Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament 1165
earthlingpink writes "In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Copeland, Jamie Reed MP, announced that he is a Jedi: "as the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill" (the quotation is a fair way down the page; search for 'Jedi,' not surprisingly). How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?" Update: 06/29 23:15 GMT by T : Reader JE_Hoover adds a correction: "Although the previous MP for Copeland was the Hon. Member for Copeland, the current MP for Copeland is not a member of the privy council. Debretts make it all clear."
Yeah, but what kind of Jedi is he? (Score:4, Informative)
Jedi Programmer [delphi-jedi.org]
Jedi Religious Member [explorefaith.org]
And did he use the Official Jedi Name Generator? [xach.com]
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is nothing to see here. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't offtopic; it's an obscure reference to Star Wars ep. IV
It's hardly obscure...it's probably the most heavily quoted/referenced line from episode IV.
Don't blame the mods...they're on crack...they really can't help themselves.
A far more readable link... (Score:5, Informative)
If you read some of the rest of the debate --- surprisingly good stuff, provided you skim it and don't get bogged down in the interminable speeches --- you'll realise that the statement was in the context of a debate on the Racial And Religious Hatred Bill, now undergoing reading for the second time. I'm not entirely sure why the hon. Gentleman saw fit to follow it up with a rather long lecture on Cumbrian history, that was only brought short by his running out of time and the Speaker cutting him off...
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Informative)
All of them. It's part of their training.
A little context (Score:5, Informative)
One of the live issues here in the UK at the moment is the "Incitement to Religious Hatred" bill that Blair is currently pushing through Parliament. This is broadly similar to the existing laws on "Incitement to Racial Hatred". The difference is that, under current laws, only Jews and Sikhs are protected, according to some interpretations. Christianity is protected separately, under some rarely (read "not in my lifetime") enforced blasphemy laws. Muslims, on the other hand, are not technically recognised as a racial group, so you can argue that they're not protected. This, the Blairites say, means that people can hurl racial abuse at Muslims with impunity. This is obviously bollocks, of course, since this would count as racial hatred anyway, so all the situation really needs is for existing laws to be enforced...
Now, the reason why this is being pushed through is that the Labour party has taken a lot of flak over Iraq from the UK's Islamic community, which is normally a staunch supporter of Labour. Indeed, a deeply unpleasant specimen by the name of George Galloway (he of "Sir I Salute Your Indefatigability" fame) managed to beat a sitting Labour MP in a normally safe seat at the last general election, standing on an extremist anti-war, anti-establishment platform (which is a little ironic considering his own lifestyle). Therefore, Labour introduces this bill in an effort to get the UK Islamic community behind them again.
Now, this leads to two problems. First of all, a lot of people, particularly commedians, notice that this has serious implications for freedom of speech. One can no longer ridicule a religion or its texts and be sure of being on safe legal ground. Now, Blair's response to this was to say that the letter of the law would not be enforced. This is obviously a pretty pathetic argument and kind of missing the whole point of "the law" (that it lets people know whether they are behaving legally or not). It also leaves the door open to all kinds of future abuses.
The other problem is that if Blair honestly doesn't intend to see the law enforced, then he's creating a lot of false expectations among the UK Islamic community and other particularly devout religious groups. A lot of these people are expecting that, come the enactment of this, it will be illegal to say anything critical of their religion or to call any aspect of it into question. If this doesn't happen, there could be a lot of disappointment, some of it violent.
So all in all, this story is a little more serious than it first seems.
Re:That wasn't a Christian (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:5, Informative)
For what it is worth, Catholics believe that the priest turns the sacramental host and wine into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ during mass. which is not too far removed from your example.
Seriously: (Score:4, Informative)
This member of Parliament isn't really proclaiming himself as a Jedi or anything of the sort. He's trying to make the consequences of potential legislation easier to understand.
Basically, they're working on a bill which would make stirring up hated against members of a religion, illegal. But the bill is total crap, so much so to the point where it would make any and all religions virtually immune to criticism.
Those of us who live in America, and are into the topic of religion, namely online discussion on forums and the like (so that's why this is on Slashdot!), often enjoy a high amount of freedom in questioning the legitimacy of Jesus, or the Muslim world's seemingly-manic obsession with demonizing Christianity, or anything else which might brand you as a heretic in that religion's home-base.
