders that has no separate facilities for men and women. They have to pay a $60 annual registration fee, in addition to $250-$750 to print and mail postcards to their neighbors every time they move. The postcards must have their name and address, and a photo is often required, as well. Failing to register and pay the fees, a separate crime, can carry penalties of up to ten years in prison.

These sex workers' names, addresses and convictions are also printed in the newspaper and on a public online sex-offender database, and are also displayed at public sites like schools and community centers. Women

Have at it, justice Louisiana style.

Sex Workers File Civil Rights Suit Against Louisiana's "Crime Against Nature" Law
7 April 2011
by Jordan Flaherty, Truthout

The third week of February, attorneys from New Orleans-based and national organizations brought a federal civil rights complaint against Louisiana's 205-year-old "crime against nature" statute, a law designed to penalize sex acts associated with gays and lesbians. The law, as enforced, specifically singles out oral and anal sex for greater punishment for those arrested for prostitution, including a requirement that those convicted register as sex offenders in a public database. Advocates say the law has further isolated women on the fringes of society, including those who are forced to trade sex for food or a place to sleep at night.

In 2003, the Supreme Court outlawed this country's sodomy laws with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas. However, instead of striking down Louisiana's law in its entirety, the state has chosen to only enforce the portion of the law that concerns "solicitation" of a crime against nature.




The decision on whether to charge those who are accused of selling sex of committing a "crime against nature," which is a felony, instead of misdemeanor prostitution is left entirely in the hands of police and prosecutors. "This leaves the door wide open to discriminatory enforcement targeting poor black women, transgender women and gay men for a charge that carries much harsher penalties," says police misconduct attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie, a co-counsel in the lawsuit. Seventy-five percent of those on the database for crime against nature offenses are women, and 80 percent are African-American. Evidence gathered by advocates suggests a majority are poor or indigent.

Louisiana is the only state that requires people who have been convicted of crimes that do not involve sexual violence or sex with minors to register as sex offenders. In 1994, Congress passed Megan's Law, also known as the Wetterling Act, which mandated that states create systems for registering sex offenders. The act was amended in 1996 to require public disclosure of the names on the registries and again in 2006 to require sex offenders to stay in the public registry for at least 15 years.

The Wetterling Act, also known as the Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act was clearly not targeted at prostitution. However, Louisiana lawmakers opted to apply the registry to the crime against nature statute as well, and at that moment started down the path to a new level of punishment for sex work. "This archaic law is being used to mark people with a modern-day scarlet letter," says attorney Alexis Agathocleus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, another party in the lawsuit. "Inclusion on the sex-offender registry violates basic constitutional equal protection principles and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment."

Those who have been victimized by this law must carry a state identification card with the words "sex offender" printed below their name. If they have to evacuate because of a hurricane, they must stay in a special shelter for sex offenders that has no separate facilities for men and women. They have to pay a $60 annual registration fee, in addition to $250-$750 to print and mail postcards to their neighbors every time they move. The postcards must have their name and address, and a photo is often required, as well. Failing to register and pay the fees, a separate crime, can carry penalties of up to ten years in prison.

These sex workers' names, addresses and convictions are also printed in the newspaper and on a public online sex-offender database, and are also displayed at public sites like schools and community centers. Women - including one mother of three - have complained that because of their appearance on the registry, they have had men come to their homes demanding sex. A plaintiff in the suit had rocks thrown at her by neighbors. "This has forced me to live in poverty, be on food stamps and welfare," explains a man who was on the list. "I've never done that before."

In Orleans Parish, 292 people are on the registry for selling sex, versus 85 people convicted of forcible rape and 78 convicted of "indecent behavior with juveniles." Almost 40 percent of those registered in Orleans Parish are listed solely because they were accused of offering anal or oral sex for money. Legal advocates credit on-the-ground organizing and the advocacy of Women With a Vision (WWAV) for making them aware of this discriminatory law. WWAV, a 20-year-old New Orleans-based organization, provides health care and other services to marginalized communities, including women involved in survival sex work. "Many of these women are survivors of rape and domestic violence themselves," says WWAV executive director Deon Haywood, "yet they are being treated as predators."

Speaking anonymously on a recent phone call set up by advocates, some of the plaintiffs in the suit shared their stories.

