Confessions of a News Junkie

The Los Angeles Times published a story today about Lila Rose, an undercover anti-choice activist who visits Planned-Parenthood clinics with a false age to illicit poor ethics of the clinics. By lying about her age and crying to Planned Parenthood agents that she wants an abortion - despite the laws that restrict the services for under-aged women - when agents cave, Rose advances the jeopardy of one of the few free/low-cost health institutions for women. Through their deceptive tactics and agenda to restrict women's reproductive health care, the credibility of Planned Parenthood and its free services are in danger. (Seventy-three percent of clients meet poverty conditions.)

Planned Parenthood's education programs concentrate on AIDS/HIV and contraception/family planning — including abstinence, parent-child communication, safer sex, sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancy, and women’s health. In addition to providing safe sex contraception, it also performs STD/STI and cancer screening.

Planned Parenthood's accomplishments give the organization's potential for increasing low-cost and free health care to vulnerable populations; its success should override conservatives’ agenda that strips funding for sex education and women's well being.

The Los Angeles Times article: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-abortion26-2009apr26,0,5408628.story

Congress enacted a 10-year ban on assault weapons in 1994. In 2004 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed an extension that was voted down, 90 to 8. President Obama and Mexico President Felipe Calderón discussed the issue in their meeting in Mexico last week.

"We understand that this is politically very sensitive because we know the great esteem Americans have for their constitutional rights, especially those contained in the 2nd Amendment," Calderón said.

Mexican officials want the ban reenacted. The government has seized 16,000 assault weapons since December 2006 and The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says that the U.S. is the genesis of 90% of weapons seized in Mexico. Also, many of the guns are used by drug cartels for defense against officials.

The inability to own such assault weapons as AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s is a small price for the safety of Mexicans and Americans.

Some of the tragic national homicides resulted from assault weapons, like the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings,and more than three cases of police shootings in the last four months. One hundred and sixty-three people have been killed and 185 wounded with military-style semiautomatic assault weapons,

A statistics report is available online at:
http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/mass-produced-mayhem.pdf

According to The Los Angeles Times, Somalia feels empowered by the knowledge of their own to battle piracy. Read the update on and intergovernmental effort to combat pirates.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-somalia-pirates15-2009apr15,0,165660.story?page=2

Here is my letter to The San Diego Union Tribune (4/19/08)
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/apr/19/lz1e19letters233920-letters/?uniontrib

Even Johnny Depp can't make pirates look good these days. Relieved by the heroic rescue of Captain Phillips, President Obama is considering a preemptive attempt to thwart piracy, by sending the U.S. Navy to patrol Somalia's coast as the country stabilizes.

International attention to fighting pirates is growing because the seafaring criminals are usurping more vessels each year. Pirate recruitment is easier in political unstable coastlines like Somalia, where locals are desperate for any basic needs like jobs and food. Likewise, punishing piracy and creating alternate career paths is harder for such ill-equipped legal and political systems.

But international law summons all nations to repress piracy as a state responsibility, and Somalia has proven incapable of this. When national systems fail, regional efforts could bolster defending the seas. Some have been successful, like China suppressed piracy by imprisoning the criminals in the 1990s. Under international piracy laws, the U.S. could have a greater impact on both East Africa's regional security and the safety of vessels in the area by helping Somalia build a strong democracy, education, and job opportunities.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is moving forward. He acknowledges the international concerns that the law he signed in March sanctions a horrific Islamic creed against women. The law applies to 10 percent of Afghans, the Shiites, and includes the following mandates:
- a man can have sex with his wife every fourth day, if she is not ill (aka RAPE)
- endorses child marriage, when girls are able to menstruate
- a wife must ask her husband's permission to leave the house, unless there is a medical emergency

U.N. Development Fund says that the law "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband" by allowing men to force sexual intercourse on their spouses.

Politicos observe that Karzai signed the law in a hurry, in order to gain support for the 2009 August election.

NATO's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, suggests that European countries might be wary of increasing troops to stabilize Afghanistan and fight the Taliban, after Karzai signed the law. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also suggested restraining troop levels.

But Karzai is more flexible than he was when he ruched into signing the law.

According to the FOCUS Information Agency, on April 4, 2009 Karzai said:
"If there is anything that is of concern to us then we will definitely take action in consultation with our [religious clerics] and send it back to the parliament.This is something that we are also serious about and we should not allow."

What are the international community's options if the law continues? Can the International Criminal Court (ICC) step in?
International law imposes a subjective moral standard on state sovereignty. For now, the ICC only prosecute, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The following actions are considered crimes against humanity:
-Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, or enforced sterilization;
-Persecution against any identifiable group based on gender, political affiliation, race, nationality, ethnicity, culture, or religion; or

The ICC is one impetus to quell laws against women.

I wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal to respond to their editorial, which attacked the capabilities of the ICC. The letter is at www.courtneyhibbard.com.