FOLLOWING the news this week that Irish police have arrested seven Muslims suspected of conspiracy to murder Swedish artist Lars Vilks who drew Big Mo’s head on the body of a pooch, the “offensive” cartoon has been given another airing in Sweden.
Vilks' drawing that led to Muslim fury
According to this report, leading Swedish newspapers yesterday published the cartoon as a sign of solidarity with Vilks.
Justifying its decision to reproduce the Modogtoon, Dagens Nyheter said in an editorial:.
Lars Vilks is not alone in this conflict. A threat against him is, in the end, a threat against all Swedish people.
The four men and three women accused of plotting Vilk’s assassination were arrested on Tuesday in the towns of Cork and Waterford in an operation coordinated with US and European security agencies.
Vilks has a 100,000-dollar (74,000-euro) bounty on his head from an Al-Qaeda-linked group.
One wonders how much more would the bountry would have been had Vilks put Mad Mo’s mug on porker.
Dagens Nyheter called on the Swedish state to give Vilks:
All the protection he needs.
It said authorities must take action:
Against an attack aiming at one of our most fundamental rights, freedom of expression.
The Expressen tabloid also published the cartoon with a picture of Vilks. The paper said:
Expressen decided to publish the drawing for two reasons: to allow readers to see the controversial work and to defend freedom of expression which is more and more threatened.
'What don't we want? Halal menus!'
UPDATE: See this report for more details on the Vilks conspiracy.
Meanwhile, we have learned that a French food chain’s decision to introduce halal-only menus at some of its outlets is proving about as popular as a fag-machine in a fitness centre.
According to this report around 70 angry Frenchies wearing pig masks invaded the Villeurbanne branch of Quick after it decided to strip pork products from its menu in order to serve the religious needs of the local population.
Protesters said it was unacceptable that a chain of restaurants should exclude and segregate the French in their own country.
HAT TIP: BarrieJohn (Modog) and Alan (piggies)
WHEN, back in 2006, a branch of Lloyds pharmacy in Rotherham was forced to apologise to a woman who was denied the “morning after” pill by a “deeply religious” employee, it was revealed that the man who refused to do dispense the pill was a Muslim, whose identity was never revealed.
But now that it’s happened again – this time in regard to a contraceptive pill – both the name of the female who refused to do her job, as well as her religious affiliation, are being kept from public scrutiny.
Jo-Ann Thomas, left, and Janine Deeley: both victims of religious zealotry
The first case involved Jo-Ann Thomas, 37. When she demanded to know why the pharmacist on duty was refusing her the pill, an assistant:
Went bright red, and after a pause said ‘I can’t tell you’.
Pressed on the matter, the assistant said:
Don’t say anything to anyone – it’s because of his religion.
Ms Thomas added:
I just stared at her with my mouth open. I was angry because he is a dispensing chemist and it is his job to dispense drugs. If he can’t do that on religious grounds then perhaps he should not be in the profession. This is a perfectly legal drug but there is a man introducing his own laws. It cannot be right that he can pick and choose the drugs he sells.”
I am a 37-year-old woman and not a daft girl who does not know what she is doing. And the chemist has no right to tell me whether I can or can’t take the pill. It’s my choice not his. It his religion not mine.
How many young girls has he turned away who need the pill? If they are his views why didn’t he come and face me and tell me. The chemist staff were trying to cover up for him and were embarrassed.
The pharmacists and staff at the pharmacy refused to comment but Dr John Radford, Rotherham’s Director of Public Health said:
Pharmacists do have the right to use their discretion in selling over the counter drugs. These drugs will be stocked by the pharmacy to be supplied when a prescription is written by a doctor. Any pharmacy refusing to sell a drug has a duty to provide the customer with information as to where they can obtain it including over the counter at an alternative pharmacy or via their GP or practice nurse on prescription.
A spokesman for Lloyd’s which operates 1,300 pharmacies across the country said :
We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the customer. However, a pharmacist’s personal decision to refuse to supply the morning after pill is an issue for the community pharmacy as a whole.
The code of ethics put in place by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain allows pharmacists via a conscience clause the right to refuse.
The code states that if supplying the morning after pill is contrary to a pharmacist’s personal religious or moral beliefs they are entirely within their rights not to supply it.
Lloyds was forced to apologise again this week after a South Yorkshire woman, Janine Deeley, was turned away by the female chemist at Lloyds pharmacy in Duke Street, Sheffield, when she went to pick up her prescription.
