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Italy Travel Ideas

Wednesday 22 April 2020

Religious Freedom, Constitution Cannot Be Suspended



By Enza Ferreri

This article was published on Italy Travel Ideas



There are constitutional rights that cannot be suspended, and freedom of worship is among them.

The video has become viral.

Mass was interrupted by police last Sunday in Soncino, a small town in the Cremona province of Lombardy, in Italy.

A carabiniere went up to the altar to notify parish priest Don Lino Viola of the 270 euro fine for non-compliance with the government decree and get him to speak to the mayor on the phone. "I am saying Mass, not now", Don Lino repeated several times to the policeman just as the Consecration prayer was beginning.

The brave 80-year-old priest brushed off the police officer and continued celebrating until the end.

There may be sanctions for him and the congregation.

But there were only an organist and 13 people wearing a face mask and gloves, in a 300sq metres church with 30 pews, thus respecting social distancing. Don Lino told the carabiniere: "This is abuse of power".

Later, in an interview, he described the events:
There were six more people than we expected: they were family members of Coronavirus victims who died without a funeral, for whom Mass was being celebrated.

But how could I chase them away? There was a parishioner who just lost his mother and was unable to even give her a funeral.

Never before in 80 years have I seen such a desecration. And to the Carabinieri commander I said: how can you send around officers who do not have respect for the sacred?
Many, including public figures, have considered this a violation of Italy's Constitution.

Art critic and TV journalist Vittorio Sgarbi, whose religious beliefs are not obvious, nevertheless has said:
Article 19 of our Constitution does not limit the freedom of religion and worship. For this reason, law enforcement agencies should be careful not to prevent all this: with only one exception, that of the distance of one metre, an indication given by the health decrees issued by the Prime Minister.
He added that in the environment of Don Lino's Mass (which I've described above) the government's regulations were fully respected.

Italian lawyer Antonino Ennio Andronico has written a long letter published by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (all references are at the end), after expressing his support for the lockdown-imposed restrictions, explains why last Sunday's specific example of authorities' behaviour is against the Constitution:
The current emergency legislation uses the word "suspension", not a legal but pragmatic and plastic concept, therefore dangerous because it risks appearing innocuous but in reality tends to limit those constitutional rights enshrined in articles 13 and following of the Italian Constitution, which - as is known - can be limited only in rare exceptions.

Thus personal freedom, of communication, of movement, etc., can be limited on the basis of a law (issued by Parliament, mind you, not by an administrative authority, such as the Government or the Region), and under the control of the judicial authority.

But there are citizens' constitutional rights which are "very special", which it is not possible to limit even in this way, as they are part of that distinctive genetic makeup of the human being who is not only homo faber, but also homo religiosus, that is, a subject capable of dialogue with a supernatural being who has revealed himself as God.

The Constitutions and Concordats between States and Churches provide for specific protection of "religious sentiment" since they are part of human DNA: thus art. 7 of our Constitution declares the state and the Catholic Church "independent and sovereign", and art. 19 of the Constitution establishes that "Everyone has the right to freely profess his religious faith in any form, individual or associated, to propagate it and to exercise its cult in private or in public, provided that these are not rituals contrary to morality". So the only limit to worship is given by "morality", the constitution fathers wrote, worried, in 1947, to avoid future abuses of the executive!

There are constitutional rights that cannot be suspended, and freedom of worship is among them, because it is part of the deepest dimension of man. The Constitution recognises the "independent and sovereign" State and Church and the Concordat reaffirms the full freedom of the Church. A notice for believers and non-believers: .

In Italy, then, there are the Agreements of Villa Madama of 1985 - an international treaty between the State and the Church hierarchically equivalent to the Constitution and superordinate to the law and government administrative acts - which in art. 2 establish: “The Italian Republic recognises the Catholic Church's full freedom to carry out its pastoral, educational and charitable mission of evangelisation and sanctification. In particular, the Church is guaranteed freedom of organisation, of public exercise of worship, of exercise of the magisterium and of the spiritual ministry as well as of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters".

Well, in Gallignano [the area of Soncino where the event occurred] law enforcement officers entered a church, interrupted the worship (not the "ceremony", as government decrees incompetently write), and both the parish priest - who fortunately was not intimidated - and the faithful were fined.

Illegal and illegitimate act of enormous gravity that violates all the constitutional and international principles set out above (but many others would have to be enumerated), while no one worries about the queues and assemblies that we find daily at supermarkets or post offices. Of course, it will be objected, but it's necessary to eat ... but if it is true that "man does not live by bread alone" it is also true that the Covid-19 disease cannot become an excuse to trample upon constitutionally guaranteed rights to individuals and communities ... and make money!

For those who really believe in it - unlike those for whom Coronavirus was a holy liberation from Sunday Masses too - the religious act, the exercise of worship, the participation in Mass is constitutive of one's being, it is man's own inner self. It is [in Latin] re-ligio, that is, bond with the supreme being! Beyond the abuses of power and the articles of the penal code that I hope will be used to challenge those who made themselves responsible for such abuses, I want to warn in a secular manner all citizens, including non-believers: our fathers have obtained certain constitutional rights with blood, do not take them for granted. Keep a copy of the Constitution with you and reread it, because there is no disease that can "temporarily suspend" even a rule of law ... we would already be in a dictatorship.

My closeness, solidarity and support to the parish priest and the faithful of Gallignano, for the civil and faith witness given.
Antonino Ennio Andronico, Lawyer [Emphasis added]
The episode of Don Lino was not alone: the same day saw two more police raids in churches during Mass celebrations, both in Northern Italy.

REFERENCES AND PHOTO/VIDEO CREDITS
Messa interrotta
Maurizio Blondet
Intervista con Don Lino Viola
Lettera dell' Avvocato Antonino Ennio Andronico a La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana

Monday 20 April 2020

Italy Covid-19 Possible Breakthrough, Heparin Drug

The Monna Lisa with Coronavirus Mask

By Enza Ferreri

This article was published on Italy Travel Ideas


The mistake pretty much everywhere has been treating seriously-ill Covid-19 patients with ventilators, which requires a highly-invasive surgery for intubation, the insertion of a tube attached to artificial ventilation into the trachea, and didn’t achieve a good rate of success.

The hypothesis has now started to make headway that the main cause of death is not pneumonia, but a generalised venous thromboembolism.

Embolism is the obstruction of an artery or vein caused by a body foreign to normal blood flow, the most common of which is blood coagulation, i.e. clotting, in which case it is known as thromboembolism. The most frequent venous embolisms are pulmonary embolisms, in which a deep vein thrombosis gives rise to a thrombus, a blood clot, a part of which detaches and is transported by the bloodstream to obstruct a pulmonary artery, causing embolism.

Pulmonary embolism symptoms include breathing difficulties, and can even lead to death.

Treatment usually is by the administration of anticoagulant drugs, such as heparin and coumadin.

