Here's an excerpt from an interview Neal Conan did today on Talk Of The Nation with NPR foreign correspondent Jamie Tarabay, about the attack on Lara Logan:

CONAN: And were you surprised to hear of this attack on Lara Logan?

TARABAY: Unfortunately, I was not. I want to begin by adding my concern and my sympathy to Lara and her family, and my best wishes for her at this time. But I do want to say that when it comes to the Egyptian government and Egyptian demonstrations, this is not the first time this has happened. There's a long history of the national ruling party sending out security forces or plainclothes policemen, no matter how you want to describe them, and with specific instructions to actually target women. And there have been well-documented instances, you know, even from the last presidential election in 2005, when they have, you know, described men tearing off the shirts of women, sexually molesting them, humiliating them to kow(ph) protests. This is not something that is new, unfortunately, but it's also nothing that's restricted to Egyptian demonstrations.

CONAN: Where else have you encountered this?

TARABAY: Well, you know, this is something that happens to, you know, female reporters, and not just reporters, but obviously women who are active in politics. And it happens - you know, there have been countless instances of female reporters being sexually harassed and, in some cases, gang raped - everywhere, from places like Pakistan to Angola.

CONAN: So clearly, not just a problem in the Middle East.

TARABAY: It's obviously a problem where security is bought and paid for, and there is very, very little respect for women rights. I mean, this is always an issue in a lot of these places.

So attacks like these are more likely in countries, anywhere in the world, where there is little respect for women's rights, but it also must be remembered that this was a targeted attack by government thugs rather than a random sexual assault by lecherous Arab mob members. I'd also like to point to the fact that it wasn't just women who saved Ms. Logan, but also a group of (male) soldiers. This type of behavior is not just an Arab thing. And every country with a good record on women's rights now doesn't have to go back too far in its history to see its shameful record then.

I watched this for a while because she is quite attractive and the video seemed it might have some potential to go some where and maby be amusing in content. but the more I listen to her the more annoying she became.

If this was an ugly guy presenting the video It would not annoy me so much if just close the video and forget about it , but what annoys me with this is that its another woman that on the face of it seems like they might have been a femail equivalent of angry video game nurd or that Brit guy that reviews the shit consoles. but then when it came down to it it just came across as contrived and forced. (despite the fact that it was well produced and edited which is weird)

The only Face to cam woman I know on the internet that's good is that russan girl that does atheist videos and really she is not that good but at last she is in the top % of people male or femail I find the russen girl easer to watch and listen to than pat condel or thunder foot.

I want to see more competent women making videos in subject areas that I enjoy , there is nothing hotter than a girl that is informed confident and witty within Sceince, Games, philosphy , computing.

Its totaly unfair that Girls that are atracted to geek guys have a huge number of people to gawk at and lust over , but men such as myself have fuck all.

Its bullshit , and then u have these womens rights people saying its men repressing them which is utter shit as anny dipshit can pick up a camara and make you tube videos.

EDIT >>>>>>

"although she is a bit crazy and random, though that can be somewhat charming at times." well that's a load of shit her randomness is totally contrived and not realy that random , its the kind of random you have when sum-one watches allot of manga and starts to copy the stuff they see in them.

How stupid can the GOP be? How can they not know they are going to ultimately lose on this issue? It doesn't matter how many times they may win a battle, they are going to lose the war.

Even if I vehemently opposed homosexuality, it's simply impossible to stop the growing acceptance of homosexuality. So a smart politician should see the writing on the wall and get on board.

Deny women rights? You lose.
Deny black rights? You lose.

How often must we go through this before we stop shooting ourselves in the foot?

Don't worry, if you're still opposed to homosexuality, you can still disown your child if they are gay and send them to brainwas-err I mean church camps to reprog-err I mean enlighten them to the "correct" way.

ignorance --> fear --> homophobia

Basically this guy says out loud what Ive been thinking for long now, the GOP isnt really a political party at all anymore. A political party are people with actual opinions and goals. The election process and the power are MEANS by which to achieve those goals for a political party. The GOP is a power party, it seeks power for powers sake. The actual opinions and goals are just means to an end for them, if it means that they have to support destroying the planet, teach nonsense to children, take away womens rights over their own bodies or whatever, then so be it, as long as they get into power.

This is what happens when memes run amok, they start living their own life, and start caring for their own survival. Its how religion works.

