Diary 7 November 2009

(Westward IV screen shot)

In my e-mail today is an offer from Sandlot Games to pre-purchase the upcoming release of their game Westward IV for half-price. These folks already have my business for several reasons: They have equal or almost equal numbers of available heroines in a variety of races, classes, and body types (yes, fat heroines); they deal with historical realms but frequently contradict the white Western take on how things went down (though the Westward series is terrible about ignoring theft of First Nations territory); the action increasingly relies on smarts and cooperation as much as "battles"; and, thrillingly, the last release Tradewinds Odyssey had a small positive lesbian subplot written into one of the sequences. Now, the opening line of the blurb for Westward IV refers to the villainous railway owner as "patriarchal". Sign me up, kids. Pretty soon they'll be offering women-only vegan collectives who are fighting the criminal justice system and power-sex conflation.

Last night I watched a rather timely PBS Empires episode called "Holy Wars" about Salah Al-Din and his reconquest of Jerusalem during the Crusades era -- his decision to not slaughter or terrorize the Christian population made him a legend among Islamic and Arabic nations, but cut him no respect from the bloodthirsty Christianists of Europe. Like Bushies, they viewed compassion and respect for others as a sign of weakness.

When you have a nation (and city) where prevailing values are adherence to authority, a narrow and base-emotion definition of patriotism, and limited funding for "social" issues, internal violence will be the norm, not the exception.

Dinah finally left my immediate presence for a couple of hours to sleep, which I take as a sign of healing on her part. I'm still not sleeping more than a few hours at a stretch, related to pain. I myself sorted through some of my feelings last night with Martha, mostly having to do with being at the literal mercy of anybody who walked into my hospital room and having little room to say no or insist on autonomy. People think giving advice to those who are ill, pushing them to "do what's best", telling them stories about their own medical experiences or those of their friends & family, and/or generally assuming their thinking and decision-making is somehow impaired even in areas it is clearly not, are all manifestations of caring instead of actually simply being roadmaps to the advice-giver's own emotional blocks about what is going on -- i.e., "here's my difficulty with your difficulty, since you're lying there unable to get away or go find other resources, let me demand you deal with my difficulty right now". No wonder we can't think rationally about a simple health care plan, when we're all so bollixed up with panic about ever being truly sick and helplness ourselves.

Work on it, people. Work on it with each other, that's all I ask. Just like you work on your crap about brown people with other white folks, and your shit about women with other men.

Dinah has discovered the yellow "FALL RISK" bracelet from the hospital that I ripped off my wrist I got home and thinks it is a great toy.

My stamina is still so hammered, typing this much leaves my fingers trembling to the extent I have trouble keeping them in line with QWERTY. I guess I'm done for the time being, need to go lie down again. Dress your children in bright colors, not camouflage, and remember what Mark Twain said: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

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Jesus's Jihadis Terrorism Watch

(Poster by Austin Cline.)

Jesus's Jihadis Terrorism Watch

Here's a few updates culled from various sources.

From Daniela Altimari at the Hartford Courant:

Radio Host Hal Turner Charged With Inciting Injury To Two Connecticut Lawmakers

Radio host Hal Turner — accused of hosting a website that incited Connecticut Catholics to "take up arms" and singling out two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official — was taken into custody in New Jersey late today after state Capitol police obtained an arrest warrant for him.

Turner, who has been identified as a white supremacist and anti-Semite by several anti-racism groups, hosts an Internet radio program with an associated blog. Last week, the blog included a post that promised to release the home addresses of state Rep. Michael Lawlor, state Sen. Andrew McDonald and Thomas Jones of the ethics office.

....Turner has been branded a racist by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. Elsewhere on the blog, the recent fatal shooting of a Kansas abortion provider is called "a righteous act."

(More details in story link above.)

The two men who are the subjects of Turner's death threats, Lawlor and McDonald, have been involved in legislation which would give lay Catholics, rather than priests, oversight of church finances. What began as a struggle for separation of church and state devolved into gay-bashing focused on Lawlor and McDonald, both of whom are openly gay, according to the Fairfield Weekly article Holy War.

Regarding the hate crime this week, the murder of physician Dr. George Tiller by Christianist assassin Scott Roeder, Feministe reports that Jill Stanek, Forced Birth advocate, has published on her blog "photographs of the clinic of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, another physician who provides late-term abortions and who has said he is willing to take over providing services at Dr. Tiller's clinic".

Feministe links to the original article by Emily Douglas at Reproductive Health Reality Check, which also passes on this chilling information concerning "Operation Rescue senior policy advisor Cheryl Sullenger’s admission, just reported by McClatchey, that she provided information to suspect Scott Roeder about Tiller’s planned court appearances when Tiller was tried for performing illegal abortions. (Sullenger’s name and the Operation Rescue phone number were found on a note in the dashboard of Roeder’s car.) [Sullenger] said Roeder’s interest was in court hearings involving Tiller. ‘He would call and say, “When does court start? When’s the next hearing?”' Sullenger said. ‘I was polite enough to give him the information. I had no reason not to. Who knew? Who knew, you know what I mean?’”

Stanek's blog links to another site which lists the home and work addresses of one of the doctors and displays numerous photos of him, his wife, and his daughter. Jesus' General at Patriot Boy (whatever would we do without him) has responded by writing to Stanek's pastor at Parkview Christian Church requesting a "blessing of the rifles".

BlueGirl, writing for They Gave Us A Republic, points out in her post They Should Have Had Roeder In Custody that Scott Roeder "should have been under surveillance since he was caught with bomb making supplies in the mid 90s when he was involved with the 'sovereign citizen' movement and militant anti-abortion groups."

She goes on to inform us "On May 23, he vandalized a clinic in Kansas City, Kansas then returned on Saturday morning, May 30 to vandalize the clinic again. The clinic manager filed police reports in both instances, and on Saturday, about 24 hours before Dr. Tiller was gunned down in the foyer of his church, the clinic manager gave the FBI Roeder's license plate and a description of his car." "He had also posted on the Operation Rescue website that he wanted to confront Dr. Tiller in his church."

Since Roeder is not eligible for the death penalty based on Kansas' criteria, and since I'm opposed to the death penalty in any event, I suggest we start arresting and trying these self-declared assassins as domestic terrorists, with permanent incarceration. Following thorough interrogation, of course.


(Hat-tip to Shadocat for the information about Kansas law.)

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