"Thrombosis Possible First Cause of Coronavirus Deaths"


Those above are the words of Dr Giampaolo Palma, expert in Echocardiography and Interventional Cardiology, who also said:
Gentlemen, Covid-19 first of all damages the vessels, the cardiovascular system, and only then does it reach the lungs. It is venous microthrombosis, not pneumonia that determines fatality.
He is one of the many Italian physicians who are using the anticoagulant medication heparin and exchanging information about it through a wide nationwide network.

One of the first was Professor Sandro Giannini of Bologna, who states:
Ventilation of the lung where the blood does not reach would be useless therapy; in other words, the cause of the lung damage is the development of a coagulopathy, disseminated intravascular coagulation.
This was discovered through autopsies and echocardiograms, following the disconcerting results of analysis of large samples of ventilated COVID-19 patients, which showed that mortality rates among them could be as high as two thirds.

The UK's Intensive Care National Audit and Research Center (ICNARC) published data of a study on the first 24 hours of 3,883 patients with confirmed COVID-19 (the illness from SARS-CoV-2) admitted to intensive care units (ICUs).
Among patients whose ICU outcome is known, 66.3% of the 1053 patients who required mechanical ventilated died, compared with 19.4% of the 444 patients who required basic respiratory support.
This mortality rate is much higher than for ventilated patients with different types of viral pneumonia, which is 35.1%.

These results are similar in the observation of smaller samples of patients in China and the USA.

Something was obviously wrong, and there have been recent claims of excessive use of ventilators and even risks of ventilator-induced lung injury.

Autopsies on patients who were ill from SARS-CoV-2 revealed signs of massive thrombosis.

In addition, from echocardiograms performed in Italy for Coronavirus patients it seemed that patients go to resuscitation for generalised venous thromboembolism, especially pulmonary.

The echocardiogram (or echo) is a type of ultrasound scan to look at the heart and neighbouring blood vessels.

In Lombardy, the region most affected by the novel coronavirus in Italy and one of the most hit in the world, cardiologists became convinced that a new approach was needed. The frontline Lombardy doctors announced:
The main problem is not so much the virus as the immune reaction that destroys the cells which the virus enters. Rheumatoid arthritis patients have never been hospitalised in our COVID-19 wards because they are under cortisone or an anti-inflammatory therapy. It has not been easy to understand this because the signs of microembolism are tenuous even through echocardiogram. By taking care of the infection at home, we could avoid not only hospitalisation but also the thrombotic risk. We have thus been able to ascertain that the most exposed hospitals are administering low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) to their patients, with good results.
The drug allows you to maintain the right fluidity of the blood, limiting the possibility of coagulation.

The Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) has already launched an efficacy study on the administration of heparin, recommending a case-by-case evaluation for the time being.

At the moment, some data confirm its effectiveness, because anticoagulants are proving able to reduce at least by 25% hospitalisations in Covid-19 wards in Tuscany.

In addition, enoxaparin sodium, another anticoagulant medication used to treat and prevent deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, seems to have a double effect: not only it prevents thrombus formation but also it makes the SARS-CoV-2 bind with the drug thus preventing the virus from entering our cells and reproducing.

I'll keep you posted.


All emphases are added.

REFERENCES
Ventilators' Higher Mortality Rates
Cardiologi lombardi
Professor Sandro Giannini di Bologna
Il coronavirus danneggia i vasi sanguigni
Covid-19, la cura sperimentale con l'eparina in Toscana funziona
PHOTO CREDIT
Image by Sumanley xulx from Pixabay

Saturday 18 April 2020

The Two Popes Film: Much Fiction, Little Truth & History




This article has been published on the website Italy Travel Ideas .

During the Christmas holidays I watched the film The Two Popes, directed by Fernando Meirelles, recently released by Netflix.

It is based on the 2017 play The Pope by Anthony McCarten, in which he imagined conversations that never occurred between Pope Francis when he was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Pope Benedict XVI, and the screenplay is also by McCarten.

What is bad about this movie is not so much that fiction is vastly more abundant than the meagre quantity of reality as the fact that, if a viewer does not know the events already, he receives no clue from the film about what is truth and what is fantasy.

As if to help people in discerning that, in the infant 2020 year new serious conflicts have been widely reported in the media between the two real Popes, whose fictional cinematic counterparts in Meirelles's work are fundamentally on the exact same page. In reality there are many divergences of ideas between them.

As most people will probably know, we are now in that historically unique situation of actually having two Popes in the monarchic institution of the Church (the adjective, stemming from the Greek monos, meaning "one", and arché, "authority", should give a hint).

This is because Pope Benedict XVI, when he abdicated in 2013 (another near-unique event in 2,000 year's history, further sign of the exceptional times the Church is going through), declared he was not renouncing the spiritual role and duties deriving from the "munus Petrinum" (Peter's function) but only the active office of his ministry as Pontiff.

The Pope, successor of St Peter, is the visible head of the Catholic Church; the invisible head is Jesus Christ, Who founded it with these words:
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock
I will build My church,
And the gates of hell will not prevail against it:
And I will give you the keys
To the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth
Will be bound also in heaven;
And whatever you release on earth
Will be released also in heaven. (Matthew 16:18-19)
So Benedict XVI kept living in the Vatican, dressing in white, and more importantly maintained his title of Pope, with the addition of "Emeritus", a Latin adjective for a person who, no longer exercising a specific office, still keeps its title and honours. University professors are more common recipients of this name. In short he remained Pope too.

In that sense, "the two Popes" is an expression which never before could have been used in reference to the same period of time.

There have been only six other Popes to have abdicated in the Church's bimillenary history, but no Pope in renouncing the Throne of Peter assumed the title of "Emeritus" before Benedict XVI.

The Popes Upside Down


This is the context. Going back to the film, far from a portrayal of reality, the movie The Two Popes runs dangerously close to turning reality upside down, pandering to all falsities and prejudices spread by the media in all these recent years, driven by ideological and political motivations.

Therefore, we see or are led to believe that Joseph Ratzinger is the culprit in sexual abuse cover-ups whereas he is the one who, both as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before becoming Pope and after ascending the Chair of St Peter, made it possible to remove those who used the priesthood to assault mostly teenage boys and then removed hundreds of them, whereas in this area Francis left unanswered many accusations of protecting homosexual high-ranking prelates like former US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick preying on young men.

Francis is portrayed in the movie as the darling of the crowds, friendly and good-tempered, unlike Pope Ratzinger who is shown as rigid, harsh, austere, and even pronouncing that he is not liked. And again, the truth is entirely different: the number of people attending celebrations in St Peter's Square was higher for the latter than the former.

In conclusion, let's hear on First Things John Waters, who is a playwright himself:
Having tried it a couple of times, I understand the difficulties of converting a real-life story to fictional form, either for stage or screen. Life is too detailed and complex to translate unedited into drama. To marshal the energies of a real-life story, it is always necessary to nip and tuck, elide, compress, transpose, foreshorten, conflate. But in doing this, it is all the more vital that the essence of a story be protected and respected.

