Started campaign “My Guardian Knows What’s Best for Me.”… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Slippery slope! Watch out! 
Jun 3rd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Disability campaigner wants to impose her unreasonable fears on everyone.… Read the rest
ASA rules against church miracle cure claims
Jun 3rd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
We noted that the ad stated “… I have seen the dead raised and I have witnessed nearly all types of healing miracles.”… Read the rest
An extended chat with Hitchens
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.’… Read the rest
Nazia Quazi is free at last
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Canadian was held in Saudi Arabia for three years by her father under ‘guardian laws.’… Read the rest
Brazil proposes ‘fetal rights’ bill
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Next up: bill of rights for ovaries.… Read the rest
Taliban attacks peace jirga
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Burka-clad suicide-bomb attackers, rocket grenade launchers, no peace please we’re jihadists.… Read the rest
Don’t mess with the Vatican
Jun 2nd, 2010 12:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonOkay, I give up – why is the Obama administration siding with the Vatican against people who think it should be accountable for its many crimes?
Faced with a number of court cases in the United States that have named the pope himself as a defendant in the enabling and covering up of many rapes, the Vatican has evolved the strategy of claiming that the Holy See is in effect a sovereign state and thus possessed of immunity from prosecution. It has now been announced that the Obama administration will be advising the Supreme Court to adopt this view of the matter.
Why? What’s the thinking? Why should a church be declared a sovereign state? Why especially should the Obama … Read the rest
Obama administration sides with the Vatican
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
In its claim to be a sovereign state and thus immune from prosecution.… Read the rest
Another bit of postmodernist irony from the Vatican
Jun 2nd, 2010 11:12 am | By Ophelia BensonYou have to admire the Vatican for sheer effrontery. Which archbishops did it choose to send on an ‘apostolic visit’ to Ireland to look into the way Catholic priests and nuns have been tormenting Irish children for generations? Why, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who decided
in 1985, when he was bishop of Arundel and Brighton, to move the priest Fr Michael Hill to a chaplaincy at Gatwick airport. Eighteen months previously the cardinal had removed Hill from ministry because of child abuse allegations but then allowed him back to work at the airport where Hill abused a child. Hill was jailed in 2002.
And Seán O’Malley:
… Read the restin his diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, the district attorney in 2002 was so disturbed at
Socialist Unity throws a ‘Stop Islamophobia’ bash
Jun 2nd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe usual fun crowd – Moazzam Begg, Lindsey German, Robert Lambert, Seumas Milne, Salma Yaqoob…… Read the rest
Abuse groups not thrilled about ‘apostolic visitors’
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
They believe the child protection records of Murphy-O’Connor, O’Malley and Dolan disqualify them.… Read the rest
What’s so bad about missionaries?
Jun 2nd, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
My take on the Comment is Free belief question.… Read the rest
Nothing decisive to say
Jun 1st, 2010 4:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonOutside the world of nature, however, science has no authority, no statements to make, no business whatsoever taking one position or another. Science has nothing decisive to say about values, whether economic, aesthetic or moral; nothing to say about the meaning of life or its purpose.
Notice how quickly he moves from an emphatic absolute in the first sentence – no business whatsoever – to a qualified one in the second – nothing decisive to say. As Susan Haack says, there’s the bit where he says it and the bit where he takes it back. Science may have nothing decisive to say about values, but that’s not the same thing as having nothing to say … Read the rest
Defining ‘badness’
Jun 1st, 2010 11:58 am | By Ophelia BensonRobert Lambert and Jonathan Githens-Mazer tell worried Guardian readers about “Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence” as if they’re roughly the same thing rather than being very different things. Dislike of a belief-system is a very different thing from violence against people.
[M]embers of the EDL are echoing sentiments about Muslims they have adopted from sections of the mainstream media and the BNP. It is no coincidence that Nick Griffin has been peddling exactly the same hatred towards Muslims for the last decade. Similarly, a cursory examination of the records of Islamophobia Watch over the last five years provides a sense of the extent of Islamophobia in the mainstream media.
Islamophobia Watch! As if that were a respectable and reliable source! Bob … Read the rest
Checking the compass
Jun 1st, 2010 10:52 am | By Ophelia BensonThomas Jones says in the Telegraph (reviewing Hitchens’s memoir):
The drift from left to right is hardly unusual, and the causes for his disillusionment with socialism and attraction to liberalism – the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, visits to Cuba and Poland under Communism, the pleasures and freedoms of life in the United States – are made plain enough.
I’m not sure that really is a move (or drift) from left to right. That would make displeasure and unfreedom left, and I don’t think that’s accurate. I know, the idea is more that some coercion is worth the price for the sake of more pleasure and freedom (or more something) for everyone, and that does describe part of … Read the rest
The Telegraph reviews Hitch-22
Jun 1st, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
His opinions are deeply felt and fiercely expressed but only dimly thought through.… Read the rest
Did humans evolve to fill a ‘cognitive niche’?
Jun 1st, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
We need more evidence, of a kind we can’t ethically get.… Read the rest
Pope sends more foxes to investigate chickenhouse
Jun 1st, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Former archbishop Murphy-O’Connor will lead inquiry into clerical child abuse in Ireland.… Read the rest
Lambert and Githens-Mazer on “Islamophobia”
Jun 1st, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
They cite Islamophobia Watch for evidence. Yes really.… Read the rest
