quote of the day

“Look at that sea, girls–all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Babykiller Obama Saves Lives of Millions

I have never felt a need to be embroiled with the emotional debate over abortion. I always felt it was a private issue of great solemnity and really wasn’t aware of the circus made of it by many right-to-life advocates until Obama’s wise move to resume sending aid to third world countries. That’s when I found out that this ‘babykilling money’ wasn’t anything of the sort. The right wing can’t think straight, it seems, more often than not. It was sheer lunacy to withhold women’s health aid. The reason? Those aids MIGHT counsel abortion. It’s obvious to me straight off the bat that most third world countries are Catholic and Muslim, and abortion is not handed out like candy- only in sickness or threat to life. Withholding birth control is one of the greatest shames of the church. It’s sick prudery has meant millions of lives suffering, in slavery, in child prostitution, starving, sick….sick, sick, sick, shame, shame, shame.

But my opinion on the facts- and the facts are that this ‘babykilling agenda’ will save babies, PREVENT abortion, and save moms- is just my opinion. So I wanted to share the facts so you can share them with the pro-life lunacy faction which is actually celebrating death and suffering. And why? Because heathens don’t matter, and people who have sex don’t matter. That’s what it boils down to. Those ungodly people are poor because they are heathens, not because of natural disasters (oh, God again) or colonization’s greed.

Paul Tobin gathered these facts in The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager site:
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/ambush.html#8

“Culture of Life”:
The Deadly AmBush on Third World Women
The most apt, and appalling, example of the unholy alliance of the Catholic Church and fundamentalists Christians is in the anti-abortion policies of the current US administration of George W. Bush. Both groups of Christians were major factors in helping George W. win his reelection campaign of 2004. [1]

Ever since he took over the presidency in 2001, Bush has been doing everything he can to push family planning back into the dark ages. Keen to please his religious conservative base, on the first day of his first term as president, George W. reinstated the global “gag rule”. The “gag rule”, first introduced by President Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980’s, calls for the with-holding of U.S. financial aid to any foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) that even mentions the word “abortion” in their provision of health services to pregnant women. Thus even if a woman’s life is in danger from her pregnancy, any mention of “abortion” would mean that the NGO would lose all its funding from the U.S. [2]

One casualty of this gag rule is the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). The IPPF provides reproductive health information and services to women in third world countries. These include providing information about, diagnosis and treatment sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS), gynecological care, post and prenatal care for mother and child. Providing information on abortion and its availability, if necessary, is a fundamental part of the IPPF goals for reproductive health. As a result of this its funding of around US$20 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was terminated.

Considering the fact that 80,000 women die every year - one every seven minutes – due to unsafe abortions, IPPF’s provision of abortion services is a crucial life saving campaign. It’s provision of contraceptives, such as condoms, also help prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Hilary Fyfe, of the Family Life Movement in Zambia commented that the with-holding of funds is akin to murder: “I think they are killing these women, just as if they are pointing a gun a shooting. There is no difference.” [3]

Not to be outdone by this early success, President Bush in 2002 withheld US$34 million of contribution, approved by both houses of Congress, to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The fund, active in 144 countries, provides contraception, family planning, and gynecological health services to women in third world countries. It also works against the spread of HIV/AIDS and against the practice of female genital manipulation. The withheld funds would have made up a substantial (more than 10%) portion of the UNFPA annual budget.

What did the UNFPA do to deserve the funds being withheld from them? According to the Bush administration, the funds were withheld due to allegations about their activities in China which supposedly involved coercion of abortion and forced sterilizations among rural inhabitants in China. The charge, made by the right-wing anti-family planning, anti-abortion, “Population Research Institute” (PRI), [a] , was used by Bush as an excuse to withhold this fund. We know that it is an excuse because in May 2002 Bush sent a fact finding team which reported that the UNFPA was not involved in any coercion programs. Before the American mission, a British delegation did the same investigation and also confirmed that there was no evidence whatsoever of any forced abortions. In September 2003, a group of U.S. (non-fundamentalist) religious leaders went to China and returned with the same conclusion. Other independent investigations have also cast serious doubts on the veracity of the claims made by PRI. [4]

Upon the announcement in 2002 of the withholding of funds, fundamentalists and Catholic “pro-life” movements were ecstatic. The Roman Catholic Church, whose irrational views on abortion are well known, must have felt its prayers were finally answered. Deal Hudson, editor of the catholic magazine Crisis gladly proclaimed that it is “good news” and that his sources told him the funds will be “permanently withheld”. [5]

Indeed Hudson’s sources were correct, since 2002, the Bush administration had withheld the payment to the UNFPA for the last three years – all the while using the same discredit reason of “coercive” abortion practices in China. [6] The real reason for with-holding the funds is transparently clear: the fundamentalist and Catholic supporters of the Bush administration are against any form of abortion – whether it is coerced or not is beside the point.

