Widespread sexual harassment of female students at the Army and Navy military academies is fostering an environment in which sexual assaults are likely to occur, the Pentagon reported to Congress on Thursday. The new study, ordered by lawmakers following a sex-abuse scandal at the Air Force Academy, said progress is also being made at the other two service schools in fighting harassment but concluded that major problems remain.
At both the Army's U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, records from the past 10 years show alleged sexual offenders "were not consistently or effectively held accountable through the criminal justice system," the report said. Some in the academy communities do not value women as highly as men, it added, in large part because women are in a minority in the armed forces, are generally kept out of combat and are held to different physical fitness standards.
The 12-member Defense Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies made key recommendations to Congress, including increasing the number of female students and officers in positions of authority at the Army and Navy schools, which produce future military leaders....
On the one hand, this is mildly surprising. After all, Army and Navy went through these scandals years ago, when women were first admitted to the academies -- there were several reported incidents of gang rape, for example -- and you'd think that they'd be further along dealing with things.
But then, you'd expect that Air Force would have been dealing with this earlier, as well.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this report. Without the impetus of several nasty press revelations dogging at their heels, will Army and Navy actually move to make changes? Will the Pengagon ask them to do so? After all, if the environment producing these problems is being fostered from the top down ... there are levels above the academies.
Posted by iain at 12:02 AM
T. J. Parsell was a lanky pimple-faced adolescent bent on mischief. So when he found a toy gun one evening in 1978 while wandering home from a high school party, he thought nothing of pointing it at a store clerk and grumbling, "Your money or your life."
He got $50 for what he now calls "a stupid impulsive prank." The incident landed the 17-year-old Parsell in an adult jail, where on his first night, an older inmate spiked his drink with Thorazine and sexually abused and raped him.
"While my friends prepared for our high school prom, I was being gang raped," Mr. Parsell testified on Friday to a Congressional commission investigating prison sexual abuse and rape.
Mr. Parsell, now 45, and a successful software executive who lives on Long Island, was one of six victims of prison rape to relate disturbing accounts with a bipartisan panel of The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission here.
"What they took from me went beyond sex," Mr. Parsell said. "They'd stolen my manhood, my identity and part of my soul."
The panel, which also heard from state and federal legislators, law enforcement and prison officials and mental health experts, has been investigating the prevalence, cause and possible solutions to a problem that many experts say has escalated as the prison system is collapsing. Overcrowding, staff shortages and budget cuts have contributed to an often taboo topic.
"As a society, we have an obligation to protect the people we lock up, even though they have harmed society," the commission chairman, Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, said. "Some people say inmates get what they deserve. But they don't think about the overall impact on society."
The body, created by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, was appointed by President Bush in June 2004, focusing on questions like inmates' physical and mental problems after being released and economic burdens.
Judge Walton, speaking before the meeting here, the second in a national series, conceded in an interview that the government did not know the magnitude of prison rape.
"We don't really know the prevalence right now," he said. "But I've been in the criminal justice system for 20 years and I have always believed the anecdotal evidence."
On July 31, the Justice Department released its first statistical report on prison rape and inmate sexual abuse, a report also required under the 2003 act. It estimated that there were at least 8,210 reported incidents of sexual abuse and rape a year within a prison population that exceeds 2.1 million.
According to the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, prison assaults rose 26 percent from 2000 to 2004. [...] The secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Roderick Q. Hickman, told the panel that California was trying to quantify the problem. But he said outdated prison designs, inadequate electronic surveillance systems and an antiquated computer database had stalled progress. The information technology "system in California is completely inadequate," Mr. Hickman said. "We need a system that can report and handle the cultural classifications of the population." he added.
