“‘Fiscal conservatives’ recoil from this kind of talk like homophobes at a bathhouse: The sooner some judge somewhere takes gay marriage off the table, the sooner the Right can go back to talking about debt and Obamacare without being dismissed as uptight theocratic bigots. But it doesn’t work like that. Most of the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag. The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose checks never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix.”
Showing posts with label Americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Americans. Show all posts
Friday, March 29, 2013
Conservatives and Homosexual Marriage
Conservatives and Homosexual Marriage
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Todd Akin and Manufactured Controversies
There are two things about the Todd Akin controversy that amazes me. 1) that it happened at all (especially considering the complete lack of controversy over Biden's recent bout of foot-in-mouth-disease) and 2) that it's still going on.
When I first saw the headlines after Akin's interview, I could see right away that there was a case of how not to report the news going on again. The headlines made it obvious. Virtually every headline had the words "legitimate rape" in it, in quotes, followed by claims that Akin said women who've been rapes "don't", "won't" or "can't" get pregnant. A few had some variant of how women can somehow "shut down" their bodies if they're raped to prevent pregnancy.
Of course, with headlines like that, people were in full freakout mode. I expected that from the political left, of course. They'll freak out over the most minor of gaffes by those on the political right, while pretending the most heinous comments from their own side never happened, or simply brush them off as irrelevant. What amazed me is the vicious attacks from those on the political right. From what I've seen (and I admit, I've missed a lot of it) the attacks on Akin from his fellow conservatives has far exceeded the attacks from his liberal opponents.
The problem is, everyone seems to be freaking out over what they think he said, or some projection of what he apparently meant when he said it.
What was it that he actually said? Well, see for yourself.
Here's the transcript of his actual words.
"...from what I understand from doctors that's really rare."
Okay. So what's controversial about that? Pregnancy from rape is rare. He's not saying it doesn't happen, as so many headlines and commentators have claimed. He just said that doctors have told him it's rare. How rare? Well, that's difficult to say, since rape statistics are understandably questionable in the first place (more on that below). What percentage of rapes result in pregnancy? There have been many claims that the pregnancy rate in rape cases is the same as for consensual sex, but I'm not seeing any legitimate data to back those claims up. Then there's this example.
Now, that's old data in just one area, but I don't know that women in Minnesota are any more or less fertile then women in other parts of the US, and while the number of reported rapes may have changed, I have not seen anything to suggest the percentage of pregnancies as a result of rape has increased since then.
So basically, then, his first statement - that pregnancy due to rape is rare - is true. He didn't say it doesn't happen, or that he doesn't believe raped women get pregnant. Obviously, he knows it happens, and that is reflected in the interview. Yet if you read only the headlines, you'd think he said that rape due to pregnancy doesn't happen, which is clearly false.
What's the next part? Ah, yes. This one.
"If it's a legitimate rape..."
People are just losing their heads over the use of the word "legitimate." There are all sorts of accusations that he was somehow implying that there's rape, and then there's rape-rape. Kinda like Whoopi Goldberg.
Now if only people had flipped out over Whoopi's comments the way they are now over Akin's comments, because hers were far more condescending and insulting to rape victims!
What confuses me is how anyone could have any confusion about the use of the word "legitimate." To be honest, I think Akin's detractors know full well what he was talking about, but it's far more satisfying to get all offended and pretend he was saying something else. It fits into the "Republican War on Women" narrative so much better.
For those who still refuse to see the obvious, he's talking about ... well, legitimate cases of rape vs things like false accusations or false claims of rape.
Here is where things get muddy. Rape statistics are unclear at the best of times. Part of the problem is that there is an unknown number of women who never report their rapes, or report them years after the event. It's said that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted (all types of sexual assault, not only rape) in their life time, which is meaningless, since it's a prediction. Then there's the problem of false rape reports. Again, it's hard to know how many false rape claims there are. On one end of the spectrum, it's claimed that only 2 percent of reported rapes are false (which is higher then the percentage of abortions due to rape). Yet a US Dept of Justice report from 1996 found that about 25-26% of rape cases were proven to be false!
So here we have a problem of there being an unknown number of unreported rape cases, coupled with what may be as much as 25% of reported rapes being proven false (some have claimed that number is actually as high as 51%, but I don't find it reliable). It's entirely possible the unreported vs false accusations cancel each other out, but there's no way to know.
To further mess up the numbers, there's also statutory rape, which can include consensual sex as well as forcible or coercive rape.
In other words, when it comes to rape statistics, we really do need to know what is, or isn't, "legitimate" rape!
In context of the interview, this sort of thing was obviously what he was referring to. The headlines would have us believe he was somehow claiming that rape victims weren't really raped, or somehow making light of the seriousness of the crime committed against rape victims. Personally, I think that's a stretch. It does make me wonder, though. Just how could he have been more clear? Some have suggested that he should have just said "rape" without any qualifiers, but in context of the interview, that would have actually made his statement worse. So what would be a more appropriate word to us? Real? Authentic? True? Actual? I can think of a lot of potential adjectives, but they all end up making his statement sound worse, too.
Which leaves us back with the word "legitimate." Personally, I can't think of a better, less offensive, way to differentiate between actual rape events and false claims.
Which leads us now to the next part that has people's heads spinning.
"... the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Wow, have the responses been over the top to this part! Akin is accused of all sorts of things, from being stupid, unscientific, and crazy, to associating him with Nazi experiments and linking him to some bizarre claim from the past that "spastic tubes" somehow prevent pregnancy.
First, let's make it very clear what he ISN'T saying. He is NOT saying women who have been raped do not, cannot or will not get pregnant. That's what's in the headlines and in the interpretations. That's not what he said. He is also not suggesting that women have some magical ability to voluntarily make their bodies prevent pregnancy during rape. Again, that is something others are claiming is meant, but it's not what he actually said.
Is there any truth to the statement?
Actually, yes, and it's been known for ages. Long before we knew about the chemicals our bodies produce, and the roles hormones play in reproduction in particular, it was known that trauma and high levels of stress can affect a woman's ability to conceive and/or prevent miscarriage. Such things affect male fertility, too, but when it comes to women, our bodies actually do have ways to prevent pregnancy when conditions are not optimal for conception.
First, there are the effects of stress on the reproductive system. This can be long term stress, of it can be stress from a single traumatic event.
The female body is, from a purely biological point of view, a baby making machine. We are awash with chemicals and hormones that are there to ensure optimal fertility. That may not be true as individuals but, as a general statement for healthy women, that's how our bodies work. Aside from stress, a number of things can trigger our bodies into becoming hostile to conception. Nutritional deprivation is one such example. When we're starving, women are less likely to conceive, and if we do conceive, we're more likely to miscarry. Likewise, if we have too much or too little of specific nutrients, it can prevent pregnancy. I remember seeing an interview, several decades ago, with a doctor from a Toronto fertility clinic. He talked about how most of his patients didn't need extreme interventions such as IVF; most needed to only make minor lifestyle changes. He described two cases to illustrate. One couple he treated lived an extremely "healthy" lifestyle. They were both marathon runners, and were in peak physical condition, yet they could not conceive. In the end, it turned out the wife did not have enough body fat. They relaxed their marathon training regimen, gained some body fat, and promptly got pregnant. Another woman he described was also a "healthy" eater. He talked about how one of the first things he did was look at the palms. When he saw this woman's palms, he noted a distinct orange cast to them. As he talked to her, he learned that she had read a lot about antioxidants and had been supplementing with beta carotene. For some reason, she was taking very high amounts of it, which is why her palms started to turn orange. She stopped taking the excessive supplements and was soon pregnant.
Calorie restriction can also affect fertility. Our bodies can't tell the difference between starvation due to famine or starvation due to dieting. It can tell when we are not getting enough nutrition to support a pregnancy, causing changes in our chemical balance that make it more difficult to conceive.
These are just a few examples of ways our bodies create conditions to prevent pregnancy by shutting down our reproductive system. In the context of Akin's interview, it is the stress related responses of our bodies that kick in, creating conditions hostile to conception. Such conditions also cause miscarriages and prevent lactation. This is old news.
Do women still get pregnant, even in non-optimal conditions? Obviously we do, and he never claimed we didn't. He just said that our bodies "try to shut that whole thing down." Which is accurate. Sometimes, it fails. The idea that he was suggesting women can somehow control whether or not they can become pregnant is ludicrous, but that doesn't stop people from making that assumption.
Now, I have no idea who Akin is and, frankly, I don't care all that much. What I do care about is accuracy and truthfulness. I've seen his interview and compared it to the many headlines and column inches dedicated to tearing him apart, and it bothers the heck out of me. The attacks against him are inaccurate, in that they claim he said things he didn't, and dishonest in how they extrapolate meanings to what he said that are, at best, pure conjecture or, at worst, deliberate misrepresentation for the purpose of destroying him both personally and politically.
Was what he said clumsy, "misspoken" and or insensitive? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think the "shut things down" part of what he said was clumsy and unclear, but only to those who don't know anything about the effects of stress on the reproductive system.
Was what he said false? No. Though he was repeating what he says he was told by doctors, and he was in no position to expand on the claims during the interview, his actual statements were correct.
Of course, you won't know that by the headlines.
With all the focus on one sentence of what he said, people are completely forgetting about the closing sentence.
You know, I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
People are completely ignoring what he's pointing out here, which is that it is the rapist that did something wrong and should be punished for it. This brings up the obvious question for pro-abortionists using the rape and incest argument: Why should any child conceived in rape be killed because of what the father did?
When I first saw the headlines after Akin's interview, I could see right away that there was a case of how not to report the news going on again. The headlines made it obvious. Virtually every headline had the words "legitimate rape" in it, in quotes, followed by claims that Akin said women who've been rapes "don't", "won't" or "can't" get pregnant. A few had some variant of how women can somehow "shut down" their bodies if they're raped to prevent pregnancy.
Of course, with headlines like that, people were in full freakout mode. I expected that from the political left, of course. They'll freak out over the most minor of gaffes by those on the political right, while pretending the most heinous comments from their own side never happened, or simply brush them off as irrelevant. What amazed me is the vicious attacks from those on the political right. From what I've seen (and I admit, I've missed a lot of it) the attacks on Akin from his fellow conservatives has far exceeded the attacks from his liberal opponents.
The problem is, everyone seems to be freaking out over what they think he said, or some projection of what he apparently meant when he said it.
What was it that he actually said? Well, see for yourself.
Here's the transcript of his actual words.
Well, you know, people always want to try and make that as one of those things... "Well, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question?"And then all hell broke loose. But why? What did he say that was really so wrong or terrible? Let's look at the key phrases everyone is blowing a gasket over one part at a time.
It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
"...from what I understand from doctors that's really rare."
Okay. So what's controversial about that? Pregnancy from rape is rare. He's not saying it doesn't happen, as so many headlines and commentators have claimed. He just said that doctors have told him it's rare. How rare? Well, that's difficult to say, since rape statistics are understandably questionable in the first place (more on that below). What percentage of rapes result in pregnancy? There have been many claims that the pregnancy rate in rape cases is the same as for consensual sex, but I'm not seeing any legitimate data to back those claims up. Then there's this example.
Pregnancy is rare after a single act of forcible rape. In a prospective study of 4000 rapes in Minnesota, there were no pregnancies. In a retrospective study covering nine years in Chicago, there were no pregnancies. In a prospective study of 117 rapes there were no pregnancies among either the 17 victims who received DES or the 100 who did not.
Eugene F. Diamond, MDProfessor of Pediatrics and Past Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Loyola University Stritch School of MedicineApril 11, 1985 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine
Now, that's old data in just one area, but I don't know that women in Minnesota are any more or less fertile then women in other parts of the US, and while the number of reported rapes may have changed, I have not seen anything to suggest the percentage of pregnancies as a result of rape has increased since then.
So basically, then, his first statement - that pregnancy due to rape is rare - is true. He didn't say it doesn't happen, or that he doesn't believe raped women get pregnant. Obviously, he knows it happens, and that is reflected in the interview. Yet if you read only the headlines, you'd think he said that rape due to pregnancy doesn't happen, which is clearly false.
What's the next part? Ah, yes. This one.
"If it's a legitimate rape..."
People are just losing their heads over the use of the word "legitimate." There are all sorts of accusations that he was somehow implying that there's rape, and then there's rape-rape. Kinda like Whoopi Goldberg.
Now if only people had flipped out over Whoopi's comments the way they are now over Akin's comments, because hers were far more condescending and insulting to rape victims!
What confuses me is how anyone could have any confusion about the use of the word "legitimate." To be honest, I think Akin's detractors know full well what he was talking about, but it's far more satisfying to get all offended and pretend he was saying something else. It fits into the "Republican War on Women" narrative so much better.
For those who still refuse to see the obvious, he's talking about ... well, legitimate cases of rape vs things like false accusations or false claims of rape.
Here is where things get muddy. Rape statistics are unclear at the best of times. Part of the problem is that there is an unknown number of women who never report their rapes, or report them years after the event. It's said that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted (all types of sexual assault, not only rape) in their life time, which is meaningless, since it's a prediction. Then there's the problem of false rape reports. Again, it's hard to know how many false rape claims there are. On one end of the spectrum, it's claimed that only 2 percent of reported rapes are false (which is higher then the percentage of abortions due to rape). Yet a US Dept of Justice report from 1996 found that about 25-26% of rape cases were proven to be false!
