On the importance of the right to offend

On the importance of the right to offend

–   By Kenan Malik   – Thursday,   30th January 2014

The Jesus & Mo image tweeted by Maajid Nawaz and later censored on Channel 4 News

This article is cross-posted from Kenan Malik’s blog Pandaemonium

‘Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch’. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about the Jesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for tweeting one of the cartoons, not finding them offensive. Channel 4 decided that they were offensive and could not be shown. It would have been bad enough had the channel decided simply not to show the cartoon. What it did was worse. It showed the cartoon – but blanked out Muhammad’s face (and only Muhammad’s face). In the context of a debate about whether Nawaz had been right to tweet the cartoon in the first place, or whether his critics were right to hound him for ‘offending’ Muslims, it was an extraordinary decision. The broadcaster had effectively taken sides in the debate – and taken the side of the reactionaries against the liberal.

There has been something quite surreal about the whole controversy over Maajid Nawaz and his refusal to be offended by the Jesus and Mo cartoons. A one-time Islamist turned anti-extremist campaigner, Nawaz is a founder of the Quilliam Foundation, dedicated to combating Islamic extremism, and Liberal Democrat PPC for Hampstead and Kilburn. Two weeks ago he took part in the BBC’s Big Questions programme, in which there was a debate about religious offence. The programme discussed an incident at the LSE Fresher’s Fair when two students from the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society were forced to cover up the ‘Jesus and Mo’ t-shirts they had been wearing. (The LSE later apologized to the students for its heavy-handed reaction.) For those who don’t know, Jesus and Mo is a cartoon strip featuring Jesus and Muhammad sharing a house and discussing religion, philosophy and politics, with each other and sometimes with an atheist barmaid down the pub. It is clever, witty and, of course, irreverent

Nawaz insisted on the show that he found nothing offensive about the cartoons. ‘I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it’, he observed. Astounded by the fact that BBC had refused to show the cartoons on air, Nawaz later tweeted an image of one to once again make the point that there was nothing offensive about it. At which point all hell broke lose.

Fellow Liberal Democrat Mohammed Shafiq organized an international campaign to hound Nawaz for causing ‘immense offence and disrespect to the religious beliefs and sentiments’ of Muslims. A petition was set up calling for Nawaz’s deselection. The activist, ‘community leader’ and prolific tweeter Mohammed Ansar joined the campaign against Nawaz, urging people to sign the petition (though absurdly he also insists that he neither finds the cartoons offensive nor necessarily wants Nawaz sacked; that apparently is ‘nuance’). Nawaz has received a torrent of abuse on social media and a sackful of death threats.

There is something truly bizarre (and yet in keeping with the zeitgeist of our age) that someone should become the focus of death threats and an international campaign of vilification for suggesting that an inoffensive cartoon was, well, inoffensive.

From the Rushdie affair to the controversy over the Danish cartoons, from the forcing offstage of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti to the attempt this week by members of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to shut down the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Bible: The Complete Word Of God (a decision thankfully later reversed), reactionaries have often used campaigns against ‘offence’ as a political weapon with which to harass opponents and as a means of bolstering their community support. The anti-Nawaz campaign is no different. Mohammed Shafiq and Mohammed Ansar both have had public spats with Nawaz, and both are cynically exploiting the claim of ‘offensiveness’ to reclaim political kudos.

What gives the reactionaries the room to operate and to flex their muscles is, however, the pusillanimity of many so-called liberals, their unwillingness to stand up for basic liberal principles, their fear of causing offence, their reluctance to call so-called community leaders to account. This is why Channel 4’s stance was so obnoxious. The broadcaster’s role is not to take sides in these debates. It is to tease out the arguments, and to stand by basic journalistic principles, including the principle of free speech. What Channel 4 did was the very opposite. It abandoned its journalistic principles, refused to stand up for free speech and took sides with the reactionaries. The Liberal Democrats themselves have been equally spineless. Though some have publicly defended Nawaz, leading figures have been noticeably reluctant to stick their necks out. It took almost a week before party leader Nick Clegg put out a statement, and then a relatively bland one, urging both sides to play nicely.

Such backsliding liberals need reminding of some basic points about liberalism, free speech and the giving of offence:

1 There is a right to free speech. There is no right not to be offended

People have the right to say what they wish, short of inciting violence, however offensive others may find it. Others have the right not to listen or to watch. Nobody has the right to be listened to. And nobody has the right not to be offended.

2 It is minority communities who most suffer from censorship

Many people argue that while free speech may be a good, it must necessarily be less free in a plural society. For diverse societies to function and to be fair, so the argument runs, we need to show respect not just for individuals but also for the cultures and beliefs in which those individuals are embedded and which helps give them a sense of identity and being. This requires that we police public discourse about those cultures and beliefs, both to minimise friction between antagonistic groups and to protect the dignity of those individuals embedded in them. As the sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, that ‘If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism.’

In fact, it is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In such a society, it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. Almost by definition such clashes express what it is to live in a diverse society. And so they should be openly resolved than suppressed in the name of ‘respect’ or ‘tolerance’.

But more than this: the giving of offence is not just inevitable, it is also important. Any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. Or to put it another way: ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged.

The notion of giving offence suggests that certain beliefs are so important or valuable to certain people that they should be put beyond the possibility of being insulted, or caricatured or even questioned. The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority. This is why free speech is essential not simply to the practice of democracy, but to the aspirations of those groups who may have been failed by the formal democratic processes; to those whose voices may have been silenced by racism, for instance. The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged. Once we give up on the right to offend in the name of ‘tolerance’ or ‘respect’, we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice.

3 What is often called offence to a community is actually a debate within that community

People often talk about ‘offence to a community’. More often than not what they actually mean is ‘debate within a community’. Some Muslims find the Jesus and Mo cartoons offensive. Other Muslims – Maajid Nawaz among them – do not. Some found The Satanic Verses offensive. Others did not. Some Sikhs found Behzti offensive. Others did not. It is because what is often called ‘offence to a community’ is in reality a ‘debate within a community’ that so many of the flashpoints over offensiveness have been over works produced by minority artists – Salman Rushdie, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Hanif Kuresihi, Monica Ali, Sooreh Hera, Taslima Nasrin, MF Hussain, and so on.

The trouble is, that every time one of these controversies comes along only the conservative, reactionary figures are seen as the authentic voices of minority communities. So the critics of The Satanic Verses were seen as authentic Muslims, but not Salman Rushdie. The campaigners against Behzti were seen as authentic Sikhs, but not Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. And so on. Salman Rushdie and Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti (and Maajid Nawaz) are regarded as too Westernized, secular or progressive to be truly of their community. To be a proper Muslim, in other words, is to be offended by the Jesus and Mo cartoons or The Satanic Verses, to be a proper Sikh is to be offended by Behzti. The argument that offensive talk should be restrained is, then, both rooted in a stereotype of what it is to be an authentic Muslim or a Sikh and helps reinforce that stereotype. It plays into the racist view of minority communities. That is why it is important to challenge the campaign against Maajid Nawaz not simply as free speech campaigners but as anti-racist campaigners too.

