Well, happy christmas or whatever you wish to celebrate at this time of year. For me, saturnalia is a good enough reason to not let the theists steal our holidays!
Category Archives: General
Seasonal Downtime
Well it is the middle of winter now (literally) and both Heather and I are getting tied up in celebrations for what must be the Festival of Seaxneat, as being devout atheists we don’t “celebrate” christmas……….. Seriously, we will still be blogging over the next two weeks but as we both have a lot of travel to put up with our online time will be limited. Hope every one has a happy [insert chosen holiday here] and a great new year [except for those whose calendar doesn’t mark a new year in 10 days time…] 🙂
LOL – It’s almost Identity theft
Quite impressed to see that Possummama aka Atheist in a mini van has a post with the title “Open letter to Heather.” I was a bit disappointed to find out it’s blatantly not me, unless i have a weird evil (christian troll) twin.
Guantanamo, Politics and the Rule of Law
Today, one of the radio news headlines was the release of 4 people with British residency status from Guantanamo Bay. Obviously it is a slow news day because this had lots of coverage and not all of it made me feel warm and fuzzy about how the rule of law is viewed in this country.
The War On Terror is a pervasive aspect of western society today. For some reason, jingoistic right wingers feel that this is a war which can both be fought and can be won. The reality is so different it may as well be in the seventh dimension. I wont rant for ages on this, but in a nutshell terror is an emotion which can’t be fought. Terrorism is a tactic which also cant be fought. The more society allows itself to worry about “fighting terror” the more afraid it becomes – and the terrorist organisations notch up yet another victory. UBL and the rest of the Islamic extremist terrorists no longer need to blow things up to destroy western civilisation, we are happily doing it to ourselves. Well done all.
Anyway, the reason I harp on about this is the unadulterated fearmongering which has taken place, at the expense of any outmoded ideas of law or rights, following the release of the “Gitmo 4.”
Before I go any further, the background to this is from the BBC:
Three British residents held by the US at Guantanamo Bay for four-and-a-half years have been detained after arriving back in the UK. Omar Deghayes and Abdenour Samuer were arrested under the Terrorism Act after they arrived at Luton Airport and are being questioned at Paddington Green.
Jamil el-Banna was not arrested but is being detained under the act and questioned at a Luton police station.
The government has said their immigration status will be reviewed.
Another freed UK resident, Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, is expected to return to his native Saudi Arabia.
A fifth UK resident, Ethiopian Binyam Mohammed, will remain at Guantanamo.
So, they have already spent four and half years in prison (we wont go into the torture issue for now) without any charges or there being sufficient evidence for them to face trial in a court of law. Amazing. Scary but still amazing. National pride forces me to point out that now the three who have now been arrested are at least in the system and most probably going to be protected (and punished should they be found guilty) in accordance with the rule of law that acts as the cornerstone of our “society.”
On Radio 4’s PM show today (listen again 1 is interesting, this bit starts at around 8 minutes into the show and lasts 2 minutes) the Shadow Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones showed a very, very scary insight to what the UK will face should the Conservatve party get into government.
After a nice start in which she spouts a few generalised terms about it being good for the US government to eventually close Guantanamo Bay, she instantly jumps on the chance to attack the government – no matter how wrong her position is.
Over and over she appeals to public fear with a phrase along the lines of:
What we need to know and what we dont know is what the Government’s intentions [towards the released men] are.
Now, call me old fashioned but why do “we” need to know this? At the time the Baroness was making this heartfelt plea to fear, the men were on a plane back to the UK escorted by Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorist Officers. If the government had publicly stated “we will arrest them” or “we will release them without charge” what actual difference would it have made to the public I assume she means with the “we.”
Her main argument that something must be done is:
The Pentagon says, and has consistently maintained, that these men are dangerous.
WTF. She follows this odd line of reasoning up with explaining this is why the government should hold the “public safety in sufficient regard to give us some idea what they [they government] intend to do next.” Seriously. I really can not follow this line of reasoning so if you can explain how telling the public what they intend to do has any impact on public safety please tell me. I could (sort of) understan
d if she was complaining about the government choice of actions effecting public safety but this just struck me as rather feeble attempt to dig at the government without having anything to dig at.
