“Shark in a boat” seems so last month. Now it’s “shark in the forest.”
A call to police reporting an unusual odor on Thursday night led New Hampshire authorities to find a shark decomposing in the forest, WMUR-9 reports.
According to The Associated Press, the six- to eight-foot blue shark was found in the Milton township, located approximately 45 minutes from the ocean.
Gui Leighton, of Milton, told WMUR-9, “You think you’d see a deer out in the woods on the ground but a shark, that’s unheard of.”
Police say they suspect that somebody caught the shark while fishing, and decided to abandon it by dragging it into the wooded area.
According to PBS Online, blue sharks are one of the most common open ocean sharks, and rarely come near the coast.
People, please…keep your banksters locked up in the city. Preferably in max-security prisons.
All kidding aside, though, there’s all kinds of weirdness out in them thar woods, as the article goes on to add:
There have been some unusual rescues in the woods recently. Animal rights advocates reported on Sunday finding over 30 malnourished dogs in a wooded area of Quebec, Canada, the Canadian Press reports. A 28-year-old art teacher was also recently found in the woods, having survived for three days after falling down a hill and breaking her leg and at least two bones in her back.
Ah, nostalgia…it just ain’t what it used to be. Used to be that payola was just something that sleazy record promoters slipped to radio DJs to turn a mediocre pop song into a “smash hit”.
Well, guess what? That basic concept has proved so lucrative that it has since expanded to engulf the financial sphere. Yes, kiddies, try not to look so shocked…apparently, Standard and Poor is the new radio DJ. And if you don’t slip ’em a fat envelope, guess what happens to your credit rating?
When Standard and Poor’s announced its dreaded downgrade of U.S. Treasury bonds from their traditional AAA status last Friday, perhaps all the investors, legislators and citizens who trembled ought to have laughed instead. Perhaps they should ask whether S&P, as one of the handful of ratings agencies whose dubious conduct spurred the financial crisis, might still esteem Uncle Sam’s credit if only the Treasury doled out enormous fees to the agencies for those ratings – just like the bankers whose junk securities they had deemed impeccably AAA paid for those ratings.
Indeed, it seems reasonable to wonder if the weekend threat by top S&P executives to further downgrade government bonds is actually a solicitation for the same lucrative fees that bankers paid for those false stamps of approval on their mortgage-backed securities back before the housing bubble exploded. A famous old New York politician once disparaged the practice of law as an exercise in “learning how to call a bribe a fee” — a description that might well apply to the ratings business during the years leading up to the crisis.
[…]
Recent investigations by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have raised fundamental questions about why and whether anyone still retains confidence in the opinions issued by S&P and Moody’s. To say that their sterling ratings of credit default obligations and other exotic mortgage-based loans were “inaccurate” is far too polite, particularly because the profits and stock prices of the ratings firms depended so heavily on the fees they earned from the investment banks whose securities they graded.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s final report succinctly states the basic facts: “The three credit rating agencies were key enablers of the financial meltdown. The mortgage-related securities at the heart of the crisis could not have been marketed and sold without their seal of approval…Their ratings helped the market soar and their downgrades through 2007 and 2008 wreaked havoc across markets and firms.” Former FCIC commission member Byron Georgiou, now running for the US Senate from Nevada, says he was “incredulous” when he learned of the S&P downgrade, noting acidly how the ratings agencies fattened themselves on payments from the same Wall Street banks that issued the worthless securities they had repeatedly endorsed.
Echoing the FCIC report, the Senate subcommittee found that both S&P and Moody’s knew as early as 206 that sub-prime mortgages were extremely risky, but continued to issue “investment-grade ratings” on securities based on those mortgages for several months. The subcommittee sharply criticized the “issuer pays” model used by the ratings agencies, the foundation of their unsound relationships with Wall Street companies and their feckless endorsements of products that led to the crash.
How does that line go? “It’s just spend a buck to make a buck/You don’t really give a flying fuck…”?