So here we have a problem of there being an unknown number of unreported rape cases, coupled with what may be as much as 25% of reported rapes being proven false (some have claimed that number is actually as high as 51%, but I don't find it reliable). It's entirely possible the unreported vs false accusations cancel each other out, but there's no way to know.
To further mess up the numbers, there's also statutory rape, which can include consensual sex as well as forcible or coercive rape.
In other words, when it comes to rape statistics, we really do need to know what is, or isn't, "legitimate" rape!
In context of the interview, this sort of thing was obviously what he was referring to. The headlines would have us believe he was somehow claiming that rape victims weren't really raped, or somehow making light of the seriousness of the crime committed against rape victims. Personally, I think that's a stretch. It does make me wonder, though. Just how could he have been more clear? Some have suggested that he should have just said "rape" without any qualifiers, but in context of the interview, that would have actually made his statement worse. So what would be a more appropriate word to us? Real? Authentic? True? Actual? I can think of a lot of potential adjectives, but they all end up making his statement sound worse, too.
Which leaves us back with the word "legitimate." Personally, I can't think of a better, less offensive, way to differentiate between actual rape events and false claims.
Which leads us now to the next part that has people's heads spinning.
"... the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Wow, have the responses been over the top to this part! Akin is accused of all sorts of things, from being stupid, unscientific, and crazy, to associating him with Nazi experiments and linking him to some bizarre claim from the past that "spastic tubes" somehow prevent pregnancy.
First, let's make it very clear what he ISN'T saying. He is NOT saying women who have been raped do not, cannot or will not get pregnant. That's what's in the headlines and in the interpretations. That's not what he said. He is also not suggesting that women have some magical ability to voluntarily make their bodies prevent pregnancy during rape. Again, that is something others are claiming is meant, but it's not what he actually said.
Is there any truth to the statement?
Actually, yes, and it's been known for ages. Long before we knew about the chemicals our bodies produce, and the roles hormones play in reproduction in particular, it was known that trauma and high levels of stress can affect a woman's ability to conceive and/or prevent miscarriage. Such things affect male fertility, too, but when it comes to women, our bodies actually do have ways to prevent pregnancy when conditions are not optimal for conception.
First, there are the effects of stress on the reproductive system. This can be long term stress, of it can be stress from a single traumatic event.
The female body is, from a purely biological point of view, a baby making machine. We are awash with chemicals and hormones that are there to ensure optimal fertility. That may not be true as individuals but, as a general statement for healthy women, that's how our bodies work. Aside from stress, a number of things can trigger our bodies into becoming hostile to conception. Nutritional deprivation is one such example. When we're starving, women are less likely to conceive, and if we do conceive, we're more likely to miscarry. Likewise, if we have too much or too little of specific nutrients, it can prevent pregnancy. I remember seeing an interview, several decades ago, with a doctor from a Toronto fertility clinic. He talked about how most of his patients didn't need extreme interventions such as IVF; most needed to only make minor lifestyle changes. He described two cases to illustrate. One couple he treated lived an extremely "healthy" lifestyle. They were both marathon runners, and were in peak physical condition, yet they could not conceive. In the end, it turned out the wife did not have enough body fat. They relaxed their marathon training regimen, gained some body fat, and promptly got pregnant. Another woman he described was also a "healthy" eater. He talked about how one of the first things he did was look at the palms. When he saw this woman's palms, he noted a distinct orange cast to them. As he talked to her, he learned that she had read a lot about antioxidants and had been supplementing with beta carotene. For some reason, she was taking very high amounts of it, which is why her palms started to turn orange. She stopped taking the excessive supplements and was soon pregnant.
Calorie restriction can also affect fertility. Our bodies can't tell the difference between starvation due to famine or starvation due to dieting. It can tell when we are not getting enough nutrition to support a pregnancy, causing changes in our chemical balance that make it more difficult to conceive.
These are just a few examples of ways our bodies create conditions to prevent pregnancy by shutting down our reproductive system. In the context of Akin's interview, it is the stress related responses of our bodies that kick in, creating conditions hostile to conception. Such conditions also cause miscarriages and prevent lactation. This is old news.
Do women still get pregnant, even in non-optimal conditions? Obviously we do, and he never claimed we didn't. He just said that our bodies "try to shut that whole thing down." Which is accurate. Sometimes, it fails. The idea that he was suggesting women can somehow control whether or not they can become pregnant is ludicrous, but that doesn't stop people from making that assumption.
Now, I have no idea who Akin is and, frankly, I don't care all that much. What I do care about is accuracy and truthfulness. I've seen his interview and compared it to the many headlines and column inches dedicated to tearing him apart, and it bothers the heck out of me. The attacks against him are inaccurate, in that they claim he said things he didn't, and dishonest in how they extrapolate meanings to what he said that are, at best, pure conjecture or, at worst, deliberate misrepresentation for the purpose of destroying him both personally and politically.
Was what he said clumsy, "misspoken" and or insensitive? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think the "shut things down" part of what he said was clumsy and unclear, but only to those who don't know anything about the effects of stress on the reproductive system.
Was what he said false? No. Though he was repeating what he says he was told by doctors, and he was in no position to expand on the claims during the interview, his actual statements were correct.
Of course, you won't know that by the headlines.
With all the focus on one sentence of what he said, people are completely forgetting about the closing sentence.
You know, I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
People are completely ignoring what he's pointing out here, which is that it is the rapist that did something wrong and should be punished for it. This brings up the obvious question for pro-abortionists using the rape and incest argument: Why should any child conceived in rape be killed because of what the father did?
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Boycott to Buycott - or game changer?
Starting a post at 1:30 am is probably not a good idea, but I wanted to take a moment and post about some observations I've noted in the past few months. We're still in the busiest time of year for my family and it won't slow down for a couple more months (at least I hope it will!), and I haven't been on top of things like usual. Even so, I've still managed to hear about some of it.
I haven't been living under a rock enough to miss out on the Chick-fil-A fiasco, and it's been fascinating to see how things have played out. Being in Canada, we have no Chick-fil-A's, so it's has no effect on us, but there's no shortage of Canadians weighing in on the whole thing anyhow.
What I find the most interesting is comparing the Chick-fil-A boycott is comparing it to others I've seen. Especially after I saw someone sharing this on Pinterest.
My first thought when I read this was along the lines of "that's not quite how things unfolded." It's a pretty typical strawman response, though; portray an alternate to reality, then attack the alternate as if it were the reality.
Right off the top, in the above example, whoever made this used the term "anti-gay rights organizations", which in itself is a strawman. Gays have the exact same rights as everyone else in Canada and the US. What gay "rights" activists and their supports want are for the restrictions of granted rights to be removed so as to accomodate a tiny sub-group - plenty of whom disagree with the activists that claim to speak for them - forcing the rest of society to redefine it's foundational institutions while at the same time endorsing their proclivities. This isn't about equality - we have that. It's about special treatment and recognition.
Now, let's take the list at the top. Right off the top, we can write off the Electronic Arts one, which was faked. The end statement is accurate. They (whoever "they" are) are indeed exercising their free speech.
Let's use the JC Penny example, simply because I'm more familiar with it. JCPenny hired Ellen Degeneres (or, uh, "Degeneress"). Personally, I don't see understand what the big deal is with her; my few attempts at watching her show left me decidedly unimpressed, but so does most TV. I don't find her funny or interesting. Actually, I find her boring and bland and, quite frankly, I think more people watch her show because she's a lesbian and want to prove they're not haters then out of any real interest, but that's just me.
Now, JC Penny can hire whomever they want. They are free to do that. The One Million Moms (OMM) group made a statement and called for a boycott. I thought that was a rather bad idea, but again, they are free to do that. You know; freedom of speech and all. What was interesting was the fall out from that. The level of pure, head exploding hatred levelled against this group was pretty amazing. Of course, anyone who disagrees with anything gay activists demand are labelled "anti-gay", "homophobe", "bigot", "intolerant" and "haters." Which is really funny to see, considering the terrible things they themselves were saying against the group or anyone who doesn't cave in to their demands. Now, if someone actually called for gays to be hung (as in one of the images above), I would have a problem with that. For someone to say that gays are "possessed by demons," well, that's free speech, too, and I'd just laugh and think they were idiots. I don't actually see the context of any of the images across the top of that graphic, though, except for the first one with Ellen, and the use of the term "anti-gay moms" is just another illustration of what I'm talking about.
The point is, however, people who support traditional marriage are allowed to say so. Doing so doesn't make them "anti-gay" or "haters," but hey, that's free speech, too. One group can call for the boycott, others can condemn them for it. And condemn them, they did, with a level of hatred far exceeding the perceived hatred coming from the OMM, and that's when things started to cross the line.
JCPenny, however, seemed to enjoy their notoriety and went a step further. Hiring Ellen, after all, had nothing to do with her being a lesbian. For Father's Day, they were more blunt. Sort of. That's when they put out an add featuring two guys with kids. When I saw the add, I actually just assumed it was a couple of male models posing as dads with their kids. The image I saw was difficult to read, so I completely missed the bit at the end that revealed that the two guys in the photos were a couple, posing with their own children.
At this point, I think JCPenny was counting on OMM, or some other group, to object, because of the surge of support they got with Ellen. I saw plenty of people condemning OMM, and again, the level of pure hatred aimed at them was startling.
I also saw plenty of people claiming they would shop at JCPenny to support them. I'm not sure that that actually translated into increased sales for JCPenny. I've read claims that their sales dropped significantly as a result of the boycott, but I've also read claims that their sales soared. I don't think either is true. I expect they got a modest increase, and then everyone promptly forgot about it.
Then there was Oreo. This was interesting, because the ONLY reason I found out about the rainbow Oreo cookie ad was from people who posted about it or shared the image, slagging "homophobic" groups that were calling for a boycott of Oreo because of their support of gay activists. I actually had not seen any of these calls for boycotts at all. I'm sure they were there, but whoever they were, they got more publicity from those condemning them then they ever would have otherwise.
As soon as I saw the ad, though, my thought was that the marketers at Oreo saw what happened with JCPenny and figured publicly stating they supported gay activist causes, inviting controversy, would result in a surge of supprt - and sales - from gay activists and their supporters. I don't know how well that worked out for them. The people I saw voicing their support for Oreo say they planned to buy more Oreos, but there were so few of them, and I didn't see anyone claim they already had, because of this. Personally, I think Oreos are kind of gross, unless they're in ice cream. ;-)
Now lets go to the second part of the graphic, where is points out the percieved hypocrisy of how the call to boycott Chick-fil-A is "infringing on... free speech."
That's where the maker of this little bit of catch phrase activism gets it wrong. Gay activists are free to call for a boycott. Likewise, others are free to condemn them for it, just as the activists were free to condemn OMM for wanting to boycott JCPenny.
Calling for a boycott was never the problem.
The first problem was that the boycott was based on a lie. Many lies, actually. The owners of Chick-fil-A are well known for being supporters of traditional marriage. This is not news. Of course, the activists translate this as being "anti-gay" and "hate speech," etc. This recent controversy, however, was based on the CEO of Chick-fil-A saying "guilty as charged" in an interview, which was re-written as him saying he was against gay marriage. The thing is, he was never even asked about gay marriage. The conversation had nothing to do with gay marriage. If anything, it was anti-divorce. No one it going around saying he was "anti-divorcee", however, or that he "hates divorced people." Becuase that would be a lie, too.
So the whole thing was a manufactured controversy, right from the start.
The other problem is the claims by pro-gay activists that Chick-fil-A - the company - was discriminatory. It was claimed that their policies were discriminatory and anti-gay. That's just plain slander. If, as a company, Chick-fil-A refused to hire gay people, they'd have a case, but they *do* hire gay people. If, as a company, they refused to serve gay customers, again, they'd have a case. Of course, they do no such thing. What these activists and their supporters have done was not just twist around the actual statements made by the CEO of the company into something else entirely, but they're outright lying about the company itself.
That still isn't quite restricting the free speech of the CEO. What *is* restricting free speech is the demands of activists to punish the company for the personal beliefs of the CEO. When politicians promise that they will not approve new restaurants in their areas because the personal beliefs of the CEO is not what their own personal beliefs demand, it's actually illegal. Yes, even fascist. This is government officials abusing their powers to force private individuals to change their beliefs, or keep those beliefs to themselves. Many of these activists, who so loudly claim they are for "equality", "equal righs" and "tolerance" not only fully supported this abuse of power, they demanded it. To them, this dictatorial behaviour was "noble" and "brave."
To be fair, I saw some people who started out supporting the boycott of Chick-fil-A draw the line here. This, however, is where the gay activists lost the game. This is on top of the most vile and hateful attacks being aimed at Chick-fil-A, all because of something the CEO didn't actually say. Foul language is pretty standard for these sorts and, unfortunately, so is wishing death and all manner of terrible things (Rosanne Barr's tweet being the most infamous) on the CEO, his family, his employees and their customers. There have even been bomb threats.
It was the same level of vitriol aimed at OMM, but this time, the attackers were the ones calling for the boycott.
So, first was have the "anti-gay organization" calling for a boycott of a company because of their corporate level support of gay marriage (I have no idea what the private beliefs of anyone involved are). Yes, that's free speech. Then we have the pro-gay activists and their supporters condemning the boycotters, while claiming they are haters, bigots, homophobes, etc. for supporting traditional marriage. That is also free speech.
