PONY 2012

We interrupt your regularly scheduled implosion of Canadian democracy for this brief message.

I'm sure most of you have by now encountered that campaign against that Lord's Resistance Army creep. However, it turns out that there's more than meets the eye. Oh, not more to Kony. More to the campaign.

When I first saw that video, at the beginning I was all "Oh, wow, this is pretty innovative and interesting." But it was nary a couple of minutes when it started to feel like something was a bit...off about the whole thing. I just chalked it up to my allergic reaction to hard sells (which has, in point of fact, sometimes led me astray).

By about 2/3rds of the way through, I had had enough. I knew now that I was facing, ick, glurge. Glurge, by the way, can be for perfectly good causes; but I myself don't have to stomach it. I don't like being (non-ironically) manipulated, even by people with whom I might ordinarily agree.

As I read more, my doubts increased. Yes, Kony is a horrible man, who has done horrible things to children and others. But...well, sad to say, but nowadays there are yet still more effective ways to help Uganda, Africa, and the world. Still, it's petty to set up a hierarchy of causes. If that's what gets people going...

Finally, thanks to blogger Dusty at Left-Wing Nutjob, the other shoe dropped for me. This Alternet article, linked by Dusty, lays it out:

Is Invisible Children a nonprofit devoted to human needs, or is it a ministry devoted to bringing souls to Jesus ? Judging by a talk co-founder Jason Russell gave last November at Liberty University, it would seem to be a bit of both.

Liberty University??? Yep, that Liberty University.

Now, lest you imagine that I am simply tarring a good cause by association because of the private beliefs of its founder, well, take a look at the rest of those posts and the further links they contain therein including the rather unusual funding proportions. Frankly, even without any direct evidence of malfeasance, it's a bit of a bridge too far. A bridge too far that I will sell you, if you believe that a Falwell U connection is ever innocent.

And that once again is why DAMMIT JANET! has long been a no-glurge zone.

Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill Is Dead.

Success. At least for now. Updated yesterday.

Great news -- the bill has has been shelved! Together, we've won a major fight for equality and justice. Over 1.6 million of us signed the petition opposing the anti-gay bill, tens of thousands of us called our heads of state, and we helped make the attack on gay rights in Uganda a major international news story -- and it worked.

Today, under intense global pressure, the Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament blocked the anti-gay bill from coming to a vote in the emergency session. Now Parliament has closed and the bill has been wiped from the books. It's not necessarily gone for good, but to be considered again, it would have to be reintroduced as a new bill and go through the whole Parliamentary process -- which took 18 months last time.

Our global outcry made it clear that the world is watching, and demanding that human rights be respected everywhere. Today, we can join our friends in Uganda in celebration of a victory that could save thousands of lives.

I doubt Avaaz and the petition signers can claim all or even most of the credit. But it must have helped.

“Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

That statement comes from Don Schmierer, an evangelist anti-gay militant who now claims that he and his fellow US fundamentalist crusaders were "duped" by Ugandan officials who invited them to express their views last year. Their teachings about “curing” homosexuality - which have been widely discredited in the US, were presented in Kampala over three days to audiences of thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers, politicians and legislators.

The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, [...] and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior. One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. [...]

The three Americans who spoke at the conference [...] are now trying to distance themselves from the bill. “I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.” Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

From here. Scott Lively "was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh" - what the hell did he expect his hateful, biased, screed would produce? A "nuclear bomb" is not an instrument of peace - some might call it religious terrorism.

The discourse these three homophobic hatemongers gave was an incitement to violence against gay men, lesbians and transgendered people. And now they claim no responsibility for the response their privileged audience members had, and the actions they took.

Remember, these theocrats have an agenda, and in spite of their lying protestations to the contrary, they are positioning themselves to influence legislation and elected officials in Canada also.

Two models of church-based international development.

Dennis Gruending has researched and written about the lobbying efforts that neocon fundamentalist religious organizations have directed against progressive and ecumenical groups in Canada and in particular, those working in international development.

Kairos, for example, and earlier this year Peace and Development. The fear, the anger and the hatred that religious rightwingnuts of all christofascist tendencies have directed towards their humanitarian work is quite savage.

There's been much speculation about what motivated Stevie Spiteful and his merry band of Harpocrites to cut CIDA funding to KAIROS.

The most obvious and clear reason would be its role in facilitating discussion about the Alberta tar sands.

But I think there's another reason. In November, the PMO issued a statement condemning the blood-thirsty homophobic laws the Ugandan parliament may ratify. This was consistent with previous statements he made that his government would not reverse Canadian laws that recognize equal rights for gay men and lesbians with respect to marriage.

So the Con/reformaTory "base" is seething with discontent and malevolence because its fundamentalist religious initiatives are not receiving the government support they claim as their due for electing Harper to power. And it's not a stretch to imagine the model of international network building these rightwing religious fundamentalists would emulate.

Thus Stevie Spiteful's only recourse, in order to appease those hostile grassroots astro-turf christofascist groups is a grand and dramatic gesture - ergo, a MASSIVE slash & burn cut to Kairos' funding.

As a bonus, he reaps the benefits of re-directing that money towards his own narcissistic the PMO public relations needs or any other purpose.

Uganda's 'Death Penalty for Homosexuals' Bill: The USian connection

Unfrickingbelievable.

As a gay Ugandan, Frank Mugisha has endured insults from strangers, hate messages on his phone, police harassment and being outed in a tabloid as one of the country's "top homos". That may soon seem like the good old days.

Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.

Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.

"The bill is haunting us," said Mugisha, 25, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex groups that will all be banned under the law. "If this passes we will have to leave the country."

Surprise, surprise, the Murrican Kristian Taliban is party to it. Watch.

One Woman a Minute

Pregnancy kills one woman per minute. Unsafe abortion kills one woman every eight minutes. Reproductive Health Reality Check says:

. . .every minute, a woman still dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in developing countries (primarily in Africa and Asia), and the vast majority of them are preventable. . . .

One in eight of those women dying every minute as a result of pregnancy and childbirth are women dying from unsafe abortions, after all--totaling 68,000 women every year, a figure that hasn't changed in nearly two decades. Nearly half of these deaths occur in Africa, where abortion is largely illegal, and rarely available even under circumstances where it is legal.

We decided to have a look at current news stories from Africa.

First, there's this from Uganda.

Over 1,000 Ugandan women die every year as a result of unsafe abortions and an additional 68,000 suffer serious health complications, according to a recently released report from the Ministry of Health.

"As many as 1,200 unsafe abortions result in death each year. Nearly a quarter (23%) of all abortions result in serious complications," says the report Road map for accelerating the reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity in Uganda. . . .

Because abortion is illegal in Uganda, and because of the widespread social stigma attached to the practice, many women who experience complications are not seeking or receiving any help. "Roughly one in five of the estimated 297,000 women who have an abortion each year - a total of 65,000 women - suffer complications that require medical care but do not get treatment in a medical facility," says the report.

Now, let's have a look at Nigeria: