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.

Enough is enough

This happened, certainly not for the first time on Porter Airlines:

Christine Flynn, 31, said she was buckled in and waiting for Porter Airlines Flight 121 from Newark, N.J. to Toronto to take off early on Monday morning when an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man approached.

"He came down the aisle, he didn't actually look at me … or make eye contact. He turned to the gentleman across the aisle and said, 'Change.'"

Flynn said she was confused at first, wondering why the man was speaking to the other passenger and gesturing toward her. The man didn't speak to her directly, but Flynn said it's clear to her that he didn't want to sit next to her because she's a woman.

Flynn said she might have been willing to accommodate the man had he spoken to her directly and politely asked her to switch seats. She admits language may have been a factor — saying his English "wasn't terrific" — but said his refusal to even make eye contact was offensive.

"He could have made a plan, he could have put in a request," Flynn said in an interview Wednesday on CBC Radio's Metro Morning. "When someone doesn't look at you, and when someone doesn't acknowledge you as person because of your gender, you're a lot less willing to be accommodating.

"Leaving it to the last minute and expecting me to move is appalling. He's expecting me to fall in to that archetypical feminine role and acquiesce."

Other airlines, too.

My response would have been:

Oh yeah.  We see you Patriarchy.  The voluntary members of your ideological clan - the arrogant, the hateful, the entitled, the gynophobic - assume their beliefs are universal and immutable.

My solution:

Another solution: Make the dudes wear blindfolds.  If their eyes offend them by allowing them to *see* women, they can pluck them out.

Patriarchy is not limited to religious institutions; the crusty members of the *New Atheist™old boys club* easily roll within the ruts of obsolescent yet familiar dogma.

I would support a movement to dump ALL THESE DUDES on the next available uninhabited planet, with their toys, their issues, their fetishes, their infuriation, their toxic narcissism.

It's a phenomenon. Wherever male (or one man's) privilege or opinion is challenged, it produces a torrent of consummate women-haters cranking up the volume, using extreme sexualized and/or murderous terms, engaging in habitual 'masculine' trolling tactics directed at the target of their _rage du jour_.

It all eventually degrades into an orgy of vile verbal violence, with these jerks behaving exactly like chimps competing to establish who's the most alpha of them all, who is the most MASSIVELY endowed.

They just form a panel with Barbara Kay and Christie Blatchford judging who has the biggest metaphorical dick.  Or who is the best at compensating mightily

for a lack thereof.

Was Daesh (aka ISIL) a psychop™ ...?

My tweeted response to that sincere yet naive statement was that it could also be vile thuggery and violence tactically branded with religious symbols to appeal to a demographic.

Or later, when @jamynott suggested that it might also be a psyop, I agreed and refined the term, noting that given its brutal propaganda strategy, it should be dubbed a psychop™: a shortened version of psychotic operations, thereby highlighting the word 'chop' found therein ...

Some useful reading with regard to Daesh - how I prefer to call this horde of murderous, rapacious, greedy, patriarchal thugs.  The links are posted within the tweets.

This was published in mid-August, from Hassan Hassan: _A portrait of the menace that is sweeping my homeland_.  Andrew Mitrovica wrote about the group's agit-prop value, here.

Many speculate that some bits of Daesh were originally created, and generously funded by wealthy Saudi Arabian meddlers which explains their ability to purchase expensive military equipment from weapons industries based in the US and China.

Its connection with rebel forces that challenged the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad is also complex, though some have identified various factions.

The horde has been set loose in the Middle East and, like all man-made monsters, may have developed an agenda of its own.

ALSO: For a Canadian perspective goodness, Alison's blogposts at Creekside are a must-read. Start with Khorasan Group, then follow with this and this.  Solid research + intended ironic hilarity.

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.

Cross-border Right Wing Nut Job Gathering ...

to be held in Niagara Falls, Ontario in early September.

