OVO

Most people associate Valentine’s Day with romance, but for Salman Rushdie, I expect it has vastly different associations. On February 14, 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie for writing his book The Satanic Verses – and this death sentence has been perpetually reaffirmed by Iranian leaders, though no assassin has yet carried it out.  It was the first salvo in what has become an all-out Islamic war against the freedom of speech.

Rushdie did not invent the “Satanic verses.” The term actually refers to an incident, recorded in Islamic tradition and referred to in Sura 53, in which Satan, not Allah, spoke through Muhammad’s mouth. The verses that the devil gave to the Prophet of Islam have been known thereafter as “the Satanic verses.”

Article continues.  See also Sura 53, Wikipedia.

Background:
Geert Wilders [29 March 2008] [29 March 2008] [4 May 2008] [11 September 2008] [28 September 2008]  [10 June 2009] [3 September 2009] [3 November 2009]
Pin Fortuyn [6 May 2009] [1 July 2009] [21 October 2009] [3 November 2009]
Theo van Gogh [14 February 2008] [17 May 2008] [3 September 2009] [11 September 2008] [10 June 2009] [1 July 2009] [3 November 2009] [5 November 2009]

“I have decided to fight Islam.  Please pay attention to my statement; to fight Islam, not the political Islam, not the militant Islam, not the radical Islam, not the Wahhabi Islam, but Islam itself… Islam has never been misunderstood, Islam is the problem… (Muslims) have to realize that they have only two choices: to change or to be crushed.”

Article continues.

Thank goodness that a Muslim leader has made a public statement against the murder of homosexuals.  His statement is so clear that there is no way it could be taken out of context and turned into something wicked.  For all the railing against Islam I do, here is a bit of good news.

Mustafa Muhammad is the President of the Islamic Council of Jamaica.  Currently in Jamaica the act of buggery can lead to ten years in prison.  Mr. Muhammad has recently gone on record saying that he is against the murder of homosexuals.  Mr. Muhammad does note that sharia law does demand the murder of homosexuals.  He goes on to say “[homosexuality] is illegal and in the Sharia law the punishment is death. If you follow Christianity it is a crime in the sight of God. He destroyed a whole city because of this thing. It is an ungodly practice and I apologize to no one for this.”

But Mr. Muhammad is against the murder of homosexuals.  Why?  “This can only be done in a country that is being run by Islam.”  And right now Jamaica is not being run by Islam.

Let Muslims and multiculturalists everywhere salute Mr. Muhammad’s tolerance.

BBC News, Danish Police Shoot Intruder at Cartoonist’s Home:

The man had entered Mr [Kurt] Westergaard’s house armed with a knife and axe and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him. Mr Westergaard ran to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.

KR News, Charity cartoon rejected over terror fears:

TV2’s morning lifestyle programme Go’morgen Danmark was the latest in a long line of those trying to help the victims of the Haitian earthquake. The show organised an auction through auctioneers, Lauritz.com, and asked well known politicians and personalities to donate personal items for the charity fundraiser. A signed copy of Bill Clinton’s book dedicated to the head of the Social Democrats, concert and sports events tickets and a porcelain doll owned by Pia Kjærsgaard, head of the Danish People’s Party, are already listed in the auction. However, when cartoonist Kurt Westergaard – forever to be associated with the Mohammed cartoons and terror threats – was asked to submit a new drawing for the auction, the auctioneers refused to accept it. According to Mette Jessen of Lauritz, the decision was taken because of the latest attempt on Westergaard’s life when an alleged assassin broke into his house on New Year’s Day. ‘We must recognise that the terror threat is still of such a character that we can’t predict the consequences of a sale. We value the safety of our employees quite highly, which is why an eventual risk assessment was used in our consideration,’ she said. Westergaard was disappointed in Lauritz’s decision, saying it was just another example of how his name creates fear. ‘The drawing was in no way controversial, but it seems my name is. I’m sorry for the fear it causes people. When even my hairdresser, who is Muslim, told me with sadness that she didn’t dare keep me on as a customer for fear of reprisals, then there’s reason to be sad about this development,’ he said.

VOA News, Death of Gay Activist Brings Turkey’s Attitude Toward Gays Into Focus:

For 26-year-old Ahmet Yildiz, the choice to live openly as a gay man in Turkey proved deadly. Prosecutors say his father, charged with allegedly killing his son in what is being dubbed as the first gay honor killing, traveled more than 900 kilometers from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul.

FOXNews.com, Saudi Teen Sentenced to 90 Lashes for Cell Phone in School:

Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading country in the use of torture-by-flogging, and religious police keep a close watch over public behavior.

RFI, Playwright Petrol Attack Handed to Terrorist Police:

The 45-year-old was attacked on Tuesday night outside the theatre in Paris where her play is showing. Two men insulted her in Arabic and poured petrol over her. They then threw a cigarette at her, which failed to ignite.

MetaFilter, Malaysian Churches Attacked Over “Allah”:

Malaysian Catholic newspaper Herald was recently involved in a major lawsuit against the Malaysian government, stating that their constitutional rights were violated when they were stripped of their license to publish in East Malaysian indigenous language Kadazandusun. The ruling was overturned, amidst support by state ministers and protests by the Government, the Islamic Opposition party, and Muslim activists – some of whom have spent the past week attacking churches and convents through firebombs, Molotov cocktails, paint, and bricks thrown at glass.

MetaFilter, The Women of Afghanistan:

87 percent are illiterate. 44 years is their average life expectancy. 70 to 80 percent face forced marriages.

Sam Harris, Liberals Have More to Fear than Cheney (circa 30 January 2008):

Liberals need to realize that there are people in the Muslim world far scarier than Dick Cheney.

