'Own goals' all over the place today

Indeed, what a lovely day this is shaping up to be.

From Let Freedom Rain, news about Fox News South:

It's been a perfect day so far. Best of all, FNN is kaput. South of the border, something even more interesting is brewing. The selfish assholes who call themselves tea partiers have party-lusted themselves into major electoral troubles. They elected a non-electable scumbag in Delaware who will take away a sure Senatorial seat from the GOP.

Despite the protestations of major GOP tyrants like Rove, O'Donnell won easily and lost the Republicans a major seat. Best of all, Fox News' Rove is getting shit upon for his role in dissing O'Donnell. It can't get any better than that. Fox News South also in trouble, methinks.

Christine O'Donnell is a piece of um, work.

Across the pond, His Poopiness's tour of the UK is not going well.

One of the pope's top advisers on his visit to England and Scotland has dropped out of his entourage following the publication of an interview in which he said that arriving in Britain "you sometimes think you've landed in a third world country".

Benedict XVI's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, told the Guardian, however, that Cardinal Walter Kasper had withdrawn "for health reasons".

He said the 77-year-old prelate's absence from the papal party, which lands in Edinburgh tomorrow at the start of a four-day visit, "had absolutely nothing to do with anything else".

Kasper, the Vatican's leading expert on relations with the Church of England, made his remark after noting that Britain was a "secular, pluralistic" country.

Asked by the German news magazine, Focus, whether Christians were discriminated against in Britain, he replied: "Yes. Above all, an aggressive new atheism has spread through Britain. If, for example, you wear a cross on British Airways, you are discriminated against."

Nope, absolutely nothing to do with fatuous Catlick martyrdom. Perhaps he wants to spend more time with his family. . .

Finally, we'll give the last word to Margaret Atwood whose signature on the Avaaz petition really got this ball rolling.

Re: SUN's Kory T. resigns: I didn't do it. Honest. It was the Great Pumpkin (plus a few Own Goals.)

Pope Maledict Calls The Kettle Black.

Faithful as ever to the paternalizing approach he has perfected when speaking about the African continent, Pope Maledict condescends to telling its people what is wrong with them.

Benedict praised Africa's rich cultural and spiritual treasures, saying they were the "spiritual lung" for a world increasingly in a crisis of faith and hope. But he said Africa had also been afflicted by materialism – the "toxic spiritual garbage" exported by developed countries.

"In this sense, colonialism – while finished in the political sphere – hasn't really ended," he said, adding that as a result Africa was also at risk of another "virus": religious fundamentalism. Groups claiming to be from religious backgrounds are spreading across the continent.

"They are doing so in the name of God, but with a logic that is opposed to divine logic: teaching and working not with love and respect for freedom, but with intolerance and violence," he said. ...

The church is growing enormously in Africa; between 1978 and 2007, the number of Catholics nearly trebled, from 55 million to 146 million. Vatican statistics show that more than 17% of Africa's population is Catholic.

But at the same time, the region's poverty, conflicts and Aids have posed challenges. Among the thorny issues bishops may raise at the synod is the Vatican's ban on condom use. Many say condoms could help prevent the spread of Aids.

Let me repeat what Pope Maledict said about the groups who also trading in the business of religion and competing with the Vatican Taliban, as they try to indoctrinate and convert MASSIVE numbers of people to their own brand of doctrine in Africa.

"They are doing so in the name of God, but with a logic that is opposed to divine logic: teaching and working not with love and respect for freedom, but with intolerance and violence."

That reminds me of something .... and oh yes, this.

Sometimes you find allies in the darndest places.

Allies are individuals or organizations that may not share the same vision or raison d'être yet choose to join forces to further a cause or to advocate for specific rights.

The humorous graphic above is from a clickable link I found on a Blogging Tory's site. I suspect that I wouldn't agree with many of Ranting Owl's opinions, but I was delighted to see the above.

From a March 18 2009 media release at Catholics4life:

Pope Not Infallible on Condoms

The Vatican has yet again been forced to revise statements made by Pope Benedict XVI as he embarked on a foreign trip. En route to Cameroon on March 17, the pope claimed that condom use would "aggravate the problem" of HIV. A transcript of the pope's comments on the Vatican's Web site altered the comment to suggest that condoms "risked" aggravating the problem.

Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, welcomed the change as a sign that the pope is not infallible on this issue and is willing to acknowledge his mistakes. "The pope has admitted that he is unsure whether condoms can help alleviate the spread of HIV. Where there is doubt there is freedom and Catholics can make up their own minds whether they use condoms or not. Indeed, the vast majority of Catholics has already made this call and use condoms to protect themselves and their partners against STIs, including HIV.

