Pro-Choice Sites Promote DIY Abortions

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

This is why I shouldn't browse Facebook when I'm suffering from insomnia...

A friend of mine alerted me to instructions being passed around by a site called Women On Waves, a pro-choice group that's set up safe abortion hotlines in various countries as well as sponsoring a ship on which abortions are performed. A partner site, Women On Web, directs its users to Women On Waves for further information. Women On Web offers abortion pills by mail to multiple countries (though the United States is not mentioned in their fine print) in case women are not given the pills by their doctor or pharmacist.

( Image from Women On Waves posted for reference purposes ONLY. I do not promote the use of the instructions given in any form. )

(no subject)

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Below are two cartoons. Both have been published in the Los Angeles Times, but only one has the Times complaining of racism. YOU MAKE THE CALL:




[Poll #1808964]

The problem with the knee-jerk accusations of racism from the left is twofold:

1) It assumes that nearly any nonstandard depiction of a ideologically-correct racial minorities is racist unless it can be sufficiently justified.

2) It becomes blind to the racism when such depictions are made of ideologically-incorrect minorities who they dislike.

The Los Angeles Times ran a depiction of Condoleezza Rice portrayed as a slave from Gone With the Wind with, from the looks of things, nary a peep.

The Los Angeles Times ran an entire article on how the photo supposedly works off of the "uppity negro" trope as opposed to it simply being a well-known historical depiction of Michelle Obama as the out-of-touch, money-happy queen who has had the phrase "let them eat cake" attributed to her as a response to the bread shortages. Marie Antoinette, of course, continued to live in luxury in her $4 million vacation castle.

For the record, I don't think it's necessarily fair to criticize the Obamas for the cost of a vacation that is largely that high due to the modern security needs of the Presidency. It also, however, isn't fair to once again default to the "that's racist" card whenever a criticism of a minority left wing politician comes about.

EDIT: The first image was changed on me for whatever reason before, I have replaced it with the correct image.

Religion in the Workplace

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Saw this story this morning, and it got me thinking.

Macy's employee fired after violating company's LGBT policy( Read more... )

ANC's 100th birthday

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I thank telemann for pointing me at the feature at the TIME magazine in regards to ANC's centennial anniversary:

"The ANC blames apartheid's legacy and, as party spokesman Keith Khoza describes it, "the reluctance of business to come to the party." But 17 years is almost a generation. The government's failure to transform South Africa from a country of black and white into a "rainbow nation," in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's phrase, means black poverty is still the key political issue. A second, related one, however, is the ANC's dramatic loss of moral authority. At 93, Mandela is still among the most admired people on earth. But his party has become synonymous with failure — and not coincidentally, arrogance, infighting and corruption. Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and, at 80, still the nation's moral conscience, encapsulated South African political debate last year when he came out of retirement to give two speeches. In the first he asked whites to pay a wealth tax in recognition of their persistent advantage. In the second he called the ANC "worse than the apartheid government."

I think the author speaks truth. Now, more than ever, John Pilger's documentary Apartheid Did Not Die, is valid and worth considering.

You know, when I was leaving NL on my way to my new life here in SA, my dad sent me with the words, "Remember: it took a generation to defeat white supremacy; if it'll take another one to defeat black totalitarianism, you should be ready to go for it". But that's only one half of the story. The other one is that this isn't the main struggle now. The enemy is poverty, and corruption, and the marginalization of vast chunks of society from social and economic life, and the HIV epidemic.

Old grudges and prejudices cannot be healed in such a climate. We have to address the real roots of the problem, not just fool ourselves around with doing short-term damage control of the symptoms. And that may take more than a generation. But ultimately, it's worth the effort. Because the alternative looks much bleaker.