Indeed the excuse is even more blatantly clear when we consider the whole picture. Of its US$300 million annual budget, the UNFPA only spends US$3.5 million (around 1.2%) on China. The bulk of the funds from UNFPA goes to other third world countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas and much of it would have been for family planning and health care – not abortions. The money would have been used to help reduce the childbirth mortality in countries such as Burkina Faso, Zambia and East Timor where the mortality rate ranges from 500 to 5,000 (in East Timor) per 100,000 births. Some of the money would have been used to train midwives. In Chad, for instance, the whole country of nine million only has fifteen obstetricians. It was reported that two untrained midwives there tried to deal with a breech delivery (where the baby’s head is facing the wrong direction) by holding the pregnant woman upside down and shaking her to try and get the fetus in the “right” position! [7]

Thus the “China card” is just that: a ruse for the Roman Catholic Church and their fundamentalist allies to continue their anti-abortion crusade. And like all wars – there are casualties: the innocent pregnant women of poor countries around the world who depend on the UNFPA to safe their lives. The UNFPA estimates that the withheld fund annually would have prevented up to 2 million pregnancies, nearly 800,000 abortions, 77,000 infant and child deaths and 4,700 maternal deaths. That’s a lot of blood on the hands of these “right to lifers”. [8]

Asking how these numbers arise from provides us with a picture of the cruelty of the horribly misnamed “pro-life” movement. Sometimes deaths can be due simply to the lack of cheap surgical procedures. One condition that would have been easily treatable by inexpensive surgery – the type provided by the UNFPA – is called obstretic fistula. It happens when the pregnant woman is either too malnourished or too small to deliver the baby. Without medical help, “the baby’s head rips a hole clear through her bladder or rectum”. It has been estimated that more than 2 million women in Africa and South Asia suffers from such a condition. The baby usually dies and the mother becomes incontinent for life. [9]

Othertimes the deaths can be due to the lack of simple hospital supplies such as an oxygen. Below is a collection of two such tales in Chad as told by reporter Nicholas Kristof:

Zara Fatima, a 15-year-old girl, was in labor for four days before her family loaded her onto public transportation – the back of a truck – and took her to the dilapidated National General Reference Hospital here on Tuesday. Her blood pressure was high, 170/80, and she soon lapsed into a coma. The baby arrived stillborn. Zara needed oxygen, but the hospital had none to spare. …Zara died…

Fatima Adoum, a pregnant 15-year-old, lies unconscious on a hospital bed, gasping for breath, convulsing and slobbering. Her arm has a two-inch suppurating burn wound, and the doctors point to it grimly as a home remedy against sorcery. The delay in getting her to a doctor has hurt her, and now she needs oxygen, but it is unavailable…Fatima’s prospects are still uncertain. [10]

Thanks to the “pro-life” policies of George W. Bush, where the fertilized egg is more important than the lives of thousands of pregnant women in third world countries, these sad stories look set to multiply in the near future. [b]

Abortion is not the moral equivalent of murder, but what would one call letting thousands of women needlessly die each year when one has the power to prevent it?

Update: January 23, 2009
On January 23rd 2009, the new American president, Barack Obama, overturned the Bush policy. The move will, as a statement from Population Action International noted, “save women’s lives around the world.” Sanity has returned to American politics.

Paul’s references are below.

The truth is, any thinking person, for or against abortion morally, can clearly reason that the above facts weigh in pro life either way. Women are not the murderers of their children that these sick sadists make them out to be:  blood is on the hands of the church- again, as always, what a surprise- and the government- oh, same thing these days….

You know I’ve always been a very religious, very spiritual, Christian person who expected others to be thinking, reasoning people- after all God gave us brains. This has not been the case, and the disgusting hatred of heathens, of women, and of gays- science, history, reality be damned- has propelled me like a cannonball from ‘faith.’ At first I feared I was becoming an atheist because of the haters. Now I know I’m deprogramming from mind control that I thought I’d long shaken off.

I’m converting to reason.

