Witchy Woman

"A short Iranian documentary recently translated by the Middle East Media Research Institue and published on the Jerusalem Post's website claims that the teen wizard hero of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling books and movies is being used to promote Zionist propaganda. The five-minute segment (video below), which aired on Iranian news channel IRINN on December 15, shows clips from 2002's "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" while several commentators offer their explanations of the symbolism in the series."Now more than ever," the Iranian film's narrator says, "this tool serves to spread the dark and evil essence of Zionism and its goals."

The commentators point to several different elements of the story as evidence of a Zionist agenda - pointing to the themes of witchcraft and wizardry, which the documentary ties to Kabbalah, the study of Jewish mysticism."

""[The Zionists] are trying to convince viewers that because there is no easy way to distance oneself from witchraft, Satan and the like…they are saying indirectly, 'Join us,'" says Ali Asghar Sa’adati, billed as an Iranian expert on religious cinema."

"The IRINN piece also looks to the battle over "pure" wizarding blood as evidence of a Zionist subtext."

"Iranian film critic Sa'id Mostaghasi, meanwhile, sees Harry raised up as a Messianic figure, and his final battle with the Dark Lord Voldemort as being akin to the End of Days."[The Zionists] support Harry Potter because he is the promised Messiah," Mostaghasi says. "As you can see, he has the same traits and wants to defeat a dark force, which in this film is depicted as Voldemort. In the sixth episode, there is even mention of the War of Armageddon."

"That's Rape
By Dan Savage
I'm an 18-year-old straight female. Two nights ago, I went to a party. My ex-boyfriend was present, but my current boyfriend was not. I had several beers, and while I wasn't drunk, I was tipsy. I had to go to my car to get my cell phone, and my ex offered to accompany me. When we got to the car, he pushed me against the car and started making out with me. I tried to push him away and said, "No, I can't" several times. He kept trying to pull my pants down, and every time he did, I pulled them back up. He took his dick out and tried again to pull down my pants. I know it sounds stupid, but all I could get out were meek "nos" and "I can'ts." I was afraid of a confrontation because he and I have been friendly since we broke up.
I eventually discontinued my attempts to pull my pants back up because I figured the easiest way to get out of this situation was to let him finish. He had sex with me. I wanted to cry the whole time, but as much as I wanted to scream, "Stop! Get the fuck off of me!" I couldn't get the words out.
I called my boyfriend when I got home and told him what happened. He is angry because he thinks I had a part in it. I don't know how to make him understand how many times I said no and how at first I physically stopped my ex from taking my clothes off. My boyfriend and I have been through a lot together, and we talked about getting married one day. I never wanted to cheat on him, and while I feel guilty about what happened, I think he's being harsh on me considering I succumbed to force.
I've apologized again and again, but I don't know how to make things right. I still don't want a confrontation with the ex. I just want to forget about him and never see him or speak to him again. I just want things to be okay again with my boyfriend. Is there anything I can do or say to make him understand?
Date Rape Engenders Awful Depression
Understand that you were raped, DREAD—date-ish raped, acquaintance-ish raped, gray-area-ish raped, blurry-booze-soaked-lines raped, and raped under circumstances that would make bringing charges a futile exercise. But raped. Your ex kept coming at you, and you were paralyzed by a set of inhibitions—a desire to avoid confrontation at all costs (even the cost of your own violation), a desire to avoid making your victimizer feel bad—that are pounded into the heads of girls and young women. Your ex exploited this vulnerability. Your ex may not think he raped you since you finally "let him," and perhaps he interprets that as consent and so, distressingly, does your boyfriend. But raped you were.
So what do you do now? I'd suggest a bit more contact with your ex. You need to confront him—for your own sake, DREAD, but also for the sake of all other women he's going to encounter over the course of his life. If you can't face him, call him. If you can't speak to him, write him (a letter, not an e-mail). Wherever he is right now, he's rationalizing away his responsibility for what happened. He may be telling himself that he was drunk, that you were drunk, and that, sure, he may have been aggressive at first, but that you came around and enjoyed it as much as he did. He needs to hear from you that you regard—and, for what it's worth, I regard—what happened as rape. Tell him that he didn't get away with it—that he raped you, you know it, and now he knows it. Then tell him that if the circumstances were just a little less ambiguous, DREAD, that you would be going to the police.
Hell, tell him you still might. Put the fear of God into him.
Then you need to confront the boyfriend: If your boyfriend can't take your side, DREAD, if he can't see what really happened here, if he insists on victimizing you, too, then you don't need him in your life any more than you need your ex in your life."

"(New York City) A Wall Street currency trader is suing his former bosses claiming he was subjected to homophobic slurs after he said he did not eat meat.

