Disabled Girl Jailed in Pakistan

Whoa. This is ridiculous and outrageous! As advocates, what can we do, if anything, to help this girl and her family?

At the very least people should write to their elected officials and ask them to speak out about it. We must make our voices heard around the world!

Ivan

cyprusdisabilityforum

Pakistan police have decided to decline requests for bail for the eleven year old Christian girl who is accused of blasphemy on the grounds that releasing her would endanger her life and her family. The young girl is held in a state of shock and has not been able to say much to the police.

Christian human rights groups of Pakistan society are enraged and demand that the girl, who reportedly has Down’s syndrome, is released.

On the other hand, Muslim groups in Pakistan are now insisting she is burned alive for supposedly burning a Koran.

As a result of the controversy surrounding the case, Pakistan law is under scrutiny for imposing inhumane sentences on Christian citizens. Many Christian families who lived in the same neighbourhood as the young girl have also reportedly fled their homes in fear.

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Heated debate with family members

I was talking to my sister and mother about autism. Heated debate, ugh, got frustrated. They don’t understand about autism rights. Mom told me that the websites I visit for the real truth about autism, may not be true after all. I think I would know better, thank her very much.

This happened many months ago, and we cannot even really remember at all what exactly the content of the discussion was, except what was written above as a draft. I am pretty sure this is a common theme in the disability community; heated debates with nondisabled family members about advocacy related things. They think they know us better than we do! How many people have been told at some point in life, by family or relatives, that the time spent online seeking out POSITIVE writing about xyr disability, or positive advocacy, is wasted time?

Collaborative, Andrea and Athena

Middle Eastern Fiasco (Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine)

Middle East fiasco. Well it seems that there’s always something going on in this part of the world. 19 days ago Israel began a punishing military campaign against Lebanon, in response to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two soldiers on the Israeli-Lebanon border. Different sources of information on this conflict seem to disagree on whether said soldiers were on the Israeli or Lebanese side of the border. Either way, kidnapping soldiers is inexcusable but so is such a harsh military campaign that has killed upwards of 600 Lebanese civilians and about 50-60 Israeli civilians. These numbers might be outdated, but anyone reading should get the point. Such brutality begs the question: what the hell has this world come to?

Ivan, you wrote this quite a while ago, and there is much more material to be found on this topic…..if you look for some later, you could write an excellent piece on this topic…..

Yes Andrea, I did start writing this before, but I really cannot remember where I was going with it, because it was so very long ago that I we had that particular conversation which triggered this draft, so alot of the memories have fallen away and there is too much to do now to try and dig around in mindspace for those ideas. The war with Lebanon vs Israel ended some time ago, but now Israelis are at war with Palestinians again. That is really nothing new. And as usual the West and America is doing very little about it. We want to be Bibi’s bitch I suppose.
Why, I have no clue. They are causing more problems than anything else right now. Because of our continued blind support of the Israeli regime, we are fomenting resentment against us in the Arab world and inspiring people to resort to terrorism in the name of freeing Palestine from the Israeli stranglehold. Is any ally worth that kind of sacrifice? I really wonder. Now I don’t have any hatred for the Israeli people, but I do feel that they do have a responsibility to speak out against their own government’s hostility towards the Palestinians. Recently on Twitter there have been a few activist Israelis who call themselves “refusers” because they are refusing to do military service which is required for all able-bodied men and women 18 or over in Israel. I hope this movement grows and continues.
Ivan

Response to a blog post on “Autisable”

I read a blog post on a site called Autisable. The topic was Autism and Divorce.

I’m way too overloaded at the moment to really go into what I think about this but…….I’m reposting a comment I wrote on the blog, here.

People really need to think through their commitment to one another……and to any future children…..
Special needs happen. It’s a chance you have when you decide to have a kid. I’m autistic myself.
My parents have been married for 30 years (will be 31 years in May) and I’ve been around for 26 of those years. They managed to make it work. Granted I am verbal and have been since age 3, I never smeared poo that I can recall, probably didn’t have massive public meltdowns……I wasn’t connected enough to the world for that……though I did interact with others, I wasn’t “all there” so to speak…..I was the only one who knew that though, or so I thought.
I have heard about financial struggles that can come with bringing up special needs children. Part of this I think can be avoided……don’t spend money on therapies or diets or whatever that are questionable at best……had more to say but now am overloaded and hungry so enough for now.
A marriage is a COMMITMENT. Having children is a COMMITMENT……..
Remember that, folks.
And before anyone says “well what if a mom of an autistic child cheats on her husband, what then..”…well, use common sense. It all goes back to the COMMITMENT part.
If you can’t commit, don’t get married or don’t have kids…….one or more of them could end up with special needs……not only autistic, but perhaps other physical issues also………
The Integral

Whoa, what the heck is this?

