Ants

My friend is grousing about the ants that have invaded her house in Montréal.  She picks them up and drops them in the garden, she shoos them out the door, she has even resorted to using those round tins with poisoned bait inside.

Carpenter ants have been a problem in many Canadian homes this year because of the diluvial weather in spring and summer.

I pointed out that the ants were climate refugees. "Hunh!" she snorted.  "Well, they can go right back where they came from, they're not moving into this house."

Late last night, while I was downstairs reading in blissful solitude, I heard noise in the kitchen.  Mice?

I located its provenance, the wall behind the stove.  It sounded like grésil, a pitter-patter noise that small frozen rain striking windows makes.

Uh-oh.

On a less gloomy note, before I break the bad news to my friend, I'll watch and post this trailer of _Antz_

Another Secret CON Fetus Fetishist

From Lisa Kirbie, Warren Kinsella's gf, we learn that abortion has become an issue in at least one of the upcoming Ontario by-elections.

Ali Chahbar, running for the Ontario PCs in London West, has garnered Campaign Life's highest rating.

Rating: Pro-life, pro-family
In a July 16th telco with a pro-life leader, Chahbar indicated that he is strongly pro-life and was raised with the value that human life is sacred.

Otherwise pickings are slim for fetus fetishists in the five elections: only three candidates (Chahbar and two representing the Family Coalition Party, aka Christian Taliban Party) rate the 'pro-life, pro-family' tag. The rest are 'pro-abortion' or unknown, with two amusing exceptions. Two, both Conservatives, are deemed 'educable'.

Here's the questionnaire (pdf) candidates are asked to complete though several did not.

Again, the zygote zealots are privy to information regular voters are denied. On Chahbar's website, there is zip zero nada about his anti-choice views. Ditto in the scant media coverage I found.

Well, I guess Chahbar is just following his leader. Remember when DJ! broke the story of Tim Hudak's support for defunding abortion? That information also came from a Christian Taliban source, in that case the Dominionist Association for Reformed Political Action, who then whined about the sudden interest in their machinations.

The information was news to the voters of Ontario and the story gained legs, as they say, when Liberal strategist and blogger Warren Kinsella picked it up and then the mainstream media took up the quest to get it confirmed or denied.

(Lisa Kirbie provides a handy Tim Hudak abortion refresher, with links to MSM stories at the time.)

Hudak weaselled and squirmed for days, eventually producing a tight-lipped Harper-esque pledge to 'not reopen the abortion debate'.

Are you a voter in London West? Do you know people in the riding? They might be interested to know this tidbit about Chahbar.

And about the continuing, um, unforthcomingness of Ontario Conservatives.

BTW, Kinsella has not mentioned Chahbar at his blog.

Huh. Catholic News Agency More Responsible than G&M & BBC

Who woulda thunk?

From Catholic News Agency.

Headline: Abortion rights activists vandalize cathedral in Chile

Santiago, Chile, Jul 26, 2013 / 04:31 pm (CNA).- Abortion activists interrupted Mass at the Cathedral of the Chilean capital Santiago the evening of July 25, destroying confessionals and defaming several side altars with blasphemous graffiti.

From the Globe and Mail.

Headline: Pro-abortion demonstrators vandalize Chile cathedral

From BBC.

Headline: Santiago cathedral closed after Chile abortion protest

The Catholic cathedral in the Chilean capital Santiago is to remain closed for five days after it was vandalised by pro-abortion activists on Thursday.

G&M credits AP, BBC credits no one but uses the same facts and language.

Fairer, more accurate coverage from the Catholic News Agency.

Fer hevvins' sake, MSM, 'pro-abortion' is used only by anti-choicers. It should never appear in your pages unless it is a direct quote from a fetus fetishist.

I just commented at the Globe, but it wouldn't accept a link to the CNA story. WTF?

Beware the Mouthy Minority

This poll released today has USian fetus fetishists stoked.

While a majority -- 55% -- still think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, that number is shrinking, down from 60% in 1995.

