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elfsAn eight-year-old autistic boy died during a faith-healing service. Apparently, the police believe he was unduly restrained, while the minister and other witnesses claim that he was only "held lightly."
The minister said, "That boy had an evil spirit in his mind." EXCUSE ME! Can I please live in a century where people don't believe this stone-age crap about "evil spirits"? I live in a time and place when we send robots out to Saturn and Mars, cure most cancer and are working on the rest, and people still believe in evil fucking spirits?
The minister is also quoted as saying, "We asked God to heal that boy, and He chose to do that by taking him back." Doesn't this imbecile understand that accepting that logic can excuse any torment, any torture, any horror at all?
I just can't work up the proper amount of rage over this. I'm too drained by the idiocy of it all.
Angela Lipmman, 15, is a victim of bureacracy. Apparently, she's got enough college credit to get her first degree, but because she hasn't finished high school and her father never registered her as a "home schooled student," not only can she not get her degree but now he's being invesitgated for child abuse.
I love the quote from the school chancellor: "We're evalutating her college credits to determine whether they may be applied toward a high-school diploma."
Paging Dr. Clemens...
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for burning down a girls' school in Afghanistan, and said that they would kill anyone who works for the "infidel" government.
It seems that the Taliban don't particularly care for their women smart...
Hey,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
technoshaman, you'll love this one. Microsoft ninjas apparently descended on the US Patents and Trade Office and demanded that the U.S. use its clout with the World Intellectual Property Organization to squash a meeting devoted to "the place of open source in the intellectual property landscape." In short order, the USPTO's head of international relations issued a statement claiming that "open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights."
Y'know, I can't be the only one who was a bit unnerved by the way Gen. Richard B. Meyers said that troop levels in the U.S. Military are sufficient "so far." Man, that last quote is just a little too much. Senator McCain seems to like the robes of the Imperial Court and has floated the word "draft" in front of the media.
"There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. "This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally." And thus, with a slam and a dunk, is Al Franken freed to mock Fox News.
I love the way Fox portrayed Franken as "a nobody with no political experience whatsover," while touting the lying Bill O'Reilly (who described himself as "politically independent" until someone dug up his registration as a Republican in his home state) as "one of the most watched men in America." Franken, it must be pointed out, has four golden statues on his wall, Emmys for his satirical writings for television.
In what must be the most bizarre statutory rape case yet seen, Wisconsin state prosecutor Lori Kornblum is charging both kids for having sex with each other. The laws intent is to prevent the exploitation of an immature person by someone with experience and perhaps power over that person, so how one charges both with this is mind-boggling; each can't be both have superior knowledge, experience, and power over the other.
Ms. Kornblum feels that "their [the kids'] attitudes" warrant the attention of a prosecuting attorney, and that she's doing it "for their own good."
Looking at the article, I'm sure these kids do need help, that they come from terrible backgrounds and that intervention is warranted. But if Ms. Kornblum gets her way and these kids get convicted, they'll be on the sexual offenders registry for the rest of their lives. What kind of life is each going to have if every time he or she tries to get a job, the employer pulls up the state's sex offenders registry and finds their name under the heading "statutory child rapist?"
Yeah, that's really helpful.
The minister said, "That boy had an evil spirit in his mind." EXCUSE ME! Can I please live in a century where people don't believe this stone-age crap about "evil spirits"? I live in a time and place when we send robots out to Saturn and Mars, cure most cancer and are working on the rest, and people still believe in evil fucking spirits?
The minister is also quoted as saying, "We asked God to heal that boy, and He chose to do that by taking him back." Doesn't this imbecile understand that accepting that logic can excuse any torment, any torture, any horror at all?
I just can't work up the proper amount of rage over this. I'm too drained by the idiocy of it all.
Angela Lipmman, 15, is a victim of bureacracy. Apparently, she's got enough college credit to get her first degree, but because she hasn't finished high school and her father never registered her as a "home schooled student," not only can she not get her degree but now he's being invesitgated for child abuse.
I love the quote from the school chancellor: "We're evalutating her college credits to determine whether they may be applied toward a high-school diploma."
Paging Dr. Clemens...
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for burning down a girls' school in Afghanistan, and said that they would kill anyone who works for the "infidel" government.
It seems that the Taliban don't particularly care for their women smart...
Hey,
technoshaman, you'll love this one. Microsoft ninjas apparently descended on the US Patents and Trade Office and demanded that the U.S. use its clout with the World Intellectual Property Organization to squash a meeting devoted to "the place of open source in the intellectual property landscape." In short order, the USPTO's head of international relations issued a statement claiming that "open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights."Y'know, I can't be the only one who was a bit unnerved by the way Gen. Richard B. Meyers said that troop levels in the U.S. Military are sufficient "so far." Man, that last quote is just a little too much. Senator McCain seems to like the robes of the Imperial Court and has floated the word "draft" in front of the media.
