It is a violation to deny gay couples communion - Catholic Archbishop personally invited by Pope Francis tells press

The Vatican is undergoing a synod to discuss the topic of the 'family'. At the opening of the synod, a top Vatican official - Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith - declared that he was not only gay but had a long term same sex partner. He was fired for not adhering to the discipline of priestly celibacy. His statements however have caused many to remember the media-alleged reason the previous pope, Benedict XVI, resigned from his position. The Vatican rumour mill at the time claimed that the Vatican gay lobby had ousted him, and wanted to appoint the man who is now known as Pope Francis, to replace him.





Benedict XVI, of course, before he became pope, was instrumental in the creation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and was one of the bishops at Vatican II. He gained the nickname of 'God's Rottweiler' for his insistence on obedience to the dogmas of the Catholic church.

Butler's Lives of Saints, an old Catholic work, refers to the Catholic religion as the 'ancient religion', a reference to the founding tenant of that faith, that dogma cannot change, and that the church of Jesus' time, is the church of today. Part of that core of beliefs, centres around the provision of communion bread, which the early apostles taught, was only to be given to those who adhered to the gospel which they had preached. In the biblical letters the apostles wrote, they go so far as to claim that their readers should reject even their own statements if they contradicted what they had said originally. Taking communion while in a state of so-called mortal sin, was compared to re-crucifying Christ by early Christians. Among the other older Christian religions other than Catholicism, which do not have concepts such as mortal and venial sin, these still have sins that warrant a person not taking communion until they engage in a ritual known as confession.

Vatican English Language attache, Father Thomas Rosica, earlier this month, said that the synod fathers are supportive of 'an end to exclusionary language' and place 'a strong emphasis on embracing reality.' He states 'we do not pity gay persons but we recognise them for who they are: they are our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters.'

Following this press statement earlier this month, the Archbishop of Chicago Blase Cupich, who was personally invited to the synod by Pope Francis, has also now stated to media that pastors must give communion to homosexual couples, saying that their choice to take communion was from conscience and inviolable. Cupich has been fast tracked to his position as Archbishop of Chicago, and as he states, was personally appointed to the Synod on the Family by Pope Francis.



He also stated:

'In Chicago I visit regularly with people who feel marginalized: the elderly, the divorced and remarried, gay and lesbian individuals and also couples. I think that we really need to get to know what their life is like if we’re going to accompany them' and 'I think that gay people are human beings too and they have a conscience. And my role as a pastor is to help them to discern what the will of God is by looking at the objective moral teaching of the Church and yet, at the same time, helping them through a period of discernment to understand what God is calling them to at that point,” he said. “It’s for everybody. I think that we have to make sure that we don’t pigeonhole one group as though they are not part of the human family, as though there’s a different set of rules for them. That would be a big mistake.”' ('Archbishop Cupich lays out pathway for gay couples to receive Communion at Vatican press scrum ' by John-Henry Westen and Pete Baklinski at Fri Oct 16, 2015 - 11:51 am EST https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archbishop-cupich-lays-out-pathway-for-gay-couples-to-receive-communion)

During Vatican II, the Catholic church dogmatically declared homosexual acts to be sinful, while classing the attraction itself not to be. If the dogma of the church were to change as a result of Pope Francis' synod of the Family and subsequent declarations, it would be an unusual event in the history of the hitherto largely unchanging beliefs of the Catholic church.

Cardinal Sarah, who at the last synod meeting blasted Pope Francis in his opening remarks, arranged for the African bishops to meet in his country prior the Synod, in an attempt to prevent the church from changing its dogma. He has stated to media that he believes that most of the bishops are on his side. Cardinal Napier has expressed similar sentiments. The pro-dogma camp seem convinced that a repeat of the previous meeting, where a group personally placed in their positions by Pope Francis, drafted a document based on the meeting, which bishops later said had sorely misrepresented their statements.

On his trip to the USA, the Pope met briefly with a woman who was imprisoned for refusing to issue documents for gay weddings. The Vatican later stated that that was not an official meeting, and that the only official meeting at that location had been between the pope and a former student who is gay.

Patrick Archbold and a number of other well known traditionalist figures in the blogosphere, recently launched a petition calling the synod a sham and asking any 'faithful' bishops to walk out if it broke from tradition:

It states:

'Therefore, we faithfully request that each and every faithful Catholic bishop at the Synod, having made every effort to resist these attacks on Christ’s teaching, if its direction remains unaltered and those faithful voices remain unheard, do his sacred duty and publicly retire from any further participation in the Synod before its conclusion so as to prevent greater scandal and confusion.'('Synod Walkout' by Patrick Archbold et al at Change.org https://www.change.org/p/the-synod-fathers-synod-walkout)

Some traditionalists have begun quoting what they claim to be a quote from a mystic known as Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, which quote sedevacantists often use in their opposition to Vatican II, namely:

'Then I saw that everything that pertained to Protestantism was gradually gaining the upper hand, and the Catholic religion fell into complete decadence. Most priests were lured by the glittering but false knowledge of young school-teachers, and they all contributed to the work of destruction.'

Which comes from a longer passage credited to the mystic, namely:

'Among the strangest things that I saw, were long processions of bishops. Their thoughts and utterances were made known to me through images issuing from their mouths. Their faults towards religion were shown by external deformities. A few had only a body, with a dark cloud of fog instead of a head. Others had only a head, their bodies and hearts were like thick vapors. Some were lame; others were paralytics; others were asleep or staggering.

'I saw what I believe to be nearly all the bishops of the world, but only a small number were perfectly sound. I also saw the Holy Father– God-fearing and prayerful. Nothing left to be desired in his appearance, but he was weakened by old age and by much suffering…

'Then I saw that everything that pertained to Protestantism was gradually gaining the upper hand, and the Catholic religion fell into complete decadence. Most priests were lured by the glittering but false knowledge of young school-teachers, and they all contributed to the work of destruction.

'In those days, Faith will fall very low, and it will be preserved in some places only…'

Pope Francis, himself, is preparing the church for his statements following the synod:

'The Holy Father went on to say that each and everyone has a place in the Church, and that the key to journeying well together is listening. “A synodal Church is a Church of listening,” said Pope Francis. “It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn: the faithful, the College of Bishops, [and the] Bishop of Rome; each listening to the others; and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of truth’ (Jn 14, 17), to know what he ‘says to the Churches’ (Rev 2: 7).”

'“The Synod of Bishops,” continued Pope Francis, “is the convergence point of this dynamism – this listening conducted at all levels of Church life,” starting with the people, who “also participate in Christ’s prophetic office” and who have a right and a duty to be heard on topics that touch the common life of the Church. Then come the Synod Fathers, through whom, “[T]he bishops act as true stewards, interpreters and witnesses of the faith of the whole Church, which [they] must be able carefully to distinguish from often shifting public opinion.” In all this, the Successor to Peter is fundamental. “Finally,” explained Pope Francis, “the synodal process culminates in listening to the Bishop of Rome, called upon to speak authoritatively [It. pronunciare] as ‘Shepherd and Teacher of all Christians’: not on the basis of his personal beliefs, but as the supreme witness of the Faith of the whole Church, the guarantor of the Church’s conformity with and obedience to the will of God, to the Gospel of Christ and the Tradition of the Church.”' ('Pope Francis marks 50th anniversary of Synod's institution' Vatican Radio 17th of October 2015 http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/10/17/pope_francis_marks_50th_anniversary_of_synods_institution/1179978)

Whether this case of confusion is a case of the notoriously bad Vatican Press officials, who regularly 'clarify' statements, or a case of the direction of the synod being shown, is uncertain. What is known is that the figures who were placed personally into the Synod by Pope Francis, tend to agree with the proposals of Kasper and Marx, that dogma must either change or be ignored in practice. It will be interesting to see where the synod goes from now, and whether or not the synod and its follow-up result in a split like that which occurred after Vatican II, given that opposing forces in the Catholic Church have rarely been so vocal.

Either way, Pope Francis has noted that while he will listen to the synod, it will not be binding on him, rather he will need to be listened to after it, and obeyed. Some think he means to make a from the chair statement after the synod concludes, other simply believe he is stating that whatever the synod decides, he will still make his own voice heard, and it will need to be heard above it. Very Vatican I of him, isn't it? (Vatican I defined Papal infallibility as a doctrine.) As for whether a two millennia old Church will de facto or - per the change camp - dogmatically change its views on sex and reproduction and on whether it is sinful for communion to be taken when in 'mortal sin'... we the spectators wait with baited breath.

French Animal Rights Activists violently 'steal' destitute immigrant's dog, are selling it for almost R 3 000.00

It is uncertain if it is the visibly destitute man, or his tiny dog, that is howling.



He has nothing, and has been assaulted. What little he has, he leaves on the side of the road - in a moment and with no hesitation. He leaves all he has, unattended - in a desperate attempt to get his beloved puppy back. The dog does not appear malnourished, nor do the attackers claim it was.

His attempt to rescue what seems his only friend in the world, is doomed to fail, as pedestrians pass nonchalantly by.

One witness, however, videoed the brazen incident, one which the bold and proud perpetrators performed with no fear of any punishment. There is no talk of charging them for their profitable exploit against a member of a vulnerable minority group.

