This blog deals with political and social issues in South Africa, mostly from the perspective of Constitutional Law. Written by Pierre de Vos
Quote of the week
May 16, 2012 | 20:28 pmThe last session of parliament was the longest for 100 years. At the previous state opening, the Queen had been on the throne for a mere 58 years. She looks a little more elderly these days, a little more stooped, and she walked with that slight caution that you would have if you were carrying the weight of a large bag of potatoes on your head. Or a crown as we call it. You could hardly call it an austerity opening, though looking round the House of Lords I could see only about a dozen tiaras. The place still looked like a festival of bling, a convention of white rappers all desperate to show how minted they were. The event was designed hundreds of years ago to convince continental ambassadors that this wet, windswept country off the west coast of Europe was immensely wealthy. That might well be part of the intention today. – Simon Hoggart, in the Guardian, about the UK opening of Parliament
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Uh-oh! Batten down the hatches: I sense yet another Islamic rampage coming up!
Maybe it’s time all the religious fundamentalists were flushed out – great stuff Zapiro and all the others who show us how to exercise freedom of speech.
It strikes me that something rather interesting is going on when one condemns satanism. I don’t think I misstate the case when I say that most level headed people of any religious/political/social persuasion would find the concept of ritual sacrifice of innocents (animals/people) and the other forms of physical violence which appear endemic to Satanism as a particulalry abhorrent means of demonstrating one’s religious beliefs, and, I would imagine, it is in recognising these features in satanism that the satanism condemnors seek their justification. What these same condemnors fail to recognise, however, is that Satanism as a religion holds no monopoly over the ritual sacrifice of innocents and other forms of demonstrable violence in the name of religion (most effectively demonstrated through that most ritualistic of man’s activities: war). Perhaps a proper analysis of what we find abhorrent about Satanism reveals what we should find abhorrent about all religion!
Roy, it is of course interesting that in our society it is unacceptable to sacrifice an animal but not to kill it inhumanely at an abattoir and then burn it on flames and then it it. We are not always logical in these things, I suppose!