Oh heavens me. I feel a song coming on. Take it away, Bruce:
Looks like the IMF isn’t the only dirty MF in the alphabet soup. Move over, Bretton Woods bankers, and make way for the credit ratings agencies. Today, S & P…tomorrow, who knows what other set of initials will be holding out their claws for the massive payola?
And guess who will be on the hook for it, as usual?
America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.
Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.
So these people are now pronouncing on the creditworthiness of the United States of America?
Wait, it gets better. Before downgrading U.S. debt, S.& P. sent a preliminary draft of its press release to the U.S. Treasury. Officials there quickly spotted a $2 trillion error in S.& P.’s calculations. And the error was the kind of thing any budget expert should have gotten right. After discussion, S.& P. conceded that it was wrong — and downgraded America anyway, after removing some of the economic analysis from its report.
He doesn’t mention payola, but it’s still good for another song:
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Horrible Hiroshima Day, in a world where victims of the first nuclear strike are still dying of cancer 66 years later. This is the day that should truly live in infamy, as it utterly dwarfs everything that happened at Pearl Harbor. The building and dropping of the uranium bomb, called Little Boy, at Hiroshima on this day in 1945, followed by its plutonium counterpart, Fat Man, at Nagasaki three days later, was arguably the biggest waste of human brainpower in history, turning scientists into lackeys and journalists into liars, and even US prisoners of war into bomb casualties. It was humanity’s worst hour, and yet it was celebrated by many as a victory. But amid the euphoria of a war, allegedly against fascism, “won” through depravity, there were ominous rumblings: Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist of the Manhattan Project, was conscience-stricken, and proclaimed, quoting the Bhagavad-Gita, “Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds”; later, he opposed the development of all further nuclear weapons. Albert Einstein, who along with his Hungarian comrade, Leo Szilard, had written many years before to warn Franklin D. Roosevelt of the dangers of Nazi Germany getting the Bomb, was properly horrified by what his adopted country had done to Japan with it, and dedicated the remaining ten years of his life to pacifist and anti-nuclear causes. Claude Eatherly, the pilot of the weather-plane Straight Flush, who had given the bomber Enola Gay the all-clear to drop the bomb, was repeatedly institutionalized in mental hospitals and labelled “schizophrenic” for his piteous attempts to be recognized as the criminal he felt himself to be. He was entirely sane and by no means the mastermind of the war crime; his “mental illness” was nothing more than an acute outbreak of inflamed conscience on behalf of a country that seemed largely ignorant and indifferent to what had happened. His plight drew the attention of German ethical philosopher Günter Anders, who began a lengthy (and life-saving) pen-friendship with him that would eventually be published in book form, under the title Burning Conscience: The Guilt of Hiroshima. In all cases, these were understandable human responses to a horror without end. But then, those individuals were still irreversibly intelligent, for all the perversion that war had temporarily wrought upon their rational powers. Each was, in his own way, trying to reclaim the humanity he’d lost in the fog of war.
I note them all by way of contrast. Today, I want to juxtapose those great, flawed individuals with others who are merely flawed, with not an iota of greatness to redeem them. And no, I don’t feel like posting any ‘toons among them, either. That would break up the juxtaposition too much. So, with no further ado, here they come, in no particular order:
1. Michael Fucking Reagan. Ronald Reagan’s adopted son (and presumptive ideological heir) is a wholehearted subscriber to the “armed madhouse” model of flibbertigibbertarianism. Just look at the title of his latest screed to divine the full measure of his sorely limited imagination: “Legal guns would make Norway safer”. Um, Michael? Norway HAS legal guns. They are well-regulated there, which is good. And Norwegian culture is so peaceful that they are seldom used against people, which is even better. That’s why Norway IS largely safe…and has a murder rate so low that any sensible US citizen ought to envy it, not try to bring it up to US levels using the same NRA-backed scheme that has proved so disastrously, er, effective in your neck of the woods. And FYI, Michael: That same NRA-backed laxity you love is, in fact, directly to blame for a certain terrorist being able to acquire the ILLEGAL guns he used against his fellow Norwegians. Suck on THAT.