Ryan Pacifico worked in the New York office of Calyon in the Americas, a firm owned by Credit Agricole CIB of France.

According to Pacifico’s suit, filed in a Manhattan court, he was doing well at the company until he got a new boss.
The discrimination suit names the supervisor, Robert Catalanello, Calyon, and one
other employee.
Pacifico claims that after complaining about the slurs he was fired last March.
In papers filed with the court, Pacifico claims that when Catalanello learned the 28-year-old trader did not eat meat, he called him “a vegetarian homo.” The slurs continued when Catalanello saw a photo of Pacifico in running tights.
The court papers say that Pacifico is not gay and married, but that the law protecting workers from homophobia in the workplace extend to heterosexuals.
The company has not commented on the lawsuit. “They associated being a vegetarian with being gay,” Pacifico’s attorney Rick Ostrove told The Daily News. “It’s a ridiculous male stereotype that only real men eat meat.”

"So eating healthy/losing weight is a huge can of worms. I have several health issues so when I exercise everything below my knees soon hurts. My family has been on my case basically ever since high school, when I put on the weight after my first foot surgery. So I tend to get easily upset over my weight, just grocery shopping has been known to bring me to the brink of tears. I realized I really can’t do this without a support system.
I play Dungeons and Dragons a couple nights a week, and on those nights there’s the junk food/7-11 pilgrimage. Sunday night, most recent game night, I announced my plans to not indulge in junk (i.e. no more bags of Doritos to myself and energy drinks in the course of one game). Cheese is one of my true loves, next to crafting and s/o. “Bob” is a big guy, and really great cook of unhealthy stuff. He started everyone in a
round of teasing me with, “Jer is so full of Brie.” Or “I promise I won’t mention those compressed bits of dairy curd.” “So no Swiss for insert my character’s name here?” It wouldn’t stop, even after I threatened to stab everyone with size 2 Addi Turbos [knitting needles]. I almost started crying.
Luckily, my s/o and I are doing this together and he cooks on game nights when I don’t have time after work.
The plan of attack is what I did when I was on LA Weight Loss (but couldn’t afford that much food/so many trips to the store at the time nor driving across town to the center, as well as shame when I fell off the wagon for a couple of months).
Weight: No idea, perhaps around 200?

Highest weight ever was 205

Height: 5’3”

Size: 18

Goal: 140?

Goal Size: 10-12?

Veggies: 4 servings

Fruit: 3 servings

Carbs: 2 servings

Protein: 2 servings

Dairy: 1 serving :( Fat: 1 serving Water: 8 glasses Exercise: When I can get it, in addition to bellydance with friends a couple of hours once a week.
Today: low fat string cheese, an apple, applesauce cup, a can of Progresso Healthy Request Soup, two cups of coffee (creamer added, which was still in the fridge and needs to be finished to make room for low-fat versions), and no water.
Not too bad, but could be better.
Edited because a stated goal is a good thing. I don’t really know how much I want to lose, but at least 50 pounds would be good."

"So I have this habit of occasionally grabbing my belly (where I carry almost all of my excess fat i.e. anywhere else but my boobs) with both hands and just jiggling it up and down. Sometimes I’ll yell at it in frustration. Sometimes I do it just to make me laugh. Sometimes it’s to remind me why I’m doing this. The past couple of days, it’s felt, I dunno, somehow looser. Less dense.
Being an anti-scaleworshipper, I hopped on my non-digital one. And I’ve lost five pounds since I last posted. Granted, I was fairly bad last week for my birthday (two
parties, one involving pizza and cheesecake, the other lots of rich Italian food).
But I’ve been hiking (not uphill really because we’re working up to that) at least once a week. I haven’t been drinking enough water because I work in a cold warehouse and the thought of cold water is enough to make me run for the coffee. And when I really want junk food, I have some. Not an entire bag of chips, which I can do without even blinking, but last night I wanted jerky and a couple of mini chocolate donuts. So I did, but my dinner wasn’t just junk (which was normal on game nights for me)."