The indigent man had been mercilessly assaulted, and wrestled to the ground, as the two men and a woman collaborated to remove his dog from him. The group the trio represent, have since offered the dog for 'adoption', for One Hundred and Seventy Five Euros (which at present exchange rates is: Two Thousand, Seven Hundred and Seventeen Rands), according to the Daily Telegraph.


Towards the end of the footage, by-passers simply keep walking, as though nothing has happened.

The group responsible, Cause Animale Nord, has consistently emphasized that the man they took the small puppy dog from, was a Roma, the official word for a member of the Gypsy ethnic group.

Caritas Internationales, the word's largest charitable umbrella body, has consistently noted that gypsies are often targeted by citizens and governments alike to suffer under hate crime, in Europe. Just recently, mass sterilization campaigns and other attempts to ethnic cleanse the group have emerged to daylight.

Some in France compare the Gypsies to stray dogs, but it seems even stray dogs are not to be owned, or for that matter, cared for, by the down and out members of the group.


Cause Animale Nord, according to the Daily Telegraph (25 September 2015), took to Facebook to say:

“We intervened because it was an urgent situation for the animal. There was no violence at any moment.”

“The person had thrown himself to the ground, crushing the puppy. The puppy was stunned, had dilated pupils and was staggering around,” it went on in a post.

"We took (the dog) away from a Roma who was using it for begging. The police don't do anything, we act,"

In other words, they claim to have taken the law into their own hands. However, if the animal had dilated pupils, perhaps a picture of this claim should have been used to back it up.

The animal does not look stunned in the video, and it can either be stunned or staggering around, not both.

Furthermore, they claim there was no violence, and yet the destitute gypsy has clearly been wrestled to the ground - which cannot be defined as anything but violent. Why would someone throw themselves onto the ground? It seems odd. With the puppy up for adoption for almost Three Thousand Rand, the enterprise is definitely profitable for the animal rights group in question. Some want their use of their finances to be reviewed.


It seems no criminal investigation is pending against the group, despite over One Hundred Thousand signatures to a Change Dot Org petition to bring them to account for the incident.


[URL of a Video on YouTube of the Incident (It adapts the video originally posted to Facebook) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pKb29VHwb8 ]

Calm your horses, before they trample you!

I wanted to run. I wanted to get up and rush to the exit, maybe I'd get away, perhaps if I sneaked. They said boredom never killed anyone, but I didn't want to take any chances. I am sure school assemblies were similar for you. Fortunately, neither of us raised our backsides from the chair and fled those monotonous voices... Not in high school anyway... in Grade 2 I had decided enough was enough, and landed in trouble. As adults, we know the importance of self control. Children don't quite yet have the potency of will.

In the adult world, though, the same sort of urgency is still common enough. It is just generally better justified, latent, or expertly hidden. People get this sense of urgency, urgency becomes desperation, and keeps its annuals in stress. Whenever I have done something I whole heartedly regret, that urgency egged me on. I am told I am calm in most emergencies... I certainly didn't used to be. I thought self control would be a useful skill to master. I didn't realise quite how difficult it would be until I realised that I had never been guilty of a faux pas without that nagging sense of urgency. Patience is not merely a virtue, it is the power by which self control has a foothold in our lives.

When you want to do something you shouldn't: to eat that creamy chocolate cake that calls your name during a diet, to respond to an insult when you just know it would cause a fight... to say things you really shouldn't say... have you ever done anything you regret that was not accompanied by an unusually potent sense of urgency?

There are times for urgency... it might be wise to run if you are late for an important exam. It can be pretty urgent to get out of the path of an elephant or of an out of control truck. Urgency has a place, but generally its place is limited. When I am about to make a mistake, I might not realise that I am being foolish at first. What is always obvious to me is that sense of urgency. I just have to do it... I must... When my thoughts become urgent, I take a slow deep breath and ask myself if there is any real reason to be urgent... usually there isn't, and once calm, I see the fault in my thoughts.

Some of the more famous saints of the Catholic canon are famous for doing all sorts of exotic things to maintain their self control. Scary things, like jumping into a painful thorn adorned bush to undo their naughty lusts. I imagine they transferred the urgency they felt to do naughty things, upon an urgency to jump into a nest of thorns. No doubt that pretty lady who wanted them, noticed their passion, and regretted asking a monk to coffee or a date. The same desperation for company redirected, caused the painful jump, and with their desires cleansed, they limped away from their floral friend. Thomas Aquinas, who every lawyer learns about, was among such saints... when his family hired him a prostitute against his wishes, he directed his excess passion to chasing her out of his chambers with a fire poker... yes, that Aquinas, every lawyer learns about. And yet, in a non-medieval society, it is not socially acceptable to jump into someone else's perfectly pruned roses, or chase our fellow man with a fire poker... Deep breathing exercises and logic will have to suffice for the modern professional.

They say the wolf you feed is the one which grows. Over the years, a focus on calm and patience has truly reduced my levels of stress.

Even when urgency might be warranted, I find a calm has come over me... the less you stress, the less you are controlled by it. A few years ago I was halfway up a steep staircase, and saw what looked like paper on the step above me. I started to bend down to throw it away... next I knew, I was a few steps up, staring down at a snake... no paper had rested on the stairs. My voice sounded like that of a little girl's, but I stuck it out, just out of reach of the serpent, waiting for help without letting it out of my sight. If I had not learnt to fight urgency in my daily life, I might have run... and lost sight of my nemesis, the snake.

There is a place for urgency, but it is a very limited space.

Next time you feel just a bit too much stress, the child of urgency, ask whether the urgency is warranted... if it isn't, take a few deep breaths, calm yourself down, and passively continue with your day. I find that when I shelve undeserved urgency, I get far more done during any one spin of the earth around its axis.

Easy statements: how to damage your reputation overnight. (Unfortunate #Nedbank and #BudgetInsurance ads included.)

The annoying song blasts from the speakers. Advertisers purposely use annoying tunes, in hopes an earworm will play their song as you sleep. Computer generated cartoons prance about as Budget advertises their insurance product.

Buy the wrong insurance, and when something goes awry, you may be left in the deepest of dark holes. People I know, people you no doubt know, have experienced this. Insurance comes down to trust in a provider to be that safety net. I don't know much about Budget, I am sure I could look them up at the CIPC, the FSB, or the Who Owns Whom database, but their actual business is not what I am discussing here. I will note that the unfortunately ruined people I know were not insured with them, however, with the consequences of any doubt in the reputation of an insurer, their advertisement makes a terrible mistake, which harms their credibility in a field where trust is everything... they make an unnecessary absolute statement, which is easily verifiable as entirely wrong.

It swiftly reminds me of a Nedbank campaign where a well-spoken voice, seemingly of a white male, tells you, and newly wealthy black Nedbank client, Eugene, to be 'more savvy' with your money... The phrase 'more savvy' is far from unused, and does appear in a number of newspaper articles. A search of all major dictionaries via a specialist search engine, only sees the phrase appear in quotations on news media (3 results) in one specific online dictionary, namely Dictionary.com, and in Wikipedia entries. A search for use of this phrase in the Oxford Dictionary of English, however, turns up no results whatsoever, suggesting it is not proper English in regular usage. Oxford Dictionary of English would have us use the generally accepted word 'savvier'... in their advice on word use.

Clearly the advertisers thought they were being clever, and maybe they were: people I met suddenly began to speak of being 'more savvy'... rather than being 'savvier'. As for the Budget advert... the dreadful cacoffiny of the horrendous commercial always ends with the same phrase: 'nothing rhymes with premiums'. Absolutist statements are fine if they are verifiable and correct. Unfortunately, very many words rhyme with premiums. I will list some of them for you a bit later, below.

Either way, many would be loath to do any business with either Budget Insurance or Nedbank... brands in industries requiring extensive trust from their customers... for the simple fact that they made statements which in hindsight should have nothing to do with their ability to do their business.

The world is filled to the brims with armchair experts, and bush enthusiasts. Experts are usually loath to give an opinion on anything they have not researched. The law changes so quickly, that unless you carefully monitor it, or have a specific area of practise, utter caution is often much needed. I pay a lot of money every year for access to up to date information of various areas of law, as do many in my field. A mere ill thought tangent can permanently damage your brand, even if it is an ill-conceived statement which is entirely unrelated to your field... This mistake has been made by many an architect commenting too rashly on car design, or lawyer - on stock picks.

Personally, one of my favourite things to do is to research and authenticate information. When I speak, I have usually read up on what I am saying. Often, I have consulted the word of an expert or two. The process of finding out the truth gives me a bit of a rush, especially if the real answer is unexpected. I have gained access to many specialised search engines, tools, programs and databases, some I have made myself... just to satisfy my own curiosity. A proper fact check via sources not every Joe knows how to access, can be mightily fun to do.

It is, however, essential to do some basic research into what you are saying before you attach your integrity and your brand to an ill begotten mast.

Below are two advertisements from the respective campaigns, and explanations as to some of what is wrong with their presentations.

