Reminder that the NRA is not a gun rights organization.
smh
(Source: questionall)
Since the beginning of the settlement enterprise, Israel has not constructed advanced regional wastewater treatment plants in the West Bank settlements as it has done inside Israel. Only 81 of the 121 settlements are connected to wastewater treatment facilities, and even these are outdated, frequently malfunction and shut down, and are not able to treat the necessary amount of sewage. Of the 17.5 million cubic meters of wastewater created annually by the settlements, 5.5 mcm flow as raw sewage into West Bank streams and riverbeds. The Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection has failed to take serious enforcement actions against settlements.
[…]
The first victims of the neglect of wastewater treatment are Palestinians, primarily residents of small towns and villages, who depend on water from natural sources - springs and wells - whose pollution causes disease and harms crops. Because settlements are generally at higher altitudes, their untreated wastewater flows down to nearby Palestinian communities.
Photograph: A Palestinian farmer checks his destroyed crop as raw sewage from the illegal Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh flows through his olive grove, close to the Palestinian village of Deir al-Hatab in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, October 26, 2010. The Israeli army regular denies residents access to the grove for ‘security reasons’, despite the land and all surrounding areas belonging to Palestinians. The residents discovered thousands of destroyed olive trees on this rare occasion that they were allowed to enter their own farmland. (Getty Images)
(Source: israelfacts)
[TW: rape] Don’t believe in rape culture? Here are some statistics for you.
Out of every 100 rapes:
- 46 are reported to the police
- 12 rapes will resort in an arrest
- 9 rape cases are prosecuted
- 5 rape cases lead to a felony conviction
- Only 3 rapists will ever spend a day in jail
In a survey of 11-14 year-old boys:
- 51% believed rape was acceptable if a boy spent a lot of money on a girl
- 31% believed rape was acceptable if a girl had past sexual experience
- 65% believed rape were acceptable if a girl and boy had been dating for more than 6 months
- 87% believed rape were acceptable if the woman and man are married
A woman might not even have grown up understanding what rape is…because in a survey of 11-14 year-old girls:
- 41% believed rape was acceptable if a boy spent a lot of money on a girl
- 32% believed rape was acceptable if a girl had past sexual experience
- 47% believed rape were acceptable if a girl and boy had been dating for more than 6 months
- 79% believed rape were acceptable if the woman and man are married
In a survey of college males:
- 35% admit - anonymously - that they would rape under the circumstances that they could get away with it
- 1 in 12 admitted to committing acts defined as rape, but 84% of rapists did not recognize those acts as rape
In yet another survey of college males:
- 43% of college-aged men admitted to using coercive behavior to have sex, including ignoring a woman’s protest, using physical aggression, and forcing intercourse.
- 15% acknowledged they had committed acquaintance rape; 11% acknowledged using physical restraints to force a woman to have sex.
I could go on, but attitudinal surveys and acceptance of rape myths are far more telling than legal statistics.
If you’re white, the “Justice” system should terrify you
The lie of the “Justice” system is that it’s there to protect white people. This is a fallacy. One that will one day, sooner rather than later, come back to haunt you. The “Justice” system is there, not to protect white people but to protect white people from being punished. (In addition to making massive profits of course) White people, both those who work to be non-racist as well as those who don’t, might take some comfort in knowing that in most cases, they don’t have to worry about the police. Often, they have no reason to think about the system at all. The part so many of you seem to be forgetting is that while some of you will read about the Prison Industrial Complex and others will absorb statistic after statistic that says Black people are unfairly targeted, given higher incarceration rates and longer sentences for the same or lessor crimes, you haven’t thought about what that means for you personally.
While your skin color may work in your favor as far as jail time goes, being a victim of white-on-white crime, is quite the opposite. 96% of all rapes are committed by white men. Yet, 80% of rape inmates are Black. This means most male rapists are walking free. Free to rape again, simply because of the color of their skin. Now, add that to the fact that most crime, is intraracial and not interracial and you have white on white homicide at 86%. White on white homicide is slightly lower than Black on Black homicide but remember, Black people are getting sent to jail these days for breathing. White people are being given less than a slap on the wrist for even vicious crimes.
If you are white, not only should you be angry that criminals with your skin tone aren’t getting punished, you should be terrified that criminals of your skin tone will find you.
The bolded.
Let’s Talk About This.
(click for the Jezebel post, and click for the original article in the Daily Princetonian)
No, really.
Let’s talk about this.I fail to understand how so many of you can be so passionately committed to the human rights of subaltern peoples all around the world but completely fail to give a fuck about the consistent - not occasional, not rare, consistent - rape of your daughters, your sisters, your cousins, and your friends. This is not to say that you should care about rape victims because they’re your daughters or your friends - people shouldn’t get raped because people shouldn’t get raped. Period. But it is to express deep puzzlement regarding how you could care less about people you know or are related to. That’s what’s mystifying to me. I’m not asking you to care about this, I’m asking why you don’t care about this but you do care about other stuff, like bus segregation in Jerusalem, which, you know, is clearly a big issue for you in your personal life.
Because here’s the thing: the most horrifying statistic isn’t that 1 in 6 undergraduates at Princeton report forcible penetration or sexual assault. It’s that the national average is 1 in 5. Yes. That’s the part that’s really shocking.
So why am I so upset about the Princeton report? The answer is the explanation given by Amanda Sandoval, the Director of the Women’s Center at Princeton, when she was asked why the report was never released. I quote Jezebel:
Amada Sandoval, Director of the Women’s Center, said the results probably weren’t released because it wouldn’t be fair for Princeton to get bad press when college campuses around the country experience the same rates of rape and sexual assault but don’t publicly announce them.
“Anything about Princeton goes international, practically, and no other universities do that, so does Princeton want to be the one to say that this many of our students are sexually assaulted? I don’t think so,” Sandoval said, adding that she thought there was no “real benefit” to releasing it because “a story that Princeton’s rates of students who have been assaulted is on line with national averages is really not a story” and “in this news environment, people would make a big deal about it.”
That seems like very faulty logic given that the point of the survey was not to encourage high school students to apply to Princeton’s awesome rape-free campus but to help the University “assess the need for survivor support and education services and to utilize the information to improve prevention techniques on the Princeton campus,” according to the data summary.
Did you all follow that? The report wasn’t released, according to the Director of the Women’s Center, because it might have accidentally brought attention to the issue that the report was intended to bring attention to. And because women are getting raped everywhere all across the country, it’s OK to be in denial about it.
CHILLS DOWN MY SPINE.
http://www.qwoc.org/2012/06/queer-rage-from-lgbt-students-of-color-poetry-performance-critiques-marriage-politics-and-is-badass/
ALL THE FUCKING CHILLS
damn, what a beautifully powerful performance.
Fucking beautiful….
“Rainbows are just a trick of the light”
(Source: militant-rage)