But what has the zygote zealots really revved is the answer to the time-limit question. As more and more states ban abortion past 20 weeks, the poll asks whether people support such a limit as opposed to the current 24 weeks.

A majority -- 56% -- prefer the lower limit.

OK. That is the Excited States where they are simply insane on the subject.

In Canada 94% of us think abortion should be legal in all or some cases according to a poll the National Post* and we reported on in July last year.

Some 60% of us also support the introduction of a law that places limits on when a woman can have an abortion, with an example: 'such as during the last trimester'.

Our fetus fetishists ignored the tiny minority who want to recriminalize abortion and instead cottoned onto that 60% as proof that a majority of Canadians are 'pro-life'. (Hint to FFs: I'd betcha that 99.99% of us are prolife, just not as you twist define it.)

What a majority of us are NOT is anti-choice. In fact, 49% believe that 'abortion should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants one', in other words, 'on demand'.

By contrast,the new USian poll shows that only 20% of Merkins think that abortion should be legal 'in all cases'. Also, their nutbar fringe, as represented by the 'illegal in all cases' segment, is much bigger than ours at 15%. Oddly, though, a majority (54%) oppose making it more difficult for abortion clinics to function.

The state of abortion insanity in the US matters to us in Canada for two reasons: when their FFs get stoked, so do ours, and because we've still got a lot of work to do on access.

The NatPo* reported today on a new study on rural access in BC.

Bottom line: women in rural BC have way less access.

The author, Dr. Wendy Norman, said:

“What concerns us is that all surgical abortions in rural B.C. communities are performed in a hospital operating room setting, often under general anesthesia,” says Norman, one of the lead scientists on the Canadian Contraception Access Research Team (@cartgrac). “And half of the abortion providers reported difficulty booking time for abortion procedures due to conflict in operating room scheduling, or nurses or anesthesiologists who refuse to work with abortion cases.”

Bottom line there: Stigma and opposition.

But a hopeful note:

“One encouraging trend we noticed is that almost half of the rural cases are done medically, which is safe and affords women more privacy. This is much higher ratio than previously thought,” says Norman. “But we need to better educate women about this option as it is only available to women within the first seven weeks of pregnancy.”

As we've argued here repeatedly, medical abortion is the way of the future -- private, quick, and cheaper.

And now let's hear from the other coast, where there are significant barriers to women in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Again, there's access in St John's, but not so much elsewhere and the province does not cover all travel expenses.

Robin Whitaker argues that the procedure can and should be carried out in local clinics and doctor's office and medical abortion should be more widely available. But she points out that the preferable drug, RU486, is not approved in Canada.

In this province, RU486 could make early pregnancy termination locally accessible to many more women while saving public money. In addition to family doctors, there is no medical reason that these drugs could not be administered by nurse practitioners, midwives and even via telemedicine, provided that backup medical care was available. (It would also be vital to ensure that government did not download costs onto women by requiring them to pay for the drugs themselves.)

Our fetus fetishists will take anything a pandering CONservative government might offer: defunding, regulations based on spurious claims like sex-selective abortion, continued foot-dragging on the approval process for RU486.

In Ontario, panty-sniffer and amateur statistician, Patricia Maloney, is asking the courts to intervene in her quest for abortion statistics.

Make no mistake. Our fetus fetishists may be small in number, but they're LOUD and relentless. Right now they're sniffing some heady anti-choice emanations from the south.

And by SHRIEEEEKING and fomenting stigma, they have an undemocratically large influence on our private medical business.

Just look at what they're doing in the US with only 15% support.

Canadian women demand expanded, not restricted reproductive options.


*Fuck the National Post. They've just instituted a hit-and-miss paywall. Some stories I can read but can't get back to. Others have an immediate paywall. I'm not linking to them anymore and I apologize to readers of older posts that have links to them.

Poifect!

The latest so-called householder touting the CONtempt Party's supposed efforts to help Canadians with disabilities get jobs has a message in Braille on it.

