a Dirty Martini

Wear a Poppy

Via the British Legion's website and thanks to Pub Philosopher. It's almost November and time to wear a poppy and collect for either the RBL or Help for Heroes or any of the fine British charities supporting our soldiers. I have seen many Londoners with poppies already putting paid to the tired and churlish suggestion that liberal London or Britons don't care.

I have my poppy already :). And today had the absolute privilege of meeting and thanking a disabled Afghanistan veteran hero and giving him a kiss on the cheek and a hug. He came in to give us our poppy box at work. 

Some of last year's posts on the topic - featuring pretty girls promoting the national 2 minutes silence for those that need pretty girls to adorn their reading and other fitting tributes on the subject I wrote up last year that I hope anyone who passes by will enjoy.

Check Rogue Gunner for more tributes - the single best British (or international) military blog on the blogosphere. xxxx

Sunday Carousel

• Super-size it!
• Blogging.  It's become a virtual hub for the village of the spiteful and the damned. I'm hungry for some new sites that inspire, encourage and pursuade!
  
• Maybe I'll settle for nail varnish
  
• Plum actually. Louvre me louvre me not.
• Yeah I definitely want one of these t shirts.  
• creativity

Saturday's Lovely Finds

• Above. Thru the window of Patisserie Valerie's, Soho. Breakfast with my sister last Saturday. Lovely.
• Oh noooooo! Poor New York teenagers are feeling the credit crunch and cannot get their morning coffees or take out pizza (NYT) . Unlovely.
• Real feminists working FOR women against a background of threat (Afghanistan). Lovely in the making.
• Two drifters off to see the world, there's such a lot of world to see (Moon River, Audrey Hepburn) . So so lovely.
• The Brooklyn Bridge (Travel Postcards, NYT). Lovely.

Brits on: Energy, Green, Work, Economy, Family & Olympics

Random Friday afternoon poll list:

 

9 out of 10 Britons do not think the government is capable of managing the 2012 Olympics

 

Two-thirds feel proud of  Britain following the team's performance in Beijing and almost half now feel more excited about hosting the 2012 Games

46% of people attribute their rising gas and electricity bills to increases in fuel duty and VAT made by successive Governments, with 38% singling the current Labour Government out for blame

 

44% of those questioned said they thought the  UK energy companies were responsible for the steep hikes in the cost of power, and 40% attributed the rises to excessive global consumption

Nearly one third of British people would prefer to hire female plumbers, electricians and builders because a woman's attention to detail is considered the most valued skill needed in a tradesman.

 

More than half of Britons (52 %) currently consider their financial situation their most pressing concern, closely followed by the health of their family (46 %) and their own personal health and wellbeing (40 %).

 

58 % agree that life has become more pressured because of the current economic uncertainty.

 

Becoming a teacher (8%), a nurse (7%) and a professional sports player (6%) are the jobs most people wanted to be when ‘they grew up’.  

 

For males the most popular childhood ‘dream’ jobs were to become a professional sports player (11%) and being a member of the armed forces (9%) and for females the popular choices were careers in nursing (14%) and teaching (13%). So much for social engineering which was is and will forever remain utter extreme right-wing bollocks.

 

Just 7% of those questioned claimed to be in their ‘dream job’.

 

33% claim their job is not related to their qualifications, with only around 1 in 4 claiming the qualifications they have gained are directly related to their current occupation.

 

Two-thirds (67%) of Brits think the green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes

 

Two in five Britons believe that ‘extreme weather is becoming more common and blame global warming for this.’

 

One third (38%) of Brits would not be at all willing to pay higher taxes, even if the money raised through the increase were spent on combating green issues

 

Top ten role models for our children, proving we’re a sensible balanced people:

1. A family member

2. Richard Branson

3. Jesus Christ

 

And demonstrating our sense of humour two people nominated Homer Simpson.

Compiled by me via source

Decline of the American Conservative Movement

Great piece at the Debatable Land and totally agree with his summary.

There's plenty one could say about National Review's blog The Corner. If nothing else it affords a grim panorama of the decline of the American conservative movement.

