April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Debra

A primer on Hezbollah

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After seeing this quote pasted into a story about Canadian citizens being brought home from Lebanon

His appearance came on the same day that the White House warned it had evidence that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are trying to destabilize and overthrow Lebanon’s government.

Echoing the U.S. warning, the minister said Lebanon could again erupt into violence.

“Hezbollah are a terrorist organization armed to the teeth. They are like the Taliban on steroids,” he said. “They are a very dangerous organization.”

I decided to educate myself a little more on the Hezbollah.

The Dominion has a very informative article

Interestingly, both Jean Chretien and Bill Graham, then Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs respectively, resisted placing Hezbollah on the terrorist list. Chretien met with Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, in Beirut in October 2002. On November 28, a new set of groups was banned–and Hezbollah was still not among them. Irwin Cotler denounced the omission as “inexplicable and, given their [Hezbollah’s] murderous ideology, unconscionable.”

B’nai Brith responded the next day, on November 29, with a press conference in which they announced a lawsuit against the government, brought on the grounds that the government was failing to protect Canadians by refusing to ban Hezbollah.

The following day, November 30, the National Post picked up a story from the Washington Times claiming that, at a Beirut rally, Nasrallah had condoned and encouraged suicide bombing. Nasrallah was alleged to have said: “Suicide bombings should be exported outside Palestine”; and “I encourage Palestinians to take suicide bombings worldwide, don’t be shy about it.”

Two weeks later, after going to Beirut to investigate, CBC journalist Neil MacDonald exposed the story as a fabrication.

snip

MacDonald reported on CBC on December 11 that, “Ottawa now knows that the Nasrallah quotes in the Washington Times about exporting suicide attacks were almost certainly never uttered.”

However, the alleged comments by Nasrallah had already received enough attention to force the government’s hand; a special Cabinet committee meeting was held the evening of December 10, 2002, in which it was decided to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The Canada Gazette, official newspaper of the government, reported, “The change has been made on the basis of the close connection between the organization as a whole and the Hezbollah External Security Organization, and the recent statement by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, encouraging suicide bombings.”

Ann Coulter in Voting Fraud?

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According to an AP story:

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation into whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will probably be turned over to prosecutors, Palm Beach County’s elections chief said Wednesday.

Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney’s office by Friday.

Anderson added that Coulter, since the allegations surfaced, made “efforts to distract and divert focus on the process regarding this complaint. … I did express my frustration to the state attorney in a recent meeting and warned him I may need his services,” according to an article in the Palm Beach Post.

But Anderson said Coulter’s voting rights would not be rescinded for next week’s election.

Coulter’s TV comments and newspaper columns routinely spark outrage, an effect that she cultivates. The columnist has bashed widows of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack victims as pro-Democrat propagandists, and has repeatedly ridiculed Islam and Muslims.

Coulter’s attorney did not immediately return a call Wednesday. Nor did her publicist at her publisher, Crown Publishing.

the F word and it isn’t fuck

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There seems to be an awful lot of defining what feminism is. Yet little of it seems to have anything to do with feminism as I know it or as those I regularly have conversation with seem to know it.

exhibit A

Is Dieting Anti-Feminist?

My efforts to drop pounds made me feel like I was dropping the ball on women’s rights as well. Then the epiphany: What’s wrong with wanting to be healthy and look hot?

I don’t know what is wrong with it? I can’t remember seeing a section in the Feminist Agenda Handbook which states “one must not care about one’s body, health, or hottiness”.

exhibit B

Stubble, stubble, feminist trouble

But the stinging pain of my Veeting was nothing compared to what I felt when a female peer recently belittled me because of my status as friendly blonde. I could see her condemning me for crimes against the feminist agenda — for general silliness. I have a brain, and I like silky smooth legs. It’s often a tough thing to reconcile as a woman, and I find I’m judged not by men for my blond hair and primping but by my fellow women. Serious girls with brown hair like to turn up their noses at me when I laugh, say hello or tell them I like their bag. This, I would argue, is the downfall of feminism. Women are too quick to judge one another.

Now again in flipping through the Feminist Agenda Handbook the only sections dealing with not shaving ones legs are under “Baseless assumptions about feminists” and “Personal hygiene choices”. Friendly blonds …. nope can’t find anything against either hair colour or friendliness.

exhibit C

Muslim Rape, Feminist Silence

In France, the phenomenon of Muslim gang rape as punishment for non-veiling even has a word to describe it: “tournante” (take your turn). In areas where Muslims form the majority (i.e. the Muslim suburb of Courneuve, France), even non-Muslim women feel pressured to veil themselves in fear of Muslim sexual and physical punishment.

In the context of this epidemic of Muslim violence against women, and the open legitimization of it pronounced by Islamic clerics, one would think that the Western feminists of our time would be up in arms, sympathetically coming to the side of their raped sisters and standing up for women’s rights in general.

But this is just not the case.

