Female Muslim Olympic Athletes

From the International Olympic Committee Charter, section Fundamental Principles of Olympism, numbers 5 and 6:

Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.

Belonging to the Olympic Movement requires compliance with the Olympic Charter and recognition by the IOC.

In the sports world and from human rights activists there have been increasing calls for the IOC to enforce their rules regarding strict Muslim countries and their female athletes (or lack of).

There are of course many weighty issues surrounding competing females from these Muslim countries, such as their pitiful numbers and (compared to their male counterparts) their inadequate training, their required cumbersome and heat-retaining clothing with the risk of a flash of forbidden skin during the stress of competition - Iranian rower Ramoneh Lazar was expelled from her team when her ankles peeked out...it's a long and infuriating list, but despite these shameful discriminations, encouraging changes are happening.

Compare, for instance, the Barcelona games where 35 countries, half of them Muslim, sent no females, to Beijing where only 4 fundamentalist-Muslim countries - Brunei, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia - banned their females from competition.

Finally, the IOC (including the Saudi member) is being forced to address their non-enforcements, albeit timidly.

From the Star Tribune:

IOC president Jacques Rogge and the International Olympic Committee are unhappy with three countries for failing to support the participation of female athletes.

Rogge did not name the countries, but said they all pose "religious, cultural and political difficulties for women" to compete in sports.

"We are engaged now in high-reaching discussions with these countries to try and persuade them to be a little more liberal or positive about women's sport," Rogge said on the last day of the IOC session in the Danish capital. "We're engaging in quiet diplomacy with them.

"To name names will make the task of the people I talk to more difficult."

From the same article, Anita DeFrantz, head of the IOC Women and Sports Commission, has been less cautious in naming one country, Saudi Arabia, "suggesting" that they change their no-females or be excluded from the 2012 London games.

Pitifully incremental as it is and as elitist and corporate as the Olympics have become, the idea of change for good through competing sports has merit. Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING FROM NBC: White House official calls gays part of "Internet left fringe"

UPDATE FROM PAM:

It doesn't matter why this behavior is occurring, really. What one has to take away from this message, naturally not attributed to anyone at the WH -- cowards -- is that bloggers are messing up their playbooks. And the answer is to diminish what influence we have -- it's limited at best. You have to ask why is this paranoid, juvenile message getting tossed out there. All those big brains in the White House and the best they can do is to bring up the hoary pajama game?
.....
So which Barack Obama is it -- the one who said to challenge him, or a fragile flower that panders to LGBTs then has a coward source backstab? To me the WH has just declared war on us after a wine and dine with the right kind of LGBTs that don't make trouble for them. Someone has to answer to this.

Or do I just need to fold my hands in my pajama-clad, Cheetos-stained lap like a good homo?

And let me just add that if we're all insignificant children who don't understand politics, and who the White House doesn't worry about, then why did a White House official feel the need to lash out at us via the NBC Nightly news? I'm not feeling very insignificant at the moment, are you?
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NBC just did a piece about today's gay rights march in Washington. For the political context of the gay community's ire, NBC went to Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood. Harwood was asked if the White House was worried about "the left as a whole," and concerns they have that the White House isn't doing things that "the left" expected them to do. Harwood said the following:

Barack Obama is doing well with 90% or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the Internet left fringe.

Harwood then went on to say:

For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn't take this opposition, one adviser told me those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed, and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

So the gay community, and its concerns about President Obama's inaction, and backtracking, on DADT and DOMA, are now, according to President Obama's White House, part of a larger "fringe" that acts like small children who play in their pajamas and need to grow up. (And a note to our readers: The White House just included all of you in that loony "left fringe.")

I wonder how the Human Rights Campaign is going to explain how the White House just knifed our community less than 24 hours after he went to their dinner and claimed he was our friend.

Someone in that White House needs to be fired. Here's the video:

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And another thing. The country is "closely divided"? Barack Obama won the election by 192 electoral votes, Democrats control both Houses of Congress, have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and the opposition Republicans have been utterly decimated, and are floundering in the polls.

This is closely divided? This is an environment in which Democrats are going to have to recognize that the president is going to have to break his promises?

Maybe it's time for some White House advisers to get out of their pajamas and read a newspaper once in a while. They might find out that we actually won the election (and that the blogs - and the gay community - played a key role in that victory).

This governing from a position of weakness and fear "thing" is getting old, fast. Read the rest of this post...

Photos from the gay rights march in DC

I just posted a slew of them on the gay.AMERICAblog,com. Joe has a lot more as well, and we have video too (posting that soon). Joe and I have been there since this morning, so sorry for the slow posting... Read the rest of this post...

China to execute severely mentally handicapped Briton

Yes, the Olympics really changed everything. Bravo.

A British man is facing execution after being convicted of smuggling heroin into China. Akmal Shaikh, 53, from north London, was arrested after a suitcase he was carrying was allegedly found to contain 4kg of the drug, with a value of £250,000.

Shaikh, who is said to be severely mentally ill, will become the first British citizen to be executed in China; his lawyers warn that he could be killed imminently by a gunshot to the back of his head. Foreign Office officials said there were reports last week that his second appeal had failed, but had yet to receive "official confirmation" or any news from the Chinese authorities.

Read the rest of this post...

Calendar note: 2012 is not the end of the world

Whew. Glad this one was cleared up.

Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

They're talking war today on the Sunday shows, which means Afghanistan. Lots of Senators from the Armed Services Committee, including its Chair, Carl Levin. Of course, John McCain is showing up today -- and his sidekick, Lindsey Graham. And, there's a slew of retired generals, including former Joint Chiefs Chair Richard Myers who served under George Bush. Both of them ignored Afghanistan, so unclear what insight he'll offer. With all these military experts, and given Obama's speech last night, we may see a question of two about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." David Gregory should ask Lindsey about it.

CNN's "State of the Union" is also doing the flu. Who knows what FOX is doing -- and who cares? It's never constructive, which begs the question of why Michigan's Democratic Governor, Jennifer Granholm, is on FOX today. Nothing good comes from Democrats appearing on that right-wing GOP t.v. network. Nothing.

The full listing is after the break.

Here's the lineup

ABC's "This Week" — Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass.; retired Army Gen. Jack Keane.

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CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Jack Reed, D-R.I.

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NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsay Graham, R-S.C.; retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey; retired Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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CNN's "State of the Union" — Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Anita Dunn, White House communications director; Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Wynn Resorts Ltd. CEO Steve Wynn; Govs. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., and Mitch Daniels, R-Ind.

Read the rest of this post...

Andrés Segovia

Nice and mellow for a sleepy morning. Read the rest of this post...

Extreme right at it again in Switzerland

Disgusting as ever.

Zurich has approved the display of a controversial anti-Islamic poster showing a menacing looking woman in a burqa, next to minarets that closely resemble missiles standing on the Swiss flag.

The posters are part of a far right party's campaign ahead of a national referendum in late November on whether to ban mosques from having minarets. They have been given the go-ahead by Zurich city council, which argues that they are a necessary component of free speech.

Read the rest of this post...