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POPSKill the bastards! After urging the police to shoot to kill, Deputy Minister of Safety and Security has now advised ordinary citizens to do the same if they are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them.
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POPSNo more child witches in DRC? Whether the law can be enforced in such a fractured country is indeed a moot point, but so is the idea of these "deeply-held" beliefs. These beliefs, to all accounts, appeared quite suddenly in recent history. Perhaps they could disappear just as suddenly. What we need to find is what it takes to make them disappear, and perhaps it could help to find what caused them to appear in the first place. The DRC, like other African countries, has long had many people who believe that misfortunes are caused by witchcraft and sorcery. What appears to be new is the belief that these witches are young children, and that it is occurring on such a scale. Perhaps it is the very fractured nature of the society that is causing these beliefs to spread and be deeply held.
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POPSMoral regeneraltion, degeneration, confustion There is talk of the need for moral regeneration in our society, and perhaps they are right. It seems that nobody taught this boy "Thou shalt not steal." And nobody taught the driver of the car, "Thou shalt not kill." Or perhaps someone taught them that, but they didn't learn it. As they say in edu-jargon, the learning outcomes were not achieved.
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POPSExraordinary Rendition With shrinking space for burials, and cremations being environmentally unfriendly, theres a new proposal for getting rid of corpses by rendering. In ordinary rendering a body is boiled until the various parts separate, but in a new process, which could be described as "extraordinary rendition", chemicals are added to speed up the process. It's not clear whether it uses less energy than cremation.
3
POPSDorothy Day's diaries published Dorothy Day's diaries are to be published. They were sealed for 25 years after her death in 1980, and should provide an interesting insight into her life and ministry. Dorothy Day was a Catholic anarcho-pacifist, and is a good illustration of the principle that theological conservatism leads to political liberalism, and vice versa.
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POPSSchadenfreude? For the last three months South Africans have been complaining about Eskom's failures in planning and bad management, as if it is the only organisation to suffer from such incompetence, and as if South Africa is the only country to suffer from such misfortunes. So perhaps there was a certain sense of relief, not to mention malicious glee, to see that British Airways seems to be unable to organise a piss up in a brewery. And there was the gent of Sky News muttering at 20 minute intervals about the damage it was doing to "brand UK". At least we're not alone.
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POPSThe Archbishop and the Beast There's been a sudden increase of blogging about liberation theology since Barack Obama's pastor hit the headlines. It has brought forth some very strange comments and perceptions, such as that those, who like Archbishop Romero were crushed by the power of the state for opposing the abuse of power actually supported what they opposed.
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POPSWitchcraft-related crimes
The recent arrest and appearance in court of three men accused of ritual killings in the Eastern Cape has highlighted the problem of so-called muti murders, one of which is that they are rarely highlighted. In another country one or two murders would be sensational. Eighteen murders in a small town within a few months should rival the Virginia Tech killings in the USA for newsworthiness -- at least in South Africa. But no, things like the Virginia Tech killings got more coverage in the South African media than serial killings in our own back yard. Why is this? Is it because many of the Virginia Tech victims were white, and the Mzamba victims were black? Are deaths of white people more newsworthy than the deaths of black people? And what happens to these case? So often it is reported that someone has been murdered, and that muti killing is suspected, and then no more is heard. If someone charged, that may be reported, and no more is heard. Is anyone ever convicted?
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POPSLiberation theology I never thought I'd ever see eye-to-eye with a US Southern Baptist. This one's rhetoric almost convinces me, but not quite.
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POPSPeace symbol - 50 years on Jerry Horton's now-famous peace symbol is 50 years old. It's first public appearance was at the Aldermaston March in 1958, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to protest against nuclear weapons. Later it was widened to a general peace symbol, and not simply against nuclear weapons, and has been used by people protesting against wars in general, such as the Vietnam War and the current Iraqi-American War.
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POPSThe martyrdom of the Iraqi Church Let this be a kind of postscript to the Blogswarm post of the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraqui-American War, to which there is no end in sight. Did the neocons think about this when they unleashed the dogs of war in Iraq? Do they care?
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POPSMikhail Gorbachev as a Christian Several newspapers have reported that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, is a Christian. What is surprising, however, is not so much the reports themselves as the source: the reports have come from Italy. It will be interesting to see if there are any follow-ups in the media, saying something about how Gorbachev practises his Christian faith back home in Russia. Does he have a parish and a parish priest? Where are they, and what do they have to say?
1
POPSRacial integration through social engineering? Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa's urban residential areas remain almost as segregated as before. Now the eThekwini Municipality plans to change that -- by allocating housing on racial lines.
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POPSSchool’s shock over killings suspect There have been ritual killings before, to use human body parts for muti, but the scale of these killings goes far beyond most reported cases - 18 killings in a village within five months!
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POPSThe unexpected monks We've been talkibng about having a synchroblog on the new monasticism, and suddenly it seems to be popping up all over the place. Hat-tip to Paul Grabill for this link.
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POPSDual therapy for HIV babies OK The Department of Health has given the go ahead to use dual therapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. And it's about time too! For people infected with HIV, treatment cannot cure -- it can only retard the progress of the disease. The treatment of babies, however, is a direct intervention to reduce transmission, and the more new infections we can prevent, the better.
2
POPSBritish double standards on WMD and terrorists The recebnt revelations about British double standards on the question of WMD in the Middle East also highlights other double standards as well -- denouncing Hamas as "terrorists", but recognising the UDI by the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army).
1
POPSDisingenuous "fact" file on Kosovo "Peace talks in France failed and in March 1999 NATO started bombing to force Serbia to withdraw." What's hidden in that bland statement is that the reason that peace talks failed was the intransigence of Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, who was determined to have a war.
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POPSBush Recognizes Kosovo's Independence So who's a "surrender monkey" now? Recognition of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence shows quite clearly that terrorism pays, and leaves the "War on Terror" in tatters.
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POPSImagine no religion! Imagine no religion! Enver Hoxha did, and for 27 years worked to turn what he imagined into reality. From 1967 to 1991 Albania was the first (and only) atheist state in the world. It actually doesn't take much imagination. We don't need to imagine no religion We just need to look at the history books.
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POPSRemoving the state from Dr Rowan Williams Church, State, Law and the Enlightenment: I think that this article is rather condescending, and demeaning of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in suggesting that he did not know what can of worms he was opening in his discussion of Sharia law in Britain. I don't think he is that thick. As the article does point out, however, he has questioned one of the core assumptions of modernity -- that "religion" (itself a "modern" concept) belongs exclusively to the private sphere. In doing so, it seems, he has thought the unthinkable, spoken the unspeakable, and questioned the unquestionable. Nasty man -- a bit like Galileo and Copernicus, perhaps, except that he's questioning the secular authorities rather than the ecclesiastical ones. Though I don't agree with everything in Janet Daley's article, I think it's worth reading because she does put her finger on the main issue raised by the Archbishop.
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