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Via Information Clearing House Ahead of the ICC's decision on whether to investigate suspected war crimes in the territories, a list of 200 to 300 officials was compiled, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternative Prime Minister Benny Gantz.By Noa LandauIsrael is drawing up a secret list of military and intelligence officials who might be subject to arrest abroad if the International Criminal Court in the Hague opens an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories.Haaretz has learned that this list now includes between 200 and 300 officials, some of whom have not been informed. The great secrecy surrounding the issue stems from a fear that the mere disclosure of the list s existence could endanger the people on it. The assessment is that the court is likely to view a list of names as an official Israeli admission of these officials involvement in the incidents under investigation.Continue reading @Information Clearing House.Religious commentator, Dr John Coulter, continues his series of reflections as a Presbyterian minister s son, recalling the great evangelical missions of the 20th century, and posing the question - do they still have a significant role in the Christian Church of the new normal ?A Teenage John CoulterWhile life as a preacher s kid got increasingly tough for me as I progressed through my teens in Irish Presbyterianism, there was one element of that life in the north east Ulster Bible Belt which I relished the most - the traditional evangelical missions. It was on 9th January 1972 at one such mission that I became a born again believer in the Christian faith. Life has certainly taken a few unusual twists and turns, and many, many challenges, since that Sunday evening, but my faith has been one of the stabilising factors on that spiritual journey. That January 1972 mission was a united event between dad s church, Clough Presbyterian near Ballymena, and one of the neighbouring congregations, Killymurris Presbyterian then pastored by the late Rev William Lamont. Normally, traditional Presbyterian evangelical missions lasted a fortnight with nightly services, except Saturday. But this united mission lasted a full month - two weeks in Clough and two weeks in Killymurris. The evangelist was the late Rev Alan Flavelle, one of Seventies Presbyterianism s leading preachers of the Gospel. Even before these church missions, the Faith Mission movement was very active in the north east Ulster Bible Belt, and its pilgrims regularly staged tent missions in rural areas. Such pilgrims were also regular guests at the Presbyterian Manse. The Faith Mission held a special place in our family circle s life. My late father had become a born again believer himself as a result of a Faith Mission event in his native Stewartstown and his early preaching was with the Faith Mission movement. The January 1972 mission had been a tremendous evangelical success with many people becoming born again believers. However, as we met in the Clough Presbyterian Manse after the closing Sunday evening in late January, the talk was not of the mission s success, but the silence of watching the TV coverage of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry. The euphoria of the clerics was replaced with an eerie silence as the horrors of that day unfolded in the news programmes. While my late dad may have been better remembered throughout Northern Ireland as an Ulster Unionist politician, former Mayor of Ballymena, or leading chaplain in the Loyal Orders, his first love was preaching the Gospel. Each year, he would undertake at least a couple of Presbyterian-style, two-week evangelical missions. Meeting folk in the wider Presbyterian community was one of the joys of being a minister s son - especially the delicious after-service suppers.For me, too, such missions were the opening door to my later career in the music recording business. After becoming a born again believer, I was put in charge of dad s tape ministry.Each night of the mission, the service would be recorded live. I used a portable mixing desk with eight channels and microphones placed around the church building. There was no room for error - it all had to be recorded in the first take . There was certainly no asking - could we sing that hymn again please as I didn t get my sound levels right! . And, of course, not every Presbyterian Church or mission hall was built with the acoustics of sound recordings in mind!The master tape of the entire live service - including the welcome to worship, singing, testimonies of how people became born again believers, soloists, the prayers, Bible readings, and of course, dad s sermon - would be recorded on a reel-to-reel machine.Then, during the day time cassette copies - usually lasting 90 minutes (the older readers will remember them as C90s) - would be produced and brought to the church the following evening. This was an era when there was no internet, live streaming, or even satellite TV. For many in the north east Ulster Bible Belt, the entertainment would be listening to the services over again. The tape ministry was especially important for people with illnesses or disabilities who physically could not attend the missions. Such tape ministries were perhaps a fore runner of the online religious worships which tens of thousands of people tuned into during the Covid 19 lockdown. This experience as a wannabe sound engineer formed the foundations which later led me into forming my own heavy metal band, The Clergy, and launching my own punk and rock label, Budj Recordings. However, as the Christian Church has faced competition from the secular world, especially with the advent of satellite channels, the traditional mission began to fade as a principle means of evangelism, even in the north east Ulster