timeimmortal

Chris Johnson strikes the perfect tone, I think, in responding to the latest round of utter insanity to emerge from the animal rights organization.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has sent a proposal to the Somerset County commissioners to lease their jail for the world’s first Lobster Empathy Center.

What exactly is a Lobster Empathy Center?

“A prison is the perfect setting to demonstrate how lobsters suffer when they are caught in traps or confined to cramped, filthy supermarket tanks,” PETA wrote in a June 2 letter to the commissioners. “The center will teach visitors to have compassion for these interesting, sensitive animals while also commemorating the millions of lobsters who are ripped from their homes in the ocean off the coast of Maine each year before being boiled alive.”

…Sounds like a wonderful family vacation. Be kinda like that “Dodge the Scissahs” ride at the Fetus Empathy Centah over t’ Wahtahville.

“Mainers have been dragging lobsters from their ocean homes for generations,” said PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “It’s time for them to learn that these fascinating animals deserve more than being treated as mere commodities.”

I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Ms. Newkirk would dare dream, for any fraction of a second, to protest the way in which Planned Parenthood clinics, and other abortionists, drag unborn infants from their uterine homes, nor would she ever assert that it’s time for people to learn that these fascinating young humans deserve more than being treated as mere commodities.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Count Roland follows up on an observation he had previously made concerning the fact that Time Immortal is blocked at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster, Alberta. Apparently, I’m classified as an “advocacy organization” by the IT personnel there.

But it appears that the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. Roland has done quite a lot of investigative work, and his conclusions are…surprising, on one hand, and yet unsurprising as well.

O Writer,

I did a more extensive perusal of a small sample of organizations that have websites.

You are still blocked as an advocay organization; FreeMarkSteyn is blocked as a message/discussion board.

I was allowed to go to Planned Parenthood, CHRC, COLF, CCCB, CCRL, and Lifesite.

Given the Catholic position on abortion, I was surprised that PP was allowed, but as a defender of free speech it must be allowed - dynamic tension that is better than simple dichotomies, no?

CHRC and CCRL are opposing legal organizations. Lifesite was to test if the Catholic organizations were only allowed because the developers were told to allow Catholic sites — it was allowed as a non-Catholic life issues site, which is good.

But I am stil surprised that they, in general, were allowed considering they are as advocative as you are, if not more.

Right away, I confess myself surprised by the level and scope of the site categorization that is in play here, not all of it accurate. Lifesite is more or less correctly categorized: it is a life issues site, though not one that takes a specifically Catholic perspective.

On the other hand, Time Immortal is very incorrectly categorized: I am just one guy, not an organization, and though I do have a couple of guest bloggers (e.g. my wife) there is no explicit advocacy done through the site, certainly not in the sense of “one cause/raison d’etre” that my being categoriezed as an advocacy organization would imply. Contrast this with the allowance of Planned Parenthood’s website, despite the fact that PP openly admits that (pro-abortion) advocacy is part of its mission.

(Note that I’m not suggesting that the Planned Parenthood website should be banned — unless the ban on advocacy groups is to remain in place: consistency is important!)

And then there’s the issue of Binks’ FreeMarkSteyn aggregator, which is not really a discussion board (not more than any other blog that allows comments is, at any rate), nor a message board (according to the normative definition of the term). It is more properly termed an aggregator; that is: a collection or compliation of links to various stories from around the internet, which may or may not revolve around a common theme.

But this is also not as deep as the rabbit hole goes, O Reader. Roland notes, in a follow-up message, that a rather peculiar, though perhaps predictable, trend has begun to emerge.

Here is a list of more sites I tried.

Blocked:
Real Women of Canada - advocacy
National Rifle Association - weapons
Stormfront - hate
Black Panther - advocacy

Allowed:
PETA
National Organization of Women
Jack Chick
Coalition for Gun Control
Canadian Islamic Congress
Jihad Watch
SteynOnline
Reverend Wright on wiki -> tucc.org
Christianity Today

From my observations so far, the blocked sites all seem to be from the “conservative” side of the spectrum. Many allowed sites, from PP to now to PETA to Gun control, are largely advocacy groups but are on the “progressives’” approved list, although it also has a fair number of ‘conservative’ sites. How, though, realwomen/nra is blocked while now/gun control is not is beyond me.

Also, how is Jack Chick or TUCC not a hate site, or at least problematic on advocacy grounds for black liberation / anti-Catholic Theology?

I am somewhat confused (although I guess the web-block company likely has a liberal bias) and dismayed. I would hope that any censorship be in favour of groups closer to Church teaching and that Censorship be minimized, or if more widespread, to be at least not in favour of non-Church teaching sites.

