“We became brothers in love.”

“Now we are united. We became brothers in love,” said Mustafa Khalil, (Mustafa Abdul Jalil) chairman of the National Transitional Council.

Well then.  That explains this, I guess:

Homa Arjomand of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada said the wives of men who worked under the Gadhafi regime as pharmacists, teachers and other occupations are already being targeted for rape.  "According to Shariah law, enemies' wives should be raped and they have started raping these women already," Arjomand said.

Seems that freedom of the Libya nation only applies to half its population.  Less than half, in fact since children are chattel as well as women.

(Mustafa Abdul Jalil) urged Libyans (employ) “honesty, patience and tolerance” as the nation moves toward reconciliation.

Except when it comes to women, children, and people you just don’t like.  But needing the stamp of legitimacy on their desire to commit horrible atrocities, the interim government simply wipes out all laws and human rights by leaving such things in the hands of the vague interpretation – by men – of a barbaric set of religious laws constructed by men for men.

The top leader of NTC also reiterated that the Islamic sharia would be the main source of the law of new Libya, and any law contradicts with the Islamic sharia would be suspended.  The future of Libya will be created by the Libyan people, Jalil stressed.

So NATO goes in, helps remove a brutal tyrant, and a brutal regime takes over.  It is tempting for some people to throw up their hands and say the hell with such countries, you can’t save them from their own ignorance and cruelty, all we are doing is arming them so that they can then use our own weapons against us and continue to violate the human rights of their own citizens.

A  part of why we fail is that we approach such countries and cultures with a very patronizing, self-righteous, and ignorant attitude, wrongfully assuming that our ways are the best ways for everyone and  that we are somehow entitled to force our values and ways on everyone else.

Another reason – and it’s a big one – why we fail is that our governments – and many of our citizens – freely violate  the very same laws they want to impose on others.  We talk about fairness, equality, international laws applied to all by all in the same way, but our actions do not reflect those ideals we claim to be committed to.

We pick and choose which cases we will defend, which we will ignore, and whose rights we will violate arrogantly believing in our great, superior wisdom and enlightenment and that this entitles us to bend the rules in a case of the ends justifying the means.  But just for us.   All those who are not us are law breakers and savages if they attempt to justify their actions as we do. 

So what can we do to help further the human rights of other human beings?  Bombing the crap out of their country won’t do it, as we have seen over and over.  Some other brutal regime can easily move back in and the people whose homes, families, and workplaces we have destroyed will not likely want to embrace our way of life.

The only way to help spread human rights is to start here, at home, and spread out through example and by providing platforms where women, children, an y other suppressed folks, and human rights activists can speak freely and safely.

Why would any people look to Western societies and believe we are free of corruption, we are fair, all are treated equally?  We violate human rights, we shape our laws to suit the small percentage of wealthy people, we pick and choose who will be punished, we stifle free speech.

We need to make sure that what we ask of others, we can follow ourselves and rather than tell them these methods produce a happier, healthier population, show them by example, then let them decide.  Our governments should keep pressure on other governments to allow access to outside sources of information so that people everywhere have an opportunity to become informed and make decisions on their own behalf.

Rather than bludgeon people into implementing our policies, we should help them gain access to platforms where they can speak freely, exchange ideas, and discuss what policies of their own they would like their government to put in place. 

And we should set an example here that separation of church and state is absolute.  If we allow any religion to enter into our system of forming policies, laws, and legislation, how can we tell others that their laws must not be based on religious beliefs?  That means that here at home, religious based morality cannot be deciding factors in whether or not injection sites should continue, whether or not gay marriage should be allowed, whether or not women have the right to make their own reproductive choices.

Here’s where we juxtapose...and juxtapose...and juxtapose

I wasn’t going to write about Coulter. I thought she should just be ignored. But now that some are excusing the hate generator by labelling her words as comedy - different story.

First, we juxtapose

There’s this:

I join with most right thinking Canadians in denouncing the latest grits attempts at humour. Apparently murdering HM PM Stephen Harper is something grits gleefully look forward to. (photo of Stevo as Lee Harvey O. being shot by Jack Ruby)
- for which the Liberals apologized, admitting it was offensive.

Then there’s this:

"In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out into outright traitors."
 