3. Eric Fucking Cantor. Just for getting his picture taken with #2, I’m gonna wank-list him, too. There are, of course, other reasons, but let’s face it, nobody is more of a wank than Pamela Fucking Geller. She is so covered in her own shit that some of it is bound to rub off on anyone who gets near her…and STICK. Lie down with dogs, and all that.
4. Tom Fucking Flanagan. If Nycole Turmel, currently filling in for Jack Layton as federal NDP leader, is a “rat”, then he’s a rat BASTARD. And a rat FUCKER. And any other unpleasant noun you can think of that’s an insult to rats. Remember, he’s Harpo’s strategy advisor. So of course he’s going to look to smear the opposition…and no opposition right now is stronger than the New Democrats. It’s what CONservatives do when they’ve got no better strategy. Because, let’s face it, if you had to go by what they’ve actually done for Canadians, it would look pretty damn shabby.
5. And while we’re on the subject of shabby, take Stephen Fucking Harper. Please. The man is tellingly silent on the damage the teabaggers are doing south of the border…probably because he’s salivating to fuck us over in the exact same way up here. And when it comes to criticizing Nycole Turmel’s Bloquiste past, he really should STFU…because he comes from the “Reform” (note quotes) party, which was right-wing Alberta’s equivalent to the Bloc just two short decades ago. And in cahoots with actual neo-Nazis, to boot.
6. Isak Fucking Nygren. Another unholy alliance comes to light. This Swedish fascist has ties to Anders Fucking Behring Fucking Breivik, as well as the racists of apartheid Israel. And oh yeah: he’s constantly dropping the n-word. Getting harder and harder not to see all these right-wingers as having some very creepy things in common, no?
7. Joe Fucking Lieberman. He actually wants US social security to be cut…to finance war. No doubt he’s extremely popular with the Military-Industrial Complex, but if this doesn’t kill him at the polls, I don’t know what will. Just who does he think his main voting constituency is? I doubt very much that it’s the young! And I doubt even more that they can afford private old-age pension plans, seeing as the US economy is now officially in the shitter.
8. Frank Fucking Gaffney. OMG, he thinks even his fellow right-wingers are in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood? Just for talking to a Muslim group? Mayday, mayday…we have a tinfoil-beanie situation! Straitjacket, stat!
9. John Fucking Bolton. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at reaching the White House. (Except, of course, the way everyone else does: as a tourist.) So why so suddenly, deafeningly silent about his ties to #2, whom he was quite happy to grant interviews for her shitty blog, and pose for pictures with? Is that any way to treat your one and only superfan, John? Oh yeah, I forgot: IT’S THE BIGOTRY, STUPID!!! Pammy has the reverse Midas touch. Everything she gets her mitts on, turns to dross…if it wasn’t already. And Bolton was already, long before she ever began hyperventilating about him. Which means that an association with her will turn him from dross to shit. That is, if he isn’t already.
10. Steve Fucking King.Free birth control will end the human race? By “human”, read WHITE; those are the only humans he cares about. Hell, birth control that costs hasn’t done it, so why would birth control that doesn’t cost? This fucking idiot should look up maternal mortality statistics sometime…and see how far they’ve dropped in the world since the birth control pill first went on the market in 1960. And, with a world population at close to 7 billion (or is it over that already?), it’s hardly likely that we’re all gonna die out. If anything, by reducing the birth rate, it will help to ensure the human race’s survival. Our planet can only support so many humans, especially ones who waste as much good air as this dude. Over-reproduction tends to lead to mass die-offs, especially if there’s not enough decent food, housing or clean water to go ’round. But then, you’d have to have studied basic biology to know that. Has he? I doubt it. Incidentally, the new law is not just about free birth control, but well-woman checkups and maternal and infant health, too. Don’t anyone fucking tell me that healthy women will be the death of us all! I think he’s really just worried that white women will stop reproducing. Yes, really. In this baby-mad climate, where Bristol Fucking Palin can become famous just for getting her dumb snowbilly ass knocked up, and then going around preaching something I’m sure she would never practice.