Nedbank "Savvy"


URL for the video of the offending Nedbank advertisement: https://youtu.be/A4BY8m5A0Vs



The Budget Insurance advert, and below it, words that rhyme with premiums:


URL for the video of the offending Budget Insurance advertisement: https://youtu.be/gEgk5GNxP1I


Take a quick gander at a list of 31 words, which in British (and South African) English, rhyme with premiums (from the phonetics program, PhoTransEdit). I imagine that advertisers couldn't complete their rhyme, and so decided to make up their absolutist claim:

premiumsː ˈpriːˌmɪəmz

compendiums /kəmˈpendɪəmz/
condominiums /ˌkɒndəˈmɪnɪəmz/
craniums /ˈkreɪnɪəmz/
crematoriums /ˌkreməˈtɔːrɪəmz/
delphiniums /delˈfɪnɪəmz/
emporiums /ɪmˈpɔːrɪəmz/
encomiums /ɪnˈkəʊmɪəmz/
euphoniums /juːˈfəʊnɪəmz/
geraniums /dʒəˈreɪnɪəmz/
grahams /ˈɡreɪəmz/
graham's /ˈɡreɪəmz/
gymnasiums /dʒɪmˈneɪzɪəmz/
harmoniums /hɑːˈməʊnɪəmz/
honorariums /ˌɒnəˈreərɪəmz/
hyams /ˈhaɪəmz/
idioms /ˈɪdɪəmz/
mediums /ˈmiːdɪəmz/
moratoriums /ˌmɒrəˈtɔːrɪəmz/
museums /mjuːˈzɪəmz/
pandemoniums /ˌpændɪˈməʊnɪəmz/
planetariums /ˌplænɪˈteərɪəmz/
podiums /ˈpəʊdɪəmz/
praesidiums /prɪˈsɪdɪəmz/
presidiums /prɪˈsɪdɪəmz/
prosceniums /prəˈsiːnɪəmz/
requiems /ˈrekwɪəmz/
sanatoriums /ˌsænəˈtɔːrɪəmz/
sealyhams /ˈsiːlɪəmz/
stadiums /ˈsteɪdɪəmz/
symposiums /sɪmˈpəʊzɪəmz/
trapeziums /trəˈpiːzɪəmz/

Oxford Dictionary is clear on the related forms of the word 'savvy', 'more savvy' is not among them:

RELATED FORMS:

savvy (noun)
savviness (noun)
savvinesses (plural noun)
savvy (verb)
savvies (third person present)
savvied (past tense)
savvied (past participle)
savvying (present participle)
savviness (verb)
savvinesses (third person present)
savvinessing (present participle)
savvinessed (past tense)
savvinessed (past participle)
savvy (adjective)
savvier (comparative adjective)
savviest (superlative adjective)
savviness (adjective)

Our moral compass defines our identity (to others) - science.

It seems obtuse at first. As it comes into focus, it still appears somewhat off. People are shown other people - walking. Those who walk at the same pace as the crowd are seen as smarter. The slower and faster walkers are looked down upon. If I told you this was the basis of all laws, regulations, and of government itself, you might look at me slightly strangely. After a while - much against your better judgement - you'd start to agree.

When people are asked to judge another's intelligence, they tend to look at Emotional Quotient (EQ), not Intelligence Quotient (IQ).

People walk at many different paces. No crowd walks as one body. People's behaviour within the crowd is... random. When, however - a crowd becomes one mind, as they do during specific incidents of rioting... or some protests, its members can become as synchronised as a primitive tribe. When a crowd is walking at one pace, a custom is created. EQ is heavily associated with an ability to abide by custom. High EQ is also associated with the ability to intentionally disobey customs. The person who wears a shirt with the word 'costume' on it to Halloween is perceived as smart. The one who steps too far off the mark, or unintentionally flouts custom, is a different story.

Morality and custom have a lot in common. People who act in a predictable way, by obeying customs, are less likely to unexpectedly harm us. The man who opens the car door for his woman, and regularly buys her flowers, is more likely to be perceived as marriageable. After all, he obeys customs gentlemen might.

There is such a swathe of pseudo-science out there, I thought that what I am about to tell you - might just be that. It isn't. It turns out that friends and relatives of neuro-degenerative patients, only tend to feel that they no longer know the mind-loss victim, when their morals decline or their speech becomes impaired.

Researchers firstly did something abstract: something along the lines of... is your friend still your buddy old pal if they suddenly turn into a jerk. Many people would say no.

One might well add real world examples to that: Is your husband still the person you knew if he murders your sister? Most women would say no. The neighbours saying a serial killer was quiet and kind, are asserting their reliance upon neighbourhood customs. How could a good neighbour be a serial killer? Yet, every so often... they are.

Because we define others in a way that facilitates our own survival, it seems our judgements of whom other people are - centre not on their intelligence, their memories or so much else - but rather upon their moral compass. It makes sense. If someone wouldn't murder, they wouldn't murder us.

To get to know someone, is to know what direction their hidden moral compass points - whether we recognise its clear components, and how close to your own true north it rests.


It is just one study I am referring to from this point of the article. It is perhaps one of a kind, a fluke - it is walking in a different direction from the centuries old philosophy crowd. However, it makes sense, and as such I think it worthy of discussion.

The abstract of the study, appearing in the journal, Psychological Science, states:

'There is a widespread notion, both within the sciences and among the general public, that mental deterioration can rob individuals of their identity. Yet there have been no systematic investigations of what types of cognitive damage lead people to appear to no longer be themselves. We measured perceived identity change in patients with three kinds of neurodegenerative disease: frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Structural equation models revealed that injury to the moral faculty plays the primary role in identity discontinuity. Other cognitive deficits, including amnesia, have no measurable impact on identity persistence. Accordingly, frontotemporal dementia has the greatest effect on perceived identity, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has the least. We further demonstrated that perceived identity change fully mediates the impact of neurodegenerative disease on relationship deterioration between patient and caregiver. Our results mark a departure from theories that ground personal identity in memory, distinctiveness, dispositional emotion, or global mental function. ' ('Neurodegeneration and Identity' by Nina Strohminger of Yale School of Management, Yale University and Shaun Nichols of Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, published August 12th 2015 c.f. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/08/11/0956797615592381?papetoc )

Nathan Collins, writing for the Pacific Standard ('Identity Is Lost Without A Moral Compass', Quick Studies Series, 18th August 2015), puts it this way:

'In previous work, she and co-author Shaun Nichols found that moral traits, such as empathy or politeness, seemed to be the most important component of identity. But that research focused on hypothetical situations—if a friend became a jerk, would he or she still be the same person you knew before? The new study "is an expansion of that work that aims to see if this privileging of moral traits extends to a real-world example of radical mental change, neurodegeneration," Strohminger writes.

"Contrary to what generations of philosophers and psychologists have thought, memory loss doesn't make someone seem like a different person."

Strohminger and Nichols focused on three neurodegenerative diseases: frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Alzheimer's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS served as a control since it primarily affects movement, and not memory or moral behavior. Alzheimer's, for its part, primarily affects memory, but also has some impact on moral behavior. Of the three, FTD is the one most likely to have a moral impact—its symptoms include a loss of empathy, poor judgment, and increasingly inappropriate behavior.

'Next, Strohminger and Nichols recruited 248 people from online support groups for friends and family of patients suffering from FTD, Alzheimer's, or ALS, and they asked questions like, "Do you feel like you still know who the patient is?" using five-point scales. Friends and family of ALS patients averaged about 4.1 points on that scale, but the number dropped to 3.8 for Alzheimer's and to 3.4 for FTD, suggesting that morality was at the core of how people conceived their loved ones' identities, perhaps even more than memory.

'Following up with a more detailed analysis, Strohminger and Nichols discovered that symptoms of declining morality were strongly associated with the perception that a patient's identity had changed, while failing memory, depression, and more traditional measures of personality appeared to have almost nothing to do with a person's identity. The only other symptom that had any discernible impact on identity was aphasia, a language impairment' (c.f. http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/identity-is-lost-without-a-moral-compass )

Women rape men... often - crime statistics. #Sociology #Demographics

Reading certain newspaper articles leaves a surreal taste. Perhaps it shouldn't. Inevitably though, it tends to. New statistics suggest that we shouldn't be quite so surprised when women rape men.

Perhaps it is that manly world view, which struggles to accept statistics from America of all places: where 38% of reported sexual violence incidents recorded in their government's National Crime Victimization Survey- were against men. Just maybe, it is a result of our men-are-tough mentality, that we ignore that 46% of sexual crimes against men in that placid western nation, were performed by women.

Some examples of alleged rape by women - appearing in South African media, might include:

Terrified men are reported as claiming gangs of rough and ready women performed unwanted sex acts upon them, before fleeing in getaway cars.

Strange tales of men being stalked late at night and forced to perform at knife point - by otherworldly not-quite-femme-fatales . The men find themselves ridiculed in comment boxes and on radio shows.

Rapes of men by women - also take place in social contexts, and in schools, colleges and in the home, the Pacific Standard is quick to assert. Use of alcohol or drugs by women to rape men, is even common enough to have historical references. Lot was famously raped by his daughters in a cave, if we are to accept the biblical record of his tragic life.

These sometimes almost sensationalist tales are the sort that make for headlines by the media, however - statutory rape of men, performed by older women is also a matter that evokes perhaps misplaced disbelief. Sober sources state that even if a relationship seems fine at first, long term damage can be done upon the underage gent. Abandonment issues emerge when the lax lass inevitably breaks the arrangement to shreds.

