Radio Bloomsday, our annual celebration of James Joyce and his masterpiece, "Ulysses"
James Joyce, author of the novel "Ulysses," Airs Tonight, June 16th, from 6 PM to Midnight
With Steven Antonelli, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Beall, Justin Vivian Bond, Marie-Louise Bowe, Janet Coleman, Keith Connolly, Johnny Coughlin, Marion Cowings, Frank Delaney, Paul Dooley, Roma Downey, David Dozer, Michael Elias, Anne Enright, Jim Fletcher, Judy Graubart, Tony Hendra, Michael Laurence, Sondra Lee, John Lithgow, Simon Loekle, Mara McEwen, John Buffalo Mailer, Deb Margolin, Ralph Martin, Paul Muldoon, John O'Callahan, Bob Odenkirk, Jenny O'Hara, Angelica Page, Ailsa Prideaux-Mooney, Bernadette Quigley, Laura Ross, Wallace Shawn, T. Ryder Smith, Amy Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Tony Torn, Nick Ullett, Kate Valk, Fiona Walsh, Jamil Zakkai, and Zeroboy.
Directed by Caraid O'Brien whose two and a half hour live monologue as "Penelope," or Molly Bloom, passionately concludes our show.
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Yesterday, Michigan Representative Lisa Brown was banned from speaking after having the audacity to use the word “vagina” in a debate over an anti-abortion bill. Apparently, it’s not enough that Republicans have made it a political priority to roll back women’s reproductive rights—they also want to ensure that we remain silent as they do it.
Representative Mike Callton, for example, was absolutely scandalized by Brown’s comments: “What she said was offensive.… It was so offensive, I don’t even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company.” (He does realize that this mixed company likely has vaginas, yes?)
I wished this latest GOP gaffe surprised me, but Republicans feeling squirmy about women’s “down-theres” while desperately trying to keep said “hoo-hoos” in check is pretty standard these days. We live in a country where it’s fine to legislate vaginas, but saying the actual word is forbidden.
Is it run of the mill misogynist disgust of female bodies? Puritanical pearl-clutching? Or simply sexist legislators who would rather not be reminded that the vaginas they’re attempting to control have pesky women with opinions attached to them?
No matter the reason, it speaks volumes about the way in which Republicans would like women to participate in policy conversations that effect their health and lives: they wish we would just shut up already. It would be so much easier if we just left the important decisions about women’s bodies up to men!
But yesterday’s “controversy” sparked more laughter than outrage. Soon the hashtag #VaginaMovieLines was trending on Twitter. (I couldn’t help but add a few to the mix: “It rubs the vagina on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” “Life is like a box of vaginas, you never know what you’re gonna get.”)
It’s understandable—after all, it’s difficult not to get carried away in the absurdity of grown men having fainting spells over the v-word. But as eye-roll inducing as this incident may be, it’s also deadly serious. The legislation at the center of this debate—which has passed in the Michigan House—is being called the most restrictive anti-choice bill in the country. It bans all abortions after twenty weeks—even in cases of rape, incest and threats to a woman’s health. Women who have fetuses that will not survive birth would be required to carry them to term anyway. The bill also mandates regulations designed to make it near impossible for rural women to obtain abortions or for clinics to operate.
Despite the way in which this bill will run amok in women’s lives, homes and health, we’re expected to stay quiet. And it wasn’t just Brown who was silenced—women who had to terminate wanted pregnancies after twenty weeks because of severe fetal abnormalities were blocked from testifying in Michigan. It’s not just happening in one state, either. After all, who could forget the all-male panel on birth control?
Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to silence women’s voices and experiences. Not because they find “vagina” offensive—because they find the idea of women controlling their own bodies and lives offensive. Because they find us offensive. Republicans can shroud their misogyny in huffy rhetoric about “decorum,” but women know the truth. We just have to keep saying it.