McCarten, speaking of writing versions of real-life figures, has said: “Whether they’re alive or dead, you still have to do justice to them. You can’t do injury to their character. You can’t have them doing terrible things when they didn’t do terrible things.” How, then, can he justify The Two Popes? It treats Benedict XVI as though he were not human, as though he were not alive, as though he were unbeloved, as though he had never existed. This is outrageous, yes, but it is also not good art. The propulsion of story is an insufficient justification for the levels of invention, prejudice, and partisanship on display here. The movie title is elaborated by the weasel words, “Inspired by true events.” Yes, but this inspiration has resulted in a farrago of falsehoods. McCarten owes Benedict an apology.
There are perhaps only two good things in this movie. One is the way the two main actors resemble the Popes, respectively Anthony Hopkins Benedict XVI and even more Jonathan Pryce Pope Francis. The other is the setting of some scenes, like the occasional glimpse of a reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel and the scenes filmed outside or near the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the Papal summer residence in the lovely countryside close to Rome, simply stunning.

Thursday 16 April 2020

Coronavirus Lockdown Effectiveness, Other Doubts



One of the few certainties about this novel virus and the pandemic it is spreading is that, being new (or at least new to us, namely newly discovered), we don't know very much about it, and we are constantly learning about it all the time.

But, being human and not liking uncertainty in a similar way in which nature abhors vacuum, we try to jump to conclusions, any conclusion, in fact, just to avoid doubt, chaos and disorder (a very natural feeling). So we grab at many different explanatory theories, whether supported a lot, a little or not at all.

This is The Times of Israel reporting on the theory held by someone the newspaper describes as a top Israeli mathematician:
"I have no explanation but the numbers speak for themselves."

Top Israeli prof claims simple stats show virus plays itself out after 70 days.

Isaac Ben-Israel, who is not a medical expert, says analysis worldwide shows new cases peaking after about 40 days, slams economic closures; leading doctor dismisses his claims.
So, according to Professor Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, "simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it."

What is intriguing is that, minus the mathematical and statistical calculations, a similar view, at least in its practical conclusions, is supported by another person in the news, who has been accused of "anti-Semitism", ie David Icke:
On Wednesday night Icke shared his unsubstantiated views in an edited interview for London Real: COVID-19, and shared baseless claims on coronavirus including that mandatory vaccination for the virus would be 'fascism' and include 'nanotechnology microchips'.

… he appeared to justify attacks on 5G masts around the UK, adding 'human life as we know it is over' if the construction continued.

The 5G theory has been discredited by experts, with Public Health England stating that 'the overall exposure is expected to remain low relative to guidelines and, as such, there should be no consequences for public health.' The new coronavirus is also spreading in places without 5G networks, including in Iran.
Strange bedfellows as they may be, Icke shares with Professor Ben-Israel the hypothesis that the lockdown doesn't help to limit the spread of Covid-19, as shown on this tweet of his with a diagram comparing countries with and without lockdown measures:

Covid-19-Lockdown Countries Compared

Compare this image, though, with the one pictured above this post and you'll see how focusing only on deaths per million and removing cases per million gives a very different picture: this should provide an indication of the complexity of the issue, which doesn't lend itself to over-simplifications, much as we would love to rely on them.

Icke is not the only one to believe in the uselessness of lockdowns, there are many, especially among conservative and Right-oriented people, who are sceptical of their government's policies and think the same.

Now, I am in no position to categorically declare that this idea is right or wrong. As I said at the beginning, we don't have enough information.

I do have some doubts about using pure mathematics to arrive at conclusions like those of Ben-Israel on this. Correlation doesn't mean and doesn't necessarily involve causation. In Latin, this supremely logical and succinct language, it's better: post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy.

For example, is it possible that countries with less contact with the rest of the world and therefore fewer opportunities for contagion (ah, the joys of globalisation! we have finally discovered them in their full glory) have had lower numbers of cases of Covid-19 and therefore had a comparable smaller need for lockdown than those with more international traffic and Coronavirus spread which as a consequence resorted more to lockdown, inverting the cause-effect direction?

Has this been considered as a contributing factor, anyway?

At least we have a glimmer of hope, though: it's the prediction on the progress of the disease in Israel made by Professor Ben-Israel on last 12 April on Facebook, which I have to reproduce in its online translation:
It turns out that the expansion of the expansion [meaning, I presume, the peak] has been behind us for about a week, and apparently it will fade almost completely in about two weeks.
Assuming the translation is accurate, we can wait about two weeks to see if his prediction for Israel materialises and test whether his theory might be correct.


Monday 13 April 2020

Walkers, Joggers, Cyclists Coronavirus Risks Study

Jogger


I've noticed that in and around London pedestrians, joggers and cyclists don't always respect the minimum 2 metres' distance of social distancing recommended to limit the spread of Coronavirus.

The Guardian, helpfully, points out another anti-social behaviour in the streets which is more dangerous now: spitting.

But new research has uncovered that the 2 metres' distance deemed sufficient for people standing still, for example when queueing outside a shop, is not enough in times of COVID-19 when someone is exercising.

These are the conclusion of a Belgian-Dutch study.

There is some confusion among the public on this question, in view of the widespread notion, supported by the WHO (World Health Organisation), that the new virus is not spread via the air but by contact with people or surfaces. This is because the aerosols - minuscule particles floating in the air - containing the virus don't remain in the atmosphere long enough to cause a risk.

However, in a situation in which a person is walking, running or cycling after another, the droplets may still be in the air before they settle down on a surface.

Civil Engineering and Sports Aerodynamics researchers at Belgium's University of Leuven and the Netherlands' University of Eindhoven created simulations to investigate these risks.

Professor Bert Blocken, Study Coordinator of the white paper just published, in an interview to The Brussels Times explained why the measures for people standing still are "ineffective" for those walking, running or cycling:
When people speak, exhale, cough or sneeze they generate droplets, and while the largest droplets tend to fall to the ground first, the smaller ones can remain in the air a bit longer, so it is important that a person who is behind another does not walk into this cloud of droplets.
The Urban Physics, Wind Engineering, Sports Aerodynamics expert has extensively studied the aerodynamic advantages of slipstreaming in cycling, which is the act of a cyclist riding behind a team-mate or rival to save energy and thus gain a benefit: in sport terminology this is usually called "drafting".

But in the Coronavirus pandemic the disadvantages and dangers of this behaviour are remarkable.

The simulations show that the respiratory droplets of someone potentially infected with the virus could come into contact with anyone located behind him by travelling through a slipstream or wake, the area that a person in movement creates behind him.

