Israel: ‘Messianic’ leaders mislead public

The recently retired chief of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency has described the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, as men driven by ”messianic feelings” and said that he had ”no faith” in them to lead a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

”The fact that we are talking about clever and calculated people, who seek to stay in power and are striving to reach their goals underhandedly and with an idea of the moves and intentions of their rivals, does not make them rational in the Western sense of the word,” he said in an address on Israel’s Independence Day.

via SMH

Or, indeed, any other sense.

And these guys have nuclear weapons.

UK: Wrong for forty-four years…

…is this a record?

Telegraph Blogs

Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb and the 20th century’s keeper of the Malthusian flame, has popped up in The Guardian. “The world’s most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor,” it reports, both gushingly and alarmingly. …

“Ehrlich, who was described as alarmist in the 1970s but who says most of his predictions have proved correct, says he was gloomy about humanity’s ability to feed over 9 billion people [the predicted population peak in 2050],” it says. He says that, does he? So, let’s take a look at some of his predictions, made in 1968:

All of them hopelessly, utterly wrong, of course. But just keep telling people what they want to hear with a straight face, and you too can go on selling books and doing newspaper interviews after four decades of total miserable pathetic unrelieved failure.

If science were a game of Five Hundred, Ehrlich would have a lay-down misere.

Vatican: Who you gonna call?

Leakbusters!
82-year-old – Leakbusters!

When your plans get out
And your coups are canned,
When the Irish vote
For things you want banned,
When your pedophiles
Gather too much heat,
And tomorrow’s Bull’s
Already on the street…

Who you gonna call? Leakbusters!
82-year-old – Leakbusters!

SMH

ROME: Vatican employees who have been leaking embarrassing letters about corruption and nepotism inside the tiny city state are to be hunted down by a crack squad of cardinals led by a senior member of the religious group Opus Dei.

Irritated by the anonymous release of documents to the press this year, Pope Benedict has named Cardinal Julian Herranz, 82, to lead a three-man team that will haul in members of staff for questioning and rifle through files until they catch the perpetrators of what has been dubbed ”Vatileaks”.

And Herranz isn’t pussyfooting around. He has his role model to inspire him, the Vatican equivalent of Dirty Harry:

“men need to act decisively, like Jesus Christ who was a real man”

Got that, people? Not gay, not a woman, but ‘a real man’.

Well, a man, anyway.

US: Catholic school fires teacher for undergoing IVF

Courthouse News Service

A schoolteacher claims in Federal Court that the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and St. Vincent de Paul School fired her and called her a “grave, immoral sinner” because she and her husband were trying to have a baby through in vitro fertilization.

Emily Herx says she received the highest marks in her evaluations during her tenure as an English teacher at St. Vincent from August 2003 until she was fired on June 22, 2011.

Herx, who did not teach religion, “was not required to complete any training or education in the Catholic faith as a part of her employment,” she says in the complaint.

She says she and her husband sought in vitro fertilization because she “suffers from a diagnosed medical condition which causes infertility.”

When she told her principal about the treatment, she says, the principal told her, “You are in my prayers.” She says the principal did not object when she scheduled days off for her in vitro fertilization treatment.

But more than a year later, after requesting time off for a second round of IVF treatment, she says, she was told to meet with Msgr. John Kuzmich, pastor of the St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Fort Wayne.

Herx says that Kuzmich told her at the meeting “that another teacher had complained that Herx and her husband were undergoing IVF treatment.”

So who’s the most vile and petty: a teacher who ‘complains’ because a colleague is undergoing IVF, a priest who actually takes the ‘complaint’ seriously, or a principal who enables this disgusting abuse of human rights? Not much in it, really, is there? The Imam would be proud.

US: Do you want cancer with that?

This Week in Christian Nationalism

A women’s prayer group is praying that all the women at MRFF [Military Religious Freedom Foundation] get incurable breast cancer. We just got this email, with the subject line “We Pray Christ Jesus to stop You.” These GCBs also phoned Mikey, I think on Saturday, and apparently thought it was rude of him to hang up on them.

