jeudi 7 avril 2005

Ghouls in Rome. And voices in the desert 'Ghouls in Rome' was the reminder title I bunged today on a mail from work to home with one of those Factory stories I send myself when they're keepers. To give non-paying clients a bit of this is "against rules", but I doubt they'll kill me: "Vatican-pope-Germany-critic A dissenting German voice among the tributes to Pope John Paul II by Jean-Louis de La Vaissiere BERLIN, April 5 (AFP) - As Catholics mourn Pope John Paul II, an anti-establishment former priest in Germany has condemned the funeral preparations as ghoulish and called for the new pope to be less authoritarian. Eugen Drewermann is an outspoken figure who was barred from the priesthood in 1992 after infuriating the Vatican by writing a best-selling book criticising the Catholic Church. A long-time critic of John Paul II whom he accused of overly rigid leadership, his views are no less controversial now that the pontiff is lying in state -- a scene he compares to the chaotic funeral of revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 16 years ago. 'We are seeing ceremonies which are worryingly similar to what we saw with the burial of Ayatollah Khomeini,' Drewermann said in an interview with AFP this week. 'This is not how we should be preaching Christianity.' [...] He is especially outraged by the late pope's refusal to back the use of condoms which he says helped AIDS to ravage Africa. 'He said condoms were forbidden and yet 25 million people in Africa are facing AIDS. 'At the world population conference in Cairo (in 1994) the Vatican blocked a sensible and effective birth control programme, siding with the ayatollahs and the American fundamentalists.' Under Pope John Paul II the Catholic Church turned its back on the possibility of a 'spiritual opening', Drewermann charged. This, he said, prevented serious reflection on how to read and interpret the Bible or, for example, how to interpret the symbols of the New Testament such as the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus. Drewermann also alleged that the Catholic Church under the leadership of the late pontiff tacitly encouraged a climate of psychological fear among its followers -- a popular theme of his books which have been translated into many languages. 'There were more than 30,000 exorcisms during his reign,' which shows 'that there is a widespread belief that Satan is within people's souls," he said. [...]" The priestly majority sure has odd notions of good and evil sometimes. The same Drewermann claimed a couple of years ago, when Washington decided it was time to slap Iraq, that Bush suffered from a father complex, according to Amiland, a blog with a Teutonic typeface: "A look at how Germany looks at the USA. And how Amiland looks back..." Ami (now a Europundit) was deeply wounded: "To be honest, I really don't know anything about this guy...," she announced in 'Psychology No One' (Feb 9, 2003). "His bio says that he was booted from the Catholic priesthood and 'studied' psychoanalysis. The perfect man, it seems, for Spiegel Online to interview about the 'psyche' of President Bush. The whole interview is a joke, full of leading questions, unsubstantiated statements and pure psycho-babble. The headline says it all: Why Bush Has to Start this War. It pains me to translate any of it. Basically, Drewermann sees Bush as having a 'father complex.' You see, God and President Bush senior have melted together into some kind of force. And it is this force that is driving the current president to conduct a bigger and better war in Iraq than his father did. No, really, you can't make this stuff up. Drewermann goes on to say that the US isn't even a democracy anymore, and that freedom of the press is only nominal." Ami was right ... about one thing anyway. Really, you can't make this stuff up! There's nothing like just a little historical perspective and a few decent weblinks to the "alternative" press to feel that things have got worse since Drewermann so appalled her! Contemplating tomorrow's horrors to come and imagining the cost of the security alone -- could Nero have afforded it? -- I remembered a video I've kept of "Clinton's Last Days", which I'll bung online some time. He made it on leaving the White House, especially for journalists. Too funny just to tell, the man had a sense of humour not seen in the Oval Office since. As for the muzzling, here's a VoW after all. For the release of Shivaree's new 'Who's Got Trouble?' album, 'Les Inrocks' (the French arts and alternative politics weekly I subscribe to) interviewed the singer. It doesn't pain me to translate a little: "Wild about jazz and musics in melancholy black and white, Ambrosia Parsley sings as if she's hurting a little. In fact, it's America that hurts her. 'A mood certainly found on the disc is the sadness and the anger of one half of America. More so still in New York, which isn't really America. This Administration has taken us hostage and given us a reason to be angry every day. When the Republican Convention was held in New York, the streets were empty, stores were closed, it was horrible. A musician friend got arrested, he spent three days in a cell for doing nothing but crossing the path of a demonstration on his bicycle.' On Whose Got Trouble?, Ambrosia's bitter mood has turned into sweeter songs, democratic berceuses a Bill Clinton could have accompanied on the saxophone." An American colleague of mine at the Factory, visiting "home" rather than reporting, ended up working in New York. She too got arrested. Not for three nights, just one, held at a bus station with other suspects. Why? She found herself caught between two rallies. So she decided to report