Beware of comedians mercilessly lampooning anti-Semites

Image via Wikipedia; remove Dome of the Rock and insert Temple here

Greetings.

Jewish date:  Jewish date:  18 Tammuz 5770 (Parashath Pineḥas).

Today’s holidays:  The Three Weeks (Judaism), First Martyrs of the Church of Rome (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. “Papa Doc” Duvalier (Church of the SubGenius).


NOTE:  There was no blogging yesterday due to the Fast of Tammuz, which begins the Three Weeks, a period of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples and other tragedies in Jewish history.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Save dairy farms from big agribusiness”, “Alliance for Justice:  Tell Congress: Repair the Damage Caused by the Corporate Court”, and “Make Sale of Crush Videos Illegal Again!”.

Topic 1:  Today’s daily dose of anti-Semitism updates.  To start off, I will let the comedians at La’ṭmah lampoon current anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism in “The Three Terrors from Iran, Syria and Turkey -full Tribal Update” and “The Muslim War Council”:


Let’s face it:  comedians can say true things with impunity that many other people would hesitate say at all.  The Dry Bones cartoon “Immigrants (1990)” correctly notes the different attitudes of Israel on Jewish immigrants and Islamic countries on “Palestinian” immigrants; the former I, as a future immigrant to Israel, am grateful for, while the latter is beneath contempt and a complete betrayal of the notion that all Muslims are supposed to brothers and sisters.  “Bret Stephens on Shalom TV: Will Israel Survive?” presents a “liberal case” for Israel:

Mr. Stephens correctly notes that the values of Israeli society and government are in close agreement with liberal values, while the values are Islamic countries are contradictory to liberal values; it therefore makes no sense for liberals to back Islamic states.  “Telegraph Caught Recycling Gaza War Photo to Distort Today's Reality” documents using an old photograph as if it were applicable to the current situation, a form of quoting out of context.  Rav Shmuely Boteach presents “Response to Congressman Rothman Calling Pres. Obama the Best Friend Israeli Security has Ever Had” and “The World’s Oldest Hatred”, noting correctly that Obama is no friend of Israel (actually, to be fair, every US president since at least Jimmy Carter, has tried to get Israel to do stupid things in the name of “peace”) and that Israel-bashers tend to be insensitive to things wrong with other countries, such as Israel’s enemies.

On a brighter note:  “Dutch may use 'decoy Jews' to fight racism” discusses a new tactic in fighting anti-Semitic attacks in Holland.  Apparently not everything is looking hopeless.

Also:  Someone please prod me to get back to writing about Jesus for a change and not to concentrate too much on the Arab-Israeli War.  We are most likely going to be dealing with the Arab-Israeli War so long as our planet uses petroleum as fuel, and there is no way one man can comment on everything on this one topic.  Not to mention that there is material in Sanhedhrin 43a that presents a radically un-Christian picture of one “Yeshu hanNoṣri”, and there is some particularly un-Jewish and anti-Semitic material in the Gospel According to John which really needs to be discussed.

Topic 2:  More Islamic misbehavior:  “Pakistan's Karachi wracked by spate of killings” (as if killing those one disagreed with made one right), “Pakistan to monitor Google and Yahoo for 'blasphemy'” (as if censorship worked), “Ad aims to propagate true Islam” (as if positive advertising made up for news reporting all the horrible things done in the name of Islam, especially when they contradict the ads), “Ill. police revoke 1st Muslim chaplain's post” (the guy was linked to terrorists, absolutely the wrong sort of person to be in public service).

Related commentary:  “Jihad Denial Syndrome”.  Wishful thinking will never make Islam a religion of peace.  Only Muslims can actually make that happen.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “Adam and Apple”.  I am not quite sure what, if anything, this cartoon is meant to mean.

Peace.

Aaron

A big backlog of stuff

Image of where I am working towards going via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  8 Tammuz 5770 (Parashath Balaq).

Today’s holidays:  Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Joseph Smith (Church of the SubGenius), Litha - Sommer Solstice (Wicca).

Worthy causes of the day:  “End Violence Against Women - The Petition Site”, “Friends of the Earth U.S.”, “Action at Oil Change”, “Obama, Say No To Commercial Whaling! - The Petition Site”, “ONE | 3.5 Million Healthworkers Needed”, “Support Women's Health with the Global MOMS Act - The Petition Site”, “Please Include the Temple Mount in the Heritage Plan - אנא הוסף את הר הבית לרשימת אתרי המורשת Petition”, “Working Families » Take Action!”, and “What President Obama should have said.”

