One AK per child

November 6, 2008 — xanthippa

No, this is not some sort of a perversion of the ‘One Laptop per Child’ initiative – a very positive effort to help fight poverty in developing nations by placing education within the reach of each and every child, and which I wrote about here.

Instead, one Kalashnikov rifle is the price Osama bin Laden paid for each one of the child slaves he purchased to work on his marijuana farm in Sudan.  Think about that next time someone offers you a toke.

Yes – child slaves.

This seems unthinkable – today, in 2008, there are still children being captured and sold to slavery!  Some of their stories are beginning to come out, like ‘Slave:  My True Story’  by Mende Nazer  and ‘Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America’ by Francis Bok.

You can read more in FrontPageMagazine’s story, ‘Child Slavery in the Sudan’ by Stephen Brown.  The callousness and lack of empathy of the slavers is difficult to comprehend.

So, how could it be that today, slavery could still be practiced so openly?

I suppose we can thank the ‘desert religions’ and their ‘holy texts’ for this!

Please, do not misunderstand me – most Christians, Jews and Muslims today unequivocally condemn the practice of slavery.  Francis Bok even says that he could only escape his slavery because a Muslim family which disapproved of slavery helped him! 

Yet, Christian, Jewish and Muslim ‘holy books’ not only permit slavery, they describe the rules of how it should be practiced.  And, because ‘it is permitted by God’, many people justify the practice today.

Let’s look at the Christian’s Old Testament (it’s Jewish counterpart being the Torah).  Thanks to the Society of Christians for the Restoration of Old Testament Morality, here is an easy link to their ‘Biblically Correct Family Values’ , which quotes: 

Exodus 21:7-8: “And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.”

If you are confused by the term ‘maidservant’, note that someone is sold to become one.  (Just keep this in mind when reading other bits of the Bible, and the word ‘maidservant’ is used.)  And, we know what ‘bethroher her to himself’ means…

The Society’s ‘Biblically Correct’ pamphlet on how to treat rape victims is no less informative:

Deuteronomy 22:28-29: If a man find a damsel [that is] a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty [shekels] of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

Note that it is her father who gets the fifty shekels. The rape victim herself is not even worthy to receive monetary damages.

In other words, the rapist has just bought himself a ‘wife’ by paying her father 50 sheckles.  And, she becomes her rapist’s ‘wife’!

But there is more – here is explicit command to obey one’s owner– especially if one’s owner is also a Christian!

1 Tim. 6:1-2: “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and [his] doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise [them], because they are brethren; but rather do [them] service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.”

My point is not that the slavers in this story are Muslims – there are all kinds of slavers in the world today, both religious and secular.  However, it seems that feeling justified in owning (and abusing) other humans who are enslaved, feeling righteous in this practice, truly believing that one has the right  to oppress others because it pleases God – that is a monstrous mindset. 

Yet, it is this very mindset which is at the root of both slavery and the imposition of religious law onto secular society.  Whether it be the medieval Inquisition or modern-day Sharia – the mindset is the same.  People feel justified in committing atrocities because they truly and honestly believe this is the will of one God or another…

That is why it is essential that we do not allow our secular laws to become increasingly accomodating of religious laws or even religious sensitivities!  That is why we must fight against the creeping of religious rules – ALL religious rules – into governing the behaviour (and speech) of the people in our society!

 

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Michael Crichton – forever in our libraries!

November 5, 2008 — xanthippa

Today, the sad news was announced that yesterday, Michael Crichton had passed away, after a short battle with cancer.

He has fed our imaginations with his books.  What more could be said?

He will be forever in our libraries!

 

Hat-tip: FiveFeetOfFury

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Are we delving into dark matter?

November 4, 2008 — xanthippa

Here is an exciting bit of news from the Fermilab’s old (and therefore not as sexy as the new Large Hadron Collider) Tevatron particle accelerator.  Apparently, some rather unusual muons have been detected – ones that were not exactly expected.  (Please, refrain from ‘leptoning’ to any ‘mesonic conspiracy theories’!)

However, (and this is the exciting bit) these muons conform rather well to some theoretical predictions about dark matter… (dramatic music, please).

Of course, the experiment has to be repeated and the same data has to be gathered for this to be conclusive, so it is too soon to tell what it is that has popped up.  However, whether it turns out to be the elusive dark matter (dramatic music, please), or if it turns out to be some sort of an error, I am guessing that science will have learned something new, either way!

