Tangerine skies...

Did the Beatles know something? I'm amazed by these images from Titan. But I'm still holding out for Europa.

augmented reality fetishists drool here over simple but funky. Not as cool as the Manhattan Human Pacman, but a step closer to groovy AR. The screenshot is droolworthy in a v0.9 kinda way.

Abused for being a 'witch'

Child abuse, abetting child abuse and attempted murder. Just another sh*tty day in paradise. According to evidence leading to guilty verdicts at the Old Bailey, a ten-year-old girl identified only as 'Child B' was repeatedly beaten and stabbed before finally being zipped into a laundry bag ready to be thrown into a canal in east London. The abuse started, according to prosecution evidence, because another child accused the victim of having Kindoki (or 'ndoki), something between being 'a witch' and being 'possessed by demons'. The family pastor confirmed this opinion and told the accused that the only solution was prayer and 'deliverance'. B's 'deliverance' ordeal went on for fifteen months. Saveral local charities are quoted as saying that 'hundreds' of children have been sent back to Africa for 'deliverance' and that at least one has since been killed. So, probably not an isolated incident, then.
 
The four accused all denied having been the perpetrators and blamed each other. (One defendant cannot be named for legal reasons. In England this would normally imply that the accused was a minor, but in this case reporting restrictions have not been lifted because naming the accused might lead to the identification of 'B'). One of the four gave an interview on BBC Radio. She appeared convinced that Child B travelled to Africa in her sleep to do bad things. I seem to have heard that somewhere before - can anyone here spell Salem? Even more harrowing for me, the reason repeatedly given for wanting to stop the abuse (including the aborted murder) was not that it was wrong, but that in the UK one could go to prison for it.
 
Personally I blame my forebears and those like them. What I believe we have here is an emergent hybrid religion, native African traditions conflated with fundamentalist Christianity. I was brought up as a Godfearing Christian with the emphasis on fear rather than God or Christianity. In its own context this was bad enough, but sometime in the nineteenth century people from similar sects decided that God's Work could best be served by bringing this attitude to the uneducated natives in Africa, where even the few checks and balances imposed by my own society were lacking. Hosea VIII, 7, perhaps?

My immediate reaction: "Stupid superstitious fuckheads." Now someone's going to try to get me to determine why they are fuckheads and we are just folk with NC lives, aren't they?

The thought did cross my mind. I wrote a whole paragraph, deleted all the bits that translated as 'holier than thou' and this was what was left. Anyone else want to have a go?

I'll tell you what makes the difference: my freedom to swing my fist stops at your nose.

What is superstition? It's just blaming irrational things for unidentifiable phenomena. What is truly worrying about this case is that the adults took the word of another child as sufficient reason to abuse Child B. Why? That's the question we have to ask. My best friend at school once accused me of being a werewolf and really believed it. Even tried to get me locked up. Of course neither the nice young men in the clean white coats at the local mental hospital or any of the parents involved would believe her.

Why, then, do these adults believe not only that a child is possessed/a witch on the word of another child, but are also prepared to inflict this sort of abuse on the child as a result? What did the pastor gain from it? What influence is there that is so strong it can overcome compassion?

One has to wonder what the relationship between them was like in the first place. Some of the tales of the Brothers Grimm come to mind.