Conservative bloggers call for Campbell soup boycott fearing Islamic terrorism

What would you do if you saw someone homeless, legless, begging for help or at least understanding? Obviously your human compassion would kick in and you’d go to that person’s aid.

Not me – I’d plant a swift kick and walk away laughing.

Well… not really, but sometimes it feels like that.

Conservative bloggers in the United States — the same ones behind opposition to the Islamic centre near Ground Zero in New York — are calling for a boycott of Campbell’s Canadian-made soups, alleging Islamic terrorists are linked to both. Pamela Geller, who runs a widely read anti-Muslim site called Atlas Shrugs, is calling for a boycott of some 15 soups made by the Canadian subsidiary of New Jersey-based Campbell Soup Co.

This story is just too delicious (or should I say ‘Mmm, mmm, good’) to pass by without mocking. It has all the ingredients for a hilarious level of crapitalism: conservatism, Ayn Rand worship, completely ridiculous accusations of terror links, religion, and underlying the whole thing is soup. To conservatives: when you complain that the “elitist liberals” think that you’re all a bunch of troglodyte morons, this is why we think that. Every time you see a clownish buffoon rail against supposed connections between international terror and a friggin’ soup company, or something equally ludicrous, it’s some “family values” or “small government” nutbag right-wing group.

By the way, for those of you who didn’t read the story – the reason they think Campbell’s is connected to terror isn’t based on any deals with shady companies or foreign sources of funding. No no no, nothing so superficially reasonable:

Sold in Canada, the soups are certified by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which has been certifying halal foods since 1988. But Geller claims ISNA has ties to terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The other children on the playground are right to make fun of you, Ms. Geller – you’re a moron.

But my mean-spirited mockery doesn’t stop there; oh no, not even close:

“The Simpsons” just got a blessing from the Vatican. The official Vatican newspaper has declared that beer-swilling, doughnut-loving Homer Simpson and son Bart are Catholics — and what’s more, it says that parents should not be afraid to let their children watch “the adventures of the little guys in yellow.” “Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it. But it’s true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic”, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said in an article on Sunday headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics.”

The evidence for the assertion: prayer before meals, believing in God.

The evidence against the assertion: regular attendance at a “Presbylutheran” church, complete lack of Catholic doctrine, open mockery of Catholicism.

Ah yes, I keep forgetting. Using evidence with the Catholic Church is like trying to stop a buffalo stampede with road signs – they don’t understand it, and will completely ignore it. The Osservatore Romano based this on an analysis of a Simpsons episode in which God is discussed, the conclusion of which is that The Simpsons is the only kid’s show that discusses Christian faith and religion. Of course The Simpsons isn’t a kid’s show, it’s a cartoon sitcom for adults. Peter Griffin from Family Guy actually is Catholic, and is another popular cartoon sitcom that discusses Christian faith and religion on a regular basis, but almost never in a positive light. Hmm, wonder how they missed that? It’s the good old fashioned religious way of reasoning – come up with your conclusion first, then back-fill your explanation. Convenient!

Of course these are funny and light-hearted instances of when religious stupidity runs rampant. Sometimes it’s not a joke:

Sikh groups have urged US President Barack Obama not to avoid visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar during his India trip next month, amid reports he is now unlikely to go there. A US official told the BBC there were “logistical” issues. Mr Obama would need to cover his head to enter the temple and there are reported concerns opponents would use this to show he is a closet Muslim.

It’s a sad reflection on all of us when we let the actions of idiots influence foreign policy. I mean, it’s bad enough that we play ‘accommodationist’ with these idiots, elevating their idiocy to the level of reasoned debate in some misguided attempt to appease people who have been left behind by the last century, but to allow people who can’t tell the difference between Sikhism and Islam, or even the difference between showing respect for another culture’s traditions and being a secret member of that culture… to allow these kinds of people to derail diplomacy with a potentially huge trading partner is an unbelievable tragedy.

So yes, I kick the homeless amputee, and walk away laughing. Religion deserves nothing but mockery when it pretentiously draws itself up and masquerades as something deserving of respect. Doing otherwise is to falsely pretend that it has some sort of merit and is above criticism.