From Blocken's simulations it appears that social distancing requirement may be smaller for two people running or walking beside each other, as the droplets land behind them. When they are positioned diagonally behind each other the risk to catch the droplets of the lead runner is also smaller. The risk of contamination is the biggest when people are just behind each other, in each other’s slipstream.

The researcher compared slipstreams to a vacuum or drag effect which occurs when the regular airflow is disturbed by someone who is in motion.

Luckily, although slipstreams can even be as long as 10-15 metres, Blocken observed that they remained quite narrow and that respiratory droplets tended to evaporate quite quickly.

Based on this study's results, the scientist advises greater social distances for people on the move:
  • those who walk in the same direction in one line should maintain a distance of at least 4–5 metres
  • for running and slow cycling the distance should be 10 metres
  • for hard, fast cycling it should be at least 20 metres
  • for overtaking, cyclists should be in a different lane at a considerable distance, e.g. 20 metres.
I don't wish to unnecessarily worry anyone, but we all should be cautious in these times of pandemic for the sake of others as well as ourselves.


PHOTO CREDIT
Image by Maciej Cieslak from Pixabay

Sunday 5 April 2020

Chinese Communist Regime Caused Coronavirus Pandemic, Says Asian Catholic Church Head

China communist regime created Coronavirus pandemic, says Asian Church head Cardinal Bo


This is, in its bare truth, what communism, in spite of all its edulcorations, wishful-thinking illusions of a better world, lying promises, and deceiving claims of self-alleged philanthropism, really is.

Cardinal Charles Bo, president of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, said in an official public statement on 1 April:
The Chinese regime led by the all-powerful Xi [Jinping] and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – not its people – owes us all an apology, and compensation for the destruction it has caused. At a minimum it should write off the debts of other countries, to cover the cost of Covid-19. For the sake of our common humanity, we must not be afraid to hold this regime to account. Christians believe, in the words of the Apostle, Paul, that “the truth will set you free” [in reality it is the Gospel of the Apostle John 8:32]. Truth and freedom are the twin pillars on which all of our nations must build surer and stronger foundations.
Cardinal Bo, the Archbishop of Yangon, in Myanmar, added: "[T}he Chinese people were the first victims of this virus and have long been the primary victims of their repressive regime".

The Cardinal recalled how the Chinese authorities silenced doctors, journalists and intellectuals who raised the alarm as early as December, and waited until 23 January to isolate Wuhan and Hubei:
When the virus first emerged, the authorities in China suppressed the news. Instead of protecting the public and supporting doctors, the CCP silenced the whistleblowers. Worse than that, doctors who tried to raise the alarm – like Dr. Li Wenliang in Wuhan Central Hospital who issued a warning to fellow medics on 30 December – were ordered by the police to “stop making false comments”. Dr. Li, a 34 year-old ophthalmologist, was told he would be investigated for “spreading rumors” and was forced by the police to sign a confession. He later died after contracting coronavirus.

Young citizen journalists who tried to report on the virus then disappeared. Li Zehua, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin are among those believed to have been arrested simply for telling the truth. Legal scholar Xu Zhiyong has also been detained after publishing an open letter criticizing the Chinese regime’s response.
Moreover, he cited a damning study from an English university:
An epidemiological model at the University of Southampton found that had China acted responsibly just one, two or three weeks more quickly, the number affected by virus would have been cut by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively. Its failure has unleased a global contagion killing thousands.
The Chinese Communist Party is a "threat to the world" were the words of the Yangon Archbishop, and Xi’s regime "is responsible, through its criminal negligence and repression, for the pandemic".

And even now, the subterfuge continues:
On top of all this, there is deep concern that the Chinese regime’s official statistics significantly downplay the scale of infection within China.
The British newspaper The Telegraph on 29 March reported the UK's Health Minister accusing China of hiding the true scale of Covid-19 and shockingly exposing China's reopening of the "wet" markets which were identified as the cause of the spread of Coronavirus.

China's communist government oppresses religious freedom, destroys thousands of churches, imprisons Muslims in forced labour camps, practice the removal of organs from prisoners of conscience, suppress the freedoms of lawyers, dissidents, intellectuals.

[All emphases are mine.]


SOURCE and PHOTO CREIDIT
Catholic Archdiocese of Yangon


Wednesday 18 March 2020

Media Italiani Hanno Sbagliato il Tiro sul Coronavirus Inglese

Boris Johnson al tempo della crisi del coronavirus

Questo post si trova anche nella versione italiana di questo blog:

I Media Italiani Hanno Sbagliato il Tiro sul Coronavirus Inglese



Capisco che questi tempi di coronavirus rendono proni a sprofondare nel panico, specialmente quando le informazioni, e persino i provvedimenti e decreti, si contraddicono a rotazione.

Quando un nuovo virus e' scoperto, chiaramente anche i dati scientifici non hanno alle spalle una lunga storia di prove ed errori da cui farsi guidare.

Ma non ho potuto fare a meno di riprendere in mano questo blog, dopo due anni di lontananza, quando ho visto quello che e' accaduto in alcuni media italiani riguardo a notizie provenienti dal Regno Unito.

La Repubblica e Il Fatto Quotidiano, per esempio, hanno riportato che emergeva da un documento segreto che in Gran Bretagna l’epidemia di coronavirus sarebbe durata fino alla primavera 2021 con 8 milioni di persone ricoverate.

La loro fonte, purtroppo, e' l'inattendibile, socialista, Guardian, ma parte della responsabilita' va anche al governo inglese, che non e' stato un modello di chiarezza di comunicazione e subito dopo ha fatto retromarcia.

In un primo momento, per l'esattezza giovedi' 12 marzo, il Primo Ministro Boris Johnson aveva annunciato, nel corso di una conferenza stampa, una tattica unica in Europa (un po' come la Brexit) e strabiliante: lasciare che il virus infettasse il 60 per cento della popolazione britannica - mai, comunque, l'80% come hanno scritto Repubblica e Fatto Quotidiano - sulla base della teoria della "immunita' di gregge" che sta dietro le vaccinazioni di massa: quando un alto numero di persone e' portatore di un patogeno, una popolazione e' protetta. Come spiego' a suo tempo l'Express:
Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned COVID-19 is likely to become a "seasonal virus" [sic: in realta' COVID-19 e' la malattia, il nome del virus e' Sars-CoV-2] as he said the UK will only benefit from indirect protection, the so-called herd immunity, from the coronavirus if 60 percent of the population becomes infected. Asked how many Britons will need to get coronavirus before herd immunity comes into play, Sir Patrick said: "Probably about 60 percent or so."
Cioe': "Il principale consulente scientifico Sir Patrick Vallance ha avvertito che COVID-19 diventerà probabilmente un "virus stagionale", dicendo che il Regno Unito beneficerà della protezione indiretta, la cosiddetta immunità di gregge, dal coronavirus se il 60% della popolazione viene infettata. Alla domanda su quanti britannici dovranno venire contagiati dal coronavirus prima che subentrasse l'immunità di gregge, Sir Patrick ha dichiarato: 'Probabilmente circa il 60 percento'."

