Gawd. What a horrible way to begin my day.

All I could think of was Stephen “Woody” Woodworth polishing his big teeth, and preparing for his big day.

Even my egg started to look like him, and I hardly dared boil it, in case it should hatch. For who knows when life begins eh?

But that’s OK. Because when I checked on Woody this evening, he had egg all over his face.

Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth’s motion proposing that a parliamentary committee study the legal definition of when life begins got zero support from MPs who debated it Thursday.

And to make matters even worse better, he was being whipped with a wet egg noodle by the gorilla from the military industrial complex Gordon O’Connor!!!!!

O’Connor said abortion is a serious decision for women to make and he wants all women to continue to live in a society where they can make that decision “without the threat of legal consequences.”

Although it must be said that old Gordo was clearly reading a speech written for him by the sinister thugs in the PMO. Because in all my years of watching Stephen Harper I’ve never seen him look so pale. Or sound so ridiculous.

The prime minister said party leaders do not have control over the motions introduced by MPs and that it’s “unfortunate” an all-party committee decided the motion is eligible for a vote.

He’s obviously still devastated by what happened to his beloved Wild Hog Party in Alberta. He offered his rabid base a bone, Woody bit him with his big teeth. So now he running scared, and wants to be known as a woman’s best friend.

Right.

Oh well. The struggle continues.

But the important thing is that today we WON. A lot of angry women, and their male allies, made sure the politicians heard their message. Women’s bodies are women’s bodies. And the days of shame and coat hangers are OVER.

So hooray for US!!!!!!!

As for old Woody, I can only imagine how he is feeling eh? Gordon, Gordon, et tu Brutus? Vic, Jason, hug me. WAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

Lordy. I’d play “I am the Egg Man” if I thought it would cheer the old geezer up.

But since he believes that life begins at conception. Or somewhere between the cock-a-doodle doo and the egg.

I’m sure he’d prefer this one . . .

The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism has released its Final Report — two years in the making — on what co-chair and former Lib MP Mario Silva refers to as the ”wave of anti-Semitism we are witnessing in our nation.” A 71% increase.

Yet a mere seven months earlier in December, here is the CPCCA’s other co-chair, Con MP Scott Reid (at the 13:33 mark) :

Avi Lewis: “There’s no wave of anti-Semitism in Canada?”

Scott Reid: “No, no, no, no, absolutely not. No, it’s funny, I’ve heard people who have criticized us saying that we think this but no there is absolutely no spike in the kinds of anti-Semitic incidents that I think appall us.”

Yet there were both Reid and Silva on Thursday, gravely intoning at their presser about the need for government to get involved because “Canada is witnessing an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitic incidents and hateful discourse.”

What? Just since December?

Well no, because we’re talking ”the new anti-Semitism” here, or, as Silva puts it: “demonizing Israel as an apartheid state.”

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, the report explains, unless you use the word “apartheid” to refer to its [current right wing] government['s policies].

As in “Israel Apartheid Week.”

Especially on campus, where the first Israeli Apartheid Week in the world was held in Toronto in 2005, a movement now gone global.

Twenty-one of the report’s 80 pages are devoted to the”new anti-Semitism” on campus, as well as its progenitors — various lefty or clueless profs and administrators. And it has recommendations:

All university staff and students should be encouraged to document and report antisemitic incidents whenever they occur.

We recommend that professors be held accountable for academic rigour of their curricula.

We recommend that Federal Government and/or the Inquiry work with the provinces to help administrators develop suitable tools and structures to deal with this burgeoning problem in an effective and principled manner.

On law enforcement: The Inquiry Panel recommends that police forces across Canada send their officers to the “Tools for Tolerance” program at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA.

On funding NGOs to do monitoring :

We recommend the creation of a permanent, publicly accessible “ambassadorial” position under the auspices of the most appropriate Department (Foreign Affairs, Justice, Multiculturalism) to develop and implement policies, projects and research on combating antisemitism, including the provision of funds to NGOs to further these aims. This office should also monitor implementation of priority recommendations and ensure compliance and accountability.

What, like Israel’s NGO Monitor perhaps, the group Kenney credited in his defunding of KAIROS?

Well, we’re right off the thought-crime map now, aren’t we?

But what about actual anti-Semitic hate crime? Via StatsCan: Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2009 (but in my own words where not in quotes):

54% of all hate crime incidents reported in 2009 were “mischief, (e.g. graffiti, vandalism to religious property)”

The second and third highest percentage of hate crimes were “minor assaults (13%), in which little to no physical harm was caused to the victim, and uttering threats (10%)”

All the other hate crime categories were around 1 or 2%.

There were 283 hate crimes targeting Jews reported to police in 2009.

