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Desmond Tutu – churches should take action on world poverty, not obsess about homosexuality

BBC: Church obsessed with gays – Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused the Anglican church of allowing its “obsession” with homosexuality to come before real action on world poverty.
“God is weeping” to see such a focus on sexuality and the Church is “quite rightly” seen by many as irrelevant on the issue of poverty, he said.
It may be good to “accept that we agree to differ” on the gay issue, he said.
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However, and speaking outside the conference hall to the BBC, he said he sometimes felt ashamed of his fellow Anglicans as they focussed obsessively on trying to resolve their disagreement about homosexuality while 30,000 people died each day because of poverty.
“We really will not be able to win wars against so-called terror as long as there are conditions that make people desperate, and poverty, disease and ignorance are amongst the chief culprits,” he said.

The man rocks.

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Palinising

(Apparently American politics is the new procrastination. Can you tell I’ve started back at uni? Expect more magazine covers at some point, probably when assignments are due). Anyway, onto my point…
Resurrecting The Ayers Attack: Palinizing As Campaign Strategy:

Palinizng a month out from Election Day is a dangerous game and risky game. It erroneously presumes that the electorate does not get insulted when politicians change the subject from how to benefit Americans to how to benefit their own candidacy. It also presumes that the electorate is just as gullible as it was in 2000 and 2004, where personality trumped policy as the driving force at the polls.
It’s a risky tactic. But risk has become common currency for the McCain campaign. Yet in fully embracing the twin Republican tactics of diversion and delay, the McCain campaign continues on the road of self-parody, blithely forging ahead, becoming increasingly irrelevant, muttering personal attacks and gibberish and hoping that such babbling is accepted as “leadership” by the American people. The entire strategy is so erratic and so transparently desperate that on that front, the McCain campaign would fare better if it simply read out of the phonebook from now until Election Day.

And then check out the blog that gave us the Sarah Palin Debate Flowchart.

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‘Palin Can Launch Us Back in Time’

Former US Army Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski writes, “Palin Can Launch Us Back in Time“:

The fierceness of a pit bull, which Palin is trying to use as proof of her ability to serve as the vice president, is ridiculous at best and sadly ironic. Pit bulls are senseless and out of control when angry; they are certainly far from being of good mind, rationale, organized or focused. Her personal comparisons to Hillary Clinton are insulting to Clinton. Senator Clinton did not stoop to use of her sexuality as a means of attracting votes or attention. She is articulate and stays on message, whether in the primaries or campaigning for Obama. Hillary’s supporters, men and women, accepted her for her experience, her credentials and her qualifications, deservedly so, unlike Palin who is trying to steal mileage on the shirttails of Hillary. You can easily recollect memorable events of Hillary’s campaign, but you will not remember her parading about or flirting with her supporters or the media. She did not behave in such a manner. Her wardrobe aside, Hillary Clinton was competing on a level playing field and behaved accordingly, like an intelligent, confident and capable candidate. This is what women hope for and seek to achieve. Sarah Palin’s behavior sets our progress back by decades and encourages the fashionable use of sexuality as the tool to measure success.
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Palin, however, is a dangerous choice and her style goes against the grain of feminists and women everywhere. We spent years seeking equality, and ask only for a level playing field where we can find credit for our accomplishments and capabilities and the opportunities to compete fairly. Sarah Palin can launch us back in time and remove years of progress, albeit slow and incomplete. She encourages men and women to be drawn first to the sexuality and beauty of a woman before making a decision about her credibility, intelligence and leadership.

If reading the article makes you mad, then send it on to American friends and reward yourself with a singalong to ‘Hey Sarah Palin‘.

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International gay rights desperately needed

Peter Tatchell writes in the Guardian on:
Sexual cleansing in Iraq

The “improved” security situation in Iraq is not benefiting all Iraqis, especially not those who are gay. Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.

And in Bosnia: Bosnian Mob Attacks Gay Festival
And generally: 2008 Hate Crime Survey

Hate crime continues to rise in many parts of Europe and North America according to our 2008 Hate Crime Survey, a second annual report examining bias-driven violence in 2007 and 2008.

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A bit of Google love

From the Official Google Blog: Our position on California’s No on 8 campaign

However, while there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

I have new respect for Google.
And I’m still totally bemused by sheer amount of effort some people will put into stopping two people they’ve never heard of from getting married. Surely it’s unhealthy to be *that* obsessed with the love lives of others. ‘Homophobes are that way because they’re repressing their homosexuality’ is a glib line, but it would explain an awful lot.

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Is Rudd really better?

Rethinking indigenous policy is worth reading if you’re curious about how Rudd differs from Howard – is he going to fail us after all? At the moment it seems he’s definitely left room for improvement:

rather than simply punishing parents for their children’s non-attendance, the Government should be providing schools, teachers and resources that meet the needs of the Aboriginal community.

This actually made me incredulous:

When the school attendance policy was introduced, it was not done in a way that targeted parents who were not sending their children to school. Instead of a case-by-case approach, the Federal Government prescribed certain Aboriginal communities to be affected by the policy and all people in that community were subject to quarantining if they were on a welfare payment — whether their children were going to school or not, whether they were parents or not.

C’mon Rudd, pull your finger out.

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It’s not about China, honest

Really, it’s not. Apparently.
I’m not sure what I think about this – I guess progress and an acknowledgement of the importance of human rights and online access to information is important, and it has to start somewhere.
Big three help online rights

Three of the biggest IT companies in the world have approached the US Congress with suggestions on how to bring human rights laws to the online world.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have explained how to extend human rights to the internet and what they could do to help spread the laws.
They suggest a code which would be based around a set of principles to which companies would have to adhere, as well as guidelines on ensuring those rights and frameworks on how to enforce the rules and guarantee accountability.
The move follows up from a development in July, when Richard Durbin, a US senator, asked each of the companies to provide suggestions.