End of An Era or Something!

Exciting. This might be the last ever Blogger-driven posting.

I'm getting help in switching over to Wordpress! So, if anything goes hinky... all y'all know why. :)

Why Sarah Palin Scares Me

If you read me, and you're a fan of Sarah Palin? I'm offended by your ignorance, and the fact that you deem me entertaining yet take THAT THING seriously. Don't read me, please. It's insulting. And educate yourself.

She is ignorant, uninformed, inarticulate, and frankly, dangerous. If you support her? You are, too.

Let's talk about all the reasons I hate this woman. As much as I dislike that word, hate, this woman prompts that feeling in me for all the things she stands for, that I stand against. Few brands of people fill me with as much terror as someone like her.

For starters, rape victims were on the hook for part or all of the rape kits in her town of Wasilla. Her chief of police did it, and she never tried to stop it. Some reports state her town had the highest rape statistics in Alaska, which had the highest rape statistics in America. Now, there's no proof Palin ever argued in favour of keeping this policy, but she sure as hell never tried to repeal it -- which you'd think, as a woman, she might feel like getting on side of women, and as a mother, that she'd want rapists off the streets--whatever the fiscal cost. Gee, if you're not willing to spring for rape kits so you can properly investigate whodunnit, I guess the same rapists stay in business, huh?

On the question of whether she would allow a daughter who was raped by her father and made pregnant to abort the baby, she said she would "counsel" them to "choose life".

The woman believes homosexuality is a choice. In 2008. In the same interview I've just hyperlinked to, from CBS, she said:

But as for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships. I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay, and I love her dearly. And she is not my "gay friend," she is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made. But I am not going to judge people.

A man was beaten severely here in Vancouver last week, his jaw wired shut, surgery required, all because he was gay and holding hands with another man. Gays attempt suicide more than others. Do you REALLY think they're going to CHOOSE a lifestyle that can result in such bashing and hatred? Do you really think they CHOOSE to feel compelled to be suicidal because they feel they've failed to change this thing about them? WTF?

She thinks Alaska makes one of the largest energy-producing contributions to America's energy bottom line. In fact, she thinks America can be the new Middle-East, that the oil's "there" and needs to be extracted. Um, no. It contributes 3% of the energy generated by the United States, and the US contributes only 3% of the world's energy creation, yet consumes 25% of it. So, she's no expert on energy just because there's a few oil wells in Alaska.

And I'm sick and fucking tired of the whole "Yay, working mom!" bullshit that's going on out there.

Where I come from, a mother who finds out her newborn's got Down's Syndrome, she's going to adjust her schedule and be there for her child more, especially when she's got three other kids. Where I come from, a woman has a daughter who's 17 and pregnant, she doesn't accept a position that's going to throw her daughter into the limelight on a national stage. Where I come from, when a teenager gets pregnant, the fingers get pointed at the parents to say, "Geez, why didn't you educate them better? Why didn't you talk about condoms?" instead of rah-rahing them for being so hip and supportive of their kid.

This mother-of-the-year bullshit has worn way thin on me.

Then we get to the topic of religion.

If you're a born-again Christian, not only might you want to stop reading this article, you should really stop reading my blog, because I think you're a fucking twit if you think the world's 6,000 years old. I think you're a fucking TOOL. No, REALLY.

Freedom to believe? Freedom to be stupid! Am I politically incorrect? On this? Fucking right I am. And it feels great!

Sarah Palin is precisely such a tool. She believes man and dinosaurs hung out together! She believes we coexisted! Then, after some "undisclosed" passage of time, dinosaurs just went poof and the world became man's. (She told one young Wasilla fella that she'd seen man's footprints inside dinosaur prints.)

She belongs to a church in Wasilla, Alaska, that should scare the fuck out of any "mainstream" Christian. They speak in tongues! The minister ADMITS and is PROUD OF driving a woman out of his community in Kenya because she was a "witch" -- or at least HE thought she was. Palin, like Bush, believes she's been tapped because God Has a Plan For Her. Really? God has a plan for an ignorant former beauty-queen who's got nothing to offer to the SERIOUS issues of the day?

This woman will be a heartbeat away from the presidency! After EIGHT YEARS of being ruled by a party that's been bending over for the religious right -- mostly because the discussion on "values" took the pressure off their failed war -- we have this right-wing nutbag who never even had a passport until last year, has no understanding of the world beyond America, standing behind the guy who wants to be The Guy... who has had cancer four times, who's got this disturbing new eye twitch, who's become visibly disoriented in public of late -- and there's FOUR YEARS he's supposed to sit in office? Alive? Good luck with that!

[Re: McCain's health: The media had only three hours to examine the more than 1,200 pages his campaign released from his medical file -- none of which were sequential or numbered, so the media couldn't even look at it in a cogent, organized way, let alone in depth. When's the last time you tried to read 1,200 pages of medical notes... in three hours?]

If you even think this woman is remotely qualified for this job, you're wrong. If she doesn't scare you, you're not informed. If you don't care, you're a fool.

Palin is of the Bush ilk -- "you're either with us, or you're against us" -- but anyone who's ever had any kind of a human relationship should understand that there are no black and whites in relationships. You can like someone but disagree with them. By ruling the country in black and whites, America has arrived where it is today -- ostracized by the world at large, constantly in defense mode, with a soon-to-be $11-trillion deficit, waging two wars, with an economy on the verge of bankruptcy, all because the government in power tried to distract people from the real issues by making governing about "family values" and not about what's right for the country and its bottom line.

