This isn't a blog promoting pornography, and if you believe that nudity is always pornographic, well, I pity you. This is about a courageous young Egyptian woman who posted nude pictures of herself, although in a predominantly Moslem society, even wearing a pair of modest shorts in public can get a woman arrested, beaten, even killed.

This is one salvo in Eliaa Elmahdy's war against the official gynophobia and other suppression of individual rights in her culture. Of course it's shocking. That's the idea.

So was the public burning of American flags during the Vietnam war. I didn't do it, but understood the message, which many politicians and pundits didn't. The vast majority of flag burners had no interest in destroying the United States. Their actions told society worldwide that many American citizens disapproved the actions of our government and detested the ongoing slaughter of innocents being perpetrated in our name. (If this ingrigues you at all, you might want to read my earlier post about a battery from Vietnam.)

Take a look for yourself: http://arebelsdiary.blogspot.com/?zx=438f964c204f2676

Frankly, I've seen women who looked a lot better in the nude than she does. But I've never seen one I admired more.

Jesus never said it. In fact, it doesn't come from anywhere in the Bible. The closest quote is from King Solomon, who said "He who spares the rod hates his son." And who knows what he meant by that. The "rod" a shepherd carried was to protect his sheep from wolves, not to beat the crap out of them.

And if you assume that Solomon really was advocating beating your kids because that's what some crackpot preacher told you, then I believe you should consider that dear old Shlomo (doesn't sound so great in Hebrew, does it?) came from one of the most dysfunctional families in history.

First, let's get one thing straight. There's no such thing as female circumcision. Excising the clitoris and labia of human females is genital mutilation, whose only purpose is to prevent enjoyment of sex. It is not an Islamic practice; it is a barbaric, gynophobic practice.

Male circumcision, on the other hand, is a requirement of two major religions, Judaism and Islam, and in the U.S. it is routinely performed on infants whose parents are neither Jewish nor Moslem. While many describe it as genital mutilation, and point to some risks, research shows that it also has some benefits. Continue...

Tragic to say, it's not an exception in America's own little police state. Before you read further, please get the whole story, courtesy of Huffington Post, by opening this link in a new window: http://huff.to/jbCiW0.

Continue...

Privatization sounds like a good idea, if you believe that a for-profit corporation can provide any service more efficiently than a government agency. In some instances it may be true, but across the board? It's a false and dangerous premise.

In Iraq we hired soldiers of fortune, aka Blackwater and others, to run POW prisons and perform other functions that historically fall to our own military. We actually paid them more than we pay our own warriors, and exempted them from the rules our own men and women in uniform must operate under.

The result? When prisoners, many of whom turned out to be guilty of nothing, were tortured and humiliated, our military personnel were punished but not the highly paid private operators who gave the orders. Continue...

For many years, Jon Burge, may his name be cursed, and other Chicago detectives under his command, tortured suspects to obtain false confessions. Some of their victims went to death row. One that I know of was only 16. One was forced to falsely confess that he had set a fire that killed his own wife and son.

After ruining the lives of hundreds of innocent people, destroying families, creating a pervasive fear of police in Chicago's black community, staining the reputation of a beautiful and remarkably livable city, Burge retired to Florida to enjoy his pension and his booze. Apparently one of the few things this psychopathic scumbag really cared about was his alcohol. Finally, after decades of dodges and delays, he came to trial, in a federal court.

Why did it take so long, and why wasn't he prosecuted under Illinois law, which he was sworn to uphold but trampled? Continue...

We'd like to think so. In Iran, a woman faces death by stoning for the crime of adultery. She was already flogged for her actions - you know what that means: Lashed with a whip that leaves your flesh draped in pieces from your back. The good news is that she may not be stoned. She may just be hanged. Gee, thanks.

In Pakistan, a Christian woman faces death for supposedly blaspheming the name of Mohammed. All over a catty argument about drinking water. It's the law, you see, and although officials of Pakistan's central government, including the president, have said it appears the charges were unwarranted, and although leaders around the world, including the pope, have spoken on her behalf, the forces of hatred are determined to have her head, literally. In fact, one Pakistini religious leader has said that he will give $5,800, a small fortune in that country, to anyone who severs her neck should she be released. And Christians make up only two percent of the Pakistini population, so those who think their God is too much of a wimp to defend himself don't have much to fear from those who have different ideas of God.

OK, time for fanatics who call themselves patriots to wave the flag and strike up the band, and blather about America being the greatest land on earth, because we know that kind of thing just can't happen here. Continue...

At my age, little cues can trigger a complex of feelings and memories. That's why someday, no longer able to even lift my head, I may cry when one of the angels in my life merely says "good morning, Grandpa!"

This wasn't an angel. It was a replacement battery for a power supply, and this was my second attempt to get the right one from the manufacturer. To be absolutely certain of not missing any valuable identification marks, I peeled back the bar code sticker. There, in yellow letters against the black surface, were the words MADE IN VIETNAM.

Had I attempted to verbalize what went through my mind in the next couple of minutes, any of my fellow psychologists would have labeled it "flight of ideas." Continue...

India had its untouchables. Europe had the Jews. Groups of people who were blatantly denied the rights enjoyed by most citizens of their native countries. And we Americans, who just know that we're as close to perfect as humans can get, had our n-word people.

You know the word. I hate it, and it digusts me when some black people throw it around for shock value, or for God-knows-what. Rhymes with "bigger." Continue...