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Bolivia doesn’t have a race problem

Okay, now I’m stretching the point a bit…

Bolivia actually has a long history of racial problems. Much of Central and South America is still reeling from Spanish colonial rule. With only a handful of exceptions, the economic and political power in these countries are held by people of Spanish descent. Bolivian President Evo Morales is one of those exceptions, and has an aggressive pro-aboriginal agenda. Some of you may know that I spent 3 weeks in Bolivia a few years ago, and even in my short time there I was aware of the serious racial divides; the lack of aboriginal language instruction except in remote areas, the simultaneous resentment/envy of light-skinned people (the hallmark of colonialization), the disparagement of black people. Bolivia has a long history and contemporary reality of racial struggle.

In his zeal to correct the racial bias against aboriginal Bolivians, President Morales has made what I think is a tragic misstep:

Several major newspapers in Bolivia have made a joint protest against a proposed anti-racism law which they say threatens press freedom. The law would give the government the power to shut down media outlets it finds guilty of racism. President Evo Morales says it will help reverse centuries of discrimination against Bolivia’s indigenous majority. [The papers] say articles which let the government punish journalists and fine or shut media that publish what it considers to be “racist and discriminatory ideas” could be misused to stifle political criticism.

It’s issues like this that give me the greatest amount of personal struggle. On the one hand, I abhor racism, and I know that preserving the status quo of systemic discrimination against a racial minority (a minority, incidentally, that is a statistical majority) will result in a deeper entrenchment of that kind of prejudice. Changing the dialogue and introducing anti-racist ideas to the population at large is the best way to make strides against racism. However, banning free speech is a mistake for so many reasons, not the least of which being that it can be abused to stifle legitimate anti-governmental speech.

This is the problem of living in a non-ideal world – our choices are not always between what is good and what is bad. Sometimes we have to choose between the greater of two ‘goods’. In this particular case, knowing that hate speech laws and government interference with press freedom are too tempting and too easy not to abuse, I am comfortable adding my voice to the opposition to the provisions. Even though I might like Evo Morales, laws do not apply only to one president, and are very rarely used only in the rosy, optimistic way that might be envisioned by those who create them. While optimism is a good thing, any law that only works properly if people are inherently good and moral is destined to fail.

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Belgium identifies 500 abuse victims

I must confess to have taken some perverse pleasure in watching the Catholic Church crumble under the weight of its own evil. Any organization that has this much power, abuses its influence this egregiously, and then gets caught fills me with both an appreciation for hubris and a feeling of schadenfreude. This has definitely stopped being fun:

Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, an independent Belgian commission said Friday. Prof. Peter Adriaenssens, chair of the commission, said the abuse in Belgium may have been even more rampant than the 200-page report suggests, because his panel’s work was interrupted and all its files seized in a June 24 raid by Belgian judicial authorities who are conducting their own probe.

All of a sudden the jokes about priests touching kids simply turn to ashes in my mouth. This is a level of evil certainly within the same ballpark of the slave trade or the atrocities of the Nazi party. There’s nothing particularly amusing about this:

Friday’s report lists 507 witnesses who came forward with stories of molestation at the hands of clergy over the past decades. It says those abused included children who were two, four, five and six years old.

Or this:

The number of those coming forward with their stories and testimonies, however, could be only a fraction of those actually abused, Adriaenssens said. “We saw how priests, called up by the commission and asked to help seek the truth, were willing to set up the list of 10, 15, 20 victims they abused during boarding school while the commission knew only of one.”

I am ultimately at a loss for words (which is bad news for a blogger) to describe both my deep revulsion at this systematic abuse, and my resulting bafflement at how it could be so widespread. Are there that many pedophiles in the population at large, failing to abuse children simply out of the lack of access? Does the priesthood provide a siren call to those who have a particular attraction to children? We know that power corrupts, but is it the power itself that causes otherwise normal people to become child-rapists? Are these forms of abuse simply the resurrected ghosts of old cases of abuse that these grown priests experienced as children?

These questions all have several broad implications – if there are pedophiles in the population at large, should we be more concerned about any organization (the YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers, Boy Scouts/Girl Guides) that attracts adults to work closely with children? If the priesthood attracts pedophiles, should we be cracking down on seminarians (side note: I used to want to be a priest; am I a latent pedophile)? If it’s merely an issue of power and access, why are we not more concerned about CEOs and politicians? If this is the result of past abuse, don’t we owe a duty of care to the perpetrators as well?