4 There can be no freedom of religion without the freedom to offend

Freedom of worship is another form of freedom of expression – the freedom to believe as one likes about the divine and to assemble and enact rituals with respect to those beliefs. You cannot protect freedom of worship without protecting freedom of expression. Take, for instance, the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders’ attempt to outlaw the Qur’an in Holland because it ‘promotes hatred’. Or the attempt by Transport for London to ban a Christian anti-gay poster because it is ‘offensive to gays’. Both Wilders and TfL are wrong, just as Channel 4 is wrong. Believers have as much right to offend liberal sensibilities as liberals have the right to offend religious ones. Freedom of speech requires that everyone has the right to cause offence. So does freedom of religion.

This article was brought to you by New Humanist, a quarterly journal of ideas, science and culture. To support our journalism, please subscribe.

United Nations Challenges Vatican on Magdalene Asylums and Forced Adoptions

United Nations Challenges Vatican on Magdalene Asylums and Forced Adoptions

Virtual slaves at a Magdalene Asylum

As I have noted before, the Oscar nominated movie Philomena is a must see. Not only is the acting superb but the movie is based on a true story and in the end is a staggering indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, the United Nations is demanding accountability and more importantly records on the Church’s Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and the manner in which young women were forced to relinquish their babies to adoption – often for a fee paid to the religious order running the horrid institutions. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Vatican is trying to claim that it had and still has no control over these orders and institutions located outside of the Vatican. It’s the same disingenuous approach that has been taken by the Vatican in seeking to shirk blame for the worldwide sex abuse scandal. Here are highlights from Religion Dispatches:

In addition to calling Archbishop Silvano Tomasi and Bishop Charles J. Scicluna to account for a decades-long, worldwide epidemic of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee conducting this historic proceeding in Geneva last week also demanded responses to questions concerning the church’s trampling on girls’ reproductive health and rights.

Chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg and others wanted to know what the church was doing about uncovering the whereabouts of the children born to young, unmarried women who were essentially enslaved in Ireland’s Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and forced to relinquish their babies to adoption, a situation brilliantly dramatized in the film Philomena, with Oscar-nominated Judi Dench playing the real Philomena Lee.

“The position of the Holy See,” pronounced Tomasi, the Vatican’s Geneva representative to the UN, “is that the state has already taken its responsibility and is proceeding…through the courts….It is the responsibility of local institutions.” In other words, it’s not our job— the same position the Vatican officials took, repeatedly and disingenuously, on their refusal to act on local clergy sex abuse crimes.

Charging that the policy of the church institutions that ran the Laundries has not been to turn over their records, a blunt Sandberg issued a challenge: “I trust that you will ask the local churches to do that.” Neither Tomasi nor Scicluna, formerly the Vatican’s top sex abuse prosecutor, said that they would.

The chairwoman also brought up the story from Brazil of “the nine-year-old girl who had an emergency life-saving abortion after rape by her stepfather,” followed by the excommunication of mother and doctor, “with no measure taken against the father,” aka, the rapist. “Explain this,” Sandberg said. In that case, regional archbishops Jose Cardoso Sobrinho astonishingly admitted that the rapist had “committed an extremely serious crime,” but that “abortion is even more serious.”

Soon after, another committee member, Hungary’s Maria Herczog, brought up a situation from Nicaragua, where the Catholic Church vigorously supports a ban on all abortions. The situation involved “a ten-year-old girl forced to give birth after being raped, with the full support of the Catholic Church and the local community.

The church’s recent history worldwide is replete with stories of priests forcing the women they impregnated to have abortions; of nuns impregnated by priests being thrown out of their convents while the men remain priests in good standing; of mothers of priests’ children being forced to sign confidentiality agreements to get any support at all.

These issues—forcing children to bear children, forced child relinquishment, abandonment of children by Catholic priests—were not the main subjects of this hearing, but that they were mentioned is noteworthy because the church’s history of child abuse has taken many forms. And that history is tied intimately to the hierarchy’s history of secrecy, hypocrisy on the sexuality of its own clerics, misogyny which denies women’s moral authority, and gender apartheid, which relegates women to second-class status and surely enabled those all-male power brokers in clerical collars to callously dismiss the desperate mothers of molested children who came to them for action.

There is more to the piece that deserves a full read. The bottom line is that as an institution the Roman Catholic Church – and most certainly its hierarchy from the Pope on down – is morally bankrupt and unworthy of any respect, at least by decent moral people. Those who continue to attend mass and contribute to the Church monetarily are complicit in the horrors done by the hierarchy and the predators that it protects. Catholics need to open their eyes to the truth and walk away. The Vatican and the hierarchy will only change if and when the Church’s survival is seriously threatened by a mass exodus of members and a shutting off of the money spigot
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When the “Family Values” Agenda Includes Child Sex Abuse

When the “Family Values” Agenda Includes Child Sex Abuse

This is crossposted from Eyes Right, the blog of Political Research Associates, where I will be doing a series of posts on the Christian Right and child sex abuse. — FC The exposure of widespread sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy–and of the subsequent cover-ups by church leaders–has rocked the Catholic church for more than a decade. Less well known, though closely analogous, is the issue of widespread abuse within Protestant evangelical churches.  Such stories raise doubt that the evangelical/Catholic alliance that defines the contemporary Christian Right is, in any legitimate sense, a defender of “family values.”

Boz Tchividjian rattled the evangelical world in 2013, when he declared that the problem of child sex abuse in evangelicalism is “worse” than the problem in the Roman Catholic Church. The grandson of Billy Graham, a former child sex crimes prosecutor for the state of Florida, and now a law professor at Liberty University, Tchividjian has both the public profile to hold an audience, and the professional experience to back up his assertions.Tchividjian is not the only prominent evangelical speaking out. “Catholic and Baptist leaders have more similarities than differences on the child-abuse front,” wrote Robert Parnham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics. “Both have harmed church members and the Christian witness by not swiftly addressing predatory clergy and designing reliable protective systems.”

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which currently claims 15.9 million members in 46,000 churches in the U.S., has acknowledged the problem of child sex abuse within member churches. Still, too many Baptist leaders–like their Catholic counterparts–have responded to the problem with denials, inattention, and cover-ups. Indeed, Rev. Peter Lumpkins of Georgia called for the SBC’s governing body to adopt “a zero-tolerance policy toward the sexual abuse of children in churches,” but now thinks church officials are ignoring his 2013 resolution.

As just one example, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), SBC’s public policy arm, is holding an April “summit” in Nashville on “The Gospel and Human Sexuality.” Yet the program fails to include anything about child sex abuse. “From broken marriages to pornography to homosexuality, sexual confusion and sexual brokenness has ravaged our culture and can deteriorate the integrity of our churches,” the published program declares.  It assures prospective conferees that they can “discover” how their “church and local congregations can be a beacon of hope, clarity, and restoration as the gospel is brought to bear on human sexuality.”

