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Archive for the ‘History’ Category

Harvest and Harangue … yes, this is cheating …

Posted in History, News, Peeps, Religion, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2010| 6 Comments »

Since I’ve been busy lately … mucho work and some pleasant and interesting communication … I’m opting for a familiar blogging out I call “Harvest and Harangue”, meaning I go through the day’s news and bitch about the stuff that pisses me off.

I’ll start with murder, since that’s always such a popular topic, and with one I recall so well.

December 8, 1980 … Mark Chapman shot John Lennon. All these years later, the genius that was John is still dead and the fuckwad who killed him has had another parole hearing.

“I felt that by killing John Lennon I would become somebody and instead of that I became a murderer and murderers are not somebodies,” he said.

In a closing statement, Chapman said his life had changed because of Jesus.

“I know him, he is with me, he is with me now, he is helping me speak to you now. Without him I am nothing, I would have been an even bigger nobody.”

With some modicum of sense, the parole board turned him down again, but the fact that he gets to do this every couple of years … trot out his somebodyness and get his ugly mug in the international press annoys the shit out of me. As for his Jesusness … well, Jim Jones had that happening, too, if I recall and look at the holy shit he created.

Moving right along, but sticking with murder … if you’ll excuse the expression in this case … this story is one you can sink your teeth into.

A Broadmoor patient who confessed to killing two women in East Sussex in 1998 and eating flesh from one of them has been jailed for at least 21 years.

He also admitted trying to murder and rape a Czech student on a train and raping a London woman in her home.

Excuse me … but TWENTY-ONE years? WTF are these people thinking? Lock up and throw away the key, peeps, because the world don’t need this person.

The judge said that it had been “to his credit” that he decided while he was at Broadmoor “to get these terrible crimes off his chest, because he was concerned that he was too dangerous at that stage to be transferred from Broadmoor to a less secure hospital but also because he wanted to remain at Broadmoor”.

To his credit? Sorry, Judge, but this guy gets NO credit, not even if he finds Jesus. I’d say he’s a shark, but that would be an insult to sharks.

And speaking of sharks … sorry, can’t resist an easy segue … they kill, too, but it’s not called murder, it’s called lunch, as the tiger in this story would be happy to tell you if he could just get the bits out of his teeth long enough to spit out a sentence.

The 3.6-metre (12ft) tiger shark was caught on 4 September by a local investment banker who was deep-sea fishing.

Whilst reeling it in, he said he saw a leg poking out of the shark’s mouth.

After cutting the creature open, defence force officers found a torso, two severed arms, and a right leg.

Amazingly, the dude’s fingerprints were readable, but his claims of being a strong swimmer and therefore beyond the dangers of the sea, apparently, didn’t float.

Deadly sea creatures running on instinct and hunger have nothing over some humans when it comes to horror as this story proves … and probably have a more highly developed sense of humor to boot.

A US artist whose satirical cartoon inspired an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad has disappeared into hiding, her newspaper has said.

Molly Norris, who disavowed the movement that provoked outrage in the Islamic world, has moved and changed her name, the Seattle Weekly said.

She fled after FBI agents warned she was in danger …

FFS, Peeps … get over it! The world has moved beyond stone tablets, even photography was invented a couple of years ago, and if Mo was around today you can bet he’d be paying big bucks to his PR firm to get his mug on the cover of every mag around. After all, that’s de rigueur in the religious leaders game.

Just check out the popester’s spin machine in high gear as they try to clean up the shit he’s smearing around Britain.

The pope urged the UK to guard against “aggressive forms of secularism”.

A speech in which the Pope appeared to associate atheism with the Nazis has prompted criticism from humanist organisations.

However, the Catholic Church has moved to play down the controversy, saying the Pope knew “rather well what the Nazi ideology is about”.

Humanists have said the comments were a “terrible libel” against non-believers.

No shit.

Unfortunately for the spinnsters, he just keeps putting his foot in it …

He said: “Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.”

Yep … even in his own lifetime … and, yes, people DO remember … and the catholic church do NOT come out clean.

The Pope’s reaction to the Holocaust was complex and inconsistent. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was successful. But these successes only highlight the amount of influence he might have had, if he not chosen to remain silent on so many other occasions. No one knows for sure the motives behind Pius XII’s actions, or lack thereof, since the Vatican archives have only been fully opened to select researchers. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church’s traditional role of being politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated.) Whatever his motivation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Pope, like so many others in positions of power and influence, could have done more to save the Jews.

