Slavery In New York City
Prometheus 6 links to a fascinating New York Times article about the history of slavery in New York City. New York was a slave state until 1827 ; there may have been more slaves in New York City than in any other city in the country. New Yorkers were reminded of this history recently when a mass slave grave was unearthed.

Someone In The Guardian’s Corrections Department Is Getting Grumpy
“In a Comment piece headed, We must not forget how war was won, page 22, May 7, we wrote of “the genocidal destruction of the Jewish and gypsy (sic) populations”. Gypsy takes a capital G. The stylebook says so: Gypsies u[pper]c[ase], recognised as an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, as are Irish Travellers. The point has been made in corrections on the following occasions: December 7 1999; March 3 2000; May 4 2000; March 3 2001; July 25 2001; August 1 2001; September 1 2001; December 14 2001; February 19 2003; September 29 2004; March 3 2005.”

For some reason that really cracks me up. For many more entertaining corrections, check out Regret The Error’s amazing Crunks ‘05: The Year In Media Errors and Corrections. Hat tip: Sivacracy.

From The Willamette Week
WWeek reports: “Perhaps Gov. Ted Kulongoski has heard the critics who knock his appointments to boards and commissions for skewing heavily white, male and insider. Kulongoski this week appointed a longtime insider, former state Sen. Neil Bryant (R-Bend), to the OHSU board, but don’t judge too hastily. Bryant comes to the position with a handicap, according to the form he filled out: In the ‘disability’ section, he listed ‘white/male.’”

Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
Henry Jenkins (author of one of my favorite books, Cultural Poachers) debunks claims that video games cause violence, are played only by boys, etc. Hat tip: Shrub.com.

Carnival of Bent Attractions
“The Carnival of Bent Attractions will be published monthly and is made up of submitted blog posts on articles of interest to the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans and queer communities.” (Hat tip: Happy Feminist.)

On Once Having Been A Cute Girl
Well-written, sensitive post at Happy Feminist discussing the pros and cons of being conventionally attractive.

Ethical Dilemmas for Newbie Prosecutors
Happy Feminist tells an interesting story from her first job as a prosecutor, when her boss ordered her to act unethically.

Happy Feminist’s Summary of Oral Arguments in the Ayotte Case
Gee, seems like y’all could just skip “Alas” and go read Happy Feminist, from the way I’m linking to her! In this post, she provides an interesting discussion of the Oral arguments in the Ayotte case (which is an abortion case before the Supreme Court this term).

“Insufficiently Traumatized” Case Could Encourage Prosecutors To Bring Weak Cases To Court
Mark Kleinman makes a point I hadn’t considered about the “Insufficiently Traumatized” false rape allegation case. “The case was brought, not by the District Attorney who declined to prosecute the three men, but by the City Attorney’s office. The DA reportedly decided, not that the report was false, but that a conviction was unobtainable. That’s what a good prosecutor does, even if he thinks a crime might have been committed.

“But if a declination paints a target on the complainant’s back, every prosecutor in a sexual assault unit will be under pressure from the complainant and her friends to go ahead with a weak case, just to protect the witness.”

Racism in the Porn Industry
Although it wasn’t Flea’s main point, I thought the discussion of racism and porn in this post was particularly interesting. Be sure to read the footnote, too.

Abortion and Mental Distress: Not Clear-Cut
Shakespeare’s Sister has a typically excellent post discussing a recent study which attempted to find evidence that abortion causes long-term mental distress.

There’s more; you can read the whole thing here. (Hat tip: The Debate Link.)

But as far as I can tell, none of the conservative bloggers bothered to check David Tell’s “facts.” If they had, they might have known that this story is not as clear-cut as they believe.

From Tell’s article:

Let’s take Tell’s last paragraph first - was the ACLU press release “extensively covered in the press”? I did a Lexis search for stories in major newspapers since October 20 with the words “ACLU” and “detainees” anywhere in the text. I found one full story reporting on the ACLU’s claim (”Autopsies Support Abuse Allegations,” LA Times, 10/25/2005), and three other mentions (”21 die from interrogation,” The Advertiser, 10/26/2005; “National Briefs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/26/2005; “Controversy grows over legal status of detainees,” Financial Times, 10/27/2005). Contrary to Tell’s narrative, it’s clear that that mainstream newspapers virtually all ignored this story.

(I want to point out that The Advertiser’s headline is egregiously wrong, although the story below the headline was accurate. But since I’ve never heard of The Advertiser before today’s Lexis search, I doubt it’s a major media organ.)

Furthermore, every one of those four stories prominently mentions an important fact that Tell left out. Here’s the first paragraph of the LA Times story:

Here’s the second paragraph of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette’s coverage:

The other two reported it the same way - “The ACLU said eight detainees appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and OGA,” as The Financial Times put it, and “the group characterised 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers,” as The Advertiser put it.

