The Government Owns Your Body

...at least according to The Supreme Court of Canada.

Most at the CBC seem quite happy with this decision - that a 14-year-old-girl's rights were not violated when she was given a forcible blood transfusion against her wishes.

Read that again.

To me, this is one of the most horrifying decisions any court has ever made. The Court has said, essentially, that this girl did not own and control her body. Not even her parents owned and controlled her body. The Manitoba Child and Family Services department did.

For the record, I abhor the idiotic, superstitious nonsense that is religion and what it does to people. But so long as no one is harmed by this choice except the person making the choice or others that consent, then, yes, one is free to believe any mythological baloney they want.

Sometimes being free means letting people make choices that are not those we would make, or even choices that are wrong, or choices that are based on idiotic beliefs.

That girl was not being beaten, not being starved or otherwise abused against her will. She made the choice knowing the probable consequences. And no one but her would pay those consequences.

Ask yourself this - would you want some fundamentalist Christian sect or Muslim sect that somehow attained power to have this same power over your children, the power to invade their physical bodies against your wishes and theirs?

"Saving lives" is the same excuse used by the Chinese government to harvest the organs of Falun Gong prisoners. After all, if it means saving a life - especially the life of a child - why shouldn't the state be able to invade your body against your will?

It is the excuse the fetus fetishists use to try to take away a woman's right to choose or control her body as well.

That is exactly what this decision says - given a good enough reason (decided by them, of course) the state has the right to violate the bodily integrity of someone against their will, or against the will of their parents or legal guardians.

That is horrifying.

Don't let our natural instinct to help a child open us to giving the state the power to control our bodies. That is far worse than one 14-year-old girl making a bad or stupid choice and dying.

Remember kids....

...when there is the possibility that Google might accidentally put someone's picture on the internet, its a horrendous crime and violation of privacy that warrants CPC MP Pierre Poilievre's careful attention and action on behalf of a constituent*.

But when its the same government which Poilievre's party forms and he is a junior Minister in decides to give the police the power to spy on its own citizens without warrant and without probable cause, well that's just fine.

Or to randomly pull-over and search people, under the guise of "road-side breath tests".

'Cuz that's different, right?

The Conservative Party of Canada - police state fascists who seem to like ignoring the Charter and the law.

*Irony Alert!

Good ole Pierre, so worried about his constituent's privacy that he would berate the head of Google in a committee decides to call the constituent by name and have it published in a national newspaper. So what might have been an otherwise been an anonymous picture, now has a name and location attached to it.

Now who violated Mr. White's privacy more, the Google Truck or the smarmy Pierre Poilievre, looking again for cheap attention?

Way to go Pierre.

Of course this is provided this fantastical story is, in fact, true and that Mr. white isn't a member of the Nepean-Carleton Conservative Riding Association....

"Culture of Life" - U R doing it rong

I cannot express in words the rage I am feeling right now.

Not just at the fact that Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider specializing in medically-necessary late-term abortions, was murdered today. No, I am enraged by those who whipped the hatred against this man, who did everything to encourage his murder, are suddenly pretending they had nothing to do with it.

Damn them all. All of them.

Randall Terry. SUZANNE. The Catholic Church. The Army of God.

All of them. They are the same. They purposely espouse violent rhetoric, celebrate past perpetrators of violence and murderers as 'martyrs' and try to create false moral equivalence with a medial procedure and a planned premeditated murder of a 67-year-old professional, father and grandfather.

These people purposely took a procedure that represents less that 0.02 % of abortions, and always for medical reasons, and turned it into their main argument, that somehow Dr. Tiller was killing healthy, viable 8-month-old babies en mass simply because their mother's decided they just didn't want to be pregnant any more.

Lies! Disgusting, purposeful lies by authoritarians bent on controlling everyone's body and mind.

And they have the gall to call themselves "Pro-Life" and "The Culture of Life".

Let see how these people respect human life, shall we?