“In 2009, hate crime rates were generally highest among youth and young adults. For both victims and persons accused of police-reported hate crime in 2009, the rate peaked among those aged 12 to 17 years and generally decreased with increasing age.”

Teenagers and hateful graffiti.

Meanwhile 100s of unnamed First Nations women have been kidnapped, beaten, and killed.

No special $½-million committee for them. No Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Aboriginal Death on the world stage for them.

Hell, the Sisters in Spirit aren’t even allowed to use their own name anymore and what federal grant money they had to research those missing women has been rolled over into a general RCMP missing persons fund. End of that story.

And speaking of funding . . .

CPCCA presser June 2, 2009: “We will voluntarily disclose all sources of funding.”

Scott Reid on video yesterday at CBC:

“We had a number of donors who donated on condition of anonymity and uh the uh we passed a bylaw to ensure that no donations from groups such for example advocacy groups, from trade unions, from businesses would be accepted. These were all individual donations .”

I’ll bet. And after all that, you still haven’t come up with a reasonable definition of your new anti-Semitism.

“Tools for Tolerance” indeed.

Update: The definitive smackdown from Dr. Dawg.

Kevin Annett lives in a small white house facing onto a ramshackle street in downtown Nanaimo, BC. The local RCMP detachment, with its lot full of solid, square cop cars, is just around the corner. Inside, on a watery day in mid-January, the living room is lit only by the gray light spilling in through the front picture window. An unlit Christmas tree still occupies the centre of the room.

Annett is as stripped down for efficiency as his home. Brisk but genial, he flicks on a light and sits, looking a bit mournful, for an interview. I ask him about the evidence for unmarked mass graves at the sites of former residential schools in Canada – as many as 28, according to Annett and others.

This is the sort of question that fills his days now.

“At this point, there’s three kinds of evidence,” he says. “There’s a lot of eyewitness accounts which I’ve documented over about 15 years, pointing to graves on the grounds of the former school or an Indian Hospital nearby. Second is documentation where we’ve found letters referring to these gravesites, from Indian Agents, school officials, other people.

“And finally, in a place like Port Alberni, we’ve actually gone out with a forensic team and done a survey of the ground, and they found, some of the people three years ago who did this survey, terrain very similar to what you find in mass grave sites in other parts of the world, like sinkholes and the vegetation and that.

“So there’s pretty conclusive evidence that these kids are buried somewhere around there.”

Those are the sorts of answers that have made Annett a lightning rod for controversy, opprobrium, and admiration across Canada and, increasingly, in Europe. But they pale beside some of his more recent charges. Last year, on his Vancouver Co-op Radio program “Hidden from History,” Annett claimed that Mounties had actually assisted notorious Vancouver serial killer Robert Pickton, not just by neglecting to properly investigate his crimes but by delivering women to his pig farm. His show has since been yanked from the air. More recently, his supporters and he have “summoned” The Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper “to answer charges of conspiring in Crimes against Humanity before an International Tribunal this September in London, England.”

To Annett’s detractors, of course, this is all bad theatre and fabulation. “For years,” wrote BC journalist Terry Glavin in a splenetic 2008 attack in thetyee.ca, “RCMP investigators have been chasing down these stories and they always come up with nothing. But they persist, like the alligators in New York’s sewers.” Others point to Ottawa’s establishment of a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to deal with the legacy of Canada’s residential school system. The $60 million, five-year TRC is currently holding a series of “national events” across the country, while also gathering and recording the stories of survivors and their families.

To Annett, the Commission is a whitewash. “The way it’s established according to its mandate, and the way it’s operated in practise over the last number of months in different forums, the whole purpose seems to be to protect the perpetrators and to silence the witnesses. People are not allowed to speak freely, their testimonies aren’t allowed to be used in court, they can’t even name names. There’s all these restrictions put on people, and at the same time there’s all these indemnifications granted to the churches responsible.

“In fact, they’re not going to be held responsible and they’re not going to be prosecuted, even though thousands of children died in these schools.”

 
Kevin Annett’s long campaign for what he regards as real justice for residential school survivors has been well-documented, by no one more so than Annett himself in his books Love and Death in the Valley and, most recently, Unrepentant. As a young United Church minister in the early ‘90s, he was hired by a small parish in Port Alberni, BC, an isolated logging town 193 km north-west of Victoria on Vancouver Island. Within three years he’d been fired. His employers said it was because he “failed to maintain the peace and welfare of the church”; Annett says it was because he welcomed natives into the congregation, and let them speak freely from the pulpit about murders that had occurred at the local Indian residential school, which the United Church operated for five decades until finally shuttering it in 1973.

