The Pope taken to task on pedophilia
A big problem for the Catholic Church has been coming to terms with its fall from “superpower status” in Western society — from the preeminent position it enjoyed in the first 1000 years or so of the Christian era, when it was a law unto itself. It was so powerful, it wasn’t answerable to anyone. And being closed, it was beyond scrutiny. Accepting that it is now no more than a bit player in society, and subject to the secular state outside the areas of religious doctrine and observance, has been painful. Hence the church’s reluctance to “come clean” on the sex crimes of its priests. The cartoon is from the Manawatu Standard, New Zealand, of January 22, 2011.
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Paul McGeough attacked by Australia/Israel Review
“Of all the available footage [from the Mavi Marmara], including that of an activist stabbing an Israeli soldier, there is none of activists sheltering soldiers,” Bren Carlill writes in the January 2011 issue of Australia/Israel Review.
There are three things I would like to say about this: (1) We don’t know what a lot of the “available footage” shows, as it was seized by the Israelis and is held by them; (2) Where is the footage of an activist stabbing an Israeli soldier? Was it included in the Panorama documentary Death in the Med? I have watched this pro-Israel documentary twice, and don’t remember seeing it; (3) I think there is footage of activists sheltering soldiers. There are also several still photographs of “activists” treating injured soldiers, like the one above from the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.
I, personally, doubt any Israeli soldier was stabbed. When the allegedly stabbed Israeli commando was interviewed on television, why didn’t he pull up his shirt and show us his wound? That’s what I would have done. I would have said: “Look, this is what they did to me!”
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Bikini vs hijab
Cartoon from the Manawatu Standard of January 7, 2011. The cartoonist is Malcolm Evans.
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