NYPOST.com, Art Therapy for Terrorists:

“There is no criteria for evaluation,” John Horgan, a Department of Homeland Security consultant, told the New York Post.

Times Online, Iranian Dancer Afshin Ghaffarian Describes Ordeal at the Hands of Basij:

Ghaffarian is a dancer – an activity banned by Iran’s Islamic rulers and punishable by long prison terms. “If he had known that he would have beaten me even harder,” Ghaffarian said.

Robert Scheer, Bush’s Faustian Deal with the Taliban (22 May 2001 via archive.org):

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That’s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today.

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and etc.  “They’re making the last film… “

The Cold War was an attempt, using every means possible, by the United States and its allies in North America and Western Europe, along with other countries that had their own reasons for joining in, to prevent the expansion of Soviet power through military means or through other means, including the spread of the ideology of Communism. That Cold War began after World War II, even though from the earliest days of the Bolsheviks it had always been clear to some that Soviet Communism was inherently expansionist, totalitarian, and aggressive, and lasted until the time of Gorbachev, when the rulers of the Soviet Union conceded that on its own terms Communism had not delivered the goods, had failed. [...] Communism failed in the Soviet Union because it could not deliver. And instead of continuing to believe the stories that the stage of Communism had not yet been reached, and so it would be unfair and premature to judge Communism a failure, too many of those in the know, and in the Party itself, or close to those in the Party, realized that Communism was a political, economic, and moral disaster.

[...] Now the United States is the leader of a group of nations that are threatened in different ways by those employing different weapons, but animated by an ideology that in many respects, in its claim to regulate every area of life, may be called totalitarian, and that has hundreds of millions, indeed more than a billion, of claimed adherents. Those adherents control and dominate a large part of the world, and are moving aggressively, in every way they can, to make the rest of us, those who do not share that ideology, concede to their demands, and to make the world safe for the adherents of that ideology to work to remove all obstacles to its spread and then to its dominance. That ideology, with its Complete Explanation of the Universe (an explanation even more far-reaching than Communism, that limited itself to the sphere of economics relations and its natural epiphenomena) and its Total Regulation of Life, has a remarkable hold on the minds of its adherents. And unlike Communism, there is no one thing that Islam must deliver to prove itself. It is multidimensional and hydra-headed, and there is no one thing, no one failure, that would lead its adherents to question, much less abandon it.

[...] Along with Peace, the other great theme of Soviet propaganda was Colonialism, An End To. Since the main colonial powers were Great Britain and France, the most important allies of the United States, taking the side of all those seeking to be independent – ready or not, and no matter what the outcome – was a way to profitably exploit what was seen, too easily, as on-the-side-of-the-angels decolonialism. Furthermore, this was said to be the Side of History. The “winds of change” were blowing, said Harold Macmillan, and no one could stop it. It was not the Soviet Marxists who were the only determinists. Though a grouping of countries in Africa and Asia and Latin America became known as the Non-Aligned, those Non-Aligned, in solemn conclave assembled at Bandung or elsewhere, always seemed to pass resolutions against the West for its supposed machinations. But the machinations that counted were those of the Soviets and their collaborators, who manipulated these gatherings for their own ends. The Non-Aligned never seemed to worry about the Soviet Union, or about the new and unfamiliar kind of “colonialism” (therefore not recognized as such) that the Soviets practiced in Eastern Europe.

The Nonaligned Nations became, over time, what was called the Third World, and the playing off of the United States and the Soviet Union, or the invocation of the threat of now one, and now the other, allowed countries that were in fact always playing their own game to obtain aid, and then still more aid from the other side, in a bidding war for political affections. Unlike the economic aid given to the countries of Western Europe, countries that were part of the West, much of the economic aid given to countries outside that historic West was misused, or appropriated by local rulers, or spent on inappropriate projects. But this does not take away from the achievements of the original Marshall Plan, even as it should make one wary of invoking that Plan — as so many Muslim leaders, from Al-Jaafari (who preceded Al-Maliki) to Karzai, to Zardari, or their associates do. They fondly think they can inveigle still more money out of the by-now disabused Americans for a “Muslim Marshall Plan” that makes no sense, unless one really believes that “poverty” and “joblessness,” and not Islam itself, are the cause of Muslim economic backwardness and, especially, the cause of Muslim hostility to Infidels, including the Infidel Americans.

[...] The other part of the Cold War – the propaganda part that was fought – does not yet have an analogue in the war being fought, without a declaration of such a war (which is understandable) but even, alas, without a recognition of the nature of the war now being waged on us, but that many are still too tongue-tied or inhibited to discuss, even obliquely, metonymically. That propaganda during the Cold War was directed at two different audiences. The first was behind the Iron Curtain. To that audience, through Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and all sorts of publishing ventures, the American government provided material of many different kinds. It published émigré writers, and had those writers broadcast on Radio Liberty, or Radio Free Europe, to show that outside the confines of Communism, Russian and Polish and Czech and Bulgarian and other writers, even in their exile, had managed to continue their work, and some of that work was even about the miseries of totalitarianism. News stories about Western achievements were contrasted with stories about repeated failures – crop failures, technical failures, failures of every kind in the Communist world – were also beamed into the satellite nations and the Soviet Union. Special attention was given to those who had, like Arthur Koestler and others who contributed to “The God That Failed,” once been Communists, even fanatical Communists, but had managed to grasp the nature of the system and to fight their way out of it, and to become its most cogent because most knowledgeable critics.

And the other audience to which American and other Western propaganda was aimed, was those in the West who might have been most vulnerable to the siren-song of Communism, or Marxist-Leninism, or whatever it called itself. This audience included not only members of the Communist Parties in the Western world, but also those who, as members of left-leaning parties, were deemed in some cases insufficiently vigilant about Communist influence and Communist propaganda. It was understood that Soviet propaganda was clever, not clumsy, and that it would take an effort to counter it – one directed in the main by those who were advised by, or themselves had been, refugees from Soviet Communism, from the Soviet Union or from the Soviet-controlled nations.

