Women – Page 21 – Prog Gold

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Published on May 8, 20072 Comments

I’m still not feeling very well still so here’s a bunch of interesting stuff to be going on with till I feel up to ranting at the world in my usual misanthropic way.

Just when you though the lolcats were over…. LOLBEES!

Food politics: is your butter-flavoured popcorn killing workers?

Hah. Wolfowitz guilty of ethics breach says World Bank panel

BOOM! Big bada-boom!

And while we’re on the subject of space; octogenarian astronomer and wingnut Sir Patrick Moore proves age is no bar to mysognynistic assholery, in the Telegraph:

On the subject of female newsreaders, he said: “These jokey women are not for me. Oh, for the good old days. “There was one day (in 2005) when BBC News went on strike. Then we had the headlines read by a man, talking the Queen’s English, reading the news impeccably. “I would like to see two independent wavelengths – one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men. I think it may eventually happen.”

He should stick to reporting on comets and cosmology, he knows bugger-all about anything else.

Aw, poor iddle wingnuts, they got up a nice shiny drum-beatin’, war-lovin’ online petition, with like, Instapundit and all, and those pesky liberals immediately came along and pissed on their bonfire. Until the lone alert winger on duty noticed and yanked the page of fictitious petition-supporting blogs much hilarity ensued,. Petty but fun. I wish there really were a blog called Grabthar’s Krauthammer.

Sky-fairy spotting: Jesus on a four-gig Samsung Flash memory chip. Looks more like HELLO, I”M BRIAN BLESSED! to me.

Shorter Times columnist Minette Marin – “Oh no, the Morlocks are coming!” In Blair’s ruinous legacy of beta children a posh Tory totty holds forth on those dreadful state school children. Why, the chav might rub off on Theo or Poppy, and that would never do! Cameron may be photogenic and’ve done well at the local elections but the Tories haven’t changed a bit, every one’s a Hyacinth Bucket.

Robbery is the mother of invention:Johannesburg robbers superglue naked man to exercise bike

Mitt Romney’s Guide To Europe: sounds about right to me, at least where provinicial NL’s concerned:

Page 76:
The Netherlands, Deventer –
The purple pipeweed is good and the ladies are babalicious at Garth’s Party On Cafe.

Bibliodyssey is like candy for the booklover – you can’t stop till you’ve eaten the whole bag. Here’s one of the illustrative plates of squid from the book The Voyages of the Corvette L’Astrolabe

Don’t start looking unless you’re willing to give up the rest of the day. Fantastic.

Bigots 1, CBS 0.

Merde.

Published on May 7, 2007

I’m really not feeling well today and not only that, I can’t bear the rejoicing of the UK and US media after their boy Sarko’s win in the French election. The public world is a better place without my presence today, so I’m taking the day off to lie around moaning in between bouts of swearing under my breath and kicking things. I can’t even look at that strutting little Napoleon without wanting to damage something.

War By Other Means

Published on May 3, 2007

It’s a tragic and criminal fact that where there’re modern armies there’s prostitution, child sex and human trafficking – Halliburton and Dyncorp in the Balkans war being a case in point – but prosttution was never historically organised openly by the Army command structure – was it? Shadow of The Hegemon has an outraged post at what’s emerged about the US’ postwar occupation of Japan: :

The Americans Kept Comfort Women

There are times when I feel that there’s no real point to keeping one of these things up… when I look at the readership stats and think “is it really necessary”?

Then I read something like this, and remember what it really is… a place to be able to speak out, at least in some small way, and say that THIS IS INTOLERABLE.

Japan’s abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender — with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities — Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for American GIs.

An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.

Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.

The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945.

“Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,” recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. “The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.”…

And now we’re finding out that the single most egregious crime of the Imperial Japan, sexual coercion (if not out and out slavery), was enthusiastically embraced by the American occupation? That the “heroes” of the Pacific War, the lions of history, the grandfathers and great-grandfathers that all Americans look up to and venerate were lining up en masse to pay to violate some poor Japanese girl over, and over, and over again?

With the official sanction of the American occupational government?

INTOLERABLE.

Read more.

We hear so little about other places in the world under historic American or allied ~~occupation~~ protection that it’s easy to forget that US and allied troops have been stationed for many years in large numbers elsewhere than Iraq or Afghanistan. Japan, for instance. It’s easy to take no notice of what they’ve been up to there when there’s much more exciting, photogenic stuff happening elsewhere. So when what really happened comes out, no wonder people are shocked.

As Over There, So Over Here

Published on May 3, 20072 Comments

It’s just so bloody predictable – where the US goes, the UK goes, but 5 years later.

GPs ‘refuse to sign abortion forms’

Press Association
Thursday May 3, 2007 7:08 AM

Almost a quarter of GPs are refusing to sign abortion referral forms, a survey reveals.

According to the poll by the doctors’ newspaper Pulse, nearly one in five GPs do not believe abortion should be legal.

And 55% of the 309 GPs questioned said they wanted the current 24-week limit for abortions to be reduced.

The law in the UK states that two doctors need to sign a form referring a female patient for an abortion, to show that the woman meets the grounds that make abortion legal.