Mr. Hickman, appointed last month, said he was working to streamline and centralize procedures to investigate accusations of sexual abuse that were previously handled by individual prisons. To address guard intransigence, the department has established training programs intended to break what Mr. Hickman called "the code of silence" among guards, behavior that has helped conceal prison rapes. [...] In the afternoon, the panel heard criminologists, law enforcement officials and leaders of transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual groups about the need for better inmate classification. "We don't want a first-time offender charged with drunken driving to be housed next to a guy who has committed multiple armed robberies, and who has been in and out of the system for years," said Bart Lanni, the sheriff's deputy for Los Angeles County.
Mr. Lanni said misplaced inmates ran an increased risk of being a target of sexual abuse. "Predators looking to rape someone tend to pick people without close ties or a gang affiliation," Dr. Terry A. Kupers, a psychiatrist and an expert on prison rape, said.
All the victims testifying on Friday said that they might have escaped their rapes if the authorities had placed them with inmates of similar age, race, sexual orientation and the same categories of crime.
Well ... if nothing else, California and other states are going to have an interesting time trying to fulfill these requirements. After all, one of the things that the inmates and guards are saying is that extremely stiff, stratified segregation will be one of the best ways to prevent prison rape, and the Supreme Court, last session, dictated that racial segregation, specifically, could not be used in California prisons without sufficient justification. It remains to be seen, of course, whether or not the court will consider the prevention of rape and disease to be sufficient justification.
Posted by iain at 12:57 AM
Men who have sex with men (MSM) bear a greater burden of HIV than any other group in the U.S. We account for an estimated 45 percent of people living with HIV, compared to 27 percent infected through heterosexual contact, and 22 percent infected through injection drug use.
In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a study showing a stunning 46% -- nearly half -- of the Black homosexual and bisexual men surveyed in five major cities were already HIV-positive (more than twice the infection rate among men of other races).
To make matters worse, more than two thirds of the HIV-infected Black men in the study were unaware of their infection. That's right. Half of us may be infected and, of that half, two thirds don't know it and so almost certainly aren't doing anything about it...
Appalling, yes.
And there is ... context, let's call it.
Black Americans still get far fewer operations, tests, medications and other life-saving treatments than whites, despite years of efforts to erase racial disparities in health care and help African Americans live equally long and healthy lives, according to three major studies being published today.
Blacks' health care has started to catch up to whites' in some ways, but blacks remain much less likely to undergo heart bypasses, appendectomies and other common procedures. They receive fewer mammograms and basic tests and drugs for heart disease and diabetes, and they have fallen even further behind whites in controlling those two major killers, according to the first attempts to measure the last decade's efforts to improve equality of care. [...] The cause of the persistent disparities has been the focus of intense research and debate. Blacks and other minorities tend to be poorer and less educated, which accounts for some of the differences. Some experts argue that blacks also tend to live in places where doctors and hospitals provide inferior care. Others suspect that cultural, or even biological, differences may also play a role. The most intense debate has centered on whether subtle racism pervades the health care system. [...] The only hint of a cause offered by the new studies was the finding that gains tended to occur for the simplest care -- such as prescribing drugs -- and gaps tended to widen for more complex treatment....
So you have an immediate social context in which declaring either that you are gay -- or, to put it more mildly, that you have relationships with other men -- or that you're HIV-positive is strongly discouraged. You have a broader social context in which getting more involved health care is surprisingly difficult. That the infection rate is higher is sad, but not at all surprising.
But still. Nearly 50 percent of all gay black men are HIV positive. And, to be quite honest, the shocking part of that is the 30% rise in HIV incidence in only five years. How in hell, in this day and age, does that happen? This is a largely preventable disease; all you have to do is wear condoms! People know this disease is out there. How brain-dead do you have to be to let this happen?
Posted by iain at 12:46 PM
Every time that I think that maybe, just maybe, PETA has gone as far as they can go, they decide that, no, they CAN get even more offensive.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is reconsidering a campaign comparing images of animal abuse with those of slavery after complaints from civil rights groups and others. The animal rights group's "Animal Liberation" campaign included 12 panels juxtaposing pictures of black people in chains with shackled elephants and other provocative images.
The Norfolk-based group wrapped up the first leg of the tour in Washington on Thursday, visiting 17 cities before deciding to put the tour on hold.
