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Hits of the Day
Pat Robertson's soul fails to sell on eBay; devil says he expects reserve price to drop. True story
Considering what's just happened to the poor, sick, malnourished and misgoverned Haitian people, it may seem an irrelevant distraction to focus on the words of one arrogant Christian bigot. But it needs to be done. It's time for Pat Robertson to just go away.
Conjuring up bogus causality after the fact is his recurring shtick. Feminists and gays caused 9/11. Abortion caused Katrina. Evacuating Gaza caused Sharon's stroke. Health care reform probably caused swine flu. Teaching evolution no doubt led to Fort Hood and the underpants bomber. Enough.
It wasn't sufficient that Haiti lost 100,000 people or more, they had to endure this dreck:
[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. ... They need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God.
Robertson had the balls to deliver this smear even as he was soliciting funds for earthquake relief. So the Haitians are cursed, and they brought it on themselves, but we're so fucking good we'll help them out anyway. Gee thanks, Pat. And it was Napoleon Bonaparte, not Napoleon III. But thanks for playing.
For me, the takeaway line comes right in the middle. "True story," Robertson tells us, just after getting his timeline off by half a century. It immediately evokes the loudmouth in the bar who's telling a bunch of his newfound, short-term friends about the hot waitress he took home last night, and senses disbelief starting to creep in. His interjection isn't so much intended to convince them his story is true, but to convince himself that he's convincing them his story is true.
A pathetic excuse for a human being, let alone a man of the cloth. True story.
There, I feel better.
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In the News
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Conversations with suicide bombers
By Elizabeth Weingarten, ForeignPolicy.com, May 23, 2012
It was 2009 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mossarat Qadeem was sitting on the floor of a house with about a dozen young Pakistani men -- some of whom had nearly become suicide bombers. Qadeem's goal: to undo the destructive brainwashing of the al-Qaeda and Taliban teachers who trained them in extremism, in part by asking the students to narrate their life stories.
"We were handling one of the boys, and he just came, put his head here in my lap, and he started crying and weeping," Qadeem recalls. "I was taken aback. It is very unnatural in my country that a man that tall can just sit at your feet and put his head here. [The other men] were all crying with him, and I was looking at him, and thinking, ‘my God.'"
All in a day's work for Qadeem. She's the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of Pakistani women that convened in October 2011 to combat violent extremism in Pakistan at the grassroots level. [....]
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For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
.......
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
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Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Given Jail Term (for...
By Ismail Kahn, New York Times, May 23/24, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region [....]
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Russia lawmakers advance bill on penalties for protesters
By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2012
MOSCOW — Stiff new penalties aimed at opposition protesters were given preliminary approval Tuesday by Russian lawmakers loyal to President Vladimir Putin, the target of mass rallies and demonstrations before his March election victory.
The bill, which opposition parliament members termed draconian and protested by threatening to file out of a legislative session, calls for fines of up to $50,000 and up to 200 hours of community service for organizers of rallies and demonstrations that grow violent or exceed the approved number of participants.
The sanctions were approved on first reading by parliament's lower house, which is controlled by Putin's United Russia party. They mark a return by the Kremlin to a tough stance against critics after concessions during the recent election campaign [...]
Also see:
Russians back Putin, strong leadership
Washington Post, May 22, 2012A Pew survey of 1,000 Russians found that President Vladimir Putin is well-liked by more than 70 percent of citizens, especially older adults.
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In Cuba, Mystery Shrouds the Fate of an Undersea Internet...
Associated Press, May 21, 2012
HAVANA — It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island.
More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere. People talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials.
Perhaps most maddening, nobody has explained what happened to the much-ballyhooed $70 million project....
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a disgusting man. and a disgusting comment. true story.
I've been reading up on the religious right lately. It's been fascinating and, at the same time, nauseating. I have no particular beef with evangelicalism, which I consider no better or worse than any other religious sect. But the frontmen of the modern evangelical political movement are the most despicable, manipulative, shameless charlatans in America today. Robertson's followers would do well contemplate what it means to serve the devil.
(Ac, thanks for the opportunity to vent. Resuming dry sarcasm mode in 5..4..3..2..1)
I've been traveling for 2 days. I heard about the earthquake on Tuesday night during my layover at LAX and now that I'm in Jakarta, I'm catching up on the news for the first time. How much more does Haiti have to take, for fuck's sake?
It's sad that a person so filled with hate can attract so many followers, and so much funding, for his purported cause. Sad, but not surprising. Human nature is at once overwhelmingly caring and generous and spitefully ugly. Robertson is around to remind of us this every time our better selves kick in.
How does he know this "true story"? Either he was alive and present when it happened, or he has an inside source, satan perhaps?
Our reporter caught up earlier today with Satan, who was out stumping for the Massachusetts Senate seat (see above). Asked whether he is the source for Robertson's claim, the Prince of Darkness replied, “GRAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Satan's spokesman said that meant he could neither confirm nor deny the content of any private conversations or dealings between the preacher and his demonic majesty. The spokesman did concede that Robertson is an unpaid "informal adviser" to Satan's election campaign.