mwazemba got it wrong

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/-/434746/1064372/-/121max1z/-/index.html

AFRICAN STUDENTS WARM TO MELBOURNE

the Star Tuesday, November 2, 2010 starlife 21
H STAR Life SINGER ADNAN
SAMI WOWS
NAIROBI
See Page 24
AFRICAN STUDENTS
WARM TO MELBOURNE
African students at Victoria
University have started holding
“harambees” to strengthen
their relationships and provide a
regular platform for discussion
with members of staff.
These are not your ordinary
20-something Aussies with few obstacles
to higher education: they are older, mostly
with families, and from conflict areas like
Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. They are
enormously grateful for the chance to study
and the campus at Footscray is designed
for people like them, with plenty of extracurricular
help in the way of mentoring,
study support labs, English tuition and
pastoral care.
Of course there was excellent food,
music and dancing to create the right
atmosphere.
Most of them would be envious of
Kenyans and their grasp of English since
they have not been taught in the medium
before.
Incidentally, this has often struck me as
a missed opportunity: Kenya could attract
thousands of students from neighbouring
countries and offer similar money-spinning
courses if it seriously decided to become the
English-speaking hub of East Africa.
Kenya does not lack good teachers
and could capitalise on the substantial
collection of African writing in English
as a plus. Look at how many Kenyans
are leaving the country to study in South
Africa. Nobody wants to go far away
unless they really have to.
You can’t help admiring the
resourcefulness of the Africans in
Melbourne: though the facilities are good,
they are nevertheless stretched to the
limits, and so students have to fend for
themselves. They look for ways of getting
support within their own community and
form strong bonds with each other.
Mohammed who is 41 now has a
Bachelor of Engineering and can advise
and guide the younger ones. He came up
the hard way; having dropped out of school
in Sudan for 10 years, he went to Cairo to
teach English. Like many of his fellows,
he felt lost in Australia. When he saw the
name “Victoria University” he decided it
must be good because it was named after
the state. Now he is in love with it. “If
I was to marry a university, it would be
Victoria,” he says. But he had to conquer
feelings of inferiority at being so much
older, since in his society age-mates are
expected to be able to do the same things.
Mary, also from Sudan, has a Diploma
of Community Welfare and is doing a
Bachelor in Social Work. She overcame
her feelings of discomfort and nervousness
after coming to VU. Now working for
the International Red Cross, she is still
“climbing the mountain.”
She tends to speak in metaphors.
Because it is hard for these students to
be critical since they come from cultures
where politeness to elders and teachers is
instinctive, she gets round the problem by
comparing lecturers to driving instructors.
“If you push the car too hard it will crash,”
she says. A gentle push is what’s needed.
Encouragement and an appreciation of
how hard it is for these students are likely
to bring about success.
The Africans at VU have come up with
the idea of creating an American-style
“buddy” system where each new student
is assigned an older, more experienced
one to help them settle in. Mary has been
back to Sudan and found that she didn’t
feel at home any more. “Am I at home
anywhere?” she asked herself. “Where
I live now is home”, and that’s that.
“We can encourage friendship between
our countries and Australia and act as
ambassadors,” she said.
The education of foreign students has
been a big money-earner for Victoria in
particular, though there has been some
controversy about sub-standard colleges
and discrimination against Indian
students, which received bad press. As
a result, numbers may drop in future
which might be a good thing for existing
students who will perhaps get more
attention. Despite the negative publicity,
students get a good deal from the
government.
AMES (Australian Migrants Education
Service) assists with excellent free courses
in English and directs young women like
Bethlehem from Ethiopia to preparatory
courses like Gateway to Nursing so that
she now has a full Bachelor’s degree in the
subject. But Hakim felt there was a need
for yet more English teachers.
As parents, they are aware that their
children find things difficult; discipline is
far more lax in western countries and the
youth, caught between their parents’ world
and their new one are confused and lacking
in focus. They haven’t had to make the
sacrifices their parents made.
Mohammed pointed out that the
community had crucial role to pay here:
graduates should propagate the idea of
education amongst the younger ones and
help them find clear goals. They also want
them to retain a sense of who they are
and the cultural values of “home.” The
temptation to drop out, and get into bad
habits is always present.
Footscray is not one of Melbourne’s leafy
suburbs. It even feels like a bit of Africa
with its markets and African restaurants.
On a Friday night at the Lalibella, the
owner not only serves tables but also sings
and dances. Videos of Ethiopians in their
crisp white costumes dancing in front of
green hills make you want to be there.
Drop-out rates are a general problem
causing the state to look carefully at its
educational provision.
Together they can commit to getting
a quality education. “Everything is
available,” Hakim says. “It’s a good
environment.” And the staff are anxious to
get their feedback to make it even better.
betty.caplan1@gmail.com
LEGAL EAGLES WHO MAKE A MARK - Pages 22-23
forum: Victoria University students panel comprising older students, mostly
with families, and from conflict areas like Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Inset, the
administration block at the university.
letter from OZ
By Betty Caplan

Joan Root Biography by Mark SeaL

One woman's bid to save LAKE NAIVASHA


Rating

Wildlife researchers Joan and Alan Root in Naivasha. The two had a sense that the haven they inhabited after they married in 1961 was doomed, thus there was a terrible urgency about their attempts to immortalise it for posterity.