Annett, along with his wife and two young daughters, moved to Vancouver, where he enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia and began digging into the microfilm. “I discovered that the entire record of Indian residential schools in British Columbia had been acquired by the UBC library system that very year,” he writes in Unrepentant. In it, he found “verified evidence that the residential schools had been an exercise in deliberate genocide – that over half of all the children in residential schools had died every year from their deliberate exposure to communicable diseases, with the full knowledge and sanction of church and state in Canada.”

But his tenure at UBC ended badly too. His wife left him, taking the kids. The faculty member responsible for handing out graduate funding and teaching assistantships turned out also to be on the executive of the United Church in BC. There would be no money for Annett. Broke, he was forced to abandon his degree — though not his research.

Eventually, the United Church “delisted” him as a minister altogether. Undaunted, he gathered his findings into a cerlox-ringed, self-published book, Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust (recently republished online as Hidden No Longer). Reading it, with its pages upon pages of primary documents, government and church correspondence, and first-person testimonies, it’s hard to discount Annett as a loon, if only because to do so is to discount those testimonies as well.

Witness: “The girls who got pregnant were expelled immediately. Some of them were even found dead on the grounds of the Alberni school. None of us could ever leave the school grounds, and we couldn’t mix with the boys – we couldn’t even hold hands with them – so the staff had to be the ones who fathered those kids.”

Witness: “We were playing soccer in the back field behind the school, where it was really covered in weeds. The ball got kicked among the weeds, and in those weeds I came across the remains of a body, maybe three feet long. It was decomposed and you could see a lot of skeleton . . . . After that, the RCMP came to us and told us not to say anything about what we discovered in the field.”

Witness: “One day in 1946, I was 11, and I went to the place under the stairs where I would go and sit and cry. I heard Mr. Caldwell at the top of the stairs with another little girl, a few years younger than me . . . . Mr. Caldwell was screaming at her, and then I heard this sound, like a kick, and I heard her falling down the stairs. I looked out and saw her facing me, with her eyes open, not moving or breathing. I never saw her again after that.”

Witness: “My sister Maggie was thrown from a three-story window by a nun at the school, and she died.”

Witness: “Kids had TB there and they weren’t sent away for treatment or any help. They just left them in there with us. And I remember one girl, she was just so sick, we didn’t even want to get close to her. But then the nuns told us, you know, ‘You guys get over there and play with her. You’ve got to be around her; you can’t let her be over there by herself.’”

Witness:“I think they were trying to deliberately infect us with tuberculosis, because they always made me sleep in the same bed with girls who had TB. One on each side of me.”

Witness: “Whenever we got sick in that school we were completely ignored. My mother was even forced to sleep in the same bed with kids who were dying of tuberculosis. This was common.”

Either all these people are lying, or Kevin Annett is right.

Next page: “Eventually, the station’s ‘investigation’ resulted in Annett’s program being taken off the air and his being permanently banned from the premises.”

On August 9^th, 2010, Annett took a phone call on his long-running radio show, “Hidden from History.” The caller wanted to discuss rumours of police complicity in the murders committed by Robert Pickton. “I have specific evidence of what you’re talking about,” Annett replied. “There’s a man, Les Guerin, he’s a maintenance worker down at the Musqueam Reserve, and he gave me documents about five years ago which showed that, as far back as 1989, Dave Pickton [Robert Pickton’s brother] was bringing bags out to the Musqueam Indian Reserve. And Les Guerin and another guy went in and dug up this stuff. They had it analyzed at Simon Fraser University and, sure enough, there was human remains mixed with pig bones.” He went on to explain that, though the evidence was taken to the RCMP, they never investigated.

After his show, Annett stepped from the booth and was handed a letter by Vancouver Co-op Radio staffer Daniel van Tijn, signed by all four of the station’s staff, telling him that he would be banned from the premises while an investigation was undertaken into events nearly three weeks prior. According to the staffers, they had video from a security camera showing Annett and an unidentified woman in the station’s broadcast studio during the wee hours of July 20^th, eating, drinking, and engaging in “sexual activity.” The woman was also said to have smoked what appeared to be crack cocaine. Eventually, the account went, a guard who had been watching all this on a security monitor intervened, and the visitors left at 4:22 a.m.

The station says all this was contained in the letter handed to Annett. Annett says the letter referred only to “activities that compromised station policy.” It wasn’t until two months later, he insists, that he learned exactly what might be on the video.

Which is when the story really gets strange.

“The whole thing is ridiculous because I have a solid alibi, I was sleeping at somebody else’s house that night and I have a letter from her confirming that. But this was at the tail end of a number of things that have happened, because when I was in Europe last April, after I got back, a number of the native people on the street were referring to conversations they claim I had with them during April, which couldn’t have happened because I was over in Europe. And there were suggestions like that which indicated that there was somebody impersonating me.

