Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Violence in metaphor

    Crooked Timber has a statement on Erik Loomis. Before the statement, there is the background.

    This past Friday, in the wake of the tremendous grief and outrage millions of people felt over the Newtown mass shooting, Loomis tweeted the following:

    I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.

    Wayne LaPierre is the head of the National Rifle Association.

    It seems obvious to us that when Loomis called for LaPierre’s head on a stick, he had in mind something like this from the Urban Dictionary:

    A metaphor describing retaliation or punishment for another’s wrongdoing, or public outrage against an individual or group for the same reason.After the BP Oil Spill; many Americans would like to see Tony Hayward’s head on a stick, myself included.

    Well, I’ve become more leery of even metaphorical violent rhetoric over the past year and a half…but still that is pretty clearly a metaphor.

    Ever since putting someone’s head on a stick ceased to be a routine form of public punishment—indeed, the last instance of it we can think of is fictional (Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, though it references an actual event from the French Revolution)—calling for someone’s head has been a fairly conventional way to express one’s outrage or criticism. Two months ago, for example, right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds voiced his anger over the State Department’s lax provision of security in Benghazi by demanding, “Can we see some heads roll?”

    Yet that very same Glenn Reynolds is now accusing Loomis of using “eliminationist rhetoric.”

    And Loomis is being leaned on, rather heavily. Right-wing pundits have been shouting, and it’s worked.

    Loomis has already been questioned by the Rhode Island State Police, who told him that someone had informed the FBI that Loomis had threatened LaPierre’s life. Loomis also has been hauled into a meeting with his dean.  And now the president of the University of Rhode Island, where Loomis teaches, has issued the following statement:

    The University of Rhode Island does not condone acts or threats of violence. These remarks do not reflect the views of the institution and Erik Loomis does not speak on behalf of the University. The University is committed to fostering a safe, inclusive and equitable culture that aspires to promote positive change.

    CT responds.

    We do not expect any better of the orchestrators of this campaign—this is what they have done for many years, and doubtless will be doing for years to come. We do expect better of university administrators. Rather than standing behind a member of their faculty, the administration has sought to distance the university from Loomis.

    Even to suggest that Loomis’s tweet constitutes a “threat of violence” is an offense against the English language. We are dismayed that the university president completely fails to acknowledge the importance of academic freedom and of scholars’ freedom independently to express views (even intemperate ones) on topics of public importance.  This statement—unless it is swiftly corrected— should give alarm to scholars at the University of Rhode Island, to scholars who might one day consider associating themselves with this institution, and to academic and professional associations that value academic freedom.

    However, this is not merely a question of academic freedom. It also speaks to a broader set of rights to speak freely without the fear of being fired for controversial views that many of us have been flagging for years. Everyone should be clear what is going on. As a blogger at Atrios has pointed out, what the witch hunters want is for Loomis to be fired. Indeed, the calls have already begun (see comment thread here). Though Loomis has a union, his lack of tenure makes him vulnerable.

    We insist that the University of Rhode Island take a strong stand for the values of academic freedom and freedom of speech, that it not be intimidated by an artificially whipped-up media frenzy, that it affirm that the protections of the First Amendment require our collective enforcement, and that all employers—particularly, in this kind of case, university employers—have a special obligation to see that freedom of speech become a reality of everyday life.

    We urge all of you to contact the following three administrators at the University of Rhode Island:
    Dean Winnie Brownell: winnie@mail.uri.edu
    Provost Donald DeHays: ddehayes@uri.edu
    President David Dooley: davedooley@mail.uri.edu

    Be polite, be civil, be firm.

    We also call upon all academic and other bloggers to stand in support of Loomis. We invite others who wish to associate themselves with this statement to say so in the comments section to this post, and to republish this statement elsewhere.

    Loomis talks about metaphors and violence at Lawyers Guns and Money.

    But let’s also be clear–these people KNOW I am not calling for LaPierre’s assassination. They use language far surpassing anything I would ever say all the time. Here is Glenn Reynolds, so outraged by my intemperate language, asking “can we see some heads roll” over the Benghazi attacks. Does Reynolds literally want to see the head of Susan Rice decapitated from her body? Of course not. It’s a metaphor. I wouldn’t have even looked twice at that line because I know exactly what he means, even if I disagree with him. Not to mention that Reynolds has quite literally called for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. But I am today’s subject of the right-wing Two Minute Hate. Tomorrow it will be some other poor sap. This is all a game to these extremists, seeking to turn the tragedy of Newtown to focus on the real victims here–American white conservative gun owners. The fact that my intemperate language helped give them a lever to try and turn that narrative is unfortunate and I apologize for it. But of course they would have found any number of other people or situations where they would have done the same thing.