"We're not continuing right now while we evaluate," said Dawn Carr, a PETA spokeswoman. "We're reviewing feedback we've received -- most of it overwhelmingly positive and some of it quite negative."
One panel showed a black civil rights protester being beaten at a lunch counter beside a photo of a seal being bludgeoned. Another panel, titled "Hanging," showed a graphic photo of a white mob surrounding two lynched blacks, their bodies hanging from tree limbs, while a nearby picture showed a cow hanging in a slaughterhouse....
I find it quite impossible to believe that they truly got any "overwhelmingly positive" feedback -- at least, not from anyone not already a member of PETA.
While they are "reconsidering" the tour, the display itself is still running on their website. Even for PETA, this particular exhibit is quite outstandingly vile. In any event, since they're still displaying it on their site, apparently the only issue is whether or not they drag the thing around from city to city, setting up outside various restaurants to offend as many people as they can find.
The problem with using that particular metaphor, and those particular images, is that it requires spectacular blindness to this country's history to even consider doing so. Blacks in this country were always considered subhuman, and animal comparisons and metaphors were used to justify treating us as less than animals. After all, if your horse or dog or cow got out and ran away, when you brought it back, you'd just make your facilities more secure. Beating it to death would likely not occur to you as a reasonable thing to do, but that frequently happened with escaped slaves. It would not strike you that it was reasonable to hang and burn a Jersey bull for lowing at or looking at a Guernsey cow, but it struck many as reasonable to lynch black men for speaking to or looking at white women -- even when they hadn't done so. Most sane people would never consider these reasonable comparisons to make.
But then, PETA seldom seems reasonable these days.
Ingrid Newkirk, head of PETA, had an initial response to the offended reactions which could be politely described as tone-deaf, politically speaking.
"How dare you compare my ancestors' subjugation to the subjugation of cows prodded down the slaughter line to their deaths?!" I can, because it is right to do so and wrong to reject the concept. Please open your heart and your mind and do not take such offense.
Generally speaking, mustn't rhinos think that rhino suffering is more important than vervet monkey suffering and vervet monkeys think that their suffering is more important than songbird suffering? I'd imagine so, for a monkey mother who must choose between rescuing her own baby or a squirrel baby from drowning would surely pluck the monkey baby from the water? Just so, humans who define themselves by religion or culture or nationality or skin color think that their suffering can never be compared, no matter how factually, with any other human or animal's suffering. To do so makes them feel belittled, reduced. But perhaps that's just our primitive biology crying out to protect and save our own kind, the more narrowly defined the better, and the rest be damned. I reject that. Or I try to. Only supremacism makes us think that "our kind," our narrow view of ourselves as Protestants, Muslims, white, black, a woman, a man, a human being, is more important than the rest. But a broader definition of ourselves is simply that we are all animals. Our indignation at injustice to fellow whatever we are should go further-to indignation at injustice to anyone. Otherwise, what are we, but selfish little supremacists.
And, indeed, "selfish little supremacists" would be what PETA has made itself appear, albeit not in the way they've intended.
I don't get them, I really don't. Surely there must be a point at which grandstanding for attention in this way is so profoundly harmful to your organization that it's massively counterproductive. Based on the "Holocaust on your plate" campaign and this, they give the impression that the organization is profoundly anti-Semitic and profoundly racist, and I can't imagine why anyone other than some truly bizarre white supremacists would have anything to do with them. (Note that I am not saying that they are anti-Semitic or racist ... or that they are not. I am saying that their stunningly idiotic shock tactics make it appear that they are. Running these campaigns back to back may well deal the organization a type of blow from which it may never recover.)
From the organization point of view, the problem with using these shock tactics, over and over, isn't just that it brings the organization a type of attention it can't use. It's that it pretty much ensures that PETA's message gets buried in the onslaught of bad press, and gets dismissed as the rantings of an insane organization when it is heard. And frankly, there are just so many times you can say, "Ooops. Sorry. Didn't mean to offend a substantial portion of the country quite that much." It makes no sense to continually pull the sort of stunt that ensures that the people you want to reach never take you seriously.