Adding insult to injury, Rev. Greg Belser, a man who epitomizes the problem in the SBC, is not only a member of the ERLC’s “leadership council,” but also a panelist at the sex summit.  The Senior Pastor at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Mississippi, Belser also happens to be at the center of a major, ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal.  In other words, the ERLC–the SBC body with delegated responsibility for addressing sex abuse within churches–features as a leader someone who himself is deeply entangled in a cover-up of abuse.

Christa Brown, a leading advocate for reform in the SBC, contemplated the wider issue last year by drawing upon a quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “True evil lies not in the depraved act of the one, but in the silence of the many.” Indeed, the “silence of the many” helped facilitate the criminal career of John Langworthy, a youth music minister at Belser’s Morrison Heights church and a serial child molester. When allegations surfaced that Langworthy may have molested at least one boy, leaders at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas (one of the largest in the SBC), including the Senior Pastor (and future SBC President) Jack Graham, took the allegations seriously enough to fire Langworthy in 1989. Yet they did not report him to the police, although state law at the time required it.

Amy Smith, an advocate with SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), tried for more than two years to alert Morrison Heights Baptist Church leaders and Mississippi officials about Langworthy before Morrison Heights (the church where Langworthy had worked for two decades) finally conducted an internal investigation in 2011. Belser initially decided to keep Langworthy on staff but later allowed him to resign and to make a highly limited confession to the congregation about his “sexual indiscretions with younger males” in Texas–acts Langworthy described as “ungodly.” After Langworthy’s statement, Belser claimed that church officials had made “a biblical response” in the matter.

After Langworthy’s confession surfaced online, police launched an investigation.  As the Associated Baptist Press reported, “Six men came forward claiming they were sexually abused by Langworthy as children in the early 1980s.”  But Morrison Heights refused to turn over the findings of their internal investigation to police or prosecutors, apparently following the legal advice of Phillip Gunn, a Morrison Heights elder and a state representative.

That was in 2011.

Langworthy went on to plead guilty to five felonies committed against boys at two Mississippi Baptist churches prior to his time at Prestonwood and Morrison Heights. Thanks to a plea deal, he did no time. Meanwhile, Gunn was elected Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives in 2012 (the first Republican since Reconstruction) and was also elected Trustee of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Graham, who served two terms as President of the SBC in 2003 and 2004, remains the Senior Pastor at Prestonwood and is fending off questions about his role in the Langworthy affair. Belser remains Senior Pastor at Morrison Heights.

Christa Brown, writing at StopBaptistPredators, suggests that SBC leaders have not created mechanisms for disciplining those who “cover-up for the unspeakable crimes of their colleagues,” either because they are afraid or because they just don’t care. She also observes that there is no denominational process for assessing clergy abuse reports, keeping records of ministerial abuses, or providing a way to inform congregations about accused ministers.

“One of the best ways to protect children in the future,” Brown concludes, “is to hear the voices of those who are attempting to tell about abuse in the past. Those voices almost always carry ugly, hard truths – truths about not only the preacher-predators but also about the many others who turned a blind eye or who were complicit in covering up for clergy child molestations.”

The “silence of the many” certainly includes those who, while claiming to uphold “family values,” remain unusually quiet in the face of crimes against children.  Even more egregious is that such abuse is occurring in the care of the churches they claim best represent these values. The story of this silence may well be the one for which they are most remembered.

Man who thinks he’s Jesus… along with hundreds of young women who follow him across the world

Man who thinks he’s Jesus… along with hundreds of young women who follow him across the world

• Inri Cristo, 66, from Brasilia, Brazil, believes he is a reincarnation of the son of God
• Cristo claims to have hundreds of followers, some who live at his ‘church’ compound
• In 35 years, he has travelled to 27 countries, been arrested 40 times and expelled from Britain and the US

By Sara Malm

A 66-year-old Brazilian man has spent 35 years preaching the word of God – because he believes he is the reincarnation of Jesus.

Inri Cristo has ‘hundreds of followers’ from around the world, including the UK, Britain and France, some of whom live with him at his ‘church’ compound outside Brasilia.

Since 1979 he has travelled for 27 countries to spread his word, however his controversial views has seen him expelled from the US, Britain and Venezuela.

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I am Jesus: Inri Cristo speaks to his disciples from one of his mobile pulpits at his church compound outside the capital of Brasilia

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They see me rollin’, they hatin’: When not giving sermons and tending to his flock at his Soust church, Inri Cristo likes to get around the grounds of his compound aboard his motor scooter

 

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Son of god: Inri – which is a Latin acronym  that in English means ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’, believes that the location of his ‘church’ is the ‘New Jerusalem’

 

 

Most of the disciples who live at his church – mostly women – have followed Inri for decades, the eldest, Abevere, 86, has been following him for 32 years.

His youngest disciple is now 24 years old and first met Inri when she was just a two years old.

As ‘Jesus reborn’ he has even taken the name of Inri, which derives from the latin acronym said to have been written on the cross during Jesus’ crucifixion, and stands for Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, or in English: Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews’ and Cristo, meaning Christ.

His Jesus-like dressing and unorthodox views on capitalism, abortion and even Christmas has seen him detained by police more than 40 times.

 

Inri Cristo’s disciples sing version of “FREEDOM RELEASE’

              

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Faithful followers: A group of Inri Cristo’s devoted disciples who live at the Soust compound gather to greet ‘Jesus’ in Brasilia, Brazil. Most of the disciples who live there have known Inri for over 20 years; the oldest now 86, and the youngest 24

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Leader’s greetings: Despite being the home of Jesus, and home of a religious organisation, Inri Christo still has a kennel of dogs to protect them

 

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Uniform uniform: Inri Christo’s female disciples wear simple blue gowns with the compound’s logo on, tied with a rope, and knitted hats

 

 

He said: ‘I know that there are countless people scattered throughout Brazil and the world whose hearts beat together with mine.’

But despite seeing himself as Jesus reborn, Inri refuses to celebrate Christmas saying it is just a day where ‘the rich humiliate the poor’.

‘It is a day when the little sons of the rich can show the gifts they received while the poor children only get a crumb,’ he said. ‘So it is a very sad day for anyone who sees things with the eyes that I see.’

Inri says he first experienced the ‘revelation’ that he was Christ during a religious fast in Santiago, Chile, in 1979.

Since childhood he had been following a powerful voice that ‘speaks in his head’ but it was only on this occasion that it told him: ‘I am your Father. The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.’