"We call on the pope to revisit the teaching on condoms with a view to lifting the ban at the earliest possible moment. In his review, he should include experts who are unequivocal that condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV, like UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations around the world."

"It took the church hierarchy 359 years to stop continuing the line taken by their predecessors on Galileo. We hope that this error does not take so long to change."

Yes. Still relevant today as it was last March.

Oh, and .... SHRIEEEK!!!

More Sunday Fun.

Benny Ratzo with Crasher. Doesn't seem natural somehow, Crasher looks skeert.

Fireworks

Memories. JJ tweaks a few chords as she recaps the pomp and fury generated by The Fetus©™ fetishists' MASSIVE melt-down around this time last year.

It's been a month now since Dr Tiller was publicly executed during Sunday worship at his church by a rabid anti-abortion fanatic.

The pro-lies crusaders soldier on, a range of christian denominations loosely connected by their misogyny, their homophobia, their persecution complex and their adherence to fundamentalist religious ideology.

The testerical bloggers at SoWrongOrNuts have declared War against everyone who believes in / follows a moral compass that's not been enshrined by the Vatican Taliban. In other news, US president Obama is scheduled to meet the Pope on July 10 after a G-8 meeting in Europe. Carol Marin, a respected career journalist and recipient of numerous prestigious awards wrote about this meeting for the Chicago Sun-Times:

Pro-choice President Obama goes to the Vatican next month to meet pro-life Pope Benedict. "The Vatican has been seeking common ground with Obama, although some American Catholic bishops have been hostile to his administration," the AP reported.

Let's pray that the spirit of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin fills the room ... Bernardin and Obama, despite a deep difference on abortion, shared much: Chicago. A commitment to dialogue. And a belief that common ground can be found even across the most fractured fault lines of faith and belief.

But it's treacherous territory.

A vivid demonstration of why that territory is so fractured and treacherous can be read in Tom Roeser's response to Marin's column.

"Not only is the Sun-Times’ Carol Marin a whimpering, simpering ultra-lefty, she is a hard-eyed propagandist calling herself Catholic who adroitly suffocates the truth. 'Pro-choice President Obama goes to the Vatican next month to meet pro-life Pope Benedict.' Wrong. Obama is not pro-choice. He is the most pro-abort president we have ever had ..."

More in the same loathsome vein follows. Vile pro-lies malevolence festers on in the US. According to the scribes of the shrieeeking hordes however, it's "law-abiding" - let's pause for a moment to let the irony of that sink in - abortion criminalizers who are being victimized, being as their tactics, weapons and intentions are as pure and innocent as The Fetus©™ they fetishize.

Top photo from pollywog.

A Campaign Against Unwanted Pregnancy

... in Nigeria. Cue the shrieeeking from Blob Blogging Wingnut and the foaming-at-the-mouth hyperbole from SoWrongOrNuts. Because here are the facts - also known as a reality check - as presented by the Executive Director of the Campaign Against Unwanted Pregnancy, Dr. Boniface Oye-Adeniran, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist:

"The general public needs to become more enlightened on issues of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion. The media, both electronic and print, are recognised pathway for achieving increased enlightenment on unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion."

Oye-Adeniran stated that based on several hospital based studies carried out by the CAUP and the Gututtmacher Institute, 760,000 abortions were carried out in Nigeria annually. According to him, one out of 10 women in Nigeria has had an abortion, while two out of five women who have obtained abortion used the services of quacks.

He said, "The majority (about two-thirds) of women who had abortion used dangerous methods and objects." The medical doctor identified those who mostly sought abortion in the country as unmarried women; students and those whose partners refused to accept pregnancies.

Oye-Adeniran disclosed that complications from unsafe abortions contributed about 30 per cent to maternal deaths in the country. He stated that the CAUP had generated new data on maternal mortality based on a study carried out in ten local governments‘ areas of Lagos State. According to the medical doctor, the findings from the study will help in programming and intervention initiatives to reduce pregnancy-related deaths in the country.

In March the pope toured some countries in Africa, spreading the Vatican Taliban's anti-condom and anti-contraception message, which can be summed up thus: Women must die to uphold Catholic Church doctrine.

Giddy-up Cowboy Zombies!

Dr Dawg's got your number.

Also known as better the devil you know - the one with a gold lamé dress on.

Meanwhile, over at Blob Blogging Wingnut's House of Constant Shrieeeking and Fetus Porn, news of the unborn, the undead, the halfborn, the halfdead, the pre-born, the post-dead and the brain-sucking have been greatly exagerated hyperbolated grandiloquized reported, no?

