Buh-bye Shelly, don't cry...

Juxtapose.

Harper government Cabinet Minister Shelly Glover is rightfully under scrutiny with regard to $1200 *donated* at a fundraising organized for the CPC, held at a private residence in her riding.

Groups from the Manitoba arts and culture community, who lobby Ottawa for money, were invited to a fundraiser last week on MP Shelly Glover’s behalf.
Federal rules say cabinet ministers can’t solicit money from anyone who may have lobbied or may lobby them in the future.
Glover and event organizers said the gathering was strictly to raise money for the party’s local riding association, but CTV News obtained information which suggests otherwise.[...]
"The majority of these people were actually people who were friends of mine or board members or people that have been involved with the Conservative Party,” Glover said.
But the invitation to the fundraiser obtained by CTV News paints a different picture.
"Invitees are primarily members of the cultural community in Winnipeg,” it said. "Shelly is interested in meeting with you and hearing your views."
CTV has confirmed representatives from the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Manitoba Opera and Winnipeg Art Gallery attended.[...]
The federal ethics commissioner is reviewing a request to look at the event. Opposition parties in Ottawa have filed complaints.
Glover wrote a letter to the ethics commissioner, letting that office know about the event and what steps she has taken to deal with the matter, including ordering the $1,200 be returned to donors.
Glover’s office said the minister did not know people from the arts and culture community would be at the party until she arrived.

Then, there's Harper's Israel junket, an over-the-top display of pandering and fundraising for which Stephen Lautens suggested the twitter hashtag "200schnorrers" - a term that means sponger, freeloader.

The crass, greedy opportunism came to its logical peak with this spectacle from CPC MP Mark Adler, and then this cringe-worthy performance from PMSHithead.

As Harper and his government crank up the chutzpah, malevolently destroying scientific libraries and arrogantly engaging in corrupt activities, one wonders where, if any, might the tipping point be?

Who will be sacrificed as an venal offering to the deities of the CPC fake accountability-and-transparence scam?

My bet is that when push comes to shove, Glover will go the way of Helena Guergis and Bev Oda because that's how the Harper's boys' club rolls. 

$1200 versus the millions the CPC hope to raise for their 2015 election campaign war funds.

Beyond Adler's mendacity, there were also stomach-churning photos of CPC dauphin Jason Kenney and his gynophobic buddies reveling in the testosterone-charged enclave of Jerusalem's West Wall.

A personal anecdote about Shelly Glover.  Last summer I traveled to Montreal on Via Rail. In the business class car sat the freshly appointed Heritage minister and a small entourage of husky men, two of whom looked and behaved like bodyguards.

Not a single person in that group used an electronic device during the whole trip. No cell phone, no tablet, no Blackberry, no laptop. Nothing.

It made me wonder what they knew, and that we now know...

It's just temporary genocide

After years of denial that Israeli health officials were practising blatant racism in the small matter of injecting Ethiopian immigrant women with a long-acting and controversial contraceptive, they have now admitted to it.

A government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera.

Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu has instructed the four health maintenance organizations to stop the practice as a matter of course.

The ministry and other state agencies had previously denied knowledge or responsibility for the practice, which was first reported five years ago.

But it has worked well over the time the 'policy' was in effect.

The birthrate among Ethiopians in Israel decreased by a dramatic 50% in the last decade, and Israeli journalist Gal Gabai [the documentary maker who stirred things up again last December] wanted to know why. She investigated the issue for “Vacuum,” her documentary series on Israeli Educational Television, and she discovered some things that left her very uncomfortable — and will surely leave others equally so.

Fifty per cent. That's a helluva lot fewer black babies, innit?

What's this called then? 'Temporary genocide until we get caught and/or get the black birth rate halved'?

Despicable action by anyone. But Israel. . .

State Expropriation of Our Uteruses, Israeli Style

It just get more and more blatant.