Pro-choice victims of anti-abortion murder:

Dr. David Gunn
Dr. John Britton
James Barrett, clinic escort
Shannon Lowney, clinic receptionist
Lee Ann Nichols, clinic receptionist
Robert Sanderson, off-duty police officer working as a security guard
Dr. Barnett Slepian
Dr. George Tiller

Add to the list above the numerous bombings, harassment campaigns, vandalism, threats of death and other crimes in which no one was actually hurt. Add to that the actual assaults committed by "Operation Rescue" folks at clinics across the US.

Anti-choice victims of pro-choice murder:

.

The "best" the anti-choice side can come up with of pro-choice violence is the assault on Ed Snell, who was attacked by the boyfriend of a woman he was verbally harassing from the top of his car...a woman who was not seeking an abortion. Add to that, pushes and shoves in self-defense.

Who, then respects life?

People who say this? -

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you... I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue, August 16, 1993.[emphasis mine]

"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you and we will execute you." Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue 1995.[emphasis mine]

There is no debate with these people. There is no reasoning with them. These are the people that wish to grant legal personhood to a blastocyte, but will not do anything to help already born children in poverty. These are the people that condemn women who make the choice of abortion, yet refuse to condone birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place.

These are the people who wish to control every woman's body, to force them to give birth to unwanted children so they can then abondon both, as a punishment for having sex and or not believing in their religious teaching.

And they are prepared to kill to make it happen.

These people are the enemies of freedom and liberty. They are pure fascists and totalitarians through and through. And they will stop at nothing to enslave us all (and make no mistake, if a person cannot control or own their own body, they are in fact, a slave).

It is time for self-defense. I am in favour of abortion doctors, clinic staff and volunteers either being armed themselves for self-protection or to hire armed security guards and personell. The government obviously can't or, as evidenced in Kansas, won't help. Sometimes it is agents of the state doing the harrassing.

Am I over reacting?

But Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and close friend of Tiller's who said he is now "the only doctor in the world" who performs very late-term abortions, said Tiller's death was predictable.

"I think it's the inevitable consequence of more than 35 years of constant anti-abortion terrorism, harassment and violence. George is the fifth American doctor to be assassinated. I get messages from these people saying, 'Don't bother wearing a bulletproof vest, we're going for a head shot.' "[emphasis mine]

No, I don't think so.

I will not let my daughter be enslaved in a world run by these thugs.

I'm pro-choice and I shoot back.

Pants pissing update (June 5 2009):

From Patrick Ross in the comments -

"And by the way, Mike, you very much can be a co-defendant in a libel suit if you really want to.

If that's what you want, I suggest you repeat the latter of these two statements again."

So there you have it. When he can't instigate me by his over the top behaviour and misrepresentation of what I said, he threatens me with legal action. Will his next comment complain tha I am trying to stiffle his free speech? Only time will tell...

Barack Obama - Liar and Fraud

I always knew I would strongly disagree with Obama on economics. He is, after all, a Keynesian spender and will, like Bush before him, lead the US down to economic collapse with his nonsense ideas about "stimulus packages" and his warmed over socialism with his nonsense "bailout" plans for big auto and big banks, corporate welfare queens who should have gone out of business long ago.

At least he would stop the wars and pull the US back from despotism and restore rule of law and respect for human and US constitutional rights, right?

Nope.

Obama has decided not to release the torture photos and to continue the cover-up of the crimes of the last administration.

He is keeping US troops in Iraq until 2011, instead of the 6-9 months he stated during the campaign.

He is increasing the presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and best estimates think they will be there for at least 10 more years.

He is refusing to prosecute the war criminals in the last administration, from the actually torturers all the way up to Cheney and Bush. They all get a pass.

He has decided to continue with the Military Tribunals in Gitmo - kangaroo courts that violate nearly every rule of justice and evidence that the West and the Common law has evolved since 1215.