Scathingly wrong rightwingnutz polemic, propaganda and glurge - as JJ often observes at unrepentant old hippie - is the stuff of some bizarroid alternate universe, material you couldn't even begin to invent unless you were afflicted with the same religious zealot disorder. When even David Frum recoils from the insanity, you have to wonder.

His Poopiness Will Hate This

It's still early days but this looks very promising for women's health -- combined contraception and protection against HIV, controlled by women.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College have published results showing that a new contraceptive device may also effectively block the transmission of the HIV virus. Findings show that the device prevents infection by the HIV virus in laboratory testing. The promising results are published in the most recent issue of the journal AIDS.

The new device is a vaginal ring that releases multiple types of non-hormonal agents and microbicides, which would prevent conception as well as sexually transmitted HIV infection.

What a boon this would be for sex workers and women in high-HIV areas in Asia and Africa. I hope it will be cheap too.

And I wonder how long it will take before His Poopiness declares that this too, like condoms, helps spread AIDS.

Pope Benedict has no sense of irony.

... And in other news, bears shit in the woods. 

Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians and Muslims today to serve mankind with the "light of God's truth" while warning that extremists in nations such as Iraq were exploiting religious differences for political and violent agendas.

Speaking at the Al Hussein bin Talal Mosque, the pontiff, whose three-day pilgrimage here is an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim world, said the "tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?"

Wasn't the point of his Pontificating Preachiness' harangue to condemn stuff like this?  And this?  Oh.  Wait.  That's evidence of the ideological manipulation of christianity for political reasons, by the Vatican 

In counterpoint, not everyone welcomes the pope's visit.  

Jordanian clerics expressed disappointment that Pope Benedict XVI in an address to Muslim leaders on Saturday failed to offer a new apology for remarks seen as targeting Islam. ..."What the pope said about the Prophet Mohammed is untrue. Islam did not spread through the power of sword. It's a religion of tolerance and faith," Hussein said. The pope had in 2006 quoted a medieval Christian emperor who criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman."  

Which is of course MASSIVELY  different from the medieval clerics who justified the evil and inhuman actions of the Inquisition with the doctrine they claimed was inspired by the words of God and Jesus.

Miss Piggy Protests

Swine flu? Every pig to be slaughtered in Egypt? (Okay, that's only 5 but still.)

Moi thinks that the Real Swine in this story is Monsieur Agri Business. You've heard of him, the powerful figure behind the intensive pork mega-factories in North and Central America? Those hog gulags are vile; pigs would not choose to live that way. Ask George Clooney about his long-time companion Max - he was far better groomed than him, not a whisker or bristle out of place.

Moi does not agree with the tactics used by PETA. But Moi supports the premise that we are all animals. Some uprighteous animals have determined that they are Not-Animals and thus Better-Than-Animals.

Moi is an Agnostic. Organized religions follow different doctrines for raising its flocks of Not-Animals but each have their own Monsieur Religious Business. Yet Moi thinks that Islam and Judaism got it right - Pig is Not to be eaten. Never. Ever.

Celebrated, oui! Admired for her fashion sense, oui! Given Hollywood contracts - absolument! Courted and wooed by George? Swoon!

Update: Moi just read Cathie from Canada blogpost - Moi suggests the name Smithfield Flu.

No-fault regrets profferred by Pope

Isn't that just so special? The Church Lady would have been quite pleased at Pope Benedict's performance at a private meeting held in the Vatican between the pontiff, Catholic clergy, Phil Fontaine and delegates from the assembly of First Nations.

Mr. Fontaine said the fact the Pope never used the word "apology" during the 20-minute meeting, which also included the Most Reverend James Weisgerber, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and several B.C. aboriginal leaders, did not diminish in anyway the impact of the statement.

It would seem that the words "sorry", "asking forgiveness", "taking responsibility" or "pedophile priests" were also part of the vocabulary not ever used by the Pope, either in the private audience or in the public statement that the Vatican released. Chief Fontaine offered forgiveness, though the Catholic Church has never allowed individual priests to publicly acknowledge their crimes against the Aboriginal children who were entrusted to them. Some First Nations leaders took exception to the Pope's statement.

... Hereditary Chief Bill Wilson said Wednesday he was angry the Pope did not take direct responsibility for the harm caused by the residential schools experience. "There is no apology," Mr. Wilson said from Musgamagw Band in northern Vancouver Island. "He says he has great sorrow. Well, it's one thing to have sorrow for tragedies that happened in the world. It's quite another thing to accept responsibility for causing them. And the Catholic Church caused a great deal of misery and suffering in this country. And it's not apologizing for anybody."

