"Bush is a Worm!" Calgary Protest Photos

Yesterday's protest against Bush speaking in Calgary as brought to us by our very own Calgary Chamber of Commerce was a creative success. To raise our voices in collective activism is empowering and initates necessary dialogue. The papers were reporting 200-300 people in attendance but I would estimate much closer to 500 or more. Suited attendees were heckled and shivered in the cold while lined up along the block listening to our sneering and chanting. The media's reporting of the protest as violent (here and here) is not representative of my experience. There were drums and noisemakers, performance artists, children, peaceful shouting and a lot of typical Calgarian politeness. I was pleased to take my lunch hour attending and proud to raise my voice with Calgary's community against Bush's visit. See more photos from the media here and here.

Down the Drain

"It was draining," said Toby Blaine Dixon after being acquitted following a 3 day trial in the sexual assault of a minor. Here we have a case where a 14 year old girl was sexually assaulted while she was intoxicated and due to lack of witnesses and perhaps her demographic, her assaulter walks away 'tired'. Although the judge was pretty sure Dixon was guilty, and that the girls is credible, she is unreliable. Not only that, but:

She had a tear, bruising and abrasions to her vagina, injuries that suggested -- though not conclusively -- that she had been sexually assaulted, according to a doctor's testimony.

How can tearing, bruising, and abrasions to a vagina not be conclusive of sexual assault? Well what a fucking relief for Toby - it must have been so HARD! You know, good thing his penis wasn't torn, cut and bruised or he might have been really fatigued by the trial.

Alberta's Own

Unrepentant old Hippie has a lovely rant regarding the despised Ezra Levant at his 'meeting with the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

More than Addiction

As I've posted before, I didn't last long on Facebook. I'm a tiny minority among friends, family and colleagues who is not using the network site; I realized it was a time waster after wasting too many valuable lunch hours and evenings searching for people I knew in days gone by and gasping that some would post photos of their child being born. Tom Hodgkinson of The Guardian reveals some very interesting and perhaps shocking facts about the men behind Facebook. Hodgkinson introduces us to the only three faces on the board of directors of Facebook.

1st Board Member Mark Zuckerberg, the poster boy who initially conceived Facebook

2nd Board Member Peter Thiel
Some highlights:

But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the "multiculture" led to a lessening of individual freedoms. While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review - motto: Fiat Lux ("Let there be light"). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web.
. . .
Thiel's philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behaviour called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of Thiel's virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook. Girard is a regular at Thiel's intellectual soirees. What you don't hear about in Thiel's philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth.

3rd Board Member Jim Breyer
Some highlights:

He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions".

The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. "We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries," defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. "We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts." In-Q-Tel's first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and - with Breyer - board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: "She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century."

If these men's philosophies, agendas and ties aren't enough to kick the habit, consider this:

"Share" is Facebookspeak for "advertise". Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends. We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.

Too right. Consider life before Facebook. Consider its value. Consider quitting; saying no to these rich neocon elites and picking up the phone to connect with an old friend. Look up a postal code and delight someone you care about with snail mail. There is more pleasure in a hand-addressed envelope than a Facebook gimmick gift can ever hope to offer.

It's About Time!

I was wondering if the media would ever draw attention to this. Ezra Levant himself co-founded the Western Standard, which online edition (Paper version now in the ditch) has a hateful conservative racist blog which is nauseating. From the linked article: "Levant, who no longer owns the website or the Western Standard name, said he doesn't personally agree with the comments, but argued they should be protected as free speech." He may not own the website or blog, but he is a frequent poster and he defended a racist Article published in the Calgary Sun at the time of publication and outcry. You can read his grotesque accusation (not to mention poor writing skills and rhetoric) from the Calgary Sun here (Crash Detail Overlooked).

Finally there's an official human rights complaint filed. I took a look at the Western Standard's blog after the Calgary Sun published his despicable piece against the woman (she was wearing a head scarf so he blamed Islam for the tragedy) who was driving the bus that crashed on Crowchild Trail, killing a young Calgary girl. The comments were vitriolic and hateful, to which Levant defends with "free speech" and then says:

In Canada, when someone hurts your feelings, you can respond, write a letter to the editor, call a talk radio show, start a political campaign. But you don't go running to the government," said Levant. "Mr. Soharwardy has to realize he is in a free country now.

Ezra Levant can go eat a bag of dicks. For one, he assumes Mr. Soharwardy wasn't born in Canada. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Does it matter? Anyone could have filed a human rights complaint. He assumes Soharwardy doesn't realize his freedom to Canadian values? To the contrary. Levant may host racist bigotry on his precious (former) website, but Canada does not host his (and his posse's) "rights" to say threatening and racist putrid.