So shut the fuck up, Ben, pull on the big man panties, confess … get it off your chest like the dude who ate women … and thank the Brits for coughing up £12 mil for your holiday.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …

Movies get news, too … ours being the “live life to the fullest a screen can hold” society … and stories about celebs are oh-so-vital to maintaining the illusion that life is worth living.

Just how worthy should be questioned more often, but this venture up the celebrity ass really should serve to aim a Klieg where the sun don’t shine.

Actor Casey Affleck has admitted the documentary film he made about Joaquin Phoenix quitting Hollywood to become a rap star was staged.

Affleck told the New York Times that Phoenix gave a “terrific” performance”.

Over the last two years, the actor has behaved strangely in public, leading fans and critics to wonder whether he was documenting a breakdown on film.

Ah … duh … since there was a camera following him everywhere. Ya think? Not clever. Not tricky. Just WAY up your own asses, Casey and Joaquin. Andy Kaufman did the same thing years ago … only it was with Carson, not Letterman … and, forgive my smugness, but I called this way back when. (I still expect Andy to show up admitting that his death was part of the act.)

But I’ll end up with a bit of movie news that makes total sense to me. Sacha Baron Cohen is going to play Freddie Mercury in a movie Brian May and Roger Taylor are working on.

“We have Sacha Baron Cohen, which will probably be a shock to a lot of people, but he’s been talking with us for a long time,” May told the HARDtalk show.

Good choice guys.

And that’s the way it was … 17 September 2010 …

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“Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” ~Marie Curie

Posted in Cambodia, Children, Family, Health, History, Hopeful thoughts, Loss, love, Men, Religion, science, Sex, Smarten up, World politics on September 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

Continuing on from yesterday’s post where I’ve been taking conversations about maleness for a wander around the blog.

I titled this post with a quote from Marie Curie because it was thoughts of her that tugged me toward today’s tangent.

After hours of researching testosterone-driven aggression, infidelity, abuse, slavery, torture … pick a term for what happens to millions daily, any term … I settled in to do some light reading on patriarchy, the history and manifestations of this man’s world we live in.

Although historically, male domination of societies has prevailed … unevenly often, as is evidenced by ancient differences between Greek and Egyptian cultures and such modern poles as, say, California and Kandahar … prehistorically, matriarchies ran the show for something like 40,000 years.

Matriarchal societies are now virtually nonexistent, although a bare few are still functioning in remote corners of the world. The Mosuo of South East China, for example, a culture in which women rule the roost and the word “rape” doesn’t exist.

Few Mosuo women will have more than one partner at a time, even if they are not expected to do so. Mosuo women can change partners as often as they like. In fact, they practice “serial monogamies”, and some relationships can last for a lifetime. So they are not a culture sexually promiscuous as one might think.

Google “mass rape” and see how different the patriarchal world is. From Bosnia to post-WWII Europe, to today’s Congo, rape is not only an active verb in the vocabulary, it’s a living outrage committed by millions leaving millions of victims.

Add in feckless mates, absent fathers, violent crime in general and we get a whopper of a messy man sandwich that’s causing a global bellyache none may end up surviving.

Can we, for just a moment or two, try to imagine a world where women were able to maintain their ancient power?

Okay. Maybe that’s too much.

Can we imagine a world where the power western women have today, limited as that still is, was allocated … what? … maybe 200 years ago?

Back to Marie Curie for a moment.

Maire Curie won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 … the second year prizes were awarded. (She also won the prize for Chemistry in 1911.) In total, a Nobel has been given 41 times to a woman. (Five in 2009 alone.)

What have they won for? Here are a few examples …

Marie Curie: for her discovery of radium and polonium

Irène Joliot-Curie: for their synthesis of new radioactive elements

Gabriela Mistral: for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow: for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones

Nadine Gordimer: who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity

Aung San Suu Kyi: for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights

In the same period of time, 765 Nobel Prizes have gone to men, also for some great stuff that has made a difference in the world.

And here’s where we get to the imagining bit …

What could our world be like if … even just for the past 200 years … women had had the same opportunities to contribute?

In a bit more than 100 years, look what just 41 women who struggled like hell managed to do.

As Marie Curie, two-time Nobel Laureate was forced to admit:

I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.

Did anyone EVER ask her husband, with whom she shared the first award, that question? I’m betting NOT.