By Betty Caplan (email the author)

Your Email
Message
Send Cancel


Posted Monday, October 25 2010 at 20:53

Mark Seal’s biography of the woman who lost her life in a futile bid to save Lake Naivasha is welcome, though deeply depressing.

Seal originally wrote the story for Vanity Fair and later decided to make it into a book. It is story of someone whose life was so bound up with a love of Kenya and its magnificent wildlife — a love which in the end ensnared her in the complicated web of corruption and conflicting interests that have come to characterise any enterprise that has money-making potential in this country.

Having been herself actually conceived on the shores of the lake in 1926, its survival formed the lynchpin of her existence.

When she met Alan Root, who had arrived in Kenya at the age of 10, she found her soulmate, a man whose mission was to “capture the essence of Africa on film.”

The two had a sense that the haven they inhabited after they married in 1961 was doomed, thus there was a terrible urgency about their attempts to immortalise it for posterity.

Those who have seen the masterpieces they produced together will know that these were the greatest of the wildlife filmmakers; others have followed, but they were the first.

Because they inhabited the territory without making any human mark on it, they were able to capture, for instance, the life of the termite in Castles of Clay, the abiding mystery of how these tiny creatures make such large and well-designed structures, all at the behest of the queen who lays 30,000 eggs a day.

“Four inches long and as thick as a man’s thumb, this grotesque creature looms over the workers that attend her. Beside their queen, the workers look like a ground crew handling a half-inflated airship.”

This small extract underlines what was so special about their films — not just the photography, but the poetic script, which always helped to illuminate the images.

The film about the seasons covers just one small area of land and shows in minute detail how it changes as the rains come and go, and how the wildlife adapts.

Alan was mostly credited for the success their work achieved, but he always maintained that he couldn’t have done it without Joan, that she was his right hand.

The book is full of those marvellous brushes with death that are so common in Kenya — escaping puff adder bites (which cost Alan a finger nevertheless), stray hippos or falling out of hot air balloons.

Theirs was a true “marriage of minds” though, eventually, Joan’s health and eventually her life were sacrificed.

They survived their early years through sheer determination and dedication to their mission, but slowly things began to unravel.

Because of the punishment she had dealt her body, she developed myasthenia and, at the age of 36, suffered an early menopause.



flashad
1 | 2 | 3 Next Page »

Add a comment (0 comments so far)

ng and dance in Malindi, protests in Jakarta and Tibet, remembering musician Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole and World Cup 2010

President Obama in Ohio, Riots in France, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki in Iran, Gymnastics World Championship in Rotterdam and Fashion week in Tokyo

Chinese hospital ship in Kenya, Middle East first ladies in Lebanon, Commonwealth Games in Delhi, Mike Tyson in LA, Rescue in Chile and Forest fire in Reunion
TermsPrivacy PolicyMobileNewsfeedsHelpContact usAbout us RSS

Joan Root Biography

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/-/434746/1039064/-/item/2/-/vfa5qsz/-/index.html

Ayaan Ali Hirsi: NOMAD

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/The%20restless%20enigma%20of%20Ayaan%20Hirsi/-/434746/994430/-/nhfejy/-/index.html

Dawkins: The God Delusion corrected - thanks to reader for pointing out error

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2244-good-people-doing-evil-things

