Superstition and Other Silliness: March 2003 Archives

If Rangers sign up Saliou Lassissi , a defender from the Ivory Coast, the fans will have something other than the usual religious arguments. Lassissi was badly injured in a game two years ago, but his rehabilitation has been delayed because he believes that modern medicine is evil.

Italian clubs have long been at the forefront of sports injury rehabilitation but, for Lassissi, his employers came to embody the devil incarnate.

A variety of injections were included in his treatment - vitamins, cortisone, painkillers - anti-inflammatories, but, according to sources within the Roma treatment room, Lassissi refused them all.

He believed that injections carried evil spirits, that everything his Ivory Coast upbringing had taught him screamed out that great harm would befall him if he accepted the physio's treatment programme.

Roma were dumbfounded. Lassissi refused to have anything to do with bad medicine and Roma saw his rehab stretching further and further into the distance.

FOOTBALL: SPELL OF A PLAYER - The Daily Record, 28th March 2003.

The current attacks on Iraq have inspired predictions of Armageddon and the Second Coming - this article from an Ohio newspaper looks at them in more depth. Iraq war generates predictions of Apocalypse - The Beacon Journal, 22nd March 2003.

A theology graduate has complained that a display about 17th century attitudes to witchcraft put together by school pupils as a history project encourages discrimination.

Theology graduate Pauline Charles said the 17th Century attitudes had no place in a 21st Century classroom.

She saw the exhibition when she went to an adult education workshop at the college and was shocked the paintings were stereotypical images of old women with bulbous noses and tall hats.

She said: I was horrified schoolchildren should be encouraged to discriminate in this way.

A local 'white witch', Marina Pepper, did not feel oppressed on being told about the exhibition and was keen to see it.

It sounds very much like this was a proper history project to me. I would be intrigued to see the paintings. I am sure the students will have learnt from it that religious fundamentalism in any form is wrong.

School in 'witch discrimination' row - The Argus, 19th March 2003.

Yorkshire: Two residents of Brighouse are concerned that a planned mobile phone mast on a church tower will be used to transmit pornography.

Mr Craig Drake and his wife Melody, who live in Haigh Street opposite the church, are leading a campaign against the installation of the masts. They made sure church members were aware of the possible pornographic link by placing leaflets on car windscreens during last Sunday morning's service.

We are very worried about the proposals. As well as the link with pornography there are health risks attached to the equipment and we do not feel the church tower is the right place for this equipment, said Mr Drake.

He said the video 'phone technology had only previously been available in Japan and it had become known that video phones were used to transmit pornographic images.

We fear this will happen in this country. Paedophile rings on the Internet are being clamped down on and we are worried people will use the new video 'phones instead, said Mr Drake, who has an 11-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter. I do not feel this is an appropriate use of the church tower.

Porn 'beamed from church mast' - Brighouse Today, 7th March 2003 - link likely to break as they keep moving it. (Thanks, Tez)

Zambia: Police who said that a suspect had been using witchcraft to elude them have now been accused of using witchcraft to enable them to catch him! The officers are said to have engaged the services of a witchdoctor.

Accusations that police removed their underpants to make the search more effective would be interpreted in Zambia as a sure sign of witchery; black magic is best practised naked.

But police said that, apart from the lack of underpants and their urination on traditional herbs found at Kalumba's hideaway, it was a conventional operation.

In the latest twist a journalist has been cautioned by police after claiming in an article that the president, Levy Mwanawasa, sanctioned the police's use of witchcraft as a last resort in the search for Dr Kalumba.

Worldwide: Police accused of using witchcraft to catch fugitive - Daily Telegraph, 8th March 2003. See also: Police blame witchcraft for their incompetence - Pagan Prattle, 16th January 2003.

Batley, West Yorkshire: A primary school has banned any reference to pigs, including traditional stories such as The Three Little Pigs in case it offends Muslims, much to the bewilderment of Muslims themselves.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: This is bizarre. There is nothing to stop children reading about pigs. The ban is simply on the consumption of pork and pig products.

The ban was discovered when a parent realised that all references to pigs had been removed from homework sheets. Children banned from reading Three Little Pigs - Ananova, 4th March 2003.

Ministers on the Church of Scotland are so worried about changes to their working conditions that union membership among them has doubled in recent months.

[Reverend Ian Fraser] said: I think people are coming into the trade union because they want the support of an organisation which knows how to negotiate and to achieve better conditions of service for all those involved in the work of the church.

The church is a complex organisation with committees and the minister very often feels very alone, so, it needs the support of a network, like a trade union, to see us through the difficult times.

Clergy signing up to union - BBC News, 3rd March 2003.