April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

women

The Handmaids Tale Dystopia Meets Reality

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This story is both a horrific example of the human trafficking going on in the world and a warning as to what could happen to women should the womb police get their way.

Anyone familiar with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale will recognize this type of scenario;

In its promotional material, the Asia-based operation makes pregnancy sound like an illness. Its symptoms include “loss of intimacy,” growing “out of shape” and, of course, “birth pangs.”

The solution? Fertilize a foreign stranger who will be fed nutritious meals, housed in a Bangkok suburb, monitored around the clock and kept to a precise sleep-wake schedule. “It is quite suitable,” says the agency’s broken-English pitch, “for the women who desire to have kids but no time for pregnancy.”

Sadly this lives not in the pages of a dystopian warning but is a profitable business in Asia. Recent developments of the GOP war on women in the States has many bloggers and tweeters asking if the GOP and their supporters see women as breeding stock, anti abortionists have even caused women to be investigated and arrested simply for thinking about abortion. Some lawmakers are considering investigating women for miscarriages. How long before laws are enforced that require pregnant or pre-pregnant women to adhere to specific types of behaviour very much like this;

This high degree of scrutiny is actually promoted by the company on the Chinese-language portion of its site. Surrogates are “accompanied by hand” while walking around the community, according to the site, which also promises they’ll be woken at 7 a.m., fed at specific times each day and put to bed at 10 p.m.

Her Sight is Worth It!

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Imagine losing your site to a preventable or treatable cause simply because your are poor or simply because you are female.

“We know her sight is worth it. The ripple effect of providing eye care to a single person is life-changing. You not only give that person their sight and life back, you also free their caregivers. Consider that 75 per cent of blindness is preventable or treatable, often with no more than a 15 minute cataract surgery costing $50 or less”
[snip]
Of the estimated 45 million blind worldwide, 90% live in developing countries. Of these, 2 out of 3 blind are girls and women, because they receive only half the access to eye care that men do.

To raise awareness SEVA Canada is holding a video contest

You are invited to create a compelling video on the topic of Gender and Blindness. The top three winning short films will be used to inspire and educate the world about the importance of sight and raise awareness of the 30 million blind women and girls.

Basic rules are:

* Videos cannot be longer than 3 minutes.
* You must be 13 or older to enter.
* Contest is open to Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
* Deadline for submissions is 12:00 pm PST, December 15th, 2009. All videos submitted after this time will be disqualified.
* All videos must contain the Seva logo either at the beginning, end or both.
* Three winners will be determined through a combination of audience choice (45%) and our celebrity jury (55%).

So all you budding film makers and YouTube junkies have a chance to showcase your talents for a good cause. And best of all,
The the top three winners will also be honoured by having sight restored to one girl and one woman in their name.

Click here for further information.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

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The Vatican has launched an inquisition enquiry into American nuns. These uppity women are getting out of control and actually helping people.

Sister Kathy Stein, of the Sisters of St Joseph of Carondelet, is executive director of Thomas House, a shelter for homeless families in Garden Grove in Orange County, California.

Thomas House, with its 16 apartments in a secure compound, its language and parenting classes, its food bank and its activities for children, is a secular organisation with no formal link to the Church.

Sister Kathy has never worn a habit, and moved out of the convent long ago to live among the people she serves.

But she says the Church need have no worry about the way she meets her religious calling.

“I would see it as a reason for hope that our message of love and respect and concern for people is expanding beyond the walls of a Catholic institution… that we are able to bring God’s word to people by who we are and how we minister to them,” she said.

Sister Mary says the Vatican hierarchy inhabits a very different world, and could not expect to impose its own idea of religious life on the culture inhabited by American nuns.

“The culture encourages everyone to be very tolerant and open-minded,” she said.

“To imagine that a dictum sent by somebody we don’t know who lives very far away would take hold in this culture, to imagine that, is really a stretch.”

Could this be the same distance that allows a man who will never worry about his life being endangered or altered through pregnancy to decide that a women never has any right to an abortion even to save her life?

Read the whole article at the BBC

Mike Harris the Sequel

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Great post at Interrobang’s Internationale on what we can expect from a Harper government.

Here’s what you are voting for, if you mark that ballot for your local CPC candidate:

* fewer and less stringent food and water inspections — Walkerton: The Sequel, coming soon to your town!

* the further demotion of women to a “special interest group” (Does The Smirking Corpse not have a mother?)

* allowing the continued abrogation of the Treaty of 1814 by the US government without so much of a murmur of protest (Hey, Corpsey, you’re all about northern sovereignty; what about southern sovereignty? What about that “longest undefended border” thing? Are we not into doing that anymore? If so, I demand you arm the rest of the border, to keep the Americans out.)

* an economic plan guaranteed to cause further rising income inequality

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Lets not forget Harris also ran besweatered father knows best, aren’t I just the most docile little thing ads before he got into power and kicked everyone and their kids who didn’t belong to the right income group. In fact Harper has already begun this process, see list of just some of the Harper cut & run government decimation here.

Harper on Health Care;
In his 2002 Throne Speech Reply, Stephen Harper said: “A government monopoly is not the only way to deliver health care to Canadians. … It (the federal government) must remove any barriers, any chill to increase private capital investment plans that the provinces have for our health-care system.” Parkland Institute

Harper on Kyoto;
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations,” CBC

Harper Government on Women;
Took out equality from SWC mandate, banned lobbying and research for SWC, originally cut budget by 5 million, called Belinda Stronach a dog by McKay further fueled by Norman Spector saying “Bitch is a word I would use to describe someone like Belinda Stronach.”

Some background on the real Harper
It’s amazing what you can persuade them (party members) to do once you convince them it’s the leader who is telling them.”

The Conservative leader is totally enamoured with the U.S., supportive of the Iraq war and ballistic missile defence (despite his coyness), admires U.S. President George W. Bush, detests social programs and the equality principle that drives them, and is a proud believer in America’s culture of possessive individualism. As such, he is more at odds with Canadians’ values than any national party leader in 60 years. Handing over the reigns of government to a man who has contempt for his own country would be a catastrophic mistake. Scandal or no scandal, Canadians need to keep their eye on the prize: the future of their country.{NOTE:and there has been scandal}

There is a war on Canadian soil. It is a war to replace traditional Canadian social values with neocon disregard for justice, for rights and for community. Fight back with your vote.