Author: Roger Pearse

Comment stonings and comment warriors

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of links that show how the internet is developing.

First up are a bunch of pot-heads calling themselves “CLEAR”.  They know what they want, and they’re not about to let the fact that everyone else disagrees with them stand in their way.  They write.

Every day the CLEAR Facebook page points to such stories and calls for comment warriors, people who can post polite, well-informed, persuasive comments.  This is an excellent way of driving opinion from the grass roots.  Over time we can influence newspaper editors, local opinion formers, those people who are prominent in local society.  It is a long game and requires patience, persistence and politeness – but also passion.

So follow the Google news service for stories and keep an eye in the  CLEAR Facebook page. Watch out for calls for “Comment Warriors” when we find a story that’s really worth complaining about and  feel free to add any you notice!    Please take the time to leave a comment, express your point of view and use some facts to counter the lies and propaganda that are published about cannabis. If you can’t write a comment to the newspaper’s website, then write to the editor.

To be most effective, your comments should be polite and refer to scientific evidence.  Please do not use bad language, however angry you feel at the content of the story.  Please feel free to copy any information you find on this website to use in your comments.  Over time, you will be able to build up some standard comments or paragraphs that you can save on your computer and copy and paste as you need them.

In most cases you will need to register in order to leave comments. This can be frustrating to begin with but soon you will be registered everywhere. Of all the local newspapers published in Britain, most use one of only three or four standardised comment systems.  Once you’ve registered once, you’ll be able to comment on all papers that use that system.

The most important thing is to keep going.  It can become tedious but invest just 10 minutes a day and you can be part of making an enormous difference.  Working together we can have an enormous impact from the grass roots.  Become a comment warrior today!

Yes, it’s not about communication or debate, but “having an enormous impact”.

Over at Front Page Mag, there’s a conversion story of a leftist journalist who gradually realised that his allies in a “hit story” were being dishonest, and what happened when he tried to correct things.  The nuts and bolts of the story don’t matter; but I liked the description of what happened when he tried to add some balance to the pre-arranged media narrative.

In January of 2012 I wrote 3 consecutive articles for the Daily Kos.  The first was entitled “Loonwatch.com and Radical Islam”.  Here I pointed out the how Loonwatch only deflects criticism of radical Islam.  I was also critical of Islamic theology while noting over and over that most Muslims were peaceful. 

The comments section of Daily Kos made me feel like I was attending my own funeral.  It was like a public stoning.  

There wasn’t much in the way of responding to any of the points laid out in my article but hundreds of comments accusing me of being “right wing” a “bigot” and an “lslamophobe”. 

A “public stoning” is precisely what some of these “comments” feel like (and are intended to feel like). 

In the face of all this dishonesty, perhaps we need a campaign for honest blog comments.  That the whole purpose of comments is being perverted seems clear.

My own policy on comments is very simple; if a comment annoys me, I delete it.  This isn’t a forum, and I regard the choreographed, manipulative complaints  of “censorship” made by the offenders with amused contempt.  My house, my rules.  If you want to open your mouth in my house, be polite, be nice and, if you disagree with me, remember just who owns this house, or you will be ejected.  In other words, behave as you would if you were in my house in real life.  Which hardly seems too much to ask! 

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Are these really the words of Ignatius?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A splendid blog post at TrevinWax contains the following item:

Please pray for me,
that I may have both spiritual and physical strength to perform my duties;
that I may not only speak the truth but become the truth;
that I may not only be called a Christian, but also live like a Christian.
Yet I do not want people to look to me as an example,
for at best I can only be a pale reflection of Christ Jesus;
let people look away from the reflection and turn to the reality.
Christianity is not a matter of persuading people of particular ideas,
but of inviting them to share in the greatness of Christ.
So pray that I may never fall into the trap of impressing people with clever speech,
but instead I may learn to speak with humility,
desiring only to impress people with Christ himself.

– Ignatius of Antioch, 35-108 A. D. 

