Self-Pitying Toews and victims of CON bullies

Rights and Democracy, the organization that Remy Beauregard gave his life to defend, has now been euthanized by the Harper government.

Meanwhile, the Vic Toews pity party goes on and on.

God's wrath is fickle and and unjust.

Remember when Vic Toews threw himself a pity party and nobody came?

Oh. Wait.

While no laws were broken, the Conservatives want to learn if anyone else was involved and if Carroll is being used as a scapegoat to protect key staffers. [...]

Toews also wants the committee to look into Liberal MP Justin Trudeau's role in the affair. He was one of the first to retweet the volleys to his followers.

"It's very clear Justin Trudeau is in vikileaks30 up to his neck," said Toews.

Opposition MPs say the Conservatives are hammering the vikileaks issue to change the channel on allegations of election fraud.

Pretty loose and cheap talk for a serial adulterer and sexual predator. CONtempt of Parliament - it's how the CPC rolls. Attack others for actions that they're guilty of advocating and practicing.

I hope Trudeau sues Toews for slander and defamation, though I suspect his generosity of spirit is greater that Vic's vile spleen.

So, it seems Toews has a reputation as a bully ...

A piece in the Winnipeg Free Press goes a long way towards explaining the media silence around the serial adulterer and, as we learned also sex predator, Vic Toews - minister of Public Safety in the Harper government.

We've blogged about the incidents that were not published in the media, even those on public record and more, about Toews.

Then, there's Toews' violation of the Manitoba Elections Act. We've come to expect that PMSHithead will appoint lying, unscrupulous CONs to his cabinet, since he did appoint a felon as his minister of Justice.

The Winnipeg Free Press piece is instructive. Who would guess Toews has no impulse control, sending unsollicited, hectoring email blasts?

This is a politician who has become renowned among a small audience of Manitoba political junkies for sending out long, rambling, emails to his "supporters," in which he angrily attacks opposition MPs, journalists and anyone else with the temerity to disagree with him. As a regular target of these emails, I have never responded to the tortured logic or his tenuous grasp of the facts. He is entitled to have his say. If anyone asked me for a reaction to his rants, I merely directed them to take note of the time the emails were sent -- which more often than not was somewhere around 3 a.m. -- and then expressed my regret that I had written something that caused Toews to lose sleep.

But that was before Toews discovered Twitter, a more immediate, pervasive and, we have come to learn, less thoughtful way of venting your most volatile thoughts the moment they burst into your skull. Toews slowly began to move from the innocuous to the abusive in his emails. He taunted the opposition, howled when they disagreed with him. When the opposition voted against a Tory crime bill, he accused them of helping child kidnappers. [...]

On Thursday, he alleged that NDP MP Paul Dewar, a candidate for the leadership of that party, was behind a campaign to exploit the details of the divorce file. This was based on the revelation that a provincial NDP staffer, who happens to volunteer on Dewar's leadership campaign, had examined the divorce file.

Toews is now in full attack mode on Twitter, lambasting opposition parties for not supporting his bid to get a full parliamentary committee investigation of @Vikileaks and the Anonymous videos. [...]

Unfortunately, this is where Toews lacks any perspective on his own tenuous place in the universe. If his reputation has been tarnished, it has been by his own hand as much as anyone's. His closest political advisers pleaded with him to stop sending overnight email blasts, which they viewed as conduct unbecoming a federal cabinet minister. Those same advisers can hardly be pleased with his stream-of-consciousness Twitter activity.

If tough journalists were intimidated by the minister's fury, imagine what it must have been like for a 17 year old girl. The former teenaged babysitter for the Toews family, who caved in to pressure from her employer and had sex with him, would well know how unpleasant refusing Vic's demands would be.

ADDED: a tweet from Errol Mendes reminded me that Toews, a swinish CONjob, once called internationally respected Justice Louise Arbour *disgraceful*.

Self-Pitying Toews

What if Vic Toews threw himself a pity party and nobody came?

Oh. Wait.

While no laws were broken, the Conservatives want to learn if anyone else was involved and if Carroll is being used as a scapegoat to protect key staffers. [...]

Toews also wants the committee to look into Liberal MP Justin Trudeau's role in the affair. He was one of the first to retweet the volleys to his followers.

"It's very clear Justin Trudeau is in vikileaks30 up to his neck," said Toews.

Opposition MPs say the Conservatives are hammering the vikileaks issue to change the channel on allegations of election fraud.

Pretty loose and cheap talk for a serial adulterer and sexual predator. CONtempt of Parliament - it's how the CPC rolls. Attack others for actions that they're guilty of advocating and practicing.

I hope Trudeau sues Toews for slander and defamation.

The illustration was found here, also available in a larger format.

