BULLETIN NOW ALSO IN SPANISH LANGUAGE

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Bienvenido a la versión en Español del Boletín Racionalista Internacional!

ALGERIA: UNCOMPROMISING FIGHT AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM

In Berrouaghia, 70-kilometer south from Algiers, 26 residents of a shantytown have been gunned down by a troop of Islamic fundamentalists on 11 February. Eleven of the victims were children under 14 years. The militants entered the shantytown with Kalashnikov assault rifles and fired at everybody around. The residents believe that they would have killed all the 500 inhabitants if not stopped by nearby stationed soldiers who opened fire on them and forced them to retreat to the forest from where they had come. Workers of a neighboring factory, noticing the massacre, alarmed the soldiers by activating a warning siren.

Such gruesome scenes of terror against the population have become common in the northern African state. Just four days before, seven shepherds were killed, and two weeks back, 25 villagers including 16 children and four women were slaughtered by slashing their throats. More than 100,000 people have been killed since Islamic fundamentalists took up arms in 1992.

In 1992, Islamic hard-liners tried to sweep the parliamentary elections, threatening to "turn ballot boxes into coffins". The government banned all non-religious activities in the 10,000 mosques of the country and cancelled the second part of the polls. This unleashed a wave of violence. The Islamic Salvation Front started fighting for theocracy. It comprised of Afghan mercenaries, who found after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan their new target in Algeria. The militants lead a war of atrocities against the population, especially against intellectuals and women. They massacred, decapitated, raped and cut off women's breasts. About hundred journalists were killed. The government took a tough stand and refused to share any negotiation table with the terrorists. In December 1996, newly elected president Liamine Zeroual established a constitution that banned political parties formed on the basis of religion. Algeria fought a brave and successful battle to develop and defend sound democratic structures and is today the only Islamic country which does not give in to political manipulation in the name of religion and fights fundamentalism without reservation.

USA: ATHEISTS TO PICKET WHITE HOUSE

Atheists from across the country are heading to Washington, DCthis Saturday, 24 February, to picket the White House, and let President Bush know that they resent his call to spend public money on religious groups operating faith-based social services.

The demonstration is hosted by the atheist civil rights organization American Atheists (AA),which focuses on First Amendment public policy issues. Ellen Johnson, president of AA, said in a statement that involving religious groups in social services at public expense not only threatened the separation of church and state, but compelled millions of Americans who were atheists or had no religious beliefs to support all kinds of suspect, faith-based programs. Communication director Ron Barrier said that the Bush plan was about promoting religion, and turning compassion into a scheme to proselytize. Thousands of atheists in the USAhave signed a petition, which will be over handed by AArepresentatives to government officials on Saturday.

On 29 January, President Bush established a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and sent his controversial proposals to the Senate, earmarking billions of dollars in federal funds to religious groups. The coming legislation is expected to extend the charitable tax reduction and increase donations for the recognized groups by billions. Civil liberties activists have condemned this plan as unconstitutional as well as discriminatory: Some of the state-funded groups would only help those who share their faith, and nearly all of them would refuse to employ helpers who don't do so.

Some religious groups, on the other side, have expressed worries that the promised government money might come with strings attached. They can relax: Bush has pledged to set up a new government agency, "reporting directly to the president to ensure that charities are not secularized or slighted". "We will never ask an organization to compromise its core values and spiritual mission to get the help it needs", he promised already in 1999, long before becoming President.

GERMANY: DISSECTION OF HUMAN BODY STILL TABOO

An unusual and fascinating exhibition is currently being presented in Berlin, attracting daily thousands of visitors. It is titled Koerperwelten (Body Worlds) and has been organized by Professor Gunter von Hagens, reputed anatomist and head of the Heidelberg-based Institute for Plastination. The exhibition shows human corpses, preserved for medical research and science. The nearly 200 exhibits are skinless and dissected in various stages. They invite the visitor to take a look into the internal structures of the body in different positions and under different circumstances. There is, for example, a rider on a horseback, a sword fighter, a chess player and a pregnant woman with an eight months old fetus inside her womb. Professor von Hagens is pioneer of a special preservation technique, which substitutes water and fat with silicone and other plastics. Since 1978, with this method thousands of bodies have been treated and preserved for research purposes, before this exhibition was created, which is scheduled to go on a nation wide tour.