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His holy word: Cristo speaks to his followers every Saturday morning from his pulpit at the ‘New Jerusalem’ compound

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Long career: Inri Cristo, who has been preaching as ‘Jesus’ since 1979, surrounded by followers circa 1982 at Belem cathedral in Lisbon, Portugal

 

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On display: Artifacts from the life of Inri Cristo are kept in glass cabinets at his chapel at the Soust compound near Brasilia

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He’s alive! Inri Cristo in a photo of himself wearing his own version of the Shroud of Turin, circa 1993, set to prove that he is the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself

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Uncomfortable truths? Inri Christo’s controversial views on everything from Christmas to capitalism has seen him arrested 40 times, and expelled from several countries

 

 

 

 

He now runs his own church, the ‘Soust’ (Suprema Ordem Universal da Santmssima Trindade), located on a lush farmland outside of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, which he calls the ‘New Jerusalem’.

He and his followers survive on homegrown fruit like bananas, avocados and mangos as well as a vegetable garden.

There’s also a chapel where Ingra speaks to his followers every Saturday morning and a kennel for the dogs that guard the complex.

His quirky life has led to critics saying he is mentally ill – an accusation he firmly denies.

‘I can be crazy but not dumb,’ he said.

‘Madness is different from dementia. It is the mother of philosophers, prophets and inventors.

‘My mission is to prepare the elect, the survivors of the inevitable nuclear hecatomb that will culminate in the end of this chaotic world, for the formation of the new earthly society, which will strive to fulfill the Creator’s will.’

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Preacher and leader: Inri Christo’s loyal followers push his pulpit out into the garden in order to listen to his words as ‘Jesus’

 

Biker Jesus: Inri Christo takes his scooter for a spin around his vast compound where he lives with his followers, preaching ‘the word of Jesus’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2535168/Man-thinks-hes-Jesus-hundreds-young-women-follow-world.html#ixzz2rwD5QLCT Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Kiss me, I’m an atheist

Kiss me, I’m an atheist

by  Matthew Hutson@SilverJacket

Nonbelievers need a new PR campaign, one that emphasizes their civic engagement

Brochures and bumper stickers at the LA chapter of the Sunday Assembly, which calls itself a “godless congregation.”

Jae C. Hong/AP

In Pope Francis’ Christmas address, he extended a surprise olive branch to atheists. But the reach was backhanded. “I invite even nonbelievers to desire peace,” he offered. Even nonbelievers? How magnanimous.

Religious tolerance has increased dramatically over the last few decades, at least in the United States. But one group remains behind the pack: atheists. A 2012 Gallup poll asked Americans if they would vote for a well-qualified presidential candidate nominated by their party if the person happened to be “X.” Catholic? Ninety-four percent said yes. Jewish? Ninety-one percent. Mormon? Eighty percent. Muslim? Fifty-eight percent. Trailing them all — and well behind blacks, women, Hispanics, and gays and lesbians — were atheists, at 54 percent.

Dislike of atheists might be surprising, given that we are a small and largely invisible demographic, making up less than 5 percent of the U.S. We are not known for terrorist attacks, secret cabals or any particular pageantry — we are not even a particularly cohesive group. As the comedian Ricky Gervais once wrote, “Saying atheism is a belief system is like saying not going skiing is a hobby.” But recent research has identified the primary source of prejudice against atheists: It is the distrust of those who are not scared of a watchful God. And the research suggests that current attempts to give atheists a PR makeover are severely misguided.

The source of prejudice

A 2006 paper by the sociologist Penny Edgell and her colleagues began to outline the nature of the anti-atheist bias. They found that people associate atheists with either the low end of the social hierarchy (common criminals) or the high end (cultural elitists). What these two groups purportedly share is extreme self-interest and lack of concern for the common good.

A couple of years later, the economists Jonathan Tan and Claudia Vogel published a paper supporting the notion that dislike of atheists is based at least partly on distrust. They found that, in an investment game, players handed less money to partners they thought were less religious. (The English philosopher John Locke gave voice to such behavior in 1689 when he wrote that “those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the Being of a God.” The title of the book, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” was not ironic by design.)

But why such suspicion? Two psychologists, Will Gervais of the University of Kentucky and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia, hypothesize that people see atheists as not fearing punishment from a monitoring deity. And in the last few years they have demonstrated this belief to be the core of anti-atheist bias.

The logic makes sense: People are better behaved when they feel watched by others, or even by a photo of eyes. We also conceive of God as a personlike entity, someone who cares about our behavior. Gervais and Norenzayan have shown that cuing religious people with thoughts of God makes them more self-conscious, and numerous experiments have shown that priming believers with notions of supernatural beings makes them more honest and charitable. It is as if he is watching.

In one of their experiments (conducted with Azim Shariff, a psychologist at the University of Oregon), subjects read about a man who bumped a van while parking and did not leave a note, then stole money from a found wallet. They found this untrustworthy character to be more representative of an atheist than a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew or a feminist — which indicates that distrust of atheists is not just a matter of seeing them as outsiders. In fact, subjects were just as inclined to assume the character was an atheist as they were to think he was a rapist.

American Atheists has created billboards that read ‘Reason > prayer,’ but messages like these only increase distrust of atheists.

In their most telling experiment, subjects rated their own religiosity, evaluated the trustworthiness of atheists and rated the degree to which “people behave better when they feel that God is monitoring their behavior.” Agreement with this statement fully accounted for the connection between religiosity and distrust of atheists. In other words, if you believe in God, you think fear of God’s wrath is what keeps people in line, and this belief causes you to be wary of atheists.

Nothing to fear

How fair is this distrust of atheists? If reminders of religion prompt believers to be better behaved, are they generally more moral than atheists? Some evidence suggests that religious people are more generous than nonreligious people — but only in nonindustrialized societies, or when prompted to think about God. In one recent study, those who regularly attended Sunday religious services were more likely to respond to a request for charity than those who attended them irregularly or attended no services, but only if the request came on a Sunday. Strong evidence for goodness without God comes from Denmark and Sweden, according to the sociologist Phil Zuckerman. One in four Danes does not believe in a god, spirit or life force, and neither does one in three Swedes. These are two of the world’s least religious countries (PDF), yet they also have two of the world’s lowest homicide rates. Even if there were a small difference in the trustworthiness of atheists, are we really comparable to rapists?

Empathy does not require belief in God. Atheists feel just as much pain seeing the misery of others; it comes from a simple mammalian mechanism. A conscience does not rely on superstition either. We all like to do things that make us feel we are good people, even if it is simply to convince others that we are good.

What is more, God is not the only entity that can watch you and punish misdeeds. There is also the state. Shariff and Norenzayan found in a study that presenting people with words recalling secular sources of authority — “civic,” “jury,” “court,” “police,” “contract” — increased prosocial behavior almost as much as religious reminders did.

The fact that the government’s presence keeps people in line suggests one way to reduce distrust of atheists: Remind people that atheists are not in fact free to do as they please. Gervais and Norenzayan found that showing believers a video on the effectiveness of the Vancouver police department decreased their distrust of nonbelievers.

