Monthly Archives: May 2010

Roman Polanski, celebrity child rapist

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From here:

A British woman came forward Friday alleging sexual assault against director Roman Polanski, who is currently under house arrest in Switzerland for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

In a press conference at her attorney Gloria Allred’s Los Angeles office, Charlotte Lewis, an actress who appeared in Polanski’s 1986 film “Pirates,” alleged that Polanski sexually abused her in the “worst way possible” when she was 16 years old. Lewis claims the attack took place in Paris in 1982, four years after he fled the U.S. to escape sentencing for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer.

According to Lewis, now 42, Polanski was aware that she was 16 at the time when he “forced himself” on her in his apartment. The legal age of consent in France is 15.

“He took advantage of me,” Lewis said. “What I want is justice.”

The renowned defenders of the sexually innocent, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, are busy organising lawyers to force the extradition of Polanski so that he can face charges in the US and Britain.

No they’re not, I made that up.

How many policemen does it take to subdue one street preacher?

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Judging by this video of the infamous arrest of Dale McAlpine for saying homosexual conduct is a sin, five. It probably takes the entire police force to arrest a burglar.

Here is the transcript from the Christian Institute:

Dale: We’re not out here to break any laws. We want to abide by the law.
There isn’t any law against saying that them things are sins. There isn’t any law against that.

Police: Hello sir. What’ve you been saying, homophobic wise?

Dale: Well, homophobia is hatred towards homosexuals. That’s the definition of homophobia but I’m not a homophobia [sic]. I spoke to your officer earlier and he was upset that I was saying homosexuality was a sin – which is what the Bible says. And I affirm that’s what I say because that’s in the Bible. And there’s no law, there’s no law…

Police: Well there is.

Dale: No there isn’t.

Police: There is. Unfortunately, mate, it’s a breach of Section 5 of the Public Order Act.

Dale: It actually isn’t.

Police: Sir, it’s a…

Dale: We wouldn’t do that because if it was against the law, y’know. Lord Carey, was it Lord – the guy who passed that law in the Houses of Parliament recently – the free speech [inaudible].

Police: [inaudible] It protects free speech to a degree but [inaudible].

Dale’s friend: Actually, I certainly didn’t. These two gentlemen listened to probably all I’ve said. I certainly never mentioned homosexuality.

Police: Yeah, we know.

Dale: The only time I mentioned it was when I was talking to this gentleman here. When I was up on the steps preaching, I didn’t mention it. Even so, y’know, it still is not against the law.

Police: It is against the law. Listen, mate, we’re pretty sure. You’re under arrest for a racially aggravated Section 5 Public Order offence. You don’t have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

Dale: Fair enough.

Police: OK. Do you want to walk this way to our van?



A magistrate in Britain is scolded for calling 16 year-olds “absolute scum”

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From here:

A magistrate who branded two boys ‘absolute scum’ after they desecrated a cathedral faces disciplinary action.

The 16-year-old boys wrote racist and sexually-abusive graffiti in prayer books, and bent a priceless John The Baptist cross out of shape at Blackburn Cathedral, causing £3,000 damage.

Pages were also torn out of the prayer books and insults written in the prayer and visitor books included: ‘I will kill all Jews. Don’t underestimate me’, and lurid sexual comments about ‘the vicar’.

They were caught after they wrote their names in the visitors’ book.

Chairman of the bench at Blackburn Magistrates’ Court Austin Molloy labelled the boys ‘absolute scum’ during the sentencing yesterday at the Youth Court.

But he was immediately criticised by the court clerk who stood up and objected to the use of the ‘inappropriate language’.

The mother of one of the boys said she would be making an official complaint.

I would agree that the scumminess of the miscreants has not yet had the time mature to the degree of perfection or completeness to warrant the use of “absolute”; perhaps the magistrate should have said “lesser scum”, although this seems overly generous.