Israel's two chief rabbis, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar, have come out in support of the controversial Efrat organization, which opposes abortion in Israel.
. . .
Organizers of the right-wing Jerusalem Conference, sponsored by Israel National News and the B'Sheva newspaper, recently announced their plan to award their "Jerusalem Prize" to Efrat.
. . .
The Efrat organization achieved notoriety in October after an 18-year-old, Raz Atias, threatened to kill his pregnant girlfriend and commit suicide. Atias was killed in a shootout with police on Oct. 19, while his girlfriend survived, in shock, but unharmed. It later turned out that the couple had been suffering great emotional distress after the girl was pressured by the Efrat organization not to have an abortion.
. . .
Two weeks ago, Israel Hayom published an investigative report describing the emotional manipulation that the organization's volunteers employ against vulnerable girls and women considering abortions.

The investigation found that Efrat receives extensive cooperation from municipal welfare services and hospitals, and that Efrat volunteers even work inside hospitals to persuade girls and women not to have abortions. Efrat has an army of 3,000 volunteers, and a budget of more than 12 million shekels [$3.2 million US] per year received from contributions in Israel and abroad.

Typical anti-choice tactics.

And the motive is pretty clearly political pronatalism.
Here's EFRAT's mission.

EFRAT, The Organization to Save Israel's Babies, receives no government assistance and is dependent upon private donations and contributions. Dr. Eli Schussheim, President of EFRAT firmly believes that our children are our future. "Saving our children is the answer to those who wish to destroy all Jews; adults, children and babies, born and unborn. By assisting women we are doing our part to increase the Jewish population in Israel."

Feminists plan to protest the award.

“The worst part is that they’re using the woman for demographics,” said protest organizer Tzaphira Allison Stern. “Why shouldn’t a woman have an abortion? Because we need the baby so there are more Jews, and so there are more Israeli soldiers, so we can defend the land and continue the occupation.”

Stern added that the organization works only with Jewish women, rather than with Arab, Druse or Christian women, which illustrates that they care only about politics and not about women’s health.

Have a look at all the cute presumably Jewish children on its website.

Jewish perhaps, but not many (any?) Ethiopian Jewish children.

Here is an account of what it's like to get an abortion in Israel.

I experienced this firsthand a few years ago, and I can confirm that a single woman in Israel seeking an abortion experiences a bureaucratic tangle of dizzying proportions that is nothing short of Kafkaesque.

And she's in a relationship but not married. How it is for married women?

But what happens to women who don’t get approval to abort? While waiting in one of the endless lines during the process, other good Jewish women carrying unwanted pregnancies told me that married women never get authorization. They have to prove nothing less than insanity or significant physical disability to get approval for an abortion.

Everywhere, it seems, women's uteruses are being expropriated by the state.

More on Coercive Contraception

More details on genocide by coercive contraception.

The documentary on the situation of Ethiopian women in Israel aired last week and is causing a bit of a stir.

Israeli and Jewish aid officials are denying an Israeli TV report alleging that Ethiopian immigrant women have been coerced into taking contraceptive shots.

The aid group is the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).

In the report, a woman identified as S. said she was told at the Jewish aid compound in Gondar, Ethiopia, “If you don’t get the shot, we won’t give you a ticket.”

She recalled, “I didn’t want to take it. They wanted me to take it. But I didn’t know it was a contraceptive,” she said. “I thought it was an immunization.”
. . .
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which runs the health clinics in Ethiopia for prospective immigrants to Israel, says it offers contraception among its array of services but that it is purely voluntary.

It seems that JDC also offers medical care once immigrants arrive in Israel, providing another er, avenue of persuasion.

Several women interviewed by [documentary maker Gal] Gabbai said that they were told at the transit camps in Ethiopia that they had to receive the shots if they wanted to immigrate to Israel and continue receiving medical treatment from the JDC.

But lest Israeli officials try to lay all blame on the aid group, there's this.

Israeli authorities denied all of the allegations. However, Gabbai revealed an official letter that she uncovered from the Health Ministry to Dr. Rick Hodes, the director of the JDC Medical Programs in Ethiopia. The letter praised the doctor’s work, noting that whereas fewer than 5% of Ethiopians use any form of birth control, Hodes achieved a rate of 30% among the patients he treated.

I'll just let that lie there.

I wonder where the fetus fetishists are on this. Or the Israel-can-do-no-wrong gang. Or both, rolled into one. Co-blogger deBeauxOs had a suggestion.

Come on down, Babs! The logical gymnastics required to defend both Israel and the reproductive rights of all Israelis would be breathtaking, yes?