As legal practitioners and members of the public, sometimes we need to be reminded that rape is not a crime with only female victims. Men may not quite so often come out and say it, but they do report being raped often enough to the police to cause just a bit of concern.

As girls, women are as violent as men are. Society rather than genetics is responsible for reduced physical violence among women. Passive aggressive behaviour such as false compliments, and rumour mongering often replace aggression among women in socially sensitive scenarios. This is why men far outnumber women in jails. However, a statistically relevant portion of sexual crimes continue to be committed by women.

This article was inspired in particular by an article in an American sociological magazine, the Pacific Standard. That specific piece of journalism opens with the bizarre headline 'Young Men and the Unspoken Danger of College Campuses', and was written on the 10th of August 2015 by a David L. Bell.

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/young-men-and-the-unspoken-danger-of-college-campuses

Cloud 10 and a half... I'd thought 11 at least... oh well... such is life.

I thought I had doubled in girth until I noticed the horrid new scale had accidentally switched to pounds. It explained why I was now 5 something centimetres tall. Make that 5"10... wait... aren't I 5"11? Turns out not. I entered my height on the internet: 179 CM... 5"10.5... existential crises looming. "Is 5"10 short?" I asked that annoying Jeeves, Google. Turns out 5"10 is the height anyone below 5"10 pretends to be. Women like their men 5 inches taller than them... It explains why that monstrously tall Kenyan lady called me short. 5"5 ladies, here I come.

I am 1 cm shorter than 5"11, and three below 6 foot. With shoes... 6, maybe... perhaps if I gel my hair up, but generally I don't.

So that means my future wife will be 5"5 or something? Not that I know anything about heights. I must've worn socks when I thought 5"11... that could be it.

Worse still, my new scale says I am 0.7 kg heavier than the old one says, but it is glass and the old one is wood. There is something scaly about a glass scale, isn't there? Maybe I should boycott the scale, tell it men don't weigh themselves, or something... and shoe it into the darkness where truth tellers in Africa are sometimes exiled to?

I measured my height four times that day, just to make sure. 1.79 m. Every time. I even enlisted help, the result was the same. Perhaps with socks I'd be 5"11, who knows? I almost considered it, but who has the time to put on socks for a self put on? I resigned myself to my height. I fit just under most doors and chandeliers. I can sit up straight in my car without hitting my head... perhaps 5"10.5 is okay... I didn't know.

In the old days men were uber short. That knight in his overly shining armour, he was a squirrel riding a shetland poney... no wonder they thought monsters roamed the earth... meeting me at 5"10.5, they'd think goliath had friends over for dinner... poor short men. Short men are thought to sometimes have a short man complex... Napoleonic like or whatnot... but the average man is below 5"10, so I am quite, it seems, alright. Not that complex, I am not short... shorter than I thought, but not a big deal... 5"10... okay then. I am a centimetre above the height everyone below 5"10 pretends to be on online dating sites, the internet said... and with that I am somehow now alright... as for my new scale's uncertain fate... we'll have to wait and see. It might be an activist telling only slightly tall tales, but it would weigh heavily on my heart if I gave it the boot.

Donald Trump is pulling an Obama... in all the wrong ways...

Obama was known largely as an election winner, a writer of a book where he admitted chowing on dogs was not a tasty use of free time, and as little else. He promised hope and change, with few clear campaign promises, populist jargon, and sound bites insulting enemies of his political campaign. Donald Trump is doing likewise minus the chowing on dog meat, and with the help of Liberal Media, he is the most talked about Republican candidate.

His insulting statements about non-Americans, harsh criticisms of woman kind, and outright outrageous attacks on anyone who does not tow his line, make him dangerous. Anyone who insults Trump has their integrity called into question by him. This mimics Obama's style of vicious, acidic attacks on any who dares to slightly criticise him. Obama famously placed a British teen on the No Fly List for his sending an e-mail critical of the President. Trump no doubt would do much worse... one hopes he does not set up as Judge Judy of the White House.

At his announcement, I had thought Trump's business experience and his well-known status could make him presidential. Over the past few weeks, he has acted more the toddler than the president-in-waiting. If poll numbers are anything to go by, Trump has a good chance of winning the Republican primary. But a President Trump, could further the disasters Obama has wrought for America on the world stage. If I were an American voter and had a choice between Trump and Hillary: the bombast bamboozler and the questionable former secretary of state... I would be highly disappointed. One is suspected of peddling influence, the other speaks as though he were under the influence. Neither are presidential in the statesman sense. Though Hillary is less likely to cause World War III than Trump, while in office, I also suspect she might sell Alaska back to Russia if it best suited her purse strings.

I, artificial-intelligence-lawyer

Panic is ensuing. Lawyers are scared. Aren't they always? The same fears the Luddites had during the Industrial Revolution are sweeping many more industries than ours. In one sense, the Luddite mill workers were not incorrect: many lost their jobs, wages did not improve for them, and rich landowners benefited while workers did not. A hundred years later, wages had increased, and the improved efficiency of machines had created jobs no one could imagine existing. The job market grew because of machines, eventually.

Most large commercial aircraft could fly themselves. In fact, most of the time they do. In the age of Twitter, news media very seldom break a story. However, the news has not disappeared, at least not yet. Social media users fall prey to a hundred thousand different scams. The knowledge and skills of the journalist, in providing an authentic and verifiable voice, are indispensable in a world of disinformation.

Do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) legal contracts had been available for years from Horters. Sage Pascal has now entered the same business, with their LegalWrite software platform, offering over one hundred contracts to laymen seeking to avoid a visit to the office of an average lawyer. I went through every one of these contracts in preparation for one of my board exams. As I read through them, I could think of a hundred scenarios where something could go wrong if a lawyer did not in the very least bit read through the final contract with the knowledge of the person's circumstances.

Many lawyers fear that clever AI (that is, artificial intelligence) will replace them as legal advisors, contract drafters, researchers, and as the writers of wills. And yet, for the same reason that large commercial aircraft companies still insist on pilots in their planes, and that news media still exist despite Twitter, artificial intelligence will not take the jobs of lawyers.

Laymen have drafted their own contracts for many years. Much of litigation is thanks to this practice. A nonlegal mind is often unable to adapt a contract to their inevitably very specific circumstances. Even if an artificial intelligence, or pro forma contract could be adapted to every circumstance, people would still require lawyers for the same reason that they require pilots. My suggestion is that artificial intelligence will not take our jobs as lawyers, but that it might automate some of our processes, speeding up our ability to do our jobs. People go to lawyers, because they want to be absolutely certain that their interests, embedded in their contracts, will stand the test of time. Even if machines land up drafting our contracts, legal eyes will still need to read over the contract, and edit it where necessary.

What once took a lawyer six hours, might, within coming decades, take a lawyer six minutes, with the help of a deep learning machine to draft the actual contract. However, the same product would be bought from the lawyer, namely an ability to properly interpret the law, foresee pitfalls, and ensure the quality of the contract, the requested will, or of a memo giving legal advice.

Just as the Internet adage goes, that a product which takes a person fifteen minutes to create, and cost an absolute fortune, is worth a fortune. What is being paid for, is not the fifteen minutes it took to create the product, but the many years of study, skill, and experience required to make the product in fifteen minutes.

What is likely to happen, is that, over time, legal services, with the help of deep learning machines, will reduce radically in cost. This is what happened with the Industrial Revolution, in relation to blue-collar jobs that did not require much thinking. What also happened, is that demand for the products of the machines increased. Every person wanted to own a cotton shirt, several if possible. If anything, the deep learning machine revolution, will allow legal services to be more swiftly and easily provided by expert lawyers. With less effort required by the lawyers providing the services, fees will likely go down. With fees going down, more people will be able to afford legal services, more of the time.

Economics being as they are, the advent of personal computers, meant to reduce the effort and work human beings have to put in, in doing so, increased their workload. If anything, with the aid of deep learning, artificially intelligent machines, lawyers will have more work than they ever have. The deep learning machine industry, furthermore, will impact all other areas of the economy, where human intelligence is currently required. If your architect does not have to draw the plans, but merely go over them to make sure that they are safe and accurate and compliant, more people will be able to employ architects. Intellectual services that once only were available for the elite, could suddenly become available for everyone. If anything, the future holds the potential of more jobs for lawyers, not less. It also holds the potential that what money these lawyers earn will get them further than ever before.

So fear not, my colleagues. The machines are not out to get you. Like a personal computer, and that brilliant invention known as email, they are merely here to increase your workload.

Smile if you want to be happy.

I am, alas, an unfortunate fan of sociological magazines, such as the much trumpeted: Pacific Standard.

Such high brow publications always talk about these obtuse studies, where people are asked to think or write about some distant past situation, in their short and no doubt meaningful earthly existence. The unwitting-subjects-of-these-experiments' subsequent decisions? They are compromised by these purposely engineered prior thought crimes, and sociological conclusions are quite rapidly drawn on everything from social exclusion, power and poverty to the effectiveness of game theory.


Think about a time when little old you were... gasp... socially excluded, and you, yes, you - with the crooked smile and the coffee stained teeth, are statistically likely to become... wait for it... more likeable.