Here is a brief history of “scum”:

scum
1326 (implied in scummer “shallow ladle for removing scum”), from M.Du. schume “foam, froth,” from P.Gmc. *skuma- (cf. O.N. skum, O.H.G. scum, Ger. Schaum “foam, froth”), perhaps from PIE base *(s)keu- “to cover, conceal” (see hide (n.1)). Sense deteriorated from “thin layer atop liquid” to “film of dirt,” then just “dirt.” Meaning “lowest class of humanity” is 1586; scum of the Earth is from 1712. Adopted in Romanic, cf. O.Fr. escume, Mod.Fr. écume, Sp. escuma, It. schiuma. Adj. scummy first attested 1577; transf. sense of “filthy, disreputable” is recorded from 1932. Slang scumbag “condom” is from 1967; meaning “despicable person” is from 1971.

It is a shame that, on a rare occasion when the law was not an ass, a court clerk felt impelled to analyse the “appropriateness” (an overused and meaningless epithet) of a magistrate’s description of 16 year-olds who, for recreation,  enjoy writing “I will kill all Jews” in the Prayer Book.

Britain has become a strange place.

Rowan Williams: everyone is confused but me

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Rowan Williams confirms that he is completely out of touch with the common man with this condescending aphorism wafting serenely to the plebs from the hallowed halls of Lambeth Palace:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, risked conflict with the new Government when he criticised opponents of immigration. He also challenged the view of his predecessor that migration “threatens” British identity.

Dr Williams said that those who feared new arrivals showed “confusion” and a “lack of proper confidence” in society’s ability to learn.

200 terror suspects in Canada

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From here:

OTTAWA – Canada’s spy agency is keeping tabs on more than 200 people within the country it says are suspected terrorists.

Richard Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the parliamentary public safety committee Tuesday that his clandestine organization’s “No. 1 priority” is protecting Canadians from the “threat of al-Qaida, its affiliates and its adherents.”

“In that regard, I can say that as of this month, CSIS is investigating over 200 individuals in this country whose activities meet the definition of terrorism as set out in the (Anti-Terrorism) act,” Fadden said, adding they are also monitoring people abroad.

“It is also worth mentioning that the service maintains an active interest in the threat-related activities of a number of non-citizens who have ties to Canada, whether through former residence here or family links.”

CSIS has confirmed that not all of the suspects are refugees sponsored by the Anglican Church of Canada.

Gilles Duceppe makes anti-Christian remarks in parliament

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From Lifesite News:

OTTAWA, May 11, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a May 6 speech criticizing the Conservative Government for defunding various pro-abortion groups, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe made remarks mocking Christianity which have shocked even members of the Commons.

With laughs and guffaws coming from opposition benches last week, Duceppe blasted the Conservative Government for the “ideological decision” to fund “religious groups that believe in the imminent return of the Messiah and translate the Bible into African and Asian dialects.”

In a follow-up comment Duceppe went further, saying sarcastically, “Will it really help women to send preachers … to Africa or to have the Bible translated. What a huge help and so essential.”

Mary Ellen Douglas of Campaign Life Coalition reacted with disgust to Duceppe’s remarks. “How sad and deplorable that a Canadian political leader would disgrace Parliament with such anti-Christian comment,” Douglas told LifeSiteNews.

Duceppe is no stranger to “ideological decisions”. He used to be a member of the Maoist Workers’ Communist Party of Canada and was an ardent Maoist until well into his 30s. Although, with most of his energy devoted to splitting up Canada and mocking Christianity, he now spends less time as apologist for a regime that murdered 40 million people.

Atheists are drab

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And according to David Hart, whose book Atheist Delusions I highly recommend, there is not “one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God” between them.

Characteristically brilliant David Bentley Hart; a must read here:

I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad—not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time soaps, and The Bridges of Madison County. This is not because I necessarily think the current “marketplace of ideas” particularly good at sorting out wise arguments from foolish. But the latest trend in à la mode godlessness, it seems to me, has by now proved itself to be so intellectually and morally trivial that it has to be classified as just a form of light entertainment, and popular culture always tires of its diversions sooner or later and moves on to other, equally ephemeral toys.

