Category Archives: violence

Rihanna

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I usually try not to comment on stars, but this is just too much and I have to say something.

I would think that community service would be better spent working in a domestic violence shelter.  Or some other service that actually would have an impact on him, because as the article states, he still has a violent temper and is not addressing it.  He just doesn’t get it.

The article states that he had logged 701 hours in seven months.  701 divided by seven means he had to have performed 100 hours of service in each month–the equivalent of three hours per day, roughly.  Yeah, I’d be a questioning the truth of that, also.

The article goes on to say that peace officers had verified the work done.  So there’s obviously a disconnect somewhere…

Going on to the bigger issue of domestic violence~~

Report on Rihanna. This report says “Robyn” so I presume that Rihanna is a stage name? Photo of her face after the beating.

Rihanna has probably convinced herself that he “didn’t mean to do it” and “he’ll never do it again” and “he said he was sorry and it was because of blah, blah,blah that he got so mad….”  (You can tell this by the above link to his demanding respect that he is playing the victim and blaming everyone and everything else for his behavior.  He is in no way taking responsibility for his actions.  )

Like every woman ever subjected to domestic violence, she is probably blaming herself.

She tries really hard to please him.  He calls her stupid, lazy, worthless.  She tries harder to please him, but every day he finds something to criticize about her.  She tries harder and is walking on egg shells trying not to displease him.

But she can never achieve that because he will always find fault with her.  It’s his way to control her.

And if she does find even an ounce of self-worth and begins to stand up for herself…

…that’s when the beatings begin…for backtalking him.  For telling him, no, I don’t want to cook that meal again, or I don’t want to watch that movie or I don’t want to spend money on that or whatever the circumstance is…

And he’ll justify the beating for her disobedience.  And she’ll think that he’s right because she got out of line…

Sadly, I don’t have a lot of hope for Rihanna because the flags are up all over the place.  I am afraid for her.

It is a very difficult situation.  He may have a good side and that’s the side she loves, which makes it hard for her to leave.

It is said that it often takes several times for a woman to leave a relationship for good.  And it’s also the most dangerous time for her.  Women have been killed trying to leave their abuser.

And he won’t change unless he sees that his controlling behavior is a problem.  He won’t change unless he wants to.  No one can make him–it has to come from within.  He has to want to change.  Most abusive men don’t see that they are the problem.  They see *everyone else* as the problem.

And this cuts across all socioeconomic levels–professionals as well as blue collar; whites as well as blacks; judges, doctors, police, and politicians….there are no boundaries.  And someone who could seem so “nice” in public can be a monster in private….

Here’s the national domestic violence hotline.  800-799-SAFE.

Domestic Violence Statistics.

Here’s a recent story on a young boy who shot his father as a result of domestic violence.  Incredibly, they aren’t seeing this as self-defense, even though the father was beating the children.

And another story that may not seem related to this, but is–a young 5 year old girl in a California day care was having oral sex with the boys there.  That child had to have seen that somewhere because five year olds are too young to engage in that behavior unless they had exposure to it via p_rn or,  as I suspect, being molested.  I fear that she was subjected to this at home, and was acting out.  I can only hope that someone recognizes this and will get to the source of her abuse and get her the appropriate help.

What a troubled world.

 

The right to privacy

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…is slowly being eroded, we know, but then there are among us the rebels who won’t go quietly.

Oh, the imagination is running into overdrive with all the fun I could have of this…but I want to keep this blog, um, family friendly. haha.

From Cornell Law:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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I have a Paralegal Certificate and my professor told me that this means that if a police officer pulls you over, you have the right to refuse to give your name or any information unless you are put under arrest.  And with my experience with this, you don’t even have to be in suspicion of a crime–you just have to be in the area–doing your job–to be treated like you were a criminal.

Academy Award

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You know, there is a Canadian program on my public radio station here in FW that airs a part of a segment where a guy has said he had awards for “favorite food, TV program,” etc., and one of the categories is “best performance of impersonating a politician” (or something to that effect) “won by Dan Quayle three years in a row until Dick Cheney came along…”

I think there should just be a category for “best performance by a politician while trying to appear genuine”.

I think Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide….

No, I’m not going to link to any of the political sites that are praising her “performance” today.  It really sickens me how they have annointed her Saint Hillary that can do no wrong and refuse to look at her and Bill’s records with any degree of unemotional critical assessment.   They would be livid at that same stuff if it were done by a repub.

The fake break in her voice was the top of the performance.  Not a tear in the eyes.  Her eyes were not even red.  My voice doesn’t usually break until the tears begin to fall and the emotions have bubbled to the top.

The anger at the question of what exactly happened? “It doesn’t matter!!” Really?

She didn’t read the memo.   Didn’t read the memo….

I recalled that during the Clintons term in office, I always felt manipulated.  It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually, it came to be a frequent feeling whenever a crisis would occur and once again they escaped accountability.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beyond Vietnam

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Susie Madrak has a post up on MLK’s birthday celebration.  This is my view, too, on how everybody brings up “I Have a Dream” speech, and then fail to acknowledge his “Beyond Vietnam” speech (which he gave a year to the day before his murder).