Has humanity been served by an ancient shift that left women powerless and put men firmly in control?

What would I know? I’m just a girl …

Further reading for the interested:

http://www.japss.org/upload/8._Sharmon%5B1%5D.pdf

http://www.musawah.org/docs/pubs/wanted/Wanted-AW-EN.pdf

j-dv.org/writings/essays/witch.pdf

http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her62/62catton.pdf

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“A man is a God in ruins.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Posted in History, Men, Religion, science, Sex on September 9, 2010| 4 Comments »

Recent posts on topics like the Catholic church and a suspected tendency for men to go feral when women are out of the mix have spawned some interesting and wide-ranging conversations coming my way.

Men being the focus of discussion, we begin slowly today, and with the small issue of infidelity, a hobby women have been known to pursue, as well.

I conducted an informal poll a while back that asked, of men, the question:

If you had a chance to nail a hot babe, and if your partner … with whom you are in a good and committed relationship … was very unlikely to find out about it, would you?

Sorry to say, not one man gave an emphatic no. Some did hesitate, but upon investigation the reticence seemed to have more to do with “how unlikely” than anything else. (Women, by the way, when asked the same question, answered with a unanimous “NO”, followed by: Why in hell would I do something that stupid?)

Maybe it’s only sleazeballs in my world? Maybe. But the following ad seems to indicate differently …

Moving right along …

War. Slavery. Abuse.

USC researcher Leo Braudy’s book “From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity” is reported to address some of the issues under discussion:

At its core, “From Chivalry to Terrorism” deals with the metamorphosis of masculinity through the ages.

“I don’t believe all men are destined to be macho or that manliness is unchanging and absolute,” said Braudy, who has written 10 other books. “So many socio-biological arguments are fatalistic: ‘Men have testosterone, so war will always happen.’ I’m very dubious about the claim that all masculinity is the same, either across history or in a particular era.”

His reflections on chivalry started with an assortment of essays encompassing Braudy’s variety of interests: a long review of several books on Custer; an article comparing a pair of 17th-century poems on premature ejaculation; an essay on Method acting as a metaphor for the 1950s.

17th Century poems on premature ejaculation? Hm. Something like this, perhaps:

Although I muchly love to thrust
I cannot keep my wood, so trust
thee, my dear, to understand
If not, I’ll simply use mine hand

Sorry. Not 17th Century, but five minutes ago, and I digress …

I, too, am dubious about claims that all men are the same, but that’s not the question being asked so often right now.

In attempts to understand the state of the world, the topic of how much of the bad shit that happens daily can be chalked up to testosterone and its effects does come up. There is evidence that reducing the juice has profound impact on aggression in sex offenders:

Attempts to reduce aggression and sexual predation in male sex offenders have included surgical castration and chemical castration (the use of female hormones to suppress testosterone levels). Studies suggest that either approach can be effective; a 1989 German study by Wille and Beier, for instance, compared 99 surgically castrated sex offenders and 35 non-castrated sex offenders about a decade after their release from prison, and found that the recidivism rate of castrated offenders was 3%, while the rate for non-castrated offenders was 46%.

Interesting enough information to have a dear friend, a decade-long voluntary and happy celibate, a woman, suggest an experiment that, on the surface at least, seems to make good sense. It goes like this: Since clerical celibacy — a discipline, not a doctrine, by the way — is very apparently problematic and results in the victimization of children and no little conflict in the minds and nether regions of the guys in dresses — would it not make sense to have catholic priests the world over step up for chemical castration … just to see how it works out? Thinking, “What harm could it do?”, she follows with speculation on the richness of such a vast database and the potential to avert a load of damage to innocents, adding: What the heck do these guys need full nuts for, anyway?

The thought is not without precedent, since some places have made chemical castration a consequence of assault, although after the fact and conviction, not in anticipation of.

When it comes to war and all, it’s not only the hormone-driven territorial imperative, but the desire for money, for power, for control … oh! wait! … Are those guy things?

As a general pattern of behavior, in territorial species the competition between males which we formerly believed was one for the possession of females is in truth for possession of property.

Man … is as much a territorial animal as is a mockingbird singing in the clear California night. We act as we do for reasons of our evolutionary past, not our cultural present, and our behavior is as much a mark of our species as is the shape of a human thigh bone or the configuration of nerves in a corner of the human brain. If we defend the title to our land or the sovereignty of our country, we do it for reasons no different, no less innate, no less ineradicable, than do lower animals. The dog barking at you from behind his master’s fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of his master when the fence was built.