These are interesting sentiments, although I have a feeling that “Christianity is not a matter of persuading people of particular ideas” is not what Ignatius would say.  But the lack of a source is troubling.  Where precisely does Ignatius say this?

So, where does this come from?  Well, the direct source is probably Janice Grana, 2000 Years since Bethlehem: Images of Christ through the centuries, Upper Room Books, 1999.  This contains these very words, but since I cannot access more than a snippet in Google books, I am none the wiser.

Does anyone recognise the words?

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eChurch blog threatened with legal action for a post

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On January 28th 2012 eChurch blog included this post:

I Tweeted earlier:

“I sincerely believe that it is easier to publicly proclaim your sexuality than it is to declare mental illness and personality disorders.”

This was met with a small chorus of agreement.

This thought derived from an incident on a prominent Christian forum in which a gay atheist activist took exception to the fact that the moderators had requested he change his provocative avatar. The avatar was of two naked men in an implicit homoerotic embrace. Given the history of this particular guy on the forum, which is typified by aggression – bordering on the threatening – vileness, rudeness, bullying, accusatory sentiment, ad hominem, Christian hatred, and so forth, it was plainly obvious to many that the avatar was designed to provoke.

This guy decided not to comply with the request of the moderator and subsequently was forced to do so.  …

The forum in question is the Premier Radio forum.  I read the article, which seems very mild and points out how dreadful these people have become.

Today I learn from Lisa Graas that apparently these mild remarks have led the odious individual in question to threaten legal action!

My friend Stuart James has a reader whose brain has apparently hit the rainbow wall very hard. Apparently, Stuart is getting sued by a commenter on his blog because of something he wrote about “gay rights” and mental illness.

A commenter calling himself Charles Bishop today gave me notice of his intention to pursue me legally for this blog post, under the laws of libel / slander. I await correspondence from his legal advisors.

Stuart, tell him I guess he needs to sue me, too, because I wrote an agreeable post about what you wrote.

I haven’t been able to work out precisely what is supposed to be libellous (!) or I’d post it here. 

In truth I rather doubt the troll in question has any intention of spending a halfpenny himself: the purpose is simply intimidation. 

UPDATE: I’ve now seen the threat, published in the Premier Radio internet forum, and it’s just some troll mouthing off.  What amazes me is that Premier didn’t moderate it instantly.

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Egypt kisses tourist industry good-bye — starvation to follow

Posted on by Roger Pearse

As I understand it, Egyptian president Mubarak — a relatively mild ruler — fell from power because many Egyptians could not afford to buy bread.  It was as simple as that.

But the unrest has been very bad for the tourism industry, which is a major part of the money flowing into Egypt.  That income dropped 30% last year.  The possibility of an Islamist government will not precisely encourage the US government to keep up its donations, which form another huge part of Egyptian national income. 

The tourist industry is vital.  In Luxor, when the tourists stopped coming after the Islamist massacres of a few years ago, it provoked street demonstrations in support of Mubarak!  So closely are the incomes of local people connected with the dollars-on-legs arriving at the airport.

I have not felt any special urge to travel there at the moment, but I didn’t feel that trips to Luxor, or Sharm el Sheikh, or the Red Sea Resorts were particularly dangerous.  Until today.

Today I read in the Daily Mail a story that crosses Egypt off the list of places that I would feel safe in visiting.

Security officials secured the release of two female American tourists and their guide, hours after they were kidnapped at gunpoint while vacationing in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula yesterday. …

Three other tourists in the convoy were robbed of their cell phones and wallets as the kidnappers took the guns away from their police escort.

The kidnappers demanded the release or retrial of several of their tribesmen being detained by the Egyptian government. The demands are similar to those of the Bedouins who kidnapped 25 Chinese workers earlier this week.

The tourist group that was attacked was traveling back to the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh after visiting St Catherine’s Monastery in the southern part of the region.

I think that’s pretty much “game over” for Egypt’s tourism industry.  Sharm el Sheikh is a tourist farm, where tourists are farmed for money in return for sunshine and day excursions.  I’d always thought of it as entirely safe. 

