When femicide is justified by men who feel their "honour" has been soiled.

The first post of an informal series, illustrating how and when all the elements of the legal system do work and justice is served.

Dorothy Woods.

Police officers meticulously collected evidence to document a complicated investigation in a rigorous, professional manner.

Here's an interesting series of posts, following the release of her accused killer - presumed innocent as the legal system goes, and this feminist agrees - on bail after he was charged.

The Crown proceeded with skill, compassion and due diligence.

The defendant's lawyer attempted to impugn the integrity and the objectivity of the prosecutor.

Outside court, defense lawyer Michael Nolin took issue with how the texts presented to the jury portray David Woods as a racist. "I'm very disappointed that this is the line that the prosecution has chosen to draw in the sand," he said. "I find it interesting that the only prosecutor of colour in the Saskatoon provincial prosecution office has been drawn to try this case. And he's been on it from the beginning."

Nolin concluded his case for the defence by stating Dorothy engaged in a high-risk lifestyle with several strange (code for black) men*, and exhorted the jurors to "vote with their conscience".  Oddly that doesn't sound at all like a closing argument to me though it does seem to be a judgement.

The judge carefully presided over the trial and instructed the jury members.

The attentive jury reviewed the details of evidence that was gathered and presented.

After a finding of first degree murder, the prosecutor Michael Segu was able to offer observations to the media in his measured, thoughtful manner.

Oh. Was it racism, the "the elephant in the room" that Woods' lawyer Michael Nolin kept tripping over?

Nonetheless David Woods refused to take responsibility for the aggrieved male honour and patriarchal privilege that motivated him to plan and execute the vengeful murder of his wife.  He appealed his conviction.

*The testimony of Dorothy's friend was challenged by Woods' lawyer; the judge allowed it.

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ADDED: to provide a context for this post.  There have been many confrontations after the Ghomeshi decision, particularly with regard to those who seem compelled to police what can be properly criticized.  On both sides of the divide, many have descended into use of hyperbole.

These screen caps indicate how most criticism of Justice Horkins' judgement is met with hostile screeching of SO YOU WANT TO ABOLISH THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE! 

When those accused of being "anti-presumption of innocence" attempt to clarify - they're then accused of being in league with some RWNJ advocacy for victims, such as the useful con job Pierre-Hughes Boisvenu.  Err, no. 

Let's make ALL the girls and women wear niqab, RIGHT?!

Now that I have your attention, my point is that Harper and the CPC are cravenly using the niqab to push hot buttons during this election.

The political cartoon above suggests the niqab issue will provide Harper with a "wind at his back" which he needs desperately needs to win the election race.

There are dozens of institutions that oppress women.  The niqab is the least of them but Harper's Attack Dingo™ Lynton Crosby has found one with formidable scaremongering OPTICS, right?

Susan Delacourt unpacks CPC doublespeak with regard to the niqab.

Rational people and critics of Harper's regime nail what the CPC tactic obfuscates:

This happened north of Ottawa last week. Basil Borutski 'allegedly' executed three women. How can this still occur, in Ontario, in 2015?

“Our systems need to try to pick out these warning signs sooner and do everything we can to provide safety and security,” [Illingworth] said. “There are absolutely gaps.”

The province’s Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, which works with the coroner’s office to review every domestic homicide in Ontario over more than a decade, has compiled a list of risk factors that “indicate the potential for lethality” within relationships or, to put it another way, a check-list to figure out the likelihood that an abuser will kill his partner.

Most of the boxes would be ticked off when it came to Borutski: a history of violence, an escalation of violence, obsessive behaviour, unemployment, isolation of victims and victims having an “intuitive sense of fear.”

From here:

Leighann Burns, the executive director of Ottawa women's shelter Harmony House, said many women feel that abusive men are not monitored closely enough after being released from jail, and that conditions placed on those who are released can, in some cases, easily be ignored.

"We hear from women routinely that the offences that men commit against them are not treated seriously in the criminal justice system," Burns said.

"Somebody who is lethally violent, who has clearly got no respect for the system or any sanctions that are meted out — there's not much that can be done, other than to lock him up or keep her hidden," she said.

