Clipmarks | hayesstw's clips

Catonsville protester dies

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:54:59 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw

John Hogan had just returned after 15 years helping the poor in a tiny Guatemalan village when he learned about a protest against the Vietnam War planned by a group of Catholic activists.

Forty years ago last spring, Mr. Hogan and eight others seized hundreds of draft records from the Catonsville U.S. Selective Service office, doused them with homemade napalm in a parking lot and set them ablaze. The actions of the protesters, known as the Catonsville Nine, sparked a dramatic trial, inspired generations of activists and is remembered as one of the country's most famous acts of civil disobedience.

After being released from prison for his actions, Mr. Hogan worked as a carpenter and devoted himself to a life of quiet service. He died Friday of complications from a stroke at Yale New Haven Hospital near his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 73.

Tags: catonsville nine, vietnam war, catholic church, protest, anti-war

Boesak resigns from church positions over homosexuality

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:02:14 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw

Clip Source: www.thetimes.co.za

Anti Apartheid activist, Allan Boesak is expected to resign from all his positions in the Uniting Reformed Church, the SABC reported.

Boesak announced this in Hammanskraal outside Pretoria, after the church’s General Synod discussed the question of homosexuality.

The broadcaster said Boesak used the Belhar Declaration - an anti-apartheid statement adopted by the then Dutch Reformed Mission Church in 1986,to defend his view that it was wrong to discriminate against homosexuals.

Tags: uniting reformed church, homosexuality, allan boesak

Collective village offers new hope to Russian orphans

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:56:26 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: In our mission congregation at Klipfontein View one woman has been trained in caring for abandoned children, of whom there are plenty in the vicinity, and it would be good to have something like Kitezh village... unfortunately there isn't enough money to set it up.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

Work and play often commingle in Kitezh, an experimental orphan community about 190 miles southwest of Moscow that combines features of an orphanage with those of foster care. With its colorful wooden cottages, Kitezh appears as distant from the cruelty of the children's frequently alcoholic and abusive parents as it is from the stale, often crowded government institutions where many Russian orphans still live.

The founders of Kitezh hope that their village can be a model of reform for Russia's decrepit child welfare system, little changed since Soviet days. Though perhaps hard to replicate on a large scale, Kitezh still stands as one of the few largely successful alternatives here to institutional care for orphans.

Dmitri Morozov, a former radio talk-show host, founded Kitezh in 1992 as a kind of orphan collective

Today, there are about half a dozen houses built in Russian-folk style, a school, a communal dining hall and a small Orthodox church.

Tags: orphanages, child welfare, russia, children's village

Religious freedom: Christians forbidden to pray to Allah

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:31:23 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: The Malaysian government is trying to stop Christians from praying to Allah, and insists that the name should be reserved for exclusive use by Muslims. Yet Christians have been praying to Allah since before Islam existed.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

A Malaysian church has sued the government for banning the import of Christian books containing the word "Allah," alleging it was unconstitutional and against freedom of religion, a lawyer said Thursday.

The Sabah Evangelical Church of Borneo is also challenging the government for declaring that the word "Allah" — which means God in the Malay language — can only be used exclusively by Muslims, said the church's lawyer Lim Heng Seng.

Dusing said Christians in Sabah on Borneo island have used the word "Allah" for generations when they worship in the Malay language, and the word appears in their Malay Bible.

"The Christian usage of Allah predates Islam. Allah is the name of God in the old Arabic Bible as well as in the modern Arabic Bible," he said, adding Allah was widely used by Christians in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Indonesia and other parts of the world without problem.

Tags: religions freedom, god, allah, name of god, islam, christianity, interfaith relations

Atheist's bizarre attempt to convert Christian

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:56:05 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: One sometimes hears of fanatical Christians with over-enthusiastic in-your-face proselytising, but it seems that Christians don't have a monopoly. Atheists sometimes resort to such methods too.

Clip Source: www.eadt.co.uk

AN ATHEIST subjected a devout Christian woman to a “relentless” campaign of harassment in which he smeared dog faeces on her car and urinated on her doorstep.

Timothy Brown, of Edwin Avenue, Woodbridge, may seek medical help after a year-long bid to change Helen Watson's religious beliefs.

Brown, 37, who is married and has a child, pleaded guilty at South East Magistrates' Court in Ipswich yesterday to racially aggravated harassment between September 1, 2007, and September 10 this year.

The ordeal began in September last year after Mrs Watson had placed a religious fish sticker in her car.

After that point, she would regularly find that another sticker had been put on top of it with words such as “myth”, “deceived”, “sucker” and “fiction”, which she said were derogatory to her religious views.