Notes
a. According to UNFPA officials the tactics used by the PRI to spread their false charges involves planting unfounded allegations in the local newspapers of third world countries. Once “in print” – these stories take up an air of credibility. Subsequently they are picked up by the international press, allowing world wide dissemination of clearly made up stories.
b. Throwing up our arms won’t do. We can all do our part to help. Please donate to the The 34 Millions Friends of UNFPA.
References
1. Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall, “Evangelicals say they led charge for the GOP”, The Washington Post, November 8, 2004
2. Molly Ivins, “Another Slap against Women: Getting around Bush’s cheap move”, Chicago Tribune, October 22, 2002
3. “Report: Global Gag Rule Spurring Deaths, Disease,: Women’s eNews, September 25, 2003
Bert Wilkinson, “Report from the Field: Gag Rule’s Impact”, Population Connection, February 1, 2001
IPPF Abortion: advocating for the right to safe abortion services
4. Greg Barrow, “Abortion row threatens UN funds”, BBC News February 27, 2002.
“US to Withhold $34M in UN Funds”, Associated Press, July 22, 2002
Diane Carman, “How to Undo a Travesty of Politics”, Denver Post, June 27, 2004
Knight Ridder, “Small Advocacy Group Influences American Policy”, Jodi Enda, September 22, 2002
5. “US to Withhold $34M in UN Funds”, Associated Press, July 22, 2002
6. “Birth Control; Help the UN Fund (Editorial)”, Charleston Gazette, September 14, 2004.
David Gollust, “US Cuts Funds to UN Population Fund Agency Over ‘Coercive’ Policy by China”, Epoch Times, July 17, 2004
Christopher Marquis, “U.S. Cuts Off Financing of U.N. Unit for 3rd Year”, New York Times, July 17, 2004
7. Nicholas Kristoff, “Terror of Childbirth”, Op-Ed Column, New York Times, March 20, 2004
Ian Black, “EU Replaces Cash Denied to UN Family Planning by the US”, Guardian of London, July 24, 2004
8. Molly Ivins, “Another Slap against Women: Getting around Bush’s cheap move”, Chicago Tribune, October 22, 2002
9. “No headline could sum up how sad this is”, Jane Magazine March, 2004.
10. Nicholas Kristoff, “Terror of Childbirth”, Op-Ed Column, New York Times, March 20, 2004
11. Obama reverses abortion-funding policy, CNN, January 25th, 2009

Thank you Paul.

stem cell research brouhaha

I’m no expert on the stem cell research debate. But I do know the idea that such research has been useless is right wing propaganda. I do know that much of our continent’s pro-life stance is obsessive sadism. Life does not end at birth, people! There are sick people suffering, unwanted children starving, and before we yammer about whether or not research on microscopic cells is killing a soul, we should concern ourselves with those who are alive and have a name.

Sam Harris says is best in Letter to a Christian Nation:

Stem cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every disease or injury process that humans suffer….A three day old embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100 000 cells in the BRAIN of a fly. The embryos that are destroyed in stem cell research do not have brains, or even neurons.

Killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulty…

Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blostocyst is the latter’s potential to become a human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being.

But let us assume, for the moment, that every three day old embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming…identical twins. IS this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single…called a chimera…what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case…

The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supercede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. ..religious dogma supercedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.”

Reading Hooked, by Carolyn Smart

Ever feel you’ve got to keep your obsessive peculiarities under wraps? Forget about it. Interesting women aren’t flatliners devoid of personality. They’re wild, depressed, smart, creative, unfulfilled, particular, impulsive, and more often than not, can drink a man under the table.

If you’re hooked on fascinating people, the way I am, you’ll enjoy Carolyn Smart’s poetic journey into the lives of seven ‘unstable’ and remarkable women.

Carson McCullers, Unity Mitford, Zelda Fitzgerald and more- Smart’s found her way into the heart with this poetry. Listen:  here’s what liquor does/ it shows the hidden things/…whole sides of mountains crumbling loose.

Or this: at eighteen, I wanted to be gone, pure gone/and when I moved that way, I drew a crowd.

You may find that sometimes the attempt to push poetry into another character’s theme falls flat, feels forced, comes off a bit ambitious and loses its flow. But then there are moments of such revelation that you’ll swear the ghosts of these women have always lived where you sleep. Most importantly, perhaps, is Smart’s courageous act of kindling/rekindling an acquaintance with unusual women or creative contributors who are so often forgotten beside their equal counterparts in men. I rushed straight online to find out more about the names I didn’t know, and ordered some of the McCullers books I haven’t read.

Later this week, I’ll be rereading Hooked and perusing a few biographies over a nice mellow whiskey during happy hour at a crowded bar.  Perhaps not what Carolyn had in mind, but absolutely necessary.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

This Little Light of Mine: the astonishing art of Canada’s Pat Moffatt

There are a few tricks to getting the kind of colour and light that seems almost supernatural in Pat Moffatt’s paintings, the kind of colours that bounce around the room against the sun’s changing shadows, reverberating with glowing energy. One is gratitude, an inner illumination that comes from letting go, forgiving, moving on.