Now we have the pro-gay activists calling for a boycott of a private company because of personal opions of the CEO, which were misquoted and misrepresented, in the process declaring him anti-gay, homophobic, a hater, etc. It is falsely claimed that the company discriminates against gays. When people step up to support the company, they too are called haters and bigots and homophobes, along with wishes of illness, pain and death, even though the people supporting the company and its CEO includes gays. These people absolutely tried to infringe on the free speech of the CEO through bullying tactics, and some were willing to do so illegally through dictatorial abuse of political power.
What's the fall out?
Well, the calls to boycott JCPenny and Oreo seem to have fizzled out of the limelight, as have the calls for a buycott to support these companies for their support of gay activist demands.
The Chick-fil-A boycott seems to have backfired completely! The bullying tactics used by the pro-gay activists were stood up against. I began seeing comments everywhere from people saying that they had gone to Chick-fil-A to support free speech. I saw people saying they'd never gone before, and even some who said they'd spent the last of their money before payday, to support the company and stand up to the attacks against it. I read people describe how they went several times a week - some every day - when they had only occaisionally gone before. I heard from others saying that they were gay, but they still went to Chick-fil-A because of the what the boycotters were saying and doing. Over and over again, I heard people describe restaurants packed, some so full they couldn't get in at all, with drive through line ups that wrapped around the block.
(h/t Blazing Cat Fur)
Then there was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, and the response is out of this world!
Watching all this has served to confirm some of my other observations. For all that SSM is legal in Canada now, and polls in the US supposedly show that support for SSM has increased over the years (this despite the fact that ever state that put it to a vote has maintained the definition of traditional marriage), the tide may be turning. Just as the abortion issue, which was supposed to be a done deal, is now seeing a resurgance of opposition as more and more people recognise the damage it does to society, people are starting question the notion that accepting SSM is benign.
It had been my belief that SSM would eventually be accepted in general, though at the cost of personal and religious freedom for anyone who dared challange it. I thought it would follow the typical pattern I see elsewhere. After acceptance, it would take years - probably a generation or two - before the damage we were told would never happen would be recognise, and then eventaully a backlash would begin. That is the state the abortion issue is at now.
Oddly, I think the Chick-fil-A fiasco has become a game changer. There is an unexpected momentum in the backlash to the gay activists. We've already got evidence showing that SSM hasn't resulted in sunshine and roses for all, and that there is, in fact, quite a lot of damage resulting from even the most stable of SS relationships. Now, as the totalitarian behaviour of pro-gay activists crawls out into the open, people have noticed, and large numbers are standing up to it. Not by protesting or becoming angry, but by going out, having fun and buying chicken.
Is it possible that the humble chicken sandwich can become the final straw that revealed the hypocrisy of activists who are trying to redefine our society into their own image?
update:
Check out Bigotry and Chick-Fil-A
Give this a watch, for those still under the delusion that allowing gay marriage won't affect everyone else.
Also, When hating on Chick-fil-A, try to hide it better.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
A word on the facebook dad
Normally, when a topic gets really hot for one reason or another, I tend to stay away from posting about it. Most of the time it's because there are so many people saying what I'd already be saying, I see no need to add my own voice.
So when the story came out with the dad responding to something his daughter wrote on facebook and ended with him shooting her laptop and posting the video on her facebook page, I wasn't going to bother writing about it. I'd shared it myself, but that was about it. I wasn't surprised it went viral.
What I found interesting is the reactions the video got, and that's what prompted me to throw in my own two cents. Here's the video, just in case you've been living in a cave and haven't seen it yet. Or if you're one of those who've refused to see it because you heard such terrible things about it. If you're one of those, it's not as bad as it's been made out to be. Go ahead and watch it. It won't claim your immortal soul and plunge you into the depths of despair.
So there you have it.
As people have been sharing this video, tweeting about it, blogging about it, writing articles about it, and just plain adding to the din, the usual sorts gravitated to different camps about it.
On the one hand, you've got the people lauding him as a hero. Father of the year, best dad ever, and so on and so forth. On that side, I really didn't see much I didn't expect. A lot of people out there could really empathize with this dad. At the most extreme, some people said some pretty nasty things about the daughter that were uncalled for and unwarranted, but for the most part, there was a lot of understanding about the father's anger and frustration.
Then there's the other side, and this is the one that I found fascinating. It wasn't just that they disagreed with this dad and what he did. They were horrified. Saddened. Depressed. Feeling that this just showed how terrible the world was becoming. Doom. Gloom. Terror. Woe.
One of the first things I noticed is that many completely disregarded the daughter's role in triggering the situation. It didn't matter to them that the daughter had posted a rant online that portrayed herself as a slave and victim of her parents' cruelty, or that she had actually lied to make her own case sound so much worse. They weren't bothered by her class-ist reference to the "cleaning lady." It didn't matter that she was rude and crude. It didn't matter that she exemplified the white privilege this side tends to rail against. It didn't matter that she used facebook as a soapbox to rant against her parents, for all the world to see, except for her parents, whom she thought she could block from seeing it. Nope. She was just an innocent child and the dad was an ogre, humiliating her online for no valid reason. He was labelled cruel and abusive, and if they bothered to note the daughter's part in all this at all, it was to blame the dad.
It was all rather fascinating to watch this side of the equation play out. We don't actually know a whole lot about this family and how they got to this point in their lives, but I quickly noticed a whole lot of projection happening. People who had experienced parental disciplinary action that they felt scarred them for life would project those events onto this family, with this dad standing in for their own parents' cruelty. Interestingly, they often referred to being punished for something they didn't actually do, whereas in this video, there was no question that the daughter had done what she did. This wasn't some guy going off the deep end with no evidence - he had the evidence right there in his hand, and he'd found it in the laptop he had worked long and hard to fix up for his daughter.
A lot of people were distressed over how this dad had humiliated his daughter, and I'm sure they're right that she has been humiliated by it. Of course, they don't care that she had humiliated her parents and their "cleaning lady" online herself, and these folks don't seem to have any problem with that.
Then there was the really over-the-top commentary. There were people predicting that this daughter will someday end up shooting her parents/boyfriend/insert whoever else here as a direct result of this horrible, horrible parenting. Others suggest the daughter is going to shoot herself. Some predicted that she will leave home at 18 and never have contact with her parents again (usually from people who went on to say how they had left their own parents young, and how they'd never forgiven them for being such terrible parents). I've seen people actually advise the daughter to run away from home, while others recommended she exact revenge by doing this like using her dad's toothbrush to scrub the toilet. Others suggest that the father should shoot himself because he was so cruel to his daughter by posting this video. There's more and worse, but that's just a sampling.
As I was reading from a lot of parents talking about how much they had a problem with this, I began to notice something.
The one thing they all agreed with was that he was a bad parent. Why? Well, he humiliated his daughter, of course. And he smokes. He's got a gun. He shot the laptop instead of donating it to charity. He has a southern accent. He disrespected his daughter. He clearly doesn't love his daughter. He's a redneck. Her mother should have stopped him. His wife is just as bad because she told him to throw in a shot for her.
This whole thing, of course, is all his fault. You see, if he had respected his daughter first, she would never had done what she did. If he had been a good parent, he would never humiliate his daughter online like this. If he were a good parent, he wouldn't have a gun to shoot the laptop with (and we all know those gun owners; they're just a thread away from going into rampages - a laptop today, a human tomorrow, that sort of thing).
They, of course, would NEVER do something like this! They respect their children too much. They would never be so cruel. They would never shoot anything. They would never...
... and that's when it became glaringly obvious to me. It wasn't about the dad and his daughter at all. It was all about them. You see, only a bad parent would do something like this, and since they would never do something like this, THEY were clearly good parents. They were superior to the redneck with thecowboy Tilley hat and the cigarette and the Colt .45 By running on about how terrible this guy was, how wrong he was, or psychoanalysing him as someone who is clearly [fill in diagnosis by projection here] and unfit to be a parent, they were able to turn the spotlight on themselves over what wonderful parents THEY were, because they weren't like him.
Chances are, this dad probably regrets putting up this video. He was clearly very angry when he made it, and I doubt it occurred to him that it would get beyond his daughter's facebook friends; his target audience. People - even IT people - can forget that the internet is forever. How could he predict that it would be taken up by newspapers and go viral? Yet his daughter had been warned. While such a public display might be considered too much, he was following through with the consequences he's warned her of.
In reading comments from his detractors, I began to detect a hint of resentment, and even perhaps some jealousy. Here is a guy with a "went uphill both ways, barefoot" type of history, and he has clearly made a success of himself. He mentioned being an IT guy, which can pay pretty darn good. They live on an acreage, and he can afford to buy his daughter a laptop and all the stuff that comes with such a purchase, along with other electronic toys for her. He can afford a video camera, and he can afford a gun and ammunition. He's also willing to work out exchanges of service, such as with their "cleaning lady" that showed he wasn't the greedy, money obsessed sort, either. He's got what a lot of people wish they had.
In condemning this man for being a bad parent, his detractors seek to elevate themselves above him. THEY would never do such things, sure, but then they likely couldn't afford to buy their own kids all the electronic gadgets they wish. And how many could forfeit payment and barter for services, instead? THEY would never humiliate their child, but they probably don't know what their kids are doing behind their backs any more than this dad did until he stumbled on it (and I've encountered more than a few parents, including home schooling parents, blissfully in denial that their kids were completely messed up). THEY would never smoke or own a gun, and they certainly wouldn't destroy something that could be donated to charity.
I suspect these folks would have been much happier if Mr. Cowboy Hat, with his cigarette and Colt .45 and his pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic went back to the trailer park where he belongs, and they could go back to living their superior little lives and never have to look at their own lives in comparison.
update: If you want to see what this dad has to say for himself about all this, his facebook page is public. And for those freaking out, yes, he has been visited by the police.
uppderdate: Response to Dr. Phil.
So when the story came out with the dad responding to something his daughter wrote on facebook and ended with him shooting her laptop and posting the video on her facebook page, I wasn't going to bother writing about it. I'd shared it myself, but that was about it. I wasn't surprised it went viral.
What I found interesting is the reactions the video got, and that's what prompted me to throw in my own two cents. Here's the video, just in case you've been living in a cave and haven't seen it yet. Or if you're one of those who've refused to see it because you heard such terrible things about it. If you're one of those, it's not as bad as it's been made out to be. Go ahead and watch it. It won't claim your immortal soul and plunge you into the depths of despair.
So there you have it.
As people have been sharing this video, tweeting about it, blogging about it, writing articles about it, and just plain adding to the din, the usual sorts gravitated to different camps about it.
On the one hand, you've got the people lauding him as a hero. Father of the year, best dad ever, and so on and so forth. On that side, I really didn't see much I didn't expect. A lot of people out there could really empathize with this dad. At the most extreme, some people said some pretty nasty things about the daughter that were uncalled for and unwarranted, but for the most part, there was a lot of understanding about the father's anger and frustration.
Then there's the other side, and this is the one that I found fascinating. It wasn't just that they disagreed with this dad and what he did. They were horrified. Saddened. Depressed. Feeling that this just showed how terrible the world was becoming. Doom. Gloom. Terror. Woe.
One of the first things I noticed is that many completely disregarded the daughter's role in triggering the situation. It didn't matter to them that the daughter had posted a rant online that portrayed herself as a slave and victim of her parents' cruelty, or that she had actually lied to make her own case sound so much worse. They weren't bothered by her class-ist reference to the "cleaning lady." It didn't matter that she was rude and crude. It didn't matter that she exemplified the white privilege this side tends to rail against. It didn't matter that she used facebook as a soapbox to rant against her parents, for all the world to see, except for her parents, whom she thought she could block from seeing it. Nope. She was just an innocent child and the dad was an ogre, humiliating her online for no valid reason. He was labelled cruel and abusive, and if they bothered to note the daughter's part in all this at all, it was to blame the dad.
It was all rather fascinating to watch this side of the equation play out. We don't actually know a whole lot about this family and how they got to this point in their lives, but I quickly noticed a whole lot of projection happening. People who had experienced parental disciplinary action that they felt scarred them for life would project those events onto this family, with this dad standing in for their own parents' cruelty. Interestingly, they often referred to being punished for something they didn't actually do, whereas in this video, there was no question that the daughter had done what she did. This wasn't some guy going off the deep end with no evidence - he had the evidence right there in his hand, and he'd found it in the laptop he had worked long and hard to fix up for his daughter.
A lot of people were distressed over how this dad had humiliated his daughter, and I'm sure they're right that she has been humiliated by it. Of course, they don't care that she had humiliated her parents and their "cleaning lady" online herself, and these folks don't seem to have any problem with that.
Then there was the really over-the-top commentary. There were people predicting that this daughter will someday end up shooting her parents/boyfriend/insert whoever else here as a direct result of this horrible, horrible parenting. Others suggest the daughter is going to shoot herself. Some predicted that she will leave home at 18 and never have contact with her parents again (usually from people who went on to say how they had left their own parents young, and how they'd never forgiven them for being such terrible parents). I've seen people actually advise the daughter to run away from home, while others recommended she exact revenge by doing this like using her dad's toothbrush to scrub the toilet. Others suggest that the father should shoot himself because he was so cruel to his daughter by posting this video. There's more and worse, but that's just a sampling.
As I was reading from a lot of parents talking about how much they had a problem with this, I began to notice something.