“Which wasn’t the first time this has happened. After our tribunal in 1998, one of our head native judges, a guy called Royce White Calf, claims that someone was impersonating him in the downtown eastside, to gather information and that. So I mean, it isn’t kind of far-fetched to suggest this.”

Well, maybe. When I ask Annett what he’d say to those who might think otherwise, he tells me they should “read more about the history of what they call ‘blackops,’ or the activities of the RCMP or the FBI. There was a program that’s still in place, actually, in America called COINTELPRO which the FBI set up in the 1960s . . . . one of the techniques they used is called ‘badjacketing.’ There’s a good book about this written by Ward Churchill.” I had a look at Churchill’s book, Agents of Repression, which refers mostly to the use of rumour-mongering and manufactured evidence to discredit radicals, rather than, say, body doubles. But then again, many unusual things happen on the downtown eastside.

Annett says that in October he ran into an acquaintance who told him that a certain woman was “flashing a lot of money around and was claiming that she made it after doing some ‘play-acting.’ And that kind of struck me as odd, so I asked him more about it, and he said, ‘Yeah, she said she was down at the radio station one night and she got payment for doing something there.’”  Annett later issued a statement in which he recounted tracking down “a sex trade worker, whom I’ll call ‘Candy,’” who gave him a notarized affidavit describing “how she was approached by men she recognized as undercover Mounties and offered $200 to engage in sex with an unknown man made up to impersonate me . . . . ‘Candy’ states that a white male let her and her accomplice into the station around midnight, where she smoked drugs and had ‘mild’ sex with him for nearly four hours, in front of closed circuit TV cameras in the central studio. Unexplainably, Portland Hotel security did not intervene until almost 4 am. She says the impersonator looked like me but had a heavy accent, and was told that no-one would interfere with them for hours, and that she would not get into trouble.

“The station staff subsequently used this video to ban me from Co-op radio, without ever allowing me to view the video or confront my accusers. Clearly, if I was allowed to view it, I would instantly recognize ‘Candy’ and the frame up would be obvious.”

I phoned Leela Chinniah, program co-ordinator for Co-op Radio, who declined to be interviewed for this article. She did say, though, before hanging up on me when I persisted in asking questions anyway (on the principle that journalistic organizations ought to be willing to talk to journalists), that Annett had been given the opportunity to view the video. He denies it.

Eventually, the station’s “investigation” resulted in Annett’s program being taken off the air and his being permanently banned from the premises. He says the real reason is that guests on “Hidden from History” had been implicating the RCMP in the murders at Robert Pickton’s pig farm. “Between July and August on a number of shows we were speaking on the air, including with an eyewitness who was out at the Pickton farm, who described seeing RCMP officers taking women out there. This one woman believed that she knows the identity of one of the serial killers, him being a retired Mountie. We were talking about all of that, and about the apparent complicity of the police in concealing that.

“In fact, only 10 days after I was banned, the Vancouver Sun had an article about how the Vancouver police admitted that they knew about the Picktons for two years and did nothing to investigate. And they’ve never explained very well why they did that – why they refused to investigate.”

A media liaison for the RCMP’s “E” Division in Vancouver called the accusations “pretty crazy” and said someone would get back to me. No one did. An e-mail to the Vancouver Police went unanswered.

 
I could probably get closer to the truth behind these conflicting stories. I could ask to speak to the friend at whose home Annett says he was sleeping on July 20^th. I could try to track down “Candy.” I could talk to the maintenance worker who says he took evidence of Pickton’s crimes to the RCMP, and place another call to “E” Division, and pursue the Vancouver Police for a response, too. But I’m not sure any of that really matters.

We can be pretty certain the RCMP and Vancouver Police would deny the claims of Annett and his colleagues, just as the United Church continues to vociferously reject many of his other charges (although not the fact of Indian residential school abuses). And whatever happened in the Vancouver Co-op Radio studio last summer is finally just a sideshow – one that has more to do with the dissension currently roiling that station than the lives, past and present, of Canada’s aboriginal people.

I expect they could care less about where Kevin Annett was that night. What they do care about is the way that they, or their parents and grandparents, were systematically abused in residential schools, whether by being forcibly separated from their family and culture, or by being neglected, beaten, raped, or killed. They care, they continue to tell us, about the fact that the majority of women who have disappeared from Vancouver’s downtown eastside, and along northern BC’s sinister Highway of Tears, have been native, and that that may account for law enforcement’s otherwise unaccountable languor in investigating their whereabouts.

