Douchebag of the Week - Tom Conroy

I first heard of Mireya Mayor when she was in an awesome series called "Expedition Africa,"  Being a history buff, I couldn't wait for this show to air.  It was amazing!  I highly suggest watching this series on video if you can!  Not too long after that, I came across Mireya on Twitter and decided she would be fun to follow.  She is entertaining, a fountain of knowledge, and a good person besides.

I was really looking forward to watching "Wild Nights," which is Mireya's new series for National Geographic's new Wild cable station.  In the meantime (I wasn't able to watch until the midnight showing.) I saw Jes Alexander's OP ED on Herald de Paris, which she wrote after Tom Conroy completely freaking skewered  Mireya in an article that can only be described as a sexist rant written by a man who shrinks into a corner when confronted by a beautiful woman - even one he only sees on T.V.  (Conroy seems to pursue his writing career by making what he thinks is snarky fun of whoever he is writing about.  Note to Tom - this only ever works if you are actually funny.  You are not.)

Poor Tom even makes fun of Mireya for dressing appropriately - "But throughout the show she wears a wool cap and drab clothes that just beg us to take her seriously"  Um, no dumbass, she dresses for the job she's doing - and she looks great.  And by the way, I've seen more wildlife in urban areas than in the woods.  Sorry you're too scared of the boogey man to go outside at night.

So without further ado, for your consistently  ridiculous prose, your mean streak, your bad attitude, etc.  You sir, are a douchebag.

Are My Hands Clean?

Are My Hands Clean?

Some food for thought...... Are your hands and clothes really clean?

(Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985)


I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world

35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America

In the cotton fields of El Salvador

In a province soaked in blood,

Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun

Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill

A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal

Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time

In South Carolina

At the Burlington mills

Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of Dupont

Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela

Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day

Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,

Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago

Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas

To the factories of Dupont

On the way to the Burlington mills

In South Carolina

To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador

In South Carolina

Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric for Sears

Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea

Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—

Far from the Port-au-Prince palace

Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications

For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse

It leaves the third world for the last time

Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me

This third world sister

And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse

On sale for 20% discount

Are my hands clean?





Tags: Dorothy Kernaghan-Baez, AFRA, family rights, twitter, cyber-dissident, tarot cards, psychic, DFACS, Georgia, politics

Anti-Police Riot in Iran

The Iranian regime does its best to keep a tight rein on news outlets, but new media – cell phone video, YouTube, and the countless number of blogs and news forums in Farsi means that when large-scale protests against the regime occur in public they are impossible to completely conceal...



By Ardeshir Arian


The Iranian regime does its best to keep a tight rein on news outlets, but new media – cell phone video, YouTube, and the countless number of blogs and news forums in Farsi means that when large-scale protests against the regime occur in public they are impossible to completely conceal.This is apparently what happened over the weekend. Sources have told PJM of a major public uprising over the weekend in Tehran – an account corroborated by other reports on the Web.This is the story they tell: at approximately 7 pm on Saturday, February 23, the Ershad patrol, modesty police assigned to enforce clothing regulations, accosted and attempted to arrest a young woman at Goldis Shopping Mall, located in western Tehran, presumably because her dress was not sufficiently modest.In recent weeks, the police squads charged with enforcing modesty have become more rigorous in their enforcement, with thousands of women detained, questioned, and arrested for violating hijab standards.Instead of meekly submitting to her fate, the woman fought back. A young man - it is unclear whether he was accompanying her - came to her defense and joined her in fighting the police. In an attempt to subdue – and humiliate him - the police grabbed the young man and threw him into the garbage can nearby.That was when the large crowd, predominately made up of young people, rose up against the police and attempted to liberate the young woman themselves.Faced with a full-blown riot - complete with angry crowds with garbage cans being set on fire - the frightened police jumped into the van and fled the scene, except for one unfortunate officer who was left behind. The policeman was reportedly attacked and beaten by the mob.The police returned, reinforced by a full-fledged anti-riot unit. To gain control of the situation, members of the unit fired warning shots into the air and threatened to fire directly into the crowd. There were reports of between 10-15 arrests.The incident documented by cell phone video that was uploaded to YouTube. While the quality of the video is extremely poor, the Farsi narration and background voices were intelligible and translatable.Among the calls coming from the angry crowd after the police were first driven away:“You have put us on since 1979 until now” (the Islamic Revolution of 1979) The crowd cheered after repeating the slogan multiple times.Another slogan chanted repeatedly - accompanied by boos: “We do not want the Islamic regime”The crowd continuously boos and heckles the police: “A revolution is happening” When a police vehicle approaches, there is a call: “Look this guy is entangled too” “He is going the wrong way”, “What the hell are you going to do?” “How many people do you think you can kill?”Then, there are cries of “Death to the Police”On the video, the voice of an individual – a citizen reporter - narrates: “Thy (police) arrested a girl and put her in the van, people rushed to free her from the police custody. The arresting officer let go of her and they started attacking him. The van belonging to the agents left the scene, not wanting to be hit by the people and left that officer behind. People ambushed him as he was running away from them and beat him up badly.”In a report on the event that appeared the Iran Press Service web site, student web sites are quoted as saying “to disperse the angry mob, heavy police and anti-riot units that arrived fired into the air but were met with a crowd of more than 300 people, now changing slogans against the regime and its leaders, mostly Ayatollah Ali Khameni and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, chanting “We don’t want dictatorship,” “We don’t want emergency and martial law.”The story comes on the heels of reports of student uprisings. As with this story, the reports are nowhere to be seen in the official Iranian press or the Western media - but by those who are determined that stories of resistance are somehow told.

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