The really scary bit, considering she is a member of the house of Lords, is when the presenter asks her why we should think they are actually dangerous. He asks her why, if they are so dangerous, hasn’t the US government prosecuted them and why, if they are such a threat to civilisation, they have been released.
In response to this the Baroness stumbles a little bit claiming you cant draw the conclusion that the lack of any legal action from the US government (after over 4 years of torture questioning) means they are not the most dangerous people on Earth. She states that:
The US government has consistently claimed these people are non-combatants, I mean not legitimate combatants …
Worrying slip there…
… and have not been willing to initiate trials for them. It doesn’t follow that there cant be a legal proceeding here or some measures and that is what we need to know.
Here we go with the “need to know” again…
Over and over she stresses that some “responsible action” should be taken on these people until they can prove themselves innocent of all charges. It is comical how often she uses the phrase “we need to know what is going to happen” (or a close variant) and she seems to consider that, because the US government thinks these people may be terrorists, they must be terrorists despite no trial or disclosed evidence. She is taking it at 100% face value that the US are correct and do not make mistakes.
The presenter points out that Amnesty International thinks the men should be treated first and foremost as the victims of a miscarriage of justice. The Shadow Security Minister replied:
Part of our problem is that we dont know on what basis we can regard these people [mumbles her words a bit] on the basis that we dont know what the government is going to do next or what the government is going to do with the charges against them.
What barely intelligible nonsense she is coming out with.Ă‚Â Worryingly, she has (despite claims to the contrary) decided that these men are guilty until proven innocent.
I make no preconceived judgement on how these men should be treated, what is clear is that they must be subjected to some kind of procedure and that we will know why the government has resorted to the procedure it does,
Is it me, or does her assumption that they be subjected to “some kind of procedure” imply a preconceived judgement on how they should be treated?
These men are innocent until proven guilty. That the Shadow Security Minister seems to completely miss this concept – and if anything call for the opposite – is worrying. That the UK news is crawling with articles about terrorists being released to the UK is worrying. The comments made by idiotic Daily Mail readers is predictable, however…
Usama Bin Laden must be laughing himself all the way to the front of his cave. Western society is feasting on itself in an attempt to stop people dying. Well done us all.
—
1: Please note, this will only point to the correct show until Wednesday 26 December 2007
The bleak midwinter
Carols are good. Well, some carols are good. On an alcohol-fuelled work Christmas outing (Look, atheists can celebrate the winter solstice, OK?) I started a stupid meme about “What’s your favourite carol?”
(This started in the face of someone, who had previously seemed averagely sane, who announced himself to be a devotee of Cliff Richard’s Christmas oeuvre. Argh. You Americans really don’t know how lucky you are. You may never have heard Mistletoe and Wine. Just pray to the inhuman void or Toutatis or whoever that you never find out )
Results were Silent Night as clear winner. at more or less 4 to 1. There were two votes for In the Bleak Midwinter and one each for a random collection that included things like Away in a Manger and Little Donkey.
Given enough wine,. I might argue a case for the German version of Silent Night, but IMHO it must be In the Bleak Midwinter for the win.
It’s by Christina Rossetti. Some of the language is stunning. “Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” It sings itself. Any urchins on my doorstep that go that extra mile and sing it are guaranteed a payout.
Well what’s the atheists’ favourite carol, then?
Rageworthy story
Well, it’s good news, in one sense. “Saudi king pardons rape victim” according to the BBC.
You read that correctly. The headline did indeed say victim, not perpetrator.
The Saudi king has pardoned a female rape victim sentenced to jail and 200 lashes for being alone with a man raped in the same attack, reports say.
This man and woman were in a car when they were abducted and raped by seven men.
The “Qatif girl” case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system
The words “laughably named” could fit snugly in that sentence between Saudi and justice.