Extremists Ravaging Syria Created by US in 2007
By Tony Cartalucci
May 11, 2012 - A 2007 New Yorker article written by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh revealed a plan under the Bush Administration to organize, arm, train, and deploy a regional army of Sunni terrorists, many with ties directly to Al Qaeda, in a bid to destabilize and overthrow both Syria and Iran. The plan consisted of US and Israeli backing, covertly funneled through Saudi proxies to conceal Washington and Tel Aviv's role, in building the Sunni extremist front.
According to Seymour Hersh's 2007 article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?," (1) Saudi Arabia, a more credible candidate for openly interfacing with the militants, openly admitted that it was a danger, but that they "created it," therefore could "control it," in meetings with Washington. The plan called for not only setting up enclaves in nations neighboring Syria, including Lebanon, Jordan, and US-occupied Iraq, but also for building up the Muslim Brotherhood, both inside Syria's borders and beyond - including Egypt.
Hersh's work now holds new relevance as revelations that indeed a Sunni-extremist element is behind the violence in Syria, including a horrific bombing in Damascus (2) that has killed scores and injured hundreds. That these Sunni elements are openly supported by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, with militants and weapons flowing in from the above mentioned Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, (3) just as planned in 2007, shows clearly that the US-Israeli-Saudi plan is unfolding just as intended.
As the West feigns shock and horror over the rise of their Sunni front, from Egypt to Syria, and beyond, along with the resurrection of the Muslim Brotherhood, who Hersh confirmed was already benefiting from US and Saudi aid in 2007, it is clear that in reality this is the fruition of a complex premeditated plan, years in the making.
The accomplices include Neo-Conservatives Dick Cheney, Elliott Abrams, and Zalmay Khalilzad - who also serves on the board of the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy, (4) a chief facilitator of the "Arab Spring" destabilizations that brought the Muslim Brotherhood (purposefully) back into the Middle East's political landscape after Arab nations fought difficult battles against their brand of violent extremism and anti-secular policies. Martin Indyk of the State Department under former President Clinton, former Ambassador to Israel, and a director at the corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Brookings Institution, was also mentioned in Hersh's report, and was a co-author of the infamous 2009 "Which Path to Persia?" report, (5) openly declaring US machinations in bringing down the Iranian government.
Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar is noted by Hersh as instrumental in coordinating efforts between the Saudis, Israel, and the United States, while the political party built up around pro-Saudi Lebanese tycoon Rafic Hariri set the groundwork in Lebanon for the creation of a violent Sunni front.
With Sunni-extremists committing increasingly frequent and violent atrocities across Syria, the US and the Western media in general, has attempted to portray it as a natural progression of Syria's internal conflict - when in reality, based on Hersh's report and confirmed again more recently as the source of the rebels' funding and support is revealed, it is clearly the result of this long-planned act of foreign aggression against Syria, perpetrated by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their Sunni proxies in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hersh's report had warned of the tragic consequences to be expected once this Sunni-front had been unleashed, namely, according to former CIA agent Robert Baer in Lebanon, " Sunni Arabs carrying out a "cataclysmic conflict." Baer warned of the need to protect Christians from a predictable onslaught by Sunni extremists - an onslaught now playing out against Syria's 10% Christian population, according to the LA Times' "Church fears 'ethnic cleansing' of Christians in Homs, Syria," (6) and more recently in USA Today's distorted, but still telling, "Christians in Syria live in uneasy alliance with Assad, Alawites." (7)
Christians are not the only minorities being targeted by the US-Israeli-Saudi terrorist front, but all minorities are as is secularism itself, being systematically targeted, as is the case after the NATO-backed dismemberment of Libya. (8)
As the US State Department, and the US representative to the UN, Susan Rice attempt to portray terrorist violence in Syria as the fault of Syria's government for not yielding to "international" demands - we must remember that while they are absolutely correct - it is suffering the consequences of disobeying foreign interests who have at their disposal a vast terrorist army they have been preparing for years - designed solely to undermine and depose the Syrian and Iranian governments.
This article was first published at Land Destroyer
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