They rang our fathers anonymously

May 10th, 2013 2:19 pm | By

Campaigning against FGM can be dangerous work, at least in the UK.

The Guardian has spoken to women who have received death threats, been publicly assaulted and who have had to move house after speaking out about FGM, which involves cutting away some or all of a girl’s external genitalia and can include sewing up the vagina. It is mostly carried out on girls some time between infancy and the age of 15.

Nimko Ali, a 29-year-old British-Somalian, was taken to Somalia for the procedure when she was seven. “I never told anyone I had FGM, not even my best friend, because I saw what happened to women in the UK who did speak out and saw it as a warning sign,” said Ali, who has set up a group called Daughters of Eve to campaign against the procedure.

“I only decided to go public very recently after seeing other girls put themselves in danger by speaking out. The weeks afterwards were the most horrifying of my life. I lost friends – one even offered to kill me for £500.”

One wonders why. What is so important about destroying girls’ genitalia that opposing the practice is seen as a capital crime? Because girls and women with intact genitalia=total whoredom everywhere and that’s the worst possible thing?

I don’t  know. It’s all the same shit, isn’t it. Ropes and chains on Semour Avenue, or girls’ genitalia sliced off like so much grapfruit rind.

FGM is not condoned by any religion. It is illegal in the UK to carry out the procedure, take a British citizen abroad to have the operation, or assist in carrying out FGM abroad, whether or not it is against the law in that country.

What does the Guardian think “FGM is not condoned by any religion” means? There are some clerics who say don’t do it, but there are others who say do it. There are some Islamic clerics who say it is mandatory. They’re not the majority, I think, but they certainly exist.

Efua Dorkenoo, a director at Equality Now, regularly receives death threats aimed at stopping her campaigns against FGM. “I’m told my offence in speaking out is greater than that of Salman Rushdie and that I should die,” she said.

That certainly seems to hint that some adherents of one religion not only “condone” FGM but try to enforce it with threats. So what does the Guardian think “FGM is not condoned by any religion” means?

Dorkenoo says the backlash against women who speak out is getting more extreme. “It’s getting worse for young girls because social media means they can be threatened and harassed by people outside of their community, including by family members back in Africa who are told what they’re doing.”

Groan. Social media turn out to be such a useful tool for people who like to threaten and harass.

Muna Hassan, an 18-year-old member of the charity Integrate Bristol, a charity that helps young people from other countries and cultures, has suffered for her outspoken support of the group’s campaign against FGM. “Men harass and intimidate us girls all the time,” she said.

“We made a film about FGM called Silent Scream and they spread rumours that we were being paid to make a pornographic film. They rang our fathers anonymously and said we were humiliating our families in public.

“It horrified our parents and quite a few girls weren’t allowed to do the project any more because of it.

“These are people who promote themselves as community leaders and elders. The scary thing is that these are  the people that councillors and politicians go to when they want to discuss community issues.”

And the BBC – and sometimes the Guardian. This is exactly why they need to stop doing that.

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Die in your bed full of shit, says Giles Fraser

May 10th, 2013 11:50 am | By

Giles Fraser notes that choice in dying has a lot of public support. He bravely dissents from this public support. He says why.

These days, people say they want to die quickly, painlessly in their sleep and without becoming a burden. Apparently, this is what a good death now looks like. Well, I want to offer a minority report.

I do want to be a burden on my loved ones just as I want them to be a burden on me – it’s called looking after each other. Obviously, I know people are terrified of the indignity of dying and of being ill generally. Having someone wipe our bums, clean up our mess, put up with our incoherent ramblings and mood swings is a threat to our cherished sense of personal autonomy.

But this is where the liberal model of individual self-determination breaks down. For it is when we are this vulnerable that we have little choice but to allow ourselves to be loved and looked after. Lying in a bed full of our own faeces, unable to do anything about it, is when we break with the idea of René Descartes’ pernicious “I think therefore I am”.

Stupid, stupid, stupid man. I know he can’t be stupid really, but my god what a stupid thing to say. If he wants to be helpless and let loved ones care for him, then he can choose that (provided the loved ones exist and agree). The issue is not mandatory help in dying, it’s the ability to choose it if you choose it. If and only if. Where does he get the fucking arrogance to think that because he thinks a slow painful helpless shit-the-bed death is the way to go, therefore the choice to say no to that should remain illegal for everyone?

I know where he gets it, I suppose; he gets it from being a priest, which brings with it a mental certificate of moral rightness. He thinks that what he thinks must be a law for everyone.

No, we are not brains in vats. We are not solitary self-defining intellectual identities who form temporary alliances with each other for short-term mutual advantage. My existence is fundamentally bound up with yours. Of course, I will clean you up. Of course, I will hold your hand in the long hours of the night. Shut up about being a burden. I love you. This is what it means to love you. Surely, there is something extraordinarily beautiful about all of this.

Stupid. Of course it’s beautiful if it’s what you want. But equally of course it’s not beautiful if it’s what you don’t want. It’s not any kind of denial or betrayal of love, either. Don’t try that on for one second. That’s just moral blackmail of a peculiarly disgusting kind. We all need to be able to decide what we can stand and when we want to end it when we can’t stand it any more. We do not need unctuously bullying clerics telling us we have to keep on standing it because “I will hold your hand in the long hours of the night.” (Oh really? Giles Fraser is going to hold the hand of all of us? No of course he’s not, and he shouldn’t say he is. His existence is not bound up with mine, either. I know that was rhetoric, and it’s a generic “you” and a generic “I” – but it also isn’t. It’s manipulative that way.)