The less “good news” aspects of this story are that the halfway-sane outcome is only the result of pressure from the west and that the pardon does not imply that there was any error on the court’s decision. There is no reason to assume that such sentences won’t be passed in the future.
The custodial sentence plus 200 lashes was imposed after the woman, who has not been named, appealed against an earlier sentence of 90 lashes.
She dared to appeal. Her sentence was more than doubled. The man – who you will note was also raped – was also sentenced to 90 lashes. The BBC doesn’t know if he was “pardoned” too and I wouldn’t hold out much hope on this showing.
The pardon was said not to imply any criticism of the sentence. It was just supposed to be the King expressing some seasonal goodwill for Eid al-Adha. Well done, your highness. According to the BBC, he’s been criticised on some conservative websites for the pardon, which is seen as kowtowing to the west. Words fail.
Get thee behind me, Santa
Someone had to do it, it might as well be me..
Put the holy grail in your arteries
In a spirit of mid-winter-solstice charity, I decided to take seriously the claim on
worldnet daily that there is an amazing pill that can unblock your arteries. It must be an advert, although you’d have to be a really regular devotee of the site to detect that from the index page. The relevant page is labelled “Breaking Health News“on the homepage so I’m treating it as an item of news.
(It’s not as if anyone would ever dream of accusing the likes of worldnet daily advertisers of preying on the fears of the gullible and sick to make a quick buck.)
The 23-Cent LIFE-SAVER Heart Surgeons NEVER TELL YOU ABOUT!
The astonishing health miracle 1.5 million grateful patients swear by…
So safe, it’s FDA-APPROVED for use in baby food: Proven THREE TIMES SAFER than aspirin—used worldwide for 56 years without any significant side-effects ever reported!
So effective, you can actually SEE it working: medical studies prove it works and U.S. doctors prescribe it every day!
So cheap, it’s JUST PENNIES A DAY: Just 23 cents per capsule—one-tenth the cost of a gallon of gas!
The testimonials suggest we are the presence of a miracle cure. Arteries cleared. Heart surgery avoided. Blood pressure normalised. Breathing problems sorted out. Ankles unswollen. Eyesight improved. Liver spots disappeared. Paralysis cured, even.
Naturally, I think ‘As they said on the Simpsons, “Where can we get these placebos?”‘
There is a substance that safely unblocks arteries and it’s been known for 56 years? Why is there still any arterial disease then?
Because heart surgeons won’t tell you about it? Those skeptical science-y types spoil everything… Surely that’s not because it doesn’t work? That would be unthinkable. I mean it’s advertised on a site as reputable as worldnet daily. (Snurk)
Or, is worldnet daily suggesting that surgeons’ greed is stopping patients from getting a safe and cheap treatment? Blimey, they’ll be arguing for socialised medicine next! But “doctors prescribe it every day.” (That must be regular doctors, not those greedy heart surgeons, then.)
It is a chemical called EDTA. Wikipedia puts a mild dampener on the enthusiasm. Among many other uses, it’s an industrial solvent, a water softener and a fertiliser. It’s used to clean bottles and it’s put in soft drinks to mitigate the formation of benzene. (Argh, benzene in soft drinks?) European and US rivers are awash with it apparently. It appears to be not exactly 100% safe either.
There’s even an odd, if intriguing, celeb scandal connection mentioned in the Wiki page:
EDTA played a role in the O.J. Simpson trial when one of the blood samples collected from Simpson’s estate was found to contain traces of the compound. This was used by the defense to indicate that the sample had been planted from one of the vials collected during the investigation. Prosecution claimed EDTA might have appeared in the sample as a result of eating McDonald’s foods ….
Wikipedia describes the uses proposed by the wingnut site advert as “theoretical.” A Cochrane Collection review of the studies, as reported in Medscape, found no evidence of any effects in all but one study of it. The other one (involving 10 people) was stopped when the results showed an effect. (Uh? Don’t ask me. I just blog this stuff.)