Think about when you were weak, and you will gain empathy for those in a pinch.

People who think of others as their superiors - are better able to read their emotions. When told a picture is of an inferior, it becomes perplexingly difficult for the people - inevitably called 'subjects' - to read the emotions of the lads and lasses in those same pictures.

Think about yourself as smart, and you lose intelligence in subsequent test results, but think of your humble little muggins as trying hard, and always doing your best, and your results in tests somehow go up.


When, as a young boy, I moved to a new school... I moved from the government syllabus to the posh IEB, and along with it, to a school outsiders called... 'snobbish' - at the best of times. It was not a pleasant shift, needless to say.

One of the girls in my class once did a thoroughly boring prepared-speech on none other than 'happiness'.

She said that smiling itself caused the systems in the human body to magically release those special chemicals that cause happiness. I left that class with a fake smile, and faked happiness that day, until I was a happy lil' chap.

Life being as it is, I soon returned to blank expressions, and held to that for a few years, way back when... but c'est la vie, especially when moving to a different school.

Besides, I prefer to see my emotions as alarm bells, warnings of something that my subconscious mind has secretly picked up upon, and that poor old inobservant me just hasn't picked up yet... I would rather be genuinely sad, than peppy happy, any day of the week except Sunday. I do believe I am genuinely happy, but that does not mean a few thought crimes don't sometimes help me become better at what I need to achieve.


Actors will teach you something similar, they say that if you want to be successful, pretend you already are. Your posture changes how you view the world. It also changes how others view you in a given moment. The most annoying opponent is one who smiles when they lose a game. The absolute worst, is one who encourages you when you miss the ball, and insists on wishing you the best of luck.


Returning to those ridiculous, yet bizarrely effective, thought experiments that the inevitable sociology obsessives gravitate to...

Put a pencil in your mouth, so as to force yourself to smile. You will be less critical of what you are reading or being told at that moment... try doing so while reading this very article, and await that spinning wheel television shows portray as hypnosis. You will be an optimist, or more so, if you insist upon a breakneck speedy smile.

P.S. dear reader, you being less critical at such a critical moment, will not prevent your nearby colleagues from being critical of you, for your use of a pencil (hopefully your own): as what they might, for-some-unknown-reason, perceive as a chew toy.

Frown heavily now, and you will spot far more errors. I often enjoy a hardy frown, and a bit of bitter coffee... when it comes time to edit my tremendous or horrendous prose... it works wonders that a smile never could.


So, back to those lessons that unfortunate aspiring actors do get at sub-par-and-above schools of the arts...

By mimicking powerful or successful people, actors do something they don't even notice at first. Think of the first time a beautiful lass or two said she loved you (or, for the ladies, and those so oriented, the first time a lad did... mutatis mutandis, and all). Your posture will straighten. You will smile from ear to ear.

Just, as going to sleep at a certain time, will set and reset your biological clock, smiling from ear to ear, even without those champagne bubble memories, and standing up straight - along with that - will undoubtedly affect your internal confidence and happiness clocks.


The saying that you should treat everyone you meet as an old friend, in order to curry their favour (stop being so diabolical, dear reader) - also seems to ring true. What we think, and the way we behave, influences our mind and the behaviour of others.


So, if you are not feeling particularly confident, after you phoned up that first girl... or lad - who ever said s/he loved you - and s/he quite politely told you that s/he just isn't whatsoever interested in you anymore...

Pretend you are a puppet on a string, being held up by the top of your head, or that you are hanging on for dear life - by a wooden beam between your teeth.

Mind you, in the second example, don't put your teeth to the sky: have your face at exactly 90% from the ground... otherwise, it just looks a tad strange. In fact, so strange, that you might be socially excluded by your colleagues... priming you effectively for the coming example about social exclusion.


On that sour note, read on, to just another sociology topic...

When you next meet someone new, think of a time your were socially excluded from some portion of society - one that you so desperately wanted to be included with... statistics analysis suggests you will be more charming as a result.

Perhaps, you might be thinking to yourself - you should have done so before you called up that first lass/lad/etc who - once upon a blue moon - said she... or he... or s/he... loved you. Maybe you would have been just charming enough to reignite the inexplicable spark she... or he... once somehow - for no reason you can ever seem to comprehend - felt.


So, sit up straight in your chair, and pretend you love your day job as much as you love hearing other people say they love you. You might just become more focussed on your work, and you might just get that promotion you always wished you had. You might also not, but isn't it worth a try?

In the very least, you might find that you visit your physiotherapist or chiropractor just a pinch less, and are far happier now that you have that extra bit of cash to spend. Sitting up straight can, somehow or other, do wonders for your posture.

Medical council appeal posthumous death warrant!

A while ago, I wrote about a bizarre set of circumstances that led to a ruling which authorised what otherwise would be the murder of a supposedly dying cancer patient, a Robert Stransham-Ford. Capetonian advocate, Stransham-Ford, in a further turn of fate, was quite dead as the Pretoria based judge read out the verdict.

I referenced a case in the British commonwealth, where a court authorised the killing of a Siamese twin, to save the life of its equally young sibling, and where the court also sought to claim it was not creating a precedent. I thought the Pretoria Euthanasia ruling might not protect any doctor involved from actual prosecution, due to a concept known to lawyers as ripeness.

The court in the British case was the highest in the land, and it had the necessary constitutional authority to make the decision it had, to authorise a medical operation which would save one life and end another. In any case, the court specifically stated that it was not setting a precedent, and the death of the Siamese twin was never prosecuted.

The primary problem for me, with the current euthanasia ruling, lay in the court pre-judging a matter which was not yet ripe for trial, in that the killing had not yet taken place. I have little trouble with a court in a criminal matter developing our case law to allow euthanasia, after a killing has occurred, assuming it has enough authority to overturn the accepted practice of dealing with euthanasia in sentencing but still convicting of murder. This case however does not involve facts already at play, but facts which would not happen without the warrant to break with the current standing decisions of the South African courts, and to kill, issued by the court.

Any law student will be taught in Constitutional Law that the courts cannot be allowed to decide on matters that are as yet merely theoretical, and not yet arrived upon. My Constitutional law lecturer, was quite the activist type, he used to say that if you wanted a law changed, you should find someone prepared to break it, and defend them after the fact. The courts only have jurisdiction over matters which are already pressing, that is to say, over ripe matters. The judiciary furthermore, do not have jurisdiction over matters which are moot, that is, matters which their rulings will no longer affect.

The place of the courts, where there is established law, is reactive. It is not the place of the courts to judge matters which have not yet occurred. Were this not the case, I could at this moment ask the courts to decide the fate of the famed cannibals of the future: the Speluncean Explorers. They certainly can rule that certain laws are unconstitutional, but were the high court to do so, for instance, where a statute infringes on the constitution, it would need the endorsement of the Constitutional Court to back up its decision. Courts can also issue declarations on the law, or interdicts in accordance with it, but they cannot authorise its breaking ahead of time without invalidating the law for the rest of us. Even the law involving criminal informants who break minor laws, is heavily regulated by case law. In effect, the decision, by basing itself on facts as yet to occur, and contradicting set criminal law, was in danger of pre-empting a criminal law case, and one, what is more, likely in a different territorial jurisdiction.

One cannot imagine the nightmarish predicament the judge adjudicating a murder trial would find themselves in, had another judge already ruled in his matter before the facts had occurred. Imagine if the cancer patient had at the last minute backed out and told his doctor he did not want to die, and the doctor decided to go ahead with the euthanasia. This is a major variation of the facts, which would call into question the decision to authorise the killing, but were this or another variation to occur, it would hurt the perception of justice and make the job of the trial judge extremely difficult. Also, it would create a presumption that the cancer patient still wanted to die, even if he had decided contrary. Would the doctor now no longer need to prove that the man still desired death to the end? In Dignitas, a suicide clinic, the patients are asked if they still want death throughout their medically induced demise.

The practical problem with such a case as the present matter, would lie in a new authority created for the courts, to warrant the breaking of the law ahead of time, without bothering to set aside the law itself as unconstitutional... Not the Constitutional Court, but mere high court judges, and judges before whom the otherwise criminal act-to-be has not even occurred.
I argued at the time of the judgement, that any reliable precedent would only occur if there were a decision to prosecute the doctor who administered the suicide, and if a court in the jurisdiction of the murder were then to uphold the pre-emptive decision.
The decision in fact occurred and was given when the whole thing was already moot. As Hans Fabricius, the judge in the case read out the decision, after his spending much of the trial emphasizing his concern for the cancer patient's wellbeing - the cancer patient was already lying dead, allegedly of natural causes. Media state that Dignity SA, and the man's lawyers were unaware that he had passed away and did not purposely deceive the court of law.

In today's Stop Press, from LexisNexis Current Awareness, there is an update on this fascinating incident. It was already well established that the state would be appealing the unusual decision which sought to bar it from prosecuting what the standing precedent setting decisions of the courts consider to be a murder. Joining the state however, report The Times, is the Health Professions Council of South Africa, the body that regulates the medical profession. The HPCSA is quite upset with the part of the decision which would see the doctor not lose their medical licence for acting in what otherwise would be classed as unethical medical negligence and the intentional ending of the life of their patient.

