Christians Want Bibles Back from Chinese Govt

The Vision Beyond Borders is a group based in Sheridan, Wyoming that distributes bibles and Christian teaching materials around the world. The VBB web site states:
Many of the six billion people on the earth have never heard of the name of Jesus Christ. The disciples were sent out to preach the Good News of Jesus to the far reaches of the world. We believe that Vision Beyond Borders is helping to fulfill that commission with the same urgency found in first-century Christianity.

When the Vision Beyond Borders group arrive in China with boxes full of bibles they were shocked to find their bibles confiscated by Chinese customs. Seems no one told Pat Klein, and the other VBB members, that Bibles in China are printed under the strict supervision of the Communist government. Bibles in the officially atheistic country are, in fact, only allowed to be used in government-sanctioned churches, and in some big hotels catering to foreigners.

"I heard that there's freedom of religion in China, so why is there a problem for us to bring Bibles?" said Klein, during a phone interview with the associated press. He seemed stunned that his 300 bibles, which were printed in Chinese, were being held by the Chinese government, and was determined to get them released.

Klein said customs officers had told him they could each have one Bible for personal use, but no more than that. He said the officers had videotaped them and were insisting they leave the airport. "We don't want to go without taking those books. It cost us a lot of money to bring them here," Klein said. "They're saying that it's illegal to bring the Bibles in and that if we wanted to, we had to apply ahead of time for permission.”

Why Klein thought China practiced freedom of religion is unknown, since China has regularly faced criticism for repression of religious freedom. Religious practice is heavily regulated by the Communist Party, and worship is only allowed in party-controlled churches, temples and mosques, with those gathering outside approved facilities risking harassment, arrest and terms in labor camps or prison.

Source: http://www.vbbonline.org/
http://www.concordmonitor.com

7 year old boy on TSA Watch List

If you are in a profession that requires frequent air flight, as I was, the shift in TSA security after 9/11 was an interesting evolution from bored complacency to incompetence and inanity that made travel maddening but, also much more interesting. To be fair, I should say that even before 9/11, I apparently fit some profile that triggered the TSA to go into hyper drive, because I had been stopped and had my bags routinely searched long before it became routine. It always amused me to speculate that some doppelganger was out there in the world committing criminal offenses that made me a target for airline security, but recent disclosures regarding TSA’s modus operandi would make their motivations more likely random and far less likely to be driven by any sort of plan.

The Terrorist Watch List has become the primary source for security intelligence used by TSA since 9/11, though how intelligent it might actually be can be debated. In 2004, the Anderson family of St Paul, Minneapolis was traveling to Disneyland when they were stopped by TSA security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport, because their then 2 year old son, Jack was on the Terrorist Watch List. TSA agents were understandably stunned to see their terrorist suspect snoozing in a stroller with a pacifier dangling from his mouth, but did not remove his name. Two years later, the family was stopped again while attempting to fly, and has now given up trying to fly all together. Jack Anderson, who is now seven, says “I don’t understand why I am a terrorist.” Neither do we, Jack.


The TSA Watch List, which was implemented after 9/11 and intended to be a compiled list of known terrorists, or other characters who might want to harm American travelers, was meant to be used by Airlines to screen for terrorist trying to travel to the US by air. The Watch List is, in reality, a much more comprehensive list that includes any American with common names like Robert Johnson, John Williams and David Nelson, including several members of the U.S. Congress, like Sen. Edward Kennedy and Reps John Lewis, Don Young and Loretta Sanchez, all of who have reported problems flying. Along with the approximately 1 million other names on the Terrorist Watch List, are the 9/11 terrorists and Sadam Hussein, despite the fact they are deceased, but what the Watch List does not contain are the names of the world’s most wanted terrorists, because TSA does not want to share that information with the airlines. (Ironically For Security Reasons)

You might feel that any problems with TSA and the Watch List are worth it, if they are keeping you safe, but the truth is, the program has shown totally ineffective in nabbing terrorists, unless you count people like Jack Anderson, though they have managed to pick up a few felons fleeing outstanding warrants. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, from December 2003 through May 2007, the government had more than 53,000 official encounters with individuals on the Terrorist Watch List. However, “agencies reported arresting subjects of watch list records for various reasons hundreds of times, such as the individual having an outstanding arrest warrant or the individual’s behavior or actions during the encounter. No terrorists, just the common crooks that might have been caught by airport security before 9/11.

