What exactly is "the dignity of women" anyway, Mr. Sarkozy?

[zillah975]

[Note: This was originally posted to my personal DW journal, and the_future_modernes asked if I'd like to post it here. I said I'd be glad to, but I've edited it to remove the language that would make my grandmother give the "so disappointed" look.]

President Nicolas Sarkozy hand-delivers to President Obama a letter from Roman Polanski asking for clemency, because all he did was have sex with a little girl after getting her stoned on Quaaludes and champagne, and then submits a bill to ban women from wearing the veil in public because burqa-style veils "threaten the dignity of women."

...

The irony is thick enough to choke on.

Seriously, who actually believes that this ban is going to help women? It's an assault on the rights of women who choose to wear the veil, and the only thing it'll do for women who are being forced to wear it is make things worse! What does he think, that if a woman's family is forcing her to wear a burqa or niqab, they'll just change their minds when confronted with this law? "Oh," they'll say, "well in that case, dearest, you go on and don't wear it, that's okay. The president said!" No, she'll just be that much further confined, because she can't leave the house without wearing it, and she can't go out in public unless she takes it off.

This law isn't about helping women. It may be about discomfort with another culture, or anti-Islamic bigotry, or I don't even know what -- and you don't know me very well if you think I don't believe that part of this is an unexamined belief that really, women are public property to start with. But whatever it's about, and whatever's underlying it, it isn't about the dignity of women, and it sure as the sunrise isn't about helping them.

Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

[the_future_modernes]

Rivers of gold: an examination of the water crisis

With nearly 80% of the world covered in water, why do so many people lack it?
Facts:
- Nearly 1 billion people lack reliable access to clean water
- Almost half of the people living in developing nations suffer at any time from health problems related to unclean water, such as cholera, hepatitis, and malaria.
- People in New York pay less for water than people in some of the world’s poorest nations.
- Millions of women and girls spend several hours every day fetching water.
- Together, unclean water and poor sanitation are the world’s second biggest killer of children (pneumonia is first).
Researchers featured in the film FLOW: For the Love of Water believe the access and contamination problems will lead to another massive extinction.

Disease’s Best Friend
I

n rural communities with insufficient water distribution and sanitation systems, people must rely on rivers, streams, and other possibly contaminated sources. As a home for bacteria, toxins, and other detrimental microbes, water is a fast and efficient spreader of diseases. Ingesting unclean water is one of the easiest ways for humans to contract disease.
Contaminants come in the form of pesticides, fecal matter, toxic waste, and factory waste.
A particularly hazardous pesticide, atrazine, has been banned in the EU, but is approved in the U.S. The chemical is linked to interference with brain and sex organ development and has appeared in 75 percent of stream water and 40 percent of groundwater samples taken from various agricultural sites across the U.S.
Unclean water further endangers communities that lack proper medical care and are already at risk for various illnesses. MORE

ETA:For more on water issues around the world, take a look at IPS NEWS' Portal Troubled Waters

Oh Canada!

[the_future_modernes]

Complaints overwhelm human rights watchdog

Ontario's newly streamlined human rights watchdog is swamped with allegations of sex, race and disability discrimination, the Star has found.

"We are really overwhelmed by our volume of cases now," said Katherine Laird, the senior official whose job it is to support people who say they are victims. "Our phones are ringing off the hook."

...

Laird's office, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, helps claimants going before the tribunal, but its telephones are so jammed that staff answered just 57 per cent of the 38,579 calls it received in the year ending March 31.

Ontario Human Rights Commission chair Barbara Hall believes only a small number of cases are ever reported. "This is the tip of the iceberg," she says.

It is too soon to determine whether discrimination is on the rise or if this deluge is the effect of public awareness campaigns for the new system. But the Star's examination of at least 50 public cases and dozens of normally private mediated ones gives a stark picture of rampant racism and discrimination.

Tribunal decisions show that women, minorities and the disabled are most vulnerable to discrimination by employers, landlords and businesses. In some cases both the victim and the defendant belong to racial minorities but are from different backgrounds


... The Ontario Human Rights Code makes it illegal to discriminate against a person on 15 different grounds, including race, sex (including pregnancy), disability and sexual orientation. At least 75 per cent of all cases are work-related. EXAMPLES at the link

How DO people do some of the things they do?

About Language

[la_vie_noire]

Sociological Images: Survey Finds Different Levels of Acceptance for “Gays” Versus “Homosexuals”

[...] They asked 500 respondents how they felt about permitting “homosexuals” to serve in the military; then they asked a different 500 how they felt about “gays/lesbians” serving in the military. It turns out, people like gays and lesbians more than they like homosexuals:

(Graphic on SI post.)