The View from Number 80

Fox Hunting - when it comes to impartial, fair and balanced news reporting one name that certainly does not spring to mind is Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. This is not just 80's opinion, but one that is shared by many folk - including Sam Kimery. He has invented the "FOX Blocker" a nifty little gadget that you can fit to your TV to keep it clean of that particular contagion. It appears that Kimery, along with most rational, sentient beings decided that Fox news output was right-wing propaganda, a view also shared by FOX Blocker co-founder Joshua Montgomery. He states "We don't believe in censorship." on the Blocker website and adds "I don't have a problem with FOX News. If they would just come out and say that it is rightwing news for right wing nuts (wingnuts) we will take this site down and move on." An added kicker when you buy a FOX Blocker is that "With every order placed, FOXBlocker.com will send an e-mail in your name to the TOP 10 advertisers at FOX News letting them know that yet another subscriber has opted out of FOX News. With a little luck and a lot of volume, we can shut the FOX up!" Naturally this has upset the fair-minded, impartial and balanced individuals who get their worldview from Fox. Montgomery answers them thus,"All you hate mailers out there (750 or so today) quit sending me "CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NPR and the BBC are left wing liberal hippies......." without EVIDENCE. If you are going to send it, send it with FACTS......Just saying it makes you sound like the stupid, ignorant, uneducated hillbilly you are." Neither Kimery or Montgomery are making any money out of this - they just want to make a point - any profits, should they materialize, will be donated to FAIR.org, MediaMatters.org or Lawrence Freenet. If you have $8.95 burning a hole in your pocket get a FOX Blocker and send a message to Fox.

Miracle Babies - the long-running saga continues. Now the latest twist in the Gilbert Deya Miracle Babies scandal involves Deya's right hand man in the UK, pastor Benjamin Mensah, who stoutly defended Deya when the accusations of baby-smuggling started flying. Now it seems that Mensah has had enough of trying to defend the indefensible and has resigned from Gilbert Deya Ministries. Deya is reported here in the East African Standard as showing little Christian charity toward his former deputy saying "...good riddance as he had been a disgrace to the Church". He went on to say "I'm not interested in fighting wars through litigation. I'm a man of God and there is nothing to worry about." The only real mystery in all of this is why this "man of God" is still in the UK and not deported to Kenya where the police are anxious to talk with him about his activities.

A Glass Cathedral - it is a well-known truism that in a debate or dispute when one party begins comparing the other to Nazis any rational discussion flies out of the window and the discourse deteriorates into abuse. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, in attacking women's right to choose in the matter of abortion has unwisely chosen to play the Nazi card. Unwisely because it not only illustrates the poverty of his argument but also because it brings the focus sharply onto the history of his own church. The Roman Catholics at the top of the hierarchy have always been known for their often cosy relationship with fascists - unlike many priests at the lower end of the scale who suffered for their opposition to oppression. Whether it was accommodating Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or more recently, criminals such as Augusto Pinochet the Roman Catholic church with its unelected and authoritarian hierarchy has shown an affinity for repressive fascist governments. Murphy O'Connor, who is already damned in 80's eyes as a paedophile-shifting hypocrite, has managed to sink even lower with his Nazi mudslinging. Those who live in glass cathedrals should be very careful indeed not to start throwing stones. (For more on the Catholic churches links with political authorities this page makes interesting reading.)