The one thing they all agreed with was that he was a bad parent. Why? Well, he humiliated his daughter, of course. And he smokes. He's got a gun. He shot the laptop instead of donating it to charity. He has a southern accent. He disrespected his daughter. He clearly doesn't love his daughter. He's a redneck. Her mother should have stopped him. His wife is just as bad because she told him to throw in a shot for her.
This whole thing, of course, is all his fault. You see, if he had respected his daughter first, she would never had done what she did. If he had been a good parent, he would never humiliate his daughter online like this. If he were a good parent, he wouldn't have a gun to shoot the laptop with (and we all know those gun owners; they're just a thread away from going into rampages - a laptop today, a human tomorrow, that sort of thing).
They, of course, would NEVER do something like this! They respect their children too much. They would never be so cruel. They would never shoot anything. They would never...
... and that's when it became glaringly obvious to me. It wasn't about the dad and his daughter at all. It was all about them. You see, only a bad parent would do something like this, and since they would never do something like this, THEY were clearly good parents. They were superior to the redneck with the
Chances are, this dad probably regrets putting up this video. He was clearly very angry when he made it, and I doubt it occurred to him that it would get beyond his daughter's facebook friends; his target audience. People - even IT people - can forget that the internet is forever. How could he predict that it would be taken up by newspapers and go viral? Yet his daughter had been warned. While such a public display might be considered too much, he was following through with the consequences he's warned her of.
In reading comments from his detractors, I began to detect a hint of resentment, and even perhaps some jealousy. Here is a guy with a "went uphill both ways, barefoot" type of history, and he has clearly made a success of himself. He mentioned being an IT guy, which can pay pretty darn good. They live on an acreage, and he can afford to buy his daughter a laptop and all the stuff that comes with such a purchase, along with other electronic toys for her. He can afford a video camera, and he can afford a gun and ammunition. He's also willing to work out exchanges of service, such as with their "cleaning lady" that showed he wasn't the greedy, money obsessed sort, either. He's got what a lot of people wish they had.
In condemning this man for being a bad parent, his detractors seek to elevate themselves above him. THEY would never do such things, sure, but then they likely couldn't afford to buy their own kids all the electronic gadgets they wish. And how many could forfeit payment and barter for services, instead? THEY would never humiliate their child, but they probably don't know what their kids are doing behind their backs any more than this dad did until he stumbled on it (and I've encountered more than a few parents, including home schooling parents, blissfully in denial that their kids were completely messed up). THEY would never smoke or own a gun, and they certainly wouldn't destroy something that could be donated to charity.
I suspect these folks would have been much happier if Mr. Cowboy Hat, with his cigarette and Colt .45 and his pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic went back to the trailer park where he belongs, and they could go back to living their superior little lives and never have to look at their own lives in comparison.
update: If you want to see what this dad has to say for himself about all this, his facebook page is public. And for those freaking out, yes, he has been visited by the police.
uppderdate: Response to Dr. Phil.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Remember, occupiers; this is what you wanted
Ah, the logical inconsistencies and magical thinking of the occupiers.
Groups of people squat illegally on public and private land in cities all over the place. They openly call for revolution and our very own version of an "Arab spring." When told to leave, they repeatedly refuse. Their cause is greater than law and order, apparently. They seem downright offended that anyone should expect them to leave (and equally offended when these freeloaders discover that homeless people have been sharing their bounty). In their magical world, they should be free to break whatever laws and regulations they want, with impunity, and the rest of the world should bow down to their wisdom and do all the stuff they want us to.
The more fanatical among them have been looking for their Kent State moment, and they got it. I expect them to milk this for every drop of sympathy they think they can get. Oh, the outrage! The brutality! Never mind that they were repeatedly told to leave. Never mind they had plenty of warning. Now, someone is injured - an Iraq war hero, no less (let's forget that these are the often same people who otherwise consider soldiers to be brutal killers of innocents, acting on the orders of that warmongering GWB). Now they've got their bloodied hero to wave before us all, claiming victim hood (I'm sure it would have been much better for your cause if he'd been killed). Those evil, evil police, terrorizing peaceful protesters.
h/t Moonbattery
Peaceful protesters?
If you are truly peaceful, pack up your tents, clean up your mess and go home. Then get proactive about change by doing something effectual. I realize this might involve something you don't believe you should have to do - namely, work. Believe it or not, work is not a dirty word, though from what I've heard from occupiers, such things are beneath you.
The world does not owe you anything, no matter what your Marxist professors and liberal/progressive teachers seem to have taught you.
And our cities are not required to bend to your will, allowing you to break our laws, because you think your cause demands it. You have been shown far more leeway and patience than you deserve.
If you repeatedly break the law, while making it clear you have no intention of obeying the law, while calling for "revolution" and so on, what the heck to you expect to happen? Do you really believe that the rest of the world will just sit on their hands, letting you continue having your little power struggle? Then when they finally come to arrest you, you act all surprised, resist and people get arrested, bloodied, bruised and even seriously injured. Why do you even pretend to be surprised by this? This is what you've been asking for. This has been what you've wanted all along.
This is your revolution, folks. And in revolutions, people get hurt. People get arrested. People get killed.
From what I've been hearing, this is what you've been after all long.
Groups of people squat illegally on public and private land in cities all over the place. They openly call for revolution and our very own version of an "Arab spring." When told to leave, they repeatedly refuse. Their cause is greater than law and order, apparently. They seem downright offended that anyone should expect them to leave (and equally offended when these freeloaders discover that homeless people have been sharing their bounty). In their magical world, they should be free to break whatever laws and regulations they want, with impunity, and the rest of the world should bow down to their wisdom and do all the stuff they want us to.
The more fanatical among them have been looking for their Kent State moment, and they got it. I expect them to milk this for every drop of sympathy they think they can get. Oh, the outrage! The brutality! Never mind that they were repeatedly told to leave. Never mind they had plenty of warning. Now, someone is injured - an Iraq war hero, no less (let's forget that these are the often same people who otherwise consider soldiers to be brutal killers of innocents, acting on the orders of that warmongering GWB). Now they've got their bloodied hero to wave before us all, claiming victim hood (I'm sure it would have been much better for your cause if he'd been killed). Those evil, evil police, terrorizing peaceful protesters.
h/t Moonbattery
Peaceful protesters?
If you are truly peaceful, pack up your tents, clean up your mess and go home. Then get proactive about change by doing something effectual. I realize this might involve something you don't believe you should have to do - namely, work. Believe it or not, work is not a dirty word, though from what I've heard from occupiers, such things are beneath you.
The world does not owe you anything, no matter what your Marxist professors and liberal/progressive teachers seem to have taught you.
And our cities are not required to bend to your will, allowing you to break our laws, because you think your cause demands it. You have been shown far more leeway and patience than you deserve.
If you repeatedly break the law, while making it clear you have no intention of obeying the law, while calling for "revolution" and so on, what the heck to you expect to happen? Do you really believe that the rest of the world will just sit on their hands, letting you continue having your little power struggle? Then when they finally come to arrest you, you act all surprised, resist and people get arrested, bloodied, bruised and even seriously injured. Why do you even pretend to be surprised by this? This is what you've been asking for. This has been what you've wanted all along.
This is your revolution, folks. And in revolutions, people get hurt. People get arrested. People get killed.
From what I've been hearing, this is what you've been after all long.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Random thoughts on the OWS claims
Just a few random thoughts that have been passing through my mind as I see what's being shared back and forth among people I know, both left and right of the political spectrum, about the OWS protests. Funny thing is, I've been away from home a lot and not keeping up with my usual news routine, so almost all of this is stuff that's fallen in my lap, so to speak, when I check my facebook, emails and the few blogs I manage to squeeze a visit in.
Question. Those going around saying, "I am the 99%", do you really believe there even *is* a 99%? I've been looking through the site, reading the placards, and watching a few youtube videos. You know what? You're not part of any 99%. First, your representation of a 99% vs a 1% is a false dichotomy. Most of the groups you claim are part of the 1% aren't, and your definition of what the 99% is has no basis in reality. By your definition, I'm one of the 99%, yet I don't know anyone who fits your description, including the people who've lost their jobs, etc, nor do you represent me or my views. You are not the 99%. If you're liberal, you are part of a roughly 50%. If you are unemployed, you are part of a 20% (US) or 9% (Canada). If you've lost your home, you're part of a US national average of less than 3%. It's the same with health insurance, debt, etc.
The 99% is an illusion.
To those of you complaining about bailouts, do you not realize that it was the government that did the bailing out? Did you know that some companies tried to refuse bailout money, but had to take it anyways? As for those that did take the bailout money, if you have someone offering you millions of dollars, wouldn't you take it, to? I totally agree that there shouldn't have been any bailouts, but you're aiming your rage at the wrong target.
Oh, and while we're at it, how is it that when the Tea Party folks complained about the bailouts, it was a bad thing, but now that you're against the bailouts, it's a good thing?
For those who think that capitalism is the problem, just what do you think of when you picture capitalists? It seems to me that what you're actually talking about is crony capitalism, which is fake capitalism. You seem to think capitalism consists only of big banks, big corporations, big companies. You know what capitalists really look like? Check out the next street food vendor you see, selling out of a truck, with lines of people eager to indulge in their delicious offerings. Those are capitalists. Think of that small, family owned bookstore or convenience store in your neighbourhood. Those are capitalists. Think of your favourite coffee shop or tea place. Even if it's a franchise, they are still owned or run by individuals who have invested time and money to provide you with a place to sit, enjoy a hot beverage and get free wi-fi. Those are capitalists.
So when you say you want to destroy capitalism, say goodbye to your favourite book store, your grocery store, your coffee shop. Say goodbye to your laptops and cellphones and tablets. Say goodbye to street vendors and those funky little boutiques where you get your hipster clothes.
To those who say you want socialism, have you spent any time looking at history? Every single society that has gone the socialist route has failed, or is in the process of failing right now. At best, socialism is expensive, and is incapable of paying for itself for long, as we are seeing in Greece. At worst, it eliminates personal freedoms, individual rights and leads to the sort of death and destruction we've seen in the likes of Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler, and continue to see now in North Korea and China. This is not to say some things considered socialist do not have value; just as communism can use capitalist principles and make money, democracies and use socialist principles with some success. The difference is, one is forced and controlled by the government while the other is chosen by the citizens and the government is acting on their behalf. If you want a fully socialist society, say goodbye to democracy, freedom and individual rights.
Another question I have for OWS supporters. Those of you who went on and on about how the Tea Party were just shills for big business (ignoring the fact that the Tea Partiers were against crony capitalism and bail outs) and that they were all astroturfed by the Koch brothers and so on. Why are you so content to ignore the fact that the OWS is astroturfed, complete with paid protesters? If you're so upset about corporate corruption (and rightly so), why are you not equally upset about union corruption, and union money funding OWS?
While in the same vein, how is it that you're so upset because some people got pepper sprayed, or a police officer apparently punched a protester, but you aren't upset when protesters are violent? Why is it okay for the protesters to break the law, while you expect the police not to do anything about it?
For those who think this "movement" is big in any way, you might want to get a look at this.
Click on it for a larger size. You see that tiny little smudge on the right? That's you.
For those of you with your trite little saying on your placards (and those sharing photos of some of the "best" ones), did you misrepresent things on purpose, or are you really that detached from reality? And let's not forget how incredibly self-centred and spoiled some of your "demands" are. I gotta tell you, some of you folks haven't just gone off the deep end. You've been there a while and are doing the backstroke.
To those of you going on about how great the OWS is now, but were against the Tea Party protests in the past, please explain this.
Tea Partiers got the proper permits for their demonstrations. There were no arrests, no violence, no drug use, and when they were done, they left the areas they used in better shape than when they started. They had a clear message, stated it, then went home to their lives and jobs.
The OWS folks are occupying private property illegally, their mess has gotten so bad I'm starting to wonder when the cholera outbreak will start, there have been many arrests, they've broken a number of laws, there is rampant drug use, noise, public sexual activity, while freeloading off of donations for about a month now and vow to continue even longer.
How is it that the Tea Partiers are the bad guys, but the OWS folks are the good guys?
Oh, and a lot of those "rights" you are demanding? They're not rights. They're privileges. You don't have a "right" to a job. You don't have a "right" to own a home. You don't have a "right" to an income. You don't have a "right" to have someone else pay for your medical care, your tuition, your mortgage, and so on. Yes, times are tough and it's hard to make ends meet. Yes, it's good to have a safety net for those truly in need. They still are not rights. I am also at a loss as to how OWS will in any way improve circumstances for anyone. You're protesting the wrong place.
I've got other questions and observations, but I'll save those for another post.
Question. Those going around saying, "I am the 99%", do you really believe there even *is* a 99%? I've been looking through the site, reading the placards, and watching a few youtube videos. You know what? You're not part of any 99%. First, your representation of a 99% vs a 1% is a false dichotomy. Most of the groups you claim are part of the 1% aren't, and your definition of what the 99% is has no basis in reality. By your definition, I'm one of the 99%, yet I don't know anyone who fits your description, including the people who've lost their jobs, etc, nor do you represent me or my views. You are not the 99%. If you're liberal, you are part of a roughly 50%. If you are unemployed, you are part of a 20% (US) or 9% (Canada). If you've lost your home, you're part of a US national average of less than 3%. It's the same with health insurance, debt, etc.
The 99% is an illusion.
