Religion

So came across Cesare Bonizzi on BBC's website. Fra Bonizzi is a monk of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, an offshoot of the Franciscan order dating back to the 16th century. Fra Bonizzi is also lead singer of a Heavy Metal band that regularly shows up at the Gods of Metal festival in Italy:

UPDATE: Found a better video (still in Italian, though) to add in:

Of course it's not only Catholics who can be hip to the latest scene. Matisyahu is a Hasidic (specifically Chabad-Lubavitch branch of the Hasids) that I came across on Current TV some time back:

I actually met Tyson on our way to New York at Washington DC's Union Square Station. I was with Chris Rabb of Afronetizen and we just bumped into him.

Chris just started talking to him and I was just standing agog. He actually reminds me of Fuzzy Bear from The Muppets. A really, really smart and sexy Fuzzy Bear. Make that what you wish.

I love this clip because the point he wants to make is that the universe was not made with us in mind. He also had the audacity to have pictures of aborted fetuses with extreme birth defects to make exactly that point.

Takes balls of steel in today's political environment to do that.

PS : As per his wikipedia entry, NdGT was vote the sexiest astrophysicist in the United States by People Magazine.

The media frenzy over a pastor at Obama's church seems to finally be dying down. But why hasn't there been a similar frenzy over the bigoted hate-mongers who are endorsing John McCain. McCain embraces the endorsement of far worse people than Obama's pastor, and it gets ignored by the media. Jews on First has this report:

Barrack Obama dealt frankly, openly and intellectually with the issue of his complex relationship to Jeremiah Wright. Contrast that with John McCain's embrace of Christian Right leaders Pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley. This is big picture stuff...

...the media has not lingered on John Hagee's anti-Catholic bigotry, even though McCain stood smiling with Hagee to receive the televangelist's endorsement. When McCain subsequently distanced himself from Hagee's hateful statements, it was only for fear of losing Catholic votes...

Hagee has based his career, wealth, position and enormous power on hatred: hatred of Islam, of homosexuals, and of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yet John McCain went out of his way to court him, in hopes that Hagee's endorsement would make the Christian Right forget his not-so-long ago disdain for them as "agents of intolerance." McCain courted Hagee knowing full well that, when it comes to Israel, Hagee is doing all he can to insure there is to be no land for peace deal. Ever.

Long time readers know I have a soft atheist spot for Liberation Theology. I'll come back to discuss this post later, just wanted to give you this awesome discussion of Black Liberation Theology by the man who wrote the book about it, James Cone.

Check it out.

Barbara O'Brien fisks Jonathan Martin and concludes that Obama won't get the racist vote anyway, why dwell on trying to win that constituency?

Well, because Racism, just as sex, is a currency that in this case, buys votes. A warning to racist mongers though. To quote the famous words of pop philosopher Justin Timberlake, what goes around, comes around.

Here is John Hagee twisting the Bible in order to justify the war in Iraq as a necessary war against Islam and one that has to be taken to its ultimate consequences --the elimination of Islam. Why? Well, they don't say it in the clip but to these people saving Israel is necessary so Christians can ultimately convert Jews and return Israel to the Christian Faith :

Here is Rod Parsley calling for the end of the "homosexual agenda" from McCain's "spiritual advisor" and a "strong, true, consistent conservative",

Image Credit : BarackObama.com at Flickr

Michael has the whole text over at The Daily Gotham. The speech is flawless but this quote resonates with me as also a fellow "biracial American" :

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

In 2005 there was much sound a fury about a series of Danish Cartoons portraying the prophet Mohammed. The bottom line was that several Danish cartoonists drew cartoons including the prophet as part of a newspaper's publicity stunt. Two of the cartoons were making fun of the newspaper's publicity stunt itself. Two were, arguably, based on racial stereotypes. At least one specifically addressed Western stereotypes of Muslims. In other words, the cartoons were a mixed bag of attitudes towards Islam and the West's attitudes towards Islam.

The overwhelming reaction in the Muslim world was of outrage, often with no real knowledge of the actual cartoons.

This controversy has come back. One of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, was targeted for death by Muslim terrorists. This plot was stopped by the Danish police. In response to the terrorist threat 11 Danish newspapers reprinted Kurt Westergaard's original cartoon...further pissing off Muslim nations.

Again...much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In response to this new controversy, I want to show all 12 of the original Danish cartoons followed by my public response to the cartoons and the controversy. Folks, there are major issues of tolerance, freedom of expression, and basic human decency involved here. When someone insults you (which MOST of the cartoons were NOT doing) you don't kill them or threaten them with death. If you do, you are essentially a psychopath. You can insult them back, boycott them, sue them...whatever. But to kill someone or threaten someone with death over a cartoon is insane. So, here are the cartoons and my original comments:

So my writing about All Along The Watchtower is taking me down Bonoville. Prepare yourselves for some fangirling.

I don't remember when I fell in love with U2. All I know is that by the time I hooked up with the father of my children, I already was a rabid fan of the quartet.

The 1980s were not just about corporate greed and yuppies. The height of the war of independence was happening in Ireland with bombings everywhere by the IRA. In Spain ETA was not to be left behind. Central America was covered in the blood of the Iran-Contra war. And in Puerto Rico we had the FALN.

I came to take as "normal" a bombing or two of federal buildings or army equipment at least every 3 months. And there was the molotov coktailing of the paramilitary forces of the island whenever there was a political demonstration. By the time I had made the decision to come to the United States, I ironically made it because I felt that being in the belly of the beast would spare me of the violence and craziness. I really wanted to be as far away of all things political as possible.

Of course, if you are a fan of U2, that's absolutely impossible.

I just received an email alert saying that Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assassinated today. Bhutto had returned to Pakistan after eight years of a self-imposed exile in Dubai, with the hope to becoming Prime Minister for a third time and with the election, restore democracy in Pakistan.

Bhutto was killed after a suicide bomber opened fire and then blew himself up at a rally. This was the second suicide bombing attack on Bhutto since her return to the country of her birth.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday outside a large gathering of her supporters where a suicide bomber also killed at least 14, doctors and a spokesman for her party said.

While Bhutto appeared to have died from bullet wounds, it was not immediately clear if she was shot or if her wounds were caused by bomb shrapnel.

President Pervez Musharraf held an emergency meeting in the hours after the death, according to state media.

Police warned citizens to stay home as they expected rioting to break out in city streets in reaction to the death.

During the 1980s I had a roommate whose boyfriend at the time was a "renegade" of the Pakistani elite. It was incredibly interesting and enlightening to talk about Pakistani politics with my roommates boyfriend because it gave me a "real life" insight to the folly that was even then Pakistani politics.