Begging Voice - a bigot rattles the collecting box for your money. Not much, just a mere £75,000, in order to allow Christian Voice (CV) to pursue its blasphemy case against the BBC for showing Jerry Springer - the Opera. So goes a begging letter, (in pdf) that can be downloaded from the CV website (and kindly made available in html by Mediawatchwatch. The writer, the sainted Green the Baptist himself, even tries to answer a question that 80 (and many many others) has asked about his protests, which is "Can't God look after Himself?". Green thinks not, although he feels obliged to say "In truth, God could have struck the BBC electrical system with a thunderbolt as we prayed. He chose not to." How does Green know this? Did the old boy tell him personally? Perhaps the big G is saving his thunderbolts for Green himself, to punish him for his arrogant assumption that he speaks for the deity. No, Green has a different answer, but equally silly. "I believe God is generous enough to involve ordinary believing men and women, with all our weaknesses, in His purpose. He wants us to share His victory. He graciously desires fellowship with us." Including such weaknesses as the aforementioned arrogance. On the subject of arrogance, Green has something to say about it himself, in response to his own rhetorical question " Shouldn't we just forgive those responsible for Springer?" He pays lipservice to the idea of forgiveness for, after all, " I dearly want my trespasses forgiven!" (These no doubt would be the trespasses of homophobic bigotry and bullying a cancer charity, to name just a couple.) What he is actually saying is that we should forgive those who trespass against us,  not out of kindness or understanding but for our own benefit, "...not least because only then will God forgive us our trespasses." So, you forgive only in order to be able to get away with (be forgiven for) some trespasses of your own. How very moral. But the twist comes when Green says that we can forgive those who have slighted us, but not those who have slighted others. For "...when that sin is against the Lord Jesus, what arrogance it would be for us to forgive on His behalf!"  And what arrogance it is to condemn on his behalf. Let's be optimistic, this could be a breakthrough - Green at least understands the concept of arrogance - given enough time he may even realize just how much it applies to him and his crude and offensive zealotry. Meanwhile, in the real world, the BBC governors have vindicated the producers of Springer the Opera - although irritatingly this report still repeats the ridiculously inflated numbers for emails received by the BBC in protest. It is technically a fairly trivial exercise to flood an address with duplicated emails - numbers received should not be taken as an indication of the actual number of complainants.

Ark of the Covenant Discovered in Israel - see here for this amazing story which has parallels with the Oded Golan/James Ossuary affair. "An amazing archaeological discovery has been made in Israel, one that could potentially shake the world of antiquities to its core and signal the upcoming bloodbath of Armageddon, according to Biblical experts. Indeed, what appears to be the Ark of the Covenant referred to in the Old Testament has surfaced in, of all places, the private collection of a longtime antiquities dealer." (thanks to the excellent Explorator)

Dumb Quote of the Day - the struggle to keep US schools' science classes unblemished by religion continues unabated. This particular skirmish in Dover, Pennsylvania has been dragging on for a while now as religionists campaign for the teaching of evolution to be replaced by fairy tales. The same tired arguments are trotted out once more about Darwin's Theory being "just a theory". To many of these religionists theory means little more than a guess - they cannot quite get their heads around what theory actually means in science "A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena." (WordWeb) Now and again something slips out that illustrates quite how ignorant these fundamentalists are, and epitomises just what this struggle is all about. Pastor and parent Ray Mummert, surely unintentionally, put his finger on the real problem when he said, "Christians are a lot more bold under Bush's leadership, he speaks what a lot of us believe. We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." Which by implication means, in the black and white terms so beloved of the fundamentalists, that Mummert and chums are the stupid, ignorant segment of the culture. Now this is hardly news, but it is nice to have it confirmed by the good pastor. (Much thanks to Gerald Gluch for the heads up. Read Paul Krugman in the New York Times (reg rqd) for a reminder that schools science and the Terri Schiavo case are but two fronts in a much wider, and increasingly dangerous and dirty war.)

April 5th 2005

Darfur and the Culture of Life - the UN security council has voted to refer war crimes suspects involved in the government-enabled murder, rape and torture in Darfur, Sudan to the International Criminal Court (ICC). About bloody time too - at last the US managed to get over its fear of supporting the court in The Hague by abstaining in the vote along with China, Algeria and Brazil. Strange company for the Bush administration and its "culture of life" but at least things may get moving now and this horrible ordeal for the people of Darfur will end. Anne Patterson, US deputy ambassador to the UN is quoted by the BBC as saying "It is important that the international community speak with one voice in order to help promote effective accountability." which is pretty rich considering it was the US that held things up over referral to the ICC in the first place. 80 wonders how many more folk will have been killed because of Bush's prevarication and paranoia. Early last month 80 quoted Captain Brian Steidle on the atrocities in Darfur perpetrated by the Janjaweed militia. Steidle, a former US Marine who was a ceasefire monitor for the African Union tells of his tour of duty in the UK Independent,"In the six months I spent in Darfur as a "ceasefire observer", I saw entire villages burned down with Sudanese locked inside their huts. I saw villagers with their eyes or ears plucked out, or men who had bled to death after being castrated. I interviewed women who had been gang-raped while out collecting firewood." Culture of life? Don't make me sick. Bush and cronies make a loud enough noise over the Terri Schiavo case and other causes dear to right-wing conservative Christian voters, but the lives of the people of Darfur are obviously not so important. You may ask how come 80 singles out  the US and not China, Algeria or Brazil, the other abstainers? Because 80, perhaps foolishly, expected better of the United States. What the hell have they been doing since September last year, when then Secretary of State Colin Powell called what was happening in Darfur genocide? The US administration's hypocrisy sits well next to the outraged squealing of the Sudan government in this report from Islam Online.