One has to wonder if the pontiff was expertly coached by civil law specialists in order to ensure that no utterance could be viewed as an admission of guilt and thus be actionable.

Update on the L'Aquila earthquakes.

It has been over two weeks now since L'Aquila and the surrounding areas in central Italy were struck by earthquakes. As expected, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is lukewarm to the idea that an inquiry should be conducted to investigate shoddy construction practices and to hold those guilty of such deliberate actions accountable for the death of hundreds, due to the collapse of buildings.

Senior Italian officials on Sunday backed an enquiry into whether illegal construction worsened the toll from this month's earthquake, despite criticism from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Prosecutors are examining whether sub-standard building work was responsible for the collapse of many modern buildings in the central Abruzzo region, where the April 6 quake killed at least 294 people. ... President Giorgio Napolitano, one of Italy's most trusted politicians, said on Saturday a disregard for building regulations had worsened the damage. ... Berlusconi, Italy's second-richest man, started his own fortune in the construction sector.

In other news, Pope Benedict XVI has not yet visited L'Aquila which is located about 100 kms from Rome.

The Unbearable Wrongness of Benedict.

Over at Canadian Cynic, psa delivers one fine, fine rant. Fire the Pope encapsulates and sharpens the arguments that the Pope and his ecclesiastical goon squad have lost sight of and touch with humanity.

The DAMMIT JANET! crew has delivered a number of observations about the perorations of the Pontiff, here. psa's rant is sublime. Go read.

Bonus! The Red Cross is providing marshmellows.

There are far, far, far worse things in the world than having Stephen Harper as a prime minister.

Such as ....?

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi ... said the 17,000 people made homeless by Monday's earthquake should think of themselves as being on a "camping weekend". ... The quake, which devastated the city of L'Aquila and surrounding towns and villages, has now claimed 260 lives.

Berlusconi told the reporter for the N-TV channel that the homeless quake victims "lacked nothing". "They have medicaments. They have hot food. They have shelter for the night," he said. "Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping." ...

His remarks – which seem to have been intended to reassure the public – scarcely correspond to the experiences of the homeless. Between Monday and Tuesday, they had to endure a night of driving rain and hail during which temperatures fell to 4C ...

Meanwhile, the Vatican reports that the Pope will visit the disaster area after Easter Sunday or when the ground in L'Aquila stops shaking.

Update: The Italian press is reporting that questions are being raised about the materials and techniques used to build a recently constructed residential complex which collapsed, trapping and injuring dozens of people. A firefighter observed that it wasn't the earthquake that killed people but the buildings.

Could the earthquake in Italy be a providential sign?

Though I'm really shocked and appalled that God the Father would cause all those people to die just to get Benedict XVI's attention and to let him know that the Catholic Church is MASSIVELY wrong by not supporting women who, by virtue of their familial role and responsibilities, are most likely to ensure continuity and perseverance of religious faith in Africa.

Most fundamentalist Christians view their God as cruel and vengeful but isn't there another way to let the Pope know that his position on condoms should be revised? Hopefully those members of the Catholic Church that God punished for blind allegiance to ecclesiastical ideology, as well as those who are collateral damage, will experience illumination, healing and divine consolation.

By the way, this post was inspired by the pithy response that the habitually verbose Blob Blogging Wingnut posted at her site on March 24:

Unreported in the MSM: children of abortion chain owner died in MT plane crash...just feet from Tomb of the Unborn Just has that ironic feel about it. But what the news sources fail to mention is... the [cemetery] contains... the Tomb of the Unborn... erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.What else is the mainstream news not telling you? The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation....It strikes me as a providential sign.Though I'm really sad the abortion chain owner lost his kids. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I genuinely hope he and his wife experience healing and divine consolation.

Now we wait for the shrieeeking to start, because when progressives try to make sense of rightwingnuttery and attempt to verify if there is any logic to their pontifications by applying them to similar events, fundamentalists become quite wrathful.

Religion never at fault; women's deaths are collateral damage.

Two young women were crushed to death in a crowded frenzy to enter Coqueiros Stadium in Luanda where the Pope was about to have a meeting with Angolan youths as Benedict XVI pontificated about the evils of systemic corruption, witchcraft and discrimination against women.

There's something about that in the Gospels, is there not?

... And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye, Matthew 7:1-5.

Absent a sense of irony, it seems the Pope floats in a bubble of sublime abstractions and religious ideology, isolated and protected from the harsh realities that Catholic Church followers confront every day.

