Woman Grows Ear on Arm

US woman grows new ear on arm

Alys Francis, ninemsn

Sherrie Walter grew a new ear on her arm.

US doctors have grown a new ear for a woman on her arm after she lost her original ear during a battle with skin cancer.

Sherrie Walter had to have most of her left ear removed, along with parts of her skull and ear canal, in 2010 after she was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma, The Baltimore Sun reports.

The 42-year-old mother-of-two, from California, was left disfigured until doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland told her about a groundbreaking new procedure that would enable her to grow a new ear.

The ear was made using cartilage from Ms Walter’s ribs and arteries and from other parts of her body — the structure was then placed under the skin on her arm for four months to grow before it was transferred to her head.

Doctors said the entire process took close to 20 months and it is believed to be the most complicated ear reconstruction completed in North America.

Surgeons performed Ms Walter’s final major surgery last week, fashioning an earlobe and shaping the ear to look more natural.

Speaking before the operation, Ms Walter said: “I am one step closer to the end, to looking normal again.”

Ms Walter first noticed her skin cancer in 2008 when a scab on her ear would not heal.

After drastic surgery to remove the cancer and weeks of radiation, Ms Walter said she became self-conscious of her appearance and grew her hair long to try and hide her face.

She could not wear a clip-on prosthetic ear because parts of her skull had also been removed.

But Dr Patrick Byrne, who led Ms Walter’s surgical team, assured her there were other options and suggested she try the procedure to grow a new ear.

“It seemed a little strange but I was willing to try it,” she said.

Dr Byrne said the new ear should last for years to come.

US scientists are helping pioneer efforts to grow ears, bones and skin in laboratories, with doctors planning to use cutting-edge reconstructive techniques for wounded troops.

Sources: The Baltimore Sun
Author: Alys Francis. Approving editor: Emily O’Keefe

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• Eve’s Rib: Woman Successfully Grows Ear from Arm (medicaldaily.com)
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Jewish Baby Penis Sucking Ritual Health Hazard | Herpes Transmission | Baby Deaths

Study Indicates That Herpes Frequently Sheds And Can Be Transmitted Even When Mohel Is Shows No Symptoms Of The Virus

“At least 70% of the population shed HSV-1 asymptomatically at least once a month, and many individuals appear to shed HSV-1 more than six times a month. Shedding HSV-1 is present at many intraoral sites, for brief periods, at copy numbers sufficient to be transmitted, and even in seronegative individuals.”

Metzitzah b’peh done in Israel, where it some Zionist Orthodox and Modern Orthodox mohels do the controversial oral sucking procedure, despite its risks to the baby.

Just in case your haredi rabbi says there is no evidence that herpes can be transmitted by metzitzah b’peh (MBP) – the direct oral-to-genital sucking done by many haredi mohels to the baby’s bleeding penis after removing its foreskin – even though babies have died and been maimed by herpes infections transmitted through MBP, or if he says that a mohel who has no outward signs of herpes can safely do MBP, you can cite this study, which shows both claims of your rabbi to be false:

Abstract: Asymptomatic Shedding of Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) in the Oral Cavity
Howard E. Strassler, DMD

Jan. 27, 2009
Inside Dentistry

Miller CS, Danaher RT. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2008;105(1):43-50.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the rate of herpes simplex virus (HSV) shedding from the oral cavity, because recent studies suggest that shedding is more frequent than originally reported. Factors that could influence the rate and duration of shedding from the oral cavity were examined.

Methods: Existing epidemiologic data from 22 reports of HSV shedding from more than 3,500 individuals were analyzed with regard to demographics, frequency of sampling, and methodologic assays.

Results: HSV-1 was more likely to be detected than HSV-2 in the oral cavity of asymptomatic persons (7.5 odds ratio, 95% confidence interval 4.4–12.8; P < .0001). The rate of shedding was highly variable among individuals, ranging from none to 92% of the days tested, and occurred in seropositive and seronegative individuals. In cell culture studies, the rate of detection on a single day was 6.3%. Polymerase chain reaction studies provided a different picture. HSV-1 DNA was present in 97 of 180 patients (53.9%) at multiple visits, with a rate of daily detection of 33.3%. The mean duration of shedding was between 1 and 3 days, but more than 3 days in about 10% of the patients.

Conclusion: At least 70% of the population shed HSV-1 asymptomatically at least once a month, and many individuals appear to shed HSV-1 more than six times a month. Shedding HSV-1 is present at many intraoral sites, for brief periods, at copy numbers sufficient to be transmitted, and even in seronegative individuals. The dental implications of these findings are discussed.

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a significant human pathogen infecting most individuals early in life, predominantly at mucosal surfaces after exposure to infected secretions. It has been implicated in a range of diseases including labials and stomatitis, blinding keratitis, and, rarely, encephalitis. According to the data, more than 70% of adults have neutralizing antibodies and serve as reservoirs of the virus. The authors have done an excellent systematic review of the rate of shedding of HSV from the oral cavity. Asymptomatic shedding is generally defined as the presence of HSV in the absence of clinical lesions. Based on this review, the frequency of HSV shedding at virus numbers sufficient to be transmitted are significantly higher than most clinicians would suspect. These high frequencies of asymptomatic shedding suggest that HSV-1 is not as dormant during latency as previously believed. This translates to the fact that even without clinical lesions, the dentist, dental hygienist, and chairside assistant are at risk. This data emphasize the importance of being diligent in maintaining proper infection control procedures (eye protection, gloves, mask) when performing routine dental examinations and procedures. All efforts should be taken to minimize splashes and splatters of oral fluids even in the absence of HSV oral lesions. Also, medical conditions, eg, immunosuppression and traumatic oral surgical procedures, increase the likelihood of virus shedding in the oral cavity.

Howard E. Strassler, DMD
Professor and Director of Operative Dentistry
Department of Endodontics, Prosthodontics and Operative Dentistry
University of Maryland Dental School
Baltimore, Maryland

Baby Dies of Herpes in Ritual Circumcision By Orthodox Jews

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-dies-herpes-virus-ritual-circumcision-nyc-orthodox/story?id=15888618

Baby’s Death Renews Debate Over a Circumcision Ritual

How 11 New York City Babies Contracted Herpes Through Circumcision

http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/07/how-11-new-york-city-babies-contracted-herpes-through-circumcision/

Neonatal Herpes Simplex Virus Infection Following Jewish Ritual Circumcisions that Included Direct Orogenital Suction — New York City, 2000–2011

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6122a2.htm

NYC Puts at Least One Restriction on Mohels Sucking Freshly Circumcised Baby Penises

http://gawker.com/5947500/nyc-getting-closer-to-banning-adults-from-sucking-freshly-circumcised-baby-penises

Banned Herpes Mohel Still Circumcising Babies

http://gothamist.com/2012/03/14/authorities_investigating_herpes_mo.php

Circumcision’s Deadly Fault Line: Rationality vs. the Metzitzah B’Peh

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/10/circumcision-s-deadly-fault-line-rationality-vs-the-metzitzah-b-peh.html

 

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IMAGINE

Nice acoustic guitar arrangement by Adam Rafferty

John Lennon classic

Will Right Wing Conspiracy Theories Unleash More Right Wing Domestic Terrorism?

How The Right’s Latest Conspiracy Theory Might Unleash a Wave of Domestic Terrorism if Obama Wins

Some types of spin are more dangerous than others.

September 25, 2012  |

Two of the Fort Stewart soldiers charged with murder and conspiracy to assassinate Obama.

In a somewhat desperate attempt to maintain morale among a Republican base that disdains its standard-bearer, a number of conservative media outlets are pushing an alternate reality in which Mitt Romney is leading in the polls by wide margins and American voters have a decidedly negative view not of the challenger, but of Barack Obama.

It’s an exceptionally dangerous game that the right-wing media are playing. If Obama wins – and according to polling guru Nate Silver, he’d have a 95 percent chance of doing so if the vote were held today – there’s a very real danger that this spin — combined with other campaign narratives that are popular among the far-right — could create a post-election environment so toxic that it yields an outburst of politically motivated violence.

A strategy that began with a series of rather silly columns comparing 2012 with 1980, and assuring jittery conservatives that a huge mass of independents was sure to break for Romney late and deliver Obama the crushing defeat he so richly deserves, entered new territory with the bizarre belief that all the polls are wrong. And not only wrong, but intentionally rigged by “biased pollsters” – including those at Fox News – in the tank for Obama. (See Alex Pareene’s piece for more on the right’s new theory that the polls are being systematically “skewed.”)

Consider how a loosely-hinged member of the right-wing fringe – an unstable individual among the third of conservative Republicans who believe Obama’s a Muslim or the almost two-thirds who think he was born in another country – expecting a landslide victory for the Republican might process an Obama victory. This is a group that has also been told, again and again, that Democrats engage in widespread voter fraud – that there are legions of undocumented immigrants, dead people and ineligible felons voting in this election (with the help of zombie ACORN). They’ve been told that Democrats are buying the election with promises of “free stuff” offered to the slothful and unproductive half of the population that pays no federal income taxes and refuses to “take responsibility for their lives” – Romney’s 47 percent.

They’ve also been told – by everyone from NRA president Wayne LaPierre to Mitt Romney himself – that Obama plans to ban gun ownership in his second term. (Two elaborate conspiracy theories have blossomed around this point. One holds that Fast and Furious – which, in reality, is much ado about very little – was designed to elevate gun violence to a point where seizing Americans’ firearms would become politically popular. The second holds that a United Nations treaty on small arms transfers (from which the United States has withdrawn) is in fact a stealthy workaround for the Second Amendment.)

And they’ve been warned in grim, often apocalyptic terms of what’s to come in a second term. The film, “2016: Obama’s America,” offers a dystopian vision of a third-world America gutted by Obama’s supposed obsession with global wealth redistribution. His re-election would bring something far worse than mere socialism – it would be marked by Kenyan anti-colonialism, in which America’s wealth is bled off as a form of reparations for centuries of inequities between the global North and South.

These kinds of fringe views aren’t relegated to the fever swamps of the right-wing blogosphere – they’re often reinforced by elected Republicans. Reps Steve King, R-Iowa, Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, Louie Gohmert, R-Texas and others warn that the Obama administration has been infiltrated by Islamic Extremists. An elected judge in Texas advocated a tax increase – yes, a tax increase! – in order to better arm local sheriff’s deputies whom he claimed would serve on the front-lines of the civil war likely to come should Obama be re-elected. “I’m talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator,” he said.

They’ve been hammered with the idea that while these facts are obvious for those whose eyes are open, the media is covering it all up. Rather than a Democrat with whom people tend to connect running a good campaign against a flawed Republican candidate, many on the far-right will see an illegitimate president colluding with an array of perfidious forces, both foreign and domestic, to deny them the right to finally ‘take their country back.’

Obviously, there’s no need to fear a massive rebellion from millions of engraged Glenn Beck fans in their Hoverounds; rather, the danger is that in the aftermath of such an election, a small number of dangerously unstable anti-government extremists will take matters into their own hands — and even a small number can do significant damage.

After the 2008 election, there was a run on weapons and ammunition, and gun sellers are expecting another bonanza if Obama wins a second term. We’ve seen a dramatic wave of right-wing domestic terrorism since Barack Obama’s election. Recently, four active-duty soldiers – and five others – based at Fort Stewart, Georgia, were arrested after murdering two compatriots they suspected of betraying their plot to assassinate Obama. The group had been “stockpiling weapons and bomb parts to overthrow the U.S. government.” With $87,000 in weapons and explosives — and combat training courtesy of Uncle Sam — this was a potentially devastating plot. Just think about the havoc that a few heavily-armed men with military discipline were able to wreak in Mumbai in 2008.

It’s a real threat, but political correctness keeps it in the shadows. At a senate hearing last week, a former Department of Homeland Security official named Daryl Johnson testified that “the threat of domestic terrorism motivated by extremist ideologies is often dismissed and overlooked in the national media and within the U.S. government.” He continued:

Yet we are currently seeing an upsurge in domestic non-Islamic extremist activity, specifically from violent right-wing extremists. While violent left-wing attacks were more prevalent in the 1970s, today the bulk of violent domestic activity emanates from the right wing…. Since the 2008 presidential election, domestic non-Islamic extremists have shot 27 law enforcement officers, killing 16 of them.

That the “unskewed” polls show Romney heading towards a blow-out win is likely to lead more disturbed people to see themselves as victims of a dark plot to undermine America’s “traditional values.” It’s not the only iteration of the alternate universe that the right has conjured up in recent years – just ponder, for a moment, that the creator of “Conservapedia” – a hilariously inaccurate right-wing version of Wikipedia – has undertaken to write a distinctly conservative version of the Bible (one in which Jesus presumably inveighs against taxes and regulation dragging down job creators, and doesn’t constantly blather about the poor).

But while those efforts are often laughable, the unintended consequences of offering the hard-right a Bizarro World analysis of the 2012 election may prove deadly serious if Obama pulls out a win.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He’s the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

Related articles

• How The Right’s Latest Conspiracy Theory Might Unleash a Wave of Domestic Terrorism if Obama Wins (alternet.org)
• “Skewed” Polls, ACORN And Right-Wing Delusion (mediamatters.org)
• Eugene Robinson: Recent polls showing Obama ahead draw cries of conspiracy (sacbee.com)
• Shots fired at Mobile, AL Democratic Headquarters (crooksandliars.com)
• Republicans Blasted Obama Administration For Warning About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism (thinkprogress.org)
• Domestic Terrorism: Senate Hears Testimony About the Rise of the Right-Wing Threat (crooksandliars.com)
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The Most Godless Place on Earth

Eastern Germany: the most godless place on Earth

East German atheism can be seen as a form of continuing political and regional identification – and a taste of the future

A woman dressed as an angel waves from a roof top near the German Reichstag on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

They are sending missionaries to eastern Germany. A recent study called Beliefs About God Across Time and Countries found that 52.1% of people asked whether they believed in God identified themselves as atheists. This compared with only 10.3% in western Germany. Indeed, the survey was unable to find a single person under the age of 28 in eastern Germany who believed in God. Obviously there are some – I think I may have even met some once – but the survey was unable to find them. On the face of it this is an extraordinary finding and it is something that needs some careful explanation.

Different reasons are adduced for the absence of religion in the east. The first one that is usually brought out is the fact that that area was run by the Communist party from 1945 to 1990 and that its explicit hostility to religion meant that it was largely stamped out. However, this is not entirely the case. In fact, after initial hostilities in the first years of the GDR, the SED came to a relatively comfortable accommodation with what was called the Church in Socialism. The churches in the GDR were given a high degree of autonomy by SED standards and indeed became the organisational focus of the dissident movement of the 1990s, which was to some extent led by Protestant pastors.

