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POPSSaudi woman to be beheaded for being a "witch" Being beheaded by sword in a public place... For being a "witch" or practising "witchcraft"... Welcome back to the Middle Ages: "Burn the witch!" or "Behead the witch!", by the name of God. Correct me if I'm wrong, Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the US, who enthusiastically invaded Iraq to bring "human rights and democracy" to Arabs, right?
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POPS"Mad, Bad and Sad"
If male doctors conspired to define madness, responding to behaviors that flouted the social conventions of their culture, female patients, in the attempt to understand themselves and their context, and maybe even to create or bolster identity, colluded with those same doctors to satisfy the changing definitions of madness. “Often enough,” Appignanesi notes, “extreme expressions of the culture’s malaise, symptoms and disorders mirrored the time’s order.” While “Mad, Bad and Sad” echoes and enlarges upon Elaine Showalter’s book “The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980,” Showalter’s perspective is more exclusively feminist, arguing that psychiatry as practiced on women is a history of their subjugation and control by men. But as Appignanesi makes clear, women have had no little role in creating and fulfilling the definitions of their madness.<< "Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present" by Lisa Appignanesi.
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POPSWitchcraft not wicked "The overall finding was that teenage witches are engaging in witchcraft for positive life affirming reasons. (It) helps them make sense of the issues they are experiencing," Professor Ezzy said. "They are not fighting demons, as is sometimes displayed in popular media. Really there is nothing to be afraid of. The amount of witches is now roughly the same size as Mormons."
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POPS'Bullying' religious culture Ineffective "But is trying to eliminate every other world view the best way to advance the Christian faith? Do believers think that they will win the hearts and minds of people by default? With all due respect to Christian brothers and sisters everywhere, that is a pretty lame approach to evangelism. The need to have beliefs validated by the world around them reveals a nagging underlying insecurity on the part of some people of faith. It seems that unless their world view is constantly affirmed by what they see and hear in the wider culture, they feel threatened, attacked."
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POPSPeace Loving Moslims Find Witch Guilty Evidently the Dark Ages have special significance to the peoples of Saudi Arabia. This latest tidbit chronicles the successful trial of an illiterate Saudi woman on charges of witchcraft. Witchcraft! And this is a civilized country? But hold on Westerners. How is this different from the still occurring practice of exorcism for demon possession? So put away your smugness. Although, I'll have to admit we've done away with the death penalty for demon possession. I suppose that's progress?
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POPSNo-no to Atheists Our friends across the pond seem to suffer the same sort of religious bigotry that we have here in the States. Of course, I suppose the question could be asked why employees are surfing the net instead of working but that's for another clip.
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POPSVatican slams Harry Potter “The characterisation of common men who do not know magic as 'muggles’ who know nothing other than bad and wicked things is a truly diabolical attitude.”
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POPSWar on Witches The usual suspects ... "A year ago, the commission for promotion of virtue and prevention of vice (the religious police) in the Saudi city of Taif established a special department to combat witchcraft. So far, it has arrested 25 people - 24 of whom, interestingly, are non-Saudis."
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POPSGimme That Ole Time Religion Some of us look back on this tragedy and discount it as due to ignorance. Yet it is more than that. Think of the present day belief in satanic possession that exists 316 years after this hysteria overtook the town of Salem. As far as I'm concerned they have much in common and display a disappointing lack of rationality in a large segment of the population.
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POPSMagickal Athenaeum: Online Library Free PDF format e-books on paganism, witchcraft, magic and hermeticism. Among them are famous 20th century archaeologist Margaret Alice Murray's controversial work "The God of the Witches" and Sir James Frazer's masterpiece "The Golden Bough".
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POPSShe's Baaack! A publisher couldn't ask for better publicity than a protest against your books. People will want to read the books for themselves and see what all the hub-bub is about, which amounts to more sales!
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