This is a confusing trend, to be sure. For all intents and purposes, the person or persons responsible for policing the Internet access at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster — Holy Rosary High School — seems to be operating under something of a liberal bias in terms of how he or she applies the school’s presumably extant web access policy.

To wit: if advocacy groups are banned, why can the websites of organizations like PETA, Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the CIC still be accessed? If weapons-related sites are banned, why can the websites of gun control groups still be accessed? Roland points out other dichotomies which would appear to exist as well.

The extent of the bias is not great, but in general this situation doesn’t pass the old “sniff test” — there does seem to be some effort that has gone in to reducing access to conservative opinion on the Internet at Holy Rosary. And since censorship in any form is unacceptable…

Holy Rosary High School

Principals
Principal: Mr. T. Brochu
Vice Principal: Mr. Vince Orieux
Vice Principal: Mr. C. Musyj

Contact Information
Address: 6611A-39 Street
Lloydminster, AB T9V 2Z4
Phone: (780) 875-3600
Fax: (780) 875-9516
Email: hrhs@lcsd.ca

Do drop them a line, O Reader. There’s quite enough censorship — especially censorship of conservative opinion — going on in this country of late as it is, without some tin-pot IT dictator adding to the list of problems. That this sort of thing is happening at a Catholic hich school, especially one which states that its mission is to “nurture spiritual, academic, emotional, social and physical growth in every individual.”

Update: Welcome, readers from Sleepy Old Bear, Walker, and BCF! And welcome, Steynians!

…but I will agree, to the end of my days, that he has a right to voice his opinions. And it’s good news indeed that the Supreme Court of Canada agrees with that sentiment, and will not hear an appeal to overturn a lower court’s ruling that Whatcott’s right to freedom of speech had been violated.

Whatcott’s tactics seem, to me, on the extreme side, but the fact that the Saskatchewan Association of Licensed Practical Nurses suspended and fined him for his off-hours, anti-abortion advocacy was detestable and a violation of Whatcott’s human rights.

Nurse Bill Whatcott staged his anti-abortion protest at the clinic in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2002, and Planned Parenthood subsequently launched a complaint against him at his professional association. Whatcott had earlier served jail time for demonstrating against an abortion clinic in Toronto.

The Saskatchewan Association of Licensed Practical Nurses found Whatcott guilty of professional misconduct, suspended him as a nurse and ordered him to pay C$15,000 ($15,150) in legal costs.

Whatcott argued that he had been demonstrating in his free time and that his protest was simply a case of free speech. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association had also weighed in on the debate, saying that while it favored abortion rights it was concerned over attempts to squelch debate.

He tried to run for mayor here in Edmonton a while back. Got about a thousand votes, as I recall.

ProWomanProLife has some interesting analysis of the implications of the Canadian abortion rate in light of the outcomes of a study done by the Guttmacher Institute, the “research arm” of Planned Parenthood. Obviously, the statistics are for America rather than Canada, but given that Canada and the U.S. tend to be reasonably close on most such things, some rudimentary analysis can probably be done.

If we take the Guttmacher Institute’s …reasons for why women have an abortion, and we take the number of abortions in Canada, 96,815 for 2004-2005, approximately the following number of people were not born in Canada for the following reasons that year:

(please note we have no Canadian equivalent of the Guttmacher stats so this is all very approximate)

20,330 people died for inadequate finances

20,330 people died because the woman isn’t ready

15,490 people died because the woman’s life would change too much

11,618 people died because there are problems in the relationship; the woman is unmarried

10,650 people died because the girl is too young

7,745 people died because the woman has all the children she wants

2,904 people died because the woman has a health problem

2,904 people died because the baby has health problems

968 people died because of rape or incest

3,873 people died for “other” reasons.

(Average number of reasons given, 3.7)

I gather this is why we’re not allowed to question “a woman’s choice”: once you begin to question that, you wonder whether these are good reasons for killing people. Everyone, of course, draws their own line in the sand somewhere.

Abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and the mother’s health are what I would consider the three most commonly-cited examples of “good reasons” for an abortion. But we must be more objective. In life, the only morally legitimate act of killing is one of self-defence or, in exceedingly rare cases, killing to defend the life of another from an aggressor. And even then, the act of killing is not moral per sé, because it is still disordered and against creation — the killing is, at best, not immoral.

To be charitable for a moment, then, let us assume that the only morally legitimate abortion is one that is analogous to the act of self-defence: abortion to save the life of the mother.

