April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Debra

Happy Mother’s Day

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This Mother’s Day I want to give a gift to my daughters, the gift of a voice.

Throughout history those who seek to reign despotically first seek to silence and disenfranchise the women, this current PM scrabbling after a majority like a junkie jonesing for a fix is no different. He started by all but completely destroying SWC and has continued to show disdain for women with quotes about “left-wing fringe groups” and Bush style gag laws on abortion for women in war-torn countries, and of course he continues to defund women’s groups and programs.

Senator Nancy Ruth caused a furor when she told aid groups “to “shut the fuck up” about abortion funding, or risk a government backlash.” She speaks the truth. Harper wants nothing more than for women to shut the fuck up and let him get on with destroying healthcare, social housing, women’s groups/shelters, eroding human rights, forwarding a right-wing fundamental christian agenda, and creating a climate of war, building prisons in place of social programs and spending all our tax dollars on funding corporate welfare payments.

My Canada is not a place where women shut up and do as they are told. My daughters are not incubators. We will continue to work for a Canadian society where all are valued and cared for and welcomed.

We will not Shut the Fuck Up!

CON Artists

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Harper made it clear from the beginning that he was not on the side of those who didn’t vote for him and was particularly not on the side of women. It is not really surprising then that Senator Nancy Ruth said, “shut the f— up” or it could get worse.”

“If you push it, there will be more backlash,” said Ruth, who fears that outrage will push her boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to take further measures against abortion and family planning – abroad, or maybe even in Canada. “This is now a political football. This is not about women’s health in this country.”

A political football indeed, the mother of all motherhood issues. There is nothing that would suit the cons better than to cause divisions such as are being played out in the States. Real issues, the economy, Afghanistan, health care would be covered over with messages of gurgling babies and how many angels can dance on the head of pin.

There are those who are gleefully jubilant over this story and the recent defunding of 13 women’s groups and 1 project. They think criminalizing abortion and putting women back in the control of men is god’s will and arrogantly belive we should all rule our lives by their choice of lifestyle.

Before they get too enamoured of Harper and his tactics they might want to read this article from the Independent.

David Cameron leader of the British Conservatives is branding his cons as compassionate and lauding Hammersmith and Fulham Council as an example of his compassionate approach. Let’s have a look at the compassion.

After promising to make things better for the very poor the first thing they did was simultaneously crack down on the poor and close 12 homeless shelters. Maybe you aren’t homeless and don’t see how that applies to you. Are you a young pregnant woman in an abusive relationship?

She was eight months pregnant. She explained she was being beaten up by her boyfriend and had finally fled because she was frightened for her unborn child. The council said they would “investigate” her situation to find “proof of homelessness” – but she told them she had nowhere to go while they carried it out. By law, they were required to provide her with emergency shelter. They refused. They suggested she try to find a flat on the private market.

For four nights, she slept in the local park, on the floor. She is still traumatised by the memories of lying, pregnant and abandoned, in one of the wealthiest parts of Europe.

Are you a working mom?

David Cameron says he wants to make Britain “the most family-friendly country in the world” with “childcare as a top priority”, but his showcase council has increased charges for childcare by a reported 121 per cent

Perhaps you are disabled or know someone who is.

[…]Within three months, the promise was broken. Debbie Domb, 51, is a teacher who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. She had to give up work, and now she needs 24/7 care. After being lifted up by a large metal harness and placed in her wheelchair so she can talk to me, she explains: “This was always such a great place to live if you were disabled. You were really treated well. Then this new council was elected and it’s been so frightening… The first thing that happened when they came in was that they announced any disabled person they assessed as having ‘lower moderate’ needs was totally cut off. So people who needed help having a shower, or getting dressed, had that lifeline taken away completely. Then they started sending the rest of us bills.”

This is Harper’s wet dream. You may in your anti-feminist, anti-choice bubble be gloating for now, however, don’t be blinded to Harper’s real agenda which has little for the average Canadian regardless of whether you share his misogynist vision.

quote from The Star

Twitter Twazis

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and now a post of great social and political import 😉

In [a] stunning display of  the fact that some people really need to get a life,  your tweets are being watched for proper grammatical syntax.