11. Pat Fucking Buchanan. Racist much? One doesn’t have to be from the US south anymore to recognize a dog-whistle when one hears it…and calling a black man “boy”, especially if he’s your president, is no better than calling him a nigger outright. Everyone knows that, and yet we’re all still left wondering just what it will take to get this fascist motherfucker off the air for good.
12. Sandy Fucking Rios. See #10. And add a side order of “Hey stoopid, why aren’t YOU barefoot and pregnant, if having babies is the be-all and the end-all of female existence?” Yeah, a breast pump or a domestic-abuse counsellor is exactly the same as a pedicure. Because having a baby is no harder than getting your nails done (and she should know, hers are immaculate. Probably files them and touches up her polish during sex, too.) And well-woman care is a luxury, not a necessity. Only in Family Values Cloud Cuckoo Land, where all the spokesbimbos dare to preach, but never practice!
13. Glenn Fucking Beck. Why?
That’s why. Racist much? No, we don’t believe that you “don’t care”. If you really didn’t care, you wouldn’t babble incessant fucking nonsense about it. Or try to tie the new non-white Spider-Man in to the not-so-white-anymore White House in such an unsubtle fashion.
14. Maggie Fucking Gallagher. Yep, I think she’s got all her bigotry bases covered. Too bad she’s still striking out. And so will Rick Fucking Santorum, Mittens Fucking Romney, and Michelle Fucking Pray-Away-the-Gay-With-My-Deeply-Closeted-Hubby Bachmann.
15. Jennifer Fucking Rubin. Excuses, excuses. Apparently her intellect isn’t the only part of her that’s inexcusably fucking lazy. Would it really have killed her religious observances to turn on her computer for five minutes, just to type out “Sorry, I erred, it wasn’t Islamists, it was one of ours”? Maybe not, but I bet it would have killed her job (at which she is utterly incompetent, but apparently necessary for the illusion of “fairness” and “balance”) a lot sooner than all the outrage that’s still raining down on her head now.
16. John Fucking Stossel. If he wants laws against drunk driving repealed, there can only be one reason for that: He’s an insufferable drunk, and he’s only mad that he can’t go around killing more random strangers. (Which, when you think about it, kind of explains his loopy politico-economic theories, too.)
17. Sean Fucking Hannity. Apparently, it’s the fault of all those birth-control-using jezebels that the Baby Jesus can’t get laid. And he’s whiny as hell, thinking HE’s the one who’s gonna be paying for all their insurers to cover THEM. Boo, hoo, fucking HOO. And just , the same that’s not gonna do HIM any good, seeing as no self-respecting woman (or man) finds him even remotely attractive?
18. Peder Fucking Jensen. Finally, the infamous, anonymous “Fjordman” has a name, and it’s not Anders Fucking Behring Fucking Breivik. Okay-fine. But if he thinks that coming forward will help him “clear” his name, he should remember who clouded it in the first place by blogging all that islamophobia and hate that inspired Breivik so much. And if he fears for his safety against a bunch of peace-loving humanitarian leftists, he’s a fucking wimp. But that’s all entirely par for the course; aren’t bullies basically cowards, anyway? And who’s a bigger cowardly bully than an islamophobic blogger who hides behind a pseudonym and provides the ammo for “lone wolves” to come out shooting…and then, when the hard spotlight hits him, goes scurrying like a cockroach, saying he’s not for violence? Ultimately he’s a collaborator, and it’s only a question of how directly he collaborated. No, his name will NEVER be clear…and it’s his own damn fault for subscribing to the most fashionable hate-ideology there is out there.
19. Chris Fucking Hurst. Another neo-Nazi terrorist sympathizer whose “disavowal” rings pretty damn hollow. The white kids Breivik killed (whom Hurst “laments”) were certainly not going to “breed” the next generation of delusional fascists like this fucker. They were the next generation of antifascists, as would their own children be after them; that’s why Breivik killed them, duh. He didn’t want antifascism to get any stronger than it already is. But his massacre has backfired already, as the survivors will gladly testify. They are now more determined than ever to oppose this kind of bullshit.
