Sometimes it does kick off though....and someone adds the smiley with the frown to his post

Yup. At least you don't talk about shooting and bombing within the first 10 replies.

It really shouldn't take that long; I'll have a talk with them.

Nope, but I do have a Samuri sword hanging next to my fireplace.....which some would call "redneck.

Because most of us don't have access to firearms, that privilege is reserved for the State and criminals.

Oh, the State doesn't appear to much care about the criminals with firearms, being more concerned that the majority shouldn't have access.

I am inclined to agree. You hear very little of the same attitude directed towards the generic Indian community and less so the specifics of the Hindu's and the warriors of Mr Singh.

What I do find interesting though is the increasing number of Pakistani women prepared to stand up for their beliefs and step away from the strictures of family and choose the their freedom over 'family'. Some, even here, pay a heavy price. My missus told me a story of a decade or so back of a woman she studied with who came to study, whose face was slashed open by her own brother for disprespecting the family by daring to get an education. Religion and exagerated male ego make dangerous bedfellows.

One of the realities is that in order for women to be free they don't just need to want to be free they have to stand up and fight to be free.

It's harder in this instance as the ramifications can be extremely violent but the reality is that if they stood up they would find a mountain behind them waiting to come down on the backward attitudes that enslave them.

The part of the viloence that makes me sadest to read about and having witnessed myself is the violence directed towards women from other women - and not just the matriach figures, but from sisters and cousins. The venom that the women I mentioned in my post received from her cousins was even worse. She stepped away from her whole family but she lived in constant fear of any of her relatives making her life unbearable.. the men with the physical violence, but the woman with the spite and the eldars with the ferocity of psychological malice and violent mental comptempt.

She said that it was as if the other women in the family resented her bravery and courage to do it - they could not, so they hated her for trying.. and succeeding. She was a brave lady and she never hid her livid scars and marks of violence. The thought that a brother would take a carving knife to the face of his younger sister sickens me beyond words. I will never understand the mythical musings of the spagetti monsters that makes people do this.

Slightly off topic, but women do not even complain about long queues for toilets at theatres, department stores etc - get real - it takes them longer, there are as many out there - have more toilets for them.