To be continued …

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Bits on Men

Posted in Health, History, Men, science, Sex, Women's rights on September 8, 2010| 11 Comments »

I like men. In fact, I love men, collectively as a gender and individually. A father, three brothers and two sons were born male, and great, and many of my best friends are men. I have up-close-and-personal loved some amazing men. Men contribute to the world in ways appropriate to half the human population, and the art, lit, music, science, discovery and more that have issued from men over the centuries form the basis of what we like to think of as civilization. (For some thoughts on why there’s an imbalance of input from women, take a read through A Room of One’s Own, or any bit of history of our species.)

I adore men’s bodies, can be enraptured by their minds, find conversation with members of that opposite sex entertaining, compelling and often instructive. The smell of them is seductive, the sight can be alluring and their touch can bring sparkle to a day and spark a fire in a dark night that sets me to glowing.

Yes, men are wonderful …

but … and here’s the caveat we all knew was coming …

… there appears to be a marked tendency to jettison wonderful when women aren’t looking … or when women have no power to slap them upside the head on a regular basis.

Whether it be a mother, wife, an Empress or a best friend, having a woman’s perspective perched on one shoulder seems to greatly temper temptations touted by that other-shoulder-devil, the male … what? … ego? imperative?

Although an extreme example, a common practice in Afghanistan makes a point:

It’s after midnight. I’m at a wedding party in a remote village in northern Afghanistan.

There is no sign of the bride or groom, or any women, only men. Some of them are armed, some of them are taking drugs.

Almost everyone’s attention is focused on a 15-year-old boy. He’s dancing for the crowd in a long and shiny woman’s dress, his face covered by a red scarf.

He is wearing fake breasts and bells around his ankles. Someone offers him some US dollars and he grabs them with his teeth.

This is an ancient tradition. People call it bachabaze which literally means “playing with boys”.

The most disturbing thing is what happens after the parties. Often the boys are taken to hotels and sexually abused.

The men behind the practice are often wealthy and powerful. Some of them keep several bachas (boys) and use them as status symbols – a display of their riches. The boys, who can be as young as 12, are usually orphans or from very poor families.

It’s no question that women in Afghanistan have no power. Men in that country don’t have the worry of a wife or mother or female casual observer pointing out that they’re jerks. No, they can debauch with gay abandon. And they do.

“Bachabaze” is slavery, prostitution, evil … and, apparently, an acceptable hobby.

“Some people like dog fighting, some practice cockfighting. Everyone has their hobby, for me, it’s bachabaze,” …

EveryONE, of course, meaning every man.

Yep, all fun and games.

Will even the gentlest male go feral without the taming influence of woman? Does removing women from an equation assure a downward spiral toward decadence?

It would seem so when one considers the consequences of war and the proclivities of male-dominated institutions … the catholic church comes to mind. (See this report on mass rape now happening in the DRC and just about any old news source for info on sex abuse in the church.)

Historically speaking, some might cite Sparta as an example of male rule pulling off something special, but contrary modern perceptions it wasn’t a lack of female power that allowed the rise of that society.

“During the times of the ancient Greeks, women were generally considered inferior to men and afforded very few rights and privileges. In these male dominated societies, a woman’s only function was to bear children and attend to the needs of her husband. However, the Spartans thought very highly of their women and granted them more freedoms than anywhere else in Greece. This is because unlike the women in other cities, Spartan women played an active role in the life of the polis. The role of Spartan women was not merely to produce male warriors, but to uphold Spartan ideals and ensure that the men maintained the standards which Spartan society was built upon.”

While the Greeks were doing the Greek thing and letting Arisotle set the patriarchal tone, down in Egypt things were far different, which may be why anal sex is not referred to as “the Egyptian thing” …

Egypt left no philosophical record, but Herodotus left a record of his shock at the contrast between the roles of Egyptian women and the women of Athens. He observed that they attended market and were employed in trade. In ancient Egypt a middle-class woman might sit on a local tribunal, engage in real estate transactions, and inherit or bequeath property. Women also secured loans, and witnessed legal documents.

Yes, I love men, but I do worry about them. Left to their own devices, they seem to lack sense, and stick them in an environment where no women have any say over anything that goes on and things can deteriorate rapidly.

The thing is, it seems that men are actually happier when not left to those devices. They live longer, are more productive and off themselves half as often.

