When Patriarchy Makes the Rules V

11/11/08 Update: This young woman, the rape and murder victim, is named Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. I want to always include names when I can find them. These victims should have names so that they are more difficult to forget. Let's not forget Aisha.

Pharyngula has this BBC article today. It is enough to render me speechless, but I'm fighting it.

A 13 year old rape victim was convicted by an Islamic court of adultery in Somalia. Following her family's report of her rape by three men, she was detained. She was placed into a hole up to her neck and stoned by a group of 50 or more men in a football stadium before an audience of at least 1000 people. They dug her up to make sure she was dead. She was not. They returned her to the hole and finished the job.

In further Somalian news, from the same article, two men who helped kill a thief after torturing his mother received 39 lashes, and the man who actually completed the murder paid 100 camels to the dead thief's family and was released.

Penalty for being raped: DEATH BY STONING.
Penalty for torture and aiding murder: 39 LASHES.
Penalty for murder: FINE OF 100 CAMELS.

Among the approximately 1000 fans at the football stadium watching the stoning of the crying, pleading rape victim, exactly NONE stepped forward to try to stop it.

Fucking barbarians.

Skeptic Alert!

While "Stop Sylvia Browne" website author, Robert Lancaster, was recuperating from a stroke, his domain name expired and was snapped up by a believer in/advertiser for psychics. In order to support Mr. Lancaster's herculean efforts to expose and document the activities of the heinous, money-grubbing, immoral, and unethical Sylvia Browne, please link to the new website: http://stopsylvia.com, tagging it ,Sylvia Browne. Hopefully if many bloggers do so, it will prevent potential victims of the wealthy scam artist, Sylvia Browne, from being sucked into allowing her or any other so-called psychic to profit from their grief by pretending to communicate with their dead loved ones.

Vote Early and Often!

Yeah, I'm kidding about that "often" part! But I have been reading things that say that lines are already starting to get long at early polling locations all over the country where early voting is allowed. If the lines are getting long now, imagine what they will be like on Election Day next Tuesday!

Don't miss your opportunity to vote by waiting until the last minute and getting there too late! Four years ago, I stood in line for 2 1/2 hours to vote in a PRIMARY! It took me so long, that by the time I was finished and got back home, Nigel didn't have time to go vote at all! Our candidate lost by ONE VOTE! Well, I kid, but really, folks, don't take the chance that you may lose your opportunity to vote! Go NOW! DO IT!

Who's An American?

Some people say Senator Obama is a Muslim. Others that he is a "Muslin." The truth is that he is a Christian. But there's a larger truth:

IT DOESN'T MATTER.

Photo from: http://whatever.scalzi.com/

In Honor of My Ting-Tang Kitty

My photo skillz are not mad. Caption should say: Yes, yes, this will MAKE excellent barfs.

For the Barf-Master, Tang of the World, Big Fat Orange Kitty. Mummy loves you!


Photo credit (of course):icanhascheezburger.com

Watch Out For a New Anti-Choice Meme!

I have a good friend here whom I really, really like. We have similar senses of humor and when we're together, we're almost constantly laughing. We have scads in common - three kids, ex-pats in Israel, Intel employed spouses, and much more.

What we do not ever discuss is religion and politics. I am a registered Independent who supports Obama/Biden this election. I am a strongly pro-choice, feminist, mostly-liberal, atheist. My friend is a die-hard party-line Republican who is stoked about McCain and especially Palin. She is most definitely not a feminist, is conservative and belongs to a fundamentalist evangelical church-franchise.

She knows my views. We have chosen never to go there because we just like each other too damned much and have too much fun together to take the chance.

Her parents are here for a few months to help her out while she recovers from tendon surgery which has put her in a cast for a long period of time and has forced her into immobility for at least two months. Her parents are funny, too, and we've had lots of laughs. They are VERY Catholic and are also anti-choice strict Republicans.

However, yesterday (she was not there), her dad was talking politics. I don't know how much my friend has told him about my views (probably not much, for fear he might tell her to stay far away from me.) So he told me yesterday, "I try to like Obama. I wonder all the time if I don't like him just because I somehow don't like black people. But I do like black people. I don't think I'm racist."

I responded, "If you don't like Obama's policies, then it's probably not because you're racist, but because you don't like his policies. If you do like his policies, but you want to vote for McCain even though you don't like McCain's policies, then you might just be racist."

He then went on (and on and on) about Obama being "pro-death." What the fuck does that even mean? Nigel told me later that I should have said, "Oh, Obama's for the death penalty? I haven't heard any discussion about that!" But I know that isn't what he was talking about. He was talking about being pro-choice and anti-abstinence-only education. I knew he held those views, but I'd never heard pro-choice being called pro-death before. I wonder now if that's the new meme the Catholic church is pushing and has sent out to its priests as a sermon-point.

I really, really, really don't want to lose a great friendship, especially because of her parents, rather than something SHE has chosen to take offense at. So I hemmed and hawed and just told him that you have to decide what your deal-breaker is and base your vote on which candidate doesn't have a policy that's a deal-breaker for you. He said, "Obama has a lot of my deal-breakers." So I said, "Well, there you go," and then changed the subject.

Has anyone else heard "pro-death" being bandied about? Have I just been missing it or is it a new part of the anti-choice discourse? It sure is ugly.

Jerusalem to Be Capital of Despotic World Government!

I have been reading Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman's excellent book, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, published in 2000. It is an excellent and fascinating read, not only for the hard work and research the authors did in order to provide the facts, but also for the section about freedom of speech and why it is not necessarily an abridgment of that freedom for an institution to refuse to provide an outlet for lies and distortions.

One example given is that of Holocaust deniers purchasing ad space in college newspapers whose editors then cried, "Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech!" when the shit hit the fan. The authors wrote:

We must never pass a law that says Holocaust deniers may not publish their own literature. But we are not obligated to facilitate that expression.

Too many people do not see this distinction. I think Shermer and Grobman are right on about this.

Segue...

One quote from the book that stood out to me, in that I burst out laughing when I read it, is from white supremacist and historical revisionist (a.k.a. Holocaust Denier) Jack Wikoff from his 1990 Remarks newsletter:

Revolutionary communism and International Zionism are twin forces working toward the same goal: a despotic world government with the capital in Jerusalem.

Oh, ha ha ha ha!! He may be entirely serious! But he's obviously not been to Jerusalem. It is impossible to find a parking place just to go to the grocery store or the post office, much less for the entire world's population of supposed revolutionary communists and Zionists to come here to set up a despotic world government capital! Plus, in local politics, it is impossible to even get the people from different neighborhoods in Jerusalem to agree on anything. Good luck with that World Government, I say. Batshit crazy that Wikoff is!