20. Patrick Fucking Pexton. Now we know that the Fucking Washington Whore Post is a hopeless sellout to the Fucking War on Terra. Why? Because its own ombud chooses to defend Wanker #15, and attack her critics — who, incidentally, are not the ones who did wrong, blaming the Norway terror attacks on the usual suspects instead of the real menace. Heaven forfend that right-wingers should be held responsible for murder, or even accountable for their own fucking stupidities, eh Patsy? That now makes TWO WaHoPo harlots who should be out of a fucking job. (Three if you count Jackson Fucking Diehl, who shamelessly cheerleads the notion of expanding the War on Terra to Latin America, where meddling gringos should do only one thing, and that is STAY THE HELL OUT.)
21. Fucking ALEC. “Jeffersonian democracy” apparently entails massive corruption, a total lack of transparency, and the physical assaulting of anyone who tries to expose the creepy crawlies hiding underneath the stone labelled “Jeffersonian democracy”. Gosh, who fucking knew?
22. Michael Fucking Bradley. Calling your president an “illiterate monkey” and threatening him with death is stupid enough. But when you use the contact form on his own website to vent your racist spleen like that? That’s like the Darwin Award of the Internets, dude.
23. John Fucking Boehner. “Gays make bad parents”? I dunno, my gay best friend and his hubby sure look like mighty good parents to me. They might make bad breeders, but parents? Not so much. Boney, on the other hand, makes a rotten politician. And I don’t think he should be allowed to spawn.
24. Judson Fucking Phillips. Liberal Democratic activists protesting the fascist policies of Scott Fucking Walker, the fucking teabag governor of Wisconsin, are “Nazi brownshirts”? Look who’s talking.
25. Jason Fucking Kenney. How can we trust our own government anymore when it (a) falsely accuses the innocent, (b) conveniently “leaks” how it “lost” documents supposedly incriminating the said innocent, and (c) then expects us to trust it? Oh yeah, that’s right…the innocent were Canadian citizens who had Arabic names, so that makes this DIFFERENT somehow. We’re supposed to trust the SupposiTories to keep us “safe” because brown-skinned Muslims are scary! Personally, I’d rather trust a coyote to guard a henhouse. Fucking SupposiTories — who else is so proud of their own racism and ineptitude, and so utterly unashamed even when caught in a bald-faced lie?
26. Troy Fucking Newman. Finally, we learn exactly how pro-woman the male-dominated anti-choice movement really is. And is anyone else not the least bit surprised to learn that the answer is NOT AT ALL? When walking incubators — er, pregnant women — are just “bitches” to the anti-choice Führer, who previously claimed he opposed abortion to “protect and respect” women, it seems rather a logical conclusion, no?
And finally, to all those who claimed the tsunami of this past spring, and the nuclear disaster it brought to Fukushima, was payback for Pearl Harbor. You forgot Hiroshima, you stupid motherfuckers. Here, read what Yoko Ono has to say about all that. And just pray that it never happens to YOU, okay?
Honduran police have turned professional arsonists. Their targets: Honduran peasant villagers. Their employers: Big illegal landowners who refuse to recognize the campesinos’ land claims under a 12-year-old agrarian reform law. Their enemy: President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in 2009 by a coup. Zelaya DID recognize the campesinos’ lawful right to the land. Which is just one reason among many for right-wingers why Mel had to go. So he was heave-ho’d out of the country in his pajamas by the military, while Gorilletti took to squatting in the presidential palace.
Of course, no one burned Gorilletti out of house and home. Which is kind of a shame, because HE was definitely there illegally. And his “elected” (cough, not really) successor, Pepe Lobo, likewise. Lobo has clearly done nothing to reverse what the putschists of Honduras put in place, and on the contrary, is perpetuating it, as the burning village above testifies.