In addition to being added to the Terrorist Watch List if you happen to have a common name, you can also get added to the list if you irritate someone at TSA. Recently, after reporting on problems with the TSA program, CNN reporter Drew Griffin found himself added to the Watch List.
An additional concern regarding security and personal liberty pertains to occasions when one might fly or travel into the US from a foreign country. If a Boarder Patrol or TSA agent asks to see you cell phone, laptop, etc you better hand them over, because thanks to the Patriot Act, and greater power being bestowed on TSA and Boarder Patrols, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone or PDA and download all your private information—all without a warrant or probable cause.

So, what does TSA have planned for the future? According to the ACLU:
TSA is currently using see-through body scanning machines which are capable of projecting an image of a passenger's naked body like a virtual strip search, researching the creation of an "electro-muscular disruption" bracelet that would give airline personnel or air marshals the power to shock a person into submission and adding approximately 20,000 new names a month to the Terrorist Watch List.

So if you have a common name, you might want to consider getting familiar with Amtrak schedules.

Sources: ACLU, Management Travel News, MSNBC, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune (Aug.5) CNN

Child Killed in Honour Killing

Honour Killing is generally defined as the murder of a female member of a family by the family, when they (and maybe the wider community) believe her to have brought dishonor upon them. A woman can be targeted commonly for: refusing an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce—even from an abusive husband—or committing adultery. Basically, these killings result from the perception that defense of the "family honor" justifies killing a woman whose behavior "dishonors” that family.

Recently, in Riyadh, a young woman was killed by her father, a Saudi man working with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or Religious Police, because she converted to Christianity. The girl, who used several nicknames, including, Rania, wrote several blog posts regarding her religious conversion, and indicating her life had become an ordeal after her other family members had grown suspicious following a religious discussion with them. Sources close to the victim indicated that Rania’s father apparently cut the tongue of the girl and burned her to death following a heated debate on religion.The death of the girl sent shockwaves through the internet community, and the websites where the victim used to write her posts have allocated special space to mourn her, “While some others closed temporarily in protest.”

It has been common practice for Saudi religious scholars to warn against the dangers of Christian websites and satellite TV channels, which they claim, attract Muslim youngsters to change their religion. Muslim leaders have determined partaking of such dangerous multi-media is against the teachings of Islam.

The “Free Copts” website published a message which it received from a friend of the victim, revealing that the killer, her Father, is in police custody and that he is being investigated for an honour related crime.
http://www.gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi ... 36558.html

Sexual Morality, Music and Censorship

Recently while skimming through discussion threads on the Richard Dawkins forum, I was attracted to a thread discussing uproar by some members over the number of sexually themed discussion threads, with several members very upset over the number and the type of topics being discussed. The topics ranged from serious non religious based ethical queries into such topics as how one should view homosexuality or how one should define pedophilia, to more superfluous topics such as how long the perfect sexual encounter should take.

As I began reading through the different posts, which varied from disgust over the titles and content to disgust that the content exists on the forum at all, I noticed that member suggestions varied from some thinking the titles should just be ignored, to other members suggesting sexual topics should be coded or hidden to indicate “adult topic,” while other members called any action censorship. Some members were concerned about the fact that younger forum members might be too impressionable for such sexual content, or that such content might give outsiders the wrong image of atheists in general. As I read along, I was at first both gratified and amused over the wide range of differing opinions proffered by my free thinking atheist and agnostic correspondents, but then I began to feel a nostalgic tug. I wasn’t able to identify the source of my nostalgia right away, but then Tipper Gore came to mind, and I was mentally transported back to early 1990s.

In the early 1990s I was the mother of two young children who, as children are fond of doing, liked to spend their after school and weekends hours playing in a neighborhood park where lots of other kids liked to play. I would sit on a bench near other parents, and we would watch the kids play while a specific group of mothers, who I nicknamed the “mommy brigade” would talk. I usually tried not to listen too carefully to what I generally considered insipid talk of diaper brands and husband trouble; I could not help, however, but be drawn into a conversation one particular day about adult content on television. The “mommy brigade” had started a letter writing campaign to get some television show taken off the air because it had depicted two men kissing. They were all aflutter about how awful it was that this show was on during “prime time” viewing hours and how it was going to corrupt the morals and values of their children. I listened to them go on for awhile but then couldn’t help to interject with a simple question, “Why,” I asked, “didn’t they just change the channel?” After a minute of incredulous silence I was informed that someone had to watch and monitor the filth on TV so that it could be detected and acted upon. It was futile, I knew, to point out that two men kissing was not what I considered filth, and could be a good opportunity to teach the value of tolerance, so I asked instead “Why not just, you know, ignore it?”