Taking these results from the lab to the real world, Norenzayan and Gervais report in an upcoming paper that wariness of nonbelievers is reduced in countries with a strong rule of law. Looking at data from dozens of countries, they found that where contracts, property rights, the police and the courts were formidable, religious citizens were less likely to agree that “people who do not believe in God are unfit for public office.”

One wonders, then, if the spreading purview of the state, with its panopticon-style wiretapping, drones, surveillance cameras and Internet snooping, will increase good behavior, as the philosopher Peter Singer and others have argued. And if so, perhaps it will also boost trust of atheists. Norenzayan, in his book “Big Gods,” argues that fear of disciplinary deities enabled humans to trust each other enough for civilization to gain a foothold, but that with big government to regulate human affairs, big gods are no longer necessary to hold strangers together. “You don’t have to lean on religion anymore to decide whom to trust,” he told me, “if you think there are other reasons people can be trusted.”

If such surveillance still does not help boost the reputation of atheists, what might a brand manager do for the godless? Let us look at what has been done. The British Humanist Association has run bus ads that say “There’s probably no God.” The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a billboard that says, “I am free from the slavery of religion.” And American Atheists has created billboards that read “Reason > prayer.” But these messages only increase distrust of atheists. Most people do not see reason as the root of virtue. Loyalty and generosity are not typically understood as the output of calculations but as the abandonment of them. And attacking another’s faith does not open lines of communication. Norenzayan added, “Instead of the angry, confrontational kind of atheism that gets all the attention, how about a kinder, gentler, funnier atheism?”

A successful campaign might paint pictures of atheists doing good in the world. Clips of John Lennon singing “Imagine,” Daniel Radcliffe reading “Harry Potter” to kids, Angelina Jolie saving Africa one baby at a time. They do not even have to be celebrities or saints (or Swedes) — just, as Will Gervais suggested, standup citizens who take out their garbage and pay their taxes, like anyone else. Norenzayan also recommended that more nonreligious people come out of the closet: “I think positive social contact in general helps a lot,” he said. “It has done wonders in reducing other prejudices.”

In modern society, there is no reason not to trust atheists. So to do my part in a world where religious intolerance plays a role in so many conflicts, I invite you all to join me in desiring tolerance and peace. Yes, even you Catholics.

Matthew Hutson is a science writer and the author of “The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking,” about the psychology of superstition and religion.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America’s editorial policy.

Atheist Super Bowl Ad Sparks Controversy | News OK

Atheist Super Bowl Ad Sparks Controversy | News OK.

Obama ordered $1 billion worth of disposable coffins for use in FEMA camps? More BS fear mongering.

The loonies are on the rampage … again!

The Myth of Western Civilization

The Myth of Western Civilization

Ta-Nehisi Coates

 

Nicolae Ceaușescu, African Big Man

I finished Tony Judt’s Postwar–a book which ends as it begins, with Europe in process–just in time to catch the most recent reported musings of Phil Robertson. Here he is offering Christian marriage counseling to a young man:

I said “Well son, I’m going give you some river rat counseling, here. Make that sure she can cook a meal. You need to eat some meals that she cooks. Check that out. Make sure she carries her Bible. That’ll save you some trouble down the road. And if she picks your ducks, now that’s a woman.”

They got to where they getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting until they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ’em. Look, you wait ‘til they get to be twenty years-old and the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they’re about fifteen or sixteen and they’ll pick your ducks. You need to check with Mom and Dad about that of course.

In many parts of America, this is an argument for statutory rape. More specifically, it is an argument for men seeking to elide the power of grown women, by seeking their sexual partners among teenage girls. This style of svengalism is generally seen as repugnant to our morality. Phil Robertson believes that society should withhold civil rights from consenting gay men, while allowing men like him to push the age of consent to its breaking point. The contradiction here is as predictable as it is ridiculous. The loudest of doomsayers, so often, carry the weightiest of sin.

Postwar ends with a Europe of Hitler’s nightmares–darker, older, less Christian. The continent is teetering, its welfare state endangered, its peace, uneasy before the genocide in the Balkans. One get the sense that Judt believes that Europe has accomplished something–relative prosperity, democracy in most of its countries, lengthening life spans, acknowledgment of the Holocaust. But Judt believes in a world of actions, not monuments, and not shibboleths. Democracy is a struggle, not a trophy and not a bragging right. This is not a matter of being polite and sensitive. It is understanding that we live on the edge of the volcano, that the volcano is in us. Judt is keenly aware that late 20th century Europe’s accomplishments could be wrecked by the simple actions of men.

When I lived in Paris, this summer, I loved walking across Pont Neuf. There was something to the idea that I was standing on a bridge older (by centuries) than my entire homeland. When the murderous demagogue Slobodan Milošević rallied the Serbs, at Blackbird’s Field, he was appealing to a memory older than Columbus. But Pont Neuf could fall next week. And everyone knows what followed Milošević’s words.

Vulgar nationalists often point to Europe as evidence of something that all humans, from Phil Robertson on down, strive for–certain civilized ground. And yet the greatest proponents of such certainty, of Utopia, of exceptionalism, of soloutionism, of Stalinism, of Bibles, of Qurans, of great civilization, and complete theories, are so often themselves engineers on the road to barbarism. What Judt wants us to see is the tenuousness of human creations, and thus the tenuousness of the West, itself. Having concluded that Europe (though not its Eastern half) has finally, in fits and starts, come to grapple with the Holocaust, he grows skeptical:

Evil, above all evil on the scale practiced by Nazi Germany, can never be satisfactorily remembered. The very enormity of the crime renders all memorialisation incomplete. Its inherent implausibility—the sheer difficulty of conceiving of it in calm retrospect—opens the door to diminution and even denial. Impossible to remember as it truly was, it is inherently vulnerable to being remembered as it wasn’t. Against this challenge memory itself is helpless

But memory is constantly invoked. When Nicolae Ceauşescu’s henchmen begin to turn on him, they condemn him in predictable terms:

Romania is and remains a European country. . . . You have begun to change the geography of the rural areas, but you cannot move Romania into Africa.

But Romania, is, indeed, in Africa–the Africa of European imagination, the Africa which justified slavery, which brims with rape, murder and cannibalism. All of Europe lives in that imagined, projected Africa. In a little over a decade, in the middle of the civilized continent, 14 million people were killed.

From Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands:

No matter which technology was used, the killing was personal. People who starved were observed, often from watchtowers, by those who denied them food. People who were shot were seen through the sights of rifles at very close range, or held by two men while a third placed a pistol at the base of the skull. People who were asphyxiated were rounded up, put on trains, and then rushed into the gas chambers. They lost their possessions and then their clothes and then, if they were women, their hair. Each one of them died a different death, since each one of them had lived a different life.

Snyder quotes the poet Anna Ahkmotova addressing the legions of the dead–“I’d like to call you all by name.”