    And look, if I used violent metaphors, that’s a bad thing. I will admit that at certain moments such language might become part of my vocabulary. But then I’m a product of the same violent culture that makes real discussion about guns virtually impossible in this country. Scholars such as Richard Slotkin and Richard Maxwell Brown have spent whole careers exploring the theme of violence in American history. Others have noted the massive violent underpinnings of the United States ranging from antebellum mobs to lynchings to violence in the popular media. I probably shouldn’t use that language and certainly will be a lot more conscious going forward of not using it again, particularly since it doesn’t help in the battle against actual violence. Violence is a huge societal problem that influences all of us in various ways. Some may use violent metaphors to express their frustrations. Others join organizations that support assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons being in the hands of anyone without any sort of background check or regulation. I’ll leave it to you to decide who is the bigger problem.

    Quite so. As I mentioned, I’ve become more leery of even metaphorical violent rhetoric lately. But I don’t think the Malkins and Reynoldses should be able to get Erik Loomis fired.

  • Heed the warning of the Holy Father

    LeftSidePositive pointed out yesterday that when Catholic archbishops prate of freedom of conscience they are bullshitting, because they don’t believe in or promote other people’s freedom of conscience to have nothing to do with Catholic rules.

    This needs to be mentioned more often.

    The US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement on religious freedom last April. It is of course that kind of bullshit from beginning to end. They don’t mean religious freedom in general at all; they mean only “freedom” for them to coerce everyone else, including non-Catholics.

    We are Catholics. We are Americans. We are proud to be both, grateful for the gift of faith which is ours as Christian disciples, and grateful for the gift of liberty which is ours as American citizens. To be Catholic and American should mean not having to choose one over the other. Our allegiances are distinct, but they need not be contradictory, and should instead be complementary. That is the teaching of our Catholic faith, which obliges us to work together with fellow citizens for the common good of all who live in this land.

    No it doesn’t. Their Catholic faith obliges them to obey rules laid out by the Vatican. It obliges them to obey what they pretend are commands from god. That’s a different kind of thing from working together with fellow citizens for the common good of fellow citizens. (And how about working for the common good of all people?) Obeying god is god-centered; working with people for the common good is human-centered. The Catholic church is god-centered. It tries to elbow its way into secular matters in the hope that we won’t hate it so much, but it doesn’t mean a word of it. It does not work for the common good of people. It says it does, but it doesn’t.

    Freedom is not only for Americans, but we think of it as something of our special inheritance, fought for at a great price, and a heritage to be guarded now. We are stewards of this gift, not only for ourselves but for all nations and peoples who yearn to be free. Catholics in America have discharged this duty of guarding freedom admirably for many generations.

    Some Catholics have, no doubt. The Catholic church and its hierarchy have not.

    Catholics in America have been advocates for religious liberty, and the landmark teaching of the Second Vatican Council on religious liberty was influenced by the American experience. It is among the proudest boasts of the Church on these shores. We have been staunch defenders of religious liberty in the past. We have a solemn duty to discharge that duty today.

    No. No, no, no. You don’t let your own nuns have religious liberty – you monitor them and call them in for a scolding and do your best to force them to obey you. You excommunicate a nun who approved a life-saving abortion. You browbeat healthcare administrators who refuse to sign an agreement never to save a woman’s life via an abortion even when the fetus is doomed anyway. You don’t believe in religious liberty at all. You believe in liberty for yourselves to coerce everyone else.

    We need, therefore, to speak frankly with each other when our freedoms are threatened. Now is such a time. As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we address an urgent summons to our fellow Catholics and fellow Americans to be on guard, for religious liberty is under attack, both at home and abroad.

    This has been noticed both near and far. Pope Benedict XVI recently spoke about his worry that religious liberty in the United States is being weakened. He called it the “most cherished of American freedoms”—and indeed it is. All the more reason to heed the warning of the Holy Father, a friend of America and an ally in the defense of freedom, in his recent address to American bishops:

    Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.