The other is more technical. Just don’t use brown. Ever. “Brown is a zero,” Pat says. “In my mind, brown is one big orgy of colour, that the brilliance of the truth of colour has been lost. There is no opposite of brown, it sits alone.”

This act of symbolic omission creates stunning works that vibrate with a luminous beauty I’ve never seen before. There’s a certain purity, and maybe that’s exactly what the artist is longing for. The colours shine like stained glass, like a lighthouse clear and bright over shadowy pines and a dark bay.

I happen to like brown very much- it is the colour of bark, sand, the earth, chocolate, giraffes…but I admit I’ve never seen a vivid brilliance like what shines in Pat’s work. Besides, everything Pat does has an important symbolism. The number of flowers in a vase, the colours used, a doorway, what the sky holds- all of these hold a story, a particular piece of Pat’s heart and soul. And the things that are not there- brown- also have meaning. “Brown symbolizes a wealth of bad things,” he says. And Pat prefers to leave the bad things out.

His symbols are not consciously planned out in advance. “I see it after they are done, not before or during,” the artist tells me. Consider the painting Forty. “I started painting January of 2003, I was forty. I had my first one man show at The Gallery Wall on Bloor Street in February 2005. There were forty paintings in that show. The show was called Forty. I knew it had to have a theme. A consistency. So I started working on a ‘theme’ piece. In it you see a wheat field with nine modern

Forty

bails of wheat. Two of them are in the foreground, representing my two marriages. The sky, a very dark blue, almost like there is a planet very close to earth, and out of there is a bolt of lightning hitting a pine tree. Illuminating it from within. The tree being hit with energy represents me being given the force to paint, to create… to connect with God? There is an abstracted version of a small chapel on the left representing my belief that there is something much greater than ourselves and because it’s abstracted it may mean that ‘religion’ has corrupted the ideal of spiritualism. The painting is actually a sign of gratitude for the ability to paint. To express.”

The ideas come in a flash, on a subconscious level. “I have this urgency to act on it…and when the creative process is over, I always see profound things in the work that pertains to my life. This in turn helps me deal with those things. Come to think of it…. during the whole process, I’m not a part of any of it.”

Teachers told Pat early on that he was an artist, but he did not begin painting until he was forty. It began rather suddenly, and has been wildfire ever since. Each and every work is created, “rapid fire, no thought, like an oracle.”

There was a “set of rules, in place, in my mind, from day one,” Pat says. “These were there before I even touched the brush to canvas for the very first time. I never break them, and starting and finishing a painting in one sitting- three to four hours, on average- is one of them…It’s all about letting go for me, and in that, comes beauty.”

Pat lavishes the canvas with abundant helpings of paint, another symbolic gesture of the generosity and giving of humans, and his gratitude. This effect, combined with the furious brushstrokes, the colour vibrancy, and the speed of the composition, gives a cosmic energy to each work. He churns out about two paintings a week, but feels he should be making several a day.

Indeed, the muse has come amazingly often since Pat began painting only six years ago. He has since created hundreds of gorgeous oil and acrylic paintings, and none show any sign of a fumbling evolution, a movement toward maturity, of the search for one’s own artistic identity, signature style- the “voice.” Rather, they are all, from the beginning, instantaneous masterpieces. The “brownless palette” creates an immediate and vivid cohesion. The fast fury of brushstrokes contributes to their vitality. The underlying use of symbolism means that a still life is not quite as still as it appears. And the distinctive use of perspective and choices of subject matter have yielded, in the artist’s earliest stages, the works that an artist might finally come to after decades of study, experiment, exploration, trial and error. Could it be that this humble man from Thunder Bay, Canada, is a master in our midst?   For even the creative geniuses had a gestation period, Renoir, Picasso, Van Gogh…

Van Gogh. It’s what the viewer thinks about from the first moment.  When I experienced Pat’s work  at a Touched By Fire art exhibition, it was exciting to see someone continue on in the master teacher’s style, even, dare I say, improving on it? I assumed the stylistic focus was intentional, and I admired the artist for such singular dedication to learning from the best.