Where is such a propaganda effort today? Who are the analogues of those refugees from Communism, from the world of Islam? And up till now, what has the American government done about disseminating, not behind some Iron Curtain, but simply by all the means now so widely available – radio, satellite television, the Internet, audiocassettes and videotapes – news about Islam’s failures, or the failures of states where Islam rules? How many Muslims have been told, again and again, about how much money the Muslim members of OPEC have taken in, and how little they have managed to do with it, save spend it on armaments, and luxury goods, and palaces, and every sort of decadence that goes far beyond anything the non-Islamic rich are known to routinely indulge in? How many Muslims have listened, in broadcasts from abroad, to economists discuss the economic performance of Muslim states, compared to non-Muslim states, and discussions of the reasons for this – the inshallah-fatalism, and the hatred of bid’a (innovation)? How many programs do you know of where the moral failures of Islam are discussed, discussed regularly, not intermittently, by the likes of Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

[Article continues.]

Once again I have enjoyed the benefit of reading the words of those who are my enemies and of reading source documents as well as commentary on source documents.

Like many others, I have been reading about a proposed anti-homosexual law in the country of Uganda.  I have read consistently that the law would sentence homosexuals to death.  Then I read a press release from a group in England that supports the proposed law.  The press release made different claims:

In fact, the death penalty in David Bahati MP’s ‘Anti-homosexuality Bill’ is only for ‘aggravated homosexuality’; which is knowingly infecting others with AIDS, sodomy with minors and homosexual rape. Promoting homosexuality would however be punishable by a jail term.

It cannot be true that the proposed law both does and does not sentence homosexuals to death.  This was the benefit of reading the words of my enemies (Christian Voice, authors of the press release): I learned what I thought was true was instead in question.  One way to resolve this contradiction was to consult the source document, granting an equal mistrust to all commentators.  Here is what the source document says:

A person commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality where the (a) person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years; (b) offender is a person living with HIV; (c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offence is committed; (d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offence is committed; (e) victim of the offence is a person with disability; (f) offender is a serial offender; or (g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy or overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to ahve unlawful carnal connections with any person of the same sex.  A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death. [PDF]

The press release of my enemies is more accurate than the commentary of my friends and the mainstream media.  The section of the proposed law quoted above speaks of homosexuality in the way some laws in the United States spoke of sodomy, as a catch-all for anything other than genital-to-genital sex between a man and a woman.  Homosexuality in itself is criminalized with a jail term (life), not with the death penalty.

I am against all laws pertaining to victimless crimes.  Sex between consenting and informed adults is nobody’s business, and that includes homosexuality.  The proposed anti-homosexual law is bad enough as it stands.  Homosexuality does not merit life in prison or extradition, as the law calls for.  I am against this law, and against those who support this law.  But there is no need to exaggerate how bad this law is by falsely claiming it threatens homosexuals with the death penalty exclusively due to their homosexuality.

Yahoo News: Taliban blow up Pakistan girls school
Islamist militants opposed to co-education and subscribers to sharia law have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in northwest Pakistan in recent years.

The Nation: Woman sold in public auction in Pakistan – for $3,200
A 20-year-old girl was auctioned at village Badani Bhutto of Taluka Kashmore in consideration of Rs2,70,000 on Saturday. Azizan, daughter of late Allah Bux Bhutto, was divorced on the allegation of Karo-kari [roughly, adultery] some time back. She is stated to be mother of two children and was residing with her brother who held the open auction for her ‘sale’ at village Badani Bhutto.

BBC: Pakistan court orders ears and noses to be cut off
A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.

Mail Online: Muslim police chef defeated in ‘bacon roll’ tribunal faces £75,000 legal bill
Mr Khoja, 62, lost his claim in May after a police employee told an employment tribunal how she saw Mr Khoja eat bacon rolls and sausages.

Mail Online: Islamic militants stone man to death for adultery in Somalia as villagers are forced to watch
Mohamed Ibrahim appeals to Islamic militants not to carry out the execution as he is buried in the ground as his villagers are forced to watch.

BBC: Uganda bans female genital mutilation
Anyone convicted of the practice, which involves cutting off a girl’s clitoris, will face 10 years in jail, or a life sentence if a victim dies.

Spiegel Online: Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims
Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West — in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 — only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

ABC News: Torture Tape Implicates UAE Royal Sheikh
A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails. A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim’s arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man’s wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

BBC: Swiss minaret ban ‘security risk’
“Provocation risks triggering other provocation and risks inflaming extremism.”

Death By 1000 Papercuts: How Easy to Build a Christian Church in Muslim Countries?
These countries are the largest in the Muslim world.

New York Times: Muslim Prayers Fuel Spiritual Rebuilding Project by Ground Zero
“We want to push back against the extremists.”

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] and etc.  There are photographs of Mohamed Ibrahim being stoned to death at the above link.  Go ahead, take a look.  Islam is the religion of peace, and there is no compulsion under the religion of Islam.  You just need to level-up your cultural sensitivity to their sacred traditions.  Respect their diversity.  Sure, men get tortured and stoned to death and have parts of their faces cut off, all with the cooperation and enthusiastic participation of the Islamic government.  And yes, women have their genitals mutilated and are sold as slaves.  But just because these people are different doesn’t mean we should fear or hate them.  We need to walk a mile in their shoes before we can judge them.  For heaven’s sake don’t provoke them – provocation risks triggering other provocation and risks inflaming extremism.  See, it’s our fault!  It takes a signature from the President of Egypt to build a Christian church in Egypt.  No Christian churches are allowed in Saudi Arabia at all.  Turkey and Algeria forbid existing Christian churches to be repaired and often order that they be torn down.  Indonesia allows Christian churches to exist providing no worship services occur there on Sundays.  Pakistan Christians generally meet in private homes.  No wonder Muslims are angry that the Swiss have banned the construction of new mosques in their country.  Whether it’s eating pork or building places of worship, Islam is a ‘do as I say not as I do’ sort of superstition.