To those of you complaining about bailouts, do you not realize that it was the government that did the bailing out? Did you know that some companies tried to refuse bailout money, but had to take it anyways? As for those that did take the bailout money, if you have someone offering you millions of dollars, wouldn't you take it, to? I totally agree that there shouldn't have been any bailouts, but you're aiming your rage at the wrong target.
Oh, and while we're at it, how is it that when the Tea Party folks complained about the bailouts, it was a bad thing, but now that you're against the bailouts, it's a good thing?
For those who think that capitalism is the problem, just what do you think of when you picture capitalists? It seems to me that what you're actually talking about is crony capitalism, which is fake capitalism. You seem to think capitalism consists only of big banks, big corporations, big companies. You know what capitalists really look like? Check out the next street food vendor you see, selling out of a truck, with lines of people eager to indulge in their delicious offerings. Those are capitalists. Think of that small, family owned bookstore or convenience store in your neighbourhood. Those are capitalists. Think of your favourite coffee shop or tea place. Even if it's a franchise, they are still owned or run by individuals who have invested time and money to provide you with a place to sit, enjoy a hot beverage and get free wi-fi. Those are capitalists.
So when you say you want to destroy capitalism, say goodbye to your favourite book store, your grocery store, your coffee shop. Say goodbye to your laptops and cellphones and tablets. Say goodbye to street vendors and those funky little boutiques where you get your hipster clothes.
To those who say you want socialism, have you spent any time looking at history? Every single society that has gone the socialist route has failed, or is in the process of failing right now. At best, socialism is expensive, and is incapable of paying for itself for long, as we are seeing in Greece. At worst, it eliminates personal freedoms, individual rights and leads to the sort of death and destruction we've seen in the likes of Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler, and continue to see now in North Korea and China. This is not to say some things considered socialist do not have value; just as communism can use capitalist principles and make money, democracies and use socialist principles with some success. The difference is, one is forced and controlled by the government while the other is chosen by the citizens and the government is acting on their behalf. If you want a fully socialist society, say goodbye to democracy, freedom and individual rights.
Another question I have for OWS supporters. Those of you who went on and on about how the Tea Party were just shills for big business (ignoring the fact that the Tea Partiers were against crony capitalism and bail outs) and that they were all astroturfed by the Koch brothers and so on. Why are you so content to ignore the fact that the OWS is astroturfed, complete with paid protesters? If you're so upset about corporate corruption (and rightly so), why are you not equally upset about union corruption, and union money funding OWS?
While in the same vein, how is it that you're so upset because some people got pepper sprayed, or a police officer apparently punched a protester, but you aren't upset when protesters are violent? Why is it okay for the protesters to break the law, while you expect the police not to do anything about it?
For those who think this "movement" is big in any way, you might want to get a look at this.
Click on it for a larger size. You see that tiny little smudge on the right? That's you.
For those of you with your trite little saying on your placards (and those sharing photos of some of the "best" ones), did you misrepresent things on purpose, or are you really that detached from reality? And let's not forget how incredibly self-centred and spoiled some of your "demands" are. I gotta tell you, some of you folks haven't just gone off the deep end. You've been there a while and are doing the backstroke.
To those of you going on about how great the OWS is now, but were against the Tea Party protests in the past, please explain this.
Tea Partiers got the proper permits for their demonstrations. There were no arrests, no violence, no drug use, and when they were done, they left the areas they used in better shape than when they started. They had a clear message, stated it, then went home to their lives and jobs.
The OWS folks are occupying private property illegally, their mess has gotten so bad I'm starting to wonder when the cholera outbreak will start, there have been many arrests, they've broken a number of laws, there is rampant drug use, noise, public sexual activity, while freeloading off of donations for about a month now and vow to continue even longer.
How is it that the Tea Partiers are the bad guys, but the OWS folks are the good guys?
Oh, and a lot of those "rights" you are demanding? They're not rights. They're privileges. You don't have a "right" to a job. You don't have a "right" to own a home. You don't have a "right" to an income. You don't have a "right" to have someone else pay for your medical care, your tuition, your mortgage, and so on. Yes, times are tough and it's hard to make ends meet. Yes, it's good to have a safety net for those truly in need. They still are not rights. I am also at a loss as to how OWS will in any way improve circumstances for anyone. You're protesting the wrong place.
I've got other questions and observations, but I'll save those for another post.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Who is what?
I haven't been going out of my way to follow the situation going on with Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Despite that, I'm still learning more about this than I ever wanted to know.
Of course, the usual folks are practically creaming their jeans over this US version of the "Arab Spring." Somehow, they forget that revolutions have a tendency to leave hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people dead and many more struggling.
For now, there's just one area I want to focus on about the OWS folks and their supporters. That is their "we are the 99%" thing.
According to these folks, there're two types of people in the world. There's the 1%, who are all evil capitalists stealing money from and taking advantage of everyone else, with the everyone else comprising the 99%. They've even got a website up where people share their tales of woe, which is all because of those dastardly 1%'ers, forcing them to take on loans they can't pay, buy houses they can't afford, and generally keeping a boot on their throats.
There's a slight problem with this issue.
First, though they talk about that 1% being comprised of "the rich" who control almost all the money in the world (they tend to swing back and forth between "the world" and "the US" a lot), that 1% represents the wealthiest of the wealthy. A few years back, the numbers were that 5% of people controlled 95% of the wealth. Then I heard it was 2% and 98%. Now it's 1% and 99%.
The point being that that 1% is a tiny minority of the world's richest people. According to the Forbes list of billionairs, the No. 1 slot is held by a Mexican named Carlos Slim Helu and his family ($74 billion). He's a self-made billionaire, meaning that he didn't inherit his wealth or win it in the lottery, nor did he get make it as an employee of someone else. He started his own business. No. 2 on the list is Bill Gates ($59 billion), another self-made billionaire. Warren Buffet ($39 billion) weights in at No. 3, and is another self-made billionaire. No. 4 gives us Bernard Arnault ($41 billion), a purveyor of luxury goods. No. 5 takes us to Larry Ellison ($33 billion), yet another self-made billionaire. No 6 brings us India's Laksmi Mittal ($31.1 billion), No. 7 is the Spanish Amancio Ortega ($31 billion), No. 8 is Brazillian, Eike Batista ($30 billion), No. 9 brings us back to India with Mukesh Ambani ($27 billion), and No. 10 brings us back to the US with Christy Walton and family ($24.5 billion). That's just the top 10. You can see the full list of the world's billionaires here. The list of the top 400 Americans is here.
What you'll note about these people is that they are all billionaires. And only the top numbers of these people, worldwide, consist of the evil 1% of the world's wealthiest people.
You know what that means?
The 99% the OWS protesters claim to represent includes all the millionaires and low-end billionaires that didn't make it to the top 1%.
Of course, the usual folks are practically creaming their jeans over this US version of the "Arab Spring." Somehow, they forget that revolutions have a tendency to leave hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people dead and many more struggling.
For now, there's just one area I want to focus on about the OWS folks and their supporters. That is their "we are the 99%" thing.
According to these folks, there're two types of people in the world. There's the 1%, who are all evil capitalists stealing money from and taking advantage of everyone else, with the everyone else comprising the 99%. They've even got a website up where people share their tales of woe, which is all because of those dastardly 1%'ers, forcing them to take on loans they can't pay, buy houses they can't afford, and generally keeping a boot on their throats.
There's a slight problem with this issue.
First, though they talk about that 1% being comprised of "the rich" who control almost all the money in the world (they tend to swing back and forth between "the world" and "the US" a lot), that 1% represents the wealthiest of the wealthy. A few years back, the numbers were that 5% of people controlled 95% of the wealth. Then I heard it was 2% and 98%. Now it's 1% and 99%.
The point being that that 1% is a tiny minority of the world's richest people. According to the Forbes list of billionairs, the No. 1 slot is held by a Mexican named Carlos Slim Helu and his family ($74 billion). He's a self-made billionaire, meaning that he didn't inherit his wealth or win it in the lottery, nor did he get make it as an employee of someone else. He started his own business. No. 2 on the list is Bill Gates ($59 billion), another self-made billionaire. Warren Buffet ($39 billion) weights in at No. 3, and is another self-made billionaire. No. 4 gives us Bernard Arnault ($41 billion), a purveyor of luxury goods. No. 5 takes us to Larry Ellison ($33 billion), yet another self-made billionaire. No 6 brings us India's Laksmi Mittal ($31.1 billion), No. 7 is the Spanish Amancio Ortega ($31 billion), No. 8 is Brazillian, Eike Batista ($30 billion), No. 9 brings us back to India with Mukesh Ambani ($27 billion), and No. 10 brings us back to the US with Christy Walton and family ($24.5 billion). That's just the top 10. You can see the full list of the world's billionaires here. The list of the top 400 Americans is here.
What you'll note about these people is that they are all billionaires. And only the top numbers of these people, worldwide, consist of the evil 1% of the world's wealthiest people.
You know what that means?
The 99% the OWS protesters claim to represent includes all the millionaires and low-end billionaires that didn't make it to the top 1%.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
In her own words...
I stumbled on this compilation just today, though it was uploaded almost 2 months ago. I don't know how old the specific clip I will be referring to is. Listen carefully.
Did you catch it?
Try again, starting at about 1:43 through to 2:00
Did you catch it this time?
This is Michelle Obama speaking:
"What that reminded me of was our trip to Africa... uhm... two years ago... uh... and the level of excitement that we felt in that country - the hope that people saw just in the sheer presence of somebody like Barack Obama. A Kenyan. A black man. A man of great statesmanship, who they believe can change the fate of the world."
When I first heard it and caught her referring to Africa as a country, I had to laugh. I seem to remember someone on the Republican side (can't remember who) being dragged over the coals for referring to the African continent as a country. To be fair, a lot of people seem to make that mistake, simply because that's how the word is used, as if Africa were just one, great homogeneous country rather than quite a lot of very diverse countries.
Then I heard to referring to her husband as a Kenyan.
I had to replay is again, just to make sure I wasn't mishearing it.
So what was she saying? I suppose one could try and brush it off as her referencing his cultural ethnicity, perhaps? His racial ancestry? You'd think his own wife, however, wouldn't refer to her husband, a US politician, as a Kenyan unless he actually was one. Not that it would be the first time, as he was heralded by another politician for being a US senator, even though he was Kenyan.
Yeah, yeah, I know. With the release of a pdf of his birth certificate, it's all supposed to be over and done with, but with stuff like this coming from Michelle Obama herself, no wonder so many don't believe it!
Did you catch it?
Try again, starting at about 1:43 through to 2:00
Did you catch it this time?
This is Michelle Obama speaking:
"What that reminded me of was our trip to Africa... uhm... two years ago... uh... and the level of excitement that we felt in that country - the hope that people saw just in the sheer presence of somebody like Barack Obama. A Kenyan. A black man. A man of great statesmanship, who they believe can change the fate of the world."
When I first heard it and caught her referring to Africa as a country, I had to laugh. I seem to remember someone on the Republican side (can't remember who) being dragged over the coals for referring to the African continent as a country. To be fair, a lot of people seem to make that mistake, simply because that's how the word is used, as if Africa were just one, great homogeneous country rather than quite a lot of very diverse countries.
Then I heard to referring to her husband as a Kenyan.
I had to replay is again, just to make sure I wasn't mishearing it.
So what was she saying? I suppose one could try and brush it off as her referencing his cultural ethnicity, perhaps? His racial ancestry? You'd think his own wife, however, wouldn't refer to her husband, a US politician, as a Kenyan unless he actually was one. Not that it would be the first time, as he was heralded by another politician for being a US senator, even though he was Kenyan.
Yeah, yeah, I know. With the release of a pdf of his birth certificate, it's all supposed to be over and done with, but with stuff like this coming from Michelle Obama herself, no wonder so many don't believe it!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A tragedy made worse
I haven't had much chance to post here lately (if you visit my home school blog, you'll read why, though I do warn it might fall into the category of TMI!). On top of that, it was just really hard to make any of my usual posts in light of what's been going on in Japan in the last while. First the shock of an earthquake large enough to affect the earth's axis. Then the horror of the tsunami. Finally, Japan continues to struggle with containing their damaged nuclear reactors.
What has made this event unique is the prevalence of cameras and videos in Japan. We've been inundated with images that have made us all eyewitnesses. They are astonishing beyond belief.
Ten's of thousands of people are dead or missing.
Countries from around the world have offered aid. Some offers have been accepted, while others are on standby, ready to move should they be asked.
Meanwhile, around the world, people are offering their thoughts and prayers - as well as making donations and finding other ways they can help.
Yet no tragedy seems to go to waste without someone trying to use it to spout their own agenda or spread their own hate.
The first I saw was on someone's facebook status. This was a "gamer friend" - someone I know only as a "neighbour" in a game I play. The first was a status update that started off sending sympathies to Japan, then quickly devolved to a rant about how they were the richest country in the world and would be able to rebuild in months, because they'd taken so many US jobs. I challenged her on her claims, but she never responded. Instead, I saw a new update. Here, it started as a warning against scams claiming to raise donations for Japan - followed up by another rant on how no one should be sending donations, because they were so rich from all the jobs stolen from the US.
She is no longer on my friends list.
Then you had the people trying to tie the earthquake to climate change. No surprise there. After Katrina, Indonesia and Haiti, they're no strangers to dancing on the bodies of the dead to push their AGW crusades.