    There it is, you see – “liberty” understood as the unfettered ability to hinder other people’s access to medical treatment and contraception. “Liberty” to take away the liberty of other people.

    Religious Liberty Under Attack—Concrete Examples

    Is our most cherished freedom truly under threat? Sadly, it is. This is not a theological or legal dispute without real world consequences. Consider the following:

    …

    Catholic foster care and adoption services. Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the state of Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services—by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.

    Their cherished freedom to interfere with other people.

    They are such operators.

  • Devon and homeopathy calling it quits

    There’s one bit of cheery news – an NHS “homeopathic outreach clinic” in Devon is closing because of falling demand.

    But why did such a clinic ever exist in the first place? Homeopathy isn’t a thing. The NHS doesn’t have outreach clinics that do bloodletting, does it? Or exorcisms? Or treatment for an excess of black bile?

    Patients who use the centre for treatments for conditions including rheumatism and allergies have reacted angrily to the news.

    The trust said patients would be offered continued care in Bristol.

    Greta Rankin, from Willand, is one of the patients against the closure.

    She said: “They will lose all that personalised expertise. The approach of the homeopathic doctors is completely different. If I want to continue I will have to go all the way to Bristol.”

    Expertise in what? How can you have expertise in homeopathy? You can’t overdose on homeopathic remedies (unless you take so much that the water kills you). That’s because there’s nothing in them to overdose on, so how can there be expertise? There can’t.

    It makes no sense for the NHS to pay for homeopathy.

    Detractors such as Keir Liddle of Edinburgh Skeptics say homeopathy is “against all the laws of physics and chemistry” because the initial ingredients are so diluted that all that is left is a “memory” in the water.

    The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, believes there should be no further NHS funding for homeopathy, saying it is concerned that scarce resources are being spent on a treatment with “no scientific evidence base to support its use”.

    I think the BBC’s Steven Brocklehurst must have misunderstood Keir Liddle. It’s homeopaths who claim there’s a “memory” left in the water; “detractors” think that claim is risible.

    He gives Keir the last word though, and that’s clearer.

    However, Mr Liddle, chair of the Edinburgh Skeptics, a society which promotes “science, reason and independent thinking”, says homeopathy is “not effective and not efficient, which is at odds with the NHS health care strategy”.

    He says: “A substance with nothing in it cannot possibly meet those demands.

    “Apart from that, it is unethical for a health care service to prescribe something they know is nothing better than a placebo because that means GPs are put in a position where they end up lying to patients, which is a position which is untenable ethically and morally, in our opinion.

    “Where applicable the treatments offered to patients in the health service should be evidence-based. They should be proved to be safe and effective in order that we are not wasting money treating people with things that don’t work.”

    We’re talking about “a substance with nothing in it.” Not even a memory.

     

  • Three more

    Three more anti-polio campaigners killed dead in Pakistan. That’s showing them.

    That makes 8 this week.

    Wednesday’s attacks all took place in the restive western frontier province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – one just outside the city of Peshawar and two others in the town of Charsadda. Two men and a woman have been killed.

    The volunteers were taking part in a three-day government-led drive, supported by the World Health Organisation and Unicef, to vaccinate tens of millions of children at risk from polio in Pakistan.

    After a decades-long struggle by multilateral organisations, governments and NGOs worldwide, the disease is now endemic only in three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

    Thank you Allah.

    Women health workers held protests in Karachi and the capital, Islamabad. “We go out and risk our lives to save other people’s children from being permanently handicapped, for what? So that our own children become orphans?” Ambreen Bibi, a health worker, said at the Islamabad protest.

    Women are such whiners.

     

     

     

  • Three more anti-polio campaigners shot dead in Pakistan

    Women health workers held protests in Karachi and Islamabad. “We go out and risk our lives to save other people’s children from being permanently handicapped, for what?”

  • Oh the door’s been unlocked for a week, hahahahaha

    Alber Saber is out on bail, Paul Fidalgo tells us. On the other hand, bail was posted a week ago, but he was kept in jail for another week just for shits and giggles, apparently. That’s nice.

    Daily News Egypt also notes that these kinds of charges about offending religious feelings have been on the rise under the presidency of Mohamed Morsi.

    Imagine my astonishment.