In celebration of the new law requiring all US health insurance providers to cover birth control and other preventive health measures for women with no “co-pays” (out of pocket expenses, often used by insurers to minimize their own expenditures), Planned Parenthood got multi-culti and had some fun making this:
…which ought to give Anders Breivik a double aneurysm, seeing as it’s pro-woman AND has brown and white people dancing to Bollywood-style pop together, celebrating birth control!
A survey of 10 centres operated by Christian and anti-abortion organisations found evidence in most of them of poor practice and factually incorrect advice, while the quality of counselling differs widely. Advice ranged from scaremongering – linking abortion with breast cancer, for example – to actions apparently designed to steer women away from abortion, such as showing them baby clothes and talking about “the child”.
Right away, there is this presumption that a pregnant woman or girl should be tricked into carrying a pregnancy to term by any means possible…including lies. And loose use of loaded language. And, oh yeah, some truly ugly scaremongering:
At a Life centre in Covent Garden, London, the undercover researcher was given a leaflet entitled Abortions – How they’re Done, which said incorrectly that 85% of abortions are carried out using vacuum aspiration. It stated that “the unborn child is sucked down the tube” and that “the woman should wear some protection. She has to dispose of the corpse.”
And just think, this false “information” is from a “charity” that has been called upon by the UK Tory government to “advise” it on matters of sexual health. Something like that doesn’t make me at all confident of their capacity to advise anyone on anything.
But hey. If the loaded scaremongering language doesn’t get you, maybe the emotionalistic appeals will:
The counsellor was said to have focused on mental health issues that she associated with abortion, telling the researcher she was of a good age to have a child, showing her baby clothes and using terms such as “baby” and “grandchild” when referring to the pregnancy.
“Look at these cute little baby clothes! Don’t you want to give your mother a grandchild? Won’t she be disappointed if you fail to do this for her?”
Blecch.
But the saccharine and the erroneous are no match for the sheer hypocrisy:
While a counsellor on Life’s helpline was regarded as being “friendly and non-judgmental”, she was unwilling to answer questions about physical aspects of abortion, saying she was not qualified to do so. When asked whom to talk to about arranging an abortion, the counsellor stated that the organisation was pro-life and could not recommend any service. She claimed not to know the names of abortion providers.
A counsellor at City Pregnancy Counselling and Psychotherapy (CPCP), London, which came under Life’s auspices until the end of May, repeatedly suggested the client should wait two to three weeks before making her decision on abortion.
The counsellor said the embryo was a fully formed human life and that the client would have to grieve for her loss: “Abortion, whatever reason you might go for that, will become bereavement because this is a baby that’s going to die, if you go down that route. That’s the reality of it.”
That’s “friendly and nonjudgmental” for you. When you get right down to it, religiously biased “crisis pregnancy counselling” (note the quotes) is VERY judgmental. And not at all friendly to women, since it relies on falsehoods ranging from the sugary to the terrifying in order to convince them to want what they do not. Would a REAL friend do that?
Or, to put it another way: With “friends” like these, you don’t need enemies.
But maybe I’m being too harsh on them? I don’t know. Here’s what they found out about another such organization; you be the judge:
A counsellor at Choices Haringey in north London, part of a network overseen by Care Confidential, a Christian organisation, did not know the legal time limit for abortion, claimed that there were no statistics on the number of women who have terminations and had little idea about local services.
The counsellor frequently referred to “The Journey” – a training manual – and handed out photocopied pages from its 10-step “road to abortion recovery”, including steps entitled “guilt and shame” and “forgiveness”.
Other sections of the manual (which were not given to the researcher) state: “Part of the healing journey to post-abortion recovery involves repentance – the only remedy for guilt. If we are to walk this journey with a woman then we need to clearly see which boundaries she has crossed … immorality, coveting, lying, as well as taking innocent life.”
Goodness gracious me. It sounds to me like someone is trying to create guilt and shame where none might have existed before. The better, no doubt, to drum up business for someone specializing in for-profit “post-abortion recovery counselling”! But since they don’t even have accurate abortion statistics to work with, can we really trust in the veracity of their patented 10-step “process”?