If PETA's goal truly is to get people to stop eating and otherwise using animal products, then they might reconsider their means and methods. If, however, their goal is merely to brand themselves the most lunatic of the lunatic fringe, then congratulations! Goal achieved!
Posted by iain at 02:14 PM
How very ... interesting.
Sgt. Robert Stout of Utica, Ohio -- an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient -- visited Capitol Hill a few weeks ago to meet with his state's senators. Although Stout, 23, says the senators were called in advance of his visit -- something the senators' aides dispute -- neither Republican Sens. George Voinovich nor Mike Dewine would speak with him.
"I just said I wanted to introduce myself to my senator and discuss my state with him," Stout said.
But the fact that Stout is gay is the ultimate reason for his visit. He wants to lobby Congress to change the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which prohibits homosexuals from disclosing their sexual orientation or speaking about homosexual relationships, while serving in the armed forces.
Stout was in the Army for five years and served in Iraq as a combat engineer for about 10 months. In May 2004, he was patrolling an area about an hour southeast of Samarra when he was injured by a grenade blast. "The only thing I remember is I heard a loud bang," Stout said, "and it felt like somebody poured water all over my face." The "water" was actually blood, and after two months of rehabilitation, Stout returned to Iraq with some shrapnel left in his body.
"A couple pieces are still in the arm," Stout said. "Couple pieces in the neck, and I got a couple scrapes on my face and legs."
Stout says he was already sick of living a lie, and in April 2005, his wounds prompted him to out himself to The Associated Press. "The fact that I can fight, I can bleed, I can die just as good as every other straight man or woman in that military should not bar me from enlistment," he said.
Even though his admission violated "don't ask, don't tell," -- he quite literally and publicly "told" -- Stout was permitted to remain in the military until his normal discharge seven weeks later, as long as he signed a document. "I would go ahead and sign a paper saying I would not engage in homosexual acts, make homosexual comments, or engage in homosexual marriage, and they would let me discharge naturally," Stout said.
In fact, discharging soldiers for being gay is on the wane. What the military calls "homosexual separations" were at a high until 2001 -- the year the first of two U.S. wars began. By 2004, the number was about half that -- from 1,227 "separations" in 2001 to 653 three years later.
"The Pentagon, of course, has a great need for bodies to fight, a great need for manpower," said Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military. "And in this war, just as was the case in Vietnam, and Korea, and Persian Gulf I, and World War II, the Pentagon is ceasing to discharge gay service members because it needs gays to serve in combat." Belkin points to a military memo from March 1945. In the thick of World War II, the secretary of war changed the policy so that "the mere confession .... (of) homosexual tendencies" no longer merited a discharge.
According to regulations from 1999 regarding soldiers in the Reserves, if a discharge for "homosexual conduct is not requested prior to the unit's receipt of alert notification, discharge is not authorized." In other words, gays stay in the military once their unit has been mobilized for action....
So let me get this straight-ish:
Gays in the military are harmful to morale ... unless you're mobilized for combat, in which case nobody cares who's gay; they just need warm bodies with guns.
... Well, all-righty, then! Nothing like a consistently articulated policy to make things clear as mud!
It will be interesting to see how great the pressure on the military will need to become before there's some sort of formal loosening of "don't ask, don't tell" -- especially since the third leg of that policy, "don't pursue" has never ever been consistently followed by the military. Whether or not you got pursued depended entirely on your commanding officers, which does not make for a consistently administered policy.
Posted by iain at 11:17 AM
The Pentagon will hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an unusual announcement tucked into an Iraq war briefing yesterday. "This year the Department of Defense will initiate an America Supports You Freedom Walk," Rumsfeld said, adding that the march would remind people of "the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation." The march will start at the Pentagon, where nearly 200 people died on 9/11, and end at the National Mall with a show by country star Clint Black.