The Belgian church is struggling with these questions as well:

The Belgian Roman Catholic church on Monday acknowledged widespread sexual abuse over years by its clergy and pleaded for time to set up a system to punish abusers and provide closure for victims. The comments were in response to a report Friday in which hundreds of sex abuse victims revealed harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy throughout the country over the past 50 years…

“The challenge is so big and touches on so many emotions, it seems impossible to us to present a new proposal in all its details [now],” (Archbishop) Leonard said of hotly anticipated church plans to go after the abusers and protect the victims. The church also called on all abusers to come forward.

In the face of the accusations, I am quickly losing both my taste for this story and my patience with the unremitting arrogance and disgusting lack of human decency being championed by the Vatican. Pope Ratzinger, upon arriving in England, decided to place the blame for society’s ills on the quasi-Nazi forces of secularism – a brazenly assholish move from a man who lived in Nazi Germany, and who subsequently helped orchestrate a major crime against humanity even before taking the reins of the corrupt organization he now leads. His ignorance, maleficence and utter disregard for his own hypocrisy anger me in ways I can barely describe.

It is a family tradition to attend Christmas mass, and I will be home with my family in December. I don’t think I can bring myself to accompany them this year, or ever again.

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Censorship: the first step toward tyranny

I said recently that there isn’t much point in having any rights if you don’t have free speech. Free speech is the one that allows you to fight for all of the other ones. What good is the right to free association, or the right not to be arbitrarily detained, if the government can punish you for speaking up when those rights are violated? I am born incredibly lucky to live in a country that, more or less, understands that censorship of unpopular ideas is not only impractical, but deleterious to the welfare of society as a whole. We take it for granted in this country that I can call Stephen Harper a helmet-headed pig-fucker on the steps of Parliament, and the only recourse he has is to call me an awkward, pudgy ignoramus (or better yet to simply ignore the crazy person).

People in Sri Lanka are rapidly losing that privilege:

Sri Lanka has impounded the latest edition of the Economist, which has an opinion piece critical of constitutional changes in the country. The magazine said last week’s charter revision granting the president sweeping powers and potentially unlimited terms was dangerous. Sri Lankan authorities now regularly confiscate or delay distribution of the news and business magazine.

You’ll remember from last week that Sri Lanka has just granted extraordinary constitutional powers to its president, contrary to any extant example of good governance.

What baffles me is the fact that anyone thinks that censorship works. Especially now in the days of the internet, where the barrier of censorship better resembles a sieve than a drumskin. Just in this last century we’ve seen the French underground using print media to undermine the rule of Nazi occupiers, counter-propaganda campaigns tear down both the tight fist of United States and British imperialism and the iron rule of Soviet communism, and Iranian government corruption being exposed by a bunch of kids with iPhones. Even the fabled Great Firewall of China is subject to periodic massive information leaks that the overwhelming power of the party cannot seem to plug. Scientology is coming apart at the seams thanks to a handful of bored internet users exposing their ridiculous doctrines. Julian Assange is baffling the largest intelligence network ever conceived.

Censorship doesn’t work.

The drive for free expression will always outpace the ability of power to suppress it. It’s like a dandelion that grows up through a crack in the concrete. I am seriously baffled why I, as a (relatively) young and (relatively) ignorant student of a handful of history seems to understand that better than political leaders all over the world. Especially when there are groups of intelligent, driven people all over the world working tirelessly to baffle the forces of censorship:

Software created to help Iranians escape government control of the web has been withdrawn over security fears. Haystack was designed to help people in the country communicate via the web without revealing their identity. However, independent tests showed that Haystack’s creators had little control over who was using the program.

On the face of it, the above seems like bad news I suppose. The important thing to remember is that there is a community of people who are committed to advancing the cause of free speech, who won’t stop until it is realized. The other thing to remember is that there’s an entire internet community that is also devoted to shutting down government filters just “for teh lulz”. If you want to stay in power, govern well.

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Manitoba proves me right! Thanks guys!

One of the most daunting things about blogging like this is that I don’t consider myself an expert in very many topics. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to speak for 40 minutes at a conference on a skeptical topic of my choosing. I was immediately paralyzed by indecision – I’m not an expert in skepticism; on the contrary, I’m actually quite a novice insofar as this movement is concerned. While I may be able to write and speak clearly, perhaps even convincingly, on a few topics that catch my interest, I’m not an authority on anything. Sure, there are things in my job that I have an above-average level of knowledge about, and I have a few opinions on things like free speech or race that are unique, but I would never consider myself so knowledgeable that I would imagine anyone should listen to me rant for 40 minutes.