Now for our prayer, we pray that the women who work in your MFRR and the women in your family will befall fast moving breast cancer which can not everbe cured. We pray this for Leah Bruton, and Becki Miller, Patricia Corigan, Chris Rodda…..

There was a time when religious institutions were considered centres of learning and places of refuge for the persecuted. Boy, that was a long time ago!

Australia: Where did he get that hubris? Oh, THAT’S where.

The Australian Federal Labor Party has not done too well lately out of its dealings with the devout. First there was the pious proselytising PM Kevin Rudd, whose major personality flaws led to his spectacular removal from the top job: now the party traitor Peter Slipper, who switched allegiances in return for the plum job of Speaker, is facing a variety of accusations from several sources — including rorting travel vouchers, drunken misbehaviour and making sexual advances to staffers.

Where did an intelligent middle-aged man apparently get the idea that he could treat his staff and taxpayers like dirt? All is revealed today in a news.com.au story. Peter Slipper is an ordained Anglican priest!

 Archbishop John Hepworth said on Wednesday he had asked Mr Slipper to stand aside as an ordained priest and legal officer for the Traditional Anglican Communion.

No need to wonder any more how Slipper got so arrogant. He’s been trained by professionals.

US: Two out of three ain’t bad…

… unless you’re supposed to be all-loving and omnipotent.

SMH

 A pregnant woman who was declared dead after suffering a brain aneurysm has given birth to twins after her body was kept alive for a month on a respirator.

Christine Bolden collapsed on March 1 while walking in Michigan, Detroit, with her boyfriend and three-year-old son.
Five days later she was pronounced brain-dead by doctors. An obituary for the 26 year-old lists her date of death as March 6. But almost a month later she has given birth to twins after being kept on life support….

Miss Bolden’s aunt, Danyell Bolden, said that after learning of her condition, the family prayed for the children to survive….

“God could have taken her and the boys. But he left the boys. That’s a miracle.”

Or he could have kept all three of them alive and healthy. Did that not occur to him?

Once again medical science does the work and God gets the credit.

Ireland: Yes, we raped children, but there’s no need to be RUDE about it

Irish Examiner

Today FM radio presenter Ray D’Arcy has refused to apologise for controversial comments criticising the Catholic Church.

Speaking on his show this morning, the Kildare native said his comments on Friday, where he said that “the Catholic Church, in many ways, had f***** up this country”, had been aimed at the Church hierarchy, and not “people like my mother who is a devout Christian”.

While Mr D’Arcy repeated his apology for use of offensive language at an inappropriate time, he said the apology demanded by the Catholic Communications Office for his statement “would not be forthcoming”.

“There won’t be a retraction,” Mr D’Arcy said, reiterating that it was the Catholic hierarchy and the “litany” of abuse scandals and other issues to which he was referring in his original comments.

And on the same website, on the same day:

A Californian diocese has agreed to pay $3.75m (€2.8m) to a man abused as a child by the Tipperary priest who last week fled the US to return to Ireland.

Not ‘fucked up’, by hundreds — maybe thousands — of violent child abusers in schools, orphanages, convents and monasteries? What would you call it, then? ‘Mildly inconvenienced’?

Update 2012-05-03: Now we know: ‘unhelpful‘.

Middle East: Misogyny, thy name is Islam

Why Do They Hate Us? – By Mona Eltahawy | Foreign Policy

But let’s put aside what the United States does or doesn’t do to women. Name me an Arab country, and I’ll recite a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend. When more than 90 percent of ever-married women in Egypt — including my mother and all but one of her six sisters — have had their genitals cut in the name of modesty, then surely we must all blaspheme. When Egyptian women are subjected to humiliating “virginity tests” merely for speaking out, it’s no time for silence. When an article in the Egyptian criminal code says that if a woman has been beaten by her husband “with good intentions” no punitive damages can be obtained, then to hell with political correctness. And what, pray tell, are “good intentions”? They are legally deemed to include any beating that is “not severe” or “directed at the face.” What all this means is that when it comes to the status of women in the Middle East, it’s not better than you think. It’s much, much worse. Even after these “revolutions,” all is more or less considered well with the world as long as women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and unable to marry without a male guardian’s blessing — or divorce either.