"Ian Doe" was homeless from the age of 13 and began trading sex for survival. When an undercover officer approached him and asked him for sex, "All I said was, 'Fifty dollars,' and they put me away for four years," he said. In prison, Ian was raped by a correction officer and by other prisoners and contracted HIV. Now, he says, potential employers see the words "sex offender" written on his ID and will not hire him. "Do I deserve to be punished any more than I've already been punished?" he asks. "I was 13 years old. That's the only way I knew how to survive."

"Eve Doe" is a transgender woman living in rural southern Louisiana. She was molested as a child and kicked out of her home at the age of 14. She spent two years in prison. During her time behind bars, she was raped and has also contacted HIV. "I have tried desperately to change my life," she says, but her status as a sex offender stands in the way of housing and other programs. "When I present my ID for anything," she says, "the assumption is that you're a child molester or a rapist. The discrimination is just ongoing and ongoing."

"Hiroka Doe," a New Orleans resident, was the last person to speak on the call. "I had just graduated from high school and was just coming out as transgender," she says. Hiroka was arrested and convicted while still a teenager. As she began to describe her experience, Hiroka's voice began to shake. "I was being held with men in jail at the time.... " she began. Then there was silence on the line. Holding back tears, Doe then apologized for being unable to continue.

The Louisiana legislature recently passed a reform of the crime against nature statute, but for the vast majority of those affected, the reform makes little to no difference. Although the new law takes away the registration component for a first conviction, a second conviction requires 15 years on the registry, and up to five years imprisonment. A third conviction mandates a lifetime on the registry. More than 538 men and women remain on the registry because they were convicted of offering anal or oral sex, with more names added almost every day.




The lawsuit, called Doe v. Jindal, has been filed in Louisiana's US District Court Eastern District on behalf of nine anonymous plaintiffs. It was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ritchie and the law clinic at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. The anonymous plaintiffs include a grandmother, a mother of four, three transgender women and a man, all of whom have been required to register as sex offenders from fifteen years to life as a result of their convictions for the solicitation of oral sex for money. truthout

And just to finish off, this from NOLA, not new but part of my ''recommended for you'' at Youtube. It's the Billo bit we are interested in, it in turn promoted me to dig out the second clip. Wouldn't you think New Orleans had enough problems already, without making the efforts it does to fuck up yet more lives?

I don't know what proportion of these guys are sex offenders, but it is under a bridge that they usually end up, the result of the draconian conditions of abode set them by the State.






What's wrong with Lolita?




http://justtellmewherethebridgeis.blogspot.com/

Eternal Punishment: Obama Leads Third Century of Imperial Revenge on Haiti

Leaving behind for a while, the trials and tribulations of that testament to man's folly, the nuclear installation at Fukushima Japan, I thought it time I caught up on a writer I have sadly neglected since I was away blogging other things.

That writer, and much neglected on my part, the unique Arthur Silber. Let me borrow the same few lines that I used recently to introduce both Arthur Silber and his philosophical piece: Of Abortion, and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil.

As I've said here many times before, no one that I know writing today is making the kinds of profound connections that Arthur Silber makes, year after year: drawing out the deeper implications of the operations of power on every level of our lives, from the global scope of high politics to the still, dark night of the individual psyche.- Chris Floyd

This introduction, serving both purposes as it does, the promise of things to come from Mr Silber, and to introduce you to the writer of those few words, Chris Floyd. Who I have to say, judging by this one article alone, ain't too shabby in the literary department himself.

Arthur Silber coming soon, I just need to find my something of choice, your item of interest, out of what I can only describe as a monumental output of material from Arthur Silber's pen. All of it most readable.

Eternal Punishment: Obama Leads Third Century of Imperial Revenge on Haiti
Written by Chris Floyd
Saturday, 02 April 2011 00:41

The blood and thunder (or is it thud and blunder?) of the American-led intervention in Libya has obscured one of the more revealing episodes of our times -- especially for those many millions who still cling to the idea that Barack Obama is somehow an improvement, however slight, over the ruthless, lawless, corroded souls who preceded him in the post of imperial manager.

We speak of course of the American rigging of the election in battered, helpless Haiti -- a brazen effort to disenfranchise the majority of the population and ensure the election of a vicious -- but acquiescent -- client to the presidency. This sordid episode comes complete with a personal intervention by the Nobel Peace Laureate himself to try to continue the exile and persecution of the democratically elected Haitian president overthrown by George W. Bush in a brutal coup.

