Author: Ophelia Benson

Now that the Desmond Tutu moment is in the past, let me say, on the other hand, notice that Josh Rosenau linked to YNH just last Saturday – long after it should have been blindingly obvious to any reasonable person that it was not a truth-telling or fair or decent blog. He did partially admit that, but he linked anyway.

You’re Not Helping has been on a roll lately about that latter point, rightly criticizing various folks who criticize such calls for prayer without offering any alternative. While I think YNH has lately become less helpful than they used to be, their highlighting of the work being done by Mississippi Atheists, and of opportunities to donate to ongoing Gulf efforts by groups including the Audubon Society and Unitarian Universalists, certainly do help. If you want to help folks out in the Gulf, those are good places to start.

Rosenau, like so many critics of explicit atheists, likes to portray himself as part of The Nice Faction, but his Niceness tends to desert him when it comes to explicit atheists.

And Massimo Pigliucci linked to YNH last Thursday, which is also long after a reasonable person should have concluded that Here Be Bullies.

Are the New Atheists the New Martyrs?

He should feel stupid about that link now. G Felis (thinkmonkey) offered him the opportunity to say it was a mistake, but he (Pigliucci) didn’t take it. Neither he nor Rosenau has bothered to withdraw the endorsement of a blog that has now admitted telling large falsehoods about people it was angry with. So that’s what they’re like.

I wrote this about eight years ago for “In the Library.” It hints at why I hope Christopher Hitchens stays around.

Christopher Hitchens is a standing reproach to people who write the odd essay now and then. He is like some sort of crazed writing machine, he seems to average three or four longish essays a day, along with reading everything ever written and remembering all of it, knowing everyone worth knowing on most continents, visiting war zones and trouble spots around the globe, going on television and overbearing even noisy Chris Matthews’ efforts to interrupt him, and irritating people. And what’s even more painful is that this torrent of prose is nothing like the torrents of people like Joyce Carol Oates or Iris Murdoch, badly written in proportion to the torrentiality – no, this is a torrent of learned, witty, informed and informative, searching, impassioned history on the hoof. If Hitchens is a journalist then so were Gibbon and Thucydides.

Unacknowledged Legislation is a collection of essays on writers in the public sphere, as the subtitle has it. The essays are many things, but one of the most noticeable is that they are unexpected. The essay on Philip Larkin for example entirely declines the opportunity to express easy outrage, and instead digs much, much deeper. The one on Martha Nussbaum’s Poetic Justice wonders why she didn’t mention Mill’s autobiography and then at the fact that she seems unaware of the element of caricature in Dickens’ Hard Times. ‘When the utilitarian teacher M’Choakumchild – perhaps a clue there? – tells Sissy Jupe etc.’ Hitchens misses nothing.

Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation, Verso: 2000.

Belgium isn’t having it. Very good.

Belgium and the Vatican are on a collision course after the Holy See accused the Belgian police of using communist tactics in their paedophilia raids on Catholic bishops last week…

The Belgian Foreign Minister, Steven Vanackere, underlined the Belgian judiciary’s independence from the Church and its freedom to investigate.

“It’s good to [keep in mind] very important principles of the state of law. [There are] very elementary principles of having a separation of powers and accepting that the judiciary has to do its work,” Mr Vanackere told RNW. “That’s crucial for every democratic state.”

And that’s all there is to it. The Belgian government is the right body to investigate crimes by priests; the church is not. The church has a vested interest, and we already know what that interest is: concealment, protection of its own reputation for holiness and all-over goodness, impunity.

That panel set up by the church doesn’t see things that way. But it’s out of luck.

Belgium insisted Monday in a dispute with the Vatican over credibility that Belgian law enforcement authorities — not the potentially biased Catholic Church — will investigate sexual abuse cases involving clergy.

A panel created by Belgian bishops 12 years ago to look into abuse cases disbanded on Monday, saying last week’s seizure of its 500 case files rendered its existence pointless. Its chief, Peter Adriaenssens, accused authorities of betraying the trust of hundreds of victims and using his group to tap into information and testimony from abuse victims.

The chief of a church-appointed panel accused the Belgian government of using the testimony of victims. What did Mr Adriaenssens plan to do with the testimony then? Put it in a vault? Seal it in amber? Lose it?

Belgium’s government doesn’t appear to be concerned about having pushed the panel to the sidelines, despite an outburst from the Vatican that Thursday’s police raid was an unprecedented intrusion into church affairs.

“I respect Peter Adriaenssens, but his commission was created by the Church,” Glenn Audenaert, head of Belgium’s judiciary police, said after last week’s police raids. “That commission cannot start a prosecution. Only the justice department can.”

That’s the way to tell them.

Is it okie dokie for Muslim men to have concubines?

Why of course it is; what a silly question. Evry fule kno that.

The first condition is that if during waging of jihad the women who come with the enemy forces to support them are captured and the emir of the army distributes them, it is his discretion, we can keep them as concubines. Second, if we explore and find some market where slaves and concubines are sold and the sale is established as a social institution there, the women you buy from there will be concubine. Abducting a free woman to take her as a concubine or to sell a free woman is, I think, wrong…

Oh my, how liberal, how generous, how really fair and just and all that anyone can expect. If selling women is established as a social institution, then men can buy them, no problema. Just don’t abduct a free woman to rape her or sell her, that’s all. Agreed? Splendid. Let’s all go for a smoke.