I don’t think there’s anything original in the blood of Europe that allows for this kind of human misery. And  I don’t think there’s anything in the blood that allows for Pont Neuf, either. Nations seem to require myth. Romania’s governing history is filled with big men, autocrats and despots. But the European super-nation has long needed to believe itself above the world, above native America, above Asia, and particularly above Africa. The truth is more disconcerting: The dark continent has never been South of the Sahara, but South of Minsk and East of Aachen in the jungles of the European soul.

That the enemy is us, is never easy to take. Yesterday, Confederates routinely accused Northerners of attempting to reduce them to slavery. Today, men who convene with Confederate flags at the White House, accuse the president of racism. Yesterday, the civilized man accuses you of barbarism, while practicing sophisticated human sacrifice to the God Of Nations, while reducing his lordly estate to a house of the dead. The homophobe accuses you of sexual immorality and damns you to hell, while preaching a gospel which would make wives of children.

I don’t have any gospel of my own. Postwar, and the early pages of Bloodlands, have revealed a truth to me: I am an atheist. (I have recently realized this.) I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos. I believe powerful people who think they can make Utopia out of chaos should be watched closely. I don’t know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does.

I’m also not a cynic. I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can’t guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us. Or perhaps not. Maybe the very myths I decry are necessary for that work. I don’t know. But history is a brawny refutation for that religion brings morality. And I now feel myself more historian than journalist.

“History contributes to the disenchantment of the world,” writes Judt.

…most of what it has to offer is discomforting, even disruptive—which is why it is not always politically prudent to wield the past as a moral cudgel with which to beat and berate a people for its past sins.  But history does need to be learned—and periodically re-learned. In a popular Soviet-era joke, a listener calls up ‘Armenian Radio’ with a question: ‘Is it possible’, he asks, ‘to foretell the future?’ Answer: ‘Yes, no problem. We know exactly what the future will be. Our problem is with the past: that keeps changing’.  So it does—and not only in totalitarian societies.

 All the same, the rigorous investigation and interrogation of Europe’s competing pasts—and the place occupied by those pasts in Europeans’ collective sense of themselves—has been one of the unsung achievements and sources of European unity in recent decades. It is, however, an achievement that will surely lapse unless ceaselessly renewed. Europe’s barbarous recent history, the dark ‘other’ against which post-war Europe was laboriously constructed, is already beyond recall for young Europeans.

Within a generation the memorials and museums will be gathering dust—visited, like the battlefields of the Western Front today, only by aficionados and relatives. If in years to come we are to remember why it seemed so important to build a certain sort of Europe out of the crematoria of Auschwitz, only history can help us. The new Europe, bound together by the signs and symbols of its terrible past, is a remarkable accomplishment; but it remains forever mortgaged to that past.  If Europeans are to maintain this vital link—if Europe’s past is to continue to furnish Europe’s present with admonitory meaning and moral purpose—then it will have to be taught afresh with each passing generation. ‘European Union’ may be a response to history, but it can never be a substitute.

Happy New Year all.

There Are 13 Countries Where Atheism Is Punishable by Death – The Wire

There Are 13 Countries Where Atheism Is Punishable by Death – The Wire.

THE MYTHS OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE

Much like the Right WIng fabrication of “Western Civilization” …

Pandaemonium

I wrote some notes a few months back on Pandaemonium on Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe‘. I reworked that post into an essay, which has now been published in the latest issue ofNew Humanist. And I’m posting it here, too.

UPDATE: The original post (which is much longer than this essay) won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize.

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In the warped mind of Anders Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utøya earlier this year were the first shots in a war in defence of Christian Europe. Not a religious war but a cultural one, to defend what Breivik called Europe’s ‘cultural, social, identity and moral platform’. Few but the most psychopathic can have any sympathy for Breivik’s homicidal frenzy. Yet the idea that Christianity provides the foundations of Western civilization, and of its political ideals and ethical values, and that…

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Why I can’t call Abbott a cunt

No Place For Sheep

 

One of the most telling revelations Tony Abbott has ever made about himself occurred in his chat with Annabel Crabb on ABCTV’s Kitchen Cabinet last week.

Describing the circumstances that led to his abandonment of theological studies and his goal to enter the Catholic priesthood, Abbott explained that while struggling with a 500 word essay on the desert fathers, he had a conversation with a mate who was about to leave for London to enable the satisfactory conclusion of a billion dollar business deal. Upon hearing his friend describe his venal life, Abbott experienced a Damascene moment. Christopher Pyne will tell you how to correctly pronounce that word.

What the hell, Abbott wondered, am I doing sitting in a seminary writing about the desert fathers, when I could be carving out a future for myself in the world of power, money, and fame?

Well, that’s not a verbatim report…

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Abbott’s ‘War on Everything’

No Place For Sheep

Before the September 2013 election, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a staunch Catholic who once embarked on training for the priesthood, revealed that he prayed to God every day that he would win the contest, and form the next Australian government.

It would be interesting to ask the PM how much of his victory he attributes to God hearkening to, and answering his prayers. I assume Abbott gives no small measure of thanks for achieving his deepest desire.

I also assume that as well as a believing in his mandate from the people, Abbott believes he’s mandated by God. At least, it feels safer to assume that is the case, than to pretend it couldn’t be thus. Know thine enemy.

This aspect of Abbott occurs to me every time I hear he has declared war on yet one more issue. His ‘wars’ seem to be based on moral assumptions infused…

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The Ministry of Degradation

No Place For Sheep

The history of treatment of asylum seekers who arrive by boat in Australia is a grim one, and both major parties have employed increasing degradation as a means to control, punish, and “deter” those who seek refuge here.

Even if one accepts the false narrative created by both the LNP and ALP that asylum seekers are “illegals” who are committing a criminal act in arriving by boat, this does still not explain or justify their degradation. If boat arrivals have indeed committed a crime, why aren’t they dealt with by our legal system, as is every other person accused of a crime in this country?

In a recent poll, a majority of Australians apparently feel asylum seekers are not treated harshly enough. Obviously the major parties are responding to the electorate’s need for gratification and reassurance through the degradation of a group who are despised by many voters. This…

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Europe’s Tea Parties

Political insurgency

Europe’s Tea Parties

Insurgent parties are likely to do better in 2014 than at any time since the second world war

SINCE 2010 or so, the Tea Party, a Republican insurgency, has turned American politics upside down. It comes in many blends, but most of its members share three convictions: that the ruling elite has lost touch with the founding ideals of America, that the federal government is a bloated, self-serving Leviathan, and that illegal immigration is a threat to social order. The Tea Party movement is central to the conflict that has riven American politics and the difficulty of reforming budgets and immigration laws.

Now something similar is happening in Europe (see article). Insurgent parties are on the rise. For mainstream parties and voters worried by their success, America’s experience of dealing with the Tea Party holds useful lessons.