  • The archbishops want more women dead

    Well the four archbishops of Ireland have given their opinion of this radical new suggestion that it should be legal for hospitals to perform abortions when necessary to save the woman’s life. (H/t to Marie-Therese)

    The four Catholic Archbishops of Ireland: Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh; Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin; Archbishop Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel & Emly; and Archbishop Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam, have issued the following response to the decision today by the Government to legislate for abortion:

    Today’s decision by the Irish Government to legislate for abortion should be of the utmost concern to all.

    If what is being proposed were to become law, the careful balance between the equal right to life of a mother and her unborn child in current law and medical practice in Ireland would be fundamentally changed. It would pave the way for the direct and intentional killing of unborn children. This can never be morally justified in any circumstances.

    See? I keep saying – this is what they mean – never in any circumstances. Yes, even when the woman will die; yes, even when the fetus is already terminal.

    The dignity of the human person and the common good of humanity depend on our respect for the right to life of every person from the moment of conception to natural death. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights. It is the very basis for every other right we enjoy as persons.

    The lives of untold numbers of unborn children in this State now depend on the choices that will be made by our public representatives. The unavoidable choice that now faces all our public representatives is: will I chose to defend and vindicate the equal right to life of a mother and the child in her womb in all circumstances, or will I chose to licence the direct and intentional killing of the innocent baby in the womb?

    Moreover, on a decision of such fundamental moral importance every public representative is entitled to complete respect for the freedom of conscience. No one has the right to force or coerce someone to act against their conscience. Respect for this right is the very foundation of a free, civilised and democratic society.

    Don’t forget – they mean even a fetus of 17 or 11 or 3 weeks; they mean even if the fetus can’t survive no matter what; they mean those and the woman will die. They want to make abortion illegal and forbidden and unavailable even in those circumstances. They think it’s good that Savita Halappanavar is dead. They think that’s a good outcome, while it would have been a bad outcome if her fetus had been aborted and she were now alive. Notice that her fetus did not outlive her.

    All involved, especially public representatives, must consider the profound moral questions that arise in responding to today’s announcement by the Government. We encourage all to pray that our public representatives will be given the wisdom and courage to do what is right.

    Evil demon shithead evil godbothering evil bastards.

  • One by one by one they add up

    I’m going to piss off some people with this, but…

    I think the reaction to what happened at Newtown is a little bit out of proportion. Wait, I can explain. I don’t mean it wasn’t absolutely horrible. But the reaction seems to imply that it’s terribly out of the ordinary, and the fact is…it’s not nearly as out of the ordinary as it should be except in the fact that it was 20 children in one go.

    The US has a shamefully high rate of violence against children. The BBC reported on this more than a year ago.

    Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada’s and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year. Why is that?

    20,000 killed by family members (if the figures are correct). Two thousand a year; more than 5 a day. A Newtown every four days. Only worse, because the children in Newtown weren’t killed by their own families.

    The gun control issue makes me sick. I think we need to fix that. I always think we need to fix that. But I also think we should pay more attention to the one-at-a-time horrors.

  • Yes, it is a sin

    Cristina Odone is worried. What’s she worried about? She’s worried that Ireland is planning to change its abortion law – to legalize abortion when it’s necessary to save the woman’s life – on the basis of a mistake about what happened to Savita Halappanavar. Oh noes!

    I’m a Catholic but I believe abortion has to be legal. Yes, it is a sin; and yes, there are women who use it as contraception. But the risk of having a long roll call of tragic deaths like Savita’s is too cruel to contemplate. Like divorce, abortion should be available, but reserved as a last-resort nuclear option – and when the mother’s life is in danger is precisely such a scenario.

    The Irish U-turn over Savita’s death worries me, though. Is this the right result based on the wrong premise? As I have written here before, listening to the radio interview with the journalist who broke the story, we’re left with the distinct impression that she is not sure that Savita or her husband actually asked for, and were refused, a termination. Nor does she explain what condition the mother-to-be was in when she was admitted to hospital: in other words, was she healthy and her death was preventable by an abortion, or was she suffering from some other condition, which eventually killed her?

    And that’s the thing to worry about, clearly. Could Parveen Halappanavar be all wrong, or lying, about what happened at Galway University Hospital? Or could Savita have had some other mortal illness that had nothing to do with her pregnancy and that nobody knew about or mentioned to Praveen? That’s the thing to worry about, rather than the possibility (or likelihood) that this has happened many times in Ireland without a Praveen to go to the media about it, and rather than the need to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.