Note:  The big gap in postings is largely due to me attending an ‘Aliyyah Absorption Information Expo last week.  This is also the reason I have not yet written a review of Mort (The Discworld Series, book 4) while having finished reading Sourcery (The Discworld Series, book 5).  Expect the next Discworld review to be for at least two books at the same time.  On this past trip, I have also acquired a copy of the first season of Serughim, an Israeli show which deals with a group of Dathi Le’umi (religous Zionist/Modern Orthodox) singles in Jerusalem.  The point of getting this set of DVDs is to work on my understanding of spoken Hebrew (Israeli radio is too fast for someone unused to rapid Hebrew speech), but there is enough going on religiously in the episodes I have already watched that I expect to eventually be writing episode-by-episode reviews.

Also:  Since I have a huge backlog, expect this post to be very short on commentary.

Topic 1:  Updates on anti-Semitism:  “CBC National Corrects Gaza Infant Mortality Rate Error”, “Gaza Flotilla: The Battle for Public Opinion Continues”, “SUCCESS! - Yahoo Reunites Jerusalem”, “Best Seller”, “Their Problem”, “Bowen: My Critics Are "Enemies of Impartiality"”, “SUCCESS: BBC Apologises for Al-Dura Inaccuracy”, “Israel Bashers Bash the Beeb”, “HRC Rebuts Mayor's Diatribe in Journal de Montreal”, “Guardian Israel Obsession Reaches New Heights: Flotilla Stats”, “When concept trumps reality?”, “Cairo court rules on Egyptians married to Israeli women”, and (in a different vein) “The Never-Ending Lynching of Sholom Rubashkin” and (the very worthwhile read as it exposes some serious hypocrisy) “A modest proposal for solving the kosher slaughter problem”.

Topic 2:  Other Islam-related things going on:  “BP, Kaddafi, and Britain’s Oil Comeuppance”, “Eurological Problem (2007)”, “Turkish Tomorrow?”, “Barcelona will ban use of face-covering Islamic veil in city buildings”, “Deafening silence from Left as Iranians protest”, “Islamic Sharia Law to Be Banned in Oklahoma”, “World Cup 2010: Somali football fans executed for watching matches” (I cannot make this up, and I do not understand it), “Appeal for Afghan Christians, sentenced to death for their faith”, “Target killing count continues to rise”, “Surge for Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party”, “Ahmadis press for protection”, “Egyptian Couple Shot by Muslim Extremists Undaunted in Ministry”, “The killing of a Christian businessman in Kirkuk rekindles fear among Christians”, “Muslims Order Christians to Leave Village in Pakistan”, “Prisoners convert to Islam for jail perks” (definitely the wrong reason to convert), and “Chain e-mail claims Muslims will be a majority in U.S. in 20 years”.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor, which deals with a commonly voiced paranoia:  “Consequences Of Gay Marriage”.  I do not support gay marriage, but this graph gets it right as to what would happen if homosexual marriage were allowed.

Peace.

Aaron

Humanism is now officially a religion!

Greetings.

Jewish date:  19 Siwan 5770 (Parashath Shelaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Feast Day of Justin (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Daniel Boone (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Too extreme even for FOX.”, “Take Action: Take action for human rights!”, “Demand transparency in Wall Street reform negotiations.”, “Working Families » Take Action!”, “PETITION TO CONGRESS: Save Net Neutrality! | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”, “Repower America | Tell BP: Spill the Truth!”, and “Tell EPA: Take away BP's billions in federal contracts”.

Pardon me if this seems abbreviated, but Blogger malfunctioned, and I had to redo a lot of this.

Topic 1:  “Humanists join Hertfordshire Police chaplaincy team”.  Humanism is now effectively a religion, at least in the United Kingdom.  Non-religions do not have chaplains.

Topic 2:  More religious persecution:  “Egyptian Convert Endures Life at a Standstill – on the Run”, “Muslim Youths in Nigeria Destroy Church Buildings, Pastor’s Home”, “Second Wave of Deportations Hits Foreign Christians in Morocco”, and “Nigeria: 6 dead in religion-fueled violence in Jos”.  So much for Islam being the “religion of peace”.

Topic 3:  “How Islamists Came to Dominate European Islam” discusses how Europe and the USA got into the habit of trying to ally themselves to Islamists.  Needless to say, this approach has never worked.

Topic 4:  For today’s religious humor: “DEMON KITTEN FOUNDZ GAITWAY 2 NETHERWURLDZ”:

I had no idea the netherworld could be reached through a hole in a dashboard…

Peace.

Aaron

On a masterpiece of failing to connect the dots

Greetings.

Jewish date:  20 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath Behar-Beḥuqqothay).

Today’s holidays:  Day 25 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Rodney Allen Rippey (Church of the SubGenius), Beltaine (Wicca).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Save BioGems: Take Action: Put an End to Commercial Whaling”.