So, although men may rail at the thought of a world … or a house … in which women have equal power, it’s a partnership of the sexes that can make life on this planet livable.

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Friggatriskaidekaphobia … even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious

Posted in Health, History, Nature, science, tagged on August 13, 2010| 10 Comments »

In my time zone … GMT+4 … it’s Friday the 13th, and seeing how crap the rest of the week … month … year … has gone, I’ll be watching my back thankyouverymuch.

In prep for doing so, I gathered some info on history not my own concerning the reasons behind this particular combo of day and date having ominous overtones.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia is the bon mot coined to describe the fear of Friday the 13th, and if that’s not reason enough to stay in bed the whole day, head under the covers, and a refusal to speak to anyone for fear of having to admit to having the condition … well … I could think of a couple of others, but don’t need to.

Thankfully, planning ahead is possible — a stock of tea on hand, a couple of good books, that sort of thing — since every year has at least one … but no more than three … Paraskevi the dekatreis, and any month that begins on a Sunday is warning that the 13th on a Friday will happen.

Funnily enough, while most people now welcome Fridays with open arms and high hopes for a hoot and a half, historically, the whole TGIF thing wasn’t happening until recently:

The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil — a gathering of thirteen — and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as “Witches’ Sabbath.

Unlike moderns eagerly packing up cars and heading outta Dodge in a Dodge, as far back as the 14th century Fridays were considered an unlucky day to begin a journey, as Chauser suggests as he sees his folks off to Canterbury.

So, Friday was a downer, and the idea that 13 is an unlucky number has a few traceable roots:

In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.

Numerology, astrology, mythology, Christianity … hang a hat already.

When some bad shit happened on Fridays that fell on 13ths, folks started putting two and two together and came up with a baker’s dozen called spooky.

The Knights Templar weren’t happy about the day after King Philip had a slew of them arrested on Friday the 13th, 1307, the Battle of Hastings startedon the Friday the 13th of 1066 and ended badly for King Harold, Wall Street crashed Friday the 13th of 1929. Hurricane Charley made landfall in south Florida on Friday, August 13, 2004. The “Friday the 13th Storm” struck Buffalo, New York on Friday, October 13, 2006. The Andes Plane Crash of 1972 occurred on Friday, October 13, 1972.(For the same sorts of reasons, the Spanish-speaking world has Tuesday the 13th marked as a bad day in the making.)

And how does all this impact today? Well …

According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by a fear of this day. Some people are so paralyzed by fear that they avoid their normal routines in doing business, taking flights or even getting out of bed. “It’s been estimated that $800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day”.

So my idea of resting recumbent lo lili has me thinking I should have lots of company … so to speak.

But does the day actually attract shit? Hm. Debatable. The wiki:

There are conflicting studies about the risk of accidents on Friday the 13th. The Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) on June 12, 2008, stated that “fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Statistically speaking, driving is slightly safer on Friday the 13th, at least in the Netherlands; in the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7,800 traffic accidents each Friday; but the average figure when the 13th fell on a Friday was just 7,500. However, a 1993 study in the British Medical Journal that compared the ratio of traffic accidents between Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th stated that there is a significant increase in traffic-related accidents on Friday the 13th. There are indications that there are more accidents on Fridays than average weekdays (irrespective of the date) probably because of alcohol consumption. Therefore it is less relevant for this purpose to compare Friday the 13th with, say, Tuesday the 13th.

Driving in Holland is okay, but stay well off the roads in the UK? Okay … and I’ll add, avoid the M25 on any day!

There is, after all, no sense in tempting fate, unless such things get your rocks off. That didn’t work out so well for stuntman Sam Patch who picked the day back in 1829 to make his biggest jump … even bigger than his history-setting plunge over Niagara Falls … and died in the process. (Have to add his personal slogan here, since it cracks me up: Some things can be done as well as others.)

I leave it up to readers to decide what to do with their day … once it rolls around to longitudes more westerly … and take some comfort in the idea that I, for one, can avoid the friggatriskaidekaphobia outbreak warming up already in anticipation of Friday the 13th of April speeding toward us for contact in 2029 … or 2036 … or whatever … when 99942 Apophis puts an end to such silliness.

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The cost of blather …

Posted in Gay rights, Health, History, Nature, science, The United Nations, World politics on August 7, 2010| 2 Comments »

Let’s talk about climate change; blah, blah blah.