jewish artists in the great European paintings exhibition NGV

THE TRAGIC STORY OF GERMAN AND JEWISH ARTISTS WHO LED THE MODERNIST MOVEMENT

The greatest irony of the magnificent exhibition of European Masters from the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt is summoned up in the story of Max Beckmann. Born in Leipzig in 1884, he studied at the Weimar Kunstschule from 1900 to 1903. Eventually promoted to professor at the Stadelschule in 1925. once the Nazis came into power in 1933, he, along with many various great Jewish artists, was denounced as degenerate and fled into exile. Now his art holds a special place in the museum, 100 of whose works have been loaned to the NGV in Melbourne where they will be on show until October whilst the building in Frankfurt is being renovated.. They will not be seen anywhere else. It is a great tribute to the gallery that such priceless works can be safely shown to an eager public.
Like so many of his compatriots, Beckmann was proudly German; his greatest desire was to regenerate German art after the First World War which had affected him very deeply. Having volunteered as a medical officer, his world view was profoundly changed by the experience. The early self portrait of 1905 shows a budding artist looking out at us with questioning, gentle eyes. Behind him is a window as though the world were his oyster, but that was not to be. Compare it with the painting of the Frankfurt synagogue (1919) where everything leans at a dangerous angle, the buildings, lampposts, streets all crowding together in a claustrophobic space reminiscent of some of Van Gogh’s most disturbed works. A little band of odd characters wanders in front of the synagogue looking as if they had strayed from a circus. Like much of his later work, done in exile in Amsterdam, it is full of fear and foreboding as if he could sense what was about to happen. Beckmann was angry and disoriented by having to leave his beloved home to which he never returned. “The Circus Carriage” (1940) shows a stern Beckmann as circus master pretending to read a newspaper whilst an acrobat is trying to climb a ladder to get out of the room. But he is trapped in the picture as are we. The central figure is a reclining woman gazing blankly ahead – a fortune-teller perhaps, holding a hand of cards. A coarse animal- trainer holding a whip guards his fierce tigers in their cage. Though Beckmann, like his fellow Kirchner portrays a world on the brink of madness, the intensity of the colour and expression prevent the viewer from falling into despair. He points ahead to surrealism and the absurdist movements. But the utter humiliation of the Degenerate Art exhibition which toured Germany for four years was to damage his psyche. After he and his wife fled, they lived in Amsterdam for ten years and in 1947 emigrated to the US where he died three years later at the age of 66. The Australian born critic Robert Hughes says that this, along with Beckmann’s other triptychs “represent one of the greatest efforts of the symbolic imagination in all 20th century art, a sort of ....world theatre in which the follies and tragedies of Europe, along with its pining for a utopian order on the very brink of collapse, were given an unrelentingly vivid allegorical form.” Hughes believes that the power of Beckmann’s work comes from the heat it generates and has called him “the greatest German painter of the 20th century.”
As a failed artist, nothing was more important than art to Hitler. He based his thinking on a book by the Jewish writer Max Nordau (Degeneration,1892) which surprisingly supported the idea of superiority of traditional German culture, sowing just how assimilated many of Germany’s best intellectuals were. Twice rejected from the Vienna Academy, Hitler’s taste was limited to 19th century neo-classical landscapes and idealised figures. With Goebbels as Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, the systematic suppression of creativity in all the arts held sway.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a contemporary of Beckmann’s and a founding member of a group called “Die Brucke (The Bridge) which aimed to draw a link between the art of the past and that of the brutal new era that was dawning.. Born in Dresden in 1880, he too volunteered for military service during World War I in 1914 but suffered a nervous breakdown in 1915 and was discharged, recovering for the next two years in sanatoriums in Switzerland.
In 1918, he settled in Davos, living in a farm house in the Alps; from this time onwards his main subject matter was mountain scenes. On 3 July 1919, he wrote in a letter from Davos, "Dear Van der Velde writes today that I ought to return to modern life. For me this is out of the question. Nor do I regret it.... The delights the world affords are the same everywhere, differing only in their outer forms. Here one learns how to see further and go deeper than in 'modern' life, which is generally so very much more superficial despite its wealth of outer forms."
The two of his works on show from the Stadel are so exquisite in their use of colour composition and surface tranquillity that they hide the angst that afflicted him throughout his life. “The Reclining Woman in a White Chemise” is a voluptuous picture redolent with sensuality, the well- proportioned lady showing off her ample curves; the huge flowers contrast brilliantly with the furniture, and the echoing curves of the sofa and wall behind give off an air of luxuriance that suggest that the subject was intimately known and loved by the artist.”The Sleigh Ride in the Snow” of 1927-9 is filled with movement – in the foreground the horse pulling the sleigh through the snow, in the background hills and rows of sloping hills and trees in a variety of sharp and light colours.
In 1933, Kirchner was labelled a "degenerate artist” by the Nazis and asked for his resignation from the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 1937, over 600 of his works were confiscated from public museums in Germany and were sold or destroyed. In 1938, the psychological trauma of these events, along with the Nazi occupation of Austria, close to his home, led to his suicide.
The list goes on: Max Ernst is represented by two works which illustrate how much he was influenced by Freud, as were the surrealists who came later. “Aquis Submersus” of 1919 exhibits an eerie still world centred around a swimming pool with lifeless figures dominated by a doll-like figure in the foreground without limbs and riddled with bullet holes. In the sky a clock replaces the moon. We are already into the world of the subconscious and dreams. He did in fact collaborate with many other artists including Dali and Paul Klee. He led the most extraordinary life, marrying many times and working with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes..Like a cat he seemed to have nine lives, escaping near death and two spells in concentration camps before moving to the USA which was the fortunate recipient of many of those European artists and intellectuals who were not destroyed by the Nazi onslaught.
The exhibition traces the history of 19th and 20th century Europe and contains far more than I can begin to describe. But out of the ashes of terrible persecution, Jewish artists managed to triumph and leave an outstanding legacy.
1239 words
betty.caplan1@gmail.com
Betty Caplan is a freelance writer and teacher based in Melbourne.