In addition to an accommodation with religion, the party also deliberately created alternative poles of integration for the population. Young people were brought up in a highly ideological atmosphere and were required to undergo a so-called Jugendweihe – a sort of atheist confirmation. Interestingly, this ceremony has survived the end of communism and many young people still voluntarily enter into it. Equally, especially under Eric Honecker in the 1970s and 80s, an attempt was made to create a sort of “GDR patriotism”, in which figures from Prussian history such as Frederick the Great were put back on their plinths in East Berlin and integrated into the Communist narrative of the forward march of history. Martin Luther, Thomas Münzer and other figures from the Reformation were also recruited into the party.

Another factor is that religion in eastern Germany is also overwhelmingly Protestant, both historically and in contemporary terms. Of the 25% who do identify themselves as religious, 21% of them are Protestants. The other 4% is made up of a small number of Catholics as well as Muslims and adherents of other new evangelical groups, new-age sects or alternative religions. The Protestant church is in steep decline with twice as many people leaving it every year as joining.

If we were to follow the Weberian line on this, then a highly Protestant area undergoing rapid modernisation would almost automatically experience a process of radical secularisation going hand-in-hand with industrialisation, a process which was only speeded up by the communist obsession with heavy industry.

When we look at western Germany however, we see that there Catholics are in a majority and indeed, political power in West Germany has traditionally been built on western-orientated Catholic support for the Christian Democratic Union in the south and west. Indeed, the first chancellor of postwar West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, had been mayor of Cologne in the 1930s and even then was in favour of the division of Germany and a “Rhineland Alliance” as a sort of precursor of the European Union.

What all of this means is that rather than simply just being an area that was occupied by the Soviet Union and their satraps in the East German Communist party, the eastern part of Germany has an identity which – almost a quarter of a century on – continues to make unification more difficult than expected. Religious confession, or rather the lack of it, plays an important role in this. This has led some to talk of East German atheism as a form of continuing political and regional identification. For example, in 2000 the Catholic theologian Eberhard Tiefensee identified what he called an “East German folk atheism” which could be argued to constitute a substantial part of a regional identity against West German Catholic domination.

Secularisation processes are under way throughout the continent and the role of religion and the church in modernity are being questioned everywhere, from gay marriage to women priests to abortion and on to whether the EU should identify itself as a Christian entity. The question should perhaps be whether it is actually folk atheism that represents the future of Europe.

Related articles

• Eastern Germany: the most godless place on Earth | Peter Thompson (guardian.co.uk)
• The most godless place on earth. Some reflections on the future of nonbelief (choiceindying.com)
• Let’s Please Stop Crediting Ronald Reagan for the Fall of the Berlin Wall (theatlantic.com)

Autonomous Drones | Next Wave In Robotic Wars

The next wave in robotic war: autonomous drones

by Dan De Luce

Agençe France-Presse

Piloted U.S. military aircraft may soon be a thing of the past as technology for autonomous drones improves.

Credit: iStockphoto

WASHINGTON: The U.S. military’s current fleet of drones will soon be overtaken by a new wave of robots that will be faster, stealthier and smarter – operating virtually without human intervention, experts say.

The Pentagon is investing heavily in ‘autonomy’ for robotic weapons, with researchers anticipating squadrons of drones in the air, land or sea that would work in tandem with manned machines – often with a minimum of supervision.

“Before they were blind, deaf and dumb. Now we’re beginning to make them to see, hear and sense,” Mark Maybury, chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force, said.

Unmanned aircraft are now overseen by ‘pilots’ on the ground, but as the drones become more sophisticated, the role of remote operators will be more hands-off.

From operator to supervisor

Instead of being “in the loop”, humans will be “on the loop”, said Maybury, explaining that operators will be able to “dial in” when needed to give a drone direction for a specific task.

“We’re moving into more and more autonomous systems. That’s an evolutionary arc,” said Peter Singer, an expert on robotic weapons and author of Wired for War.

“So the role moves from being sort of the operator from afar, to more like the supervisor or manager, and a manager giving more and more of a leash, more and more independence,” he said.

Despite the dramatic advances in technology, the American military insists humans will remain in control when it comes to using lethal force.

Lawyers aren’t ready for this

But the next generation of increasingly capable drones will stretch man’s capacity to control robots in battle, generating unprecedented moral and legal quandaries.

“These [technological] responses that are driven by science, politics and battlefield necessity get you into areas where the lawyers just aren’t ready for it yet,” Singer said.

Over the next decade, changes in computing power will enable teams of hi-tech drones to operate virtually on their own, or as ‘robotic wingmen’ to piloted aircraft, said Werner Dahm, the U.S. Air Force’s former top scientist.

At a testing range in the Arizona desert, Apache helicopters are flying together with unmanned choppers in experiments the Pentagon believes will serve as an eventual model for future warfare.

‘Alone and unafraid’ doctrine turned upside down

“We’re not far away from having a single piloted Apache or other helicopter system and a larger number of unmanned systems that fly with that,” said Dahm, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Arizona State University.

“These require very high levels of machine reasoning. We’re much closer to that than most people realise,” Dahm said.

The new technology has turned the U.S. Air Force’s doctrine upside down. For decades, the military trained pilots to face an enemy “alone and unafraid,” flying deep into hostile territory to strike at a target and then return home.

Now the Air Force is planning for scenarios in which different tasks would be divided up among manned and unmanned ‘systems’, with drones jamming enemy air defences, tracking targets and assessing bomb damage, while piloted warplanes oversee the launching of bombs and missiles.

“It’s difficult to prove something won’t go wrong”

Instead of the slow-flying turbo-prop Predator, future drones will likely more closely resemble their manned counterparts, with a longer range, more powerful jet engines and radar-evading stealth design, which the bat-winged Sentinel drone already has pioneered.

But the biggest technical hurdle for Pentagon-funded scientists is delivering an iron-clad guarantee that the more autonomous vehicles will not make a grievous mistake with potentially catastrophic consequences.

“You have to be able to show that the system is not going to go awry – you have to disprove a negative,” Dahm said. “It’s very difficult to prove that something won’t go wrong.”

Emotionless, ethical warriors

One veteran robotics scientist, Ronald Arkin, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that countries will inevitably deploy independent robots capable of killing an enemy without a human pushing a button.

Arkin, who has worked on U.S. defence programs for years, argues that robotic weapons can and should be designed as “ethical” warriors, with the ability to distinguish combatants from innocent civilians.

Without emotions to cloud their judgment and anger driving their actions, the robots could wage war in a more restrained, “humane” way, in accordance with the laws of war, Arkin said.

“It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield, but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of,” he wrote.

Related articles

• Robots at War: Scholars Debate the Ethical Issues (chronicle.com)
• The Pentagon Doesn’t Trust Its Own Robots (wired.com)
• VIDEO: Dog drones and camera grenades (bbc.co.uk)
• Iran’s new spy drone is an Israeli Hermes 450/Watchkeeper clone. Capable of carrying missiles. (theaviationist.com)
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Alzheimer’s Epidemic Looms | Medical Mystery

Alzheimer’s remains medical mystery as epidemic looms

by Mariette le Roux

Agençe France-Presse

As the population ages, finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is increasingly imperative – but there will be a number of hurdles to overcome along the way.

---

Alzheimer’s disease causes two-thirds of dementia cases and instances are expected to increase as the population ages.

Credit: iStockphoto

More than 100 years after it was first caught in the act of decaying a patient’s brain, Alzheimer’s disease remains one of medicine’s greatest challenges as it robs ever more people of their memory and independence.

Researchers make halting progress, reporting small steps forward along with many frustrating setbacks.

And while care for Alzheimer’s sufferers has improved since former U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British fantasy author Terry Pratchett helped lift the stigma, the key workings of the illness remain a riddle.

Alzheimer’s disease causes two-thirds of dementia cases – attacking one in 200 people – and finding a cure has never been more pressing as the world’s population grows and ages.

“There is going to be a tsunami in terms of [cost] burden,” Dean Hartley, director of science initiatives at the U.S. Alzheimer’s Association, said ahead of World Alzheimer’s Day on September 21.

A door to hope slammed last month when drug giants Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson stopped tests of eagerly anticipated therapies that failed in clinical trials.

On September 6, French researchers announced plant extract gingko biloba, widely marketed as a natural Alzheimer’s remedy, did not actually prevent dementia.

Blaming insufficient funding, at least in part, researchers say they still do not know quite what to make of the plaques and tangles that German doctor Alois Alzheimer first spotted in the brain of a dementia patient who died in 1906.

Little follow-up work was done until the 1960s, partly because fewer people were then living to an age when the disease shows up.

Today, the sole drugs shut in our arsenal treat some symptoms but are powerless to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s.

“People are absolutely desperate for medicines – people suffering from the disease, and people close to them,” said Eric Karran, research director at Alzheimer’s Research UK.

“Where we are at the moment is a critical period for this disease,” he added.

“The pharmaceutical industry has had a range of very, very expensive failures. I worry they might be thinking: ‘this is very difficult and we will just have to wait until the science is more evolved’.”

Hartley and Karran said Alzheimer’s received a fraction of the money governments spend on disease research despite being one of the costliest illnesses in terms of suffering and spending.

Costs and complexity

Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) projects the number of people with dementia will rise from 35.6 million in 2010 to 65.7 million by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050.

The cost, including hospital and home care, drugs and clinic visits, is expected to soar some 85% by 2030 from about US$600 billion in 2010 – roughly the GDP of Switzerland.

But money is not the only problem.

The disease is a particularly complicated one to crack, not least because its effect on humans is nigh impossible to replicate in lab animals.

Its slow progression is an added hurdle.

“The disease seems to be present in people’s brains maybe 15 years prior to … suffering symptoms,” said Karran.

Alzheimer’s normally becomes apparent around the age of 70, when family members observe a loved-one becoming forgetful and confused.

“When patients are available to be studied in clinical trials, you are actually looking at a disease that has been going on for 15 years,” by which stage neurons would already have died, said Karran.

Scientists disagree on the respective roles of beta amyloid plaque build-ups and of a protein called tau, which forms tangles inside these brain cells.

Most test therapies have targeted beta amyloids, but some now suggest it is actually tau killing the brain cells.

“We still do not understand the relation between the structural damage and cognitive symptoms exactly,” Dutch neurophysiology PhD student Willem de Haan said.

Researchers are aiming for a treatment that will halt the disease at an early stage – even before the onset of symptoms.

And while they have not succeeded, their work is throwing up some valuable clues along the way.

Already known is that a small percentage of people, more women than men, are genetically predisposed to developing Alzheimer’s. A family history of the disease boosts the risk.

Some studies suggest healthy living may reduce the chances of those people who do not carry Alzheimer’s-related genes of developing the disease.

Diagnostics, too, are improving: new research shows that a simple eye-tracking test and sleep disruption may be early indicators, helping victims make lifestyle choices before the disease steps into higher gear.

The experts believe that if governments, researchers and drug companies work together efficiently, a treatment may be available within 20 years.

But they also warn against giving false hope to desperate people.

“Finding a medicine for a chronic disease is far, far more complicated than, say, putting a man on the Moon,” said Karran

Related articles

• Sleep quality linked to early signs of Alzheimer’s (time4sleep.com)
• Many mysteries remain as Alzheimer’s epidemic looms (rawstory.com)
• Melatonin and exercise work against Alzheimer’s in mice (eurekalert.org)
• Physical Exercise cuts dementia risk (foodconsumer.org)

Benjamin Netanyahu Plagiarizes Looney Toons | But He Ain’t The Wascally Wabbit!

What do Netanyahu and Wile E. Coyote have in common? Bibi Pulls Out A Cartoon Bomb To Explain to UN The Iranian Nuclear Threat

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted that ‘Netanyahu’s bomb cartoon is the Middle East equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s chair’

Via:- Destro

I knew ACME was in the bomb business but this is ridiculous!

[Link: www.carbonated.tv…]

What do Netanyahu and Wile E. Coyote have in common?

Other than looks you mean? Well both have their devilish plots, deceptions and grand schemes that typically backfire. They also have the wonderful ACME bomb sketches and ofcourse their continuous harrassement of their foes, the Road Runner in one case and the Palestinians/Iranians on the other- Beep Beep anyone.

In what is going to be remembered as one of the goofiest performances of all times at the U.N. Netanhyahu’s attempts to graphically scare the world about the dangers of the Iranian bomb backfired as his cartoonish sketch became the subject of ridicule in various media circles and is sure to be featured on all late night talk show circuits imminently. Hey Bibi, how about outsourcing the graphics to India the next go around?

Image: 83853_story__NETANYAHU-Untitled-1.jpg

Image: 83853_story__NETANYAHU-Untitled-2.jpg

CHART OF THE DAY: Benjamin Netanyahu Pulls Out A Cartoon Bomb To Explain The Iranian Nuclear Threat

Brett LoGiurato

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled out this chart to describe the threat of a nuclear Iran during his speech to the UN General Assembly…..

“We must face the truth,” he added. Economic sanctions, he said, are not enough to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He said “a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program” needs to be established.

Here’s the red line:

Image: netanyahu.png

So far, there have been mixed reactions to the chart.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted that it “It’s Official, Netanyahu has no idea what he is doing and turned a serious issue into a joke: Image: jeffrey-goldberg.png

Goldberg followed up that it was Netanyahu’s equivalent of the Republican National Convention’s Clint Eastwood moment.

Not to worry though!

Former George W. Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, on the other hand, called it “effective” and “gripping.”

Read more: [Link: www.businessinsider.com…]

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The Increasingly Insane Ravings of Religious Right Loon Bryan Fischer | Obama Antichrist

American Family Association Caveman Bryan Fischer: ‘Too Early to Say’ Whether Obama’s the Antichrist

Wouldn’t want to jump the gun

Via:- Charles Johnson

Is Barack Obama the Antichrist? Well, amazingly enough, religious right caveman Bryan Fischer thinks it’s too early to say.

But I sense that he’s leaning toward “yes.”

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Actress Cindy Lee Garcia Sues Over Innocence of Muslims Schlock

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia sues over Innocence of Muslims

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has gone into hiding since his name was linked with the film

Anti-Islam film protests

A US actress who appeared in an amateur anti-Islam video that sparked protests across the Muslim world is suing the film’s suspected director.

Cindy Lee Garcia accused Nakoula Basseley Nakoula of duping her into a “hateful” film that she was led to believe was a desert adventure movie.