Bible Belt. As traditional Christian denominations - such as Presbyterianism, Methodism and the Church of Ireland - saw a slide in Sunday attendances, the missions seems pushed to the back-burners in terms of evangelical outreach. With the turn of the new millennium, the north east Ulster Bible Belt witnessed a growth in the Pentecostal movement which could boast a more lively style of worship compared to the conservative hymns and psalms of the mainstream denominations. The Pentecostal movement placed its emphasis on regular Sunday worship, rather than a specific time-framed evangelical mission. To such pastors, every Sunday was a mission service. Young people, especially, were attracted to Pentecostalism by the lively music. While the mainstream denominations and mission halls focused on worship accompanied by the piano or organ, the Pentecostalists focused on building worship bands with drums, and electric guitars. But the coronavirus pandemic and the closure of churches during the lockdown has placed all places of worship now on an even platform. Christian evangelism enjoyed a massive boom during lockdown as tens of thousands tuned in to online services and Bible studies. While the churches have re-opened, they all face very strict social distancing regulations and restrictions. The so-called new normal - even the threat of a second wave of the virus - has now thrown severe challenges to the Christian Churches. Indeed, it may even be years before Christian worship returns to the level of physical interaction it enjoyed pre-lockdown. Another challenge for the Church is how it can retain many of the online followers as lockdown eases. Perhaps the time has now come for the Christian denominations, congregations and fellowships to see a return of the traditional evangelical mission as a means of keeping folk interested in the life and work of the Christian faith. It would also be a fitting tribute to the great evangelists of the Seventies if their legacy was a return to those tremendous missions as the main form of Christian witness. Plenty of points for church leaders to ponder here!FollowDr John Coulteron Twitter @JohnAHCoulterListen to Dr John Coulter s religious show, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 9.30 am on Belfast s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM, or listen online atwww.thisissunshine.comHarry Hole is drunk again. While that is not news to those familiar with the staggering Oslo detective, it would be deeply disappointing for fans were it to cost him his job. An entirely dry Harry Hole of course would be a much less compelling character, his magnetism stripped away. It is the flaws that make it all work, adding to the grit while honing the suspense: Harry is unpredictable apart from the one certainty that he will hit the bottle again. Well, there are two - he will also solve any murder case that comes before his eyes, rather than across his desk. Harry is not the type of cop who is cut out for desk work. When he takes to the chair he likes it placed in his local in front of whatever culinary special is on offer, and where he could have "a drink, one drink, a moment without torment."If Harry hated pubs they were only "theme pubs, Irish pubs, topless pubs. novelty pubs or, worst of all, celebrity pubs, where the walls were lined with photographs of regular customers of some notoriety."Bjarne Moller has reached the end of his tether and fired Harry. The long suffering superior grew tired of acting as a guardian angel for "the lone wolf, the drunk, the department's enfant terrible". Not so much saved by the bell as the star, he evades the sack when at the last minute he is called back to work on a fresh Oslo murder case. It is summer, many cops are on holiday including the chief who would sign his termination of contract but had not yet got to the paperwork sent by Moller. Harry avoided the drop but is a long way from becoming disentangled from the the noose that sits loosely, for now, around his neck.A return to the land of the living is not entirely without problems as it reminds Harry too much of the dead, in particular a murdered colleague he had worked closely with. The new investigation puts him close to the person he suspects of being behind his fellow cop s death. While avoiding the sack he misses being in the sack with Rakel who has pulled away from him, taking her son Oleg with her. Harry and the boy had formed a comforting bond, so when it dissolves it hurts. The new investigation is kickstarted by the discovery of the body of a young woman in her bathroom. Camilla Loen is 23 and one of her fingers had been hacked off: not a macabre souvenir but more for the purposes of posting to the cops. Another feature was the insertion beneath the eyelid of a stud diamond in the shape of a star with five points. Five days later a stage actress is reported missing. When one of her fingers arrives at the National Crime Investigation Service, more than just the cops take notice. Then a third victim is found in her place of work. The star again. A sadistic serial killer is on the go and Harry is the one detective with experience of successfully confronting the phenomenon. Harry is to work with Tom Waller but readers familiar with the history of both men will know why Harry neither likes nor trusts Waller, the origins of which go back to Redbreast. If Harry was considered good at the job, it was in Waller that he found his equal and whose philosophy of policing was summed up as:that's how we deal with the human detritus we're surrounded by. We don't clean it up, we don't throw it away, we just move it around a little. And we don't see that when the house is a stinking rat infested hole, it's too late. Just look at other countries where criminality has a firm foothold ... That's where we come in, Harry. We take the