“You don’t understand,” I was told, “it’s not just our children, but all children we have to protect, even those whose parents don’t have the good judgment to shield them from such immorality.”

I remember that conversation so well, because Tipper Gore was a mother much like those in the “mommy brigade” who thought it was her job to protect the children of America from smut, too. In 1985, Tipper Gore’s 11 year old daughter, who apparently had much better taste in music than her mother, bought a Prince album, and the history of music censorship in America changed forever. It suddenly became the government’s business to tell American parents what music our children could safely listen to by putting warning labels on music, including much of the music people in my generation grew up listening to. In an interesting development, it seemed those in charge of music censorship were especially punitive with rap music, which I, and many others considered an expression of racism. Thanks to Tipper Gore, today you can buy music from Wal-Mart or Target with all the offensive words removed, and can feel safe that your children are not listening to music with sexually offensive language. (If they have internet access, however, they can find the uncensored versions quite easily, unless they live in, say, China.)

Censorship in America extends further than our music CDs, but also infects our news and TV networks as well. That is why there can be a huge anti-war protest in New York but have it be reported as a small media affair in California. I happen to be living, temporarily in an area where the local CBS affiliate has chosen to protect the people of this area from degradation by taking the show Swingtown off the air. The show is based on several couples in the godless era of the 1970s that are into wife swapping, recreational drug and group sex activities. It has received great reviews, and was great fun to watch, but the moralistic people of central Wisconsin cannot, apparently, be subjected to such evil.

Meanwhile sexual realities in this country are stunning. One in four children in the US has an STD, teenage pregnancy is on the rise, and studies have shown that oral and anal sex among female children who consider themselves “virgins” is off the charts. Meanwhile we hear every day about some previously pious politician or religious leader being ousted as Gay, or as being a customer of prostitution. Perhaps if we spent less time focused on the morality proscribed or shaped by religious dogma, we could spend less time trying to censor what these kids see and hear, and offer them an opportunity to learn about human sexuality in a realistic manner. Maybe, without censorship, we could have a realistic dialogue about the myriad nature of human sexuality in all its glorious, humorous and pitiful forms, withholding judgment and offering instead, compassion, instruction, and most of all, understanding.

Unfair Criticism of PZ Myers and other Secular Scientists

On July 31, 2008 Salon.com posted an articled titled: What's wrong with science as religion, by Karl Giberson. Giberson, who has a PhD in physics and is the author of “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and believe in Evolution” was responding to a July 24th web posting by PZ Meyers on Meyers’ blog Pharyngula. (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/) In the web posting Meyers stuck a rusty nail in a communion cracker, and then used the nail to impale pages of the Qur’an and Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion,” before throwing them all in a garbage can. The exercise was performed in an effort to demonstrate the importance of remaining free from the influence of dogma.

Seeming to shares in “Myers' enthusiasm for fresh eyes, questioning minds and the power of science…” Giberson says he also worries”…about dogmatism and the kind of zealotry that motivates the faithful to blow themselves up, shoot abortion doctors and persecute homosexuals.” Giberson also worries, however, “about narrow exclusiveness that champions the scientific way of knowing to the exclusion of all else. “I don't like to see science turned into a club to bash religious believers…” and he considers “…PZ Meyers a science crusader and true believer with the “singled-minded enthusiasm of a televangelist.”

Giberson admits that “…Myers doesn't seem to like me.” Maybe Myers doesn’t like him because, when interviewed by Salon.com about his new book, “Saving Darwin” Giberson indicated there “might be a reality beyond science, and that religion might be about God and not merely about the human quest for a nonexistent God.” Giberson believes that Christianity and evolution are complementary, not incompatible, and he seeks a “middle way.”

Comparison is made by Giberson between Meyers, and other famous secular scientists and writers, to evangelical preachers of the 1700s, saying “Myers' confident condemnations put me in mind of that great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who waxed eloquent in his famous 1741 speech, Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God, about the miserable delusions that lead humans to reject the truth and spend eternity in hell.” He suggests that Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Myers are a new type of preacher, men of the scientific cloth, “Like their traditional counterpart, the new preachers speak with great confidence that their religion -- science -- contains all the truth we need to know and all the truth that can be known. They call us to worship at the altar of science, a summons of which I am skeptical, to say the least.”

