I was relaxing in the little park next to the marine police station, on the last day of a long sweltering weekend, when Callum came running up with the shocking news. Mohammed bin Salman aka MBS, the perfumed crown prince of the barbaric Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, had declared war on Canada for not showing him enough respect. And not only was he now trying to bully us into submission. Saudi Arabia lashed out at Canada on Monday for criticizing the recent arrests of Saudi rights activists, and threatened to break off trade with other Western countries if they too spoke out about political repression in the kingdom. Some of his agitated supporters appeared to be threatening a 911-style attack on MY neighbourhood !!!!!!
I don't expect much, or anything really, from the barbaric kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The home of the beheaders, and the nexus of terrorism. But even by its brutish standards this is outrageous.
In the latest chapter of the grotesque love story between Stephen Harper and the backward rulers of Saudi Arabia, today I have both good news and bad news. The good news is that the brutish flogging of the blogger Raif Badawi has been at least temporarily postponed. The case of a Saudi blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes has been referred to the Supreme Court by the king's office, the BBC has learned.
Blogger Raif Badawi's wife said the referral, made before he was flogged 50 times last Friday, gave him hope that officials would end his punishment.
A second round of lashings was postponed for medical reasons. And the bad news? Saudi Arabia is still the same barbarous country.
It's not going to be easy to write this post, because the anger I felt earlier today, has been replaced by sadness and shock. Sadness for those who were killed, and those who loved them. Shock at the bestiality of those who would murder others for the "crime" of wielding a pencil. For as you might have guessed, while I have no time for crazy religion, and I hate bullies with a passion. I do admire cartoonists a lot...
For telling the truth that so many others dare not speak.
It was an extraordinary sight. John Baird sitting next to Julian Fantino at a committee meeting this morning, blasting the hideous anti-gay statements of a Canadian religious organization. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird took aim Tuesday at "offensive" and "mean-spirited" statements on the website of an organization that gets federal funding to do aid work in Uganda. A page from the group's website that has been removed, but is still available as a cached version, calls homosexuality and transvestism perversions and lists them along with pedophilia and bestiality. A day after Fantino defended his decision to fund that organization's activities in one of the most anti-gay countries on earth. And fast tracked its approval.
Glory Hallelujah. I see that Pope Benny has decided to take early retirement. "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry," the Pope said. Leaving us to wonder whether it was his health, his conscience, or something the butler said.
He has always been an enemy of gay people. A man who would murder their rights tomorrow, if he thought he could get away with it. He has voted against every bill that would make them equal, or protect them from hate crimes. He discriminates openly against gay organizations. He won't spend a dollar to help save the lives of gay children who are being bullied to death. But he does have oodles of sticky blood money to fund an anti-gay group in one of the most anti-gay countries on earth.
Almost every day of my life I read about the cruelty of religion, its ignorance, its bigotry, its barbarism. But most of the time I just shake my head and don't say anything. For what's the point eh? People will believe what they want to believe, there are many decent religious people, and since I have seen how it can comfort the dying, and those who love them, I try to ignore its atrocities, and keep my mouth shut. But not today. For this is murder.
So I'm sitting on a bench down by the swan pond this evening, staring at the signs of The Apocalypse.
Two little trees that have surrendered to the Canadian winter. Already. (click pic to enlarge) And I'm screaming at them, in my mind. How could you do this to me? How could you leave so soon?
And wondering is it just me, or is the whole world going crazy?
Well I suppose it was too real to be tolerated. A poster of the Virgin Mary receiving a pregnancy test.
So a religious fanatic attacked it with a pair of scissors.
"This is Satanic, this is the ultimate Satanic attack, when Lucifer attacks his worst enemy, the Blessed Virgin.
"This particular church - so called - is run by a gay, feminist-type lobby. They claim to be Christian and yet they put up a blasphemous image of the Blessed Virgin, attacking her virginity and the fact that she was the mother of Christ, the God-Man."
Even though the poster's message was gentle and human.
In Uganda, the homophobia the crazy Christianists ignited, claims the life of a gentle gay hero.
“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende, the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, said in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”
The pastor presiding over the funeral of murdered gay rights activist David Kato went on an anti-homosexual rant Friday, adding insult to injury for the circle of activists hoping to honour and bury their friend.
Villagers then refused to bury the coffin, so Kato's friends carried it to the grave and buried him themselves.
In Afghanistan, the brutish Taliban Islamists stone a young couple to death, for the crime of being in love.