Ma, come dicevamo, il governo britannico ha subito dopo rivisto questa strategia che ha un aspetto eutanasico al suo interno. Basti pensare che, nell'introdurre questo piano, il leader conservatore aveva aggiunto una frase forte: "Molte famiglie perderanno i loro cari".

Johnson sembra che affronti molte questioni, non solo la Brexit, come una schiacciasassi.

Il suo piano, pero', e' stato duramente criticato da medici e ministri della Sanita' passati e presenti, in quanto non teneva conto del fatto che, cosi' facendo, la curva del numero dei casi di contagio sarebbe salita troppo velocemente, oberando il sistema sanitario e mettendo cosi' a rischio di morte persone che, con le cure adeguate, si sarebbero potute salvare.

Un conto e' la vaccinazione, dove l'immunità di massa ha un senso, perche' l'agente patogeno e' somministrato in dosi minime e controllate.

"Non si fa affidamento sull'agente infettivo in dosi altamente letali per creare una popolazione immunitaria", afferma Akiko Iwasaki, un virologo della Yale School of Medicine.

"Vallance e altri hanno dato l'impressione che il governo stesse deliberatamente mirando a far ammalare il 60% della popolazione", sostiene l'Atlantic. Ma cosi' non e'.

E' vero che La Repubblica ha pubblicato il dietrofront di Johnson, ma ho la sensazione che sia sfuggito a qualcuno.


FONTI:
La Repubblica
Il Fatto Quotidiano
Daily Express
The Atlantic
PHOTO CREDIT
Vox


Saturday 2 June 2018

The Antichrist Looks a Lot Like Something We've Seen



Rings a bell?
The Antichrist:
1) will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity, and plenty, not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. 
2) He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live.
3) He will induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for our sins.
4) He will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal.
5) He will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong.
6) He will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital.”
7) He will increase love for love and decrease love for persons.
8) He will invoke religion to destroy religion.
9) He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived.
10) His mission, he will say, will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism, which he will never define.
11) In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God. And because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect.
12) He will set up a counter-Church, which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will be the mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the Church as the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man enlargement of purpose, without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt. These are days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope.

Thanks to https://churchpop.com/2018/05/21/the-12-tricks-of-the-anti-christ-to-steal-souls-according-to-the-ven-archbishop-fulton-sheen/


Saturday 26 May 2018

Men Cannot Predict Consequences

Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher who founded utilitarianism




How many times have we stubbornly and ardently wanted something, and maybe got out of our way and moved heaven and earth to make it happen, only to realise in the end not only and not so much that it was not worth it, but above all that it was not for our benefit at all, and that it would even have been better if the opposite had occurred?

It is sufficient to think, furthermore, of the heterogony of ends, or the unintended consequences of intentional actions, of which the most macroscopic examples are the side effects of drugs and the laws of the state.

All this is telling us that often we are not able to foresee, understand and evaluate the medium- and long-term consequences of actions or events, in a nutshell we can't see beyond the end of our nose.

This is not the only but one of the fundamental reasons why any consequentialist ethical system, namely a system for which every choice of a moral agent must be guided by the evaluation of the consequences that will derive from each alternative choice, can only fail.

We have many examples of great historical significance of this disastrous, catastrophic failure to foresee the consequences until the total reversal of intent.

Muslim men in Europe praying


An example is offered - unintentionally, of course - exactly by a philosopher who is the representative of a consequentialist school of thought, utilitarianism, which we will discuss below: the contemporary Australian philosopher Peter Singer.

In his book One World published in 2002, Singer vigorously defends mass immigration from Third World countries to those of the First, arguing on a utilitarian basis that, while the possible inconveniences, if ever there are, for the peoples of the latter are mild, they are nothing compared to the good that immigration into rich nations brings to the poor of the world (Singer, an ethnic Jew, would perfectly agree with Pope Francis).

The Princeton professor arrives (or arrived, in 2002) to the point of saying that the European countries and North America should greatly increase the number of immigrants they welcome.

With the benefit of hindsight, which is 20/20, I do not know if Peter has changed his mind. I know however that the events that followed have completely refuted him, even from within his own viewpoint. That's because the type of immigration from poor regions to rich regions that he advocated has had - and is continuing to have on an ever-increasing scale - the consequence of spreading Islam in the Western world, once Christian and still preserving some traces of the virtues and attitudes arising from Christianity, including doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Once the ethnic, cultural and religious replacement of Christianity with Islam will to a good extent be accomplished - not only for the purely demographic reasons of the different degree of reproduction between Muslims and native Westerners but even more so because a society, especially as complex as ours, cannot exist without religion, and it would be destined to collapse (but this is a subject for another article) -, what will happen to us is what is happening in the rich Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which erect walls and close their borders to their Muslim "brothers" of Syria.

This is how Singer's pro-immigration recommendation, which would have the self-declared intention to help the world's poor, will result in the rich countries' changed nature - changed exactly thanks to the application of the precepts and prescriptions of this utilitarian philosopher -, which in turn will have the direct consequence of making them much more reluctant to help the poor.

Ecological disaster


Another clamorous example of miscalculation is that of another Jewish and atheist philosopher, Karl Marx.

All or almost all the predictions that Marx derived from his diabolical theory have been refuted by that giant laboratory that is history, proving that his theory is indeed scientific, as he called it, but at the same time false.

In particular, Marx thought that the only relationships that matter, the only dynamic relationships, were those between man and man, social.

The other relational aspect of the economy, that is the relationship between man and nature, this communist man par excellence saw as active only on the part of man, and purely passive on the part of nature.

Unlike for others of his ideas, Marx cannot be blamed for having had this idea.

In the nineteenth century it would have been very difficult, indeed impossible, to foresee ecological disasters, to think that the environment could, so to speak, "rebel". Certain phenomena needed to take place, events to occur, ideas to be developed and understood before we could make similar predictions.

But this is yet another demonstration of human incapacity for far-sightedness.

Finally, I mention only briefly - with the intention of developing it more fully another time - the so-called "sexual liberation", that orgy of promiscuity and libertinage that has engulfed and enveloped the West at least starting from the notorious sixties on.

It's only love, said Oscar Wilde. Make love not war, the hippies echoed. Who could think that something bad could come from "love"? That chaos could derive from "love"?

Well, there was someone who understood it. And he understood it precisely because he was going against the current, and his foresight came from far away, from very far away, from another world.

I'm talking about Paul VI and his encyclical Humane Vitae, in which, perhaps enlightened by the Holy Spirit and certainly on the basis of a true doctrine - predictive ability is the test of truth -, he was able to foresee, already in the now distant 1968 (so much water has passed under the bridge), those many and serious evils that we later saw.

Yet again evidence that are not men alone, without supernatural help, who are able to see far away.

