Friday, October 28, 2005

CATHOLIC AUTHORITARIANISM NOT DEAD

Sounds a bit like the Holy Inquisition to me -- reaching into people's private lives. I suppose the Rev. Kieran McHugh will be bringing back the index expurgatorius next and forbidding students from reading anything that does not have the imprimatur of a bishop and the "nihil obstat" of a church censor. I hope the church hierarchy realize how much damage this sort of thing does both to the loyalty of their flock and to the image of the church in the wider world. If they do, they will pull the dictatorial McHugh into line pronto

When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Sussex County Catholic school principal. It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago. Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John's order reaches into students' homes. The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

Students, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for disciplinary action, said the majority of the student body protested the new rule. They tried to argue that they have freedom of speech and the school should not control what they do at home. "The idea of a private school regulating student activity outside of school is not unheard of and there is a long tradition in it," said Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San-Francisco-based defender of online civil liberties.

While Pope John's school handbook does not specifically forbid students from creating personal profiles on Web sites, it does prohibit students from posting anything on the Internet pertaining to the school, without the school's permission. "It's an incredible overreaction based on an unproven problem," Bankston said. "If they're concerned about safety, they could train students in what they should or shouldn't put online. Kids shouldn't be robbed of the primary communication tool of their generation." Bankston said he believes the real motivation for school officials was to suppress negative comments about the school posted by students. One student, who identified himself as a senior who was expelled, wrote that "pope john kicks you out once you think freely."

Source



MORE INCORRECT FOOD BANNED

Swit the twit guides us to wisdom. Even overfeeding of ducks and geese is bad, apparently. Some people object to slaughtering calves for veal. Will that soon be banned too? What about cattle fattening? Is that bad too?

Amid comparisons to the mistreatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, a City Council committee agreed Tuesday to ban the sale of the liver delicacy known as foie gras in Chicago restaurants. If the full Council follows the Health Committee's lead, Chicago would join the state of California and a host of countries that have already banned the pricey appetizer. They include the United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Israel.

Famed Chicago chef Charlie Trotter has already stopped serving foie gras, and more than 100 other Illinois restaurants have signed similar pledges. Ald. Joe Moore (49th), who proposed the Chicago ban, estimated that "not more than a dozen" local restaurants still serve it. "It'll mean that there will be fewer restaurants serving this product and, hence, fewer ducks and geese being tortured to create this product," said Moore, who has been ridiculed in some circles for trying to ban a food that most Chicagoans have never tasted. "Chicago is in the nation's heartland. It's not known as a city that passes, without considerable thought and deliberation, ordinances of this nature. It'll encourage other legislative bodies to consider similar measures."

It was actress Loretta Swit of MASH and "Hot Lips" fame who made the prison comparison. Her voice choking with emotion, [About the sacrifices being made daily in Iraq by America's military men? Whoops! No.] Swit talked about the "torture" that geese and ducks endure while being force fed to enlarge their livers 10 times normal size. Three times a day, a steel pipe is jammed down a bird's esophagus. When the monthlong ordeal ends in slaughter, the birds can barely walk, much less breathe, experts contend.

Swit quoted Chicago Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington as saying that creating the delicacy "may not be pretty, but it pales by comparison to problems like Abu Ghraib, police brutality and racial profiling." "Are we ever going to forget the memory of that girl smiling, holding a tortured prisoner on a leash and enjoying it? . . . She grew up with the acceptance of this kind of behavior in whatever form it was, whether it was torturing a cat or a dog or seeing somebody doing it and looking the other way," Swit said. "If we look the other way -- if we say, 'It's a guinea pig. It's a mouse. Who cares? It's a kitten. Whatever,' then why are we surprised at the existence of inhumane acts directed toward each other? Violence begets violence. Brutality begets brutality. Inhumanity is a disease."

Didier Durand, chef/owner of Cyrano's Bistrot, 546 N. Wells, spoke in opposition to the ban on behalf of the Illinois Restaurant Association. He noted that foie gras is a delicacy that dates back "many hundreds of years" to the Egyptians, the Romans, Germans and French. "To take it off our menu would be destroying a time-honored culinary tradition. Every restaurant has the right to serve what they want. We welcome all palates. But we strongly contend that they are not matters to be regulated by law, but by personal choice," said Durand, who serves roughly 30 foie gras appetizers each week at a cost of $15 apiece.

Carrie Nahabedian, chef/co-owner of Naha Restaurant, 500 N. Clark, called foie gras "part of the tradition of what a chef becomes when they learn to cook. They learn the values and the ancestry." She added, "We're going down a slippery slope. If we're going to look at foie gras, then we should look at a lot of other things. Maybe it moves on to hamburger and maybe it should. We have mad cow [disease] threatening us on every shore. We have the bird flu that is of major concern. Maybe we need to look at everything."

Earlier this year, Mayor Daley ridiculed the proposed foie gras ban as a Big Brother-style government intrusion. "We're trying to tell people they can't eat certain foods. They can't buy certain foods. They can't ship certain foods in. Pretty soon, you can't drink. Do you really want government to keep telling you every day what to do?" Daley said.

Source



Alphabet correctness: "A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said Tuesday. The court in the southeastern city of Siirt fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira for holding up the placards, written in Kurdish, at the event last year. The letters Q and W do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, but are used in Kurdish. Under pressure from the European Union, Turkey lifted bans on teaching and broadcasting in Kurdish in 2002, but bureaucratic resistance has delayed implementing the reforms. State television and radio began limited broadcasts in Kurdish last year, but local television channels have yet to receive permission to start programs in Kurdish. The 1928 Law on the Adoption and Application of Turkish Letters changed the Turkish alphabet from the Arabic script to a modified Latin script and required all signs, advertising, newspapers and official documents to only use Turkish letters. Many shops and companies in Turkey have names, signs and advertising using the letters Q, W and X which are not used in Turkish, in apparent violation of the 1928 law, but have not been prosecuted".

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