The mother-of-two, 38, said:
The pharmacist said she had my other medication but wasn’t going to give me the pill. I initially thought that was a bit strange and perhaps I was supposed to pick them up somewhere else. She said no, she wasn’t giving me the contraceptive because it was against her religion. I thought she must have been joking.
She added:
I don’t mind the fact that she’s got a religion but she shouldn’t force it down anybody’s neck and it shouldn’t affect her work.
Miss Deeley also said she was worried teenagers like her two daughters, Carlie, 18, and 14-year-old Lauren, might be put off using contraception if they encountered such difficulties.
I don’t want the pharmacist to lose her job but I think that if she’s going to be a pharmacist she shouldn’t expect people to accept her religion. She should accept that, in this country, we have the legal right to contraception and, if it’s against her religion, she shouldn’t be doing that job.
A spokeswoman for Lloyds pharmacy said she was not aware which religion the pharmacist belonged to, and an investigation had been launched.
She added:
Lloyds pharmacy is very sorry that Ms Deeley was refused supply of her prescribed contraceptive pill at our Duke Street pharmacy.We have launched an investigation into the incident and been in contact with her to apologise for any distress and inconvenience caused.
A spokesman for NHS Sheffield added:
We take patient concerns very seriously and while we have not yet received a complaint from Ms Deeley we would be happy to investigate the matter on her behalf if she gets in touch through our normal complaints system.
Hat Tip: Ian E
THE Holy See has a chief exorcist – but he’s crap at his job.
Why? Because, if he were any good, he would by now have captured Beelzebub in a bottle, and sold him for mega-bucks on eBay, or some other online auction site.
Father Amorth
In what amounts to a major admission of failure, the demented old spook-chaser – Father Gabriele Amorth, 85 – is reported today as saying that sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that
The Devil is at work inside the Vatican.
Amorth – the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years who claims to have he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession – said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as:
Cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon.
He added:
When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.
Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.
But Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Amorth had “gone well beyond the evidence” in claiming that Satan had infiltrated the Vatican corridors.
Cardinals might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of God.
Father Amorth told La Repubblica that the devil was:
Pure spirit, invisible. But he manifests himself with blasphemies and afflictions in the person he possesses. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, transform himself or appear to be agreeable. At times he makes fun of me.
Really! Why would he do that, we wonder?
He said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to hold down a possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag.
Anything can come out of their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose petals.
He said that hoped every diocese would eventually have a resident exorcist. Under Church Canon Law any priest can perform exorcisms, but in practice they are carried out by a chosen few trained in the rites.
Amorth was ordained in 1954 and became an official exorcist in 1986. In the past he has suggested that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were possessed by the Devil. He was among Vatican officials who warned that J K Rowling’s Harry Potter novels made a “false distinction between black and white magic”.
He approves, however, of the 1973 film The Exorcist, which although “exaggerated” offered a “substantially exact” picture of possession.
In 2001 he objected to the introduction of a new version of the exorcism rite, complaining that it dropped centuries-old prayers and was “a blunt sword” about which exorcists themselves had not been consulted. The Vatican said later that he and other exorcists could continue to use the old ritual.
He is the president of honour of the Association of Exorcists.
Among many of the amusing comments posted under The Times report was this one from Freethinker reader James Hazan, who wrote:
Father Amorth has just discovered that Satan resides in the Vatican. Where else would he make his home? – In a synagogue where he is not recognised?!
70,000 cases of demonic possession in 25 years, eh? Even if the good father was working through all the weekends with no holidays (which I’d somehow expect of a very holy man of god) that would be more than 7 cases a day. Do they have some sort of quality management with what they are doing?
DUTCH Catholic bishops have ordered an independent inquiry into alleged sexual abuse of children by priests. The investigation, according to the BBC, would be launched “as soon as possible” into more than 200 reported cases of abuse.
Earlier, the Vatican defended its response to child sex abuse allegations in a number of European states, saying it had reacted rapidly and decisively.
In the latest revelations, the head of an Austrian monastery confessed to abusing a boy more than 40 years ago.
The Dutch Catholic Church offered its apologies to the victims:
To the victims of abuse in Catholic boarding schools, the religious leaders and bishops offer their deep-felt condolences and apologies.
Allegations first centred on a school in the eastern Netherlands, with people saying they were abused by Catholic priests. This prompted dozens more alleged victims from other institutions to come forward in recent days.