Utilitarianism, founded by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) (also influenced by the Italian Cesare Beccaria and his treatise Dei delitti e delle pene), is a consequentialist moral theory of the kind described at the beginning of this article.

For it the right moral action in all circumstances is that which is expected to result in maximum utility, understood as the greatest pleasure and happiness for the largest number of moral patients - that is, all those who will suffer the consequences of such action - and the least pain and unhappiness for the least number of them.

What one feels, the feeling, both physical, as sensation, and psychic, as emotion, reigns supreme.

In fact what else can be the foundation of an ethical system that has been deprived of God, what other rational basis can it find? It is the triumph of the purest materialism.

There are other ethical systems without God besides utilitarianism, but the latter is perhaps the one that best represents the atheistic position.

Once the feelings of pleasure at the pillar of the whole moral system have been erected, and provided with a somewhat rational basis (the so-called "utilitarian" calculation), it has infiltrated European culture and, by extension, Western spasmodic research, not to say obsessive, of pleasure itself, by any means: "natural" - sex -, artificial - chemically, with drugs, alcohol, sweets, excess and excessive consumption of food -, possession of wealth, power, material goods, obsession with shopping, and so on.

This article is also in Italian, here.

Friday 9 September 2016

There Is No Such Thing As Humane Slaughter

I'm not reproducing here the horrendous pictures of animals tortured in an abattoir by bored staff, filmed earlier this year by an animal protection group in (ironically named) Vigan, France.

You can see them by clicking on this link to an article in The Daily Express.

And don't think that these things don't happen in Britain. They do, as it's been repeatedly exposed in undercover reports by worthy organisations like Animal Aid.

The Animal Aid exposes have been covered by mainstream media, for example here in The Telegraph.

Make no mistake: both ritual (halal for Muslims and kosher for Jews) and nonritual slaughterhouses are horrifically cruel, although the former a bit more than the latter.

If you find even watching these graphic images hard to bear, think of the animals who must endure these ordeals on their own flesh and skin.

And, especially, think of that when you buy or eat meat.



Friday 18 March 2016

There's More to Pumpkin Seeds than You Ever Thought

Pumpkin


I love pumpkin seeds for their taste, and recently I started snacking on them in the late evening before going to bed.

After a while I noticed that I was falling asleep much more easily than had been the case for some time. A persistent cold and cough I had been suffering from had also disappeared.

The causes can be manifold, of course, but I noticed the strange coincidences and I decided to look up the health benefits of pumpkin seeds, if any existed: I wasn't even aware that they possessed them, for if you like the taste of a particular food you're not inclined to dwell too much on the question of whether it's good for you. Just in case you find out that it isn't.

From my research it turned out that the improvements I had discovered in myself could likely have been the result of consuming this great food, which, according to Nutrition Research Reviews, has indeed many medicinal properties.

The report of a study published in Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences and entitled "The effects of methanolic, chloroform, and ethylacetate extracts of the Cucurbita pepo L. on the delay type hypersensitivity and antibody production" starts in this way:
Pumpkin, as a dietary plant, has been used in traditional medicine around the world. In addition, during the last decade, antidiabetic, antihypertensive, antitumor, intestinal antiparasitic, antibacterial, anti hypercholesterolemia, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and analgic effects of pumpkin has been reported.
The study in itself is performed on mice therefore, as is well known, the application to humans is extremely unsafe. But the essay's introduction indicates the scientific recognition of this plant's health benefits.

Pumpkin seeds contain the vegetable compounds phytosterols, as well as free-radical scavenging antioxidants, also useful.

The 2015 study "Evaluation of the potential of squash pumpkin by-products (seeds and shell) as sources of antioxidant and bioactive compounds" concludes:
This work shows that the residues produced from agro-food industries, like pumpkin shells and seeds are potentially good sources of antioxidant compounds like polyphenols, beneficial for human health. Therefore it is of high interest to develop low cost/effective methods of processing to transform them in added value co-products.
Pumpkin seeds and their oil have benefits for postmenopausal women.

For men's health as well, pumpkin seeds have long been known to be important. Their high zinc content is beneficial for the prostate. Studies have shown that their oil can be used in the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia, namely enlarged prostate gland.

Research results published in the Journal of Food Science and Technology show that pumpkin contains appreciable amounts of important nutrients, including calcium, iron, zinc, total dietary fibre and β-carotene.

Zinc, of which pumpkin seeds are rich, has many crucial functions, including sleep, insulin regulation, mood, eye and skin health, and particularly it supports the immune system. Zinc deficiency is common in our societies, and that leads to increased incidence of colds and flu, as well as depression and chronic fatigue. The boost to my immune system from pumpkin seeds could explain my better resistance to cold and cough.

And what about my own experience of falling asleep more easily? That link with pumpkin seeds too has found confirmation in scientific literature.

Pumpkin seeds are rich in the amino acid tryptophan (proteins are complex molecules made of amino acids), that the body converts into the highly precious neurotransmitter serotonin which in turn is converted into melatonin, called the "sleep hormone". Research has found that protein source tryptophan is comparable to pharmaceutical grade tryptophan for the treatment of insomnia.

In addition, pumpkin seeds are cheap, easy to eat, easy to carry, don't require cooking, etc etc.

In case you are thinking that I have invested in pumpkin seed companies' shares or otherwise have vested interests in them, I haven't. But now I may be starting giving it a thought.

Friday 11 March 2016

Redefining Marriage in Italy Is Not so Easy

Rome Family Day protest, 30 January 2016

Published on Catholic World Report

By Enza Ferreri


Recently Catholic World Report published an article by Italian journalist Alessandra Nucci on how “Italy is the last remaining nation in Western Europe to hold out against the recognition of civil partnerships” and how the Church hierarchy, in particular the Italian Bishops’ Conference, has not always been as straightforward as desired on this theme.

It was followed a few days later by a piece on the website of the Culture of Life Foundation entitled Italy Debates The Definition Of “Family”…A Half-Century Too Late, by Steve Soukup.

First the facts. Is Italy the last stronghold of the Catholic family in Western Europe? We’ll have to wait until the result of the vote on new prospective legislation currently under discussion, but there are signs that in Italy the LGBT and similar lobbies are having a more difficult time than elsewhere.

There are two major innovative elements in the Cirinnà proposed law (named after the senator Monica Cirinnà who drafted it) that is now going through the Italian Parliament. One is granting official status to both heterosexual and homosexual civil partnerships, making them legally equal to marriages. The other is giving the civil partners in all these unions the right to adopt each other’s offspring, thus opening the door to same-sex couples’ adoption rights.

While the various parties in Parliament are negotiating and fighting over innumerable amendments and counter-amendments to the bill, the latest opinion polls have found that a small majority of Italians (between 50% and 60%, depending on the poll) favor the former but a strong majority (3 out of 4) oppose the latter.

