For millenia, rape has been used as a weapon of terror against women. The women of the Congo are the latest mass victims: hundreds of thousands of women have been raped by looting soldiers in a bloody civil war that has raged since the 1980s.
Melissa MacEwan of Shakespeare's Sister has more. See if you can get through this powerful and disturbing post. I'm sure having trouble finishing it.

Donate to CARE to support the women of Congo.

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo won the Sundance Festival award for best documentary. It is being shown on HBO.

...And I hope my tomato plants don't get pummeled to pulp.

I had to write this down tonight so I wouldn't forget. My big problem w/ cooking is repeatable results, which is why I'm so fond of my Ras el Hanout spice mixes.

2 tsp cumin
~1 tsp coriander seed
~1/4 tsp black pepper
~1/2 to 1 tsp allspice
1 Tablespoon smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp cinnamon
~1/2 to 1 tsp ground ginger
~ 1/2 tsp dried red pepper flakes (optional)

~4 lb chicken thighs and legs, skin and excess fat removed. Note: If desired, you can leave the skin on some of the thighs and brown them, but this is a pain in the ass and requires scraping skin off the bottom of your Dutch oven. I gave up after 4 pieces. ("Bored now.") I also used a free-range chicken so it wasn't nearly as fatty as using a battery-raised chicken.

2 onions, halved and sliced thin
4-6 garlic cloves, chopped
~2-3 Tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 C red wine. Or so.
~2 C broth, or to cover
1 large sweet potato, halved lengthwise and cut into large pieces
(I would have added carrots but I ran out of room in the pot)
Grated zest from one nicely scrubbed lemon (Yea, Microplane!)
(ETA) 1 to 2 Tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Toast cumin, coriander seed, allspice and pepper in dry skillet; pour into heat-safe container. When cool enough, grind spices in your spice grinder (a coffee grinder used only for spices), then combine with paprika, cinnamon and ginger. Set aside.

Have red wine, broth or other liquid ready to deglaze pan. If you don't have liquids ready, you might be doomed. Just saying.

In a heavy Dutch oven, saute onion in olive oil on med or med-high heat until they brown and soften. Watch that they don't burn on the bottom. I used a ton of onions this time, and didn't bother to caramelize them a whole lot because I was tired of standing.

Shove onion to the side of the pot.

Add minced garlic and saute for about 30 seconds. Add dry spices and stir for about 30 sec. Add tomato paste. Watch the hell out of it!!!!

Deglaze with wine and stir the hell out of it. Add additional broth if necessary.

After you deglaze and scrape up yummy stuff from the bottom of the pan, place chicken pieces in, making sure that every piece is level and will able to be submerged in the broth. Add Sweet potato pieces. Add more broth if needed. In this batch, the sweet potato was not submerged at first, but sank down as the chicken cooked.

At this point, you have two cooking options: 1. Simmer for ~1 hour on the stovetop, which requires some watching to make sure it doesn't either a)boil or b) just sit there and not do anything. Recommended when it's too damn hot to turn your oven on.

2. Bring the liquid to a boil on the stovetop, then turn off and cover the pot with a piece of foil. Place the lid on the pot and try to seal the edges with the foil. Then bake in a 300 deg. F oven for about an hour.

I got tired of checking the progress using Option 1, so I switched to Option 2 after about 30 min.

Remove from oven/stovetop, remove lid and let cool a bit. Serve with a squeeze of lemon and maybe some chopped cilantro if you have any. Fresh pita bread is nice too.

The result: YUM!

Someone's comment on a friend's blog started me to thinking about the kitchen equipment I would recommend to novice cooks. Sure, I have a potato masher, a Bundt cake pan and an oyster knife--but what do I use every day, or every week? Here's my list. Note that it's better to buy one or two nice pieces at a time and build up your cooking arsenal gradually, instead of getting a 187-piece set that's either crap or freakishly expensive. And for Pete's sake check out Ebay or the local restaurant supply warehouse. You don't need a designer chef's knife for crying out loud.