How Can a woman be a saint but not a priest?

A WOMAN CAN BE A SAINT BUT NOT A PRIEST
RIDDLE: How come a woman can be a saint but not a priest?
ANSWER: Because she has to be dead first.
Does it not strike you as odd that a woman can achieve sainthood in the next life but cannot do the work of the Church in this one? Last week the Vatican pronounced that paedophilia and the ordination of women were equally grave sins. This statement alone proves that the Catholic Church has remained stuck in the dark ages when male priests were not allowed to marry to ensure that land could be retained by the church. No wonder it is finding more and more difficulty in recruiting priests in the West, where there are other options and where the need for sexual love is acknowledged as human. The same is not true in so called Third World countries because severe economic difficulties mean that any opening to a paid career is taken seriously. And, to be fair, the Catholic Church has done a huge amount to improve the lives of ordinary Africans by providing excellent schools and hospitals all over the continent, often in places the government doesn’t even visit.
It isn’t that the women can’t do the work: it is that they cannot be acknowledged or rewarded for it in the same way as men. They cannot strut about in lavish robes amongst the poor and the hungry who may not have clothes to cover their backs. Yet it is the women who do all the fund-raising, knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning and caring – everything that enables the church to continue its physical existence. And they don’t ask for thanks but for recognition which the Anglican Church at least has granted them. Reform Judaism also acknowledges female Rabbis.
But how are the two things linked? Paedophilia is a sin committed by a powerful adult who holds the trust of a vulnerable child in his hand. Secrecy is an integral part of the deal: the priest can threaten his victim with all sorts of things if s/he spills the beans, and the victim, trusting in a superior who is respected and feared, colludes. “T’will not be believed,” said Angelo to Isabella in Shakespeare’s play “Measure for Measure” when he tried to seduce her. He knew his reputation was strong enough to defy any charge by a mere woman. The Seducer-Priests are in league with one another, ensuring that their reputations remain intact and that any misdemeanours are swept under the thick-piled carpet. They must remain outside the law – as the Pope’s angry reaction to the recent police investigation in Belgium proves – and be free to behave as they see fit. For them sexual abuse of a young person is not a crime whose effects can be damaging for life, but just a small matter to be quickly forgotten. As far as they are concerned it isn’t even sex, but mere play. The fact that one party has not given consent is irrelevant in a society which has never pretended to be democratic.

There is no point in half-heartedly attempting to punish those who are caught because there are far too many. It is, after all, a world-wide phenomenon. One must ask instead, why are they there? The church is attractive to such men precisely because they know they will be safe and comfortable. The hothouse cloistered environment heightens and intensifies sexual feelings without allowing them proper expression. The same happens in prisons: men forced to be together will form sexual relationships because their pitiful situation has put them in more need than ever of human warmth and affection. Emotions require an outlet; if there isn’t a healthy one, an unhealthy alternative will be sought.
As for women, they must be controlled at all costs. Because they hold the keys to the mightiest skill of all – giving birth – they must be watched over constantly. It is true of all the monotheistic masculinistic religions, but most exaggerated in the higher echelons of the Catholic Church. Even here in supposedly advanced Australia, as in the USA, there are states where women don’t have reproductive freedom and abortion is criminalised. The Jewish line passes through the mother because, (pre-DNA testing), only she could be sure who the father was. This is the Achilles’ Heel of the male gender. This is why the lord Jesus could not have been delivered to a mortal woman but came to earth, as the story goes, as a result of an Immaculate Conception, and therefore remained forever a Holy Virgin unbesmirched by contact with male flesh.
Linking the two totally unrelated issues, then, leads us to logically conclude that it is as sinful to be a woman as it is to be a paedophile. This is why Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden in shame, covering their now ugly human bodies, only moments before considered to be part of nature and beautiful. And so in Islam, a woman must be dressed “modestly” which is interpreted in a hundred different ways, some of them offensive to Europeans who are not at all disturbed by teenage girls wearing clothes that barely cover their bottoms. And it doesn’t stop at dress. Yesterday, an arbitrary edict was suddenly issued in Gaza preventing women from smoking water pipes. It must be one of the few pleasures they still have.

