Secret forced sterilizations in Uzbekistan

By GottaLaff

There are some things that are so difficult to read, so hard to process, that writing about them is painful. This is one of those things:

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, April 25 (UPI) -- Many women in Uzbekistan are sterilized without their consent under a government order meant to reduce the number of poor people, human rights activists say.

A human rights campaigner who requested anonymity because of fear of detention said about 5,000 women have been sterilized without consent since February, The Sunday Times of London reported.

Doctors visit the homes of women and lie to get them to hospitals, where they then perform sterilization.

One young woman, 26, was told she had a fatal cyst. She had no symptoms. She was frightened into admitting herself to a local hospital, agreed to surgery, and then woke up to find she had been sterilized.

"I could not stop crying. They tricked me and treated me like an animal."

VIDEO- Cawffee Tawk: Coffee Party kickoff a "huge success"

By GottaLaff




(A little something for you Streisand fans)

Coffee, tea, or me?

The new Coffee Party movement deemed its official kickoff Saturday a "huge success," with dozens of talks held at coast-to-coast coffee shops as members came together to discuss the issues most important to them.

Billed by many as an answer to the conservative Tea Party movement, the Coffee Party was born on Facebook just six weeks ago. While the group has become an instant hit online -- it boasts more than 141,000 Facebook fans as of Saturday -- gauging the success of this weekend's coffee meetups was predicted to be an indicator of the group's strength.

Who knew beverages would generate such political involvement? I feel like I'm gonna burst from all these liquids. Give me a solid Progressive party any time.

Tawk amongst y'selves:

At Java Monkey in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, coordinator Stacey Hopkins said turnout far exceeded expectations, with around 60 people participating at the "very productive" meeting where health care reform was the overriding issue. [...]

Coffee Party founder Annabel Park, who worked as a volunteer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia's 2006 campaign, says the group is not "aligned" with any party and calls the two-party system out of date.

If you link to the article, you'll see they have a few things in common with the Tea Tantrumers, except for that whole civility thing. It's all about a revolution.

If you thought there was a punch line coming, you were right:

So what does the Tea Party movement think of this new sensation?

"This Coffee Party looks like a weak attempt at satire or a manufactured response to a legitimate widespread grassroots movement," says Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, a nonprofit conservative organization that helps train volunteer activists and has provided much of the organizational heft behind the Tea Party movement.

"It's driven from the top down and it's not a grass-roots movement driven from the bottom up," Jim Hoft of the St. Louis Tea Party said.

I had no idea Tea Tantrumers had such a well-developed sense of humor.

Corporations behind efforts to label Sotomayor ‘racist’

By GottaLaff

Astroturfy frauds-- aka corporations-- would love to see Sototmayor disappear. This is typically deceptive in the slimiest, Rushpublic-iest way:

How corporations are buying the judiciary: Part I

Corporate interests posing as a grassroots conservative group are behind attacks on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, a RAW STORY investigation has found.

The Committee for Justice (CFJ), an astroturf group established by big business in July 2002 to create an appearance of popular support for President Bush’s judicial nominees, is now leading the effort to oppose the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court.

CFJ’s Executive Director Curt Levey has been sending out press releases and making media appearances to promote the theme that Sotomayor is racist and biased in her rulings, drawing his talking points largely from a speech in which she suggested that when it came to race and sex discrimination cases, it was possible that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences … would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

“It’s pretty disturbing,” Levey told The Hill. “It’s one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial … allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality. But it’s almost like she’s proud that her biases and personal experiences will cloud her impartiality.”

Gee, I wonder what kind of lowlife could have started such a group...

CFJ was created at the urging of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) – who has himself been plagued by allegations of racism.

Please go here for the rest.

So who's up for a genuine, citizen-driven, grassroots tea tantrum?

Oz. Curtain. Pulled back.

Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Help Orchestrate Tea Party Protests

By GottaLaff

Short version: Grass roots, my ass. This movement is about as spontaneous as a bar mitzvah. Longer version via Think Progress:

Despite these attempts to make the “movement” appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests:

– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters, contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”

– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.

– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.

– Freedom Works has several domain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.

– Americans for Prosperity is writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.

This type of corporate ‘astroturfing‘ is nothing new to either organization. While working to promote Social Security privatization, Freedom Works was caught planting one of its operatives as a “single mom” to ask questions to President Bush in a town hall on the subject. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed Freedom Works for similarly building “amateur-looking” websites to promote the lobbying interests of Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader who now leads Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper.

Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed’s former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations — a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Indeed Americans for Prosperity has coordinated pro-drilling ‘grassroots‘ events around the country.

This afternoon, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, leader of the corporate-funded American Solutions for Winning the Futures (ASWF), blasted an e-mail to his supporters with a reminder to attend the protests, along with a "Toolkit" of talking points. Gingrich's ASWF is funded by polluters and helped orchestrate the "Drill Here, Drill Now" campaign last summer. ASWF has been an official "partner" in the tea party effort since at least March.

All that so-called Rushpublic folksiness (think: Sarah Palin's Rushpublic convention speech) and grassrootsiness amount to nothing but a front for the usual corporate puppeteers pulling the usual strings of the usual Stepford puppets who carry out their usual destructive, psycho tasks.

Will the corporate media call them out? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear your answer. It was drowned out by a big, loud, ear-splitting corporate "No!"

H/t: BuzzFlash

John Sidney McCain, alias "Eldon Smith". No, I'm not kidding

By GottaLaff

Oh, this is good:

It turns out that this isn't the first time the issue of John McCain's lavish multiple residences has emerged in the heat of a campaign.

In 1986, when then-Rep. McCain was running for the Senate seat vacated by Barry Goldwater, he quietly began remodeling a $500,000 house in central Phoenix owned by his wealthy father-in-law James Hensley. The $225,000 project -- which included the construction of a 4,000-square-foot addition, swimming pool, jacuzzi, cabana and barbecue -- held political peril for McCain, who was already fighting charges that he was as an opportunistic carpertbagger.

The new house was located in Phoenix's fourth congressional district -- outside of the first district in Tempe which he represented at the time.

AP caught wind of the work at 7110 North Central Ave. shortly before the general election and dispatched a reporter to examine blueprints at the planning department. They found the permit applicants were listed as Hensley and a mysterious "Mr. Smith."

The reporter tracked down McCain's plumber, who told him he'd been told Mr. Smith's first name was "Eldon."

Eldon Smith, it turned out, was John McCain.

Say it with me: John Sidney Eldon Smith McCain.

When confronted with the blueprints, McCain's spokeswoman didn't deny that the renovation was being done for McCain and his wife Cindy -- and suggested that Smith was Cindy's mother's maiden name. She didn't explain why Marguerite Hensley might have been listed as "Mr. Smith."

Later, McCain released a statement attributing the choice of Smith's name to his architect. Use of the alias didn't violate the law, he claimed, because it appeared only on blueprints and not on official permits.

"Like most architectural firms, Sheiner Day Kunz Associates uses a generic name on blueprints when working for a well-known client," he said, adding that he and Cindy had been "very open" about their plans to move out of his congressional district.

Alas, local planning experts didn't quite agree.

"Gabor Lorant, head of the Phoenix-area chapter of the American Institute of Architects," the AP reported on Oct. 31, 1986, "said that in his 29 years of work here he had never heard of a blueprint practice such [as the one] McCain described as common practice."

A McCain spokesman declined comment on the 22-year-old intrigue.

He was a P.O.W. so it's okay to deceive people.

He went on to win the race. I wonder if he won it as Eldon or J Sid.

H/t: Commenter Eve