So, probation officer are overworked, likely because of a large client load which, at the risk of provoking shrieks from Babs Kay, I will guess is 90% male offenders.

Remember Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Mohammad Amir, 50? Their bodies were found in the family’s Nissan, submerged in the Rideau Canal on June 30, 2009. The family members who killed them were able to "justify" their murders using the same twisted patriarchal ideology that motivated Borutski.  

Women "provoke" their murderers by defying the Gawd-given control entrusted to men to extract resources from women.  If women and girls refuse to provide men with what they want and demand, they're disposable.  They can be threatened, harmed, damaged, tortured and killed with impunity.  That chilling premise is the core of patriarchal extremism throughout the world.

So, the niqab? Just as oppressive as Harper's Hard-On Crime regime of venal liars who did NOTHING during their 9 years in government to make Canada safer for women and girls.


For a rueful chuckle to end my pessimistic rambling, check out my co-blogger's post about #CdnNiqab as well has the photos that folks posted on Twitter.

Le théâtre politique, Québec-style.

What is currently unfolding in La belle province is a spectacle.  It's not Grand Guignol yet, but given the inflammatory issues involved, it may yet descend to that.

The knives are certainly being sharpened, and they will be used judiciously to silence critics and opponents.

MP Maria Mourani was expelled from the Bloc Québécois caucus following comments she made about the proposed Quebec charter of values: la charte des valeurs québécoises.

In an interview with Radio-Canada on Wednesday, Mourani said Quebec's charter of values was a political miscalculation on the part of Premier Pauline Marois.

Mourani was making the comments as a spokesperson of a pro-sovereignist group in favour of secularism which calls itself "les indépendantistes pour une laïcité inclusive."

Bloc Québécois Leader Daniel Paillé said Mourani's comments are "irreconcilable" with the party's position.

The Parti Québécois claims that this Charter will unify all Quebecers within a secular state, one that is devoid of all image and symbols of adherence to religious beliefs.

Crucifixes prominently displayed on provincially funded public institutions are to be exempt from the Charter.  Its continued presence is defended as a valid historical and cultural artifact for the majority of Quebecers, in patronizing rhetoric uttered by Bernard Drainville.

Last year, PQ candidate Djamila Benhabib had the temerity to suggest, as a follow-up to the recommendations of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, that the MASSIVE crucifix hanging in the National Assembly be taken down.  She was attacked and

... forced by members of her own party to recant, she was castigated as a foreigner with alien values and an unpronounceable name by Saguenay mayor Jean Tremblay. Her crime? Not having enough cultural Catholicism to know that the principle of secularism only applies to other religions.

The crucifix is a reminder of the oppressive, authoritarian and violent power that the Catholic church wielded.  Many First Nations people and descendants of the survivors of La grande noirceur do not wax nostalgic about the crucifix.

...Charles Taylor, the well-known academic who co-chaired a provincial commission into reasonable accommodation in 2007, describes the proposal as an “absolutely terrible act of exclusion.” So the debate is on.

Former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry has lashed out at English Canadian media for “Quebec bashing” while covering the matter. Landry told CBC Radio’s As It Happens that Quebec welcomes immigrants but wants them to join society. “When you change country, you change country,” he said. “And you have to get first the language, then the culture and integrate.”

In the same interview, Landry even goes on to ridicule the idea of police wearing turbans, which harks back to the Reform Party’s 1989 convention resolution stating that Sikhs should be barred from wearing turbans in the RCMP.

Landry’s comments on religious accommodation obviously shift quickly to immigration policy although individuals barred from wearing religious symbols would likely include native-born Quebecers.

From here. 

I have been reading La Presse, Le Devoir, Le Droit and listening to Radio-Canada with regard to la Charte des valeurs québecoises almost non-stop since last Tuesday.  My head hurts from the intellectual dishonesty and contradictions advanced by those who support and vigorously defend la raison d'être of this project.

Yesterday I had a long chat with a neighbour who wears le hijab about faith, spiritual devotion and cultural adaptation, while we were waiting on OC Transpo.  On the bus, I noticed a young man of African ancestry who may have been an immigrant — or born in Canada as my neighbour was.  He wore un chapelet around his neck. This rosary was made of fluorescent green plastic.  It was quite ostentatious.