She is also asking a judge to order YouTube to remove the film.

A clip dubbed into Arabic provoked widespread anger for its mocking portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

The film, Innocence of Muslims, which was made in the United States, has sparked protests across the Middle East, North Africa and as far away as Sri Lanka, with some demonstrations turning into destructive and violent riots.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stephens, were killed during an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

According to Ms Garcia, the script she received had made no mention of the Prophet Muhammad or made references to religion.

She claims she has received death threats since the video was posted to YouTube, and says her association with the film has harmed her reputation.

In a court filing lodged with Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, Ms Garcia alleged fraud, slander and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Dialogue dismay

Lawyers for Ms Garcia contend that changes in dialogue during post-production casts her in a false light.

Protests are continuing in the Muslim world, including in Pakistan

“[Garcia] had a legally protected interest in her privacy and the right to be free from having hateful words put in her mouth or being depicted as a bigot,” the lawsuit says.

“There was no mention of ‘Mohammed’ during filming or on set. There were no references made to religion nor was there any sexual content of which Ms Garcia was aware,” it adds.

Mr Nakoula denies being “Sam Bacile”, a pseudonym used by the person who posted the video online.

He has gone into hiding after telling US media he was the manager of a company that helped produce the film, but US officials believe him to be the director.

Mr Nakoula was convicted of fraud in 2010 and ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was released in June 2011 with the provision that he did not access the internet or use any aliases without permission.

Authorities questioned him last week over whether he had violated any of those conditions.

YouTube has so far refused Ms Garcia’s requests to remove the film, according to the lawsuit, although it has blocked it in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt.

“This lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment nor on the right of Americans to say what they think, but does request that the offending content be removed from the Internet,” the complaint states.

Google, which owns YouTube, has blocked the film in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt.

A spokesman for YouTube said they were reviewing the complaint and would be in court on Thursday.

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Catholic and Jewish Right Wing Extemists Behind anti-Muslim Schlock

Inside the strange Hollywood scam that spread chaos across the Middle East

A group of rightwing extremists aimed to destabilize post-Mubarak Egypt and roil US politicians. They got their wish

Via:- Max Blumenthal

Palestinians protest against The Innocence of Muslims. Officials confirmed ‘Sam Bacile’ was an alias used by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Photograph: EPA

Did an inflammatory anti-Muslim film trailer that appeared spontaneously on YouTube prompt the attack that left four US diplomats dead, including US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens? American officials have suggested that the assault was pre-planned, allegedly by of one of the Jihadist groups that emerged since the Nato-led overthrow of Libya’s Gaddafi regime. So even though the deadly scene in Benghazi may not have resulted directly from the angry reaction to the Islamophobic video, the violence has helped realize the apocalyptic visions of the film’s backers.

Produced and promoted by a strange collection of rightwing Christian evangelicals and exiled Egyptian Copts, the trailer was created with the intention of both destabilizing post-Mubarak Egypt and roiling the US presidential election. As a consultant for the film named Steve Klein said: “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen.”

The Associated Press’s initial report on the trailer – an amateurish, practically unwatchable production called The Innocence of Muslims – identified a mysterious character, “Sam Bacile”, as its producer. Bacile told the Associated Press that he was a Jewish Israeli real estate developer living in California. He said that he raised $5m for the production of the film from “100 Jewish donors”, an unusual claim echoing Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style fantasies. Unfortunately, the extensive history of Israeli and ultra-Zionist funding and promotion of Islamophobic propaganda in the United States provided Bacile’s remarkable statement with the ring of truth.

Who was Bacile? The Israeli government could not confirm his citizenship, and for a full day, no journalist was able to determine whether he existed or not. After being duped by Bacile, AP traced his address to the home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a militant Coptic separatist and felon convicted of check fraud. On September 13, US law enforcement officials confirmed that “Sam Bacile” was an alias Nakoula used to advance his various scams, which apparently included the production of The Innocence of Muslims.

According to an actor in the film, the all-volunteer cast was deceived into believing they were acting in a benign biblical epic about “how things were 2,000 years ago”. The script was titled Desert Warrior, and its contents made no mention of Muhammad – his name was dubbed into the film during post-production. On the set, a gray-haired Egyptian man who identified himself only as “Sam” (Nakoula) chatted aimlessly in Arabic with a group of friends while posing as the director. A casting notice for Desert Warrior listed the film’s real director as “Alan Roberts”. This could likewise be a pseudonym, although there is a veteran Hollywood hand responsible for such masterpieces as The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood and The Sexpert who goes by the same name.

Before Nakoula was unmasked, the only person to publicly claim any role in the film was Klein, an insurance salesman and Vietnam veteran from Hemet, California, who emerged from the same Islamophobic movement that produced the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Styling themselves as “counter-Jihadists”, anti-Muslim crusaders like Klein took their cues from top propagandists like Pamela Geller, the blogger who once suggested that Barack Obama was the lovechild of Malcolm X, and Robert Spencer, a pseudo-academic expert on Muslim radicalization who claimed that Islam was no more than “a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers”. Both Geller and Spencer were labeled hate group leaders by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Klein is an enthusiastic commenter on Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugged, where he recently complained about Mitt Romney’s “support for a Muslim state in Israel’s heartland”. In July 2011, Spencer’s website, Jihad Watch, promoted a rally Klein organized to demand the firing of Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca, whom he painted as a dupe for the Muslim Brotherhood.

On his personal Facebook page, Altar or Abolish, Klein obsesses over the Muslim Brotherhood, describing the organization as “a global network of Muslims attacking to convert the world’s 6 billion people to Islam or kill them”. Klein urges a violent response to the perceived threat of Islam in the United States, posting an image to his website depicting a middle-American family with a mock tank turret strapped to the roof of their car. “Can you direct us to the nearest mosque?” read a caption Klein added to the photo.

In 2011, during his campaign to oust Sheriff Baca, Klein forged an alliance with Joseph Nasrallah, an extremist Coptic broadcaster who shared his fear and resentment of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nasrallah appeared from out of nowhere at a boisterous rally against the construction of an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2010, warning a few hundred riled-up Tea Party types that Muslims “came and conquered our country the same way they want to conquer America”.

Organized by Geller and Spencer, the rally was carefully timed to coincide with the peak of the midterm congressional election campaign, in which many rightwing Republicans hoped to leverage rising anti-Muslim sentiment into resentment against the presidency of Obama.

Through his friendship with Nasrallah, Klein encountered another radical Coptic separatist named Morris Sadek. Sadek has been banned from returning to his Egypt, where he is widely hated for his outrageous anti-Muslim displays. On the day of the Ground Zero rally, for instance, Sadek was seen parading around the streets of Washington, DC, on September 11, 2010, with a crucifix in one hand and a Bible implanted with the American flag in the other. “Islam is evil!” he shouted. “Islam is a cult religion!”

With another US election approaching, and the Egyptian government suddenly under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, Klein and Sadek joined Nakoula in preparing what would be their greatest propaganda stunt to date: the Innocence of Muslims. As soon as the film appeared on YouTube, Sadek promoted it on his website, transforming the obscure clip into a viral source of outrage in the Middle East. And like clockwork, on September 11, crowds of Muslim protesters stormed the walls of the US embassy in Cairo, demanding retribution for the insult to the prophet Muhammad. The demonstrations ricocheted into Libya, where the deadly attack that may have been only peripherally related to the film occurred.

For Sadek, the chaos was an encouraging development. He and his allies had been steadfastly opposed to the Egyptian revolution, fearing that it would usher in the Muslim Brotherhood as the country’s new leaders. Now that their worst fears were realized, Coptic extremists and other pro-Mubarak dead-enders were resorting to subterfuge to undermine the ruling party, while pointing to the destabilizing impact of their efforts as proof of the government’s bankruptcy. As Sadek said, “the violence that [the film] caused in Egypt is further evidence of how violent the religion and people”.

For far-right Christian right activists like Klein, the attacks on American interests abroad seemed likely to advance their ambitions back in the US. With Americans confronted with shocking images of violent Muslims in Egypt and Libya on the evening news, their already negative attitudes toward their Muslim neighbors were likely to harden. In turn, the presidential candidates, Obama and Romney, would be forced to compete for who could take the hardest line against Islamic “terror”.

A patrician moderate constantly on the defensive against his own right flank, Romney fell for the bait, baselessly accusing Obama of “sympathiz[ing] with those who waged the attacks” and of issuing “an apology for America’s values”. The clumsy broadside backfired in dramatic fashion, opening Romney to strident criticism from across the spectrum, including from embarrassed Republican members of Congress. Obama wasted no time in authorizing a round of drone strikes on targets across Libya, which are likely to deepen regional hostility to the US.

A group of fringe extremists had proven that with a little bit of money and an unbelievably cynical scam, they could shape history to fit their apocalyptic vision. But in the end, they were not immune to the violence they incited.

According to Copts Today, an Arabic news outlet focusing on Coptic affairs, Sadek was seen taking a leisurely stroll down Washington’s M Street on September 11, soaking in the sun on a perfect autumn day. All of a sudden, he found himself surrounded by four angry Coptic women. Berating Sadek for fueling the flames of sectarian violence, the women took off their heels and began beating him over the head.

“If anything happens to a Christian in Egypt,” one of them shouted at him, “you’ll be the reason!”

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• Inside the strange Hollywood scam that spread chaos across the Middle East | Max Blumenthal (guardian.co.uk)
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Silences — E.E. Cummings

Silences

“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star…” – E.E. Cummings

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Is Obama Right to Snub Netanyahu?

Obama is right to ignore Netanyahu

By Andrew Cohen, Ottawa Citizen September 24

In the Jewish calendar, the interlude between Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is called the Days of Awe. During these 10 days, Jews reflect on themselves and their faith.

Like observant Jews everywhere, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will consider his conduct over the last year and seek forgiveness for his transgressions. He will have much to contemplate. Before the Days of Awe, Netanyahu had his Days of Audacity.

That’s audacity as in effrontery, not boldness. Netanyahu’s cardinal sin is interfering in the domestic politics of the United States, Israel’s friend, ally and benefactor, in a manner that is disingenuous, ungrateful and irresponsible.

Twice this month, Netanyahu has told the United States, publicly, to give Iran an ultimatum on its nuclear program. It should draw “a red line” that Iran cannot cross, he says. “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red line before Israel,” he told a news conference this month.

His point: that if America is not going to set limits on the Iranians and nuclear weapons, it has no right to tell Israel what to do.

As if those dense Americans didn’t recognize themselves as “the international community,” Netanyahu later went on American television to drive home the point.

Let’s get beyond the coded conversation. The prime minister is saying that President Barack Obama is unreliable. He does this as the president seeks re-election against a Republican who attacks him for being soft on Iran and hard on Israel, who claims Obama is “throwing Israel under the bus.”

It is very simple and very dangerous, Netanyahu’s game. In portraying Obama as weak, he plays to the Republican canard that on Israel — as in events in Libya and Egypt — the president has no backbone.

This is beyond audacity. It is chutzpah.

No wonder Obama is snubbing Netanyahu when he visits the United Nations this week. He resents Netanyahu’s megaphone diplomacy, which tries to drag the U.S. into a premature, preventive war, as well as his ingratitude for America’s magnanimous financial and military support of Israel.

For months, Netanyahu has been warning that Iran is getting the bomb, a refrain from him and other alarmists we have heard for 20 years. In his messianic view of himself and Jewish history, Israel has no choice but to strike first.

Netanyahu continues to argue this amid growing opposition in Israel, particularly among influential insiders, such as Meir Dagan, who ran Mossad. Read Dagan’s assessment of Iran in the New Yorker, and see the emptiness — and recklessness — of Netanyahu’s declarations on Iran.

It was madness to speak of hitting Iran in January, when Netanyahu began his new season of sabre-rattling, and it is madness now. Attacking Iran isn’t about weak-kneed morality. It is about hard-headed practicality.

And practically speaking, it just doesn’t add up.

No credible intelligence suggests that Israel has the ability to destroy Iran’s capacity to make a nuclear bomb. It can delay it, yes, for six to 24 months.

Say Israel does attack Iran. Then what? Consider the consequences: a newly enfranchised but still illegitimate regime in Tehran, backed by popular outrage in the Arab Street; the expulsion of the international nuclear inspectors; a public commitment from Iran to developing the bomb “in self-defence”; a rain of rockets on Israel’s cities, launched by Hezbollah and Hamas; Israeli retaliation inviting regional war, drawing in Egypt.

No wonder Obama wants to let international sanctions and diplomacy play out. If they don’t, and the Iranians decide to build a bomb (which they have not yet), Obama might then decide to order an attack. If so, it would be carried out with America weaponry, with a better chance of success.

Apparently that isn’t enough for Netanyahu. He is gambling that a weakened Obama loses the election, and that Mitt Romney embraces Netanyahu’s view and takes his talking points from Jerusalem, much like the government of Canada.

That the United States has helped finance Israel’s (“Iron Dome”) anti-missile and other defence systems, that it has provided $168 billion in aid to the country since 1948, and that it has collaborated with Israel on anti-nuclear cyber-warfare against Iran — all does not give Netanyahu pause.

The prime minister’s audacity will bring him more trouble than he knows.

If he attacks Iran over the objections of the Americans, he risks shattering Israel’s most important relationship. If he doesn’t attack but continues to push the U.S. to present ultimatums, he risks shattering his relationship with Obama, who will be less tolerant of Netanyahu if re-elected.

In arguing for red lines, Netanyahu cited — and misread — John F. Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis 50 years ago. As Netanyahu tries to make the case for war, he would do well to heed JFK’s memorable warning: those who ride the back of the tiger often end up inside.

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

 

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Ever-Increasing Number of Catholic Sex Abuse Cases | Catholic Empire of Pedophiles and Sexual Abusers

Catholic Church in Australia reveals 620 sex abuse cases

By Agence France-Presse

The Catholic Church in one Australian state has revealed that at least 620 children have been abused by its clergy since the 1930s, sparking a fresh call Saturday for an independent inquiry.

The Catholic Church in Victoria revealed the number in a submission to a state parliamentary hearing on Friday but said the instances of abuse reported had fallen dramatically from the “appalling” numbers of the 1960s and 1970s.

“It is shameful and shocking that this abuse, with its dramatic impact on those who were abused and their families, was committed by Catholic priests, religious and church workers,” Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said.

The full submission was not released publicly but the church said most of the 620 claims it had upheld over the last 16 years related to incidents 30 to 80 years ago, with very few related to abuse that has taken place since 1990.