What has Obama delivered but more and bigger deficits than Bush and has either covered up or continued Bush's crimes around the world.

You can call that a lot of things, but it ain't even close to being "Change".

Right now, the only difference between Bush and Obama is that the latter is smarter and able to fool a lot more people while doing exactly what the former did.

Barack Obama - Bush lite.

First Principles

For those who ask 'why?'

Its nice to be reminded in an elegant way why some of us are so adamant in our quest for liberty.

Yes, it really is this simple.

Dear Michael Coren

My letter, sent April 21, 2009:

Mr. Coren,

You, sir, are a disgusting worm. How dare you disparage the service of Trooper Karine Blais, 12e Régiment Blindé du Canada serving with the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Régiment, in order to tout your misogynist nonsense.

Trooper Blais was a soldier. She died doing her job, just like any other soldier. She passed her course, just like any other soldier.

And you, sir, demoted her to mere object, mere pretty thing full of something you call 'grace' rather than acknowledge her for the brave soldier she was.

You should be ashamed. I hope your next column either profusely apologizes to the Blais family and the Vandoos or is a detailed treatise on how a to fire a C-7 rifle with a penis.

I hope you are fired over this outrage.

He won't be fired of course. He'll make light of it, or same halfhearted "sorry you were insulted" type apology and then move on to insult someone else. and will Sun Media fire him? Nope, because it seems their editorial position agrees with this.

Tune in when Can West Christaliban mouth breather and misogynist David Warren writes a column agreeing with him.

I sure hope a few compatriots of Trooper Blias get the opportunity to express their feeling to Coren in person someday.

The Obama Disappointment

I know.

I know, I know, I know.

Its only been about 3 months since he took office. Give the guy a chance right? Wait for the first 100 days right? Well, unfortunately there are signs that Obama is not all that different than Bush and is prepared to continue with the many parts of the last regimes program.

1. The Torture Memos - while admitting there was torture (finally, a good thing) he has given the torturers the Nuremburg defense. They were just following orders. So, he coninues to deny justice for the victims and protect the guilty. He seems to want to reserve the right to torture if he feels its needed too. Just like Bush.
2. Bush and Cheney - while clearly both of these men committed war crimes (as the above Torture Memos indicate), Obama is not prosecuting. He is not investigating. There is nothing.
   
3. Maher Arar - still on the no fly list, despite being proven innocent. No reasons given.
4. Wiretapping - despite claiming it was dangerous, he voted as a Senator to keep the program going and now wishes to continue to use it.
5. Packing the Justice Deptartment - and packing it with RIAA lawyers. RIAA LAWYERS. What on earth is THAT?
6. Stimulus Spending - started by Bush and Obama is merely continuing it. Where is the change in that? Well except for those who attend teaparties now that a Democrat is doing it.
7. Closing Gitmo - while this is another good thing, its been put off for a year, rather than immediate. This means, of course, that he could change his mind next December. It also says nothing of the other black prisons around the world that continue to operate.
8. Habeas Corpus - it is still unclear, even after Gitmo being closed, whether habeas corpus still means anything in the US.
9. Withdraw from Iraq - except its in 3 years and meanwhile most of those guys will go to Afghanistan. So how exactly is this a withdraw from Iraq? Why haven't the permanent bases been closed?

All of these were obvious abuses and wrongs from 8 years of the Bush presidency. To my civil libertarian mind, there is no reason to go slow on any of these. My hope, despite being an anrachist who despised all government, that at least Obama would be principled enough to right these wrongs, even while I fully expected him to screw up economically. If I were still and NDP member, almost everything in that list would still disappoint me.

Well clearly I am wrong.

The only conclusion I can come to is that once he obtained the power that Bush and Cheney wrought - the power to ignore the US Constitution at will, the power to hold people without trial and the power to torture if desired. This is change?

Meet the New Boss, same as the old boss.

Update:



Its getting worse and worse.