Yabbut, the message is printed, not embossed as it must be for blind peeps to read it.

Isn't that the most perfect example of CON compassion and comprehension?

All bullshit. No substance. No understanding.

Self-Censorship

Friends of the CBC are fighting back on the Harper Regime's political interference with a very clever ad, which also serves as a quick summary of this government's crimes against democracy.




While the group has the dough to pay for broadcast, the CBC won't air them.

A new ad campaign to “Free the CBC” from political interference will not air on the public broadcaster’s programs, say representatives from the non-profit media watchdog group that created the commercials.

“I’m a little surprised and disappointed that they wouldn’t take our money for the ads,” said Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesperson Ian Morrison. “It proves our point a little bit about the nature of the problem.”

I'd agree with Mr Morrison there.

Or, as William Burroughs put it: 'A functioning police state needs no police.'

Canadians don't want to see the government meddle with our CBC either.

Morrison adds that results from a recent Nanos poll – also released Monday – show that Canadians care about the CBC and its independence from government. In an online survey of 1,000 Canadians, respondents were asked about their views on government’s intentions to “take direct control of the wages and working conditions of all CBC employees.” The majority — 81 per cent — said the CBC should remain independent from government while 12 per cent said they agreed with the government’s intentions. The remaining respondents were unsure where they stood on the issue.

Shame on you, CBC.

Speaking of tweets

In the wake of the Texas bill, notorious Fox bloviator and all-around vicious (but probably well-paid!) idiot Erick Erickson decides to make a joke on Twitter that has been making the rounds.

The link to which he directs opponents of the Texas bill is to a coat hanger supply store. The "joke", in case you didn't get it, is that now that abortion services are less accessible to Texas women, they will have to start looking into getting coat hangers so that they can get (dangerous and sometimes life-threatening) back-alley abortions.

It's now an image because he deleted the tweet and "apologized".

I only bring up this episode, which is mostly banal and par for the course, to highlight the idea that for the extreme right, abortion is not merely an intellectual exercise, it is just an intellectual exercise. Erick Erickson cannot apparently imagine that coat hanger is used as a symbol of suffering and death. The idea that women would go even to such measures to end a pregnancy and the implications of that does not apparently occur to Erick son of Erick.

ADDED by fh: From OB/GYN Dr. Jen Gunter: Anatomy of a Coat Hanger Abortion.

Full Cellulose Jacket

A brilliant piece of political theatre was enacted yesterday at the Texas legislature which is trying yet again to control the uteri of the state. I'm sure the pro-choice forces would have paid handsomely to demonstrate graphically and ironically how ReThuglicans view women in Texas.

But they didn't have to.

State troopers are confiscating tampons, maxi pads and other potential projectiles from those who are entering the Texas capitol to watch the debate and vote on a controversial anti-abortion bill. Guns, however, which are typically permitted in the state capitol, are still being allowed.

Because, you know, tampons are dangerous.

Of course Twitter exploded. #FamousTamponQuotes is still going strong this morning.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they take your tampons. #FamousTamponQuotes #TamponGate

— Anomaly (@Anomaly100) July 13, 2013

"You should never bring a tampon to a gunfight" #FamousTamponQuotes

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 13, 2013

I found this and wonder what the state troopers would have thought of it.



It's a real instructional thingy, with video and all.

I liked this instruction:

Do not use tampons that have been worn. This is unhygienic and the expanded tampons will clog the gun barrel.

The bill passed as expected.



h/t to commenter Pseudz for the title

Paging Barbara Kay to the Apologist's Phone in the Lobby

While perusing the confundity around 'advocacy' group Men's Rights Edmonton (An organization incestuously intersected with the American "A Voice for Men" anti-woman collective of sites)  and their brave slut-shaming campaign this last week, I came across AVFM comments rooting for conservative columnist Barbara Kay to step into the media fray on the behalf of their 'cause'.

Realizing I was likely well behind the times on this and being of  a morbidly curious bent, I googled off to find out what raised such hopes in the minds of a crowd already excited by their raised profile.