responsibility. We see it as the sanitation job that society dare not take on.Running parallel with the serial killings is the problem of corruption that has plagued the Oslo police force. Beate Lønn can prove crucial here but needs to leap over some psychological hurdles from her own past which can seem much larger than they actually are when magnified by apprehension. If Harry was not Homicide he would have the motivation for Internal Affairs. The corrupt have an animal like instinct to protect themselves so So Harry the hunter becomes Harry the hunted.Because so much in the book has a past story it is best to read the books in sequence. While the fifth in the Hole compendium it is the third located in Norway so the new reader might get away with giving the first two a miss. But there is no compelling reason to do such, just that the storyline of this one will not be affected if the first two are skipped.The Devil s Star is aptly positioned in the timeline of Harry Hole books. The five points of the star are laden with symbolism and teasers. The novel is the fifth in the series. For those who prefer their Scandinoir in cold climes, The Devil's Star might throw them a bit. Oslo bakes as the summer sun grips it. Snow rather than sun creates the mood music for Scandinavian crime fiction.Still, a five star read.Jo Nesbo, The Devil's Star. Publisher @ Harper. ASIN: B014TAGP00 Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyreMichael Nugentwith the third in a series of pieces on whether gods exist.Is it more likely that gods exist or do not exist? This is the third of a series of short posts about whether gods exist and why the question is an important one.We cannot know for certain whether gods exist, just as we cannot know for certain whether many things that we believe are true.Photo Pinwheel galaxy Messier 101 from NASA s Spitzer Space TelescopeSo how do we evaluate what is most likely to be true? Obviously we have to use a combination of our senses and our thinking.I suggest that faith and personal experience are the worst and least reliable ways of identifying what is true. They result in different people coming to different beliefs about the same reality.Applying reason to evidence is the most reliable way. Why? Because it can more reliably result in different people coming to the same beliefs about the same reality.When we apply reason to evidence, we notice that the idea of a god seems to be implausible, that reality and morality seem as we would expect them to be if there was no god, and that there is a relentless pattern of natural explanations replacing supernatural explanations.For example, theists typically believe that their god is a pure mind without a body, perfect and changeless, the first cause beyond time and space, all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good. There are many reasons why this idea is implausible, which I will address in later posts.When we look at the universe around us, reality looks like we would expect with no gods. We do not see the universe moving towards any purpose, and human life is as we would expect it to be based on natural evolution, not as the design of a human-focused god.Morality also looks like we would expect with no god. An all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good god that is the source of morality and cares about human beings on planet Earth would at a minimum be able to give us all the same moral message.I am happy to say about anything, including whether there are gods, that I might be mistaken. But at the moment, I am as confident that the Christian God and the Islamic Allah do not exist, as Christians and Muslims are that Thor and Zeus do not exist.Michael Nugentis Chair of Atheist IrelandJim Duffy An interesting programme on RTÉ presented by Michael McDowell called Rome V Republic, about the Catholic Church in Ireland.Unfortunately, whether due to the superficialities of television histories where there isn't the time to go into detail, or the editorial stance of the makers, it seriously misrepresented the power of the Catholic Church in the 19th century in Ireland.It created the impression of a passively accepting congregation doing as priests ordered. That simply is not true. Go through the archives and you find constant evidence where the church was disobeyed and mocked.For example, one of the reasons the church was against wakes was because people at them consistently mocked the church and the sacraments - holding mock masses to the fury of the clergy. Sex outside marriage was commonplace. Illegitimacy was commonplace. In tracing ancestors in Navan parish I was shocked to find in the baptismal registers around 80% of children baptised in the town were illegitimate in the 1850s. I literally came across pages of the register that listed nothing but children with the word 'illegitimate' in a side column. I began to wonder if I had found some register of illegitimate births - but it seems to be the normal register.In rural areas, illegitimacy was much lower, but still surprisingly common.The Catholic Church in the 1870s tried to set up a Catholic Party - but it flopped miserably as ordinary Catholics voted for the Home Rule League under the Protestant Isaac Butt rather than Cardinal Cullen's party. The fact that his new party was created almost directly after the passage of the Secret Ballot Act added to the freedom of voters to do what they wanted, not what they were told to do.) That also contradicts the McDowell narrative.In the 1890s the church took a strongly anti-Parnellite stance. The clear majority of the population were on that side too - but it is not clear how influential the church stance was. The party also took an overwhelmingly anti-Parnellite line. So did the main newspaper, the Freeman's Journal. Did they turn on Parnell because they were appalled at