Offside

Hijabs have been approved by the Alberta Soccer Association to be worn by players. Muslim soccer players may wear a "sports-friendly hijab approved by the game's referee". I really don't see this as a victory of any sort; I'd like to remind my dear readers that a) it is unlikely that a hijab is a serious safety concern in soccer; and b) there has never been a hijab-related sports injury in soccer nor has this been an issue in all the years that many of these very girls have been playing soccer in Calgary. Even still; the girls and women wearing such sport-friendly hijabs are still subject to judgement and scrutiny by the referee of the day.

Crying Hijabs

This morning I followed up on a news story that a 16 year old girl in the region of Peel, Ontario, was taken to the hospital after a domestic assault that left her fighting for her life in hospital. Her father made a call to 911 that he had killed his daughter. Today it has been confirmed that Aqsa Parvez has died. I grieve for her; and her family and friends. Violence against women enrages me; but the media is enraging me more in this case. The family is Muslim and the Globe and Mail, CBC, the National Post, the Toronto Star; all major media sources are crying "Muslim, Muslim Muslim!" and smearing this tragedy with religious undertones. If you Google some murders, if you feel up to it, it's a challenge to find any news stories that highlight the subject families' religious beliefs. The Globe and Mail writes, "Students at nearby Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga said the teen had recently clashed with her family after ceasing to wear a hijab and adopting a more Western style of dress." I'm curious, because with the recent and ongoing hijab debates in Canada (burn victims are not required to show picture ID but Muslim women are required to remove their headscarves in order to vote; and soccer associations are kicking girls off the fields for wearing hijabs), that here we have more racial profiling and politicizing of a "hot-topic" religious practice. The articles around Aqsa's murder are pointing fingers at the family's religion making an underlying assumption that Aqsa was murdered over her hijab. There are no facts being reported about the lead up to Mr. Parvez killing his daughter, just a quotation from a grade 11 student: "her family was really religious, and I think her dad was angry because she never wore religious clothing." The National Post headlines, "Friends believe Aqsa . . . was the victim of a dispute over the teenager's desire to be more western."

Aqsa was strangled to death by her father. Muslim or Buddhist or Christian religion aside, this is a horrific example of domestic violence and whether the argument really was over her hijab is irrelevant. It could have been over a channel change or allowances or doing the dishes or eating too many cookies out of the cookie jar for shits sake. It doesn't matter WHAT the argument was about, no one should be killed at the hands of our own family. It wouldn't matter if it was a Christian girl who didn't want to wear her wooden cross necklace anymore or a girl attending a school with a uniform and wishing to wear striped socks. These small side notes are not the issue we need to be focusing on when there's a body to bury.

Our media wants us to think that all Muslim women are oppressed by men and need to be rescued. Maybe that's what the writers actually believe themselves, I don't know. But Muslimah Media Watch has a brilliant piece on Danielle Crittenden's recent blog project "Islamic Like Me" at Huffington Post. Read the review; it's a smart and vicious attack on Crittenden's niqab 'experiment' and her Islamophobia.

Update: "Canadian Muslim girl not killed over hijab: report"
Update II: Listen to CBC's "The Current" program covering all sides of this tragedy.

More Racism in Calgary against Muslim Women

UPDATE: "NO [hijab] INJURIES HAVE EVER BEEN DOCUMENTED." [source]

Update: The president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada reacts to the referee and ASA's decision.
Update: A Calgary Herald Reader reacts with an eye glasses anecdote; also a bending of the rules sited below.

Making front page headline on the Calgary Herald's online edition this morning, this is just infuriating! A 14 year old girl was suspended from her soccer game on Saturday when the referee would not allow her to play. She has never had a problem before and has been wearing her head scarf while playing indoor soccer all year. This is the second time (that I'm aware) in a month that hijabs are being considered a safety issue for women in Calgary. This also isn't the first time this has happened:

In February, a girls soccer team made up of Grade 6 students from Nepean, Ont., forfeited a tournament in Laval, Que., when one of the players was ordered by a referee to remove her hijab. Four other teams from Ottawa also forfeited their games in protest.

Seems it's safe to wear a hijab in the boxing ring, as well as rugby, a much more agressive game than soccer. What's the difference between wearing a head scarf and having long hair!? A pony tail is also a safey concern but girls aren't being asked to whack those off or get off the field.