Hart said the church had taken steps to redress the issue, including a programme implemented in the 1990s involving an independent investigation, an ongoing programme of counselling and support, and compensation.

“This submission shows how the church of today is committed to facing up to the truth and to not disguising, diminishing or avoiding the actions of those who have betrayed a sacred trust,” he said.

“We acknowledge the suffering and trauma endured by children who have been in the Church’s care, and the effect on their families. We renew our apology to them,” he said in a statement in which he spoke for church leaders in Victoria.

But victims’ supporters say the number of children abused was likely much higher than that confirmed by the church in its own inquiries.

President of the Law Institute of Victoria, Michael Holcroft, said there was a need for more independent investigations.

“Obviously there’s a public perception that the church investigating the church is Caesar judging Caesar and I think that the community is now looking for somebody external, someone independent to get to the bottom of what’s obviously been a big problem for a long, long time,” he told the ABC.

Archbishop Hart said victims were strongly encouraged to go to the police.

“We look to this inquiry to assist the healing of those who have been abused, to examine the broad context of the Church’s response, especially over the last 16 years, and to make recommendations to enhance the care for victims and preventative measures that are now in place,” he said.

The Victorian state government announced the inquiry into the handling of child abuse cases by religious and non-government bodies after the suicides of dozens of people abused by clergy.

Last year Pope Benedict XVI told Australian bishops that their work had been made more difficult by the clerical sex abuse scandal which has rocked the church as he exhorted them to “repair the errors of the past with honesty”.

The pontiff met victims of abuse when he travelled to Sydney in 2008.

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Jews Must Be Converted | American Right Wing Nuts’ Hate Fest

Jews Must Be Converted: FRC Vice President

Submitted by Josh Glasstetter on Thu, 09/13/2012 – 12:25pm

Bad news for Eric Cantor. He’s speaking tomorrow at the Values Voter Summit, but he’s apparently still going to hell. Let me explain.

Jerry Boykin is the Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council and Tony Perkins’ right-hand man. FRC is hosting the far right conference that the House Majority Leader, who is Jewish, plans to address tomorrow.

Boykin, much like Bryan Fischer, has a penchant for saying exactly what’s on his mind – things which others know not to say, even when they’re thinking the same thing. While you may know Boykin from his prolific Muslim-bashing, he also has some interesting things to say about Jews.

In a 2009 speech on “Why We Must Stand with Israel,” Boykin spoke out against pastors who say that “the Jews don’t have to come to know Jesus,” complaining that those pastors were “destroying the efforts” to lead Jews to Christ:

Last year, Boykin said that “one of the most disgusting things I hear is for people to call Hitler the extreme Right” because he was “an extraordinarily off the scale leftist.” He then lamented that “many Jews in America, for example, can’t identify with the Republican Party because they’re called the party of the Right, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.”

Boykin also said that President Obama is creating a Hitler-sytle Brownshirt army to force Marxism on America. And in 2003, then-Lt. Gen. Boykin said that the U.S. was fighting a war “in the name of Jesus,” prompting a rebuke from the ADL and President Bush.

To be sure, the Religious Right hasn’t always had the best relations with American Jews. Jerry Falwell sparked a controversy in 1980 when he said that God “does not hear the prayers of unredeemed Gentiles or Jews.” He was speaking at a press conference in defense of the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who had proclaimed that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”

More recently, however, Religious Right leaders have been careful to stress Judeo-Christian values and avoid explicit attacks. Boykin, however, doesn’t have any use for such niceties.

Yet Boykin was able to meet recently with Mitt Romney, and he has three speaking slots during the conference. He’s even leading a panel on Israel with his good friend Kamal Saleem. Saleem, who is considered to be a fraud, describes himself as a former terrorist who “completed his first bloody terror mission into Israel for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at the age of seven.”

All of this makes me wonder if Cantor’s folks did their homework before agreeing to speak tomorrow. Perhaps something will come up, and he’ll have to decline FRC’s invitation, much like Ann Romney and Cardinal Dolan have done. We’ll find out tomorrow.

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Is the Right-Wing Psyche Allergic to Reality? A New Study Shows Conservatives Ignore Facts More Than Liberals

Is the Right-Wing Psyche Allergic to Reality? A New Study Shows Conservatives Ignore Facts More Than Liberals

More evidence that conservatives tilted their views of the facts to favor their moral convictions more than liberals did, on every single issue.

This story was originally published at Salon.

Last week, the country convulsed with outrage over Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s false suggestion that women who are raped have a special bodily defense mechanism against getting pregnant. Akin’s claim stood out due to its highly offensive nature, but it’s reminiscent of any number of other parallel cases in which conservative Christians have cited dubious “facts” to help rationalize their moral convictions. Take the twin assertions that having an abortion causes breast cancer or mental disorders, for instance. Or the denial of human evolution. Or false claims that same-sex parenting hurts kids. Or that you can choose whether to be gay, and undergo therapy to reverse that choice. The ludicrous assertion that women who are raped have a physiological defense mechanism against pregnancy is just part of a long litany of other falsehoods in the Christian right’s moral and emotional war against science.

In fact, even as Akin reaped a whirlwind of disdain and disgust, a new scientific paper has appeared with uncanny timing in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, underscoring what is actually happening when people contort facts to justify their deep seated beliefs or moral systems. Perhaps most strikingly, one punch line of the new research is that political conservatives, like Akin, appear to do this significantly more than political liberals.

In recent years, the field of moral psychology has been strongly influenced by a theory known as “moral intuitionism,” which has been championed by the University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Dealing a blow to the notion of humans as primarily rational actors, Haidt instead postulates that our views of what is right and wrong are rooted in gut emotions, which fire rapidly when we encounter certain moral situations or dilemmas—responding far more quickly than our rational thoughts. Thus, we evaluate facts, arguments, and new information in a way that is subconsciously guided, ormotivated, by our prior moral emotions. What this means–in Haidt’s famed formulation–is that when it comes to evaluating facts that are relevant to our deep seated morals or beliefs, we don’t act like scientists. Rather, we act like lawyers, contorting the evidence to support our moral argument.

But are we all equally lawyerly? The new paper, by psychologists Brittany Liu and Peter Ditto of the University of California-Irvine, suggests that may not actually be the case.

In their study, Liu and Ditto asked over 1,500 people about their moral and factual views on four highly divisive political issues. Two of them–the death penalty and the forceful interrogation of terrorists using techniques like water-boarding–are ones where liberals tend to think the act in question is morally unacceptableeven if it actually yields benefits (for instance, deterring crime, or providing intelligence that can help prevent further terrorist strikes). The other two–providing information about condoms in the context of sex education, and embryonic stem cell research–are ones where conservatives tend to think the act in question is unacceptable even if it yields benefits (helping to prevent unwanted pregnancies, leading to cures for devastating diseases).

In the experiment, the subjects were first asked about their absolute moral beliefs: For instance, is the death penalty wrongeven if it deters others from committing crimes? But they were also asked about various factual aspects of each topic: Does the death penalty deter crime? Do condoms work to prevent pregnancy? Does embryonic stem cell research hold medical promise? And so on.

If you believe some act is absolutely wrong, period, you shouldn’t actually care about its costs and benefits. Those should be irrelevant to your moral judgment. Yet in analyzing the data, Liu and Ditto found a strong correlation, across all of the issues, between believing something is morally wrong in all case–such as the death penalty–and also believing that it has low benefits (e.g., doesn’t deter crime) or high costs (lots of innocent people getting executed). In other words, liberals and conservatives alike shaded their assessment of the facts so as to align them with their moral convictions–establishing what Liu and Ditto call a “moral coherence” between their ethical and factual views. Neither side was innocent when it came toconfusing “is” and “ought” (as moral philosophers might put it).

However, not everyone was equally susceptible to this behavior. Rather, the researchers found three risk factors, so to speak, that seem to worsen the standard human penchant for contorting the facts to one’s moral views. Two those were pretty unsurprising: Having a strong moral view about a topic makes one’s inclination towards “moral coherence” worse, as does knowing a lot about the subject (across studies, knowledge simply seems to make us better at maintaining and defending what we already believe). But the third risk factor is likely to prove quite controversial: political conservatism.

In the study, Liu and Ditto report, conservatives tilted their views of the facts to favor their moral convictions more than liberals did, on every single issue. And that was true whether it was a topic that liberals oppose (the death penalty) or that conservatives oppose (embryonic stem cell research). “Conservatives are doing this to a larger degree across four different issues,” Liu explained in an interview. “Including two that are leaning to the liberal side, not the conservative side.”

There is a longstanding (if controversial) body of research on liberal-conservative psychological differences that may provide an answer for why this occurs. Conservatives, Liu notes, score higher on a trait called the need for cognitive closure, which describes a feeling of discomfort with uncertainty and the need to hold a firm belief, a firm conviction, unwaveringly. Insofar as a need for closure pushes one to want to hold coherent, consistent beliefs–and makes one intolerant of ambiguity–it makes sense that wanting to achieve “moral coherence” between one’s factual and moral views would also go along with it. Conservatives, in this interpretation, would naturally have more conviction that the facts of the world, and their moral systems, are perfectly aligned. Liberals, in contrast, might be more conflicted–supportive of embryonic stem cell research, for instance, but nourishing doubts about whether the scientific promise we heard so much about a decade ago is being realized.

In documenting an apparent left-right difference in emotional reasoning about what is factually true, the new paper wades into a growing debate over what the Yale researcher Dan Kahan has labeled “ideological asymmetry.” This is the idea that one side of the political spectrum, more than the other, shows a form of biased or motivated assessment of facts–a view that Kahan rejects. Indeed, he recently ran a different study and found that liberals and conservatives were more symmetrical in their biases, albeit not on a live political issue.

The question of why some researchers find results seeming to support the left-right asymmetry hypothesis, even as others do not, remains unresolved. But the new paper by Liu and Ditto will surely sharpen it. Indeed, Kahan has already weighed in on the paper, acknowledging that it provides evidence in support of asymmetry, but observing that in his view, the evidence againstasymmetry from other research remains more weighty.

The upshot, for now, is that it’s hard to deny that all people engage in goal-directed reasoning, bending facts in favor of their moralities or belief systems. But–to butcher George Orwell–it may also be true that while all humans are biased by their prior beliefs and emotions, some humans are more biased than others.

Chris Mooney is the author of four books, including “The Republican War on Science” (2005). His next book, “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality,” is due out in April.

Related articles

• Study: Right twists facts (salon.com)
• Chris Mooney – Is the Right-Wing Psyche Allergic to Reality? A New Study Shows Conservatives Ignore Facts More Than Liberals (prn.fm)
• Conservatives Twist Facts To Support Preconceived Moral Notions, New Study Finds (failedmessiah.typepad.com)
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GOP Delegate Claims Disabled Children Are God’s Curse

GOP Delegate Bob Marshall Claims That Disabled Children Are God’s Punishment for Abortion

After his remarks set off a national controversy, Marshall tried to claim that he had somehow been misunderstood:

A story by Capital News Service regarding my remarks at a recent press conference opposing taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood conveyed the impression that I believe disabled children are a punishment for prior abortions. No one who knows me or my record would imagine that I believe or intended to communicate such an offensive notion[.] I regret any misimpression my poorly chosen words may have created[.]

But the video speaks for itself. Marshall explicitly stated that he believes God punishes women who have abortions by giving them disabled children. And then he backed up his claim with what he evidently considered to be evidence (and the gentleman to his left nodded in agreement).

Marshall is entitled to his offensive views, but he should not run from them.

It’s worth noting that Marshall has a history of saying offensive things – or being ‘misinterpreted.’

He said this about abortion in the case of rape: “[T]he woman becomes a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman.”

And he said this about contraception: “[W]e have no business passing this garbage out and making these co-eds chemical Love Canals for these frat house playboys in Virginia.”

Marshall was not the only one at last week’s press conference to say something completely ridiculous and offensive, or as Marshall calls it – creating a ‘misimpression.’

Rev. Joe Ellison said he agrees with Pat Robertson’s comments that Haitians brought the recent devastating earthquake on themselves by striking a deal with the Devil and practicing voodoo:

From a spiritual standpoint, we think the Dr. Robertson was on target about Haiti, in the past, with voodoo. And we believe in the Bible that the practice of voodoo is a sin, and what caused the nation to suffer. Those who read the Bible and study the history know that what Dr. Robertson said was the truth.

And let’s remember. These guys aren’t just some sideshow attraction in Virginia’s state capital. They hold sway with top Virginia Republicans, including Gov. Bob McDonnell, and are making gains in their war on the reproductive rights of Virginia women

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Religious Nutcase Kirk Cameron Causes The American Taliban To Drool

Kirk Cameron: “God IS the Platform”

The Christian Taliban movement

Wingnuts

Today’s moment of right wing religious fanaticism comes from former child star Kirk Cameron, who says, “one of our parties is wondering whether the name God should be in the platform,” but according to America’s founding fathers, “God is the platform!”

The crowd cheers this line in a very disturbing way.

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Why Are Conspiracy Theorists Bullshitters? How To Spot The Frauds!

8 Ways to tell a Conspiracy Theorist is really a Fraud

 As I have been observing conspiracy theories, and by extension, conspiracy theorists themselves. From my observations I’ve noticed that some of them may not be entirely truthful in what they believe, and that some of them may be out right frauds.

Here are eight ways to tell if a conspiracy theorist is a fraud:

1. Constant self promoter

It’s one thing for a conspiracy theorist to promote the conspiracy theories they believe in, it’s quite another for a conspiracy theorist to constantly promote their own materials and media concerning conspiracy theories they allegedly believe in.

The fact is, is that some people do make money off of promoting conspiracy theories, and some fraud conspiracy theorists do realize they can make lots of money creating and pedaling books and videos about conspiracy theories.

2. Tells people to ignore facts

While most legit conspiracy theorists will usually ask a person to examine all of the facts before asking you to conclude that they are right, a fraud conspiracy theorist will tell you to ignore any facts other then the “facts” that they present. Some even go so far as to call real facts disinformation. This is done as a way to discourage people from actually examining real facts, and by doing this a person might stop believing a certain conspiracy theory, and thus stop believe the fraud conspiracy theorist.

3. Constantly making up stuff

A fraud conspiracy theorist constantly makes up stuff, and then discards certain “information” when no one believes it any more, or no one really cares about it any more.

One of the main reasons this is done is because it keeps people coming back, wanting “new” information.