So every story I could find in the press mentions that the ACLU claimed that eight - not 21 - died from being tortured or abused by U.S. personnel. And that’s what the ACLU’s press release says, too:

So, in fact, the ACLU and the press have only claimed that “at least eight” of the deaths are attributable to abuse by U.S. personnel. If the ACLU’s documents contain “at least eight” such deaths - and as we’ll see, they do - then the accusations that the ACLU has lied are unfounded.

But first, let’s look at another of Tell’s claims. Tell writes:

But hold on a moment - the ACLU’s press release never claims that “the Pentagon itself had labeled 21… deaths ‘homicide.’” The ACLU report never refers to “official homicides.” But you’d never know that from Tell’s account.

The truth is, both Tell and the ACLU are being squirrley here. The ACLU claims that “according to the documents,” there are 21 homicides - but, technically, it never says that the Pentagon itself has officially labeled all them as homicides. Still, the phrasing could easily be read that way. 3 of the 4 newspaper reports I found didn’t get misled - all three attribute the 21 homicide count to the ACLU, not to the government - but one paper, The Financial Times, got it wrong.

The ACLU press release gives details about some of the deaths they classified as “homicide.” The first death they describe is this one:

Note that cause of death is “undetermined,” not “homicide.” So despite a single misleading phrase, the ACLU’s press release didn’t hide the fact that their homicide count includes deaths not classified as “homicide” by the government.

I do agree with Tell that the ACLU appears to be counting some ambiguous cases as “homicide,” merely because the government has officially labeled them homicides (for an example, a case of a prisoner suffering fatal injuries during an escape attempt). So a point goes to Mr. Tell there.

Finally, let’s look at the most important, substantive point: Are there, in fact, 8 deaths described in the ACLU documents that could reasonably be described as caused by abuse or torture by U.S. personnel? Yes, there are.

The ACLU press release lists the following four cases in enough detail to convince me, and I think most reasonable people, that we’re talking about homicide due to actions by US personnel.

The other four deaths aren’t described in much detail in the ACLU press release - but reading the documents and researching the names has convinced me that the ACLU’s assessment is certainly defensible, and probably correct. From the ACLU’s press release:

The autopsy report (pdf link) indicates that his beaten-to-death body was found “under guard by the Afghanistan Militia Forces.” So why is the ACLU blaming this one on the US Military? Because this appears to be Abdul Wahid’s autopsy, and the US Military has admitted that Abdul Wahid died in American custody (see this CBS news report).

To me, this seems like the only one of the 8 deaths the ACLU refers to that can reasonably be questioned; and even here, the only question is if he was beaten to death by us or by our allies, and the US military appears to believe that it’s us.

Then there’s this case:

The ACLU’s press release should have mentioned that he was strangled to death while “in isolation,” according to the autopsy report (pdf link). I guess Tell would say that we don’t really know who killed this man; however, it doesn’t seem plausible that anyone who wasn’t part of the US military could manage to murder a prisoner in isolation in a US military prison.

Finally, there are the cases of Mullah Habibullah, a 30-year-old beaten to death in a U.S. prison “with his arms shackled and tied to a beam in the ceiling”; and Dilawar, who was “beaten by guards and interrogators, some of whom stood with their full weight on top of him, concentrating on his groin.” Although neither case was described in detail by the ACLU’s press release, both are in the ACLU’s document collection, and both are certainly cases of homicide by US personnel.

Total score: Six clear-cut cases of deaths caused by abuse and torture by American personnel, plus two likely but somewhat ambiguous cases. Tell’s claim that “at most 5 of those homicides contain even the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing by American personnel” is not only nonsense, it’s reprehensible nonsense. By characterising six fairly clear-cut cases of prisoners being beaten and/or tortured to death as just “the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing,” Tell is in effect minimizing and excusing murder and torture. Shame on him.

On the whole, neither the ACLU nor The Weekly Standard’s Tell looks perfect - but from what I can tell, the ACLU has much less reason for shame than The Weekly Standard.

1) On the anti-ACLU side, the ACLU may have messed up its count of homicides; its press release contained one sentence which could be read as saying that the “homicide” count was according to the US military’s official designations (the press release as a whole clearly discussed homicides regardless of official designation); and its count included some officially-designated homicides that I think are actually ambiguous. Finally, the ACLU’s primary claim was that 8 detainees have been murdered by American personnel; however, it seems to me that only 6 of the 8 cases are certain.

2) On the anti-Weekly Standard side, the Weekly Standard failed to mention that the ACLU’s primary claim was that 8 detainees have been murdered by American personnel, and that this was how the ACLU’s claim was reported in the mainstream press. Judging from a Lexis search of major newspapers, the Weekly Standard also vastly exaggerated the coverage the ACLU press release received; in fact, this story was overwhelmingly ignored by mainstream media. Finally, and most inexcusably, the Weekly Standard characterized clear-cut cases of detainee death due to inexcusable abuse by American personnel as containing only “the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing.”

