Author: ghostdancers way

I happen to agree, now don’t get your panties in an bunch just yet.  I agree because it has historically fought the state to keep religion out of our schools, it has fought unfair and unprincipled laws that infringed on the rights of the citizenry of our great country. ACLU has one, just one function, to protect the Constitution of the United States of America and in particular the first ten amendments of the Constitution.  I have such a difficult time understanding how NeoCons continue to attack the ACLU, when they (neocons) shout from the highest rooftops that they are the true defenders of liberty. How laughable is that, when they attack the only organization who has fought to protect the Constitution when everyone else said its ok, it is only a murderer, or a black man, or a chinaman, or that law doesn’t affect me, only jews, or I don’t mind jesus in my school system after all we are a judeo-christian culture.  I would rather see 500 guilty persons set free, than to watch in horror as one person that is innocent is locked up or worse executed. I don’t want criminals on our streets any more than you or anyone else does. I also don’t want criminals running my country and yet there it is, they are trying to eliminate free speech, free access to information and permeate our schools with religious ideology.  I can not understand why every American is not a member of the ACLU.  I know that it has defended some very unpopular people in its storied and historic past, yet even the chickenhawk rightwing pundit Rush Limbaugh has been defended by them.  Do I agree with them in that defense, emphatically no, Do I believe it will protect my rights, emphatically YES. So I suck it up and accept that if I want my rights protected, then the rights of those that I would fight with my last breath also are entitled to the same protection.  I hope you will check out the links I am providing to learn more about this great American Institution that the Rightwing pundits, the chickhawks and Right wing Taliban call An Enemy of the State. I agree wholeheartedly that it is their enemy. The ACLU is an enemy to any organization, entity or process that desires to eliminate FREEDOM for all Americans.  That is why I am a proud supporter of the ACLU and all that it stands for in our country.

The ACLU is our nation’s guardian of liberty. We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our job is to conserve America’s original civic values – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The American system of government is founded on two counterbalancing principles: that the majority of the people governs, through democratically elected representatives; and that the power even of a democratic majority must be limited, to ensure individual rights.

Majority power is limited by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which consists of the original ten amendments ratified in 1791, plus the three post-Civil War amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth) and the Nineteenth Amendment (women’s suffrage), adopted in 1920.

The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:

Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly. Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict separation of church and state.

Your right to equal protection under the law – equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.

Your right to due process – fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.

Your right to privacy – freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.
We work also to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people; women; mental-health patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor.

If the rights of society’s most vulnerable members are denied, everybody’s rights are imperiled.

http://www.aclu.org/about/aboutmain.cfm

http://scorecard.aclu.org/scorecardmain.html

http://www.topix.net/news/aclu

And just google aclu with your states name, to find out about your states aclu activities.

There is justice for those who abuse their authority.

Political North Carolina pastor resigns
Pastor was accused of ousting members who voted against Bush The Associated Press
Updated: 8:42 p.m. ET May 10

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. – A Baptist preacher accused of running out nine congregants who refused to support President Bush resigned Tuesday.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7769149/

From the diaries by susanhbu. Ghostdancers way’s diary is the second in a special BooTrib series of the ten most overlooked stories in the world. Please sign up here to shed light on another ignored story.

I chose this diary for personal reasons. One having grown up in a family permeated with violence not only toward women, but children as well. Second because I chose upon finding recovery to seek help for a problem that I deemed would take me back to using drugs and alcohol, I was an abuser of women. Not something I am proud of and not something I relish in openly discussing on a blog, but there it is. I have been clean and free of drugs, alcohol and violence against anyone for more than 17 years. I spent more than 9 of my 17 years in seeking help and treatment for my violence and uncontrolled rage. I am happy to report that I actually have a life that has been free of violence and my wife and children are the most glorious gift I could have received in this life. More below:
I thank the Great Spirit for all the gifts, joys, happiness and pleasure I have found in this life. I am blessed each day and hope that this small contribution will help someone become free of the horrors of these despicable acts against women.

·    The Story
 Violence against women and girls is a universal problem of epidemic proportions, but its human cost often remains invisible. At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. The abuser is usually someone known to the victim.