At present, there is insufficient evidence to decide on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of chelation therapy in improving clinical outcomes of people with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Compared to swallowing whole the whole worldnet daily message, swallowing mostly harmless pills is pretty small beer. Not to mention swallowing the line that you can get a load of free gifts to keep even if you send the stuff back as not working.
So, how much do they charge for this widely available industrial solvent? (Which seems to be so freely used that it’s a wonder there’s anyone left with plaque in their arteries)
BEST VALUE: A full year of Enhanced Oral Chelation™™ for just $239.40. I SAVE $120.00 and get all 7 FREE gifts:
4 FREE bottles of Mineral Power!â„¢ (a $79.80 value)
NO MORE SNEAK ATTACKS! (a $19.95 value)
DE-GUNK YOUR ARTERIES FOR LIFE! (a $19.95 value)
FREE SHIPPING AND HANDLING
$246.65 worth of discounts and FREE gifts in all!
Bloody hell! It costs $246.65 for 4 bottles of a mineral supplement, a couple of leaflets and some money-off coupons!
And what happened to the “$126.65 value, FREE!” they were shouting about earlier in the page? Were the leaflets affected by the rise in oil prices in the time between writing the page and setting up an order form? The numbers are so specific, they couldn’t have just pulled them out of the air could they?
*************
Pointless aside: Doesn’t chelation mean turning something into a turtle? Or a shell?
The Emperors strike back
Governments are supposed to have advisors and advisory committees for a reason. Otherwise, it’s like buying a satnav for your car but just driving in the opposite direction to the one it suggests.
The trouble is that governments haven’t had their thinking formed by a close reading of the “Emperor’s new clothes” story. They need to be surrounded by people who tell them their new suit is sumptuously sheer. Any courtier who dares to say, however diplomatically, “My liege, that whole subtle tailoring thing isn’t quite borne out by the evidence of the senses” becomes an ex-courtier pretty quickly.
The Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons is not remotely impressed by the need for 42 days’ detention for terror suspects. The BBC reported that the committee “saw no evidence that there was a case for extending the pre-charge detention beyond 28 days.”
Committee chairman Keith Vaz said the committee recognised there was a “real and acute” threat from terrorism but said there was a danger Muslims could come to view detention as a form of internment…
Not just Muslims. It is clearly a form of internment, if you accept that “internment” is a euphemism for “locking up people without evidence, so as make martyrs of them and to turn people who culturally identify with them into enemies of the state.”
Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was “unequivocal” in opposing the 42 day limit, whenĂ‚Â interviewed in the Guardian on 6 December. He said “I thought it was wrong. I thought it was unnecessary and I believe these things are very important.”
Generally, the whole of informed opinion is pretty well clear on the issue. So, whose advice do you think the government will follow?
Or what about Bush? Fingar’s report, published last week, reached the conclusion that there was no evidence that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. How much ice does a professional intelligence report cut in terms of stopping the development of T.W.A.T. beta 3.1? Probably little enough, unfortunately. The very word “intelligence” probably sends a shudder down the spines of Bush and his associates.
Obviously, the whole point of being an Emperor is that you don’t need to listen to your stronger-willed and more honest advisers. You can just carry on with whatever nude modelling career your stylists suggest. It’s not as if your subjects have votes or anything…
Pratchett tribute
Mort-ified* to hear that Terry Pratchett has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease.
Some parts of his Discworld series are so funny that you can’t read them on public transport for fear of cackling uncontrollably and getting taken for a crazy person. (Maybe that’s just me.)
He is taking the Alzheimer’s news with the wise and witty touch you’d expect from him.
“I know it’s a very human thing to say ‘is there anything I can do’, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.”
He’s sold over 55 million books according to the BBC. That’s amazing. There was a Guardian interview with him once in which he complained mildly about librarians who told him that they were so pleased that so many teenagers liked his books, because they often sparked an interest in reading “real” books. 🙂
Books don’t get much “realler” than Pratchett’s best works.