Tags: altheism, christianity, proselytism, atheists, christians

Conservatives scared of spiders, liberals have moral blind spots

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 06:34:45 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: Scientists have been investigating peoples' moral and political compass, and have come up with some dubious conclusions.

Clip Source: gawker.com

Rice University Political Scientist John Alford published some research in the creatively named journal Science about a possible biological basis to liberalism and conservatism.

Liberals were not sensitive to the scary images. Which means they're biologically inferior, because they'd die if a gay spider tried to abort their faces to death.

Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, wrote a lengthy anthropological investigation into why people vote for Republicans.

they have different cultural standards of ethics and morality! Liberals and college students define morality as "how we treat each other," conservatives attach more significance to "supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way." Liberals recognize fairness and care as important moral virtues, conservatives add to that loyalty, respect for authority, and duty.

Tags: politics, morals, morality, liberals, conservatives, fear, psychology

Family honoured for memorial

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:53:55 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: I'm not sure which branch of the Growden family this is, but it seems interesting nevertheless.

Clip Source: www.wtol.com

A northwest Ohio family who helped establish the national World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. got special recognition Sunday.

Former Veteran Roger Durbin from Berkey, Ohio helped come up with the memorial idea, and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur helped pave the way in Washington.

Roger's granddaughter, Melissa Growden, was also a part of building the memorial, and she accepted the gift. "We receive phone calls, emails... People stop us on the street to say thank you," she says.

Tags: growden, family, family history, war memorial, ohio

Building society eats building society

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:25:36 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: I don't know much about financial institutions in Britain, but I found it encouraging that they still apparently have building societies.

In South Africa all the major building societies demutualised about 20 years ago, suckering their members with stories of "windfalls", which they have since lost many times over in the bank charges levied by the commercial banks that replaced the building societies.

Am I right in surmising that Northern Rock, which recently had a big bail out at the expense of the taxpayers, was also one of these demutualised ex-building societies?

And what are these Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac that have had similar bail-outs in the US? The first sounds like an escort agency rather than a financial institution. I realise that "image" is deceptive, but who in their right mind would lend to or borrow from an institution with a name like that?

Clip Source: business.timesonline.co.uk

Nationwide is expected to announce that it is taking over two smaller rivals in a deal that will value the building society at £191 billion.

However, the two smaller societies' 910,000 members are unlikely to receive a windfall because the Derbyshire and Cheshire will retain their own brands and branches.

No money will change hands in the deal, which must be approved by the societies' members. The three societies will together have almost 16 million members.

But experts said that the deal was unlikely to kick off a wave of consolidation because most societies had business models that could steer a path out of the economic doldrums.

Nationwide, which took over the Portman Building Society last year, has benefited from the so-called flight to quality that occurred after the collapse of Northern Rock.

Savings fund 71 per cent of Nationwide's business, which means that it is less reliant on borrowing from the wholesale market.

Tags: building societies, banks, mortgage loans, savings, finance

Americans whinge about proposed Internet bandwidth cap

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:08:03 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: For the first time ever, it seems American ISPs are thinking of implementing bandwidth caps to curtail Internet usage, and many are up in arms about it.

But Comcast's mooted 250 Gig cap seems infinitely generous compared with Telkom's 3 Gig monthly maximum, and anything else one has to pay extra for.

Clip Source: www.consumeraffairs.com

The era of unlimited Internet usage for a flat monthly price is one step closer to its end, as cable giant Comcast officially announced today that residential subscribers would top out at 250 gigabytes (GB) per month of data bandwith availability, beginning October 1.

Critics of metered broadband say that the plans offer too little bandwith for too high a price. Customers will shy away from using high-speed Internet's full potential, such as uploading or streaming videos, if they are afraid of going over their limits in doing so, and that companies who are supporting metered plans do so to protect their own video channels and hamstring competitors such as YouTube.

Tags: internet, bandwidth cap, comcast, telkom

Caucasian Realpolitik

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:38:15 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: The recent Caucasian conflict shows that among the great powers, Realpolitik still trumps principles and morality.

Clip Source: links.org.au

To most Russians, it was obvious from the beginning that the latest war in the Caucasus began with an attack by Georgian forces on South Ossetia, and that ultimately it was unleashed on the initiative of the United States. To the West, meanwhile, it was just as clear from the outset that the August war in the Caucasus represented an assault on small, defenceless and democratic Georgia by huge, aggressive and authoritarian Russia. This is what almost all the world media have asserted, and continue to assert.

