Sworn Virgins

An odd little story from the Washington Post today about the "sworn virgins" of Albania. A Practice dating back to at least the 15th century has allowed women in Albania to swear an oath to remain a virgin. They are then allowed to live the rest of their lives as men. They are allowed to pursue any career, even hold high political office - as men. (I remember reading something about this once some time ago, but this article is, I think, more detailed then whatever I read was.) There are not many of these sworn virgins left today and very few women appear to be willing to follow that particular path. But the story is a fascinating look at an unusual cultural accommodation.

(Elvira) Dones, who lives in Rockville, had just met an adherent of an ancient northern Albanian tradition in which women take an oath of lifelong virginity in exchange for the right to live as men. The process is not surgical — in these mountains there is little knowledge that sex-change surgery is even possible. Rather, sworn virgins cut their hair and wear baggy men's clothes and take up manly livelihoods as shepherds or truck drivers or even political leaders. And those around them — despite knowing the sworn virgins are women — treat them as men.

The idea that a woman would need to forsake love and live as a man to control her own fate seems primitive to modern eyes. But perhaps, in the context of a once-upon-a-time culture, a culture before feminism, it can be seen as progressive. The existence of sworn virgins reveals a cultural belief, however inchoate, that a biological woman can do all the work of a man.

"Why live like a man?" one virgin, Lule Ivanaj, asks herself rhetorically in an English-subtitled documentary that Dones (pronounced DOH-nez) made on the women for Swiss television called "Sworn Virgins." Ivanaj looks like a man in his 50s, with short hair, thick arms and a wide metal watchband on one wrist. "Because I value my freedom. I suppose I was ahead of my time."

Dones, 47, learned about sworn virgins 25 years ago from her university classmates in Albania's capital, Tirana. The practice has existed at least since the 15th century, when the traditions of the region were first codified, according to Dones. The sworn virgins came into being for emergencies: If the patriarch of the family died and there was no other man to carry on, a provision was needed so that a woman could run her family.

An unusual cultural adaptation to a traditionally patriarchal society, apparently. Their numbers have dwindled to between 30 and 40 now and few - if any - women are following them in taking the oath.

Hezbollah Buying Land, Fortifying For War

The Telegraph reports that Hezbollah has begun buying up large chunks of land north of the Litani River - and out of the UN patrolled exclusion zone - and is busy fortifying their new holdings for the next war with Israel.

The land grab is thought to be driven by the Iranian-backed guerrillas' efforts to rearm themselves and fortify the strategically important ravines north of the Litani River, just north of the front line in last year's 34-day conflict with its Jewish neighbour.

Here, Hizbollah has been free to press forward without harassment from the 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers and 20,000 Lebanese army troops who were deployed south of the Litani as part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the conflict.

Just south of the Litani, the UN is conducting hundreds of patrols each day in a bid to keep Hizbollah weapons out of the area, but the peacekeepers' mandate ends at the river.

The Lebanese army, meanwhile, is about 50 per cent Shia and seems to be turning a blind eye to Hizbollah activities north of the river.

In these rugged gorges, the group appears to be readying for round two with Israel, and many fear it is not far off after the inconclusive end to last year's war and reports of -Hizbollah rearming.

The area's forested wadis, or valleys, make ideal terrain for Hizbollah's brand of guerrilla warfare and, just 10 miles from the border, are within rocket range of Israeli cities.

The Shia encroachment into a mixed area of Christians, Shias and Druze Muslims threatens to disrupt Lebanon's delicate sectarian balance, which is already teetering after three years of political tumult.

"Christians and Druze are selling land and moving out, while the Shia are moving in. There is an extraordinary demo-graphic shift taking place," said Edmund Rizk, a Christian MP for the area until 1992.

On a scenic, sparsely populated ridge, the farming village of Chbail was once Christian. Today, the land belongs to a wealthy Shia businessman with alleged ties to Hizbollah. Its new residents are recent Shia transplants from the Hizbollah-controlled south.

And outsiders are now forbidden to enter the village. This is not a good sign for Israel, the region or the world.

Tempest In A Flea Pot

This story is, to say the least, bizarre. A Belgian-based company that is the world's biggest supplier of "eco-friendly" cleaning products has lost the "prized" Vegan Society endorsement mark. Why, you ask? Well because the company tests the effects of its products on the marine ecosystem using a tiny little thing called a water flea. These water fleas run to the huge size of 0.2mm or around .008 inch. The company maintains it is the only way to test the effects. The Vegans call it animal testing.

The world's biggest supplier of environmentally friendly cleaning products is embroiled in a bizarre row over 'animal-testing' - on tiny water fleas.

Products by Ecover, which the company says are not tested on animals, carry the prized Vegan Society mark.