If this bill were passed, any who enjoy that right and excercise it in public would potentially be committing an illegal act.
Of course, in the Western world the Internet is still largely a frontier for government monitoring and regulation. It's too dynamic. In public, however, there's little doubt that any statement or action which might even remotely irritate a member of a certain religion (double points if it's a minority) would be regarded as hate-inciting and therefore illegal.
The bottom line is, there goes another freedom! Unless this bill is stopped.
*wiff* over the head... (Score:2, Informative)
The guy anounced this because of a new law in england that makes it illegal to incite religious hatred...
i.e. mocking Star Wars fanboys who declare themselves Jedi, can get you jailed now...
Re:Jesus Heals (Score:5, Informative)
"She turned me into a newt!" heads turn "I got better."
If you can actually prove that your hand was miracuously healed, then I'm pretty sure James Randi has a million bucks waiting for you.
But it raises a pretty big question. If Jesus did heal your wounded hand, why doesn't he heal other believers' hands? I'll wager that most burn wards in the Americas and Western Europe are populated largely by Christians, so what makes you so damn special, or is there some sort of miracle lottery?
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Answer (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:2, Informative)
The fact that you get modded insightful shows how shallow many Slashdot'ers understanding of this particular religion is.
Christians _try_ to live like Christ, but in the end, it's one's belief in the fact that Jesus is a) The Son of God b) and that he died for their sins that gets one into heaven. Read the Apostle's Creed sometime, it's basically the Christian Secret Code for salvation.
And no, I'm not Christian. Just open minded enough to try to _understand_ their religion. I don't happen to agree with it, but it makes a certain sense if you understand its basic principles. (Which basically means, stop listening to the likes of Jerry Falwell on TV. TV is crap. TV preachers are double crap.)
Re:A little context (Score:2, Informative)
That's because the word "Muslim" just means a follower of the religion of Islam. Look it up. [reference.com]
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Informative)
Of course there is also substaintial evidence that the writings of Josephus were edited after the fact in order to agree with biases of believers in Jesus. See, for example, "Jesus, A Life," (unfortunately, I forget the author), a book about the historical Jesus.
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A far more readable link... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Oh and another thing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Insult! (Score:3, Informative)
Although I do think anyone who went on the Children's Crusade deserves one.
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:1, Informative)
Why has this heresy been allowed to stay at +2?
Catholics know that the bread and wine are physically transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in section 1376:
Anyone who has mod points and doesn't mod down Rahga's post will burn in eternal hellfire. A lot. And not in a nice way.
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Informative)
The thrust of John "feed my daughter BSE burgers" Selwin Gummer was that there seemed to be a lack of context. If only he'd thought of that when he was a Minister of the British Government. He, and others, also talked about how it was the actions that people often hated, not other people. The final point given was that existing laws protected Jews (because they are a culture as well as a religion) but exempted Muslims (because there is no recognized, unified concept of Muslim culture in British law).
British politicians frequently hit on some excellent points, but just as frequently pick themselves up and carry on regardless. The new law could be modified to become workable, by tightening up on the definition of incitement to only include direct and deliberate instructions to attack (eg: the fatwah against S. Rusdie) or the direct and deliberate attempt to cause irreperable harm to another group of people, for the explicit purpose of creating hostilities.
You notice that this is extremely specific and narrow. And so it should be. Laws should cover situations that cannot be resolved in a civilized manner by tolerence, acceptance and discussion. They should never be a substitute - which is what this law seems to be. But where things would otherwise get out of hand, there needs to be some mechanism for the authorities to step in and keep the sides apart.
Ideally, I would throw away this bill, all blasphemy laws and all race hate laws, and simply make a generic law that protects people's rights to protest, assemble, hold a faith, do whatever they damn well feel like, with the sole limit that they cannot deliberately seek to have others come to harm in the process.
I don't see the need to have a billion special-interest laws that cover this case or that case, when there's a single, common, underlying issue that can equally well be put in check.
I also don't see the benefit in vagary, when the purported aim is to prevent abuse. Vague laws are one reason why the US has get-rich-quick lawsuits and only minimal order. The aim of the US legal system has been to make lawyers rich and lobbyists powerful over whoever is the selected victim group of the day.