In the ensuing discussion, let’s not forget that quibbling over how many documented torture deaths there are in this report (six? eight?) shouldn’t become an excuse for brushing aside the real moral point: even one such death, let alone six or eight, is entirely inexcusable.

* * *

By the way, check out the comments following this post on Protein Wisdom, in which several of the participants are discussing, in apparent seriousness, “Is there anyway the government could have [the ACLU] shut down once and for all?” Nothing at all fascist about that…

The Best Post I’ve Read This Year
“I’ve decided that there must be a giddy sense of power that comes from being able to command poor people to stand in line, at the drop of a hat.” Kactus describes a monday afternoon at the welfare office. Via Bradford Plumer, whose post also quotes David Shipler on welfare cheats: “The more damaging welfare cheats are the caseworkers and other officials who contrive to discourage or reject perfectly eligible families.”

Carole Joffe’s Open Letter To Dalton Conley
“Like you, I am a passionate believer in public sociology, and think its recent revitalization is one of the best things that has occurred in our discipline in years. I commend you for your many writings that are accessible to an audience beyond sociology. But in the case of this op-ed, I believe you have acted irresponsibly, and have done harm to a cause in which you profess to believe. Quite frankly, rather than seeing your op-ed as authentic public sociology, I view it as inappropriate ‘private sociology.’ Based on your individual experience with a contested pregnancy, you are attempting to intervene in a policy arena that you seemingly know very little about.”

Twisty on Culture
“As you know, I am the world’s foremost authority on the status of women in Fiji, so you can believe me when I say that if chumps in their own government are advocating pickling women in the good old pre-feminist brine so that they’ll conform to some kind of quaint “national identity” dictated by crowd-pleasin’ hair-dos, it can’t be good. In fact, it looks to me like they’re wanting to put the kibosh on women’s rights because they fuck with Fiji’s brand.”

(By the way, take note of I Blame The Patriarchy’s shiney new URL.)

Yes, Virginia, There Are Mean People On Both Sides
Cathy Young points out what should be obvious about US politics: ‘There is nastiness and ugliness aplenty on both sides, regardless of the exact forms it takes. ” That should be a truism, but there are oodles of people on both sides who seemingly think that the other side has a near-monopoly on hate. I disagree with some of Cathy’s particulars, but her overall post is spot-on.

Sentenced to Death for Self Defense
“Let’s summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn’t named in the warrant, and wasn’t a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door’s been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town’s police chief. He’s later convicted and sentenced to death by a [mostly] white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid. The story gets more bizarre from there.”

Battlepanda has a long, long list of blogs commenting on the Cory Maye - he’s running a competition to see if the rightosphere, the leftosphere, or the libertarians generate the most links publicizing this case.

Poll: Most Pharmacists Want Right To Refuse Women Birth Control
“The more relevant finding was that about 39 percent of the pharmacists felt they should be able to refuse to fill a legal prescription, apart from another 37 percent who felt they should be able to refuse with a referral to a more cooperative pharmacist. (Only 23 percent said that a patient’s legal rights should prevail over the pharmacist’s misgivings.) [...] If nothing else, there seems to be a vast difference of opinion between pharmacists and physicians–a previous survey of doctors by HCD Research found that 78 percent of physicians thought that pharmacists should be obliged to provide emergency contraception.”

Link via Earl at Prometheus 6, who has a modest proposal: “Pharmacists that refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions should have to raise the kid.”

Women In Their 20s Gain Income Every Year They Delay Motherhood
“So, if you have your first child at 24 instead of 25, you’re giving up 10 percent of your lifetime earnings. The wage hit comes in two pieces. There’s an immediate drop, followed by a slower rate of growth…right up to the day you retire. So, a 34-year-old woman with a 10-year-old child will (again on average) get smaller percentage raises on a smaller base salary than an otherwise identical woman with a 9-year-old. Each year of delayed childbirth compounds these benefits, at least for women in their 20s. Once you’re in your 30s, there’s far less reward for continued delay. Surprisingly, it appears that none of these effects are mitigated by the passage of family-leave laws.”

The full article has interesting details describing how this study was carried out; the researcher was very clever in her approach.

Outing Can Change Votes
Interesting post on Pandagon points out that “outing” closeted gay, right-wing politicians does in fact cause many of them to stongly improve their voting records (from a pro-queer-rights point of view).

