Sunday: Hili dialogue (and a long kvetch)

April 3, 2016 • 6:30 am
 Well, I’m in the middle of an airline nightmare, thanks to Air India and a combination of bad machinery and unhelpful staff. Our flight was scheduled to leave Delhi at 2:20 a.m., arriving in Chicago at the decent hour of 7:45 a.m., and I was looking forward to getting some good sleep in my spiffy business class bed. But as soon as the guy next to me sat down, he dropped off, and soon was snoring like a buzzsaw. I mean, he was so loud that passengers two aisles over took notice. As business class was full, so I couldn’t find an empty seat to escape the din, I knew I was gonna be in for a rough night. There was nowhere I could escape the egregious nasal racket.
But it turned out to be even rougher—in an unexpected way. The air-conditioning broke down as we were ready to take off, and we returned to the gate for a supposed one-hour fix. Then out to the runway again after nearly two hours, and another a/c failure. After an announced 20-minute “minor repair” that lasted 1.5 hours, we headed out yet again. And then, as the plane turned to the gate for the third time (without any announcement from the pilot), I knew we were in trouble. Finally, as he killed the engines, the pilot made the dreaded announcement: the plane was irreparably broken, and we’d have to deplane.
If you’ve been to India, you’ll know that mass confusion immediately ensued: rebellion from an angry and vociferous mob that had stewed for over five hours on a hot tarmac, with no information about their fate.
Eventually it turned out that they would bus us to a hotel (for how long we still don’t know) where we’d wait for Air India to retrieve us and take us back to the airport, hopefully to a working plane. Of course we had to ferret that information out of the staff, who didn’t give a tinker’s dam about our plight. It was far worse in steerage, though, where people were soaked with sweat and small children were crying.
So, I’m cooling my heels (literally) in the Radisson in Delhi, sharing a room with a nice Indian physician (Air India’s too cheap to get us our own rooms), and with no idea when we’ll be out of here. It’s time to go home, and I haven’t slept a wink for thirty hours and six minutes. But I kvetch. . .
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus and Hili muse about the eternal mystery of the human animal:
Hili: Do you understand human prejudices?
Cyrus: A bit. I had to cure myself of something like that.
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In Polish:

Hili: Czy ty rozumiesz te ludzkie przesądy?
Cyrus: Trochę rozumiem, sam się z czegoś takiego musiałem leczyć.

 And Gus has pretty much demolished his box by now. His staff will have to buy another Ikea lamp because that Ikea lamp box was the only box Gus ever loved. (And you always gnaw the one you love.)

And some new photos of Gus with notes from his staff:

The first goes with the video from yesterday [just above], I think he looks like he’s holding a piece of toast. Then there are a few of him sitting on the piano keys, that’s where the sun was shining….And the last one, I should have had for last week, as Gus is not amused.

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Amy Winehouse: “Me and Mr. Jones”

April 2, 2016 • 2:30 pm

Things are gonna be sparse on this site till I get back to the states on Sunday morning, but I didn’t do all that badly, right? And we’ll even had a Caturday Felid today.

In the meantime, enjoy “Me & Mr Jones,” by the late Amy Winehouse. This is a live version from the Isle of Wight in 2007, four years before her death. I like it better than the other live version, which you can find here.

Amy appears to be missing an incisor.

Poland’s going to right-wing Catholic hell

April 2, 2016 • 1:30 pm

Although the U.S. news doesn’t give the political situation in Poland a lot of coverage, you can still discern the beginning of a Catholic-infused regressive politics in that much-beleaguered land. And, given my friendship with Malgorzata and Andrzej (Hili’s staff), I hear more about Polish politics than the average American. And what I hear is NOT reassuring.

In 2015, the Polish people elected a known right-winger, Andrzej Duda, as President. He, and now the Prime Minister, are members of the PiS (“Law and Justice” party).  In league with Poland’s strong Catholic church, the government is proceeding to dismantle many progressive reforms enacted by previous regimes.

The latest action involves the government’s proposal for a total ban on all abortions. Yes, total: that means no abortion in pregnancies that might endanger the health of the mother, in which the fetus is medically doomed, or which resulted from incest or rape. Currently, all three kinds of abortions are legal, but, as Medical XPress reports, perhaps not for long:

Poland’s prime minister and the powerful leader of its conservative ruling party both said Thursday they support a total ban on abortion.

 Abortion is currently only allowed in mostly Catholic Poland when the pregnancy poses a threat to the woman’s health or life, if it results from a crime like incest or rape or if the fetus is damaged.

But these regulations dating to 1993, which have been considered a tough compromise between the views of the country’s liberal and Catholic circles, are now being contested under Poland’s new conservative government.

