Category: Religion

8 of 10 Jailed Haitians Released

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The two apparent ring leaders remain in custody, and as a condition of their release, they must return later to Haiti to answer investigator questions:

While Judge Saint-Vil’s ruling allows eight of the Americans to leave Haiti on the condition that they return to the country to answer further questions in the case, it requires that Laura Silsby, the Idaho businesswoman who led the group, and her live-in nanny, Charisa Coulter, remain in jail to answer questions about traveling to Haiti before the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.

“We are disappointed that all in the group are not being released,” said Terry Michaelson, a lawyer for Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, where five of the detainees, including Ms. Silsby and Ms. Coulter, attended church.

The church mission’s lawyer had put forward about $7,000 to help pay for the first month’s rent for the orphanage that Ms. Silsby planned to establish in the Dominican Republic.

…………

Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.”

(emphasis mine)

This is beginning to sound like something written by Dashiell Hammett.

Haitian Kidnapper Update

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First, I think that it’s pretty clear that something if fishy, since the State Department is refusing to intervene in the case, despite the fact that they, and their allies have aggressively lobbied for this.

It may have something to do with a report that this appears to be the 2nd time that they tried to abscond with children without paperwork or vetting that these were in fact orphans.

As I said before, this was a religiously motivated kidnapping.

Luckily for them, it looks like the they will be released shortly, with a finding by the judge of “the White American get out of jail free card” “no criminal intent.”

I Know That They Are In the Faith Business………

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But the fact that the Church of England (i.e the Anglicans, called the Episcopal Church in the US) has invested 100% of its pension funds in equities (stocks) seems to me to be just a little bit risky:

The Church faces the same problems as all employers with DB pension schemes – improved longevity and lower real interest rates. But the Church’s pension problems are largely self-inflicted since, astonishingly, the scheme has an asset allocation of 100 per cent equities – the riskiest asset allocation of any UK pension scheme. To add insult to injury, it has (reluctantly) agreed to start moving to 70/30 equities/bonds, but not until 2017, and not to be completed until 2027.

(emphasis mine)

There is a good reason for interest rates to be up against the zero bound right now, but interest rates have been unreasonably low since GW Bush took office, as the result of a conscious decision by Alan Greenspan to bolster Republicans (politically independent Fed, my tuchas), and when this happens, people do insane things to get returns as a result.

Big Surprise

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Former Liberian President, and mass murderer, Charles Taylor is saying that he did mining deals with Pat Robertson in exchange for his lobbying Bush and His Evil Minions™ for support:

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, testifying in his war crimes trial in The Hague on Thursday, said that his government had awarded American televangelist Pat Robertson a gold mining concession in 1999 and that Robertson later offered to lobby the Bush administration on the government’s behalf.

The revelations came in the midst of Taylor’s U.N.-backed trial on 11 counts of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone’s 1990s civil war. Taylor is accused of directing a Sierra Leonean rebel group, the United Revolutionary Front, in a campaign aimed at securing access to the country’s diamond mines. The rebel movement stands accused of committing mass atrocities in the West African country in the late 1990s, including the mutilation of thousands of civilians.

Here’s hoping that the war crimes tribunal comes after Pat Robertson, whose association with Taylor has been common knowledge for at least a decade.

Of course, Robertson will never see the inside of a court room, because the United States won’t turn over anyone for war crimes, because we’re big enough not to play by the rules, so all that we will hear from him on this is his spokesman’s denial.

Have I Mentioned that I Love Alan Grayson*

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He lays into Pat Robertson’s comment on Haiti and the devil, and further notes that the religious right, and particularly Pat Robertson’s supporters have achieved none of their goals, specifically a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, and a ban of abortion, and he asks, “What about your own pact with the Devil? How’s that worked out for you?” (3:07)

I don’t think that everyone should be like Alan Grayson, but I think that it’s essential that the Democrats have a few of these sorts of firebrands to describe the wrong that the Republicans do in stark and moralistic terms.

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

Another Reason for the Islamic World to Hate Us

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We are trying to poison them.

You see, Vegemite is now Halal:

VEGEMITE has gone halal in a bid by food giant Kraft to make the national “treasure” available to Muslim Australians.