'Robert Stransham-Ford, who won the right to die with a doctor’s help, was wrong when he said his terminal cancer had robbed him of his constitutional right to dignity.
This is according to the Health Professions Council of SA’s appeal against the landmark ruling that Stransham-Ford be allowed to commit doctor-assisted suicide.
Stransham-Ford, 65, argued that his slow death was undignified.
In appeal papers filed this week the council said: “The process of dying does not constitute an insult upon human dignity. Infirmity, incompetence, dementia and immobility, all of them of natural origins, limit human possibility. But sooner or later they are unavoidable, the products of inevitable bodily and or mental decay.”
An appeal has been lodged by the state and its papers, filed by the minister of health, minister of justice and the director of public prosecutions, assert: “Dying is part of life; its completion.”' (The Times | 'Medics, state line up to challenge euthanasia ruling' 27th May 2015)

Notably, Dignity SA is quoted as saying that they welcome the matter being appealed, and that rightly the Constitutional Court should be the court to decide the matter. Indeed, it would be, but for such a precedent setting case, why it wasn't approached as court a quo on an urgent basis is beyond me. As it is, we sit with a situation where a court of law states that it can authorise the breaking of standard law beforehand, and that each decision in such regard must be made based on its own merits. This is a scenario where two doctors both euthanise a patient, one with a court order and another without one, and where one goes to jail and the other does not. It is a strange scenario indeed. Perhaps it will become our standing law, but it is up to the Constitutional or other appeal court to decide that now.   Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice.

 
 

Only the long-dead will be surprised by the slight emerging crest of the long-made rising tsunami of Ireland's shift

Has anything really changed between today and yesterday in Ireland?

We have had gay marriage for about a decade now in South Africa. No smiting as yet has occurred, although society has become more amicable to the idea of gay marriages over time, just as it has to legal abortion, and to divorce.

I expect that within 50 years most of the world will endorse gay marriage, the endorsement being the natural follow-on to the popular support it has. I also expect euthanasia to be legal just as swiftly. Even the pope promotes gay lifestyle, and now divorce. What you are seeing is laws changing as society does.


If anything, any fight to be had was over years ago when society pitched left.

The introduction of laws to meet society's wishes, and to punish those who don't support gay marriage such as cake makers or lifestyle venues, well, that is a natural progression of society's wishes being granted. The criminal penalties against pro-life protestors in South Africa, are far more daunting than those faced by wedding venues for refusing weddings. Nothing has changed in Ireland, although in the lives of certain individuals - those affected by the change, something has happened.

That does not mean I agree or disagree with what has happened, it just means that only the long-dead will be surprised by the slight emerging crest of the long-made element of the rising tsunami of Ireland's complete cultural shift.

Law is just that, law. It has winners and losers. To create rights you inevitably take away rights. Any argument to the contrary does not stand in practice. However, a law which represents the beliefs of the people, whether heinous or beautiful, does not really change much on the ground, especially if it has been voted through in a democratic manner. Laws come and go and change as society does. Ireland's laws better represent what Ireland is today, than they did yesterday, when it still more fully pretended to cling to Catholic moral teachings which had held such force for centuries, and now have been rebuked and what is more, loudly rejected as no longer representing the left wing Irish. The Irish have done what many a teen actor has, and shed their religious fatigues for different clothing, and have been roundly applauded by many around the world for it.

The same tsunami could just as easily swing the other way. In many European nations with liberal laws, 'homophobia' has been secretly rising, according to surveys of the people. In America it has swung the opposite way, with once popular abortion, though the laws remain as they were.

Society changes and so does its laws. It signifies little in the long run, except when laws outlast the centuries. Then perhaps we can say something has changed. For now however, an idea of rising popularity is now to be law in Ireland.

p.s. Please keep any comments on this post civil and within South African law.

Judge authorises killing of lawyer... doctors might still be prosecuted

A Pretoria based judge has authorised the "mercy killing" of a Cape Town based lawyer... the lawyer's doctors might still be prosecuted.

The life of a Siamese twin depended upon the killing of their sibling. In Great Britain, the courts were asked to authorise the slaying of the marked out sibling twin. The courts created something never attempted before, in authorising the killing. The judgement set out a judgement without precedent, a judgement that future cases could not reference as a binding authority. This is something the courts attempted, in an authorised, legal murder of a little child, to save the life of an equally little child.


The standing law in South Africa is that if you kill a person out of feelings of mercy to the victim, you are convicted of murder, but are given a minimal sentence.

A Pretoria judge, Hans Fabricus, has authorised the euthanasia of a lawyer, 65 year old Adv. Robin Stransham-Ford, who practices law in Cape Town. The judge attempted something similar to the British court, setting out that each future case must be decided on its merits.

listen to ‘Judge authorises killing of lawyer. Lawyer dies on same day.’ on audioBoom

News report that the judgement set out that the doctors would neither be prosecuted nor convicted, nor held civilly liable for their intentional killing of a cancer patient.

Therein lies the problem. It is set out by our system of government that it is the role of the National Prosecuting Authority to decide whether to prosecute. The law furthermore states clearly, through precedent, that euthanasia is still murder, that is to say, no matter your motive, you may not intentionally kill another human being without justification. Cases where people have sought legal advice and acted in accordance with it, while still breaking the law, have found the violator of the law still guilty.

Can a judge authorise a battered wife to kill her husband? Can it authorise a police team to assassinate a kidnapper or criminal? The problem with the judgement authorising the killing of the lawyer, is its shady quality. The real precedent if it comes will occur if the prosecutor decides to prosecute the doctors. Then, the courts will need to decide whether a judge can issue a death warrant by authorising killings which oppose standard law. Further, the facts are not at issue yet, the killing is not yet done, the judge might well have pre-empted an issue, and further his decision could be viewed by courts as merely legal advice, and thus not binding.

One would have expected a Capetonian judge to adjudicate such a matter, of note is that the judge is question is a Pretoria based judge, and yet, he is deciding on the fate of a Capetonian. Perhaps there is also an issue of physical territorial jurisdiction beyond that of basic concepts of jurisdiction. It would take a brave or reckless doctor to be willing to be the test case in this matter. Otherwise, we might find ourselves in a country where any odd member of the judiciary issues authorisation for any number of usually illegal activities, from killings, to burglary, to any number of cases. An attempt to pre-judge or authorise a series of events, certainly may not stand the test of time.

Ultimately the real case is yet to come. It will likely follow on police sirens, and the injection of a green substance resembling Spar Letta Cream Soda.

Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice.

A statue of Rhodes is set to fall, but a history cast in stone, persists...

Statues have a strange effect on the human psyche. Their stone absurdities haunt mankind, or comfort men and women, as though their strange figures still breath, walk and sprint upon the far-flung hinterlands of the mind. The fall of the statue of a somewhat unfortunate dictator, a Mr Saddam Hussein, seemed a perfect signifier of sentiment in Iraq, as the very glorious westerners brought lifelong democracy and eternal salvation with them... That the CIA orchestrated the event in question, was not immediately announced, but subsequently hit page 9 of some newspapers, years later.

Statues make us think. In Europe, the way a statue is crafted can tell you how its namesake died.

In a little mineral based economy at the southern tip of a largely unnoticed little continent called Africa, a statue of a man who died ages ago is causing a bit of a hiccup.

listen to ‘A statue has been sentenced to banishment, still, a history cast in stone remains’ on audioBoom

The man in question was the great, and terrible industrial businessman of his time. He acquired abundant wealth, and lived in luxury. Like most wealthy monopolists of his time, his wealth and conditions of life were quite opposed to what his workers and employees could expect from their own second hand cradle and soon to be dug grave. He insisted people wear trousers, which caused great hardship to people who farmed for a living. His egregious must-wear-trousers  scheme gave him cheap labour to extract minerals within the devil's mouth of his mines.

Make no mistake, many of the most essential parts of South African infrastructure exist today because of the man in question. Our economy and business world owe certain amounts of their profits to the business acumen of the ruthless man Rhodes.

He set up the University of Cape Town, and is the namesake of Rhodes University (which in modern times owes more to its name than to any current reputational gap with its competitors).

Rhodesia quickly became Zimbabwe when its colonial rulers were militarily thwarted. South Africa has also taken upon itself to change the names of landmarks, even those which are quite neutral, poetic, and known across the world (or were until their names were changed).

The ancient Egyptians had a poetic curse. Those who were most particularly worthy of infamy, where wiped from the historic record. Their monuments were destroyed, and their name was pencilled over. The most monstrous of people, or the least liked were erased.This approach is distinct from the approach of the Chinese dynasties, which had history rewritten to blacken the names of their predecessors. The approach of that fearless thing, democracy, has been slightly different. Rather than fear the ghosts of yesteryear, an approach has emerged, that seeks to preserve history, both good and evil. History, is a lesson according to such an approach. It is a hard fought knowledge that must be heard, and must be remembered, with tales of caution, and carefulness to study from the ruin of others.

Napoleon might have mercilessly pursued his opponents, but the French would not dismantle his statues or his monuments. Even those who believe him akin to a secular anti-christ, would hardly dare desire to lay ruin to his statues. His monuments, remind them of both his terrible wrath and madness, and of the great feats he achieved in other areas.