I absolutely hate the way that all laws in all countries define what is "wrong", but never define what is "ok". Well, that should be everything that's not prohibited, right? Well, the problem is that just about everything is prohibited by some law or other and those doing the interpreting are often the least-qualified to do so.
(And if laws need interpreting by experts, how are average people supposed to follow them?? Remember, ignorance isn't an excuse.)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:1, Informative)
Christ died in AD 33.
The earliest verified manuscript is known as P52, part of the Gospel of St John. It has been dated to around 125AD. This puts it within 92 years after the events.
Another piece of papyrus has been discovered, 7Q5. While it's still being questioned, many scholars believe it to be from the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6, verse 52-53. 7Q5 was discovered in Cave 7 of the Qumran community and is believed to have been part of a larger Qumran library. We know the Qumran's disbanded no later than AD 68. If this is in fact Mark, this would put the Gospel of Mark beign written 35 years after the fact.
The other evidence the Gospels were written even closer to AD 33 is in the book of Acts. Luke intended Acts to be the second part to his Gospel. There is much evidence, of which you can read about on wikipedia, that Acts was written around AD 70.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7Q5 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P52 [wikipedia.org]
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Informative)
His teachings are great example of modern masters who truely understand not only THAT martial arts work, but WHY martial arts works.
Forest C. Adcock
3rd degree Tae Kwon Do
4th degree Shinjukki-Jin Jitsu
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:1, Informative)
The Roman Catholic Church has invented many traditions out of the logic of man rather than through direct revelation (too many for me to enumerate here). This makes them an apostate church. Sorry, but you can't "vote" on church doctrine like they did in the Council of Nicea, etc.
They also come dangerously close to placing Mary above Jesus, making her an idol, even if they don't claim to worship her directly. Christ taught that He and His Father are the only beings one needs to believe in in order to achieve salvation.
Re:Jesus didn't claim to be a Christian (Score:3, Informative)
Here are a few examples:
The Jews therefore said to Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am." Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple. (John 8:57-59)
"I and the Father are one." The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God." (John 10:30-33)
And Jesus cried out and said, "He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me. And he who beholds Me beholds the One who sent Me. I have come as light into the world, that everyone who believes in Me may not remain in darkness." (John 12:44-46)
The question is not whether Jesus claimed to be God, because I think it's demonstrated that he indeed did make such a claim. Rather, the question is whether or not you believe it to be true.
If you don't think Jesus is God, then why believe anything else he said (in other words, why follow any of his teachings?) But if you do think he might be God, then you should dig deeper and learn more.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A little context (Score:3, Informative)
Of course you can. But what you shouldn't be able to do is make statements that incite violence towards him because of his religion. Of course you can't do that anyway, because there are other laws that cover incitement to violence, so those who are stopping to think about this are wondering what the point of any new legislation is.
Re:They Voted Him In (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, he supports it. Read the last paragraph of his speech, just before he gets cut off for exceeding his time limit.
His joke doesn't fit with his position, but since when do we expect MPs to be consistent?
Re:That wasn't a Christian (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of places. Mark 2:1-12 is a good example where it is clearly stated that only God can forgive sins and Jesus then forgives sin. He accepts Thomas' declaration that he is God in John 20:28-29.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Informative)
The numbers on the site you were refering to are way optimistic for some kind of christianity. There is evidence that one of todays gospels existed 110AD, but that's it. Even the catholic church would disagree with the figures you gave. In fact, the catholic church is much more open to historically acurate research about the NT, since they don't depend on it to be the direct and historical word of god anyway. The NT was put together by the catholic church, so it's basically their book. Since they basically claim to be god's one and only branch office on earth, the book is automatically godly, since the church produced it and everything done by the church is guided by the holy ghost.
There used to be numerous alternative gospels which disagreed in major points. They were destroyed but some were rediscovered, or at least quoted or outlined in secondary literature.