My opinion counts for little, but here it is.  I’m encouraged by the Muslims described in the last link, those pushing back against their fellow Muslims.  I’m for the free exercise of religion and I’m for secular government. Christianity survived secularization and Islam can survive it as well.  If it cannot or will not, Islam deserves to die out.  Does it seem impossible that a religion could die out, particularly a globe-spanning religion like Islam?  Then spend a little time walking around in the graveyard of the gods to get a little perspective.  Every religion dies out given time.  And a little bit of a shove.

Two years ago (24 November 2007) I wrote about Mamie Manneh. Manneh was accused of illegally importing monkey meat “for religious ceremonies.”  Her lawyer wanted the charges dismissed “because they impinge on the importer’s right to freedom of religion,” that “bushmeat has spiritual significance and Ms. Manneh’s actions were protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” “From her baptism in Liberia to Christmas years later in her adopted New York City, Mamie Manneh never lost the longing to celebrate religious rituals by eating monkey meat.”  Here is what I had to say about that…

Mamie Manneh is an attempted murderer who illegally imported the remains of endangered species into the USA for the purpose of eating them. Handling and consuming this animal can lead to some of the most nightmarish diseases known to humanity. Only spongiform encephalopathy and religion can soften the mind enough to cause a person to hold Mamie’s ‘culture’ or ‘sincere beliefs’ worthy of consideration in this regard. It’s easy to look around and see that no one around you is eating monkey and that almost anyone you ask would be horrified at the idea. It’s easy to not lie to customs. It’s easy to not run over people in cars. It’s easy to not have nine kids that you can’t take care of because you’re in prison for trying to kill a woman. I wish it was easy for judges to laugh and scowl and toss her superstitions out of the courtroom. But that would mean tossing out superstitions that are in better favor with the majority, such as Christianity and Judaism and Islam. How much better it would be if the Constitution of the United States were in effect, and there was no establishment of religion in America.

Time marches on.  In the past two years Manneh has had two more children, bringing the total to eleven.  And for her crime?  A crime Jane Goodall wrote could have “grave consequences on public health?”  A crime which could cause outbreaks of Ebola, measles, tuberculosis and retroviruses similar to HIV among even those who do not eat monkey meat as part of their superstition?  Probation.

Once again, religion is the get-out-of-jail free card.  You can chew off part of a baby’s penis, causing the baby to get herpes which leads to the baby’s death, then another, then another, and get… a warning.  You can neglect your child until they die of curable diseases… but if you are able to demonstrate you mumbled magic spells to an invisible monster that lives in the sky while you watched your child die and did nothing, you can get a reduced sentence.

Spitting contempt is all these morally retarded creeps deserve, and it’s all I have for them.  How much worse, though, that they are given leniency in court.

Dear Friends,

Thank you all so much for the generous support you’ve given me over the years!  I could never have reunited my family and gotten my life back if it wasn’t for all of you, so thank you once again for everything you’ve done!

I’ve finally received the paperwork for the Appeals Court dismissal of my ex’s bid to keep the case in New York State.  You can view them on Google Docs, page 1 here: http://tinyurl.com/yara369 and page 2 here: http://tinyurl.com/ydrzh2k.  Some people have asked me about the court order preventing me from having my own artwork and writing inside my home, so I have put those orders up on the web also.  The legal prohibitions against me having any SubGenius materials in my home are found in numerous court docs.  In the latest, currently standing order from Judge Punch it is found at the bottom of page 2 and top of page 3 here: http://tinyurl.com/yc727s9 .  It is also seen affirmed by Judge Adams on page 17 here: http://tinyurl.com/y8wozzt .

Essentially, the upshot of the latest Appeals Court decision is that for now the case is dismissed, but my ex has one year from the date stamp, September 22, 2009, to make another attempt to complete this appeal.  After that deadline, if nothing further is filed, the case will finally move beyond the jurisdiction of New York State entirely.  Never again would my family face the prospect of having to split up and find lodging in New York for months or years on end to fight the case.  Never again will I be handicapped by not having any of my local friends and people who know our family available to testify.  Although this doesn’t guarantee the case would be completely over, it would return it to a fair and level playing field.

So basically, I’m counting down to September 10, 2010!!  I’ll be sure to send out an update then if all is well so you can rest easy!

Of course the legal bills are still a huge burden.  I have a monthly payment of over $500 to pay back a legal loan that my father secured with his entire retirement savings, so until that is paid off I am always living under the fear that I won’t be able to pay it and everything my father saved over decades of hard work as a letter carrier will be snatched away from him.  Any donations would be greatly appreciated, as always!  The link to donate is: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/90

Another way to help is to visit my new blog!  http://revmagdalen.blogspot.com/2009/11/welcome-to-my-new-blog.html I started this blog because I’ve begun to feel like the terrible numbing effect all these troubles have had on my mind is starting to wear off, and I’ve begun really wanting to share my opinions and hopefully make some people laugh!  And I’ve monetized the blog with ads, so every time anyone just visits and casts their eyes upon the ads, perhaps clicking any that are of genuine interest, it helps out my legal bills!