And those on the front lines tell us little has changed: “An increasing number of women who are forced to live and work in conditions of extreme poverty and marginalization continue to be murdered or have gone missing,” says Carol Martin, a victim services worker at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.

By continuing to draw attention to all this, however clamorously – indeed, because of the holy racket he makes, in his calm, relentless way – Kevin Annett has extended his ministry well beyond anything he could have imagined when he was in theology school, debating whether or not Jesus was a revolutionary. “As important as it has been that the deaths and crimes are finally being acknowledged,” he writes in Unrepentant, “nowhere in all the growing rhetoric and mainstream coverage of the residential schools, nor in any government or church release, or in the subsequent ‘apology’ by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, do the words ‘blame’, ‘murder’, ‘trial’, ‘churches’ or ‘genocide’ ever occur . . . . No ‘M’ word: it is not in our lexicon. It never happened. We have experienced the greatest crime in our history, yet one officially devoid of criminals.”

But not without its own chief prosecutor.

William and Kate this, Royal Wedding that. Kate Middleton had a Dirty Dancing themed stagette, while Prince William’s bachelor party is rumoured to have had a water theme: speed boats and wakeboarding and a boat-borne pub crawl.

Sounds like fun. But while I doubt Will spent a lot of time worrying what Kate was up to at her hen party, I wonder if Will’s stag gave Kate a royal freak out?

Mention the words “bachelor party” to many a bride-to-be and her body stiffens, her heart quickens, and within seconds she’s laying down the rules and regulations for her guy’s night of fun. I recall seeing an article a few years ago with the no-nonsense thesis: “Don’t let your man’s bachelor party destroy your wedding.” As if we’re our fiancés babysitters.

We women drag (yes, drag) our men to wedding fairs and cake tastings, torture them with endless questions about linens and centerpieces and party favours (questions to which there is likely no correct answer), then shoot down their suggestions and get mad at them when, later, they are less than eager to share their opinions. But let the men find something they can get actually excited about planning — the bachelor party — and watch out.

A co-worker of mine told me about his brother’s bachelor party, held in Los Angeles. “All the women were spazzing because we were leaving the country, like we were trying to hide something. We rented a couple of over-priced hotel rooms, went golfing, toured L.A., drank some beer and went to bed.” Most of the men, he said, received at least two phone calls from their partners per day while they were away. “We had to explain what we were doing, what we were going to do next, and what we thought we would be doing in a few hours. They made it difficult to have fun.”

You could say it’s part of the wedding tradition, the bride losing her shit over her man’s desire to go out and party it up with his guy friends. But it shouldn’t be. More likely than not, he devotes most of his Friday nights to spending time with you and has watched enough chick flicks and taken you out for dinner enough times that he’s earned a night or weekend of guy time. And given that you’re getting married, he’s already committed to spending the rest of his life with you, so really, give the guy a break.

The Bridezilla in you doesn’t take too kindly to his ideas regarding the wedding (which is half his, by the way. And the cotton candy machine he wanted and you vetoed could have been fun). So leave him alone and let him have a party. This isn’t The Hangover. The guys won’t be taking roofies, stealing tigers, or marrying strippers. Obviously, I can’t know this for sure, but I’m reasonably certain that bachelor parties aren’t as reckless and destructive as Hollywood makes them out to be. They certainly aren’t worth getting our panties in a bunch over when there are plenty of other things to stress about.

You know, like seating charts and save-the-date cards.

By Alison@Creekside

In every election now, Stephen Harper’s June 1997 speech to a right-wing U.S. think tank in Montreal comes up. You know the one:

“Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term”

“the NDP is simply the left-wing agenda to basically disintegrate our society”

“the PC party were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country”

“the Liberal party . . . enacted comprehensive gun control . . . believes in gay rights, put sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act”

“a constitutional package which . . .  included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things”

And every election, Steve’s supporters make the same two objections to bringing it up: 1) Harper says he was only speaking in jest, and 2) it’s an old speech and he’s “evolved” since then.

Let’s deal with Steve the funny guy first.

A couple of months after making this supposedly jokey speech, he co-authored a policy paper with Tom Flanagan in which he repeats many of the same points. Celebrating Conrad Black’s purchase of the Southam newspaper chain, Steve looked forward to the end of its previously “monolithically liberal and feminist” stance.

“Public policy reflects the growing conservatism of public opinion. Canada is not the same country it was 10 years ago. Almost everyone in public life now takes . . . free trade, privatization of public enterprise and targeting of social welfare programs for granted.”

And as for 1997 being a long time ago . . . well here’s Steve on the campaign trail 18 months ago, stumping for a majority with the same old complaints about feminism and gun control and social programs:

Meanwhile . . .