The Context

·    Violence against women occurs in all regions and countries and much of it is invisible. Police in countries around the world say that many rape victims do not report the crime.
·    Often, countries reporting the incidence of violence are the ones doing the most to counter it.
·    In the Dominican Republic, reports indicate that in cases of violence against women, the aggressors are partners or former partners of the victims in 40-68 per cent of the cases. In Georgia, it has been reported that 50% of families experience some form of domestic violence. In India, statistics indicate that 14 wives are murdered by their husbands’ family every day.
·    According to a 2002 report by the World Health Organization, studies in Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the US have shown that 40-70 per cent of women who have been murdered were killed by their intimate partners, usually in the context of an abusive relationship. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that in the United Kingdom 40 per cent of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or boyfriends.
·    A study in Sweden found that 70 per cent of women had experienced some form of violence or sexual harassment. Statistics from the Netherlands show that about 200,000 women are subjected to violence each year by their intimate partners.
·    It has been reported that 6 in 10 women in Botswana are victims of domestic violence, while in Moldova, 31 % of girls and young women (ages 16-19) are reported to have experienced sexual violence.

http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/story.asp?storyID=1800

Women and Violence

Violence affects the lives of millions of women worldwide, in all socio-economic and educational classes. It cuts across cultural and religious barriers, impeding the right of women to participate fully in society.
Violence against women takes a dismaying variety of forms, from domestic abuse and rape to child marriages and female circumcision. All are violations of the most fundamental human rights.
In a statement to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995, the United Nations Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, said that violence against women is a universal problem that must be universally condemned. But he said that the problem continues to grow.
The Secretary-General noted that domestic violence alone is on the increase. Studies in 10 countries, he said, have found that between 17 per cent and 38 per cent of women have suffered physical assaults by a partner.
In the Platform for Action, the core document of the Beijing Conference, Governments declared that “violence against women constitutes a violation of basic human rights and is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace”.

The Work of the Special Rapporteur

The issue of the advancement of women’s rights has concerned the United Nations since the Organization’s founding. Yet the alarming global dimensions of female-targeted violence were not explicitly acknowledged by the international community until December 1993, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Until that point, most Governments tended to regard violence against women largely as a private matter between individuals, and not as a pervasive human rights problem requiring State intervention.
In view of the alarming growth in the number of cases of violence against women throughout the world, the Commission on Human Rights adopted resolution 1994/45 of 4 March 1994, in which it decided to appoint the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, including its causes and consequences.
As a result of these steps, the problem of violence against women has been drawing increasing political attention.
The Special Rapporteur has a mandate to collect and analyse comprehensive data and to recommend measures aimed at eliminating violence at the international, national and regional levels. The mandate is threefold:
·    To collect information on violence against women and its causes and consequences from sources such as Governments, treaty bodies, specialized agencies and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, and to respond effectively to such information;
·    To recommend measures and ways and means, at the national, regional and international levels, to eliminate violence against women and its causes, and to remedy its consequences;
·    To work closely with other special rapporteurs, special representatives, working groups and independent experts of the Commission on Human Rights.

http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1772e.htm

Stop Violence Against Women

The Power of Change Is in Our Hands

Welcome to the Stop Violence Against Women Campaign. Every day, women and girls around the world are threatened, beaten, raped, mutilated and killed with impunity. It’s time to recognize that violence against women is a global human rights scandal that affects us all. Across the world, Amnesty International members will unite to work towards making women’s human rights a reality.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/stopviolence/index.do

Worldwide scandal

Violence against women is the greatest human rights scandal of our times.
“I really don’t know what it was that evening that made me decide to call the police, but I always say it was the sight of cleaning up my own blood.” Lorraine, a British woman, was regularly beaten by her partner for eight years before telling anybody. “People have asked me why I didn’t just leave, but …. I was very, very frightened of him. So you get to the point where you live with it, it becomes a normal pattern of life, you adapt, you cope, you hide it.” In the UK, emergency services receive an average of one call per minute about violence in the family.

From birth to death, in times of peace as well as war, women face discrimination and violence at the hands of the state, the community and the family.
·    At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in her lifetime. This figure comes from a study based on 50 surveys from around the world.
·    More than 60 million women are “missing” from the world today as a result of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide.
·    Every year, millions of women are raped by partners, relatives, friends and strangers, by employers and colleagues, soldiers and members of armed groups.
·    Violence in the family is endemic all over the world; the overwhelming majority of victims are women and girls. In the USA, for example, women account for around 85 per cent of the victims of domestic violence.
·    The World Health Organization has reported that up to 70 per cent of female murder victims are killed by their male partners.
·    Small arms and light weapons are the main tools of almost every conflict. Women and children account for nearly 80% of the casualties, according to the UN Secretary-General.

http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/scandal-index-eng

In his testimony before Congress, John Echohawk, director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), called it “yet another serious and continuing breach in a long history of dishonorable treatment of Indian tribes and individual Indians by the United States government.”

Arizona Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, bluntly called it a “theft from Indian people.”

These men were describing the single largest and longest-lasting financial scandal in history involving the federal government of the United States. The culprit: the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a department of the Interior’s agency, and its management of Indian money held in trust accounts.