The label on Australia’s most famous spread has changed in recent months to include halal certification in a move some have described as “ridiculous” political correctness.

“Islamic communities are proud Australians and they want to be able to eat our national icon as well,” Kraft spokesman Simon Talbot said.

I think that this qualifies as chemical warfare.

Obama Goes to “National Prayer Breakfast”

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So, he showed up to the little bit of Christian Dominionism run by “The Family”, though he did condemn the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda.

I have no word yet on whether the Ugandan genocidal manics David Bahati, author of the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, and Ugandan Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, one of its chief supporters, were in attendance, though they had intended to until this entire thing blew up.

I also think that any politician who associates with “The Family” to any degree is doing this country a great harm.

Formal Charges of Child Kidnapping in Haiti

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Let’s be clear about this: There is sufficient evidence for formal charges to be filed against these “missionaries” attempting to “rescue” the children.

Now that they have been officially charged with a crime that can result in 5-15 years in prison, we can see some truth seeking.

As I have said before, I think that they were kidnapping the children with the goal of raising them as Evangelical Christians, and so I welcome the fact that they have been charged.

There has been all to much in the way of prosecutorial discretion cutting in favor extremist religious fundamentalists, and the realization that they can charged, tried, and sent to jail when convicted makes for a good deterrent.

Much of the problem with violent religious extremists throughout the world has been an outgrowth of authorities ignoring the “little things”, because it is seen that their hearts are in the “right place”.

Tefillin of Mass Destruction

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Click for full size


You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes

—Deuteronomy 6:8

So a plane was diverted to Philadelphia on a New York to Kentucky flight because of concerns of the straps and boxes that a Jewish Teen was wearing as he prayed:

Jewish teen’s prayers spark airliner scare
Flight is diverted after religious item is mistaken for a bomb, police say

updated 9:18 a.m. ET, Fri., Jan. 22, 2010

PHILADELPHIA – A Jewish teenager trying to pray on a New York-to-Kentucky flight caused a scare Thursday when he pulled out a set of small boxes containing holy scrolls, leading the captain to divert the flight to Philadelphia, where the commuter plane was greeted by police, bomb-sniffing dogs and federal agents.

The 17-year-old on US Airways Express Flight 3079 was using tefillin, a set of small boxes containing biblical passages that are attached to leather straps, Philadelphia police Lt. Frank Vanore said.

You know, the guy wearing Tefillin is among the people least likely to be an Islamic bomber.

US Military 1 – Jesus 0

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Click for full size


Picture h/t Dating Jesus

Remember Trijicon, the company that was busy painting targets on the back of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan included references to Christian bible verses on the optical sites (don’t call them sniper scopes) that are being used by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Well, while the Army may have downplayed the importance, the Marine Corps, made it clear that these markings would materially effect their current and future contracts, and so the “Scopes for Jesus” company has agreed to stop engraving the bible references, as well as providing tools to remove the references on their existing sights:

Trijicon, the gunsight maker that has imprinted Bible verse numbers on its scopes, has announced that it will no longer imprint the verses on the sides of scopes intended for the U.S. military, and will also provide clients with the kits to remove the Bible verse numbers from existing scopes.

An ABC News report earlier this week revealed that the Michigan-based company, which has a contract to provide up to 800,000 scopes to the U.S. military, prints references to New Testament chapters and verses in code next to the model numbers of its scopes. The scopes are used by the U.S. Marine Corps and Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by U.S. allies in those countries, and for the training of Afghan and Iraqi troops.

There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it.

My original post on this.

Best, Satan

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A letter to the editor from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.

The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle.

Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style.

Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.

You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad.

Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

(line breaks are mine, the LTE had none)

Because It’s Not a War on Islam

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Well, they have just discovered that sniper scopes purchased for the Marine Corps contain verses from the Christian bible:

Following an ABC News report that thousands of gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with secret Bible references, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said the Corps is ‘concerned’ and will discuss the matter with the weapons manufacturer.

“We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived,” Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said in a statement to ABC News. “We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements.” Carey said that when the initial deal was made in 2005 it was the only product that met the Corps needs.