his long-time relationship with a married woman? The fact that he was the father of her children? The condemnation of the bishops? Or the fact that they resented his dismissive treatment of critics in the party? Or that the Liberals were taking a holier-than-thou stance based on their own religious base and threatening to abandon home rule? Perhaps it was a combination of some or all of them. It is way too simplistic to conclude that they simply took their instruction from the bishops. They had been frequently ignoring instructions from bishops for years on issues like the Plan of Campaign.What is striking is how openly many people took their pro-Parnell line literally in front of their priest - again contradicting the McDowell thesis of an obedient populace. In my parish, the parish priest, Fr. Cole, was a particular hardliner. At one stage he denounced Parnellites from the altar and ordered his parishioners Not to go to a Parnellite rally in I think Kells. A brass band was assembling outside, and directly after mass a sizeable chunk of the massgoers assembled behind it, as the furious priest stared at them, and set off to march to the Parnellite rally in Kells. Again, that contradicts the image of an obedient loyal membership of the church. They openly disobeyed the priest and the bishop. (The bishop lived in Navan.)In a court case which recounts in detail the open disobeying of priests, possibly involving Cole (I forget but have the impression it was him), a story was recounted of an angry parish priest hitting his parishioners with his blackthorn stick at a Parnellite rally. One of them took the stick off him and whacked him hard across the body with it. Another man took great pleasure in telling the court how the priest had bribed him not to attend the Parnellite rally but to go to an anti-Parnellite one instead. He took the money and went to the Parnellite rally anyway, spending the money in the pubs afterwards.My great-grandfather, Patrick Duffy, was anti-Parnellite. Two of his closest friends and next door neighbours were Parnellites. The priest may have been calling Parnellites the devil incarnate but Patrick maintained his friendship with the Kane and Collins families, and Joseph Collins was a witness to Patrick's mother's will.Cole banned Joseph Collins from holding the traditional station mass in the Collins home. It made no difference. Joseph Collins stuck to his guns and remained a Parnellite, while still going to mass in the local church. Eventually Cole was moved by the bishop as he was too disruptive in the parish. Again the experiences in the 1890s in my local area, and numerous other areas, contradicted the thesis of parishioners passively obeying the church. They were not the sheep McDowell seemed to think.In the 20th century there was widespread disobeying of instructions of the priests, and open contempt shown for the Bishop of Meath. The bishop lived in Navan, though officially based in Mullingar, and the church in Navan was known informally as 'the cathedral'. The bishop stormed off to live permanently in Mullingar because locals in Navan, a Parnellite town though the Parnellite split had officially been healed, flung horse dung in on him in his carriage. Flinging horse dung in the face of a bishop again hardly supports the theory of a subservient obedient Catholic populace.The clergy in 1916 were openly hostile to the Easter Rising. So were most people. The support for the priests and people was shown when the local priests in Navan carried the bodies of the R.I.C men killed in the so-called Battle of Ashbourne into the County Infirmary, as hundreds gathered outside in a show of support. Clerical condemnation made no difference to the Irish republican minority at the time. (Due to the chronic mishandling of the aftermath, the British managed to turn public opinion against them, allowing republicans then and since to spin the myth that the rising had popular support. It didn't.)Church condemnation of the Plan of Campaign, of the Land League, of boycotting and other issues in the 1880s had also made no impact. In 1923 the church condemned the anti-Treaty IRA and threatened members with excommunication. It made no difference. It was lack of public support, not church condemnation that forced the anti-Treatyites to end their campaign and that lack of support long predated the condemnation by bishops. Deeply religious figures like Sean T O Kelly and de Valera didn t suddenly quit the anti-Treatyites the moment the excommunication threat was made. They ignored it.In the 1930s, de Valera refused to support the Nationalists in Spain under Franco, earning a furious condemnation from the church. The Irish public were strongly pro-Nationalist but there is no clear evidence that was due to church pressure but was just the wholesale fear of communism that was a feature across Europe, with the Republicans seen as communists. Yet de Valera went on to win the general election in Ireland in 1937. He lost seats. So did the pro-Nationalist Fine Gael. Labour, which was split between pro-Nationalists and pro-Republicans, gained seats. Though priests called on people to go to Spain to defend religion by supporting the Nationalists, and support for Nationalists far outweighed support for Republicans, only a small number joined Eoin O'Duffy's Greenshirts. (No. That isn t a typo. Contrary to myth, it was not the Blueshirts who went to Spain, not least because the Blueshirts were abolished two years before the start of the Spanish Civil War. It was O Duffy s new group, the Greenshirts, and his National Corporate Party, that went to Spain.)You will probably have heard how the Catholic Church got what it wanted in the 1937 constitution. That is another myth. In fact, its key demands were all rejected. In particular, the demand from Maria Duce and Fr. John Charles