The stoning lasts two minutes. Hundreds of rocks - some larger than a man's fist - are thrown at her head and body. She tries to crawl out of the hole, but is beaten back by the stones. A boulder is then thrown at her head, her burka is soaked in blood, and she collapses inside the hole.
Then her lover, Khayyam, is brought to the crowd...The attack on him is even more ferocious. His body, lying face down, jerks as the rocks meet their target. He is heard to be crying, but is soon silent.
And in South Carolina, a woman kills a puppy for eating her Bible.
Miriam Fowler Smith, 65, told cops on Monday that she hung and burned her nephew's pit bull after the animal took a bite out of her bible.
She claimed God urged her to kill Diamond, a 1-year-old female dog, because the animal was a "devil dog" and would hurt neighborhood children
A 13-year-old Longueuil girl died Saturday night as a result of injuries she sustained Wednesday when police say her 71-year-old father slapped her and she went into a coma.
But so far, so bad.
Shocked neighbours Monday described the girl as a "ray of light" who played happily with their children and used to give hugs to some of the other mothers when she came home from school.
But neighbour Linda Robert said Noutene had been quieter in the last two years. Her father was demanding, Robert said, and could be heard sometimes yelling at the children or his wife. On the evening that she was struck, neighbours said her father was calling in to recite her prayers, as he often did. She was reluctant to go, as she often was, neighbours said.
"Even when she was young, she hated going in for her prayers," Robert said.
In the meantime, I've got two questions of my own.
How do you "slap" a child into a COMA?
And at a time when gay kids are dying because of religious intolerance, should anyone be surprised?
More than three years ago I started writing about how a shadowy group of theocons were infiltrating our government. And how Stephen Harper himself was a secret religious fanatic.
At the time even some of my friends didn't believe it could happen here.
But now nobody can deny it. The attacks on groups like Rights and Democracy, the vicious assault on women's groups, their war on gay Canadians just because of who they are and who they love.
The story is in the newspapers...even the Con Post.
For mainstream voters eyeing Stephen Harper amid the faltering fortunes of the federal Liberals, The Armageddon Factor-- a look at rising Christian nationalism in Canada by political observer Marci Mc-Donald -- is likely a book this Prime Minister doesn't want you to read.
Chief of staff Guy Giorno is strongly pro-life, backed by deputy chief Darrel Reid, who had a history of court fights against gay rights and same sex marriage while opposing abortion on demand. Mr. Harper has also hired former Christian educator and activist Paul Wilson as his policy director. Dozens of other staff and aides proclaim deep religious affiliations.
Can you believe that? Accusing the CBC of waging a Faith War? When they are the ones waging a brutal Faith War on women, gays, and all kinds of other Canadians. Those hideous thugs. Those Big Liars.
Spending 800-thousand dollars on BIBLES? When 70-thousand poor women die every year from unsafe abortions. The cruel inhuman BASTARDS.
And now a friend of mine...a gay Christian... says he may have found the teeny tiny footprints of a theocon plumber's gang that he believes may be up to some VERY naughty things.
And I say enough is ENOUGH.
You know how the Cons are always going on about national security to cover-up their other crimes? Well what would you call the infiltration of our government by a fanatic group of Christianists organized and heavily financed by extremist right-wing groups in the United States?
I call it a threat to our national security and our democracy, and I DEMAND a public inquiry.
These theocratic thug Cons almost got away with it because Canadians had never seen anything like them. They didn't believe it could happen here. But it did.
For some reason this picture of the Pope washing the feet of twelve priests, while the sexual abuse scandal continues to spread, reminds of the scene in The Godfather, when Michael Corleone attends a christening, while his mobsters wipe out the opposition. Or in the case of Pope Benny's mob, go after the New York Times. And miss. In its article Thursday about Levada's remarks, the Times said the allegations "drew on documents obtained from lawyers suing the church that showed that Vatican officials had at first ordered a secret canonical trial, then asked the archdiocese to suspend it after the priest pleaded for leniency to Cardinal Ratzinger. While the Vatican's pathetic hit spit man Bill Donahue, goes after gay men. And makes a bigot out of himself, as usual. Donohue is feeding a hostile climate that gay people continue to face in this country. It's wrong, it's unacceptable, and no credible media outlet should be providing a platform for these kinds of attacks." As well as an idiot. A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops to investigate the clergy sex abuse scandal has found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children. But what do you expect? Like the Pope he serves Donahue has made a career out of attacking gay people, and trying to whip up hatred against them. And we don't expect ANYTHING from him or those religious perverts and monsters. “Nothing surprises me anymore. Homosexuality, which is a disease, has become something normal. They sprout like poisonous mushrooms, and instead of feeling shame they celebrate this plague and the church itself minimalises these sins. Homosexuality itself is not a sin, you can’t punish a sufferer. But it becomes one when the abomination is practised. It’s disgraceful.” Because we know who they are. We know they are the diseased...the poisonous mushrooms ...the anti-human. We know what so many did to so many helpless children. And how they covered up their plague. We know the victims of this insane hatred.
