The victim "who had previously been treated for schizophrenia, had believed she heard the devil talking to her."
On a positive note, the Romanian Orthodox Church condemned the "techniques" as "abominable". But I would have preferred to hear them say that devil possession and exorcism are ludicrous superstitions. That this ancient practice has made it to the 21st Century is mind-blowing.
Another compelling PBS Frontline mini-documentary, this one about Iraqi Kurds smuggling European liquor into Iran...where drinking alcohol is forbidden by Sharia law. Yet another wonderful example of hypocrisy in the Muslim world.
* Note that there is a problem with the video in that it freezes up 43 seconds before the end.
This morning, driving to work, I saw the above bumper sticker. This is truly the height of naiivity, for it assumes that every breed of every group represented by these symbols wants to coexist...a thought that is truly a pipe dream.
Case in point: The continuing flow of Palestinians from Gaza, over the breached security wall, across the Philadelphia Corridor, into Egypt's Sinai Desert...and the return to Gaza of weapons that will be used against Israel.
An interesting Israeli perspective can be heard here at this streaming podcast from Marty Roberts, a New Yorker now living in Israel, and host of The Marty Roberts Show. Given the potential disaster for Israel that is unfolding, it gives an alternate perspective to the post I submitted yesterday. Egypt, it seems, is incapable or unwilling to control the flow from "Hamastan," although in fairness, it appears that Israel is equally paralyzed.
I fear that the situation will get much worse before it gets better. John Lennon wrote:
Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace
In light of the wave of Gazans flowing into Egypt over the toppled border wall, this article provides an excellent solution to Israel's Gaza problem: Return Gaza to Egypt.
The Gaza Strip was a protectorate of Egypt from 1948 until 1967, when Israel acquired it as one of the spoils of the Six-Day War (a war launched in response to Egypt's call "for a unified Arab action against Israel").
The Gazans, like their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank, have not demonstrated their ability to self-govern - by a long shot - or to be capable of living peacefully side-by-side with Israel.
Having Gaza annexed by Egypt would return responsibility for maintaining peace to the major country that created this problem in the first place. This would also enable Israel to stop having to provide electricity and fuel to an entity that returns the favor by launching a continual barrage of rockets into Israeli border towns.
Israel is an island of democracy and secular Western values in a sea of theocracies and dictatorships. I find it incredibly disappointing when the ultra-Orthodox minority - who exercise disproportionately large political influence in a system that requires coalitions of political parties - behave as bigoted, archaic and insane as their undemocratic neighbors.
One case in point: The story I posted two weeks ago about ultra-Orthodox men relegating women to the back of Israeli buses that travel through their neighborhoods, and insulting and physically threatening women who wear trousers.
"These people are dangerous and we must keep an eye on them."
"Gay people must be made aware of how 'their lifestyle is destroying our existence.'"
Ze'ev, along with fellow Knesset member Eli Gabbay, would also like to outlaw gay pride parades in Jerusalem, proposing an amendment that "would enable the Jerusalem Municipal Council to ban gay parades and rallies for considerations of disturbance to public order, offending the public's sensitivities or for religious considerations."
These hateful attitudes and behavior are an embarrassment for civilized people of every nationality, race and creed. The damage that this kind of behavior does to Israel - a tiny country struggling to survive against tremendous hatred and ill will - is immeasurable. The more examples there are of fundamentalist religious bigotry and uncivilized behavior by the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, the harder it is to argue for the moral superiority of their society.
I can only hope that secular and religiously moderate Israelis will remove individuals like Ze'ev and Gabbay from power, and will stand up to the lunatic ultra-Orthodox and say, "No more!"
I realize that this is terribly blasphemous and offensive, but it is also funny as hell. I found it on the website of Pat Condell, a British comedian who has a collection of YouTube videos that are as blasphemous and offensive as they come, but they are also hysterical social commentaries. Not recommeded for the religious or the politcally correct.
Actually, this photo by NASA's Spirit rover likely shows a rock formation. But the Internet is apparently abuzz with theories of what this might be, from proof of alien life to the Virgin Mary. You can read about it here and here.
With all these theories floating around, I think mine is as valid as any. To read more about Dennis Kucinich and UFOs, see my post from January 15.
I salute Al Gore for having the guts to release this video in support of gay marriage. I wonder if he would have done the same had he been president?
I have yet to hear one solid argument, backed up by statistical evidence, that shows any reason whatsoever why gay marriage would be detrimental to individuals or society. On the other hand, every single argument I have heard made against gay marriage has, at its root, religiously-rooted fear and bigotry.
That said, my libertarian belief is that people should be allowed to dislike whomever they choose, and religious institutions should be free to refuse to marry whomever they choose.
But with marriage being a social contract based in law, with special rights provided to individuals who sign that contract, it is clearly discriminatory for gay men and women to not be allowed to make the same social contract as their heterosexual fellow citizens.
So how do you allow people to remain bigoted within their religious institutions and not translate this bigotry into the laws of the land? My answer is to remove marriage from the law. Marriage should be considered a religious practice that is managed by religious institutions.