And then something like this happens, and I feel much better:

Aboriginal leaders are calling for two Parks Canada employees in Manitoba to be fired after the pair were disciplined for circulating a racist joke by email. One employee forwarded the vulgarly worded email, which made fun of aboriginal and black people, to a colleague. That person then accidentally sent it to all 180 Parks Canada workers in the field unit at Riding Mountain National Park in western Manitoba.

Please don’t misinterpret my meaning – I am not at all happy that government employees think it’s appropriate to spread racist statements among each other. I’m not happy when anyone engages in acts of racism, regardless of their employer. But I do derive some small satisfaction of being able to shove this in the face of morons like Mindelle Jacobs and others who say that Canada doesn’t have a race problem. Racism exists beneath our thin veneer of “post-racial” assumption. The longer we purport to address racism by sticking our fingers in our ears and believing we can will ourselves to ignore centuries of sociological racialization through sheer strength of conviction, the deeper racism becomes entrenched in our psyche, and the harder it is to deal with.

For further evidence of this, scroll down on that news item and take a gander through the comments. It’s been 2 weeks since I saw this item, so I am writing this completely blind, but I’d be willing to wager that there are at least 10 comments in the first 10 pages that say something like “you shouldn’t be sending personal e-mails on government accounts anyway”, thus completely missing the point of the story. In fact, I’m willing to go so far as to say that anyone who takes that away as the message of this story is intentionally ignoring the racism aspect.

I spent about 5 minutes trying to track down the text of the e-mail, before I realized that it’s somewhat akin to entering a “World’s Ugliest Man” contest – even if I succeeded, I’d lose.

Sowing the seeds of tyranny

We take for granted that we live in a free society. The phrase “it’s a free country” has been repeated so often that it’s become a bottled phrase – a combination of words that are always put together in the same order without being examined on their own. Many could argue, validly, that our society could be a lot more free than it is – we are compelled by government to do a lot of things we don’t agree with, and many actions that do not harm others are still restricted by law. We can make our society much freer.

But, grading on a curve, we live in a free society; a society whose freedom far outstrips several other places. It is important that we safeguard our freedoms (God, I sound like a friggin’ Tea Partier), because it’s really easy to lose them.

Swaziland protesters arrested

Police in Swaziland have arrested about 50 people ahead of protests against sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy, activists say. Most of those detained were later freed and hundreds of people marched through Manzini, Swaziland’s commercial centre. Several South Africans trade unionists were prevented from taking part in the march and deported.

I am not going to pretend that I am knowledgeable about the internal struggles of Swaziland (a small country on the northeast border of South Africa, if Google Maps is to be believed). However, I don’t have to be an expert in, or even generally aware of the political situation in any country to recognize tyranny. King Mswati III is clearly a corrupt leader who would rather rule by locking up his opposition than by leading effectively, with the welfare of his people in mind.

I’m happy to criticize Stephen Harper, particularly his attitude toward the media. He runs a government that was elected partially on a platform of accountability and transparency, and yet has been less forthcoming and more obscurantist than his predecessors. However, Mr. Harper does not lock up dissidents or legally punish those who disagree with him (although he certainly tries to punish them, but anyone would). The advantage to the legal system we have here in Canada is that it accurately recognizes and predicts that those who have power will do whatever they can to keep and increase it. Legal clauses are put into place to limit the amount of power an individual politician has, precisely because it is for the benefit of the entire society that corrupt leaders can be removed.

Sri Lanka grants additional powers to President Rajapaksa

Sri Lankan MPs have approved proposals to let President Mahinda Rajapaksa seek an unlimited number of terms, in a move critics say could lead to dictatorship. The constitutional amendment also hugely boosts the president’s powers… The amendment also empowers him to appoint all the top judges and commissioners for elections, human rights and other affairs, unfettered by any legal veto.

Clearly the kind of foresight the framers of Canadian law had is not enjoyed by the members of Parliament in Sri Lanka. This move is so backward and nonsensical it’s tempting to think it’s a big joke being played on the rest of the world. While countries like Kenya are making positive steps to decentralize power from potentially (and historically) corrupt governments, Sri Lanka has made the decision to run screaming back into the past.

I now have more sympathy for the Tamils who are fleeing the country to come to Canada. If the Canadian parliament passed such a measure with such overwhelming support from even the opposition, I’d be on the first fishing trawler out of here. Apparently Europe is going to be overrun by niggers anyway, what’s one more?