This. Warning: mute sound on your laptop or device unless glurge-y music and a sermon about the Virgin Mary is your thing.

It appears that Roméo Dallaire's staff didn't bother to google "Fatima: the path to peace" when the invitation for the senator to speak came into the office.

Had someone done that, they would have discovered the deeply gynophobic, racist, homophobic and anti-semitic ideology this organization promotes.

From here:

Beyond the obvious, what do a far-right Italian politician, the president of the John Birch Society and former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul have in common?

In early September, the men are all scheduled to speak – along with a lengthy list of archconservative clergy, lawyers and academics – at a conference in Canada sponsored by the Fatima Center, part of the “radical traditionalist Catholic” movement, perhaps the single largest group of hard-core anti-Semites in North America. 

Senator Dallaire has withdrawn from the conference.  I'm ambivalent about that.  He should have gone ahead and spoken to the religious RWNJ audience before him, and excoriated their medieval asses.

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.

Whose safety?

A group of students stage an impromptu theatrical intervention, to welcome Con MP Stephen Woodworth (of Motion 312 infamy) to the University of Waterloo.

There are more students protesting his appearance at a *Campus Crusade for Life* club than there are Zygote/Embryo/Fetus zealots present to hear him...

One of the proChoice agitprop performers said to the cops shielding Woodworth from verbal remonstrations and the Vagina-Lady: "Why are you concerned about his safety and not the safety of our uteruses?" 

Here's an overview of DJ! previous posts about Woodworth's Wank.

Grand merci to Canadian Cynic for bringing another Woodworth FAIL to our attention — though I disagree with his comment. Buffoon antics are the perfect way to foil rightwing christian fundamentalist ideology and tactics!

Meanwhile, with M408 the antiChoice forces within Harper's CPC get ready to launch another attack against women's reproductive justice rights and pregnant women's right to choose to carry (or not) their pregnancy to term on March 28 - right in time for Easter! 

Con MP Mark Warawa's Motion 408 is also a thinly disguised attempt to criminalize abortion, women, and the healthcare professionals who provide medical support.

ADDED: According to the Notional Pest, the artist known as Vulveeta is from WLU and he made that nifty outfit.  Those rightwing christianist conservatives like Woodworth just suck all the fun out of fundamentalism.  So dour and sour.

The power of music, dance and drums

 

During the 2011 federal election campaign that Harper's CONtempt party *won* with a pathetic 39% of the popular vote (with the support of CPC fraudulent tactics that likely included voter suppression in key ridings), I wrote this review of world-reknowned Mali musician Salif Keita's concert.

As a result of political upheaval and regime changes in northern Africa, the tenuous balance of power in other countries has been disrupted, notably in Mali where civil war has been raging for months. 

Scott Taylor describes how the Harper government aided the Islamist terrorists. 

In a nutshell, where things stand at the moment in Mali.

One of the revealing actions taken by religious fundamentalist in Mali was to ban all public performances as well as the private expression of music. Yes, music.

There is an uplifting energy to music that fundamentalist ideologies loathe, unless its power can be controlled and directed to support religious and political hegemony or simultaneously exploited by profit-making ventures.

In contrast, the exuberant, chaotic outbreaks of round dancing in corporate public places is a judicious and brilliant manifestation of the open, inclusive and generous spirit of Idle No More.

Leanne Simpson, an Anishinaabe academic and writer, argues that a spirit of celebration has generally characterized Idle No More gatherings.

"One of the things the round dances have demonstrated to me is that there's a joyfulness to this movement," she says.

"It's strategic and it's serious and it's multifaceted but, at the foundation, it's not coming from a place of anger. It's not coming from a place of want. It's coming from a place of joy and connections to our homeland and our cultures."

Idle No More began as a series of teach-ins by four women in the Prairies, and has been spurred on by a female chief on a hunger strike. So it has been very much shaped by women.

It's an incredible thing when you see our women leading," says McMahon. "They bring a power and a balance we as men can't bring. And it's about time."