The irresponsible world of entitled guys swinging big ...

appendages around. Or in the case of DSK, a Viagra-enhanced monetary incentive.

I love this quote:

Two men with ties to Strauss-Kahn have been put under preliminary investigation in France on charges including organizing a prostitution ring and misuse of corporate funds.

Strauss-Kahn's name surfaced in the investigation last fall and his lawyer has asked that Strauss-Kahn be allowed to tell his side of the story. One of Strauss-Kahn's lawyers has said that the former French presidential hopeful never knew that the women at orgies he attended were prostitutes.

“He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you're not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” Henri Leclerc told French radio Europe 1 in December.

DSK is so repellent in character and physique that women should only accept his advances when considerable material benefits are offered.

Here's another instance of a man with delusions of grandeur - the chest-thumping captain of the Costa Concordia, a coward and a liar when required to act honourably and responsibly.

Feel free to provide other examples in the comments thread.

How many crimes does it take?

How many crimes does it take to make the *criminal justice system* finally act in accordance with the law, and lay charges against one of its own?

Quite a few it seems - most outrageously committed in plain view, in open defiance of the laws that the system has, seemingly and reluctantly, finally enforced. From here:

Former Gatineau police officer Jeffrey Greetham, who was fired last February 9 after a disciplinary hearing, was formally charged Tuesday with sexual assault. [...] The crimes allegedly took place between 21 April and 1 May 2010 [...] In a terse statement, the Chief of Police of the City of Gatineau, Mario Harel, described the behaviour of the accused former police officer as "unacceptable". [...]

During the years he was employed by the force, Greetham's record of charges for actions contrary to his professions code of ethics continued to mount, and in 2002, he had to answer two charges of sexual assaults against a 15 year old girl.

After a very brief hearing, the charges were dismissed. The judge concluded: "Faced with no evidence in support of the complainant's weak version of the alleged sexual assaults, the court is unable to discredit the accused's version."

More about Jeffrey Greetham, here.

Women as collateral damage in politics.

Twitter was all a-twitter yesterday evening as news broke out that Dominique Strauss-Kahn or DSK had been prevented from boarding his Air France flight and was being questioned by the police about a reported sexual assault.

Many elements of this story are troubling; observers of European politics thought DSK would challenge and defeat Sarkozy in the next presidential elections in France and bring the socialist party back to power.

Thus his supporters are claiming the circumstances of this incident are 'un coup monté' - that is, a set-up. It would certainly seem details regarding the alleged crimes were judiciously leaked by his adversaries.

Nonetheless, this man has a history of of similar incidents. The women he allegedly violated or attempted to have sex with - forcibly - are numerous. None ever stepped forward to lay formal charges. DSK is a wealthy man, member of an illustrious family and wrapped in a protective cocoon of class and political privilege.

From here (Google translation):

The issue with the current Dominique Strauss-Kahn incident is that there are too many precedents. Stories were first circulated as gossip: DSK, womanizer; DSK, skirt-chaser; DSK unable to accept no as answer from female journalists ...

Then there were books in which thinly veiled descriptions of a certain unnamed politician obsessed with sex, an insatiable regular at swingers clubs, were alleged to be about him.

For years, this reputation didn't seem to hinder his political career. Only in 2007, with his appointment to the IMF, was the issue raised publicly by Jean Quatremer, a journalist with Liberation:

"The only real problem with Strauss-Kahn is with his relationship to women. Too insistent with his demands, he often flirts with sexual harassment. This is known throughout the media, but nobody speaks up about it - this is France, after all."

As with Julian Assange, it appears that a significant number of ideological sympathizers are eager to proclaim that accusations of sexual assault against their hero and leader are nefarious plots cooked up to bring him down.

DSK should be presumed innocent, until a court of law decides upon the degree of his guilt - or responsibility for his actions - can be proved beyond a doubt.

But it also appears that the current situation may be the result of years of complicity, of DSK being allowed to run roughshod over women, with no family members, advisors or peers attempting to curb his behaviour by telling him that he's a sexual predator and his obsessive pursuit of a perceived 'droit de cuissage' have caused injury and damage to women.

At least one can imagine that, unlike rightwing religious fundamentalist hypocrite Newt Gingrich, DSK won't claim patriotic fervour as justification for his excesses and lying lies.

Right back at you, Juan Terranova!

This week's Maurice Vellacott Award goes to Argentine writer Juan Terranova who defends his *right* (and that of all men) to verbally threaten and sexually terrorize women. He claims there's a

"beautiful richness to obscene language." Terranova, who some view as one of the newly appeared voices in Argentine contemporary Literature, goes so far as to call for "the revindication of the cat call as a minor literary genre."

From here.

We're not coy, pearl-clutching damsels here at DAMMIT JANET! We think that you deserve the same opportunity that you wished to personally inflict upon the feminist activist, Inti Maria Tidball-Binz.