betty.caplan1@gmail.com
Published the Star July 20, 2010

BOSTON MARRIAGE: REVIEW OF MAMET'S PLAY MTC MELBOURNE JULY 2010

BOSTON MARRIAGE

“Boston Marriage” is a euphemism for an intimate but discreet relationship between two women, coined well before the words gay and lesbian were current. In Aidan Fennessy’s production for the MTC, David Mamet’s play is a writer’s delight: there are echoes of so many precedents – Genet, Beckett, Oscar Wilde – but the concoction is, in the end, Mamet’s alone. Perhaps that now that Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter is dead, Mamet, also Jewish, can assume his crown. I shall recommend him even if he’s not British.
It takes consummate artistry to have 90 minutes pure of theatre in which nothing actually happens and three people just talk. But what talk! The dialogue between the two genteel society ladies Anna (Pamela Rabe) and Claire (Margaret Mills) crackles and sparkles like a Catherine wheel. It reminds you of the age of conversation before electronic gadgets took over. Victims of an age when clever but unschooled women were reduced to whiling away the time whilst servants like Catherine (Sara Gleeson) slavishly attended to all the household chores, they naturally got up to mischief. (See Liaisons Dangereuses, for instance.) The brilliance is in having the third person who is not, as you might expect, the lover to whom Claire is going to give herself, causing her to break her tryst with the older Anna, but the humble servant girl who, by constantly interrupting the flow of dialogue, provides a comic foil as well as adding the dimension of class. Our gratification is forever being delayed. Her thanks? To have their sadistic, frustrated impulses heaped upon her, all the energy and drive which would normally be directed towards work or family. But they, poor rich things, are blissfully, delightfully free – to do nothing at all but talk. Until, that is, their protector snatches the carpet from under their feet and forces them to depend on themselves.
Mamet is known for writing about men: Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed- the- Plow, American Buffalo. In the provocative “Oleanna”, he dealt with sexual harassment in the university. Here by contrast, we are locked into a claustrophobic boudoir throbbing red in Christina Smith’s delicious design, with no apparent window on the outside world. Only the maid comes and goes with messages about a man fixing the stove and bringing new parts – all delivered with a knowing undercurrent of sexual nuance. For this play is a High Camp melodrama: it’s really about theatre, acting, plot, costume and, of course, language. Everything is artifice, uttered with a sense of irony. There are the necessary props, too – a tell-tale necklace which causes the fantasy protector to abandon his mistress, some scarves, candles, and select items of luxurious furniture. These are just excuses. Underneath all the role play, the needs and desires of these women – all three – are as strong and believable as any. That is what makes the play so much more than a versatile exercise in satire.
Boston Marriage continues at the Fairfax Theatre until July 24.

HOW A WOMAN CAN BE A SAINT BUT NOT A PRIEST pub The Star (Kenya) July 22 2010

A WOMAN CAN BE A SAINT BUT NOT A PRIEST
RIDDLE: How come a woman can be a saint but not a priest?
ANSWER: Because she has to be dead first.
Does it not strike you as odd that a woman can achieve sainthood in the next life but cannot do the work of the Church in this one? Last week the Vatican pronounced that paedophilia and the ordination of women were equally grave sins. This statement alone proves that the Catholic Church has remained stuck in the dark ages when male priests were not allowed to marry to ensure that land could be retained by the church. No wonder it is finding more and more difficulty in recruiting priests in the West, where there are other options and where the need for sexual love is acknowledged as human. The same is not true in so called Third World countries because severe economic difficulties mean that any opening to a paid career is taken seriously. And, to be fair, the Catholic Church has done a huge amount to improve the lives of ordinary Africans by providing excellent schools and hospitals all over the continent, often in places the government doesn’t even visit.
It isn’t that the women can’t do the work: it is that they cannot be acknowledged or rewarded for it in the same way as men. They cannot strut about in lavish robes amongst the poor and the hungry who may not have clothes to cover their backs. Yet it is the women who do all the fund-raising, knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning and caring – everything that enables the church to continue its physical existence. And they don’t ask for thanks but for recognition which the Anglican Church at least has granted them. Reform Judaism also acknowledges female Rabbis.
But how are the two things linked? Paedophilia is a sin committed by a powerful adult who holds the trust of a vulnerable child in his hand. Secrecy is an integral part of the deal: the priest can threaten his victim with all sorts of things if s/he spills the beans, and the victim, trusting in a superior who is respected and feared, colludes. “T’will not be believed,” said Angelo to Isabella in Shakespeare’s play “Measure for Measure” when he tried to seduce her. He knew his reputation was strong enough to defy any charge by a mere woman. The Seducer-Priests are in league with one another, ensuring that their reputations remain intact and that any misdemeanours are swept under the thick-piled carpet. They must remain outside the law – as the Pope’s angry reaction to the recent police investigation in Belgium proves – and be free to behave as they see fit. For them sexual abuse of a young person is not a crime whose effects can be damaging for life, but just a small matter to be quickly forgotten. As far as they are concerned it isn’t even sex, but mere play. The fact that one party has not given consent is irrelevant in a society which has never pretended to be democratic.