Hate Crimes Have Been Severely Undercounted
Orcinus extensively quotes a new government report showing that hate crimes are much more common than FBI numbers have indicated. From the report: “The report also showed that 56 percent of hate crime victims identified race as the primary factor in the crimes they reported. Ethnicity accounted for another 29 percent of the total. Hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation were 18 percent of the total. Given that the best studies indicate about 3 percent of the American population is homosexual, this means that gays and lesbians are victimized at six times the overall rate.”

Party for Pimps Protested
The Chicago Sun-Times has a good op-ed piece about the annual “Players Ball” - a sort of annual convention for Pimps - as well as two stories focusing on protests. (Thanks to “Alas” reader Samantha).

Everything Is Connected on “Choice For Men”:
“I cannot imagine, except to mouth the platitude that it must be very painful, what it would be like to want a child, to know that I have already helped to conceive the beginnings of that child-to-be’s life and then, with no appeal possible, to have to accept the fact that, against my wishes, the woman who was carrying the beginnings of that child-to-be’s life chose to end it. Nonetheless, to argue from that pain to a social policy giving men the right to take possession of women’s bodies in the ways that Conley suggests is to argue not for a valuing of men’s fertility, or even of men’s desire for fatherhood…which is what Conley insists his argument is about…but, rather, it is to argue that any given man’s desire to be a father, assuming he is willing to put his money where his mouth is, is tantamount to a legally enforceable edict that he should be made a father. Power, in other words, is what’s at stake here, not fairness…”

The Best Post About The Hysteria Over Violence At Katrina
I’m a bit late linking to this very smart post at Respectful of Otters, comparing the media reaction to the shooting at Kent State, to the media reaction to Katrina refugees. But go read it anyway.

More On Pornography
Tiffany at blackfeminism.org responds to my recent post on pornography.

School Argues That 13 Year Old Is Responsible For Being Abused By Teacher
Amanda sent me this story, about a case in Washington state sexual abuse lawsuit in which the school argued that the 13 year old victim “had a duty to protect herself against sexual abuse but failed to do so.” The Court ruled against the school.

Average Loan Interest Rate In Portland Is 521%
Yeesh.

On Countering Anti-Feminist Rhetoric
Good Mind the Gap! post on how feminists can respond to anti-feminist rhetoric.

Technology is Neat! MIT unveals $100 dollar laptops.
Not for commerical sale, but for mass sale to school systems, including in developing countries; the goal is “a laptop for every child.” A neat idea, and a neat design.

Technology is Neat! (2) Windmills in the Sky
A big problem with wind power is that it’s not always windy - not unless you go about 15,000 feet in the air. Some folks are trying to do just that, developing self-powered, flying wind turbines that would draw power from the nonstop winds high above ground.

Yet Sometimes Technology is Just Silly: Toy Helicopter Alarm Clock
Boing Boing reports on a “small, noisy helicopter” alarm clock: “…at the desired time it escapes from a cage in your room. It starts moving and producing sound around you - to turn it off you should catch it and put it back in the cage.”

The problem is that both Brad and the Washington Post article are getting facts wrong. For instance, is average Joe falling behind average Jane economically? Sure doesn’t look like it. Here are some charts showing median earnings of Hispanic, black and white men and women at different levels of education (these charts are based on 2000 income data compiled by the Census Bureau).

For literally as long as we’ve been measuring, men with less education have earned more than women with more education. So, contrary to Brad’s expectations, there’s no reason to think that women’s advantage in education is going to reverse men’s advantages economically.

Second, while it’s true that women are now more likely to attend college, it’s not because men are “disappearing.” It’s because women have been increasing their rate of college attendance faster than men have been. As Robin Herman writes (hat tip: Jill at Feministe):

I do think it’s legitimate to want more young men to attend college. But what’s going on is not a “crisis” of “disappearing men,” nor are men “falling behind” in any larger cultural sense.

Furthermore, the state of men today is not comparable to the state of women in the 1970s (or the 1870s!), when feminists took up the issue of small numbers of women going to college. The issue for feminists was not college education alone, but the things college education could lead to: The ability of women to earn independent livings, so that women would have possibilities in life other than low-pay work or being supported by fathers and husbands. Men as a whole - even those who don’t go to college - are not in a comparable situation.

But some men - mainly black men and Hispanic men - are in a comparable situation.

What’s amazing to me is that neither Brad’s post, nor the Washington Post, nor this silly National Review article that Hugo takes apart, mention the word “race.” It’s not really possible to discuss this issue in any serious way without talking about race as well as class.

Unfortunately, this chart (source) doesn’t account for wealth, but it does provide a look at college attendance, sex and race. (Click on the chart to view a larger version).

Women (especially black and Hispanic women) have been increasing their rates of college attendance faster than men - but the gap between white men and women is relatively narrow, and it’s only among Hispanic men that the rates of attendance have actually gone down.

In the comments of Feministe, Rachel of the new-to-me blog Rachels Tavern (which is so going on my blogroll!) gets to what should be the heart of the issue: