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April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Archives for October 2007

How Harper celebrated Women’s History Month

10/29/2007 by Debra

As we near the end of Women’s History Month it is time to pause and reflect on the way our ignoble PM celebrated with us.

Red Jenny tells us of a new bill

The Harper government yesterday introduced legislation requiring all voters – including veiled Muslim women – to show their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.

A Creative Revolution informs us of his support for women in the north

The Status of Women cuts that the UnReal women of Canada so lauded and cheered about like a bunch of mindless maroons, the ones that killed NAWL funding, have had an even harsher effect in the real great white north.

Women in the Yukon are 2.9 times more likely to experience sexual abuse, or be killed by a spouse than women in other parts of Canada. The Organizations that seek to help them are being forced to scramble for alternate funds through bake sales and garage sales.

Mere days before WHM we saw the passing of National Association of Women and the Law

Close Harper friend and advisor Tom Flanagan speaks;

Flanagan calls funding cuts to Status of Women Canada and the elimination of the Court Challenges Program a “nice step,” asserting without equivocation that Conservatives will “defund” all equality-seeking groups – with feminists at the top of the list. He goes further, clarifying that Conservatives also plan to choke-off these groups’ supposedly privileged access to government by, for example, denying “meetings with ministers.” But for strategic reasons, Flanagan notes, this will all happen incrementally. To avoid the perception of mean-spirited retribution, he says, “incrementalism is the way to go.”

Avoid the perception yet not the reality.

And the PM Statement section? Still reads, “forthcoming”.

Of course Harper is proving that actions do speak louder than words.

That’s ok Stevie we’re not waiting for your call…we’re just not that into you.

Filed Under: Canada, feminism, Harper, Politics, women, women's history month Tagged With: Canada, conservatives, equality, Harper, NAWL, SWC, Tom Flanagan, women's history month

Fighting Back or Prince hates Babies

10/27/2007 by Debra

Apparently Prince, in lieu of a career, spends his time scouring the net for instances of “copyright violation”.

A well-placed source directly involved in the situation confirmed to ABC News that Prince was directly involved in seeking the takedown of Lenz’s video.

“This guy scours the Internet,” the source said of the legendary artist, who once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and wrote the word “Slave'” on his cheek until he won back the rights to his music from another publishing company.

“He’s really intense about this stuff,” the source said, adding that Lenz’s video “happened to be one of many” that artist apparently located online and demanded be taken down.

The violation in question involves 29 seconds, yes that’s right 29 seconds of Let’s Go Crazy Baby, in a home video of a baby. Serious stuff.

Prince petitioned YouTube to take down the video, which they did. However, in a classic case of don’t get mad, get even, Stephanie Lenz has filed suit;

“I thought even though I didn’t do anything wrong that they might want to file some kind of suit against me, take my house, come after me.

“And I didn’t like feeling afraid,” she continued. “I didn’t like feeling that I could get in trouble for something as simple as posting a home video for my friends and family to see.”

She contacted a leading cyber rights legal organization called the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and filed a civil lawsuit against the music publisher, claiming they were abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by sending out reams of what are known in the industry as “take down notices” to Web sites like YouTube, claiming their artists’ copyrights had been infringed upon — when in fact, sometimes they may not have been at all.

Youtube has put the video back up.

Filed Under: america, media Tagged With: copyright, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Electronic Frontier Foundation, internet, music, petition, Prince, Stephanie Lenz, YouTube

Code Blue for Canada?

10/24/2007 by Debra

Code Pink In a stunning move of synchoanty, Canada denied access to both Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin because they were on an FBI list of undesirables.

Today the Globe and Mail is carrying Ms Benjamin’s response to this occurrence.

If Canada’s policy of excluding those who have committed non-violent civil disobedience were truly enforced, the results would be absurd. It would block 14 members of the United States Congress, including Holocaust survivor Rep. Tom Lantos for his arrest outside the Sudanese Embassy in 2006 protesting genocide in Darfur. The list of banned Americans would be populated by Nobel Prize-winners, members of clergy, writers, scholars, actors, musicians, activists and the thousands of Americans who have been arrested protesting the Iraq war.