McCain's problem [ref the summary piece on the debate in The Corner] , you see, was that he didn't froth enough. This is howl-at-the-moon madness. The weird thing is that many of these people actually seem to believe all this nonsense. They are perplexed that the rest of us don't see it. What are we missing? Isn't it obvious that Obama is a terrorist-coddling (nay, supporting!) lefty radical? A sort of Baader-Meinhof candidate?

Claiming that he does fails to pass the smell test. And, equally, it has no bearing on any actual issue in the campaign.

Punters are more likely to see this sort of attack as the diversionary tactics of a campaign that has run out of energy, ideas and promise. And they will be correct to come to this conclusion. This election is all but over, barring some cataclysmic event...

I wonder what this will mean for the Republicans going forward. They seem to be sitting in the centre now, much like in British politics where they have gradually followed suit on all but social conservatism.  But even on the latter they have lost the plot aswell. Bar their chiefly championed obsession with stoking up religious and gender politics to their continual detriment each time they lose.  

Noone should reward these incompetent, socially conservative polarising wombats whose only form of attack is hysterical paranoid curtain twitching politics. Be it accusing Obama of being a terrorist lover or the peculiar fascination with women's lives. I reckon Obama will ride out the economic storm well and/or ensure he takes no flack for it. And if he manages this test the Dems will be in for the long haul. And the man wants to deal with Pakistan. The fallout here will be yucky but your tenure in Washington is worth it.

Despite my test result in the post below pointing to McCain I say Go Obama!

 

random anonymous advert on Tube

Double Quote of the Day

"Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women. The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden."

The Joy of Pizza

 

Something a bit different and based on a recent conversation :D kinda relevant to moi. A funny piece in today's Guardian

Just wait till I get you home ...

The Italians might be notorious for being great lovers and making sumptuous pizza, but to my knowledge the two things have never really been connected. Until now.

One Simone Falco insists they're linked. He's the managing director of Rossopomodoro Pizzeria, and he has this to say:

Pizza is something you touch and share. You've got to treat a pizza like someone you want to make love to. The pleasure of eating it is just as much about how it feels as how it tastes.

.... making Falco come over like an Italian Swiss Toni

Yes, he is so convinced that pizza is the food of love he has decided to ban cutlery from every branch of Rossopomodoro so customers are forced to get their hands all over the doughy circles of loveliness

 

 

Colorado: Women, the Election & the State's attempts at defining a fertilized egg as a person

Weekly Gallup Poll

Preference for the General Election

Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund in the swing state of Colorado among 40 undecided women voters, half of whom were married women, half unmarried. Participants answered a series of questions and held a discussion about the election, the candidates, their views on McCain, Obama, Biden and Palin.

Click here to read the full report…

A sample of American extreme "pro"-"life" lunacy (Taliban Light alive and well in America) in that very state. Man oh man. Check out this sensational stupidity.

via Feministing....

 Colorado's attempt to define a fertilized egg as a human being with full rights. This antichoice ballot measure, known as Amendment 48, has got it all:

Fetal (or in this case, even embryonic) "rights" trumping women's rights? Check. The amendment would officially change the definition of "person" to include "any human being from the moment of fertilization," therefore endowing all embryos in the state (whether they're implanted in a woman's body or not) with "inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law."

Ties to "some of the most virulent paramilitary antiabortion groups in the nation"? Check. Dr. James Patrick Johnston -- who is linked to groups like the violently Army of God -- is handling the "national outreach" to antichoice doctors and pharmacists on behalf of Amendment 48.

Not just anti-abortion, but anti-contraception? Check. "This amendment would make the pill and IUDs illegal because they keep a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus."

