!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! ! ! ! Catt's Claws ... A Feminist Newsletter #70 .. September 28 , 1995 ! ! ! !.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! The slight drop in crime in the U.S. of A. has been credited to a myriad of reasons, but the study of Nicholas Bala, a law professor at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, probably makes the most sense. He says the reason is that there are fewer young men because of the aging of the population. Statistics show that 85% of the those accused of breaking and entering are males under 35. People 45 and older make up only 2% of the accused. "Don't put bars on your windows; put on a condom!" ....................... * ........................ From a recent Common Cause fund-raising letter by Archibald Cox (a one-time Federal prosecutor investigating Watergate): "For example, during the past 12 years, medical-industry PACs poured more than $83 million into the campaign coffers of congressional candidates. These are the same PACs that oppose reform of our health care system. "A recent news item on one of the network morning shows revealed that the medical-industry PACs are pouring twice as many millions of dollars into the Republican rightwing/Christian Coalition members of Congress and Senators as they ever did for the Democrats. In other words, the members of Congress are being BOUGHT by special interest PACs. Is it any wonder that they are attempting to vote away government regulation and the rights of the people to sue for damages caused by defective merchandise." Common Cause says that in the 1994 elections, special-interest PACs gave House and Senate candidates $189 million, a new record. But in backing the Christian Coalition candidates, one might give these PAC donators a bit of advice. They should rent the movie _Cabaret_ and again view the outdoor beer garden scene again where a young, beautiful ARYAN boy stands and sings ... and one by one everyone - young and old - stands with him in his bigotry. When the leads (Minelli and York) drive away with "the Baron," the Minelli character asks: "Do you still think you can control them?" ....................... * ........................ In commenting on the news reports that his men took a 15-year-old girl into custody in the middle of the night with an armada of ten police cars because they felt the girl might have an abortion, Blair, Nebraska, police chief Marv Doeden said, "The officers felt it necessary to react to that situation for the benefit of all involved." The family of the girl are suing in federal court. And yes, in answer to many questions to us, the ACLU is on the case. Where the hell is NOW? (See Catt's Claws 09-26-95 #69 for full details.) ....................... * ........................ Federal and state officials seized records of Dr. Ricardo H. Asch's offices in Laguna Hills and Santa Ana and at his Newport Beach home. They also seized records from his partners, Jose Balmaceda and Sergio Stone. Asch, the former director of the University of California, Irvine's renowned fertility clinic, is suspected of human egg swapping at the facility. It is believed that at least 30 women had their fertilized eggs stored at the clinic and then implanted in other women. Some of the recipients have given birth, which raises all sorts of problems about biological parentage. The university closed the Center in June when the scandal began to surface. ....................... * ........................ A new study proves that AIDS patients treated with ATZ live longer regardless of sex or ethnic origin (any of yah hear the crazy religious supremacist claim that ATZ CAUSES AIDS). However, inside the study, men with AIDS live longer than women with AIDS, low-income die faster than higher income, and non-drug users live longer than drug users. One wonders how much testing and research is ACTUALLY being done about women with HIV-AIDS considering that the primary tests for HIV-AIDS is still T-cell counting when that is NOT the primary indicator for the disease in women. ....................... * ........................ Talking about disease, how many women who are prone to yeast infections have insisted that their male partners be treated? Soap and water doesn't do it for women, so why do you think it does it for men? ....................... * ........................ There are still no clues in the murder of Maria Isabel Monteiro, 44, who was jogging at Central Park a week ago. There is a $63,000 reward and police are handing out photos in the Park to joggers in case anyone saw anything. The condition of Monteiro's body indicated she put up a terrific fight and the murderer has to be marked. The murder occurred about 350 yards from where a women in 1989 was gang raped and brutalized - which the newspapers have euphemized into "the notorious `wilding' incident." My, the boyz are so good at hiding the truth with their make believe words such as `wilding' - and the same boyz go ballistic when they see such words as "herstory." ....................... * ........................ Tansu Ciller, a professor of economics before becoming the first woman prime minister of Turkey in June 1993, has resigned. Several groups have pulled out of her coalition government because of her austerity program under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund. She will not call immediate elections, she said, while Turks are feeling the effects of the harsh economic measures. Ciller said she would try to form a new coalition government, saying that the nation needed solutions not elections that would continue the economic problems of high inflation. ....................... * ........................ Big Brother is now part of America On Line. AOL users are encouraged to take part in an online "neighborhood watch" and report any illegal activity. The AOL "neighborhood watch" is being encouraged by management as a result of alleged transmissions of child pornography as looked into by the FBI. If you want to see PORNOGRAPHY, look at what the guys are transmitting about women, pixs and words. It is said that the head of AOL doesn't think women want to use online services for anything except gossip and shopping, so obviously there will be no crackdown on that filth. Catt's Claws may be very wrong on this, but we don't think there's all that much child porno being transmitted, and we see this whole thing as an attempt at censorship. (It also protects the multi-million dollar porno industry that makes people PAY for their filth when on Internet, many of the photos are for free. Something to think about? Especially in light of several Republican political leaders having invested in porn such as Gramm and Dole?) Prodigy, which at one time was the No. 1 in online services, censored what went on its family and religion forums, but allowed men to spew filth and some REALLY bad stuff on the women's forum - and refused to do anything about it because of free speech. ....................... * ........................ The new terminology for abortion rights is: the right to "no forced childbearing." Before anyone groans about more PC, let's take a look at the religious supremacist rhetoric starting with "unborn children." "No forced childbearing" is much more inclusive than pro-abortion and more to the point than pro-choice. It is specific and doesn't beg any questions: Women should not be subject to forced childbearing. ....................... * ........................ Canada's Justice Louise Charron ruled against union pension benefits to same-sex couples, basing it on a recent Supreme Court decision that while discrimination against gays is prohibited, the government can deny benefits to homosexual couples. Canada's largest union said it would appeal. Union spokesperson Geraldine McGuire noted that the union pension plan is private. ....................... * ........................ The woman who claims she was under medication and fell asleep after she left her two sons in the car where they suffocated in last summer's heat actually fell asleep during the jury selection at her trial. Her attorney says she is being medicated for bipolar disease. Without her medication, her attorney says, Jennie Bain Ducker cries constantly as she did at the trial before a recess. When the court convened after the recess, she put her head down on the table and went to sleep. ....................... * ........................ For more information, contact Pamela Gilbert, NNEDV, (202) 223-9729 or Lnemeth@aol.com: "Legal Services Corporation: The Senate bill cuts the funding for legal services almost in half, eliminates the corporation, and block grants the money to the states with a long list of restrictions on what the money may be used for. Among the restrictions is a prohibition on providing legal services for divorce or legal separation cases. This prohibition could be devastating for victims of domestic violence who seek to leave their batterers. Call or fax your Senators with this message: "Support the Domenici amendment to preserve the Legal Services Corporation and eliminate draconian restrictions on the ability of legal services attorneys to represent their clients." ....................... * ........................ Oh, man. The boys in the media are discovering that girls are more dissatisfied with TV than girls. Can you believe this? They don't have eyes that see, brains that think? They needed a poll conducted by Louis Harris which screened schoolage children? That most said that there was little on TV about the lives of real girls? Girls Incorporated is challenging the television industry to deliver more diverse and realistic portrayals of girls' lives and announced a long-term, nationwide media education and advocacy project, "Girls Re-Cast TV." It raises such issues as,"Do the girls and women on TV look like you or anyone you know?" and provides information, including addresses, for writing TV network bosses. "Girls want better, more diverse TV," said Isabel Carter Stewart, national executive director of Girls Incorporated. "Girls want to see themselves and their reality."Too often," she added, "TV insults and devalues them." ......................... * ...................... Keeping a firm hold on the political actions of NOW, the 1995/1996 NOW/PAC committee has the old-tyme stalwarts of Ellie Smeal and Janet Canterbury as advisors to the committee made up of NOW officers Patricia Ireland, Rosemary Dempsey, and Karen Johnson. From the states, Elizabeth Toledo (California), Marty Whitehead (Texas), Faye Williams (who lives in the East but represents Louisiana), Ellen Conviser (Maine), Hannah Olanoff (DC), and Olva Vives (Illinois). ....................... * ........................ A boycott of Ziploc bags, Scotch tape, and Excedrin was announced by the hundreds of women who rallied at the Capitol to demand financial accountability from implant makers ... Why the Capitol? We don't know since the Republicans who hold sway there are opposed to manufacturers taking *any* serious responsibility for their defective merchandise. The boycotted products are manufactured by the major silicone implant companies. Newspapers wrote up the rallies with such phrases as "testify that their ailments were real," implying the very terrible tragedy of silicone implant leakage was somehow faked or at least a deserved result of the American Male Breast fetish (a phrase coined by Ellen Goodman). A Food and Drug Administration panel of experts recommended in 1992 that the implants be banned but they were used afterwards, even today in some operations. A proposed $4.25 billion settlement of breast implant suits against Dow Corning Corp. of Midland, Mich., Bristol-Myers Squibb of New York, and other implant makers is not large enough to handle the surge of 440,000 women who registered to take part. Dow filed for bankruptcy protection saying it couldn't pay that kind of money. Needless to say, Dow Corning still maintains that the women's illnesses were not caused by the implants. ....................... * ........................ Bowing to the pressures of a Republican-led punishment in the form of a recall, Doris Allen has resigned as speaker of the California Assembly and turned the job over to her only Republican supporter, Brian Setencich. The new speaker was supported by the Democrats, who again foiled attempts of religious right Republicans to take control. Allen was the first female speaker in the Assembly's 146-year history and is facing a recall engineered by conservative Reps in her Orange County district. She is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying, "I had a choice to make -- to represent the constituents who elected me and defeat this recall or give in to the fringe element of my party and accept defeat," the 59-year-old Allen said from the Assembly rostrum. "I cannot do that." Allen has drawn her line in the sand against the radical religious supremacists who have attempted to take over the Republican Party. (Report sent to CC by Cynthia.) ....................... * ........................ As every woman who has gone online and faced the wrath of the pimple-faced WORMTs knows, they don't know how to write English. Maybe that's why so many of them resort to four-letter words and canned vileness from comic books. In fact, when I pointed out to one guy that he wasn't spelling a few things like major cities correctly, I was rewarded with the same vocabulary that I saw on bathroom walls in grade school. (I guess they don't teach advance cuss words in any of his courses.) Anyway, the freshman nerds are being tested for literacy and those who fail will be given remedial English in grammar and composition. ONLY 17 PERCENT OF THE BUDDING TECHIES AT MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DID WELL ENOUGH ON THEIR ENGLISH COMPETENCY TEST TO BYPASS THE REMEDIAL REQUIREMENT. At the University of Illinois engineering school, about 80 percent of the freshmen must take remedial English. ....................... * ........................ Shannon Faulkner blazed the trail and fell out exhausted - and terribly, terribly frightened from the many threats on her life and the safety of her family. More than 100 male cadets also dropped out of the freshman class. Now there are four more women wanting to enter The Citadel. The Citadel has said it will not consider any women's applications until a court decision on whether the politically powerful South Carolina school can stay all-male. The Citadel grads are noted for representation in top businesses in the South with VERY, VERY few of them ever going into the military service. ....................... * ........................ The URLs to the most current weeks' worth of Catt's Claws set up on the Web by Laurie D. T. Mann, the Feminist Webitor, are: http://worcester.lm.com/lmann/feminist/cattsclaws.html The FTPs for Catt's Claws being archived by William Affleck-Asch, are: ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/f/feminist/ (or NCFTP open ftp.eskimo.com cd /u/f/feminist/) The FTPs for Catt's Claws being archived by Dorothy Dean are: FTP.execpc.com ....................... * ........................ Women's rights are young and tender and we must protect them from the plagues of holy hypocrisy and newts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>> Send your ideas, comments, and news to irenestuber@delphi.com for inclusion in the Catt's Claws feminist newsletter which will be emailed three times a week: Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information and is NOT sponsored by any organization. We are accepting *limited* donations (only what can be spared) to help offset the online costs of posting Catt's Claws. Irene Stuber. 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