It reminded me of cab-drivers who prominently display cross or large medallions that feature Catholic saints.  These objects are usually dangling from rear-view mirrors.  I have asked a few of them:  Do you put these in your taxi so that customers will know that you are not a muslim?  The answer is always an embarrassed yes.

And why is there a photo of Tonto, as embodied by Johnny Depp at the beginning of this blog?

Publicity, even negative, is considered by public relations flaks to be a *good thing*.  Which is why the PQ leaked information about la Charte to engineer a "crisis" ahead of its release, and to provoke a negative reaction from the Rest of Canada.  A win/win situation for the PQ.

Like Depp's costume, la Charte is a shallow, histrionic contrivance designed to create a furor, and to disguise the inherent racism and white privilege oozing from this political tactic.

So. Islamophobia exists. Christian and white privilege exists in Canada.  Religious fundamentalists are using the same tactics as the PQ, framing the *problem* to suit their ideology as well as exploiting people's fear and anger.

Violence against women occurs all too frequently; it seems it's only when a crime is motivated by fundamentalist muslim patriarchal ideology that femicide is rigorously investigated and prosecuted according to existing laws.  When the killing of women is fuelled by christian fundamentalism, only feminists feel that the media should equally denounce it.

Fortunately Tabatha Southey rescued me from feeling as gloomy and grumpy as Depp seems — and I don't even have to choose to wear (or not) head-gear for business, cultural, religious or political reasons. 

“The state has no place interfering in the moral and religious beliefs of Quebecers,” Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for the charter, said in a bid to explain its stated rationale.[...]

Mr. Drainville’s voice remained remarkably steady for a man who, we’re asked to believe, understood himself to be addressing the confused population of a province whose citizens have been soldiering on through what he called “a crisis.”

The crisis, he clarified in a follow-up interview, stems from the “tensions” and “much frustration” caused by the “clearly unreasonable religious accommodations” that minorities in the province have been granted on occasion.

By “tensions,” was he referring, for example, to a case this summer when a newspaper reported that Muslim and Jewish groups were allowed to bring their own food into the La Ronde amusement park – which offers no kosher or halal dining option? The outrage caused the park to forbid the practice.[...]

Last year, my mum lost her hair to chemotherapy. She found wearing a wig too uncomfortable to bear and so played around with a scarf for a while but was unhappy with the results.

“I was trying to achieve the graceful look I’d seen on Muslim women,” she told me, “but instead I looked like Princess Anne at the races.”

Eventually, she called the Islamic Society of Guelph and asked if someone could help her. “I’ll give you my wife’s cell number,” the man she spoke to said. “She’s awesome.” The two women met at the rec centre it turned out that they both frequent and my mother was scarf-schooled.

 

Just a reminder: the head covering worn by La Piéta is a *traditional* garment. 

It seems quaint now, just as the babushka certainly was when hundreds of Ukrainian Catholic women immigrated to Canada, their scarves firmly knotted under their chins.

A much earlier DJ! post about women being solidaires with women who choose to wear the hijab, here.

Some decent folks live in Texas but...

its reputation as an extreme right-wing, christian fundamentalist, patriarchal, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic, violent hell-hole is mostly well-deserved.

When Louise (of _Thelma and Louise_) wanted to make a run for Mexico, she wanted to avoid Texas.  Except for the enlightened city of Austin and environs, that is the correct approach to this reactionary US state.

DJ! has many, many blogposts about the Texan political climate and its dominant anti-Choice practices.

This judgement was recently pronounced there:

On Christmas Eve 2009, Ezekiel Gilbert, 30, shot Lenora Ivie Frago, 23, in the neck. She was paralyzed; seven months later, she died due to complications from that injury. On June 6, 2013, Gilbert was acquitted of that crime. He was acquitted because he claims she accepted $150 for escort services but did not have sex with him, which means that he was just defending his property. This acquittal shows the dangerous use to which such common "self-defense" laws can be put.[...]

Gilbert claimed he believed that sex was included in the $150 fee he paid to Frago as an escort; thus, when Frago did not have sex with him, he considered her a thief. Gilbert was probably also concerned about his inability to recover the money, as it would have required admitting to attempting to solicit a prostitute. As such, his attorneys successfully argued, the Texas law permitted the murder.