In Israel: Stringent Contraception for *Some*

A story that broke nearly three years ago is back in the news in Israel.

The birthrate among Ethiopians in Israel decreased by a dramatic 50% in the last decade, and Israeli journalist Gal Gabai wanted to know why. She investigated the issue for “Vacuum,” her documentary series on Israeli Educational Television, and she discovered some things that left her very uncomfortable — and will surely leave others equally so.

Let's go back to January 2010.

Health officials in Israel are subjecting many female Ethiopian immigrants to a controversial long-term birth control drug in what Israeli women's groups allege is a racist policy to reduce the number of black babies. The contraceptive, known as Depo Provera, which is given by injection every three months, is considered by many doctors as a birth control method of last resort because of problems treating its side effects.

Look how it came to light.

Women's groups were alerted to the widespread use of Depo Provera in the Ethiopian community in 2008 when Rachel Mangoli, who runs a day care centre for 120 Ethiopian children in Bnei Braq, a suburb of Tel Aviv, observed that she had received only one new child in the previous three years. "I started to think about how strange the situation was after I had to send back donated baby clothes because there was no one in the community to give them to," she said.

She approached a local health clinic serving the 55 Ethiopian families in Bnei Braq and was told by the clinic manager that they had been instructed to administer Depo Provera injections to the women of child-bearing age, though he refused to say who had issued the order. Ms Mangoli, who interviewed the women, said: "They had not been told about alternative forms of contraception or about the side effects or given medical follow-ups." The women complained of a wide range of side effects associated with the drug, including headaches, abdominal pain, fatigue, nausea, loss of libido and general burning sensations.

Depo Provera is controversial? Boy howdy. It causes, among other nastinesses, osteoporosis.

On the plus side, one doesn't need to remember to take it.

Back to the new documentary:

Some of the women interviewed said they were told that birth control pills were not suitable for them because they were not capable of remembering to take them daily. Video shot with a hidden camera during an Israeli health clinic visit by an Ethiopian immigrant, during which she gets a Depo-Provera shot, indeed documents healthcare providers expressing this exact opinion of Ethiopian women.

From the 2010 story:

Figures show that 57 per cent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two per cent of the total population. About 90,000 Ethiopians have been brought to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has subsequently been questioned by some rabbis and is doubted by many ordinary Israelis.

That percentage is kind of amazing, isn't it?

Health care providers were told that injectable b.c. was preferred by Ethiopian women, but a survey in Ethiopia reported that of women using b.c. there, 75% of them used oral contraception. The Pill.

Moreover, isn't Israel worried about population decline? Yes, it is.

This policy appears to conflict with the stated goals of the country's Demography Council, a group of experts charged with devising ways to persuade Jewish women to have more babies. The council was established in response to what is widely seen in Israel as a "demographic war" with Palestinians, or the need to maintain a Jewish majority in the region despite high Palestinian birth rates. In a speech marking the council's reconvening in 2002, the then social welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, referred to "the beauty of the Jewish family that is blessed with many children".

We've blogged about Israeli pro-natalism and its desire to encourage some marriages over others.

And, it seems, there is some history to this sort of thing. From the 2010 article again:

Yali Hashash, a researcher at Haifa University, said attempts to restrict Ethiopian women's fertility echoed practices used against Jewish women who immigrated to Israel from such Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen and Morocco in the state's early years, in the 1950s and 1960s. Many, she said, had been encouraged to fit IUDs when the device was still experimental because Israel's leading gynecologists regarded Arab Jews as "primitive" and incapable of acting "responsibly".

What an ugly stew. Vulnerable women, not particularly welcomed, pressured into a dangerous regime of stringent birth control that contradicts stated population policy.

One's gotta ask: why?

Not very many credible answers, are there?

And this is Canada's great friend. You know, the one we'd apparently go to war over.

“Canada and Israel share a bond of friendship and are allies in the democratic family of countries,” International Development Minister Julian Fantino said in a statement released by Israel’s embassy in Ottawa.

Wonder if Canada also supports coerced contraception for *some* Israelis?

h/t myaguarnieri

Pronatalism in Israel?

From the Jerusalem Post, a straightforward account of falling abortion rates in Israel.