"(Vancouver, British Columbia) The man described as the ringleader in killing of a gay man in a Vancouver park eight years ago is being released early from prison after serving four years of a Ryan Cran was convicted of manslaughter in 2005 in the slaying of Aaron Webster.
Webster’s naked body was found in a pool of blood on a footpath near a public parking lot in a gay cruising area of Vancouver’s Stanley Park in November 2001. An autopsy showed he had been beaten to death with a blunt instrument, probably a baseball bat. Stanley Park was a well known cruising area and the killing galvanized
Vancouver’s gay community and police at the time.
Cran was sentenced to six years in prison, while two young offenders received lesser terms after admitting their roles in the November 2001 beating. A fourth man was found not guilty.
At Cran’s sentencing, prosecutors asked for a six- to nine-year sentence, but did not seek to have the case treated as a hate crime to allow for a longer sentence - something that angered Webster’s family and BC LGBT activists.
Nevertheless, at the sentencing hearing, the judge was told that Cran had not shown any remorse for the killing. The prosecutor said that the pack of armed men were looking to hunt down another human being for entertainment.
The two juveniles were released after serving two years in a youth detention center.
During his four years behind bars, Cran launched several unsuccessful appeals. Under Canadian law, a prisoner can be freed after serving two-thirds of a sentence if there have been no problems during the incarceration.
Webster’s cousin Denise Norman had lobbied the National Parole Board to have Cran banned from the predominantly gay West End where the park was located.
The board disregarded Norman’s plea. Cran’s release conditions only require counseling, refraining from alcohol, and having no contact with Webster’s family."

"Two gay Arizona men have begun a voter initiative to legalize civil partnerships in the state.
Gino Meriano and Philip Cotton filed notice of the proposal with the Secretary of State’s Office, the first step to begin collecting signatures to have the question put to voters in 2010.
“This was a special moment and one that Philip and I will not forget, at last a new start and fresh approach for Arizona by bringing a new concept that will provide same-sex couples full and equal legal rights and protection that is well overdue,” Meriano said in a statement.
To get the question placed on the ballot they will need to collect 230,047 valid signatures.
If approved, the measure would provide almost all of the rights and obligations of marriage that are covered under Arizona law. That would include tax benefits currently available only to married couples, partner rights to determine each other’s care if one is unable to make medical decisions, inclusion in domestic violence laws and the ability to collect benefits after a partner’s death or to inherit a partner’s assets on death."

"Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, two of the child actors in “Slumdog Millionaire,” are still living in the slums of Mumbai, despite the film’s $14 million budget and worldwide success. Ali earned 500 British pounds ($710) for one year’s work and Ismail earned 1700 pounds ($2414), “less than many Indian domestic servants“:
Both children were found places in a local school and receive £20 a month for books and food. However, they continue to live in grinding poverty and their families say they have received no details of the trust funds set up in their names. Their parents said that they had hoped the film would be their ticket out of the slums, and that its success had made them realise how little their children had been paid.
Ismail is in fact “worse off” now, as his “family’s illegal hut was demolished by the local authorities and he now sleeps under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin.” Ali lives nearby — in a “hut.” A Fox Searchlight spokesperson said he is “proud” of their treatment and boasted, “For 30 days work, the children were paid three times the average local annual adult salary.”"

"This week, the focus is on contraceptives. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has claimed that the package would spend “hundreds of millions on contraceptives.” Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about the provision.
Pelosi replied:
PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

Here is the actual text from the stimulus package’s summary:
State Option to Cover Family Planning Services. Under current law, the Secretary has the authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to grant waivers to states to allow them to cover family planning services and supplies to low-income women who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid. The bill would give states the option to provide such coverage without obtaining a waiver. States could continue to use the existing waiver authority if they preferred.

Like other portions of the stimulus bill, this measure would not only aid states, but also provide preventative, cost-saving health care to help low-income women support their families and keep working. It focuses on access to recommended services and contraception to prevent unplanned pregnancies and promote maternal and infant health — not abortion. ThinkProgress has learned that an upcoming Congressional Budget Office report estimates that this change would save $200 million over five years and $700 million over 10."

"Democratic party politicians in Maryland have announced plans to legislate against surveillance of non-violent groups after a gay rights activists were targeted by state police.
Equality Maryland, a group with thousands of members, works to secure and protect the rights of LGBT Marylanders by promoting legislative initiatives at state, county and municipal level using professional lobbyists and legislative staff.
It was one of several non-violent groups deemed a security threat by the Homeland
Security and Intelligence Division of Maryland State Police, who kept dossiers on activists and protests.
State Senator Jamie Raskin is one of those proposing new legislation:
“The State Police are not Maryland's thought police," he said.
"Marylanders have a right to work for environmental protection, an end to the death penalty, marriage equality, peace, and bike lanes without being spied upon and called terrorists by law enforcement officials.
"Our bill will forbid covert tactics against our citizens unless there is specific reasonable suspicion that they are engaged in criminal activity.
"It will also forbid the Orwellian practice of keeping political dossiers on citizens that are not part of actual criminal investigations. At a time of staggering financial crisis, let's stop wasting our money spying on people nonviolently exercising their political freedom."
Police have said they will purge the existing files."