The consequence of this must be yet further unrest.  The reason Mubarak was ousted was poverty — and now the poverty must be getting worse, as the supply of money is cut off.

This is sad, sad news for Egypt.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m getting ready to go on a trip to Israel with a local church group, as part of my cunning plan to make more links with the local Christian community.  It seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, that 6 days in the company of people from my area, looking at things in which we are both interested, should be productive of friendships.

The tour seems to be staggeringly expensive, yet the actual quality of hotels etc is lower than I have stayed in for many years.  These pilgrimage tours are a rum lot!  But I expect I can endure for a few days, and I hope to see Galilee. 

Likewise, for unexplained reasons, we see to have an overnight flight.  Never been on one of those.

Slightly worryingly, the travel pack includes a small hymnbook.  I wonder under what circumstances that gets used!  Some Christian groups can do weird things, like running people around all day and then expecting them to attend a bible study in the evenings when everyone is tired.

Predicted temperatures are not great.  The last time I was in Jerusalem was 20 years ago (and don’t those numbers sneak up on you?!), and it was perishingly cold.  The other thing I remember from that tour is the pickpockets outside the church of the holy tomb.  Must make sure that I don’t give them any business!

The task of earning a living will return soon enough.  In the mean time, I am trying to make hay.

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A portrait of a damned soul

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An old college friend died a couple of years ago.  I only found out a week or so ago, when I did something that I never do — I logged into Friends Reunited.  A menu highlighted that someone that I knew at college had a page, and it was him.

The page was written by him.  It discussed his life, and gave his thoughts about it.  And then someone had added a note at the bottom with news of his death.

The page made rather sad reading.  His career https://www.highlandpediatricdental.com/antabuse-disulfiram/ evidently never went anywhere, and then he gave it up and took a series of short-term jobs, unsuited to a man of his abilities.

This man was an Oxford graduate.  He was brighter than I am, and was in the year above me at college, doing the same subject.  We were, in some ways, very similar people, and I got on well with him. 

In imagination I can still see his window in the Rose Lane Annex.  It was often lit late at night.  I remember going up to see him, at some late hour, as students do, and finding him playing LP’s of Russian composers — he introduced me to Shostakovich — and drinking strange teas.  The one I remember looked more like logwood chippings than tea!  We would discuss politics, in which we were both active, although he was slightly more right-wing than myself.

He had grown up among Christians.  He owned a number of Graham Kendrick LP’s, which I took care to copy.  His parents were simple folk, delighted to have so intelligent a son. 

But he had rejected Christ at some point before I knew him.  I remember him complaining about the Christian Union at college — made up of the brightest that England could produce, remember — that it was not intellectual enough.  He said that he had been along to a bible study, and that he and another would discuss the Greek of the passage, while everyone else looked blank.

But I also remember learning something else about him.  There was a debate in the Union, and I spoke, somewhat ineptly, against the newly fashionable promotion of unnatural vice.  To my surprise he got up — we were sitting together — and spoke for it.  Later he told me that he had become a homosexual.  I didn’t throw him out — indeed I couldn’t really believe it, and tended to treat the profession as one of his eccentricities — but it was odd.  In time he went down from college, as we all did, and I saw him no more.  I kept in contact for a couple of years, but then lost contact with him, and with others of my time at college.

The page https://www.carolinasmilesnc.com/ambien-zolpidem-online/ makes clear that he never married.  It contains what is perhaps the saddest phrase I ever saw:

I have no children (that I know of).

What self-inflicted emptiness lies behind those words!  I fear that, before I knew him, he came up to college and Satan drew him into sin, to reject Christ, and then on into unnatural vice, thereby cutting him off from everyone.  I remember him saying https://www.bordeauxcenter.com/ativan-lorazepam/ that he could no longer relate to his parents, in times of trouble.

Now he is dead.  He died at 48 (I think), alone.  What sort of life did he have?  Not much, from the look of it.  Yet he was a marvellous creation of God’s, a “character” in the best sort of way, one that Dickens would have delighted to draw.