The rate of legal abortions in Israel – among the lowest when compared to the countries of Western Europe for both women under 20 and women over 35 – has declined since 2000 after being steady from 1995 until then.

This emerges from the abortion report issued by the Health Ministry for publication on Monday. The report does not explain the reasons for these trends.

Details of the numbers follow, then:

But when The Jerusalem Post suggested that it could be a result of the decline in aliya [immigration of Jews to Israel] and the aging of women who arrived from the former Soviet Union – where abortions were widely used instead of contraception – and the improved access to birth control among these immigrants – ministry official Dr. Yoram Lotan said it “sounded very logical.”

Now, another story on the same topic from a source I'd never seen before, Israel Today.

Israel Today has written several times before about how Israel has an abortion problem. Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, more than one-and-a-half million babies have been aborted - more than the number of Jewish children killed in the Holocaust. Going by current birth rates, had those children been allowed a chance at life, there could be 5-10 million more Israelis today.

Alarm bells going off? Specifically the 'demographic winter' aka 'THEY-are-outbreeding-US!' SHRIEEEEK alarm?

Israel Today notes and dismisses the JPost's 'very logical' supposition for the causes of falling abortion rates and instead points to the work of 'a handful of pro-life organizations'.

One of those organizations is the Messianic-run Be'ad Chaim (Hebrew for "Pro Life"). With centers around the country, Be'ad Chaim is able to provide assistance and teaching to hundreds of women who may otherwise have aborted their children every year.

While the work of Be'ad Chaim and other such organizations may only be scratching the surface of Israel's abortion problem, it is making a difference. The latest Ministry of Health report revealed that women with a higher education or from better socioeconomic conditions are already far less likely to have an abortion today. Most abortions today are performed on mothers with low socioeconomic status, or, in other words, crisis pregnancies, the very ones being targeted by Be'ad Chaim and others.

Hoookay, crisis pregnancy centres in Israel.

So what is Be'ad Chaim?

Be’ad Chaim (Pro Life) is a registered Israeli non-profit
organization dedicated to the protection of mothers and unborn children. (Registered in 1989) We are a national organization with offices and Hotlines throughout Israel. All women are eligible for our assistance, regardless of nationality or religious beliefs.

We have no reason to doubt that last bit, but . . .

Next, what the heck is Messianic Judaism? (That link comes with a warning: 'Article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed.')

Messianic Judaism is a syncretic religious movement that arose in the 1960s and 70s.It blends evangelical Christian theology with elements of Jewish terminology and ritual.

Our next question is posed by Israel Today.

Israel Today: How many Messianic Jews are in Israel today?

Asher Intrater: When we speak of Messianic Jews in Israel, we are speaking of people who are Jewish and Israeli citizens and who believe in Yeshua as their messiah. This is the Messianic Remnant, and it numbers about 15,000. In addition, there are many Arabs who believe in Yeshua, and there are many international Christians who make their home here.

Are we creeped out yet?

I went looking for other Israeli anti-choice organizations and found EFRAT.

Efrat is an Israeli pro-life group which tries to convince Jewish women not to perform an abortion. To this end, the organization distributes explanatory materials and offers economic aid to pregnant women considering abortion.

Let's see what it has to say about itself.

Since 1977, EFRAT has saved over 34,000 children. Through a combination of education and economic assistance, EFRAT has helped establish a new generation of Jewish families.

Hm. Not quite so non-denominational. . . But to its credit, there's little of the USian-style lies and fear-mongering. No links between abortion and mental health and/or breast cancer, for example.

So, what the heck is going on here?

Last week, deBeauxOs blogged on the Israeli Ministry of Immigration Absorption's campaign to discourage Israelis from marrying or befriending American Jews for fear of losing their identity.

Taken together, it sure seems some Israelis are flirting with notions of nativism and pronatalism.

They really want to go there?

I'm definitely creeped out.

(Gee. Look where I found that image from 'Demographic Winter'. Yup, Big Nurse Jill Stanek's. Quelle surprise.)

Category 5 break-up?

Hostilities are escalating by the minute, between Türkiye and Israel.

Their marriage of convenience is displaying MASSIVE cracks; the inevitable divorce will be nasty, even by the .... urgh, habitual Middle East standards when relationships between governing authorities go sour.