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Fighting opression through education: ‘hole in the wall’

November 4, 2008 — xanthippa

The best way to make this world a better place for everyone, in my never-humble-opinion, is to make good education so accessible, everyone gets some.

The more, the better.  Why?

It may be naive on my part, but I have always thought that many injustices throughout the world are not opposed because it simply does not occur to people that they could be opposed.  One good thing that results from education is the broadening of one’s perspectives, learning about different places where things are done differently, and the realization that it is possible to ‘question stuff’…

Education also teaches us how to reason.  It does not matter what we are learning, we cannot escape acquiring some formal reasoning when we ‘learn stuff’.  That is also good.

But, perhaps one of the best reasons for making education available to everyone is that it will open horizons for kids and open up possibilities for them that they never dreamt of before.

That is why I think that efforts like ‘One Laptop per Child’ are so important – and why every child, male or female, should become educated.

But many people question how children would benefit from simply having an internet-connected laptop.  What would they do with one?  How would they learn?  Many of them do not even speak English – or any of the other languages dominating the internet!  What use would such a computer be to them?

A little while ago, one of my sons came across an interesting article about a brilliant study done by a physicist named Sugata Mitra in New Delhi, India.  It was called ‘Hole in the Wall’:

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Based on the results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.

The results were brilliant!  The computer, connected to high-speed internet, had a touch-screen interface.  It ‘mysteriously’ appeared, cemented into a wall, in a New Delhi slum… no instructions, no manual, no rules, no help.  What happened next was, well, enlightening!

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.

If you have the time to read the whole interview with Dr. Mitra, I would greatly suggest it.  If not, here are some of the highlights:

  • Children aged 6-12 were the most avid users of the computer
  • without any instruction, they taught themselves to use a paint program and to access sites with games
  • Dr. Mitra played an mp3 file for them – a capability of the computer that had not occurred to them.  In several days, Dr. Mitra says, they knew enough about mp3 files and music online ‘he could have learned a thing or two from them’.
  • If children think something is worth learning, it is not necessary to use formal instruction (expensive in the developing countries) to teach kids – instead, it ought to build on knowledge kids can self-teach

But there was more to Dr. Mitra’s curiosity…he wondered how effective self-directed learning would be in more formal subjects…like, say, physics…

Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, “What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?” He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, “Look here guys. I have a little problem for you.” They read the questions and said they didn’t understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, “Here’s a terminal. I’ll give you two hours to find the answers.”

Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.

They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn’t mean much. But I said to him, “Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject.” So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, “They don’t know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn’t know.”

That’s not a wow for the children, it’s a wow for the Internet. It shows you what it’s capable of. The slum children don’t have physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web somewhere. Creating content is not what’s important. What is important is infrastructure and access … The teacher’s job is very simple. It’s to help the children ask the right questions.

This makes so much sense!

And, please, consider that many universities and colleges have started putting their undergraduate courses online – accessible for free!!!

Here are some examples:  MIT Open Courseware, Carnegie Mellon open learning initiative, John Hopkins open courseware, and many, many more!!!  So, with a laptop, an internet connection and a healthy dose of curiosity and desire, a kid in Africa or Sri Lanka or anywhere else in the world can access world-class education.  There is still the question of accreditation, but that is only necessary to getting a job – not to actually using the education on their own! 

Just think how empowering it would be for young people, all over the world, to gain access to this kind of education!  If Dr. Mitra is correct, then self-directed learning is the most effective way to educate our children.  So, let us put the tools into their hands – and let’s watch them grow!

Of course, education is not the answer to ending oppression – but it is an important step.  It is much more difficult to oppress a society of people who are well educated and internet literate than it is to control people who don’t know how to call out for help!

Posted in education, freedoms, human nature, opression, politics, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow – only one of the many victims of Sharia

November 3, 2008 — xanthippa

It is inconcievable that a 13-year old should be publically executed.

It is unthinkable to stone a woman to death for the ‘crime’ of having been raped.

My mind is having incredible difficulty wrapping itself around the fact that both of these happened to the same person – Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow! 

What happened to this child is outrageous, and inexcusable and we must all work hard to make sure it never happens again!  And the way Aisha’s execution (can it even be called ‘execution’ when we are talking about a 13-year-old child?) is being reported – that is a crime in itself!

