Happy September. The World Is Coming Apart.

Geez, I leave you people alone for not even five months, and all hell breaks loose. Clearly my presence is needed. Not to mention my commentary about it all.

Ukraine

For those who don’t know anything about Vladimir Putin, let me clue you in: He’s an old Soviet KGB guy who masturbates to a picture of Stalin. OK, I don’t actually know about that last part, though I wouldn’t be surprised. I do know that he is philosophically much closer to most leaders of the former Soviet Union—save Gorbachev—than any Russian leader since the collapse of the old communist empire.

Thus, no one should be surprised that he has invaded what in his dreams is still called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Sure, he insists that it isn’t really an invasion, just the action of unaffiliated rebels, because he is counting on the rest of the world not noticing that those rebels are all wearing Russian military uniforms and driving Russian military vehicles and packing Russian military-issue heat. Indeed, the only thing that should surprise anyone is that it took him this long. Make no mistake, Vlad has designs on Ukraine—and several other nations.

ISIS/ISIL

Take your pick on which name to use. You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. In fact, you can call it Al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Black September for all I care. It’s yet another Islamic terrorist group with an odd affinity for killing people who don’t toe their religious/political line. Remember after the September 11 attacks, when George W. Bush and assorted celebrities tied themselves in knots to assure Muslims that we weren’t at war against Islam? It turns out that Islam, or at least a segment of it that enjoys a disturbing amount of support from Muslims around the world, was at war against us, and still is. ISIS has vowed to destroy the United States and fly their flag over the White House. All I can say to that is, over my dead body, and I mean that literally.

One aspect of the news coverage that bothers me is all the attention given to the beheadings of two American journalists. Not that those weren’t awful, but ISIS has been doing this for months, and many of their victims have been Christians, particularly children. I’ve seen a fair amount of coverage in the alternative media and a few conservative news sites, but the mainstream media has been more lax—until their own were the targets.

Ferguson, Missouri

If media outlets give disproportionate coverage to journalists killed by terrorists, they also give disproportionate coverage to black men killed by police. Again, it isn’t that such cases shouldn’t be investigated; I’ve seen and heard enough about over-zealous cops on power trips to appreciate the possibility that the shooting of an unarmed civilian is indeed unwarranted. And in the interest of full disclosure, I was one of the people who jumped on the bandwagon denouncing the shooting death of Michael Brown in Missouri. But as is the case so often, it turns out that initial reports—and my initial reaction—might not have been entirely accurate.

I consider heavy-handedness by law enforcement to be a significant threat to liberty. At the same time, it isn’t heavy-handed for an officer who believes he or she is in danger to exercise self-defense, which is the right of civilians as well. Let’s just say that I am no longer convinced that the Ferguson officer didn’t have a legitimate reason to feel threatened. Besides, if the killing of an unarmed black man by a white police officer is by definition a big news story, then the killing of an unarmed white man by a black police officer (yes, it happens more than you would think) should be as well. That there is disparate treatment says more about the racist attitudes of the media and many observers than about alleged racism by police.

Rape culture

It isn’t a new idea, but the neo-feminist insistence of societal misogyny so pervasive as to indicate the widespread cultural acceptance of rape is getting a lot more attention lately. It’s bullshit. Seriously, if encouraging women to take simple steps to keep themselves safe is sexist—and the reasoning (I use the term loosely) goes that men shouldn’t rape, so women shouldn’t have to protect themselves from it, and suggesting they do is akin to blaming the victim—then it isn’t just rape that our society supposedly accepts.

I have a home security system because my house was broken into a couple of years ago and I don’t want it to happen again. But really, it wasn’t my fault that I was robbed; I should be able to feel secure in my own home. So what if I refused, as a protest against “theft culture,” even to lock my doors and windows? Or what if I failed to safeguard my personal information—social security number, online passwords, credit card numbers, and the like—as a protest against identity thieves and a statement of empowerment? I would be out of my mind, that’s what. Because in the real world in which I live, there are those who break into houses, steal people’s identities, and yes, even rape women. I can stomp my feet and bitch about it, or I can be a grown-up and protect myself against it.