From Haaretz:

Israeli passengers claim authorities at Istanbul airport humiliated them and made them undress to their underwear [...] Some 40 Israelis on board a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul were separated from the rest of the passengers upon arrival in Turkey on Monday and were questioned at length by Turkish police, marking a highly unusual event against the backdrop of a deepening diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel.

From Hürriyet:

[...] the Turkish government is planning to give new orders to Turkish Navy warships to start patrolling in the territorial waters of the eastern Mediterranean, aiming to show Israel that it is not the bully of the region. Is this going to convince the Israeli government to change its mind and try to improve relations with Turkey?

It is not a question to answer easily, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu said he saw nothing to apologize for in the “self defense” of Israeli soldiers against the provocations of civilians on a ship acting hostile to them 72 kilometers off the Israeli shore, out of their territorial waters. Perhaps according to current government rules in Israel, the punishment for provocations from civilians could be an instant shot in the back of their heads, as stated by the Palmer Report, but not according to common sense.

It's difficult to figure out what advantages the respective authorities are hoping to gain from the dramatic moves, unless it's all public posturing for the media. If corporations have accrued *human rights* and the liberties that only individual persons once had, it seems that governments can now act like celebrities.

A is for Anti-semitism and Apartheid (with update)

My father and mother shared the history of growing up in Ottawa's multicultural Lower Town with their daughters. It was thus I learned of the bigotry that francophone Catholic priests spread from the height of their pulpit, preaching - and deliberately planting seeds of violence - against the Irish, the Protestants and particularly, their Jewish neighbours. Later on, I discovered research documenting the hateful manifestions of anti-semitism.

My parents' choices as well as their open minds allowed me to understand the life experiences of immigrants to Canada as well as the vital and dynamic role the Jewish community held in Ottawa since its foundation. As an adolescent, I had the privilege of attending a religious service in the old synagogue, now closed.

When my cousin who converted to Reformed Judaism in her 30s invited me to her daughter's Bat Mitzvah, I felt honoured then moved by the beauty and spiritual force of the ritual. The women and men of this congregation are equally and fully engaged in all practices of their religious traditions.

Recently a friend's mom stated the film "An Education" sugar-coated its anti-semitic depiction of anti-semitism; after watching it I agreed with her impression, though some Jewish reviewers had a different perspective.

Today my friend lagatta directed my attention to powerful opinion piece by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the original founding mothers of Ms magazine. It concludes:

As a life-long, Israel-loving, peace-seeking Zionist, I disdained the hyperbolic label and the facile, incendiary parallels to pre-Mandela South Africa that, for years, have been propagated by Jimmy Carter and some pundits on the left. I’ve made at least two dozen trips to Israel since 1976 and, though strongly critical of its government’s policies toward Palestinians within and outside the Green Line — whether under Labor, Likud or Kadima leadership — I never felt that extreme indictment was warranted by the facts on the ground. Then again, until last month, I had never been to Hebron.

Justice-loving Jews cannot keep denying what is happening under Israeli auspices in Hebron; we can never say we didn’t know.

It is painful to discover that a person, an institution or a belief one respects is wrong. It takes courage to say so.

Via our feminista consoeur AntoniaZ, a link to a strong and timely opinion piece in Haaretz.

Funny Twitter Folks

My virtual roomie just blogged about a journalist named Andy Carvin, a *serious* Twitter person who tweets and retweets events as they occur in real time in Libya and other political hot spots and who provides links to news stories and people in the fire of action.

In addition to @acarvin, I also follow a variety of individuals who exploit Twitter's potential for delivering pithy and scathing political commentary.

@RagingTeabagger, for example, offers the above photo with a suggested caption: "Palin puts the move on Netanyahu's wife in a Bush/Merkel moment."

That would be this intimately inappropriate moment.

However, from Sara Netanyahu's vantage point, it might be possible to see The $arah's nostril hair, as well as the rest of her, becoming ever so wordly and savvy in diplomatic affairs ... NOT.

Mona Eltahawy at J Street

Mona Eltahawy recently spoke as a panel member at this event organized by J Street last week.