But it is also right to push back against the general assumption that pain reduction is unproblematic. For pain is so much a part of life that its suppression can also be a suppression of a great deal of that which is valuable. Constantly anaesthetising ourselves against pain is also a way to reduce our exposure to so much that is wonderful about life.

Yet too many of us make a Faustian pact with pharmacology, welcoming its obvious benefits, but ignoring the fact that drugs also can demand your soul. That’s perhaps why we speak of the overly drugged-up as zombies.

The same damn problem still. If you want pain, Mr Fraser, you can choose pain. That does not mean you get to force anyone else to choose it. It doesn’t even mean that anyone else should choose it.

Finally, the contemporary “good death” is one that happens without the dying person knowing all that much about it. But what about the need for time to say goodbye and sorry and thank you? It is as if we want to die without actually knowing we are dying.

Is he kidding? Who has the better chance of saying goodbye and sorry and thank you, people who don’t know when the end is or people who schedule it?

My problem with euthanasia is not that it is a immoral way to die, but that it has its roots in a fearful way to live.

That’s insulting. What a horrible, self-centered, sentimental yet ruthless article.

 

 

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But we just don’t see it that way

May 9th, 2013 6:03 pm | By

Aratina pointed out a guest post at Friendly Atheist March 14 last year – shortly before the Reason Rally. The guest poster is none other than Lee Moore, the guy who kept trying to push me to “discuss” things with the people who harass me, including his friend Reap Paden. Mr Diplomacy, Mr Peace, Mr Supergood at HR.

Oh really?

Here’s how that guest post starts:

Our recent invitation to the Westboro Baptist church has sparked a bit of controversy. Kelley Freeman described our invitation as “[poking] a rattlesnake with a stick,” but we just don’t see it that way.  Reactions from others have been a mixed bag. Some have patted us on the back and thanked us for sending the invitation. Others have been less than enthusiastic.

We have serious doubts that the invitation — sent three weeks prior to the event — had much of an effect on whether the WBC planned to attend. Likely, the WBC knew of the Reason Rally well in advance and had planned on attending for some time before the invitation was sent.

It would be an outright lie to claim that publicity was not the first idea that came to mind when writing this letter. The WBC has quite a following, and they command a great deal of “media credit.”  The publicity that they generate, if handled in the right fashion, will draw positive attention to the Reason Rally, the NAP, and the freethought movement in general.

How interesting. The only trouble is, they (the National Atheist Party) didn’t bother asking the RR board, they just invited WBC on their own. This did not go down well. At all. The comments almost all express fury mixed with disdain. For example…

If I agree to help support an event that others have initiated, I bear a responsibility to make decisions that are in concert with the rest of the organizers. It would be very irresponsible and selfish of me to unilaterally invite someone who is very controversial and potentially disruptive to the event without consulting the rest of the organizers first.

The WBC would have shown up as uninvited party-crashers, and they could have been treated as such. Now thanks to you, we have to treat them as invited guests. If any unfortunate incidents or violence occurs, the WBC will be able to portray themselves as the victims who were invited and then abused, rather than as the provocateurs.

Your self-centeredness and insensitivity to the basic etiquette of working with the other event organizers,  combined with your nonpology at the end of your rationalizing PR spin letter in this post have sealed the deal for me. Just as with Chris Leithiser who has made the second comment here, I had some doubts about the NAP, but no longer. I will avoid you and disassociate myself from you.

I fear that the NAP will become embarrassing to atheists in general in the same way that the WBC is embarrassing to Christians in general.

That’s Lee Moore – that’s the guy who set out to heal the deep rifts among atheists. He is!

It’s funny but it’s also disgusting. He never bothered to tell me any of this. He never evinced the slightest hint of uncertainty about his own communication and peacemaking skills. I had more than enough uncertainty of my own once I found out (also without his telling me) that he’s friendly with various people who call themselves Asshole Atheist, Angry Atheist, Angry Loud Macho Atheist…ok I made that last one up – anyway the point is, he’s not the right person to try to bridge any rifts.

Next point. Notice everybody was pissed off – and the NAP was an ally, not a constantly-sniping enemy. Notice everybody thought inviting WBC was a terrible idea. Now notice Karla Porter.

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Sylvia Browne says god’s a better psychic

May 9th, 2013 5:39 pm | By

Yes, things are looking grim for Sylvia Browne. She might have to settle for however many millions she’s already made by telling credulous people that she’s a psychic, and not collect any more suitcases full of money.

“The [Ariel Castro abduction] is a test case for all psychics,” said Joe Nickell, editor of Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that encourages science-based analysis of paranormal and fringe-science claims. “Why didn’t one psychic wake up in the middle of the night and know where they were?”

Ummmm…interference on the astral plane?

Browne responded with an official statement to The Huffington Post earlier this week that included this line: “Only God is right all the time.”