Naked Fear - when John Ashcroft let his nipplephobia get the better of him (they keep following me round the room) and had the nude statues in the Great Hall of the Justice Department's headquarters draped at the taxpayers' expense 80 thought he was a uniquely sad little man. This was wrong - he is not unique after all, he has a soulmate in the form of Frank Butler, a zoning inspector for Bartholomew County, Indiana. Butler has ordered that classical-style statues at White River Truck Repair and Yard Art be moved out of the public view. Asked why, this silly little official said, "They have nudity ... and that should not be in the view of a minor." It seems Indiana's obscenity law prohibits the display of nudity where children might see it. You wonder about the moral danger breastfed babies must be in - unless you blindfold them at dinnertime of course. To be honest, it is unfair to have a go at Butler as he is only doing his job - the two creeps that complained to his department in the first place are the real weirdos.

The Company You Keep - can say a lot about you. 80 often employs this maxim when looking at, say, a website that makes health claims that appear questionable or unsubstantiated. Just check the other sites that this site links to, and you can get a feeling for where they are coming from. This assessment by association can work in other areas, such as capital punishment. A recent Amnesty International report has found that "During 2004, more than 3,797 people were executed in 25 countries and at least 7,395 were sentenced to death in 64 countries.." Of course this only includes recorded, judicial executions as opposed to widespread, coordinated murders taking place right now in places like Dafur. Also many countries announce a much smaller number than other evidence would lead one to expect, such as global leader in executions, China. According to the Amnesty report "China executed at least 3,400 people, but sources inside the country have estimated the number to be near 10,000." On the other hand it does also strike a hopeful note, saying that there is a "..worldwide trend towards abolition..." but also stresses the "..ongoing need for concerted action by the international community to consign the death penalty to history." This BBC page helpfully publishes a graph of the top six countries in the world judicial murders league - and it is here that the "company you keep" exercise can be employed. In decreasing order of executions are China, Iran, Vietnam, US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Strange company indeed for a country like the US, with a president who blathers on about a "culture of life"........

On the bottom words are shallow.
On the surface talk is cheap.
You can only judge the distance by the company you keep

Joe Walsh - The Confessor

Gone But Not Forgotten - all over the world the late Pope is being eulogized in such adulatory terms that 80 thought it only fair to mention some of his achievements that have gone strangely unremarked. Damage to the environment caused by the increase in human population, a population in many countries forbidden contraception by this man. Thousands dead and dying from HIV AIDS because they were forbidden to use condoms by this man. Unknown numbers of women dead or seriously injured in backstreet abortion clinics because abortion was forbidden by this man. Thousands of children abused by the Catholic priesthood, a scandal never fully acknowledged by this man. Gays and lesbians worldwide condemned as "... part of a new ideology of evil" by this man. Even now, the old autocrat's  work is still not done, although he himself is dead. He has packed the Conclave of Cardinals with men possessing the same stern conservative views as himself, thereby doing his best to ensure his successor will be in the same mold. (To emphasise business as usual, Cardinal Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston in 2002 following accusations that he covered up sexual abuse of children by priests, will be leading a memorial mass for the dead pope. A support group for the victims of priestly abuse will be there, armed with leaflets. This BBC report reminds us "In February 2004, a report commissioned by the Church said more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the previous 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children - mostly boys.")