Even as he was scheming with the CIA to put covert American "boots on the ground" in the Libyan civil war, Obama and his dream team have been maneuvering like mad to put one of a pair of right-wing fanatics into office in Haiti while excluding any other candidates from the running -- including those from Haiti's biggest political party. Obama also personally called South African President Jacob Zuma to ask to keep holding Bush-ousted former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Africa and prevent him from returning to his native land before the election.

With the sublime hypocrisy that has become the hallmark of this most mendacious militarist administration, an Obama spokesman said the Peace Laureate opposed Aristide's return due to "deep concerns that President Aristide's return to Haiti in the closing days of the election could be destabilising," adding that the defender of freedom and democracy believes "that the Haitian people deserve the chance to choose their government through peaceful, free and fair elections."

Even from Team Obama, this is pretty rich. After blocking the largest political party from running, then forcing a run-off between two former supporters of vicious coups, Obama said he didn't want Haiti's democratically elected former leader to return to the homeland he was trundled from at gunpoint by Bushist goons in order to give the Haitian people "a free, fair election."

The result has been a record-low turnout and run-off so riddled with corruption that it may be weeks before one of America's hand-picked stooges is declared the winner. Meanwhile, Aristide did return -- Zuma told Obama plainly that Astride was a free man, he had a passport from his home country, and "I cannot hold him hostage." He did not interfere with the election, he endorsed no candidate. Most of his supporter simply boycotted the election, because of its blatant illegitimacy.

So this is what Barack Obama and his partner in imperialism, the globe-trotting Hillary Clinton, have been up to on the side while they are killing children in Libya and bluntly declaring to Congress that Obama will not acknowledge any restriction on his imperial will to wage war where whenever and wherever he damn well pleases. As John Caruso notes in a blistering post: more

Now That's What I Call Blogging

Blogging with attitude, blogging with a fuck you attitude, and unapologetic with it.

I've been wanting to up a link to this site for a few days now, particularly after availing myself of a link or two that I found there. But I knew if I upped the thing without first putting my hand in my pocket, then the odds of Sea Shepherd Org. actually seeing a donation might have got a bit longer. (See new banner)

When you take a look at this site and read yer man's words, in truth I couldn't for shame not have sent a few bob, to what is after all, a cause close to my heart.

This is a mighty resource for anyone with a social conscience, and undoubtedly the result of an equally mighty effort. Activism on this scale makes me feel quite humble, my hat off to you Sir.

Click to open.

Radical Video Library

(EN) Radical Video Library is a non-profit D.I.Y. project, that has put as its goal to spread the word in form of "the video". We will try to bring here various genres from different perspectives and subcultures. We try to focus especially on anarchy, protests, riots, ecology, animal liberation, peak oil, antifascist struggle, human rights and other liberation struggles - in the form of film, documentaries, music, presentations, pictures, zines,...for Download.

Do you like something you downloaded from this library? It can happen that the DLL links get deleted so I encourage you to UPLOAD these films or documentaries to other servers, so it will be available for download as long as possible.

Remember! The main purpose of this library is not to keep you in front of the computer screen!! The struggle is out there in the streets and forests of this lovely Earth!!!

Hey folks, write me if you have something on your heart:)
E-mail: anticopyright@moose-mail.com

http://www.fuckcopyright.blogspot.com/

And how could you not admire a man who names his blog such.

Click to open and then click image for full size.

Not Much of a CV GW

This individual seeks an executive position. He will be available in January 2009, and is willing (and hopeful) to relocate.

RESUME

GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

Law Enforcement:·
I was arrested in Kennebunkport , Maine , in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pleaded guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver'slicense suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been 'lost' and is not available.

Military:·
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam .

College:·
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

Past Work Experience:·
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.

I began my career in the oil business in Midland , Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas . The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land
using taxpayer money.

With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas .

Accomplishments

As Governor Of Texas :·
I changed Texas pollution laws to favour power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union .

During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America .

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida , and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President of the United States, after losing by over 500,000 votes.

Accomplishments

As President (with 4 3 5 Notable Firsts):·

I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal
record.

I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues.