Just in case you are not familiar with this child’s suffering and murder, I wrote about it earlier.  She had been gang-raped, and when she sought ‘justice’ by filing a complaint with the police, she found out the hard way that her town had just come under ‘Sharia law’.  Her complaint menant that she was ‘admitting’ to have ‘engaged in extramarital sexual inercourse’, and that ‘justice’ demands that she be stoned to death…

Sharia is NOT an acceptable ‘law’ for any human being to be subjected to!  (Pay attention, all Brit readers, you have recently stripped human rights from a group of your own citizens, living in Britain – including a friend of mine – their only crime was being a Muslima!!!  Every single one of you should be ashamed of yourselves, until you get this abomination overturned!)

So, let us hear what life under Shari REALLY is…

How could it happen that the ‘legal courts’ would think that a 13-year-old can even ‘commit adultery’?  A ‘child’ can be abused by someone, but she cannot ‘commit adultery’!  Only an adult woman can ‘commit adultery’ – and then, only if she consents to a sexual act. 

How can it be that under Sharia, a 13-year-old would be considered ‘adult woman’?  Is this just some sort of a mistake?  Or, is it that under Sharia, it is perfectly legal for 13-year-old children to be ‘wives’???  After all, some ‘western’ reports called her ‘MRS. Aisha Dhuhuluw’…

So, what exactly is this ‘baby-wife’  ‘special case’?

But, that was a Christian’s interpretation.  He could be ‘twisting’ Islam…  To be fair, we should listen to what Islamic experts on marriage have to say on this topic:

Of course, this is only happening in the ‘far away’ countries ‘nobody cares about’!!!!  Right???  Oh, yes – and Britain – because Britain has instituted Sharia ‘law’ for British Muslims as the legal code for such things as ‘family law’ – which includes ‘marriages’. 

Here is what ‘marriage’ under ‘Sharia’ is like, from the child-wife’s point of view:

IF you are one of those sick enlightened people who think it’s OK for women in ‘far away’ places to suffer – and, please, do NOT count me among these people – then think again:

Far from being slowly but surely eradicated – these ‘Sharia attitudes’ are NOT the norm in fewer and fewer places…. To the contrary!  They are spreading, as Islamists (NOT respectable Muslims, but Islamists) spread their hateful and opressive ways throughout the world.

It is up to us, the adults, to protect our children.  All our children.  It is too late for Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow – but it is not too late to save others from Aisha’s fate!  If Sharia ‘law’ permits THIS to happen to children, then it is up to every single one of us to oppose this abomination perversely called Sharia ‘Law’!

Update:  The people who committed this crime against Aisha may have largely been funded by Brits!

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Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 14 Comments »

How a 13-year-old rape victim’s execution is being reported

November 1, 2008 — xanthippa

All right, we’ve all heard the gripes about how ‘things’ are distorted and what ‘gets reported’ is not always a factual, unbiased account of the events.  But this, this has got to be some of the most bizzare collection of distortions I have seen so far.

Or, at least, that I am aware that I have seen…

As far as I can piece this together (and I am NOT certain of the complete facts), it would appear that 13-year-old girl-child, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow, was gang-raped.  She went to register the crime with the courts, presumably expecting the police to find and arrest her rapists.

However, last August, Aisha’s home town of Kismayo – a port in Southern Somalia – had been taken over by Islamist forces and Sharia law had been imposed.  When the child came to file her complaint with the police, she was asked ‘if she is sure this is what really happened’.  Aisha confirmed that she had, in fact, been gang-raped and asked for justice. 

This last bit came back to haunt her, her family, and anyone with a conscience!  At this ‘admission of engaging in extramarital sexual intercourse’ and ‘demands to be punished’, the police officials had ‘no choice’ but to arrest her.  The ‘Sharia Court’ (if you can call it a court) had heard the case and had ‘no choice’ but to sentence her to death by stoning.  After all, she herself ‘freely admitted her guilt’ and ‘demanded justice to be done’!!!

Dressed in black, with a green veil (green – the colour of Islam and peace), she was brought into a large stadium filled with about 1000 people.  Reporters, based on her ‘appearance’, guessed her age to be about 23 yearsof age, were forbidden to use their cameras, but radio broadcasts were permitted. 

Here, the child was bound hand and foot and – while screaming and pleading for her life – Aisha was buried up to her neck in a hole in the ground.

It would appear that the crowd – or at least some of the people within the crowd – tried to intervene and save the unfortunate child.  The ‘guards’ opened fire on the crowd, shooting a child dead.