The squeezed, and angry, middle

There are big differences between the Tea Party and the European insurgents. Whereas the Tea Party’s factions operate within one of America’s mainstream parties, and have roots in a venerable tradition of small-government conservatism, their counterparts in Europe are small, rebellious outfits, some from the far right. The Europeans are even more diverse than the Americans. Norway’s Progress Party is a world away from Hungary’s thuggish Jobbik. Nigel Farage and the saloon-bar bores of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) look askance at Marine Le Pen and her Front National (FN) across the Channel. But there are common threads linking the European insurgents and the Tea Party. They are angry people, harking back to simpler times. They worry about immigration. They spring from the squeezed middle—people who feel that the elite at the top and the scroungers at the bottom are prospering at the expense of ordinary working people. And they believe the centre of power—Washington or Brussels—is bulging with bureaucrats hatching schemes to run people’s lives.

Mainstream politicians in Europe have tried to marginalise the insurgents, by portraying them as unhinged, racist or fascist. But it is not working, partly because many of the insurgents are making a determined effort to become respectable. UKIP, the FN and the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands could each win the most votes in European Parliament elections in May. In France, 55% of students say they would consider voting for the FN. The Progress Party has joined Norway’s government. Slovakia has a new far-right provincial governor. Count insurgents on the left, such as Syriza in Greece and the Five Star movement in Italy, and mainstream parties in Europe are weaker than at any time since the second world war.

Explore our interactive guide to Europe’s troubled economies

The insurgency is doing well partly because the mainstream has done so badly. Governments encouraged consumers to borrow, let the banks run wild and designed the euro as the pinnacle of the European project. In the past five years ordinary people have paid a price for these follies, in higher taxes, unemployment, benefit cuts and pay freezes.

This newspaper is sympathetic to the Tea Parties’ insight that the modern state often seems designed to look after itself, rather than the citizens it is supposed to serve. It is true that the EU has no answer to the problem that minorities of voters in many countries feel it lacks legitimacy—a looming threat to the euro. But Europe’s insurgents go further than that.

When Geert Wilders, leader of the PVV, calls the Koran “a fascist book” and Islam “a totalitarian religion”, he is endorsing intolerance. When Ms Le Pen demands protection for French firms from foreign competition, she is threatening to impoverish her compatriots. When UKIP promises British people prosperity outside the European Union, but within a free-trade zone of its own devising, it is peddling an illusion. Increasing inequality and growing immigration are the corollary of technological progress and economic freedoms that most people would not willingly give up.

Such details do not detain Ms Le Pen who, with the swagger of a politician on the rise, predicts that she will be in the Elysée within a decade. That is highly unlikely, partly because national elections are less susceptible to protest votes than European elections are, and partly because as they get closer to power almost all Europe’s Tea Parties are likely to reveal themselves as incompetent and factional. Yet the insurgents do not need victory to set the agenda or to put up barriers to reforms. That is why Europeans need to see them off.

Honesty in all things

Attacking the insurgents as fascists worked when Hitler’s memory was fresh, but many of today’s voters rightly see it as mostly a scare tactic. Even as the mainstream demonises the insurgents, it also panders to them by adopting pale versions of their policies—against immigration, global finance and the EU. But the mainstream is inhibited by a sense of what is possible and an understanding of what is legal. So it ends up flattering the idea that something needs fixing, while seeming to lack the courage to do anything.

The lesson from America is that if Europe’s politicians do not want the insurgents to set the agenda, they need to counter their arguments. As long as Republican leaders have indulged Tea Party demands to put purity above the work of governing (for instance, by shutting down the federal government) they have sunk lower in the public esteem. The hardline positions of Republican candidates satisfy the party faithful but drive away undecided voters, costing the party Senate seats in recent elections and arguably the presidency in 2012. Politicians need to explain hard choices and dispel misconceptions. Europe’s single market is the source of prosperity: enlarge it. Workers from eastern Europe pay more into government coffers than they take out: welcome them. Politicians prepared to speak out will find that most citizens can cope with the truth.

Ultimately, though, the choice falls to voters themselves. The Tea Party thrived in America partly because a small minority of voters dominate primary races especially for gerrymandered seats. In elections to the European Parliament many voters simply do not bother to take part. That is a gift to the insurgents. If Europeans do not want them to triumph, they need to get out to the polls.

Right Wing Round-Up

Media Matters: Rush Ties Democrats To Nazism, Communism, And Terrorism.

J. Lester Feder @ BuzzFeed: Ugandan President Denounces Anti-Homosexuality Bill — But Stops Short Of Blocking It — In Letter To Parliament.

Jeremy Hooper: Video: Michael Brown (again) claims #GLAADCAP is ‘censoring’; is (again) bearing false witness.

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: ‘That’s what gave us Jim Crow.’

Tim Alberta @ National Journal: Conservatives Form Their Own Caucus Because the RSC Isn’t ‘Hard-Core’ Enough.

Daniel Strauss @ TPM: GOP Fundraiser Says Christie ‘As A Person, Is Horrific.’

See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/right-wing-round-11714#sthash.t7qaZ88l.dpuf

Sanity of Atheism vs Schizophrenia of Religion

Sanity of Atheism vs Schizophrenia of Religion

 

Fire Sex Abuser Rabbi, New Petition Says

Fire Sex Abuser Rabbi, New Petition Says

“…Rabbi [Haim] Druckman’s statements in the media, in which he specifically questions the veracity of the Court’s rulings, undermine the judicial system and sends an ominous message to our community, especially the youth of the global B’nei Akiva movement – of which Rabbi Druckman is the spiritual head – that victims of child sexual abuse who speak up will not be believed by their rabbinical leadership. We therefore call upon Rabbi Druckman to terminate Rabbi [Mordechai] Elon’s employment…”

 

Above: Rabbi Haim Druckman

A petition from the anti-child-sex-abuse organizations Tzedek (Australia) and Magen (Israel) concerning the lothesome behavior of the most senior Zionist Orthodox rabbi in the world, Haim Druckman:

In light of the conviction (7th August 2013) and sentencing (18th December 2013) by the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court of prominent Rabbi Motty Elon on two counts of forceful sexual assault upon a minor, we deplore the decision of Rabbi Chaim Druckman, a senior leader within the global National Religious movement, to retain Rabbi Elon as a teacher at Yeshivat Ohr Etzion.
Rabbi Druckman’s statements in the media, in which he specifically questions the veracity of the Court’s rulings, undermine the judicial system and sends an ominous message to our community, especially the youth of the global B’nei Akiva movement – of which Rabbi Druckman is the spiritual head – that victims of child sexual abuse who speak up will not be believed by their rabbinical leadership.
We therefore call upon Rabbi Druckman to terminate Rabbi Elon’s employment in any capacity at the Yeshiva.
We also call upon Rabbi Druckman to retract his denunciation of the Court’s ruling, and we appeal to the National Religious political and religious leadership, both in Israel and around the world, to condemn Rabbi Druckman’s actions, which bring shame upon the National Religious sector, and the broader Jewish community.
We believe that the protection of our children and youth must be paramount for all educational and youth organizations.