What a shock……to see the blog layout changed so drastically. Not sure if I like it yet…………

Poopy overload! My overload level is……….infinite……….1/x where x=0.

Gah…….help……..the integrals are all diverging!!!!!!!!

Wait……..isn’t The Integral divergent already?

I think she said so at some point

Ivan is coming back soon yay! He’s been gone for……..3 weeks now. He took two weeks off and then boom, Aunt Flo came so the lucky bum got an extra week of vacation. The Integral and I will both be relieved but………he comes right in time for finals, which are math so they will be done by………you guessed it………The Integral.

Ivan is more of an Economics person. From Calculus both he and I prefer differentiation over integration……The Integral loves it all.

She had a bit of trouble with Elementary Linear Algebra at first……..

Wow I’m surprised I have a lot to say even with being this overloaded. Darn Ivan for starting smoking at 19…..it used to be just his thing, but now we’re all doing it.

The semester is almost over…….hooray! School is cool but……..The Integral and I need a break.

Well, off to continue Ivan’s Terrible Habit……

Til Next Time

The Humble Poopyhead, Athena

Some things we need to learn to blog better (feedback greatly appreciated)

1. how can we make links blue, so that people can click on them to read whatever we are referencing?

I’ll update this post with new questions as they come up……..

all of us

UPDATE: Problem 1 has been SOLVED, thanks to “ama” for providing us with an easy answer to the question.

2. How do we incorporate html into comments to others’ blog entries? We’ve seen many commenters adding links to articles they have found or posts they have written about a certain topic or topics in response to whatever they are commenting on.

Problem posted by Ivan, solution sought by all

UPDATE: Problem 2 has been SOLVED, thanks to “Rose” for providing us with an easy answer to the question. I did some experimentation and whoever was writing, was correct. Yay I understood something.

3. Is there a way to convert javascript to some other kind of script, for use in wordpress? WordPress.com does not support javascript so I cannot put widgets on my blog that use that script. Widgetbox.com has really neat widgets, but unfortunately they all use javascript….

Things I didn’t realize until much later

things I didn’t realize until much later:

-people on TV don’t respond to those watching at home. Because they can’t. The show has already been recorded and put on TV. The TV is an inanimate object and the actors on whatever show you’re watching, never see you sitting at home or wherever you might be sitting in front of a television set. I thought of this when I woke up rather late this morning (August 6th, 2006) when I thought of Peter Pan begging unknown people watching that movie to save Tinkerbell, his fairy friend, after she drank his medicine which had been poisoned by Captain Hook. (Here’s a bit of background info about where I was when I thought of this: I had just arrived at the home my family and I would be staying in for about the next two weeks.) Now mind you, this is the non-animated version of the film I am referring to. When he realizes that Tinkerbell has drunk his medicine and is dying as a result of the poison (she drank it to save him from being poisoned.), Peter, played by Mary Martin, says roughly the following, staring up into space, eyes directed as if gazing out of the set at the viewer: “Do you believe in fairies? Please, please believe…. If you believe, simply clap your hands and keep clapping to bring her back.” And then Tinkerbell begins to recover. But how? My sister and I sat on the couch clapping, obviously thinking that it would save her. (This is a memory of something that happened a long, long time ago. I cannot remember how many years ago now, but I don’t think I had hit puberty yet.) I believed for a long time that Tinkerbell survived as a result of our clapping, and held this believe for several years (I think) after that. I’ve never admitted that to people, for several reasons, including not having recalled this event until many years after the fact.

-that I can’t see my own eyes rolling or moving at all when I’m looking at them in the mirror, no matter how closely I look at them. A well-known autistic author mentions a similar experience in one of her books (elaborate if given permission. It was the part about looking at her face in the mirror, thinking it was another person, and then wondering why her face looked away when she looked away from the mirror.) I thought I had something seriously wrong with my eyes, and I also thought I was crazy, and that “everyone else must be able to watch their eyes roll in the mirror! Why not me?”

-that coughing up phlegm meant I had HIV/AIDS or some other terrible sickness. To this day we have no clue what led us to that conclusion, all we know is that we had that fear for a while.

I am sure there are other things related to these, that I have had trouble deciphering at some time or other. Reading Donna Williams’ “Somebody Somewhere,” specifically about her interaction with her friend K. and the mirror, was very vindicating. I realized there wasn’t something horribly wrong with me for not figuring out the above things so long ago.

Athena.

p.s. I included this in the category of embarrassing things not because I’m embarrassed at any aspect of being autistic, but because at the time I was pretty embarrassed that I couldn’t figure these things out.