And having thus vented, I feel better now. I’ll be back soon with more of the insightful opinions you have come to expect from me and have, no doubt, missed terribly.

Things That Make You Go “Hmmmmm…”: British Royal Edition

Never mind that nekkid, wild, partying Prince Harry. There’s a bigger scandal brewing for the Prince of Wales’ spare.

For reasons that might or might not be related to Harry’s recent Las Vegas indiscretions, His Royal Highness, who is also an officer and a helicopter pilot in the British Army, has been deployed to Afghanistan. I was reading one newspaper’s coverage of the prince’s deployment, complete with quite a few pictures of Harry in camo.

There’s gesticulating Harry alongside another soldier, smooth Harry giving thumbs-up for the camera, focused Harry in the cockpit, wary Harry on patrol, smiling Harry sitting in a makeshift bunker, hungry Harry spooning food from a foil packet, wistful Harry looking…

Wait, a minute, what was THAT?

Either The Sun fell victim to a brilliant photoshopping scam, or there’s something terribly wrong in Her Majesty’s armed forces:

Need a hint?

Seriously, I think this is much more embarrassing than the full frontal shots from Vegas. What in the world was he thinking?

So Many Topics, So Little Time

Recent lack of blogging here at Musings hasn’t been for lack of subject matter. On the contrary, my brain currently contains the seeds of posts about the following topics:

• The Sandusky/Penn State scandal, the Freeh report, and the NCAA sanctions
• International Olympic Committee refusal to honor the victims of the 1972 Olympic massacre at this week’s opening ceremony
• President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” remarks and campaign claims that he didn’t actually say what the video shows him saying
• Egypt’s new government and the country’s descent into Islamic intolerance
• The Colorado movie theater shooting and Brian Ross’s wishful thinking

Check in over the next week for the Den Mother’s unique perspective on those issues and more.

Fake Syrian Lesbian Does More Harm Than Good

Both the virtual world and the mainstream (print/broadcast/cable) media have spent the last few weeks caught up in the story of a blogger called “A Gay Girl in Damascus” who was supposedly taken into custody by Syrian security forces. After the arrest/abduction and a post by the girl’s cousin, the blog went viral as an example of anti-gay sentiment in the highest levels of Middle Eastern governments. But the whole thing was a hoax.

“A Gay Girl in Damascus” was really a straight man in Edinburgh. A straight, married, American man studying in Scotland and writing fiction disguised as fact.

Like all frauds, he initially denied suggestions that the sympathetic Syrian character might be merely a figment of his active imagination. When he finally fessed up yesterday on the blog (to which I will not link, refusing to give him any more traffic), it was in defense of what he had done:

I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.

I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in this year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.

This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.

However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.

Best,
Tom MacMaster,
Istanbul, Turkey [where he was on vacation]
June 12, 2011..

The sole author of all posts on this blog..

Smugly self-important? Yes, indeed. It’s OK to lie if you’re lying about things that are true. Maybe this guy aspires to be a politician. He proved his worthiness with the requisite faux apology given in a Skype interview with The Guardian today:

“I regret that a lot of people feel that I led them on. I regret that … a number of people are seeing my hoax as distracting from real news, real stories about Syria and real concerns of real, actual, on-the-ground bloggers, where people will doubt their veracity.”

He doesn’t regret what he did, merely what other people feel about it. If only people didn’t feel led on, if only people didn’t see his hoax as a distraction, if only everybody else wasn’t so stupid and gullible, than he would feel just ducky, thank you very much.

Maybe he got some push back over the interview or maybe he just decided to man up, but for whatever reason, he posted another apology today on the blog that was more direct:

Statement Regarding the Gay Girl in Damascus Blog

Tom MacMaster

Istanbul, June 13, 2011

I am the sole author of this blog and have always been so. Any and all posts on the blog are by me.