Statues make us ask about history, they bring it to life in a way that writing alone will not.

Ghandi, had some very racist things to say about black South Africans, when he was still walking the earth. From his horrendous statements, one might think he believed his fellow human beings to be below the basic dignity of human rights.

We do not remember Ghandi for this reason however. We remember him for his pursuit of peace. We do not tear down his statues, and demand that the world view him by one context only. In fact, we recognise that his views were more a product of his social upbringing at the time, a defect, than something that is connected to his greatness. We view Ghandi as a whole human being, we view the good with acclaim, and we view the bad with sadness.

A poll conducted around the time UCT decided that they would be moving or removing the statue, found that the vast majority of students opposed such a move.

The 'debates' held, involved black African students chanting 'k*ff*r', and shaming white students in general, according to media reports. The white students who attended, shared how ashamed they were to be white, because certain white people had been evil towards black people in the past. Whether race shaming is acceptable if the person doing it is the skin colour, or whether it is still the judgement of a race based on the actions of individuals is another issue entirely. The whole thing started with vandalism of the statue, with a student proudly taking responsibility for dumping human excrement upon the stone-faced image. The students campaigning against the statue placed Nazi swastikas around campus, and did other disruptive things. Beyond the statue, they announced that they wanted more black lecturers, and inevitably less white ones.

An early industrialist, who was expert at business, and lacking in respect for human dignity, has become the centre of a storm. A lynch mob, at odds with the majority of students at UCT, shouting and plastering up offensive symbols, has succeeded in calling for the removal of a statue.

The ANCYL now wants the statue of Paul Kruger to be removed. He too, like Ghandi and like Cecil John Rhodes, was a product of his times. His faults were almost inevitable, given the society he was raised in, in a world that had no concept yet of civil rights. He is also one of the shaping forces which made South Africa what it is today.

Students who want Rhodes University to change its name will succeed in graduating from a university that no one has heard of, rather than from one with a reputation spanning many years, a reputation no longer linked to Cecil John Rhodes, but to academic excellence.

Wiping Cecil John Rhodes from textbooks, and from public spaces, will deny those same students the opportunity to teach their children about what good, and what evil Rhodes did, there will be no reason to ask about him, or his role in shaping South Africa.

Take away the Voortrekker monument, and there is no longer a reason to ask why the Afrikaners fled the cape, or what role rivalry between English and Afrikaans South Africans played in the lead up to Apartheid. The main English language party at the time gained many votes from coloured South Africans, denying them the vote, was a pragmatic move for the Afrikaner nationalists, in their political war against the British. Political opportunism caused what today is called a crime against humanity. Opportunism based on hatred of another culture, born from wars between the four colonist nations that once formed South Africa.

When we finally stop seeing the world in black and white, and instead see people who offer us lessons with their good and ill judgements, perhaps we can be comfortable with history.

Insisting white lecturers be replaced, will only mean that the standard is no longer that the best lecturer gets a job, but rather another criteria, which can then become one of a vast list of criteria. The result is that the students in question are no longer guaranteed the best education they can afford. Instead, they are offered something less, something yet still more befitting their comfort zone.

There are two ways of viewing history: objectively, as that which really has happened, or, subjectively, seeking to destroy the fame and infamy of the long dead, who neither benefit, nor lose any sleep, either way. It is we who lose, when the hard learned, deeply painful lessons of history are erased for the sake of staying within a false comfort zone.

Because, heaven doesn't exist... yet... according to the early Christian writings

Ancient writings make a peculiar read. They can subvert our preconceptions, revealing that what we hold to be sacred modern knowledge, is ancient. It can shock the spirit to discover that the ancients believed in a spherical globe of an earth. It can unnerve the inner form, to discover how close the mind of some writers is to the essence of our so-called Western civilization. Augustine's City of God, is often credited as a founding force in our modern world. Virgil's poetry teaches us values such as duty and family, which the ancient Greeks had no concept of.

The early Christian writings are particularly fascinating in their literalism.

The followers of the All Encompassing Church, as early Christians called themselves (even those who disagreed with each other, and formed their own denominations), the 'Catholic' church, to use the modern phrase, which still holds its place even in the creeds of protestant churches... these followers believed in a physical death and a physical resurrection.

The fact Jesus came back from the dead, not as some disembodied spirit, but as a physical creature with real wounds, is definitely of great importance to these early Christians. Roman Catholics even today believe that it is real, living human blood, and human flesh that they eat during communion, the blood and flesh of Jesus as he hung dying upon a tree, a cross as modern language labels the instrument of the death of God.

The dead are only raised, and judged after the death of the universe in the bible. All is destroyed, and human beings are raised and judged. The good inhabit a physical city, with physical bodies, made anew, perfectly made.

The New Jerusalem, Zion, is created after the destruction of everything, and this is where the early Christians believed they would spend eternity, in physical bodies, accompanying their deity.

Heaven, in the sense of the rule of God, of course existed to Christians. Where goodness was on earth, there was heaven. Heaven as a place inhabited by the risen dead however, was a place yet to exist.

In fact, the Catholic church, for centuries has taught that the soul is not separable from the body. It is the blueprint of our body through eternity.

In recent years, as philosophies have changed, these philosophies have influenced religious beliefs also. The idea of an abstract heaven emerges from poetry and philosophy, the concept of saints walking around on clouds, and a hell where the damned are already punished.

These concepts however are modern concepts.

Early Christianity believed in a heaven to come, and in an earth fading away.

The Council of Vienna, in discussing beliefs that the soul was separate from the body, in 1311-1312 stated:

'Moreover, with the approval of the said council, we reject as erroneous and contrary to the truth of the catholic faith every doctrine or proposition rashly asserting that the substance of the rational or intellectual soul is not of itself and essentially the form of the human body, or casting doubt on this matter. In order that all may know the truth of the faith in its purity and all error may be excluded, we define that anyone who presumes henceforth to assert defend or hold stubbornly that the rational or intellectual soul is not the form of the human body of itself and essentially, is to be considered a heretic.' (EWTN | COUNCIL OF VIENNE (1311-1312))

The human mind, is essentially a mix of electricity and the reactions of various chemicals. It can be affected by substances, circumstances, even fatigue. To suggest that the mind and the soul are the same thing would seem highly irregular. The soul, if it is inseparable from the human body, can surely then be the blueprint, the writing in of the plan of God for a person. The Lutherans thought this to be an absolute plan, where we are born good or evil. The Catholics however held that choice must be involved, even if God might know the choice that will be made. To the Catholic, mortal sin damages the soul. If the soul is the blueprint of the person written by God, and sin is disobedience against God, then this makes a deep amount of sense. It links with the idea voiced by Jesus in the Christian gospel, that man does not live by bread alone but by the words of God, and to the idea that opens that famous book in the bible, that through the word God made everything.

It's wrongly, but perhaps not unexpectedly suggested by a reader that I was advocating the advent of soul sleep in my analysis. Such a belief, is not what I was suggesting. An interesting article on the controversy over the idea a few centuries ago, also sets out the Catholic position, as I shall quote it:

'We, with apostolic authority, define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints […] already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment, have been, are and will be with Christ in heaven […] and these souls have seen and see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature' (Rorate Caeli | A POPE WHO FELL INTO HERESY, A CHURCH THAT RESISTED: John XXII and the Beatific Vision)

However, Christianity from earliest times has held that the spiritual is not physical. The soul, is spiritual, in the same way that the writing which forms the pages of a book is not a part of the story created by the book, but its governing foundation. Heaven in the sense of the presence of God has, as I was aware before the debate, was widely believed by Christians from the start. However, the sense of a heaven that includes any sort of moving about in a body, must be restricted to a heaven to come, for the soul is spiritual.

Spiritual things, like the rules of the physical universe such as gravity, certainly can interact one with the other, just as mathematical formulae interact in the real world. In this spiritual sense, heaven certainly can be said to exist, even in the early Christian writings, it is the presence of God, into which the spiritual soul is governed, awaiting its body, and the heaven to come.

However the concept of heaven as another dimension, or a present physical place existing just out of view does not correlate with the concept of something being spiritual. Spiritual in the sense carried through centuries relates to that which can neither be touched nor seen. The words which create a novel, the code which runs a computer. The writing of God which creates all things.

The modern sense of heaven however, where an alternative realm exists, or people wonder around the lofty heights cannot be said to exist in analysing the ancient writings. That sort of heaven is only something early Christians expected to come about in the future.

Except in the concept of purgatory, where the soul is said to be readjusted before heaven due to slight deviances from God's plan, after the death of a person, in analysing the beliefs in question, their soul cannot be said to change. It, in that sense, of time being the measurement of before and after in change, cannot be said to interact with the divine writing that is considered the soul. Yes, the soul, if it were said to be exposed to time might interact with it in sequence, but could not be said to be changed by the physical world any longer.


However you define the spiritual heaven early and later Christians believed in, the one pre-dating the establishment of a physical heaven, it does not match the concept of heaven the modern world holds. That concept is a mash up of the ideas of a physical heaven, with a cultural shift that envisages almost another dimension, and elysian fields, a mount Olympus, an Avalon. These ideas are foreign both to the bible, and to the early Christian writings.

Why fire ignites infinity...