They fill shelves of British supermarkets and help the Belgian-based firm achieve a £30million annual turnover.

But the Vegan Society is to refuse permission for its trademark to be used when the endorsement comes up for renewal later this month.

The move follows a tip-off that Ecover uses the water fleas - between 0.2mm and 5mm long - to test the effects of detergents on aquatic life.

According to Ecover, the microscopic crustacean - scientific name Daphnia - found in rivers, streams, lakes and ponds, isn't actually an animal.

Certainly it's not covered by EU animal-testing rules which are limited to vertebrates past a specified embryonic stage.

But the Vegan Society members consider water fleas - named for their jumping style of swimming - as "part of the animal kingdom".

We're curious about how vegans treat infections since bacteria are also part of the animal kingdom. (If they hold to that set of beliefs, they are on the same road the Shakers took.) The Vegan Society also demands that Ecover not use blood drawn from farmed rabbits for other testing. Instead, they say, the company should use human blood. (We're not making that up.)

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are not sure what, precisely, is "prized" about the Vegan Society mark. We'd call it a booby prize, but hey, that's just us. We remind readers not to try a vegan diet however. They're whiny, hard to catch and stringy.

Moose Takes Up Whitewater Rafting

A moose in Maine has taken up a new hobby - whitewater rafting. Well, without the raft, but the idea is the same. The moose wandered along in the middle of downtown Camden, Maine in the Megunticook River then took a trip over the falls.

Police department member Paul Spear said the moose was reported around 10 p.m. in the river in the Tannery Lane area, and that game wardens were notified. A warden visited, but decided to see if the animal could find its own way out.

Spear said the animal is believed to have eventually taken a trip down the falls toward the harbor, and to have taken off under its own steam to parts more suitable for it.

They have pictures, too. Meanwhile, over in Burlington, Vermont another moose was spotted eying an in-ground pool, apparently trying to decide if it was a good place for whitewater rafting.

Residents in Burlington's south end reported seeing a moose running through back yards early Friday morning.

Carlos and Kerrie Theye said the moose wandered around their back yard around 8:30 a.m. for about five minutes.

They have video.

Gift Wrapping

There is a flurry of bear stories in the news today. The first one is about a bear who has decided that tents are just gift wrapping for the edible contents within. Said contents being humans.

Jim Walters of Fromberg credits a fellow recreationist for saving his life after a black bear pounced on his tent at a campground in the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.

‘‘I don’t think he ever growled,’’ said Walters, 54. ‘‘He just plopped right on top of me. It was quite the wake-up call.

‘‘He didn’t claw me. He didn’t bite me. He had a hold of me with his arms, and he wouldn’t let go of me,’’ Walters continued. ‘‘He just wouldn’t get off me.’’

Todd Loomis and his family arrived at the campsite on Bighorn Lake by boat Tuesday morning. His wife, Tammy, spotted a black bear through the willows, and Todd started taking pictures.

But as he walked closer to get a better view, he could see the bear was on top of a tent.

‘‘You could just see the tent jumping up and down,’’ Loomis said.

Walters said he tried rolling toward the tent door, but the bear kept him pinned.

‘‘I was kicking him, punching him. I couldn’t get him off me,’’ Walters said.

Loomis started yelling. The bear stood up, looked at him, then moved about 10 feet away to the edge of the campsite. Walters stuck his face outside the tent, then scrambled out in his underwear.

The men threw some rocks at the bear, and yelled and waved their arms in a standoff that ended when the bear finally walked away.

The bear had already torn up an unoccupied tent looking for a snack. Park rangers closed the campground briefly and intend to destroy the bear - who is completely unafraid of humans. However, first they have to identify the bear. So they have reopened the campground and are, for all intents and purposes, using campers as bait for the bear. Yeesh.

On to Nevada, where complaints about bears are at a record high. There are so many that authorities can't deal with them all. Well, except to blame the humans.

"Seeing a bear tipping over garbage cans and drinking out of a horse tank is not an imminent threat," said the weary biologist. "I simply cannot respond to these lower priority calls. In fact, do not even call us if it is simply an issue of bears and trash. Be responsible and use bear-resistant containers and the bear will disappear."

(Note, the humans should be making sure garbage is not accessible to the bears. That's basic responsibility, folks.) Folks in Nevada should be happy they aren't being used as bear bait.

Final item, also from Nevada, where the local head of the "BEAR League" is encouraging people to act as bear bait.

With streams going dry in the backcountry, bears have been coming into neighborhoods in record numbers. The BEAR League has been receiving 150-200 calls per day, compared to about 50 two years ago, said Ann Bryant, executive director of the Lake Tahoe-based BEAR League.