McQuaid that Catholicism be made the established church was ignored (leading to a temporary rupture in the friendship of de Valera and McQuaid). McDowell made a point of how the 1922 constitution was more secularist than the 1937 one. Of course it was. All constitutions drafted in the 1920s tended to be. They were a product of the quite secularist revolutions across Europe. The only problem was that they were very much liberal elite documents wildly out of touch with public opinion which was one of the reasons why so few constitutions of the age had public support. By the 1930s, new constitutions adopted Europewide tended to be more religious - reflecting the grassroots opinions of voters. That was not unique to Ireland. It simply reflected the fact that across Europe the revolutionary elites that took power from 1918 on tended to be much more liberal and secularist than their populations. While I may prefer the 1922 constitution s secularism (though the 1937 one is better written), it undoubtedly wasn t reflective of the views of the Ireland of the time, whereas the 1937 one was closer to the views of ordinary people. Indeed it does pose a rather difficult fundamental problem in democracies - what happens if the majority of the public hold views that are the antithesis of the minority elite liberal democratic fringe?The scale of how much liberal commentators fundamentally misunderstand the church and the time period is captured in the 1937 constitution. Liberals think the special position of the Roman Catholic Church in the constitution reflects the church s control over the text. They entirely misunderstand that article and Catholic teaching at the time. The church believed it was the embodiment of divine revelation and truth. Whether it had one member in a country, or 100% of citizens were members, was irrelevant. As the supposed embodiment of truth and divine revelation it had a right to superiority in law. In church teaching at the time, error has no rights. All other faiths had broken away from the truth church, Catholicism. Therefore they had No rights.Yet what did the special position article, Article 41, say?1. The special position was not based on the church being the true church . It was based on being the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens. That was an outrageous line for a church who believed its authority came from right as the true church - not simply a head count.2. The article said:The State also recognises the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, as well as the Jewish Congregations and the other religious denominations existing in Ireland at the date of the coming into operation of this Constitution.In other words, while Roman Catholicism believed all other faiths were in error and error has no rights , the article in the constitution that gave the Catholic Church a largely meaningless recognition based on a sectarian headcount, also said quite frankly that error Has rights by recognising all the other religions as valid.So, the idea that the article, since amended, embodied Catholic power, is a nonsense. In almost every way it contradicted Roman Catholic teaching. As a result, yet again, what Michael McDowell and many liberals think the past was is actually based on a fundamental lack of knowledge.Michael McDowell also suggested that Ireland in a host of ways was the odd one out in Europe, with a more powerful Catholicism ruling the roost. One of the many fundamental flaws in McDowell's thesis about the past is that it fails to grasp that society in general worldwide was quite religious in the 19th century. Ireland wasn't the odd one out, but quite typical. It was spoken of as if the grotesque Catholic idea that its canon law is superior to the law of the state was unique to Ireland. In fact, that has been the Roman Catholic Church's view in every state.I was surprised to hear McDowell claim he only discovered this as Attorney General. Seriously? I m not a lawyer yet I knew that decades ago. It was hardly a secret. Roman Catholicism believes that as a divine-created organisation it outranks secular organisations and states. That is why popes claimed the right to crown Holy Roman emperors centuries ago. Anyone who ever studied history or law should always have known it. It was not remotely a secret. That has been at the core of the clerical abuse scandal the belief that Catholicism outranked all secular organisations, so it didn t have a duty to report crimes committed by its clergy to inferior secular states. In other words, their laws are god s laws, and therefore outrank man s laws. It has believed that for two thousand years and has been at the core of almost every clash between Catholicism and any state. If McDowell didn t know that he was astonishingly ignorant about history and law, and the relationship between Catholicism and law in countries worldwide. How on earth did a senior counsel not know something like that, let alone imagine it was unique to Ireland?McDowell also showed no understanding of why Catholicism was so important in independent Ireland. Catholicism over the centuries had become the central badge of identity to differentiate Ireland from Britain. Even if they didn t believe in Catholicism as a religion, people used it as a badge to stress its difference to Britain: Protestant Britain, Catholic Ireland. Many independent states adopt a unique symbol - and in Ireland, the role of Catholicism as being the voice of the ordinary suppressed Irish person right through the penal laws gave it that badge of being a unified cultural symbol. Had the Irish language not largely died out in the 19th century it may well have been that badge of difference.So, the crowds going to the Eucharistic Congress weren t just making a religious statement, but also a political statement about their own