There is no point in half-heartedly attempting to punish those who are caught because there are far too many. It is, after all, a world-wide phenomenon. One must ask instead, why are they there? The church is attractive to such men precisely because they know they will be safe and comfortable. The hothouse cloistered environment heightens and intensifies sexual feelings without allowing them proper expression. The same happens in prisons: men forced to be together will form sexual relationships because their pitiful situation has put them in more need than ever of human warmth and affection. Emotions require an outlet; if there isn’t a healthy one, an unhealthy alternative will be sought.
As for women, they must be controlled at all costs. Because they hold the keys to the mightiest skill of all – giving birth – they must be watched over constantly. It is true of all the monotheistic masculinistic religions, but most exaggerated in the higher echelons of the Catholic Church. Even here in supposedly advanced Australia, as in the USA, there are states where women don’t have reproductive freedom and abortion is criminalised. The Jewish line passes through the mother because, (pre-DNA testing), only she could be sure who the father was. This is the Achilles’ Heel of the male gender. This is why the lord Jesus could not have been delivered to a mortal woman but came to earth, as the story goes, as a result of an Immaculate Conception, and therefore remained forever a Holy Virgin unbesmirched by contact with male flesh.
Linking the two totally unrelated issues, then, leads us to logically conclude that it is as sinful to be a woman as it is to be a paedophile. This is why Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden in shame, covering their now ugly human bodies, only moments before considered to be part of nature and beautiful. And so in Islam, a woman must be dressed “modestly” which is interpreted in a hundred different ways, some of them offensive to Europeans who are not at all disturbed by teenage girls wearing clothes that barely cover their bottoms. And it doesn’t stop at dress. Yesterday, an arbitrary edict was suddenly issued in Gaza preventing women from smoking water pipes. It must be one of the few pleasures they still have.

betty.caplan1@gmail.com

Catholic Church Should Put its Own House in Order

Editorials|Opinion |Cutting Edge|Cartoon|Letters
Outside the Box|Charles Onyango-Obbo|Linus Gitahi|Macharia Gaitho|Jaindi Kisero|Mutuma Mathiu|
Job Offers|Cars|Real EstatesHomeOp/EdOpinion Opinion

The Catholic Church should put its own house in order

Share Bookmark Print Email
Email this article to a friend

Friend's Email Address
Your Email
Message
Submit Cancel

Rating
By BETTY CAPLAN
Posted Thursday, March 26 2009 at 18:46

Pope Benedict XVI has now left the continent having preached to thousands in Angola and Cameroon. But doesn’t the epithet that “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” apply to him?

Scientists have agreed that it was nothing short of irresponsible for him to claim that condom use actually increases the rate of HIV infection. It encourages promiscuity, the church believes.

This stance is immoral on two levels: first because it is plainly untrue, and goes against the advice of trained personnel. The church must recognise that it has failed in this mission.

SECONDLY, BECAUSE IT contradicts the kind of philosophy that has due regard for the health of our ailing planet. On the day the Pope arrived in Africa, the Nation featured a picture of dozens of beautiful children, all in the care of the police, their parents unwilling or unable to claim them.

The church fathers are stuck in a time warp; living in medieval times; they are totally out of touch, especially with youth.

Not only does the Vatican refuse to admit that its policies have not worked, but it will also not face the immorality which continues to fester in its own ranks.

Cases of sexual abuse of minors have been reported in countries as far apart as Australia and Mexico. The Pope himself suppressed publication of a report which revealed the extent of this exploitation.

In 2007, child sex abuse cases cost the church $615 million (Sh49 billion), an increase of 54 per cent over the previous year, most of which went towards settling in court. Therapy for the victims and the accused took care of $23 million.

New allegations of abuse in 2007 totalled 689, most of the sufferers being young males between the ages of 10 and 14 when the abuse began.

A Charter for the Protection of Children has done better at protecting clergy from exposure.

In 2007, on his first visit to the USA, the Pope avoided Boston for fear of the protests about sex abuse scandals there.

The numbers of men in the West willing to repress their sexual needs and become priests has been decreasing rapidly; calls for the obligation to remain celibate have gone unheard.

But Africa, as in colonial times, is unfortunately ripe for conversion: only here is the church growing — an “opiate” as Marx called of desperately poor “masses” whose lives are made bearable by the unprovable belief that the next world is better than this one.

One cannot avoid the suspicion that underneath this pattern of behaviour is a fear and dislike of women who are particularly disadvantaged in the Catholic Church and prevented from holding high office.
Compare to the Anglican Church, which has tried hard to move with the times and accept homosexuals as being as worthy of love and respect as all men and women.

OR WITH HINDUS OR BUDDHISTS. The Catholic ideal is a Virgin, painted in centuries of European art as a (lily-white) maiden flying high in the clouds, well away from the grasp of men whereas she would have looked much more like an Arab or a Swahili.

Is a female to be nothing but a vessel for a man’s sperm?

Witness the shocking case of the nine-year-old girl in Brazil whose family and doctors were ex-communicated because the foetus was aborted.

No compassion was shown for the girl, traumatised and subjected to incest, yet meant to bring up another child though not past childhood herself.

