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By James Mann
$18.45
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By Andrew Breitbart
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Flickr / Wesley Oostvogels
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By Vanessa Richmond, AlterNet —
Is there a fairer way to compensate surrogate mothers? Too often, surrogacy is about a wealthy couple hiring a poor woman to breed for them.
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By Ellen Goodman — What fans loved about Sarah Palin was her perceived authenticity. She was repeatedly described as “real.” But now it appears she doesn’t really know who she is. Or what she wants.
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By Marie Cocco — None of Sarah Palin’s numerous shortcomings excuse the sexist cant that she, like Hillary Clinton before her, has been subjected to since she burst onto the national scene.
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Collage: eonline.com / andrewbostom.org / drrobertrey.com
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By Gbemisola Olujobi — As a circumcised and sexually fulfilled African woman who has been lectured for years by Western NGOs about the moral implications of my genitalia, you can imagine my surprise learning about the the wind of labiaplasties and genital rejuvenations currently sweeping across Europe and America.
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Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
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By Ellen Goodman — It is believed that the shooter acted alone. But Michael Griffin also acted alone when he killed David Gunn in 1993. Paul Hill acted alone in 1994. John Salvi acted alone and so did Eric Rudolph and James Kopp. This suspect is hardly lonely in this murderous cast of lone actors.
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By Amy Goodman — He was assassinated while in church in Wichita, Kan., on Sunday, targeted for legally performing abortions. His death might have been prevented simply through enforcement of existing laws.
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By Marie Cocco — President Obama’s nominee said she hopes Americans “will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.” Ordinary people have had a difficult time of it before the current Supreme Court.
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Author, scholar and Truthdig contributor Chalmers Johnson passed away Nov. 20. In his honor, we are reposting this 2009 book review, which, like much of Johnson’s work, remains relevant to this day.
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dodimagery.afis.osd.mil
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Women at war all too often do battle on two different fronts, as author Helen Benedict says in her new book, “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq.” There’s the fight they signed up for and the one that can make them targets of their fellow soldiers in the most isolating and devastating ways.
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A group of determined Afghan women took to the streets of Kabul on Wednesday, suffering chants of “Dogs!” from a much larger crowd in order to challenge a law that essentially legalizes marital rape. The AP reports on a scene that underscores the complexities of that country—there were more women among the angry counterprotesters than in the women’s rights group.
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By Ellen Goodman — Ever since the Afghan war began, we assured ourselves that whatever else, we had one moral victory. We’d freed the women from Taliban rule. Now we know something very different to be true.
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By Marie Cocco — Afghanistan’s women are no longer in vogue. President Karzai has just signed a law that forces them to obey their husbands’ sexual demands and in general again consigns them to lives of brutal repression.
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By Marie Cocco — A court ruling offers a chilling compendium of accounts by doctors and other FDA professionals who were routinely thwarted as they tried to make the “morning after” pill available, especially to teenagers.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Cohen A. Young
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“Military women are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq,” said Rep. Jane Harman in response to the news that the number of sexual assault reports in the military last year increased by about 9 percent to 2,923. The Pentagon believes the actual number of assaults is five to 10 times higher, because most go unreported.
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By Marie Cocco — An idea that has been around for years now has reached that rarest of moments: There is a political environment that should, if reason prevails, produce legislation to require the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.
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latimes.com
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For the crime of receiving two unrelated men in her home, a 75-year-old Saudi woman has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months behind bars. Once again, a nation that is both one of America’s closest allies and brutally oppressive of women finds itself in an awkward light.
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By Marie Cocco — A favorite of the MTV crowd, the stunning and successful singer now is a symbol of the ubiquity of domestic violence—and the dangerously confused message that celebrity culture sends about it.
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AP photo / Andy Wong
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By Chris Hedges — All efforts to save the planet will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. And yet studies, books and documentaries that deal with various crises fail to discuss the danger of all those billions of hungry people looking for a better life.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If President Obama’s primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation’s divisions around religious and moral questions.
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By Joe Conason — Once, conservatives liked to say that “ideas matter.” Although many of their theories later proved flimsy, they at least attempted to address real problems with fresh thinking. But ideas no longer matter—and in fact they’re dangerous, according to the maximum leader of the right.
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By Ellen Goodman — Rush Limbaugh asks why women don’t like him. Well, I think I know why. Pull up a chair, my dears, and I’ll tell you, and him, a sad, sad story.
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By Amy Goodman — President Barack Obama met recently with the prime ministers of Canada and Britain, two NATO allies looking for a way out of Afghanistan even as the U.S. is talking escalation.
