Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

19 year old Chris Brown pleaded guilty to a single count of assault on his former girlfriend and was sentenced to 6 months community labour, with 5 years probation during which time he will have to attend courses on Domestic Violence.

Is that enough for a first offence? Or is it a slapped wrist for a young man who will go on to do it again?

Brown was originally facing a jail term of up to 4 years but in a statement outside the court his lawyer said that

"He embraces this as a chance to get the message out that domestic violence will not be tolerated. He wants to get his life back on track."

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg told him:

"I think it’s commendable that you took responsibility for your conduct, sir."

He made the right noises and got away with less punishment. Does it make any difference that Brown is This Chris Brown? And that the former girlfriend is Rihanna? I’m not sure, but I don’t think it should. On the one hand the celebrity of a young R&B singer standing up and speaking out against domestic violence could have a HUGE impact, but he’s not suggested he do that has he?

But you know what bothers me more? 

After Brown left the courtroom, Rihanna entered and was addressed by Judge Schnegg who explained to the Barbados-born singer that she had issued a stay-away order.

The singer had not been seeking such an order, but the judge imposed one anyway.

The order requires that Brown and Rihanna stay at least 50 yards (45m) from each other, except at entertainment industry events when the distance is reduced to 10 yards (9m).

The judge also told Rihanna it is not a one-way order - and that she, too, should not get any closer to Brown than the order allows.

Rihanna didn’t seek a Stay Away order but one was imposed anyway? And that last bit "it is not a one way order" just implies that Rihanna is just as wrong as he is and just as guilty. Well, I suppose we don’t know all the details of this particular case but how many times do you hear "she asked for it" or "she provoked me"? How many? And how many times is that allowed as a good reason for violence?

So says Nick Griffin, BNP leader, who was pelted with eggs and forced to abandon an impromptu press conference outside parliament. He goes on to say that the BNP:

won votes because it spoke openly about the problem of immigration

he argued that the "political elite" were responsible for making "the indigenous British majority… second class citizens in every possible sphere".

Now I don’t condone pelting anyone with eggs and I believe firmly in the freedom of any individual to speak their own political views, but this man’s hate and intolerance are somehow too much for that. The BNP are, reportedly, aiming to fund the resettlement of non-white immigrants living in the UK so they can return "home" and then the indigenous white majority will have enough jobs will we? Then life will be good again will it? Very familiar start to a familiar process there Mr Griffin.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then… they came for me… And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

So, first the non-white immigrants, then who? What if they don’t want to leave Mr Griffin? What then? Will you use force and deport them instead? How will you decide who gets to stay and who gets to leave? Will you use skin colour grading? The pencil in the hair test? DNA?

I am just plain disgusted that the UK managed, through political apathy and disinterest, to actually elect 2 of these fascists into power.I despair, I really do.

Apparently, according to Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of M&S.

"Women can get to the top of any single job that they want to in the UK," he told the Observer newspaper.

Sir Stuart also rejected the suggestion that having children can damage the careers of working mothers, saying he knows many who are successful.

He said: "Apart from the fact that you’ve got more equality than you ever can deal with, the fact of the matter is that you’ve got real democracy and there are really no glass ceilings, despite the fact that some of you moan about it all the time.

"Women can get to the top of any single job that they want to in the UK. You’ve got a woman fighter pilot who went in to join the Red Arrows yesterday."

He told the newspaper: "I mean, what else do you want to do, for God’s sake? Women astronauts. Women miners. Women dentists. Women doctors. Women managing directors. What is it you haven’t got?"

I’d like a life where I’m not afraid of male violence, a life where I have genuine equality not something a man hands to me on a plate and tells me is equal.  This man is so entrenched in his white male privilege he has no idea what he is really saying. "Hey uppity women, I’ve given you jobs and something that looks like equality, will you quit threatening my precious patriarchy now?"

No. Not going to happen. Yes, some individual women can achieve those positions within the male world and I celebrate that they are able to do so. But those choices are not open to most of us still and those that pursue them can only do so by becoming more male than the men in many cases. You still make us play by your rules and with your tools and strategies.

*cough, sneeze* I think I may be breaking out in rashers…

Now, I know that any form of flu can be dangerous for the young, elderly, immune compromised or those with respiratory problems. And I know that this swine flu is a nasty one. I also believe that one day some virus will adapt to resist all our medicines and will become the pandemic that we fear and millions will die, if not billions. But 28 cases does not make a pandemic.

So, compare that with 2 women dying every week, 104 every year. That’s this year, next year and the year after.  This is something that targets women and kills with terrifying regularity.

Not large enough numbers for you?

Try 100 women affected every day. That makes 36,500 every year. Now is that a pandemic yet? Are those numbers big enough to frighten you?

Yet these are not diseases as such, they’re not caused by a virus or bacteria. These cases do need medical help, and there is a long recovery if the woman survives. 

104 women every year are killed by their partner or ex-partner. The disease that is pandemic here is Domestic Violence.

100 women every day are victims of Sexual Violence and that’s just in the UK. Globally it must be so huge that I don’t even want to think about the numbers involves. Yet, where is the news? Where is the panic? Where is the outrage?

Oh, there isn’t any, no-one cares and life goes on as normal because it’s just women isn’t it……

Source: Shock, Horror - From the Foot of Witchy’s Stairs.