after all. When she's back from Vatican City, if she doesn't get arrested there as well -- or try to arrest Mugabe (BBC, which she can't, since he has a special dispensation -- she'd enjoy a splendid 'Pope Watch: What Were They Thinking?' photo page at Blogcritics. That's where Firefoxed RSS newsfeeds (now my previous entry) comes in useful at work. How are you expected to survive otherwise? By taking this stuff seriously? Amid the orgiastic rites of organised religion at its most grotesque, there was one piece of decent news today. in deeply Muslim northern Nigeria, hardline Islamic preachers who claim vaccines are part of an American anti-Islamic plot, thus allowing polio to regain a hold across chunks of west Africa, got two fingers from the governor of, if I recall correctly, Kebbi State. He said if families rejected polio vaccinations for their kids, the children would get them by force if necessary. I forget his name, but remember why his spokesman confirmed to the Factory that it was "Yes. Force. If necessary." Because, he argued, it's in the Koran, where he found an appropriate quote from the Prophet to explain that should lives be endangered, it's a religious duty to protect them. By force. If necessary. I phoned the Lagos office, to be told that the chance of such a voice being heard amid the tumult from the imams was slender. Maybe as lonely as that of Eugen Drewermann. Nevertheless, I suggested, it might be interesting "if you've time to get a good story about that and contrast it with the Vatican on AIDS." They're thinking about it. 9:58:28 PM  link   your views? [] From background clutter to upfront news I'm chopping up an entry, guessing you don't want the Factory intruding into the fabulous voices any more than I do. When I left people in southern Africa in peace to do what they did, sorry I let a big story sit longer than it should have done while a technician fixed glitches on my incoming news computer. Or so he said; while I post stuff in the early hours after the night's other work, one day rolls into another, sleep just a shortish interlude -- later we found a glitch in part of the Factory's internal network, of no interest here, except now it's sorted, people will no longer get the very same "same old": three or four stories that went out to the world then came back, to be sent again by idiots like me. The techie then gave me what I've wanted for months on my main console, and now they've stopped arguing and surrendered, one first full day with Firefox for Windows made me feel like a 21st century journalist. At last. Maybe later I'll pester Jo'burg, as asked of me, about Mandela. That still holds true, since most of the media people I've talked have shifted staff on the pretext that all roads lead to Rome. Somewhere in the Vatican mega-splurge, the BBC' asked its audience: "Are we overdoing the pope?" and was told "Yes". But still I can no longer find the link. Then Rainier III (Wikipedia) died and someone on the Factory's English desk cancelled his holiday to do this. Who else saw Saul Bellow (Guardian Unlimited) do likewise? So people said: "Nick, could you check whether the Mandela bios and stuff are up to date." Then there's Fidel Castro. How old's the Dalai Lama while we're at it? I can't blame cautious bosses caught up in the funereal maelstrom for the "what if?" feeling, but firmly call it paranoia. And I'm superstitious about having "deathwatch files" updated. This gives me claustrophobia. Death's not a deadline. I know many people are celebrating their pontiff's life, I respect that, but each day it's more of an institutional nightmare I find morbid and unhealthy. An encouraging small victory After my success as technological "pioneer", Firefox showed me what several people's weblogs (including this one) and other sites can look how they should at work, instead of being mangled sometimes by Internet Explorer. But what won me a decent browser was my insistence I need to read RSS newsfeeds, scarcely an outrageous demand in the 21st century. And already today, that proved extremely handy. They may protest, but if faced with similar resistance, I suggest anybody in a simliar position urge their bosses to do the same if they've a costly computer park made of Microsoft. It's not as if I'll throw away IE6. It's not as if I said "Please chuck out Windows and give us OS X." I suspect those who said "yes" now anticipate further such demands from people who need the Net to work ... if you promise to be a good and computer-savvy "guinea pig (at the Factory, there is a real technical objection if you're stupid, because one part of our system is incompatible with Firefox. But then you can use IE). It took me just 10 minutes before the end of day flurry to set everything up as I wanted it, including an initial bunch of RSS newsfeeds via Sage, plus a non-distracting but useful Africa news ticker at the bottom of the browser. Today, it took me another half-hour between news stories to add other sources to the ticker and the rest of the newsfeeds I'd turn to instantly at home. And that was it. Firefox's multiple tabs, of course, make IE a stone-age research tool. It took so very little to "make a man happy with a new toy", after so much fuss, that I may shut up more and work harder yet with everyday indispensable bookmarks already tabbed open and needed -- I hope -- long before any deathwatch files. This is trivial, scarcely a small blow for the revolution; it's symptomatic of the System, an absurdity and lethargy which are often nobody's "fault" in particular, just a failure to hand out harmless small freedoms of choice without putting up a fight. 12:39:26 AM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.