Forschner (Victorinox) chef's knives: You gotta have a good knife. A crappy knife is worse than no knife at all. Forschner is one of the two Swiss companies that makes Swiss Army knives. This feels good in your hand and you can get one for under $25. And you can stick it in the dishwasher. If you can get only one thing from this list, it would be this.

If you get a decent knife or knife set, it's also a good idea to have a sharpening steel to straighten out the blade before each use. I've got a diamond-coated one that sharpens AND straightens the blade. (Thanks, FIL!)

Heavy-ass Dutch Oven: And I do mean heavy, for even cooking and temperature retention. Enameled or cast-iron--I have both. You can use a Dutch oven for soups and stews, pot roasts, even breads. The Lodge company has info on caring for cast-ron cookware. No brillo padz, plz!!

2-qt saucepan w/ tight-fitting lid: if you like to make rice. Like all pots and pans, it should be heavy, esp. on the bottom, and not feel light or flimsy.

Plastic cutting boards: Get them at Target, at restaurant supply houses (super cheap), IKEA... I have several. Some people have color coded ones-one for meats, one for veggies, etc.

Non-stick skillet: If you like omelets. NOTE: Don't turn the heat up past med-high, otherwise you'll ruin the coating. Don't get a thin, cheap one. It should be heavy. I have one for omelets and another with a lid for other, non-omelet stuff.

Silicone spatula: Sick of accidentally melting plastic or nylon spatulas? Silicone ones are non-stick and heat resistant to 500 deg. F. Get 'em about anywhere.

Also:

• A ton of cheap kitchen towels and dishcloths. You can find them at IKEA or Tuesday Morning or wherever. I get white or unbleached ones so I can use hot water w/o worrying about fading.


• Measuring spoons and cups


• Pyrex casserole dishes for heating stuff up in the microwave, or storing the stew you made in your Dutch oven.

Ras el Hanout, which kindasorta means "Top of the Shop" in Arabic, is a catchall term for a type of Moroccan spice mix traditionally used in tagines--slow-cooked stews cooked in earthenware vessels of the same name. A ras el hanout mix can contain a bazillion different spices, and has been known to include stuff like hashish and Spanish fly (Ew. I mean, seriously, ew.). Fear not, I have gathered together ras el hanout recipes that are perfectly harmless, yet yummy. I tested No. 1 yesterday on stew meat (cubed chuck, grassfed of course) and it was so good I thought I was going to pass out. I added about 1/2 t of red pepper flakes to about 3 heaping tablespoons of the spice mix.

If you make these mixes, don't hoard them--use them. Ground spices go stale pretty quick. I got some handsome Quattro Forgioni jars from The Container Store, which are the perfect size. I whipped up several batches of spice mix for Christmas presents. To hell with those crappy salt-and-preservative-laden "spice" envelopes from McCormick and Lawry! Make your own stuff.
( Three Ras El Hanout recipes )

Leaders of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin canceled an organization's reservations for an interfaith Thanksgiving celebration, leaving Austin Area Interreligious Ministries only four days to find a new venue. The reason? Church leaders suddenly realized that the interfaith celebration would be led not just by non-Christians, but--gasp! Muslims. Fortunately, a Jewish congregation has opened their doors. The local paper has covered the the church's rude behavior, ensuring that tens of thousands of people are going to know exactly the kind of bigoted xenophobes run

Church rejects interfaith service on its property

If you live in the Austin area: the event will be held at Congregation Beth Israel, 3901 Shoal Creek Blvd., on Sunday, November 18th at 4:00pm. I'm bringing an interfaith pie. First UU is hosting some tables at the event.

Veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges echoes Dana Priest when he says that it is the U.S. military, not Congress, that is the strongest bulwark against an attack on Iran.

"In the Hands of the Military"

The last wall of defense that prevents the Bush administration from targeting Iran, an attack that could ignite a regional conflagration and usher in apocalyptic scenarios in the Middle East, runs through the offices of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Adm. William Fallon , the head of the Central Command (CENTCOM); and Gen. George Casey, the Army's new chief of staff. These three figures in the defense establishment have told George W. Bush and the Congress how depleted the U.S. military has become, that it cannot manage another conflict, and that a war with Iran would make the war with Iraq look like an act of prudence and common sense.