Criminal prosecutors Matt Lovell and Jessica Schulze, on the other hand, disagreed. Even with the Texas law, they argued that Gilbert's behavior was not protected. The law, they said, only protects "law-abiding" citizens; it does not protect those attempting to force the commission of an illegal act, such as prostitution, as would have been required of Frago.

Obviously, prostitution is illegal in the majority of the United States, which means that these people — if Frago was a prostitute, as is claimed – were already committing a crime. Also, admittedly, punishing Gilbert will not bring back this poor young woman. However, those facts to not obviate the problems with a law that justifies murder by the supposed theft of $150.

There you have it. This is even more callous than "Stand Your Ground" laws, which, as Florida recently demonstrated, works exclusively for men and people of pallor.

Grand merci to @godelnoodle and @godammitkitty for the link.

Another "honour" killing ...

Here are the undisputed facts of this killing, on record as the trial unfolds.

A man killed his girlfriend by hitting her head with a hammer at least 11 times, then he took a knife and stabbed pages of religious text into her body.

Court heard last week part of the passage stabbed in her body read “that which is crooked cannot be made straight.” The crown alleges the accused intended to kill her when he began bludgeoning her with a hammer following an argument about marriage and abortion. The victim, who had missed her period twice, told the accused she no longer wanted to get married, couldn’t handle caring for another child and would get an abortion if pregnant. She asked him to move out of her apartment. 

The accused became angry, looked for a weapon, found a hammer, took it back into the bedroom, and he hit her over and over until she stopped screaming, the jury was told. The accused then fled to Montréal with another woman; the police arrested him upon his return two days later. 

The accused confessed that though he did kill her, he had not intended to murder her. 

I believe the reason that the usual islamophobes - Shaidle and her posse - aren't shriEEEking "honour" killing is that the religious text in question is the bible.  Does it seem familiar?

It should be.

In the memorable words of Mark Steyn, "Must be convenient to have a [religious] code that obliges all your pathologies."  

Fundamentalist christianists shriek about "honour" killing which they CONveniently limit to muslims while disregarding the long tradition of Catholic sophistry which has justified centuries of femicide at the hands of men.

Will the christian Sharia anti-Choice supporters of Bill C-484 as well as Motions 312 and 408 defend this anti-abortion killer?  Certainly.  In his bludgeoning frenzy, the only beating heart he stopped was that of Lucita Charles - there was no zygote, embryo or fetus.

Let The Fetus©™ fetishists' pretzel-twisty propaganda begin!

Photo of Lucita Charles and Mataeo from here.

The role of pigs in Pickton saga.

These are only 15 of the missing women that were killed at the Pickton farm in Port Coquitlam.

Pigs - the porcine type of Sus genus - were happenstance accomplices in the murders. They were recruited to remove the evidence.

What is emerging from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, established to examine how police investigated the disappearance of dozens of sex trade workers from the Vancouver Downtown Eastside "combat zone" is that two-legged *pigs* stuck their snouts in, with the result that a number of deliberately engineered events derailed the investigations.

Certain police documents — including notes from their investigations — have not been disclosed. Pages from reports have mysteriously vanished. Police witnesses have offered conflicting accounts of key events. “This case has all the familiar hallmarks of a police cover-up,” says Mr. Ward, choosing his words carefully. “And I’m afraid the inquiry may be enabling it.”

Why, despite their strong suspicions, their corroborating information from tipsters, and their knowledge of Pickton’s violent history with prostitutes, did police wait years to stop the serial killer? Who knew what, and when did they know it? Mr. Ward doubts the inquiry will answer those questions, because they involve high-ranking police officers and others with too much to lose. [For example] why, in 1998, [was] a decision made by B.C.’s criminal justice branch to stay charges of attempted murder and unlawful confinement against Pickton, after his near-fatal stabbing of a Vancouver prostitute at his farm?

Pieces of the story emerged at Pickton’s marathon murder trial in 2007. He was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder.

From here. At the time, there was a strong impression, supported by Willy Pickton himself, that he accepted the role of fall guy in order to divert attention from other people involved in the bloody carnage, and in events that took place at the pig farm.