I’m still in a legal grey area as far as whether or not I can blog about my case, so I’ve chosen not to risk anything by doing that, but I have become pretty involved in activism for the Iranian Green Movement, so I do blog about that and a variety of SubGenius topics.  There’s even a section where you can “Ask Magdalen” any questions on SubGenius doctrine, your love life, anything!  I’ve also written a post explaining in more detail the answer to that infamous question, “Why a goat?” referring to a costume I wore at a SubGenius event that caused much controversy in the courtroom.  Get all the answers here: http://revmagdalen.blogspot.com/2009/11/because-goats-are-funny.html

You can also follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/revmagdalen where I also plan to occasionally serve ads, so the more followers I have, the more it will help my legal fund!  Feel free to tell your friends to check out the blog and follow me on Twitter, for a great free way to help with a good cause!

Thank you all again so much for everything you’ve done for my family, I don’t know how to repay you except to tell you that you have made a huge difference in a family’s life, and without your help we would still be separated and miserable, but your generosity has allowed us to be reunited and we are so happy and grateful for that!!!

Thank you so much!!
-Rachel Bevilacqua

The Associated Press Sudanese teen flogged for wearing “indecent” skirt:

A 16-year-old Christian girl from southern Sudan said Friday she was lashed 50 times for wearing a skirt deemed indecent by authorities in the north who enforce a strict version of Islamic law. Silva Kashif said she was arrested by a plain-clothed policeman in a Khartoum market last week for wearing a skirt beneath the knee. She was convicted of offending public morality and received 50 lashes in the courtroom. “I was treated like a criminal,” Kashif said in a telephone interview. “I am confused what to wear. The trousers were an issue. My skirt was beneath the knee. What more can I do? I am Christian. My tribe and my customs permit me to dress like this.”

Foreign Policy, The Militarization of Sex:

Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community’s political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage. Mutaa is a form of “temporary marriage” only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: “I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]” and the man says: “I accept.” The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the “Party of God”-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained. [...] Zahra, a fully veiled 25 year-old Shiite woman who is completing her master’s degree in English literature, comes from a family of Hezbollah supporters and party members, and has been a lifelong Hezbollah member herself. She explained that she practices temporary marriage because it is a religious duty.”I take good care of myself, and make sure I look perfect every time I go into a mutaa marriage because I should please my husband, temporary or not,” she said. “It is my religious duty to do so. God allowed this kind of marriage for a reason, and I never question God’s wishes.”  Zahra is divorced and believes that Islam has acknowledged sexual desires for both males and females, which is why temporary marriage is permissible. “It is also a religious duty to fulfill your sexual desires,” she insisted, noting that temporary marriages with women whose husbands had been killed fighting Israel were especially encouraged. “[T]hose who satisfy widows of martyrs have more reward in heaven,” she said.

Christopher Hitchens, The “war on terrorism” didn’t cause the Fort Hood shootings:

The terrorists do not pause before deliberately blowing up the mosques and religious processions of those whose Muslim beliefs they deem insufficiently devout. Most of those now being tortured and raped and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran are Muslim. All the women being scarred with acid and threatened with murder for the crime of going to school in Pakistan are Muslim.

Jim Verhulst and Emilio Morenatti, Terrorism that’s personal:

Schoolgirls whom the Taliban in Afghanistan sprayed with acid simply for going to class. [photo essay.]

Ashley Hayes, Expert Study on Extremism Might Have Prevented Fort Hood Shootings:

Shannen Rossmiller is angry that the study she worked with the Pentagon to create – unclassified at its inception – is now under wraps. She told CNN she is concerned political correctness trumped the study.

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and etc. “The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.” – H. L. Mencken, American Mercury March, 1930.

BBC, Irish Catholic Church apologises for abuse by priests:

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has said he is deeply sorry and ashamed about the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests. Cardinal Sean Brady also apologised for the way the Church covered up the abuse, which happened in Dublin. He spoke after an Irish government report revealed abuse over decades, a systematic cover-up by the Church, and a lack of action by the Irish police. The Church put its own reputation ahead of the welfare of children, it found. The Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin covered a period from 1975 to 2004. Some offending priests were shifted from parish to parish, leaving them free to abuse again.

Article continues at link.  Shifting priests from parish to parish leaving them free to abuse again was not an isolated error.  It is the official policy of the Roman Catholic Church, established by His Holiness Pope John XXIII on 16 March 1962 and confirmed as still in effect by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.  Says who?  The BBC, the same source the above report.  The evidence that the Holy See operates an international child rape ring that enjoys diplomatic immunity is available for anyone who cares to look at it.  Father Michael Canny of the Derry diocese was right on the button when he said “The church has no credibility, no standing, and no moral authority.” Apologies won’t count for much until His Holiness renounces the Crimine Solicitaciones.

Olivia Lang, Hindu Sacrifice of 250,000 Animals Begins:

The government, which donated £36,500 to the event, has shown no sign of discontinuing the centuries-old tradition. An attempt by the previous government to cut the budget for animal sacrifice provoked street protests. Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival’s high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. “The goddess needs blood,” he said. “Then that person can make his wishes come true.”

BBC, Taking the Global Pulse of Healthcare:

Rahul Bose, a community worker in West Bengal tells a story [...] “There was this lady who came to my house at eight in the morning,” he says. “She had been bitten by a snake at four in the morning, but since there were no male members in the house, she was not able to leave the house. When I took her to the hospital, the doctors delayed treatment for two hours and so she died in my car.” Cultural attitudes towards women in rural areas, as well as problems of distances from health centres both prove major challenges for improving health.

Robin Hanson, Social Science Cuts Religiosity:

A new NBER paper compares college majors for their effect on student religiosity. Majoring in biological sciences, engineering, or vocational areas all increase religiosity about the same relative to not going to college. Majoring in education encourages religion even more, while majoring in physical science has about the same effect as no college. Majoring in humanities reduces religiosity relative to no college, and majoring in social science reduces it the most.

