26. februar 2004

Virtual Occoquan Check out the new issue of the Occoquan Inquirer, issue #51 in fact. It includes some of the best from Salon blogs in the past week or so, including my take on anti-Semitic art. 10:13:08 PM    comment []

Ivory Coast polio case may be traced to Nigeria I have previously written about the superstitious opposition to polio vaccines by some Muslim clerics in Nigeria. Now a baby girl in the Ivory Coast has has become the first polio case in the country for four years, and UNICEF strongly suspects the infection has come from Nigeria. Six other countries in the area have already experienced outbreaks of polio directly tracable to the Nigerian states boycotting the attempt to eradicate the horrible disease. Some radical clerics in Nigeria have claimed that the Americans (of course!) have infected polio vaccines with Aids to kill Muslims. Yes, these fundies are that nutty. Anti-Americanism kills, and mostly it is poor people in the third world that are its victims. PS: More here, quoting a political leader in one of the Nigerian states: "It is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even 10 children (to polio) than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile," Kano state Governor Ibrahim Shekarau told the AP news agency. Ah, that old chestnut. "The evil whites are making blacks infertile." Conspiracy theories exported from the nutty left and the nutty right (something like this is a popular idea with LaRouchians) in the west, and wrecking haboc on health in Africa. 7:16:27 PM    comment []

Google this, Mel! I am for the first time joining in to help make Google somewhat misleading: The Passion of The Christ. Trailers. Good Website. Protesting Gibson's Passion Lacks Moral Legitimacy. I haven't seen Mel Gibson's movie, so I will make no judgment on it, but I am such a big fan of Life of Brian... From Pharyngula. 6:55:07 PM    comment []

When is anti-Israelism anti-semitic? Europeans are simply unable to admit that their extreme anti-Israelism contains any trace of anti-semitism whatsoever. There is no sign of self-reflection. Bjørn Stærk analyzes and discusses a debate on Norwegian TV. PS: Speaking of anti-semitism... What to think of AdBusters outing Jews? At least they used an asterisk in front of the Jewish names, but I fear that the reason is merely that a Star of David is not part of a normal character set. 7:58:15 AM    comment []

Forced gay marriage Ok, as everybody knows, Bush decided to come out in favour of the anti-gay marriage amendment. It's pretty hard to come up with anything clever to say about it. It is just plain sad that the US president decides to use the Constitution as a toy and gay people as victims in his campaign. One could almost imagine that a recent Onion article was correct, and that the "judicial activists" in Massachusetts had forced straight people into gay marriage: As we are all aware, it's simply not possible for gay marriage and heterosexual marriage to co-exist," Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall said. "Our ruling in November was just the first step toward creating an all-gay Massachusetts." Marshall added: "Since the allowance of gay marriage undermines heterosexual unions, we decided to work a few steps ahead and strike down opposite-sex unions altogether." Marshall said the court's action will put a swift end to the mounting debate. "Instead of spending months or even years volleying this thing back and forth, we thought we might as well just cut to the eventual outcome of our decision to allow gay marriages," Marshall said. "Clearly, this is where this all was headed anyway." However, since that was satire and Bush's speech was the unfortunate reality, it is bloody hard to understand exactly how gay marriage in any way, shape or form "threatens" straight marriage. When pressed for specifics, anti-gay bigots just sprout cliches. Does anyone even know about a blogger or columnist that tried to put up a rational, serious defense of an anti-gay constitutional amendment? If so, tell me about it. I feel like flaming some dimwit about this subject, but flaming the president's silly cliches is just bloody reduntant. PS: It doesn't look like Andrew Sullivan is going to vote for Bush, after all. Neither is a lot of his readers, gay and straight alike. After all, what has caused many to support Bush is the war on terror. But how can anyone trust Bush's leadership in the war on terror when he is turning against his own countrymen over political convenience? Glenn Reynolds is not happy, either. He adds some interesting legal analysis. 12:16:28 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 02.03.2004; 23:46:30.