Before I say anything else, I want to apologize to anyone I may have hurt or harmed in any way. I never meant to hurt anyone. I am really truly sorry and I feel awful about this. Words alone do not suffice to express how badly I feel about all this. I betrayed the trust of a great many people, the friendship that was honestly and openly offered to me, and played with the emotions of others unfairly. I have distracted the world’s attention from important issues of real people in real places. I have potentially compromised the safety of real people. I have helped lend credence to the lies of the regimes. I am sorry.

I have hurt people with whom I share a side and a struggle. That matters. I have hurt causes I believe in sincerely. That is wrong.

It started innocently enough without any intention whatsoever of creating a massive hoax or duping the world. Ever since I was a child, I,ve wanted to write fiction but, when my first attempts met with universal rejection, I took a more serious look at my own work and I realized that I could not write conversation in a natural way nor could I convincingly write characters who weren’t me. I tried to get better and did various exercises (such as simply copying overheard conversations). Eventually, I would set up a number of profiles on dating sites with identities that were not my own as ways of interacting with real people in conversation but with a different personality than my own.

I was also very involved in issues surrounding the Palestine and Iraq struggles. Ever since my childhood I had felt very connected to the cultures and peoples of the Middle East. It’s something that I came by naturally. My mother had taught English in Turkey before I was born and my father had been involved with Middle East refugee issues when they met. They are both people whom I admire immensely and have continued to do many wonderful works that I can only aspire to.

I’m also an argumentative sort and a bit of a nerd. I was involved with numerous online science-fiction/alternate-history discussion lists and, as a part of that process, I saw lots of incredibly ignorant and stupid positions repeated on the Middle East. I noticed that when I, a person with a distinctly Anglo name, made comments on the Middle East, the facts I might present were ignored and I found myself accused of hating America, Jews, etc. I wondered idly whether the same ideas presented by someone with a distinctly Arab and female identity would have the same reaction.

So, I invented her. First, she was just a name. Amina Arraf. She commented on blogs and talkbacks on news-sites. Eventually, I set up an email for her. She joined the same lists I was already on and posted responses in her name. And, almost immediately, friendly and solicitous comments on mine appeared. It was intriguing. That likely would have been the end of it; I’d just keep her as a nearly anonymous handle for commenting on issues that mattered to me but …

Amina came alive. I could hear her ‘voice’ and that voice and personality were clear and strong. Amina was funny and smart and equal parts infuriating and flirtatious. She struggled with her religious beliefs and sexuality, wondered about living in America as an Arab; she wanted to find a way to balance her religion and her sexuality, her desire to be both a patriotic American and a patriotic Arab. Amina was clever and fun and had a story and a voice and I started writing it, almost as though she were dictating to me. Some of her details were mine, some were those of a dozen other friends borrowed liberally, others were purely ‘her’ from the get go.

And I did something really, really stupid at that point. I should have left the original ‘brief experiment in nerd psychology’ go and, if I continued to ‘hear’ the Amina voice, I should just use it in a novel.

I didn’t. Instead, I enjoyed ‘puppeting’ this woman who never was. I knew what she looked like in my head and I grabbed photos of a woman whom I have never met who looked exactly like what Amina should look like. That was stupid and possibly evil of me and I’m really, really sorry about that. I gave Amina a facebook page; she soon had friends and admirers.

Amina kept growing. And I kept trying to ‘kill’ her. Her story was great; I can easily write in Amina’s voice because I know her like she was a real person. I know what she likes and what she dislikes, how she feels and what makes her angry or elates her.

It was a terrible time suck but it was fun. And, regularly, I tried to stop. Amina moved overseas, she dropped out of sight repeatedly and so on and so forth. I meant to stop her … but is was hard. I’d read news stories and I’d find myself fighting the urge to respond as Amina … and occasionally giving in.