This sharp woman testified at the inquiry in January:

The investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton suffered from the same kind of systemic failures as the investigation of Ontario serial killer Paul Bernardo, the Missing Women inquiry was told Monday.

Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Jennifer Evans, who was asked by the inquiry to provide an expert analysis of the Vancouver police and RCMP investigations of Pickton, said there was a systemic communication breakdown between Vancouver police and the Mounties.

From here and here:

In her report, Evans was critical of an interview of Pickton done on Jan. 19, 2000, by RCMP Constables Ruth Yurkiw and John Cater. [...]

During the interview, Pickton was asked about an informant's claim that Pickton was seen one night butchering a woman in a barn on his Port Coquitlam farm.

Pickton, claiming he had never hurt anyone, told the officers they could search his farm and even take soil samples to search for DNA.

"I ain't got nothing to hide," Pickton said at the time.

But the officers never took Pickton up on his offer.

In her report, Evans wrote: "The worst case scenario was that Pickton would refuse them entry; the best case scenario, we will never know."

And this week:

Wracked by personal grief and disillusioned by a loss of confidence in the VPD and RCMP, Vancouver police Det. Const. Lori Shenher broke down on the stand at the Missing Womens Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday.

Shenher’s two days of testimony painted a very grim picture of policing in the Lower Mainland, suggesting badly flawed efforts by the VPD and RCMP possibly allowed drug addicted sex workers to die needlessly. [...]

Shenher eventually got a handful more investigators. But two “interfered” with the effort because they were “racist, sexist and homophobic,” Shenher said.

Shenher admitted in cross-examination that tips and reports of missing women were likely lost because a VPD civilian member was “racist.”

She said she missed many investigative avenues and engagement with sources was “woefully inadequate” because she didn’t have the needed time or resources.

Shenher reluctantly acknowledged that she came to believe senior management did not expect her to be successful. She said she heard an allegation that Vancouver deputy police chief John Unger referred to the missing women as “just f-cking hookers,” in a meeting.

Most of the missing women were of mixed ancestry - Aboriginal, European, African, Asian.

Here's a personal account from a woman who experienced this toxic environment first-hand.

I was in Vancouver in the early 1990s, looking for work in the medical field for which I was trained. I had never been in Vancouver before. I got temporary work in the East End of Vancouver. It was like they had declared war on women, all women. I couldn't walk down the street without being sexually harassed and I was in my forties. On one occasion this man followed me onto a bus, saying he was going to follow me home. I asked the bus driver for help - he was brilliant in getting rid of this creep, much more than the police would have been, though I didn't realize that at the time. Looking back, it must have been in the mass murder period and every man in the place knew he could get away with virtually anything. I mentioned my problems at the clinic where I was working, but they were in denial in a major way. I was happy to leave Vancouver after three weeks and would never go back. I have lived in three cities, all larger than Vancouver, and have never experienced such harassment before. In fact, the largest city, London, England, was the safest.

And then, there's RCMP officer Catherine Galliford's perspective.

I believe Robert Pickton was the logistics guy, and that other people may also be criminally involved in violent activities including the femicides, that took place at his farm. How likely is it such facts will be disclosed to the inquiry?

Two important additions:

This website and a blogsite about the missing women.

Vancouver cops who acted with revolting impunity are named by witnesses at the inquiry, here.

Contempt and Cruelty

SHithead's Government is at it again.

Eager to demonstrate that His Contempt Party is *Hard On Crime* Stevie Spiteful and Saint Jason Kenney of Perpetual Heterosexual Virginity are cracking down on what they define as immigration fraud.

Paola Ortiz is the latest victim of their political sturm und drang theatre.

Kenney's Ministry for the Deportation of Dusky-Skinned Folks claim that Ortiz's account of the vicious violence afflicted upon her by her ex-husband cannot be true, since Mexico purportedly and officially *recognizes* rights for women.

What about the volumes of documentation about sadistic sexual assaults and femicides that occur daily in Mexico?

Oh, right. The journalists who chronicle these events are women. And progressives.

Balbulican at Dawg's Blawg has an interesting take on Cons who shrieekkk about violence against women in Moozlim countries - and yet are silent on the situation in Mexico, a country ruled by christo-fascist fundamentalists.