However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military’s overall command in Iraq and Aghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.

(emphasis mine)

Ummm………Because inscribing Christian verses on weapons that you kill Muslims with will make it that much more difficult for US troops to train with Muslim troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and because it’s likely to inspire more violence against American troops, because it is another piece of evidence that Islamic radicals will use to show that this is a war against Islam?

That kind of fits the definition of, “Contrary to good order and discipline,” doesn’t it.

The Marines get it, the US Army doesn’t.

Interestingly enough, it’s the the Army, along with the US Air Force in which the bulk of complaints about discrimination by aggressive Evangelicals have been reported.

It appears that this has been common knowledge among gun enthusiasts for about 4 years, but the military never noticed what the Trijicon corporation was doing.

Well, This Has Fail Written All Over It

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It appears that Yemen, under US pressure is looking to arrest Anwar al Awlaki, the Imam tied to both the Fort Hood shooter and the Underoos bomber.

The problem here is that, absent any information that he’s actually involved with al Qaeda, he’s just someone who speaks in support of them.

That makes him a bad person, but we are in the process of making him a martyr, and the counter-terrorism forces will use his sermons, convincing Muslims even more thoroughly that this is a war on Islam.

Really, I think that anyone involved in counter-terrorism should read Wasp by Eric Frank Russell, or at least the first chapter:

The title of Wasp comes from the idea that the main character’s actions and central purpose mimic that particular insect; just as something as small as a wasp can terrorize a much larger creature in control of a car to the point of causing a crash and killing the occupants, so the defeat of an enemy may be wrought via psychological and guerrilla warfare by a small, but deadly, protagonist in their midst.

The point is, pedants arguing about anaphylaxis notwithstanding, is that the wasp cannot kill us, it can only induce us to kill ourselves.

Pat Robertson is a Pathetic Excuse for a Human Being

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What a sorry excuse for a human being

He can always be counted on to say something hurtful and stupid, and this time, it’s the earthquake in Haiti.

He’s saying that the Haitians made a pact with the devil to drive out the French, and so they are cursed, which is why their country is poor, wracked with violence and instability, and struck by natural disasters.

What he is really saying, and I need to credit Juan Cole for this insight is that the Blacks of Haiti, much like the Blacks of New Orleans that he also attacked, are defying god because they are revolting against God’s will by refusing to be slaves.

It’s the Curse of Ham, a and comes from the story of Noah in Beresheit (Genesis) and was used by evil men who took up the role of clergy to justify slavery and the slave trade in pre Civil War days, because one of Ham’s sons Canaan, was cursed to be a slave.

It’s clear that in his heart of hearts Robertson believes this story: He thinks that black people in general are cursed because they have rejected the role that God has given them, that of a slave.

A transcript of what he says: “

And you know Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. [Actually, you moron, it was Napoleon the first] And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. [No, local priests who practiced african religions issued a blessing] They said we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True Story, and so the Devil said OK it’s a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they’ve been cursed by one thing after the other desperately poor. That island is Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc.. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.

(H/t Username4242 at Daily Kos for the transcript)

He also studiously ignores the history there, where both the US and France conspired to keep their respective boots on their neck, starting with Thomas Jefferson, because as a slave holder, he was terrified at the prospect of a successful slave revolt.

To quote Christopher Hitchens, as much as it pains me, “If you gave him an enema you could bury him in a matchbox.”

Shoot Me, I Agree With David Frum

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Who is a Canadian turned right wing former George W. Bush speech writer.

Frum takes Commentary magazine,* and staff writer Jennifer Rubin, over her article “Why Jews Hate Palin”, in which she suggests that Jews, or at least Jewish liberals, hate rural people, hunters, people who work with their hands (note here, Palin never really worked with her hands except for summer jobs when she was in school), people who have large families, the military and military families, and people who denigrate education.

Also she thinks that Jews find her too pretty, and hate her for that.

You know, her article could come from the mouth of Patrick Buchanan, it’s so full of stereotypes, and Frum is remarkably kind to her in his response, but he nails her to the last wall.

