Small blessings.

Thank gawd JJ posted this. I considered blogging about it, anticipating that fundamentalist catholic religious zealots would claim that the woman was some hairy-legged feminist and/or a pagan self-abortionist whose mind had snapped because Bay-bee Jay-Zeus asleep in the manger forever & ever reminded her that she was now barren.

One should be grateful that Pope Maledict's stalker only seemingly wanted to cuddle him and that she eschewed the tactic Berlusconi's rabid fan used to get his attention. Following the "logic" of that stealth approach - smacking a cheap statuette of Milan's gothic cathedral the Duomo into the Italian PM's face - one can only imagine how Ratzy's daemon lover, possibly armed with an effigy of la Cicciolina, might have wielded it.

Ah, Italy! The passion! The politics!

Three Wise Women

... are challenging Ireland's inhumane abortion laws.

The three ... all left their homes in Ireland to have abortions in Britain. Identified only by the letters A, B and C because of the risk of imprisonment in Ireland, they are supported in their case by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and the Irish Family Planning Association. Ireland’s abortion law dates from 1861, and bans the procedure except where there is a risk to the life of the mother, including that of suicide. An estimated 140,000 women have crossed the Irish Sea for abortions in the past 30 years, with the number presently running at an average of 6,000 a year. ...

The women were not in court in Strasbourg, but their lawyer, Julie Kay, said that anyone undergoing an abortion in Ireland “is legally bound to life in prison, an horrific perspective”. The women, who all experienced medical complications on their return to Ireland, said that the ban made the procedure expensive, complicated and traumatic.

“The restriction stigmatised and humiliated them; risked damaging their health; and, in the third applicant’s case; even her life,” Ms Kay said.

Also here.

Meanwhile in Italy, despite opposition from the Vatican Taliban and members of Berlusconi's government, the sale of RU486 also known as the abortion pill has been authorised. However, unlike most other EU countries, the pill can only be administered in hospitals.

The monarchy has been restored in Italy.

Clearly unhappy that, although he has direct and indirect control over most of his country's media, the world press keeps reporting his sexual peccadilloes and his legal imbroglios, Silvio Berlusconi has directed his tourism minister to launch a campaign to revive Italy's image.

How very Louis XIV. L'État, c'est moi! - à la Berlusconi.

An emergency taskforce is to be established within a month to monitor airwaves and news-stands the world over for coverage of Italy and bombard foreign newsrooms with good news about the country.

The plan was announced by the tourism minister, Michela Vittoria Brambilla, who said a crack team of young journalists and communications experts would be assembled to stamp out bad news.

"Their first job will be to monitor all the foreign press, including dailies, periodicals and TV in every latitude, from Japan to Peru," she told Corriere della Sera today. The second task will be to "bombard those newsrooms with truthful and positive news", and reveal to the world "a generous, truthful and audacious Italy – the Italy of entrepreneurs, art, cultural events and our products".

Berlusconi attacked the foreign press yesterdayfor criticising himself and Italy, days after the country's constitutional court stripped him of legal immunity, a ruling which means he again faces prosecution for fraud and bribing British tax adviser David Mills.

... Berlusconi, who owns Italy's largest private television network and has indirect influence over the state RAI network, has said he will now make radio and TV appearances to explain to Italians why his upcoming trials are "farcical".

Yesterday the international press reported yet another Berlusconi freudian slip. He complained bitterly that:

... he has paid millions of euros to consultants and judges during his court appearances.

He also claims he is:

...“absolutely the most persecuted by the judiciary in all of the history of the entire world”. He had been forced to endure 106 trials and investigations ...

Which makes us wonder how the investigations in the construction companies which used sub-standard building materials and techniques in L'Aquila are proceeding. Unbelievable though it may seem, there are far, far worse prime ministers than Stevie Harpoon.

The photo of Silvio was found at this blogsite.

Brava, Italian Feministas!

A new generation of Italian feminists energized by a 'summer of sleaze', led by slimebucket Berlusconi.

Towards the end of her career as one of Italy's most famous and loved leading ladies, the Roman actress Anna Magnani instructed her make-up artist not to conceal the lines and wrinkles on her face. "Leave them all there," she said. "I spent a lifetime earning them."

Magnani is now celebrated as a role model for a new generation of Italian feminists, galvanised by sex scandals involving prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and a daily diet of sexist imagery in the media. Archive footage of Magnani's bon mot appears in a short documentary which has become a word-of-mouth sensation online in Italy. Il Corpo delle Donne, or The Body of Women, is an acid critique of the routine sexism that pervades commercial Italian television.

Andate ragazze!

Il Corpo delle Donne.

One step forward for Italy; two steps back for Québec?

Italian women may soon have access to RU 486 medication on a limited basis.

The Vatican and Catholic politicians today reacted with dismay to a decision by Italy's drugs agency to approve limited use of the abortion pill Mifepristone, which has been available in much of the rest of Europe since the 1990s. Senior Vatican officials said women who took the pill would be excommunicating themselves, as would doctors who prescribed it and nurses who administered it. Because of the high proportion of conscientious objectors to abortion in the Italian health service – some 70% – it is likely that use of the pill will be circumscribed.

After a reportedly heated four-hour session that ended late on Thursday, the board of the Italian pharmaceuticals agency, AIFA, voted by four to one to approve Mifepristone. But it stipulated that the pill should only be administered in hospital during the first seven weeks of pregnancy.

