Random News Stories

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well. This is pretty fucked up, even by my standards:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/04/children-galway-mass-graves-ireland-catholic-church

The bodies of 796 children, between the ages of two days and nine years old, are believed to have been buried in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway. They died between 1925 and 1961 in a mother and baby home under the care of the Bon Secours nuns.

Locals have known about the grave since 1975, when two little boys, playing, broke apart the concrete slab covering it and discovered a tomb filled with small skeletons. A parish priest said prayers at the site, and it was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.

The Tuam historian Catherine Corless discovered the extent of the mass grave when she requested records of children's deaths in the home. The registrar in Galway gave her almost 800. Shocked, she checked 100 of these against graveyard burials, and found only one little boy who had been returned to a family plot. The vast majority of the children's remains, it seemed, were in the septic tank. Corless and a committee have been working tirelessly to raise money for a memorial that includes a plaque bearing each child's name.

No glib comment, just a big sack of fucking awful.

The BF and I were talking about this; the truly horrifying element is that this is unlikely to be a unique case.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well, you're dealing with babies that are "illegitimate" in many cases. Bastards got notoriously terrible treatment so the neglect being pushed to this level, while shocking, is hardly unexpected.

You're dealing with the kind of mentality that assumes the pain of birth is justified because of sins committed. When you start with that outlook, it's hardly a surprise that many kids met a bad end.

What scares the shit out of me here is the chances of this being an institutional problem being rather high. Mortality rates in these homes were high even for the era so the chances of there being many more mass graves just like this one is significant.


Disclaimer - I've met Nuns on two occasions and both times been stunned that they refer to their behaviour as "Christian". I'm sure this isn't the case for all nuns, but personal experience does not make me particularly willing to give the benefit of the doubt. If I sound somewhat biased, it's probably because I am.

Well, I certainly won't argue with you, given what the Catholic Church did to Native children in the US and Canada.

[Cain]

I'd just like to leave this here.  Note: extremely unpleasant reading, even with the brief descriptions given by Wikipedia.  Further study may lead to "X-dossier" like feelings of revulsion towards humanity.

[Junkenstein]

Thanks, I guess.

I assume that's another one of these things that the more you look at it, the worse it gets? Because that summary was pretty grim.

[Cain]

Yup.  Because it was done at least in part for money, and...well, look at when it occured.  Look at who was the president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the American Psychiatric Association at the time.  Look at his friends, what his "research" entailed, what methods he employed.

Chances are if something of this magnitude was happening in Canada, of all places, it was happening in Ireland, where the church is far more powerful and secretive.

[Junkenstein]

Seems depressingly reasonable. Done a couple of quick searches and this is rapidly getting into "what the fucking fuck" territory.

[Cain]

Always does, with MK-Ultra.

[Junkenstein]

I've started laughing again.

On a (marginally) less horrific, are you familiar with http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270262/ ?

I caught this a couple of days ago and the chap's tale it's allegedly based on is a little far fetched in places but occasionally quite convincing. Trying to determine how much is actually likely/true, there's certainly plenty of corroboration for various events but others are lacking (Uday's shooting, for example)

[Cain]

Heard of it, but never seen it or really looked into the details.

[Junkenstein]

It's worth a look. Not the best thing you'll ever watch but there's enough around the guy who become's the body double to keep you interested for a while, I'd guess.

Totally unrelated to anything, but perfect for this thread:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22356306

Of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first, and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion. So why have monks been using hate speech against Muslims and joining mobs that have left dozens dead?

This is happening in two countries separated by well over 1,000 miles of Indian Ocean - Burma and Sri Lanka. It is puzzling because neither country is facing an Islamist militant threat. Muslims in both places are a generally peaceable and small minority.

In Sri Lanka, the issue of halal slaughter has been a flashpoint. Led by monks, members of the Bodu Bala Sena - the Buddhist Brigade - hold rallies, call for direct action and the boycotting of Muslim businesses, and rail against the size of Muslim families.

While no Muslims have been killed in Sri Lanka, the Burmese situation is far more serious. Here the antagonism is spearheaded by the 969 group, led by a monk, Ashin Wirathu, who was jailed in 2003 for inciting religious hatred. Released in 2012, he has referred to himself bizarrely as "the Burmese Bin Laden".

Not often you get an article highlighting the nasty side of Buddhist monks.

[LMNO]

YouTube is considering pulling all indie music that doesn't sign license deals for its new subscription music service.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/17/youtube-indie-labels-music-subscription

I can't tell if this means no more music at all on the non-subscriber side; but if that's the case, YouTube is most likely fucked forever.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

YouTube is considering pulling all indie music that doesn't sign license deals for its new subscription music service.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/17/youtube-indie-labels-music-subscription

I can't tell if this means no more music at all on the non-subscriber side; but if that's the case, YouTube is most likely fucked forever.

That's the stupidest damn thing I've ever heard of, and also I hope they do it because that opens the door for some little web startup nobody's ever heard of yet.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, I'm sick of their fucking ads. They are the worst targeted ads I've been subjected to anywhere on the internet, to the point where I'm having a hard time even believing that they are targeted at all, given that the SAME FUCKING TRISCUIT COMMERCIAL prefaces EVERY FUCKING CRASH COURSE BIOLOGY video. Even if you watch ten in a row. You know what's not a good idea? Showing the same commercial to the same viewer over and over again.

[Junkenstein]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2014/jun/17/homeless-peoples-handwritten-signs-turned-into-fonts

Writing the cardboard sign you use to beg, says Guillermo, one of Barcelona's estimated 3,000 homeless people, is just "really shitty. You're hardly going to convey love. You can't convey anything nice. What you're conveying through the cardboard, through your writing, is something that's really ... screwing you."

But the handwriting of some of the Catalan capital's rough sleepers is now being put to a wider use than helping its individual authors survive: scanned and converted into downloadable fonts, it is being sold online to raise funds for a foundation that supports homeless people in their effort to leave the street behind.

5/5. Short video in the link that covers everything quickly. Here's hoping for more of such thinking in the immediate future.

[Cain]

Youtube's been going down the shitter for a while.

This may just be the final nail in their coffin.