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	Wednesday, July 16, 2003

From today's Anchorage Daily News: Police estimated that 7,500 to 8,000 people were at the Park Strip Tuesday afternoon during the trophy's four-hour appearance, which came courtesy of hometown hero Scott Gomez of the NHL champion New Jersey Devils. Boy!!!!! Did Mom's Stanley Cup Senior Center tip payoff big time!!!! There were probably only a hundred people at the Senior Center yesterday morning for The Cup viewing. So within 45 minutes I got all the pictures I wanted and got to heft and hug the cup. Whereas if I'd ventured down to the Park Strip for the publicized official viewing in the afternoon, I would have had to fight my way through 8,000 other viewers! 9:28:26 PM    comment []

Excellent news!!!! The superb Laura Hillenbrand New Yorker piece detailing her experiences with CFS is now available on-line here at the ME society of America. 9:17:21 PM    comment []

Quite a disturbing NY Times article on the increased rape rate in Bahgdad: Sanariya's [a nine year old girl who was raped seven weeks ago] four brothers and parents beat her daily, Fatin said, picking up a bamboo slat her father uses. The city morgue gets corpses of women who were murdered by their relatives in so-called honor killings after they returned from an abduction - even, in some cases, when they had not been raped, said Nidal Hussein, a morgue nurse. "For a woman's family, all this is worse than death," said Dr. Khulud Younis, a gynecologist at the Alwiyah Women's Hospital. "They will face shame. If a woman has a sister, her future will be gone. These women don't deserve to be treated like this." It is not uncommon in Baghdad to see lines of cars outside girls' schools. So fearful are parents that their daughters will be taken away that they refuse to simply drop them off; they or a relative will stay outside all day to make sure nothing happens. "Women and girls today in Baghdad are scared, and many are not going to schools or jobs or looking for work," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "If Iraqi women are to participate in postwar society, their physical security needs to be an urgent priority." ..."We used to patrol all the time before the war," said a senior officer at the Aadimiya precinct house. "Now, nothing, and the criminals realize there is no security on the streets." I know that Bush administration apologists (ie., Andrew Sullivan and David Ware) would state that this article is overblown - another very slanted piece from the deeply biased NY Times. Well guess what? This may be an NY Times article, but by now, we all know that the US was shamefully underprepared for the post war governing process. And we also all know that rape is epidemic in chaotic wartime and postwar environments. How could we have not prepared for this? I personally am appalled by the United State's total lack of execution. Whether or not we should have gone to war is one thing. But to not do the job right afterwards is appalling - especially when we are capable of doing so much better. 9:13:06 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Stephanie A. Kesler. Last update: 3/5/2005; 8:34:47 PM.