    That kind of thinking is the real “sin.”

  • Cristina Odone worries about Ireland’s changed abortion law

    Because when in doubt, let the woman die.

  • Ireland to legalize abortion when mother’s life is at risk

    Up until now the government has not enacted legislation to give certainty to doctors as to when terminations can be carried out and under what circumstances.

  • They would regret helping the “infidel” campaign against polio

    First, do no harm.

    First, don’t be evil.

    It’s strange how easily a lot of people lose sight of that basic thought, or never entertain it in the first place.

    What would be high on a list of harms not to do? Killing people who are working to prevent polio in a country where 35 children have been infected with polio this year, when nearly all other countries in the world are polio-free.

    High high high on the list. One, polio is bad; very very bad. Immunizing people against it is an unqualified good. Two, people who are working to immunize children against polio are doing a good thing, and don’t deserve to be killed for doing it.

    And yet, there are people who murder young women who are working to immunize children against polio in Pakistan, where 35 children have been infected with polio this year. The immunization campaign has been suspended in Karachi as a result.

    Three women were killed and a man was wounded in two separate attacks on health workers in Karachi on Tuesday, said senior police superintendent police Imran Shaukat.

    The team had received telephone calls warning workers they would regret helping the “infidel” campaign against polio, said health official Gul Naz, who oversees project in the area where the women were shot.

    An anti-polio worker in Karachi was shot dead on Monday, the United Nations said.

    In the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, gunmen on a motorbike shot a 17-year-old girl supervising an anti-polio campaign, said government official Javed Marwar.

    She died of her wounds in hospital, a doctor said.

    All of the victims were Pakistanis working with a U.N.-backed program to eradicate polio, which attacks the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection.

    It has been eradicated in all but a handful of countries but at least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year.

    In Karachi, provincial Health Minister Saghir Ahmed said the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the anti-polio drive in the province.

    It’s monstrous.

  • Pakistan: gunmen shoot five anti-polio workers

    Four women killed, one man injured for helping the “infidel” campaign against polio. At least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year.

  • “Married” six times in one night

    The Islamists in Northern Mali are getting more unpleasant.

    On a sweltering afternoon, Islamist police officers dragged Fatima Al Hassan out of her house in the fabled city of Timbuktu. They beat her up, shoved her into a white pickup truck and drove her to their headquarters. She was locked up in a jail as she awaited her sentence: 100 lashes with an electrical cord.

    “Why are you doing this?” she recalled asking.

    Hassan was being punished for giving water to a male visitor.

    Grabbed, beaten up, abducted, “sentenced” to 100 lashes with an electrical cord, for giving water to a man. Fatima Al Hassan does something ordinary and sociable, and a bunch of men commit a whole set of violent crimes against her to punish her for that.

    “The people are losing all hope,” said Sadou Diallo, a former mayor of the northern city of Gao. “For the past eight months, they have lived without any government, without any actions taken against the Islamists. Now the Islamists feel they can do anything to the people.”

    So they do.

    Why do people want to do shit like that? Why don’t they hate their “god” and run away from it?

    Refugees fleeing the north are now bringing stories that are darker than those recounted in interviews from this summer. Although their experiences cannot be independently verified — because the Islamists have threatened to kill or kidnap Westerners who visit — U.N. officials and human rights activists say that they have heard similar reports of horrific abuses and that some may amount to war crimes.

    The refugees say the Islamists are raping and forcibly marrying women, and recruiting children for armed conflict. Social interaction deemed an affront to their interpretation of Islam is zealously punished through Islamic courts and a police force that has become more systematic and inflexible, human rights activists and local officials say.

    …

    “They are going around asking every pregnant woman who made her pregnant,” said Alkaya Toure, an official with Cri de Coeur, a Malian human rights group. “They also rely on spies inside the populations in Gao, Timbuktu and elsewhere.”

    But as a reward for loyalty, the Islamists have found a religious loophole. They have encouraged their fighters to marry women and girls, some as young as 10, and often at gunpoint. After sex, they initiate a quick divorce. In an extreme case that has shocked the country, a girl in Timbuktu was forced last month to “marry” six fighters in one night, according to a report in one of Mali’s biggest newspapers.

    A positively papal level of hypocrisy.

    In a telephone interview, a senior Islamist commander conceded that his fighters were marrying young girls.