From here.

Though some may prefer to gleefully focus upon CONtempt party tactics intended to crush the human spirit, it's timely to remember this Indigenous teaching.

A Cherokee elder told a grandchild that all human beings have two wolves doing battle inside them.

One beast is armed with anger, jealousy, fear, greed, vindictiveness, scorn, lies and vanity. The other animal has joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, honesty and empathy in its arsenal. 

The child thought, then asked which creature would win. 

The elder said with twinkling eyes: "The one you feed."

In closing, a round dance exuberantly performed and joyfully expressed on December 22, 2012 at the TD centre in Calgary.

The YouTube displayed was recommended by @CopperBronzed - I am proud to be her ally and her sister in solidarity.

*Mother* Russia and her Totalitarian Christian Patriarchy

From Putin and Kirill - the dogmatic duo that viciously punished Pussy Riot - more ideological crap.

Christians from Russia's Orthodox community are demanding that the country's Apple division remove the famous half-bitten apple logo from its products and replace it with a cross, because they find the apple image offensive to their beliefs.
In popular culture, an apple is often used to represent the fruit that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge when tempted by the devil, as found in Genesis 3 in the Bible – although the exact type of fruit is not mentioned in Scripture.
Still, conservative Christians in Russia have insisted that the logo should be removed and replaced with a cross, Xbitlabs.com reported from a translated article from Interfax news agency.
The Russian conservatives may get their way and force Apple to change its logo because of new laws being proposed in the country's parliament on blasphemy and insults targeting religious, spiritual, or national values. It is expected that President Vladimir Putin will back the laws, especially since the Russian Orthodox Church heavily supported him during his election campaign in 2012. Besides replacing the logo, conservatives may even stop Apple product sales in Russia if they manage to convict the company of committing anti-religious deeds.

From here.

In spite of Amnesty International's concerns for the safety of the Pussy Riot women condemned by Putin's puppet court, they have been sent to serve their sentences in two of the worst prisons in Russia. 

The stench of fundamentalist christian sharia is floating around the Kremlin.

Whether it is islamist misogyny or ultra-orthodox gynophobia, it always ends with violent and murderously vindinctive retaliation against women who won't do men's bidding.

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 pathology of your choice, justified by religious dogma.

Oh yeah?

Well, I want a law making it legal and mandatory for men who believe they will sexually assault women because of the way they're dressed, or for those who have violated women for those very reasons, to be given skewers to poke their eyes out.

Problem solved.

Thus women can continue to dress *provocatively* if they choose to do so, without risking physical or emotional violence. The people who can admire and enjoy their *provocative* attire will assume complete responsibility for their actions and thus won't be projecting their own fetishizing pathologies or sexualized proprietary claims onto *provocatively* garbed female bodies.

Just in case you thought this was an exclusively islamist misogyny, check out the poster held up in the background by a christianist zealot.

*Pussy Riot* grrrlz are threat to Putin and thus Russia.

Imagine living in a country where the government leader flouts the democratic traditions and exploits the system to stay in power, with the assistance of rightwing religious groups and corporate interests.

That would be Russia, not Canada though the Harper regime is moving us closer to Putin's totalitarian ideal every day it remains in power.

Three women - workers, artists, mothers and students - and members of the punk group *Pussy Riots" were arrested five months ago. They have been kept in prison since they performed a prayer to the Virgin Mary to rid the country of Putin, in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

The issue has divided Russian society into two camps. The first group thinks that their song represents an insult to the religious sensibilities of the majority, which ought to be a criminal offense punishable with jail time.

A significantly smaller group – concentrated among Russia's intellectual and artistic communities – argues that while the women may be guilty of bad behavior, their actions should not be considered a serious crime in any secular society. Legal experts now agree, warning of a decrease in public confidence in the Russian judiciary and government institutions.

Some 35,000 people have signed an Internet petition calling for the women's release, and last month more than 100 prominent Russian artists, musicians and public intellectuals signed an open letter to the Kremlin that declared "the criminal case against Pussy Riot compromises the Russian judicial system and undermines confidence in government institutions on the whole."

Some liberals insist that the surprisingly harsh prosecution of the women is being pushed by the Kremlin at the behest of the Orthodox Church, which has grown in political power in recent years and increasingly takes public stands on social matters such as the way Russian women dress and anti-religious artistic expressions. The church denies any direct involvement in the case.

From here; more here and here.



And. Also. We're going for the Abrahamic religious trifecta, thanks to Sarah Silverman's raunchy *indecent* proposal to one of the billionaires meddling in US politics.

Warning: it is NSFW and not for anyone who might be offended by the dubious juxtaposition of ethnocultural jamming, blatant political venality and lesbian sexual practices. Sarah uses her dog to illustrate what she is pitching, though the critter doesn't appear to have been harmed psychologically or otherwise.

Thirdly: a crackpot preacher and recent convert to Islam regurgitates the standard gynophobic fundamentalist ideology that shames women for men's behaviour.

Instead of mandatory burqas, why not issue blindfolds to men who are incapable of taking responsibility for their violence and their abusive actions towards women?

It does raise the question of why women chose to participate in their own objectification and sexualization. Recent studies such as this one observe this phenomenon can be detected beginning at the age of six. Yes, you read that correctly.

Grand merci to Le Devoir, Weywerd Sun, and Dred Tory.

Why AntiChoice is Wrong

AntiChoice is the term ProChoice attributes to those who believe, based on fundamentalist religious ideology and not actual science, that abortion is MURDER!

Wrong. Something that isn't alive cannot be killed.

Gestation requires the nurturing and the giving of life.

At the moment of conception, a physiological process begins. Conditions for a zygote, then embryo and finally fetus to develop from a blob of cells into a viable being have to be correct and appropriate.

The year before I gave birth to my daughter, I had a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. From the outset, I sensed that something was wrong. The physician I consulted when first trimester bleeding occurred asked me how I felt about the pregnancy and wisely suggested that nature would take its course. When I left the hospital - follow-up care after the spontaneous abortion was required, as placental tissue had not been completely evacuated - I felt a great sense of relief.

The following year, I was in much better physical and emotional condition and I embraced every moment of my pregnancy, even the weird klutziness of the last month and a fairly easy birth - which wasn't pain-free since I went into intense labour quickly and thus there was no time to administer epidural anesthesia.

Now, as much as I try to avoid the fundamentalist catholic dogma, religious glurge and glossy photos of anatomical detritus on display at @roseblue's aka Blob Blogging Wingnut blog, every once in awhile I catch a whiff of HER sanctimonious shriEEEking and pitiful bleating - particularly when SHE is pregnant. The irony of HER situation is quite amusing. HER moans and groans about the MASSIVE difficulties and problems of pregnancy would qualify HER for martyrdom, if the Vatican Taliban recognized that female tribulation as such, which it does not.

With M312, Stephen Woodworth hopes to criminalize a medical intervention which terminates a pregnancy.

Since 1988, women and healthcare providers have worked on the parameters of how, why and when abortions happen.

That works, with no necessity for "personhood" legislation for the "preborn". Only the Dominionists and religious zealots want the government inside women's vaginas and uteri.

Perverts? In too many ways to count.

#CreepingSharia

From here:

Tommy Robinson took a few seconds on Sunday evening to make an observation about Twitter's homepage. "Welcome to twitter homepage has a picture of a mosque," he wrote. "What a joke #creepingsharia." Of course, Tommy isn't just any old tweeter, but the co-founder of the English Defence League, a far-right protest group. [...]