Take, for instance, the recently published 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Simple probability, surely, would seem to dictate that a collection of essays by fifty fairly intelligent and zealous atheists would contain at least one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God. Certainly that was my hope in picking it up. Instead, I came away from the whole drab assemblage of preachments and preenings feeling rather as if I had just left a large banquet at which I had been made to dine entirely on crushed ice and water vapor.

To be fair, the shallowness is not evenly distributed. Some of the writers exhibit a measure of wholesome tentativeness in making their cases, and as a rule the quality of the essays is inversely proportionate to the air of authority their authors affect. For this reason, the philosophers—who are no better than their fellow contributors at reasoning, but who have better training in giving even specious arguments some appearance of systematic form—tend to come off as the most insufferable contributors.

Nicholas Everitt and Stephen Law recycle the old (and incorrigibly impressionistic) argument that claims of God’s omnipotence seem incompatible with claims of his goodness. Michael Tooley does not like the picture of Jesus that emerges from the gospels, at least as he reads them. Christine Overall notes that her prayers as a child were never answered; ergo, there is no God. A.C. Grayling flings a few of his favorite papier-mâché caricatures around. Laura Purdy mistakes hysterical fear of the religious right for a rational argument. Graham Oppy simply provides a précis of his personal creed, which I assume is supposed to be compelling because its paragraphs are numbered. J.J.C. Smart finds miracles scientifically implausible (gosh, who could have seen that coming?). And so on. Adèle Mercier comes closest to making an interesting argument—that believers do not really believe what they think they believe—but it soon collapses under the weight of its own baseless presuppositions.

The Anglican Covenant at the Canadian GS2010

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The ACoC has a document to help attendees prepare for the General Synod 2010 discussion – or waffle – on the Anglican Covenant. Read it all here. Section 4 of the Covenant is the potentially contentious part, since it seeks to reign in Provinces such as TEC and the ACoC that have decided to go their own way on issues like same-sex blessings. Conservatives complain that section 4 has no teeth and liberals that it interferes with matters that are internal to a Province. It has no teeth.

In Section Four, affirmations and commitments are offered relating to processes and principles that should be followed in situations of conflict between provinces. The particular issues of potential or present conflict are not named, and the processes laid out work within the present structures of the Anglican Consultative Council, with the standing committee of that council serving as the mediating agent. The standing committee’s power is only to recommend courses of relational consequences to the council’s own constitutionally formed processes.

Member churches of the Anglican Consultative Council are invited to enter into this covenanted relationship, which makes tangible affirmations and commitments about our common heritage, participation in God’s mission, and mutual responsibility in the bonds of affection. When a situation of conflict arises, churches are enjoined to seek the mind of Christ, and the affirmations and commitments in Sections One, Two and Three provide tools for discerning dialogue. The possible outcomes cannot be predicted. Common mind may include, for example, the agreement to disagree on a particular issue, but to keep walking together. What is clear is that Section Four does not supplant the existing authorities, the canons and constitutions of provinces, or the constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council.

So to summarise the document’s preparation for discussing section 4:

  • If a Province breaks the Covenant, the consequences are “relational” resulting, no doubt, in a severe scolding.
  • If there is disagreement after signing the Covenant we’ll have some “discerning dialogue”. TEC and the ACoC have had a lot of practise at this: each could single-handedly bore the balls off a buffalo, let alone shrivel the resolve of all but the most hardy opposition.
  • If TEC and the ACoC fail to subdue the enemy by focussed, concentrated magniloquence, then the “common mind” simply changes its meaning to “we disagree”. Black is white, up is down, and so begins another normal day in the ACoC.
  • Who cares anyway because section 4 has no teeth.