Personally, I found his straight sci-fi dull, his kids’ books a bit twee, the spin-off books really irritating and the many Discworld fan-products just money-grubbing. (The Science of Discworld annoyed me no end – pop science around a discworld story that you couldn’t even follow because of having to pick it out from the gee-whizzy science stuck in by his collaborators.) I even find the cover illustrations crap, although as soon as I see one it sets off a Pavlovian dog response in me: “Must have that book. NOW.”
The books in the Discworld series can be sublime. The Discworld is like our world but in HDR. The characters are amazing. I have to stop there because I will end up sounding (even more) like the pseud’s guide to English Literature 101
The man is a genius. I hope some seriously high-end experts in brain chemistry get to work on him fast.
* Lame Pratchett pun. Sorry.
Back story
I was trying to ignore this – partly because every post here seems to be turning out to be a crap version of some other atheist’s blog post and I never find out until I’ve posted. But, hoping that the Daily Mail Online is too distasteful for the more faint-hearted in the atheosphere, I’ll present this story.
The Daily Mail headline says:
Wife ‘cured’ by prayer can’t get benefits stopped because government computer doesn’t recognise miracles
….With the Government pledging to crack down on “sicknote Britain”, it seems remarkable the 56-year-old received more than Ă‚ÂŁ3,500 she did not even want.
(Stop sniggering at the back!!! Of course, she had to withdraw it………)
What? The government has a sceptical computer? And it’s forcing public money on Christians against their will?
The “story”: A woman got disability payments for 6 years after she had to stop working because of the damage to her “hip, pelvis and spine” (Maybe I’m being too pedantic, but aren’t these all more or less the same place?) She got better but didn’t tell the Social Security (/Department of Work and Pensions or whatever it’s called now.) Then she did. They said she needed confirmation from a doctor before they could stop her claim being processed. But now they have stopped it and she has to pay a few months’ money back.
Simple story. Twisted by the Daily Mail and the people involved into a piece of journalistic excrement that manages to claim evidence of a religious miracle, at the same time as insulting the government.
It’s a little out of character for the Daily Mail – the fearless scourge of the dole-scrounging workshy – to be putting a case that it’s somehow the fault of the government that someone claimed disability allowance when they weren’t disabled.
Was it the spirit of Christmas that prompted this surprising change of heart toward benefits claimants? No, it’s the spirit of Christianity or, at least, of one of its odder forms.
Her husband Stuart, 58, a pastor at Hooe Baptist Church, said that he prayed every day after the accident that God would “bring my wife back”.
The prayer seemed to be answered when his wife attended a Christian conference in January last year.
Within hours, Mrs Clarke was able to fold away her wheelchair and stop taking painkillers. When she realised she was permanently cured four months later, she contacted the Government’s Industrial Injury Department to put a stop to her benefits.
… But the department continued to give her Ă‚ÂŁ600 a month – and she ended up being paid Ă‚ÂŁ3,600 in incapacity benefits for a period when she was in perfect health.
Oh, so she has to pay back benefits to which she wasn’t entitled, then? (I assume her husband is working, unless it’s a voluntary pastor thing. So she probably wouldn’t have got social security benefit at all – which is a lot less than Ă‚ÂŁ600 a month if she wasn’t a permanent invalid. But I digress.)
Ignore the legal aspects or even the sequence of events that must have led to this story.
(Picture an embarrassed civil servant – who is trying to get out of a conversation with a woman who says “I’ve now been healed by a miracle” – saying “Oh good. I just need to see some confirmation from a doctor before I stop the computer payments.” Woman phones Daily Mail in horror.)
What about the confused and confusing theology here? The injury apparently had nothing to with god, (unless the deity wanted this couple to get some invalidity cheques and decided to injure her. Mysterious ways, etc…) But the healing itself came directly from their deity. Well, OK, not actually directly, as such. I mean, it took 6 bloody years to work. The pastor can’t be very good at it, can he? Or god just didn’t care.
She was healed after attending a service? Well, a matter of “hours” after attending a service. Granted there is no time too large to be considered a matter of hours, but I’ll take it this as meaning “a day or so.” He’s a pastor and this is the only service she’s attended in 6 and a half years? Seems unlikely. In fact, it seems unlikely that there are any times in their lives that aren’t a matter of hours removed from attendance at a service.
