Central America

32 followers

230 daily readers

rank of 26

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Some people just don't want to believe what's in front of their eyes. Why do so many have so little faith?

Take the news from Trinidad this week. Seventeen high school girls fell ill simultaneously, then started rolling on the ground and talking in strange tongues.

The Moruga Composite School students appeared to suffer nausea and headaches. Two tried to throw themselves over a railing and had to be restrained. Others fell into a semi-conscious state, eyes rolling and limbs out of control.

Alarmed school administrators called in Roman Catholic priests and pastors from nearby churches, who showered the students with holy water and said prayers. The exorcism seemed to work. Several of the girls were taken to hospital suffering grazes and bruises, but all were later released and full recoveries were made.

They were lucky. One teacher said the school was built on top of a cemetery. And a male student told the local newspaper that he had communicated with a "devil" who had possessed one of girls. "I asked the Devil what he wanted with the girls and the voice said he wanted a life," the boy said.

Despite all this evidence of evil visitation, however, some local residents are claiming the whole thing was a hoax. One said there is no cemetery under the school. Another said the whole thing had been arranged by clergy to drum up publicity for the church. Even local municipal administrators showed themselves on the side of the doubters, claiming there was "nothing in the environment to trigger the event".

It's shocking that people can doubt events just because they involve things we don't easily understand. And the fact that the whole episode was just like a scene in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible was, of course, pure coincidence.
dailymail.co.uk

102

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Central America, Trinidad and Tobago, Occult, Religion

Email this Post to a Friend

Getting to the bottom of the graffiti problem

March 8th 2010 06:35

VYOOS EDITORIAL
Sometimes, the best decisions in law are innovative moments of colour splashed on grey areas of inefficacy.

The ideal judicial system is one which protects both the citizens of a community and the rights of those citizens. But the law can be a platform of social justice made of quicksand. It can never cover all eventualities, and if people try to make it do so, the law can be an ass.

An example surfaced in San Juan del Rio in Queretaro state, central Mexico, late last week, when police caught a 13-year-old boy spray-painting graffiti tags on municipal property. They took the boy to a municipal official whose job it was to deal with petty offences.

The official decided that, in this case, a lesson about vandalism and the sanctity of other people's property might be learned if he spray-painted the boy's buttocks.

So he did.

The San Juan del Rio mayor promptly fired the official, saying he should have played it by the book and informed the boy's parents, who would then be responsible for paying for the graffiti to be removed.

In today's carefully sanitised and correct world, the mayor was right. Informing the parents, and forcing them to pay for the damage, was the legally mandated and sensible thing to do. It is interesting, however, that this action would in no obvious way have given the boy a demonstration of why his behaviour was considered unacceptable.

To be fair, the official went too far. You can not pull down the pants of anyone, let alone a 13-year-old, and spray-paint their bum to make a point. But perhaps the point could have been made anecdotally imagine how you would feel if I violated your property, to wit, your bottom, by taking this spray can and ...

If, next weekend, the 13-year-old boy decides after consideration that he is no longer inclined to spray-paint graffiti on municipal property, do you think we will have the mayor, who still has his job, to thank, or the official who no longer has his job?

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Mexico, Human nature, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Vyoos Editorial

Email this Post to a Friend

Swine flu death toll 160 and counting

April 29th 2009 23:00

The number of deaths thought to be attributable to swine flu is 160 and counting. A Mexican toddler has died in America, the first swine flu death outside Mexico. The World Health Organization has upgraded its global threat level to 5, its second-highest, and warned nations to prepare for a global flu pandemic. Everyone from health regulators to travellers, not to mention the entire population of Mexico, is holding their breath wondering there this will end.

There have been confirmed cases as far apart as Scotland, Israel and New Zealand, all involving people who had travelled recently to Mexico.

Mexico City has 20 million people. The most affected area is its central section, home to eight million people. There, all restaurants, bars and cinemas have been closed by public order as part of increasingly radical measures to fight the outbreak.

It all brings back memories of the SARS scare in Hong Kong, where I lived at the time, and commuter trains full of people wearing medical masks. There was a certain stoicism about something utterly sinister and yet completely beyond the control of normal citizens. Life must go on. Many people looked fearful. Some looked relaxed. Some drew funny pictures on their face masks. Others laughed in the face of danger and refused to wear masks at all.

Human nature is wonderful. But swine flu isn't. Where will it end?
image: Agence France Presse

Vote