Word of the event startled some observers. "I've never heard of such a thing," said John Pike, who has been a defense analyst in Washington for 25 years and runs GlobalSecurity.org.
I don't even know what to say about the parade/concert aspect, except that it seems grossly inappropriate to the occasion. "Hey, a few thousand people died on September 11! Let's celebrate! We support them for dying!" I mean, what the hell...?
Leaving aside the relatively recent mercantile aspects from the private sector, the official approach to Memorial Day is handled much more respectfully than that. Granted that we're talking about far fewer people than Memorial Day is meant to memorialize, surely a more dignified approach would be ... appropriate.
The news also reignited debate and anger over linking Sept. 11 with the war in Iraq. "That piece of it is disturbing since we all know now there was no connection," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq veteran who heads Operation Truth, an anti-administration military booster. Rieckhoff suggested the event was an ill-conceived publicity stunt. "I think it's clear that their public opinion polls are in the toilet," he said.
Rumsfeld's walk had some relatives of 9/11 victims fuming. "How about telling Mr. Rumsfeld to leave the memories of Sept. 11 victims to the families?" said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband in the attacks.
Administration supporters insisted Rumsfeld was right to link Iraq and 9/11, and hold the rally. "We are at war," said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.). "It's essential that we support our troops." He also said attacking Iraq was necessary after 9/11. "You do not defeat Al Qaeda until you stabilize the Middle East, and that's not possible as long as Saddam Hussein is in power."
This, however, is an utterly absurd argument on its face. Iraq under Hussein was a vicious despotism, to be sure, but the one thing it was was a stable despotism. It cannot be reasonably said that what we've done to Iraq has made it more stable. It's become a rolling civil war zone, is headed toward becoming an Islamist theocracy with severe curbs on women's and minority rights and the margins are so unguarded that it's become both a terrorist magnet and exporter. "Stable" is one thing the country is not. Destabilizing Iraq has not notably made the rest of the region quieter; Iran is charging willy-nilly back to the nuclear age, Lebanon is perhaps a hair trigger away from another civil war, Afghanistan is a disaster area and once again ramping up opium production, Saudi Arabia veers wildly between appeasing and viciously suppressing its religious extremists, Egypt and Pakistan are quite nearly as despotic as Iraq was (but on our side, so we like those kinds of despotism), Israel is flailing about trying to deal with the questions of the Palestians and the settlement areas ... and since when is it our job to stabilize the region, anyway?
Posted by iain at 01:12 PM
The Washington Post ought to be ashamed of itself.
President Bush installed John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, employing the presidential power to make temporary appointments to break through a wall of Democratic opposition to Bolton's confrontational brand of conservatism.
Frustrated by the refusal of Senate Democrats to permit a final vote on Bolton's nomination, Bush said he resorted to the 17-month recess appointment to circumvent "partisan delaying tactics" in Washington and to send a resounding message that the White House is serious about reforming the United Nations....
Yes, the Democrats were, for a wonder, fairly united in opposition to Bolton's nomination. That much is true. However, what was dragging the appointment down was the lukewarm (at best) response from moderate Republicans -- including what would normally be a devastating 9-9 tie in the Senate confirmation hearings, resulting in his nomination being forwarded to the full Senate without a recommendation. Add to that the very real possibility that, without some serious arm-twisting from the majority whip, Bolton would not have been confirmed, and it's very clear that what shot down Bolton's nomination was not the unified Democrat opposition, but the ladk of firm Republican support.
That aside, one wonders what it is that Bush hopes to gain from this. To describe Bolton as damaged goods would be understating the case massively. The international community seems to loathe him. He's been battered in confirmation hearings so badly that everyone in the world -- or at least those to whom it matters -- knows that he's being sent forward with an effective vote of "no confidence."
THAT said ... anyone want to lay odds on whether or not Bush puts him forward a second time as a recess appointment, forcing Bolton to serve two years without pay?
Posted by iain at 07:18 PM