“Abortion is a greater crime than rape,” declared the church, defying years of worldwide struggle for equal rights, and minimising the effect of sexual violence on young people who have placed all their trust in adults who are in loco parentis.

betty.caplan1@gmail.com




Alternative text.
Add a comment (6 comments so far)

You need to login first to submit a comment.
Submitted by mogofalo
Posted March 28, 2009 01:00 AM


Maybe the pope should not be the enormous moral authority across the global culture that he is. The pope believes that a myth about the existence of a good one in Heaven at war with an evil one cast down to and ruling over Earth is; the truth about the existence of one totality that we all share. To claim that myth is truth as he does is to lie to the many of our global culture.




Submitted by gabbysteve
Posted March 27, 2009 06:55 PM


The CATHOLIC CHURCH has already put her house in order by simply saying it's not advocating for use of condoms. This ought to be followed to the letter. You need not mix issues of individual priciples and doctrines of the church. Which came first, HIV or condom? Condom! Even before HIV, the music was the same, "stop use of condoms" This is not going to change as God is not going to change. Simply, those who are not married should wait to marry and those married already to have the obligation only with their partner (spouse only).




Submitted by Jellyfish
Posted March 27, 2009 06:22 PM


Betty you are dead wrong. Did you see this article on the East African? "UNAIDS and myth of condoms efficacy against AIDS" posted on 7th of february 2009 by Curtis Abraham. http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/525956/-/rku48lz/-/index.html. To say that the scientific community is in agreement is disingeneous to say the least. If you need more scientific info on how ineffective condoms are I would be happy to furnish you with more.





See all 6 comments
Most Popular
Four Kenya MPs join 'No' camp
Kenya drawn into US-Russia spy saga
Protests as ‘Yes’ team runs out of money
Marende: Outcry over Kenya MPs' pay premature
We would fight all over again, say Saba Saba chiefs
Kenya police get pay raise
Lorna: I blame no one for the life I have had
Cat and mouse game with Jose Mourinho
Sh24bn makeover for Nairobi train transport
Second liberation leaders speak out
n-sokoAbout usEditorial TeamContact usMobileDigital EditionsPrivacy PolicyHelpTerms RSS

Remembering 7/7/2005 London

REMEMBERING 7/7/05

There was an eerie feeling in my stomach the night before. I was waiting for my daughter to give birth for the first time and on the platform of the underground station, one of those nasty tiffs between a few drunken louts was happening where you worry that one of them will fall onto the train tracks and die an Anna Karenina –type death. An omen, I later realized.
The baby was born that night and I planned to go and meet her the next morning.
“Don’t go into town, mum,” my older daughter phoned at 9 o’clock. “Kenny took the Liverpool Street train at 8 and said there was something wrong with the electrics on the underground network.” I was in North London and the baby was at Kings College Hospital in South London where her mother and sister were born. Then about an hour and a half later, she called again.
“Mum, there’s been a bomb. No-one is going anywhere.”
What to do? I had a new granddaughter and couldn’t see her. I turned on the television and the details were only beginning to emerge. A co-ordinated series of attacks had targeted four different trains and a bus right near elegant Endsleigh Square where I had stayed a year ago. It was mid-summer so the trees were in full bloom and there was that air of utter hedonistic pleasure that comes in a cold place where sometimes you get no summers at all. Every bit of sunshine is celebrated as if it might be the last.
For claustrophobes the idea of being attacked when you are in a train far under the good earth is frightening. All your fantasies of being trapped, helpless abandoned come to the surface. But that’s what happened to the 52 people who died on that day, clawing and screaming to get out of the carriages, whilst 700 others lay bleeding or dying around them. I had lived through the years of the IRA bombs and the hoaxes and there was nothing like this. Like the war in Afhganistan where young diggers are dying, it was for nothing – that is the worst part. Not for any noble idea, not to rid the world of a Hitler. People’s lives shattered for nothing. A few lunatics with a grudge against the country that had brought them up very imperfectly.
On television there were images of police systematically closing off everything. All the phone networks were jammed. As in a crisis, family and friends pulled together. When you could get through to someone, there were anxious voices: “Where are you? Are you alright? You’re nowhere near.......”
I went to the street market nearby usually full of Cockney traders calling out, ”Come on, termaters (tomatoes) 50 pence! Last orders please.”
What hit me was silence. It was warm but the sky was grey and closing in on me. No-one spoke. Although it was only about 11 am, one by one the market stalls were being dismantled. Everything was shutting down. Is this what the end of the world will feel like? And there at the opposite end of town wailed my first grandchild, blissfully unaware of what kind of world she had come into.
In the only shop that stayed open a fat family sat eating greasy chips.
For days you couldn’t go anywhere. The brand new University College Hospital couldn’t cope with the confusion and the deluge of patients. Now there are warnings everywhere: “Emergency Rooms This Way.” They’ve learnt how to manage a crisis.
I couldn’t use the underground for weeks. I got the bus to Kings Cross and everywhere there were big signs saying: “Have you seen my brother/sister/friend?” with accompanying photographs.
A woman who spoke on the BBC this week remembered her daughter who died aged 24. After all, this was 9.10 am on a weekday so the bombers hit those who had jobs and were on their way to work. The mother was a pillar of the community, an Anglican priest and a marriage celebrant. She had been forced to give up her work. “I can’t forgive them for taking my only daughter away. So how can I stand up there and preach love and forgiveness?”
“In the midst of life we are in death.”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
And for most of us the fear does go away, those whose lives have not been shattered and who haven’t had to pick up the pieces and start all over again. Anniversaries remind us of those who suffered, and that we are all vulnerable wherever we are, to the whims of nature or to the blind rage of youths who use religion as a cover for their unarticulated feelings. .
betty.caplan1@gmail.com