The reliance on the military command, however, to be the voice of reason in the debate about a new war is not a healthy sign for our deteriorating democracy. Compliant generals can always be found to carry out the Dr. Strangelove designs of a mad White House. Those who resist implementing decisions can easily be removed. The protective cover provided by these figures in the defense establishment could vanish.

Chris Hedges is the author of War is a Force That Gives us Meaning and American Fascists. I highly recommend both books.

Today is the International Bloggers' Day for Burma.



http://www.free-burma.org/

Bush still thought in 2006 that Iraq had WMD.

Bush, for his part, was not disposed to second-guessing. Througout 2006, he read historical texts relating to Lincoln, Churchill, and Truman — three wartime leaders, the latter two of whom left office to something less than public acclaim. History would acquit him, too. Bushwas confident of that, and of something else as well. Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card’s departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs. [p. 388]

In 2006. Long after even the diehard Fox viewers had reluctantly given up on the notion. Hell, he's probably still thinking it.

Someone this delusional is going to have no problem thinking that bombing Iran will solve all his problems. He's listening to nutjobs like Michael Ledeen, who have been harping on Iran for decades. Bush is weak, and very highly susceptible to manipulation.

He's going to do it unless Congress stops him.

A clarification regarding my previous entry: the Kos diary I linked to has been removed and is believed to be a hoax regarding specific claims about military preparations.

But a hoax diary changes nothing. Bush and Cheney plan on attacking Iran, and are rolling out the war wagons just like they did in 2002. Same tactics, different country.

Barnett Rubin knows what the hell he's talking about.
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/09/iran-war-rollout-starts-link-to-iraq.html
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/09/rollout-to-war-with-iran-update.html

So does Glenn Greenwald.
http://salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/29/iran/

So does Seymour Hersh.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/19/hersh-iran-agent/

So does Ken Silverstein.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/sb-war-with-ir-1171457451

Insane? Yes. But Bush is so far down in the hole, he feels he has nothing left to lose. Attacking Iran is his one last chance to prove to the world and to history that he was Right, By God.

And god help us, I don't know how we can stop him.

ETA: Rep. Lloyd Doggett, my Rep, is one of the co-sponsors of HR 770, which would prohibit the funding of military action against Iran in the absence of an imminent threat.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR00770:@@@P

"I don’t think it’s limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens. And whatever the consequences, whatever the consequences, they will have to be lived with. I am sure if my father knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason. But something inside me tells me to tell it anyway."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/1/183018/1527


ETA: This is what I get for breaking my own rule about checking stuff out. That diary was taken down. Kos himself intervened and apparently had the diary deleted, and another diarist called BS on some of Maccabee's--such as talking about Tomahawk targeting--that simply wouldn't have happened.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/2/194714/9801

It seems like the commenter, Maccabee, has had a history of being a bullshit artist and talking to in-the-loop people whom he manages to quote flawlessly without a tape recorder. One Kossack linked to six of his previous posts, and they all featured ominous warnings from articulate people with unique life experiences... with arresting, near-novelistic quotes.

Bottom line: Maccabee and people like him use very real and plausible concerns to get attention. People who get their information only from the traditional media will be inclined to dismiss the idea of an attack on Iran as patently ludicrous. Not checking stuff out damages our credibility.

In 1996, Kenneth Foster was a dumbshit 19-yr-old who drove the car while a couple of his buddies robbed people at gunpoint. One of his buddies got pissed off at a guy and killed him. Under Texas's Law of Parties, which does not grant exceptions for capital cases, Foster was convicted of murder too. The actual shooter was executed last year. Blogger Sean-Paul Kelley was friends with the murdered man Wayne LaHood, and wrote about Foster's case at his blog The Agonist.

Foster was scheduled to be executed today. But Gov. Goodhair, Bob Perry, did something that W never did: he commuted the death sentence. Did Perry do this because he felt Foster was unfairly convicted--or was itdue to the 5,000 calls and emails to the governor's office and the state board of pardons and paroles? Whatever Perry's motivations, he did spare a life today--and he signaled that he would like the Legislature to revisit allowing capital defendants to be tried simultaneously for the same crime.

