Blag

Judging by the actions of the NSW government, Catholics are so thin skinned that they need extra police protection. Police have been granted special powers to deal with people who confront attendees of the WYD with ideas the Pope doesn’t agree with. According to some observers, wearing slogans or handing out condoms at WYD could get you in trouble. Group Think will probably be OK.

Thank God the media is on the case.

From the Age : http://news.theage.com.au/national/youth-day-protesters-to-offer-condoms-20080701-2zlj.html

Powers approved by the NSW government allow for people who continually annoy or inconvenience pilgrims during the event, to be staged in Sydney from July 15 to 20, to be arrested and possibly fined $5,500.

From the ABC : http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/01/2290617.htm

Draconian, repugnant and unnecessary. These are just a few of the criticisms of special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney.

Civil libertarians and legal experts say the regulations could see situations such as someone deemed to be wearing an offensive T-shirt being arrested and given a hefty fine.

New South Wales Police say the measures are designed simply to ensure that World Youth Day is a peaceful and happy event.

From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7482696.stm

Lawyers in Australia say that police powers introduced for a major gathering of young Roman Catholics later this month will undermine free speech. Under the powers, police will be able to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance or inconvenience” to participants in World Youth Day.

From News.News.News.News.com: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23951245-5016937,00.html

NSW POLICE have been given extraordinary new powers for World Youth Day, including being able to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to participants and conduct partial strip searches.

....

Critics say the new powers have the potential to make wearing a T-shirt with a slogan, a protest like handing out condoms or a Chaser-style stunt a crime, while civil libertarians believe the powers are more extreme and than those used during last year’s APEC summit.

From the Daily Mail :

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

Hahaha. I was sure that was a joke when I first read it.

Reuters and the The Age report that the Infallible head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict says that atheism is responsible for injustice and cruelty. Lenin and Marx are mentioned in reference to atrocities committed in the name of Marxism.

This is a common argument you hear from time to time. “If you want to live in an Atheist society, move to North Korea” is an old favourite. However, in societies such as North Korea, religion is replaced by a cult of personality and their own system of belief. These belief systems have the hallmarks of Religion including being idealistic, utopian & dogmatic.

One thing they don’t have, is people doing evil things “In the Name of Atheism”. The argument is old and busted.

Atheism encourages rational inquiry over superstition and it can hardly be said that societies such as North Korea or Nazism or people like Lenin or Stalin or Chairman Mao were suffering from an excess of rationalism.

Aside from being incorrect, it’s typically hypocritical. This is the organisation which protected child molesters from discovery and prosecution, the organisation which facilitates the spread of AIDS throughout Africa and other devout but poor countries by banning the use of condoms. This same organisation criticises Amnesty International for supporting the victims of rape during war who choose abortion. And that’s only in the last 15 years!

On the same front page of The Age, we get this, another example of what happens when you mix ignorance and faith. It should remind us of what the Dark Ages might have been like.

You might well say not all ( or even most ) religious people behave in this way. But this is exactly what “Faith” enables – people believing nonsense ( in this case, that their god would be offended that a teacher allowed children to name a teddy bear Mohammed, the most common name in the Islamic world ) with such fervour that they’ll call for the killing of a teacher. It allows people to fly planes into buildings and murder doctors specialising in abortion and believe that they’ll go to heaven for doing God’s work. You cannot argue with them, because their beliefs are not rational, it’s their interpretation of their holy book.

The BBC ( among others) is reporting that the head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique, reportedly widely respected throughout the country, believes that condoms not only don’t work as a method to stop transmission of AIDS, but are actually infected with the virus as part of a plot by European manufactures to destroy Africa. Abstinence for the unmarried, and fidelity for the married is the only way to stop the infection, according to the country’s head of the Catholic Church.

The BBC’s Jose Tembe in the capital, Maputo, says it is estimated that 16.2% of Mozambique’s 19m inhabitants are HIV positive. About 500 people are infected every day.

At what point can opinions like this be classified as genocide? The Catholic church needs to accept part of the responsibility for the spread of this disease in countries where it has poisoned public perception of safe sex with its ludicrous propaganda.