"So if gay people can get married," I've heard, "why not brothers and sisters?"...To which I respond, "Why not?"
The social contract in American law that provides special rights to interested pairs of individuals should have nothing to do with romantic and sexual intimacy. Any two individuals should be able to participate in this social contract if they meet reasonable criteria (for example, be of legal age and living under the same roof).
While people married within their religious institutions would usually also commit to a civil union, there would be no necessary relationship between the two. As such, gay couples would be allowed the same - and by that I mean the exact same - rights as heterosexual couples in the eyes of the law, without offending the archaic religious opposition that most individuals appear to have against gay marriage.
A swimming pool located in Algarrobo, Chile and measuring 3500 feet in length and with a surface area of 20 acres, has been named the world's largest by the Guiness Book of World Records. Up for a game of Marco Polo, anyone?
In Saudi Arabia, a country whose most notable contribution to world culture has been the psychotic flavor of Islam known as Wahhabism, a couple's marriage has been annulled because the wife's relatives believed she had married beneath her tribe. By secretly continuing to live with her husband, the wife ended up in jail for nine months.
It could be worse for the wife. She could be forced to die in a burning building because religious police wouldn't let her outside without proper attire, as happened in 2002.
...or so believed Bobby Fischer, the chess champion who died January 17. Which goes to show, chess may require intelligence, but it certainly does not require wisdom or kindness.
Good riddance, Bobby Fischer. I wish for you an eternity of losing games to Anatoly Karpov.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I just don't share the ethical problem that many people have with human cloning. That's not to say that I think we should populate the world with replicas of ourselves and dead relatives (which strikes me as cruel to the cloned individuals). But given the possibility of treating and curing diseases by harvesting cloned embryos and stem cells, it would be unethical not to exploit this technology...at least in my humble opinion.
Such is the debate that continues to rage, as it was announced that a scientist has managed to clone himself, creating embryos that were smaller than a pinhead and survived for five days.
It seems that those who object to human cloning fall into two camps: those with religious issues, claiming that we are treading on "God's Turf," and those who fear the science will lead us to the world of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where babies are harvested in the laboratory. In other words, the objections come from those who fear science, and those who oppose it.
I tend to wonder how members of either camp would respond if faced with an illness and offered a cure that required human cloning to implement?
This video shows "stunt junkee" Jeb Corliss attempting to jump off the Empire State Building last year, unbeknownst to building officials or a rooftop full of tourists.
According to this article, the nutty ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel are behaving like their medieval neighbors in the Middle East, insulting and physically threatening women who ride the bus wearing trousers, and relegating women to the back of the bus, as if this were the pre-Civil Rights Movement era of the American south. I suppose we should give them credit for not stoning women to death as is done in some Muslim countries, but it just seems like a reward for not being as crazy as possible...only almost as crazy.
In discussing middle eastern politics, I take pride in defending Israel as an island of democracy and western values in a sea of Islamic fundamentalist insanity. But stories like this destroy the credibility of this argument, and make Israelis look like any other religious lunatics. I can only hope that the secular majority will eventually disempower this embarrassing minority.
If these religious chauvinists want to live in a country where men and women don't mix, they should move to the sandy paradise of Saudi Arabia.
According to this article, dozens of residents of Stephenville, Texas, have reported seeing "a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast," which of course MUST be a UFO. No other explanation could possibly be plausible.
One quote from the article that stands out as evidence of the credibility of aliens choosing their first contact with Earth to be a small farming community where no one owns a camera is:
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times."
My own suspicion is that the UFO that Dennis Kucinich saw was coming back to vote for him in the Texas Democratic primary. You can hear Kucinich comment on his encounter below:
"Good scientists are their own worst critics. They're always trying to prove themselves wrong, which is hard, because sometimes you've got an idea and you think you're right and you have to force yourself [to ask], 'Where are the weak points of this argument, or the weak points of my experiment?'"
The reason that the science of evolution by natural selection is challenged only by religious crackpots is that it has undergone scientific scrutiny since the publication of On the Origin of Species 150 years ago. The theory is overwhelmingly supported by available evidence.
When it comes to Man-made Global Warming - as opposed to global warming by natural causes - there is significant evidence for and against this theory. I want to see more evidence that is untainted by politics, the media and public hysteria. But this requires objective analysis on both sides of the debate.
You can therefore imagine my satisfaction at discovering the Climate Debate Daily website. At last, some balance! This website provides numerous articles in support of, and opposed to, the theory of Man-made Global Warming. I have yet to explore the site in depth, so I may find its claim of neutrality to be inaccurate, but my hopes remain high.
Is it any wonder that the Muslim world is in turmoil when Middle Eastern societies turn generation after generation of children into psychopaths by filling their education and entertainment with hatred and the glorification of violence and martyrdom? These videos provide a few chilling examples:
A month after I reported that the Pope was setting up exorcism squads (a claim the Vatican denies), another exorcism story is in the news...and this one isn't funny, I'm afraid. A former Romanian priest has received a jail sentence for "murdering a young nun during an exorcism ritual when she was bound, chained to a cross and denied food and water for days." Four nuns aided the ex-priest in this psychotic ritual.