She is a journalist that I've been following on Twitter - @monaeltahawy - since #SidiBouzid and #Jan25; she is an articulate, witty and effective communicator.

J Street is a formidable presence in Washington DC, ensuring that accurate and factual information about the Middle East is available to counter the rhetoric of those who lobby in support of Israel's pro-war policies.

There's no similar organization in Ottawa, which allows MP Irwin Cotler to promulgate his perspective as though it were the official position of Liberal Party of Canada - and gives the Harper Regime more opportunities to maintain its ideologically-informed policies, with regard to Israel.

Updated to add a link to Mona Eltahawy's blogpost about FGM written last year and is particularly moving, in honour of IWD tomorrow.

Paradis and Depp not traveling to Israel.

Haaretz is reporting that Vanessa Paradis may have canceled her scheduled concert in Tel Aviv because a large number of her fans asked her respect the Boycott Israel campaign.

This information has not been confirmed by her manager, however.

Will mounting pressure from the campaign bring about a change in government policies that currently maintain apartheid zones for Palestinians, occupy their lands with new settlements and destroy Berber villages? It remains to be seen.

Here Vanessa Paradis and Jeanne Moreau sing 'Le Tourbillon de la vie'.

Blame Harper for the attack on international aid flotilla.

Bullies do what they do because they are addicted to the adrenaline their brain produces when they engage in violence, and to the endorphin surge they get from terrorizing others. It's all about having and using power over others.

Stevie Spiteful and his cadre of goons - Kenney, Baird, Toews - recognize in Netanyahu a rightwing comrade-in-arms familiar with the bully principle. Alison at Creekside gets it:

Netanyahu says Israel has never had a better friend than Canada and thanked Steve today for being "an unwavering friend of Israel."

Too true. Canada was the first country in the world to boycott Gaza for electing Hamas. When Israel bombed Lebanon in 2008 killing 1400, Steve called Israel's actions "measured". A Canadian killed when Israel shelled UN offices went unremarked by our government. We support the Wall at the UN. Peter Kent, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has more than once stated on his website that "an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada." We have cut off funding to humanitarian groups like Kairos and UNRWA who have been sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, and replaced members on the board of the once independent group Rights and Democracy with pro-Israel hawks.

Those who study the physiological and psychological factors present in subtance abuse and dependance have pointed out the role of the enabler in allowing the problem behaviours to escalate.

Harper is the biggest enabler of the state of Israel's violent apartheid policies and practices.

The Kents on Recalibration

I don't think that word -- paraphrase -- means what you think it does.

Peter Kent backs down on his whoring remark. (And I mean no disrespect to honest sex-workers.)

In an interview published in Shalom Life, dated Feb. 12, Mr. Kent said: “Prime Minister Harper has made it quite clear for some time now and has regularly stated that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

Mr. McIntosh pointed to Mr. Harper’s statements from May, 2008, marking the 60th anniversary of Israel, where the Prime Minister said: “Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada, because, as the last world war showed, hate-fuelled bigotry against some is ultimately a threat to us all, and must be resisted wherever it may lurk.”

“In this ongoing battle, Canada stands side-by-side with the State of Israel, our friend and ally in the democratic family of nations,” Mr. Harper said. “We have stood with Israel even when it has not been popular to do so, and we will continue to stand with Israel, just as I have always said we would.”

Gee, and I thought that fella had some background in the werdz biz.

Meanwhile, the brother who got all the smarts in that family said on Facebook today:

So we're to believe that the C.I.A. has nabbed a top Talib with Pakistani help? Sure, and Wali Karzai's got some land to sell us in Kandahar. With our Afghan mission now teetering between big power treachery and rampant corruption, it's time to recall Parliament, Mr. Harper, and truly recalibrate.

I would have said that Arthur got all the looks too, but that woulda just been mean.

Just another fetishist of The Fetus©™

We learn, via CC's blogpost The Justin Chronicles that another Blogging Tory blathers on and on, using the familiar "Because I say so" approach to zygote zealotry. Expect the same-old same-old rationalizations and equivalencies, as always based on the premise that a blob of dividing cells has more human rights than the female vessel that carries said blob.

Hey Justin, one more reason to give thanks to your g-d that you were't born female, right?

