Why Dan Hilliard Suck

Here's one that will have you screaming, WTF?! Stacey Fearnall has been fired for shaving her head to raise money for the charity, Cops for Cancer. She raised $2,700, but her boss told her she was fired from her waitress job, when she showed up to work with no hair. Her boss is Dan Hilliard, also known as an asshole. The restaurant is Nathaniel's, in Owen Sound, Ontario. Make sure you never eat there.

Obama has lost women 'with sexist campaign'

This has got to be one of the most absurd things I've read recently. Some women are, not surprisingly, pissed that Hillary Clinton is on the road the lose the US presidential nomination. They are so pissed however, that they are willing to turn to John McCain, instead of Obama, in the coming election, and charging Obama of running a sexist campaign. Chief among female Obama-haters, is Geraldine Ferraro -- a woman perhaps more insane than Clinton. Ferraro forwards the following evidence of Obama's sexist campaign:

• His response to Mrs Clinton's reminiscences about learning to shoot as a girl at her grandfather's summer cabin in Pennsylvania. Miss Ferraro said: "He walked up and down the stage with his microphone like a stand-up comic and ridiculed her as an Annie Oakley," she said, quoting his reference to the legendary female sharpshooter. "Would he have ridiculed a man by comparing him to John Wayne? Of course not."
• His apparently dismissive description of Mrs Clinton as "likeable enough" during a televised debate before the New Hampshire primaries.
• His role in an earlier debate in Philadelphia when several of the male candidates running at the time were said to have ganged up on her, prompting Mrs Clinton to complain about the "boy's club" of US politics.
• His "failure", Miss Ferraro claims, to speak out against other sexist acts such as lewd T-shirts, the men who shouted "Iron my shirt!" at Mrs Clinton and jibes about her "cackle". Mr Obama also apologised to a female reporter he called "sweetie" in an aside that received widespread coverage.

The absurdity of the accusation just floors me. Of course Obama must be sexist -- he's a black man; a muslim man; and he's friends with terrorists.

In Basra, there is no love for women

17-year-old Iraqi student, Rand Abdel-Qader, was beaten to death by her father and her two brothers for falling in love with a British soldier. The police arrested Abdel-Qader Ali for the murder, but released him two hours later, with congratulations for restoring his family honour. I can't comment further on this story. I don't have the words to respond coherently. These actions ... these animals ... they need another Saddam Hussein. You can read the interview of the murderer at the Guardian's site. Note that the details are horrifying.

Disemboweled and Torn Apart for Teaching Girls

The world does not need the Taliban. The world does not need Islamic fundamentalists. The world doesn't need fundamentalists, period. They should be killed. Everyone single one of them. Killed -- because if it's not them, it's us. This report from 2006 is a reminder of why the war in Afghanistan got as much support as it did; and why it's still a just war. If George W. hadn't fucked it all up by invading Iraq, the world would have been a different place today. Muslim moderates would have cheered to have the fundamentalists purged from the planet. Instead, George W. succeeded in irking Muslim moderates and turning a war against fundamentalists into a war against Islam. Way to go jackass.

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Killing Girls for Allah

There are some parts of the world that is dying need of a revolution. One such place is Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, prevented firefighters from rescuing girls from a burning school building, because they were not wearing the abaya. Men who attempted to rescue the girls were stopped, with the police telling them "it is a sinful to approach them." As a result, 15 girls were burned alive.

Stupid Women

The NYTimes chronicles a female circumcision event in Indonesia, where women take their daughters, usually before their 14th birthday, to have their genitals brutalize by older women who should really know better. It's a sickening, misogynic act, practiced to keep women in a station of life -- made much worse by women who offer up their daughters to this torture. The thumbnail image to this post is of a 9-month-old baby, who had her genitals mutilated. Backwards -- culturally and religiously. Some places of the world, people are still living in the dark ages.

Hermione's IMAX Enhancement

It's no secret that the media is obsessed with an idealized image of women -- and more and more, girls. The latest abuse comes courtesy of IMAX, for a digitally enhanced image promoting the latest Harry Potter flick. In a publicity poster featuring the main characters, the stars of the movie are posed in a dramatic shot. IMAX took the same image, which has been used to promote the film, and then altered it to make Hermione fit IMAX's idealized image of a young girl -- more blonde, slimmer waist, and an enlarged bust. The image has since been pulled from the IMAX site, but not before a whole lot of folks noticed. Emma Watson, who plays Hermione, is 17-years-old and portrays a 15-year-old Hermione in the movie. IMAX did more than just get this one wrong. Someone purposely made the decision to make Hermione more than Emma Watson was portraying her. Someone made the decision to make a 15-year-old Hermione's breast larger. That someone should be fired in my opinion. Was there really a need to sexualize Hermione to attract viewers to the movie?