And this:

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, speaking at a traditionally black college, joked that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. [...] “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee,” Coulter said. Coulter then added, “That’s just a joke, for you in the media.”

There’s this serious, scary death threat (better get the RCMP on that right now!):

the poster would like to "dip (Coulter) in gravy and lock her in a room with a wolverine high on angel dust," to which Coulter and the wingnuts cried DEATH THREAT!!!!!  WAAAAA!!!!
 
And there’s this:

I will defend to the death your right to protest Coulter but reserve the right to shoot you dead if you impede my right to hear her speak. (Guess Dave_RoA should go and shoot Coulter’s organizers who canceled the event, then. Hey! That’s just a joke!!!!! )

The problem with the I was joking defense:

It’s the spirit in which a joke is said that makes it more or less objectionable. Lenny Bruce used offensive language and satire to wear away the power of hurtful words. Coulter tries to re-insert it. She slings the word faggot like a barb, and in doing so promotes the hateful belief that being gay is contemptible.

By saying she is using jokes and satire to make a point, she is telling her audience that there is some social or political truth to what she is saying, and her writings leave little doubt of what bastardized version of reality she is preaching.

If Coulter wants to be viewed as a comedian trying to make some political point, then she should be subject to the same constraints as any other political comedian. I am very sure Rick Mercer or John Stewart could not get away with the violence, racism, and hatred she reflects in her stage acts. Comedians have been shut down for far less.

As far as her politically correct argument goes, we covered that ground decades ago which is why her brand of humour is generally not tolerated. Kids get banned from teams, suspended, even kicked out of school for ragging on other kids the way Turkey Neck rags on anyone left of a wingnut. This is because grownups who are not vicious hatemongers realize that mocking anyone or any group over and over for their differences is devastating. It creates a mindset that somehow, having those differences is a negative.

Coulter deserves the same rights as anyone else and it would be patronizing of us not to expect her to be accountable for her actions, just like any other adult.  Unless, of course, she is legally insane, in which case she should not be making public appearances which could influence impressionable minds.

Barring the insanity defense, she should be held accountable for her hate talk, presented as it is in a public forum with the intention, as she herself declares, of influencing how others think.

Oh yeah...why aren't the wingnuts screaming Anti-Semite!!!!! at her?

Big Daddy tells his minions: do as I say, not as I do.

Guergis has “one of the worst meltdowns a staff member of Charlottetown Airport says he's ever seen,”  then four days later, Jean-Pierre Blackburn nearly had the cops called on him when he took “strong issue with security guards at the Ottawa airport who refused to let him on a plane with a bottle of tequila,” prompting negative press indicating that gee whiz, Canadians really don’t like paying wages to people who feel they are above the law, after which Steve realizes Canadians aren’t completely asleep and decides that he needs to save his own miserable ass by having the PMO say he “will issue an edict to his ministers, reminding them that they're not above the law.”   H/t CC

Impolitical points out that Steve the Arrogant really needs a lesson in respecting the law himself.

Mr. Prorogation who breaks parliamentary convention with ease, Mr. Not-So-Fixed-Election-Date Law, Mr. Defy-Parliamentary-Order-on-Document-Production, Mr. PMO-Instructs-Ministries-to-Disobey-Access-to-Information-Laws...Mr. all of these things is going to issue an edict to his ministers reminding them that they're not above the law. Uh huh. What is it they say, the fish rots from the head. Or do as I say, not as I do?

But really.  We were all kids, once, and we know that eventually, all the do not rules mean nothing if the parent pushing them violates the rules themselves.

Air transport security?  Let’s look back to 2006 and see what example Big Daddy set for his MPs:

... on a recent trip, the Prime Minister was asked by a flight attendant to turn off his cellphone and BlackBerry. Mr. Harper declined. The pilot then made a request, saying it was for safety purposes. The PM relented. But, at the end of the journey, one of his staffers gave the pilot some news: His services would no longer be required on prime ministerial trips.

I guess respecting the law doesn’t apply to egocentric sociopaths who think the rest of the universe is full of shit and destined to be ruled by said sociopath.

Because Big Daddy knows best.  And he is, afterall, Big Daddy.

There's a word for that...

...oh yeah...