4. Claims to be withholding information until a later date

Many fraud conspiracy theorists claim they have “secret information” that they claim they are withholding until a later date. Most of the times this “information” isn’t even revealed at all, or the “information” that is revealed is actually false and made up, and sometimes not even new at all, just reworded.

5. Presents known fraud media as real

Some fraud conspiracy theorists will take documents, photos, and videos that are known to be fraudulent, some that were even created as a hoax in which to point out how gullible some conspiracy theorists are, and present such media as real and legit. Sometimes a fraud conspiracy theorist will even create the fraud media themselves.

6. Claims persecution, but presents no evidence

Many fraud conspiracy theorists claim they are being persecuted, but present no evidence what so ever that they are being persecuted, whether it be official legal documents, photos or videos showing they a being persecuted, or other credible eye witness backing up the claims of persecution.

7. Lying about credentials

Fraud conspiracy theorists will often times lie about their credentials, such as lying about military service, or about their education, or their expertise. This is done in order to make it seem that they know what they are talking about when they are discussing a conspiracy theory, and in hopes that the conspiracy theory they promote will seem more valid.

8. Unable to pass a lie detector test

One of the most likely ways to tell if a conspiracy theorist is a fraud is that they are unable to pass a lie detector test concerning the conspiracy theories that they promote, or they are unwilling to take a lie detector test concerning the “information” they present, or concerning whether or not they believe in what are promoting in the first place.

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What Is Confirmation Bias?

Confirmation Bias

via 59ways.blogspot.com

Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and look for what confirms one’s beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one’s beliefs. For example, if you believe that during a full moon there is an increase in admissions to the emergency room where you work, you will take notice of admissions during a full moon but be inattentive to the moon when admissions occur during other nights of the month. A tendency to do this over time unjustifiably strengthens your belief in the relationship between the full moon and accidents and other lunar effects.

This tendency to give more attention and weight to data that support our beliefs than we do to contrary data is especially pernicious when our beliefs are little more than prejudices. If our beliefs are firmly established on solid evidence and valid confirmatory experiments, the tendency to give more attention and weight to data that fit with our beliefs should not lead us astray as a rule. Of course, if we become blinded to evidence truly refuting a favored hypothesis, we have crossed the line from reasonableness to closed-mindedness.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that people generally give an excessive amount of value to confirmatory information, that is, to positive or supportive data. The “most likely reason for the excessive influence of confirmatory information is that it is easier to deal with cognitively” (Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life). It is much easier to see how data support a position than it is to see how they might count against the position. Consider a typical ESP experiment or a seemingly clairvoyant dream: Successes are often unambiguous or data are easily massaged to count as successes, while negative instances require intellectual effort to even see them as negative or to consider them as significant. The tendency to give more attention and weight to the positive and the confirmatory has been shown to influence memory. When digging into our memories for data relevant to a position, we are more likely to recall data that confirms the position.

Researchers are sometimes guilty of confirmation bias by setting up experiments or framing their data in ways that will tend to confirm their hypotheses.

More: Unnatural Acts that can improve your thinking: confirmation bias.

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Mitt Romney The Nutty Mormon Conspiracy Theorist

Mitt Romney Pushes “They’re Taking God Off Our Money” Conspiracy Theory in Virginia

Today, The Hill reports that at a campaign stop in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Mitt Romney was quoted as saying the following:

Mitt Romney weighed in for the first time on the Democratic platform initially removing the word ‘God,” saying that was something he would never do.

Mitt Romney, stumped.

Romney began a campaign appearance in Virginia Beach, Va. on Saturday by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before turning to the platform controversy.

‘That pledge says ‘under God,’ and I will not take God out of our platform,’ Romney said to cheers. ‘I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart.’

Is Mitt Romney still spreading a conspiracy theory from 2007, when e-mail rumors were circulating that “In God We Trust” was to be omitted from new U.S. dollar coins? A theory which Snopes found to be false? New U.S. dollar coins were designed with the motto “In God We Trust” omitted.

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Conspiracy Contradictions and The Monological Belief System

Conspiracy Contradictions

Why people who believe in one conspiracy are prone to believe others

ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, I spent several hours on a hot bus in a neon desert called Las Vegas with a merry band of British conspiracists during their journey around the Southwest in search of UFOs, aliens, Area 51 and government cover-ups, all for a BBC documentary. One woman regaled me with a tale about orange balls of energy hovering around her car on Interstate 405 in California, which were subsequently chased away by black ops helicopters. A man challenged me to explain the source of a green laser beam that followed him around the English countryside one evening.

Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience. A recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary that I participated in called Conspiracy Rising, for example, featured theories behind the deaths of JFK and Princess Diana, UFOs, Area 51 and 9/11, as if there were a common thread running throughout. According to radio host and conspiracy monger Alex Jones, also appearing in the film, “The military-industrial complex killed John F. Kennedy” and “I can prove that there’s a private banking cartel setting up a world government because they admit they are” and “No matter how you look at 9/11 there was no Islamic terrorist connection—the hijackers were clearly U.S. government assets who were set up as patsies like Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Such examples, along with others in my years on the conspiracy beat, are emblematic of a trend I have detected that people who believe in one such theory tend to believe in many other equally improbable and often contradictory cabals. This observation has recently been confirmed empirically by University of Kent psychologists Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton in a paper entitled “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science this past January. The authors begin by defining a conspiracy theory as “a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal” that is “notoriously resistant to falsification … with new layers of conspiracy being added to rationalize each new piece of disconfirming evidence.” Once you believe that “one massive, sinister conspiracy could be successfully executed in near-perfect secrecy, [it] suggests that many such plots are possible.” With this cabalistic paradigm in place, conspiracies can become “the default explanation for any given event—a unitary, closed-off worldview in which beliefs come together in a mutually supportive network known as a monological belief system.”

This monological belief system explains the significant correlations between different conspiracy theories in the study. For example, “a belief that a rogue cell of MI6 was responsible for [Princess] Diana’s death was correlated with belief in theories that HIV was created in a laboratory … that the moon landing was a hoax … and that governments are covering up the existence of aliens.” The effect continues even when the conspiracies contradict one another: the more participants believed that Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.

The authors suggest there is a higher-order process at work that they call global coherence that overrules local contradictions: “Someone who believes in a significant number of conspiracy theories would naturally begin to see authorities as fundamentally deceptive, and new conspiracy theories would seem more plausible in light of that belief.” Moreover, “conspiracy advocates’ distrust of official narratives may be so strong that many alternative theories are simultaneously endorsed in spite of any contradictions between them.” Thus, they assert, “the more that participants believe that a person at the centre of a death-related conspiracy theory, such as Princess Diana or Osama [bin] Laden, is still alive, the more they also tend to believe that the same person was killed, so long as the alleged manner of death involves deception by officcialdom.”

As Alex Jones proclaimed in Conspiracy Rising: “No one is safe, do you understand that? Pure evil is running wild everywhere at the highest levels.”

On his Infowars.com website, Jones headlines his page with “Because There Is a War on for Your Mind.” True enough, which is why science and reason must always prevail over fear and irrationality, and conspiracy mongering traffics in the latter at the expense of the former.

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Should Atheists Ignore Islamophobia?

• Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril
• By Chris Stedman

• 
• Chris Stedman is the Assistant Humanist Chaplain and Values in Action Coordinator for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His memoir, Faitheist, about his experiences as a former evangelical Christian, a queer person, and an atheist, is due out in 2012 from Beacon Press.
• When I first heard that a white supremacist opened fire on a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin a few weeks ago, I froze. My stomach lurched and my thoughts turned to the friends I’d made in the Sikh community through my work as an atheist and interfaith activist.

  In the wake of the horror I reached out to friends directly and logged on to Twitter to express my shock, outrage, disgust, and sadness—as a Millennial, I suppose you could say this is one way I engage in the collective processing of such traumas. Within minutes of my first tweet, I began to get responses from other atheists saying that interfaith work is bad, that I should be more concerned about atheists than Sikhs, and that “religion poisons everything.” The next day, I was called “a traitor” when I tweeted about efforts to raise funds to rebuild a mosque in Joplin, Missouri that was burned to the ground. When I tweeted about reaching out to the Sikh community and expressing solidarity, I was accused of trying to make atheism a religion.

  And I wasn’t alone in facing such criticism. When skeptic blogger Kylie Sturgess wrote a post about the Joplin mosque she was called “a terrorist” by a commenter.

  Of course, it’s hardly reasonable to be concerned solely on the basis of comments made by Internet “trolls.” Unfortunately, there are worrying indicators that public figures in the atheist movement are perpetuating and enabling a hostile stance toward Muslims—in many cases, above and beyond the criticisms they direct at other religious communities. One of the most widely-known atheists in the world, Bill Maher, for example, is alarmed by the number of babies being named Mohammed in the U.K., and said the following of Muslims and Islam: “What it comes down to is that there is one religion in the world that kills you when you disagree with them. They say, ‘Look, we’re a religion of peace and if you disagree we’ll cut your fucking head off.”

  In December of last year, the president of American Atheists posted a status update to his public Facebook profile that read: “Never give up a right without a fight. I will defame Islam if I want to. It doesn’t mean I hate Muslims. It means Islam is a shitty religion that worships a pedophile as morally perfect.” When I expressed my concern about those comments, atheist blogger JT Eberhard wrote the following:

  Islam is a shitty religion (more shitty than most, and try me if you don’t think we can defend that statement) and Muhammad was a pedophile, which has resulted in several Muslims continuing the practice. If Chris doesn’t like the word “shitty”, I wonder what adjective he would suggest. Horrible? Morally repugnant? Should we greet the anti-science, morally fucked up religion of Islam with an, “Oh shucks, that is pretty anti-humanity and doesn’t make much sense now does it?” How softly would be enough to get Stedman to relinquish his iron-clad grip on his pearls? Frankly, to call Islam shitty is like calling the surface of the sun warm.

  Later in the post he claimed to just be “factually criticizing” Islam and Muslims, but even if that were his aim, several of the claims he put forth about Islam and Muslims were not only false, but were framed in a way that is likely to inflame anti-Muslim sentiment. Another example is Ernest Perce V, the Pennsylvania State Director for American Atheists, notorious for a lawsuit resulting from his depiction of “zombie Muhammad” (the judge, who called Perce “a doofus” and ruled against him, was forced to relocate shortly after the ruling due to safety concerns over threats made against him). Perce has also made several statements that have inflamed anti-Muslim attitudes in Pennsylvania—his latest being that he plans to publicly flog a Koran on the Pennsylvania state capitol steps next month in protest of a state resolution to name 2012 the “Year of Religious Diversity.”

  There is No Such Thing as Islamophobia

  While these issues have been the subject of debate in segments of the atheist movement for some time, events this month have got me thinking about a new aspect of this issue: the problem of silence. As the Sikh community reeled from the tragedy in Oak Creek and prominent figures from a plethora of religious communities reached out to express their solidarity and sympathy, I was surprised that I didn’t see more notable atheists speak up. Browsing some of the most trafficked atheist blogs I saw that they posted little or nothing about the shooting—until Pat Robertson blamed atheists for the tragedy, an accusation that a sizable majority of atheist websites then addressed.

  RationalWiki, an atheist wiki featuring a newsfeed and articles like “Atheism FAQ for the Newly Deconverted,” contained no mention of the Sikh shooting, but it did list an instance where a Florida door-to-door salesman was shot, and noted the recent mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. PZ Myers, who is among the most visible atheist bloggers in the world, did write about the shooting twice, though one of his posts simply referenced the shooting as a way to condemn America’s “gun culture,” while the other focused on Pat Robertson’s comments. (Most of the more than 35 other dedicated bloggers on Freethought Blogs—a massive atheist blog network he co-founded—didn’t address it at all.)

  But while this silence is deeply troubling, I don’t want to suggest that, like some of those mentioned earlier, the atheist community at large necessarily has an Islamophobia problem—or that legitimate criticisms of Islam (or any other religions) constitutes Islamophobia. The problem, I think, lies in a lack of sensitivity to or awareness of the rampant Islamophobia sweeping our society. A key offender in this respect is bestselling atheist author Sam Harris.

  The day after the shooting in Wisconsin, Harris published a lengthy blog post decrying Internet trolls; bizarrely, though, he included yet another defense of his position that Muslims should face extra scrutiny at airports. He and I engaged in a back-and-forth about this issue earlier this year after he wrote a post where he first argued that “we should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.” In my response, I challenged his claims that talk of Islamophobia is “deluded” and that “there is no such thing as Islamophobia.” He responded, but largely neglected my concerns about Islamophobia.

  It was surely nothing more than poor timing on his part to publish his latest defense of profiling one day after a man opened fire on a community of Sikhs, who have frequently been on the receiving end of bigoted anti-Muslim profiling in the years since 9/11. (In fact, the first 9/11-related hate crime was the murder of a Sikh man named Balbir Singh Sodhi by a man shouting, “I’m a patriot!”) But while Harris may be convinced that he can parse arguments for profiling people who “look Muslim” from Islamophobia, the thing about words—especially words put forth by highly visible public intellectuals—is that they have consequences. Unintentional though they may be, such sentiments reinforce and perpetuate the broader cultural climate of Islamophobia. Terry Jones, who garnered worldwide attention for “International Burn a Koran Day,” indicated that he was directly inspired by “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” an event that was chiefly backed by atheists. And even when the corollaries aren’t so obvious, anti-Muslim attitudes seep into the culture, no matter where they originate.

  …With Liberty and Justice For All (Not Just Atheists)

  When incidents like these occur, I think of the ways in which principled religious criticism can easily devolve into unthinking prejudice. I can think of any number of examples from atheist conferences I’ve attended, such as the time I watched with dismay as attendees shouted “show us some ankle” at women wearing burkas for a satirical musical performance, or when a group of fundamentalist Muslim protesters was encircled by a crowd of hundreds of atheist conference attendees shouting things like “go back to the Middle East, you pedophiles.” We should be free to criticize all religions, Islam included, but that doesn’t mean we should feel free to deride and scorn its adherents.

  It should go without saying that this isn’t a problem with atheism, but it is a problem among atheists and it’s one that is being largely ignored. 9/11 is frequently lifted up as the genesis of “New Atheism,” and it’s not uncommon to see people at atheist conferences wearing shirts declaring that “9/11 was a faith-based initiative.” Popular atheist blogger Greta Christina has stated that she considers 9/11 the atheist Stonewall—a symbolic equivalent to a moment many regard as the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement. Statements such as this make me wonder if it’s perhaps more difficult for some segments of the atheist community to empathize with members of the Muslim community.

