Watch where you wank that motion.

Yesterday my co-blogger posted the results of her magisterial investigative efforts.

fern hill showed us the creepy face of the homophobic, racist and Dominionist fetus lobby that is currently attempting to erode women's procreative and sexual rights through Woodworth's M312.

Today we learn

Religious and ideological websites can carry three times more malware threats than pornography sites, according to research from security firm Symantec. [...]

Symantec found that the average number of security threats on religious sites was around 115, while adult sites only carried around 25 threats per site--a particularly notable discrepancy considering that there are vastly more pornographic sites than religious ones.

From here.

So, if you pay a visit to Mike Schouten's gynophobic website, make sure to protect your laptop or device with as much security as possible, essentially the electronic version of this:

More DAMMIT JANET! posts about M312.

News you won't see or read about on SunMedia

Où sont les islamophobes d'antan et d'aujourd'hui?

The moozlim-haters are worker ants busy-bustling around all levels of SunMedia. And that's why not a single morsel of information to read, hear or see will be found there, regarding this powerful humanitarian news story.

A remote First Nation in northern Manitoba will be eating better this weekend, thanks to a large shipment of meat and bread that an Islamic charity is donating to the community.

The Winnipeg-based Zubaidah Tallab Foundation is sending about 200 kilograms of beef, lamb and sheep meat, along with sacks of bread, by plane to Shamattawa Manitoba, on Thursday morning.

Hussain Guisti, who heads up the foundation, said Muslims butcher an animal at this time every year and give part of it to charity. Guisti said the foundation decided to send this year's donation to Shamattawa, a First Nations community of about 1,100 located just south of Hudson Bay, in the hopes of making an impact there.

This is why I love the CBC. It doesn't suppress new stories - unlike SunMedia and SunTV which only carry infotainment that fits into its corporation's rightwing ideological framework.

On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me if SunMedia had positive things to say about Lou Engle and his *prayer* meeting.

Grand merci to Beari8it who tweeted the link to the CBC news story.

DJ! Gets into That Juxtaposing Thingy

Experts good.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews explained the costs were a result of an “unprecedented event” with two back-to-back summits.

“And we believe the experts when they say this is the necessary level of security. I understand that the Liberals don’t believe in securing Canadians or the visitors here. We are different,” Mr. Toews said.

Experts bad.

The Harper government turned its back on advice from its own civil servants when it excluded abortion funding in its G8 maternal- and child-health initiative, The Canadian Press has learned.

Briefing notes prepared in January by the Canadian International Development Agency for International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda suggest access to safe abortion services could save numerous lives in developing countries.

ADDED: Really bad elite experts.

The Conservative government, having ignored advice from public servants that abortion was an essential component of an effective maternal-health initiative, now appears to be turning its back on similar advice from the elite national scientific academies of all G8 countries.

The Royal Society of Canada as well as the national academies of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia issued a joint statement late Tuesday.

It is a unanimous call to G8 leaders to ensure that access to contraception and “measures to reduce unsafe abortion” are part of a richer, more focused and more coordinated maternal and child health initiative in June.

. . .

But Bev Oda, Canada’s international aid minister, who said “I used to be an English teacher,” read it differently.

She said the statement recommends family planning services and adequate treatment of the complications that result from abortion, but does not recommend measures for the provision of safer abortions.

Keee-rist these people are braindead.

They hate children, don't they?

Canadian Cynic: The Catholic Problem - pretty shaved ape has posted a cohesive and comprehensive round-up of the latest disclosures about the Catholic Church enabling and seemingly sanctioning the violence that members of the Roman Catholic clergy (or non-clergy under their authority) directed towards thousands and thousands of children in Ireland, as well the exalted bishops who rationalize somehow that it's not really evil but actually tolerable if you're a "good Catholic."

Go read it.

The only element missing, as the coup-de-farce would be the pope granting a MASSIVE pardon to the sexual predators who "regret" their actions.

As for those malevolent Catholic Church clergy and administrators who derived moral satisfaction from the savage physical, emotional and spiritual violence they inflicted upon the children in their care, they were merely enforcing religious doctrine, that is, they were faithfully "following orders".

More about religious fundamentalist bullying

There are moments when the most eloquent blogpost possible, on a particular issue, is to simply provide a link to someone else’s piece.

Last month, Birth Pangs wrote, in Moving the goal-posts on contraception and The Haters’ Agenda Part II, about the Bush administration’s meddling in the parameters of federally-funded health programs.

Read Proposed HHS Regulation Pits “Workers’ Religious Freedom vs. Patients’ Rights”.

… if … it’s Workers’ Religious Freedom vs. Patients’ Rights, the patient wins. For those who feel they can’t morally treat everyone, go into another line of work. Whether you are a stem cell advocate, or in favor of reproductive rights, back door regulations are no way to set health policy that will affect millions of Americans in ways they are not expecting, including the superseding
of state laws designed to protect reproductive rights.

Political religious fundamentalist bullies never sleep, it seems.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

The Haters’ Agenda, Part II

Last year, Birth Pangs drew up what we thought was an amusing little poke at right-wing religious fundamentalist fanatics, The Haters’ Agenda. As it turns out, our spoof gets closer to reality every day Bush continues to rule in the US.

At Bring It On, Daniel DiRito writes about the new Bush government’s initiative to impose religious fundamentalist ideology upon those organizations that are funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

As if it isn’t bad enough that we’ve had to endure nearly eight years of George W. Bush, he has chosen his final months to enact one of his most intrusive policy initiatives. It seems that the president has decided to redefine abortion to include contraception.

The plan would be enacted by the Department of Health and Human Services and cloaked as an attempt to prevent discrimination in government funded endeavors. The explanation being offered by the president’s operatives suggests that the goal is to insure that those individuals who have religious objections to abortion or the distribution of contraceptive products cannot be terminated from employment.

Nor can the organizations refuse to hire individuals because they hold those beliefs.

This is the same administration that has long argued that hate crimes legislation, intended to specifically deter violence against the LGBT community, is unnecessary. So when it comes to measures to bolster the safety of gays, existing laws are sufficient because they already provide penalties and punishment for these crimes. However, when a handful of Christians want to refuse to provide contraception to a rape victim, the Bush administration thinks special rules are warranted.

So, the Bush administration refuses to pass anti-hate laws to protect those who are the target of the haters, but … lookee here, a law to protect the haters’ rights to be fully employed in areas where they can do harm to those they hate.

The Haters’ Agenda: one more task, soon to be accomplished.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Moving the goal posts on contraception

Yet more evidence the US federal government policy is being shaped by officials sympathetic with religious fundamentalist beliefs, appointed by Republicans.

The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control. Under the draft of a proposed rule, hospitals, clinics, researchers and medical schools would have to sign “written certifications” as a prerequisite to getting money under any program run by the Department of Health and Human Services. …

The proposal defines abortion as follows: “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

From the NYTimes.

Remember “The Pill Kills” campaign? It would seem that there are policy makers working within the US Department of Health and Human Services who support the unscientific basis of that premise and they are attempting to coerce physicians, hospital administrators and other health care professionals to enforce it.

Many US-based organizations have responded to the USDHHS proposal; Reproductive Health Reality Check, Planned Parenthood, and more from the Reuters Health and Science reporter. And of course Dr Prole in her rant ON mode regarding this news item, here.

First posted at Birth Pangs.