I read this, and I feel ashamed to be an American.

What can we do? Why is the Bush administration not being tried for war crimes? Why are these sites still running? Where is the accountability? Why have proceedings not begun for impeachment of our criminal leader?

I feel powerless. My government continues to embarrass me, let me down. And I feel that there's nothing I can do.

To all of those being tortured, imprisoned, killed over this stupid war: I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry.

I appreciate Carol Lloyd posting on this topic - but there's a bit of ethnocentric assumption in the idea that mental illness around body image is always going to skew toward skinny.

In places like Mauritania, young girls sometimes stuff themselves sick (or are force fed by their parents) in order to fit a fat aesthetic. When thin is in, anorexia goes with it. When fat is in, the opposite would hold true. The cultural image of perfect beauty is what sets the fat-or-thin marker.

Of course, in the West we so completely can't grok the idea of people actually wanting to be fat that the idea of an eating disorder going in the opposite direction of what we're used to is, well. Pretty foreign.

In a lot of cultures - including much of America - the flower is often used as a metaphor for female genitalia. Whether it works depends on the image itself - and I think they've got it spot on.

A lot of people don't think about the full extent of female genital mutilation; that it's not only the removal of the clitoris, but also frequently sewing shut the vulva to close off the vagina, only to be ripped open via sex in the marriage bed. Sometimes the clitoris is sliced open and/or burned away. (I've included a link in my signature to the United Nations Population Fund website, which describes the practice as well as its consequences.)

While this may be a bit graphic by way of description for some of your readers, it's important to know what young girls are subjected to on an alarmingly regular basis. It all has to do with a terrible kind of misogyny, in which women are seen as wild and naturally promiscuous beings whose rampant sexuality and desire must be brought under control - and in fact, stamped out - lest they bring ruin to the community. FGM was even recommended by some Christian groups as a deterrent to female masturbation as recently as the mid-20th century!

As an oppressive control mechanism, it's frighteningly effective in scarring women both physically and psychologically, taking away a vital, physical piece of womanhood - as vital as the womb, or the breasts (both of which are also hyper-sexualized).

The image of a vibrant, beautiful, bursting red flower so brutally sewn shut is a powerful and haunting image; I hope, however, that along with education for the masses about this practice goes some deep cultural education in the places where it is still prevalent.

My sister received an unexpected visit from Child Protective Services a few years ago, on the report that she had drugs in the house, and was a frequent drug user. The caseworker was very nice, and after talking to my sister for a while intimated that these kinds of things happen a lot - sometimes the accusations are true, but often they're not, and are just issued to scare people, or get back at someone in the most horrible way possible. The fear of losing your child is terrifying.

Still, they have to investigate, because if the accusation is true, then they've got to step in. If it isn't, their time is wasted. The CPS caseworker said she could tell my sister wasn't a "junkie" (as it was quoted in the report) just by the state of her home. For what it's worth, my sister works in a hospital, is subject to regular drug testing, and is clean as a whistle. She doesn't even drink!

In my sister's case, it was her ex-husband's wife who called CPS and made the accusation, she found out later. It makes sense, as the woman is terribly insecure and controlling, and has often tried to get at my sister through the kids.

But Cary is right - it does spark outrage. The fact that there are people who could be so callous and cruel as to get the state involved over something so petty and, well, childish... it's simply outrageous.

And one of the things that America stopped paying attention to was race.

So I guess racial profiling and other forms of racism don't apply to those of Arabic, Persian, Pakistani, Indian descent and so on. Or perhaps I missed the memo that there are only two colors that count in this country?

I'd like to think that racism is on its way out, but it seems to me that if Mr. Kamiya is correct about America not paying attention to race anymore, it could only be in terms of black and white. I certainly agree that there needs to be more than a sort of "us vs. them" dualist model of ethnicity (not to mention gender, sexual orientation, religion, politics, etc.); however, placing things in such "black" and "white" terms, and completely ignoring an enormous section of the American population in this discussion, is not going to help us get anywhere.

I'm not saying that Mr. Kamiya actually thinks that there are only two races in this country, it's just unfortunate that the article comes across that way.