Hillary Clinton for Vice President? Yes | Kickstarter's Amazing Crowd Funding Success | Afghan's 'Baad' Girls Continue

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Anne is reading  …

Image by Nicholas BlechmanBill Keller’s op-ed piece Just the Ticket has put Hillary Clinton for vice president where it belongs: in the limelight.

Keller sums up all the reasons why AOC has championed Hillary for vice president, as a way of banking President Obama’s 2012 hardly-guaranteed reelection. Whatever disarray Obama’s West Wing Boys Club sees in the Republican party this moment could be a bitter pill to swallow in 2012 defeat with an Obama-Biden ticket. Keller writes that there are three key reasons to put Hillary Clinton on the 2012 ticket:

One: it does more to guarantee Obama’s re-election than anything else the Democrats can do. Two: it improves the chances that, come next January, he will not be a lame duck with a gridlocked Congress but a rejuvenated president with a mandate and a Congress that may be a little less forbidding. Three: it makes Hillary the party’s heir apparent in 2016. If she sits out politics for the next four years, other Democrats (yes, Governor Cuomo, we see your hand up) will fill the void.

AOC supports Hillary for president but we agree that there is no chance in 2012. What is NOT ACCEPTABLE to us, with women’s right to birth control under assault by the Republican Party, not only Roe vs Wade, is that all the president’s men (unless Michelle and Valerie really do have any influence on behalf of women) ignore the peril American women are living in, throwing not only the presidency but the supreme court to the Republicans.

To read and hear Salon’s Joan Walsh ridiculing Keller’s editorial, saying that Joe Biden’s ego is at stake, with no concern for the rights of half of the US population underscores the reality that the Boys Club is just as active in the Oval Office, and among some women, as in the Republican Party. 

More from Anne: Hillary for President? It’s Insane But How About a Poll on Democratic Preferences? AOC Women

Kickstarter Crowdfunding Success

Over 27,000 projects were launched on Kickstarter in 2011, with over 11,000 successfully completed, for a project success rate of 46%. Over $99 million was pledged, presumably including projects that weren’t successful. In 2010 Kickstarter saw over 8 million visitors arrive on the site, while in 2011, the number shot up to over 30 million.

Kickstarter has also shared some interesting facts on projects that have received success beyond achieving funding. In January 2011, 5 Kickstarter films made it to Sundance and one project made it into a display in the Museum of Modern Art. The retrospective also looks at Kickstarter’s own success including being named one of Time’s 50 best websites of 2011. Read on at The Next Web.

More DFR

Image by Ed Ou for The New York TimesEgyptian Women Have What Rights?

Egyptian Women Confront Patriarchy reminds us of the gruesome truth that nearly a year after Egypt’s ouster of President Hosni Mubarak’s government, it was Samira Ibrahim’s father who has supported his daughter’s case against Egyptian soldiers who tortured her with electric prods and forcibly subjected her to a ‘virginity test’. 

“Changing the patriarchal culture is not so easy,” said Mozn Hassan, 32, executive director of the seven-year-old group Nazra for Feminist Studies.

Tortured in Afghanistan

Musadeq Sadeq / AP PhotoFeminists who understand the plight of Afghan women still choked on the horrific story of 15-year-old Sahar Gul, who is demanding justice after being rescued from her husband’s parents house.

Gul’s in-laws kept her in a basement for six months, ripped out her fingernails, tortured her with hot irons and broke her fingers. “I want my husband, sister-in-law and father-in-law to be in jail… They gave me electric shocks….They beat me with cables and tortured me,” she said, speaking at the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital in Kabul, where she was being treated for her horrific injuries.

The Daily Beast writes that Afghanistan refuses to enforce the country’s Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women, in which the practice of ‘baad’, in which girls are given away to settle disputes between families, continues unchallenged.

Steilneset Memorial Against Witch Burning

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and the late French-born artist Louise Bourgeoise collaborated in the hauntingly beautiful and poetic Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, Norway, an arresting memorial to 91 people, 77 women and 14 men, who were burned at the stake here in the 17th century for the crime of witchcraft.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, witch hunts took place across Europe and in the American colonies. Researchers believe that between 40,000 and 100,000 people were killed, mostly women. It’s not easy to put these events behind us, when key supporters of more than one 2012 Republican presidential candidates are aligned with religious forces who say that Oprah is a forerunner to the anti-Christ.

We call out this haunting reminder of what happens to primarily women, when God’s soldiers take over the political process. In seeking a theocracy for America, events like witch-burning could easily be reinvigorated on American soil. Read on in Sensual Rebel

Anne of Carversville

Camilla | Toby Knott | Glass Magazine Winter 2012

AOC Style

Bette Franke | Lachlan Bailey | Harper’s Bazaar February 2012 | Chic Easy Pieces

Drew Barrymore | Andreas Sjordin | InStyle February 2012

AOC Private Studio

Darya | Wee Khim | Style Singapore January 2012 | ‘Pain Jane’

Elisa Sednaoui | Nico | Harper’s Bazaar Argentina January 2012

Ragnhild Jevne | David Roemer | Glamour Italia January 2012 | ‘Sexy Noir’

Gisele Bundchen | Mert & Marcus | Versace Spring/Summer 2012

Nina Porter | Andrew Lee | How To Spend It January 2012 | ‘Singular Sensations

AOC Body

Demi Moore & Amanda de Cedenet | Cedric Buchet | Harper’s Bazaar US February 2012

“I have had a love-hate relationship with my body. When I’m at the greatest odds with my body, it’s usually because I feel my body’s betraying me, whether that’s been in the past, struggling with my weight and feeling that I couldn’t eat what I wanted to eat, or that I couldn’t get my body to do what I wanted it to do.

 “What scares me the most is not knowing and accepting that just about everything is not in my control. That makes me feel unsafe. I think being comfortable is perhaps overrated.

Sensuality News

SN Living

Ana Claudia Michels | Paulo Vainer | Harper’s Bazaar Brazil December 2011 | Verão Na Paralela

David Beckham | Alasdair McLellan | Bodywear for H&M

Marloes Horst | Simona Barbieri’s Twin Set Jeans S/S 2012 Campaign

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