Iran imprisons opposition lawyer

A prominent human rights lawyer in Iran, Nasrin Sotoudeh, has been detained by the authorities. She is accused of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security, her lawyer has said. Ms Sotoudeh has represented Iranian opposition activists and politicians, and prisoners sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were under the age of 18.

Pointing out the corruption and complete lack of human decency present in the Iranian regime is so easy as to almost not be worth the time it takes to write it down, but I thought it was relevant to point this story out, considering the topic of this post.

Tyranny is not the drunken, half-cocked fantasy of overzealous libertarians. It still exists in many places in the world, and when it begins to encroach on our rights (does anyone remember the G8/G20?), we have to speak up. I have a great deal more confidence in our system than these other places though – our laws were designed to protect us from this exact thing from happening.

It may also be worthwhile noting that despite all the abuse I heap on the religious, none of the three above stories have anything to do with religion. These are the kinds of threats that could still happen in our post-religion secular socialist utopia. Sometimes we have to protect ourselves from ourselves.

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Gaddafi warns of a “black Europe”. Wow… just wow

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is a lunatic, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. However, it’s refreshing to know that he’s a racist asshole too:

Speaking on a visit to Italy, Col Gaddafi said Europe “could turn into Africa” as “there are millions of Africans who want to come in”.

Okay, sure. It’s absolutely justified to express concern over illegal immigration. I’m concerned about the recent (and continuing) influx of Sri Lankan refugees. Illegal immigration is both a threat to national security and unfair to the thousands of people who attempt to immigrate legally. That part isn’t where my objection lies.

This is:

“We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,” Col Gaddafi said. “We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”

Nice, Muammar. Europe used to be such a nice neighbourhood before all the damn niggers moved in and wrecked everything, eh?

There are serious problems happening in Africa. A great deal of them can be attributed to the effects of colonialization, with major foreign commercial interests exerting undue influence over the political system, with a vested interest in keeping Africans poor and economically shackled to those same commercial interests. The lack of a concerted effort to develop both physical and human resource infrastructure also plays a major role, as do the attitudes that spawn food as aid instead of making long-term investments. It’s a knotty problem that requires a multi-faceted approach to solution.

Building a fence around Europe to keep out the ‘barbarian nigger horde’ is a solution to exactly nothing. It’s in both Africa’s and Europe’s long-term interest to invest and develop to make the African countries thrive. Africa’s benefit is obvious – improved quality of life, decrease in disease and malnutrition, new products and services, a more educated populace, the list goes on. Europe, in turn, would gain a strong trading partner (with whom they might gain a position of privileged status for their help), would benefit from any technological developments made as a result (think agriculture and natural resource management, as a start), and would simultaneously decrease the risk of illegal immigration by poor, ignorant Africans because there would be fewer of them.

And in case you thought Gaddafi’s idiocy was confined to race bigotry…

Col Gaddafi’s visit to Rome was overshadowed by another controversial speech he made – to two groups of several hundred young Italian women, hired at a fee of 70 or 80 euros each from a local modelling agency. He told them that Islam should become the religion of Europe and gave them free copies of the Koran, after he had lectured them for an hour on the freedoms enjoyed by women in Libya.

Hmm… maybe this isn’t such a great time to be talking to European women about the virtues of an Islamic state:

On Tuesday, Kayhan, which acts as a mouthpiece for Iran’s conservative Islamic leadership, reiterated its attack, adding that the Italian-born French first lady deserved to die for supporting her. “This Italian prostitute’s indignation at Kayhan’s report came while she has had illegitimate relationships with different people before and after marrying [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy,” Kayhan said.

Ah yes, the religion of peace is at it again! Those crazy Iranian rascals…

Russia doesn’t have a race problem

I once had a conversation with a good friend of mine who wanted to go on a trip with her (black) boyfriend to Russia to meet some of her family members. I suggested that perhaps that might not be such a good idea. She asked what I was talking about. I was talking about this:

More than 100 Russian skinheads have attacked a music festival in central Russia, reports say. At least 10 people were injured while attending the Tornado festival in Miass, in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. The skinheads were reported to have been armed with truncheons and sticks when they launched their attack on the event, attended by some 3,000 people.

