Halo Halo / Tiny Tips
Halo, halo
Not for the first time comes a report of a 45-year-old Afghanistan man marrying a six-year-old girl. He reportedly has two wives already and paid the child’s family for the ‘marriage’. The report notes that ‘since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, child and early marriages have been on the rise’. It’s said that this rise is due to ‘worsening poverty and strict restrictions on women and girls, especially the ban on female education. UN Women reported in 2024 that this restriction has led to a 25 percent increase in child marriages’ (tinyurl.com/m54ty4jy ).
A Pakistani 72 year old Catholic male has, after 23 years on death row, been acquitted of a blasphemy conviction. He was originally charged with ‘insulting the Prophet Muhammad” – a capital offence in Pakistan’ (tinyurl.com/yu8xpysj). It has now been ascertained that he had mental health problems, so could not be held accountable. It’s expected that this defence will be used in dozens of other blasphemy cases.
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Did you know that the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum is striking at the very foundation of European civilisation? If you’re going to pee people off you might as well go the whole hog. The museum, supposedly, has also ‘insulted’ god and every catholic in the world. Respect!
Who is making this outrageous claim? TFP Student Action Europe is. This is a right-wing catholic organisation founded in 1960. It would appear to want to set the world clock back to medieval times, unlike the global political movement masquerading as a religion which sanctions child abuse and wishes to turn the clock back to the seventh century. What does TFP mean? Apparently, it stands for tradition, family and property.
This is to be found on its website: ‘The Seventh and Tenth Commandments protect property. Property… (is) the guarantee of freedom. If it is not respected, we will automatically be led by socialism. Together, these three values, tradition, family and property form a protective wall against Marxist, socialist, and communist ideology’.
So why all the kerfuffle? It’s caused by a condom. The item in question is a very old condom, one that’s two hundred years old. We would suggest that it shouldn’t be utilised for its intended use as it’s probably well past its best before date. The condom ‘features an erotic print of a nun and three naked clergymen about to engage in a sexual act’. Surely the important question should be, was it consensual? So, the TFPSA finds this condom ‘sacrilegious’ and displaying it goes ‘far beyond moral and spiritual boundaries.’ What one wonders do these would-be moral arbiters think of the temples in India where they could view the erotic carvings on the walls? How do they find the Amsterdam red light district?
Apparently ‘Dutch conservative Christian group Civitas Christiana has been demonstrating outside the museum calling for the condom to be removed.’ Is the removal of a condom really wise? One thought that Catholics were mandated to practice safe sex at all times? (tinyurl.com/2jsk59bw).
DC
Global warming is not the inevitable result of “‘human nature,”’ argues economist Parrique in this blistering debut study. Instead, “‘the primary cause of ecological derailment is… capitalism,”’ more specifically “‘the frantic pursuit of growth,”’ or increased production (Publishers Weekly).
When challenges combatting the majority in India, from unemployment, lack of basic amenities, threat of their houses being demolished or being actually razed to the ground and more are taken note of, each is a pointer to the hard reality –- that of bleak future for those already facing hard circumstances. In essence, these certainly are not suggestive of their being raised above their present economic status. They certainly cannot be counted among those who seem to have been raised above the index of extreme poverty (Counter Punch).
The regime has systematically abandoned United Nations agencies that have questioned its rule. First came the Food and Agriculture Organization in February, after it ranked Nicaragua among the countries with the highest levels of hunger in the world… The logic is simple: the regime rejects any body that questions it, seeking to consolidate absolute control by eliminating all external oversight (Civicus Lens).
In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the government has missed most of its key targets to tackle AMR [antimicrobial resistance]. It’s also dropped the ball on its surveillance programme, on improving environmental protection and on engaging with other countries on the subject. Instead of taking responsibility, the PAC said, the government is dialling down what it actually wants to achieve. “‘There is arguably no more haunting silhouette on the horizon for the entire world than AMR,”’ the committee’s chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said. “‘If left unchecked, it could rewind medical progress by a century.”’ (TBJ Uncovered).
Trump deported, via removals and returns, approximately 1.8 million people during his first term. By comparison, Biden oversaw approximately 2 million deportations, excluding Title 42 order expulsions. Obama, once labeled as “‘deporter in chief,”’, removed about 5.2 million over his eight years. In his current term, Trump has struggled to meet internal ICE targets…. The more Trump lashes out, the more it becomes clear he cannot control the system he claims to command (The Hill).
Trump’s approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, “‘The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.”’ Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about “‘blood poisoning”’ to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren’t worthy of moral consideration… And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community (Common Dreams).
(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)