About Muslim Violence:
From today's headlines:
Christian mobs torched cars, looted Muslim-owned shops and burned a prison, freeing hundreds of inmates, in violence touched off by Friday's executions of three Roman Catholics convicted of instigating attacks on Muslims.
In light of the number of comments I've heard lately about how Muslims are basically violence-prone and Christians just don't do things like that, this story seemed worth noting. C'mon, people --it's a human failing, and the sooner you recognize that, the better off we'll all be.
And here's a comment I'd like to hear from closer to home:
Vice President Jusuf Kalla appealed for calm, saying the deaths of the three men had nothing to do with religion.
"It's a matter of law," he told reporters in the capital Jakarta. "If the people resent the law, we are doomed."
Perhaps I've become cynical, but a good portion of the remaining story, dealing with pressure that may have been applied to the judges and evidence that others were more culpable in the original violence, seems to have a lot of "perhapses" and "might haves." Not that I would ever accuse AP of stretching a point. Not me.
Gay Terrorism:
A note to the producers of "The Path to 9/11" -- if you're going to slam American Airlines, at least slam them for the right things.
Science and Faith:
From Andrew Sullivan. I think both Sullivan and Benedict miss the point. Science doesn't claim to explain everything. It never has. The "war" of science against religion is a war invented by religion and maintained by it. Sure, there are scientists who are outspoken atheists. There are scientists who are people of faith. I have to confess I'm not terribly surprised to see Sullivan defending Benedict's straw man, any more than I'm surprised to see Benedict espousing such an argument to begin with.
Christian Virtues: Torture:
Reader PietB sent this snippet from a recent Molly Ivins column (I've been having trouble getting through -- must be a really popular column):
I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I'd like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don't know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as ... well, torture. And, um, wrong. And I've smoked dope! Boy, everything those conservatives tell us about the terrible moral values of us liberals must be true after all.
Marty Lederman weighs in at Balkinization with this commentary. Note particularly this statement that Ivins mentions from the Traditional Values Coalition:
"Our rules for interrogation need to catch-up with this awful new form of war that is being fought against all of us and the free world. The post -World War II standards do not apply to this new war.
"We must redefine how our lawful society treats those who have nothing but contempt for the law and rely on terrorizing the innocent to accomplish their objectives. The lines must be redrawn and then we must pursue these criminals as quickly and as aggressively as the law permits.
"And since this debate is, at its very core, about preserving the traditional value of prosecuting injustice and protecting the innocent, TVC will score this vote in both the House and the Senate. We encourage all of our supporters and affiliated churches to contact their elected representatives and let them know we support President Bush's efforts to update our methods of interrogating terrorist detainees in order to provide greater protection for our troops and the innocent."
Once you translate the code words, Sheldon is simply saying that evangelical Christians should support torture, even in those cases where there is no evidence that the vicitm has done anything wrong. Sorry -- this is a traditional value I want to have nothing to do with. The man wouldn't know a moral act if it bit him.
Someone noted, and I forget who, that liberals don't need to speak in code because liberals aren't generally proposing something that most people find morally repellent.
It's interesting that Sheldon thinks we have to update our thinking to allow torture of innocent people, but we don't have to update our thinking to recognize sincere love between two people of the same sex. But then, maybe that fits.
McCain Sells Out -- Again:
About that "compromise" on the torture bill: I am so fed up with the Democrats. They sat there, riding on McCain's coattails, and of course they got shafted. Lord love a duck -- I can't believe they didn't see this coming. It's an election year, for crying out loud, what do they think the mechanics are going to be? And not one of them has the balls to stand up on his hind legs and rip Bush and McCain a new one.
Read what Digby has to say, here, here, and here.
What it boils down to is that the Republicans are too corrupt to govern and the Democrats are too stupid.
Confession:
I've been working a lot lately, so I treated myself to a shopping expedition -- some new (used) books (Delany, Card, Pynchon), and new (used) CDs (Nickelback, Eagles, R.E.M., and Turandot, my usual strange mix), and then went to my favorite Indian restaurant and ate too much. Sure beats reading the papers. (Or paying retail.)
Of course, what I really need is a new pair of jeans.
A heads up -- I'm working on a set of interlinked reviews for GMR, all about slipstream. Look for it in October. I'll also be doing an overview of the fiction of Charles de Lint for our special de Lint issue on November 5.
Next time -- which will be when I can stand to look at the papers again, unless I think of something else to comment on.
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