Clearly nobody is going to force you to endure 9 months of unwanted pregnancy, but being a neocon man, you have the right to opine about humanity. And bonus points for you - you'll have the opportunity to kill human beings who have the bad grace of living on land that a government (who considers them sub-human) wants to occupy.

But would you let your daughter marry one?

This is up at Alternet, so I assume it is true.

Nonetheless, it's incredible.

A local authority in Israel has announced that it is establishing a special team of youth counselors and psychologists whose job it will be to identify young Jewish women who are dating Arab men and "rescue" them.

The move by the municipality of Petah Tikva, a city close to Tel Aviv, is the latest in a series of separate -- and little discussed -- initiatives from official bodies, rabbis, private organisations and groups of Israeli residents to try to prevent interracial dating and marriage.

In a related development, the Israeli media reported this month that residents of Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, had formed a vigilante-style patrol to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls. . . .

In 2004, posters sprang up all over the northern town of Safed warning Jewish women that dating Arab men would lead to "beatings, hard drugs, prostitution and crime."

Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, told a local newspaper that the "seducing" of Jewish girls was "another form of war" by Arab men.

Both Kiryat Gat and Safed's campaigns were supported by a religious organisation called Yad L'achim, which runs an anti-assimilation team publicly dedicated to "saving" Jewish women. . . .

The degree of general opposition in Israel to interracial marriage was suggested by a government-backed television ad campaign earlier this month that urged Israeli Jews to inform on relatives abroad who were in danger of marrying a non-Jew. The ads were hastily withdrawn by surprised Israeli officials after many US Jews took offence.

One of the commenters said: 'You gotta love how Israel keeps digging itself deeper into irony.'

Me, I don't know what to say.

Who's the terrorist?

Is Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish a terrorist? Is that why his daughters had to die?

Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian.

Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:

“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”

Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel’s main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish’s wailing was broadcast across the country.

Some more pictures of terrorists from Guerrilla Radio:






































From Da Arab Mcs: Who's the terrorist?

Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!

In Michael Ignatieff’s recent mea culpa , not only does he acknowledge that he was wrong about the Iraq invasion but he reveals a humility that has endeared so many Canadian voters — not. Peppering his earlier paragraphs with quotes from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, he faults his error in judgment on the academic’s propensity to view the world through ideas and knowledge rather than simple understanding of reality. This convoluted explanation of the difference between the intellectual and politician serves as some kind of proof that he has rappelled the walls of his ivory tower to embrace the simplicity of thought of the common man. And who better to represent that common man than Ralph Kramden!

“As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t. Yet even lengthy experience can fail us in life and in politics. Experience can imprison decision-makers in worn-out solutions while blinding them to the untried remedy that does the trick.”

The “bus driver” has a shrewder grasp of reality because he bumbles along in life and picks up a few “what’s what” by learning from mistakes. You have to wade through some 15 or 16 paragraphs that grapple with the obstacles faced by politicians and the challenges of dealing with Iraq before Ignatieff actually and clearly acknowledges that he was wrong because others were less wrong. Those who were against the Iraq invasion were too common and simple to know they were right!?! How else can we interpret this:

“We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.”

Ignatieff’s so-called apology is pompous and self-serving. In the paragraph that follows, he basically calls those who demonstrated good judgment callous cynics who didn’t suppose the human rights ideals that fueled his own belief that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. His vision and good intentions, like those of Bush and such honourable Iraqi exiles as Ahmed Chalabi, were his failings? Ignatieff and his fellow neo-conservative pundits do owe an apology for defending and boosting the Bush administration’s ridiculous and illegal plans to liberate Iraq by bringing ruin and insecurity to a nation that had not posed any threat to the US or its allies.

Ignatieff might learn a thing or two about the common man by renting The Honeymooners on DVD. Robert Svedi had this to say about the appeal of this television classic:

“Another reason for The Honeymooners long shelf life is that the problems that the Kramden's and the Norton's faced some fifty years ago, are the same problems that still plague people today. Money shortages, being stuck in a dead-end job, housing and relationship issues and the desire to better one's condition are all things that are dealt with on a daily basis for most of the population every day. The Honeymooners allow us to laugh at ourselves while teaching us that the most valuable commodities are really love and friendship.”