I wasn’t trying to pick fights or stir up controversy … I was instead trying to enlighten people. I posted comments on a blog; the owner asked me to contribute columns. I did so. I set up a blog to publish some of the things I’d written as Amina and, maybe, get a few comments. I did not expect anyone to read it or to care if they did.

And in the first month and more it was up, it received only a few visits. That was more than I had expected. Then, I wrote a perfect little story about the situation in Syria and the mutual affection between father and daughter … and to my shock, it went viral ….

And everything spiraled out of control. I couldn’t think of how to shut Amina down but …. It just kept on growing …

And now, I have ended it. She is me. She never really existed. I feel like I am in some ways the worst person in the world. I’ve hurt a lot of people, including people who thought of ‘me’, when I was her, as a good friend. I want to apologize clearly and explicitly and personally to Jelena Lecic, Paula Brooks, Sandra Bagaria and Scott Palter. Each of them, in very different ways, was hurt deeply by me and each of them will get a personal apology from me. Each of them is more than entitled to hit me.

I didn’t mean to hurt them.

I didn’t mean to harm anyone who is upset. I didn’t mean to hurt the causes which I myself believe in. I didn’t mean to malign anyone. My intentions were good; I got carried away. I owe apologies to those I hurt and will do all in my power to make things right. I only wanted to set forth real information through the use of artfully crafted fiction. I was too successful and I was too caught up in what I was doing. I ignored the consequences of my action.

I am sorry.

I want to turn the focus away from me and urge everyone to concentrate on the real issues, the real heroes, the real people struggling to bring freedom to the Arab world. I have only distracted from real people and real problems. Those continue; please focus on them.

And there we have it. A frustrated writer who couldn’t get anyone to read his stuff figured out a way to get read anyway. He liked the attention, even if it wasn’t actually being paid to him. He liked the fact that he could fool people. He liked the power. He liked creating a reality to which he wanted to bring attention.

But why did he have to make it all up? It isn’t like there aren’t homosexual people in every Middle Eastern country who are oppressed. Isn’t the reality of, for example, homosexuality being a capital crime in Iran dramatic enough? Isn’t the reality of tyrannical regimes arresting and torturing protesters horrifying enough? Isn’t what has been happening throughout the region over these last few month exciting enough? The answers are, in every case, “Yes, but they weren’t about me.”

And of course, he wasn’t truly, deeply sorry until he got caught and his reputation went down the toilet, as it should.

The internet is an amazing thing, giving power to the powerless and voice to the voiceless. But like everything else, it can be used properly or it can be misused. It can be a tool with which to do good or a weapon with which to do evil. It can bring out in its users the very best or the very worst. It can tell us a lot about ourselves and others.

In this case, it revealed a selfish attention whore who didn’t care who he hurt until the one getting hurt was himself. Good riddance to him.

Baby Steps for Saudi Women, but Are Their Efforts Futile?

Via the Drudge Report (which I visit occasionally and never fail to find something interesting) comes word of a little civil disobedience in Saudi Arabia:

Manal and ten other people are organizing a campaign on Facebook and Twitter urging Saudi women with international driver’s licenses to join them starting June 17, risking their jobs and their freedom. The coordinated plan isn’t a protest, she said.

“I’m doing it because I’m frustrated, angry and mad,” Manal, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said in an interview from the eastern city of Dhahran. “It’s 2011 and we’re still discussing this insignificant right for women.”

That’s right, Saudi women aren’t allowed to drive. They also aren’t allowed to “travel or get an education without male approval or mix with unrelated men in public places. They aren’t permitted to vote or run as candidates in municipal elections, the only ones the kingdom allows.” So-called reforms the kingdom claims to have adopted include “[a] change of policy in 2008 [allowing] women to stay in hotels without male guardians, and an amendment to the labor law [allowing] women to work in all fields ‘suitable to their nature.'” I shudder to think what jobs the Saudi government things are suitable to women’s “nature.”