       For more than 50 years as a spiritual psychic and guide, when called upon to either help authorities with missing person cases or to help families with questions about their loved ones, I have been more right than wrong. If ever there was a time to be grateful and relieved for being mistaken, this is that time. Only God is right all the time. My heart goes out to Amanda Berry, her family, the other victims and their families. I wish you a peaceful recovery.

Browne has estimated an 87-to-90 percent success rate with cold cases, but Skeptical Inquirer did a 2010 analysis of 115 predictions she made on “The Montel Williams Show” and put her success rate at zero.

Oh? Is that how she markets herself? More right than wrong? In everything I’ve read of hers she just asserts things, confidently, as if she knows them. She doesn’t say she’s probably right.

Nickell has also headed projects researching the success rate of psychics working on police investigations, and found no substantial evidence of their effectiveness. However, he concedes that some investigators will accept psychic assistance as a very last resort.

“One detective, a homicide commander, told me, ‘you can be skeptical, but when you have a distraught family and a psychic has convinced them they have clues, it’s hard to refuse,’” Nickell told HuffPost.

Problem is, according to Nickell, many of the so-called “clues” offered by the psychics are too vague to be of use. Once the police find out the answers through legitimate police work, the vague clues might seem to fit after the fact, a process he calls “retrofitting.”

Same with god. After the hurricane, the people who aren’t squashed by falling trees or drowned retrofit the whole thing into god saving them.

Browne is also drawing criticism from other psychics like Craig Weiler, who said Browne’s callous prediction to Berry’s now-deceased mom crossed a line, possibly doing “harm to the family.” He advises mediums to use disclaimers.

“They need to say, ‘this is my impression’ or ‘this is my truth,’” Weiler told HuffPost. “Something like ‘this is what I feel’ is OK …”

Weiler runs a blog that attempts to explain scientific studies of parapsychology in layman’s terms, but said off-the-cuff predictions make things harder for people like him who are trying to demonstrate psychic ability is real.

“Failed predictions that are so high-profile are a pain in the ass,” Weiler said. “There’s a public perception that psychics are fake. They’re not, but it hurts.”

Ah yes the real psychics. Nice job, Huffington Post.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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How about nine? Is that young enough?

May 9th, 2013 2:03 pm | By

An item from the Onion?

A prominent barrister specialising in reproductive rights has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13.

Barbara Hewson told online magazine Spiked that the move was necessary in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal to end the “persecution of old men”.

No, the BBC, but the source is Spiked, so it might as well be the Onion (except the Spiked crew think they’re serious).

Let’s create an age of consent for murder, to end the persecution of murderers.

She argues for an end to complainant anonymity, a strict statute of limitations to prevent prosecutions after a substantial amount of time has passed and a reduction in the age of consent to 13.

She said that “touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt” are not crimes comparable to gang rapes and murders and “anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality”.

Good idea! Let’s totally stack the deck against victims of sexual assault so that it’s not just difficult for them to report their assaults, but impossible.

[opens the Spiked article] Ah yes of course – what is Spiked saying? That it’s a “witch-hunt of ageing celebs.”

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Yewtree is destroying the rule of law

With its emphasis on outcomes over process, the post-Savile witch-hunting of ageing celebs echoes the Soviet Union.

Barbara Hewson

I do not support the persecution of old men. The manipulation of the rule of law by the Savile Inquisition – otherwise known as Operation Yewtree – and its attendant zealots poses a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did.

Now even a deputy speaker of the House of Commons is accused of male rape. This is an unfortunate consequence of the present mania for policing all aspects of personal life under the mantra of ‘child protection’.

Witch-hunt and inquisition – that reminds me of something…

H/t Bernard Hurley

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Progress in fundamental ontology

May 9th, 2013 12:38 pm | By

Hey remember the Templeton Foundation? Sean Carroll says (not for the first time, but perhaps hoping it will be for the last) what he thinks of it.

I don’t think that science and religion are reconciling or can be reconciled in any meaningful sense, and I believe that it does a great disservice to the world to suggest otherwise.

That’s all I need to know. Next subject?

No seriously. There’s more. The question is just how nefarious Templeton is.

I don’t see much evidence that the JTF is actively evil, in (say) the way the Discovery Institute is evil, actively lying in order to advance an anti-science agenda. The JTF is quite pro-science, in its own way; it’s just that I think their views on science are very wrong.

There is (at least) one thing they do that I think is deceptive: it’s their habit of setting up “institutes” and similar in places like Oxford and Cambridge and next door to the NIH so that they can use the names Oxford and Cambridge and thus trick people into thinking they’re part of the eponymous universities. It’s their habit of making their stuff sound sciencey when it isn’t. The Faraday Institute, for example – does that sound sciencey or does it not? Well then.

Any time respectable scientists take money from Templeton, they lend their respectability—even if only implicitly—to the idea that science and religion are just different paths to the same ultimate truth. That’s not something I want to do. If other people feel differently, that’s for them and their consciences, not something that is going to cause me to shun them.

But I will try to explain to them why it’s important. Think of it this way. The kinds of questions I think about—origin of the universe, fundamental laws of physics, that kind of thing—for the most part have no direct impact on how ordinary people live their lives. No jet packs are forthcoming, as the saying goes. But there is one exception to this, so obvious that it goes unnoticed: belief in God. Due to the efforts of many smart people over the course of many years, scholars who are experts in the fundamental nature of reality have by a wide majority concluded that God does not exist. We have better explanations for how things work. The shift in perspective from theism to atheism is arguably the single most important bit of progress in fundamental ontology over the last 500 years. And it matters to people … a lot.