In Russia, Putin and Co. are putting into practice an economic and social model that is more market-liberal even than in the US, and even less socially oriented than in the US; in this sense, the Putins and Medvedevs are more than worthy pupils of the Bushes).

such behaviour by the official Russian authorities was almost certainly not the result of a consistently thought-out position of defending justice and the right of nations to self-determination in the world political arena.

Tags: geoargia, south ossetia, russia

Did the devil make him do it?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:51:13 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: The parents of a schoolby charged with kipping a fellow pupil said that he was "into satanism", as did some newspaper headlines.

The trouble is, these allegations are tossed about, but never followed up. There were similar reports a few months ago in the Eastern Cape, but we have heard no more.

Clip Source: www.thetimes.co.za

The parents of Morne Harmse, accused of stabbing a fellow pupil to death with a sword, in their first public statement since the incident, said their son was a victim of bullying.

The Harmses said "to our regret, it seems like he had started experimenting with Satanism".

The mask he wore is said to be similar to masks worn by heavy metal band Slipknot which has been accused of producing Satanic music.

Tags: satanism, witchcraft, ritual murder, school killings

Cabaret in Pietermaritzburg

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:36:30 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: Second cousin once removed James Aitchison in Pietermaritzburg play.

Clip Source: www.witness.co.za

Cabaret was immortalised in 1972 by the film version directed by Bob Fosse. It won eight Oscars that year, two of which went to Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey for their portrayals of Sally Bowles and the Emcee, respectively. Inevitably, any subsequent production is compared to the film, as the roles of the Emcee and Sally Bowles have to bear comparison with the iconic performances of Minnelli and Grey.

Fortunately, anyone going to Peter Mitchell’s production of Cabaret currently on at the Hexagon Theatre will not be disappointed. Caitlin Kilburn is

Based on the world described by Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Stories, the milieu is the Weimar Republic, under a government that encouraged sexual indulgence of all kinds.

Aitchison is very good as Bradshaw as are Diana Wilson as Frau Schneider and Leo Quayle as Herr Schultz.

Tags: family history, theare, drama, pietermaritzburg

Interreligious dialogue

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:38:42 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: When the goddess Bhagavati calls on the virgin Mary, is it interreligious dialogue at a higher level? Or is it inculturation, or syncretism?

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

"Yes, yes, the Virgin Mary is Bhagavati's younger sister," explained Vasudeva, the head priest, matter of factly, as if stating the obvious.

"But, for sisters, don't they look rather different from each other?" I asked. A calendar image of the goddess, pinned up behind him, showed Bhagavati as a wizened hag wreathed in skulls and crowned with an umbrella of cobra hoods. In her hand she wielded a giant sickle.

"Sisters are often a little different from each other," he replied. "Mary is another form of the Devi. They have equal power." He paused: "At our annual festival the priests take the goddess around the village on top of an elephant to receive sacrifices from the people. She visits all the places, and one stop is the church. There she sees her sister."

Tags: inculturation, syncretism, interreligious dialogue

The Bible, modernity, and missiology

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:32:54 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw
clipper's remarks: Interesting article here by N.T. Wright, prepared for the recent Lambeth (actually Canterbury) conference of Anglican bishops.

Clip Source: www.virtueonline.org

Debates about the authority of scripture have tended to get off on the wrong foot and to turn into an unproductive shouting-match. This is partly because here, as in matters of political theology, in the words of Jim Wallis 'the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it'. And sometimes the other way round as well. We have allowed our debates to be polarized within the false either/or of post-enlightenment categories, so that we either see the Bible as a holy book, almost a magic book, in which we can simply look up detached answers to troubling questions, or see it within its historical context and therefore claim the right to relativize anything and everything we don't immediately like about it. These categories are themselves mistaken; the Bible itself helps us to challenge them

Tags: bible, missiology, lambeth conference

Russian Church does not condemn communism as a political doctrine

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:16:44 GMT

clipped by: hayesstw

Clip Source: www.interfax-religion.com

The Moscow Patriarchate finds no sense in condemning communism as an ideology.

"Church doesn't give estimations to political philosophy and political doctrines. When they say Church should condemn communism as philosophy I don't think it's correct," deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said on air of Russian News Service.

He noted there were believers among the Communists and "many people once urged Church to condemn Communism."

According to Fr. Vsevolod, "it's difficult" to say what communism is today as "some left political movements speak about ideals of justice. And these ideals are also important for an Orthodox Christian."

It is quite a different matter (and according to him, "many priests have positively stated it") that "society and state should condemn crimes of the Bolshevist regime

Tags: church, christianity, ideology, political policies