Restrictions like these are what led my mother, about forty years ago, to nix the possibility of my father’s taking a lucrative overseas job assignment in Saudi Arabia. A representative of Dad’s employer, meeting with Ma in an effort to win her approval, tried to sell her on the fact that she would have household help, a driver, someone to do all her shopping and errands, and other assistance. She quickly pointed out that was because women aren’t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and she wasn’t about to sign up for three years of basically being a prisoner in her own home, no matter how many servants and how much money was involved.

Not much has changed since that time. If anything, the Saudi way of life is spreading, with increasingly daring Muslim purists attempting to bring strict Islamic Sharia law not only to less strident Muslim nations but even to secular Western democracies. I am currently reading a book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It by Lebanese-American writer Brigitte Gabriel, that argues against the possibility of fending off radical Islamic influence in our own country without acknowledging that such beliefs lie at the very root of Islam. (An interesting anecdote from my mother, since I’ve already mentioned her: she once presided over a ritual body washing and funeral service for a Muslim man who in his lifetime shunned mosques because “they’re loaded with whack jobs.” He was talking about mosques right here in Massachusetts, not in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan.)

I wish the Saudi women well and wish there were some way I and other sympathizers could support them. They will need it. Unfortunately, most of their natural allies around the world, feminist groups and human rights advocacy organization, would rather turn a blind eye to their plight than admit that the problem isn’t merely a discriminatory law but rather the discriminatory religion that promulgated it.

How to Have an Election (Hint: We’re Doing It Wrong)

Evidently, there was an election yesterday north of the border. I’m trying to figure out exactly what happened, but I am hampered somewhat by the fact that Canada’s parliamentary system has always perplexed me, steeped as I am in the United States’ constitutional principle of separation of powers.

For my non-American readers, here’s a quick lesson in U.S. government. The President (head of the Executive Branch) is elected by the states via what we call the Electoral College. Basically, the candidate that gets the most votes in a state wins all that state’s Electoral College votes, which are equal in number to total of the state’s Congressional Representatives and Senators. By contrast, members of Congress (the Legislative Branch) are elected directly by the people in the district (for House members) or the state (for Senate members) they represent. (There’s also the Judicial Branch, but that isn’t germane to this particular conversation.) So, in 25 words or less, the elections of the President and of members of Congress are essentially unrelated, except for the occasional “coattails” effect that can happen when either the President/candidate or the majority party in Congress is unusually popular or unpopular. (That was more than 25 words. Sorry.) If the President’s party loses control of one or both houses of Congress in a mid-term election (or if his/her party never had control in the first place), it does not diminish the President’s powers, even though it might practically make it harder for him/her to accomplish anything requiring legislation. This is part of what we call the system of checks and balances.

Because the power of the President does not derive from the partisan make-up of Congress, we simply have a Presidential election every four years and Congressional elections every two years. And because the timing of our elections is mandated by our Constitution, we know exactly when every federal election will take place from now until the end of time. Which is about how long the campaigns last. Eighteen months ahead of our next Congressional/Presidential election, politicians (including the incumbent President) are already beginning to quasi-campaign, if not declaring their candidacies outright. Because a term in the House of Representatives is two years, each member spends roughly six months actually doing his/her job before kicking into campaign mode for the next election.

Contrast this with Canada, which has a parliamentary system that, as I said before, I don’t quite get. From what I can gather, they elect a government, i.e. members of Parliament, and the leader of the party in the majority in Parliament gets to be the Prime Minister. (By “Parliament,” I mean the House of Commons. The Canadian Senate is appointed and is thus roughly analogous to the U.S. Senate as it was before the 1913 ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, except that it was the individual state legislatures that elected its two Senators and they serve a six year term at a time.)