He was expanding from the Civil Rights protests towards protesting the condition of the poor and of the terrible consequences of war.  This was more of a threat to the status quo than anything he had done prior.  Indeed, even his friends that had supported him during the Civil Rights era were abandoning him when he started advocating for the poor and protesting against war.  According to those that knew him, he never felt so alone.

He knew that advocating those positions was dangerous.

And he did it anyway….

 

North Haven, Connecticut

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I came back to look at the Cluster link…and North Haven, Connecticut caught my eye.  I wondered how close it was to Newtown.

From the Cluster website:

Researchers have doubled the scope of their investigation into brain cancer cases at a jet-engine manufacturing company and are requesting another two years and an additional $4 million to complete the work. This study was prompted by the deaths of at least several dozen workers from the same rare, very fast-growing form of brain cancer. The study initially had been expected to look at the medical and work records of about 100,000 current and former workers. But that number increased to 200,000 during routine searches of company records, said a biostatistician at the University of Pittsburgh who is conducting a portion of the research. The due-date for the study is 2008, but researchers now want to push back the completion deadline to 2010.

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I looked at the distance between the two cities: about 42 miles…close enough to possibly affect them?

When I looked up Newtown contamination, I found this. <sigh>

These piles are contaminated with high levels of metals including cadmium, lead, tin, chromium, copper, zinc, and nickel, as well as PCBs.

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…the only one missing is mercury, but the article does mention that it was a site of aluminum smelting.

So…you have poisons giving people brain cancer and 40 miles away, you have the toxic soup further messing with brain function, if they were lucky enough not to become sick (at least noticeably sick, i.e., cancer).  But many others will likely suffer from chronic fatigue, low thyroid/adrenal function, ADD, memory loss, and on…and they won’t likely be counted.  It’s sooo much easier to ignore a problem when you only count those most severely affected, and not the overall decline of health of many others….and if someone commits a horrible crime because of those toxins…

A trail of bullets…

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C.J.Chivers of the New York Times had this up over the weekend–a post on ammunition being supplied to Africa.  I thought I’d post it because of the focus on Africa.  Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems that Africa is becoming a focal point…or perhaps it was always there, but ignored?

Anyway, I thought that it’s striking that a lot is said about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but not of small arms ammunition and shipping it to other countries.

The question one has to ask is…why?  What do they hope to gain?  Is it for their political benefit or just plain guns profits?

 

And my new favorite Twain quote is…

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“If Christ were here,  there is one thing he would not be…A Christian.”  Brilliantly said.  Trying to act like Christ is a little too much work…as it requires following “Do Unto Others…”

Diane Sweet has a post up on the fundamentalist Pat Robertson, doing what fundamentalists do:  putting women beneath them…

I disagree with one of the commenters who said that this kind of thinking was dying out.  It’s a dangerous assumption, and from what I’m seeing, far from being a thing of the past.  This crap has been going on for thousands of years, in different forms and won’t “die out” until women are seen and treated as equals. Women are a still not thought of as having equal value in whatever they do–if they stay home to raise the children and care for the house, or if they work outside the home.

The issues with rape and the degradation of the young woman in Steubenville are classic examples of treating women as “less than” and making moral judgments against her that are not made against the men.  She’s a slut to be peed on.  He’s just having a good time.

 

 

And the violent mindset escalates…

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My first impression of listening to Carolyn Cain is that she sounds waaay too much like Sarah Palin.  It was just a first impression I got…(and a side note~the eye movement?  That is a sign of mercury/heavy metal poisoning…I kid you not.)

Where to begin??

My God, can you imagine a child getting a hold of a gun and killing his/her classmates?

Or a child, say a middle schooler, that was in one of those pissed-off-at-the-world moods who gets the teacher’s gun and shoots her?

The gun can (and will) be used in so many ways that are unintended…that is, they won’t be protecting people’s lives, but ending them.

I mean, really, schools that I taught in were safe–all doors were locked and you had to be buzzed in to enter the school.  They go through exercises to practice the drill for any emergency, including this, so I’m at a loss as to how Sandy Hook even happened.  I do know that the nurse was given a moment in time when she could have tried to stop Adam Lanza–he was right next to her as she hid under a desk (if I recall correctly).

If she had a gun, would she have used it?  I know that I wouldn’t.  I’d try to find some other means to stop someone from the rampage.  I would have tried to tackle him once his back was turned…I may have died in the process, but at least I would have tried to stop more from being killed…and at the very least, it would have bought more time until police could arrive.  Just my thoughts on it…

Looking at the comments, the first one on the Ed Show website is brilliant:

If she wants to carry a gun at work, she should quit teaching and become a cop.

Amen.

Also, if I were still substitute teaching, I would not want to be in a classroom with a gun in it. Period.  I would refuse to teach or have the gun taken by the principal.

I’m not being dragged into the fear.  And the kids need to see the adults not being manipulated by fear.