A small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing people’s tweets.

They build their own algorithms to sniff out tweets with typos or flawed grammar, or written in ALLCAPS, and then send scolding notes to the offenders. They see themselves as guardians of a new behaviour code: Twetiquette.

“It would be kind of nice if people cleaned up their grammar a little bit and typed in lowercase, and made the Internet a little bit smarter,” said one of them, Nate Fanaro, a 28-year-old computer programmer from Buffalo whose Twitter handle is CapsCop.

Know what else would be nice? If self important little twits minded their own damn business!

SOURCE

Computer Tech Barbie – Pink Meets Tech

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Mashable has a great article on women/Barbie and tech. Mattel has introduced Computer Tech Barbie and some are upset that she has her usual pink accessories, but for women and girls who like pink or pretty does fashion preference automatically rule out career choice?

This false dichotomy — that you have to choose between being feminine and “looking the part” of a mathematician or scientist — might be part of what turns girls off from math and science in the first place.

Or maybe girls don’t aim for careers in math and science because they don’t see role models. Even Ada Lovelace had role models. Her mom, the “Princess of Parallelograms,” loved math and gave Lovelace a very intensive math education. And Lovelace was also mentored by legendary female science writer and polymath Mary Somerville.

Or maybe girls are afraid of being the only woman in their technology courses or workplaces. If that’s the case, their concerns are certainly warranted. Not only are fewer women entering the information technology field, but more women are leaving the field mid-career.

A recent Harvard Business Review report, The Athena Factor, notes that “52% of highly qualified females working for SET [science, engineering, and technology] companies quit their jobs, driven out by hostile work environments and extreme job pressures.” These women report that they lack mentors and feel intense isolation in the workplace.

The article also points to a great female role model Ada Lovelace;

In 1842 Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his analytical engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer, and future prime minister of Italy, wrote up Babbage’s lecture in French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève in October 1842.

Babbage asked Ada Lovelace to translate Menabrea’s paper into English, subsequently requesting that she augment the notes she had added to the translation. Ada spent most of a year doing this. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea’s paper, were then published in The Ladies Diary and Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs under the initialism “A.A.L.”.

In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Lovelace’s notes as a description of a computer and software.[26]

Her notes were labeled alphabetically from A to G. Note G is the longest of the seven. In note G, Ada describes an algorithm for the analytical engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is generally considered the first algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and for this reason she is considered by many to be the first computer programmer.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, “MIL-STD-1815”, was given the number of the year of her birth. In addition Lovelace’s image can be seen on the Microsoft product authenticity hologram stickers.[citation needed] Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded a medal in her name[27] and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students of computer science.[28]

Not Even Men Believe That

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Over at Bread & Roses Antonia posted a link to a David Warren column which included such gems as;

Consider for instance the proposition, “a woman’s right to control her own body.” Not even men believe this, and a pregnant woman, who actually believes that the baby she is carrying is part of her own body, should wait for it to kick. Perhaps she has an astoundingly primitive notion of biology; but I should think even a woman of subnormal intelligence would understand the difference between what is in that bump she is carrying, and what is in the rest of her flesh. To wit: a different person.

“a woman’s right to control her own body.” Not even men believe this

What exactly does he mean by this? For sure the statement is no lie as we know that

*rapists don’t believe it
*abusive husbands/boyfriends don’t believe it
*anti-choice fucktards don’t believe it
*men’s rights fucktards don’t believe it
*the pope doesn’t believe it
*the taliban doesn’t believe it

Geez Davey you’ve found yourself some great company!

Power To The People!

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Attended the Hamilton CAPP rally, what an inspiration. Canadians of all ages, income groups, ethnicities and political stripe joined together in a common cause it was all so…Canadian!

Stephen Harper – Canadians HAVE noticed, we DO care, and all your Parliament are belong to us!

Power to the People

Pics from the Rally