It's unbelievable that the Alberta Soccer Association is standing by the referee's decision. But wait a minute!!! I just read this on ASA website under the "Rules and Regulations":

Iv) (2006) Jewelry and Non-compulsory Equipment
a) (2006) In District and provincial competitions leading to national competitions, no player will be permitted to wear any jewelry, as outlined in the jewelry policy of the Canadian Soccer Association, with the exceptions that bandanas and sweatbands will be allowed for religious or medical reasons, and prescription eye glasses will be permitted.
b) (2006) In all other competitions in Alberta, the wearing of jewelry by players will be ermitted as long as it is taped to the satisfaction of the referee. This is not to be interpreted to mean that all jewelry is allowed provided that it is taped. The referee shall not allow anything to be worn by any player for any reason if the referee determines that it is a potential danger to another player.

How can the ASA support the referee's decision when this explicitly says the "exception that bandanas and sweatbands will be allowed for religious or medical reasons"? A hijab poses NO THREAT to the safety of other players or the player herself. There is no reason for the referee's call except explicit racism. Shame on the ASA for supporting it.

We can support 14 year old Safaa Menhem by contacting the ASA and tell them what we think of this hypocritical and racist decision!

Here's the link to the the contact info.

Status Quo

When are we going to see the beauty industry take a step away from its statusquo of exclusionary bullshit? The Independent reports today about Black and Asian women being largely ignored in the beauty industry.

This ignoring/isolation issue is reminiscent of one of my last trips to Wal-Mart in University years ago with my roommate at the time, who was a fan of the corporate giant. She is a black woman and she needed some product for her hair. Wandering up and down the hair care isle we couldn't find "black hair" shampoo. She had extensions and she needed a special formula for her braids. Finally we had to ask an employee and this is the answer we received:

"It's in the next isle beside the Sunscreen and Cotton Balls."

I am not kidding. It was unbelievable and revolting. Sure enough, there it was; black-people shampoo next to the sunscreen and cotton balls. This is one of the many many many reasons that Wal-Mart sucks and I won't be seen walking through the doors of that plague.

Hateful Racism in the Calgary Sun

December 2007 Update: A Human Rights Complaint has been filed against the Western Standard's Racist Blog.

Update:

On Wednesday, October 24 the Calgary Sun removed Levant's racist column from its website. I have re-posted it here if you'd like to take a read. Oh yeah, and it has been determined after a raging message left by my partner and subsequent conversations with a representative of the Calgary Sun (who defensively added, "but I'm not a left lib") that Mr. Levant will not be writing for the Sun again. I'm sceptical, but lets hope we don't read Levant's poor writing and racist "reporting" again. If the Sun should have anything to do with that "man" they should report on the appalling hate-speech bigotry that's rampant over at the Western Standard blog.

I was too disgusted to blog this yesterday and was fuming for hours about a column in yesterday's Calgary Sun. Having thought about it and slept on it, I’m still disgusted and I make no apologies for my rage. Last week a 9 year old girl, Mary Frances Kathelynn Occena, was killed in a tragic accident on Crowchild Trail after the school bus she was riding in sideswiped a gravel truck parked on the side of the morning-rush-hour 80 km/hr roadway and then plowed into a light pole, the side of the bus remaining on the gravel truck and as anyone can imagine, a horrific scene.

Ezra Levant, in his column yesterday, blames Islam.

His disgusting racist rhetoric is insulting to Mary’s family, the other children involved in the accident, and certainly a slap in the face to the bus driver. Levant claims that the driver’s headscarf caused the accident and refers to multiculturalism in this case as being dangerous, “an unacceptable risk -- and something that should be banned by common sense.” So not only should Muslim women not be allowed to vote, but they shouldn’t be allowed to drive, either? It’s infuriating that he victimizes himself in his own article when he says that today, to state that head scarves should be prohibited is “Islamophobic.” I would say it’s racist bigotry.

Levant, co-founder of right wing publication "Western Standard", is the individual who, here in this city, reprinted the images of Mohammed that sparked controversy last year in Denmark that upset our Muslim community. He claimed then that the media is afraid of Islamism and this is [poorly at best] repeated in his column yesterday:

I think it's obvious why these questions were not asked: because it is
politically incorrect to question a religious veil -- or even anything that
looks like one -- for fear of being regarded as politically incorrect.

It is politically incorrect. . . for fear of being regarded as politically incorrect. Huh? What the fuck kind of writing is this and why would the Calgary Sun publish not only terrible writing with poor sentence structure, but words written with the clear motive to inspire hate.

Let the editor know what you think about this article:
callet@calgarysun.com
Fax 403-250- 4180

Dr. Watson's DNA

Check out this post over at Himbly's blog about DNA identifier Dr. Watson and his recent views on 'black people' and abortion. He's not such a neat guy after all.