50 men then started to throw stones at Aisha’s head (the only part of her above ground).  When they thought she was dead, they dug her up – but a check showed she was still alive, so they burried her again and continued to throw stones at her.  They had dug Aisha up 3 times to check if she is dead yet….and then burried her again to stone her some more…

Her family is distrought and angry.  Her father confirmed her age to be 13 years.

This, in itself, is a horrible story.  It is a nightmare!

I truly don’t know if there are words strong enough to express my anger and outrage!

But, it would appear, my reaction is not all that usual.  At least, if one were to go by what is being said in the many ‘official’ reports of Aisha’s suffering and murder lawbreaking and execution.

Please, consider the following:

AFP (Agence France Presse), the oldest news agency in the world, carries this report:

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Thousands of people gathered Monday to witness 50 Somali men stone a woman to death after an Islamic court in the southern port of Kismayo found her guilty of adultery, witnesses said.

Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, who had been found guilty of extra-marital intercourse was buried in the ground up to her neck while the men pelted her head with rocks.

“Our sister Aisha asked the Islamic Sharia court in Kismayo to be charged and punished for the crime she committed,” local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah told the crowd.

“She admitted in front of the court to engaging in adulterous sexual intercourse,” he added.

“She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply.”

The execution was carried in one of the city’s main squares.

…

Did you notice the mention of the fact she was a rape victim?  No, because this was not mentioned.  But you might have noticed how her ‘demand for justice’ was explained by the local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah!!! 

Good reporting, AFP, making sure we hear the ‘proper’ side of the story!  Good reporting, AFP, for ‘digging for the details of what really happened there’!  Bang-up job, you are doning!  Truly!

But they are not the only ones reporting on this murder of Aisha along these lines…

Surely, that ‘most extreme-right-wing-media outlet’, Fox News, will have done a bit of digging around to find out what was happening, right?  If so, it was not mentioned in their article, ‘Somali woman stoned to death for adultery’!

No verification with her family, or Amnesty International, which also seems to have had no trouble learning Aisha’s true age – 13, not the 23 admittedly arrived at by a reporter’s ‘guess’….

No explanation that the ‘adultery’ in question consisted of being gang-raped….

WHAT THE F$*&Q^#$*&!!!!!!

How about other sources?

The ‘neutral’ and award winning Sky News reported:  ‘Cheating’ woman stoned to death.  I suppose the ‘Cheating’ – being in quotation marks – constitutes ‘neutrality’ (also in quotation marks).  And, they do report that while the officials explained she demanded this punishment herself (!), they do quote witnesses that heard her scream and saw her struggle….and they hint that only the guns of the guards – who killed a child in the process – kept the crowd from freeing poor Aisha.  But, not the correct age, not a peep about the fact that she had been the victim of rape….except those quotation marks around ‘cheating’, that is…

Why is it that one has to go to blogs (A New Dark Age Is Dawning)  and non-mainstream media like ‘Islam:  the religion of peace’ to find out information, and only then can kernels of it be seen in the ‘respectable news-outlets’ reports?

It was not until today, 5-or-so days after her murder execution, that there is even a peep about the true story…. CNN carried the little mention.

What are we doing?  Are we ‘normalizing’ Islamist violence against women?  Are we all headed for the burka?

Nike (among others!!!) is already working to normalize such attitudes!

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Posted in freedoms, opression, perceptions, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 18 Comments »

‘Modern trick-or-treaters’…

October 31, 2008 — xanthippa

I LOVE Halloween!

And, only a few hours ago, we turned our lights out as we had run out of treats….even though I thought I had ‘overbought’!

We saw a lot of really cute costumes.  Many kids had gone out of their way in the imagination department – putting together the best non-store-bought costumes (those, along with the very young ones, got the most candy).  Our dog – with his traditional Halloween makeup (and ‘they’ said I can’t ‘paint dogs’) – got many pats and pets, though he seemed somewhat dissapointed that all these people (especially kids – he loves little girls in particular) who came to see him left so quickly…

And, I do have to note – this year, the ‘trick-or-treaters’  have been more polite than ever before.  Even the ‘bigger ones’ – the ones I think are too old to trick-or-treat, so I only give them 2-3 ‘little’ treats (or 1 ‘bigger’ treat – and I often pretended I was going to give them a ‘package of soup’…incredulity easily gave way to laughter), they were almost all polite and thanked me!  There were only 3 that did not (I kept count).  This is WAY more polite crowd than ever before.