Excellent column from Antonia Zerbisias on Friday on how Harper is “targeting” women: both in the sense of wooing their votes with an income-splitting “family tax cut” that will only benefit the wealthiest 13% of Canadian families sometime after 2016 if he gets a majority in the next two elections, while in the meantime cutting programs that benefit the rest of Canadian women and enacting policies that don’t. A solid read.

Last week, Angela Campbell, a professor of law at McGill University, testified at a constitutional reference case examining Canada’s current polygamy law that the practice ought to be decriminalized. I wasn’t sure if I should gasp or applaud.

Campbell visited Bountiful, B.C. in 2008 and 2009, interviewing 22 women over a total of approximately 11 days. The small polygamist community near Creston has been the centre of much criticism, after questions were raised regarding child brides and forced marriages.

The women, who volunteered to be interviewed, told Campbell they were happy, healthy, and had control over their body and reproductive decisions. So where’s the harm, right?

Polygamy has been illegal in Canada since 1890 and not without just cause. Historically, polygamy has often ignored the rights of women, treating them instead as voiceless, husband-pleasing baby-makers. And most women will not argue with a law that attempts to save them from oppression.

By contrast, the women of Bountiful, in Campbell’s opinion, are not oppressed by their husbands but by the law. The anti-polygamy statute renders them silent and fearful to reach out for services or speak out against other crimes, for fear of exposing themselves as members of a polygamist family and put them at risk of having their children taken away.

It is a fear shared by other polygamists, including acquaintances of mine, who live a normal life, in a normal house, far from any polygamist community.

They live a life of secrets, Steve* told me. In order to feel safe and accepted in their community, they disguise their relationship and discuss it with few people. Not that they like it that way.

Steve and Laura* have been together for over 15 years, and have a child. Almost four years ago, Megan joined the family. While one of the women is more outgoing than the other, they are far from submissive, and Steve is not remotely sexist or domineering. All three entered the relationship respectfully and willingly.

I can’t personally imagine myself sharing my husband with another woman, but Laura and Megan seem comfortable and happy in their lives. When on their own with Steve, they are affectionate, jovial, and immersed in each other’s company. As a family, they go on bike rides and do yard work together, though they have to refrain from affection or anything else that would reveal their dynamic.

Since Steve and Laura are more established as a couple, have been together longer, and are parents to the child, Megan often has to take a back seat when they are in public or around people who recognize Steve and Laura as a couple, but are unaware of Megan’s role. It’s a step back that leaves her feeling somewhat ostracized and alone. That’s where the real oppression occurs, according to Steve.

They worry that if they are open about their relationship, the child will be taken from the home — from the happy, healthy home in which they all live. So they hide.

All three entered the relationship as individuals and consenting adults, and all three report that, while they may sometimes deal with issues and struggles that do not exist in monogamous relationships, they feel content and loved. The secrecy is taxing, but they do not complain. They acknowledge, though, that many of the complications and stresses in their lives would be resolved if polygamy were legal.

So a part of me would like to see the law changed, for their sake. However, there’s a big difference between three adults down the street choosing to live in a multi-member relationship, and religious fundamentalists living in polygamous communities like Bountiful.

Grilled by lawyers for the attorneys-general of Canada and B.C., as well as the organization Stop Polygamy in Canada, Campbell admitted that she had not determined whether the women she interviewed had been told what to say by their husbands or their religious leader, Winston Blackmore. (In 2009, Blackmore and another Bountiful leader were charged with polygamy; after the charges were quashed, the Province of B.C. asked for the current examination of the law.) Campbell said she was concerned about insulting the women, but the history of fundamentalist polygamy suggests that hard questions need to be asked.

Before we sanction polygamy we need to know a lot more about allegations that girls as young as 13 have been brought to Bountiful to become brides (Blackmore denies the charge), about the teenage girls who become pregnant at the settlement, about tales told by Debbie Palmer and other apostates’ of sexual molestation and forced marriage. Until we do, decriminalizing polygamy across the board, while it would make life happier for my acquaintances, is not the solution. Not yet.

* Not their real names

By Alison@Creekside

Speaking to his fellow members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights last week at a meeting which heard that the situation for Afghan women has considerably worsened over the last two years, Lib MP Mario Silva recounted his own conversations with women’s groups in Afghanistan this past June:

“They told us when they were young, they had full freedom in terms of education, they didn’t have to wear the head scarf, they could go out in public without any problem. It was more restricted with the Taliban but they did have more progressive attitudes towards women some time ago. So I think when we in the West say we have to be culturally sensitive to them and it takes time — I think that is a false argument.”