Breakdown by political affiliation shows that the majority of Right-wing respondents oppose official status for civil partnerships as well, although individual Catholic members of Parliament across a broad spectrum of parties from the Right to the Left are also totally against this bill.

It’s interesting to see how in Italy, like in the United States, a public opinion that showed initial resistance to legal recognition of civil unions (or, in the case of the US, to same-sex marriage) has gradually changed over recent years, considering that in 2000 only 42% of Italians accepted it. The effect of mainstream media’s propaganda and the general feeling of fighting a lost battle (being “on the wrong side of history”) combine with changing demographics, as the 78% of supporters among the under-35s clearly indicates.

Italy is still the only country in Western Europe that does not have a law on civil partnerships.

Does this mean that Italy is lagging behind, and that countries like the UK and France are more advanced? This is what I used to think. If I was asked such a question years ago, my answer would have been “yes”.

But now I have different views and I wonder: advanced towards what? Our concept of "progress" entirely depends on the final destination we choose.

I now believe that the nations which introduced laws to give equal status to non-married couples and legalised same-sex marriage have advanced on the road to perdition, the road leading to Hell. Not to mention human unhappiness in this world as well.

Steve Soukup’s argument in the article mentioned above is that, since Italians are condemned (far from uniquely in the Western world) to demographic extinction, it’s pointless for them to worry about granting official status to civil partnerships, same-sex and non, stepchild adoption and similar matters.

This argument has a very strange logic. For it’s exactly by reaffirming the value of the true marriage and family, and therefore by opposing those who wish to equate marriage with other forms of union while at the same time by explaining the need for Christian ethics and natural law, that we can hope for society’s recovery, including demographically.

Furthermore, to say (or imply) that Italy is lagging behind (by expressions like “a half-century too late”), despite its having one of the lowest birth rates, a sure indicator of a “developed” society, just because the country doesn’t easily accept to be dominated and subjected to homophile and sexual relativist ideas, is tantamount to neglecting an objective sociological indicator and paying attention only to a subjective ideological preference of the commentator.

What is very lively in Italy, although largely ignored or vilified by the media, is the large grassroots movement of opinion against the Cirinnà bill and what it represents.

An example of the tactics used by the media to attack this movement is the coverage of the Standing Sentinels. All over Italy, in hundreds of towns and cities, silent protests are being held by the Sentinelle in Piedi to protect the natural family founded on the union between man and woman.

They stand in a square or other public place they have been authorized to use, usually reading.

These peaceful people generally attract the attention of various Left-wing, anarchist, LGBT and other groups, who stage unauthorized counter-demonstrations around them, harassing them with shouts, insults, spits, pushes and all sorts of violence, verbal and physical, to which the Standing Sentinels don’t respond.

The media reports, not unlike those talking about “sectarian violence” between Christians and Muslims in Islamic countries where the former are persecuted, tortured and slaughtered by the latter, describe “conflicts between opposing groups”, one of which, for good measure, is defined as “ultra-Catholic” (whatever that means).

The Family Day is another spontaneous movement of laity that has organised protests. On January 30th a huge pro-family demonstration, dubbed “Family Day”, was held in the Circus Maximus, one of the largest open spaces in Rome, estimated to have been attended by over a million people and said to have been the biggest demo of all time, in a country long used to big demos.

I conclude with what the Family Day spokesman Massimo Gandolfini, a neurosurgeon and psychiatrist, declared:
On these issues I have specialist knowledge. The entire world literature, from Freud to today's studies, says that the harmonious growth of the individual requires the essential presence of the so-called "parental triad" (child, mom and dad). There is no dissenting voice, except some theories from the ‘80s supported by the gay lobby, like the studies of the homosexual researcher Patterson, who recounted the development of some children of same-sex couples through their self-reports. In reality they are not really scientific investigations but opinion surveys carried out by her. There is no scientifically valid study favorable to the adoption of children by gay couples.
.



Tuesday 8 March 2016

A Tale of Inequality: Sex, Rape, Alcohol, Anonymity



In the UK there is a two-lane system of law: one for women and one for men. And guess which is the faster, broader, more comfortable lane to travel in.

Last August an unnamed (to protect privacy of those involved, all names are withdrawn here) middle-aged top woman lawyer had a business lunch with a male colleague, a senior City lawyer, suggested by her, followed by a "long boozy afternoon" together.

The pair were then seen outside the very busy Waterloo Station, in London, during rush hour, engaged in indecent and intimate behaviour.

They were arrested and spent the night in a cell in a South London police station.

The following morning, the man denied any wrongdoing and was charged with outraging public decency by engaging in a sexual act during broad daylight. The woman, a QC (Queen's Counsel, namely an especially eminent lawyer) and high-profile barrister, accepted a police caution for the same offence as the man.

Six weeks later the QC changed her story, and said that she should never have accepted the caution because she had, in reality, been the victim of a sexual assault. That claim guaranteed her anonymity for life, while the man, as the defendant, has had his name splashed all over the papers.

Media reports say that six weeks later, after returning to the same police officer who gave her the caution, the woman said she was intending to make an application to have the caution quashed, claiming she was unwell at the time of the incident.

Instead of asking her why she didn’t say all this before accepting the caution, the police officer took her statement and contacted the man, who was told he would be arrested if he didn’t go for a voluntary interview about it.

So, after getting totally drunk and having sex, she claimed she had been sexually assaulted so that, as a "victim", her identity would not be disclosed, her reputation would not be trashed and she would not risk jeopardising her brilliant career. A man cannot have that "opportunity" open to him to protect his name.

We have here another of the many absurdities of the victimhood ideology and culture: women, as pre-labelled "victims", have the privilege of getting plastered and claiming they were raped, men don't. But these women can decide to become unconscious through stratospheric alcohol consumption, and they were conscious when they made that decision. Also: why can't the same thing be said of a man? That a woman sexually assaulted him because he was too drunk to be able to give consent?

Why should a man not be allowed to sue a woman because she had sex with him when he was too drunk to give consent? Reflexes are not a sign of voluntary reaction.

Violence is not claimed to have occurred in these cases of alleged "rape" when the woman was under the influence, because obviously violence was not necessary. So, if there was no resistance, the disparity in physical strength between the sexes - which is anyway general but not universal, true in most cases but not in all - cannot be adduced as an excuse for such unequal treatment of men and women.

To prevent these travesties of justice from happening, the law should be changed so that either both accuser and defendant in sexual crime cases are protected by anonymity or neither is.

Similarly, either both men and women can use being drunk while having sex as grounds for a rape claim or neither can.

Friday 5 February 2016

Lord Bramall Is Innocent, Like So Many Others

Dawkins and Tatchell only Protest Ideological Enemies, not Paedophiles

Tatchell and Dawkins are opposing an ideological enemy, not paedophilia


Lord Bramall, a UK former armed forces chief dubbed a "war hero", has launched a serious attack against London's Metropolitan Police Service (Met for short, aka Scotland Yard) for "failing to speak to witnesses who cast doubt on the claims made 10 months earlier by an alleged abuse victim called Nick".