Or at least, it would matter, if we made it more widely known. It’s the one piece of scientific/philosophical knowledge that could really change people’s lives. So in my view, we have a responsibility to get the word out—to not be wishy-washy on the question of religion as a way of knowing, but to be clear and direct and loud about how reality really works. And when we blur the lines between science and religion, or seem to contribute to their blurring, or even just not minding very much when other people blur them, we do the world a grave disservice.

Yes.

Can I help in any way?

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Unity through shouting

May 9th, 2013 10:04 am | By

I’ve watched the whole thing now.

In the last part he gets more and more shouty and angry about all these pesky interlopers trying to change his “movement” – he shouts angrily about how wonderful TAM is and how important it is that we all stick together - and he never says one word about the ongoing harassment of a few chosen women in the three overlapping “movements.” Not one word.

Unity? Stick together?

No.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyLULErf_6E

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What is a testable claim

May 9th, 2013 9:16 am | By

I’m watching the Jamy Ian Swiss video from last Saturday (Orange County freethinkers; you know the drill), trying to figure out what all the fuss is about – his fuss among other fusses.

One claim of his that I don’t understand, though it’s possible that I will once I’ve watched the whole thing. At 23:42:

If you believe in god based on faith, that in and of itself is not a testable claim. We have no debate with that.”

Yes it is. If you “believe in god” then “god” must have some meaning. Once you know what the meaning is in the particular case, then it becomes a testable claim. Even if you say “god” means something large and abstract like Love, it’s still testable. Maybe it’s possible to make “god” so very large and abstract that it no longer is testable, but then…it’s not really “god” that you believe in, you’re simply using that word to name something else, because the word gets respect and deference.

Tell me why that’s wrong.

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If you don’t want abuse, get off the internet, India edition

May 8th, 2013 5:42 pm | By

It’s so familiar. Sagarika Ghose, an Indian journalist and tv news anchor, got threats to herself and her daughter.

“Targeting me for my journalism is fine. But when it is sexist and foul-mouthed abuse which insults my gender identity I get incredibly angry. In the beginning I used to retaliate, but that would lead to more abuse.”

Ms Ghose says women abused on Twitter in India tend to to be “liberal and secular”.

“The abusers are right wing nationalists, angry at women speaking their mind. They have even coined a term for us – ‘sickular’.”

So many people are angry at women speaking their minds.

Kavita Krishnan, a prominent Delhi-based women’s activist, was attacked viciously during a recent online chat on violence against women on Rediff.com, one of India’s leading news websites.

“It began well. I had answered a few interesting questions. And then one person, with the handle @RAPIST, started posting abusive comments. He then asked me where he could come to rape me using a condom,” she said.

She says she decided to leave the chat after the abuse continued.

So @RAPIST won and she lost.

Writer-activist Meena Kandasamy chose to go to the police when she faced sexist abuse online.

Last year, she had tweeted about a beef-eating festival at a university in the city of Hyderabad after which she was threatened with “live-telecasted gang-rape and being torched alive and acid attacks”.

…

K Jaishankar, a teacher of criminology who has been studying bullying, stalking and defamation of women online, says India’s “patriarchal mindset has pervaded the internet space”.

“Men don’t like women to talk back. Public personalities who express strong opinions are trolled in a bid to force them off line,” he says.

So, very, familiar.

H/t Scr… Archivist

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Stuck with our dimension’s annoying laws of time and space

May 8th, 2013 4:58 pm | By

And another post on Sylvia Browne from 2004.

I’ve been visiting the Other Side. Well not so much visiting it, I guess, as reading about it. Or researching it, you could call it. Sylvia Browne calls it researching, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t.

And never mind about shooting fish in barrels. Not that you would, most of you, but some of you would and do. Some of you seem to think that the targets are too easy and that there’s no reason to shoot at them. Well the targets are easy all right, I’ll give you that, but there is every reason to shoot at them. I’ll show you why.

So why this current interest and acceptance of the absolute truth that yes, there are Angels among us?…First of all, as the belief in Angels continues to grow, people are less and less reluctant to speak up about their encounters with them.

That’s Sylvia Brown, in The Other Side and Back (page 25). And she’s right. She’s wrong about nearly everything she puts on paper, but she’s right in that last sentence. As belief in angels spreads and gets entrenched and becomes commonplace and meets little opposition – so it spreads and gets entrenched and becomes commonplace even more, and meets even less opposition, and so people are indeed less and less and less reluctant, embarrassed, inhibited, ashamed about believing in angels and speaking up about their ‘encounters’ with them. And that’s a bad thing. A very, very bad thing. It may be getting to the point where we have to worry that bus drivers, airline pilots, dentists, engineers, pharmacists, grocers and countless other people we entrust with our bodies, our health, our food, our safety, believe in angels and listen to advice from their spirit guides. We really, really don’t want that. Trust me on this (or don’t – read for yourself) – we don’t want people who think the way Sylvia Browne does to have jobs of that kind. It’s hard to think of jobs that are harmless enough to entrust them to people who think like that, really.