Three percent. Just three percent of all abortions performed could thus be categorized as having been done for “good reason.” But let us be charitable and allow that the number could be as five percent, since the statistics would probably be a bit different in Canada.

Now, let’s be even more charitable, and concede that “good reasons” for abortion include cases of rape and incest.

Four percent.

Look at the list above. The overwhelming majority of abortions — over ninety percent — are performed for reasons that, objectively speaking, are not “good” ones. The health of the baby is irrelevant. The age of the woman is mostly irrelevant — if she’s “too young” to be having a kid, she probably is too young to be having sex in the first place. Finances, personal preparedness, and relationship turmoil are irrelevant — they are inevitable facts of life, and there’s really no such thing as an “ideal” time to have a baby. And the fact that a woman’s life would change too much is more than irrelevant; it is illogical — of course having a baby changes things! D’uh!

The overwhelming majority of abortions would seem to happen for one primary reason: selfishness.And the majority of unborn children who are aborted die to make someone else’s life a little easier. That’s not a “good” reason — in fact, it’s no reason at all.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Count Roland writes in with an answer to the question I posed at the end of this article: what is wrong with Islam?

It’s falsity?

It’s anachronistic binding to 7th century Arab culture through Muhammad?

It’s taking advantage of the West’s (its only real competition, given the Truth of Christianity at the West’s core — pace to the secularists) elites’ self-effacing policies of appeasement?

Oh, and Writer, I was blocked frfom seeing timeimmortal at the Catholic high school in [Lloydminster] because the software blocks “advocacy organizations” - I did not test if it blocks Planned Parenthood or Birthright or COLF or CCRL or CHRC. I wonder what you adsvocate that the software developers feel is inappropriate for grade 8-12 minds?

Apparently, I’m an “advocacy organization” now, O Reader! I as not aware of this fact. But I imagine that any sufficiently left-leaning IT personnel could find any number of objectionable things on this website, more than enough to justify (if only in their own minds, and not as a matter of substantive policy) blocking access to the site.

I would advise Roland to test the websites of those other organizations. Perhaps a pattern will emerge! If so, I would be most interested to hear what the pattern itself is.

As to Islam, the above are certainly legitimate criticisms — one need not look very far, nor dig very deep, to find examples of (especially) the second two points. Indeed, there is much about Sharia law that gives of a certain Bronze Age aroma, and it is only too easily observed that various Islamist groups are now making continual use of e.g. human rights commissions (and other inventions of appeasement-driven, fearful Western governments) to in effect silence those who speak out against…well, just what Roland himself spoke of in the first half of his message.

And if you believe that title, O Reader, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

A recent survey — the first of its kind? — in the U.S. has revealed that one in four women is infected with at least one of four common STDs — human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes or trichomoniasis. Fifteen percent of the infected women apparently have more than one of these four diseases. And — perhaps most shockingly — almost half of all African-American teens surveyed had at least one of the above STDs.

I know that Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenecist who spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies, but I didn’t think that their programs would be so effective at crippling the black population in America!

All facetiousness aside, these results are nothing more than shocking, and should be taken as a scathing condemnation of the ever-more comprehensive sex education programmes that have been fed to schoolchildren since about the 1960s. Unfortunately, the president of Planned Parenthood, one Cecile Richards, has taken the opportunity to say that this study “emphasize[s] the need for real comprehensive sex education.”

It’s not a surprise that Ms. Richards would come out and say as much — Planned Parenthood is a moneymaking operation first and foremost, and both womens’ rights and womens’ health take a back seat to its drive to accumulate profit. But that doesn’t stop Planned Parenthood’s top person from trying to shift the blame away from her own group, its beliefs, and the changes they and others like them have effected in the U.S.

“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price.”

I highly doubt that there is any teenage girl (or boy) in the United States that has not heard of a condom, and precious few teens of either gender who are unfamiliar with the use thereof. Condom availability is likewise not a problem; you can find them at almost any grocery store or corner drug store these days, in a wide range of sizes, textures, and flavours.

The problem, then, is not that teens haven’t learned enough about condoms and other “protective” measures — it’s that they are choosing, nevertheless, to avoid the use thereof, much as they are choosing to ignore whatever they might be learning about abstinence (since it’s damn hard to get an STD when one is abstaining from sexual activity). Because in spite of all the teaching, in spite of all the warnings, and in spite of the availability and ease of procurement of “protection,” kids still do whatever they damn well please. And no amount of additional education is going to change that.