Almost a year ago the 92-year-old was accused by a single witness, a man in his 40s known as "Nick", who alleged that he had been abused as a boy by a powerful "VIP paedophile ring" (as it came to be called), which included Lord Bramall, former (and late) UK prime minister Ted Heath and the late former Tory MP Harvey Proctor. Among the accusations was that he had raped and tortured young boys in the 1970s.

Bramall was immediately subjected to a heavy-handed police investigation which included a 10-hour raid on his home in Surrey, in the south-east of England. Among other things, Lord Bramall aims to challenge the legality of the search warrant on his property, questioning if the police followed the letter of the law in obtaining the warrant.

The former army chief has always denied the allegations, saying: "I know I have only had sex with someone other than my own sex" and calling any suggestion he was involved in child abuse "absolutely a load of rubbish."

The D-Day veteran criticised a senior police officer named Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald for having appealed for boys who might have been abused to come forward, adding that, if people who had been abused came forward, "we will believe you". Lord Bramall correctly commented that it was not the police's role to accept allegations as true, but the prosecutors' task to prove them.

"We will believe you" seems to me a remark more suitable to a counsellor or psychotherapist than to a policeman. Empathy is required from the former, investigation from the latter. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
The claims against Lord Bramall were part of "Nick"'s allegations, under investigation by the Met, of having been abused by prominent men in the military, politics and law enforcement.

Despite what Det Supt McDonald said, that the police regarded the allegations as "credible and true", Bramall has recently been told that he faces no further action as "following a thorough investigation officers have concluded there is insufficient evidence to charge him with any offence.

Yesterday the ex-director of public prosecutions Lord Kenneth Macdonald (not to be confused with the officer MacDonald quoted above) criticised the new police stance of “we believe the victim”, adding that it could lead to miscarriages of justice and that police had got the balance wrong. He said officers risked being “manipulated by fantasists”.

In an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme he commented: “The worst miscarriages of justice I have seen have resulted from blinkered investigations in which police have believed a theory at the start of the case and gone on to try to prove that theory. We need the police to conduct impartial, objective and professional investigations.”

This is at the end of about a year in which the peer had to live under suspicion of one the most despised crimes. Isn't a man whose reputation has been damaged a victim too? Quite unprecedented, even the Queen expressed her support for the ex army-chief.

The investigating detectives failed their duty when they did not interview key witnesses for 11 months and did not check some of the case's most basic facts for over 5 months.

A lot can be said about this, which is unfortunately similar to many other cases.

But I want to trace it back to where it all started on a big scale: this modern form of persecution dates back to the time when the mostly Left-wing mainstream media had a field day with the so-called "Catholic Church abuse scandal".

Just to see how politically self-serving in order to settle old scores with ideological enemies the furore was, and how absolutely nothing this fake self-righteousness had to do with concern about children, one has to observe the total silence and absence of outrage at the allegations of abuse by politicians and entertainment industry members (or anybody unconnected with the Church) of those professional anti-Christians like Richard Dawkins and Peter Tatchell who so vociferously, venomously and unjustifiably called for the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI when he visited Britain in 2010 (see picture above).

For some reason, sexual offences have such a powerful emotional impact that, unlike criminal claims of other nature (like robbery or embezzlement), whenever accusations of sexual misconduct are made there is a presumption of guilt, when in fact there should always be - both legally and morally - a presumption of innocence until proof of guilt is provided.
The onus of the proof is on the accuser.

From the mere claim of an accuser (who may have all kinds of motivations and personal problems) to the evidence of guilt there is a vast distance, similar to that between saying and doing, speculating and demonstrating, fantasy and reality.

The so-called "sex abuse scandal" of the Church has been largely a political campaign by the mainstream media, whose journalists are mostly on the far-Left, anti-clerical and atheists with a vengeance. There were plenty of episodes of false and misleading headlines which were plainly contradicted by the article below, if anyone bothered to read it.

The fact that the Church in many cases chose out-of-court settlements was seen as an admission of guilt instead of, as it should have been seen, as a sign of the Church's desire not to be dragged into a shameful headline war by a hostile media establishment, which thrived on court cases.

Since then, some people have realised that making allegations of sexual abuse (no matter how well or, rather, badly founded) was a way to win money infinitely more reliable than by buying a lottery ticket.

And so the ball of paedophilia or rape charges against men in the public sphere, preferably rich and famous, has kept rolling.

The historic abuse charges are the best because, in the absence of physical evidence after decades, mere acquaintance with a celebrity or politician may be enough to jump on the bandwagon, or even better the gravy train.


By www.CGPGrey.com, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11534384


Wednesday 11 November 2015

The Amorality of Atheism, Great Book

Tatchell's group Outrage calling for the abolition of the age of consent


The Amorality of Atheism (Amazon USA)  (Amazon UK)  by Giorgio Roversi, an Italian author living in Britain, is a slim book that says everything that needs to be said.

Atheism is full of illogicalities both from an ethical and scientific viewpoint.

This book deals with the ethical aspect of atheism's self-contradictions, and it does it brilliantly.

The only consistency of atheist "morality" or rather of atheism in general is with the requirements of a society that simply wants to follow its own wishes and urges without any constraints.

But this is also a society which was founded on Christianity, therefore the remnants of the ethical system that has dominated it for almost two millennia still echo in the hollow chamber of even the most entrenched atheists.

And here is the origin of another contradiction: modern secularists want their cake and eat it. They don't want an external source of their morality so they can forge it the way they like it, but at the same time they want to feel to be self-righteous and doing "the right thing". So they claim that those qualities and acts that we consider good only in virtue of their adherence to the Christian values can find their grounds on something else. But what?

The options offered are all wanting.

Science. One of the most irrational claims of many atheists is that science can guide morality. Hume's principle is here an invincible obstacle: you cannot derive "ought" from "is".

Subjectivity. But that, as Roversi says, is the opposite of morality, which must by its own very nature be universal and therefore objective.

"Nice, good" feelings, like empathy and compassion. But we also have nasty, bad feelings, destructive and harmful to others. If we are only a conglomerate of atoms and cells bent solely towards survival and self-interest, on what rational - not emotional - grounds can we choose which are better between those two competing groups of feelings?

This book should be read by everyone because the subject it deals with concerns all of us in the most fundamental and vital way. A society cannot survive without ethics and, therefore, without God.

The West is trying on itself an experiment that is bound to fail and is already failing, as we can see, for example, from the devastation of the family, the race towards primitivism, the erosion of civilisation and all their consequences, like multiculturalism, destructive immigration and the growing power of Islam.

Giorgio Roversi's The Amorality of Atheism is the antidote to the poisonous misconceptions and deceptions spread by Hollywood, the mass media and the elites (political and intellectual) every minute of every day.

This book is very highly recommended.