Sarah Palin? Dangerous. Wrong. In every fucking way.

Get real. Never has a politician been more wrong for a time and place than she is for America now. Dick Cheney in a skirt? Worse. At least Dick had brains.

NOTE: I do not hate Christians. I just think born-again "the world is 6,000 years old, and our ancestors walked with dinosaurs!" are fucking nimrods. There's a difference!

A Perhaps Controversial Thought About the Birth of the AIDS Virus?

[I would normally post something like this on my other blog, The Last Ditch, but since it's about AIDS, which is sexually transmitted, I've decided to be a little bit of a shit disturber and post it here for a larger audience. I'm interested to hear your thoughts...]

I've been fascinated by the history of the Congo for some time now, thanks to the brilliance of Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghosts and the history of the first real genocide, the slaying of ten million Congo Africans during the rise of the rubber trade and height of African colonialism at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century.

10 million Africans slaughtered for rubber. Never mind the millions stolen and forced into the slave trade from other regions, or those slaughtered when colonial interests take over.

I'm fascinated by genocides. I'm more fascinated by the horrors of Africa today, though. The legacy of that death and brutality.

It's sadly funny, the justifications of whites and 'manifest destiny', how they felt Africans were "savages" who required a civilizing hand.

Now, Africa has descended into chaos -- Somali pirates, Darfur's genocide, South Africa's rape crisis, and list goes on and on -- and still you hear the pundits saying how Africa's just a different kind of place. They're uncivilized and brutal. It's the African Way, they'll say, in quiet, hushed voices that don't get a lot of airplay.

It's kind of like Bush saying the terrorists were in Iraq, so the war went there. And now, of course, terrorists are in Iraq. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yes, Africa has become a savage place.

We talk so much about head-shrinking (the psychology kind) here in the west, how our little childhood traumas stay with us for a lifetime.

But how about the systemic slaughter of millions of your countrymen for a little thing called rubber? How about the legacy of foreign invaders who put the heads of your people on stakes along the river to remind you to collect as much rubber sap as you can? After all, Conrad's Heart of Darkness was a virtually-true account of legendary rubber trade captains, like Captain Leon Rom of the Force Publique, a Belgian military force in the Congo.

How long does THAT stay with a country? How long does THAT influence the society? How do you, as a people, get past knowing you were so devalued that a bucket of rubber was worth more than a life?

So... I think about these things sometimes, the societal ramifications of the ills of the past. It's the historian in me. And no place in the world has greater, more horrific, or even more recent ills and horrors than that of Africa.

And I find it interesting now, that the BBC has run a story this morning stating that it's the early 1900s, in Leopoldville, in the Congo, that now appears to be the birthplace of AIDS, when AIDS made the jump from primates to humans.

The rubber trade was at the height between 1885 and 1920, the very same years (1889-1924) they say AIDS made the jump. In the Congo. Where millions of Africans were brutalized, murdered, and forced into hard, brutal labour that often involved getting hurt or maimed as they tried to extract rubber for a growing rubber trade. (The main cause of the desperation for rubber? The need for bicycle and car tires as the transportation evolution began, oddly.)

Had these Congo Africans not been forced into this labour, would the virus have jumped from apes to humans? Had so much blood not been shed, and people not injured, in the jungles in those years, would AIDS have made the jump? Had the brutality of Western civilizations not been forced upon these people, would we even know of AIDS today?

Of course, the article focuses primarily on the growth of cities and how living in close proximity to one another would have been the main reason for its spread. But Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, was created as the hub of the rubber trade. It was Ground Zero for the genocide and slaughter of 10 million Africans.

It just makes one wonder, I guess, if we're really aware of just how evil some of the evil we do really is. And just how far-reaching the consequences of our actions can be.

I'm not saying AIDS is entirely the fault of Belgian imperialists. I'm just saying we need to take this into consideration. We need to think about just how much that may have played a role. We need to accept that there could be more to this story than we'd like to assume.

But it breaks my heart a little to think this disease that threatens the entire continent of Africa, thus the world, may be yet another consequence of imperialism. And it bothers me that our legacy of imperialism remains that dirty little secret no one really wants to talk about.

Gay Bashing in Gay-Tolerant Vancouver

Some of us Vancouverites are PROUD of how gay-friendly this city is. I'm straight, and I think the fact that we're one of the "gayest" cities in the world makes us, well, frankly, fun.

Yet even here there is intolerance. And if it's here, then we still have a lot of work to do in the world. And that's just sad.

Last weekend there was a gay-bashing. A few years ago a gay man was beaten to death and his killers are now free. This time, though, these fuckers are being charged with a hate crime.

Good. Here's hoping gen-pop makes the fuckers their bitches when they land their hating asses in jail. I'm told they like virgin asses there.

It's a few hours later, and... Sigh, I hate it when people are right (aka: when I'm wrong). This comment was just left by Sugarmag: "I share your satisfaction that gay bashers were charged with a hate crime, someone who would do such a thing deserves to go to jail. However, I really don't wish rape on anyone, and I don't really think you do, either. Not really."

No, I don't really wish anyone would be raped, even in this scenario. I guess I just let the venomous angst that this bullshit continues in 2008 (2008!!!) get to me, and in this liberal, gay-embracing city. What can I say? I hate hate.