He stated that that all the womens groups told him that concessions to the Taliban were won on the backs of women, that they strongly opposed the Karzai government, and that continued Canadian presence in Afghanistan was important to them.

The only witness Tuesday was Reverend Majed El Shafie of the Christian Toronto-based human rights group, One Free World International. He testified that while working in Afghanistan four years ago, he was able to connect with local human rights orgs and individuals through their networks. In the last four years, however, and specifically in the last two, reports indicated the human rights situation is much deteriorated, so in June he returned with a delegation that included Silva.

El Shafie outlined three main issues.

Number one – the severe abuse and shocking punishments meted out to women, abetted and sanctioned by the new 2009 laws passed by the Karzai government before the last election.

Number two – Boy play or “bacha bazi” — sexual slavery in which boys are dressed up to dance as girls and afterwards whoever pays the most gets to rape the boy. Members of the government take part, says El Shafie, and some boys are raped six to eight times a day, including by the police if they complain. He has video.

Number three – Persecution of 25 Afghans converting to Christianity, including calls for their deaths by members of parliament, backed up by Karzai’s spokesman, the deputy secretary. El Shafie tabled the document authorizing them being stoned to death.

He recommended future Canadian aid be tied to preconditions on human rights improvements.
Although he testified that “our support of Karzai and the corruption of his family is what is negatively affecting our image” to the Afghan people, he made a passionate plea for Canada not to abandon them, to stay on in Afghanistan.

The committee met hours before the defeat of the Bloc motion condemning the Conservative government’s extension of the Afghanistan mission without a parliamentary vote.

There is a notable lack of partisan party bickering on this seven member committee – possibly because a majority of them also work together on the Steering Committee of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA). Scott Reid is Chair of both, Mario Silva is Vice Chair of both, and Irwin Cotler and David Sweet are members of both. So the Steering Committee of the CPCCA holds a majority on the human rights committee.

This also perhaps explains why human rights abuses perpetrated on Palestine/Gaza do not show up anywhere on their radar. Rather unusual for a human rights committee, no?

By Beth Hendry-Yim ~~

After spending more than half her life working hard to raise her two boys alone, Susan Peach is ready for life to get a little easier. At 46, the B.C. fitness instructor wants time to putter in her garden, take a week or two to visit a warmer climate, and maybe write her memoirs.

She’s dreaming of a four-hour work week, and setting up office anywhere there’s an Internet café and a chai latte.

And her dream may be coming true. Peach is among a growing number of women between the ages of 45 and 60 who make an income from websites. Call them WebMatrons — a new breed of businesswomen, in an age bracket Stats Canada says is bursting with first-time entrepreneurs.

In her home office, which used to be her eldest son’s bedroom, Peach’s choice of office wear is decidedly casual: workout pants, a yoga top, and sandals. On the bulletin board above the eight–year–old Mac desktop computer from which she runs her business is a flow chart of her website structure. Next to it is a cheque from Google AdSense for $136.18. She earned the money from strategically placing Google ads on her website’s pages. Every time someone clicks on an ad link, Peach gets paid. She points to the cheque. “That was my first one,” she says. “It’s a photocopy. I didn’t want to cash it, but I needed the money. I got it copied in colour so it looks real.”

Peach’s website, Pole Dancing for Fitness, provides comprehensive advice and information on one of her favourite ways to stay in shape. “Everyone seems to have their own opinion on the subject of pole dancing,” she writes on the site, “but as far as I’m concerned it’s a great way to build some incredible strength and have a ton of fun at the same time.”

She started the site after reading about SiteSell, an all–in–one site–building and hosting service that also provides advice on monetization — ie., making money. In addition to Google ads, she surrounds the written content with banner ads from affiliate sites. When one of Peach’s visitors clicks on a banner, goes to the partner site, and makes a purchase, she gets paid a commission in the 10–25 percent range. “My most popular link is Lil’ Mynx Poles,” she says. “So far I’ve made over $250 in commissions since I signed up for their affiliate program. I even had another pole company contact me to say I needed to sell their product. You know you’ve made it when companies start contacting you!”

Peach’s bigger goal is to find a balance between work and pleasure. According to a CIBC report on women entrepreneurs, she’s a “lifestyler” — a self-employed businessperson looking for a good mix of satisfying work and leisure time.

“I’ve done my stint working a 9-to-9 job running a fitness studio,” she says. “Maintaining a website gives me time to play and money to play with.”

Gale Lennard, a 51–year old analyst for a large aerospace company, knows what Peach means. She owns HappyHalfway.com, a site with the motto “How to be happy in midlife.”