More "honour killings".

Which is just a cover name for gynophobic violence, femicides, and murderous patriarchal actions justified by religious beliefs and 'cultural' traditions.

Again.

A convicted rapist out on bail has been arrested along with his cousin for brutally beating his own aunt and another widow to death in the name of family honour. Tension prevails in the area while the accused is unrepentant.

The two women were attacked at Ranila village in Bhiwani district late Sunday night. The horrific crime was committed in front of at least 200 villagers, including dozens of women, but nobody came to the two women's rescue.

"The bodies were lying unattended in the open and nobody had touched them till the arrival of police," said a police official.

The victims were identified as Suman, 35, the mother of an eight-year-old girl, and Shakuntala, 40, the mother of a 15-year-old boy. They were beaten up badly with sticks by Shakuntala's nephew Naresh, 23, and his cousin Subhash, 22, police said.

From here. Those acts are also terrorism. It serves as an example to the fate that awaits other women, if they dare to attempt to evade the control of male propriety. It ensures that they obey, and live in a state of fear.

Grand merci to Gay Persons of Colour who wrote about this.

Octo-Pop Gibson threatens "honour killing".

Given Mel's religious proclivities, facts emerging from his rancorous child-custody and legal battles with Oksana Grigorieva are neither shocking nor surprising. He's a violent gynophobe as well as as well as a sexist, anti-semitic and racist man.

It's being reported that his hate-fuelled rants were unleashed during fights with his ex, as their relationship unraveled.

"You're an embarrassment to me," Mel tells her at one point. "You look like a f***ing pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault."

Mel's profane outbursts are littered with references to Oksana being a "whore" and "c**t".

In another tirade, Mel tells Oksana: "How dare you act like such a bitch when I have been so f**king nice." He warns, "I am going to come and burn the f**king house down... but you will blow me first."

Grigorieva claims she made tapes of his outbursts after he uttered death threats and became physically abusive towards her.

I guess she refused to dress modestly in accordance with the precepts of Gibson's traditionalist catholic church - with her head covered and wearing only ankle-length skirts, never pants.

How likely would it be, were Gibson to kill Grigorieva - as legal documents have documented that he has threatened to do - her murder'd be headlined as an "honour killing"?

"Honour" killings and the murderer.

Last weekend I heard an interesting fact from a physician friend who works part-time as coroner in Toronto.

She told me the following: when police are called to the scene of an apparent death by hanging and the victim is a woman, they won't assume it was self-inflicted. The body will be removed with cord, rope, or materials seemingly used to cause death left intact so that the evidence can be examined by an expert. It appears that a high percentage of femicides by strangulation are covered up with evidence planted to suggest suicide. There are some knots that can't be tied by oneself. Post-mortem trauma is different, and a forensic scientist can identify the markers of physical injuries that distinguish a garroting inflicted by a second party.

Bad luck for Chris Little, then. His scheme to pin the "honour" killing of his estranged wife on someone else was doomed from the moment he started planning the double murders.

His defense lawyer John Rosen took an approach that required the demonstration that his client's estranged wife had "cheated" on him before they wed, during their marriage and after they separated. Rosen was hoping to show the jury that Little remained dispassionate about his partner's actions and to infer it was the "wronged" woman who had killed Julie Crocker.

The judge did not allow the prosecution to present character witnesses who would have countered Rosen's claims regarding Crocker and Menendez, nor evidence that would have revealed other aspect of Little's criminal behaviour, because the police obtained it in circumstances that violated Chris Little's Charter Rights.

... the jury didn't hear that Little apparently drugged and sexually assaulted Crocker while she was unconscious, something which was revealed in a court document obtained by The Star.

The jury also never saw the video of the attack, which police found hidden in a basement ceiling of the home where Crocker was murdered. Justice Michelle Fuerst ruled that York Regional Police violated Little's Charter rights in the search that unearthed the video and a pin-hole camera. Exactly when the apparent drugging and sexual assault occurred is not clear.