It looks like they have good reason to believe Ms. Kay is their media BFF but she's not their only ally at The National Post.

The CAFE organization she promotes in the article is also intersected informally with AVFM as cited by Vice.com, is recruiting on campuses across Canada (often by their lesser known and less PR friendly subset,  "Mens Issues Awareness" or...MIA...geddit? geddit?) and has had their asserted mandate compared to their actions by critics .

A recurring point in articles criticizing CAFE-hosted events is that they do draw in men seeking assistance in men's issues but that the selling point 'feminism is-what-has-buggered-men-over zero-sum game theory' complete with misleading claims of fact, manages to miss the men's liberation barn by several kilometers.

It also seems the MRA gateway meme preferred even by lecturers at CAFE events, is women's perfidious destruction of men's lives with false sexual assault accusations, so MREdmonton appears to be simply parroting that the best consciousness-raising idea for men is pro-actively 'gaslighting' accusers and any who might take their part.

Just as an aside...

I would like to know, does this 'regret' perfidy extend to gay/bi/straight men(and boys) making sexual assault accusations against men or are gay/bi/straight men inherently honest bcuz XY trump, where women of any stripe are not?  Where do transgender men identifying as straight/gay fit into that?  What about hetero cis-men/transgender men and women/lesbian/bi women accusing women of sexual assault? Are they also perfidious miscreants out to ruin women's lives?

This is Why Authentic Men's Issues Activists Can't Have Nice Things

An Albertan offshoot of the American MRA ('men's rights activists' and yes, the scare quotes are intentional) whinefest and hate groups has decided the Edmonton Police Department's "Don't Be That Guy" Campaign was talking about *all* men  and decided to be brave heroes with a counter-campaign of their own, speaking truthiness to power.

"Don't Be That Girl"

Bonus CTV videos

The "Men's Rights Edmonton" website has the bingo card of straw arguments that are mainstays of the MRA seething resentmentarians.

"…Except, feminism has had over 40 years to do something about mens issues, and they have done jack diddly about them. In fact, feminism has been directly responsible for exacerbating existing issues, while brining about new ones. So your pro-feminist camp can CLAIM to covet open-mindedness and open discourse, but you already have a great deal to answer for before you have a hope in hell of being taken seriously. If you call yourself a feminist, you have to own this shit."

Eeeeyah.  It's possible they are actively working on actual men's issues but when it quacks 'whataboutthemenz you feminazis' like a duck... Anyway, I invite readers to visit the website and decide for themselves.

If you want a more detailed taste of the American seething from which this Edmonton group appears to draw its rotes, an excellent watchdog site focused on them is "Manboobz" (run by a man...or mangina as his MRA opponents spit at him.  They loathe feminist men almost as much as they do feminist women).

As an example, at present, Manboobz has highlighted the usual suspects discussing the celebrity assault/divorce of Saatchi vs Lawson, where apologizing for Saatchi is tricky but doable if you ignore reality.

The fact that the Edmonton-based MRA group has a woman out front 'unofficially' speaking to the press, shows no matter the size or organization of a group women are not homogenous in their empowerment goals and women are just as socially conditioned into being misogynists as men are.

Some women are quite fervent about being misogynists, although ironically, they tend to make a very public, independent, financially rewarding career for themselves telling women to remain in domestic roles submissive to men's authority.

"Heteronormative Patriarchy for Men" a men's issues blog working on the sufferings of men under patriarchal systems (you know, where an elite caste of authoritarian male patriarchs have historically exploited *all* sexes of lower social caste for continued power), has recently had a run-in with the American MRA resentmentarian Paul Elam of "A Voice for Men" and taken him to task.  The blog has links to other men's issues groups, many international.

To end this on a light note, here's a great Emmy-winning video from Soomo Publishing, where they filk Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" into the story of American women's suffrage.  It takes all sexes and genders to improve society.  Some people are authentically getting on with it.  MRA misogynists howling menz are the real victims and women have run a global conspiracy to kick men around are not them.