The Murder of Du'a Khalil Aswad

If I had a magic wand, I would wave it for a lot of things -- one of them being fundamentalists. I would wipe the lot of them, regardless of the dogma they subscribe to, right off the planet. I wouldn't waste time on inflicting horrors before their existence is negated -- I would be in too much of a hurry to just get rid of them all.

What has caused my blood to boil is the news coming out of Iraq of the "honour killing" of 17-year-old Du'a Khalil Aswad, last month. Aswad was condemned to death by the men of her family, for being in love with a Sunni Muslim boy -- Aswad is a Yezidi. She was hiding out in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in a small town outside of the Kurdish capital of Mosul, when 8-9 men stormed the house and dragged her out to the street. They then proceeded to stone her for half-hour, until she died. A large crowd looked on, including security authorities. The entire incident was filmed and the story only broke when the video made it onto the internet.

Her name is Du'a Khalil Aswad. She was a girl. Men and religion murdered her. Her story should never be forgotten.

Designing Change

Limited thinking would view the poor as a burden to society, but if you buy C.K. Prahalad's bottom-of-the-pyramid theory, the 4-plus billion impoverished people in the world are a vast untapped market. If you're motivated solely by profits, you may limit your understanding of Prahalad's theory to bringing consumerism to the poor -- but if your aspirations are to close the inequalities that exist between those that have, and those that have don't, then this vast untapped market represents an opportunity to make a difference, even while eking out profits. The poster child for tapping into those at the bottom is Grameen Bank, with their micro-financing to aid those in developing nations towards self-sustainment.

Helping the poor help themselves is a novel idea that is taking off in philanthropy. It's not just about throwing endless sums of money at the vacuum of need -- but about wisely investing in the poor, so they can create an economic environment where the cycle of poverty can be slowed and even stopped. I've just found out about an organization, like Grameen Bank, that is investing in the poor, for a profit. Jacqueline Novogratz's Acumen Fund takes the micro-financing approach with venture funds, looking for businesses, business models and designing solutions to tap into the unmet needs of the poor -- and along the way, sometimes bringing home a small profit for their efforts that is then reinvested. What a virtuous cycle.

Acumen's $20 million investment portfolio is focused on health, water and housing, with seed money coming from some well known philanthropic organizations. Its website boasts some great success stories, such as a $325,000 loan to A to Z Textile in Tanzania, in which it lost $32,500, but got 5,000,000 Tanzanians mosquito nets to protect against malaria infection. A to Z Textile expects production to ramp up to 7 million nets. That impact, for a $325,000 investment. BusinessWeek tells the story of Acumen's equity investment in Drishtee, a startup in India, that rolls out information kiosks in rural India, complete with a computer, internet access, digital camera and fax machine. Drishtee offers the kiosks as franchise operations, allowing locals to own the kiosks that provide village access to health information, government resources and other necessities of modern India. Women it turned out made better franchise owners than men, as they open earlier and close later, but lacked skills and most banks in India do not lend to women. Acumen has invested in training village women in the basics of business and is working with an Indian bank to offer a guarantee to the bank's loans to women franchise owners -- aiming to prove to the bank that women are safe investment bets.

Jacqueline Novogratz, an American woman, making a difference to the lives of the poor women of India -- I like the female symmetry in this story -- noteworthy, since today is International Women's Day.

International Women's Day

International Women's Day (IWD) is marked on March 8, every year. It's a day set aside across the world to recognize the achievements of women everywhere -- although it is marked differently by different countries. In some countries, IWD is celebrated like Mother's Day or Valentine's Day -- whereas elsewhere, it's a day marked by the reaffirmation of the equal rights of women; a recognition that there is much more that needs to be done before there is no longer a need for the IWD. If you are female, this day should mean something to you. If you're male, this should also mean a whole lot to you, for you at least have a mother -- and may have a sister, wife, daughter or female friend -- and unfortunately, the world continues to do them a disservice because of their gender.

Here in Canada, women have greater rights than in most countries of the world -- aligned more or less with the status of women in other developed nations -- yet, there is much more work that needs to be done. The Status of Women government agency, which the Harper government has done quite a job taking apart, marks 2007 with the theme of Ending Violence Against Women: Action for Real Results -- which speaks volumes on how much still needs to be done in Canada.  If the theme alone doesn't shake your awareness, check out some of the publications on the Status of Women site.  The topics are deplorable.  As a Canadian, it is the responsibility of everyone of us to take action to end discriminatory practices, behaviours, and policies in our country.  As a citizen of the world, everyone of us needs to lend our voices to call for the elimination of discrimination against women -- for the plight of women in most parts of the world is reprehensible.