In less than 24 hours, #creepingsharia was trending, but what could have become a feed for EDL members and sympathisers to display their hard-hitting "evidence" of the rampant Islamisation of Britain, instead attracted the nimble fingers of sensible and funny tweeters, wittily but firmly telling Robinson and others of his ilk where to shove their ill-informed views. (It's worth pointing out that the "mosque" that started this hashtag, this emblem of creeping sharia law into Britain was in fact the Taj Mahal, the marble mausoleum in India. It's almost as if the very existence of the EDL is based on false information, suspicion and idiocy. Hang on…)

Hilarious. And fundamentalist religious political rightwing racist zealots wonder why rational folks think they're stupid.

I'm going to use that hashtag when tweeting about MP Wankworth's antichoice M312, adding beforehand #catholic.

Grand merci to this tweet.

*Christians* threaten 16 year-old schoolgirl with violence.

The facts about her challenge to US Christofascism:

Jessica Ahlquist, a student at Cranston High School West, sued the city of Cranston and its school committee in April 2011 to remove the banner, which dates back to 1963.

As an atheist, Ahlquist said the mural made her feel excluded and ostracized. She accused the school of violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution's First Amendment, which prevents the government from promoting one religion over another.

From here:

“A Christian Catholic prayer may bring comfort to the majority of students in my school,” said a confident and composed Ahlquist, who sat surrounded by her father, two lawyers, the ACLU Executive Director Steve Brown, a reverend and a rabbi. “But it sends a different message to the large population of students of other faith or in my case, none. I firmly believe that it should not be on display in a public school.”

More here.

Last week, a judge who evaluated the legal arguments of both parties ordered the banner removed.

G-D knows about this and She is not amused.

In fact, She decrees it's the men who should be sitting at the back. Also, to ensure that their gaze won't fall upon the women, the driver will issue blindfolds to the men.

From here:

[...]men told her that she had to get up. Move to the back, they insisted.They were Orthodox Jews with full beards, sidecurls and long black coats, who told her that she was riding a “private bus” and a “Jewish bus.” When she asked why she had to move, a man scolded her.

“If God makes a rule, you don’t ask ‘Why make the rule?’” he told Franchy, who rode the bus at the invitation of a New York World reporter. She then moved to the back where the other women were sitting. The driver did not intervene in the incident.

The B110 bus travels between Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn. It is open to the public, and has a route number and tall blue bus stop signs like any other city bus. But the B110 operates according to its own distinct rules. The bus line is run by a private company and serves the Hasidic communities of the two neighborhoods. To avoid physical contact between members of opposite sexes that is prohibited by Hasidic tradition, men sit in the front of the bus and women sit in the back.

Perhaps to avoid complete physical contact with women, fundamentalist zealot men of all religious orientation should live on a different planet.

Isn't it interesting how the *brothers* of Judaism and Islam ressemble one another in their hatred of women?

Grand merci to lagatta who provided the source material for this post.

Not a rocket scientist, this guy ...

just simply a common variety domestic terrorist.

Quebec police are investigating after a small-town mayor reportedly dumped a gigantic boulder onto the lawn of his ex-wife.

The mayor of St-Theodore-d'Acton, east of Montreal, told a local newspaper he left her a rock of about 20 tons as a birthday present. [...]

Police tell The Canadian Press that their suspect has refused to remove the boulder.

From here, thanks to Julie Lalonde's tweet.

It's quite the elaborate joke, innit? The message: I could have *accidentally* squashed you like a bug while you were sleeping.

Violence against women and children is domestic terrorism. "Honour killings" are the product of patriarchal beliefs, not only religious doctrine.

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.

"Honour killings" - two women dead because of religious extremism.

Shrieeek!

Oh. wait. The father who shot a mother and her daughter is a christian. More about this hateful crime of violence, from here:

A man upset about his high school-age daughter's relationship with a woman killed the girlfriend and her mother in a Southeast Austin home Monday night, culminating a months-long feud between the families, police said Tuesday.