    “Our religion says that if a girl is 12, she must get married to avoid losing her virginity in a wrong way,” said Oumar Ould Hamaha, the military leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa…

    And a “wrong” way of course is one without “marriage” – but “marriage” is whatever we say it is, so we can whip you or stone you or fuck you and then divorce you, whichever we choose.

    And they treat boys and men like crap too.

    I’m so sick of thugs.

     

  • Mali: Islamists’ attacks on people grow more brutal

    A woman is sentenced to 100 lashes with an electrical cord for giving water to a male visitor.

  • Delhi: woman gang-raped on private bus

    The woman was travelling with a male friend on Sunday night when they were attacked. They were brutally beaten, stripped and thrown out of the vehicle.

  • What dialogue?

    The pope has his message of peace for the new year all written and typed up and translated and posted online. The pope is way ahead of the game! The pope can kick back and watch some football.

    Well it won’t have been very difficult. It doesn’t break any new ground. Somebody could have put it together by cutting and pasting from previous messages of peace for the new year.

    It’s not very rich in what you might call self-awareness or self-knowledge.

    In addition to the varied forms of terrorism and international crime, peace is also endangered by those forms of fundamentalism and fanaticism which distort the true nature of religion, which is called to foster fellowship and reconciliation among people.

    Oh? Religion is called to foster fellowship and reconciliation among people? Is it really? Does the Catholic church have a long history of that?

    No, of course not. Quite the reverse…unless of course you take “fellowship and reconciliation among people” to mean “fellowship and reconciliation on our terms.” Fellowship and reconciliation provided you surrender and submit. Fellowship and reconciliation provided you join our club, and endless war and revenge if you don’t.

    That’s become less popular over the last three or four centuries, so the church has gradually gotten into the habit of talking emollient fluff about fellowship and reconciliation. It doesn’t mean it though. It wants to be the boss of all of us.

    In every person the desire for peace is an essential aspiration which coincides in a certain way with the desire for a full, happy and successful human life. In other words, the desire for peace corresponds to a fundamental moral principle,
    namely, the duty and right to an integral social and communitarian development, which is part of God’s plan for mankind. Man is made for the peace which is God’s gift.

    See what he does there?

    He talks in two completely different and opposing veins, as if they were one and the same. He’s cheating.

    He talks in secular terms, about what human beings want and need, and then he sticks god in it, when god has nothing to do with it. Then at the end he simply gives god credit for the thing we want and need and don’t have. What tf does he mean “peace is god’s gift” – what gift?! Where is it? I mean, there’s peace where I am, and I’m very fortunate that way, but there are millions of pockets all over the world where “god’s gift” either never arrived or got smashed up lately.

    He does it throughout the “message” of course. It’s what he does; it’s what they do. But it’s cheating.

    To become authentic peacemakers, it is fundamental to keep in mind our transcendent dimension and to enter into constant dialogue with God, the Father of mercy, whereby we implore the redemption achieved for us by his only-begotten Son. In this way mankind can overcome that progressive dimming and rejection of peace which is sin in all its forms: selfishness and violence, greed and the will to power and dominion, intolerance, hatred and unjust structures.

    Dude – how am I supposed to “enter into constant dialogue” with someone who has never given me the slightest reason to think it is there? Why is the onus on me? Why are you telling me to talk to someone who doesn’t answer? Seriously. Why are you telling me to talk to someone who doesn’t answer? Why do you call it a dialogue? You know very well it’s not a dialogue, so why do you call it that?

    Yes he does. Of course he knows. Does he ever record god talking? Does he ever quote any of god’s recent sayings? He quotes putative old sayings of god’s, but that doesn’t count as a dialogue. I can quote Shakespeare, but I don’t call that a dialogue with dear Will.

    It’s all a cheat. It’s just habit that makes that non-obvious to some people.

  • The pope has a fancy new hat

    It’s got pictures of people on it. Carmen Miranda would be jealous. Oh and btw same sex marriage threat to peace blah.

  • Kuwait introduces death penalty for ‘cursing God and prophets’

    Kuwaiti MPs approved a death penalty for Muslims who curse God, the Koran, all prophets and Mo’s wives. Non-Muslims get a minimum of 10 years.

  • A scientific pioneer and a reluctant role model

    “I have not set myself up to be a role model for women, but it does seem to be more of an issue than it used to be,” cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Brenda Milner explains.