I’m guessing that Mona is not an accommodationist.

UK: Anglican Church not manly enough…

Whatever you say, Tex!

…. says the guy with the handlebar moustache.

guardian.co.uk

I for one was rather discomfited to find, in my 20s, just how many liberal Anglican clergy were gay, and how the issue dominated discussions; it partly led me to keep my distance from church culture.

If only they’d had some virile, manly activities to take their minds off it. Like wrestling.

UK: Imaginary zombie carpenter not woman, but gay!

Last Supper? More of an intimate brunchette, really

guardian.co.uk

Jesus was a Hebrew rabbi. Unusually, he was unmarried. The idea that he had a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene is the stuff of fiction, based on no biblical evidence. The evidence, on the other hand, that he may have been what we today call gay is very strong. But even gay rights campaigners in the church have been reluctant to suggest it. A significant exception was Hugh Montefiore, bishop of Birmingham and a convert from a prominent Jewish family. He dared to suggest that possibility and was met with disdain, as though he were simply out to shock.

‘Shock’ is probably the wrong word. If there was a word for ‘shamelessly fabricate nonsense in an outrageous attempt to procure goodwill from a pressure group’, that would be the word you were looking for.

But this new rigorously tested scientific finding will come as a real blow to Doctor Cornwall.

US: Five impossible things before breakfast

William Lane Craig is at it again.

The Hell with Christianity « Evangelical Realism

The Hell with Christianity
April 15, 2012 — Deacon Duncan
(Book: On Guard, by William Lane Craig. Chapter 10: “Is Jesus the Only Way to God?”)

There are times when a Christian apologist’s chief task is to so corrupt our reason and morals that we are no longer able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Last week wasn’t too bad; Craig was standing up for Christian particularism as versus religious pluralism, and that would be fine if there were, in fact, one true religion. But to be true, a thing has to be consistent both with itself and with objective reality, and Christianity fails to meet those criteria, as we’ll see in today’s installment.

Here’s the executive summary, kiddies:

1. God fails to provide any evidence that he exists.

2. So we use the rational brains he gave us to deduce that he doesn’t exist.

3. So God sends us to burn in hell forever.

4. This makes him really sad, but not sad enough to actually do anything that could prevent or alter it.

5. So… God is loving and compassionate.

Got all that?

US: Looking like PZ Myers allows you to violate the Constitution!

The X Blog

Americans United is calling for an IRS investigation of the Peoria Catholic Diocese after Biship Jenky gave a homily in mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral in which he said:

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

No, wait — that’s only being PZ Myers.

Russia: He’s not a lesbian, nor does he play one on TV…

…he just thinks they should be treated as human beings.

And now he may be headed for jail, as religion comes back in Russia with a vengeance.

Won’t you sign his petition?

All Out

Last Sunday Sergey Kondrashov was arrested in Saint Petersburg, Russia for holding up a banner that read: “A dear family friend is lesbian. My wife and I love and respect her … and her family is just as equal as ours.”

In just five days Sergey will go to court, where he could be fined and even thrown in jail for 15 days for violating St. Petersburg’s new “gay propaganda” law. With lawmakers in Russia’s federal legislature (the Duma) looking to extend this “gay propaganda” law to the entire country – Sergey is taking a stand. He is asking Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to denounce the absurd anti-gay law that made him a criminal, and to do everything in his power to stop this unconstitutional law from spreading nationwide.

Sergey doesn’t think of himself as an activist. He’s just someone who thinks that all Russians – gay or straight – should be treated equal under the law. If you believe that it should never be illegal to defend the dignity of your friends and family who are gay, lesbian bi or trans – please stand with Sergey, and sign this petition to the Russian Prime Minister.