Among the most despised gods of the savagely civilised ancient Greeks, was Kronos, the God of time.

It flickers softly, as the airflow passes through. Fire is not light. It is not heat. The fire is not the mere sacrificial smoke, or the altruistic, dead or dying fuel which feeds it.

listen to ‘The Fire flares and it ignites infinity’ on audioBoom

Define it, the philosopher challenges our limited three dimensional minds. Define it, the philosopher screeches loudly. The fire burns destructively ahead of us, and yet we worship it for what it creates. We fill our churches, temples and synagogues with the flame of this magical, mysterious dead being.

The reason we struggle with defining fire is the same reason that we struggle to define life or love. Scientists say that we do not truly see the world. It is this reason that permits optical illusions, and allows colours to appear different than they are when the illusion of shadow is permeated through the mind. We see a very limited small part of the world, and even that the mind filters out, we see only what we need to survive.


It is easy to define a chair. The sky is less easy, the mind can easily comprehend it.

What we struggle to define, we the creatures who believe, in our major world religions, that God created us to name all the creatures of the world: is that which consistently changes, and that which itself is change. I am a sinner, I am a saint… The old popular music song brays against the world. Many authors of novels, of late, have come to despise the fiction art: refusing to believe that the caricatures of fiction can exist in real life. That which changes is hard to define. Fire itself is change. It is why we struggle with it.

Fire, ignites infinity. The basis of Buddhism, a spiritual suicide. The Buddha believed that life was suffering, and that Nirvana needed to be reached, that a being always coming out the birth canal as something different, is something that needed to be stopped. The God of Christianity calls himself I Am. He insists that he does not change, and that in the end all judgements will be final. Our major world religions circle around change. Repentance, reconciliation, and the criminal justice system depend on the concept. That which is most easily defined can never change.

Fire fascinates us because it is never the same, from the moment we look at it, from the moment we are born and from the moment we die and pass from this world. Fire is never the same, this fraying thread of a candle in the vicious and softly caressing winds.

It is said that if something is unexpected enough, the brain does not even perceive it. If it does perceive it, it does not remember it. And if it does remember it, it remembers it for ever, for whatever it is that it is deemed important enough to be remembered, despite being unknown, must inevitably have an impact upon our survival.

Whether baptism or a hallucinogenic spirit journey, guided by the beating of drums and the shaman's incessant whispering, the concept that a person can become something that they are not is the core of our spiritual being as human beings.

Change, the fourth dimension, is the foundation of the spiritual human person, and the basis of all of our religions. That is why we fear the unknown, it is why we dream and imagine and long and lust.

Life is the opiate of the scientific community, is what they seek to create with every discovery as they move forward. Life, change which directs itself.

Fire ignites our infinite intrigue, for it appears to mimic life, for life is change. And yet, the random flickering of gaseous flames is not alive, yet it somehow is still unpredictable enough to appear so to the human mind.

And fire is what differentiates a human being, from many of the beasts upon the plains and from the named and unnamed things hidden subtly within various mysterious forests, and from the creatures that inhabit the oceans that decorate and accessorise the ever fertile planet Earth.

To which change do you direct your aeviternal life? From the moment of our conception, we are never the same, and upon death our mortal body will decay, even in death our form will always change, and in the end there will be nothing left of us, we only exist for as long as we change.

Like the fire, we will never be the same, and even in death we will never be the same until we are void. To what do you direct your aeviternal life? How do you, a creature born of fertile earth – define yourself, if you only exist for as long as you are change? You're not fuel which feeds the fire, you are not the smoke, you are not the light, and you are not the heat. Like fire, you, life, at a cellular level, take in oxygen and fuel and release the smoke of carbon dioxide, and with it the energy that drives on the change, the fire within you that goes on until you are no more.

Fire ignites infinity, because like fire we may not truly be alive, we might simply be random chemical processes, a reaction as old as life itself. Fire ignites infinity, it is an analog for all of our spiritual lives, our strange and incessant search for meaning, for something constant and unchanging, for something as yet still alive, in the change that is our lives.

Always be prepared to quit your job!

Always be prepared to quit your job!

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My philosophy to work is a bit different than perhaps many others'. I will work longer, under far more pressing duress and against more intransigent difficulty than many other people are prepared to contemplate facing against. I also am not amongst the victim-survivor class who tend to view a job as a desperately needed life raft, without which they would immediately die.


In the modern world we live in, it is all the more important not to view your job as a necessary prison or a fenced in time locked inhumane work camp. If you're employed by someone, in fact you are not merely an employee, you are a provider of a needed service. Your boss is your primary client. They are not by any means your lord and master, but rather someone who buys a product or service. They are someone who has bought into you, and what you can provide for them.


If you do the work you do for nothing other than to avoid being fired, counting down the hours, ever in fear of your vehement boss shouting at you, your life is additionally probably very, very, highly stressful.

listen to ‘Always be prepared... to quit... your job.’ on audioBoom

You, as an individual, probably have a very different approach to clients however. Do you fear a client shouting at you? Does their raising their voice feel like the rug is being pulled out from under you, is the floor quickly approaching your unprotected face? Probably not. You probably also have a much higher tolerance for inappropriate behaviour from a client. They are not your life raft, you're not desperate to please them with sacrifice in the fruits of fear.



A job is a wonderful thing and it is something very hard to find for many people. However, if you view your work as a survivor's-only-option-life-raft, to be selfishly guarded and held onto for every moment, you're likely to treat it with the same divine fear, and under the same God forsaken stress as a shipwreck survivor might treat their last chance log rolling on the death besotted waves.


I personally believe that God put me where I am today. It might be bumpy seas or clear skies. Either way that log which is floating in the ocean, my job, is not my last chance of salvation. The stress of your job might leave you every day: crying out in your head 'I quit, I quit', and along with that 'I am certain today is the day I will be fired'. You will not drown if you are fired. You're not a survivor on the ocean, clinging on for dear life to a small splinter riddled piece of wood.


Often people are more terrified of their boss, than they are motivated to do a good job. If your boss is your superior and not your client, then your reputation with your boss might be much like a slave's reputation with their master. If however you view your boss as your primary client, you are far more likely to gauge your reputation with your boss, and to treat your boss in a professional manner. If you are a product, you need to be a product with a good reputation.


I like to treat my work as though I'm not working for my boss, but for God or some higher being who demands diligence and perfection. I get along very well with people in authority over me, but even if I did not get along well with them I would make sure that my standard of work was up to scratch in every way. The difference between working for a boss and working for a boss, all the while knowing and well-knowing, that your boss is not your master but rather your primary client, in the end comes down to your motivation. Are you motivated by fear, or rather by something much better then fear: the development of your personal brand and the selling of your services? The old adage of only following orders only stands up to scrutiny when your boss is the monstrous dragon of many a tale, seeking the decapitation of your head from your body, and chucking you out of windows in an old form of defenestration. You're far more likely to save your money producing company from destruction by speaking up at the right time, if you view your company as a client of yours. The destructive silence of the cowering employee along with many other results of having a master servant relationship with your boss, can be largely eliminated by viewing them as your primary client or as a representative of it. You are also much less likely to let go of your morals, if you view your job as a place to sell your skills-based work, rather than your last chance to avoid the gulag.


An employee who views their boss as their client, is far more likely to let their boss get on with their boss's work. They are separate from the company to some degree, they need only concern themselves with their own work, their own soul and their own integrity. Such a person is also much less likely to write a scathing resignation letter, or engage in too much workplace politics. The company merely is their primary client, they are selling their services to their client, and not their souls to a master.


Have you ever seen a hawker by the side of the road? They do not own the part of the street that they sell on. Your job is a contract perhaps, but in truth it is something figurative. What it consists of is you doing work and if it is good work, being paid for it. What makes you valuable is ultimately determined by the standard of your work, your ability to communicate this in words and actions, and the betterment of your brand. Nothing stops you from being very dedicated to your primary client, the company you work for.


The days of company loyalty are not over. However, the days of company loyalty to employees, nurturing them for 50 years until they become CEO, are something of the past. If you want your company to be loyal to you, you need to make yourself a supplier of skilled labour, and valuable to the company. You are a product, and if you want to survive in the modern world you need to be a product which people want to buy. Discussion of fairness or unfairness, is something that might emerge in the relationship between a master and the servant of a master. In a different sense it might appear between a client and a supplier. In the first, it might be in the sense of one complaining. In the second it might emerge in negotiation. In the first, below the surface, the person feels powerless and a desire to lash out. In the second they are empowered by the better framed status of their mind.



Whether your boss is middle management or in charge of your company, they are your interface with your primary client. Treat them as such. It will not only reduce your stress, it will hopefully make you work with a higher quality of output, with better strategic thinking and efficiency, and in such a way as to stand your ground and to make the living you desire to make.


In the end of the day, no matter who your primary client is, you are your own boss, and your business is something you need to look after in the long run. Your boss is your client, they are not your slave master. Run your business well, manage your finances soundly, and use your resources in a fit and proper manner. You are in charge of your own riptide through life. Your boss in the end of the day is not. So, always be prepared to quit your job. It is not the end of the world if you do. Rather, it is a strategic decision to be made with caution. It is no less strategic, and should require no less caution than continuing to work where you do.