Juan, here's hoping that you'll soon meet a virile, muscled, hairy and MASSIVELY endowed Macho Man and that he'll growl in your ear that he "would love to rape you in the ass".

There's such a beautiful richness in the obscenity of that threat language - don't you see, Juan?

From @WentRogue's tweet.

Grievous bodily harm.

What do Robert Pickton, Fernando Manuel Alves, Daniel Katsnelson, Justin Fuminori Onzuka and Russell Williams as well as, allegedly Amitabh Chauhan and Suganthan Kayilasanathan, have in common?

They are predators and takers. They drugged women, they sexually assaulted them when they were unconscious, they preyed upon them by isolating them from other people and they exploited their vulnerabilities.

Consent is not a concept they understand or choose to negotiate with a potential sexual partner. These assailants select and use women who are unable to stop them or they take whatever means necessary to ensure they get what they want.

Three of the men mentioned are also physicians though Onzuka lost his license to practice medicine in Ontario.

Amitabh Chauhan and Suganthan Kayilasanathan have taken impressive means to dodge criminal charges laid against them. Nonetheless, the Toronto police suspect these alleged predators have done this before; this case has been publicized widely to encourage other women to report similar assaults.

Robert Pickton believed the women he drugged, sexually assaulted and in many instances also murdered and dismembered were "immoral, impure or greedy". He took what he wanted from them and he justified his crimes with selected passages from the Bible.

Though the men named may be sociopaths, their shared proclivity for sexual torture and terrorism is reinforced by a prevalent rape culture - which includes misogynist p0rn0graphy that dehumanizes women and children.

From here:

Fortunately, not all men are prone to abuse, violate, brutalize, and/or murder female family members, intimate partners, spouses, neighbours, work colleagues, parishioners, clients or acquaintances. Unfortunately, the minority of men who engage in these actions are recidivists and their level of violence tends to escalate if they're not stopped by their peers or the criminal justice system.

Unless systemic efforts are made to identify the reasons why violent misogyny rules some men and concerted strategies are taken to prevent its development in boys, incidents like this will increase.

The affidavit said the assault started after a 19-year-old boy invited the [11-year-old] victim to ride around in his car. He took her to a house [...] where one of the other men charged, also 19, lived. There the girl was ordered to disrobe and was sexually assaulted by several boys in the bedroom and bathroom. She was told she would be beaten if she did not comply, the affidavit said.

A relative of one of the suspects arrived, and the group fled through a back window. They then went to the abandoned mobile home, where the assaults continued. Some of those present recorded the sexual acts on their telephones, and these later were shown among students.

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands [...] said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record.

More relevant would be to question the parents of those boys who allegedly detained and repeatedly sexually violated this girl. Sadly, were the victim an 11-year old boy, it's unlikely members of the community would so easily absolve the assailants of responsibility for their actions.

As with pedophile priests, rape culture facilitates a knee-jerk response that shames / blames girls and women for the violence done to them.

Everything you wanted to know (or likely, not) about Thomas Euteneuer

but were too disgusted and creeped out to ask.

Pharyngula did the heavy lifting.

Euteneuer was an up-and-coming star of the Catholic priesthood: he was a charismatic fellow who appeared on radio and TV and other media to fight for the dogmatic Catholic position on just about everything. He was a crusader against homosexuality, against sex outside of marriage, against contraceptives, against abortion. He was also an official Catholic exorcist ...

Euteneuer was also the president of Human Life International, that anti-abortion, anti-birth control, fetus-fetishizing lobbying organization that is MASSIVELY admired and parotted by Blob Blogging Wingnut.

More here.

One wonders what the priest's connection to Pope Maledict and the Vatican Taliban might be, as it appears that Euteneuer has successfully evaded any criminal charges for his sexual predation involving adult women.

P.Z. Myers really has their number, though:

Which brings me to the really weird part. Everything I'm reading about this situation contains these insistent declarations that the act involved an ADULT! WOMAN! Even the Catholic bishop's statement about the case emphasizes this.

Euteneuer has been undergoing intensive evaluation and counseling to address admitted inappropriate crossing of adult heterosexual boundaries on the occasion of carrying out his priestly ministry.

See? ADULT! and HETEROSEXUAL!

This bugs me. It's like they're saying, "At least it wasn't gay sex, and it didn't involve a child." They're trying to reduce the magnitude of whatever perversity was committed. And it's as if they're reassuring everyone that it wasn't that awful homosexuality was committed.

And weirdest of all, it's as if they're saying that because a woman was the victim, it wasn't so bad. Women are the designated victims; oh, sure, it's not good that he was abusing a woman, but it would have been even worse if a man was hurt.