You can sign here.

How to keep your house cool in a heatwave

By Wendy Miller, Queensland University of Technology

Should you open or close your house to keep cool in a heatwave? Many people believe it makes sense to throw open doors and windows to the breeze; others try to shut out the heat. Listen to talk radio during a hot spell and you are likely to hear both views.

In a modern house the best advice is to shut up shop during the heat of the day, to keep the heat out. Then, throw open the windows from late afternoon onwards, as long as overnight temperatures are lower outside than inside.

But our research shows that opening and closing doors, windows and curtains is just one of the factors at play. To really stay cool when the heat is on, you also need to think about what type of house you have, and what its surroundings are like.

The traditional “Queenslander” house has long been seen as ideally suited for hot weather. Such houses have great design features for cooling, including shady verandas and elevated floors. But the traditional timber and tin construction provides very little resistance to heat transfer.

If uninsulated homes are closed up during a heatwave they would very likely become too hot. This has led people to opening up their house, to stop them getting much hotter inside than outside.

But in temperatures of 40C and above, one could argue that both strategies (opening and closing) in an uninsulated house would result in very uncomfortable occupants. Such houses would also not meet current building regulations, as insulation has been required in new houses since 2003 (or earlier in some parts of Australia).

Our research explores the role of design and construction on occupant comfort in hot weather. We have looked at brick and lightweight houses, as well as those made from less common materials such as structural insulated panels, earth, straw, and advanced glass and roof coatings.

We found that three factors influence the comfort of people inside a house: whether is it opened or closed; its urban context; and its construction materials. Having a better understanding of these factors could help you to keep cool this summer – or prepare for the next one.

To breeze or not to breeze

Whether they have air-conditioning or not, we found that people usually approach hot weather in the same way: by opening doors and windows to capture breezes.

People in both groups also tended to shut up the house if it gets hot outside, or if there is no breeze, or before switching on the air-conditioner if they have one. Most participants in our survey, which looked at homes less than 10 years old, also used ceiling fans to create air movement.

Occupants tape foil to the inside of windows to try to stop their home from overheating in Queensland.

But our research showed that many people failed to take advantage of cooler overnight temperatures, meaning their homes were hotter than the outside during the night. This may mean that houses have not been designed to get rid of daytime heat. Or that people aren’t opening the windows overnight to allow the house to cool down.

The impact of context

The research shows that occupants first try natural ventilation for achieving comfort. But the success of this strategy depends on the urban context of the house. This includes factors such as housing density, street scape and microclimate.

For example, during a hot spell in 2013 an Ipswich estate experienced minimum and maximum temperatures that were 3-4C hotter than the local weather station. Restricted air movement due to nearby buildings, and radiant heat from hard surfaces such as concrete, can both drive temperatures up.

Built for comfort

Both the housing industry and occupants seem to have little understanding of the impact design and construction have on the temperature inside the building. As a result, air-conditioning is now seen not as desirable, but as a necessity. This does not have to be the case.

Most houses are built to minimum regulations (5-6 stars out of 10). There is also evidence that, with poor construction practices and virtually non-existent compliance testing, many would fail to meet even this level.

What does this mean for comfort year-round, and in a heatwave?

In inland southeast Queensland, a 6-star home will have an internal temperature of 18-28C for 80-85% of the time. In a typical year, its temperature will be above 30C for between 300 and 350 hours (3.5% of the time). Heat-wave conditions would result in more hours above 30C.

In contrast, a 9- or 10-star house in the same climate would deliver more “comfort” hours (85-95%) and would be above 30C less than 2% of the time. These houses are designed to slow down the transfer of heat, meaning they naturally stay cooler for longer. And there is no (or little) need for air-conditioning!

This 9-star home uses 48% less electricity than the south-east Queensland average.

A wide variety of design and construction techniques and materials can be used to achieve such high performance houses in every climate zone in Australia.

Open and shut case

So when facing a heatwave, should we open up our houses or close them up? The answer is… it depends.

If your home is well insulated and shaded, it should be able to resist several days of extreme heat. Closing doors, windows and curtains during the heat of the day can help the house stay cooler than outside. Ceiling fans provide air movement to make you feel cooler.

Opening the house as much as possible from late afternoon to early morning is beneficial if overnight temperatures will fall below your inside temperature.

Air conditioning a poorly insulated house with little shading is expensive and futile. In a well-insulated and shaded house, air-conditioning can be used quite efficiently by using the same strategies as above. A higher thermostat setting (perhaps 26-28C), combined with ceiling fans, can provide comfort with lower running costs. This can also reduce strain on the electricity network.

Whether air-conditioned or not, houses can be designed specifically for their climate, to limit the flow of heat between the outside and inside. The higher the star rating of the house, the more effectively it stops unwanted heat from entering the house. Different strategies are required for different climates.

Of course, the knowledge that you might be more comfortable in a different house is likely to be cold comfort as you swelter through this summer. But perhaps you can prepare a “cool comfort” plan for next summer.

Wendy Miller has conducted consultancy research for Metecno Pty Ltd, the Australian Glass and Glazing Association and Ergon.

She has also received funding from the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre and the Australian Government through the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Afghan atheist to get asylum in Britain on religious grounds

 

Afghan atheist to get asylum in Britain on religious grounds – UK Politics – UK – The Independent.

Afghan atheist to get asylum in Britain on religious grounds

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Taliban militants – there was a risk the man could face persecution in Afghanistan for having rejected Islam

AFP/Getty Images

A supervisor on the case, said: ‘The decision represents an important recognition that a lack of religious belief is in itself a thoughtful and seriously-held philosophical position’

After seeing the impact of 20 years worth of NAFTA

After seeing the impact of 20 years worth of NAFTA

Noam Chomsky Says The Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Lower Wages And Increase Insecurity

The political theorist and linguist slams the agreement that has little to do with free trade.

Science, Religion and the Young

Science, Religion and the Young

 

The fight against fascism is the fight of the little people. Lest we forget.

Leaders. They get us into wars. But the little people fight them, and the little people are the ones who get us out of them. I wonder if we remember that enough? I suspect we don’t

Well, This Is What I Think

I have been thinking a little, recently, about the unending fight against fascism. Against the authoritarians, the anti-democrats, the oligarchs, power elite, the swine.

This is partly because on an ongoing debate I enjoy with a number of close friends on the legitimate role for the State in our lives, but also, no doubt, because I am currently going to sleep at night listening to the audio book “Dominion” by C J Sanson, a provocative “what if” thriller set in a Britain that had sued for peace with Germany in 1940 and which is now, in the mid-1950s, sliding towards its own Jew-culling fascist nightmare. And also because my daughter has been seized by the Hunger Games Trilogy, which, it could surely be argued, is as effective an anti-fascist series of novels as one could want to read, and in targeting its relatively junior audience, a force for good. Discussion…

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