Topic 1:  “Corrections, Clarifications, and Outright Obfuscations”.  More anti-Semitic, bungled reporting of the news, including blaming Israel for the death of an Arab kid who was really quite alive and well and in Egyptian custody for illegally crossing the border.  (Oops.)  You would think reporters would do a little fact-checking.

Topic 2:  “Religion’s Summer of Discontent”.  Rav Shmuley Boteach discusses current public perception of religion, noting its perceived “uselessness” and “irrelevancy” to many due to scandals and focusing tightly on one or a few issues to the exclusion of other, often more pressing concerns.  His solution is concentrate more on those pressing concerns, such as through his initiative “ Turn Friday Night Into Family Night”.  Definitely notable is his asking Pope Benedict XVI to work with him.

Topic 3:  “Some profit from wives despite French polygamy ban”.  There was no way your humble blogger was going to not mention this article.  Here is a little exercise for the reader.  This article deals with the problem of polygamy—or to be more specific, polygyny, marriage of one man to more than one woman simultaneously—among immigrants in France, which is subject to abuses, both of the women involved and the welfare system.  (This sort of thing should be offensive even to those who see nothing wrong with polygyny itself; plural marriage does not justify lying, cheating, stealing, and treating one’s wives and children badly.)  Now, this article goes into great detail of what is wrong (practically) with polygyny.  It even says a little what countries the abusers are from.  But what religion do they belong to?  Take a few minutes, look over the article, and see what it says.

Have you found the answer?

The answer is:  the article never says.  It starts off mentioning the issue of Muslim immigrants wearing burqas, but the subject of religion is quickly dropped and not addressed at all regarding polygyny.  Which is notable since there are only two major religions in the West which are problem-children when it comes to polygyny.  The first is Mormonism, primarily in its non-mainstream varieties.  Mormonism, while having spread beyond the United States, is barely ever mentioned as having a presence in Europe; your humble blogger has never heard of the pro-polygyny variants as having reached Europe at all.  The other major problem-child religion when it comes to polygyny is Islam.  Unlike mainstream Mormonism, which repudiated polygyny, Islam still allows men to have up to four wives.  The spread of Islam in Europe and the difficulties in integrating Muslims into general European culture are also major worries over there.  The perpetrators of polygyny mentioned in this article are almost certainly Muslims, yet the author of the article completely fails to acknowledge any connection.  Yes, blaming Muslims for problems which are created by Muslims but not members of other religious groups (including agnostics and atheists) might be considered politically incorrect, but failing to recognize something clearly relevant to the problem is not going to do anything to fix it.

Topic 4:  For today’s religious humor: “Honey, call the exorcist.”׃


Peace.

Aaron

Are you GameStation’s slave?

Greetings.

Jewish date:  2 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath Thazria‘-Meṣora‘).

Today’s holidays:  Day 17 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Friday of the Second Week of Easter (Roman Catholicism), St. Messalina/All Hookers’ Day (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Help Eliminate Measles Worldwide - Take Action Today @ The Child Health Site” and “Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) | Co-sign our open letter to Republican Leader Boehner”.

Topic 1:  Silly anti-Semitism:  “UK Bans Western Wall from Israel Tourism Ads”.  The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority has prohibited Israel from claiming or implying in tourism advertisements that eastern Jerusalem is part of Israel.  This is despite Israel annexing the territory in 1967.  Or Jews having being in Jerusalem for millennia.  Or the fact that the Advertising Standards Authority does not have any real authority to dictate what territory belongs to which state.  Note the logical fallacy of proof by assertion:  anti-Semites claim enough that eastern Jerusalem (or any part of Israel) does not belong to Israel (or is not Jewish), expecting this to be taken as the truth.  Of course, reality does not work this way.  I could claim billions of times that the Sun is purple, and the Sun would never turn purple.

Also notable on anti-Semitism:  “Not quite free” (on Europe covertly sticking its nose into Israeli politics through funding nongovernmental organizations) and “A dangerous silence” (on the hypocrisy of the US government treating Israel shabbily while coddling Muslim dictatorships, with little in the way of protest).

Topic 2:  “7,500 shoppers unknowingly sold their souls” and “GameStation: "We own your soul"”.  In a twist on the classic Faustian bargain, GameStation added a clause to their terms and conditions of sale asserting that they owed on-line purchasers’ souls unless they opted out.  88% of such purchasers did not opt out, strongly suggesting that few people read such contracts.  (They are pretty dull and too long.)  The point proved, GameStation nullified this clause.