A new civic group called “Stop Abortion” is gathering support to impose a total ban and is backed by Poland’s influential Roman Catholic Church.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said, as Catholics, they support the total ban but if it comes to a vote in parliament, party lawmakers will be able to vote as they wish.

According to Malgorzata, more than half of Poland’s parliament supports this bill, so it’s likely it will pass, making Poland the EU country with the most restrictive abortion laws.

The people of Poland knew what they were getting when they voted, and so I suppose they won’t grouse about this latest travesty. After all, most voters don’t require or want abortions. And so we’ll watch the spectacle of Poland marching back into the Dark Ages, with trumpets blaring and banners of ignorance waving.

I’ll be in the air soon, but Malgorzata might answer any readers’ questions in the comments. She kindly sent me some clarification about the bill’s provisions, which I quote:

“Here is some additional information about the proposed abortion bill:
It starts with a new vocabulary:
1. a ‘conceived child’ is alive and must be treated as human life from the moment an egg is fertilized.
2. a ‘prenatal killer’ is a person who causes the death of a conceived child.
Penalties: for causing the death of a conceived child, up to 5 years in prison; for inadvertently causing the death of a conceived child, up to 3 years in prison
No emergency contraception will be allowed, no in vitro fertilization either.
Which means, among many other horrors, that a surgeon who operates on acute appendicitis in a pregnant woman and she thereby loses the fetus may go to prison for inadvertently causing the death of a conceived child. Physicians will therefore be very cautious when prescribing necessary treatment for sick pregnant women, as even a strong dose of antibiotics could end the pregnancy (i.e., prison is looming).
Women who miscarry will be forced to prove that they didn’t do anything to cause the miscarriage, not even inadvertently.”
Woe, ye Polish women!

Cellphones in Heaven

April 2, 2016 • 12:03 pm

It’s 10:30 in India, and I’m cooling my heels in the Air India Business Lounge at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi airport, having consumed a large plate of non-veg (but Indian) food and a cold bottle of Kingfisher. Three hours to go, but I must beware of overnomming given the food on the 16-hour flight ahead.

My last post on Prophet Mboro of South Africa, who’s trying to dupe people into paying big bucks to see the cellphone photos he took on his reported Easter journey to Heaven, has inspired reader Pliny the in Between, and without much delay. Here’s the cartoonist’s latest, “Duh,” from Evolving Perspectives (click to enlarge):

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White House apparently censors French President Hollande’s remarks, omitting mention of “Islamist terrorism”

April 2, 2016 • 12:00 pm

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the infamous 18½-minute gap in Nixon’s White House tapes during the Watergate scandal (1973)—a gap that contained conversation between Nixon and H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff. It’s thought that that gap contained conversation that incriminated Nixon (though he was incriminated anyway), and the White House “excuse” for the gap—that Nixon’s secretary accidentally erased the tape while answering a phone call—wasn’t widely believed.

Now there’s another White House gap—this time in a video, and not so serious. But it does appear to show that the White House will do anything to avoid implicating religion as a cause of terrorist acts by Muslims. As reported by pjmedia and other sources (see here, here, and here), the White House may have ordered some “scrubbing” of remarks by French President Francois Hollande made during the nuclear summit in Washington D.C. In particular, Hollande’s remarks about violence in Syria and Iraq being “Islamist terrorism” appeared to have vanished from the tape.

Below is the original tape released by the White House. At 4:47, you’ll hear a a gap during which Hollande’s remarks on “Islamist terrorism” are omitted, along with the English translation, and then the English translation resumes at 5:05:

Somebody noticed, however, that what disappeared on the tape was actually written down on the official transcript from the White House press office. A bit of the transcript is below, and I’ve put what’s missing on the tape (a gap in the audio) in bold, and have also put Hollande’s French remarks (given in the audio but not translated into English) in italics:

But we’re also well aware that the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq.  We therefore have to act both in Syria and in Iraq, and this is what we’re doing within the framework of the coalition.  And we note that Daesh is losing ground thanks to the strikes we’ve been able to launch with the coalition.  We are continuing to support Iraq.  This is also a decision we have taken, supporting the Iraqi government and making sure that they can claim back their entire territory, including Mosul.

Later on, the White House issued a “corrected” video with the following unconvincing explanation:

A technical issue with the audio during the recording of President Hollande’s remarks led to a brief drop in the audio recording of the English interpretation. As soon as this was brought to our attention, we posted an updated video with the complete audio here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoW61…) and on WhiteHouse.gov (https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and…), which is consistent with the written transcript we released yesterday.

