“Cutting,” “abrasive,” “sarcastic,” offensive” … These are just some of the words used to describe the Freethinker magazine, which was launched in Britain in 1881 and has continued publishing without a break ever since. But it was the word “blasphemous,” dropped from the lips of a hostile judge, that that got its founder and first editor G. W. Foote into serious trouble. As a result mainly of irreligious cartoons published in the Christmas, 1882, edition, the judge declared the issue “blasphemous” and Foote was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment with hard labour. [...] The Freethinker has had that attitude since 1881. Founder George William Foote set out the purpose of the magazine in the very first issue: “The Freethinker is an anti-Christian organ, and must therefore be chiefly aggressive. It will wage relentless war against superstition in general, and against Christian superstition in particular. It will do its best to employ the resources of Science, Scholarship, Philosophy and Ethics against the claims of the Bible as a Divine Revelation; and it will not scruple to employ for the same purpose any weapons of ridicule or sarcasm that may be borrowed from the armoury of Common Sense.”

It is with great pride that I announce I have an article in the May 2012 issue of the Freethinker, titled ‘Drawing a Veil Over Child Abuse in Orthodox Jewish Communities.’  I am also a frequent commenter at the Freethinker website.

This Portland, Oregon bookstore is not accessible to the general public.

Go ahead and install video cameras all over downtown. Make them accessible on smartphones and computers via wifi by everyone. There could be no better tool for the average citizen to keep tabs on corruption and incompetence among city employees. Streaming video of day-to-day life would be a valuable service to shut-ins. Terrible, strange and wonderful sights would be seen. All of downtown would be a free global broadcast studio for protesters, publishers and advertisers. Just possibly small incivilities would decrease if people knew they were being watched. And the police would get what they want, too.

This wouldn’t come free, and might be abused, and would do away with privacy on a scale usually not seen outside of military prisons. For these reasons, I can’t say this is definitely a better idea. But the idea of ubiquitous cameras for all, not just police, is worth considering.

This basalt rock is more than 3.75 billion years old (the Earth is 4.52 billion years old). It was brought to Earth by the Apollo 17 mission. From the ‘Driven to Explore’ exhibit seen here and here. One of a small number of moon rocks that the public can touch.

And now, let’s begin… The Easter Challenge!

from OVO 16 AntiChrist (January 2006)

South East Lincoln, Sherman and Grant. Lone Fir Cemetery.

See Portland Memorials for thousands of memorials in downtown Portland, Oregon USA.

Music: Aeolian Piano Roll – “Phantom Patrol” (1903)

Buttons from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s.  Bands, comic books, cults, politics, mysteries.

Lownsdale Park, First Presbyterian Church and the South Park Blocks all contain memorials to the Civil War (1861–1865). First of a series.

See Portland Memorials for thousands of memorials in downtown Portland, Oregon USA.

Music: Aeolian Piano Roll – “Phantom Patrol” (1903)

Prosecutors are investigating the death of a newborn boy who died in September after contracting herpes through a controversial practice of ritual circumcision, reviving a debate in New York over safety and religious freedom. [...] The cause of death of the 2-week-old boy, who died at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn on Sept. 28, was Type 1 herpes, caused by “ritual circumcision with oral suction,” according to the medical examiner’s office. The ritual of oral suction — or in Hebrew, metzitzah b’peh — is practiced almost exclusively in ultra-Orthodox communities and, to a lesser degree, in Orthodox Jewish communities, despite efforts by the city to curtail it and educate communities about its health risks. The procedure occurs during the circumcision ritual of the bris, as the practitioner, or mohel, removes the foreskin of the penis and then sucks the blood from the wound to clean it.

Following up on OVO blog posts commenting on mainstream media in the past [2/05] [8/05] [11/05] [9/07] [12/07], another report of grown men sucking the blood from a baby boy’s freshly wounded penis in front of an appreciative audience.  Only religion gets a free pass on such atrocities.  Only religion allows you to mutilate a child’s genitals, suck blood from the wound, do so in public and get away with it.  Somehow this one more dead baby on a pile of who knows how many more dead babies isn’t really a dead baby.  It’s a debate, a controversy.  There’s two sides to it.  Two sides, a debate.  We’re having a conversation about it, it’s a controversy.  Just put that dead baby over there while we have a debate about this controversy.   On one side, there’s not practicing amateur cosmetic surgery on newborns, wrapping quivering bearded lips around the delicate member and drawing out blood through the sucking motion of a diseased tongue.  And on the other side, there’s religion.

I’d like to live in a world where there isn’t a debate about this ritual of oral suction, and it isn’t controversial.  A world where everyone recognizes this as wrong in every circumstance and without exception.  I’d like to live in a world where the parents who allow this to happen have their surviving children taken away, and the men who do it are put in prison for life.  There’s no subtlety necessary, no need to be concerned about the feelings and traditions and communities involved.  May metzitzah b’peh end and never again be practiced.  If the practitioners are not willing to give it up, the full force of the law should be used against them.  Let the charges of antisemitism fly.  My defense is I advocate the criminalization of all sucking of cradle cock, not just the hemopedophilia carried out by these monsters.