What I was actually talking about at the time was reports of ethnic Uzbeks and Kazakhs being assaulted on subways and busses by gangs of young neo-Nazis, but it was symptomatic of the larger problem. Russia has well-known economic problems, made even worse by the wildfires that destroyed much of the wheat crop this past summer. As I’ve said since I started this blog, any time there’s an economic crisis the first people to be blamed are those who look different from the majority group. It happened in Uganda when Idi Amin drove out the South Asian population, almost immediately turning a prosperous country into an economic ruin by removing an entire class of workers. It’s happening in Arizona, where draconian laws are being signed into law to discriminate against Latinos, and it’s happening with violent assaults in Russia.

There is, of course, a non-trivial irony of the existence of Russian neo-Nazis. Somewhere in the area of 20 million Russians (~6 million military, ~14 million civilians) died fighting the Nazis. There’s an argument to be made that they didn’t fight the Nazis so much as the invading German army, but at any rate Russia is no friend to the Nazis. It’s then bizarre to see the mantle of the master race be picked up by the youth of Russia, but since race bigotry is fundamentally non-logical it’s not really that strange.

We can’t separate race from economics, and until we recognize that a rising tide raises all boats, we’re going to keep falling back into this trap.

Madness? THIS… IS… well yes, this is madness

Sometimes something happens in the news that is so painfully stupid that it’s hard to hold out any kind of hope for the future of mankind. It’s like watching a slap-fight between two legless drunks – it would be funny if it weren’t so macabre.

Such is this “International Burn a Koran Day” bullshit. For those of you who haven’t been following the news, there is a tiny church group in Florida that decided it would have a book bonfire, in which they torch several copies of the Qu’ran. Thirty people down in Florida decide to burn a book they haven’t read, to protest a religion they don’t know anything about.

Big hairy deal, right?

Ah, but because it’s a religious thing, of course the whole world goes indiscriminately insane.

Muslims all over the world began protesting, burning effigies, American flags, and chanting “death to Christians.”

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across Afghanistan over plans, now on hold, by a small Florida church to burn copies of the Koran. Three people were shot when a protest near a Nato base in the north-east of the country turned violent. President Hamid Karzai said the stunt had been an insult to Islam, while Indonesia’s president said it threatened world peace.

It’s absolutely shocking the complete lack of a sense of irony or proportion that religious groups have. “30 people burned the book of the religion of peace? Well then we will call for the indiscriminate murder of all Christians, and the President of the United States. Also we will burn objects sacred to you, because your actions threaten world peace!”

So the Islamic world did pretty much exactly what everyone thought it would do – go batshit nuts and renew the chant of “Death to America” or whatever. Ho hum, nothing to see here, move along folks. That should be the end of it, right?

No, let’s turn up the stupid, shall we? General Petraeus, what would you like to sing for us this evening?

“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen Petraeus said in a statement to US media. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world, we are engaged with the Islamic community,” added Gen Petraeus, who heads a 150,000-strong Nato force against a Taliban-led insurgency.

Thirty people in Florida are about to do something stupid. What’s a proportional response? Let’s get the commander of NATO allied forces to comment directly on it, elevating it to an international incident! Well now it will absolutely cause danger to the troops, because it’s received national attention!

Hold the line, I believe we have a comment from Darth Helmet:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper added his voice to the global outcry against a U.S. church’s plan to burn 200 copies of the Qur’an on Saturday — the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. “I don’t speak very often about my own religion but let me be very clear: My God and my Christ is a tolerant God, and that’s what we want to see in this world,” he said. “I unequivocally condemn it,” he said. “We all enjoy freedom of religion and that freedom of religion comes from a tolerant spirit.”

Nothing like international attention to blow any sense of proportion far over the horizon. We now have international leaders lining up to condemn the actions of 30 morons in Florida. Are we going to make an international crisis out of every act of Islamophobia? Boy howdy!

Amazingly, the only voices of reason seem to be coming (from all places) Iran and Gaza:

Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said Mr Jones’ threat was an “expression of hatred of Islam” but called for restraint. “This disgraceful act contradicts the very duties of religious and spiritual leadership to enhance the value of peaceful coexistence and safeguard the rights and mutual respect among religions,” he said.

In Gaza, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Mr Jones was a “crazy priest who reflects a crazy Western attitude toward Islam and the Muslim nation”.

When Iranian Ayatollahs and the head of Hamas are the islands of perspective in a sea of complete insanity, you know that the world has gone completely topsy-turvey.