Twenty bears had been hit by cars by the end of July, Bryant said. Washoe County Sheriff's deputies reported another one killed by a car on Friday on the Mount Rose Highway. That number has already surpassed the record 19 bears hit in 2005.

Sgt. Carl Barnett of the Incline Village Substation said, on average, his office receives about 12- to-15 bear-related calls per day. Eighty percent of those calls result in actual bear sightings, he said.

The Tahoe Basin has the second highest density of black bears in North America, with several bears per square mile at times, according to the Nevada Department of Wildlife Web site.

However, despite the number of bear sightings this year, some question whether the slaying Aug. 2 could and should have been handled differently.

Sgt. Erik Frederickson responded with deputies Jason Wood and Randy Vawters to a bear call at 130 Rubicon Peak Lane at about 5:30 a.m.

Capt. Steve Kelly, commander at the Incline Village Substation, said the homeowner called the sheriff's office, saying a bear was in his house. He then locked himself and his family in the master bedroom, waiting for authorities to arrive.

Once the deputies arrived, Kelly said they opened the garage door to provide the bear an escape route.

However, when Frederickson looked through the open dining room window Kelly said the bear spotted him. The animal growled and charged through the window at Frederickson, who shot the bear with a shotgun at close range in self defense.

Here's the bear leaguer:

(Ann) Bryant disagreed, saying it couldn't have been the bear's intention to attack Frederickson because black bears aren't mean-spirited.

Another argument she made was the family never should have locked itself in a bedroom.

"The thing that gets me is the family was too afraid to approach the bear - they were scared, so they hid in the bedroom. It's shameful," Bryant said. "That's what is happening in the basin. People are being kept in fear by (NDOW and the California Department of Fish and Game) because they're telling them it's OK to be afraid. It's just shameful.

"That's why this bear was needlessly shot. Because the family was to afraid to yell at the bear to 'get out' and stand its territory."

The bear needn't be "mean spirited", it merely has to act like a bear. That includes attacking if it feels threatened. Or if it startled by, say, some people stamping and waving their arms while shouting. Anthropomorphizing madly won't change that. The Disneyfication of nature continues apace for some people.

Today’s “It’s Not Fair” Moment

US farmers are apparently whining mightily because there are some relatively minor crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Facing the prospect of major layoffs of farmworkers during harvest season, growers and lawmakers from agricultural states spoke in dire terms yesterday about new measures by the Bush administration to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.

“This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,” Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N. Y., said in a telephone interview.

“We’ve tried everything we can do,” Ms. Torrey said. “But they are leaving us with no options.”

At a news conference in Washington yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, formally unveiled the measures, which had been disclosed in general terms earlier, to reinforce border security and drive illegal immigrants out of the labor force.

The "draconian" measure?

Under the new rules, employers will have 90 days to resolve discrepancies between Social Security numbers provided by their workers and the records of the Social Security Administration.

If the employers cannot obtain valid Social Security information for an employee within three months after receiving a notice of any discrepancies, they must fire the worker. Illegal immigrants often present false Social Security numbers on job applications.

Fines levied on companies for knowingly hiring illegal workers — currently $2,200 for a first offense and up to $10,000 for repeat offenses — will increase by 25 percent, officials said.

Mr. Chertoff said the “real hammer” would be more frequent use by the immigration authorities of criminal felony charges against employers and illegal immigrant workers. He said the authorities had made 742 criminal arrests so far this year in illegal employment cases, compared with 716 such arrests in all of last year, which was a record.

I dunno that the term "real hammer" is appropriate here. More like foam rubber mallet, but it is at least a start. But the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the farmers is simply ridiculous. They know it, the administration knows it and the whining politicians know it. This is, at best, political theater. There is an enormous problem with illegal immigrants to this country. Something has got to be done. One of the people charged in the execution style murders of three teenagers in Newark, New Jersey is an illegal immigrant from Peru. He happened to be free on bond from child molestation charges when the killings occurred. The Feds had done nothing to get this man out of the country despite having several chance to do something about him.

The arrest came hours after the man suspected of being the ringleader in the crime pleaded not guilty. The authorities revealed that he is an illegal immigrant from Peru who could have been detained by federal authorities after one of his two previous arrests in the past year. Instead, the immigrant, Jose Lachira Carranza, a 28-year-old construction worker, was free on $150,000 bail at the time of the killings last week, despite pending felony charges of aggravated assault and sexual abuse of a child.

“The system is overwhelmed from top to bottom,” said Armando B. Fontoura, the Essex County sheriff, whose office discovered Mr. Carranza was in the country illegally, and reported it to the federal government, after he turned himself in on Thursday. “This guy got through the cracks.”

Cracks you could drive a blimp through. Its time to fix this. Hell, its past time. Let the farmers whine, just crack down on this mess.