“I’ve been with the same corporation for 26 years,” Lennard says. “The company has been extremely good to me — great pay and benefits. But in recent years, I’ve seen shifts due to economy and changes in funding for our Space programs, and realized that the only way for me to be in control of my career and financial destiny is to be my own boss.”

For Lennard, however, success isn’t only measured by AdSense revenue. “My definition of success is to get paid to do something you love,” she says, “and I love working on my web business — communicating with people all over the world, getting feedback from visitors, and learning new things.”

Control and fulfillment are a common theme for WebMatrons. Elizabeth Martyn, owner of Healthy Eating Made Easy, was a freelance writer when she decided she wanted a project “that was mine, rather than working on projects where others were in control both of content and timing.” At 57, she now focuses solely on her web business, which allows her to take a few months off every now and then. “Some weeks I do a lot of work, some weeks none at all. [It] averages 10–12 hours weekly over the year.” She’s been developing her website since 2005, and it’s now bringing her a “reliable four–figure income” every month.

Peach’s website has seen similar growth. “I started out setting a goal of earning $1.00 from AdSense per day and one purchase from an affiliate partner per month,” she says. “After just a few months, I’m looking at over $200.00 a month.” Peach recently added a feature which provides pole dancing studios with a free listing in a searchable database. For a small monthly fee, they can supplement it with content such as video, live links, pictures, and a Google map “As my traffic increases and I keep adding new monetizing methods, my income will keep going up. Once you start researching and looking around, it’s amazing how easy it is to generate a decent income.”

Next page: Good, original content is the first and most important factor in getting and growing traffic.

Good, original content is the first and most important factor in getting and growing traffic, Peach explains. It not only draws potential customers in, but also keeps them browsing around and clicking on links and ads. For Lennard, creating content has had another plus side. “Sometimes it’s a struggle to find the words,” she says, “but I’ve been quite surprised to find out that I can actually write. I’m very proud of the writing I’ve done.”

Optimizing websites by using keywords is also important. Keywords are the terms — “pole dancing” for example — that visitors enter into a search engine to locate relevant information. When optimized, a site can more easily be found and categorized by search engines, improving its ranking and hence how easy it is to find.

That may seem like a lot of new jargon and esoterica to learn, especially for people who grew up in an era without computers. Fortunately, there’s just as much help to be had. “When I first started,” Peach says,”I knew very little about websites, but the hosting service I use has a self–study course that showed me how to put it all together.”

Now that Peach’s traffic has gone from under 100 unique visitors a day to over 400, she’s moved on to creating “pole dancing for fitness” DVDs. With retail and wholesale services like Kunaki and Amazon, it’s fairly straightforward. Once the video is produced, all she has to do is copy it to her hard drive and then upload to Kunaki along with the cover art. Getting on Amazon is a little more complicated and not as financially rewarding, but she says it gets her name out in cyberspace and drives more traffic to her site. “Though I don’t make as much with Amazon, I’ve already got one video up that’s bringing in $300.00 to $600.00 a month. If I could get three more up there, I think I’d be set!”

Like many Canadian women, Peach is branching out, exploring new employment territory, learning new skills, and stretching her comfort zone. Thirty–three percent of entrepreneurs in Canada are women and of those, over 58 percent are between the ages of 35 and 54. The largest growth rate in entrepreneurial endeavours, however, is being seen in women over the age of 55. In a tough economy, they’re finding innovative and creative ways to make a buck and stay sane.

And while not all will succeed, the gamble has more than paid off for Peach. Her directory has grown to contain listings for pole dancing studios in nearly every American state and Canadian province, as well as from countries all over the world, including a huge representation from the U.K. AdSense revenue has also been increasing steadily and her site’s ranking is improving daily. Not bad for a former 9-t0-9er, now turned pole-dancing WebMatron.

Quick Tips for Building a Web-Based Business

1. Find a niche market that is specific. Fitness and Health are broad topics. Narrow it down to something more specific like pole dancing for fitness or eating vegan on a budget.

2. Don’t monetize your site until you have at least 25 pages of content produced. There’s no use putting AdSense on your web pages if no one visits them. Google chooses the quality of ad that’s put on your website. If you don’t get much traffic, you won’t get the good ads.

3. Make sure the content on your site is relevant and well-written. Repeat traffic means increased revenue. If visitors find irrelevant or poorly written information on your site, they won’t come back.

4. Do link exchanges with related websites. Have a recipe for blueberries on your site? Find a site dedicated to blueberries and ask the webmaster if they’d like to put a link to your recipe. In exchange, you’ll link your recipe to their website. Spiders love sites with outgoing and incoming links.

5. Add video and pictures to your website. Make a how–to–video on how to make a blueberry cake. Upload it to YouTube, link it to your site and watch the traffic and AdSense revenue increase.