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I think I’ve posted this before, but for stuff like this I don’t have a problem with the repetition.
Hello everyone,
What a restful/hectic week I’ve had over in Kaslo British Columbia as I touristed around Kaslo and participated in the annual choral workshop held in town. This trip was photographically sparse for me, but I managed to take a few pictures of the lake where we had the traditional Monday night wiener roast. 
Yes, it really is that beautiful there.
I’m back home in Alberta now, and slowly finding my way back to my usual routine. Thanks all for your patience with a week of light but interesting posts.
What long suffering people do when faced with the towering stupidity of the force-birth crowd.
One of our escorts developed this brilliant Bingo to be played while we are at the clinic. You can print out the pictures and play along wherever your clinic is, but with practice you can visualize the Bingo board in your mind and place your mental tokens while practicing your 1,000-yard stare. Have fun and don’t forget to yell “Bingo”! It will totally confuse the antis.
(We have written out the Bingo Legend cards at the end of the article for easier reading and hyperlinks.)
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BINGO LEGEND
FREE SPACE – Any mention of god, because there will be; there will be.
Description: The use of god as a weapon is prevalent on the sidewalk. The protesters never seem to think that the people escorting or going to the clinic might worship a different god or no god at all. They can’t fathom that someone might worship the same god…
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This excerpt is from an article on Counterpunch titled “Treason”. It is on the rhetorical side and my eyes did roll when I saw that the author’s upcoming book to be released was called ‘Zen Economics’. But I liked this paragraph enough in his essay to share it with you my faithful readership because it succinctly illustrates the sad state that most of journalism is in.
“Likewise, there appears eternal mystery on the part of the compassionate right—liberals and progressives, why the corporate media are tools of corporate leaders and their servants in government. It is no accident Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jeffrey Toobin and David Gregory use the royal ‘we’ to conflate their interests as rich, connected, white ‘journalists’ with those of Mr. Obama and Ms. Feinstein. The received wisdom is ‘access’ to elite sources is behind the ‘affectation,’ but it is no affectation. The strategy to ‘universalize’ narrow interests through the use of totalizing language (‘we’) is class politics 101. These ‘journalists’ are responding to disclosure of class ‘secrets’ that threaten their privilege, not to acts against the public interest. (‘Access’ is to report what elites say, not what they do (a/k/a journalism) and these brave folk have a greater chance of dying from choking on Jell-O than from terrorist attacks).”
(ed. bolding mine)
Guest post by:
Elaine Charkowski
Mary Daly in her book Quintessence wrote, “Naming the agent is required for an adequate analysis of atrocities.” As linguist Julia Penelope has shown in her book Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues, “Agent deletion is a dangerous and common mind-muddying flaw.”
The purpose of “Malespeak” is to avoid naming MALE violence against women and it’s perpetrators (MEN) specifically. After reading Carol Adam’s books (Neither Man Nor Beast, The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Pornography of Meat) about how male violence against animals and women are not named, I watched for more instances of linguistic techniques to avoid naming male violence against women. Here are the kinds I have gathered so far. I’m sure there are more!
•The Absent Referent
This refers to something without actually NAMING it. Carol Adams coined this term in her books linking men’s abuse of women…
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The buzz word in popular feminism today is empowerment. When I became a feminist many years ago, the word we used was liberation. Unlike empowerment, liberation is a collective concept which means that even if my life is all rosy and “empowered,” it doesn’t mean shit for those women who are doing low paid jobs while trying to raise families. In fact, there is a very good chance that elite women’s empowerment is built on the backs of other women whose exploited labor provides the goods and services that enable a good career and a comfortable lifestyle. The low pay of nannies, cooks, cleaners, sweat shop workers, and day care providers means that wealthier women are freed up to make a salary that no doubt does feel empowering.
Gail Dines
Okay, religion might not poison everything.
Christians attend a gay pride event apologizing for the crummy behaviour of many of their churches.
And the response…
Thanks Buzzfeed for a little pick me up today.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…