is about as productive as mocking and insulting and jeering and slandering them, just because you have some sort of imagined right to do so (and if so, everyone else has an equally strong right to regard you as a complete asshole when you do). If you ever went to any of those benighted countries, you see, your 1st amendment speech and privacy rights would be about as valuable as the Geneva Convention is in Gitm, which is kinda the point really. (That was for you, (TM)/symbol/kunt/obnox-anon dude, in case you only read every other sentence or so, as is your usual practice.)

Neither Turkish nor Spanish, nor for that much, German voters give a shit what Tina nor Tracy nor I or anybody else on these boards thinks they should do. But they do hear hostility, intolerance, and bigotry loud and clear, and they are hearing no little amount of it these days.

All I am trying to say is that while grinding your personal ax may feel good for the moment, it does have consequences. If we want to share the Enlightenment with the rest of the world, it stands to reason that we have to be enlightened ourselves as we do it, not the bunch of baboons you can see in these threads.

(Sorry, I think that might have been an insult to many of the fine upstanding actual baboons this old anthropologist has known over the years.)

Respect (which does not imply agreement, as most of us learn in daycare) can only be given where it is returned, and that applies to me and you, and to Muslims and feminists, and to pretty much every human situation I know of.

I don't think it applies much in mom's basement, because there you are all alone, really. (Dude, you started this legitimate mocking thing, hope you are enjoying it.)

Boy, Tina, do I wish I WAS drunk. I had the bad luck to pull the weekend night shift, and am working right now, multitasking in fact, which puts unpredictable strains on my time and makes me write in short-hand (yes the Algerian reference was relevant to the point I was making), and without aforethought. Oh, and also inspires certain levels of irritation which flow over I guess.

And it ain't all that late yet in this part of Canada, we aren't all located in the Eastern Time Zone, I've got more than 6 hours of crisis management in front of me, and this was supposed to be a quiet weekend. Damn.

The jury is still out on mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts; in some cases it appears that they can work substantially to employees' benefit. Indeed to all parties' benefit, achieving about the same results, in much shorter time-frames and at extremely lower costs. But they are highly controversial, especially since, duh, lawyers hate them since their primary purpose is reduce legal costs and insanely random outcomes. They are also troubling in that they sometimes appear to be quite coercive. Anyway, when you look at the state of civil law suits in the US, you have to concede they have a point. But because they are a fairly hot topic, you have to be very careful with what makes it through to the media, taking it with spoonfuls of salt as it were.

For example, in the two cases where arbitration was successful for women, the incidents weren't "gang-rape," and the cases were about KBR's duties as an employer, not the actions of the perpetrators. The arbitrators made awards based on KBRs responsibility and liability as such, not anybody's criminal conduct.

The facts of the Jamie Leigh Jones case are extraordinarily murky, to put it mildly. But there are two separate issues that tend to get conflated: the criminal matter of the rape, and the civil liability of KBR. From what I know of the law, I suspect that indeed the DoJ could in fact lay criminal charges, but has chosen not to. That has nothing to do with arbitration, it has to do with some legal questions, and perhaps some political interference (in the Bush DoJ? Unbelievable!)

In terms of civil liability, her contract does hold her to arbitration rather than a civil case, insofar as KBR is concerned, and perhaps Halliburton and/or Blackwater, depending on the rather murky legal relationships. It does not prevent her from suing the alleged perpetrators, although they have far shallower pockets of course.

Also, in theory, the Iraqi government has a legal right to lay charges of rape; the legal consequences of which would be a good deal more serious than in the US. It sure would be fun to see them file an extradition request to the US, and watch the US squirm about the human rights record of the wonderful Iraqi democracy they have established.

But like I said, the facts of the matter are mighty murky and frankly contradictory, and highly influenced by people grinding various axes and playing politics.

Gee, I always thought traditional/tribal/theocratic resistance to Valentine's was resistance to immodesty, commercialization of profoundly private matters, and imposition of like a CHRISTIAN saint, on a non-christian country. (Not that I agree with any of those things, as a good little small L liberal, please, be as immodest, exhibitionist, and evangelical as you like.)

But how wrong I was, it all turns out to really be about none of that, but rather a protest movement against the suppression of women's freedom to choose their partners. Alrighty then.

To intrude a smidgen of reality here, there is no correlation whatsoever between societies that practise arranged marriages and societies that are anti-valentinian. (As we all know, Bollywood & Hong Kong produce no love stories at all.) Leaving that aside, also note that "arranged marriage" does not equal "the man forces a woman to marry him." An arranged marriage is just that, and pretty gender neutral really, there are as many dissatisfied and satisfied male customers as female ones, almost by definition.