  Again, silence about the recent spike in bias and violence directed at Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs, and others isn’t a problem exclusive to the atheist community, but by neglecting to tackle it, the atheist movement is opting out of an important conversation about the mistreatment of certain minority groups in the United States. Figures in the atheist movement talk frequently about how our society should recognize the contributions and worth of atheists, and how everyone should decry rhetorical attacks against the nonreligious, but this argument falls flat when many atheists fail to extend that claim to other communities—especially ones facing frequent rhetorical and physical attacks.

  As a minority community in America’s religious milieu, it makes strategic sense for atheists to ally with Muslims, Sikhs, and others. But as a Humanist atheist, I feel a sense of moral obligation to stand up against identity-based hatred, no matter whom it’s directed at. Not only is it absurd to hope that people should care about the lack of acceptance for atheists in the United States without also hoping that society will similarly embrace other communities, it’s also selfish. Atheists who remain silent about Islamophobia aren’t just missing out on a strategic opportunity to highlight the parallels between their own experiences and those of other disenfranchised religious minorities—they’re opting out of an opportunity to do what is right, to take the moral high road, and to demonstrate what we keep telling the rest of the world: that atheists can be “good without God.”

  There’s been a great deal of discussion in the atheist movement recently about social justice focused on anti-atheist bias, sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, and more. These are, of course, crucial hurdles to overcome in the quest for human progress, but social justice should mean justice for all, including religious people. In fact, this is exactly what “social justice” means. From dictionary.com: “the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.”

  A recent study by philosopher Jeremy Stangroom may shed some light on why some atheists’ definitions of social justice don’t seem to include the religious. He found that 32% of atheist respondents felt that “they are not morally obliged to help somebody in severe need in India, even though to do so wouldn’t cost them much, compared to only 22% of Christians who respond the same way (a difference that is easily statistically significant).” He continued:

  In other words, the data shows that people who self-identify as Christians are considerably more likely to think there is a moral obligation to help somebody in severe need (in India) than people who self-identify as atheists…

  A possible (partial) explanation for this failure, supported by the data noted above, is that many (online) atheists don’t believe they have a strong moral obligation towards relatively anonymous or distant others, or don’t feel the pull of such an obligation even if they believe they have it (or think they believe they have it).

  Stangroom also noted another recent study that asked whether respondents would be willing to give a small donation to an overseas aid agency:

  The data shows that only 31% of people who self-identify as atheists respond that they are morally obliged to make such a donation, compared to 36% of people who self-identify as Christian, a difference that is statistically significant… Moreover, if we also look at people who also self-identify as Muslim and Jewish (i.e., as adherents of Judaism), then the gap between how atheists and people who self-identify as religious respond widens (31% to 38%).

  I wonder if one of the issues at work is that many atheists see Muslims, Sikhs, and other religious individuals as distant others. There are female atheists, queer atheists, and atheists of all different races and ethnicities, so social justice for women, LGBT folks, and racial and ethnic minorities is accessible—these issues impact many people in the atheist community. But what about people in other communities?

  If this is the case, then interfaith outreach and cooperation is imperative as it strives to decrease the distance between “others” and create opportunities for people to identify shared values and a sense of shared humanity—an understanding of identity that allows people to see another’s freedom and value as connected to their own.

  Beyond Tribalism

  Fortunately, there are indications of progress in this direction. A number of atheists did speak out against the shooting, and the conversation about positive engagement with the religious and the intersections of oppression is advancing. I was fortunate to witness cooperation between atheists and religious individuals in the week following the shooting when 25 atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Pagans, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others met at the Humanist Community at Harvard to attend a memorial for the shooting victims at a gurdwara in Medford, Massachusetts.

  An atheist in attendance told me that he had never experienced anything like it before, but perhaps the most moving sentiment came from a Christian minister who said during the memorial: “Personally, I am embarrassed that it’s taken a tragedy for me to come here and introduce myself to you.”

  All of us—atheist and religious—should consider it an embarrassment that there isn’t more goodwill and cooperation between religious communities and the nonreligious. There have been at least nine additional attacks on American Muslims and Sikhs in just the last couple of weeks since the gurdwara shooting, so no community can excuse their silence any longer.

  We can disagree about the veracity of religious claims, but I worry that these disagreements lead some atheists away from defending religious individuals against injustice (and, to be sure, many religious individuals and communities likewise neglect to extend their support to atheists in need). But if the atheist community doesn’t speak loudly against Islamophobia now, when will it?

  If too many are only willing to stand up against hate directed at ourselves and other members of our community, then we are not truly against hate or for social justice—we are merely for ourselves and for our community. Social justice cannot mean in-group tribalism, or it’s not justice at all.

Related articles

• Why Don’t More Atheists Speak Out Against Islamophobia? (patheos.com)
• Memo to Atheists in America: Don’t Ignore Islam (patheos.com)
• American Atheists’ Pennsylvania State Director Will Desecrate the Koran if ‘Year of the Bible’ Resolution Isn’t Dropped (patheos.com)
• Conventions leave atheists asking: What political party represents me? (wtvr.com)
• Jerry Brown signs law protecting Sikhs, Muslims, from workplace bias (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• NORTH CAROLINA: Atheist Billboards Near DNC Removed After Christian Threats (joemygod.blogspot.com)
• American Atheists Expresses Condolences for Sikh Community Following Shooting (patheos.com)
• The Banality Of Islamophobia (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Rise of Far Right Extremism In America

Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin raise an American flag before a service commemorating the victims of a mass shooting. A gunman who identified himself as a white supremacist went on a rampage during a Sikh service at Oak Creek, killing six people.

AP

Rise of far right in US aided by ‘perfect storm’

Omar Karmi

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WASHINGTON // Heated political rhetoric, economic hardships, changing demographics, anti-Islamic fervour and the first African-American president have all contributed to a “perfect storm” for the proliferation of extremist groups in America that some civil-rights groups are warning could become more violent.

Related

• ■ Gunman who killed six in US Sikh temple in ‘white supremacist’ band
• ■ Fight over Oklahoma Sharia ban loomed well before 9/11
• ■ Islamophobia increases since 9/11
• ■ ‘Post-racial’ US still far from being colour blind

The past two months have seen at least a dozen violent incidents involving religious establishments across America, including the massacre of six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most of the other incidents involved mosques and Islamic institutions. A mosque in Missouri was burnt to the ground, shots were fired at an Islamic school in Illinois and six other Islamic institutions were targeted in apparent acts of vandalism.

An Arab Christian church in Dearborn, Michigan, a Jewish holocaust memorial in New York and a synagogue in Florida were also vandalised.

If those acts suggest actions of the extreme political right, violence has also gone the other way. Last Wednesday, a man opened fire inside the Washington, DC, headquarters of a Christian conservative group, reportedly upset at its opposition to same-sex unions. A security guard was wounded.

Some fear more violence. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil-rights group that tracks extremists in America, said the Milwaukee killings did not surprise observers, who had been expecting some kind of copy-cat attempt after the shootings and bombings in Norway last July when Anders Breivik killed 77 people.

“I think we are at a very dangerous moment. There’s a kind of perfect storm of factors favouring the development of [extremist] groups and accompanying domestic terrorism.”

The SPLC has documented a nearly 70 per cent increase in the number of American extremist groups since 2000 and an “extraordinary” expansion – from 149 in late 2008 to 1,274 in 2011 – of so-called patriot movements, often loosely aligned anti-government groups that sometimes form armed militias.

Patriot militants were behind a string of domestic terrorism plots in the 1990s, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

The expansion coincides with the term of Barack Obama, the first African-American in the White House, but it is not necessarily a classic racist reaction, Mr Potok said. Rather, America’s First Family is visceral evidence of the fact that the country’s demographics are changing – 2011 was the first year in the United States in which non-white birth rates exceeded white birth rates, according to the US Census Bureau.

“Every white supremacist in America knows the census bureau has predicted that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in America by the year 2050.”

America’s slow recovery from its worst economic downturn since the depression of the 1930s and rhetoric that previously belonged on the fringe gaining more traction have also provided fertile ground for extremists, Frank Meeink, a former neo-Nazi and author of a memoir, The Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, said in a recent interview.

Mr Meeink joined skinhead gangs in the late 1980s. He said he sees many parallels between now and when Bill Clinton, another socially progressive Dempcratic president on civil-rights issues, took office in 1993 during an economic slump.

The difference, he said, is that rhetoric that used to belong to neo-Nazi groups has become more mainstream and is particularly evident in the language of the Christian Right and the Tea Party, where, he said, some of his former associates had ended up.

“The new lingo is calling everything ‘socialist’.And it’s almost the same as how neo-Nazis used to talk about Jews taking over the government.”

Adding fuel to the situation is the fact that unrestrained political rhetoric is seemingly becoming increasingly common in public places.

In New York City, for instance, posters citing “19,250 deadly Islamic attacks since 9/11/01. It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism” went up last Friday and will be visible for another three weeks.

Buses in San Francisco bear posters proclaiming: “In a war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad”.

Both are paid for by the American Freedom Defence Initiative, run by Pamela Geller, best known for her role in the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy in 2010 and part of a coterie of what Mr Potok described as “professional Islamophobes and the politicians willing to shill for them”.

The controversy over plans for an Islamic centre near the site of the World Trade Center in 2010 ushered in a year when anti-Sharia legislation began to appear in state legislatures across the country and congressional hearings into the “radicalisation” of America’s Muslims – which took place in early 2011 – were announced.

The same year also saw a 50 per cent spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes, according to FBI statistics, bucking a steady decline since 2002 when passions had settled after the attacks of September 11.

Robert Sellers, a professor at the Logsdon school of theology in Texas, warned of a “culture of Islamophobia” at the annual Baptist World Congress in late July.

“I trust that none of us wishes to sin against our neighbours by spreading fear and stereotypes,” Mr Sellers said, according to the Baptist Center’s Ethics Daily website.

Extreme rhetoric has an effect, Mr Potok said.

“When people make completely unsubstantiated and incredibly demonising statements about entire groups of people, they can’t be surprised when those people are subjected to criminal attacks

Related articles

• Institutionalized Islamophobia in US (nation.com.pk)
• Simran Jeet Singh: Another Sikh Murdered In Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Searching For a Cause (huffingtonpost.com)
• White Supremacist Committed Murders at Sikh Temple (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Gunman in Sikh temple attack was white supremacist (sacbee.com)
• Sikh temple shooter said to be white supremacist (washingtontimes.com)
• Sikh Temple Shooter Said to Be White Supremacist (usnews.com)
• Wisconsin Sikh temple holds first Sunday service since gunman killed 6 worshippers (democraticunderground.com)
• U.S.: Muslim Americans reach out to Sikhs (ionglobaltrends.com)
• The Threat Within: Racists In The Ranks (jeffwinbush.com)
• Nazi extremists infiltrate US military (rt.com)
• http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/dhss_right_wing_terror_blind_spot/
• http://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/wade_michael_page_islamophobia_unleashed/
• http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/08/u-s-political-leadership-critical-to-fighting-rising-islamophobia/
• http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/13/sikh-temple-shooting-returns-attention-to-military-s-white-power-problem.html
• https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/jewish-hatemonger-pamela-geller-linked-to-murder-crime-and-corruption/
• https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/pamela-geller-professional-hatemonger-freaks-out/
• https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/category/pamela-geller-hatemonger/

GOP Voters Find Watching Paint Dry More Exciting Than Mitt Romney’s RNC Speech

Romney’s RNC Speech Gets Lowest Gallup Rating Since 1996

Right wing fail

The new Gallup tracking poll shows that the GOP convention and Mitt Romney’s speech really got the voters all lukewarmed up.

These results, based on Gallup Daily tracking conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 1, showed predictable partisan differences. Republicans overwhelmingly said the convention made them more likely to vote for Romney, although most would likely be voting for their nominee anyway. Democrats as predictably said the convention made them less likely to vote for Romney. Independents, a key group in any presidential election, were essentially split, with 36% saying the convention made them more likely to vote for Romney and 33% less likely — although 30% said they don’t know or that the convention made no difference.

Gallup has asked this question after selected conventions going back to 1984. Although the question was asked at differing time intervals after the conventions and in different survey contexts, the results give a rough approximation of the conventions’ relative impact.

This historical context shows that the 2012 GOP convention generated about the same impact as the two previous Republican conventions — in 2008, when John McCain was nominated for president, and in 2004, when George W. Bush was re-nominated.

Related articles

• Gallup Poll: Romney Acceptance Speech Gets Lowest Ratings of Any Gallup Has Measured Since 1996 (themoderatevoice.com)
• Romney convention speech gets lowest positive rating since Gallup started tracking in 1996 (dailykos.com)
• Gallup: Romney’s convention speech lowest-ranked (cbsnews.com)
• Gallup Polls Show No Sign of Republican Bounce After Convention – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Gallup: Romney’s RNC Speech Polled Worse Than Any Since 1996 (mediaite.com)
• Gallup’s Editor: No Signs of Republican Convention Bounce for Romney Yet (Confirmed by Second Poll As Well) (themoderatevoice.com)
• Post-RNC FL poll: Romney gets no bounce, Clint’s speech flopped, Rubio rocked (miamiherald.typepad.com)

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks (Review)

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks (Review)

Posted by Darren

“This is Christmas!” the Doctor declares, addressing the Parliament of the Daleks early in the episode. Really, Christmas was merely the last time we saw him, but it’s been so long since the last new episode of Doctor Who that it does almost feel like Christmas. This year, showrunner Steven Moffat has promised big budget spectacle. There will be no two-parters and, instead, each instalment will feel like a forty-five-minute summer film. Asylum of the Daleks feels like a fairly efficient prototype for that storytelling model, while still perhaps hinting at the things to come as the Doctor enters his fiftieth year on British television.

Moffat’s crack at writing a Dalek episode…

This is really Moffat’s first attempt to write a “Dalek” episode. Sure, he’s written stories including the monsters before, like The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, but this is the first to focus solely on the genocidal maniacs and (arguably more importantly) the first with a title to include “… of the Daleks.” I think that’s fascinating, if only because – as a writer, Moffat has gravitated rather consciously towards what might be dubbed “his own thing.”

While Russell T. Davies would end his seasons by bringing back fan favourites like the Daleks or the Cybermen or the Master, Moffat has generally used the season finalé to round-out the year’s story-telling, to offer something a bit bold and perhaps a bit less obviously crowd-pleasing. So it’s interesting to see Moffat open a season with the most crowd-pleasing of Doctor Who monsters. It’s always fun to see a writer working outside their comfort zone, and it is very weird to see Moffat doing an entire episode based around a very classic concept, rather than something more distinctly his own.