I’m actually serious. I sound flippant but I’m serious. Browne does have a serious point there, and she is right. It’s a meme thing. A groupthink, conformity, culture thing. Humans do take their cues from each other, and it is becoming ever more Okay to believe and avow belief in ‘paranormal’ or ‘psychic’ or ‘supernatural’ or ‘metaphysical’ entities and events, as more and more people do exactly that. I don’t see any way to resist this dangerous and idiotic trend other than to resist it. Exposing it is the first step.

And then of course a lot of it is also extremely funny.

We on earth are stuck with our dimension’s annoying laws of time and space, laws that contribute concepts like ‘late’ and ‘crowded’ and ‘traffic jam’ and ‘stressed out’ to our vocabulary. The residents of The Other Side joyfully function without those restrictions and instead enjoy the freedom of such universal laws as infinity and eternity.

Cool. Einstein meets the tooth fairy and everybody’s happy.

And how is this for something to look forward to: All spirits on The Other Side are thirty years old…Spirits can assume their earthly appearance when they come to visit us, to help us recognize them, but in their day-to-day lives on The Other Side, not only are they thirty but they can choose their own physical attributes, from height to weight to hair color.

Eeyup, and they can choose their clothes, too, and their jewelry, their shoes, their accessories, their cars, their wine cellars. Yup.

And on and on it goes like that – just a description of anyone and everyone’s fantasy of a perfect world with everything good at hand and all limits and frustrations and undesirables erased – but described as if it were a real place, and as if Browne had the maps and guidebooks and lyrical travelers’ descriptions at her elbow. Of course, she says she does; she says her spirit guide Francine has told her all about it, and that she herself has then ‘validated’ what Francine tells her through ‘meticulous research.’ Right on page 13 she says that – ‘Typically, Francine gives me information about The Other Side, and I then validate it through meticuous research, including regressive hypnosis…’ Ah yes, that’s meticulous research all right. I tell you about a hitherto unknown alternate universe that my spirit guide has given me information about, and which I have validated through regressive hypnosis. Er, you ask, but how can you being hypnotized validate anything about the existence of a place outside you? Tsk – don’t be silly – that’s a physical question, and the information I’m giving you is metaphysical. Or something.

And yet, and yet – the description can be quite of the earth earthy, at times…

The Other Side is a breathtaking infinity of mountains and oceans, and vast gardens, and forests – every wonder of nature that exists here, its beauty magnified hundreds of times. The landscape is punctuated with buildings of brilliant design and variety – classical Greek and Roman architecture for the temples, concert halls, courtyards, sports arenas, and other public gathering places -

Hmm – sound a little like a mix of Disneyland, Celebration, Las Vegas, a wet dream of Prince Charles’, and Nazi Berlin? And now for the real estate agent’s patter:

- and homes designed to meet every entity’s personal preference, so that a stately Victorian mansion might share a neighborhood with a simple log cabin and a geodesic dome.

Yeah right. People are really going to want to go to The Other Side so they can live in a log cabin while other people whoop it up in a ‘stately Victorian mansion’ (a what?) just as if they were still on This Side. No. Look, if we’re just going to sit around dreaming up our fantasy places, let’s get it right, shall we? The deal is, I get to live in the biggest house in the place, and all the people who irritated me on This Side have to live in nasty little shacks nearby enough so that I can see them when I feel like gloating and far enough so that I can ignore them when I want to. That’s the housing set-up on The Other Side, obviously. Not to mention which, picture it, will you? These chaotic neighborhoods? Norman Bates’ house on one lot, Abe Lincoln’s on the next, a McMansion across the street, a yurt next to that, Trump Towers next to that, then a pueblo, then a Frank Lloyd Wright, then Castle Howard, then the Gherkin – oh gawd, I feel sick. The Other Side will be one long festival of nausea.

Okay, that’s enough meticulous research and regressive hypnosis for the moment.

 

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A homeopathic preparation called “influenzinum”

May 8th, 2013 4:35 pm | By

Canada…you’re supposed to be more sensible than the US. You know this. What are you doing?

Health Canada licenses homeopathic vaccines

Come on. Really?

Most Canadians were born too recently to see the night-and-day difference in public health brought about by immunizations—individuals who witnessed the horrors of the polio epidemics of the 1950s first hand are now well into old age, and many have passed away. Good health can be taken for granted when the public does not properly understand the link between that same good health and the measures that made it possible, and unfortunately, history and science cannot always conquer misinformation, mistrust, and fear.

Enter “alternatives.”

It is disheartening enough that mis­information about vaccines is spread by voices ranging from outspoken celebrities like Jennifer MacCarthy[5] to various alternative medicine trades,[6] but it is cause for urgent concern when public institutions entrusted with the health of Canadians enable misinformation about endemic communicable diseases to go forward with the imprimatur of science.

Health Canada is responsible for ensuring that remedies sold to the public are both safe and effective. In recent years, however, Health Canada has allowed various natural health products to enter the market without requiring rigorous proof of effectiveness. Indeed, there are many remedies and homeopathic preparations currently licensed for sale that do not contain any of the allegedly active ingredient. A number of these are hom­eo­pathic “nosodes.” These are ultradilute (typically diluted far be­yond the point where anything is left except solvent) preparations of infectious agents or infected tissue, and are administered as an “oral vaccine.”[7]

Although real vaccines use low doses of part of an infectious agent to prevent disease, homeopathic preparations typically are diluted beyond the point where a single molecule remains.

