In the News, Week of December 26
The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:
SATURDAY
And this on European Muslim women’s mad dash to equality:
Unlike their homebound elders, these emancipated Muslim women use the Internet and spend hours in proliferating Islamic chat rooms. Web sites are now favorite trysting places, a chance for risk-free “halal dating,” that is, interacting with men in a way that violates no social or religious codes.
—Okay good. Next, halal ass-fucking…
FRIDAY
Re: the latest good news in the Israeli/Palistinian conflict:
Sharon to Undergo Repair of Hole in Heart
— Diplomacy. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
THURSDAY
Re: the Catholic Church’s recent get-together to discuss whether babies who die before baptism should be sent to Hell, or Limbo (nice place generally, but God doesn’t hang there), or the big one, right on to Heaven:
“Even though Augustine himself would not be particularly tolerant of a doctrine that is kinder to unbaptized children, you could still say that a move in that direction would have an Augustinian quality to it,” he said.
— Augustine, reached on his celestial cellphone, comments: “No, what I said was; Hell is for babies.”
The theology is complicated, but the bottom line is that Augustine, believing in mankind’s original sin, persuaded a church council in 418 to reject any notion of an “intermediary place” between heaven and hell. He held that baptism was necessary for salvation, and that unbaptized babies would actually go to hell…It was “a pretty grim doctrine,” said the Rev. Gerald O’Collins, an Australian Jesuit and co-author of “A Concise Dictionary of Theology” (Paulist Press: 2000). “You’re either in hell or you’re not.”
In a related story, there’s this from Dick Cheney about whether or not the President has the right to do anything he pleases to whomever he pleases as long as there’s a war on…
“Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not,” he said.
—Either we are, or we’re not, eh? Lemme think…Ok, “not”! Let’s just go to hell with the babies.
— S. C.
WEDNESDAY
Citing the SF Chronicle, a certain georgia10 at www.dailykos.com points out that the Iraqi factions are forming their own armies now. . .
Beyond the purple fingers, beyond the false claims of progress. . .Shiite and Sunni leaders, we learn, have started forming sectarian armies to patrol their regions. The Kurds already have their own armed force. The religious Shiite group which had the best showing in the election is refusing to acknowledge Sunni complaints, urging “national unity” [but refusing] to install anyone except a member of their own religious party as Prime minister.
A nation on the cusp of civil war.
— Maybe they are learning from us, after all.
TUESDAY
On Christmas, Iraq gave us a gift that keeps on giving:
Mosul — one of two cities named by U.S. President George W. Bush before the election as a model of progress in Iraq — has been at the forefront of complaints of voter fraud this year.
— But, my dear: For Bush, voter fraud is progress.
MONDAY
Until we are finished training Iraqi jailers US military will not let them get their hands on any of our detainees, reported the NY Times Christmas Eve . . .
“Bottom line, we will not pass on facilities or detainees until they meet the standards we define and that we are using today,” the commander, Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner of the Army, said in a telephone interview this week from Iraq. . .
The general’s remarks also come at a time when. . .at Abu Ghraib, where crowding contributed to the worst of the prisoner abuses that occurred in late 2003, there are 4,924 detainees, nearly 40 percent over what the military considers ideal capacity.
— By “the standards we define and are using today,” that’s not “crowding;” that’s “closeness.”
— M. C.