And that sums up the progress made toward preventing catastrophe, as highlighted in today’s news from Bonn where guys in suits have gathered to hobnob one last time before jetting off to Cancun … notice these summits seem to happen in fun places … to blather a bit more.

“At this point, I am very concerned,” said chief US negotiator Jonathan Pershing at the conclusion of a week of talks in Bonn.

“Unfortunately, what we have seen over and over this week is that some countries are walking back from progress made in Copenhagen, and what was agreed there.”

And it’s not as if the Copenhagen deal was an epiphany, being, of course, just talk.

What’s it going to take before it all goes to shit? Well … it all going to shit.

We’re well on our way, and although the writing is on the wall it is not on any document that carries enough weight to make any difference at all to the consequences of greedy short-sightedness.

While far too many folks are thinking gay marriage in California is the abomination worth getting het up about, seriously bad stuff is happening … bad stuff that is getting worse and will eventually cause discomfort at church picnics … yet causing little of the outrage stirred by a bit of wedded bliss between consenting adults.

So, let’s look at some news of the day …

A big chunk fell off of Greenland.

Floods in Pakistan have caused misery for 12 million people, destroyed 1.4 million acres of farmland and killed thousands … so far.

In Russia, 560 wildfires are raging and people in Moscow should stop breathing if they know what’s good for them since the city’s mortality rate has risen at least 30% in July.

As the UN and pals start thinking about packing their Armani into Vuittons, champaign goes on ice, every limo in western Mexico gets a good spit and polish and hundreds of jets are fueled up, the planet goes to hell in an ever-hotter hand basket.

Do the name Nero ring a bell? This time is ain’t just Rome, though … it’s the whole damned world, still the only one we have.

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Witchkids weigh the same as a duck … Burn them!

Posted in Children, History, orphans, Religion, The United Nations, Women's rights on July 18, 2010| 6 Comments »

Not learned much in 600 years, have we ... ?

Lest anyone get the idea that I am inclined to chew on the ass of only one religion, I’ll range more widely today and slam effects of worship all the way to witchcraft.

Subscribing to a bit of the old double, double can seem nothing more than a giggle, but as is the case with all who take hocuspocus as gospel, be it the Eucharist or “He turned me into a newt!”, it always results in damage to some innocent bystander.

Today’s example comes from the BBC in this report on an increasing number of kids in Africa being accused of witchcraft, and the horrible consequences of those accusations.

A new Unicef report warns that children accused of being witches – some as young as eight – have been been burned, beaten and even killed as punishment.

(… burned, beaten AND EVEN KILLED … What the hell sort of sentence is that? Oh … never mind … )

In rounding up the usual suspects, it’s orphans, street kids, albinos and the disabled, mainly boys between the ages of 8 and 14 who are victims.

Unicef … always so good at counting atrocities, but not so hot on preventing them … reports that 20,000 street kids have been tarred with the black magic brush in Kinshasa, DRC alone.

The agency [Unicef] said there was little it could do about the belief in witchcraft itself, and that it was not trying to eradicate the practice. But it said violence against children was wrong, and that it would do everything it could to stop it.

Well … isn’t that special?

Urbanization and war are fingered as prompts for a shift from picking on old crones and focusing on kids as harbingers of evil sorcery as more and more children fend for themselves in ways that just might make some uncomfortable. Of course, there’s always a few folks who have figured there’s a buck or two to be made, as well.

It is reported that some evangelical preachers have added to the problem by charging large sums for exorcisms. One was recently arrested in Nigeria after charging more than $250 for each procedure.

When some of those rituals involve petrol being poured into the eyes, one must wonder at the price of fuel.

As logical as it gets ...

Being me of little faith, the whole disambiguation song and dance has always been a puzzler. I get that paganism, being an outdoor activity that didn’t make a lot of dosh, was an unpopular option to offer potential church members, but didn’t anyone twig to the fact that anyone with the sorts of powers accused could easily avoid the horrific demise those devout Christians so relished?

But it’s never been about sense. As Nietzsche so aptly put it, “’Faith’ means not wanting to know what is true.”

True is that tens of thousands of children are being tortured and murdered over something that J.K. Rowling has made a mint from.

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Hammering the Church … they started it …

Posted in Children, History, My Chinese Checkered Past, Religion, World politics on May 4, 2010| 4 Comments »

There are some who might accuse me of Pope-bashing or, at least, hammering the Catholics … shall we say? … mercilessly.

Well … yeah. But they started it.