Jeanna Bryner, Teen Birth Rates Higher in Highly Religious States:

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests. The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise. Mississippi topped the list for conservative religious beliefs and teen birth rates, according to the study results, which will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health. However, the results don’t say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: “We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”

Alex DeMetrick, Trial Postponed For Cult Members In Baby’s Death:

Home video of Javon Thompson and his mother Ria Ramkissoon doesn’t hint at the dark future awaiting them, when they became swept up in the religious cult of Queen Antoinettte. Authorities say cult members starved 1-year-old Javon Thompson because the boy did not say “Amen” after meals. His body was packed in a suitcase and taken to Philadelphia, where it was abandoned in a storage room.

Jennifer Viegas, Superstitious Beliefs Cemented Before Birth:

The propensity to believe in paranormal phenomena and superstitions appears to arise in the womb, suggests new research. The findings, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, further indicate that a reduced ability for analytical thinking may correspond with increased intuitive thinking, which has been associated with a belief in extrasensory perception (ESP), ghosts, telepathy and other paranormal phenomena. Author Martin Voracek claims his new study’s determinations “suggest (there are) biologically based, prenatally programmed influences on paranormal and superstitious beliefs.” [...] Prior research had determined that relative finger length, also known as digit ratio, can be a marker for individual differences affected by hormones. Men tend to have ring fingers that are slightly longer than their index fingers. In women, these fingers are usually about the same length, or the index digit is slightly longer. In some cases, however, women exhibit a digit ratio more associated with men, while men may exhibit the ratio associated more with women. The ratio is “a putative marker of prenatal androgen exposure, with paranormal as well as negative and positive superstitious beliefs,” Voracek explained, mentioning that exposure to testosterone and other male sex hormones in the womb are thought to underlie the observed differences. Voracek found that “higher feminized” digit ratio in men correlated with stronger paranormal and superstitious beliefs, “even when controlled for age, education, adult height and weight, and birth length and weight.” “Shorter feminized” digit ratios in women also correlated with a greater likelihood of superstitious beliefs, as did a woman’s lighter weight at birth. For both sexes, shorter body length at birth was associated with later beliefs in superstitions and the paranormal. The findings help to support the conclusions of Kia Aarnio and Marjaana Lindeman, both University of Helsinki psychologists who have extensively studied the propensity for paranormal and superstitious beliefs. They found that women are much more likely to have such beliefs, which the researchers attribute to “higher intuitiveness and lower analytical thinking.”

All articles continue at links. “The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous… Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame… True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force… But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them… He has no right to preach them without challenge.”- H. L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925.

When the 1st Session of the 111TH Congress passed HR 3962 (Affordable Health Care for America Act), I had a few comments on its content.  The Senate has voted to debate HR 3590 (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).  Like HR 3962, state sponsored superstition has crept in.  Purchasing health insurance is required of everyone – everyone except those who are “a member of an exempt religious sect or division.”  But those exempt must be “an adherent of established tenets or teachings of such sect or division.”  Sounds like the State has been given the responsibility of establishing if you are an adherent of your religious sect or if you’re just pretending.  Maybe pretending so you pay less taxes.  Leaving it up to the State to determine what a ‘real’ religion is, who is and is not a member, is something many countries do.  So far in the United States this has not been the case.  Perhaps things are changing.  One less Amendment in the Constitution to worry about.

Radley Balko, How to Get Ahead in Law:

Last June, District Attorney David Capeless of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, announced that he was dropping all charges against 44-year-old Bernard Baran, a man who has spent half his life behind bars on child molestation charges that the state no longer has the confidence to retry. Baran was convicted in January 1985 of molesting six children at a pre-kindergarten day care facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was released on bond in 2006 after an appeals court determined that his trial attorney had been incompetent and that the prosecution may have withheld key exculpatory evidence. Baran says that during his jail term he was raped and beaten more than 30 times, necessitating six different transfers to new correctional institutions. Such is the cost the prison system exacts on an openly gay man convicted of molesting children. Baran was one of the first people in the country to be prosecuted in the day care sex abuse panic of the 1980s, a bizarre nationwide hysteria fed by homophobia, fears of Satanism, and a wing of child psychology that used unproven interrogation techniques that critics say caused children to recount sexual incidents that never took place. In this case, prosecutor Daniel Ford, now a judge on the Massachusetts Superior Court, showed the grand jury that indicted Baran an edited video interview with the children. According to court documents, the video shows several kids alleging that Baran had sexually abused them. Edited out was footage in which some of the children denied any abuse by Baran, interviewees accused other members of the day care faculty of abuse or of witnessing abuse, and, most important, interrogators asked the same questions over and over – even after repeated denials – until a child gave them an affirmative answer. Some children were even given rewards for their answers. [...] In upholding the ruling that granted Baran a new trial, the appeals court added in a footnote that if the state wanted to retry him, Baran could file a motion for a hearing on Ford’s alleged misconduct. By dropping the charges, the D.A. avoided that hearing. “In my opinion,” says Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, “ the possibility of an embarrassing hearing into misconduct by a former prosecutor and now sitting Superior Court judge was the main reason, if not the reason, they decided to drop the charges. The appeals court opinion cut a bit too close to the bone for them.” So while Bernard Baran is free after 22 years of incarceration, there are no plans to look into the actions of the prosecutor, now a sitting judge, responsible for his conviction. Ford’s career trajectory indicates the backward incentive structure that prosecutors face: Convictions produce rewards, while abuse rarely comes with a penalty.