Alternative Gospels can be found here [earlychris...itings.com]
An article about the formation of the NT, based on current scholarship, by Richard Carrier [infidels.org] (an eval atheist)
Re:A little context (Score:5, Informative)
Biggest party in the UK at the moment is Labour. Until the 1990s, Labour was basically a socialist party. They believed in strong trade unions, nationalised industries, tax-and-spend economics and, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, nuclear disarmament. Labour was responsible for a serious crisis in the UK economy in the late 70s, with strike action bringing the UK to a virtual stand-still. On the basis of this, they were swept from Office and spent the better part of 2 decades in the political wilderness. In the 1990s, they got new leaders, first John Smith (who died after a couple of years) and then Tony Blair, who swept the old hard-left away and replaced them with a centrist, maybe centre-right "broad church" coalition. This won resounding election victories in 1997 and 2001 and a narrower, but still decisive, victory in 2005. Labour's majority in the Commons from 1997 until the 2005 election was so massive that other parties were effectively shut out of the picture altogether, with the real opposition to the government essentially being provided by dissidents within the party. This will probably change now that their majority is reduced.
The Conservatives (often called the Tories) are the other big party in the UK political system. They're effectively the "small government" party, although this part of the message tends to get lost. Unlike US conservatives, the UK conservative party doesn't have any real religious base; they're essentially more economic than social conservatives these days. The Conservatives are basically credited with/blamed for (depending on who you ask) reversing the UK's post-Imperial economic decline/destoying the UK's working class. Margaret Thatcher, their leader throughout the 80s, basically shattered the power of the trade unions, most notably the National Union of Miners, which had previously been vastly powerful. While this was a good thing for the country economically in broad terms, and laid the foundations for the UK's current prosperity relative to the rest of Europe, it had some pretty grim social effects, particularly on the working class in the North of the country. Opinion is still *sharply* divided over whether Thatcher was a good thing or not, largely along social lines. The wheels fell off the Conservative machine in the 90s, with a series of embarrassing economic and foreign policy blunders and a damaging split in the party over their line on the European Union. This led to a shattering defeat in 1997. It's taken the Conservatives a long time to get back on their feet from this; they went through two useless leaders (William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith), then found a relatively good one in Michael Howard. Sadly, he then went and quit after losing what was effectively an unwinnable election and the current leadership contest is proving pretty damaging to the party. The party still has a strong base of support in England (where it is more popular than Labour, whose strongholds tend to be in Scotland and Wales), but the Parliamentary party haven't been able to energise this for over a decade. They'll probably manage to do better in the next elections (probably 2009), if they can pull themselves together a bit. Their fortunes are being helped in the long run by a growing frustration with the higher taxes that have crept in under Labour. Broadly speaking, the Conservatives today are low-tax and Euro-sceptic.
The third party in the UK are the Liberal Democrats. Prior to the First World War, the Liberals were (along with the Tories) one of the two main parties. However, a series of miscalculations saw them losing this space to the newer, more aggressive Labour party. Historically, the Liberal Democrats have been "Liberal" in the classic sense of the word; low tax, small government, relaxed social policies. However, following Labour's swing to the right, the Lib Dems have essentially out-flanked them on the left. They picked up some seats on the basis of anti-war sentiment in the previous election, as they were the only major party to oppose
Muscles contract (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A little context (Score:3, Informative)
Uhm... may be because Muslims are *NOT* a racial group by any stretch of definition of one, that is if you know anything at all about Islam and ethnicities on Earth?
Muslim pupulation ranges from purely Aryan Iranians (for those not aware, the real Aryans, as far as ethnicity goes, live in Iran, despite nazi's rantings); to Arabs (who are racially closest to - *drumroll please* - you guessed it, Jews, being of semitic origin); to Mongoloids (Tatars in Russia) to Pushtuns/Uzbeks and their ethnic relatives in "-stan" area; to blacks (never mind modern American blaks - think Moors); to Philipinos; to Indonesians, to Chinese (some parts of China are Muslim). These days you can even add lots of pure caucasians, due to Muslimization of Europe.
To sum it up, there's almost no major or even mid-size race you can come up with that's nor represented in Islam, and thus the only "race" that Muslims can be recognized as would be Homo Sapience.
BTW, as a card-carrying
NOTE: I'm not saying that there aren't people who hate all Muslims 'cause of their religion. I just have a beef with a part your statement I quoted above.
You know nothing about Asia. (Score:1, Informative)
Please don't be so quick to foist your ignorance on others and make blanket statements about societies you have probably never visited.