Riots in Moscow

A gay rights protest asking the Mayor to overturn a ban on a gay pride parade turned into a bit of a riot when Russian orthodox protesters got involved and started beating up the other side. One orthodox believer said: "It (homosexuality) is satanic." One man holding a crucifix threatened to beat-up any gay person he saw.

And the survey says...

A recent survey says that most muslims in American assimilate into society reasonably well. The problem is that there is still a frighteningly large (roughly 26-30) percentage who say that suicide bombings are justified often, sometimes or rarely.
At a recent Organization of the Islamic Conference the leaders of Malaysia, Indonesia, Kuwait, the UAE and Pakistan spoke of the problems that many of the 1.6 billion muslims are among the worlds poorest and have an international reputation that has been tarnished by false perceptions that most support terrorism. I would bet that if you surveyed muslims in these countries the numbers would not be significantly different. In any population it will be difficult not to find some that think that it is ok to get revenge by killing, but 1/4 of the population is really bad.
I was watching 60 minutes the other day and it was great to see them honor some military families from Iowa. During the same segment they interviewed one military member about to be shipped off and what he said made me worry.
"I feel that god lead me to do this job. ... I believe that what they did on 9/11 was a travesty." Who does this sound like? Dick Cheney? Pat Robertson? Jerry Falwell?

Pope makes people mad

On his recent tour of Brazil the pope said that Latin America had welcomed European priests who came with the conquitadore colonists. Brazilian Indians called the pope's comments 'arrogant and disrespectful.' Many have demanded an apology (including Venezulean president Hugo Chavez), and he came close by acknowledging in a recent audience that "It is not possible to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by the colonizers on the indigenous population, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled upon."

What is honorable about killing a family member?

A kurdish teen in northern Iraq was killed apparently because her family members believed that she converted from Yazidi to Sunni Muslim. The details of this killing are rather horifying, it was caught on a cell phone camera and police apparently watched as it happened.

Ding dong, Jerry Falwell is dead

Jerry Falwell died the other day. He is most notable as the founder of the Moral Majority. Let me point out the (hopefully obvious) irony: J.F.'s followers are neither moral nor major. Lets hope they will leave us alone now that he is gone.

The pope is catholic

The pope is in Brazil lamenting that they are losing catholics to other religions. He blames many of South Americas problems on Marxism and capitolism, but then warns that women should not have access to legal contraception or abortion. I believe single most effective means to help the social status of a population is to give women control of their reproductive rights and the pope is not acknowldging the damage that the catholic church has caused in South and Central America.

Child mortality rates in Iraq

It was reported recently that 1 in 8 children in Iraq die before age 5 and has appeared at the very bottom of the list of countries with bad child mortality rates. It is hard not to be cynical about churches (say like the Southern Baptist Convention) that came out in favor of the Iraq war and have a strong anti-abortion lobby. I think that everyone would like to see abortion rates lowered, but one cannot take the moral high ground and impose laws that say all abortions are illegal when at the same time you do things which indirectly kill millions of children.