Maybe the problem is that rape is an extension of military culture. And it’s metastasizing, even as legislation to address it stays trapped in congressional subcommittee.

Scandals and outrage come and go, but rape is ever-present. In 2011, a Pentagon report estimated that 19,000 sexual assaults had occurred in the U.S. military, of which barely 3,000 were reported because of the stigma and risk involved in doing so. The “I own you” system of military justice traditionally turns on the victim far more than the accused. That year, in response to the shocking statistics, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would, among other things, remove the investigation of rape cases from the military chain of command, which has far more interest in ignoring the problem than prosecuting it.

Now a new Pentagon report is out, estimating that 26,000 cases of sexual assault occurred in the U.S. military in 2012, with, once again, just over 3,000 incidents reported. And Speier’s legislation has been sitting the whole time in the House Armed Services Committee, denied even a hearing.

Kabul--Since 2009, Voices for Creative Nonviolence has maintained a grim record we call the “The Afghan Atrocities Update” which gives the dates, locations, numbers and names of Afghan civilians killed by NATO forces. Even with details culled from news reports, these data can't help but merge into one large statistic, something about terrible pain that's worth caring about but that is happening very far away.

It’s one thing to chronicle sparse details about these U.S. led NATO attacks. It’s quite another to sit across from Afghan men as they try, having broken down in tears, to regain sufficient composure to finish telling us their stories. Last night, at a restaurant in Kabul, I and two friends from the Afghan Peace Volunteers met with five Pashtun men from Afghanistan’s northern and eastern provinces. The men had agreed to tell us about their experiences living in areas affected by regular drone attacks, aerial bombings and night raids. Each of them noted that they also fear Taliban threats and attacks. “What can we do,” they asked, “when both sides are targeting us?”

THE FIRST RESPONDER’S TALE

I don't like corporate monopolies but I needed to pay the rent, so I got a job at Time Warner Cable in the fall of 2012. My job title was Technical Support Representative. To a lesser degree, I was happy to be working for the company that produces Real Time with Bill Maher. Insight Cable Company was recently bought up by Time Warner Cable. The transition from Insight Cable to TIme Warner was happening gradually as I started working there. One thing myself, and many other employees, were concerned about was the number of people getting fired. It seemed like one employee would lose his or her job every two weeks. A co-worker approached me and told me she was interested in starting a union. She and I began talking to workers to see if they were interested in forming a union and we got a good response.

Washington is descending into another silly season. Let’s end this diversion of dust and smoke as partisans hype mock “scandals” for political profit.

The real scandals — like that of children in poverty — are simply being ignored. In this rich nation, nearly 8 million children under the age of 18 are being raised in what are called “areas of concentrated poverty.” These are the ghettos, barrios and impoverished rural areas where more than 30 percent of families live below the poverty line (a little over $22,000 for a family of four in 2010, when these figures date from). The number of children living in these communities is rising: It’s up 25 percent since 2000, according to the Data Snapshot of Kids Count, the nonpartisan organization whose report is the source of this data.

Earthquakes continue to rattle the damaged nuclear facility at Fukushima Daiichi. The list below shows only the strongest ones- there are weaker ones almost daily. The good news is that the radioactivity does decay with time, decreasing the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear fire. The bad news is that the buildings housing the spent fuel pools and melted-down reactor cores also decay with time, bombarded as they are with radioactivity, and shaken by earthquakes. Concrete crumbles, pipes break, rats gnaw at wire systems.

TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power, which runs the facility, is in reactive mode, literally putting out fires, repairing damaged equipment, dealing with overflows of radioactive water. The Japanese mafia, Yakuza, drains off a good portion of the massive public funding poured into the containment/cleanup process. The workers are overexposed to radiation, and even so can only be on site for a short time until they've reached over the maximum exposure allowed, so the supply of workers is running short.