Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Lucinda Marshall: The Imperative Of Women’s Human Rights

Reflections On The 100th Anniversary Of International Women’s Day

This year marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.  It is a time to celebrate the lives of women and to renew our commitment to women’s human rights throughout the world.

That it is even necessary to have such a day should give us pause.  There is not, after all, an International Men’s Day.  But the truth is that while women may be half of the world’s population, they most assuredly are not equal stakeholders when it comes to human rights and empowerment.

Here in the U.S., women’s reproductive health rights are under sustained siege as never before.  In the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Sudan women are raped with impunity.  In Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of women have gone missing and been brutally murdered and the perpetrators roam freely.  Honor killings continue to be a huge problem in the Middle East and female genital mutilation is still a common practice in many parts of Africa.  In southeast Asia and eastern Europe, women are trafficked into sexual slavery.  In India there are dowry murders.

Widney Brown: Sidelining Egyptian Women after the Uprising

All the members of the committee writing Egypt’s new constitution are men.

A century ago, more than a million people marched in streets across Europe on the first International Women’s Day. They called for an end to discrimination and for women to have the same rights as men to work, vote, and shape their countries’ futures.

A hundred years later, women across the globe are still much more likely than men to be poor and illiterate. We earn only one-tenth of the world’s income for doing two-thirds of the work. Women produce up to 80 percent of the food in developing countries, but own only 1 percent of the land in those nations.

In many countries, we’re still told what we can do and even what we can wear. Women in Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, and Iran face harassment if they don’t observe conservative religious dress codes. Muslim women in France and some parts of Spain now break the law there if they don traditional attire.

Women campaigning for their liberation are often met with derision, abuse, or worse. In Russia, the Philippines, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, and Nepal, leading activists have recently been murdered for speaking out. In China, Bangladesh, India, Zimbabwe, and many other countries, they are routinely detained and tortured.

Tragically, the international community largely ignores these facts. Women’s inequality is treated as a regrettable but inevitable reality.

Michelle Chen: The Republican Attack on Women’s Health Goes Global

What does a congressperson from Ohio have in common with a 16 year-old sex worker in Cambodia? They’re both symbols of the perverse political stalemate in Washington, D.C., that threatens to set back the struggle for women’s equality around the world.

The year that girl was born, a conference of world leaders vowed to eliminate many of the worst forms of gender oppression. Last week, officials and civil society groups convened again at the United Nations to take stock of all the ways the international community has fallen short of its promises on women’s health, education and political and economic empowerment. And on Capitol Hill, the GOP is pushing budget cuts that would make sure the promise remains broken.

It’s not a coincidence that conservatives in Congress are fighting a two front war on women: attacking women’s rights across the Global South and killing Roe v. Wade at home. Conservatives are exploiting the budget process to defund Title X, the primary federal funding vehicle for family planning reproductive health services for women. Cutting these funds would leave many poor women with no local clinic or social service agency to get the guidance they need to make informed choices about sex and pregnancy.

Amanda Marcotte : Texas Legislators Fight Back With Pointed Amendments

In this era of fetuses being called to testify in court and anti-choicers trying to strip away funding for cancer screening and condoms, it does feel for pro-choicers like we’ve slipped down the rabbit hole, but instead of finding ourselves in a fun Wonderland, we’re instead in the madhouse of Wingnutland.  With that in mind, I have to tip my hat to the pro-choice members of the Texas legislature, who decided to fight absurdity with absurdity last Thursday during the debate over a law that will require  any woman who wants an abortion to get an ultrasound, go home to “think” about it, and only then come back for her abortion.  It’s unclear yet if she’ll be required to sit in her room and write, “I will not be a dirty slut,” 100 times over in her best handwriting and be denied her cartoons for a week.  Perhaps legislators will be holding on to that for the next legislative session.

Furious at the sexist paternalism and anti-choice nuttery behind this bill-but unable to do anything to stop it-pro-choice Texas legislators instead decided to engage in a bit of performance art to draw attention to the hostility towards women and short-sightedness inherent in these ultrasound bills that condescendingly masquerade as caring.  Houston state representative Harold Dutton got the most coverage for repeatedly making the point that “pro-lifers” drop all pretense of caring about life the second it can’t be used to punish sexually active women.  In rapid order, he introduced three amendments that were tabled by the majority, who really didn’t want to address the issue of the wellbeing of actual children when potential children matter so much more to them.  All three amendments addressed what should happen if a woman looks at a sonogram and decides not to have abortion.  The first amendment would have required the state to pay for the child’s college tuition, the second required the state to pay for the child’s health care until age 18, and the third required the state to pay for the child’s health care until age six.

Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis: Under Obama, Better to Commit a War Crime Than Expose One

Bradley Manning is accused of humiliating the political establishment by revealing the complicity of top U.S. officials in carrying out and covering up war crimes. In return for his act of conscience, the U.S. government is holding him in abusive solitary confinement, humiliating him and trying to keep him behind bars for life.

The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You’re better off committing a war crime than exposing one.

An Army intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, the 23-year-old Manning – outraged at what he saw – allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. These cables show U.S. officials covering up everything from U.S. tax dollars funding child rape in Afghanistan to illegal, unauthorized bombings in Yemen. Manning is also accused of leaking video evidence of U.S. pilots gunning down more than a dozen Iraqis in Baghdad, including two journalists for Reuters, and then killing a father of two who stopped to help them. The father’s two young children were also severely wounded.

“Well, it’s their fault for bringing kids into a battle,” a not-terribly-remorseful U.S. pilot can be heard remarking in the July 2007 “Collateral Murder” video.

Eugene Robinson: Stoking irrational fears about Islam

Peter King’s offensive hearings play into claims that America is hostile toward Islam.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is about to convene hearings whose premise offends our nation’s founding ideals and whose targets are law-abiding members of a religious minority. King has decided to investigate Islam.

A Republican from Long Island in his 10th term, King seems untroubled that the freedoms of religion and association are guaranteed by the Constitution. His public exercise in Islamophobia, scheduled to begin Thursday, can do no good – and much harm.

John Nichols The Only Constitutional Crisis In Wisconsin Is the One the Governor’s Consigliere Is Creating

Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican who serves as Governor Scott Walker’s legislative consigliere, is trying to put the best face on his attempt to rewrite not just the rules of the Senate but the Wisconsin Constitution.

As everyone from Kenosha to Cairo knows, fourteen Democratic members of the Wisconsin Senate have refused to return to the Capitol and provide Republican leaders of the chamber with the quorum required to approve Walker’s budget repair bill. The Democrats fled to Illinois in order to delay action and force negotiations on the measure, which would strip most public workers of basic bargaining rights. The bill would also restructure state government so Walker can begin dismantling BadgerCare and SeniorCare and start selling public properties to private corporations.