The arguments Giberson poses regarding PZ Meyers’ scientific evangelism fall flat, of course, since the very web blog he is criticizing was meant to promote free thought, not dogmatic adherence to a specific school of ideology. PZ Meyers chose the communion wafer, the Qur’an, and the God Delusion for a reason; he wanted to impress upon us the importance for vigilance, for keeping our minds open, free of dogmatic clutter from any source. As for Richard Dawkins, he himself says he ranks himself somewhere between strong agnostic and pure atheist because to say there is no God without evidence equals the zeal with which theists claim there is a God. Christopher Hitchens is extremely respectful of all religious practices, despite his atheistic beliefs. Perhaps, if Dr. Giberson’s perceptions were less obscured by his own dogmatic affinities, he could more clearly see the truth about those he chooses to malign.

China revokes visa of gold medalist, Darfur activist Cheek

Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek has had his visa revoked by the Chinese government for his ardent support of the Sudan region of Darfur. Cheek is the founder of Team Darfur, a group of 70 athletes who work to raise global awareness about human-rights in Darfur. China has military, economic and diplomatic ties to the despotic government of Sudan which has been directing a systematic program of genocide against people in the Darfur region.


Cheek released a prepared statement:
"I am saddened not to be able to attend the Games. The Olympic Games represent something powerful: that people can come together from around the world and do things that no one thought were possible. However, the denial of my visa is a part of a systemic effort by the Chinese government to coerce and threaten athletes who are speaking out on behalf of the innocent people of Darfur."


China should be held accountable for its contemptible support of the Sudanese government.

Repealing the Don't Ask Don't Tell Law

Those of us, who never considered serving in the military, might also never consider what it would mean to hide our sexuality while performing a difficult and dangerous job. The military, as we have all seen in movies and documentaries, is a culture of its own, one that fosters interdependence and deep trust to ensure personal safety in dangerous situations. How the authors of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law planned for that trust to be developed in an environment of mistrust and dishonesty they didn’t bother to explain. Since most homophobic attitudes are based on religious or other misinformed ideological dogma, they have no place in US laws, and should be expunged permanently.

On Wednesday July 23rd, for the first time since 1993, the Congressional House Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Armed Services Committee held an oversight hearing to review the military’s disastrous Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) law. A large coalition of organization including the Human Rights and Campaign, Service Members Legal Defense Network, but the military witnesses who testified provided the most eloquent impetus for supporting repeal of the law.

"Major General Vance Coleman (Ret.), who served in the U.S. Army for more than 30 years, told the panel about his own personal experience of being devalued for arbitrary reasons: "I know what it is like to be thought of as second-class, and I know what it is like to have your hard work dismissed because of who you are or what you look like...It is bewildering and counter-intuitive to me that we maintain a federal law that says, no matter how well a person does his or her job, no matter how integral to their unit they are, they must be removed, disrespected and dismissed because of who they happen to be, or who they happen to love."(http://www.hrcbackstory.org/)

“Staff Sergeant Eric Alva (Ret.), a dear, dear member of the HRC family, spoke of his frustration at being deemed at once a hero and unworthy of service: "I received the Purple Heart, along with visits from the President and First Lady. I was told I was a hero. That landmine may have put an end to my military career that day, but it didn't put an end to my secret. That would come years later, when I realized that I had fought and nearly died to secure rights for others that I myself was not free to enjoy. I had proudly served a country that was not proud of me."(http://www.hrcbackstory.org/)

"Captain Joan E. Darrah (Ret.), who served for nearly 30 years in the U.S. Navy, gave dramatic testimony on the immense strain of serving under DADT: "On Tuesday, September 11, I was at the Pentagon attending the weekly 8:30 intelligence briefing...When American Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, I was at the Pentagon bus stop. As it turned out, the space I had been in seven minutes earlier was completely destroyed. Seven of my co-workers were killed. The reality is that if I had been killed, my partner, then of 11 years, would have been the last to know as I had not dared to list her in my emergency contact information."(www.hrcbackstory.com/)

We can hope that sanity prevails and DADT is repealed, after all, reason and rationality have to prevail once and awhile.