Jose Alfonso Aviles, 45 , went to the house [...] where Norma Hurtado, 24, lived with her mother and shot both women after knocking on the door, officials said Tuesday. He has been charged with capital murder and could receive life in prison or the death penalty if convicted. [...]

Aviles' daughter, who was in the home at the time, found Norma Hurtado and her mother, 57-year-old Maria Hurtado , after they were shot, according to police and court documents.

The daughter's "family was quite upset over this relationship," Austin police Lt. Gena Curtis said Tuesday. "This had been an ongoing dispute between these families and it turned tragic, into a horrific act of violence with the death of two individuals."

The daughter told police that she and Norma Hurtado had been involved in a lesbian relationship, which her father did not approve of, and that there had been disturbances between Aviles and Norma Hurtado, according to an arrest affidavit. An online records search for those incidents turned up a report of a sexual assault in September and a family disturbance in October; however, police did not release details of the incidents.

A US blogger has tagged this as a christian "honour killing". It certainly meets the criteria: murderous violence directed at women by male family members + religious ideology + patriarchal control = "honour killing".

So islamophobes, start your Gawd-given shrieeeking engines for all to hear.

"Of religious fanatics in the Conservative"

There are many great things about Twitter; one benefit is that it allows me to get behind Le Devoir's subscription wall. I follow Hélène Buzzetti; a link to her political piece of the day led to the discovery of this (once again, a modified Google translation for those who don't read French). As we've written before, the Contempt Party provides fundamentalist religious christian non-registered lobbyists like Charles McVety and Faytene Kryskow with direct access to Parliament via its evangelical MPs.

Today we discover that Jason Kenney is someone who believes in religious institutions that maintain catholic sharia. And he is a prominent member of the Harper Regime a political party that appears hell-bent intent upon changing the secularity of government.

Here's a CNN news clip link from the article, circa 1989-90:

The money quote from Le Devoir and the CNN piece:

Jason Kenney initiated a petition asking the Church to withdraw Catholic status from his university. The San Francisco Chronicle asked him about his reasons; Mr. Kenney replied: "If the university is not prepared to offer an educational environment consistent with the Catholic faith, it should cease to call itself Catholic. " On CNN Mr. Kenney said the [pro-choice] group had "destroyed the mission of the university." During the previous year Mr. Kenney tried to impose Catholic prayer before each meeting of the Student Senate, but his motion was defeated. Even the university's administrators found the the activities of young Kenney and others deplorable. Le San Francisco Bay Guardian avait publié en avril 1990 un article détaillant «le siège de la droite à USF». In a San Francisco Bay Guardian article published in April 1990 titled "The siege of the right-wing at USF", former professor Joseph Soehee described this zealous youth movement: "They want the return of the 50s. And I do not mean the 1950, I mean the 1550s: obedience, obedience, obedience."

The title of the post is the translation suggested by Google for "Des fous de Dieu chez les conservateurs" literally: God's crazies in the Conservative's ranks. And also. Paul Wells wonders what the hell Contempt party leader is doing with all his *free* time, now that he's locked out of his PMO politburo his office. This, too:

By the peculiar psychology of campaign journalism, asking a party leader how he has governed the country or how he would proceed if given a mandate to govern it some more is “playing along,” “in the tank,” “throwing lob balls.” Asking him process questions to work through our frustration at how he’s treating us, on the other hand, is “tough” and “uncompromising.”

Look, I find it upsetting that the Conservatives are shutting people out of their events, even people who have previously jumped through the ridiculous hoops it takes to be accepted to Conservative rallies but who are then found unacceptable for whatever Orwellian reason. I’m used to more relaxed rules.

But we are living in deluded fantasy if we think the hardest question an incumbent prime minister can face is about the attendance rules at his campaign events. And I cling to the belief that what’s worst about the Carson affair is that, five years after Harper’s government promised to provide clean water on Indian reserves, it’s still possible to get rich promising clean water for Indian reserves.