US: Amish hair-cutting mastermind appears in court

Page 4: a victim speaks out about his horror and shame

His name? Samuel Mullet.

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

cleveland.com

Samuel Mullet Sr. and 11 of his followers from an Amish splinter sect returned to federal court Thursday, joined by four more defendants, in a hate-crimes case that prosecutors say involved hair-cutting attacks against other Amish men….

The charges accuse some of the defendants of concealing and destroying evidence such as a disposable camera, scissors, and a bag of hair from victims of the attacks. Also, Samuel Mullet was accused of lying to federal agents.

The new charges against the 10 men and six women involve what prosecutors describe as five separate assaults from September to November, 2011, and the cover-up that ensued.

In each of the assaults, the men are accused of forcibly cutting the beards and head hair to settle scores with victims with whom Mullet and his followers had disputes. Mullet helped to plan and encourage the attacks, according to prosecutors.

Counsel for the prosecution: “Your Honor, my colleague for the defense will claim that Mullet was not the ringlet — sorry — ringleader, that he did not normally act in this style, that his actions were a conditioned reflex brought on by distress, that the police story doesn’t gel and this trial is a sham. Pooh! I say to that. In his bare-faced lies and clipped speech we have ample proof that he is simply unable to beehive in a civilised manner.”

Iran: Divine Right trumps human rights, every time

“Until a person has converted to Islam, he is free — but democracy and Human Rights have no meaning within Islam. Everything must be under the surveillance of the government, even the way people dress. And if some people say otherwise, they don’t know Islam.”

via hriran.com

There it is, in black and white. Literally.

US: Are those for the sacrifice, then?

A poster for a follow-up campaign promoting the Seven Deadly Sins

Wicked atheists challenge believers to find something offensive about this.

Another Inoffensive Atheist Billboard – Patheos

And they will, never fear.

US: His Eminence has never seen The Blues Brothers..

… or he’d know; you just don’t piss off nuns.

NYTimes.com

The Vatican has appointed an American bishop to rein in the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying that an investigation found that the group had “serious doctrinal problems.”

The Vatican’s assessment, issued on Wednesday, said that members of the group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

The sisters were also reprimanded for making public statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” During the debate over the health care overhaul in 2010, American bishops came out in opposition to the health plan, but dozens of sisters, many of whom belong to the Leadership Conference, signed a statement supporting it — support that provided crucial cover for the Obama administration in the battle over health care.

The conference is an umbrella organization of women’s religious communities, and claims 1,500 members who represent 80 percent of the Catholic sisters in the United States. It was formed in 1956 at the Vatican’s request, and answers to the Vatican, said Sister Annmarie Sanders, the group’s communications director.

Word of the Vatican’s action took the group completely by surprise, Sister Sanders said. She said that the group’s leaders were in Rome on Wednesday for what they thought was a routine annual visit to the Vatican when they were informed of the outcome of the investigation, which began in 2008.

“I’m stunned,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by sisters. Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping “silent” on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Coming soon to a cinema near you: Blues Brothers II: The Vatican Rag. With special guest appearances by Sally Field as Cardinal Bertrille and Whoopi Goldberg as Cardinal Mary Clarence. Music and lyrics by  Tom Lehrer.

US: Failure teaches valuable lesson…

…Abraham Lincoln was right!

SheLoves Magazine » Raising Dead People: A Tutorial

But after four days of non-stop prayer and a lot of shofar blowing and prayer walking the morgue seven times, our friend never got up. He was as dead as dead is. Probably more dead. He was definitely NOT mostly dead! He was more dead than I had ever seen anyone before.

The good news is that the guy who teaches the videos said that it wasn’t until he prayed for the seventh dead guy, that it worked. It took perseverance and a whole lot of humility. And I started to resonate with the idea of humility and perseverance that day–in a different way.

Ireland: This just in: sex causes pregnancy!

BreakingNews.ie

A Fine Gael TD said today that fornication is the “most likely cause” of unwanted pregnancies in Ireland.