The most common reasons for abortion within 24 weeks relate to the woman’s physical or mental health. But 24% of GPs questioned said they would not sign abortion referral forms and 19% did not believe abortion should be legal.

The findings have provoked concern amongst women’s health experts. Dr Robbie Foy, clinical senior lecturer at Newcastle University, who has conducted research on abortion, said that current access to abortion services are “a lottery for women”.

“We must provide reliable, secure and non-judgmental care. Many women are still not getting this at present and face unacceptable delays which increase the risks of complications as well as causing additional anxiety,” he said. “Any sort of trend towards more doctors refusing to participate in induced abortion will risk marginalising this essential service.”

But Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a sexual healthcare charity specialising in abortion services, does not believe the survey accurately reflected GPs’ opinions as it polled less than 1% of the UK’s 40,000 GPs.

“Pulse’s findings differ from weighted, representative UK public opinion poll results which have shown majority support for safe, legal

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “If GPs feel their beliefs might affect the treatment, this must be explained to the patient who should be told of their right to see another doctor.”

© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved.

BPAS’ response sounds remarkably like NARAL’s reaction to the US right’s war on women – “Hey, there’s no problem, nothing to see here, move along please”.

South Derbyshire is no South Dakota ; nevertheless, British womens’ right to choose is being sliced away by small increments, and complacency from organisations like BPAS, who should be reminding doctors that it’s not their job to impose their own morality on others, doesn’t help.

A Green Unpleasant Land

Published on May 2, 2007

In the course of an impassioned post on abortion recently Digby warned women who think they can just travel to another state should abortion be banned where they live, that it’s naive to think fundie misogynists in government would not outlaw travelling to obtain an abortion elsewhere too.

Want proof? Well here it is, happening in Ireland:

Irish court battle over teenager’s abortion right

· ‘Tragic case’ reignites call for constitutional change
· Doctors say brain impaired baby would live only days

Owen Bowcott in Dublin
Wednesday May 2, 2007
The Guardian

A pregnant 17-year-old in state care in Ireland began a court battle yesterday to be allowed to travel to England for an abortion, as the country’s failure to resolve the ambiguities in its abortion laws threatened to erupt into a constitutional crisis.

The teenager, who is four months into the pregnancy, is seeking an abortion because the baby has got a rare brain condition and will not live more than three days after birth, she has been told.

Identified only as Miss D, the teenager has been in the care of Ireland’s health service executive (HSE), since February.

The government agency has overruled her wish for an abortion in Britain. The young woman’s father is absent and her mother’s behaviour had led to earlier court proceedings.

Abortion in this predominantly Catholic country, where the influence of the church has gradually weakened, remains illegal, with the ban on it written into the constitution. Abortions can only be performed if there is a substantial risk to the mother’s life, which includes the threat of suicide. The law does not permit abortion on grounds of foetal abnormality.

Most women seeking an abortion go to England for the operation. Successive complex cases have led to hearings at the European court of human rights and several divisive national referenda.

Since 2002, three teenagers in care have been allowed to go abroad for terminations.

But the republic’s abortion laws have never been fully clarified. As long ago as 1992, a supreme court judge warned that the failure to introduce proper legislation was “inexcusable”.

Last year a 45-year-old woman lost a case in Europe in which she said she had been denied her human rights because she could not have an abortion on grounds of foetal abnormality. The court dismissed her application saying the issue had not yet been dealt with by the Irish courts.

This latest case, emerging in the opening days of a general election campaign, has prompted fresh calls for constitutional reform.

[…]

The application on behalf of the young woman has been brought by her boyfriend, who is supporting her. The teenager, from the Leinster region, had not considered having an abortion until told about the foetus’s medical condition.

Doctors say the baby suffers from anencephaly, a condition where the front part of the brain is missing. The condition is detected through blood screening. Such children are normally blind, deaf, and unconscious. The high court in Dublin has been told that life expectancy would be somewhere between several hours and, at the maximum, three days.

Miss D’s lawyers are seeking the removal of the restrictions on her right to leave Ireland and the rescinding of a request sent to the Gardai to prevent her travelling abroad.

The legal challenge will be heard at Dublin’s Four Courts tomorrow. Lawyers for the teenager said it was a matter of “great importance” that the case be heard as speedily as possible.

The court heard that the young woman was not suicidal but had not wanted to have an abortion before hearing about her baby’s condition.

[..]

They want to force a teenager to carry to term and give birth to a baby that’s deformed and bound to die. This on the same day that priests and employees of the very Catholic church which is behind this cruel law are found to have been wallowing in even more filth and child abuse than had been previously thought.

That’s the culture of life?

The Catholic church has no moral right to tell any woman anywhere what she can and can’t do with her body, so far as to be able to place restrictions even on her right to movement, over-populated as it is with the emotionally disturbed and criminal perverts.

I cannot think of any other situation in which an organisation proven to have harboured sexual criminals and to have colluded in evading the law to protect its rapists and child molestors from justice is given the legal right to impose its twisted morality on women’s private medical decisions .