"A majority in the state House has signed on as co-sponsors of a bill that would give same-sex couples in Hawaii all of the rights of marriage but without the name. But whether the bill will make it to a vote on the floor depends on just a couple of committee members who are expressing reservations.
If passed, the measure would legalize civil unions with all of the benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage. It would also recognize domestic partnerships entered into in other states where they are legal. Marriages from Massachusetts and Connecticut would be regarded as civil unions. Under the legislation, same-sex couples would have to obtain a license and then have the civil union performed by a judge, a retired judge or a member of the clergy."

"The Shadow Justice Secretary has expressed support for an amendment to laws protecting lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
In May the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act created an offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.
However, an amendment by Tory peer Lord Waddington, a former Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, was added to the legislation.
His amendment to the offence of using threatening language with intent to stir up hatred on grounds of sexual orientation said that urging someone to change their sexuality should not count "of itself" as threatening or as intended to stir up hatred."

"While Lord Waddington claimed his amendment was about "free speech," in effect it gives people leeway to claim they were just following their religious beliefs if accused of inciting others to hate gay, lesbian or bisexual people."

"Treatment such as this makes me ashamed of the system we seem to be creating in this country," said Mr Grieve.
Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay equality organisation Stonewall, said the Waddington amendment has no effect on the law and categorised it as "a bit of red meat for the Tory Right."
"You would not put a clause in saying it is OK to hate Jewish people," he said."

"Guidance will be issued making crystal clear the difference between the trivial causing of offence and the criminal incitement to hatred," said Mr Summerskill.
"There is a catalogue of cases cited by the Christian Institute last year, not one of which withstood scrutiny.
"It is distressing that some organisations that claim to be Christian do not put as much emphasis on truth as one would expect."

"Around 3,000 armed troops have been patrolling Italian cities and guarding sensitive sites since August. Mr Berlusconi, who was re-elected for the third time last year, said the aim was to increase "ten-fold" the military presence in order to confront "an evil army" of criminals.
When the opposition said the soldiers had done nothing to reduce crime, Mr Berlusconi responded by saying that Italy did not have a large enough force to avoid the risk of attacks on women.
"We could not field a big enough force to avoid this risk [of rape]. We would need so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful," he said."

"The 72-year-old billionaire, whose fondness for flirting with women has earned him public reprimands from his wife, was accused of being flippant about a very serious matter.

"Berlusconi ought to refrain from saying offensive things about women," said Vittoria Franco, the shadow equality minister.
"Basically what he is saying is that if women leave home alone they run the risk of being raped or attacked because it is not possible to make the country safe," she said."

"Krispy Kreme, being the genial purveyor of glazed goodness that it is, decided to get in on the Obama inauguration craze and is offering one free doughnut to every costumer on January 20, Inauguration day, and released this seemingly innocuous press release:
"Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet 'free' can be."Well, The American Life League noticed the liberal use of the word choice and decided to blast the chain bakery for producing abortion doughnuts."The unfortunate reality of a post-Roe v. Wade America is that 'choice' is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of 'freedom of choice' is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand," the group's president, Judie Brown said in a statement.File this under "Overreactionary Wing Nuts" and another attempt of conservatives to redefine words for their political means (You can try to rewrite the Constitution, but not the dictionary). Of course, the "overreactionary libtard" counter to this is that conservatives want to demonize all choice from America until we're living under a fundamentalist dictatorship.
A fundamentalist dictatorship without doughnuts."