Hari's Game - 80 has mentioned Johann Hari and his sane and rational articles before. Now, in common with the rest of the world (or so it seems) he has written about the late Karol Wojtyla. He suggests that despite all the excessive adulation for the man he will be seen eventually in the same light as one of his predecessors, Pope Pius XII, as "a deeply malign force". Hari's articles are archived on his website here, and are definitely worth reading. Almost as interesting, however, are the discussions that follow further down the page - although 80 doubts whether some of the contributors are quite what they claim to be. There is one particular correspondent who so fits the profile for a right-wing, religious, homophobic twit that he must surely be a caricature. Anyone that manages to defend the likes of Franco and Pinochet, (they kept those godless commies/socialists in check) and simultaneously maintain an irritating holier-than-thou attitude has to be a fake or a nutter. Here is an example of this person's thinking on the church's condom/AIDS lies, "Condoms are a perversion of sexual intercourse, which is intended for procreation. In discrediting condoms, the Church was not attempting to spread disease, but rather to emphasise that the one truly acceptable course is in fact to abstain from sexual activity altogether, outside of marriage. That message is theologically sound and it is the surest way to prevent disease. The Church is not in the business of advocating condoms as a second-best strategy, because second-best doesn't cut it with God." The thought that this person, assuming they are for real, is out there walking the streets is too worrying to contemplate. There are also those whose postings give 80 the old "I wished I had said that" feeling, a mixture of admiration and jealousy. One of the papal apologists' favorite, and poorly substantiated, claims to absolve Wojtyla in spite of his awful record (see Gone But Not Forgotten) is that he spoke out against communism (mild version) or singlehandedly brought the Berlin wall crashing down (loony version). As Phil, another contributor says, "..even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day". The last word is Hari's, looking at the catalog of Wojtyla's achievements and the nauseating obsequiousness of his funeral rites and tributes, "If we want to talk about respecting the dead, today we should grieve not for one peddler of superstition, but for the tens of thousands who - thanks to him - did not live to see this day. I do not believe John Paul II will face a Judgement Day in "Heaven". But one day, the fatuous tributes of the past week will rot, and his name will be cursed here on earth."

Funereal Flummery - here is an excellent piece by Polly Toynbee  (in the Guardian) expressing disgust at the world leaders fawning  over a corpse in Rome today. As 80 has attempted below, Toynbee adds a desperately-needed counterbalance to the crawling coverage in the media of Karol Wojtyla and his legacy. As Toynbee so eloquently puts it, " Today's saccharine sanctimony will try to whiten the sepulchre of yet another Pope whose obscurantist faith has caused pointless suffering; it is no defence that he was only obeying higher orders."

TV Ghost Frauds - well worth a look is Tony Youens' Commentary on the stupid TV ghost/psychic shows, in particular the fatuous "Most Haunted Live". In Psychic Dumbing Down Tony asks the question, how may health and safety legislation apply to ghostly "hazards" featured in this show, which is described in the publicity blurb as "...terrifying" and comes away with some interesting observations. The unwelcome spread of such shows has as much to do with the cheapness of production as with the gullibility and ignorance of the target audience. A low light camera system, some "performers" and a bucket load of bullshit and you are there.

Of Teacups and Intolerance - sometimes what appears to be a storm in a teacup can presage something far more serious. Take the row going on in the English village of Lyneham in Wiltshire. What seems to have started it was Mitch Hawkin's website www.lynehamvillage.co.uk - or more particularly his references to the late Pope and a spoof ad that he ran for a successor. Hawkin's comments strike 80 as amusing and also to the point - "Fancy a new job? The Vatican is now looking for a new Pope now that the current one has snuffed it. Let's hope the next Pope can do a better job. Better still, why not abolish the position of Pope, as religion, at the end of the day, causes more wars than anything else." Certainly nothing offensive here in 80's view, but that view is not shared by another village resident, one Andy Humm, who coincidentally has his own, rather more conventional and sedate website www.lynehamvillage.com. Not only does Humm think Hawkin's site "shames" Lyneham he told the Guardian "What Mr Hawkin has said about the Pope is disgusting and outrageous. Mr Hawkin should be charged." (Perhaps Humm should have look at Number 80 if he wants to fret about disrespectful coverage of the dead Pope) It seems Humm and a local Tory councillor, Allison Bucknell, are keen for Hawkin to be served an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) for daring to mock Wojtyla. The Wiltshire police are said to be investigating. The first observation to make is to wonder whether some of Humm's spluttering outrage is owed to the fact his site visitor numbers have likely dipped - the publicity about the threatened ASBO has no doubt boosted Hawkin's site instead. But aside from the amusement to be had from this, let's face it, petty squabble, there is an important principle at stake. Just because Hawkin has not joined in the nauseating adulatory coverage of the late Wojtyla, but rather expressed, via humor, his opinion of the whole religious circus, should he be gagged? Certainly not. If not given enough scrutiny and opposition Humm and Bucknell might actually succeed in making an ASBO do the job of the (currently shelved) religious hatred law. The idea of these little Englanders dictating what one can or cannot say is in itself "disgusting and outrageous" and should not be permitted to happen. Even if you don't find Hawkin's pages particularly funny, visit his site and show your support. Voltaire's (possibly apocryphal) saying, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" definitely applies here. The use of an ASBO to stifle free speech could well be the thin end of a very nasty wedge. (Thanks to New Humanist for the heads-up on this)