From what I can gather, the maximum term of office for a Member of Parliament is five years. But in reality, it could be a much shorter amount of time. That’s because the Prime Minister can ask for a new election before the five years are up. Once that happens, the election takes place not less than 36 days hence.

Did you see what I just wrote? 36 DAYS, people! Thirty-six days before a Presidential or Congressional election, American voters are already so sick of the campaign that they’d vote for General Zod if that would make the candidates, their ads, and their stupid robo-calls just go away. And to emphasize the point, our next federal election is 553 days away. Suddenly, I’m feeling a little queasy.

But back to Canada. It seems that the Conservatives won big, which means Prime Minister Stephen Harper gets to keep his job for a while longer. The Liberals, who had hoped to take control, got trounced, as did the party’s leader, Michael Ignatieff, who lost his seat outright. Sources (OK, just one) tell me Ignatieff is a horse’s ass, but I can’t attest to that myself, nor can I say whether or not Harper is a strong leader or, as any American liberal would say of any American conservative, tortures puppies and steals old ladies’ hats. As a side note, I see that the Bloc Québécois, the party best known for wanting Québec to secede, won only enough seats to fill a table at a bridge game. Sucks to be them.

I have now written everything I know about the Canadian national government, plus probably a few things that I thought I knew but aren’t quite accurate. And our good friends and border-mates now have themselves a new functioning government, and it took only a couple of months of campaigning. I wish I could figure out how to emulate that part of their system, but the only way I can think of is to make it illegal to solicit or receive campaign contributions earlier than, oh let’s say, 120 days before an election. Four months is still a long time to endure a campaign, but it’s better than eighteen months.

Closure, but Not Completion

Buh-bye, bin Laden. Too bad we can’t see how pissed you are to learn there aren’t 72 virgins waiting for you.

Question of the Day: Good God, What’s on That Rich Englishwoman’s Head?!?

OK, so I’m the only person alive who didn’t wake up this morning at 5:30 with the explicit intention of watching the royal wedding. In fact, besides yet another period of insomnia from about 2:30-4:00 a.m., I didn’t wake up at all until about 7:30, at which time I didn’t even remember there was a wedding going on somewhere, because who gets married on a Friday, anyway? (True, my parents got married on a Monday, but only because it was Easter Monday and in those days you couldn’t get married in the Catholic church during Lent unless you were pregnant, which my mother wasn’t, and if they had waited until the following weekend, they’d have missed my father’s school vacation week and wouldn’t have been able to take a honeymoon. But I digress.)

Because of my utter indifference to all things royal, it wasn’t until I got to work and was sitting in a 9:00 breakfast meeting, enjoying my french toast (alas, without real maple syrup, which currently retails for about—I kid you not—$90 per gallon), that I heard someone mention the royal wedding and remembered that today was The Big Day. Naturally, after breakfast was done, I did the obligatory girl thing and went online to view the wedding dress, which was very tasteful and decidedly not ridiculously fairy tale-ish like the groom’s deceased mother’s dress was. Lord, that thing was ugly. And that was as far as I was going to go in my royal wedding observance, except that I made the mistake of clicking on a link that said “Fashion: Royal Wedding Style” and saw this:

Who knew the Brits were into theme weddings? Evidently, the royals urged their guests to adopt a marine motif, as is clear in this photo depicting (left) a blue canoe holding a head of purple cabbage and leaving billows of smoke and feathers in its wake and (right) an albino octopus, each escorting one of Andrew and Fergie’s daughters, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, respectively. Imagine how pissed Eugenie must have been to learn that she wasn’t the only woman who brought with her an electric blue watercraft, even if the other one’s cabbage passenger was matching blue:

A caption identified the copycat biatch is Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, whom a Google search revealed to be the English equivalent of Paris Hilton or the Kardashians. But wait, it isn’t just princesses and no-talent publicity hounds who kept with the nautical theme. No less than the step-mother of the groom, the Duchess of Cornwall, wore what the experienced eye recognizes as a giant inflated mainsail:

To her credit, Spice Girl Victoria Beckham tried to buck the trend with a simple pillbox hat, which sadly kept falling down her forehead until a spiny tentacled ocean creature, apparently having been separated from its designated wedding guest, sprang to the rescue to hold the headpiece in place, as seen in this video screen capture:

More successfully eschewing the seven seas was the groom’s grand-aunt, Princess Anne, who sported a simpler chapeau (can I use a French word? The Brits hate the French, you know) adorned with what looks like a vegetable from Princess Eugenie’s cabbage patch:

Every royal wedding includes the reigning monarchs of other nations, and for this occasion, foreign royalty including Princess Maxima of the Netherlands (left) and Spain’s Queen Sofia and Princess Letizia. They used the excuse that they couldn’t read the English-language invitations to justify their normal hats, which resembled neither creatures of the deep nor edible plants:

But my personal hero, though I don’t know her at all and actually only saw her for the first time in this picture, is British First Lady (is that what they call the Prime Minister’s wife?) Samantha Cameron, who is said to have written in the margin of her response card, “F*CK HATS AND COLOR-COORDINATED ACCESSORIES!”

Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day when the following words would come out of my mouth, but the Queen had the most dignified hat of the day. It might not be the most stylish, but she wears what she wears and doesn’t make a spectacle of herself.

You go, girl.

The Den Mother’s Take on the Upcoming Royal Nuptials

I don’t ordinarily care about what the dysfunctional bunch known the world over as the British Royal Family is doing on any given day. But since there’s going to be a wedding tomorrow between Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton (or so it says on the official Royal Wedding web site), I thought it would be appropriate to offer the following observations:

1. The bride-to-be is gorgeous, but the groom looks just a tad too much like his father.
2. Unlike most Britons, they both have really great teeth.

Now that’s the kind of in-depth analysis you can only get from the Den Mother.

Strange News from the Great Wide World

Here are some noteworthy stories that have come across my BlackBerry news feeds over the past few weeks. The whole world is a mess, I tell you.

UNITED STATES: New Rules Would Label Millions of American Workers as Disabled

Millions of Americans may be disabled and not even know it, according to some legal experts.

That’s because sweeping new regulations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offer new guidelines on the issue of how to define “disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

[ . . . ]

Although the new regulations cannot classify any condition as a disability per se, there is a list of maladies that will be viewed that way “in virtually all cases.” The list includes: autism, diabetes, epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder.

For the love of Pete, do we now need to give federal bureaucrats vocabulary lessons? The word “disability” is defined by Merriam-Webster online as “inability to pursue an occupation because of a physical or mental impairment,” meaning that one must have impaired functioning in order to be considered disabled. Or, as we say in the disability insurance business, a diagnosis doesn’t necessarily mean a disability. Millions of people have diseases, injuries, or other conditions without any functional restrictions (things they should not do) or limitations (things they cannot do) whatsoever. The definition narrows even farther when you consider disability as the inability to perform the duties of a certain job or occupation.

Take, for example, a person with epilepsy whose seizures are eliminated with medication. He or she would have no functional impairments at all, in either an employment situation or with daily activities. An individual with mild autism might be very high-functioning, perhaps more than someone without autism depending on the skills and talents required of a certain job. Someone diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder caused by a trauma not job-related might have no problems working. And there are thousands of people who have diabetes without even knowing it.

Unfortunately, the new interpretations of the disability law, if the report is accurate, appear to equate the presence of a condition with absence of function. In most cases, nothing could be farther from the truth.

INDIA: India combats sex-selective abortion as gender ratio loses balance

The 2011 census recorded an alarming drop in the percentage of girls among India’s preschoolers. For every 1,000 boys aged up to 6 years old, the report counted 914 girls, a drop from 927 a decade ago.

That’s the lowest ratio since India gained independence in 1947, said the preliminary census.

