h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Indeed, the boy would be locked up. But, instead, he has his fingers wrapped around the "God Spot" of millions of people

We need to get rid of the "God Spot"

It's my prayer that all this superstitious nonsense such as belief in gods vanishes from the world forever.

for some reason this feals incestuous.

Would you like a little irony with that?

"In his homily, [the pope] urged his listeners to reach out to those Angolans who believe in witchcraft and spirits. "So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers..."


http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=d1f6f272-055c-466d-9acf-2f7aea5319cc

But, 'tis true "So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers. In their bewilderment they even end up condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers" It is a noble thing to try to enlighten such poor, benighted people.


Of course, it is not noble to substitute another fear . . .

But the voices say I am mad... should I listen to them?

The genocidal Vicar of Christ is at it again:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7967173.stm

Whenever this man makes a pronouncement I despair. Only one thing holds me back - the thought that if Catholics believe him, in one or two generations they will all be gone. Such is the price of stupidity.

What makes me really mad though is that he knows the power of his pronouncements. From his history we know that he is also intelligent enough to know the truth about condoms. But instead of bending his considerable power and intellect to the surely christ-given task of addressing third world poverty he decides to spread lies and thus condemn millions to an awful lingering death, and their children to poverty and starvation.

What will he come out with next? Malaria nets are not in the Bible and thus are ineffective against mosquitos? They are a barrier method after all...

When a medical researcher in the UK raised doubt about the MMR vaccine and caused hundreds of thousands of parents to fail to get their jabs that man was investigated and punished. What should be the punishment for a man who is knowingly condemning millions to death through his doctrinal propaganda?

Personally I'd like to see him in the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face charges of genocide.

There again I am an extremist...

Matholwch .

What would happen if someone was advocating driving without a safety belt, I wonder? After all, we are supposed to drive carefully, therefore accidents don't happen to careful drivers

> Only one thing holds me back - the thought that if Catholics believe him, in one or two generations they will all be gone. Such is the price of stupidity.<

If only that was true.

Math, the man is no fool, he knows full well what he's doing. The Roman Church has centuries of practice in this. It's not just a common sort of sadomasochism, it's diabolically clever. If you drive someone to despair he will clutch at straws. If you deny him every comfort in this life, you can get him to accept your empty promises of the next. That's the source of the Church's power.

In spite of the AIDS tragedy Africa has the highest birthrate in the world. It's also where the Church is growing fastest. The Nazis in all their depravity never bred their victims to make more of them. I'll bet Ratso in his hitler youth thought his superiors were missing a good chance there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7962521.stm

" A 19-year-old man has been found guilty of the murder of teenager Jimmy Mizen at a bakery in south-east London.

He was sentenced to life in prison to serve at least 14 years"

14 years minimum? That's not life.

Let's change the law so that for a crime that can't possibly have a mis-carriage of justice like this one a member of the deceased family gets 5minutes in a room with the convicted..no questions asks, no action taken either way about what happens in the room.

And if people reply that we are a civilised country...we aren't we never have been and never will be.

Sounds good 3Dots but suffers from the same problem as capital punishment. Sooner or later you're going to have a wrongly convicted man in that room with the family member...

True full-Life imprisonment is a nightmare to actually manage. After all what has the lifer left to lose? This is the situation in many American prisons where you have large numbers of lifers bored, violent and practically unmanageable.

The possibility of parole and time-off for good behaviour and taking part in rehabilitation programmes is a pragmatic method of trying to manage this issue.

What I don't see is any form of restitutive justice for the victims and their families. As soon as an offender is charged the whole focus is upon him or her. The victim's and their fmailies are there simply to support the State's case.

In our supposedly 'barbaric' pre-christian past there was an expectation that the offender and his family would provide restitution to the victims through labour, land or gold, even if the offender was put to death or banished. In a pre-welfare state it gave the victim's families some hope of continuance after the loss of the loved one.

It also put responsibility for bringing up the offender and policing his behaviour upon his family, so as to avoid this form of 'collective' punishment.

Matholwch .

<>

What happens when the convicted beats the cr@p out of and/or kills the family member?

Last night on CBC radio I listened to a story by a woman who got to spend that time alone with the killer of her father. Some might want to give it a listen. The link is on this page: http://www.cbc.ca/outfront/listen/2009/09-03-27.html

There are rather worse situations than someone starting a fight and ending up killing an innocent person through what is at least *partly* bad luck.

In fact, in many cases not *too* different from this one, the conviction (and possibly even the prosecution) might only be for manslaughter, as often seems to be the case when someone physically strong punches an innocent person hard enough to knock them down, and they die from head injuries resulting from hitting the pavement, etc.

Many other homicides involve premeditation, (as in a deliberate intent to kill), or the carrying of a weapon with an explicit intent or desire to use it, or involve someone being killed in the course of a planned crime where the use of violence was predictable or likely.

SWL

Nothing, those are the rules. You go in there you face the consequences.

Regarding the Poops speech about condoms not working: Joanna Bogle on Channel 4 news with a very 'well-behaved' Christian Aid' lady.

Bogle is a nutbar. She was on Radio 4 last December and was as moronically loud and aggressive on that.

See Jon Snows face at about 3:06.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXNcV6Jbimc

Nah, too arbitrary for me 3Dots and smacks more than a little of vengeance. We grew out of mob justice and vigilantes a few years ago. It didn't stop crime then, I don't see why it would stop it now.

Yes, vengence. At the moment crooks have no real deterrent and again...totally up to the bereaved and in cases where there's no chance of a dodgy conviction like in this case...ohhh I hear everyone cry you can;t be totally sure...yes you can especially in a case like this.

We need this like we need a revolution against the banking system and government in general. They will carry on being as corrupt as they are now because they know a people simply shouting does nothing. Lets bring the French over to burn some cars and throw some sheep at teh Houses of parliment. They know how to protest. Stuff being British.

>>At the moment crooks have no real deterrent<<

Deterrence, particularly aimed at violent psychopaths, just does not work all that well.

Few of even the common criminals ever consider the possibility of getting caught, let alone punished.

We need better, and more widely implemented, diagnostic methods to reveal the psychos in our society. After that, we can discuss ways of preventing them from doing damage

That's about the size of it.