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Ranking countries by their blasphemy laws + Orphan Utopia

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Ranking countries by their blasphemy laws
https://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/...ous-speech

EXCERPT: Blasphemy laws, in the sense of laws that penalise speech or acts that disrespect God or the sacred, are “astonishingly widespread”. [...] Those were the main conclusions of a report issued this week [...] It identified 71 countries that punished blasphemy—two of which, Denmark and Malta, repealed their laws very recently—and ranked them according to severity. [...] The five countries deemed to practise the grossest violations of international standards were all Muslim-majority lands. Top came Iran and Pakistan, both countries where “blasphemers” can face death. At the other extreme came Ireland, which introduced a new blasphemy law in 2009 on the grounds that the constitution required such legislation. Many European states have blasphemy laws on the statute book, designed to protect established or privileged churches, but they are hardly ever invoked. [...] The research delivers a surprisingly harsh verdict on Italy, deemed to be seventh worst infringer of international norms....

MORE: https://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/...ous-speech



Orphan Utopia
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/63/mcconnell.php

EXCERPT: When the angels appeared to John Ballou Newbrough early one morning in 1881, he was nothing if not well prepared. A dentist and Spiritualist, he had spent the last ten years purifying himself for supernatural contact by abstaining from meat, bathing twice a day, and rising before dawn. The visit was expected.
 [...] By the end, Newbrough had produced a nine-hundred page manuscript called Oahspe: a history of world religions that exposed their lies and elucidated their fundamental interconnections.

[...] Although Spiritualism was known and largely accepted in the New York of the time [...] some quarters received Oahspe with hostility. A “new bible” was a bit harder to reconcile with Christianity than simple communication with spirits, especially when that bible claimed that Jesus was actually a crafty angel named Looeamong who had tricked the other angels and minor deities into electing him chief divinity of the universe.

[...] What most fascinated the newspapers, though, was Newbrough’s intention to found a colony. Oahspe enjoins its followers—called Faithists—to gather orphans and raise them to be independent, vegetarian, and spiritually pure, as preparation for leadership of a New World Order. [...] Shalam, as Newbrough ultimately named the colony, would be a religious community and a refuge for thousands of indigent babies, far from the corruption of cities. [...] [...] Surprisingly, Newbrough’s conception of a “new race” was free from the scientific racism then prevalent. At a time when eugenicist notions of racial purity were ascendant in American society, Newbrough took in all the babies he could get ahold of—baby boys and baby girls of any race and class.

[...] The search for a place to start the colony took some time. Newbrough looked in California, but his attempts to acquire land there fell through. Returning from an exploratory trip, he stopped in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and there found many acres of arid land available very cheaply. The colonists pitched their first tents in late October 1884...

MORE: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/63/mcconnell.php

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