There has been tons oflaudatory coverage of Kristi Burton, the 21-year-old face of the embryos-are-people-too movement. But really the Colorado campaign -- as well as a similar attempts in Georgia, Oregon, and Montana -- were coordinated by a national group, the ultraconservative Thomas More Law Center. Defining a fertilized egg as a person doesn't just restrict access to abortion, contraception, cancer treatment, and fertility treatment. It opens the door to charges of child endangerment against pregnant women. Basically, it allows for the policing of pregnant women's bodies and behaviour.

more on the community blog, where laurenv recently summed it up: 

I understand that many Coloradans are morally conflicted about abortion rights who may be inclined to vote yes on this measure because it would restrict access to abortions. But Amendment 48 is not a measure that can be easily squeezed into this over-simplified "pro-choice" or "pro-life" debate. I urge these voters to take a closer look at Amendment 48 and to understand that it would not only ban all abortions in every instance--even in the cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman is at risk--but would also threaten stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, common hormonal birth control methods (like the Pill), and access to emergency contraception for rape and incest victims.

Give me the extremist muslims in Britain any day of the week over this lot.

"Aren't Women Human Beings?"

Asks Tahira Abdullah, a Pakistani feminist (via Le Monde and care of Harry's Place). Good question she asks. But apparently not. A poor translation of the article is here. But a picture speaks a thousand words I reckon.

Womens faces burned with acid for honour cromes in Pakistan

Le Monde also reports on the three young women aged 16 to 18 who were buried alive with a JCB for the crime of wishing to marry someone they had chosen.

Certainly they are not within the various extreme tenents of the 3 big faiths married up with politics and law. And make no mistake. This is not just about the men who use violence and brutality to exert their sense of manliness. Women are just as stupid as the men that go along with the religiosity. I don't believe the extremes of any faith where they are forced into politics are about spirituality, trying to be a good moral person or Godliness. It is simply about 'being religious'. And yes women are just as likely to screw over other women and go along with the moral control of their own gender in the name of their chosen religiosity.

The morality police in Iran are all women for starters.

• An Orthodox Jewish sect in Jerusalem is waging a campaign , a brutal campaign, against women with "secular lifestyles".
  
  Welcome to the new, increasingly orthodox, Jerusalem. The attack on Mikhail, although exceptionally brutal, was only the latest in a string of assaults over the past two years against Jewish women accused of immoral behaviour in the city.  With the demographics skewed in their favour, government authorities are acquiescing to the growing demands of the ultra-orthodox.

• Muslim spiritual leaders could be denounced publicly by their own community as part of a campaign to expose imams whose silence on domestic abuse is leading to women being burnt, lashed and raped in the name of Islam.
  
  Sheikh Irfan Chishti, director of the Light of Islam Academy and a former member of Tony Blair’s Preventing Extremism Together taskforce, said there was “religious justification” among some imams for the abuse and subjugation of women. He said female victims were in many cases afraid of seeking help because they feared retribution and being accused of tarnishing or disobeying Islam.
  

• Nicaragua as a catholic "pro-life" nation.  "Here there is a lot of religiosity but only a litle Christianity" 
  
  Without anaesthetic or proper instruments it was more akin to mutilation than surgery, but González insisted. The haemhorraging was intense, and the agony can only be imagined. González was not stupid and did not want to die. She knew her chance of surviving the butchery was small. But being a practical woman, she recognised it was her only chance, and took it. The story of why it was her only chance is an unfolding drama of religion, politics and power that has made Nicaragua a crucible in the global battle over abortion rights.  It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies. The Pope seemed to acknowledge an increased risk to women's health. Ortega, desperate to regain power, mobilised the Sandinistas behind the local cardinal's campaign and helped get the ban enacted just days before the poll. The former revolutionary, now reinvented as a devout Catholic, was rewarded with the presidency.

Outside of religion it is at the other extreme. I sometimes feel that hardcore liberal secular traditions leave them to be celebrated for their porned up sexuality and nothing more. As if feminism existed to ensure women just got to show more flesh and being a prostitute or a lap dancer for some sex starved low life tosser in the corner of a room is somehow clever and can be neatly squared away as a proper career option.

And in the battle waged over Palin and Clinton, in the US, where feminism is a true political ticket, both Left and Right have indulged in spurious down and dirty sexism centering largely on how fuckable they each are.