[quote]Hey dip fuck. Look at Iran or Palestine. I'll bet there are more higher educated women with positions like doctors, etc. then in the US or other western countries. So you can shove your ignorant big talking mouth back to hickistan.[/quote]

This seemed tremendously unlikely so I checked. The only specific example you gave was doctors, so I checked that:

10.8% of Palestinean doctors are women. (see http://www.pwic.org.ps/english/Health/hea3.html)
24% of US doctors are women. (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1404692/?page=2)

I couldn't find good stats for Iran, but I expect they have a higher percentage of woman doctors than Palestine because of Iran's particular focus on religious rules (male doctors are discouraged from seeing naked female patients). Given this particularity, I thin if we expanded this out to other "higher educated" positions I think we'd see at least the same gap.

That said, I think many people would assume the status of womens' rights in, say, Iran is worse than it actually is. But that's no reason not to look at things objectively. And if we expand out to other Islamic nations (like, say, Afghanistan) then the situation is much more dire.

And in defense of hickistan (which I assume is somewhere in the US despite its name), I think it's hard to fault the US too much on this front (that of educating women). It has made tremendous progress in the last 30-40 years in terms of gender inequality. For example, in 2003 49.2% of medical students were women.

@burdturgler

I explained to my girlfriend it is required for her to post tits if she wished to continue expressing herself on teh internets, and she refused. She cited womens rights and gender equality blah blah

Also, you're absolutely 100% correct. The niqab is not the problem. Full facial coverings are the problem when engaging the public. If niqab's are determined to be reasonable, and are accommodated as such then I might start going out in full face masks too. I don't much like people and, honestly, I would love to be able to enjoy the same level of anonymity in the real world as I enjoy online.

Again, I'll group yamakas in the same category as earrings and baggie pants. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they're no less an expression of individuality, or lack thereof, then shutter shades. But the niqab, if I didn't know any better, and even if I did know better, looks to hide the identity of a person.

Look, I get it. I'm also worried about the governments plans. I'm worried they'll watch my internet traffic and decide I'm a Ron Paul supporter and then they'll slow my internet down / cause disconnects often.

I'm worried they will hand over too much power to corporations. I'm worried they will show too much preference in tax breaks to religious institutions.

But if tomorrow they enacted a law similar to the "No shoes, no shirt, no service" signs you see sometimes. I'd have no problem with that. It would be optional. Meaning if you walk into my store and refuse to show your face, I can legally refuse to serve you. That seems reasonable to me. "No face, No place."

It's a different issue when it's government services. But the necessity to show your face during exams and while voting stands.

Heh, fair enough. I didn't mean to be patronizing.. it just came so naturally.

Well, I think I almost completely agree in that definition. There's plenty of other content that intends to arouse the viewer without actually being porn though, a reading of an erotic novel, commercials (usually beer commercials) and such all intends to arouse the view, but should not be considered porn either.

To be pornography, it should contain two things: 1) the intention to arouse the viewer 2) actual sexual content.

A woman suggestively eating a banana isn't porn. Elderly (or younger) women sitting in a circle masturbating is certainly skating the borders of it, even it it's framed as if not to arouse - but instead be hilarious. It's all a big gray area. I'm not certain dag and lucky actually meant pornography when they wrote it in the faq though, it's basically just to keep sexually explicit content to a minimum (I think). And this is certainly pretty explicit.

In reply to this comment by berticus:
Hey, you played the patronising card first. Golden rule.

It cannot be just "explicit genitalia" that dag is concerned with (isn't there a testicular self-exam guide video here? and I know I've seen other clips with genitalia) - it seems to be the fact that since it's in the context of sex it's scaring advertisers. Such a ruling I have no grudge with, if it's because it's scaring off advertisers that are (depressingly) necessary to keep the site afloat.

But that is entirely separate from what I actually care about. The video is NOT pornography. It was not made to sexually arouse the viewer.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
I do get what you're saying about 'porn' as in commercials and other videos that sell themselves with sex (or arousal) as the main selling point. I think there's a difference between those and the video in question though. Innuendo and hints are different than explicit genitalia on screen. I have nothing against it as such and for all I care it should stay, but there is a difference I think. None-the-less, as you said yourself, dag's trump card trumps the rest.