Last Friday, Delara Darabi was hanged in an Iranian jail with no warning and with total disregard for a 2 months stay of execution granted by the head of Iranian Judiciary.

BBC News.

early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman’s noose.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: "We are going to execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it."

Her lawyer was not informed of the execution and neither was her family. 

"Amnesty International does not consider her trial to have been fair, as the courts later refused to consider new evidence which the lawyer said would have proved she could not have committed the murder,"

A young women’s life is ended for a crime she did not commit. She confessed to protect her boyfriend, funny how there’s no mention of him or him being tried and convicted for the murder.

Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don’t know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

The new laws whisper:

You don’t know who you are

You’re mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

Sadly these are not my words, I just copied them.

All due credit should be offered to Philip Pullman

This was briefly an article by Philip Pullman in the Times, but it seems to have gone. I’d like to share it here, with full attribution to the author.

Eh?

One-Armed CBeebies Host ‘Scaring’ Children

Cerrie Burnell is a recent addition to the cbeebies channel, presenting the filler bits in between the programmes. She is so far from scary that I am just astounded at the comments I’ve seen around the internet - all anonymous of course, as is the way of the interweb!

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on Cbeebies (Cerrie Burnell) may scare the kids because of her disability?

I didn’t want to let my children watch the filler bits on the bedtime hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter’s mind and possibly caused sleep problems… and yes, this is a serious post." From one of the message boards - from an anonymous poster obviously far too scared of Cerrie to admit who he is!

Yes, Cerrie has a difference, I hesitate to call it a disability because although she is obviously different she seems to have no problems doing her job extremely well. My kids didn’t notice her difference for ages and even then they shrugged and took no notice. In fact their conversation ran a bit like: "Oh yes, you’re right, that’ll make doing (insert random task - I think they said ironing but it might have been washing up) a bit tricky." Reply from oldest - "Nah, she’ll just get her partner to do it." Not scary at all and clearly has no impact on her ability to present on cbeebies.

I’m a bit gobsmacked over the whole thing to be honest. This is a young woman making her way in the world and doing it well. She doesn’t deserve the vitriol that’s been aimed at her and makes her out to be some sort of disfigured monster. 

So, what is this scary deformity that Cerrie has?

She was born missing her lower right arm and hand. Really, it’s barely noticeable. There is no nasty scarring, it’s not disfiguring and in any case it’s NOT scaring kids unless the parents are making that happen.

So, who fancies rebalancing the complaints with some letters and emails of support?

BBC, PO Box 1922, Glasgow, G2 3WT.

They have a WebForm for email too.  Although it wasn’t easy to track down on their site.

Go for it, make some positive noise!

 

I found this and it made me feel sick.

We all know that the male suicide bomber is promised 72 virgins in the gardens of paradise. What, then, does a female ‘martyr’ get in return for her suicide?

From the Mail Online. 

 

Women are controlled by men  -  their fathers and brothers initially, and then their husband and his brothers, who monitor and supervise every aspect of their lives. A woman is the possession of the men in her family.

Rape is the deadliest assault on this honour code. But few sympathise with the victim herself.

Whatever the circumstances, rape victims are almost always blamed for bringing shame to their family by somehow provoking her attackers.

Or simply by being somewhere away from the protection of the male members of the family.

In a marriage culture that prizes virginity, a rape victim will never find a husband and never recover from the sexual shame, it is a living death.

I’m speechless. But does this mean that a woman wearing her Abaya is to be feared? Should this incite us all to hate all Muslim people?

Not at all. 

The truth is suicide bombing is a cult. It twists parts of the Koran, parts of Arab culture and genuine political grievance into an easy but deadly myth.

It’s important to remember that this is a product of a mysoginistic society, a rape culture and that certain factions within that are manipulating the extreme line to produce this. It’s twisted and hateful.

The almost equal gender balance of AMs in the Welsh assembly has transformed how politics in Wales is conducted, according to a new report.

The study showed there were more female voices at the assembly than at Westminster and in many Welsh councils.

Political debates were more consensual than adversarial as a result and had ‘non-traditional’ topics on the agenda such as domestic violence.

Political debates are LESS ADVERSARIAL! Perhaps Westminster could learn from this? 

From here

 

More than 100 local councils across the UK are being threatened with legal action for failing to provide specialist support for victims of sexual violence but the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who are bringing the action, have been called "irresponsible" by the LGA (Local Government Association)

Chair of the Equality Commission, Trevor Phillips says,

"In many parts of the country services for women who have experienced violence are chronically under-funded or simply do not exist.

"Women shouldn’t be subjected to this postcode lottery… for those councils who continue to ignore the dire need to shore up services and plug the gaps we have a stark reminder: the commission is ready and willing to use its enforcement powers."

Every year in Britain, three million women will become victims of rape or another form of sexual violence and the support for them has to be specialist and immediately available for those women to stand any chance of recovery. But the funding for and provision of suitable support services, such as Rape Crisis centres, is woefully inadequate and shockingly patchy. 

Research indicates that the best levels of provision per head is to be found in Bradford, while the lowest level is across the south east of England. Glasgow has the best provision found in the whole if Britain, and that is attributed to the fact that Glasgow officials have made Women’s safety a top priority. 

Where do you live?