All those centuries of burnings and beatings and such rather set a precedent for showing no mercy, and, gee, all I do is give a tongue lashing, and like Blacks can use the “N” word, girls who grew up in the bat-like shadow of Sister Mary Stanislaus and her ilk have license to lash.

Yes, I was a Catholic girl, although I didn’t start that much too late, and had my share of rotten treatment at the hands of black-clad despots, so bear with me.

This story raises a host of ghosts, and we ain’t talking little white bread dots.

… current research and expert opinion suggest that men within the Catholic Church may be no more likely than others to abuse, and that the prevalence of abuse by priests has fallen sharply in the last 20-30 years.

How’s that for missing more than one point in one go?

First, let’s look at the “research” … and feel free to note my bolding of type and call it hammering if you like:

The best-known study on sex abuse by Catholic priests was published in the US, by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops …

Well, grab my head and stick it down a baptismal font! That attribution drips.

Moving right along to more on the point-missing, how’s this?

“The real problem is an abuse of authority, the duty of care that pastors have to their flocks,” says the British historian, and former member of the Jesuit Catholic order, Michael Walsh.

“This has been abused and that is the greatest scandal – that’s what is systemic, rather than sex abuse.”

No, Father Michael … the real problem is that kids have been getting fucked by priests, and the fact that church dudes in big hats and dresses did everything in their vast powers to make sure nobody ever did a thing about it, and that tactics that guaranteed this were engrained into the fabric more clearly than the face on the Turin shroud, just made it more fun.

Trotting out stats is often a dodge, and here’s a classic case of the trots used to suggest that: “There is a big gap between the reality and the public debate … ”

Overall, from 2001-2010 the Vatican has considered sex abuse allegations concerning about 3,000 priests dating back up to 50 years, according to figures given last month by Monsignor Charles J Scicluna, who as the Vatican’s Promoter of Justice heads the office that investigates such cases.

Though the cases were spreading geographically, “the phenomenon itself is much reduced,” he said, noting that there are 400,000 priests worldwide.

Sorry, but the cases the Vatican “has considered about sex abuse allegations” hardly qualifies these numbers as hard data.

My favorite bit of gospel though is this line:

“Celibacy can indeed be a challenge but the vast majority of sexual abuse is not committed by celibates … “

I’ll be charitable and assume this means theoretical celibates …

There’s more, but I have kids to bathe, and if anyone tries to sprinkle them bashing and hammering will happen.

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RWP: “Forty predators of press freedom” … and what’s really dangerous (hint: ends with Palin)

Posted in History, Island life, My Chinese Checkered Past, Seychelles, Smarten up, The USA from the outside in, World politics, tagged , , on May 3, 2010| 7 Comments »

Confession: I was a junkie.

No, I’m not talking drugs here … although given the decades I was misspending my youth I was far from circumspect, but that’s not what this post is about.

This is about news. I was hooked on it.

Starting in high school, I have written for newspapers, worked in TV newsrooms, yapped away on radio and made money keeping track of media coverage for companies, lawyers and folks whose babies won beauty contests. I’ve followed murder cases and exploding Fords, sticking 45-second clips onto reels that run for days … in the process stamping permanent images of mayhem to the inside of my eyelids.

For much of my adult life, mornings didn’t begin until the radio clicked on at about the same time the newspaper hit the doorstep, and my coffee always came with opinions.

Rehab for me was a small island in a big ocean a long way from everywhere else where there was one TV station that aired 5 minutes of news in English … didn’t matter, since I had no TV … and a newspaper that consisted of 8 pages. And … there’s no news on Sunday.

Cold turkey is ugly, and I suffered, right up to the time I shook the yoke of the constant flow of information on world happenings and it dawned on me that horrible shit can happen without me having to know about it.

I have learned to be a social imbiber of news, taking in what interests, educates or elucidates and allows me to participate in dialog with others likewise motivated to keep up with some of what is going on beyond the inside of our own front doors.

This being the case, this year’s Reporters Without Borders report listing “Forty predators of press freedom” has me tipsy enough to actually put a blog post together.

It’s a disturbing read:

There are 40 names on this year’s list of Predators of Press Freedom – 40 politicians, government officials, religious leaders, militias and criminal organisations that cannot stand the press, treat it as an enemy and directly attack journalists. They are powerful, dangerous, violent and above the law.