I don’t know if the US allows that or not. Even if it doesn’t, we can’t brag, because it does allow “religious exemptions” in the majority of states, which basically just means it allows exemptions on request. That’s pretty much the same thing as an “oral vaccine” with nothing in it but solvent.

Remarkably, at the same time as Health Canada focuses on influenza education, flu shots, and other proven prevention measures, that same body has licensed 10 products with a homeopathic preparation called “influenzinum.”[8] According to providers, in­fluenzinum is for “preventing the flu and its related symptoms.”[9]

Homeopathic vaccines are available for other infectious diseases as well. Health Canada licenses homeopathic preparations purported to prevent polio,[10] measles,[11] and pertussis.[12]

Oh dear god. Canada, shame on you.

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Sylvia Browne on angels

May 8th, 2013 3:41 pm | By

Sylvia Browne is getting a lot of flack now, not surprisingly. I can’t manage to feel very sorry for her.

I searched ur-B&W for her name and found quite a lot. That Jon Ronson article I pointed out yesterday is there, in 2007 when it was first published. Below that there’s an article by James Randi, but the link is a dud. There’s one from Stop Sylvia Browne, but that link too is a dud. The very first one is from December 2004 (jeezis) and is about Sylvia Browne’s angelology.

Here it is again.

___________________

 

Ever read any books about angels? No? No, I hadn’t either, but I’ve read bits of one now, and I must say, if you’re looking for a good laugh, books about angels (if this one is anything to go by, at least) are pretty damn funny. Books about Wicca are quite mirth-inducing, too.

With the angel book, I keep opening it at random, and the first thing I read is so absurd I find myself cackling before I’ve read ten words. I’m beginning to think that every single line of the book is packed full of unintentional humour. Shall I give you a taste? These are just random, mind – I haven’t actually searched out the most risible stuff.

The first one actually isn’t entirely funny, but the basic failure to connect the dots that underlies it, is.

At the time of 9/11, there were many stories of people seeing angels, which of course shows that God sent his legions of blessed angels to escort those dearest of souls to the Other Side and to bring the rest of us a message of hope.

Oh dear kind sweet thoughtful God, sending his blessed angels. Um – why didn’t he just send his blessed angels to stop the God-lovers in the airplanes? Or stop them himself? Because he has a Purpose, which is Inscrutable to us mere mortals. Okay, but in that case, we don’t know anything about it, do we, so why make factual statements of that kind? Because it’s fun, obviously. But the idea behind it – well really. So – little Kevin likes to torture small animals to death, and then when he’s done it he sends blessed angels to escort the souls of his victims to the Other Side. Do we think well of little Kevin? Dear Violet likes to set fire to people’s houses in the middle of the night and watch while the residents are immolated, then in the morning she sends her blessed angels to smooth their way to the Other Side (where, who knows, what greets them may be serried ranks of Kevins and Violets, all grinning fiendishly). In other words, how people can unite the idea of a kind helpful deity sending angels with one who just got through allowing a slow-motion mass murder to happen in the first place, is simply…beyond my humble understanding.

The very next bit:

The Archangels can heal, and they can carry messages, and they can do one more thing as well. They can take us out of our bodies and take us away on an astral trip. To go on an astral trip…we can call on the Archangels to help us, because these messengers can be the ones who come forward and whisk us right up.

Oh! I didn’t know that. Dang, silly me, I just wasted all that money on a plane ticket. I didn’t know one could just call on an Archangel instead. Okay, I see – so if one wants to take a plane one visits Expedia or some such, and if one wants to take an astral trip, one calls an Archangel. Got it. Next time I’ll know.

Another bit, under the heading Angels: Fact and Fiction:

Before we go any further, let’s clear up a few myths about angels. Since we’ve spent so much time talking about what angels are, it’s equally important to go over what they are not.

First of all, contrary to belief, there are no dark angels.

Oh. You know, you’ll hardly believe me, but there’s no footnote for that statement. In fact there are no footnotes in the whole book. Nor is there an index, nor a bibliography. So one’s strong curiosity to know exactly how Sylvia Browne (for it is she) knows this, is doomed to remain unsatisfied. No doubt she has stacks of scholarly references, or perhaps notes of her extensive experimentation and research, but her citation method is a little primitive. Which is to say she left it out entirely. Odd that an angel didn’t remind her. Well, I say ‘entirely’ – but to be fair there is a kind of blanket citation at the beginning, in the ‘Author’s Note.’ She has a guide named Raheim, ‘from India’ (well of course – where would he be from, Trenton N.J.?), and another named Iena, an Aztec-Inca woman (another no-show for the Trentonians), and the two of them have ‘conveyed countless hours of information’ to her. So consider that one big mega-meta-footnote for all factual statements. Astral trips, no dark angels[1]

[1] Iena, Raheim

Kind of pedantic, isn’t it.

 

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A tragedy for anti feminist public relations

May 8th, 2013 11:59 am | By

Hey guess what – it turns out that the Castro brothers (the Cleveland ones, not the Havana ones) are bad PR for misogyny. You don’t say!

