Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

Memorials to Christianity driven genocide.

Witch memorials are quietly spreading across Europe

Across Europe, campaigns for national witch memorials are gathering pace. In the Netherlands, a charity recently announced it had selected the design for a monument in Roermond, the site of the country’s worst witch-hunt.

In Scotland, campaigners Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi published a manifesto, How To Kill A Witch, to continue pressure on the Scottish government for a state-funded monument. Their Witches of Scotland campaign had won an early victory in 2022 when first minister Nicola Sturgeon issued an official apology.

Across early modern Europe (1450-1750), between 40,000 and 50,000 people were executed as witches. Though the age and gender of the accused varied from place to place, roughly 75% to 80% of all victims were women.

Within Britain and Ireland, Scotland saw some of the fiercest witch-hunting. Historians have identified more than 3,800 accusations (84% women), leading to perhaps as many as 2,500 executions.

Despite these stark figures, there are still no official national witch memorials anywhere in Europe, although the Steilneset memorial in northern Norway, created in 2011, comes close.

On the other side of the Atlantic, descendants of those caught up in the infamous 1692 Salem witch trials were among the earliest to commemorate the victims. A cenotaph erected in 1885 by descendants of Rebecca Nurse, one of the Salem accused, may well have been the first.

In Europe, there are similar local memorials. A witches’ well installed outside Edinburgh Castle in 1894 was probably the earliest such memorial in Europe, but most local attempts at memorialisation have been much more recent.

Our project – supported by Cardiff University’s On Campus student internship scheme – mapped memorials around the world and created an inventory of 134 plaques, memorials, sites and museums, which skews heavily towards the 21st century. Of the sites that can be securely dated, nearly half were unveiled during the past decade.

This growth in grassroots interest has several origins. It partly stems from renewed concern at present-day violence, both against women in general but also against suspected witches in the global south. Our research threw up one memorial in the Indian state of Odisha to deter modern vigilantism.

Overlaying witch memorials with the geography of the early modern witch-hunt reveals further striking patterns. With 29 local memorials, Scotland accounts for the largest share, followed by Germany with 24 – both epicentres of the early modern witch-hunt.

By contrast, France is virtually absent from our data. There is no memorial in the former Duchy of Lorraine, another notable witch-hunting hotspot, nor any marker in Paris of the sensational and infamous “affair of the poisons” that shook Louis XIV’s court.

How to remember can be fraught. Accusations of kitsch, commercialism and profit haunt museums in particular. Salem’s Witch Museum was once named the world’s second biggest tourist trap.

Perhaps for this reason, many communities have settled for straightforward plaques listing those executed for alleged witchcraft.

https://theconversation.com/witch-memori...ope-265506

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^I think you may have missed the point. These are intended as memorials to the victims, not to the policies that led to their murders. Think of it in the same vein as Holocaust memorials.


Boru

[Fake Messiah]

It also seems to be memorial to the mentality behind the witch persecutions:

The lack of such national memorials does not mean the witch hunt has been forgotten. Its memory has long offered moral lessons for the present.

This growth in grassroots interest has several origins. It partly stems from renewed concern at present-day violence, both against women in general but also against suspected witches in the global south. Our research threw up one memorial in the Indian state of Odisha to deter modern vigilantism.

It also coincides with the popularisation of witch-hunting as a political metaphor and the #MeToo movement. The latter not only encouraged women to call out misogyny, in the process it also highlighted how few statues of non-royal women exist.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It also seems to be memorial to the mentality behind the witch persecutions:

The lack of such national memorials does not mean the witch hunt has been forgotten. Its memory has long offered moral lessons for the present.

This growth in grassroots interest has several origins. It partly stems from renewed concern at present-day violence, both against women in general but also against suspected witches in the global south. Our research threw up one memorial in the Indian state of Odisha to deter modern vigilantism.

It also coincides with the popularisation of witch-hunting as a political metaphor and the #MeToo movement. The latter not only encouraged women to call out misogyny, in the process it also highlighted how few statues of non-royal women exist.

No, it doesn’t.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

How US evangelicals are using Trump’s aid cuts to attack human rights in Africa

With foreign aid being slashed and Donald Trump flexing his political muscle back in the White House, global conservatives are pushing to mould the rest of the world in their own image. The conferences form part of modern-day missionary efforts seemingly aimed at halting the advance of sexual and reproductive rights across the continent, involving a number of possible legislative bills – from a new Pan-African family values charter to a draft anti-gay bill in Kenya.

Taking to the stage in Nairobi in the summer, Slater – American herself – spoke in front of a projected photo of Adolf Hitler and the words: “He alone who owns the youth, gains the future”. FWI said the use of the quote, “obviously was critical of Hitler”. She went on: “They're after our children. They're coming after them because our children are the future of our nations”.

‘They’, it seems, being the ecosystem of international agencies like the UN and charities working on improving women and girls’ health, including access to safe abortion care and sex education – rights that have been voted through by many African states.

During the Nairobi conference, Slater was celebrating her campaigning having already blocked comprehensive sex education “in many places.” FWI runs annual training sessions to teach countries to lobby at the UN and influence negotiations with the aim of “thwarting the radical sexual rights agenda”. Her group has been involved with three such conferences in Kenya, Uganda and Sierra Leone this year.