"There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. "This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally." And thus, with a slam and a dunk, is Al Franken freed to mock Fox News.
I love the way Fox portrayed Franken as "a nobody with no political experience whatsover," while touting the lying Bill O'Reilly (who described himself as "politically independent" until someone dug up his registration as a Republican in his home state) as "one of the most watched men in America." Franken, it must be pointed out, has four golden statues on his wall, Emmys for his satirical writings for television.
In what must be the most bizarre statutory rape case yet seen, Wisconsin state prosecutor Lori Kornblum is charging both kids for having sex with each other. The laws intent is to prevent the exploitation of an immature person by someone with experience and perhaps power over that person, so how one charges both with this is mind-boggling; each can't be both have superior knowledge, experience, and power over the other.
Ms. Kornblum feels that "their [the kids'] attitudes" warrant the attention of a prosecuting attorney, and that she's doing it "for their own good."
Looking at the article, I'm sure these kids do need help, that they come from terrible backgrounds and that intervention is warranted. But if Ms. Kornblum gets her way and these kids get convicted, they'll be on the sexual offenders registry for the rest of their lives. What kind of life is each going to have if every time he or she tries to get a job, the employer pulls up the state's sex offenders registry and finds their name under the heading "statutory child rapist?"
Yeah, that's really helpful.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 05:15 pm (UTC)I also linked to that article in my journal.
Stories like that make it really hard for me to believe that we're actually living in the 21st century.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 06:06 pm (UTC)http://www.allaboutsex.org/molested-onefamilysstory-salon.html
Remember folks, social workers are not your friends. Ever.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 06:21 pm (UTC)Well, seeing as how we live in a century where people right here in LJ seem to honestly believe they are faeries or dragons with invisible tails or the reincarnated avatars of ancient Hindu goddesses, um, no, I think you'll have to wait for another century.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 06:37 pm (UTC)I don't know of anyone who died because someone thought she was a dragon.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 07:22 pm (UTC)In a saner world, the so-called faith healers would be laughed out of town - or offered treatment for their delusions - before they had a chance to kill.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 08:56 pm (UTC)And the therapists who go into civil service are that, plus they come in two varieties. Those who are naive and idealistic, and they burn out or quit, and the types who get validation and enjoyment out of their petty yet absolute power.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-26 12:46 am (UTC)I don't believe that the human animal is a fully rational one and insisting that we act as if it were is a source of no small amount of suffering. Less than the people that killed this boy, to be sure, but it is not healthy to deny that fantasy plays as big a part in our lives as logic does.
As someone that's had a hard time constructing an identity through which to interact with the world myself, I can fully sympathize with people who build themselves out of dragons and faeries and goddesses. Those are powerful symbols, and it is not wrong to see them as tools with which we can build ourselves better. We do not come pre-assembled, and if such things were lacking in power and identity, they would hardly have come down to us from our ancestors, yes?
I can't imagine that a rejection of the mystical in our lives would make us healthier. What caused these people to kill that poor boy was not their religion, but their blindness.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-26 12:58 am (UTC)But something's askew when people mistake those symbols for objective reality. If one person's faeries are "real," then who's to deny that another's demons are just as real?
It wouldn't be polite to hijack Elf's journal to debate this, so I'll drop it here.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-26 01:41 am (UTC)I haven't met a lot of people that have serious trouble telling the differences between their symbols and objective manifestations, even in the relatively flaky circles I move in. I don't think there are a lot of useful paralells to draw between the sort of people you're talking about and the people that killed that boy.
And I thought hijacking journals were what comment threads were for? ;)
more on this "reality" thing
Date: 2003-08-28 09:28 pm (UTC)I don't have any problem with the Evil Spirits theory of psychology, as long as there is no coercion involved, whether psychological or physical. I haven't met a single person who believed they were a mythological creature who felt that identity entitled them to kill or maim anyone. This is symbolism used as a tool.
Tools become traps, on the other hand, when idiots get hold of symbols and believe in them to the exclusion of all other perspectives. When someone says to the nonreligious media that an Evil Spirit has possessed a boy, they either have no other way of expressing their experience (and thus can learn), or they think everyone sees things their way.
If this was too long, then I'm sorry. :(
Oh, and another thing...
Date: 2003-08-28 09:40 pm (UTC)As for Ms. Kornblum and the case of the two child-age inter-rapists, if she manages to convict them, I suspect the far better course would be to register both her and the judge as rapists in place of the kids. Truth in advertising, you know?
Sigh.