The Crommunist Manifesto

137 HIV/AIDS & Stigma (Canadian Edition Lite)

This past Saturday was World AIDS Day. If you didn’t know, that’s OK. Now you do. As I was walking up to the site of an anti-abortion hate group demonstration to go picket them, a group of people in my city were giving out free hugs to anyone who wanted one, and passing out red ribbons to spread a message of compassion for everyone who is presently living with or at risk of HIV/AIDS. And while prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS and raising awareness to reduce stigma faced by people living with HIV/AIDS are both really important sides of the conversation, there’s another side to it that often gets overlooked or completely ignored: institutionalized HIV/AIDS discrimination. For the purposes of relative brevity only, I am limiting the content of this post to HIV/AIDS discrimination in Canada, and will not be addressing the racial component (i.e., which racial groups are at highest risk). It should go without saying that this is already a loaded topic. I’m going to warm this post up by providing you readers with a video link for the trailer of a powerful documentary about the life-long effects of discriminatory North American laws (specifically in the U.S.) on HIV-positive people, before I break down some basic terminology:

HIV Is Not A Crime – A 2011 Documentary by Sean Strub

12 God, Jesus, Dad, and Me

December 5, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · crommunism · personal · religion

I was asked to contribute my ‘deconversion’ story to a book project about black non-belief. Since it’s (in my opinion) a pretty solid piece of writing, I thought I’d add it here. You can compare it to a previous occasion when I wrote this story, albeit in less detail.

I can’t tell the story of my ‘deconversion’ – my escape from faith – without telling the story of my father. Dad was born the youngest of seven in Guyana, a country geographically located in South America, politically located in the Caribbean, and geopolitically located in the third world. A British colony, Guyana was home to a simmering political dissatisfaction (which would be resolved during Dad’s adolescence with independence), ever-present racism, and serious poverty.

Dad, taking one of the few opportunities available to a bright young man, entered the Catholic priesthood. He was educated at the seminary, growing up with other priests in training. Dad also grew during this time as a musician and photographer. His missionary work took him all over the Caribbean, and eventually to Toronto, Canada as part of a foreign mission organized out of Scarborough.

Facing his own doubts, particularly around the church’s teachings on birth control (he would tell me, many years after I was born, that he felt as though he was contributing to the suffering of people he was supposed to help), Dad left the priesthood in the late ‘70s. It was also around that time that he met my mother, although he has repeatedly assured me that those two developments were not related in any way. … Continue Reading

15 PPP looks about to snap

December 4, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · conservativism · crapitalism · forces of stupid · politics

Imagine you had to talk to Republicans. Every day. And pretend they weren’t idiots. How long do you think you’d last before you just snapped?

Public Policy Polling looks like its patience is wearing thin:

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. Wefound that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore [emphasis mine].

An animated .gif of an elephant calf getting booted

Give in to your anger, PPP. Come join us on the snark side.

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11 Hilarious parody site skewers Catholic sainthood

December 4, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Catholic church · funny · religion

I am not sure why, I assume it has something to do with the fact that my name and e-mail is out there and searchable, but I regularly get spam e-mail from people hawking a book or offering me an “exclusive chance” to interview someone I’ve never heard of for my blog. Usually I reply with a simple “please remove me from your e-mail list”, but they continue to pour in unabated. Because I occasionally talk about religion, I often get this unsolicited spam from people hawking religious books on behalf of their clients – a feat of irony that tells me they don’t bother to read the blogs before they start pimping to them.

The joys of internet notoriety, folks.

Most of the time I delete them without reading, but yesterday I received an e-mail that, to the untrained eye looked like the same kind of spam, but was, upon closer inspection, actually an extremely clever bit of anti-Catholic parody: … Continue Reading

3 Say hello to the new neighbours!

Those of you who browse the front page may have noticed that it has grown by one name. What you maybe didn’t know is that it actually grew by two names. That’s right, folks, we’ve got some brand spankin’ new FTBloggers!

