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Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament
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."
This whole Jedi religion dreck has now officially gone too far. To those misguided simpletons out there who insist on calling themselves 'Jedi knights', I offer you this chance to prove yourselves:
What's that...you can't? Don't have suitable raw materials, you say?
OK...that's fair...how about this, then:
Are you doing it? I'm not feeling anything...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Jedi Academy Student
Jedi Programmer
Jedi Religious Member
And did he use the Official Jedi Name Generator?
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Am I the only person who doesn't see the Jedi belief system flawed? I could only imagine the devestation to the republic if this became popular.
Peace out, homies.
This is not the article you are looking for.
Not every argument requires reduction to absurdity.
This is not the congressman you're looking for.
How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?
Oh, but we have. Problem is... they're all Siths. And the greedy kind.
"How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?"
They get Jedi, we get Sith...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
As if there wasn't enough lunacy in Parliament.
Finding God in a Dog
I'm glad that he's paying attention to this ridiculous bill by showing how daft the implications of it would be. Hopefully, along with Rowan Atkinson's recent attack, the bill will be defeated
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
Or maybe Count Obama?
Somehow "Master Kennedy" just doesn't have the same ring to it. And "Darth Delay" is only slightly better than "General Grievous"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Here is Jamie Reed's MP page on My Society's excellent TheyWorkForYou project.
And here is the screen scraped debate, that you can comment on like a blog.
You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
This is an absolute insult to those of us who hold religious beliefs. Now the faiths of Christianity, Judaism and Muslimism are on par with something made up in a movie!
Clearly, the Congresscritters in the US will never go Jedi, as they're already devotees of the Book of Bokonon. This can be seen by their tendency to speak in foma, or as the rest of us call them, "reassuring lies." ;-)
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
You have to realise that the British don't take anything too seriously, especially politics and religion.
In the US, I suspect a politician making light of religion in this way would upset a lot of people in The Bible Belt.
This gives immense insight into the type of people that get voted into Parliment. The voters are either oblivious, don't care, don't know better or maybe they are also members of that movement.
Or perhaps they have a really twisted sense of humor...
-ShelbyCobra
Living life in the right side of the s-plane
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...
Not really.
It's entirely different to claim to believe in Jedi and to claim to BE a Jedi. According to the books I've read and the movies, a Jedi is capable of performing these actions. They all have their "talents" but to be a Jedi you have to be able to manipulate the force in some tangible and demonstrable way.
The water to wine thing doesn't hold. It's not a commonly held dogma (leaving backwoods ministers from crazyville out) that Christians are given controllable powers. If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.
Never confuse volume with power.
Sounds to me as if he went straight over your head. He is opposing a bill that would outlaw the the stirring up of hatred against members of a religion. That includes jedi, sith, scientologist, whatever. The bill is very loosely worded as to what could be considered stirring up hatred. "Yoda was an arsehole, it all Jedi should be done away with" might qualify.
So this is a smart guy using satire to ridicule the bill in a fairly subtle way. So yes, I suppose you could say that it does give insight into the type of people who get voted in.
And in case anyone is wondering about the obsequious thanks to Jack Cunningham in the speech, it is traditional to thank your predecessor in your first speech to the commons.
We'll have a Jedi Senator years before we'll have an atheist one.
Fish-out-of-thin-air guy wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew.
Perhaps he was voted in by an electorate who believes he would do a good job of representing the people regardless of his peronal beliefs (no matter how unconventional).
Perhaps he was voted in by an electorate who are concerned about the bill outlawing 'incitement to relgious hatred' that is about to pass through the commons and runs a risk of making various forms of satire and free speech (including your post) potentially illegal.
In any case, we now how cllr's from the BNP, I would rather see a self-proclaimed 'Jedi' in parliment than a nazi-wannabe.
I've seen miracles performed in the name of Jesus that are far more impressive than water into wine.
For example the healing of severe burns, where the skin had turned black and begun to flake off, the affected hand was made as good as new as we watched.
I know it wasn't a trick because it was my hand that was burnt in an industrial accident and it was healed because the woman who is now my wife (who was there) prayed for healing in the name of Jesus. Had she not had the courage to pray and ignore the heckling of by standards I would haver had permanent and disfiguring damage.
Ok, this one isn't quite as simple or as amusing as the summary makes out, I'm afraid.
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.
...you're doing waving your hand around like that?
I'm a Congressman. Mind tricks don't work on me. Only money.
More people need to RTFA. No, I'm not new here, but still. Usually, people manage to get it somewhere on topic. This discussion is just completely out there.
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.
I think that this is somewhat missing the point...
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...
With all these people going Jedi on us, I'm wondering how many people check their roots and realize that it is not the Jedi that they are, but Numenorians??! Why do people give up on teh Valar so easily?
...you really think theres a single American politician with the balls to make fun of religion in public?