Don't be That Guy or Gal*.

*No, I don't find 'girl' to be literately equivalent to 'guy' for meaning. In modern informal usage, guy can be any age.  Girl is still a juvenilizing term, especially when attaching it to the subject of false rape accusations.  Also, did the counter-campaign include a same-sex consent poster ala the original campaign? Or was it all about casting doubt on sexual assault reports by women against men?

Update:  The woman in the CTV video linked above, identified as Karen Straughan, the 'unofficial spokesperson' for the Edmonton group, is better known to the intertubes by the 'nym "GirlWritesWhat" a voluble token woman MRA.

A Canadian, she's a contributing editor to the notorious "A Voice for Men" website and its spinoffs.  AVFM's  head is Paul Elam, taken to task above.  AVFM is crowing about the press the Edmonton event has garnered.

exerpted from the piece because I don't really want to link there.

"...Editorial note:  These events are, by far, the most widely covered men’s rights efforts by the media to date.  For the next several days members of Men’s Rights Edmonton and by extension the broader MHRM will have exposure they have never had before.  It is important that those reading this post contact the above mentioned news sources and educate them about our movement in order to strike the iron while hot.  Below are links to other articles concerning this issue and their numbers are growing by the hour.  Lets keep it going, shall we!!!!...." 

...strike the iron while hot?....oookay then.  So, no, I don't think the Edmonton group nuts fell far from the MRA woman-hating tree.

/edited for update and to see if I could work the quote code

Stigma

'I don't want to get pregnant now' would probably be the quick answer from most women using some form of birth control if asked for a reason.

'I don't want to be pregnant now' should be the only answer a woman seeking an abortion needs if asked for a reason.

And the grand thing is -- in Canada it is the only reason a woman has to give. Because abortion in Canada has been a legal, normal medical procedure for over 25 years.

Yet Judith Timson says that most women won't talk about their abortions because that is the very reason they had them.

She opens with a story of her own (slight) brush with abortion, then goes on to the gigantic hubbub going on the US at the moment. She notes that many, many moving and tragic abortion stories were told in the vain effort to derail the debacle in Texas.

But she think the 'normalizing' or 'destigmatizing' campaign is a waste of time.

No matter how moving your story is, many will argue your abortion was unnecessary and evil and you’re a murderer. Abortion stories don’t seem to change the minds of opponents. If anything, they harden their stances.

First, a serious quibble: I don't know Timson's definition of 'many', but to me, a tiny minority is not 'many'. Here in sane Canada, only 6 per cent of people want a total ban on abortion. Compare that to a recent poll showing that 17 per cent of Americans support a total ban.

She says women she knows here in sane Canada don't want to talk about their abortions because it's private.

Fine. No one is demanding they do. Privacy is paramount in all things medical.

But then she quotes a woman of her acquaintance.

Most women who choose an abortion don’t do so because they’ve been raped or because of severe fetal abnormalities, she continued. “They do it for the same reason I did. It just was not the right time or circumstance in which to be pregnant.”

They didn't want to be pregnant, in other words.

Just like I didn't want to be the host of that bothersome skin thingy I had a dermatologist remove.

Stigma still surrounds abortion, here as well as in the Excited States.

Stigma is a powerful silencing tool.

Stigma is fed when the media gives an over-loud representation to the tiny minority of liars and haters. Stigma is fed when even pro-choice columnists like Timson casually allude to it as if it's inevitable.

Destigmatization works to normalize and validate peoples' choices and circumstances. When we get to know that people we know and love are/have/have done some 'unspeakable' condition or action, it shifts our views. Maybe only a little, but things change.

If you've had an abortion and don't want to talk about it, fine. But if you have and refuse to be shamed by your choice, tell someone.

We can take the stigma off abortion. And lay it where it belongs -- on the misogynist minority who would deprive women of their rights.

Poster Boy for Entitled Patriarchy

Vic Toews.