So, where is the miracle even supposed to be here? God had been too busy fixing the results of World’s Strongest Man competitions and Hollywood awards, that he forgot to take all his calls. But one day, he suddenly switched on his prayer-answerphone, heard the 6 year-old message and decided to do what this one pastor asked. (The selfish bugger could have prayed for world peace or dying babies or at least healing a few amputees, if it was going to work.)
A cynic might see it as the miracle of the new anti-Invalidity Benefit moves by the government – very much spurred by the Daily Mail and its ilk – which involve following fake physically disabled people and photographing them walking to the pub or even (in one recent case) running marathons. This sort of activity can cause great stress to mentally and physically ill people but that cuts no ice with the Daily Mail or its middle-England readers.
Miraculous healings seems to soften their hard taxpayers’ hearts indeed. Soften their heads too, it appears.
Bear with me
Wow, yet another ursine soft toy with political implications, though this time it’s a teddy making a gentle point about how society has been changed by anti-immigration hysteria. Paddington, the star of the long-popular children’s book series gets hassled over his immigration status in the latest book by Michael Bond.
Michael Bond, the 81-year-old writer who created Britain’s favourite asylum seeker back in 1958, returns with his first novel-length collection of Paddington stories for 30 years, and the bear in the duffel coat is confronted with what his creator calls a “very different world”. (from the report in the Guardian)
The story is that the Peruvian-originating Paddington reports a loss to the police and gets into some trouble over his immigration status instead. All works out well in the end, of course. (Don’t have nightmares.)
Nice one, Michael Bond, for the gentle jab in the fake-furry underbelly of our paranoid society.
I will forbear (argh) from mentioning that the London Underground Railway Society is about to seize Michael Bond for the name he gave his creature. But be warned” Militant trainspotters can get really obsessed……
Communion breakfast
Sponsored link (Well, I can dream……):
Gift for your Christian friends
Hold your own communion services at home and find it easier to suspend disbelief than if you’ve been handed a stale wafer and told it’s Jesus’ body.
Get the exact same amount of spiritual benefit that you’d get if you bought a Mary-faced pancake on e-bay, but you can get it fresh every day.
This is the best among the array of kitsch Christmas gifts on ship of fools, a self-mocking Christian website. It’s a a toast stamper for turning regular unholy toast into toast with Jesus’s image burned into it.
(I think this counts as both fair comment and free advertising, so bleh to any holy copyright lawyers.)
Kill the witch
Child “witches” are being beaten, tortured and abandoned in the Niger Delta, after the local evangelical pastor has pronounced them to be possessed, according to a story by Tracy McVeigh in the Guardian Unlimited.
This possession by a witch can be miraculously removed by the simple payment of money to the pastor. Is this making you puke yet? Just wait till you find out some of the details.
There is a video on the Guardian website. If you find the video too harrowing, there is a gallery of images with some explanations, although that’s not easy viewing either.
Casanova Dawkins
Read Richard Dawkins works? (Well, some anyway.) If you are a man maybe you should reread them again, because I bet you missed the bit about how to be a “babe magnet.” This is the point at which I would traditionally feel impelled to say, “I kid you not”. So I’m saying it.
A reporter for the Times Online turned up for one of the “How to pick up women” seminars that are apparently turning unfeasible male bragging and male credulity into a profitable industry. (It’s quite an entertaining piece.)
This is about one of the keynote speakers, who goes by the nom de seduction of Gem. (I put the Dawkins bit in bold)
… he resembles a Mediterranean shipping magnate the morning after the night before. Gem expands upon his theme by drawing from Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene, one of three texts which, he says, taught him “everything I know about pick-up”. We must banish our primordial fear, he says, and realise that looks are less important for women than they might be for men. “I am clinically obese,” he continues. “Every day that I go out, I’m disproving the idea that looks are important to women.”
(Nor, if this sort of course is anything to go by, are sincerity, intelligence, or the capacity to treat women as real human beings. 🙂 )