Mayo TD Michelle Mulherin made the remarks during a debate on proposed abortion legislation in the Dáil.

“Abortion, as murder, therefore sin, which is the religious argument, is no more sinful, from a scriptural point of view, than all other sins we don’t legislate against, like greed, hate and fornication, the latter, being fornication, I would say, is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country,” she said.

The Middle Ages just called. They miss you.

UK: Homeopathy in its own write

Martin Robbins | Science | guardian.co.uk

Elaine Lewis: “When you’re desperate, and you’ve seemingly tried everything, there’s your own body to make remedies from: your discharges, your urine, your blood–you’re never really without remedies, are you?”

Do read it all, especially the comments — they’re priceless.

Nigeria: At last, someone who takes the Bible seriously!

Those witches better watch out!

Sahara Reporters.

The potentially dangerous activities of a new local church in Cross River-Akwa Ibom states axis of the country should be of concern to all people of conscience in Nigeria and beyond. This church, which habitually starts the themes of its crusade with “My Father! My Father!!…”appears to be on a fast track to causing a new wave of witchcraft related abuse, torture and killings in the region.

This church is owned and led by a boyish upstart pastor who addresses himself as ‘God’s Prophet’ and as ‘Prophet of signs and wonders’. It is not clear when and how he came about these titles, but like others in the business of penticostalism, these appellations have become the trade mark of this evangelical entrepreneur. From an apartment in Calabar, Cross River State, where it started, the church has grown so rich that it now organizes its meetings in some of the most expensive hotels in the region. But the issue is not whether this ‘My Father Church’ holds its events in cheap or expensive venues but what these programs are all about.

UK: Payments to produce energy? Peanuts! Payments to NOT produce energy…?

…Priceless!

Telegraph

The £1.2 million will go to a Norwegian company which owns 60 turbines in the Scottish Borders.

The National Grid asked the company, Fred Olsen Renewables, to shut down its Crystal Rig II wind farm last Saturday for a little over eight hours amid fears the electricity network would become overloaded….

In total, 11 wind farms were closed down last week, receiving a total of £2.6 million. The money – detailed in calculations provided by National Grid – will be added on to household bills and paid for by consumers

I haven’t produced any electricity since the dynamo fell off my bike in 1997. Where do I apply for my subsidy?

Australia: Stabbed to death in front of 300 people

SMH

 A self-absorbed man who stabbed his estranged wife to death in front of 300 people because she disobeyed him will spend at least 26 years behind bars.

Zialloh Abrahimzadeh, 57, was sentenced today to life in jail after pleading guilty on day 11 of his murder trial earlier this year to killing Zahra at a Persian function at the Adelaide Convention Centre in March 2010….

The judge said Abrahimzadeh had shown no remorse when he wrote to his children after the murder – blaming their mother and her family for all his troubles.

Anybody want to bet that the killer wasn’t a devout Moslem?

No, I thought not.

Australia: Judge runs out of words foul enough to describe priest’s conduct

SMH

Former priest Brian Spillane has been sentenced to nine years in jail for a number of sexual assaults on young girls described by the presiding judge as “serious, planned and callous”.

Sentencing Spillane, 69, Judge Finnane said: “The offender used his position as a priest to gain access to the homes in which each of his victims lived. Because of his position as a priest and because of his standing in the community generally, he was very trusted and the parents of each of the victims readily gave him access to their daughters.”

The assaults began 30 years ago when Spillane was on the staff of St Stanislaus College, Bathurst. After ingratiating himself into the family of two boys at the school, he abused their sister, then aged 11.

“This was the conduct of a violent bully and coward, done without regard to the effect it would have on the young girl,” said Judge Finnane. “It was sexual abuse carried out by a trusted priest, and was a major breach of trust.”

In late 1979, Spillane left the school to become a parish priest in Sydney. Again he ingratiated himself into a devout Catholic family and under the guise of hearing their daughters’ bedtime prayers abused both of them for more than a year.