He was a decent chap, I always felt, and yet, on the face of it, he lived a miserable life and died without God.  Who can doubt his damnation?  His life was empty.  He neither made himself happy, nor did what God asked.  Poor soul! 

Let us hope that I am wrong, and that, before he died, he repented and turned back to God. 

It is a sobering warning to us all, to take heed of ourselves.  This is not a rehearsal.  This is not play-acting.  This life … this is it.  Either turn to God, or lose even what we think we choose instead.

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CIL to be digitised at last?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Ancient World Online I learn of an initiative here to scan in the out-of-copyright volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.  This is very welcome news, so long as we get PDF’s out of the end of it.

It probably takes an initiative to do this.  The CIL is really important, in that it contains all the Latin inscriptions.  It also contains documentary texts. 

But the volumes are huge, rare, and impossible to get access to.  So no ordinary chap is ever going to be able to slap  them on a photocopier and do the necessary.  Indeed merely photocopying a page can be a challenge.

Let’s hope the volumes will be available in PDF.  The site seems to make access to this complex, if it is possible; but that is what we want, first and foremost.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I went to Cambridge today to take a look at Roger Cowley, Ethiopian biblical interpretation, Cambridge 1989.  There is supposed to be a reference to a possible Ethiopic version of some of the Eusebius, Gospel Problems and Solutions material.  Unfortunately I was quite unable to find it.  I’ll have to order up the book by ILL and look then.

Another update has come through on the Origen book.  With luck the main bulk of the work will be done by Friday, I am advised.  That will be very good news.

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The modern way of death is cruel

Posted on by Roger Pearse

They are an embarassment, the dead, in our modern society.  Our masters prefer that the remains of the unimportant should vanish, it seems.  Only the rich and powerful get graves today.

When the girl we loved dies, there is a funeral still.  But the graves of yester-year are no more, at least for us.  Instead the body is burned, like so much waste, to be disposed of as expeditiously as possible.

In some cases ashes are delivered to the relatives, and their fate is unknown to anyone else.  In others the ashes are supposed to be scattered at the crematorium; although a quick calculation of the number of dead against the size of the area in question reveals that most must be simply thrown in the council landfill. 

In either case, the beloved simply vanishes.  There will, most likely, be no plaque, no grave, nothing.

What happens, then, to those to only learn of the death in after years?  They come to grieve, and find nowhere to grieve.  They cannot lay flowers on the grave, for there is not one. 

They can, it is true, leave flowers at the crematorium where the funeral took place.  Although I find notices like this: “In order to keep the wall of flowers fresh, flowers will be removed every Monday”.  But the remains are not there; and so the mourner wonders where he should grieve, where the wreath should be sent, where the card can be placed.

Little by little the traditional way of handling a death, and of mourning them, has been adapted to the production line efficiency where the departed loved ones are simply a commodity.

In Iceland they still have proper cemetaries.  Not here, it seems.

It is a cruel, cruel business, this modern way of death.

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Sunday and Eusebius — a supposed quotation?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

By accident today I came across a supposed quotation of Eusebius, used in a negative way.

Eusebius, in AD 324, wrote, “We have transferred the duties of the Sabbath to Sunday.” Who are the “we”? Certainly not the apostles. They could not do so after the testament was ratified by the death of the Testator on the cross. When Eusebius says, “We have transferred the duties of the Sabbath to Sunday,” it reminds us again of what Paul foretold about those who, after his death, would speak “perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” (Acts 20:30.) This last quotation from these early Fathers is dated AD 324. [1]

I always want to see a reference when I hear something like this.  Walker doesn’t provide one, and a search for the phrase brings up only copies of his book.  I’m not sure what group he wrote for, in truth.

The most accessible work by Eusebius has always been the Church History, so it’s probably in there.  But a search through the ANF version, online, in all 10 books for “sabbath”, brings up no such words.

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  1. [1]Allen Walker, The law and the sabbath (1953), p.98-9.  Google books preview of reprint here.↩