I was pissed back when my squirting orgasm video was discarded, but I understand why it was discarded and in the end I'm OK with that. Bills gotta be payed and since we'd never use the site if it was pay-per-view, ads will have to do and then the site owners have to appease them at least a bit. I'm all for taking a moral standpoint against censorship or womens' rights or what have you, but I just don't care enough about this video to grab my pitchfork just yet. If it had been guys sitting around jacking it, I'm pretty sure the discussion would not be so loud and roaring and it would just have been discarded as porn. (That's a separate issue though.)

"Just forget it"? There's no need to patronize me. I don't care for it and it still doesn't suit you.

In reply to this comment by berticus:
'porn', gwiz, not porn. just forget it.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:

But @berticus, if there's so much porn already, please present it. You can't just claim that there is and expect us to just accept that as fact. And self-righteousness does not become you (or anyone), please tone it down lest you become the ghost of MINK past.

Hey, you played the patronising card first. Golden rule.

It cannot be just "explicit genitalia" that dag is concerned with (isn't there a testicular self-exam guide video here? and I know I've seen other clips with genitalia) - it seems to be the fact that since it's in the context of sex it's scaring advertisers. Such a ruling I have no grudge with, if it's because it's scaring off advertisers that are (depressingly) necessary to keep the site afloat.

But that is entirely separate from what I actually care about. The video is NOT pornography. It was not made to sexually arouse the viewer.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
I do get what you're saying about 'porn' as in commercials and other videos that sell themselves with sex (or arousal) as the main selling point. I think there's a difference between those and the video in question though. Innuendo and hints are different than explicit genitalia on screen. I have nothing against it as such and for all I care it should stay, but there is a difference I think. None-the-less, as you said yourself, dag's trump card trumps the rest.

I was pissed back when my squirting orgasm video was discarded, but I understand why it was discarded and in the end I'm OK with that. Bills gotta be payed and since we'd never use the site if it was pay-per-view, ads will have to do and then the site owners have to appease them at least a bit. I'm all for taking a moral standpoint against censorship or womens' rights or what have you, but I just don't care enough about this video to grab my pitchfork just yet. If it had been guys sitting around jacking it, I'm pretty sure the discussion would not be so loud and roaring and it would just have been discarded as porn. (That's a separate issue though.)

"Just forget it"? There's no need to patronize me. I don't care for it and it still doesn't suit you.

In reply to this comment by berticus:
'porn', gwiz, not porn. just forget it.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:

But @berticus, if there's so much porn already, please present it. You can't just claim that there is and expect us to just accept that as fact. And self-righteousness does not become you (or anyone), please tone it down lest you become the ghost of MINK past.

I do get what you're saying about 'porn' as in commercials and other videos that sell themselves with sex (or arousal) as the main selling point. I think there's a difference between those and the video in question though. Innuendo and hints are different than explicit genitalia on screen. I have nothing against it as such and for all I care it should stay, but there is a difference I think. None-the-less, as you said yourself, dag's trump card trumps the rest.

I was pissed back when my squirting orgasm video was discarded, but I understand why it was discarded and in the end I'm OK with that. Bills gotta be payed and since we'd never use the site if it was pay-per-view, ads will have to do and then the site owners have to appease them at least a bit. I'm all for taking a moral standpoint against censorship or womens' rights or what have you, but I just don't care enough about this video to grab my pitchfork just yet. If it had been guys sitting around jacking it, I'm pretty sure the discussion would not be so loud and roaring and it would just have been discarded as porn. (That's a separate issue though.)

"Just forget it"? There's no need to patronize me. I don't care for it and it still doesn't suit you.

In reply to this comment by berticus:
'porn', gwiz, not porn. just forget it.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:

But @berticus, if there's so much porn already, please present it. You can't just claim that there is and expect us to just accept that as fact. And self-righteousness does not become you (or anyone), please tone it down lest you become the ghost of MINK past.

if you still dont understand after reading the comments above, chances are youll never understand.

there is no such thing is gay rights, or black rights, or womens rights so show me any spokesperson be they martin luther king junior or a ten year old with an overactive vocabulary and ill show you a person who doesnt understand human rights

I think I get the gist of what you're saying, and you're certainly way more schooled that me.

It is of course dangerous to generalise from anecdotes - I threw them in because clearly I now have a bias and they're part of the reason why.