Its not like there hasn't been ample opportunity of late either. Answers on a postcard: how come you can do this sort of stuff in a country with an absolute union between state and the state religion (nb. Her Brittanic majesty is both head of state and head of the church of england) but you're in deep shit if you try it in the US with a written constitution ensuring free speech? I'm at a loss as to figure out how this state of affairs has arisen. I am however reasonably sure its not what the founding fathers had in mind.
Lucky for him, there are no active volcanos in the British Isles.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
And this from other belief systems differs... how?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.
Thomas did ask for proof, yes, and he got his proof. But Jesus castigated also him for it. Daring to ask for proof was seen as a much weaker for of faith than belief without seeing.
Such a philosophy goes a long way towards explaining the current climate in the US.
Download my free songs!
Sounds like he needed therapy.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
L Ron Hubbard didn't wait thousands of years to start his psycho religion, and now that religion has half the fucktards in Hollywood dumping their money into it. With such a proven track record, why should the Jedi nerds wait thousands of years to start theirs?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Answer: Never. Or when the U.S. changes over to proportional representation, whichever comes first.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the Jedi
with the business end of a double-bladed lightsaber given to
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo Sith Lord and
star of many ILM møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Sith Lord", "Gungans of Passion", "The Mani Mitichlorians of Horst Nordfink"...
I hope you will next time. We need people like this to stand up against any trend towards religiousity becoming part of government (as distinct from part of state) in the UK. For the many people who consider religion to be no more than fiction or, at best, mythology, those who will mock its place in parliament are to be encouraged and voted for. A
Time is life: speed saves it. LJK Setright
Please show me where it says in the bible that God caused life to appear out of nowhere. Please show me where the bible references TIME at all after those first seven days, when God was creating humans, plants, and animals. There is no indication whatsoever that God snapped his fingers and life suddenly appeared. By believing in this man-invented concept of creationism, you are claiming to understand how your god did these things and how long it took him.
Your catagorical disbelief of evolution (as opposed to specific objections, like irregularities in the evidence) is not supported by the world around us, and it is not supported by the very book you claim to follow. It is illogical, irrational, extremely arrogant, and is modded flamebait for very good reason.
As for the "it's just a theory" horseshit, well, if you haven't figured out how worthless that statement is by now, you really are beyond all reason. Things like eletricity and gravity and relativity and nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are all theories, and have all field very real, practical results. Evolution, too, has shown itself to be real as best it can, but no one can prove it to be absolutely, unquestionably true any more than they could prove that an electrons are real by picking one up and showing it to me.
But you go ahead and keep believing that electrons aren't real because you can't observe them directly. Just try not to get hit by a bolt of lightning...
Money didn't save the Jews from the Germans, or the Russians, or the Spanish, or the French... Or any of the other peoples who turned on the Jews in order to steal their money. The real "Force" is going with the tao of the universe to survive the downturns. There the Jews have claim to some power: staying power.
--
make install -not war
"There was only one Christian, and he died on the cross." ...2 points for the attribution.
PS: I'd like to know what percent of American christians believe that Jesus was literally a man-god, as opposed to a godly man. Yes, I'm sure there are those out there who would bet their life that an omnipotent sky dweller is responsible for everything, but I doubt it's really a large percentage. Pulled-out-of-my-ass statistic: maybe 25% of american christians (and that's a highball).
Keep in mind that the ones who are the most extreme correspond highly with those who are most vocal.
And before the slashdot conserva-posse comes to lynch me, I do not hate christianity, only lunacy. Frankly, I think the saddest part of christianity today is that there is so much of value which is totally ignored for the benefit of those who wield the devotion of the masses.
"You can flame me now. My heart is full of love." ~somebody else's sig
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I once heard a story about a pastor who asked the members of his board of elders to drink poison to prove they have faith.
The pastor and all the elders died except one.
When asked why he didn't drink with the others he said "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Luke 4:12".
The problem is not a lack of "super powers" but a lack of understanding of the Bible.
When Christians don't understand what the Bible teaches they are bound to do stupid things "in the name of God".
Jesus said:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?' Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.' " -Matthew 7:21-23
The prophecy was that he would bring balance to the force, not destroy the sith. Balance would be the Jedi and Sith having equal power, but since that would just be non stop war, having only 2 of each (discounting EU) left, Obi-Wan and Yoda, and Vader and the Emporer, achieves a pretty good balance.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Yes, Jesus did claim to be God. See this page for a detailed list of places in the Gospels where Jesus made that claim.
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.
Sounds to me as if he went straight over your head. He is opposing a bill that would outlaw the the stirring up of hatred against members of a religion.
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?
"Turn around... Turn-- Turn around..."
"Behold! I have created food!"
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
To be a Jedi. .
