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What Catholic Confession Is Meant To Do And How It Goes Wrong

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Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 05:40
What Catholic Confession Is Meant To Do And How It Goes Wrong

It has been observed that Catholics have a tendency towards excessive guilt, in the same way that Hindu practice devolves towards something close to OCD.

Like a lot of religious practices, the eye of someone familiar with actual spiritual cultivation practices can see what they were intended to do. Rosary practice and bajans, for example, are obvious forms of meditations (Hindus haven’t forgotten that, Catholics often do.)

If you’re riven with guilt or shame, you can’t pass beyond certain points in spiritual practice. A mind which doesn’t “let go” and move freely is an absolute barrier to progress, and as the Buddha noted, spirituality is about freedom. Being hounded by negative emotions is not spiritual.

Haley Outreach?

https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/09/haley-outreach/
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 05:30
Not yet… Nikki Haley won 22% of the vote (over 150,000 people) in the Indiana GOP primary this week. It’s an open primary so it’s possible that a bunch of them were Democrats meddling, but that would mean that Democratic turnout was very high. She was out of the race before early voting began so it’s not that. There are Republicans who are still protesting the Trump nomination in pretty high numbers. So what’s Haley up to? Nikki Haley is easing back into public life after dropping out of the Republican presidential race in early March, but has no immediate plans to endorse Donald Trump. The former South Carolina governor is attending a retreat in Charleston, S.C., on Monday and Tuesday to thank about 100 of her biggest donors, a person close to Haley told The Wall Street Journal. She isn’t expected to discuss her political future or encourage them to give to other campaigns. The person said there is no pending endorsement of Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee. The two didn’t speak when she got out of the race on March 6 and haven’t done so since, this person said.

The West believes antisemitism is a more egregious problem than genocide

https://johnmenadue.com/the-west-believe-antisemitism-is-a-more-egregious-probl…
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:59
The loss of Western authority as a result of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza has merely sped up changes already underway for a generation. It was a coincidence of course. As Australia Day came to an end the seventeen judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) were preparing to deliver their preliminary response to Continue reading »

Faced with an Israeli Pariah, Wong decides on Palestinian statehood

https://johnmenadue.com/faced-with-an-israeli-pariah-wong-decides-on-palestinia…
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:56
Foreign Minister Penny Wong conveys Australia’s decision on Friday 10 May to the UN General Assembly on whether Palestine should be admitted as a full member. This, after years of conflict over Palestine between Labor and the Coalition, and disagreement within the ALP, is a definitional moment for Australia. A Palestinian-backed draft resolution seeks to Continue reading »

77% of top Climate Scientists think 2.5°C of warming is coming – and they’re horrified

https://johnmenadue.com/77-of-top-climate-scientists-think-2-5c-of-warming-is-c…
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:54
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said. Nearly 80% of top-level climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C by 2100, while only 6% thought the world would succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre industrial Continue reading »

No, Minister. It’s you who should be in court

https://johnmenadue.com/no-minister-its-you-who-should-be-in-court/
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:53
Even good minds can get criminal justice wrong, but usually for only so long. Several years ago, a veteran magistrate was speaking over lunch with a bunch of us criminal-law practitioners. Inevitably, the judicial colleagues came in for some free and frank character analysis, but the most telling comment was about a relatively recent arrival Continue reading »

Australia’s stunted mainstream defence and security imagination

https://johnmenadue.com/australias-stunted-mainstream-defence-and-security-imag…
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:52
With Australian defence writers now arguing for society to be reimagined as an ‘input to defence capability’, we are witnessing further incursions in the Democracy – Defence Nexus. A recent article appearing on the website of Defence Connect claims a discovery: the identification of Australian society as a “fundamental input to defence capability.” In a Continue reading »

For centuries, art has raised its voice in terrible times

https://johnmenadue.com/for-centuries-art-has-raised-its-voice-in-terrible-time…
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:51
In times of atrocity, art and reporting are crucial to evidence, to remember and assert moral witness. To paraphrase Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who will speak for those who are silenced? As artists across the West find themselves criticised, threatened and silenced for showing support for Palestine, an upcoming Sydney exhibition, Forms of Censorship (11 Continue reading »

Blatant Corruption

https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/09/blatant-corruption/
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 04:00
Scratch his back and he’ll scratch theirs The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year. Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people He doesn’t need to hide it because he knows that nothing will ever happen to him. He has “immunity” from accountability for everything in life and always has.

Being a Mother Is Easy

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/being-a-mother-is-easy
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 03:00

Despite near-constant whining about how impossible it is to be a mother, really, it’s simple: you just have to be perfect. No, not like that. Not annoyingly perfect, like a show-off or something. You need to be effortless and self-deprecating in your perfection. Not that self-deprecating—is this a joke to you? Are you mocking the moms out there who are struggling? Honestly, how hard is it to be perfect in a precise, scientifically calibrated way designed to be 100 percent infallible without ever being exhausted, needing a break, or losing your cool for a single second from the time your children are born until each one goes to college?

Never Leaves A Dime On The Sidewalk

https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/09/never-leaves-a-dime-on-the-sidewalk/
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 02:00
Instead of being on the campaign trail Donald Trump flew down to Mar-a-Lago to host a dinner for people who bought his NFTs. I assume he made money on the party. NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are part of a suite of non-campaign-focused ventures that Trump has been balancing with his White House run and his legal issues throughout 2023 and 2024. After Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, the former president told reporters that he’d like to be campaigning as opposed to being tied up in a courtroom. Over the last three years, Trump has used naming rights agreements with Florida-based LLCs to personally profit off his name and likeness. Financial disclosure statements showed that Trump made at least a six-figure dollar amount from his previous “superhero” NFT digital trading cards. Trump has previously used similarly structured LLCs to promote and sell a Trump sneaker line, a Trump branded perfume and cologne, and a pricey copy of the Bible.

Six Points Is A “Slim” Lead?

https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/09/six-points-is-a-slim-lead/
Created
Fri, 10/05/2024 - 00:31
“It’s about trends” — former Sen. Claire McCaskill Signs don’t vote, say campaign veterans when anxious partisans freak out over seeing large numbers of opponents’ signs around the neighborhood. On the other hand, they can be an indication of how the neighborhood is trending. Right now, “signs” are trending Joe Biden’s way. Quinnipiac: President Joe Biden leads former President Donald Trump 50 – 44 percent in a head-to-head matchup, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University poll of registered voters in Wisconsin released today. Democrats (97 – 2 percent) and independents (50 – 43 percent) back Biden, while Republicans (95 – 3 percent) back Trump. CNN describes 6 points as “a slim lead.” Explain that one. The race is too close to call with third party candidates included in Quinnipiac’s accounting. On MSNBC, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) was measuredly optimistic. Individual polls are not important. “It’s about trends.” And right now, things are trending Biden’s way.

War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young

https://tomdispatch.com/war-culture-hates-the-ethical-passion-of-the-young/
Created
Thu, 09/05/2024 - 23:32

Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash between accepting and resisting, while elites insist on doing maintenance work for the war machine. I wrote the above words recently, but I could have written very similar ones in the spring of 1968. (In fact, I did.) Joe Biden hasn’t sent U.S. troops to kill in Gaza, as President Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, but the current president has done all he can to provide massive quantities of... Read more