nationhood. It was independent Ireland s first chance to host a major world event - and Eucharistic congresses were big world events. It was, in some ways, Nationalist Ireland s first chance to party on the world stage as an independent state. The papal legate was being welcomed by the Irish Air Corp flying overhead, the Irish flag flying, the Irish prime minister (and Irish governor-general, though de Valera tried to marginalise him). There was nothing British about it.To caricature the 1932 Eucharistic Congress as simply about triumphalist Catholicism, and not understand that the event was as much a badge of political identity as religious identity, shows very poor historical knowledge. It was as much a celebration of independence as it was a celebration of Catholicism. That is why it was the Irish flag, and not just the papal flag, that flew everywhere. It was a symbolic assertion of independence.A critical flaw in McDowell s programme was that it presumed a hierarchical structure of authority from bishops and priests down to obedient Catholics. In fact that wasn t the case. As mentioned, people regularly ignored diktats issued by those at the top if they didn t like them. McDowell mentioned the banning of divorce, and the introduction of censorship.Neither of those, however, were top-down diktats of the hierarchy. Far from it. They came from ordinary people. It was often grassroots demands that produced them. It wasn t Rome being enforced on the state, but grassroots citizens, many Catholic, some of other faiths or none, who lobbied to say we don t want these. We want you to ban them. In the 1925 all Ireland election for the Seanad (the only popular election for the Seanad to take place), Gaelic League founder Douglas Hyde, expected to be a shoe-in, was humiliatingly defeated by ordinary citizens because they thought he was pro-divorce. There was no instruction from Maynooth to defeat him. In fact the bishops found many ordinary Catholics reported them to Rome accusing them of being too liberal, or modernist (to use the idiotic phrase so loved of Pope Pius X). It was the ordinary citizens who instead of electing Hyde, or another respected figure, chose as a poll-topper a non-entity councillor from Monaghan.One final flaw in the McDowell thesis was the idea of not just the uniqueness of the Irish relationship with Catholicism (he obviously doesn t know about the similar relationships in a host of countries across Europe throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Italy only legalised divorce in the 1970s) but that Catholicism s abuse of power was unique, as well as being unique to Ireland. The clerical abuse scandal is closely associated with Catholicism (and I am one of its victims) simply because it was the first one caught. Since then almost every other religion has been caught up in similar scandals the most recent one being Mormonism. Indeed, strikingly, figures from John Hopkins University show that the scale of abuse in Catholicism is almost identical to every other religion. Each has a sexual abuse rate of 5% - which does disprove the theory that Roman Catholic clerical sexual abuse is linked to the male priesthood or celibacy, as the percentage remains the same whether religions have a married or unmarried clergy, whether they have a male clergy or male and female clergy. Given that sexual abuse is slightly lower in religions than in the general population, it seems to suggest that all organisations will reflect the popular prevalence of sexual abuse, with in or around 5-6% of their staff abusers.The truth about Catholicism in Ireland is a lot more complicated than the rather clichéd, cartoonish liberal version portrayed by McDowell in his programme on RTÉ. The Irish historically were far less under the thumb of Catholicism than he seems to think. They were more than able to ignore it when it suited them whether it be in not voting for Cardinal Cullen s Catholic Party, ignoring papal condemnations through the 19th and 20th centuries, ignoring the Church on the Plan of Campaign, boycotting, Parnell, or their sex lives. They could blame the church where necessary to avoid personal responsibility as when they decided to put relatives into mother and baby homes for convenience and pretended it was under duress (contemporary accounts contradict the duress claim). The image of the obedient masses doing what Father said because Father said it is wildly, almost comically, exaggerated.Overall, while McDowell s programme was an interesting polemic, it was dubious history. It made sweeping generalisations that simply aren t supported by the detail. It presumed a special relationship between Catholicism and Ireland that actually occurred in many states. It presumed uniquely appalling behaviour by Catholicism in Ireland that was in fact neither unique to Ireland or indeed unique to Catholicism. It presumes a rather clichéd image of ordinary Catholics in the past as obedient sheep ready to be hunted wherever their shepherd priest or bishop wanted them to go. In that, it had no idea of just how independent ordinary Irish Catholics have tended to be throughout history, and how many times Catholics entirely ignored and often disrespected the priests and bishops (and you can hardly get any more disrespect than flinging horse dung into the face of the Bishop of Meath!)The reality in Ireland was much more complicated, and far more independent-minded and nuanced than McDowell s thesis allowed for. As a polemic, the programme was interesting. As an accurate understanding of the history of Ireland, it was cartoonish and superficial. Jim Duffyis a writer-historian.Maryam Namazie Marieme Helie Lucas Some people, including Human Rights Watch s DirectorKen Rothand politicians likeRabina Khanhave taken the opportunity of a global pandemic to defend the burqa/niqab by