Jackie Gleason’s bus driver has more insight into the human condition than this wannabe Prime Minister.

UPDATE: For the sake of political expediency, I thought I would bite my tongue on the LPC's coronation of Ignatieff as the de facto leader of the party. I've expressed my doubts that he would put his personal ambition aside to work for solutions for Canadians, including working within a coalition government should Harper fail to deliver anything but a just and effective budget. But his recent comments with respect to the brutal assault of Gaza by the IDF was just too much to remain silent. My fellow progressive bloggers have been raking Iggy over the coals and provide great insight as to why he is an utter disappointment. Some have suggested I repost this because it is just too damn easy to dismiss this latest pronouncement as just a gaffe when in fact, Ignatieff has been pretty consistent in his views.

Here is a list of some excellent posts about Iggy's "not an occupation" statement worth reading:

• Ignatieff Gets a Huge Pat On The Back - from The National Post

• Gaza: "Big Concentration Camp"

• Israel faces UN war crimes probe

• Not Good Enough

• Ignatieff the Bloody

• Wanker of the day

• An Israeli atrocity

• Oh, Iggy

Cross-posted at Resettle THIS!

Terrorism and terror

Much has been said and written about the events in Gaza. I listen to Radio-Canada and I read news coverage that attempts to balance the overwhelming, initial pro-Israel bias with parsimonious information eked out from Gaza. Progressive Bloggers have been particularly diligent in seeking out alternate news sources and writing about this bloody conflict which has both sides targeting civilian populations. The side with the best weaponry is inflicting the most savage damage as the number of deaths, mutilations and crippling wounds increase every day in Gaza.

Terror: Intense, overpowering fear. Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.

Terrorism: The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Terrorism, 1795, in specific sense of "government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in France" (1793-July 1794), from Fr. terrorisme (1798).

"If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror - virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent." (Robespierre, speech in French National Convention, 1794)

General sense of "systematic use of terror as a policy" is first recorded in Eng. 1798. Terrorize "coerce or deter by terror" first recorded 1823. Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine - earlier it was used of extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French Revolution (1795) - from Fr. terroriste. The tendency of one party's terrorist to be another's guerilla or freedom fighter was noted in ref. to the British action in Cyprus (1956) and the war in Rhodesia (1973).

How to end this conflict? Fighting terrorism with terrorism appears to be a losing strategy for all sides. There are alternatives, though they rarely receive the attention and the financial support that armed confrontations do. Which is not incidentally a result of the increasingly lucrative weapons industry.

Here's an overview of groups and organizations who are attempting to fight terrorism and violence with information, reason and pacifist means.

Women Against Occupation

Adalah-NY: Coalition for Justice in the Middle East

Jews Against the Occupation

Feminist Peace Network

Christian Peacemaker Teams

A Soulmate for ALLCAPS

ALLCAPS has a soulmate in anti-feminism, Yaakov Schlusser, chairman of Israel's Men's Rights Party.

Despite having flunked out of the past three elections, the Men's Rights in the Family Party has decided to offer itself up to the Israeli voter once again this year due to fears that "the feminists are destroying the country."
. . .
"Seeing as we live in an extremist feminist state, the entire system is unjust, including the courts, welfare services, the police, and the government," he told Ynet. "The feminists are destroying every good part of this country. A country that doesn't respect its men has no right to exist."
. . .
Schlusser claims that last year his party received 4,200 votes, a far cry from the previous year's 1,250 and enough to plant them in 20th place.
. . .
Despite his views, he claims he is not a chauvinist. "The claims that I am a chauvinist are demagoguery. I love women and support relationships, my mother was a woman and I have a daughter," he said. "I'm not against women but nature has rules: The man should be on top, there should not be equality.

(I was a tad leery of this story, so I checked. There is a Wiki entry on it and it has a rather minimal website, unfortunately for me, all in Hebrew. There are also several other news stories on it.)

Israel has proportional representation. I checked to see what the election threshold is there. It's 2%. (By contrast, it's 5% in Germany and New Zealand, 10% in Turkey.) So if only 2% of Israelis vote for this yutz guy, the Men's Rights Party could have a seat in the Knesset!

No wonder the nutbar fringe parties here are keen on proportional representation.