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A Gnostic text entitled “Thunder, Perfect Mind” has turned up as the script for a Prada commercial. That is so perfect: self-absorbed words for a so-very-stylish fashionista advertisement. The ad is almost five minutes long, and not until the final minute does it become clear what it’s selling: perfume.
Watch it at YouTube, if you feel so inclined.
h/t: Way of the Fathers
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A fatwa has been issued by Iranian Grand Ayatollah (gotta love that title!) Makarem Shirazi affirming that husbands are permitted to cuff disobedient wives.
Shirazi, one of the leading clerics of the Shiite holy city of Qom, wrote on his website that "the Koran first of all advises a man to try and convince his wife to obey to him in a polite way and through advice, then by refusing to have sexual relations with her and, finally, if all this will have failed to make her reason, with physical punishment."
The punishment, the leading cleric said, "must be light and considered an exceptional event, like surgery in case of a serious illness."
Makarem Shirazi advised his readers against "physical punishment which leaves signs and wounds." Women, he axplained [sic], "are masochistic and sometimes they have a crisis and need light physical punishment to get back to normal."
Ain't that "Grand".
In not-unrelated news, India has criminalised wife-beating.
Wife-beating was declared a crime in India yesterday as legislation was introduced to combat the high levels of domestic violence.
No word yet on whether Grand Ayatollah Shirazi will publish a fatwa condemning the Indian legislators who voted to outlaw what he says is fine and dandy.
h/t for Adnkronos International: Dhimmi Watch
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A cemetery dating to c 2400 BC have been unearthed in Syria. The discoveries show that the death of a princess was commemorated by decapitating donkeys and sacrificing babies.
The newly-discovered tombs contained signs of the ritual sacrifice: underground brick structures yielded the skeletons of infants and decapitated donkeys or perhaps onagers (their wild cousins), as well as puppy bones, Prof [Glenn] Schwartz said. "Given these discoveries, it's likely that the tomb complex is a royal cemetery," he said. "Nowhere else in the region have we seen this elaborate example of animal sacrifices as part of burial rituals."
. . .
The animal remains were sometimes found adjacent to baby bones, perhaps indicating that infant sacrifice went along with equid sacrifice in rituals honouring the important people buried nearby, Prof Schwartz said. Sets of puppy bones were also found in several of the brick structures. The archaeologists found spouted jars in the installations and a large jar containing the skeletons of three infants.
The archaeological site is believed to be the location of the lost city of Tuba, west of the Euphrates. Tuba was the capital of a kingdom centred on the trade route between Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and the Mediterranean.
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A letter signed by fifteen psychologists, psychiatrists, and other health professionals and published in The Times of London reports on new findings published in a scholarly journal of psychology.
Research published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in January has shown that even women without past mental health problems are at risk of psychological ill-effects after abortion. Women who had had abortions had twice the level of mental health problems and three times the risk of major depressive illness as those who had given birth or never been pregnant.
This research has prompted the American Psychological Association to withdraw an official statement denying a link between abortion and psychological harm.
Since women having abortions can no longer be said to have a low risk of suffering from psychiatric conditions such as depression, doctors have a duty to advise about long-term adverse psychological consequences of abortion.
The writers call on the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Psychiatrists to amend their guidelines regarding what information should be provided to women considering abortion.
The new psychological research corroborates recent studies showing that women who have had abortions are more likely to suffer depression and other mental health problems.
h/t: LifeNews and Pearcey Report.
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The US announced earlier this month that, after 2009, it will cease monitoring ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the body that co-ordinates the internet's system of unique identifiers around the world. ICANN should be an independent private corporation with its own Board of Directors free of government oversight, says the US Department of Commerce.
Not surprisingly, that plan doesn’t sit well with tyrannical governments that want to restrict the information their citizens can access. They pressured the UN to set up a three-year consultation process, called the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), that went nowhere. Then the UN instituted the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which has been rendered pointless by the US decision regarding the future status of ICANN.
Nevertheless, the bureaucrats press on: This December a meeting will be convened in Athens under UN auspices with the euphemistic title Internet Governance for Development.
Development has nothing to do with it; it’s about control.
As during WSIS, the debate at the IGF will be dominated by regimes with their own agenda. Vacuous catchwords like equity, security, and capacity-building actually cover attempts to reduce the threat that the open Internet poses to oppressive governments. Syria finds ICANN “not consistent with national sovereignty.”
Recent experience in China gives us some insights into such national sovereignty, where companies such as Google, AOL and Yahoo have been required to hand over information about users, including innocuous search history and private emails. Crimes include entering a word such as “democracy” into a search engine or visiting dangerous news sites like the BBC.
Combine this with Syrian and Iranian censorship, Robert Mugabe’s attempts to bury criticism of his 25-year misrule and Fidel Castro’s ideological opposition to business and you have a frightening mix.
If the UN ever becomes the internet police, say good-bye to the seamless and efficient access to cyberspace that we’ve all come to know and rely upon.
h/t: Colby Cosh
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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Simon & Saint Jude, Apostles, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:
O almighty God, who has built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head cornerstone; Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St Jude 1-16
The Gospel: St John 15:17-27
More on St Simon and St Jude here.
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