Daniel, meanwhile, is angry that Ariel Castro’s alleged crimes have done real damage to … men. That is, if the whole thing isn’t a big false-flag fake:

The truth is, this was the worst that could happen for anti feminist public relations at the moment. If this guy – Mr Castro – only knew how much damage he has done to men by doing this.

The case is such a gift basket for feminism, that I almost suspect it is fabricated.

That’s right! Feminists fabricated the whole thing. Which was totally easy to do – just persuade three women and their families and friends and the news media and the FBI and the Cleveland police…wait…

H/t Jackie Paper

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The shortest ends of the short ends

May 8th, 2013 11:34 am | By

Greta has an eloquent post about being “divisive” and what it’s possible to find common ground with and what it isn’t.

I do not want to be in unity with atheists who say that I’m an ugly dyke and therefore nobody should take me seriously. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who post their opponents’ home addresses on the Internet; who hack into their opponents’ private email lists and make content from those emails public. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who alert the Westboro Baptist Church to atheist events, and ask if they plan to attend. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who bombard other people with a constant barrage of hate and threats of rape, violence, and death. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who call me a cunt, who call other women cunts, again and again and again and again and again. And I do not want to be in unity with atheists who consistently rationalize this behavior, who trivialize it, who make excuses for it.

That is how I feel about the matter too, likewise, also.

There is literally no way that the atheist movement can be inclusive of everybody. We can’t be inclusive of atheist women… and also be inclusive of atheists who publicly call women ugly, fat, sluts, whores, cunts, and worse. We can’t be inclusive of atheists of color… and also be inclusive of atheists who think people of color stay in religion because they’re just not good at critical thinking, or who tell people of color, “You’re pretty smart for a…” We can’t be inclusive of trans atheists… and also be inclusive of atheists who think trans people are mentally ill or freaks of nature. We can’t be inclusive of atheists who are mentally ill… and also be inclusive of atheists who think mental illness is just a failure of willpower. Etc.

And when people, however well-meaning, make generic calls for unity — when they tell all of us to stop fighting and just get along — they’re basically telling those of us on the short ends of those sticks to shut up.

Which many of them probably don’t realize precisely because they’ve never been on the short ends of those sticks – or at least not on the very shortest ends of the short ends. There’s nothing quite like being a target of a hate campaign to sharpen one’s awareness of what it’s like to be a target of a hate campaign. In that sense I kind of see why so many people get it wrong, and think it’s far better to say “let’s all just get along” than it is to say “knock off the hate campaign.” I kind of see it, but that doesn’t make me like it.

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Ropes and chains

May 8th, 2013 10:36 am | By

Ok, here we go…

Ropes and chains have been found inside the Cleveland home where police say
three women spent close to a decade in captivity, city officials said Wednesday.

Because that’s what you do when you’re three guys – you capture three women and chain them up so you can fuck them whenever you want to without having to do anything like win their affection, be kind and thoughtful, take a shower now and then.

Ariel Castro’s wife might have been a clue, if anyone had been able to combine things.

According to court documents, Ariel Castro’s former wife accused him of repeatedly abusing her, including breaking her nose twice, breaking two ribs, dislocating her shoulder twice and knocking out a tooth.

Grimilda Figueroa also accused Castro of causing a blood clot on her brain, according to the 2005 documents.

A judge granted a protection order, but lifted it three months later after repeated court delays and hearings Castro did not attend, according to the documents.

Excuse me? Castro stonewalled the court so the court lifted the restraining order on him? That’s how that works?

Meanwhile let me expand the cheery advantages of chaining women up. You can fuck them whenever you want to without having to do anything like win their affection, be kind and thoughtful, take a shower now and then, or refrain from beating the shit out of them.

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When Jon Ronson encountered Sylvia Browne

May 7th, 2013 6:10 pm | By

First he tells a story of one of her exercises in lost child finding.

A six-year-old, Opal Jo Jennings, had a month earlier been snatched from her grandparents’ front yard in Texas while playing with her cousin. A man pulled up, grabbed her, threw her into his truck, hit her when she screamed and drove off. Her distraught grandmother went on Montel’s show and said, “This is too much for my family and me to handle. We want her back. I need to know where Opal is. I can’t stand this. I need your help, Sylvia. Where is Opal? Where is she?”

Sylvia said, “She’s not dead. But what bothers me – now I’ve never heard of this before – but she was taken and put into some kind of a slavery thing and taken into Japan. The place is Kukouro.”

“Kukouro?” Montel Williams asked, after a moment’s stunned silence.

“So she was taken and put on some kind of a boat or a plane and taken into white slavery,” Sylvia said.

Opal’s grandmother looked drained and confused. Opal’s body was eventually found buried in Fort Worth, Texas. She had, the pathologist concluded, been murdered the night she went missing. A local man – Richard Lee Franks – was convicted.

Nice.

She doesn’t give interviews any more, apparently not wanting to answer journalists’ questions about such things.

So Jon Ronson decided to go on a cruise where she was a guest lecturer. He went to her first lecture.

The next woman walks to the microphone.

“I have a strained relationship with my daughter,” she begins. “And I want to know …”

“Your daughter is strange,” interrupts Sylvia.