TIME FOR JEWS TO STAND UP AND PROTEST

IT IS TIME FOR JEWS TO STAND UP AND PROTEST

The shocking act of piracy that was committed this week in the name of the Jewish state cannot be tolerated and Jews must be the first to stand up and be counted. I am a secular Jew, the child of Holocaust survivors and I have seen the Holocaust being used and abused to claim special privileges which have no basis in law or human rights. Israel has become like a spoilt child whose parents daren’t criticise it – a fact that has done both it and them more harm than good. Mrs Clinton waves her finger angrily at Iran and Korea but will she express outrage at an act of flagrant illegality and even criminality? Has anyone waited for an independent report before condemning North Korea for supposedly sinking a battleship? Where were the WMD that justified the Iraq war? What is fuelling anger and terrorism in the world is the application of double standards.
The bombing of a flotilla of boats peopled by those who promote peace and reconciliation in the Middle East has brought out the worst in the Jewish state. We cannot wait for “proper investigations” which simply delay the issue and (the perpetrators hope) put it out of the public mind. Some stories simply don’t have two sides and this is one of them just as there were no two sides when the Nazis carried out their Final Solution on Jews, Catholics, homosexuals and gypsies. Both were plain wrong. But the older generation of Jews all over the world still carry the paranoia and fear of the Other that leads them to fear outsiders. Their dead did not receive proper burials and they are still in a state of grief. After centuries of persecution it is understandable but by this stage not forgivable. Imagine that I as an Australian Jew have the “right of return” to my “ancient homeland” but Palestinians who have lived there since time immemorial don’t! Israel’s behaviour is still grounded in the sense of abandonment Jews felt when the world stood by as they were slaughtered like cattle. What it taught them was to stand on their own feet: to become heavily militarised and attack anything that looks like a threat. They do not need to fear world opinion because it has not stopped them even from demolishing houses in East Jerusalem let alone bombing the daylights out of innocent civilians.
As people of the Book, we must think and use our experience to defend others against harm: that surely is the lesson of the Holocaust. Not to use it as an excuse to lie and kill. The flotilla was attacked in international waters – itself a crime in law – by a country which is illegally occupying the Gaza strip because a democratically elected regime is seen as evil and threatening. The UN has stood by and done nothing. The boats were inspected before they set sail from Turkey and no weapons of any kind were found. The commandos began shooting from the air before they even touched deck, again breaking international law by murdering civilians. I do not deny that Palestinians have lobbed rockets into Israel but compared to what has been done to them and considering that Israel is a nuclear power and armed to the teeth that is small beer. Once again Israel has over-reacted. It has turned itself into Goliath forgetting that it was the small humble David who ultimately won the game.
Jews are renowned for their learning and scholarship but when it comes to action these qualities are entirely absent. Thought demands that you consider the consequences of your actions. Will this, or for that matter another of Obama’s “surges” put a stop to Al Qaeda or any of the other groups that are mushrooming around the world in response to these acts? On the contrary. Jews must know from their own experience that such behaviour only strengthens their resolve and gathers more recruits. Zionists were strengthened by opposition from the British in the years before the establishment of the state of Israel. They have forgotten that they, like Nelson Mandela, were forced to be terrorists in order to achieve independence. “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it,” wrote Santayana. The more outlandishly the Israeli government behaves, the more pacifists and people who care about human rights gather in greater numbers to protest. Like all religions, Judaism preaches love and respect for fellow human beings. Once you write off a section of humanity you feel free to treat them like animals. That is not the philosophy I was taught but it was what enabled the Nazis to attempt genocide. Let the Jews’ vow of “never again” apply to everyone, not just to their own kind. And please know, Mr Netanyahu, that the Israel my parents devoted their lives to building has nothing at all to do with the policies you are carrying out. If I have the right of return to Israel, I also have the right to speak out.
845 words
betty.caplan1@gmail.com