comparing it with mandatory face mask rulings used in the fight against Covid-19.Immediately after Ken Roth s tweet implicitly supporting the right to veil of women (only), women who had fought the imposition of the compulsory burqa in their own countries issued a strong protest.They pointed to the fact that Ken Roth accused France and only France of Islamophobia for banning burqas, while he was too cowardly to dare to point out the Muslim-majority countries that have done the same thing, such as Cameroon, Chad, Egypt and Bangladesh amongst others. Ken Roth knowingly he has duly been informed over the years but to no avail omits that France has banned any form of face covering (burqa included) in the public space, when it is not appropriate, such as helmets when one is not driving a motorbike or masks outside the time of carnival, but certainly authorises them when it is. What could be more appropriate than surgical masks preventing contagion in times of a pandemic?Also, face masks are temporary measures for both women and men to safeguard public health in the public space during a pandemic that has already killed nearly half a million people across the world. The niqab and burqa, on the other hand, are far from safeguarding women. They are impositions by Islamic fundamentalists to control and erase women from the public space. They are extensions of victim blaming and modesty and rape culture. If women don t cover up as fundamentalists and patriarchs demand, they are to blame for any rape, violence, honour-related crimes and threats that they face. If sweets are uncovered, as so many banners in countries like Iran and Afghanistan argue, flies will naturally swarm towards them.Lumping together ungendered health protection necessitated in times of a pandemic and religiously manipulated dress codes offers a victimization that Islamist fundamentalists and preachers of Salafist Islam never stop seeking, says a statement by women activists which pays homage to the women executed by fundamentalist states and non-state actors for not submitting to compulsory veiling. A. It unequivocally rejects the imposition of a religious identity by a minority.Roth s attitude is nothing new. International human rights organisations have persistently ignored or worse opposed women fighting for their right not to be forcibly veiled, as was well-documented in Algeria under the fundamentalist boot in the 1990s. These organisations have persistently supported the rights of religious males fighting for domination over women including the imposition of various forms of veiling amongst other forms of oppression.What has been ignored is that most Muslim women don t wear the niqab or burqa. These are Islamist uniforms which become predominant when the fundamentalists have power. Not only have human rights organisations actively participated in reinforcing patriarchy in our countries, they have also participated in the eradication of cultural diversity. A few decades ago, Muslim women were wearing saris in South Asia or boubous in the Sahel, colourful dresses in the mountains of Algeria, etc The worldwide promotion of the burqa, a specific Mid-Eastern outfit from a narrow geographic area by Muslim fundamentalists and their human rights supporters, blurs one of the great cultural assassinations of our times, failing to address this cultural form of imperialism.Even in the case of the hijab and headscarf, it is important to add that socially speaking and on a mass scale, these are impositions on women who face shaming and punishment for non-compliance by their families, communities and Islamic states. Veiling is highly contested by Muslim women or women presumed to be Muslim. In Iran, for example, women protesting compulsory veiling laws are imprisoned for decades. What is often touted as a women s choice is more often than not acquiescence and submission at best and a long term in prison, or honour-related violence and even death at worst.Finally, we have a message for women of Muslim descent who confuse a health prescription for men just as much as women with an extremely reactionary form of religiosity which specifically targets women. Yes, there is discrimination against minorities and migrants but discrimination must be fought economically, socially and politically, with political tools not religious ones. Moreover, on the issue of the burqa and niqab: be wary of betraying your sisters who fight against forced veiling throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East and now in the diaspora. Do not ally with organisations who feign to fight for human rights to the detriment of women s rights. Do not ally, wittingly or unwittingly, with fundamentalists, even when they disguise themselves as anti-racists and human rights defenders. Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian Sociologist and Founder of Secularism is a Women s Issue.Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born activist and Spokesperson of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and One Law for All.The State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sent him a cease-and-desist letter, threatening to sue and fine him for making false or unsupported claims that might deceive people into thinking that such a vaccine exists.In recent weeks, the Federal Trade Commission has sent warning letters to other companies making unsubstantiated claims. One recipient touted high doses of Vitamin C or D and stem cells, which they claimed had been researched and studied in helping in the healing process of COVID-19. Cannabis companies have been told they cannot claim that their products prevent COVID-19. A Minnesota company was warned about selling soap-shaped pieces of copper that they said would deactivate the virus. A Houston company was told to stop selling a drink they said would