Top Marks for Cain - in the left margin of this page you will find many interesting and useful links, this is the story of one of them. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, The View from Number 80 started life as a space advocacy page - as you can see it has changed a lot since then, although a vestige of the original purpose still exists further down this page - see Case For Space. Also mentioned on this site since its inception is an internet newsletter called Universe Today, (UT) which is also the source of the syndicated Space News that 80 still runs. Universe Today, now well past its 1000th edition, is the brainchild of Fraser Cain. It has grown over the years from a plain text newsletter to the illustrated, professional product we see today. Apart from running space news and releases, these days UT offers high quality downloadable desktop images and original interviews, book reviews and ads for space-related businesses, an indexed archive from 1999 and a lively forum on a number of space-related topics. Now Cain is running an experiment in Podcasting, (an audio file, usually MP3, that can be downloaded for listening to either on your pc or a portable player when you want). To kick off the service is a short interview with Scott Gaudi at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics about Sedna's lack of a moon. (Sedna is a recently-discovered planetoid three times farther away from Earth than Pluto, and named for an Inuit goddess). To check out the podcast, catch up on space news, discuss space and astronomy, find out how to run Space News on your own site, and enjoy Cain's occasional wry humor, cut along to Universe Today - highly recommended. (Update - UT now has an RSS link to which you can subscribe so that you will automatically hear show updates. For more information visit UT)

Mourners and Shakers - my, what a wonderful place the papal funeral was for bringing people together - there was Prince Charles shaking hands with the dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe and, even more touching, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad shook hands with Israeli President Moshe Katsav. Sadly the warm glow shed on it all by this Reuter's report fails to mention that Charles claims he was "caught by surprise" (pre-nuptial jitters maybe?) and Khatami denies any of it ever happened. Syria does not deny a handshake took place but "this did not change Syria's position on the Jewish state." Officially they are still at war with each other. Sigh..............

Beetle Honor - here is an amusing little item - Two former Cornell University entomologists, Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller have been busy naming new species of slime mold beetles and have chosen some striking names for three of them. These unfortunate little critters have been named for George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. When asked why, the scientists said it was out of admiration for the principles (?) of the three gentlemen and not because the beetles looked like them. As if anyone would assume otherwise.......

Promises To Keep - here is an op-ed in the New York Times (reg rqd) from Kofi Annan, secretary general of the UN, on the pledges made recently by donor countries to aid those suffering in Sudan and particularly in Darfur. It is one thing to promise aid - it is another thing to keep the promise. As Annan points out "...in 1992, donors pledged $880 million for Cambodian war rehabilitation; three years later, only $460 million had been delivered. Nearly a year after donors promised $1 billion to deal with the devastation caused by the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, less than 20 percent of the money had been delivered." He also reminds us that monetary aid is useless without an end to the atrocities still being committed every day. The sooner the Janjaweed and their government backers stand trial for their actions the better. Meanwhile President Bush's hopelessly inappropriate and insulting nominee for ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, is having a hard time attempting, and failing, to justify his past contemptuous remarks about the institution. Bolton is also tainted by his politicizing of information and fighting to keep blatant inaccuracies in a speech on Cuba's weapons program. This was attempted by intimidating those who felt adherence to the truth was still important, even within the Bush administration. A former intelligence chief, Carl Ford, described Bolton as ""kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy", who tried to bully government analysts into producing the intelligence he wanted." according to the Guardian. Sadly the general feeling is that Bolton will get the job - if so, it will be the equivalent of Bush and his neocons giving the UN the finger - yet again.

Vanquished Virgin - the prize for daft headline of the week must go to a BBC news page with "'Vision of the Virgin' vandalised". (To be fair they do get 8 out of ten for alliteration) This vision, like all the other Virgin apparitions, was strictly in the eye of the beholder, as only the eye of faith/gullibility could discern a human figure in what was just a stain on a concrete wall in a Chicago underpass. This leads to the question, can one vandalize a salt stain? The answer has to be no. One Victor Gonzalez has been accused of daubing the wall with the words "big lie" in brown paint which may well be vandalism, but vandalism of a concrete wall and not some imagined image. This "image" of the Virgin is but one of a succession of such. The old girl has turned up as fencepost in Australia (this one was "vandalized" too), and on windows and toast in the US. As 80 has observed before, this minor Christian deity has nothing on the showy tribal god of Old Testament times - at least he could manage a burning bush and a pillar of fire. Personally 80 thinks thinks they are all true manifestions of the blessed Saints Rorschach and Pareidolia.