Okay, let’s try this again. I’m really working hard on giving them the benefit of the doubt here…
At Skylight Counselling, a Care Confidential affiliate in Coventry, the counsellor was said to have listed physical and psychological effects she linked to the “post-traumatic stress” of abortion. Literature suggesting risks such as “sub-fertility or infertility” and “increased risk of breast cancer” was given out.
Oh dear. This old shit, too? It’s worth noting that lowered fertility doesn’t stem from abortion per se, but from ILLEGAL abortion. Infection, blood loss, and incomplete evacuation of the uterus are all common where abortion is illegal and performed clandestinely. They are highly uncommon where abortion is legal and safely performed by a trained practitioner.
As for breast cancer, it can be caused by genetics, by pesticides in food and on lawns, by radiation, by chemical exposure, and by smoking. But by abortion? NEVER.
The fact that I have to spend time debunking these lies is really depressing, y’know? But even more depressing is the thought of how many women’s lives in Britain are hanging in the balance because of these “charitable” misinformers. The report concludes that only two in ten of the centres visited by the “mystery shoppers” gave out good, accurate information and full, nonjudgmental support. That means that 80% of “crisis” pregnancy centres are handing out false information.
Here in Canada, I don’t expect that it’s any better. I’ve seen the training literature they give their volunteers; I came across it one day quite by accident, when I used a washroom shared by several offices in a local building downtown. It was lying half-crumped on top of a heap of damp paper towels in the wastebasket. I took it out, uncrumpled it, and read in horror just what their “intake” process was: Separate the possibly-pregnant female from any “abortion-minded” (read: PRO-CHOICE) companion; while she waits for the “free” pregnancy test result, make her watch a video which details fetal pain and suffering caused by abortion; if the test comes back positive, refer her to the “Bethesda” clinic (a local anti-choice, religiously biased clinic in a nearby strip mall with a big cross on their sign, one which has since mercifully disappeared — guess nobody was willing to pay out of pocket to be indoctrinated!), and even if the test result is negative, push abstinence and religious “counselling” on her to make sure she doesn’t “stray” again. No information on birth control whatsoever! Abstinence only. And lots and lots of guilt-tripping; that much is a given. You can’t have abstinence without making a girl feel guilty and ashamed about her sexual desires.
And what little they provide in “services” can be obtained in Canada for free at any doctor’s office. The pregnancy test, for instance. You don’t have to go to a fake clinic to get it. Hospitals and doctors’ offices often have on-site testing labs where you can get the results for free within minutes, no traumatic video watching necessary. If you have a few bucks to spare, you can also get one of those pee-on-a-stick tests at any drugstore, and know as soon as the day after a missed period if you have anything to worry about or not, and call your doctor directly for an abortion referral once you have the result. In other words: the only thing of any real value these centres offer — free pregnancy testing — is something you don’t really need them for!
All in all, it strikes me that “crisis pregnancy” centres are an awful lot like those discredited “drug counselling” centres run by Scientologists. They rely on an unholy combination of guilt, shame, love-bombing and misinformation. They can mess with an unwary woman’s head for years, and scar an impressionable girl for life.
Like many a chemotherapy patient, Chavecito has opted for the quicker, tidier solution of simply buzzing it all off, rather than waiting for it to fall out in clumps (which can be a disconcerting experience even when you’re expecting it). Since his usual ‘do is very close-cropped anyway (a holdover from his army days), it’s not a terribly traumatic change. And once the chemo is done, it will all grow back in no time. Some chemo patients report that their hair comes back darker and curlier than it was before, but since Chavecito’s hair is already black and afro-curly by nature, I don’t think it will look any different when it grows in again.
And, in the meantime, Richard from Mexfiles sends me this timely reminder of what women really think about chrome-domed dudes:
With hair or without, Chavecito is sexy. And that’s the bald truth.
Fear doesn't travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory's truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next.
--Arthur Miller, "Why I Wrote 'The Crucible'", The New Yorker, October 21, 1996
All opinions here are the brain-wrackings of Sabina C. Becker, unless otherwise credited. If you cite them, please give credit where due.