Click here to send email thanking Gov. Goodhair If we're going to beat up on public officials when they screw up, we should also give them a cookie when they do something right--whatever their motivation.

Yes, in September. Because you don't roll out new product in August, of course.

http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/08/post-labor-day-product-rollout-war-with.html

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Just in case you hadn't noticed, we're going to go to war with Iran. What pisses me off is that Congress and the traditional media are falling for it again. Let me make real simple for y'all, OK?

2003: War-mongering lies about Iraq
2007: War-mongering lies about Iran

Get it?

Greenwald: The president's escalating rhetoric on Iran
Firedoglake: Poking Iran with a sharp stick

A friend of mine desperately needs a home for her two cats by Friday. She is moving to Canada and cannot take them, and was put in this terrible strait due to someone who reneged on a promise to adopt them.

"They're really the sweetest kitties. They take awhile to warm up to strangers, but if you're feeding them the warm up time goes by very quickly. They can't be around large dogs but will tolerate small dogs. They're fine with kids who understand tail pulling is cute the first time and death the second. They're..well they're CATS."

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0603/valeria/cam%20pics/101_0039.jpg

The cats are in Odessa, but I can get them to Austin.

ETA: A nice cat-lover has agreed to give the two kitties a home, so all is well.

Or, "How two psychologists who don't know what the fuck they're doing made a nice little torture program for the CIA." Background: the SERE program prepares certain military and intelligence personnel in case they are captured by countries that don't honor the Geneva Conventions. Trainees are exposed to conditions like humiliation and waterboarding, so in case they are captured, they are better prepared to withstand horrific treatment. Only... now we're the country that doesn't follow the Geneva Conventions. These two con artists with Ph. D's turned the SERE program on its head in the moronic belief that you can get good intel that way.

Our government is being run by seriously disturbed people with a torture fetish. And they are worshipped by the clowns at publications like the Weekly Standard and National Review--run by squishy, soft middle-aged or even youngish men who've never done manual labor in their lives and got their positions in life because of Mummy and Daddy.

"At least half a million dollars a year for these two knuckleheads to do voodoo"

Edit: The VF article fails to mention that Abu Zubaydah was froot-loops even before we tortured him. No telling what state the guy is in now.
http://ad-kay.livejournal.com/98836.html

"Supernatural is like Bo and Duke Luke Ghostbusters."

The new head of the U.S. Central Command, Adm. Fallon, has refused Cheney's proposal to send a third aircraft carrier inside the Gulf and has privately said that an attack on Iran will not happen as long as he is in charge.

"Fallon's refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran 'will not happen on my watch'. "
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=37738

The IPS article says that SecDef Gates recommended Fallon for the CentCom position, which says to me that Gates is well aware that attacking Iran would be madness. Let's hope that Fallon's stand pushes Cheney to greater irrelevance.

Another good sign in the past couple of weeks is Condi's signalling that the U.S. is willing to talk to Iran.

Thank god.

Via ThinkProgress: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/16/fallon-carrier/

Take Back the Blog Homepage

"The Take Back the Blog! Blogswarm supports the rights of women to participate fully in all aspects of our society, including specifically online in the world of blogging but indeed everywhere and at all times, day and night, without fear of harassment, intimidation, sexual harassment, online stalking and slander, predation or violence of any sort."

I just found out about this blogswarm via a commenter at FireDogLake. We've all been there to some degree, haven't we? The crap that happened to Kathy Sierra is why I won't post my real name or photos of myself online.

Also be sure to check out Sara Robinson's excellent post on the mindset of men whose anonymity makes them fearless:
Sara Robinson on the hate crimes against Kathy Sierra

ETA: Too bad I didn't see the date on this sucker. April Fool! I realized something was up when I couldn't locate any writer called McKrack on the NYTimes site.

I'd love to see them try this. Please, please, Cheney, challenge the 22nd amendment. Watch the Republican Party flee in terror from you. (Note: I'm pasting in the entire text because a friend reports that the link isn't working and the story cannot be located elsewhere)