Evil, pure evil, in any language:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/slideshow/ALeqM5h5f3B-Kb1SjRRDSOe4mX8g_J1FFg?index=0
Story:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h5f3B-Kb1SjRRDSOe4mX8g_J1FFg
Quote:
Bahrami, who moved to Barcelona after the attack to get medical treatment, said the court had originally ruled that she was entitled to have the man blinded in only one eye in Iran because “each man is worth two women”.
We salute you Craig. Despite the fact that the British state would have denied you your most fundamental human right, that of being in control of your own life, you managed to preserve that right to the end.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7774652.stm
The documentary examining your illness and death airs this evening on a British TV channel, and the media here is full of predictable objections from authoritarian and reactionary forces that want to take that right away from people in your situation, forcing them to spend their final months, years or decades in a living nightmare of terrifying helplessness and dependency. You were destined to suffer a fate that many consider to be one of the most horrific of all, namely, becoming a “brain in a vat”, utterly helpless and eventually destined to lose even the means to communicate your most basic needs to the world around you (and even that would have required that the world around you remained compassionate and attentive to your needs, things you would have been powerless to ensure). It truly is the stuff of nightmares, but the British state was going to prevent you from taking the required steps to avoid it.
Craig was faced with an utterly horrendous ordeal that could have lasted decades. To those who would have preferred to have seen him forced to endure such a horrific, drawn-out fate in order that their inherited superstitious beliefs be appeased, I say shame on you. It’s unconscionable to allow such hangovers from the primordial mental swamp to override the very real desires and needs of a man in such a desperate personal situation.
To those who object on utilitarian grounds, believing that a liberal approach to euthanasia creates the potential for too much abuse, I’m less dismissive and I share your concerns to some extent. However, I do not accept that any theoretical concerns override the very real situation that Craig faced. And they certainly don’t override the most fundamental human right of all, that of self-determination.
As for the televising of Craig’s death, well, it was his decision, no one forced him. If you don’t want to watch the program, it’s quite simple, don’t.
Ophelia Benson writes:
So. A child of 13 and her father try to tell the authorities that she was raped by three men, and the authorities in response arrest her, order up a truckload of stones, bury her in the ground up to her neck, gather a crowd of a thousand people, and throw the truckload of stones at her head.
It’s hard to figure out what’s going on in the heads of people like that. It’s not just violent lashing out - it’s religious legal official punishment - carried out in cold blood and the pure odor of sanctity. It’s hard to figure that out. What kind of monster do they think they worship, that wants children smashed to death with rocks for being raped? What kind of hideous loathsome savage bloodthirsty tyrannical cruel monster do they imagine wants them to act like that? What kind of nightmare world do they live in? How do they look on their work and approve it?
To anyone who might be thinking that incredible thought “But who are we to judge others’ culture?”, I suggest you put the question to the 13 year old victim. Let’s ask her whether or not she thinks others have the right and/or duty to question the practice. Oh hang on, we can’t. She’s been brutally murdered.
From theregister.co.uk: Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids
And it seems even the US priests accept this, hence their recourse to a little moral blackmail, by highlighting YouTube’s caving into Jewish protests recently over a video showing a teenager urinating on a Holocaust memorial in Greece. After five days of pressure YouTube duly removed the vid.
Maybe, just maybe, a memorial to commemorate the lives and remember the mass murder of real people, whose children are still living, is deserving of protection in a way that symbolic cream crackers used within superstitious rites simply aren’t. Are the complaining priests aware that to those of us occupying a more, er, objective standpoint, there’s a qualitative difference between their concern over a childish insult and the memories of people murdered within a holocaust that their church was infamously ambivalent about?
It amazes me that so many professional Christians, and I was raised within a Christian culture even if I wasn’t imprinted with metaphysical belief by my parents, really are far down the stack when it comes to being secure in their beliefs. If a Zen priest saw a video of a man flushing a statue of Buddha down a toilet, he’d be more likely to email him the number of a good plumber than to write angry letters to YouTube. “But Sir! Sir! You did it for Weinstein, it’s not fair, Sir!!!”
Honestly, grow up, the lot of you! And send a delegation to Japan to learn how truly spiritual men and women behave when confronted by ignorance or irritation. I think you’ll find it an instructive and humbling experience.
Let’s hope that YouTube replies using the Scott Adams method.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s top judiciary official has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks that broadcast immoral content.
The sooner we wean ourselves off oil, the better for all modern, civilized people, methinks.
So, in addition to McCain’s appeals to his god superstitious beliefs for guidance and inspiration, we now have Sarah Palin who supports the teaching of Creationism in America’s schools, who supports religion-inspired state control over women’s wombs and believes that the troops in Iraq are on a divine mission.
The likelihood of the formation of the United Theocracy of America seems to increase daily.
Edit: today the BBC seems unconcerned with the matter of Palin’s religious beliefs, instead choosing to focus on the “lipstick on a pig” controversy. Way to go BBC, that’s what’s really important here…
Edit2: Obama’s lookiing worryingly tired, but then who wouldn’t after the few months that he’s been through?
Edit3: Perhaps my title should have read “theocrat” rather than “autocrat”. Not that the two are mutually exclusive of course.
Jesus and Mo’s favourite barmaid interviewed by freethinker.co.uk:
FT: Does God hate women?
OB: The God of most of the people who think there is a God certainly hates women. The God of some of them hates women with a weirdly obsessive neurotic hostility - so weird and petty and obsessive that one wonders what this god would make women for if it hates them so much. If it wants them covered up all the time, why didn’t it make them out of a bale of cloth? If it doesn’t want men looking at them, why didn’t it make men without any eyes? These are deep theological questions.
Link: Not much of a believer - a world exclusive interview with Ophelia Benson
Council ban on atheist websites
EDIT: This intolerable nonsense has finally persuaded me to join the National Secular Society. I submitted the membership form this evening.