Due to the terrible injustice experienced by female employees of defense contractors, Al Franken suggested an amendment to the 2010 defense bill that would protect the rights of rape victims and help ensure that rapists are punished for their crimes. Guess who thinks that's a bad idea?
In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."
30 of 40 Republicans voted against that amendment.
3 out of 4 Republicans voted against rape victims getting their day in court. 3 out of 4 Republicans voted against rapists facing punishment.
Family values, my vagina. These people are monsters.
Way to represent, Oklahoma Senators. Both of you voted "nay". You wouldn't be the misogynistic, anti-science, pieces of shit that I know you are if you had voted "yea".
ReplyDeleteYes, I am sending a letter off to both of them now.
ReplyDeleteI don't have much to contribute, except a very shocked "how can you vote NO on that???" Horrible.
ReplyDeleteWow.
ReplyDeleteThat shocked me so much that I actually followed the links and read the amendments - hoping to find some clause that would have caused them to vote against it. No such luck.
Bunch of scumbags the lot of them.
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ReplyDeleteSickening, but not surprising. What I've learned about rape is that Many Things are More Important than it, including sports, artistic genius, and now corporate access to government funding.
ReplyDeleteFannie,
ReplyDeleteYou could probably add 'maintaining the status quo in the Catholic Church' to that list too...
Any more?
Good one, ExPatMatt.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood how contracts like this can be legally binding. Doesn't agreeing to not report/prosecute a felony make you an accessory or facilitator or something?
ReplyDeleteYou know, you'd think so. I never thought about it before, but it seems like it should be illegal to remove someone's right to testify in a criminal proceeding.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it either. Can they do this?
ReplyDeletei don't know if they can actually get out of the contract and sue anyway - i *do* know that if one, say, joins the military, one is federally disallowed to "sue the government" during your period in the military, or for anything that happened during your period in the military. the understanding is *supposed* to be that there are Military Courts who will handle all of that (conflict of interest be damned! although i must grant that *most* military panels *DO* do their damnest to judge based on facts and reality, and are to a fairly large extent insulated from most "pressures". but there are some times when even the most honest and earnest and perfect panels *still* has to judge a case not based on it's merits, but rather what will "be good", or not ruinious, for the Service as a whole).
ReplyDeleteit was at one point my understanding that defense contractors who were in an area that is under any sort or martial law or censor would be lumped into the Military Judicial system - and the fucktards starting doing things so disgusting (and stupid, not that i want to say that rape is "stupid", but the way it was handled was, all of the cases) that the Military essentially said "don't bring that mess in here! if we touch that, no amount of bleach will EVER get it out"
but this is just my understanding, based on listening to family, who fall into 2 categories: retired for over a decade, and thus not in any info loop; or pretty much brand-spanking-new, E-5 at most, and thus not i any info loop (outside of their specified and dedicated AOS, anyway). i don't know that i know anyone who could say for sure what the status of specific types of contractors is - i mean, they will know (for instance) that Blackwater people are friendly-combatants, and get the same care and etc, i just don't if i know anyone who knows enough about the current laws and cultures to say for sure.
Wiki covers some of the details;
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Leigh_Jones
I do not find anything surprising here. The GOP has long been the pro-rape party.
ReplyDelete