There are two points to be made out of this absolute lack of cognitive processes. The first has to do with the power of religion. It’s almost completely incredible that the actions of 30 people in a backwater part of the Southern United States can set off an international crisis. We have roughly 30 regular volunteers here in Vancouver’s branch of CFI. If we stated burning copies of the Charter or The God Delusion or the Canadian flag (or all three at the same time), we’d get arrested for mischief without a news camera in sight. Why? Because atheists are boring! But put an equal number of Christian extremists around a pile of burning copies of a Muslim book, and watch as the entire world goes nuts. It’s 30 idiots in Florida. Take a deep breath.

The second point has to do with free speech (my favourite ^_^ <3 ). A number of countries have been demanding that the President directly intervene to stop 30 idiots in Florida from burning some books. Ignoring for a second the 8 or 9 levels of the chain of command that would skip (not to mention the fact that the President doesn’t have the authority to order private citizens to do anything), and also ignoring that it’s just 30 idiots in Florida, the United States constitution strictly forbids any kind of legal response to this – an act of free expression. The whole point of free speech is that you are free to say what you want. It’s hate speech, absolutely. I think it’s bigoted, I think it’s stupid, and I think it sends absolutely no worthwhile message other than “we are idiots, and we don’t understand anything about either Islam or our own religion.” But as I’ve said before, laws against hate speech are a really bad idea.

At the end of the whole debacle, the pastor decided to back down, an appropriately anti-climactic conclusion to a blisteringly-meaningless non-issue.

Of course the tragedy here (besides all of the people that will be killed and injured as a result of people being idiots) is that this pushes American Muslims further into the fringes, and closer into the arms of extremist groups that are the real problem. It’s not quite cutting off your nose to spite your face, it’s like cutting off your own hand and giving it to someone trying to choke you with it.

The correct response to this would for the governor of Florida to say “apparently some fundamentalist extremists have decided to do something stupid. I hope they vote for someone else in the next election. Floridians and Americans have more important things to do than worry about some backwash church led by a nutcase” and let that be the last word on it.

TL/DR:The response to the burning of Qu’rans is completely out of proportion to the act. Thirty idiots in Florida shouldn’t have the power to derail the entire world, and it’s only possible because of religion. Also, free speech ought to be absolute, even when it’s stupid.

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Another proud moment for Christians

Imagine that human civilization is the Little Engine That Could, chugging along up the hill chanting “I think I can, I think I can” as it struggles to reach the zenith of a fair and just society that minimizes human suffering and maximizes human happiness.

Now imagine someone drops a giant boulder in the middle of the track and says “No you fucking can’t!”

Boulder, thy name be religion:

U.S. regulations expanding stem cell research have temporarily been blocked by a U.S. judge. A non-profit group, Nightlight Christian Adoptions, contends that new guidelines on stem cells drafted by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration will reduce how many human embryos are available for adoption.

I’ll wait for you to extricate your face from your palms before I start in on this. Do it slowly, you might have fractured something.

Okay, ready? Good.

First off, nobody adopts an embryo. It is possible to bring an embryo to term and act as a surrogate birth mother, then claim the child as your own. Unless something dramatic has happened to the number of women who are willing to pursue this option, or unless in-vitro fertilization has stopped, there will always be far more unwanted embryos than willing wombs.

Second, there are lots of live babies and children waiting for adoption. Stem cell research will do absolutely nothing to diminish this supply, and stopping stem cell research in the name of ensuring a sufficient number of adoptees doesn’t diminish it either; on the contrary, it may actually increase the size of this population by reducing the number of potential adoptive parents.

Finally, embryonic stem cell research requires the consent of the genetic parents. There are lots of people who pursue IVF who aren’t comfortable destroying their genetic material, ensuring that there will always be a renewable supply of embryos for those women hell-bent on getting pregnant with someone else’s child.

There is literally zero merit to their argument, but a federal judge decided to grant it anyway because it’s not as though delaying the progress of science is going to cause any suffering. Well, except those people with Parkinson’s, Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, ALS… the list goes on.

This is why secular humanism is a better model for stable and progressive government than theocracy – it is less sympathetic to the capricious whims of a shrieking horde that enters a battle with no evidence and spurious argument. I anticipate that this ban will be overturned by a higher court, but it’s a solid reminder that in the battle between happiness and suffering, American Christianity is on the side of suffering.

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