There are few surprises, as it doesn’t take an article addict to have the dope on regimes like those in North Korea and Burma and know that journalistic freedom doesn’t even blip on the radar of rights denied. Zimbabwe, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba … ditto. Spain was a bit of a surprise, but that’s an ETA thing, apparently, like Italy’s issues with organized crime taking a toll on truth-telling in print or broadcast.

Personally, I’m not at all happy to see Mexico named as among the most dangerous countries for journalists, having had 62 killed in the last decade, and I’m happy Ernesto is a musician, not a reporter.

But back to my recovering news junkie status and how I’m dealing with this infusion of inclusion in the goings-on.

Strong arm tactics, murder, intimidation … yeah, yeah, yeah. Reporters will balls have dealt with this since Grag covered Yurk’s attempt to take over the cave by hiding the mammoth meat.

Quite frankly, all the predators described by RWB don’t scare me half as much as Fox News.

It’s not vicious attacks on reporters that will crumble the fourth estate to dust, but pretty people passing palatable pap to the people … the vapid to the vacuous.

Far more insidious and likely to put an end to journalism as we once knew it … Sarah Palin clothed as credible.

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Church … State … do not mix …

Posted in History, Religion, Smarten up, Women's rights, tagged , , , , , , , on February 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

I live on an island. That is my only excuse for being caught off guard by the preposterous news that a fundamental function of America’s founding fathers is under attack.

The separation of church and state is about as basic as it gets as far as making and keeping the USA a sane and livable nation, so the information in this piece in the NYTimes Mag is like a ball-peen to the brain case:

To conservative Christians, there is no separation of church and state, and there never was. The concept, they say, is a modern secular fiction.

The fact that headway … although that seems completely the wrong word to use juxtaposed against such brainlessness … is being made in efforts to remove the vital barrier between gods and government is testament (Like that one?) to just how stupid people can be.

I know. I know. Using words like ‘stupid’ shows no brilliance on my part and I should attempt to wax eloquent when referring to those so determined to limit … ban even, if at all possible … thinking, but, sorry, they piss me off, and stupid fits so well.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the poperific dude’s take on the UK’s efforts to take the “in” out of religious intolerance …

The effect of the government’s proposals, he said, in an address to Catholic bishops in Britain, has been to impose “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.

… and mentioned the dangers of slopping religion all over governing:

… freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs” is an old saw that has cut deeply over the centuries since religion was invented, excusing everything from mass exterminations to female genital mutilation, serving up the Kool-Aid in one form or another and forcing millions to stop with the thinking stuff and take a big ole swig.

A couple of days later, I picked up The 19th Wife, a novel based on fact by David Ebershoff woven around the true story of Ann Eliza Young, one of the many wives of Brigham Young, prophet for profit of Momons and a staunch and paunchy advocate and practicer of polygamy with more than 50 women tethered to his bits and hundreds of children spawned … the guy the university is named in honor of who is well-revered to this day amongst the Latter Day Saints, as they like to call themselves.

Have been forced to sit through hundreds of hours of LDS claptrap as a child … this after hundreds of hours of Catholic claptrap … I am more than familiar with the tale of the golden books and magic sunglasses that delivered the message of the Moron angel to Mr. Smith, eventually leading thousands of those with thoughts of something to gain to Utah in much the same way Jim Jones got San Francisco folks to head for South America and for many of the same reasons.

Ann Eliza’s tale is rife with horrid consequences of life under a government controlled by a “faith” where abuse of all flavors is considered part and parcel, so condoned, then … eventually, when forced into the light of day by those who passed on the Kool-Aid … concealed, excused, apologized for, and finally condemned.

Today’s news brings reports on decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests … and it’s about time.

An investigation last year revealed that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law while many fellow clerics turned a blind eye. A separate report in Ireland released months earlier documented decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages.

The popester is reportedly “”disturbed and distressed” by the report and shares the “outrage, betrayal and shame” felt by Irish people … but still insistent, as we saw in the article last week, that government should keeps hands off.

Yeah. Right.

Does anyone think that any religion would come clean on anything if there were no secular government to grab it by its over-starched lapels and shake?

The days of religion running nations should be as far behind us as the possibility of owning other humans … but we all know many countries have a faith-shod foot on the controls and slavery happens every day in our world. The trick is to keep from backsliding in places that have moved beyond these archaic, abusive methods of ‘leadership’.

“Secular” … Latin saecularis, from saeculum ‘generation, age,’ used to mean ‘the world’ (as opposed to the Church)

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