Plunging into a new season with Matt Smith…

It’s very clear what Moffat wants to do here. As he outline in interviews before the series started, he wants to make the Daleks scary again:

Kids are supposedly frightened of Daleks but they take them to bed. Is there a way we can make them scarier, get them back to being more monstery? I hope they will leave them outside their bedroom doors, was my response to that. There is a tremendous temptation to go kitch and sweet with the Daleks. You shouldn’t. They are insane tanks.

Of course, there’s only so much a writer can do. The Daleks are, for better or worse, almost as deeply engrained in our popular consciousness as the good Doctor himself. You can use the word “Dalek”and everybody knows what you’re talking about. They aren’t treated as objects of fear in the collective mind, but objects of ridicule. The very word conjures up a (literal) tinpot dictator screaming nonsense in a shrill voice, often while spinning around uncontrollably.

Graveyard of the Daleks?

That’s not to suggest that it’s impossible to make the Dalek’s scare again. I think that, for all its faults, Dalek did a good job of that years ago. The problem is that you can’t keep them scary. They’ll always vary from episode-to-episode. After all, Russell T. Davies gave us the all-conquering Daleks of The Parting of the Ways and the campy sass-talkin’ Daleks of Doomsday. It really depends on the episode in question to sell the Daleks as a credible and convincing threat. I think it’s impossible to “rehabilitate” the collective cultural opinion of the monsters, if only because the BBC itself is the one pumping out plush Dalek teddy bears. Squeeze them and they say “Exterminate!”

In Hollywood, they say that you are only as good as your last movie. In television, the Daleks are only as good as their last episode. While it has – following this logic – been quite a while since they’ve been really good at all, Asylum of the Daleks does a pretty good job establishing the pepperpot maniacs as credible monsters in their own right, to the point that it feels much more like a Dalek mission statement than Victory of the Daleks, the first Dalek episode of the Moffat era. There, the episode seemed to exist merely to finally reverse Russell T. Davies’ repeated genocide of the creatures. Here, Moffat seems to work to make them actively scary.

Shining some light on the matter…

Asylum of the Daleks does open with the monsters at their lowest ebb. In a way, it follows the reverse arc of most Dalek episodes. In the past, Dalek episodes have introduced the creatures as serious threats, only for the Doctor to undermine them towards the end. Here, Moffat opens with the creatures looking almost pathetically weak. “Save us!” the Daleks chant as the teaser fades. “Save us! Save us! Saaaaaave us!” Our plucky heroine has been introduced seeming to keep an entire planet of Daleks at bay for over a year using nothing more than a few boards of wood, while being so blaisé about the monsters on her doorstep that she bakes soufflé.

However, over the course of Asylum of the Daleks, Moffat continually builds up the monsters as a threat in their own right. Both of those opening images are brutally subverted. Our survivor is not who she appears to be, and the Daleks actually plan to save a bit of bother by blowing up the Doctor with their asylum – killing two birds with one gigantic explosion. In a way, Moffat seems to set out the same thing that show set out to accomplish with Victory of the Dalekstwo years ago.

One flew over the Daleks’ nest…

That episode also began with the Daleks at their weakest possible point (“WOULD! YOU! CARE! FOR! SOME! TEA?!”) and then sought to reveal them as a grand galactic threat in their own right. The notions seemed to be that you might elevate their stock by allowing the monsters to “win one” for a change. However, the episode was somewhat undermined by the fact that it interpretted “win one” as “produce a bunch of toyetic new models and run off like cowards into outer space.” It was more Stalemate of the Daleks than Victory of the Daleks.

The ending of Asylum of the Daleks feels a more successful one for the monsters. They don’t get to kill the Doctor, but they do succeed in getting him to do their dirt work. They accomplish their goals, but miss out on the perk of killing him. The Doctor doesn’t “win”by any stretch. He loses a new friend in a rather brutal manner. He just about manages to avoid losing at least one of his companions.

Primed and ready for action…

Indeed, the closest thing to a victory he earns in confronting his foes is the fact that they don’t remember who he is. (Incidentally, preventing them from planting another of their brutal traps – next time presumably intending to kill him.) While it isn’t a clear victory for either side, the Daleks emerge as a much more credible threat going forward.

There are, of course, other very “Moffat” ideas that exist to enhance the scare factor of these most iconic of monsters. The notion of Daleks that have literally hallowed out human beings so that they could live inside is a terrifying one. It’s a creepy image, especially as the eye-stalk does emerge through a clean portal, but instead breaks the skin, evoking Ridley Scott’s Alien for a family friendly audience. Indeed, the line that they come “still only at night” feels like a shout-out to Newt in Aliens.

They’ve really cornered the market…

While those creepy human-Daleks are introduced early on, it’s the notion of the “nano-cloud” that makes the monsters so unsettling in a way that they haven’t been in a while – the fact that they can animate any matter – “living or dead” – in their own image is much creepier than people on Dalek ships in weird fetish gear. The thought that they can “subtract love and add hate” without you really realising it is unsettling, as is the notion that you might be a Dalek without even realising it.

In fact, the early part of the episode does a wonderful job of exploring the relationship between the Doctor and the Daleks. It’s fascinating how clearly they seem to understand each other, while completely failing to grasp the most essential facets. The Doctor understands the Daleks are bred to hate, and knows the plan that they have concocted to simultaneously wipe out him and the rogue elements. However, he’s aghast at they “divine hatred” that they see as “beautiful.”

Tough crowd…

At the same time, they seem to understand him quite well. Perhaps, in some ways, even better than he does himself. They bring Rory and Amy along, if only because, as they state, “the Doctor requires companions.” It’s a truth that the character himself seems to be denying at the moment – and experience has taught us that he lacks the self-awareness to see that this is a very bad thing. And still, despite their understanding of him, they fail to grasp that he will inevitably escape because… well, that’s what he does.

It’s interesting that Moffat actually takes the time to reverse the direction that Russell T. Davies took the Daleks. I like the revelation that he is “the Predator of the Daleks”, and I love the fact that the interplay between the Doctor and the Daleks in this reluctant team-up reveals so much of each. (“This conversation is irrelevant!” serving as perhaps the most obvious expression of the philosophical conflict between the two.) So it’s interesting that Moffat takes the time to effectively re-write that dynamic, erasing the Doctor from the Daleks’ memory banks.

(Eye) stalking their prey…

To be fair, maybe he has a point. Maybe that dynamic ha splayed a part in humbling the creatures – making them too casual and too familiar to the Doctor. After all, it’s hard to construct a credible threat when they shake in their little space boots at the very mention of his name. So now they meet as equals. It’s quite similar to how Moffat used the “tear” to quietly tidy up his predecessor’s continuity. I also love how the Doctor seems almost insulted as he asks, “You made them forget me?!”

That seems like it might be a nod to the series’ fiftieth anniversary, coming up. The episode leans pretty heavily on the notion of legacy and memory. There’s the discussion between Rory and Amy about kids, which is quite a potent piece of drama for a family show, but also the fact that the Daleks forget the Doctor and the final plea, “Remember me! Remember me!” (Speaking of which, how weird was it to hear Nicholas Briggs speaking in his Dalek voice in an almost conversational manner? The man’s vocal performances continue to impress.)

Alone with every genocidal pepperpot…

Of course, Moffat’s re-writing of Dalek history does raise a few questions, retroactively. After all, the opening sequence has the Daleks efficiently corralling the Doctor in a fiendish plan. It’s a fantastic reversal of their needless complex schemes that often end up backfiring, portraying the monsters as strong and ruthless. However, it begs the question of why – if the Doctor is such a pain – they never did this to simply exterminate him in the first place? The nano-cloud is a brilliant idea, but it makes it seem a bit strange it never came up before. Still, that’s something for others to figure out. It works well here, and it makes them a pretty convincing threat. And that is undoubtedly the most important thing.

It also feels a bit strange to meet “the Parliament of the Daleks” with the “Prime Minister” at its head. What do they do, sit around and talk exterminating policy? Do they hold constituency elections? Is there a Dalek election by-law? I really liked the “Holy Dalek Emperor” from The Parting of the Ways, but I always saw the Daleks as a distinctly fascist species.  (In fact, Moffat’s reference to “divine hatred”seems to reference that most daring and most wonderful of Davies’ take on the monsters.)

If David Tennant were around, I would make a “Beam me up, Scotty” reference here…

Even using terms associated with democracy feels kinda strange in relation to the creatures. Did they vote on the plan to coopt the Doctor? Still, it’s not a problem, just a small element that feels a little out of place. I can’t help but wonder if Moffat was trying a bit of blunt social satire, like he did in The Beast Below.

The episode’s twist also feels just a little bit familiar. After all, Moffat did the “person-isn’t-really-a-person” twist not too long ago, in Silence in the Library, another story of a girl interacting with the Doctor’s adventures from a secure location who turns out to be part of some ghastly mechanised operation, with an element of tragedy concerning the state of her humanity in this altered and distorted form.

Come to a dead stop…

I will confess to being a bit disappointed (as I was in Closing Time) with the revelation that Amy became a model. It’s a shame that character has been defined by jobs that involve her looking appealing to men. Not to suggest, of course, that there is anything wrong with Amy enjoying a career as a model, it just seems that her skillset has not really evolved. She’s still defined by her job as “really, really good looking”, albeit just in a less sleazy context.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to seem puritanical or anything. However, it seems strange that the recurring theme of the new series has been that the Doctor has allowed his companions to grow as individuals through their interactions. Rose became a super extra-dimensional secret agent. Martha became a kick-ass medical professional and alien invasion specialist. The great tragedy of Donna was that she was eventually denied the growth that stemmed from her time with Doctor. So it feels strange that Amy’s character development is measured in becoming a “pretty face”on a billboard.

Carry on regardless…

That said, it’s interesting that Moffat chose to have Amy and Rory break up. Of course, it’s inevitable the pair will get back together, but I like the idea that largely adult concerns – well, almost – could come between the two. The notion of a couple being unable to conceive feels quite an adult development. Of course, Amy’s decision to kick Rory out instead of actually talking about or dealing with it is undoubtedly childish. That said, it feels like a place to begin a second character arc for the pair. Amy has still not quite “grown up” enough to deal with these adult problems in a mature manner, so it feels appropriate that her “raggedy Doctor” has returned to help her through it.

Still, it’s great to have the team back. And it’s certainly a blockbuster start to the year. The sequence with the Dalek missiles destroying the asylum did look a bit gnaff in an eighties sort of way, but the rest of the production was pretty stylish. I especially like how Moffat effectively structured the episode like a James Bond or Mission: Impossible type plot, with the teasure spent putting the gang together, only for the group to be tasked with a nigh-impossible task. It does go a long way towards adding a cinematic feeling to proceedings, which seems to be what Moffat is trying to do. It’s really quite effective tea-time telly.

Graveyard of the Daleks?

While I certainly hope that we might get something a bit quieter at some point this year (or next), it certain accomplishes what it set out to do. If they can do twelve more of these, I’ll be very impressed. It’s a great way to ring in a fiftieth anniversary.

Related articles

• Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks (Series 07, Episode 01) Review (geeksyndicate.wordpress.com)
• “Asylum of the Daleks” Review (SPOILERS APLENTY) (nerdist.com)
• REVIEW: Doctor Who – Asylum of the Daleks (comeonpond.wordpress.com)
• Doctor Who Review 7.1 – ‘The Asylum of the Daleks’ (houseofgeekery.com)
• Thoughts on “Asylum of the Daleks” (asuccessionofbusynothings.wordpress.com)
• Doctor Who Season 7: 5 Questions About “Asylum Of The Daleks” (spinoff.comicbookresources.com)
• Recap and Chat: Doctor Who 7×01 – Asylum of the Daleks (abigpicturewindow.wordpress.com)
• Doctor Who returns with the crazy ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ (rymanonfilm.wordpress.com)
• Asylum of the Daleks (review) (everything2.com)

Conservative Islamist Fanatic Seeks Death of Crippled Girl

Rao Abdur Raheem: The Militant Lawyer Who Wants Disabled Christian Girl Dead

‎Via:-| Richard Bartholomew

From the Guardian:

A lawyer representing the man who accused a Pakistani Christian girl of blasphemy has said that if she is not convicted, Muslims could “take the law into their own hands”.

Rao Abdur Raheem cited the example of Mumtaz Qadri, the man who last year shot dead a politician who had called for reform of the much-abused blasphemy law.

…Raheem said he had taken on the case for free because he was convinced that Masih should be punished. “This girl is guilty. If the state overrides the court, then God will get a person to do the job,” he said.

I’ve written about Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, and their baleful consequences, previously. The current case, however, is particularly egregious; the accused girl, Rimsha Masih, reportedly has a learning disability. Raheem, however, is unconcerned about this: her medical assessement, he claims, was “illegal” and should not be taken into consideration.

In December 2010, Raheem created a self-described “lawyers’ forum”, called the Movement to Protect the Dignity of the Prophet; according to the New York Times, the group produced a petition in support of Qadri which was signed by a 1,000 lawyers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Members of the group also reportedly ”greeted Mr. Qadri’s… court appearances by throwing rose petals”. The NY Times noted:

…The lawyers’ stance is perhaps just the most glaring expression of what has become a deep generational divide tearing at the fabric of Pakistani society, and of the broad influence of religious conservatism — and even militancy — that now exists among the educated middle class.

They are often described as the Zia generation: Pakistanis who have come of age since the 1980s, when the military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, began to promote Islam in public education and to use it as a political tool to unify this young and insecure nation.

Raheem has also turned his attention to the internet and the US embassy; the Express Tribune reported in May that:

Margalla police station registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Facebook and three other websites under sections 295-A and 298-A of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) on the directions of Additional Sessions Judge Kamran Basharat Mufti. The application had been submitted by the Namoos-e-Risalat Lawyers Forum (NRLF).

One of the complainants, Advocate Rao Abdur Rahim, told The Express Tribune that they had been informed in July 2011 that Facebook and a few other websites had been posting ‘blasphemous’ posts on their websites and the material was being uploaded from inside Pakistan.

…”We gave three applications: one against Payam TV for telecasting a movie ‘Yousaf’, one against Facebook and three other websites and one against the US embassy in Islamabad for organising a gathering of gays and lesbians,” the petitioner said.

Yousaf is actually an Urdu television serial, telling the Koranic version of the story of the Biblical Joseph. Episodes can be found on YouTube.