Sylvia doesn’t pause. Other psychics will often reach around for some inner voice, but Sylvia answers the question instantly, in a low, smoky growl, sometimes before the person has even finished asking it.

“Your daughter is stubborn,” she says. “She’s selfish, narcissistic. Leave her alone.” The woman reluctantly nods. Tears roll down her cheeks.

“Don’t get too involved with her,” Sylvia says. “She’ll hurt you. Leave her alone. I don’t like her.”

“Thank you, Sylvia,” the woman says.

I want to yell out, “Don’t listen to her! Sylvia doesn’t know anything about your situation! She’s just saying the first thing that comes into her head!” But I don’t.

There are some situations where skepticism really is the one thing necessary.

Famous sceptics such as James Randi say Sylvia is not a silly, deluded person who believes herself to be psychic. They say she’s a callous fraud. She’s just a good cold reader.

Why isn’t that kind of thing prosecuted?

 

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Sylvia Browne told her matter-of-factly

May 7th, 2013 4:31 pm | By

This is painful to read:

Amanda Berry is dead, psychic tells her mother on Montel Williams’ show (republished)

The picture is painful to look at, too – Berry’s mother Louwana Miller sitting on her daughter’s bed, which is bedecked with yellow ribbons. Well she did come back, but too late for Louwana Miller.

For 19 months, Louwana Miller refused to give up hope that her missing daughter might still be alive.

Not anymore.

Desperate for any clue as to Amanda Berry’s whereabouts, and tired of unanswered questions from authorities, Miller turned to a psychic on Montel Williams’ nationally syndicated television show.

The psychic said what the FBI, police and Miller hadn’t.

“She’s not alive, honey,” Sylvia Browne told her matter-of-factly. “Your daughter’s not the kind who wouldn’t call.”

Sylvia Browne says a lot of things, based on nothing whatever.

With those blunt words, Browne persuaded Miller to accept a grim probability that has become more likely with each passing day.

Miller went back to the West Side home where she had been keeping Amanda’s things in careful order and cleaned up. She gave away her daughter’s computer and took down her pictures. “I’m not even buying my baby a Christmas present this year,” she said.

Miller said she returned devastated from the show, taped this month in New York.

“I lost it,” she said.

Miller is dead, but Browne is not. I hope she’s having a good hard think right now.

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Tiny Delaware

May 7th, 2013 3:26 pm | By

Tiny little barely-detectable Delaware has just become the 11th state to approve same sex marriage.

The rhetoric today was heated, as religious leaders invited to speak by the bill’s opponents condemned homosexuality for multiple hours. Conservative witnesses and senators alike repeatedly sought explanations for why people should not be free to discriminate against same-sex couples, even though such discrimination is already illegal under Delaware law.

Why should we not be free to discriminate against same-sex couples? Why, why, WHY?

It’s a tide.

Rhode Island became the 10th state to legalize same-sex marriage just last week, Minnesota may be primed to become the 12th state perhaps as soon as later this week, and Illinois is also within “striking distance” of passing legislation.

If Minnesota and Illinois can, surely Kansas and North Dakota will not be far behind.

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Prayers have finally

May 7th, 2013 3:17 pm | By

First of all, please stop saying things like that.

“Prayers have finally been answered. The nightmare is over,” said Stephen Anthony, head of the FBI in Cleveland. “These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin.”

Dude. Prayers were not answered, finally or otherwise. Berry finally, after ten miserable years (during which her mother died, believing her to be dead), got a chance to escape and get the others rescued. That’s what happened. Prayers had nothing to do with it – and if they did, by the way, fuck the piece of shit who answered them. What took so long? Was the prayer-answerer too busy sending earthquakes and hurricanes and droughts?

But they had nothing to do with it, so shut up about them.

And then…

Two neighbors said Tuesday that they were alarmed enough by what they saw at the house to call police on two occasions.

Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of Castro’s house, which had plastic bags on the windows, in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.

Why weren’t the prayers powerful enough at least to make the cops do a more thorough job on one of those occasions? That’s not asking much. Most of the heavy lifting is already done – the cops are there, on the scene. Why didn’t the prayers cause the cops to take it seriously? To get a warrant and break the door down?

I’m not rushing to blame the cops. They probably get a lot of calls based on vague or could-be-mistaken” things, and they can’t get a warrant and break the door down every time – we’d be yelling about police brutality if they did. But why couldn’t the prayers have put a heavy thumb on the scales when it would have been useful?

Causality. It’s so easy to get it wrong.

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Collecting

May 7th, 2013 11:46 am | By

A long time ago, when the world was young, John Fowles wrote a fascinating novel called The Collector. It was about a socially inept young man who collected butterflies and then inherited some money and hit on the bright idea of collecting a young woman, which he did. He bought an isolated house and fitted up a bunker in the basement, then collected the woman he’d been stalking and locked her up in it. After a year or so she developed pneumonia and died in the bunker (after begging him to get a doctor) and the novel ends with his stalking a new candidate.

Much of the novel is the diary of Miranda Grey, the collected woman, and she’s a wonderfully rich, complicated, interesting person.

It occurs to me now that I always thought of it as bordering on fantasy. Nobody would actually do that. It was a kind of thought experiment (though I wasn’t familiar with the concept of thought experiments when I read it).

Well think again.

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