However, there was something new this Halloween – somethig I had never seen before!

Well, two ‘somethings’…

First, there was a group of 4 girls, 14-ish, in ‘French Maid’ and ‘Tavern Wench’ type outfits…and two of these were, well, particularly remarkable…  Their outfits had been ‘highly’ sexualized – their perky little boobies were mostly hanging right out (making me worry about pneumonia, with the snow on the ground and all) while their skirts were too short to fully cover their g-strings… and, obviously as ‘part of the costume’, they were both sporting smoking cigarettes!  Yes, yes, I have seen enought ‘sexy’ outfits for ‘too young’ girls – but these two were, well, nothing like I had ever seen before!

Yet, they were very polite, thanking me for the candy and oooh-ing appropriately over the dog’s Halloween make-up.

Mind you, it looked to me like they were not really used to smoking.  It was the way they held the cigarettes in the ‘look, I’m holding a cigarette’ way…or in the way they tried way too hard to look natural as they tried to take a drag from them….  Yet, I do have to admit, I found their ‘way-too-young and in-your-face sexuality’ a little disturbing.  I expect that just taking a picture of them in their costumes would have constituted ‘kiddie-porn’! 

The second instance was perhaps even more disturbing… 

They young lady in question (16-years-old tops, she actually looked a bit younger than that) had a pretty benign ‘she-devil’ costume (by comparison).  And, she was also very polite, as was the bunch of her girlfriends (some looked quite younger than she did, so 16 years might have been too high a guess).  What was so striking about her was the fact she was carrying her baby-daughter (no more than 8-9 months old – and extremely cute, dressed in pink ‘princess’ outfit) on her left hip, as both of them were ‘trick-or-treating’ together.

I have never before seen two generations (in the same line) young enough to go ‘trick-or-treating’ together!  Perhaps I’ve lead a sheltered life…

Yet, everyone I saw tonight – from the young mom who lovingly made her baby part of the fun in her life, the provocative-costume clad young sirens using costumes to test the limits of their sexuality, the many (my Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu neighbours’) costumed kids, the parents and older siblings who brought the hords of thrilled costumed kids to my door – everyone had fun!  It brought everyone in the neighbourhood out and talking, joking, sharing, enjoying themselves! 

How dare some busybody ‘bannies’ try to take that away from all of us!

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Happy Halloween – not ‘black and orange day’!

October 31, 2008 — xanthippa

Today is October 31st – HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

It is a most fun day – kids (young and old) plan fun costumes for weeks and decorate their houses.  Yet, the ‘Politically Correcet Creeps’ have started casting their shadow over even this innocent fun.

Schools have started to ‘replace’ Halloween with ‘black and orange day’!

Children are discouraged (or actively forbidden) from wearing costumes, Halloween-related activities are not happening, the spark of joy is being choked out of yet another beautiful tradition.

Why?

Because, we are told, some ‘Wiccans may be offended because it is a religious holiday for them’….

Well, I know many active Wiccans – and every single one of them is offended that Halloweeen should be replaced by ‘black and orange day’!!!  It may be a cross-quarter day – but the fun festivities and celebrations that everyone partakes in according to their taste and likes enriches the holiday experience for everyone, not takes away from it – in the eyes of Wiccans. 

After all, it is not a religious holiday for others, so why should it bother Wiccans how they celebrate it?  They’re happy people are finding time to have a little fun, because Wicca teaches that joy and sharing and finding pleasure in the ‘big and little things’ is a very important part of life!

‘Sanitizing’ all forms of fun  – THAT is offensive!

Deciding FOR the Wiccans that they ‘ought to’ be offended – then censoring everyone else to spare them this offence –THAT is offensive!

Sorry, I just loose it when I see bullies, banning and censoring everyone around them, claiming to do it ‘on behalf of’ someone else….without actually caring what that ‘other one’ thinks, because it really is just a convenient vehicle to drive their own agenda and nothing else…  Ok, so I don’t like bullies in any shape or form…and people who bully others and are not even aware they are doing it (or try to dress the bullying up so that they hope you will not realize you are being bullied) – well, they drive me mad.

So, what about other reasons being used to sour this sweet holiday?

Bad nutrition….  Yeah, pull the other one! 