The man who didn't just think about having sex with his family's adolescent childcare giver, but did so. The man who exploited his status in a political and social hierarchy to improve his chances of "getting lucky".  The man who used his power to threaten his opposition - and all Canadians, then abused Parliamentary process to get his revenge when he was unmasked as the hypocrite he is.

This is one extreme manifestation of the religious environment in which Toews was steeped.

This is one brave, lone defender of the integrity of our legal system taking on the alleged corruption of Toews' CPC government.

This is one of Vic's peers, exploring the arguments that rationalize why men are entitled to sexualize women and to fetishize their body parts.

This is what we've posted about him and his "accomplishments" in the Harper government, at DAMMIT JANET!

I am fortunate to know many people who don't stand with Vic Toews and who don't share any of his personal or political proclivities.

The only appropriate salutation as he completes his last day of public office before he trundles off to whatever hell he will be creating for other people is "Adios, Vic!"

THIS Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Wonder how we Canadians continue to elect arrogant, classless imbeciles?

Most people don't give a damn.

Only 10 per cent of respondents to the Samara survey had volunteered, donated to or joined a political party in the previous five years. Just 17 per cent said they had taken part in political discussions on social media such as Twitter or Facebook over the past year. The same percentage said they had written a letter to the editor about a political issue in the past 12 months.

Full, depressing report that our elected morons will be merrily jacking off to.

SUZY: Fetal Gore Pr0n DOES TOO WORK!

Joyce Arthur has a piece at Rabble on why fetus porn doesn't help the anti-choice cause. Her impetus is the latest stunt from the FetusMobile gang to plaster chosen MPs' ridings with postcards bearing the usual gory image next a photo of the MP.

Hilariously, SUZYALLCAPS is in a lather over it.

Here's the URL and regular DJ! readers will know why it's not in the form of a link.

http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2013/07/joyce-arthur-denounces-fetal-porn.html

For non-regular readers, here's the reason as explained by Canadian Cynic in an old blogpost titled 'The Creepy Eliminationism of Suzanne Fortin'.

OH, DEAR: As commenter Fern predicted, Suzanne Fortin is such a dishonest hack, she redirected the link to her post to fetal porn -- you know, the horrific, bloody images that one suspects she masturbates to on a regular basis. So here's a screenshot of the text in question:

SHE thinks fetal gore porn works just fine and calls Joyce Arthur 'crazy'.

Okey-dokey then.

Hail Satan!

From Joe.My.God:

All of Teabagistan went into an uproar last night after a handful of pro-choice activists allegedly chanted "Hail Satan" as a group of anti-abortion activists sang Amazing Grace in the rotunda of the Texas Capitol.

(I'm sooo stealing 'Teabagistan'.)

He says he watched the video a couple of times and could only hear 'Hail Satan' once. Me too.



So once again demonstrating their absolute humourlessness and pathological thin-skinnedness, fetus fetishists are going nuts.

And now 'Hail Satan' is trending on Twitter.

A small assortment of samples. First, the non-humour-impaired.

"Hail Satan" is trending. Good for him! He's a hard-working guy who doesn't get enough credit.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) July 3, 2013

#HailSatan Because the modern GOP isn't enough like The Crucible.

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) July 3, 2013

Now the frothing mad.

Vid: TX abortion backers chant "Hail, satan!" Photo: child holds vulgar sign http://t.co/HG0hXcq16b #stand4life #prochoiceviolence

— Jill Stanek (@JillStanek) July 3, 2013

And a representative from Faux News.

Abortion supporters chant 'Hail Satan' http://t.co/XcqrSekqu1 Catholic League says maybe it's time for a mass exorcism.

— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) July 3, 2013

Yep. Time for a mass exorcism.

Of misogynist Vatican Talibanis and their enablers and allies.

ADDED: According to Joe.My.God. the smear was started by RAPEpublican representative Scott Sanford. Text of his tweets are there, but they've been deleted from his time-line. What ignorant cowards these dinosaurs are.