I’ve taken out the link to the petition as some dumb fuck has linked it to a young porn site.

Filed Under: Canada Tagged With: Canada, Code Pink, Government Stupidity, peace

Democracy takes another hit

10/24/2007 by Debra

Bene Diction Blogs On writes today on how parliament has managed to disinfranchise 4.4% of Canadian voters.

Voters now need a residential address with a street name and number before casting a ballot, because of an amendment to the Canada Elections Act that Parliament enacted four months ago.

But more than one million rural Canadians have no proper residential or civic address. Many of them use post office boxes, and on some native reserves residents only use the name of their community. (CTV)

Perhaps when we finally lose our right to have a say voters will sit up and take notice.

Filed Under: Canada, Canada Elections Act, voting Tagged With: Canada, Canada Elections Act, voting

Anger, Resentment & Politics

10/22/2007 by Debra

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough. ~Bede Jarrett

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. ~Phyllis Diller

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. ~Mark Twain

Life has intervened lately on my ability to read and/or blog as often as I would like. However, I have reached a state of anger and resentment of the whole political process that I simply must vent.

It would appear that the concept of democracy has all but been lost.

The current Harper Government™ seems to have confused being elected by a modest number of people with absolute right to mob rule. Further evidence of the need to reframe our current process. The lack of will shown by the other parties to partake in any form of fight against this Bush wannabe is an outrage. They are all, as modern day Nero’s, fiddling while all our hard won rights and cherished freedoms burn.

Speaking frankly as a voter, a citizen, a woman, A CANADIAN, I really don’t give a rat’s furry ass how your poll numbers look. Want better poll showings? DO SOMETHING! SAY SOMETHING!

Prove you are there to do more than warm seats and gather pensions.

Filed Under: Greens, Harper, Liberals, NDP, Politics Tagged With: anger, Greens, Harper, Liberals, NDP, Politics

Please Try to Remember the First of Octember

10/16/2007 by Debra

If you are, or were, a Dr. Suess fan you may remember this book. Written about the glorious things you could do on the First of Octember such as stay up all night to drink “66 six packs of Doodle Delight.”

October is Women’s History month. A current look at the SWC site shows this statement from our Prime Minister;

“forthcoming”

Mid way through October Canada’s New Government™ has yet to issue a statement. Perhaps the script from Gwen was delayed….indefinitely?

One imagines that Harper et al would far rather Women’s History month, and indeed all matters pertaining to women’s equality, be relegated to the First of Octember.

Think of the glorious things he could do like ignore the child care issue, roll back programs that most especially help women, place tax cuts above health care, child poverty, employment issues….mmm seems he is already doing that.

Perhaps our ignoble PM lives in the land of Octember.

October 18th is Person’s Day. This is a day to commemorate the Person’s Case.

On October 18, 1929, the five Lords of the Judicial Committee came to the unanimous conclusion that “the word ‘persons’ in Section 24 includes both the male and female sex.…” According to them, the exclusion of women from public office was “a relic of days more barbarous than ours.

It is a sad and sobering thought that there are those who would joyously lead us back to those “barbaric” times. Those who see women not as persons in their own right but simply as wombs from which issue the cannon fodder needed to perpetuate war. War against other countries and war against the marginalized.

As we reflect upon Women’s History let us not forget the struggles that we are free not to face. The struggle for education, for our own name, for our own property, to not be included as property, the right to be paid a decent wage, to fight against sexual impropriety in the workplace, the right to control our reproduction, the right to say no in marriage and so much more.

Our fight to keep our rights, to move forward in our struggle, to ensure our daughters’ never have to fight to be recognized as persons in their own right, is one that must not be relegated to the First of Octember.

( cross posted @ Rose’s Place )

Filed Under: feminism, Harper, Persons Case, women's history month Tagged With: abortion rights, conservatives, feminism, Person's Day, Persons Case, women's history month

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