My kids LOVE ‘getting’ candy on Halloween!  It is fun, exciting and they spend hours with their friends trading this tid-bit for that one….  and, I usually throw 90% of it out during Christmass cleaning…  I honestly don’t know anyone who actually eats ALL the Halloween candy and chips they get! 

Though, I have seen many kids donate sealed ‘semi-nutritious’ snacks to their schools’ ‘forgotten lunch pantry’ – where kids who forget their lunch can get someting to tide them over.  And, since my older son is too old to trick-or-treat, but he does walk his brother through the neighbourhood for safety, my younger son automatically splits his loot between them when they get home!  So, in effect, getting rid of ‘trick-or-treating’ is going to reduce our kid’s ability to be charitable and sharing, from things that are their own.  ‘Wonderful’ lesson…

Oh, but costumes are too expensive for some families.

OK, here is what I paid for my son’s costume:  $1.99 for face paints (Enough for a few kids’ faces), $2.00 for 2m of fabric (bought on sale at a fabric store for $1.00/m).  $0.99 for an elastic waistband.  That’s it.  I already owned some thread, a needle, some scissors….   And, some years in the past, we used ‘outgrown clothes’ for materials to make the costumes out of.  One year, we made a fancy cape by ‘borrowing’ a tablecloth and 2 pillows….once through the wash, all were ‘good as new’! 

Plus, sewing costumes is ‘OK’ for boys, as well as girls!  So, now my boys have acquired a skill… not that they boast of it.  But, they HAVE it!

My first Halloween in Canada (I was too old to ‘trick-or-treat’, but a few of us dressed up to chaperone my friend’s younger brother as he went around.  I was MOST impressed that my friend’s step-mom had also dressed up – and unabashedly had fun!  That was most excellent – it was OK to be silly!

I had a ball!  But, my family was VERY short of cash then….so I had to borrow some makeup (my friend’s step-mom had fun ‘doing me up) and I used our curtains and drapes to make a ‘fancy ghostly gown’ for an evening, uning clips (no cutting, no sewing, no pin-holes allowed)!  Cost?  $0.00.  Fun?  100%!

Which brings me to the last major objection:  immigrants might be unfamiliar and alienated.

As an immigrant, who was completely unfamiliar with this Halloween custom prior to arriving in Canada, let me put these fears to rest.  THEY ARE NONSENCE!

Halloween was EXCELLENT for me!  By teaching me about it, and helping me get my costume together, I got WAY closer to the people who would eventually grow to be my friends!  It was ‘an opening’ to talk to me – an opportunity to talk about more than just math homework…  My classmates felt good telling me all about Halloween.  Doing this, they were including me – all the while they were proud to show off this most fun holiday – and now I was PART of ‘IT’! 

It was just what was needed for this awkward, shy immigrant kid was to no longer just keep her head burried in a textbook and watch everyone from the sidelines – people MADE me PART of the celebrations!  I had fun!

I truly felt included! 

If anything, NOT celebrating Halloween will REDUCE the oppotunities for newly arrived immigrants to socialize, to make friends, to successfully integrate!  And it will suck another bit of enjoyment out of living…

So, what do I have to say to those who would erode yet another cultural icon?

Quoth Xanthippa:  NEVERMORE!

Posted in education, freedoms, human nature, immigrants, opression, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

‘Linking to offensive site is not defamation’ – legal precedent set in BC court

October 29, 2008 — xanthippa

As many Canadian bloggers are being targetted for ‘lawfare’ – using real courts or the semi-judicial (but just as legally binding) Human Rights Commission/Tribunals in order to bully them with the threat of stressful, expensive and long-term legal battle – we have a legal precedent that might serve to curb at least some of these.

For example, Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury  is being dragged in front of the HRC for having linked to a site which contained something that was ‘potentially offensive’.  She, and many others like her, may now have a new weapon in their defense:  the precedent set in a BC court (a real court – unsurprisingly, is not as random as the HRCs!).

In this case, Jon Newton (p2pnet) was being sued for publishing a link – the argument being that the link itself constituted ‘re-publishing’ the offensive material. 

From p2pnet, in his own words:

Following a landmark decision by British Columbia Supreme Court judge Stephen Kelleher, p2pnet is the victor in a case in which Vancouver businessmen Wayne Crookes, once an important federal Green Party of Canada official, tried to claim I defamed him by linking to articles he didn’t like.

That amounted to publication,  he maintained.