1. Follow a path of Serving Others rather than Serving Self.
2. Use force only for defense.
3. Do not allow strong emotions to rule your thoughts and actions.
4. Believe that one's Focus Determines One's Reality.
5. Do not allow attachments into your life.
6. Learn how to manipulate the 'Force'.
7. Learn martial arts with respect to the sword.
There's probably other elements, but that's all I could think of off the top from the films.
My thoughts on those points by number. .
1. Agree wholeheartedly with the principal. Hard to do in this reality where eating kills and everybody has baggage they're working through.
2. Fits with the first point.
3. Hmm. Sounds like a good idea, but I'm not entirely clear on this. I think love and compassion, and emotion in general are really, really important to explore and understand within yourself. Shutting them off does not allow self knowledge, but rather puts up walls which cause problems.
4. Absolutely. "Your Focus determines your Reality". This is an incredibly powerful function of this reality. This is difficult to understate. This is the easiest route to so-called 'magic' I've ever seen. Anybody can make anything happen, but watch out for anticipation. That and wishful thinking will derail you every time.
5. Yes, but it's a very easy thing to screw up. A blanket law of not being allowed to love makes it easy to follow, but is probably crippling in the long run. In the end, learning how to love without attachment is one of THE big goals in this reality.
6. Energy works rather differently here than it does in the Star Wars universe, but the general idea is there.
7. Why not? How can one expect to master the ephemeral if one cannot master the physical?
Those are just my thoughts. --Plus this last one; I don't think Jedi can be considered a religion in the classic sense, (besides the fact that it's made up), in that religions typically involve (petty) god worship at some point, (that and not asking too many questions). Whereas 'Jedi' seems to be more like the study of spirituality without such limitations; self-exploration and the exploration of reality through the interaction of consciousness and spirit with the universe. Not the same as no fish on Fridays and believing in Roman social engineering/population herding propaganda (the Bible).
-FL
Good thing too, it'd be pretty damn gross if you were chowing down on your wafer and it suddenly turned into a warm rubbery little disc of human flesh.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
> the power of those styles. Even in asia, fery few people believe in chi these days.
I totally agree with you based on my experience with Goju Karate, Jujitsu, Shorinji Kempo, Chi Kung, Baguazhang, and Kung Fu. No question, chi is just a convenient way of thinking about your body and isn't actually real---that was my experience.
Except then I accidentally measured the damn stuff.
Surprised the heck out of me when I did it---I was TOTALLY expecting a different result. So I repeated the experiment. And again. And again. And...well, I explained the result to friends kinda like this:
I was sitting in a research talk about databases, and having trouble paying attention because I'd just presented and it was right after lunch. The speakers were passing around wireless heat sensors, so I started playing with one when it came around to me. The standard demo was to hold it in one hand and then cup your other hand over it - the sensor would pick up the heat change, and the assosciated data stream being shown on the screen at the front of the room would spike up to a new level accordingly.
After doing that a couple of times, I was bored again. I decided it would be fun try pretend to channel chi into it; nothing would happen, of course, but the idea was worth a few seconds of chuckling---flinging chi at a doctorate-level research project! Amusing notion, but with only one problem:
I was wrong.
I did a half-hearted two seconds of a standard little meditation/visualization meant to build up chi, and pictured it flowing through my arms down into the sensor, fully expecting the continuously-updated data display to be wholly unchanged. You can imagine I was a mite surprised, then, when the sensor output spiked at the exact moment I was doing this.
My immediate thought was that it was pure coincidence - the sensor's readings probably spike randomly every now and then no matter what's going on. If I waited a little while, I figured, I'd see a similar spike without me doing anything, and that would be that.
So I waited.
Nothing.
Okay, first two hypotheses---that nothing would happen and that it was a coincidence---were false. But it was probably a fluke---I doubted it'd happen again.
So I did the little two-second meditaty thing again...and the sensor spiked again, exactly at the instant I was visualizing the chi hitting it. So much for hypothesis #3.
At this point, I figured it was pretty clear that I was indeed causing the spikes in the sensor readings, but how? I guessed that maybe I'd been inadvertently tensing my hands a little, moving them closer to the sensor cupped inside. So, of course, I test that, doing the channel-thing again, but this time keeping _very_ careful watch on my hands to see that they're completely motionless.
Spike!
I ran that test a second time, holding my hands motionless through the both tests and the maybe-it's-coincidence-after-all? waiting period in between; spikes (only) at the instant of channelling, just as before. Hypothesis #4 bites the dust.
Well, alright, I thought, if I'm doing something to influence the sensor, is it just yes/no, or is it actually measuring something? If I'm theoretically channelling _more_ chi, will I get a bigger spike in the readings?
Hypothesis #5.
This time I do the building-chi visualization for a little longer, maybe 3-4 seconds, and visualize a more powerful stream of chi flowing through my hands into the sensor.
And the sensor spikes like I've never seen before, not when I was doing the previous tests, not when I or anyone else was cupping and uncupping our hands around it, never---this spike is significantly larger than any other change I'd seen the sensors detec