Next on the list were the anti-nuclear crowd. They, of course, are expecting the worst - are almost eager for it, for all their claims to the contrary - and don't believe any of the official reports. Of course, those reports are changing so fast, there's no way to know anything right now. We shall see how that evolved. I find it quite disturbing, however, that they are so quick to ignore the thousands of dead while fretting over the nuclear plants and preaching their anti-nuclear message. Some, if you can believe it, are even planning to stockpile iodine. Which would make more sense if they were actually in any danger, but we're talking people who live in central North America.
Just now, however, was the worst of the worst.
A certain group of people I know have started sharing a YouTube video. I'm not going to link to this pathetic piece of garbage here, and hopefully enough complaints will have been made against it to have it removed completely.
The video is of a young woman who's going on about how "God is so good" for answering prayers. The prayer in question was to "open atheists eyes." The prayer was answered, according to her, through the earthquake in Japan.
Now, within the first minute of this video, it was obvious to me that this was a troll. For someone who claimed to be a Christian, she didn't talk or act like one. I've encountered a few whacked out extreme Christians in my time, and they don't act or talk like her, either. A quick search revealed that this person is a member of a satirical, spoof "Christian" forum, where she's known to post under another alias as well.
For a troll, this one is particularly dedicated. There's a year's worth of videos on her YouTube channel. All stupid and obnoxious. She was obviously an anti-Christian playing herself as a Christian extremist. It didn't help that she did things like call Lent, lentil.
This particular video, however, was disgusting beyond belief. If she had been a real Christian spouting this, it would be disgusting beyond belief. What makes it worse is that we've got an anti-Christian troll using the horror and tragedy of Japan to troll against Christians by posing as one and spewing her garbage.
It only took a few minutes of searching to find out her double identity, and that she was a fake. The people sharing her video (and giving her channel hits in the process) fell for it. They're the usual bunch of anti-Christians, and they shared it with comments such as this.
I don't recall this woman's political views being mentioned, but then I didn't waste time watching the whole thing. This crowd always assume Christian = political right, and it's a common phrase.
Because apparently, this video is what they think organized religion is like. Nothing like painting millions of people worldwide with the same brush!
Okay, aside from the hyperbole in the first sentence, the second one is just plain ignorance. People are afraid of Muslims because they see all those videos and read news about radical Muslims teaching their kids that Jews are dogs and pigs that need to be wiped off the face of the earth, and that the greatest thing they can do is blow themselves up while killing as many infidels as possible, or go around shooting US soldiers after watching a fake video supposedly showing atrocities by US soldiers but were actually taken from a movie, or murder families in their sleep. People can't tell one type of Muslim from another. It's not like the extremists walk around with signs taped to their foreheads reading "I am a radical Muslim!" Comparing this woman's ignorant blathering doesn't exactly fall into the same category.
Here's the thing. Of the many thousands of Christians around the world posting, sharing and otherwise articulating their caring for the victims of Japan's triple tragedy, sending their heartfelt prayers and organizing ways to send help, this group of Christophobes (and it's a very specific group only) is busily sharing this disgusting video, giving the troll who made it more traffic on her YouTube channel in the process, and using it to spew their own anti-Christian bigotry.
I wonder how many of them bothered to go to the YouTube page and flag the video as offensive? Somehow, I don't think a single one did - just as not a single one bothered to do a simple google search to find out if this sicko was for real, or the troll that she turned out to be.
Which, as far as I'm concerned, makes them every bit as disgusting as the troll who made the video.
update: Well, that was fast! The woman who made the video I've been talking about has admitted her videos were all fake, and her YouTube account is now closed.
Let's see how many of the people who shared this will apologize for spreading their hate.
What has made this event unique is the prevalence of cameras and videos in Japan. We've been inundated with images that have made us all eyewitnesses. They are astonishing beyond belief.
Ten's of thousands of people are dead or missing.
Countries from around the world have offered aid. Some offers have been accepted, while others are on standby, ready to move should they be asked.
Meanwhile, around the world, people are offering their thoughts and prayers - as well as making donations and finding other ways they can help.
Yet no tragedy seems to go to waste without someone trying to use it to spout their own agenda or spread their own hate.
The first I saw was on someone's facebook status. This was a "gamer friend" - someone I know only as a "neighbour" in a game I play. The first was a status update that started off sending sympathies to Japan, then quickly devolved to a rant about how they were the richest country in the world and would be able to rebuild in months, because they'd taken so many US jobs. I challenged her on her claims, but she never responded. Instead, I saw a new update. Here, it started as a warning against scams claiming to raise donations for Japan - followed up by another rant on how no one should be sending donations, because they were so rich from all the jobs stolen from the US.
She is no longer on my friends list.
Then you had the people trying to tie the earthquake to climate change. No surprise there. After Katrina, Indonesia and Haiti, they're no strangers to dancing on the bodies of the dead to push their AGW crusades.
Next on the list were the anti-nuclear crowd. They, of course, are expecting the worst - are almost eager for it, for all their claims to the contrary - and don't believe any of the official reports. Of course, those reports are changing so fast, there's no way to know anything right now. We shall see how that evolved. I find it quite disturbing, however, that they are so quick to ignore the thousands of dead while fretting over the nuclear plants and preaching their anti-nuclear message. Some, if you can believe it, are even planning to stockpile iodine. Which would make more sense if they were actually in any danger, but we're talking people who live in central North America.
Just now, however, was the worst of the worst.
A certain group of people I know have started sharing a YouTube video. I'm not going to link to this pathetic piece of garbage here, and hopefully enough complaints will have been made against it to have it removed completely.
The video is of a young woman who's going on about how "God is so good" for answering prayers. The prayer in question was to "open atheists eyes." The prayer was answered, according to her, through the earthquake in Japan.
Now, within the first minute of this video, it was obvious to me that this was a troll. For someone who claimed to be a Christian, she didn't talk or act like one. I've encountered a few whacked out extreme Christians in my time, and they don't act or talk like her, either. A quick search revealed that this person is a member of a satirical, spoof "Christian" forum, where she's known to post under another alias as well.
For a troll, this one is particularly dedicated. There's a year's worth of videos on her YouTube channel. All stupid and obnoxious. She was obviously an anti-Christian playing herself as a Christian extremist. It didn't help that she did things like call Lent, lentil.
This particular video, however, was disgusting beyond belief. If she had been a real Christian spouting this, it would be disgusting beyond belief. What makes it worse is that we've got an anti-Christian troll using the horror and tragedy of Japan to troll against Christians by posing as one and spewing her garbage.
It only took a few minutes of searching to find out her double identity, and that she was a fake. The people sharing her video (and giving her channel hits in the process) fell for it. They're the usual bunch of anti-Christians, and they shared it with comments such as this.
PLEASE GOD, Save us from the Christian Right!!!
I don't recall this woman's political views being mentioned, but then I didn't waste time watching the whole thing. This crowd always assume Christian = political right, and it's a common phrase.
This is why I hate organized religions.
Because apparently, this video is what they think organized religion is like. Nothing like painting millions of people worldwide with the same brush!
This will make your hair stand on end. To quote my source for this: "... and people are afraid of Muslims?"
Okay, aside from the hyperbole in the first sentence, the second one is just plain ignorance. People are afraid of Muslims because they see all those videos and read news about radical Muslims teaching their kids that Jews are dogs and pigs that need to be wiped off the face of the earth, and that the greatest thing they can do is blow themselves up while killing as many infidels as possible, or go around shooting US soldiers after watching a fake video supposedly showing atrocities by US soldiers but were actually taken from a movie, or murder families in their sleep. People can't tell one type of Muslim from another. It's not like the extremists walk around with signs taped to their foreheads reading "I am a radical Muslim!" Comparing this woman's ignorant blathering doesn't exactly fall into the same category.
Here's the thing. Of the many thousands of Christians around the world posting, sharing and otherwise articulating their caring for the victims of Japan's triple tragedy, sending their heartfelt prayers and organizing ways to send help, this group of Christophobes (and it's a very specific group only) is busily sharing this disgusting video, giving the troll who made it more traffic on her YouTube channel in the process, and using it to spew their own anti-Christian bigotry.
I wonder how many of them bothered to go to the YouTube page and flag the video as offensive? Somehow, I don't think a single one did - just as not a single one bothered to do a simple google search to find out if this sicko was for real, or the troll that she turned out to be.
Which, as far as I'm concerned, makes them every bit as disgusting as the troll who made the video.
update: Well, that was fast! The woman who made the video I've been talking about has admitted her videos were all fake, and her YouTube account is now closed.
Let's see how many of the people who shared this will apologize for spreading their hate.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Are they daft?
I just read the most bizarre article at the Huffington Post.
Regulators Reject Proposal that would bring Fox-style News to Canada.
Good Lord, what a piece of BS! Take this part...
1) "Fox News" was never trying to move into Canada.
2) the PM had nothing to do with any efforts to repeal any laws (and from what I've been told, our "right wing" PM would be considered a bleeding heart socialist liberal in the US).
3) any regulations we currently have sure as heck aren't stopping our current news broadcasters from making s**t up whenever they please. Like claiming Fox News is trying to get into Canada and that the PM is trying to force changes in our laws to allow them in.
Then we get this part...
1) Canadians are free to watch Fox News and listen to "right wing" radio all they want. They just have to buy the right bundle from their satellite or cable tv carrier. Canadian regulations require Canadian broadcasters to have a minimum amount of Canadian content. (see section 4)
2) how does this provision make Canada a model for democracy and freedom? Oh, sorry... that was *liberal* democracy and freedom. I forgot. Only liberals are allowed to have democracy and freedom. Anyone else doesn't count.
3) Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage? What rot! Our news coverage is biased, obnoxious and frequently misinformative. Guess which side is the one represented? Our news coverage is biased heavily towards the left, with very rare exceptions. This does not equal high quality news coverage. It equals garbage.
While we're at it, has anyone seen the proposed amendment that would "abolish the anti-lying provision." The actual regulation is here, BTW. The pertinent part reads:
See also here.
Pretty much all of those get skirted on a regular basis.
What I find interesting about the claims that sections 8d and 5d above has "kept Fox News" out of Canada is that by saying this, they are basically saying that absolutely everything coming out of Fox News (or anything from the right) is a lie. Stranger still is that people actually believe this. They literally believe that, if something comes from the political right or out of Fox News is false. Gee, closed minded, much?
Oh, and I have yet to see the actual proposed amendment that would supposedly allow news broadcasters to lie to their hearts content (though, of course, only those on the right would do so. The left would never make up things... like the crap in this article. /sarcasm off/). I've followed a number of links that supposedly showed this proposed amendment, but there was nothing there. I had to dig through the CRTC website just to find the parts I quoted above. I've searched the CRTS site repeatedly, with no success. All that I've been finding date back several years. You'd think, since their decision against the amendment is making news right now, I'd be able to find it in their "newsroom" section. Or the "decisions, notices and orders" section.
Of course, how this amendment has been described to the public has changed. Originally, people were saying that the amendment would open a "loophole" to the "fair and balanced" regulation - but nothing on just how it would do that.
To continue:
Plus, our news is already toxic, partisan, biased and dishonest. What people who support having the SunTV option want is a news media that isn't toxic, partisan, biased and dishonest, for a change.
Again, no. This was never "Harper's proposal." Since I can't find the proposed amendment, I also can't find who made the proposal. As for timing, since the CRTC is the foundation of our biased media, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the timing for this proposal (the paperwork for such things take months, and it likely goes back to well before SunTV's license application became public news) is probably very deliberate - on their part.
Also, the only Canadians who call it "Fox News North" are left-wingers and our left-biased media. The rest of us call it SunTV.
1) Harper is not "often refereed to as George W. Bush's Mini Me." I've only encountered that reference once, ever, and that was when the Conservatives first won the election years ago. Hardly anyone uses the term.
2) there has been no "Bush like war" on any of those groups. Though I suppose having one's funding threatened because it's a useless or redundant waste of taxpayers dollars might be viewed as such by the people who's careers depend on those taxpayers dollars.
3) That last line? Pure BS. Plain and simple.
There's one last paragraph in the article I won't bother trying to quote from. The whole thing is ... dare I say it?
False and misleading.
update: Tasha Kheiriddin does an excellent take down of this same article.
upperdate: I've found a timeline for all this, and guess what? It was the CRTC itself that proposed the amendment, the Joint Committee recommended against it, and the whole thing goes back to 1992.
Wow.
.
Regulators Reject Proposal that would bring Fox-style News to Canada.
Good Lord, what a piece of BS! Take this part...
Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
1) "Fox News" was never trying to move into Canada.
2) the PM had nothing to do with any efforts to repeal any laws (and from what I've been told, our "right wing" PM would be considered a bleeding heart socialist liberal in the US).
3) any regulations we currently have sure as heck aren't stopping our current news broadcasters from making s**t up whenever they please. Like claiming Fox News is trying to get into Canada and that the PM is trying to force changes in our laws to allow them in.
Then we get this part...
The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverageBwahahahahahahahahahahahaha*wipestearsofmirthfromeyes*hahahahahaha!!!!
1) Canadians are free to watch Fox News and listen to "right wing" radio all they want. They just have to buy the right bundle from their satellite or cable tv carrier. Canadian regulations require Canadian broadcasters to have a minimum amount of Canadian content. (see section 4)
2) how does this provision make Canada a model for democracy and freedom? Oh, sorry... that was *liberal* democracy and freedom. I forgot. Only liberals are allowed to have democracy and freedom. Anyone else doesn't count.
3) Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage? What rot! Our news coverage is biased, obnoxious and frequently misinformative. Guess which side is the one represented? Our news coverage is biased heavily towards the left, with very rare exceptions. This does not equal high quality news coverage. It equals garbage.
Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality,Is this guy for real?? What absolute BS! Spend some time watching CSPAN, then tell me how civil, modest, honest or collegial our political dialogue is. Look at the drive by smear campaigns that pop up on a regular basis. Granted, our politics may not be quite as bad as in the US for that sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's any good.
When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, ...Oh, look... we're making things up again. PM hasn't done anything of the sort and hasn't got anything to do with it.
While we're at it, has anyone seen the proposed amendment that would "abolish the anti-lying provision." The actual regulation is here, BTW. The pertinent part reads:
Prohibited Programming Content
8. (1) No licensee shall distribute a programming service that the licensee originates and that contains
(a) anything that contravenes any law;
(b) any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability;
(c) any obscene or profane language or pictorial representation; or
(d) any false or misleading news.
(2) For the purpose of paragraph (1)(b), sexual orientation does not include the orientation towards a sexual act or activity that would constitute an offence under the Criminal Code.
See also here.
PROGRAMMING CONTENT
5. (1) A licensee shall not broadcast
(a) anything in contravention of the law;
(b) any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability;
(c) any obscene or profane language or pictorial representation; or
(d) any false or misleading news.
(1.1) For the purposes of paragraph (1)(b), sexual orientation does not include the orientation towards any sexual act or activity that would constitute an offence under the Criminal Code.
Pretty much all of those get skirted on a regular basis.
What I find interesting about the claims that sections 8d and 5d above has "kept Fox News" out of Canada is that by saying this, they are basically saying that absolutely everything coming out of Fox News (or anything from the right) is a lie. Stranger still is that people actually believe this. They literally believe that, if something comes from the political right or out of Fox News is false. Gee, closed minded, much?
Oh, and I have yet to see the actual proposed amendment that would supposedly allow news broadcasters to lie to their hearts content (though, of course, only those on the right would do so. The left would never make up things... like the crap in this article. /sarcasm off/). I've followed a number of links that supposedly showed this proposed amendment, but there was nothing there. I had to dig through the CRTC website just to find the parts I quoted above. I've searched the CRTS site repeatedly, with no success. All that I've been finding date back several years. You'd think, since their decision against the amendment is making news right now, I'd be able to find it in their "newsroom" section. Or the "decisions, notices and orders" section.
Of course, how this amendment has been described to the public has changed. Originally, people were saying that the amendment would open a "loophole" to the "fair and balanced" regulation - but nothing on just how it would do that.
To continue:
...Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverageUhm. No. No they didn't. A very small, very vocal minority has been shouting out the sort of BS that's in this article in their efforts to block SunTV. Our left-biased media has been fighting tooth and nail to prevent competition for the airwaves. A large number of Canadians, tired of our biased media, would LOVE to see a Canadian alternative available. They'd LOVE to at least have the choice.
Plus, our news is already toxic, partisan, biased and dishonest. What people who support having the SunTV option want is a news media that isn't toxic, partisan, biased and dishonest, for a change.
Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."
Again, no. This was never "Harper's proposal." Since I can't find the proposed amendment, I also can't find who made the proposal. As for timing, since the CRTC is the foundation of our biased media, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the timing for this proposal (the paperwork for such things take months, and it likely goes back to well before SunTV's license application became public news) is probably very deliberate - on their part.
Also, the only Canadians who call it "Fox News North" are left-wingers and our left-biased media. The rest of us call it SunTV.
Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.Wow. How much BS can you shove into two sentences?
1) Harper is not "often refereed to as George W. Bush's Mini Me." I've only encountered that reference once, ever, and that was when the Conservatives first won the election years ago. Hardly anyone uses the term.
2) there has been no "Bush like war" on any of those groups. Though I suppose having one's funding threatened because it's a useless or redundant waste of taxpayers dollars might be viewed as such by the people who's careers depend on those taxpayers dollars.
3) That last line? Pure BS. Plain and simple.
There's one last paragraph in the article I won't bother trying to quote from. The whole thing is ... dare I say it?
False and misleading.
update: Tasha Kheiriddin does an excellent take down of this same article.
upperdate: I've found a timeline for all this, and guess what? It was the CRTC itself that proposed the amendment, the Joint Committee recommended against it, and the whole thing goes back to 1992.
Wow.
.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
How Not to Report the News
Here's a video some people I know on facebook have been passing around and commenting on. Note that they just passed on the video, no story, so what was in the video was the only information they were discussing. The video is actually about a year and a half old, but it seems to have just been rediscovered.
Please note that there are some pretty disturbing images in here.
The story deals with an "increasing number" of babies in Falllujah born with deformities "since the war."
According to the report, the deformity rates are so high, women are afraid to have babies anymore. They talk about how there's no explanation for this, only suspicions on the part of the parents that it has something to do with chemicals used during the war. The only chemical mentioned is white phosphorus, and the only users mentioned is the US. They then show a series of pictures of babies born "within the last 8 months." With the date of the video, that would make it though early 2009.
A doctor is interviewed, who tells us they don't actually know how many births like this there are, as "there isn't a specialist centre to register deformities." He then goes on to say how he and other doctors have "noticed that the number of deformities has gone up in comparison to last year." That would be 2008. They then show a man holding his healthy young boy, noting that it took him 8 years to have a child, with the reporter telling us "doctors told him problems conceiving may also be the result of weapons used during the war."
Here we have a story with a tremendous human interest aspect. The topic is heartbreaking and well worth reporting on and having investigated.
Why, then, did they do such a shoddy job of it?
First off, it's incredibly vague. It tells us there's a huge increase in these deformities since "the end of the war." This was in 2009, yet the war in Iraq was not officially declared ended by Obama until Aug. 31, 2010, almost a year after this report was made. Perhaps they mean since Feb. 2009, when Obama began an 18 month withdrawal of combat troops? It's unclear, yet this date would put it in the 8 month range mentioned in the video. That, however, makes little sense. They would be comparing births of children conceived in the last few months of the war to children conceived and born in the year previous, before the war ended. When was the last known time any chemicals (I think we're supposed to assume these were chemical weapons) were used? Who used them? How much? What were they?
The only chemical mentioned is white phosphorus. What is white phosphorus? They don't tell us, but we're to assume it's something that can cause deformities. Well, let's look it up.
It turns out white phosphorus is a substance that smells like garlic, looks like wax, and ignites when exposed to oxygen.
Hmmm... nothing about possible birth defects here, and it's apparently been used for a very long time. From the same source as above, we have:
We still don't know how this stuff can lead to birth defects. Reading more at the above link, we find out WP is some nastya$$ $hit that causes severe burns. It's also used in...
Toothpaste?!?
It turns out WP is used in all sorts of non-military ways, including soft drinks, fertilizers, food additives and cleaners, special glasses, fine china, steel production and baking powder. Oh, lovely... it's also an ingredient in Meth.
We also learn that, while it's never found free in nature, it's found combined with other minerals all over the world.
Finally, at the end, we look at health effects (other than the whole burning and pain thing). The list of adverse effects is rather long. They include:
When it comes to necrosis of the bone, it mentions 10 cases with an exposure range between 10 months (2 cases) to 18 years. More information and symptoms are mentioned.
Nothing about infertility or birth defects.
Looking around some more, we discover that phosphorus (in its various forms) is essential to our health, particularly in the formation of our skeletal and nervous systems, and that a lack of dietary phosphorous disrupts our muscle and blood cells, and leads to muscle and neurological disruption.
Clearly one of those things where the dose makes the poison!
So, in the video report, we have doctors saying they don't know what's causing these deaths and deformities. Parents suspect "chemicals, such as white phosphorus, used by the Americans during the war."
Why did the reporter move from the generic term "chemicals" to the specific chemical, "white phosphorus?" What other chemicals were used? How? When? We have nothing. Why are only the Americans specified? Did no one else use white phosphorus?
A quick look at the history of military use of WP, we see it goes back to WWI. Bombs, shells, rockets and grenades have been used by the British, the US, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Russia, Iraq (by Saddam Hussein), and "the Commonwealth" (individual Commonwealth countries were not named). Though it's not on the lists I've seen, I know the Canadian military has used it since well before becoming involved in Afghanistan. While contact with WP, which has a tendency to stick to the skin, results in extremely painful, severe burns and significant damage, its primary use is for its smoke and light. Its use is legal, and it is not classified as a chemical weapon.
In searching for this, there are plenty of articles about the use of WP as a weapon in Afghanistan, Iraq and, specifically, Fallujah. This is not what the story is about. These parents, as far as I can tell, were not victims of (alleged, suspected, or verified) chemical weapons attacks. Such attacks aren't even mentioned. Just a vague 'use of chemicals' comment. This implies exposure, not contact. Which means they are most likely to have been exposed to the smoke. Smoke of all kinds can cause damage and, potentially, death, though there are no confirmed cases of anyone dying of WP smoke.
With WP being used by so many countries for so long, you would think there would be evidence of deformities and infertility connected to its use that goes back at least a couple of generations, and specifically among people people in, say, Vietnam, Chechnya and Iran, as well as among the Kurds in Iraq. Is there any evidence of this? Since there is apparently a rise in these deformities noted only during the Iraq war, one is lead to believe there isn't any. From this story, these deformities seem to be an isolated explosion of cases in Fallujah. If exposure to WP does lead to birth defects and/or infertility, this should be showing up among the people who trained with WP, as well as those who used it in combat. Is it? We're not told. For all its dangers, birth defects and infertility are simply not mentioned anywhere I've seen.
So if it's not WP that's causing these deformities, what is? This is a huge issue that deserves better handling than what this video gives us, which is little more than suspicions and insinuations. A horrible disservice to such an important topic.
If you have taken the time to view the video on youtube, however, you'll find a link with a bit more information. It's a "letter to the United Nations," also dated in 2009.
Here we're given some actual numbers.
For the above quoted portion, we've got striking dissimilarities between the two sets of numbers. (I also don't understand why they used percentages with one, while using actual case numbers in the other.)
In a single month before the war in Iraq started, this one hospital saw 530 births. Six of those (1.13%) died within 7 days, and of those, 1 (16.666% of the 1.13%) was a baby born with a defect. No word on how severe the birth defect was, or if it actually caused the death. Jump forward 7 years, and the same hospital has only 170 births in one month. Of those, 24% (or 40.8 babies) died within the first week, and of the ones that died, 75% (30.6 babies) "were classified as deformed." Again, nothing on the relationship between the deformities and the deaths.
At first glance, these numbers prove an incredible leap in deformities, but again, what we're lead to believe is so is actually extremely vague and inconclusive. For all we know, someone cherry picked a single month before the war with the highest number of births and lowest number of deaths, then cherry picked a single month after the war with the lowest number of births and highest number of deaths. We have no other information; particularly about what happened in the 7 years in between. We have a major drop in the number of births at that hospital, coupled with a major increase in deaths and deformities, but the lack of data means we actually know nothing at all. We're just guessing. Why did this particular hospital see such a change in numbers of births? Are these parents locals, or do we have an influx of people from outlying areas with little or no medical care available? What range of possible causes have been explored?
Unfortunately, what we've got to work with is largely anecdotal evidence - such as one grave digger in one cemetery who claims to be burying 4-5 babies a day, and his claim that most of these babies are deformed. Something worth exploring more.
This letter, at least, does mention more than just WP. It calls for "an independent committee to conduct a full investigation into the problem of the increased number of birth defects and cancer," then goes on to assume they already know the causes, namely WP and depleted uranium. Once again, we're not given any information. What, specifically, is depleted uranium? How is it used? Why and where? By whom? We have nothing. Instead, the letter talks of "toxic materials used by the occupying forces including depleted uranium and white phosphorus" and the need to "prevent children and adults entering contaminated areas."
So what is depleted uranium? How and why is it used?
It's uranium that has about 40-60% (depending on your source) less radiation than natural uranium (military specifications for depleted uranium actually has less of the radioactive isotopes by weight). Natural uranium exists in small amounts pretty much everywhere. We eat, breath and drink it every day. Now, before we start freaking out about radiation levels, let's take a moment to examine the realities of radiation. Lots of things are naturally radioactive, including food. Like bananas and Brazil nuts. We are all surrounded by radiation, and some geographical locations naturally have higher levels of radiation than others. (Interestingly, many people living in these areas tend to have longer average life spans and lower levels of cancer than in other areas. We don't know why.)
As for depleted uranium (DU), it is extremely dense. This makes it ideal for use in things like armor plating on tanks and armor-piercing projectiles. In the civilian world, it's used by the airline industry as counterweights, in medical radiation therapy, industrial radiography equipment and in containers radioactive materials are shipped in.
Who uses DU? It's quite a list. Military use includes the US, the UK, France, Canada, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies. That's just a partial list and doesn't even count its civilian uses, both industrial/commercial and medical. It's even used in false teeth!
Studies on cultured cells and rodents show possible negative effects ranging from neurological effects to cancers. There are contradictory reports about the effects of exposure to DU by humans.