Unfortunately it appears that new health care regulations in Québec will make it more difficult for women to obtain a IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) in the future. Le Devoir and other media report that the requirements of Bill 34 which establishes understandably rigorous standards for private clinics, in the wake of medical accidents such as Micheline Charest's death in 2004, may lead to the closure of some abortion clinics. Physicians and obstetricians are lobbying the government to exclude IVG procedures from Bill 34, since in their professional opinion there is no justification to apply such requirements. Abortions practised in the first trimester are normally performed with the administration of a local anaesthetic; complex root canals are more risky than such IVG. Doctors and nurses who work in clinics and in hospitals have pointed out that first trimester abortions provided in institutional settings do not have to meet these requirements.

It's one of those events that, as with federal Bill C-484 (now-defunct), makes you wonder if a tiny group of anti-choice bureaucrats and politicians hoped to sneak these restrictions under the radar, without the benefit of public scrutiny. Polls have indicated that the majority of Canadians support access to abortion.

One inadvertently comic note about the Italian story, which includes far too much information about the Italian prime minister (emphasis ours):

For Silvio Berlusconi's government and its supporters, this was a delicate moment for any announcement bearing on sexual ethics. Recordings purportedly made by a prostitute who claims that she spent the night with Italy's 72-year-old married prime minister have focused public attention on his own apparently wide-ranging sex life. In one, a businessman who allegedly supplied women for parties at Berlusconi's home can be heard warning one of them that the prime minister never uses a condom.

That must make him a good Catholic - right?

Gadhafi & Van Susteren: Where are the feminists?

Together in spirit, though not on the same continent and likely not even in the same universe: Moammar Gadhafi and Greta Van Susteren.

Gadhafi lectures Italians on women's rights - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave Italians a contradictory take on women's rights Friday, criticizing Islam's treatment of women but then suggesting it should be up to male relatives to decide if a woman can drive. ... At times he appeared to strike out for women's rights, but also backed some of Islam's strictest tenets and criticized the history of women's emancipation in the West.

Gadhafi, a self-styled feminist on his first trip to Italy, arrived at the auditorium dressed in traditional robes and surrounded by his female bodyguards. After his speech, he reached out to the veil of a woman in his entourage and used it to wipe the sweat off his brow.

Meanwhile, back in the US, Greta Van Susteren played the indignant feminist card on Fox News Infotainment, citing first Rush Limbaugh's faux-trage as he spins his claim that Letterman suggested

"that Palin's daughter was raped at 14 years old during a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. And who's denouncing it? Who denounced any of the hatred against Sarah Palin?"

Disregarding the fact that Letterman didn't actually say that, Van Susteren then brought on as guest Jane Swift, the former governor of Massachusetts as some sort of expert on feminism, or perhaps to proclaim that Limbaugh is now a champion of women's rights. In fact, Swift's authority appears limited and specific to the role she played during the Republican presidential campaign as the head of a "truth squad", with the purpose of debunking false rumors about Sarah Palin. Is that the odour of a well-greased political machine grinding away to keep Palin in the news or the stench of Limbaugh roasting in his own fat under the TV studio lights that we can smell?


Oh, and by the way Greta, how's that Best Friends Forever thing with Sarah working out for you?

Could the earthquake in Italy be a providential sign?

Though I'm really shocked and appalled that God the Father would cause all those people to die just to get Benedict XVI's attention and to let him know that the Catholic Church is MASSIVELY wrong by not supporting women who, by virtue of their familial role and responsibilities, are most likely to ensure continuity and perseverance of religious faith in Africa.

Most fundamentalist Christians view their God as cruel and vengeful but isn't there another way to let the Pope know that his position on condoms should be revised? Hopefully those members of the Catholic Church that God punished for blind allegiance to ecclesiastical ideology, as well as those who are collateral damage, will experience illumination, healing and divine consolation.

By the way, this post was inspired by the pithy response that the habitually verbose Blob Blogging Wingnut posted at her site on March 24:

Unreported in the MSM: children of abortion chain owner died in MT plane crash...just feet from Tomb of the Unborn Just has that ironic feel about it. But what the news sources fail to mention is... the [cemetery] contains... the Tomb of the Unborn... erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.What else is the mainstream news not telling you? The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation....It strikes me as a providential sign.Though I'm really sad the abortion chain owner lost his kids. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I genuinely hope he and his wife experience healing and divine consolation.

Now we wait for the shrieeeking to start, because when progressives try to make sense of rightwingnuttery and attempt to verify if there is any logic to their pontifications by applying them to similar events, fundamentalists become quite wrathful.

Italy's Terri Schiavo

Unbelievable. From Pharyngula a link to a story about Italy's Terri Schiavo (emphasis mine):

The Italian government has been plunged into a constitutional crisis over the fate of a 38-year-old woman who has been in a coma for the past 17 years. Eluana Englaro was left in a vegetative state after a car crash in 1992. After a decade-long court battle, doctors reduced her nutrition on Friday in preparation for removing her feeding tubes, which her father claims would be in accordance with her wishes.

But in an extraordinary turn of events, the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling. On issuing the emergency decree, Berlusconi declared: "This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate."

Justifying his campaign to save Englaro's life, the prime minister added that, physically at least, she was "in the condition to have babies", a remark described by La Stampa newspaper as "shocking".

...
The case has deeply divided Italian society and raised concerns over the influence of the Vatican. Yesterday Pope Benedict indirectly referred to Englaro in a message delivered to mark the World Day of the Sick, stating that society had a duty to defend "the absolute and supreme dignity of every human being" even when "weak and shrouded in the mystery of suffering".

What is it with men's weird fascination with raping sleeping women?

Go read the comments at Pharyngula.


h/t CC at Canadian Cynic

UPDATE: Ms Englaro has died.