The West’s leftist feminists are responding with an apathetic heartlessness and deafening silence.

Now perhaps this one is too easy. I found the section dealing with this in the Feminist Grade School Primer it deals with bigots and arseholes trying to smear two opponents at once with faulty argument, skewed statistics and a general Rush Limbaugh approach to logic.

exhibit D

Feminism, my foot!

Me? No, not really. Feminism from my point of view is anti-men. Actually, feminism wants to do away with men and compete unduly with them. That’s not my job.

That’s not my line. I believe in what I call complementarity. There are things men cannot do even if it is biologically and socially and there are things women cannot do. And if you keep insisting on equality, that’s what feminist does, total equality, you are fragmenting the effort. When you come together, you know you have deficiencies as a man and as a woman and two of you come together and complement yourselves. I believe in that. So, in actual fact, I am not a feminist, maybe I am a womanist because I believe that women have actually not been given their due.

Although, many of us are doing some important things, men still think we are inferior to them. In that case, if you think being a feminist means saying that women are important, women issues are important, woman rights are human rights, if that’s what feminism is all about, then I am a feminist. But if it is trying to fight with men and displace them and chase them away and not deal with them and becoming lesbian, so you don’t get any dealings with men, then I am not feminist, I am a womanist.

Confusion. Otherwise known as I’m not a feminist but…. Sadly indulged in by those who want all the rights, freedoms and perks of feminism but don’t want to appear “threatening” to men from whom they still need laudation.

exhibit E

Feminism is undermining human evolution

Before I explain what those Y chromosome differences are, though, let’s see what stories Tucker spins from it.

What has changed is the role of males. Among chimps, males hang out in groups, form alliances, forage together, and do a lot of bickering over status. They do not participate at all in child rearing. By the time hunting-and-gathering tribes arrive, however, men have been folded into the family. Monogamy predominates and both parents participate in child rearing. The extraordinary innovation is “fatherhood,” a role that doesn’t really exist elsewhere in nature.

Apparently, “fatherhood” is a special attribute embedded in the Y chromosome. Monogamy and shared parenting is certainly found in many vertebrates—sea horses and sticklebacks, voles and penguins come to mind—so I’m afraid that his claim of a special status for human fathers is complete nonsense.

He fine tunes his argument, though: paternal investment is a strategy that distinguishes humans from their nearest primate relatives, and is the reason for our success.

In fact, the discovery of bonobo society proves just the opposite. It is precisely because females play a dominant role and males are so passive and unambitious that bonobos did not produce an evolutionary line that led to human beings. Instead, they remain a relatively minor, underpopulated species holding their orgies deep in the jungle. The larger East African chimp, where males predominate, produced the line that led to humanity.

Well, having males “predominate” might not be the best strategy for increasing a population—I think he is referring to male dominance. He really seems to think that letting females have a dominant role in society would mean we’d just be having jungle orgies, and that patriarchalism leads to human ambition and progress (umm, can I just say…the jungle orgies don’t sound all that bad.)

The just plain hilarious.

The only thing I can find relating to this is to get more girls involved in science.

Now all of you watch out for your 2007 issue of the Feminist Agenda coming to your mailbox soon…and be sure to use those coupons for a free leg wax.

Misogyny epitomized

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So the little ladies have their skirts in flap again and it’s all due to the presence of estrogen in the press galley. Good to know. I thought maybe it had something to do with misogynist bullshit flying every direction, glad to hear it’s just a bunch of hormone challenged press types blowing things out of proportion.

Has Canadian society really sunk this low? Are the majority of Canadian men really this stupid? Well I did read one comment by a blogger that was less intelligent than what Spector said but I would hate to taint all men by comparing them with him.

I suggest you have a bucket handy and something to kick.

“You know, I’m not in politics, I can say it, I think she’s a bitch and I think that 90 per cent of men would probably say she’s a bitch, for the way she’s broken up (former Maple Leaf) Tie Domi’s home and the way she dumped Peter MacKay. She is a bitch.”

snip

Spector also told CTV News he thinks the reason the Tory foreign affairs minister’s reported reference to Stronach as a dog got major coverage was because of the number of female journalists in Ottawa.

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.*

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*Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948


You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon. ~David Lloyd Georg


If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. ~Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War

Gulf War Syndrome

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die. ~Jean-Paul Sartre


We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped. ~Harriet Tubman

[Read more…] about Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.*

This is an apology?

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Limbaugh having received flak from all corners apologizes…uh well sort of;

 “Okay, I need to apologize,” the radio personality said on the air Thursday. “I was wrong because I speculated either he didn’t take his medication or he was acting.” 

But, “I never said the word faking. Now, if you people on the left want to equate acting with faking, I mean, go ahead. George Clooney would be a faker, all your favorite actors, we’ll call them fakers. I never used the word. But I was wrong. He did take his medications. Now he took too much medication.

Limbaugh–not just an asshole–a pathetic asshole