I would like to note my puzzlement at the notion of selling one’s soul.  One’s soul is not merely a part of oneself; it is oneself.  Literally selling one’s soul would thus be tantamount to selling oneself into slavery.  There is also the question of what the buyer would do with a soul.  If the buyer is Satan (as in the classic Faust story), then one is going to Hell.  However, if the buyer is mortal, like the people at GameStation, then it is unclear what he/she could do with a soul, especially if there were no body still attached with it.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Basement Cat”:


Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

“Intelligent design” is worse than merely being wrong

Greetings.

Jewish date:  3 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s holidays:  Ash Wednesday (day 1 of Lent; Roman Catholicism), Feast of Giordano Bruno the Martyr (Thelema).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.”

Topic 1:  More anti-Semitism (yes, that issue is not going away anytime soon, unfortunately):  “UN's Double Standard for Arab Refugees” (according to the definition for refugees used anywhere besides Israel, extremely few of the stateless Arabs, whether in Israel or claiming connection with it, qualify as refugees), “'EU aid funds PA incitement'” (bad idea if they really want peace), and the Dry Bones cartoon “And Then? (2004)” (everyone who does not think that Israel will have to bomb Iran’s nuclear program back to square one because no other country will be willing to do the job, despite international criticism, stand on your heads).

Topic 2:  “The End of Intelligent Design?”:  This article deals with what is wrong with the so-called “intelligent design” (ID) movement, not merely as “intelligent design” being a euphemism for creationism.  Correctly noted is that as science ID is a total failure, having produced zero results, all the while in effect claiming that science is incompetent to explain our world.  This is a very dangerous thing to do, as science has been very successful at understanding how our universe works; naturally, real scientists are strongly opposed to ID.  Another consequence of ID is to pit religion and science against each other.  This makes it easier for anti-religious atheists to pretend that science actually supports their beliefs, causes a ton of needless enmity, and anyone who is both pro-science and pro-religion is likely to get caught in the crossfire.  In short, ID is worse than merely being wrong.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “after a long and tiring day of soulsnatching”:


Peace.

Aaron

Banning the veil and the impossibility of peace in our time

Greetings.

Jewish date:  4 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Bo’).

Today’s holidays:  Tuesday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Topic 1:  “Sarkozy party chief: France must ban full Muslim veil”:  France is considering yet another law interfering with freedom of religion.  Just like the religious clothing ban in French public schools, banning the veil for anyone wishing to become a French citizen attacks a symbol, not what the symbol stands for.  And not necessarily what the symbol stands for to the person who wears it, but rather what Sarkozy and company interpret it to mean.  Better that France outright not allow Islamists and anyone else intent on forcing others to conform to their religion to become citizens than to play such games.

Topic 2:  More articles on the Arab-Israeli War:  “Peace blocked by pro-Hamas media and Gaza activists” (by a “Palestinian”!), “Palestinians Need a Generation or Two” (on why a real peace is currently impossible), and “Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist” (on European hypocrisy on the Arab-Israeli War).

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “kitekat died 4 ur sins - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats”:


Peace.

Aaron

Folly in the name of religion and anti-Semitism

Greetings.

Jewish date:  6 Ṭeveth 5770 (Parashath Wayyiggash).

Today’s holidays:  Saint Day of John of Kanty (Roman Catholicism), Founding of Agia Sofia (Greek Orthodox Christianity).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Libel reform campaign petition statement”, “We Need A Hero | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: Sign the petition”, and “Stop New Mining Near the Grand Canyon - The Petition Site”.

Topic 1: “Measles kills children of anti-vaccination sect”.  I have said it before, and I say it again (and probably many more times in the future, too):  Whatever god exists or karma does not favor those who act foolishly in the name of religion.  In this case, the Johanne Marange Apostolic Church (probably a Pentecostal group) in Zimbabwe holds that people should not make use of medicine, including vaccination.  Unsurprisingly, this group is suffering from a measles epidemic, and 30 people have died.  Keep in mind, wisdom literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes) is part of the Canon for a reason.

Topic 2:  “Dishonest Reporter Award 2009” and “Kaddafi Back in My Backyard”.  Both of these articles deal with current anti-Semitism.  The former reviews the worst anti-Semitic incidents in a number of categories in 2009.  The latter, by Rav Shmuely Boteach, vents over a number of recent incidents in the United States (the Libyan embassy setting up shop in Englewood, the settlement freeze), the United Kingdom (various hostile actions against Israel, trying to dictate who is a Jew), and the Vatican (the planned canonization of Pius XII); he pleads for Jews not to be complacent, to stand up for themselves, and to consider running for public office.  Rav Boteach is definitely right that bad things happen politically to those who do not stand up for themselves.  Politicians feel the pressure to do whatever they can to gain and hold on to power, even if it means stepping on people who do not deserve it.  No one should let politicians commit injustice by being a doormat.  The Dry Bones cartoon “Twenty Years Later” is also relevant to this topic.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Can i haz”.


Peace.

Aaron