I was surprised to learn that the connection was spontaneous, and there from the very beginning. “I somehow do paint like him. A blessing or a curse…not sure?” Pat says. “This comes naturally and logically to me. My natural brush strokes look almost identical to his for some reason. My best friend for 32 years has an oil painting I did when I was thirteen. I had no idea he’d kept it all these years. Recently, he brought it out and showed it to me- I almost fell out of my chair. My brush strokes are the same as they are now! But at the time it was painted, I hadn’t even been introduced to Vincent Van Gogh.”

Van Gogh did use browns, but the kind of quick, short brush strokes that energize everything Pat paints indeed evoke the master and no other. The type of perspective used, the sorts of colour choices, the framing and splicing of the composition, and the subject matters- laneways, churches, flowers, faces, skies, landscapes, fields- all of these things have the feeling of deep homage to Vincent. I can’t help but wonder at the connections, the statements Pat has made about not really being there during the process, not premeditating the work, acting as an oracle.

“When I paint, it’s almost like I’m in some sort of state,” Pat tells me.  “Like runner’s high. Most runners will tell you that they cannot remember any details of the five miles they just covered. For me it’s the same thing. …. To me, painting is 100% freeing, connecting, maybe even connecting with God.”

Depression and madness cut Vincent’s life short at 37 years.  Outside of grade school, Pat didn’t start painting until he was 40- and then he did so furiously. Vincent sold only one painting in his lifetime. He would have wanted to sell more, and to have more time to paint, take his distinctive style to the next level. Could Pat be his channel? Or a reincarnation? Well, stranger things have happened…

Pat says he could talk about Van Gogh forever, and whether or not it’s conscious, I feel that he exudes a playfulness that celebrates the parallels. In Ballet of the Silent Mind, a dancer stands before two paintings that show Van Goghian chairs. Chives or Chinese lanterns in vases tribute the composition and vividness of the famous million dollar sunflowers. The many churches in Pat’s work suggest the rambling angles of the Church at Auvers. The dark swirling skies are more than a little evocative of the unforgettable Starry Night. For whatever reason, the spirit of Van Gogh is part of Pat’s work, a blessing and honour.

Or, as Pat suggested, a curse? Because even with this uncanny high honour of effortlessly conjuring one of the greatest artists of all time, it must be odd to represent the limelight that another never had.

And of course, Pat has many distinctions in his style that are difficult to convey in words. The parallels to Van Gogh are in no way detracting from a body of work that is wholly original. The purity of colour, as mentioned, is breathtaking.  Each piece is so glossy and shiny that the paint still looks wet. There’s a surreal, dreamy quality as recurring characters like nuns or accordion players enter the works. And some of the works are unmistakably Canadian, like the beautiful Northern Lights and Silver Birch. Occasionally, an oeuvre veers completely away from everything else, like Apology, which is sort of like Keith Haring and Kandinsky at the same time.

And then there’s the other part of the ‘curse. Depression. “I have battled alcohol since my 20s and I’ve been diagnosed with major depression. I think very creative people are so sensitive that problems or obstacles tend to be too much to deal with. A misdirection of fear or vulnerability,” Pat confides. “The worst enemy of the artist is fear.”

“There have been many days when I cannot paint due to depression. I don’t force the issue,” Pat says.  “But another one of my rules is that there will be no darkness in my work. I will not subject the viewer to the dark places in life. My job is to lift people up… not to share some horrific thing because I feel that I must. There would be no light without darkness, and it’s my job to show light. I really hope that come across.”

Pat says surviving his childhood is his greatest accomplishment. “I will not get into the details of it but I will say that the first nine years of my life were full of trauma, violence, tragedy, loss, and confusion.”

“More than anything…I long to become one with God. Becoming one, instead of being lost. Money or material things mean little to me. I have been extremely poor and middle class. I have climbed the corporate ladder to great heights only to fall off the ladder. I have dined with artists, writers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs. I have also dined with the poor, the insane, criminals, addicts, and have-nots. We are all the same, deep down, we all want the same things.”

That’s what I see reflected in the light of his artwork, in the attention brought to vivid objects or paths or angles we may miss along the way if we’re not watching. I see that beauty that’s reflected off the darkness, just as the luminous moon dances diamond ripples across dark waters.

“My eyes have never been wider than they are right now,” the artist tells me.  “There is so much to learn, to forgive and to let go of. If anything I am ultimately grateful.” He feels it is amazing to be here, to be able to create, to feel the connection with spirit, or God, those forces beyond ourselves that are mysterious and majestic.

“If I had a ‘normal’ upbringing, I think I would be selling used cars or vinyl siding,” he says.

Contact artist Pat Moffatt at patttygo@hotmail.com.

See over 100 of his works at http://www.artmajeur.com/?login=moffatt&go=artworks/display_list_galleries.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

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