The idea of American conservatives potentially trying to influence African laws isn’t new. Slater had previously taken the stage at a related conference in Entebbe in Uganda in 2023 to offer assistance to African parliamentarians in drafting legislation. She claimed her work had already been used to stop comprehensive sexuality education – evidence-based programmes – in the country. That year, Uganda brought in its harsh Anti-Homosexuality Act, although Slater has consistently denied being involved in its drafting. Copycat bills appeared shortly afterwards in Ghana and Kenya, promoted by lawmakers who had attended the Entebbe conference.

But this year, the speakers seemingly saw an even bigger opportunity – the vacuum left by Trump’s slashing of foreign aid. It is framed as a mission. Trump’s government is cutting off “millions...even billions of dollars” spent on “evil programmes”, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said Thomas W Jacobson from the Global Life Campaign. "That's a good thing," he told the room which included representatives from the Kenyan and Ugandan governments, even if it means less money flowing to African countries.

Among the other speakers, ex-US Navy pilot Travis Weber from the US evangelical lobby group Family Research Council made the apparent aims of the conference even more explicit.

First, existing policies should be rolled back, he said: “The promotion of LGBT ideology and abortion to Africa and elsewhere around the world, that must be stopped”. Some could be amended, and then new ones should be introduced. Groups like his need to “actually step forward into that void,” he added. “I believe the time has come for a pro-family foreign policy from the United States.”

While progress has been uneven, Sub-Saharan Africa has seen big improvements in maternal mortality, HIV rates and healthcare access this century, saving millions of lives, in part due to the expansion of information about and access to contraception and safe abortion. Campaigners fear this progress could be under threat from a highly-conservative movement blossoming on the continent.

For example, the Maputo Protocol, drawn up through the AU 20 years ago and signed by 49 of 55 its members, guarantees sexual and reproductive healthcare for all women within the signatory countries.

A new would-be charter on African family values circulated at the Nairobi and Entebbe conferences has sections which appear to challenge those rights. A draft seen by The Independent says African states should reject legal agreements that advance reproductive rights or “normalise...LGBTQI ideologies” and ensure aid isn’t tied to such policies.

American and European movement leaders flying into Kenya to tell Africa about the continent’s values makes Esther Kimani of reproductive justice alliance Fos Feminista, “very angry".

"What they're saying is that us Africans don't even know what our African values look like... “We only have to wait for white men from Europe and America to come and teach us what African values really are,” Kimani says.

While a global movement opposing sexual and reproductive rights grows, and aid shrinks, highly conservative groups are already “moving aggressively to fill in those gaps," Kimani adds.

Wrapping up his speech in Nairobi, Ordo Iuris’ Kwasniewski signed off with a slip. “God bless America,” he said, before hastily correcting himself. “I mean...God bless Africa.”

https://www.the-independent.com/news/wor...63702.html

[Fake Messiah]

But I thought that Christians were FOR prayers in school.

At USF Tampa, Christian supremacists mock, spit, and wave bacon at praying Muslim students

Last Tuesday morning, Nov. 18, several MSA members gathered on top of a parking garage on USF’s Tampa campus for Fajr, Islam’s morning prayer. A livestream by Warriors for Christ—an organization recognized by the SPLC as a hate group—shows Muslim students kneeling in prayer as one of the men, identified in the video only as Ricardo, approaches with a painted cardboard box that reads “KAABA 2.0 JESUS IS LORD.” The Kaaba is a stone building at the center of the holiest site in Islam. While praying, Muslims face the geographical direction of the Kaaba.

The man sets up the box in front of the crowd while two other men, identifiable via their social medias (where they posted the video along with many other similar videos at other locations) as Richard Penkoski of Oklahoma and Christopher Svochak of Illinois, start to “insult” the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, in obscene and sexual ways. One of the men calls them all terrorists. “Go back to Mecca,” he shouts.

At one point, Penkoski brings out a small Wawa container with bacon in it and waves it around while snacking from it.

“We do care about you, so we brought you some bacon,” Penkoski says. “It’s really good. Bacon? Bacon? Anybody?”

“I spit on the grave of Muhammad,” the man identified as Ricardo says before spitting on the ground within a few feet of the students, who are still praying on the ground.

“Take that towel off of your head,” he says, pointing to a woman in the back wearing a religious head covering. At this point, after several minutes of the men shouting at the largely silent students, Ricardo lunges towards a student and points his finger in his face, prompting the student to briefly grab his wrist. Immediately, all three Christian men say this is evidence that Islam is a violent religion.

“This is not how you preach,” one of the students can be heard saying. “Brother, you’re harassing us,” he says to Penkoski.

“You’re not my brother,” Penkoski responds. “This isn’t harassment; this is free speech. But thank you for doing what you did to give us more ammo to prove you’re a bunch of violent psychopaths.”

The video continues like this until the students leave and the Christian content creators do the same. “That was awesome. That was fun,” one of the men can be heard saying as they walk away.

But Florida Statute 871.01, which makes disrupting religious assembly a crime.

Florida Statute 784.0493 deals with harassment based on religious or ethnic heritage. It makes it illegal (first-degree misdemeanor) to “willfully and maliciously harass or intimidate another person based on the person’s wearing or displaying of any indicia relating to any religious or ethnic heritage.”

The man, identified as Ricardo repeatedly told two women with religious head coverings to “get that towel off your head,” and called one a “wicked woman” and a “Jezebel dog.”

https://www.wmnf.org/usf-tampa-christian...-students/