I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My 'poorest millionaire, ' Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.

I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history, Enron.

My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.

I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts

I appointed more convicted criminals to my administration than any President in U.S. history.

I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States Government.

I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S history.

I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. 'prisoners of war' detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US election).

I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. Citizens and the world community.

I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.

In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking
Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

I am supporting development of a nuclear 'Tactical Bunker Buster,' a WMD.

I have so far failed to fulfil my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

Records And References:·

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review. I specified that my sealed documents will not be available for 50 years.

I never knew one man and one post could warrant so many labels.

No attribution, my apologies.

"Opium Flowers" The Child Brides of Afghanistan

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Tragic.

Khalida's father says she's 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can't keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can't keep her much longer. Khalida's father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he's losing far more than money. "I never imagined I'd have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter," says Shah................




Eradication efforts aren't the only thing pushing opium marriages. Poppy acreage is expanding in Helmand province, but loan brides are common there, too, says Bashir Ahmad Nadim, a local journalist. He says moneylenders in Helmand are always looking for "opium flowers"— marriageable daughters ready for plucking if crop failure or family emergency forces a borrower into default. In the south's drug-fueled economy, fathers of opium brides often get hefty cash bonuses on top of having their debts forgiven.more

"It begins with a girl and a lie" Child Trafficking Indian Subcontinent

.
There is little I can say.

Inside The Slave Trade

This is the story of the 21st century’s trade in slave-children. My journey into their underworld took place where its alleys and brothels are most dense - Asia, where the United Nations calculates 1 million children are being traded every day. It took me to places I did not think existed, today, now. To a dungeon in the lawless Bangladeshi borderlands where children are padlocked and prison-barred in transit to Indian brothels; to an iron whore-house where grown women have spent their entire lives being raped; to a clinic that treat syphilitic 11-year-olds.

But this story begins like all these stories begin: with a girl, and a lie. Sufia comes to talk to me in a centre for children who have been rescued, funded by Comic Relief – which is having its major Sport Relief funding run this weekend. She has only ever talked about it to her counsellors here. But she wants the world to know what happened to her.more

Lower graphic not related to story, I used it to highlight just how far apart are the lives of these two groups of kids.

World Wheat Crisis: Three Reports

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This is not something I would normally cover but the potential for a humanitarian disaster doesn't seem unlikely.

What I find morally indefensible with half the world starving is the use of foodstuffs to produce bio-fuels and grain to feed cattle.
Figures for this in the Times article.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.

The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high and could lead to further hikes in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods. Times

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For some U.S. crops, it‘s almost too late. The 2007 U.S. wheat crop is virtually sold out, while domestic soybean stocks soon will fall below a 20-day supply. Corn inventories are stronger but with demand from export markets, the livestock industry and ethanol plants, supplies also could be just as scarce for the 2008 crop. Hoosier Ag Today

~~~~~~~~~~~

Wheat prices have hit record highs and tight supplies of the staple crop have ignited concern about rising food costs.

The price of higher-quality spring wheat jumped almost 25% on Monday - the biggest one-day increase to date. BBC

Update:Scientists say they have made a key breakthrough in understanding the genes of plants that could lead to crops that can survive in a drought. BBC

Women Of The Gulabi (Pink) Gang Fight Back In India

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Good for them, that's the way to go ladies.

Under a scorching summer sun, a swarm of 400 furious women engulfed the scruffy electricity office of Banda district in north India. They were all dressed identically in fluorescent pink saris...........


There are few places on earth where life is as short and brutal as in Bundelkhand, the desolate region straddling the southern tip of Uttar Pradesh where Banda lies. Farming is the principal livelihood; wages are as little as 60p a day for men and half that for women. Bonded and child labour are rife. Corruption is routine. Its reputation in India is that of a place where people still die of hunger......................

The targets of the Gulabi Gang's vigilantism are corrupt officials and violent husbands. The gang has stopped child marriages, forced police officers to register cases of domestic violence - by slapping them - and got roads built by dragging the official responsible from his desk on to the dust track in question.

The gang is led, and was created by, 46-year-old Sampat Devi Pal. When I meet her, she is demonstrating self-defence moves with a stick. "We always carry them but only for protection," she explains, twisting the weapon high over her head and thwacking it hard against her opponent's.more