More stories available, I am giving you several links to follow this story.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1088/natives/case.htm

http://www.indiantrust.com/

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/free/biatrustfund.html

Who is Elouise Cobell?
“Bush administration calls for end to Cobell case”

Judge replies the Interior department “has an unprecedented opportunity within its grasp: to take real steps now to redress some of the harm that has been inflicted against some of this nation’s most impoverished citizens”

Elouise Cobell is the lead plaintiff in a federal court case attempting to restore to Indians money which is rightfully theirs. A member of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe of Montana, she grew up with seven siblings in a home that lacked electricity, a telephone, and running water. Today, she is the Executive Director of the Native American Community Development Corporation and Chairperson for the Blackfeet National Bank. She served for 13 years as her tribe’s treasurer and that experience opened her eyes to the mess that the federal government had made of trust accounts and the effects mismanagement had on the quality of life of tribal members. The lawsuit Elouise Cobell brought with others, Cobell v. Norton, is solely on behalf of individuals and families who were cheated by the government and deprived of royalties and land use fees.

http://www.fcnl.org/act_nalu_curnt/indian_0422_05.htm

A little levity on the perceived persecution of the Christians in America.  Gratefully written by “Merlin Missy” and posted at Slacktivist on May 8, 2005.  I hope that covers the copyright issue.

And this glorious example of the Art of Rant from Merlin Missy:

Of course Christians are persecuted in the United States. After all, everyone knows Christians can’t marry other Christians (except in one state but nobody recognizes Christian marriages anywhere else and it’s not like those are real marriages anyway), can’t adopt ot become foster parents after they truthfully answer the “Faith” question on the questionnaire, can be denied housing and jobs for being Christians, and are regularly the butt of jokes where practitioners of other religions (especially Jews) are portrayed as kind and giving. In many parts of the country, Christians are afraid of walking down the street because they know people will shout at them for being Christian. They don’t dare walk into some bars, knowing that their conservative clothing or a slip in conversation might make them a target for “beat the Christian in the backroom.” When a Christian commits an act of terrorism against an abortion clinic, Christians lock their doors in fear of retaliation by complete strangers. Doctors who practice and promote Natural Family Planning are listed on websites with “Wanted” posters and regularly receive death threats. Halloween and Beltaine are paid days off regardless of a person’s faith; anyone who asks to take a vacation day for Christmas or Easter is grilled suspiciously by coworkers and managers. Schools for other faiths are everywhere; there are only one or two Catholic schools per state and they don’t advertise after three were firebombed in one year. The ruling party and all three branches of government have dozens of people who have made public statements that Christians are destroying this country and that the practice of Christianity should be banned by the Constitution. Christians are barred from military service. Every Christian has a friend or relative who was killed or imprisoned during the last world war because they were Christian. When Christians complain about the treatment they receive, they’re told to move to another state / country with their own kind. People regularly picket the funerals of Christians with signs that read “The nameless forces that randomly shaped the cosmos into an appealing pattern hate Christos!” The word “christian” is used as an independent adjective to describe something stupid and/or undesireable. Christian girls who ascribe to Paul’s teaching that women must keep their heads covered when they pray are suspended from schools for violating the “no hats” policy. The only movie most people have even heard of that features Christianity is “The Faith,” a horror film that shows teenaged girls praying for bad things to happen to their classmates and committing cannibalism (using a phrase made trendy by the movie: “Body and Blood of Christ”). Politicians regularly end statements with “And Allah bless America,” and when called on it, they claim they mean all gods when they say Allah. “In YHWH We Trust” is written on our money. Teenagers who tell their parents they’re interested in Christianity, or believe they might be Chrisrians, are told they’re “going through a (rebellious) phase” and are often sent to counselling to “fix” them. The first response people often make when they hear someone’s family member is a Christian is to say “I’m so sorry.” Christian clubs at colleges don’t advertise their meetings because atheists regularly show up and hand out copies of “On the Origen of Species.”
Or you know, not.

 
Evolution Controversy in Our Schools

This letter was sent to Academy members by President Bruce Alberts on March 4, 2005.  

http://www4.nationalacademies.org/nas/nashome.nsf/urllinks/NAS-6AQJS4?OpenDocument

Here is a wonderful article on what is currently an issue that the Kansas board of Theocracy Opps Education is working on today and for the next six days.  Seems that Intelligent Design is the newest form of Theocratic Propoganda to be moved into the Kansas School Science Curriculum.  

I am a Believer, not a Christian Believer but a Believer that there is a Higher Power, I choose to call the Great Spirit and I for one don’t want schools to implement a back door in teaching religion in our schools.