It also emerged on Tuesday that the head of a Salzburg monastery, Bruno Becker, had offered his resignation on Monday after confessing to having abused a boy 40 years ago, when he was a monk. Church authorities accepted his resignation immediately.
The German, Austrian, Irish and US churches have all been damaged by sexual abuse scandals.
Earlier on Tuesday, a Vatican spokesman said in a statement the sexual abuse scandals were especially deplorable given the educational and moral responsibilities of the Catholic Church, but that the institutions in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands had shown that it wanted to be transparent.
Said Father Federico Lombardi:
They have demonstrated their desire for transparency and, in a certain sense, accelerated the emergence of the problem by inviting victims to speak out, even when the cases involved date from many years ago.
He denied the Vatican had tried to erect a “wall of silence” around the scandals surfacing in many countries.
On Monday, the German justice minister said Vatican secrecy rules were complicating investigations of the cases.
Allegations of sexual abuse are being investigated in 18 of Germany’s 27 Roman Catholic dioceses, where former students from a number of Catholic schools have alleged sexual abuse by teachers.
The Church says it is doing its best to limit the moral damage caused to it by stressing that paedophilia is a problem not limited to Catholic institutions and teachers, but one which must be tackled in a broader context within civil society.
In Germany, there have also been allegations of abuse at a church choir in the Regensburg Diocese.
These are especially sensitive because the choir was run by the Pope’s own elder brother, Father Georg Ratzinger, from 1964-1993 – though the abuse is alleged to have happened before he took charge.
The Pope's brother Georg admits hitting children – but now feels about it
He has denied any knowledge of the sex abuse cases.
But he admitted in an interview that discipline was strict, and that he himself had sometimes slapped pupils in the face.
Last night, BBC2’s Newsnight reported on the case of former priest Bill Carney, who was named in the Murphy report into clerical abuse in Ireland as a “serial abuser”. One of his rape victims was a boy of 13. But for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain.
In its 40 pages on Carney, the Murphy report said that his was one of the worst cases the commission investigated and that the Church’s handling of his case was “nothing short of catastrophic”.
It was inept, self-serving and for the best part of 10 years displayed no obvious concern for the welfare of children.
In 1992, the Church convicted Carney internally, under Canon law, of child sexual abuse.
But this compulsive paedophile refused to leave the parish house. So the Church paid him £30,000 to go away.
ADAM “Nergal” Darski, frontman for Poland’s extreme heavy metal band Behemoth, has been formally charged for destroying a copy of the Bible over two years ago.
According to this report, while it is a crime in Poland to destroy any religious iconography, there must be at least two formal complaints before a charge is laid. The first charge was made in 2008 – and recently an undisclosed number of additional complaints were lodged against Darski.
Nergal with the Best Underground Band trophy clinched by Behemoth at the Metal Hammer Gods Awards 2009 in London. (AP Photo/James McCauley)
At the first hearing, under cross -examination, Darski said what he does on stage is part of artistic license and it wasn’t intended to offend religious feelings. This was countered by an expert on religious history and studies from Jagellonian University in Krakow, who stated that every copy of a Bible could be considered a religious icon.
Following this second wave of complaints, the case will now go to court, and if found guilty, Darski could face a full two years in prison.
Last month it was reported that the national conservative Polish political party Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (PiS), was orchestrating efforts to prosecute Darski for offending people’s religious beliefs.
The alleged offence happened in September 2007, when Darski reportedly called the Catholic Church “the most murderous cult on the planet” during a Behemoth performance in Gdynia, and tore up a copy of a bible onstage.
Behemoth bassist Tomasz “Orion” Wroblewski, said:
The incident was by no means a spontaneous outburst, we’d been doing that for two years on tour before it happened in Poland.
He added:
A Behemoth show is a Behemoth show, so the fans are aware of what to expect.
Hat tip: ZombieHunter
ON March 4 we revealed that one of Scientology’s many front organisations, the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights, was to have a presence at the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham.
Well, now they are not.
According to a message posted today by Hartley Patterson on the anti-Scientology blog, WhyWeProtest, the CCHR has been given the royal order of the boot.
Patterson said he had just received word from the conference team, saying:
Thank you for contacting us about the CCHR coming to our party conference. I can confirm that this organisation will no longer be having an exhibition stand at this weekend’s event.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