It’s illegal in India to abort a child just because of its sex, but such abortions happen, often aided by illegal clinics.

“The reasons for high number of incidence of female feticide in India include a deep-rooted traditional son preference, continued practice of dowry and concern for safety of the girl child and exploitation and abuse of women and girl children,” India’s Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath told Parliament last month.

Sad to say, this is nothing new. Female infanticide is an age-old tradition in India, China, and some other cultures that see sons as a blessing and daughters as a burden. The availability of abortion merely allows the act to be performed earlier.

Women’s rights activists have long been torn over what to do about sex-selection abortion. They can’t logically argue that abortion is a woman’s private choice but then make an exception when the choice reflects a preference not to have a daughter. If female feticide should be outlawed on feminist grounds, then why shouldn’t abortion because of fetal “deformity” be outlawed on disability rights grounds? On the other side of the coin, if a fetus isn’t a person under the law, then what difference does it make why you kill it?

UNITED KINGDOM: UK’s ‘discriminatory’ royal law may be changed

The British government has accepted that laws surrounding succession to the throne could be “discriminatory” and that “discussions have started” to change them, CNN has learned.

Current rules state older daughters are overlooked in favor of the first-born son, and non-Protestants are banned from assuming the throne.

[ . . . ]

The British government confirmed to CNN that it has been working on this matter behind closed doors.

The Cabinet Office said: “The Government accepts there are provisions which could be discriminatory.”

No, do you think? It boggles the mind that this is just now becoming an issue, especially considering Britain’s history of strong female monarchs. You would think that the successful reigns of Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II would have long ago put to rest the notion of male supremacy. But sexism isn’t rational.

By the way, it isn’t just a first-born son who bumps his older sisters down the line of succession. All sons (and, subsequently, their heirs) automatically move ahead of the eldest daughter in line. That’s how the reigning queen’s daughter Anne ended up behind not only her older brother Charles and his sons but also her two younger brothers and their daughters.

And don’t even get me started on the Catholic thing, which you can read about in more detail in the article.

CANADA: Family with disabled child can stay in Canada

A French family living in Montreal will be allowed to stay in Canada after facing deportation because their daughter has cerebral palsy.

The Barlagne family was originally denied residency because Canadian immigration officials said eight-year-old Rachel would be a burden on Canada’s health-care system.

Hey, Barlagne family, come on down here, where certain political types called Democrats want immigrants to come in and be a burden on the system and then become life-long Democratic voters.

But seriously, I believe that every country has the right to determine whom it lets in. A society can hardly sustain itself if it allows people to take up residence and then go on welfare. It seems to me, however, that human decency requires you to stop making distinctions beyond whether or not an immigrant is gainfully employed. Banning people with greater-than-average health care needs (which is a matter of degree) opens the door to all sorts of other judgment calls that do not befit an egalitarian nation.

AUSTRALIA: Woman told to remove personalised number plates due to rude Filipino translation

Kristen Perry, known as Kiki by her friends and family received a letter from the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) in New South Wales demanding that she show “just cause” for using the plates, otherwise they would be confiscated.

The RTA said it had received a complaint from a member of the Filipino community because Mrs Perry’s nickname Kiki translates to “vagina” in Tagalog.

TAGALOG? Why, exactly, is an Australian state concerned about how people’s names translate in Tagalog? The Philippines aren’t part of Australia. Besides, “vagina” isn’t a dirty word. I realize that the actual word in question might actually translate to a more vulgar slang term, but the world is a big place and I suspect that many names and words sound like vulgarities in other languages. Evidently, the state agency at issue reached the same sensible conclusion and backed down. Good for them.

By all means, go ahead and prohibit Australians from having vanity plates that say the C-word or the F-word or similarly offensive English vulgarities. But leave Tagalog (or French, or Swahili, or Urdu, or Dutch, or Ayapaneco, or any other language) out of it.