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An effort to screen pregnant women for HIV in order to reduce the spread of the virus among babies didn’t get Colorado state Sen. Dave Schultheis’ vote. In the Republican’s own controversial words, that’s because “[t]his stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t go there. ... We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly.”
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By Amy Goodman — The American Chemistry Council assures us that “we make the products that help keep you safe and healthy.” But U.S. consumers are actually exposed to a vast array of harmful chemicals and additives embedded in toys, cosmetics, plastic water bottles and countless other products.
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change.gov
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Speaking at a Justice Department event in honor of Black History Month, the first black attorney general, appointed by the first black president, acknowledged that America has made progress but warned that “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” His full remarks, after the jump.
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By Ellen Goodman — What wasn’t predicted was that women might finally reach the goal of equality less because they scaled the heights than because men slipped downward. But here we are.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Bipartisanship is a cute idea, but with 600,000 Americans losing their jobs in one month, there simply isn’t time to be nice.
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By Marie Cocco — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s renewed struggle with cancer is both a demonstration of courage and a dismaying reminder that she represents a quota of one.
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freechoicesaveslives.org
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In the next move of a partisan ping-pong game over women’s reproductive health, Obama is slated to reverse the despicable “global gag rule” that refuses U.S. aid to foreign health clinics that even mention the word that begins with an A. And sounds like “shma-shmortion.” It’s abortion.
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Two recent books show how a man of reason and conservative temperament and a man of passion and radical disposition joined together, even before either knew it, to end slavery.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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By Chris Hedges — I do not like Hamas. I detest religious fundamentalism and the use of suicide bombers. I find the group’s anti-Semitism and ruthless silencing of internal Palestinian opponents repugnant. The rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are a war crime. But this does not negate the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to the long Israeli siege and occupation of Gaza.
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By Ellen Goodman — What will happen if Michelle Obama makes the personal her political issue? What would a serious work-and-family policy look like?
Posted on Jan 14, 2009
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amazon.com
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A revelatory account of a hidden chapter of the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II deepens our understanding of American prejudice and the abuse of power.
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By Ellen Goodman — The standard male narrative about flying solo to the top, bootstraps in hand, energized only by your own talents, always seemed a bit cockeyed to me. The female narrative was not so much self-effacing as it was realistic.
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By Marie Cocco — Peace is not at hand, at least not as Americans define it. Yet peace has been breaking out all over.
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Flickr / BohPhoto
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First he wins the presidency of the U.S., then he wins Time’s Man of the Year. Now a poll shows that Barack Obama holds a sizable lead among Americans as the most admired man in the world. Coming second was George W. Bush and third was John McCain, proving once again the horrible imagination Americans have when finding inspiration outside politics.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Chris Hedges — We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.
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By Marie Cocco — Today’s brainteaser: Name the top female executives who were forced to go before Congress, explaining why their companies made multibillion-dollar mistakes that helped wreck the economy but nonetheless deserve billions in taxpayer bailouts.
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There’s a revolution underway in Chinese culture as young women flock from villages to factory employment in the cities, leaving traditional values behind.
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By Ellen Goodman — It was a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a “brilliant stroke.”
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AP file photo
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By Chris Hedges — The world is far more complex than our childish vision of good and evil. We as a nation and a culture have no monopoly on virtue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when viewed from the receiving end, are state-sponsored acts of terrorism.
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By Marie Cocco — This week marks a decade since a consortium of state attorneys general negotiated the landmark settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies. The results are in: Cigarette consumption has declined by 28 percent in the past 10 years.
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AP photo / Kiichiro Sato, file
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By Chris Hedges — The swelling numbers waiting outside homeless shelters and food pantries around the country have grown by at least 30 percent since the summer. If Barack Obama continues to turn to the elites who created the mess, if he does not radically redirect the nation’s resources to assist the working class and the poor, we will become a third-world country.
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By Regina Marler — A new volume of the late poet’s correspondence sheds fresh light on the anguish and art of Sylvia Plath.
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By Marie Cocco — It is time to stop kidding ourselves. This wasn’t a breakthrough year for American women in politics. It was a brutal one.
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By Ellen Goodman — Sen. Robert Byrd, 91, announced that he will give up the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee to Sen. Daniel Inouye, 84. The torch has passed to a new generation.
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Flickr / Brave New Films
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By Marie Cocco — The giant discounter is the only store where hard-squeezed consumers can afford to buy anything, and so it has kept posting sales gains amid the retail bloodbath.
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An unabashed triumph, Morrison’s new novel is a gloriously poetic and incantatory retelling of America’s tragic and redemptive story.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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