The full decision can be found here (from p2pnet) and the actual pdf is here.

An excellent summary can be found at ‘EXCESS COPYRIGHT’:

Essentially, the Court held that a link is much the same as a footnote, except a lot more convenient.

Congratulations to both Mr. Jon Newton and his lawyer, Mr. Dan Burnett!  And, Judge Kelleher – well done!

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Aspergers: paying attention

October 27, 2008 — xanthippa

Paying attention at school can, at times, be trying for anyone.  It can be even harder for kids with ADD.  Yet, for Aspie kids, there can be an additional thing at play!

I am an Aspie, married to an Aspie, raising a couple of kids who are Aspies – not a professional in this field!  For a ‘boilerplate explanation’, please see my ‘Guide to my Aspie posts’ page.

One of the ‘things’ that define Aspies’ is the inability to innately read and comprehend body language.  However, many of us (especially ‘girl Aspies’, or ‘Aspiettes’, if you’d like) tend to realize we have this ‘blind spot’ and we try to compensate for it.

This often involves becoming more ‘observers’ than ‘doers’.  It means an Aspie trying to ‘decipher’ this is more likely to choose to be present for a lot of ‘social’ situations, but not actually actively participate.  Yet, the Aspie will keenly observe everything that happens in order to try to analyze the situation for behaviour patterns which would give us our personal ‘rosetta stone’ to non-verbal communication.

This process, by itself, is enough to alienate (‘creep out’) many ‘neurotypicals’ who are our peers – resulting in more ‘shunning’ and greater social isolation….which leads to more ‘Aspie frustration’!  After all, you are only trying to learn the patterns in non-verbal communication:  with your usual OCD intensity…  Yet, THAT is not the point of this post!  The point here is to point out how many Aspies’ attempts to pay attention are really misunderstood.

Let me use myself as an illustratory example:

I was raised in Central Europe – with a somewhat different schooling system.  50% of our mark was based on written tests – just as 100% of it is in North America now.  The other 50% was based on ‘oral/verbal testing’:  the person ‘being tested’ gets called up, stands in front of the class and the teacher, and is asked a question they must answer.

There IS quite a lot of merit to this form of testing.  For one, many of us (especially Aspies) are WAY better at demonstrating our knowledge verbally than in writing.  Also, if we have concerns about the question (often, test questions are so vague as to be meaningless), we can ask the teacher for clarification.

The other – and often unnoticed – benefit of this form of testing is that no two people will explain the same material in exactly the same manner and wording.  So, when a student is being tested, the whole class is being presented with a repeat lecture presenting the material, but in a slightly altered manner.  The teacher conducting the test will correct any incorrect statements by the student – and this is really key in helping other students correct their own misconceptions and learn!

Thus, testing students by calling a student to the front of the class and asking them to demonstrate their understanding of the material taught acts to both reinforce the lesson to the rest of the students, as well as correcting misconceptions and presenting alternate explanations of the material.  To me, this seems like a win-win-win situation…as it also helps people overcome fear of speaking in front of an audience.

Usually, there is several days of ‘study time’ between the time new material is presented to students and when their testing on it begins.

Sorry for the long explanation – but it is important to ‘set the stage’, if you will.

I was in grade 6 when I became most acutely aware of the whole ‘facial expression/body language’ method of conveying ‘colouring’ to one’s statements.  Predictably, I became completely fascinated by this weird and counterintuitive phenomenon!  When someone would speak, I would begin to obsessively ‘superfocus’ on their ‘non-verbal’ message, so that I could relate the two to each other later, when I ‘replayed’ the experience (in my memory) for analysis.

Except that there was one tiny-little problem:  when I would superfocus, I would – wanting to or not – block ALL other stimulations!  Unfortunatelly, this meant that if I focused on ‘non-verbal communication’, I could not help but block out all sounds…  Yes, it kind of defeated the purpose.

Well, this one day, I was in a history class.  The teacher (who had issues with my Aspieness – without understanding it was Aspieness) was actually presenting an extremely interesting lecture!  I was totally fascinated by it, and did not want to miss a single word!  I was determined to pay full attention and not miss a single word, no matter what!

Yet, I knew that if I started looking at the teacher, I would ‘skip’ into the ‘superfocus’ mode, where I would ‘record’ every bit of her body language and facial expression nuance – but I would loose everything she said!  And I was too interested in the lesson to want to miss what she was saying!!!