In the version below, you can now hear Hollande’s remarks beginning at 4:48:

“But we’re also well aware that the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq.  We therefore have to act both in Syria and in Iraq, and this is what we’re doing within the framework of the coalition.”

Was this really a “technical issue with the audio”? If so, how did they fix it? Normally I’d give Obama the benefit of the doubt about this, but his long history of punctiliously avoiding any mention of “Islam” in connection with terrorism makes this gap seem about as much a technical glitch as was the Nixon gap in September of 1973. Stay tuned.

South African preacher claims he went to heaven—and took photos with his cellphone

April 2, 2016 • 10:00 am

There’s a reason they call religious believers a “flock”—because they’re so easily fleeced. In this case, though, the attempted removal of wool met with pushback. The miscreant here is one Pastor Paseka Motsoeneng of Incredible Happenings Ministries in Katlehong, South Africa.

The pastor, also called “Prophet Mboro,” is said to have healed many people, and delivered stones and fish through the private parts of women impregnated by demons. Here are two headlines (go to screenshots to see original articles):

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Here’s a video of the Prophet delivering stones from a woman apparently impregnated by a demon. It’s very convincing, no?

Motsoeneng has a long history of this kind of chicanery, and I feel sorry for the helpless people who believe his scam. In fact, they believe it to such an extent that they’ve enriched him considerably. As the BBC reports:

The pastor, reportedly a multi-millionaire who owns a fleet of luxurious cars and was once the subject of a BBC documentary, is no stranger to scrutiny over his financial affairs. In 2015, he was questioned by a public commission investigating the commercialisation of religion. He denied all wrongdoing, remained defiant, and told his supporters that he was determined to go to jail if that is was is necessary to protect his church’s image.

His methods are, let us say, somewhat unsettling. From iol.co:

According to the Sunday World newspaper, the pastor acts out carefully staged and managed situations on his weekend television show.

Motsoeneng has also been labelled as a “pervert” because of the unusual way he heals people, as well as a “thief” who steals the church’s money.

The newspaper reported that thousands of people had attended his service in Katlehong last week to witness his miraculous demon-banishing service which “resembled a porn movie”, rather than a religious service.

The self-styled prophet Motsoeneng put his fingers into the vaginas of two female congregants as part of a ritual to expel the demons that had allegedly possessed them.

Motsoeneng’s unorthodox demon-banishing methods, which may constitute indecent assault, alarmed other miracle-seekers who attended.

Sitting on the lap of a 17-year-old girl, Motsoeneng placed his hand on her head, and started praying for her.

Motsoeneng told the congregants her tummy had swelled up because some sorcerers had cast an evil spell on her.

As he was praying for her she collapsed. Motsoeneng then told the teenager to open her legs, which she did.

He then plunged his fingers into her vagina.

As he was busy with his “healing process”, Motsoeneng ordered her to call him by his nickname, Mboro.

“Mboro” she said, with a stifled cry.

He was interrupted by a female congregant who brought him a glassful of what looked like ice-cream, which she spoon-fed him. He was still sitting on the woman’s lap.

Despite the huge outcry following Motsoeneng’s “demon banishing” service last weekend, Katlehong police say they are not investigating the matter.

Now, however, comes a scam of epic proportions. According to the same report by the BBC, Motsoeneng actually visited heaven and took pictures with his cellphone:

But Motsoeneng, popularly known as “Prophet Mboro”, may have gone a bit too far with his latest otherworldly boast.

A South African news site quoted a church spokesperson on 30 March saying that “the prophet did go to heaven” during an Easter church service and that while there “he took pictures” using his smartphone.

But here’s the rub: you don’t get to see those photos for free.

Those eager to see photographic proof of the afterlife will have to open their wallets though. Mboro has asked those who wish to view the pictures for a donation of 5,000 rand (about £240 or $340).

This has, predictably, led to a spate of mockery on social media. Here are a few tw**ts reproduced by the BBC (more at the site):

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There are none so blind as those who cannot see—or who wish to see only what they believe. I hope someone manages to reproduce those pictures taken by Motsoeneng during his sojourn in Heaven.

h/t; Barry

 

Here’s the bird!

April 2, 2016 • 9:15 am

Yesterday I put up a “where’s the bird?” post that included the photo below. That was a very hard one, for the bird silhouette was almost impossible to tell from the leaf silhouettes:

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The answer? The bird is the black blob closest to the center: about 60% across from the right and 65% down from the top. I wouldn’t have known it was a bird had I not watched it for 30 minutes. The other black blobs are dead leaves.

Two readers, Smokedpaprika and Monika, got it. The rest failed.