Maybe there's something in the practice of modern Islam that's not working.

I tell you what's funny is that when I went to church for the funeral in June I remembered *everything*, all the amens and hosanna in the highests and exactly when to stand up or kneel. And this is after many years of not going to church.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
former catholic eh?
many people come to me from the ecclestiastical teachings of catholicism very confused.
cant blame them...the doctrine of the church is contradictory to the teachings of jesus,and the papacy has for centuries amended doctrine when it so suited them.
which is EXACTLY my point.
substitute catholic for muslim and my point my become clearer.
religious dogma and doctrine has always been the whipping tool of those who hold the reigns.preying on the weak,poor and ill-educated to submit to a doctrine that is contradictory to the teachings of <fill in holy messenger HERE>.
i could spend hours debunking the biblical (quran,torah,KJV) scriptures that have been misused to perpetuate a misnomer on:womens rights,sexuality,marriage,sin etc etc eeeeeetc.
most atheists i know are not in reality atheists,just agnostics who have peeked through the veil of the church and found it lacking.
many of them are angry,feeling betrayed by an institution that so often stated that they were right.
no...they werent.
the thing i find most funny is that every spiritual "leader"(if i may)has denounced the church of that time as being a form of evil fomenting more evil.
but i digress (i know..shocker),
my point is that islam has enriched human society tenfold.
by creating the most egalitarian society 500 a.d
womens rights 525 a.d
property rights 525 a.d
the continuation of sciences,so while europe got bogged down in the 600 yr dark ages and the church raped the countryside with its inquistitions,islam was not only preserving but helping to restore as much of the library of alexandria as it could.
fairness,justice,honesty virtues held in huge regard.
humility and reverence for all creation.
these are worthy things to admire.

maybe its the history teacher in me,i tend to look at information in giant blocks.the ebb and flow of time,forces of social upheavel and political unrest changing one national landscape to form into another.philisophical tectonic plates if you will.sometime i forget the here and now.
the teachings of mohamhed and jesus are poignant and wise.
i do not like the polarized nature of our countries,it only leads to danger.
i am sorry that the situation is where its at in your country.
by your response i can never know,but i can guess:
the newly immigrated islamic community is using its religion to strongarm the rest of the community to bend to the churches wishes.
i shall look more into this,i welcome any anecdotes you may wish to reveal.
while i still feel the billions of muslims are being misunderstood due to these few who butcher a beautiful text to garner their desires.
that is NOT from islam..nor christianity for that matter.
but they keep saying thats exactly what the text says dont they?
and they could not be more wrong.
those who are unfamiliar with islamic text base their assumptions on these selfish people.
sad sad sad....
what could have been a good and righteous thing is now an instrument of divisiveness.
bah...rambling again.
thank you for the reply my friend,i do hope this makes a modicum of sense.
namaste.

former catholic eh?
many people come to me from the ecclestiastical teachings of catholicism very confused.
cant blame them...the doctrine of the church is contradictory to the teachings of jesus,and the papacy has for centuries amended doctrine when it so suited them.
which is EXACTLY my point.
substitute catholic for muslim and my point my become clearer.
religious dogma and doctrine has always been the whipping tool of those who hold the reigns.preying on the weak,poor and ill-educated to submit to a doctrine that is contradictory to the teachings of <fill in holy messenger HERE>.
i could spend hours debunking the biblical (quran,torah,KJV) scriptures that have been misused to perpetuate a misnomer on:womens rights,sexuality,marriage,sin etc etc eeeeeetc.
most atheists i know are not in reality atheists,just agnostics who have peeked through the veil of the church and found it lacking.
many of them are angry,feeling betrayed by an institution that so often stated that they were right.
no...they werent.
the thing i find most funny is that every spiritual "leader"(if i may)has denounced the church of that time as being a form of evil fomenting more evil.
but i digress (i know..shocker),
my point is that islam has enriched human society tenfold.
by creating the most egalitarian society 500 a.d
womens rights 525 a.d
property rights 525 a.d
the continuation of sciences,so while europe got bogged down in the 600 yr dark ages and the church raped the countryside with its inquistitions,islam was not only preserving but helping to restore as much of the library of alexandria as it could.
fairness,justice,honesty virtues held in huge regard.
humility and reverence for all creation.
these are worthy things to admire.