So, I did EVERYTHING I COULD to pay attention to what my teacher was saying!

To keep myself from ‘getting stuck watching my teacher’, I forced myself to pointedly stare out of the window.  When that started failing, I looked at the ground under my desk.  Then I stretched my arms out on my desk and tried to burry my head in them – as aggressively as I could – so that I could prevent any visual stimulation which would distract me from listening to my teacher!  However, the temperature in the classroom was pretty cold, so even this was difficult.  So, I started hitting my head on my desk – just a little bit – to force myseld not to look at my teacher – just enough to keep focus so that I could pay attention to what she was saying.

I got told off for disturbing the class!

You must understand, back then and there, NOBODY knew (or was allowed to know) about Aspergers.  Even migranes – which I suffered terribly from since early childhood – were not a ‘legal’ diagnosis….  My mom, who got me to see a doctor at the hospital (not an easy task in a socialist country where the medicare is ‘free’ – she had to call in a bunch of ‘favours’ and give out a number of non-monetary ‘gifts’ to get me to be seen by a specialist) was told that my symptoms ‘would be’ a textbook example of migranes, except that officially (read ‘political correctness dictating medical diagnosis’), migranes were ‘something upper-class, bored ladies pretended to get to make themselves more interesting’ – and as such, ‘migrane’ was not a permissible diagnosis in a progressive, socialist country that did not have ‘bored rich ladies’…  It was CERTAINLY not an acceptable diagnosis for a little school-girl! The doctors would loose their jobs…

IF Aspergers had even been part of either the educator or medical training, it would still have been stigmatized, along the lines of ‘migranes’….but, it most definitely was NOT taught or mentioned at all!

Predictably, in the classroom, my many attempts to pay attention were greatly misunderstood!

I got into trouble for NOT paying attention!

Frankly, there was nothing I could do to pay attention more!  Yet, my teacher seemed (as usual) extremely angered by  my behaviour… 

And she did something unusual and unexpected!  (I knew it was unusual, because I had not witnessed this before.  I realized it was unexpected by analyzing the surprised and shocked noises and (YES! I had learned this much!) facial expressions of my classmates:  my teacher called me up to the front of the class to test me on the material she had just finished presenting!!!

Frankly, I think I shocked her.

I could repeat everything she said, every date she presented, understood and could explain every ‘reasoning’ she had presented to us in her lecture!  As she gave me an ‘A’, she said she was shocked because she ‘saw’ I was ‘totally not paying attention’ during the whole class, and this was meant to ‘discipline me’!  Looking back, I think she thought me defiant when I truthfully said I had NEVER tried to pay attention as hard as I had that day!

So, what is the point of this post?

When Aspies look like they are doing everything NOT to pay attention – they might truly be escaping into their own world of interests….OR, they might be doing their best to truly and honestly listen to what the teacher is saying!!!  Just because their behaviour does not conform to that of other children who are paying attention does NOT mean that Aspies are not paying attention, nor does it mean that they are not TRYING to pay attention!

Just as Aspies ‘suck’ at ‘reading’ body language, there are times when we just as much ‘suck’ at PRESENTING body language!  We are VERY BAD at emulating the ‘cultural norm’ external body language ourselves (especially when we are young and before we have learned to emulate/fake it).

Yet, just as WE are bad at ‘reading’ the body language of ‘nerotyoicals’, the ‘neurotypicals’ are eaqually as bad at reading OUR body language!

This may lead to ‘Aspergers’ so called ‘specialists’ of the past (hopefully not the present) to put inappropriate emotive labels on Aspies:  claiming we are lacking in empathy, social belonging, inability to sympathize, stunted emotions and so on.  Nothing could be further from the truth!

These false charges and many misunderstandings only hurt young Aspies and further undermine our regard for our abities, our self-confidence.  It is one of the many ‘drops of poison’ which causes many Aspies to shut themselves away from ‘the world’ and limit ourselves to our ‘internal worlds’, where such hurtful undermining of us is not a daily reminder of our inadequacies.

So, the next time you see a person whose body language you think inappropriate, please, consider the possibility that you are simply unable to understand THIS person’s non-verbal communications – just as much as that person is unable to understand yours.  Respecting this difference – and learning from it – is constructive.  Rejecting or ridiculing such a person – well, this is not so nice…and can ruin a person’s ability to EVER truly believe in themselves again.

Posted in Aspergers, education, freedoms, language, opression, society. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »
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