Religious Tolerance, The Baran Sexual Abuse Case:

The Bernard Baran indictment appears to have many factors in common with dozens of ritual abuse cases which surfaced during the 1980s and early 1990s. Bernard is a homosexual. That has proven to be a tremendous personal liability, because of the high level of homophobia in American society. On 1983-AUG-1, Bernard Baran was hired as a teacher’s aide by the West Side Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) in Pittsfield, MA. Pittsfield is located near the extreme western border of Massachusetts, very close to the state of New York. The uncle of one of Baran’s students complained to the ECDC that he did not want a homosexual teaching his nephew. Shortly after this complaint, he and his sister-in-law called police and said that the boy had accused Baran of molesting him. On 1984-OCT-6, Baran was charged with sexually assaulting two three-year-old children at ECDC. The number of charges reached nine after most of the 160 children at the ECDC were interviewed. Baran was 19 years of age at the time. On 1985-JAN-30, he received a sentenced of 3 concurrent life terms. Because of his age and slight build, he was easy pray for other inmates. “During his first four years, he was raped and physically assaulted 30-40 times. He has suffered serious eye injuries and many broken bones. [...] In all probability, he is innocent. In fact, the criminal acts for which he was charged probably never happened. However, the children (now in their twenties) probably retain “memories” of the abuse that were implanted in their minds as a result of improper interview techniques.

Articles continue at links.  See also the Free Baran archive.  I lived in a small town as a teenager in the 1980s.  I read books, including books on taboo subjects.  I played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.  I listened to music that wasn’t to be found on the radio.  I was very aware that a satanic panic was occurring in the United States, and that I could be caught up in it for my interests.  I could be accused of the kind of nonsense that Baran was caught up in.  I found two strategies that worked well in keeping myself safe.  Those strategies were knowing when to be public about my interests and when to be private.  Being public (including publishing OVO) meant that any argument I was a secret agent for evil would be weak.  Being private meant that what the do-gooders didn’t need to know about they never knew about.  But it was my dumb luck that the do-gooders didn’t try especially hard.  Now I’m an adult and it turns out reading those books, playing those games and listening to that music didn’t do me or anyone else any particular harm.  Turns out the good guys were the bad guys and the bad guys were innocent.  I’m the one who stuck by my guns.  The judges and therapists and police and teachers and clergy who made bank on the satanic panic are the ones who tucked tail and shuffled into an underground tunnel.   I don’t deserve any particular reward for what I did.  But were this a just world, they would be held accountable for what they did.  Bernard Baran spent half his life in prison to satisfy the blood lust of those who serve an invisible monster that lives in the sky.  And that’s one of the reasons I’m public about my interest in the withering away of religion under the twin suns of scorn and reason.

John Dolan, Lord Byron the eXile’s Patron Saint (via):

[Lord Byron] chose to be noisily “immoral” not because he was any worse (or any better) than the average aristocrat of his time but as a weapon against the moralism of Wordsworth. I don’t mean “moralism” in a normative sense – God no. I remember sifting through the elderly Wordsworth’s letters looking for any comment at all on the Great Famine which was extirpating the Irish, and finding only one remark, in which the great moralist earnestly prays that England will not weaken, ie provide any aid whatsoever. It’s one of the curiosities of English literary history that you’ll never find the least particle of compassion for the Irish in “moral” poets like Wordsworth. Only the “mad, bad and dangerous” Byron mentioned the slaughter of 1798, attacking the PM, Castlereagh, for “dabbling [his] sleek young hands in Erin’s gore” and, as Pope would have recommended, delivering an extra kick to his enemy’s corpse in this epitaph: “Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”

BBC, Straw retreats over gay hate law:

Ministers have admitted defeat in their efforts to remove a “free speech” defence from new laws against inciting homophobic hatred. MPs have voted four times to scrap it but it has been repeatedly overturned in the Lords, who again last night voted by 179 to 135 to keep it. Among those concerned about the new law were some comedians who feared it would leave them open to prosecution. Ministers argued only words intended to stir up hatred were being targeted. An offence of inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation was brought in by legislation last year – intended to protect gay people from threatening behaviour, amid fears attacks were increasing. [...]

Lord Waddington, who inserted the defence of free speech into legislation covering religious hatred last year, said peers had to maintain consistency. “If we are to finish up with a free speech clause in the religious hatred offence but no free speech clause here, we’re simply asking for trouble.” [...]

Who benefits from the free speech clauses for religious hatred?  Religious people, of course.

Wikipedia, Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006:

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which creates an offence in England and Wales of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion. [...] Critics of the Bill (before the amendments noted below, adding the requirement for the intention of stirring up hatred) claimed that the Act would make major religious works such as the Bible and the Qur’an illegal in their current form in the UK. The House of Lords passed amendments to the Bill on 25 October 2005 which have the effect of limiting the legislation to “A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening… if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred”. This removed the abusive and insulting concept, and required the intention – and not just the possibility – of stirring up religious hatred.

So when the Bible says “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” – when the Bible says homosexual men should be killed, that does not mean homosexual men should be killed.  The new law in relation to the old law means, well, what does it mean?  It means two things.  First it means the British government has recognized that the Bible contains the exact sort of hate speech they seek to ban.  Second, the majority of Christians are able to pick and choose which unalterable, eternal, exceptionless rules confirmed by their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ they will follow and which ones they will ignore when convenient.  To protect religious people from those with an intention of stirring up hatred, only religious people must be free to stir up hatred.  It’s something that brings Christians, Jews and Muslims together.

Religion: using the State to get a monopoly on hate.