The last paragraph says it all”

But even this is not the worst of it. Just guessing, but I think the real and most fundamental problem Jews have with Palin is not her gleeful ignorance, but her willful divisiveness. More than any politician in memory, Palin seems to divide her fellow-Americans into first class and second class citizens, real Americans and not-so-real Americans. To do her justice, she has never said anything to suggest that Jews as Jews fall into the second, less-real, class. But Jews do tend to have an intuition that when this sort of line-drawing is done, we are likely to find ourselves on the wrong side.

Also, add the fact that she literally shared a stage with a professional witch hunter, one who had driven “witches” out of his community, at her church, and the juxtaposition of Christian witch-hunters and the Jewish community is………How to put this?………Most unfortunate.

That being said, Frum does miss a point: that Jews don’t view her more negatively than the general population:

The entirety of the Commentary article rests on the notion that Jews actually disproportionately dislike Palin. As her one piece of evidence, Rubin cites a 9/08 poll showing that only 37 percent of Jews approve of Palin. Is this really disproportionately low?

………………

So going by their partisan voting patterns alone, we would expect 36.5 percent of Jews to approve of Palin — almost exactly what that poll found.

Though to be fair to Mr. Frum, I found that blog post in his tweets, and the negative tags for this post apply to Ms. Rubin, and not him.

*No links to the magazine, ever. It got hijacked by the John Podhoretz Neocon insanity in the late 1960s, and no more link to them than I would link to Michelle Malkin.

I Have Mixed Feelings about the French Burqa Ban

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The leader of the French Parliament, Jean-François Copé, has restated his intention to ban the Burqa (see pic) in France.

He plans to put forward a law to impose fines of up to €750 ($1050) for anyone who appears in public with their faces covered, and there would, “Stiffer punishments would be laid down for men who ‘forced’ their wives or daughters to wear full-body veils.”

There would be exceptions for the wearing of masks on “festive occasions,” which means, I guess that Halloween has become an institution in France too.

Interestingly enough, Nicolas “President Bling Bling” Sarkosy is trying to slow this down, though one wonders, considering his statements about having a “debate on national identity” got the ball rolling, how sincere he is.

It’s clear that the politics play into some very base feelings, but there is a legitimate question about what is, or should be appropriate public behavior in any society, even a modern Western society.

While societies should be accommodating, there does have to be a line drawn.

I believe that a head scarf (Hijab) should be allowed both in public and the workplace, I do think that the Burqa, and it’s slightly less extreme cousins the Niqab and Chador are over when used outside of a religious observance.

The politics here get really weird though:

Yesterday the veteran far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, also rejected the need for new legislation against the burka, perhaps surprisingly. He said that the existing French legal code already banned masks in public places. “All they need to do is apply the law,” he said.

Le Pen opposes the Burqa ban? Le Pen?!!?!? I do not understand French politics.

I would also note that the number of people who wear the extreme coverings in France is well small, perhaps 2,000 out of a female Muslim population of 1½ million, so either it’s a problem that does not need to be addressed, or it’s one that can be nipped in the bud, depending on where you feelings lie in this matter.

As I said at the beginning, I am conflicted: I think that the Burqa is a very bad thing, but I’m still not sure if it rises to the level of a problem that requires a formal prohibition under law.

The Religious Right Really Needs To Get Laid

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Because, they are really wound way to tight.

Case in point, their collective sh%$ fit over the appointment of Amanda Simpson as a senior technical advisor to the Commerce Department, where her portfolio will include the export of dual use technologies, because she is transgendered.

You can see excerpts of the freakout by focus on the family about this at the link, and my conclusion is that they are freaking, because no one there has gotten their porcupine properly whacked in a very long time.

As to her qualifications:

Simpson is highly qualified for the position. She has worked in the aerospace and defense industry for 30 years, most recently serving as Deputy Director in Advanced Technology Development at Raytheon Missile Systems. She holds degrees in physics, engineering and business administration, and is a certified flight instructor and test pilot with 20 years of experience.

So she’s a test pilot and a f%$#ing rocket scientist, but all that the religious right can think about is that her plumbing has been altered.