... at a meeting with female Catholic groups ... He further emphasised “think about those lands where poverty abounds, zones devastated by war, in many tragic situations resulting or not from forced immigration, almost always women keep human dignity intact, they defend the family and uphold the cultural and religious values”.

Thus the top Catholic Church patriarch can patronize and deign to recognize women's contribution ... but upholds the ecclesiastical opinion that only male power reigns supreme in the clergy.

This imperious personal and Catholic Church position has deadly consequences for women in Africa.

The United Nations magazine, Africa Renewal, quotes an expert who participated in a UN survey of AIDS' impact on young African women. She described the conditions under which most young African women contract AIDS as follows:

"[They] are not in a position to abstain. They are not in a position to demand faithfulness of their partners. In many cases they are in fact faithful, but are being infected by unfaithful partners...A woman who is a victim of violence or the fear of violence is not going to negotiate anything, let alone fidelity or condom use ... Her main objective is to get through the day without being beaten up."

The Pope is correct in saying that AIDS cannot be eradicated by condom use alone. Clearly, when young women are raped or otherwise forced into sex against their will, the men abusing them will not commit to use condoms. But instead of offering these women useless verbiage, the Pope could have offered the vast resources of the Church to distribute anti-viral foam to young married women in AIDS-infested areas. Foam is the only form of AIDS prevention that young wives completely control and can use without their husbands' permission.

From here.

The photo-montage is from this blog.

The Pope pontificates on why the chicken crossed the road.

This morning on Christiane Charest the corrosively witty Zapartistes did a drive-by-excoriation. Listen to the whole piece.

Their imitation of Pope Benedict pontificating on why the chicken crossed the road (that bit is found at 4:50) just cracked me up.

Imagine a creaky voice ...

"That chicken was excommunicated. That chicken is a sinner because she laid eggs - which are aborted chicks. May God have mercy on her soul."

The Pope as chicken comes from this website.

This is how the Pope's declarations harm women and children.

This needs to be said: the Pope's declarations harm women and children. An African mother who is a practicing Catholic faces the following dilemna: If she requests that her husband use a condom when having conjugal relations, she is going against the Pope's edict, even if she is trying to protect herself and any potential child that she might carry to term from HIV infection. If her husband is a devout Catholic, he may refuse to use a condom.

If this woman decides to not allow sexual intercourse, her husband may beat her, sexually assault her or abandon her and their children. Her priest, if he obeys the Pope's edict, will consider that she sinned.

But if she becomes infected with HIV because she submitted to sex without protection, who will care and take responsibility for her children when she dies of AIDS? The Catholic Church?

Some countries were quick to take action, in response to the Pope's medieval ideology.

Spain said Wednesday it will send one million condoms to Africa to fight the spread of AIDS, one day after Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks that they aggravated efforts to battle the disease. "The objective is to advance the prevention of this epidemic, which affects 33 million people all over the world, two-thirds of them in Africa," the health ministry said in a statement. "Condoms have been demonstrated to be a necessary element in prevention policies and an efficient barrier against the virus, according to laboratory studies," it added.

Good for Spain, I hope that other Catholic countries follow its lead in demonstrating compassion for Africans as well as support for medical science.

Spreading dogma and ignorance.

It's what the Catholic Church does best. And its chief propagandist strikes again.

The Pope today reignited the controversy over the Catholic church's stance on condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.

How did health agencies respond? Graciously, considering the continued harm such attitudes and values promote.

About 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS. In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there, as well as two-thirds of all people living with HIV.

Rebecca Hodes with the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said if the pope is serious about preventing new HIV infections, he will focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how best to use them. “Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans,” said Ms. Hodes, director of policy, communication and research for the action campaign.

While she said the pope is correct that condoms are not the sole solution to Africa's AIDS epidemic, she said they are one of the very few HIV prevention mechanisms proven to work. Even some priests and nuns working with those living with HIV/AIDS question the church's opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa.

Is it any surprise that the word 'pontificate' has come to mean 'to express opinions or judgments in a pompous way'?

Obama for Pope

Let's see if this blog-mind-meld deBeauxOs and I seem to have going continues. Trespassing on her turf (a bit) I found this:

To get right to the point, Kung in his article on February 3, wished Barack Obama were Pope. “The mood in the church is oppressive, reforms are paralyzed, and the church in crisis,” he says. “Benedict is unteachable in matters of birth control and abortion, arrogant and without transparency and restrictive of freedom and human rights.”

There's a link to the article in German there.

Who's making popcorn? :)