Year: 2010

Leo Igwe and his father were arrested this morning.

The police team was led by Dr Edward Uwa the university leacturer who raped a ten year old student Miss Daberechi Anongam…About three years ago, Dr Uwa invited Ms Daberechi Anongam to do some house chores for him and forced her to bed, covering her mouth and raped her. She sustained several injuries in her private part. Leo Igwe and his family members led an intensive campaign for justice for Ms Daberechi. After a lot of intrigues,the police now started a prosecution on the matter at Ahiazu magistrate court Imo State. Since then, Leo Igwe and his family have known no peace as several pettitions have been written against them to intimidate them to submission and to abandon the struggle for justice.

Now they’ve been accused of murdering someone – someone who died of AIDS some time ago.

Fortunately, Leo and his father have now been released on bail, but they’re obviously still vulnerable to being framed. Attention must be paid.

A commentator at Comment is Free explains about the axe-attack on Kurt Westergaard the other day.

It was the latest in a string of attempted attacks that can be traced directly to the offence caused by Westergaard’s cartoons for Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

Unbelievable, isn’t it? A guy with an axe broke into Westergaard’s house and made an earnest effort to chop him up with it, and Nancy Graham Holm is pointing the finger of blame at Westergaard. For drawing a cartoon.

Why did the editors of Jyllands-Posten want to mock Islam in this way? Some of us believed it was in bad taste and also cruel. Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act. As a journalist now living in the same town as Westergaard, I thought some at Jyllands-Posten had acted like petulant adolescents. Danes fail to perceive the fact that they have developed a society deeply suspicious of religion. This is the real issue between Denmark and Muslim extremists, not freedom of speech. The free society precept is merely an attempt to give the perpetrators the moral high ground when actually it is a smokescreen for a deeply rooted prejudice, not against Muslims, but against religion per se. Muslims are in love with their faith. And many Danes are suspicious of anyone who loves religion.

So the real villains here are the cruel heartless Danes who are not charmed by religion. The guy with the axe is just an understandably upset victim of the horrible secular Danes, who don’t share his tender erotic love for Islam.

Now the Danes won’t back down and the few but fatally insane radical extremists will continue the fight…This time, Westergaard’s attacker was caught – but someone else is out there waiting for an opportunity to strike again.

Because the Danes won’t back down, which they ought to do, because these people with the axes are so reasonable and fair and modest in their demands. All the Danes have to do is apologize for something one newspaper did and promise never to do it again. A mere nothing! It’s so simple – there are these maniacs saying ‘we want to kill you and we’re going to do it’ and if only everyone apologizes to them, everything will be all right. Can’t you see that? Of course you can. Just lie down – there you go – close your eyes – hands together, like that, that’s right – is that too loose?

But really. What a disgusting piece.

Chris Mooney is still at it, telling ‘scientists’ what they must do. They must learn to ‘communicate’ better. They must also learn to reassure trembling theists better. They keep not doing that, and Chris Mooney is getting pretty tired of the way they don’t listen to him.

…at its core, the objection to evolution isn’t about science at all, but about perceived threats to faith and moral values. The only way to defuse the conflict is to assuage these fundamental fears. Yet this drags many scientists out of their comfort zone: They’re not priests or theologians and don’t know how to sound like them. Many refuse to try; others go to the opposite extreme of advocating vociferous and confrontational atheism.

Isn’t that irritating? Mooney keeps telling them, yet they go right on being atheist and saying why they are atheist. It’s so perverse and obstinate and naughty. After all Mooney has infallible knowledge of what is the right thing to do and what actions will cause what results, so it’s just unconscionable that ‘scientists’ won’t obey him.

Ironically, to increase support for the teaching of evolution, scientists must join forces with — and show more understanding of — religion. Scientists who are believers also need to be more vocal about how they reconcile science and faith.

They must, you see – not they could, or they should, or it might help if they; no, they must. According to Chris Mooney. That’s how we know he has infallible knowledge of what will cause what to happen – it’s because he’s so bossy.

In other words, what’s needed is less “pure science” on its own — although of course scientists must continue to speak in scientifically accurate terms — and more engagement with the concerns of nonscientific audiences. In response to that argument, many researchers will say: “Why target us? We’re the good guys. And if we become more media savvy, we’ll risk our credibility.” There is only one answer to this objection: “Look all around you — at Climategate, at the unending evolution wars — and ask, are your efforts working?” The answer, surely, is no.

The answer is ‘no’ if and only if your definition of ‘working’ is one peculiar to Chris Mooney. What he means is not ‘are your efforts working?’ but ‘are particular things going the way I would like them to go?’ and it simply is not written into the structure of the universe that scientists as such are obliged to do whatever will make things go the way Chris Mooney would like them to; not even if Mooney’s wishes are on the whole sensible wishes. Mooney does have sensible wishes, but they’re not the only possible wishes, and his version of ‘working’ is not the only possible version of ‘working.’ Scientists spending their time being scientists rather than being ‘media savvy’ suck ups and soothers and appeasers makes a lot of things ‘work’ and it may just not be on the cards for them to add political maneuvering to the menu. It’s also just not as obvious as Mooney thinks it is that if scientists did do that, the things Mooney wants to work would work. He has great and unexplained certainty that it is obvious, but pretty much no one else does.

On other topics, including evolution, scientists must recognize that more than scientific matters are at stake, and either address the moral and ethical issues themselves, or pair with those who can (in the case of evolution, religious leaders and scientists such as Giberson and National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins).

Bossy. Bossy bossy bossy. He really should do something about that – being an expert in communication and all. It’s way off-putting to have a young fella like him telling you what you must do, especially when what you must do is something as rebarbative as either trying to talk ‘moral and ethical’ sludge to theists or pair with Karl Giberson or Francis Collins for the purpose.

Maybe what ought to happen is that scientists ought to start writing articles for the Washington Post telling communication experts what they must do to make things work. That would be entertaining.