You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2009.
A hat tip to Womanist Musings for the redirect to this article entitled The Growing Power of the Men’s Rights Movement.
The article itself was well written and brought attention to the radical agenda that certain MRA groups have going. They are becoming cohesive and organized enough to start making judicial and legal differences.
The MRA movement is an expected backlash to the idea that women can be people too. I know this is a radical idea, but it is vigorously opposed by these fundamentalist misogynists. But what is appalling are the comments left by the so called representatives of the MRA. Let’s take a small sample:
(trigger warning)
“ONCE AGAIN, feminist c*nts CONTINUE TO LIE to promote their man-hating campaign.”
“Oh, no kidding. You mean when you refuse to count anything a woman may do to a man as domestic violence, and when you include men who hold up their hands to prevent women from striking them in the head (again) as abusers, your data show that men are more violent than women? Wow.”
“But this faulty rationale fails to recognize the difference between unjust oppression and healthy restriction; limiting a gender’s job responsibilities based on natural capacity is not the same as limiting a racial group’s opportunities based on appearance.”
“delusional c*nts are so funny when they are trying to make sense. this is why women belong in the kitchen and not online. they are too f*cking DUMB to make a coherent, rational point without resorting to hysterics. LAWL :D men need to learn how to protect themselves from these violent, dangerous, man-hating c*nts”
“In the last two weeks, both sex trafficking AND unequal pay have been officially exposed as myths created by feminists and based upon deliberate lies spread by those feminists in order to further the selfish interests of women (and esp. feminists themselves)”
I am saddened by the sheer burning stupidity left on the comments section. The vitriol expressed not only toward women but the rights they are fighting for is shameful.
I thought debating religious people was frustrating. I would not want to even go there and attempt *any* sort of rational debate with this people. They really seem to be without redemption.
Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Anne Widdencombe MP speaking for the motion and speaking against the motion, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.
Psst…America look! a civil debate. Try it sometime.
Update: Watch the edited 46 minute version at the Intelligence Squared site.
Update #2 – They went and moved stuff around – The debate in chapter format can be found at the intelligence squared site here.
Update #3 – They went pay site. – Go to ytube from the link and find it there.
In a time where things are hyper sensationalized and denuded of any real meaning Remembrance Day has done remarkably well to maintain its somber demeanor and sense of decorum. (I’m sure some budding capitalist is contemplating a remembrance day sale, just before being cuffed upside the head for being so vulgar)
I’d like to put forth the notion that we should change the focus of Remembrance Day; from the armed forces to the civilian populations that suffered the brunt of the casualties during those special times where we leave our empathy and rationality at the door and engage in wholesale slaughter.
This is by no means a comprehensive listing of all civilian deaths due to war – just the low-lights that I could find.
World War I – 6.8 million civilian deaths.
World War II – 42 – 58 million civilian deaths.
Korean War – 2.8 million
Vietnam – 2.0 million
Nicaragua – 78,000 and counting due to landmines.
Iraq – 93,000 to 102,000 and rising.
Afghanistan – 32,000 and rising.
We should take this day to remember our humanity and to work toward understanding each other from across a table, not the barrels of guns.
We should remember those innocent victims of war, they certainly did not deserve their fate, yet war claimed them anyways. We should remember the Armenian Holocaust, we should remember the Jewish Holocaust not only to remind us of depths of human depravity but to remember that tragic events such as these happened because ordinary people did not speak up and call out the injustice as it was beginning to happen.
It is our responsibility as human beings not to look and then turn away, but rather, we must face our ugly past to prevent an ugly future.
So, on this November 11th, I choose to remember our common humanity and weep for our losses due to the depredations of war and unrest. I will remember that I will always have a choice whether or not to perpetuate evil, I will remember the past and hope I have the courage to make the right choice if faced with the grim situations that have marred our bloody history.
The British PM Gordon Brown wants Hamid Karzai to clean up corruption. Brown said:
“I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption,” Brown said in speech at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London.”
This should be referenced in light of the recent attack in Helmand province in which an Afghan police officer shot and killed 5 British soldiers and escaped into the countryside.
“The soldiers concerned were mentoring Afghan national police. They were working inside and living inside an Afghan national police checkpoint, just outside Nad-e-Ali district centre,” Lt.-Col. David Wakefield, spokesman for the British forces, told Sky News. “It is our initial understanding that an individual Afghan policeman possibly acting in conjunction with one other started firing inside the checkpoint before fleeing from the scene.”
Occupying a country certainly is more difficult if when they keep turning on you and killing your soldiers. We are not going to see another British Colonial India in Afghanistan. The governments of the West are deluding themselves if they think they can install some local panjandrum and then rule quietly behind the scenes. It just will not happen, ask the Russians how much fun ‘ruling’ Afghanistan is. Perhaps the British have more insight? Doubtful.
But back to cleaning up corruption; or more specifically how to do so when it is your presence that is causing the massive corruption in the first place?
We should not be kidding ourselves. The West’s military presence in Afghanistan is creating more problems than it is solving and should be withdrawn immediately. If the Taliban, which we created and armed so well in the 1980’s, presents itself to be a problem then we should negotiate with them to broker an agreement without having to slaughter innocents in the process.
There is no way for the West to “win” in Afghanistan, we should begin reparations and move on as soon as possible.
Sometimes you smile when you hear the misrepresentations of what Universal Heathcare. Other times you get righteously pissed off. This is neither. I knew the teabaggers were ass-hats, through and through, talking foolish nonsense, and being blindingly ignorant of history, but the picture below goes too far.
Yes, that really is a picture from a concentration camp, victims of state murder. And they(our tinfoil hat wearing, retarded-ignorant-hate-spewing-monkey-bile-for-brains- teabagging representatives) are equating state sponsored mass murder with Universal Health Care.
Un-frakking- believable. The ignorance demonstrated by these people is mind shattering.
Richard Dawkin’s latest book the Greatest Show on Earth (GSOE) is a great primer on Evolution and the important contributions Charles Darwin made to the field of biology.
I’m currently listening to the GSOE in my car, and I have the print copy fairly high up in my reading pile.
Some reviews are getting annoyed at Dawkins for taking shots at creationists, but others think that it really is not so bad.
I’m inclined to agree with Mr.Dawkins when he takes the odd jab at the rotten edifices of religion, no surprise there, but it is necessary to show exactly how wrong the religiously deluded are.
It has been great listen so far, and I would highly recommend reading the GSOE if you want to work on your evolutionary fundamentals or polish your arguments in defense of evolution.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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