fight infection by strengthening the immune system. The director of a California spa is facing charges of fraud because he told clients that hydroxycholoroquine was a magic bullet that would cure the novel coronavirus. . . . the list goes on.The FTC said,It is unlawful . . . to advertise that a product can prevent, treat, or cure human disease unless you possess competent and reliable scientific evidence, including, when appropriate, well-controlled human clinical studies, substantiating that the claims are true at the time they are made.How then do religious leaders get a free pass? Making false or unsupported claims in the absence of competent and reliable scientific evidence is exactly what they do to earn a living. It s their whole business model. And what they do is worse than merely promoting a bogus vaccine or immune booster, because they tout their products as cure-alls for all sorts of physical and mental health problems year after year. Sometimes their products actually kill as when Christian Scientists convince susceptible believers to pray instead of seeking medical care or when fundamentalist parents try to beat the demons out of their behaviorally-disordered children. But mostly, religious leaders and institutions just bilk money out of vulnerable people who yearn for a little more goodness and health in their lives, leaving them alive but lighter in the pocket.The scammers who advertise bogus preventives or cures for coronavirus are, for the most part, simply making claims based on insufficient evidence (or sometimes based on none at all). But churches do worse, because we have solid evidence that their products don t work. Millions of dollars have been spent trying to prove that God heals people in response to prayers, and some of these studies have been fairly well-designed by scientific standards. But they have utterly failed to show consistent and significant healing effects from prayer.Comparing the lifespans of devout vs secular people similarly fails to show a significant difference in favor of religious people or of one religion in particular beyond the positive benefits of social support. This is true despite the fact that many of the devout spend time daily or weekly for years on end praying (or thanking God) for health and healing. At best, in response to these intercessory prayers, their god operates at the margins of statistical significance. That s pretty pathetic for an all-powerful deity; very pathetic when compared to the clear and dramatic difference made by modern antibiotics and vaccines or even hand-washing.So why is it then that secular snake-oil merchants and fraudsters are being reprimanded and threatened for trying to exploit a vulnerable public, but religion-vendors selling equally bogus products somehow have gotten themselves declared essential businesses? Worse, they are being allowed to apply for financial relief from funds they never contributed to because money going out of churches into insurance programs like FEMA would violate separation of church and state, but money going into churches out of the same public funds somehow doesn t.One difference, of course, is that the religion vendors are themselves victims as well as victimizers. Thanks to an ever-evolving family of mind viruses, they actually believe in the miracle cures they are selling, and many have paid the price. Around the world, some conservative religious institutions have prioritized the health of their religious enterprise (namely growing their congregations) over the health of individual members. Their refusal to stop meeting in person has turned their religious gatherings into disease hubs, sometimes with lethal results for leaders as well as members. But that seems all the more reason to set limits on religious claims of immunity and healing.The Washington State Attorney General spoke in strong terms about scientist Johnny Stine selling an untested vaccine because Stine s standing as a public figure made his influence particularly problematic.I would say anytime someone has the veneer of a professional, a trusted source, a doctor, a scientist, that raises my concern that Washingtonians may think this is a solution to the challenge they are facing right now.Did you notice the glaring omission from that list of particularly trusted information sources? Yeah, me too.Valerie Taricois a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. From UnHerd Political correctness could explain why the Jordan Peterson generation is quite so conservative.By Eric KaufmannSomething unusual is happening among Britain s youngest voters, known as Generation Z or the Zoomers. Increasingly, those under the age of 22 seem to be diverging from voters aged between 22 and 39, and appear considerably more conservative, to the point where today s 18-year-olds are about as right-wing as 40 year-olds.How might this be explained? Are Zoomers just more irreverent, reacting against their politically-correct older siblings? Or is it that Britain s newest voters are simply too young to have been shaped by the Brexit shock? Whatever the explanation, in the immediate post-Brexit years the youngest voters were 40 points more liberal than the oldest. Today they are only 20 points more to the Left.Continue reading @UnHerd.Former IRA volunteer and ex-prisoner, spent 18 years in Long Kesh, 4 years on the blanket and no-wash/no work protests which led to the hunger strikes of the 80s. Completed PhD at Queens upon release from prison. Left the Republican Movement at the endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement, and went on to become a journalist. Co-founder of The Blanket, an online magazine that critically analyzed the Irish peace process. Lead researcher for the Belfast Project, an oral history of the Troubles.

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