maybe its the history teacher in me,i tend to look at information in giant blocks.the ebb and flow of time,forces of social upheavel and political unrest changing one national landscape to form into another.philisophical tectonic plates if you will.sometime i forget the here and now.
the teachings of mohamhed and jesus are poignant and wise.
i do not like the polarized nature of our countries,it only leads to danger.
i am sorry that the situation is where its at in your country.
by your response i can never know,but i can guess:
the newly immigrated islamic community is using its religion to strongarm the rest of the community to bend to the churches wishes.
i shall look more into this,i welcome any anecdotes you may wish to reveal.
while i still feel the billions of muslims are being misunderstood due to these few who butcher a beautiful text to garner their desires.
that is NOT from islam..nor christianity for that matter.
but they keep saying thats exactly what the text says dont they?
and they could not be more wrong.
those who are unfamiliar with islamic text base their assumptions on these selfish people.
sad sad sad....
what could have been a good and righteous thing is now an instrument of divisiveness.
bah...rambling again.
thank you for the reply my friend,i do hope this makes a modicum of sense.
namaste.

This stupid thing still going on? If you haven't noticed, rasch187 ain't this important. He's Norwegian, remember? No one cares for the Norwegians. They're the turd-like residue left over after the Swedes left.

I'm glad to see thinker247 is here having a lot of fun with his 'First!' jokes. Those are so fresh. Thinker is like that guy that shows up at the high school reunion still making the jokes people didn't laugh at in high school. This clown had the misfortune to name himself 'thinker247', as if after a single comment post we wouldn't realize that was absolutely the opposite of what he should've named himself.

I'm glad they got Crosswords to MC this. That's a lot fun. Who's MCing the next roast? Anagrams? Nothing spells good times like a word puzzle with a knife welding raccoon avatar. I could not think of a more unremarkable person to host this, to be honest. Well, there is one: nibiyabi. "I'll put a pilgrim hat on Darwin and give him some googly eyes. That'll make me the life of the party!" No, nibiyabi, that makes you unfunny. Though, his profile claims he likes cat fart videos, so he can't be all bad, can he?

Who let rougy in here? Isn't there a warrant out for him yet? He's a forty something year old man with an avatar of a naked boy. Rougy fancies himself a poet. I normally like to encourage artists, but after reading his most recent poem Doorways & Beginnings I think encouraging him to continue would be like encouraging choggie to become a linguistics professor.

Good to see laura and alien_concept in here. Two of the resident women on the Sift. I'm not sure what good the two of you will do on here, though, because last I checked Dag and Lucky hadn't installed a kitchen. But, you're two progressive and self-actualized women, right? That's really great. Now, put a @$*# in that mouth and fetch me a ham and cheese sandwich.

Speaking of phallic items in mouths, I almost forgot this roast was about rasch. Rasch is an ugly guy. He is. I don't have a joke for that... he's just an ugly guy. I'm not saying he's the ugliest guy in the world, but his mom had to get drunk to breast feed him. When he was born, his mom tried to take home the placenta instead. Janet Reno is a handsomer man than he is.

>> ^imstellar28:
^no you hateful piece of sh t
laws are supposed to based on unalienable human rights. that is the ONLY legitimate basis for a system of law.


The word republic comes form the word res publica which means a public matter, in political science a republic refers always to a state where power is given via consent by the people governed. Nowhere does it say that a republic comes with laws that come from unalienable human rights. This is simply a system of government over a populace.

If the people governed choose to have slavery, no womens rights and abolition of gay rights this is what the republic would have as laws. Changes with regards to these come from social change as a whole, as people realize that oppression by color by sex and by sexual preference is not right or inhumane and so on.

The modern world is not wrong, it is simply the result of recursive adjustments to how society changes its views over the course of history. In the 20th Century we gained womans right to vote, civil liberties and this all culminated in an election where a woman and black man ran for President. Obama became president. That's in a span of less then 50 years since the civil rights movement.

You are basically saying that we should have imposed laws. I agree that the Bill of Rights is a great Law to impose unequivocally. But this never happens in separation, it always leaves room for new laws that simply tools of oppression. That's why checks and balances exit.

That's why the US is constitutional republic, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law."

How did Hollywood's latest products know that I don't care about Darfur or womens' rights? They must have special powers or something.

You win. I won't vote.

I'm glad that's over. Anybody got some weed?