If DU is a cause of these defects, given that it's used in armour plating (among other things), you'd think that soldiers surrounded by it day after day, year after year, would be showing signs of infertility and have deformed offspring as well. Likewise, civilians exposed to it on a regular basis should also show similar signs. Do they? We don't know. The letter doesn't explore the notion at all. If it is a cause, however, the health problems attributed to exposure to DU should be showing up in the parents of these babies - yet the parents shown and interviewed seem to be healthy. Of course, we can't judge a person's health just by looking at them, but given the nature of the claims, you'd expect at least someone to mention if the parents themselves have unusually high levels of cancer and other illnesses typically attributed to high exposure rates to DU. One would have to assume that the parents have been exposed to these conditions for the duration of the war. If exposure to DU and WP are the cause of these defects, why are they not also causing health problems in the parents?
There are so many possible causes for these defects that aren't being examined. We don't even have the most basic of data to be able to understand just how widespread and serious the issue is.
What we have are an awful lot of questions, and no answers.
Going back the the video report, we have an utter failure in dealing with a major topic. We have a heartbreaking situation that deserves to be treated with urgency and seriousness. Though the letter gives slightly more information, it is little better.
What the news report should have done was asked more questions. If no answers were forthcoming (due to lack of data, for example) there should be screaming for the rooftops to find the answers, so that solutions can be found.
Instead, we have suspicions and blamecasting.
A story that should have been hard hitting on facts and questions, while sensitive to the human interest side, was instead used to find something else to blame on the US.
This does nothing to help these poor children and their families. Worse, jumping to conclusions and playing the blame game delays finding the actual cause of these deformities, which in turn delays finding a solution, compounding the tragedy even more.
Which tells me that, once again, it's more about getting ratings by attacking popular targets (the US and the use of specific chemicals) and not about finding the truth.
Please note that there are some pretty disturbing images in here.
The story deals with an "increasing number" of babies in Falllujah born with deformities "since the war."
According to the report, the deformity rates are so high, women are afraid to have babies anymore. They talk about how there's no explanation for this, only suspicions on the part of the parents that it has something to do with chemicals used during the war. The only chemical mentioned is white phosphorus, and the only users mentioned is the US. They then show a series of pictures of babies born "within the last 8 months." With the date of the video, that would make it though early 2009.
A doctor is interviewed, who tells us they don't actually know how many births like this there are, as "there isn't a specialist centre to register deformities." He then goes on to say how he and other doctors have "noticed that the number of deformities has gone up in comparison to last year." That would be 2008. They then show a man holding his healthy young boy, noting that it took him 8 years to have a child, with the reporter telling us "doctors told him problems conceiving may also be the result of weapons used during the war."
Here we have a story with a tremendous human interest aspect. The topic is heartbreaking and well worth reporting on and having investigated.
Why, then, did they do such a shoddy job of it?
First off, it's incredibly vague. It tells us there's a huge increase in these deformities since "the end of the war." This was in 2009, yet the war in Iraq was not officially declared ended by Obama until Aug. 31, 2010, almost a year after this report was made. Perhaps they mean since Feb. 2009, when Obama began an 18 month withdrawal of combat troops? It's unclear, yet this date would put it in the 8 month range mentioned in the video. That, however, makes little sense. They would be comparing births of children conceived in the last few months of the war to children conceived and born in the year previous, before the war ended. When was the last known time any chemicals (I think we're supposed to assume these were chemical weapons) were used? Who used them? How much? What were they?
The only chemical mentioned is white phosphorus. What is white phosphorus? They don't tell us, but we're to assume it's something that can cause deformities. Well, let's look it up.
It turns out white phosphorus is a substance that smells like garlic, looks like wax, and ignites when exposed to oxygen.
White Phosphorus (WP), known as Willy Pete, is used for signaling, screening, and incendiary purposes. White Phosphorus can be used to destroy the enemy's equipment or to limit his vision. It is used against vehicles, petroleum, oils and lubricants (POL) and ammunition storage areas, and enemy observers. WP can be used as an aid in target location and navigation. It is usually dispersed by explosive munitions. It can be fired with fuze time to obtain an airburst. White phosphorus was used most often during World War II in military formulations for smoke screens, marker shells, incendiaries, hand grenades, smoke markers, colored flares, and tracer bullets.
Hmmm... nothing about possible birth defects here, and it's apparently been used for a very long time. From the same source as above, we have:
The Battle of Fallujah was conducted from 8 to 20 November 2004 with the last fire mission on 17 November. The battle was fought by an Army, Marine and Iraqi force of about 15,000 under the I Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF). US forces found WP to be useful in the Battle of Fallujah. "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. ... We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions."Wait... the last fire mission was in Nov. of 2004? The story above says this dramatic increase has been since the war ended, in 2009. Why are birth defects now being blamed on something that happened 5 years previously? How are the parents still being exposed?
We still don't know how this stuff can lead to birth defects. Reading more at the above link, we find out WP is some nastya$$ $hit that causes severe burns. It's also used in...
Toothpaste?!?
It turns out WP is used in all sorts of non-military ways, including soft drinks, fertilizers, food additives and cleaners, special glasses, fine china, steel production and baking powder. Oh, lovely... it's also an ingredient in Meth.
We also learn that, while it's never found free in nature, it's found combined with other minerals all over the world.
Finally, at the end, we look at health effects (other than the whole burning and pain thing). The list of adverse effects is rather long. They include:
- for "systemic intoxication" one can develop abdominal pain, jaundice and garlic breath
- "prolonged exposure" can lead to anemia, cachexia and necrosis of the bone
- "prolonged absorption" can lead to necrosis of the bone
- "overexposed workers" have complained of toothache, loose teeth, pain and swelling of the jaw and excess salivation
When it comes to necrosis of the bone, it mentions 10 cases with an exposure range between 10 months (2 cases) to 18 years. More information and symptoms are mentioned.
Nothing about infertility or birth defects.
Looking around some more, we discover that phosphorus (in its various forms) is essential to our health, particularly in the formation of our skeletal and nervous systems, and that a lack of dietary phosphorous disrupts our muscle and blood cells, and leads to muscle and neurological disruption.
Clearly one of those things where the dose makes the poison!
So, in the video report, we have doctors saying they don't know what's causing these deaths and deformities. Parents suspect "chemicals, such as white phosphorus, used by the Americans during the war."
Why did the reporter move from the generic term "chemicals" to the specific chemical, "white phosphorus?" What other chemicals were used? How? When? We have nothing. Why are only the Americans specified? Did no one else use white phosphorus?
A quick look at the history of military use of WP, we see it goes back to WWI. Bombs, shells, rockets and grenades have been used by the British, the US, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Russia, Iraq (by Saddam Hussein), and "the Commonwealth" (individual Commonwealth countries were not named). Though it's not on the lists I've seen, I know the Canadian military has used it since well before becoming involved in Afghanistan. While contact with WP, which has a tendency to stick to the skin, results in extremely painful, severe burns and significant damage, its primary use is for its smoke and light. Its use is legal, and it is not classified as a chemical weapon.
In searching for this, there are plenty of articles about the use of WP as a weapon in Afghanistan, Iraq and, specifically, Fallujah. This is not what the story is about. These parents, as far as I can tell, were not victims of (alleged, suspected, or verified) chemical weapons attacks. Such attacks aren't even mentioned. Just a vague 'use of chemicals' comment. This implies exposure, not contact. Which means they are most likely to have been exposed to the smoke. Smoke of all kinds can cause damage and, potentially, death, though there are no confirmed cases of anyone dying of WP smoke.
With WP being used by so many countries for so long, you would think there would be evidence of deformities and infertility connected to its use that goes back at least a couple of generations, and specifically among people people in, say, Vietnam, Chechnya and Iran, as well as among the Kurds in Iraq. Is there any evidence of this? Since there is apparently a rise in these deformities noted only during the Iraq war, one is lead to believe there isn't any. From this story, these deformities seem to be an isolated explosion of cases in Fallujah. If exposure to WP does lead to birth defects and/or infertility, this should be showing up among the people who trained with WP, as well as those who used it in combat. Is it? We're not told. For all its dangers, birth defects and infertility are simply not mentioned anywhere I've seen.
So if it's not WP that's causing these deformities, what is? This is a huge issue that deserves better handling than what this video gives us, which is little more than suspicions and insinuations. A horrible disservice to such an important topic.
If you have taken the time to view the video on youtube, however, you'll find a link with a bit more information. It's a "letter to the United Nations," also dated in 2009.
Here we're given some actual numbers.
In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.Then there's brief mention of premature births and surviving babies developing "severe disabilities at a later stage." No data to back it up, however.
This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.
For the above quoted portion, we've got striking dissimilarities between the two sets of numbers. (I also don't understand why they used percentages with one, while using actual case numbers in the other.)
In a single month before the war in Iraq started, this one hospital saw 530 births. Six of those (1.13%) died within 7 days, and of those, 1 (16.666% of the 1.13%) was a baby born with a defect. No word on how severe the birth defect was, or if it actually caused the death. Jump forward 7 years, and the same hospital has only 170 births in one month. Of those, 24% (or 40.8 babies) died within the first week, and of the ones that died, 75% (30.6 babies) "were classified as deformed." Again, nothing on the relationship between the deformities and the deaths.
At first glance, these numbers prove an incredible leap in deformities, but again, what we're lead to believe is so is actually extremely vague and inconclusive. For all we know, someone cherry picked a single month before the war with the highest number of births and lowest number of deaths, then cherry picked a single month after the war with the lowest number of births and highest number of deaths. We have no other information; particularly about what happened in the 7 years in between. We have a major drop in the number of births at that hospital, coupled with a major increase in deaths and deformities, but the lack of data means we actually know nothing at all. We're just guessing. Why did this particular hospital see such a change in numbers of births? Are these parents locals, or do we have an influx of people from outlying areas with little or no medical care available? What range of possible causes have been explored?
Unfortunately, what we've got to work with is largely anecdotal evidence - such as one grave digger in one cemetery who claims to be burying 4-5 babies a day, and his claim that most of these babies are deformed. Something worth exploring more.
This letter, at least, does mention more than just WP. It calls for "an independent committee to conduct a full investigation into the problem of the increased number of birth defects and cancer," then goes on to assume they already know the causes, namely WP and depleted uranium. Once again, we're not given any information. What, specifically, is depleted uranium? How is it used? Why and where? By whom? We have nothing. Instead, the letter talks of "toxic materials used by the occupying forces including depleted uranium and white phosphorus" and the need to "prevent children and adults entering contaminated areas."
So what is depleted uranium? How and why is it used?
It's uranium that has about 40-60% (depending on your source) less radiation than natural uranium (military specifications for depleted uranium actually has less of the radioactive isotopes by weight). Natural uranium exists in small amounts pretty much everywhere. We eat, breath and drink it every day. Now, before we start freaking out about radiation levels, let's take a moment to examine the realities of radiation. Lots of things are naturally radioactive, including food. Like bananas and Brazil nuts. We are all surrounded by radiation, and some geographical locations naturally have higher levels of radiation than others. (Interestingly, many people living in these areas tend to have longer average life spans and lower levels of cancer than in other areas. We don't know why.)
As for depleted uranium (DU), it is extremely dense. This makes it ideal for use in things like armor plating on tanks and armor-piercing projectiles. In the civilian world, it's used by the airline industry as counterweights, in medical radiation therapy, industrial radiography equipment and in containers radioactive materials are shipped in.
Who uses DU? It's quite a list. Military use includes the US, the UK, France, Canada, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies. That's just a partial list and doesn't even count its civilian uses, both industrial/commercial and medical. It's even used in false teeth!
Studies on cultured cells and rodents show possible negative effects ranging from neurological effects to cancers. There are contradictory reports about the effects of exposure to DU by humans.
If DU is a cause of these defects, given that it's used in armour plating (among other things), you'd think that soldiers surrounded by it day after day, year after year, would be showing signs of infertility and have deformed offspring as well. Likewise, civilians exposed to it on a regular basis should also show similar signs. Do they? We don't know. The letter doesn't explore the notion at all. If it is a cause, however, the health problems attributed to exposure to DU should be showing up in the parents of these babies - yet the parents shown and interviewed seem to be healthy. Of course, we can't judge a person's health just by looking at them, but given the nature of the claims, you'd expect at least someone to mention if the parents themselves have unusually high levels of cancer and other illnesses typically attributed to high exposure rates to DU. One would have to assume that the parents have been exposed to these conditions for the duration of the war. If exposure to DU and WP are the cause of these defects, why are they not also causing health problems in the parents?
There are so many possible causes for these defects that aren't being examined. We don't even have the most basic of data to be able to understand just how widespread and serious the issue is.
What we have are an awful lot of questions, and no answers.
Going back the the video report, we have an utter failure in dealing with a major topic. We have a heartbreaking situation that deserves to be treated with urgency and seriousness. Though the letter gives slightly more information, it is little better.
What the news report should have done was asked more questions. If no answers were forthcoming (due to lack of data, for example) there should be screaming for the rooftops to find the answers, so that solutions can be found.
Instead, we have suspicions and blamecasting.
A story that should have been hard hitting on facts and questions, while sensitive to the human interest side, was instead used to find something else to blame on the US.
This does nothing to help these poor children and their families. Worse, jumping to conclusions and playing the blame game delays finding the actual cause of these deformities, which in turn delays finding a solution, compounding the tragedy even more.
Which tells me that, once again, it's more about getting ratings by attacking popular targets (the US and the use of specific chemicals) and not about finding the truth.
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