Raheem has a Facebook page, consisting for the most part of jpegs of urdu documents. His group also has a Facebook page, under the spelling “Namos E Risalat Lawyers“, where a booklet in support of Pakistan’s blasphemy law has been posted. Hypocritically, both pages carry material condemning the violence of militant Buddhist monks in Burma (a subject I looked at here).

There’s also a YouTube channel related to the group, under the name “nrlfp50″ (The booklet on the group’s Facebook page includes a reference to a website, “nrlfp.com”, which is currently defunct). One of the videos posted is footage of a rally in support of the murderer Qadri:

UPDATE (2 September): Rimsha had been handed over to the police by a local imam; the AFP reported on 24 August:

Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti, the imam of the mosque in the Islamabad suburb of Mehrabad, insisted he had saved the girl, Rimsha, from mob violence by handing her to police but said the incident arose because Muslims had not stopped local Christians’ “anti-Islam activities” earlier.

Yesterday, it was reported that Chishti “has called for the law to be followed to its conclusion, even if that means the girl is executed”. However, his enthusiasm for having alleged blasphemers executed may perhaps now have cooled somewhat:

Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti appeared in court on Sunday after witnesses claimed to have seen him adding pages of the Qur’an to a bag of ashes Rimsha Masih had been carrying away for disposal last month in order to strengthen the case against her.

…Tahir Naveed Chaudhry from the All Pakistan Minority Committee said it had always maintained that evidence was planted on her.

“And now it is proved that the whole story was only designed to dislocate the Christian people,” he said. “He must be prosecuted under the blasphemy law as it will set a precedent against anyone else who tries to misuse that law.”

Rao’s bloodlust, though, remains undiminished:

“Our case is totally separate from the case against Chishti,” he said. “The man who accused him of adding pages from the Qur’an also confirmed that Rimsha burned a book containing verses from the Qur’an.”

Related articles

• Rao Abdur Raheem: The Militant Lawyer Who Wants Disabled Christian Girl Dead (barthsnotes.com)
• Pakistan blasphemy case: ‘Muslims could take law into their own hands’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Pakistani mullah accused of trying to frame girl in blasphemy case (guardian.co.uk)
• Cleric held in blasphemy case – iAfrica.com (news.iafrica.com)
• Blasphemy case: Pak imam held for ‘implicating’ Christian girl- #Rimshacase (kractivist.wordpress.com)
• Delay in Pakistan blasphemy case (edition.cnn.com)
• Pakistani mullah ‘planted charred texts’ on girl accused of blasphemy (guardian.co.uk)
• Pakistani Imam Faces Blasphemy Charge – Sky News (news.sky.com)
• Pakistani cleric Chisti may face blasphemy charges (arabtimesonline.com)
• Talk of violence against Rimsha worries her lawyer (hopeforthisworld.wordpress.com)

Looney Religious Right Promotes Fake “Crucifixion” | Religious Hoaxes

Jonathan Kay: Egypt’s “crucifixion” hoax becomes an instant Internet myth

Jonathan Kay | Aug 22, 2012 12:53 PM ET | Last Updated: Aug 25, 2012 9:31 PM ET More from Jonathan Kay | @jonkay

PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty ImagesAn Egyptian anti-government demonstrator holds a cross and the Koran at Cairo’s Tahrir Square back in 2011.

Have you heard the one about how Christians are being nailed up on crucifixes and left to die in front of the Egyptian presidential place?

It’s a story worth dissecting — not because it’s true (it isn’t), but because it is a textbook example of how the Internet, once thought to be the perfect medium of truth-seeking, has been co-opted by culture warriors as a weapon to fire up the naïve masses with lies and urban legends.

The Egyptian crucifixion story gained critical mass five days ago, when WorldNetDaily, a popular right-wing web site that promotes anti-gay and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories from an Evangelical perspective, published a story entitled “Arab Spring run amok: [Mulsim] Brotherhood starts crucifixions.”

“The Arab Spring takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood has run amok, with reports from several different media agencies that the radical Muslims have begun crucifying opponents of newly installed President Mohammed Morsi,” author Michael Carl declared. “Middle East media confirm that during a recent rampage, Muslim Brotherhood operatives ‘crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.’ ”

The article quickly went viral. It has been tweeted thousands of times, and has 14,000 Facebook “likes.” Education is apparently no defence against this sort of web-peddled nonsense: Some of the people who credulously sent me a link to the article in recent days included an Ivy League-educated U.S. lawyer, and a former Canadian Senator. Britain’s Daily Mail reported the story, as did thousands of blogs.

It is, of course, theoretically possible that Muslim radicals truly have “crucified” someone, somewhere, sometime, in Egypt. Islamist mobs have staged countless murderous attacks on Copt “infidels” in recent years — and a crucifixion would hardly be a more barbarous tactic than truck bombs and beheadings.

But the story doesn’t just allege that a crucifixion has taken place somewhere in Egypt: It alleges that multiple crucifixions have taken place in front of the presidential palace. That would be the equivalent of, say, mass lynchings taking place in front of the White House, or a giant gang rape taking place in front of Ottawa’s Centennial Flame fountain.

“If that happened, wouldn’t someone, you know, take a picture?” I asked one of the friends who emailed me the WorldNetDaily link. Maybe just a few shots with a cell phone camera from one of the tens of thousands of people who no doubt would have witnessed this Biblical horror in one of the most densely trafficked patches of real estate in the entire Arab world?

And yet, not one of the stories I saw had a photo — or even names or descriptions of any of the supposed crucifixion victims. So I decided to check out the “several different media agencies” that supposedly have reported the crucifixion story.

WorldNetDaily, and other sites that are reporting the story, all trace the claim of multiple Arabic sources to a Jewish web site called algemeiner, which has published its own highly-trafficked article on the subject, and to something called The Investigative Project on Terrorism. Like the cited Arabic sources, they in turn base their claims on reports from Sky News Arabic — a recently formed joint venture between BSkyB and Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp. Sky is supposedly the original source on the story, everyone agrees. Yet neither algemeiner nor WND nor any of the other sources supply the original Sky reporting that purportedly outlines the facts.

That’s because there is no Sky report on the subject.

Yesterday I contacted the management of Sky News Arabic, and asked them about the crucifixions. According to Fares Ghneim, a Sky communications official, the crucifixion claim “began on social media. It started getting pick-up from there and eventually reached us.”

“Our reporters came across reports of the alleged crucifixions and a story very briefly appeared on the Sky News Arabia website,” he added. “The story — which was taken down within minutes — was based on third-party reports and I am not aware that any of our reporters said or confirmed anything along the lines of what is quoted in the article [by WorldNetDaily] … What’s unclear is where websites in North America got [the] Sky News Arabia bit from. As mentioned [previously], none of our correspondents confirmed this issue or commented on it. Clearly there is an intermediate source the websites got the info from, but as of yet we haven’t been able to identify it.”

Nevertheless, web surfers already had begun sourcing the story to Sky, at which point it went viral in portions of the Arabic media, and then on U.S. Christian web sites, and pro-Israel blogs. And thus was born an Internet urban legend. (Update: In response to my article, WND has posted a new article claiming they have confirmed the original Sky report — but the only relevant new evidence produced is an obscure Youtube video produced by a third party, which purports to reproduce text from the deleted Sky web story).

Enter the terms Brotherhood crucifying 2012 into Google and you get numerous hits, the most prominent being the articles I have discussed in this column. Every single one of them swallows this made-up story whole. Indeed, some are even more emphatic than the original WorldNetDaily story, such as a well-trafficked Free Republic headline that claims, plainly, “Muslim Brotherhood Are Crucifying People.”

Such sites also have carried other nonsense articles about the Muslim Brotherhood, such as that it plans to blow up the pyramids — which the New York Times thankfully took pains to debunk back in July. Yet till now, no one (that I can tell) has taken the time to investigate or debunk the crucifixion tale, even though it only took a few emails to Sky to show that it was bunk. (Ordinary Egyptians also could have helped debunk the story. Here’s how one Copt put it in an email to WorldNetDaily: “I am an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox, i.e. Egyptian Christian, my mother and members of my family live within a stone throw from the presidential palace. I talk to my mother every other day. If something like what you mentioned in your article took place, she [would] be the first one to know.”)

Why do so many people believe this made up story? For the same reason that people believe all urban legends — because they play to some deeply held narrative that resides in our deepest fears. In this case, the narrative is that the Arab Spring is part of an orchestrated Islamist plot to destroy Western civilization (beginning with Israel). Believers in this narrative (who are especially numerous in America’s right-wing Evangelical circles) are so hungry for news items that purport to offer confirmation that they ignore the credibility of the messengers. If they had checked out the credibility of WorldNetDaily, for instance, they would have found that the site’s past “scoops” have included the claim that drinking soy milk makes you gay, and that Barack Obama himself is gay (presumably from aforesaid soy milk).

As James Callaghan once put the old adage, “a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” He was British PM back in the 1970s, decades before the Internet expedited the process. These days, the truth doesn’t even bother rousing itself from bed. It just turns over its sleep, and puts a pillow over its exposed ear to drown out the nonsense from the world’s web-enabled conspiracists.

AUGUST 24 UPDATE Earlier this week, I debunked the story — spreading like wildfire on WorldNetDaily and other Internet sites — that Christians were being crucified by the Muslim Brotherhood in front of Egypt’s presidential palace. As I noted, the story was based on nothing more than a social-media rumor that had been posted for a few minutes on the Web site of Sky News Arabic, before an alert Sky editor deleted it. From that small seed of nonsense, it traveled far and wide, as such urban legends do in the Internet age.

In response to my debunking, WorldNetDaily published a new article purporting to “confirm” the original crucifixion story. But the only relevant new evidence WND provides is a link to a video that purports to show the deleted text from the Sky web site. Since I already reported the existence of the original, short-lived Sky article, I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove. (More generally, the article also supplies links to Arabic-media images of people who have been brutalized — allegedly at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. I have no reason to doubt that these photos are genuine. But as I made abundantly clear in my original article, I don’t dispute that Egypt’s hardcore Islamists are a nasty lot. My article was limited to debunking the crucifixion claim. And none of the photos provided show any hint of crucifixion.)

Over the last day or so, I have had an ongoing email correspondence with Michael Carl, the WND reporter who wrote the crucifixion article. He tells me he is sticking by his story. When I asked him if he has “any information from any of the tens of thousands of people who would have seen an actual ‘crucifixion’ if one really did take place in front of the presidential palace,” he told me that he had. Tantalized, I pressed him for details. Alas, he refused to divulge any of the evidence to me — or anyone else. If he did, he explained, the Muslim Brotherhood “would kill my sources.” And so ended our correspondence.

More enlightening than my emails with Father Carl (he describes himself as a priest, as well as a reporter), was a note I got from a reader pointing out that this is not the first time that Islamists in the region have been falsely accused of crucifixions.

As Nathan J. Brown pointed out in early 2009, on the web site of the Carnegie Endowment, an internet rumor circulated in late 2008 to the effect that Hamas was “celebrating” Christmas by crucifying Gaza’s non-Muslims. And amazingly, it wasn’t just the conspiracy theorists at WND who got sucked into this one. According to Brown, it was featured in blogs connected to such respectable publications as The New Republic, National Review and Commentary. Even the Simon Wiesenthal Center was pushing the story.

Here is the real story, as Brown describes it:

Some officials of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Justice (answering to Hamas) have been drafting a new criminal code based on Islamic criminal law. They have not released its work (at least outside of Gaza), but they did hold a workshop to discuss a draft. A copy of this document fell into the hands of a reporter for the Arabic daily al-Hayat. While that newspaper is generally reliable enough, the reporter made a significant mistake: He thought the draft had been fully and finally passed by the parliament, not that it was the subject of a small group discussion. And he quoted from some passages in the law — including the title of a section dealing with categories of punishment that mentioned crucifixion (a legal category in Islamic criminal law). There was no evidence that the law went beyond using the term as a legal category. And since the reporter did quote some fairly strong provisions in other areas it seems unlikely that he would have missed the opportunity to mention any actual provisions for crucifixion. The small (and mistaken) article in al-Hayat was picked up by the Jerusalem Post (it also circulated in some Arabic media outlets) which — in perhaps the only glimmer of responsible journalism in this strange episode — added that it could not confirm the report. But that qualification got lost. So did the explanation from Hamas legal officials that no law had been passed. One Israeli activist working hard to circulate the charge (Itamar Marcus) actually went so far as to cover up his mistake by claiming that the Hamas denial (which was actually quite accurate) was simply a “lie” … And so columnists (generally on the right side of the political spectrum) began to claim that Hamas had legislated crucifixion — in the more lurid report — for any “unbelievers,” “enemies of Islam,” or even Christians. And few could resist mentioning that the timing coincided with Christmas.

The people reporting this false story were not deliberately lying. As I noted in my original post, they have simply become so wrapped up in the idea that we are fighting an existential war against militant Islam, that they are willing to believe any nonsense story they come across without checking it. If it sounds like it could be true, then it must be.

The first casualty of war, as always, is truth.

National Post jkay@nationalpost.com Twitter @jonkay

Related articles

• Jonathan Kay: Sinai terrorists only manage to isolate Gaza further (fullcomment.nationalpost.com)
• This Week in Conspiracy (26 Aug 2012) (skepticalhumanities.com)
• Jonathan Kay: The Arafat probe is fuel for anti-Israel conspiracy theorists (oyiabrown.com)
• Did the Muslim Brotherhood Crucify its Opponents? (asenseofbelonging.org)

Jewish Pedophile Son To Make Rebbe | Jewish Religious Perverts

Even Pedophile Son Will Be A Rebbe

The will of the Shomrei Emunim Rebbe, Avrohom Chaim Roth, was read Saturday night. In the will, the rebbe ordered that all of his sons should become rebbes in their own right – even the son currently in prison for pedophilia.

The late Shomrei Emunim Rebbe, Avrohom Chaim Roth

Yeshiva World reports that the will of the Shomrei Emunim Rebbe, Avrohom Chaim Roth, which was read Saturday night, orders that all of his sons – even his son in prison – should become rebbes in their own right:

The rebbe instructed all of his sons to serve as rebbes, including the  one in prison, adding they are not to take on the leadership role until  his release, which should be in the coming months.

What is the rebbe’s son in prison for?

Apparently for child sexual abuse, rape, sodomy, obstruction of justice and incest.

In an interview published last fall, the Shomrei Emunim Rebbe referred to President Obama as a “black dog” and “Arab”:

Why all the nations, headed by the ‘black dog’ (the term used by the  Rebbe for US President Barak Obama), an Arab too, and he was elected  because he stood for assisting the Arab conspiracy, standing firmly  together against Israel.

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