Koerperwelten has met with much appreciation by the public - but also with furious protest. The latter comes, of course, from the Roman Catholic Church, which strongly condemned the exhibition on moral and religious grounds and termed it as "sensationalist" and as an "affront to human dignity". The dissection of the human body for anatomical research has obviously remained a topper on the list of mortal sins - although centuries have passed since the Catholic Church threatened scientists and students for their scientific activities with draconian punishments. (Least we forget: in the Italian city of Padova one can still see the dissection table, which has once been conspiratively surrounded by professors and students of the university. This specially constructed table could be turned upside down any moment, so that the human corpse, which was the object of research, would change places with the corpse of some animal, when the henchmen of the church raided the university.)

Professor von Hagens has not only many appreciative observers of his work, he has today also about 3,300 donors bequeathing their bodies to his institute. The exhibition has further increased the number. The donors carry special passes, informing about their will.

USA: "COACHING" DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT!

Awidely unknown USinstitute has come to public attention, which operates silently but efficiently to change the course of world politics. The International Republican Institute is a Washington-based NGOwith the task to "develop" political parties in countries, which fail to satisfy the USgovernment with their own results in this field and are therefore to be provided "democratic" assistance from outside.

A recent article in Peace Watch, a publication by the government-funded Washington Institute of Peace, revealed the International Republican Institute as the driving force behind the powerfully growing Serbian opposition movement which overthrow former president Milosevic. The youth movement Optor (resistance) had been developed by the institute to become a critical force in the revolt of 5 October. After three months of disciplined, peaceful street demonstrations in Belgrade in 1996-1997, led by opposition and youth movement, achieved a first break-through in the political climate in Serbia, a strategic plan was worked out to alter the power structures with non-violent action techniques. The institute sent a specialist, retired USArmy Colonel Robert Helvey, to supervise the training of Optor's core members. They studied to identify power sources and their strengths and weaknesses and to use about 200 different non-violent action techniques "to put an opponent into a situation in which he has no choice but to loose". In April 1999, the trained cadres compiled a manual of such techniques and swarmed out to train 70,000 activists, who should become the backbone of the October 5 revolt.

VENEZUELA: THE CULT OF THE CATHOLIC VOODOO QUEEN

Nobody knows if she was an Indian princess sacrificed by her father to a giant serpent or the daughter of an escaped Spanish conquistador: Maria Lionza, the mighty queen goddess of the forests has a great following in Venezuela which is steadily increasing over the last decades. The belief in her is a unique blend of African black magic, rooted in old times of slavery, with Indian shamanism and a good dose of Catholic faith, which is dominant in the country.

Daniel Flynn observed a nightly session in a jungle shrine at the foot of the magic mountain of Sorte. He describes a ritual that is performed to purify three crying little boys from witchcraft. While the babies are lying in a chalk circle lightened by candles, a witch doctor invokes the protection of Maria Lionza by chanting verses in turn with a chorus. A shaman in trance spits liquor over the children's bodies and blows smoke from a cheroot into their faces, asking a spirit of the queen's "Court of the Seven African Powers" to possess him. He shrieks and moves faster and faster with the increasing speed of a group of drummers till he collapses. There are rumors about violence in connection with those rituals.

On weekends, Maria Lionza, like her Catholic namesake, grants relief from illnesses and adversities to the masses of faithful. Hundreds of pilgrims are flocking to her birthplace, many claim, they have been cured. The faith in Maria Lionza has dramatically increased during the last years of economic depression in Venezuela, which pressed 70 per cent of the population of the once so wealthy state into poverty.

USA: EXCITEMENT ABOUT JESUS - WAS SHE BLACK?

It is hanging in the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, New York, and is simply "disgusting". This is at least the considered view of Rudolph Guiliani, Major of New York and devout Catholic.

"Yo Mama's Last Supper" is a large photo exhibit by New York photographer Renee Cox, which surprises with a radically new image of Jesus Christ: (s)he is not only female but that too black. This may not be too astonishing, since the piece of art was conceived by a feminist black photographer. One could even argue the artist has expressed deepest religious feelings in this feature, mystically blending subject and object of worship together as one. But there is another problem: Jesus is naked. With her arms wide open she stands among her 12 black (and male) disciples. But that's art. "While many of these works are beautiful and easy to enjoy, others may be controversial and difficult for us as viewers", said museum director Arnold Leeman.

For Mayor Giuliani, this was anyway too much, and he swung into action to try and close the museum and to stop its public funding. Already in 1999, he tried to take legal action against the Brooklyn Museum, without success. There it was a portrait entitled Holy Virgin Marie by Nigerian-born British artist Chris Ofili, that arose his ire because it incorporated elephant dung.

The exhibition Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers is - until further notice - open for visitors.