There are of course like-minded men who claim that Little was unjustly accused and unfairly held accountable for crimes that Crocker provoked with her "immoral" behaviour. That was the line of defense Little's lawyer pursued, and the comments posted wherever accounts of the trial were published are from men who believe that Little is innocent and/or justified in his actions. Those men probably wish Canada still had judeo-christian laws that would justify their particular sociopathic feelings towards women.

Teaching Old Farts New Strategies.

In spite of decades of work done by feminists and women's organizations with police, it appears that there are lessons that many cops and their administrator bosses are unwilling to learn.

A women's studies professor is criticizing police for not warning women in Edmonton about a man who allegedly sexually assaulted four women within a week after luring them on a social networking site.

"It's quite possible had they alerted women that some of these assaults could have
been prevented. The police could have warned women using social networking sites or dating sites to be specifically careful of someone doing this particular thing," Lise Gotell from the University of Alberta said Tuesday. "And it's quite possible had they alerted women that some of these assaults could have been prevented."

Edmonton police first announced Tuesday afternoon that they had arrested a 22-year-old man in relation to four assaults that allegedly took place in the Millwoods area of the city. The suspect has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual assault with a weapon, three counts of possession of an offensive weapon dangerous to the public, two counts of unlawful confinement and one count each of robbery and theft over $5,000.

Police allege the man contacted the women through a social networking site, developed a relationship with them over several days, lured them to a remote location, threatened and sexually assaulted them.

Note that Gotell, an award-winning prof at the University of Alberta, is first identified through her association with Women's Studies which is an interdisciplinary academic program that right-wing conservatives often attack and attempt to discredit.

In Manitoba, cold cases and historical homicides of women are to be re-investigated.

Justice Minister Dave Chomiak first told the Free Press last month that the RCMP and Winnipeg Police were dusting off the old cases. The news came shortly after 17-year-old Cherisse Houle was found dead, face down in a ditch, and Chomiak
himself wondered if a serial killer could be responsible. ...

Former Vancouver police officer turned serial-killer profiler Kim Rossmo told the Free Press that it wouldn't surprise him if a serial killer was at work in Winnipeg.
"It would be shocking to think that in a city the size of Winnipeg, that you wouldn't have one or more serial killers preying on prostitutes over a 30-year period," Rossmo said.

Do cops become so hardened by their obligation to view prostitutes as criminals, rather than human beings - a consideration always generously awarded to their clients who are offered an opportunity to bypass criminal charges by enrolling in "John School" - that when women are butchered, they shrug it off? Don't they care that these are someone's daughter, sister, mother? And is the fact that many of them are Aboriginal women lead to a somewhat desultory investigation of their murders?

If there are other versions of Willy Pickton (and his suspected accomplices at the pig farm, who have somehow escaped criminal charges) who are stalking and killing women in Manitoba, the police don't appear very committed to finding him to stop his campaign of murder and terror.

Anti-feminists tell lies about feminists.

Anti-feminists tell lies about feminists.

Not exactly an earth-shattering or tell-all statement, is it?

Here’s the thing: whenever SUZANNE, a.k.a. Blob Blogging Wingnut, the wannabe Sarah-Palin-lookie-like “Choice” for Childcare and ‘Hunter’ go ballistic with their anti-feminist screeching, MASSIVE lies are involved.

Distortion, spin, fabulating, obfuscation, falsehood, prevarication – call it what you will - it all boils down to big, fat lies offered up with the greatest of disingenuousness as reality. That reality for the close-minded, conservative, patriarchy-toadying anti-feminists is a load of fabrications cobbled from their fears, their inability to think coherently and their determination to slander the anti-violence work that feminists do.

Thus criminal charges against the alleged murderers of Zainab, Geeti and Sahar Shafia and Rona Amir Mohammed becomes an opportunity for a Blogging Tory anti-feminist to rail against feminists.

Hunter’s two-fold objective is muddled by her confused rhetoric, atrocious syntax, spelling mistakes and demented comments by her usual chorus of sycophants.

1) Discredit the decades of work that feminists have accomplished to ensure that all forms of familial/domestic/intimate violence against women is processed properly in the criminal justice system.

2) Attack people of islamic faith and/or culture.

JJ at unrepentantoldhippie did a formidable job of shredding Hunter’s sorry excuse for a blogpost to bits. She also has an excellent post about a recent femicide in Alberta.