The judge called this: “Predatory and a major abuse of trust.”

In those same years he assaulted and wrote love letters to a 16-year old student at a Western Suburbs Catholic School.

The judge called the assault “predatory and heartless” and one of the letters “maudlin, full of false piety and completely inappropriate”.

Spillane, who continues to proclaim his innocence, later left the priesthood and married in 2004. His wife was present in the court at sentencing. So was one of his victims who sobbed with relief when the judge sent the ex-priest to jail for nine years with a non parole period of five years.

Next month, Spillane faces the next of several scheduled trials for alleged assaults committed while he worked at St Stanislaus College in the 1970s and 1980s.

At the conclusion of the trial Spillane said: “I’d like to thank the Catholic Church for making it all possible.”

Well, no, he didn’t. But perhaps he ought to.

Ireland: Vatican enforcers silence radical priest

IrishCentral

Father Tony Flannery, a Catholic priest who has been outspoken in his criticism of the abuse crisis in Ireland, has found himself under investigation by the Vatican for his liberal views.

Founder of the Association of Irish Priests, Father Flannery told TheJournal.ie that the Vatican has contacted him to inform him of the investigation.

The effect of the investigation was immediate. This week The Irish Catholic newspaper reports that Father Flannery had to cease writing his monthly column in the Redemptorist Reality magazine in response to news of the investigation.

What a shame we can’t silence Tim Flannery!

Afghanistan: Islamic fanatics poison 140 schoolgirls

CNN.com

At least 140 Afghan schoolgirls and female teachers were admitted to a local hospital Tuesday after drinking poisoned water, said local health officials, who blamed the act on extremists opposed to women’s education.

The victims range in age from 14 to 30 and were taken to a hospital in Afghanistan’s northeastern Takhar province after their school’s water tank was contaminated, according to provincial health department director Dr. Hafizullah Safi.

No deaths were reported, but more than half the victims partially lost consciousness, while others suffered dizziness and vomiting….

In 2010, more than 100 schoolgirls and teachers were sickened in a series of similar poisonings.

Educated women — the fundamentalist’s worst nightmare.

Australia: State inquiry into religious sex assaults

SMH

A WIDE-RANGING inquiry has been launched into sexual abuse in religious organisations after revelations some 40 alleged victims committed suicide.
The 40 were allegedly abused by members of the Catholic Church in Victoria but the inquiry will also look at misconduct in other churches, as well as Jewish organisations…

Nicky Davis, the president of Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, congratulated the Victorian government for being the first in Australia ”to take the plight of victims of Catholic Church-enabled child rape seriously”.
”This is a huge step forward in stopping the reign of terror of sexual predators enjoying the prestige and protection of this powerful institution,” said Ms Davis, herself a victim of abuse….

Former Jewish leader Manny Waks, himself a victim, said there had been widespread sexual abuse of children within Victoria’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, and he was convinced the inquiry would uncover more.

Afghanistan: 47 dead, 65 wounded

SMH

And as the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, made clear major Australian combat operations in Afghanistan would end next year, the man who commanded Australian troops in Afghanistan in 2010, Major-General John Cantwell, expressed his doubt about the war.

Talking on Four Corners General Cantwell, who retired this year, acknowledged that ultimately Australia had become embroiled in the decade-long war because Australia was ”supporting an alliance with the United States”. He admitted he had struggled with whether Australian involvement was worth the cost in blood.

It’s a bit late to acquire a conscience now, General…

UK: Labour Lord alleged to have offered bounty for capture of Obama

SMH

A senior British Labour figure has been suspended by the party while it investigates reports that he offered a £10 million ($15.4 million) “bounty” for the capture of US President Barack Obama.

Labour peer Nazir Ahmed is said to have offered the cash for the capture of Obama and his White House predecessor, George W Bush, at a reception in Pakistan in response to an American reward for the capture of a prominent Pakistani radical.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who founded the violent extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, is blamed for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in which 166 people were killed.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but religion is just plain kinky.