Phillip Nelson says he's been tormented for the last month. His apartment was broken in to and his belongings were tossed everywhere. He was even punched in the face while taking out the trash... "They were saying that I should die because I'm gay. They were yelling THE FAG."
We know where that hatred comes from. And we will fight those bigot bullies FOREVER...
I try not to blog too much about the madness called religion, because it bothers me in so many ways. Sometimes it makes me shake my head. They knew he was probably a pervert, and they put him in charge of dealing with the victims? Huh? Sometimes it makes me shake my head ...... and laugh.
During the twenty minute early hours chase - which was described in court as "like something from a Hollywood movie" two police cars crashed and three police left injured. When he eventually stopped he told stunned officers:"You have no idea who I am. You don't know who you are messing with," not before he had tried to drive his car at them. And he's a Master of Ceremonies at the Vatican? What kind of ceremonies does he organize? Then there's the stuff that just makes me angry. Like the religious fanatic who killed five U.N workers today. For the crime of feeding the hungry. And then there's this horrifying story
Shia and Sunni clerics started to preach in their Friday sermons about the evils of homosexuality and “the people of Lot.” Police officers stepped up their harassment of openly gay men. Families and tribes cast out their gay relatives. The bodies of gay men like Mazen and Namir, often mutilated, began turning up on the street. There is no way to verify the number of tortured or harassed, but the best available estimates place that figure in the thousands. Hundreds of men are believed to have been killed. That just makes me wish for a religion-free world. I know there a lot of good religious people. But who will save us from this madness?
Well I see the Christianist crazies in the United States are up to their old tricks. Once they burned women and gay people. Then it was the Harry Potter books. Now it's a book about gay teens.
The offending book is Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang. The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union.
Their suit says that "the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library," and that it contains derogatory language that could "put one's life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike."
Which sounds pretty outrageous until you check out who they are...
Kookamunga. Do you think they call him Redneck Moses...or Crawdaddy Jesus?
But of course it's not funny. Because these are the kind of crazies that whip up the hatred that leads to the killing of abortion providers and the murder of gay people.
The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people killed in bias-motivated incidents increased by 28 percent in 2008 compared to a year ago, according to a national coalition of advocacy groups.
"What we're also seeing, more disturbingly, is the increase in the severity of violence...The more visibility there is the more likely we're going to see backlash, and that's exactly what we see here."
Which means until these Christianist terrorists are arrested or locked up in an insane asylum, more gay people are going to be hurt or killed.
Because we're not going ANYWHERE. And if they think we're visible now they ain't seen nothing yet.
Which leaves me with one nagging question.
If I used the Holy Dirty Book those bigot crackers read, to start my barbeque.
Not that I would eh? But say I did.
Do you think my sausages would taste of possum.... or SQUIRREL?
The Christian Civil LIBERTIES and Book Burner's Union? Muahahahaha. Don't make me VOMIT...
I've read a lot of good stories about the tragic killing of Dr George Tiller...most of them from the fabulous feminists in our own Canadian blogosphere. And I also liked this New York Times story. Because it talks about the realities Dr Tiller had to deal with... “We’ve made pregnancy a fairy tale where there are no fetal complications, there’s no cancer, no terrible abuse of girls, no cases where to make a girl go all the way through a pregnancy is to destroy her. These are the realities of the story. That’s what Dr. Tiller worked with — the realities.” And about what needs to be done about these pro-death terrorists... “We really do need to arrest people who are trespassing. Arrest people who are gluing locks. Committing more minor violations of the law so criminal activity doesn’t escalate, so these criminals don’t feel emboldened....In places where the laws are enforced, you don’t see violence escalate. Protesters generally go someplace where there’s a more hospitable climate....Law enforcement can’t treat this as a political issue. It’s a criminal issue.” Exactly.These terrorists should not be allowed anywhere near an abortion clinic.
And if these criminals resist, throw them in jail.
Because one woman's life, or the safety of one abortion provider, is worth more than the freedom of these hideous hatemongers...who would rather see a little girl being ripped apart, than do the right and decent thing.