First up, Miriam Mogilevsky of Brute Reason:

Miriam is a progressive feminist atheist currently attending a Large Midwestern University and studying psychology. After that, she hopes to get a degree in social work and pursue a career that combines activism with counseling. When not doing school things, Miriam spends her time reading and writing about social justice, mental health, sexuality, and politics. Occasionally she also interacts with people and sleeps. A few of her other interests include Russian literature, photography, and Cheez-its. In addition, she enjoys asking people about their feelings.

We also have Near Earth Object, a blog by Paul Fidalgo

Paul Fidalgo is a writer, actor, musician, and professional skepto-atheist. As communications director for the Center for Inquiry (which totally does not endorse anything on this site), he writes the daily blog series The Morning Heresy, and is also a contributor to Friendly Atheist. He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and his original music can be enjoyed here. He lives in Maine with his wife Jessica and children Toby and Phoebe. You can endure his tweets as @PaulFidago.

Both Miriam and Paul are crazy-talented and friendly individuals, and I am quite psyched about their joining. Go and say hello!

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0 Kiva project: December 2012

Hey everyone, seeing as it’s the beginning of the month, it’s time once again to reach into the Kiva fund and spread some love. Here’s where this month’s funds went: … Continue Reading

3 #Eschaton2012: some additional reflections

December 3, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · Conferences · personal

While my earlier summary was a bit more formal, I thought I’d give some more personal thoughts on the way I thought the conference went. First off, the TL/DR version of this post is “I enjoyed the shit out of the conference”, so there’s that for people who don’t want to read that much.

Me at the conference — Photo credit: Frances Wicks (@ottawafran)

A few of my favourite things … Continue Reading

5 Crommunist’s #Eschaton2012 wrap-up

I spent this last weekend in Ottawa, attending the Eschaton2012 conference put on by CFI Ottawa. Invited speakers included biologist and blogger PZ Myers, Butterflies and Wheels author Ophelia Benson, No Longer Quivering’s Vyckie Garrison, Mangaka and educator Sara Mayhew, executive director of the National Center for Science Education Eugenie Scott, and a whole host of other truly impressive speakers and luminaries. And also me, for some reason. Yes, I received my very first invitation to speak at a skeptical conference, which was certainly a nerve-wracking experience. What follows is a brief summary of the weekend and my thoughts about it. … Continue Reading

6 Movie Friday: Jason Chu

November 30, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · history · movie · race · racism

I’m in Ottawa at the Eschaton2012 conference. Well… I guess right now I’m about to take a tour of the Supreme Court building, but that’s what I’m up to this weekend. I’ll be live-tweeting the event, so if you’re not following me on Twitter you should be.

Yesterday I talked about the conspicuous and consistent absence of voices of colour from stories that recognize their (our) agency in civil rights struggles. While black or brown faces might be present in stories, but it’s rarely to acknowledge that we were the architects, at least in part, or our own ascendancy from second-class to… well… whatever we are now.

It is hard to talk about this issue without pointing out the notable and near-complete absence of actors of Asian descent from anything but the most stereotypical roles. Again, roles when a group’s foreign-ness is their chief identifying feature only serve to perpetuate their ‘other’ status. This issue came to a head recently when La Jolla Playhouse cast a multi-racial group in a play set in China: … Continue Reading

10 Eschaton-bound

I am currently in some form of en route to my nation’s capital, the city of Ottawa, where I will be at the Eschaton2012 Conference giving a presentation entitled Don’t Go In There! Talking about race and racism in the time of the zombie apocalypse. There will be no surprises in it for those of you who are regular readers of my blog, but maybe the visual element (and the soothing sound of my gilded voice) will make it all the more impactful.

I’ll be shuffling around downtown Ottawa on Friday afternoon. If anyone’s interested in saying hello, but can’t go to the conference, I’ll have a bit of time. Fire me an e-mail and I will try to organize some kind of meetup before the start of the evening’s events.

Here’s a picture of a dog I saw one time:

A dog painted to resemble a tiger

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