RANT: African Archbishop Asshole
Posted in atheist, news, rants, skepticism on September 27th, 2007 by r3v(Any readers wanting some relgious tolerance in their posts today should look elsewhere.)
Archbishop Asshole Chimoio is the head of the Catholic church in Mozambique. There are about 20 million people in Mozambique. The CIA World Fact Book has this to say about Mozambique’s population:
Population: 20,905,585
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected; the 1997 Mozambican census reported a population of 16,099,246 (July 2007 est.)
The United States Center for Disease Control, has this to say:
Mozambique is one of 15 focus countries of the Emergency Plan which collectively represent at least 50 percent of HIV infections worldwide. Under the Emergency Plan, Mozambique received nearly $37.4 million in FY2004 to implement a comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care program in line with Mozambique’s national strategies. In FY2005, the U.S. is providing more than $57.2 million to support Mozambique’s fight against HIV/AIDS.
A 2003 CIA estimate puts the HIV/AIDs infection percentage at 12.2%. Other estimates have it as high as 16.2% (That one came from the BBC article, I will link to shortly.)
The BBC article also says that “17.5 per cent of Mozambicans are Catholic.” The CIA Factbook says 23.8% were Catholic according to a census in 1997.(Now, please note, there’s no data to correlate those two sets of numbers (percentage of HIV positive vs percentage of Catholic), and I’m not trying to imply any linkage without such data.)
This is just to illustrate that AIDs is one of the worst problems facing Mozambique, Africa and the world. It’s also to point out that Archbishop Chimoio has some amount of sway over at least 1/6th to 1/5th or more of the population.
So, what does he do? He not only continues to wave the idiotic Catholic banner against condoms, but claims that there are two countries in Europe that are making condoms that actually contain the HIV virus on purpose. He is either mentally imbalanced or willfully deceitful. Those are really the only two options I can come up with.
He also claims that the anti-retroviral drugs being used to combat HIV are also infected with the virus. So, not only is he actively enabling the spread of the disease, he’s trying to inhibit the tools that will help the already infected. So, maybe there’s another option? He’s fucking evil?
It’s reprehensible and irresponsible to attempt to stop the use of condoms in the first place. Furthermore, it’s despicable to spread such FUD about condoms and the anti-retrovirals. Lastly, it’s fucking insane to think that two European countries are involved in a conspiracy to wipe out the African peoples.
The Pope should fire his ass. Of course, we’ve seen that this new Pope is no fucking genius when it comes to PR.
So, in closing, I’d just like to say: Fuck you Archbishop Chimoio, and fuck the Catholic Church. Fuck you right in your medieval-pointy-hat-wearing heads.
There’s no gor’ram Jeanine here. Still.
Posted in misc on September 19th, 2007 by r3vI’ve been getting calls for this Jeanine chick for a 2-3 years now. It’s pretty annoying. What’s worse is that they come in batches. I won’t get any for a while, and then I will get hit maybe 6 or 7 times in the span of a week.
Well, today a guy calling to offer to refinance her home (like many of the calls) heard the exasperation in my voice with my immediate response of “there’s no Jeanine here” which I punctuated with an annoyed sigh. We chatted a bit and he took pity on me.
He then gave me her e-mail and mailing addresses.
That was pretty cool of him, but I don’t know exactly how I’m to proceed from here. It’s not like she made a typo one day, she’s recently used this phone number according to my inside man at Lending Tree. She’s purposefully giving out my number as her own on forms for stuff.
So, do I just send a polite email, saying “hi, could you not do that?” Or do I send one that sounds more forceful, like a cease and desist letter? Or do I just sign her up for as many gay-midget-animal-clown-porn mailing lists as I can find? Flaming poop on the doorstep?
I must ponder.
links for 2007-09-19
Posted in links on September 19th, 2007 by delicious-
(tags: rollerderby)
-
(tags: rollerderby derby)
From the “Best Lines I Never Used” files.
Posted in funny, misc on September 17th, 2007 by r3vA forum discussion about cops and traffic stops reminded me of this memory from my youth.
I file this snippet of my life under “Best Lines I Never Used“.
Many, many, many moons ago (back when I was 18), I was taking a risk and speeding to work through a part of the South Bay Area sprawl known as Campbell. Campbell was well known amongst my friends for having more than it’s fair share of really dickish cops. We all tried our best to not get pulled over in that town because there was no talking your way out of the ticket. However, I was late.
So, predictably, I got nabbed only a few miles from work. The cop pulls me over and takes his time coming up to my window. When he gets there, I can see that he’s already pissed off about something. He gives me a little lecture, and then asks me if I knew what the speed limit was.
I actually didn’t, but it just so happens he pulled me over right in front of a speed limit sign. I look up at it and say, “uh… 35?”
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Uh…”
“53 miles per hour.”
Now, this is what I should have said: “But, officer, I’m dyslexic!”
It only would have made things worse, but what was he gonna do? Write me a ticket for being a smart ass on top of the speeding?
I still kick myself and use it as a reminder to always go with the instinct, because “one time, I said to this cop…” makes for a better story than “one time, I thought of something to say to this cop…”
links for 2007-09-15
Posted in links on September 15th, 2007 by delicious-
“*** Girl is now known as Kate”
This makes me serious happy. Two great things…
links for 2007-09-10
Posted in links on September 10th, 2007 by delicious-
Boss Hog’s derby site.(tags: rollerderby)