While the mainstream media outlets continue their politically-correct embrace of one another, rallying around the propaganda point that Hasan’s killing of 13 soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood had nothing to do with his Islamic beliefs, even the more gimlet-eyed feel compelled to use terms like “extremist” to describe Hasan’s worldview. For example, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), in calling for possible Senate hearings into the murders, said he was doing so because “there had been strong warning signs that Hasan was an ‘Islamic extremist.’”
But was—is—he? The “Washington Post” today is reporting on the Power Point presentation Nidal gave to fellow doctors in 2007, entitled “The Koranic [sic] Worldview As It Relates to Muslims in the US Military.” The “Post” even has copies of the 50 slides he used for this lecture, a number of which detail the Qur’anic-prescribed afterlife rewards for “believers”—Muslims—and punishments for non-Muslims. The slides themselves simply provide the Qur’anic citations for these (and other) Islamic beliefs, and the “Post” story is ambiguous about whether Hasan was reporting dispassionately on these beliefs or advocating them. However, according to a story yesterday in the U.K. “Telegraph,” at that same talk Hasan “had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut,” as well as “be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throat.” [...]

Until it becomes acceptable in Sunni Islam to read such verses as metaphor—as, for example, rhetorical “decapitation” of non-Muslim arguments against Islam—and/or to limit them to the 7th century AD, the Hasans of the world will continue to find rational justification within the Islamic fold for personal jihad against “infidels”—totally apart from any connections to, or encouragement from, al-Qa`idah or any other Islamic terrorist group. Far from being an “extremist,” Hasan was, and is, simply a literalist Sunni Muslim who acted upon the teachings of his holy book, rather than merely pay it lip service. We should be thankful that, so far, the bulk of the world’s, and America’s, Muslims remain hypocrites–unlike Hasan.

Article continues.  Links added by OVO.  The Christian world is a fine model for the benefits of hypocrisy.  The Bible contains a comparable list of injunctions to kill non-believers.  Deuteronomy 13:6-10 is the most clear example of what Christians are expected to do to non-believers, and Matthew 5:18-19 the most clear example of Jesus Christ confirming the commandments of the LORD.  But somewhere along the way the Christian world lost that old time religion.  Christianity even lost its taste for slavery, although all the verses for slavery remain and there are still exactly zero verses against slavery to be found in the Bible.  Secular morals advance and religious moralists fight against them with everything they’ve got.  Until religious moralists adopt secular morals and say that’s what they believed all along.  Thus Christianity will bang the drum all day long that Christians like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement and speak not at all regarding the few thousand years of history in which Christianity advocated and practiced slavery.  There’s no reason the Muslim world cannot engage in the same hypocrisy, double-talk and lying that has made the Christian world a more peaceful and productive superstition.

The 1st Session of the 111TH Congress has passed H. R. 3962 Affordable Health Care for America Act, or ‘A bill to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.’  Earlier versions of this bill would have provided tax funding for magic spells (aka prayer).  Fortunately this section has been removed.  Prayer is a consistently dis-proven means of medical care and so to use tax funding in this way would have been a waste.  Further, to force all Americans (who may not be superstitious, or who may favor a different set of superstitions) to pay for the magic spells of some Americans is an establishment of religion, expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution.  My comments below are restricted to where superstition appears to remain in the bill.  It is entirely possible I do not correctly understand the bill, as I am not especially skilled at reading legal documents.  And this bill may not become law, or change in the process of becoming law.

from Abortion threatens House health care bill:

The issue of abortion threatened to derail House Democrats’ health care bill Friday unless staunchly anti-abortion Democrats and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops succeeded in their effort to get strict abortion limitations into the measure. [...] Now House leaders are not only negotiating with fellow lawmakers, but also with representatives from the bishops’ organization, Democratic sources said.  “It’s come to this,” said one bewildered senior Democratic lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.  [...] Several Democrats, including Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, said they are in touch with their Catholic bishops back home. Altmire said he must have the approval of his bishop in Pittsburgh before he can vote yes.

Rep. Altmire, if he has been quoted accurately, has disqualified himself from further public service.  Those who elected him did not do so as a proxy for the Roman Catholic Church.  Rep. Altmire is free to consult anyone he wishes in his decision making process.  But to require the approval of representives of a foreign nation before proceeding is counter to the goals and responsibilities of his office.

H. R. 3962 includes the following:

Religious Conscience Exemption. (A) IN GENERAL. — Subsection (a) shall not apply to any individual (and any qualifying child residing with such individual) for any period if such individual has in effect an exemption which certifies that such individual is a member of a recognized religious sect or division thereof described in section 1402(g)(1) and an adherent of established tenets or teachings of such sect or division as described in such section.

It appears to read that a person can exempt themselves from mandatory insurance if that person “is a member of a recognized religious sect or division thereof.”  What, then, is a recognized religious sect?  What religious sects are not recognized?  Any decision by the State to answer these questions will be an establishment of religion, expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution.  I have been unable to locate section 1402(g)(1) referred to here.  And what is it that Religious Conscience Exemption makes a person exempt from? That would be Section 501…

Tax on Individuals Without Acceptable Health Care Coverage. In the case of any individualwho does not meet the requirements of subsection (d) at any time during the taxable year, there is hereby imposed a tax equal to 2.5 percent of the excess of — (1) the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income for the taxable year, over (2) the amount of gross income specified in section 6012(a)(1) with respect to the taxpayer.

Declare yourself a member of a state-established superstition and you can pay less taxes.  Who wouldn’t?  All it costs is the integrity of the United States Constitution.

H. R. 3962 also includes the following:

Training Models — In carrying out the education and training programs required by this section, the Secretary, in consultation with Indian Tribes, Tribal Organizations, Indian behavioral health experts, and Indian alcohol and substance abuse prevention experts, shall develop and provide community-based training models. Such models shall address — (1) the elevated risk of alcohol and behavioral health problems faced by children of alcoholics; (2) the cultural, spiritual, and multigenerational aspects of behavioral health problem prevention and recovery; and (3) community-based and multidisciplinary strategies, including Systems of Care, for preventing and treating behavioral health problems.

United States tax dollars should not pay for the ‘spiritual’ care of any nation.