Back in the barbaric 1950s (and before), STD rates weren’t anywhere near as high as they are now among the teenage population. There weren’t comprehensive sex education programs back then, nor were there condom machines in the bathrooms and racks full of condoms in every food or drug store in town. There was less “openness” about sex, and many people — especially Planned Parenthood employees — would characterize societal attitudes toward sexuality (especially premarital and/or teenage sexuality) as “repressive” (read: dependent on a measure of individual self-control and self-respect).

And yet it is only in our “open”, “enlightened” age that STDs are raging almost out of control in the population, in spite of the availability of condoms and the frankness with which children are taught about sex.

Clearly — obviously — the problem is that our comprehensive, explicit sex education programmes are not nearly comprehensive enough!

Not like they were founded by a noted eugenics advocate or anything!

Kathy provides a partial transcript:

Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely.

Actor: Like the black community for example?

Planned Parenthood: Certainly.

Actor: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.

Actor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.

Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don’t, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.

Actor: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college.

Planned Parenthood: All right. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited, and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

Look, I know Planned Parenthood is a business first and foremost, and that it profits immensely from abortion. I know that it is in Planned Parenthood’s best interests that women continue to have abortions, and that women be kept as ignorant about the moral issues surrounding abortion as they can possibly be (nothing thins the pocketbooks of evil like a resurgent conscience). And yes, I think that’s a despicable thing.

Did you notice, O Reader, how easily Planned Parenthood could be used for racist purposes? And did you notice not only how eager the Planned Parenthood representative working the phone was to take the donation (even though the actor made it plain that his motives were bigoted), but how the representative also laughingly agreed with the sentiment “the less black kids out there, the better?”

Margaret Sanger once spoke at a KKK rally. It’s nice to know that the organization she founded is upholding that part of her legacy too.

Just what it says — two condoms, a “whisper-quiet” vibrator (with batteries!), and lubricant. Not that they have an ulterior motive, or anything. Me, I fail to see what this sort of product has to do with parenthood (a subject one would mistakenly assume the organization selling this item is familiar with).

And if the Reader will permit me a moment of snark: what on God’s green Earth is up with that website background, eh? Seriously…pixelated and artifact-laden…I’ve seen better drawings emerge from MS Paint.

Related: interesting observations on just how unreliable and useless condoms are.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: The Curt Jester)

It even features a nice pictoral of a mother playing with her child. All well and good, except for the fact that said mother electively underwent a surgical procedure in which a doctor stuck a pair of scissors into the back of the skull of her daughter’s sibling and sucked out his/her brain.

Just disgusting? You bet. But hey, so what if mommy killed your sister, little kiddo? It’s important that she had the choice to do so.

My God but this is a selfish world we live in.

Related, tangentially:

…the financial motives are staggering. According to its own annual report, Planned Parenthood — which receives its lion’s share of profit from abortion — performed 264,943 abortions in the 2006 fiscal year, raking in an astronomical $55.8 million in profit … free and clear.

It doesn’t take a Phi Beta Kappa to figure out that Planned Parenthood — one of the foremost cheerleaders of “comprehensive sex ed” — has a vested interest in seeing that young girls become pregnant and have abortions. It’s a classic case of “the fox watching the hen house.” “Comprehensive sex ed” spells money in the bank because it actually encourages kids to have sex. It doesn’t work, and they know it.

That’s worth repeating: Planned Parenthood (and, indeed, a goodly number of other pro-abortion lobby groups) have a vested financial interest in seeing that young girls become pregnant and procure abortions. All this false piety about choice and caring for women ranks, I think, a very distant second next to the almighty dollar that these people rake in each and every time the vacuum pumps get fired up.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)

I wonder if a man should be elected president who has voted to allow American citizens to be left for dead in certain circumstances as dictated by the selfish whims of said citizen’s mother:

The Associated Press has a shocking report on Barack Obama’s state legislative record, though the AP’s Nedra Pickler does her best to play it down:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizes rival Barack Obama’s record on abortion rights in a mailing sent to New Hampshire voters.

The mailer says that seven times during his time in the Illinois state Senate, Obama declined to take a position on abortion bills, while Clinton has been a defender of abortion rights.

During his eight years in the legislature, Obama cast a number of votes on abortion and received a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives. He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive, a vote that especially riled abortion opponents.

There is a word in English for “aborted fetuses who survive.” They are called infants.

Just another reminder, if anyone ever needed it, that abortion is murder with a fancy name. And Barack Obama voted to allow said infants to be left for dead.

What’s really interesting is that Hillary Clinton is the one going after him for being, apparently, too liberal about abortion. American politics — and especially American politicians — evidently can no longer be said to make any sense. (I realize my sentence presumes that it could, at some point in history, be said that said politics/politicians did, in fact, make sense)

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)