The last words though belong to Sherene Razack.

"I get really distressed by the idea that a really terrible violence that has been done to girls and women is now getting framed as a kind of hate fest, something about Islam and Muslims," says Sherene Razack, professor of sociology and equity studies at University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Razack says the term also detracts from the real issue, which, in the end, simply boils down to violence against women.

Razack's dissection of the gynophobia that supports the murderous and violent actions directed towards all women is cogent and compassionate, whereas Hunter's raving is the disjointed and illogical shrieeeking of an apologist for christian neo-con wife-beaters, rapists and other abusers who are not brown-skinned and seemingly, in her belief system, allowed those social conventions that give them authority over the lives of their women.

Update: An ironic footnote to Hunter's "Where are the feminists?" screed. Yesterday she posted a YouTube video that has gone viral in the last week, with the inane comment "I suspect this will be a very happy marriage!". When you visit this 'lefty' (according to Hunter's definition) couple's website, they urge the fans of their joyful wedding ceremony to support a progressive organization working to end domestic violence. Duh!

Hundreds of women were murdered on Terrazas' watch.

Demonstrations in Montréal, Ottawa and Mexico were held today to express opposition to the presence of Francisco Barrio Terrazas, Mexico's new ambassador to Canada.
From here:

[He] assumed the cushy diplomatic posting on February 26th, 2009. He had previously served as mayor of Ciudad Juarez, known as the Murder Capital of North America, and later as governor of Chihuahua state.
...
Representing the regime of Felipe Calderón in Canada is a man who governed a city where more four hundred women have been killed since 1993. Many of the women killed were sexually assaulted first. Barrio Terrazas refused to call for an investigation until 1998.

"We can't accept that Canada, a model country that's culture is based on the respect of human rights and rule of law, could shelter a person who tolerated the murder and rapes of women and girls," reads a statement concerning Barrio Terrazas' appointment from May our Daughters Come Home, a women's group based in Juarez.

In Montréal several organizations, including la Fédération des femmes du Québec released statements protesting his appointment and deploring his complicity in allowing the murders of women to continue unchecked and undermining investigations into the criminal activities that have brutalized women in Ciudad Juarez.

Pregnancy and femicide

The compulsory pregnancy crowd, also known as the fetus-fetishizers and anti-choice criminalizers, rarely if ever consider that this condition can be a factor in precipitating femicide.

Stephen Hart, a psychology professor at Simon Fraser University and an expert in psychopathic behaviour, has worked with the B.C. Institute Against Family Violence to look into spousal homicides in the province. Hart said that only about one-third to one-half of the relationships he studied showed a “pattern of escalating violence”. Another subsection of men showed a pattern of violence “across relationships”, while another one-third of cases showed no prior warning of violent intent. But here, men may have been triggered by a stress factor, which can include pregnancy.

Rosemary Gartner is a University of Toronto sociology professor has done extensive research and authored many studies and reports about femicide. There are a couple of issues around pregnancy,” Gartner said. “One is that some men respond to pregnancy with fear and trepidation—it means both a financial and emotional commitment to both the woman and the child. Another part has to do with the man [falsely] believing she is leaving him or that she has been unfaithful to him. Sometimes men question the paternity of the pregnancy.”

Hart agreed with Gartner that pregnancy is a “real risk factor”. “In the United States, the homicide of the mother is one of the major causes of prenatal mortality,” Hart said.

Information available here indicates that homicide is a leading cause of traumatic death for pregnant and postpartum women in the United States, accounting for 31 percent of maternal injury deaths. Also, women with unplanned pregnancies have a two to four times greater risk of suffering violence from their husbands or partners than women whose pregnancies were planned.

Although funding has been returned to Status of Women Canada, with the anti-feminist bias of “Canada’s New Government” visibly on display, what’s the possibility that any ongoing research into the prevention of femicide will be supported? Certainly not, if it challenges the half-truths and disinformation provided by groups such as the REAL-ly fundamentalist women.

(This particular entry is not meant as parody. There are times when it’s difficult to find humour in the unconscionable cruelty of those who claim to champion the pre-born (their terminology) as though their cause were exempt from the realities that women experience, pregnant or not.)
First posted at Birth Pangs.