"One of Russia's top human rights lawyers was assassinated in the centre of Moscow yesterday in a killing apparently linked to his work defending opponents of the pro-Kremlin government in Chechnya.
Stanislav Markelov, 34, was shot in the head by a man using a pistol with a silencer in the middle of the afternoon on a busy Moscow street. Markelov worked as a lawyer for Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper whose special correspondent Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow in 2006. The paper's co-owner Alexander Lebedev last night said Markelov had dealt with Politkovskaya's case.
Before escaping, his killer also shot Anastasia Barburova, a 25-year-old trainee journalist also employed by Novaya Gazeta. She had been walking with the lawyer to the metro when the killer, who wore military fatigues, opened fire. Barburova died last night in hospital.
Witnesses said she tried to chase the assassin, who turned and shot her in the head. Lebedev said the newspaper had grown concerned for the safety of its staff on Saturday after it published an article about Chechen execution squads roaming around Moscow. Several staff were put under protection, he added.
Markelov was one of Russia's most prominent human rights advocates. As well as his work for Novaya Gazeta, he represented the family of an 18-year-old Chechen woman who was murdered and raped in 2000 by a drunken Russian army colonel. The case was one of the most notorious to arise out of the Kremlin's two savage Chechen wars.
Col Yuri Budanov snatched Kheda Kungayeva from her father's house during a late-night raid in 2000, killed her inside his tent, and then ordered his subordinates to secretly bury the body. He was convicted of murder in 2003, despite claiming he had temporarily gone insane and had mistaken her for a sniper.
Budanov was released from prison last week, 18 months early. The case had prompted outrage in Chechnya, and news of his release sparked protests across the republic. Hours before he was murdered yesterday, Markelov had said he planned to appeal Budanov's release. Human rights activists yesterday said they were appalled by Markelov's killing, which they compared to the murder of Politkovskaya. "We don't know who killed him. But we know he was killed for doing his job, without a shadow of a doubt," said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch in Moscow. "He was one of those people prepared to risk his life for the cause. He was funny, outrageous and sometimes quite obnoxious. He was a colleague and friend. We travelled to Chechnya together. He was always telling jokes, including the most obscene ones. I can't believe he's gone." She went on: "His murder is similar [in scale] to Politkovskaya's. He is the latest in a long line of strong critics of the state who have got killed. In each case the killers are never caught. We are just appalled that this has happened.' The lawyer was murdered outside a historic palace in upmarket Prechistenka Street.
Witnesses at the scene said there was no sound of gunshots. "It was 3pm. A passerby came in to call for an ambulance. She said a man and a woman were lying on the ground," Natalya Ivanova, who works in the chemist's opposite, said, adding: "The killing was outrageous. It was in broad daylight in a street full of people."
Russia's prosecutor general Yuri Chaika announced he was taking personal charge of the investigation. The assassin was described as of Slavic appearance, 5ft 11in tall and wearing a baseball cap.
Relatives of the dead Chechen woman yesterday said Markelov had received threats before his assassination.
"He said: 'I am being sent text messages, people are calling. They are saying they will kill me unless I stop the Budanov affair,'" her father, Visa Kungayev, told Ekho Moskvy radio. Last night sources suggested that the killers responsible for Poltikovskaya's murder may have been involved in yesterday's. Chechnya's president Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russia's prime minister Vladimir Putin, has been accused of involvement in Politkovskaya's death, one of several such charges he denies.
As well as the Budanov case, Markelov represented the family of a Chechen man who vanished last August. Mokhmadsalakh Masaev was abducted in Chechnya several weeks after giving an interview to Novaya Gazeta, in which he said he had been kept and tortured in a prison in Kadyrov's home village for four months.
Another critic of Chechnya's president, 27-year-old Umar Israilov, was shot dead in Vienna last week. Israilov had filed a complaint to the European court of human rights in 2006, alleging that Kadyrov had personally tortured him.
According to last week's New York Times, another Chechen, Artur Kurmakayev, claimed Kadyrov had a death list of 300 Chechens living abroad."

"Sources within the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice [CPVPV] in Saudi Arabia have revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the CPVPV will move to combat magic and those who practice it, and regulate the exercise of legitimate spiritual healing, by instituting a system designed to deal with such practices which are against Islamic Shariaa Law.

Sources close to the CPVPV leadership in the Saudi capital of Riyadh revealed that a number of legal consultancies were studying the draft version and procedural guidelines of this project. Asharq Al-Awsat managed to obtain a copy of this draft which gives the police the right to deal with witches and sorcerers, and the means to identify and convict them."

"The Christian cross is not an appropriate symbol to memorialize deceased veterans of many different faith perspectives and should not be displayed on government property, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has told a federal appeals court.
Americans United and other religious and civil liberties groups today asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court’s ruling holding that the Mt. Soledad cross in San Diego is a secular war memorial."

“American service personnel come from many different faiths and some follow no spiritual path at all,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It is disrespectful to our deceased veterans to use the symbol of only one faith to memorialize them all." “As a Christian minister, I know the cross has great meaning for many Christians,” Lynn continued, “but it is simply not an appropriate marker for non-Christians.”

“That the cross is used in a veterans’ memorial here does not make it secular,” asserts the brief. “In fact, as a burial marker, the cross has been used almost exclusively for Christian burials in order to convey a sectarian message that the deceased lived and died as a member of a particular Christian community. And as a monument in a veterans’ memorial, the cross conveys a similar sectarian message: that only fallen Christian soldiers are being remembered. Given the ‘commanding presence’ of the Mt. Soledad cross in relation to the rest of the memorial, the primary message that this cross communicates is religious, not secular.”
Added Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser, “The towering cross, visible for miles around, sends a message that the government favors and endorses Christianity, and it fails to honor the sacrifices of the many non-Christian soldiers who have given their lives in the service of their country.”