It’s annoying, but marginally less so than the one proclaiming “Beer: helping ugly people get laid since 1821”.
If you got shit for pointing out that was a joke, try directing them to The Onion. Remember to report back to us.
Canada is 43% Catholic and we have same-sex marriage. And they had an argument about whether we can have a cross in the Quebec National Assembly. I’m surprised we’re not on there.
Always, except for the times that it has instead had a strong religious (typically Christian) element. Like, say, in Latin America.
Is that liberation theology?
Hah, debunking email forwards is a hobby of mine. So much so that an ex-girlfriend of mine will forward me stuff her mom sends her, just because she knows I won’t be able to resist taking the bait. 
But yeah, I hate it when folks refuse to let a little thing like the Truth get in the way of them being pissed off about something that someone they didn’t like didn’t even do.:rolleyes:
Now I’ve got “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” stuck in my head. I hate that song.
And I hate the kind of thinking that allows these people to refuse to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Well, I’d say it’s annoying in at least 192 countries.
You’d cross the 419 Scammer Gullibility Border.
The 419 SGL is the area of dishonesty you can lie within, but not leave, without defeating the purpose of your own lies. I figured it out myself by sending replies to 419 scammers. I sent increasingly ridiculous replies featuring pictures of my “relatives” that were pictures of Star Wars characters - I mean, like, Darth Vader and stuff - and the Ghostbusters and whatnot. None of the scammers EVER notice I’m claiming Han Solo is my brother, even if he’s standing next to Chewbacca and firing a blaster. Ever.
But send them a letter asking them to fill out a ridiculous form, and they’ll usually decline and suddenly run off. You’ve crossed the 419 SGB. See, they’re too stupid and greedy to care if you say your sister is the ghost librarian in Ghostbusters. But they do care, because it intrudes upon their personal space, if you want them to sign something. It’s not the extent of the lie, it’s whether it’s within their circle of understanding.
If you tell gullible fundamentalist parishioners that Uzbekistan is mean, mean mean to poor, downtrodden Christians, that flies fine, because to some toothless rube Uzbekistan may as well be Oz or Mars or Tatooine. But if you tell them the same thing about Canada, that (in some cases, not all) could result in a dissonance. Somebody might have a friend or a relative in Canada, or might well have been there with their truck proudly displaying a Jesus fish and all that, and would think “hmmm, that doesn’t jibe with my experience.”
The point to the shirt is not that 52 countries would shoot you for it. The number’s irrelevant. It could be 42 or 92 or 292. It doesn’t matter what does or doesn’t happen in Canada or, for that matter, anywhere else; they just needed a few dozen likely suspects most people would be willing to beleive were guilty. The point is “We Christians are a terribly persecuted group! Be afraid! It’s okay to go after other religions and things that frighten us, because we’re just defending ourselves.”
“sometimes they don’t get along”. Excuse me while I vomit.
I can’t imagine that wearing a shirt with a cross on it would be illegal in China. I’ve seen people wearing all kinds of crosses and crucifixes on shirts, necklaces, backpacks, etc. The one working church that we have in my city sells t-shirts with pictures of jesus and the cross on them.
Also, hmmm, I’ve seen pictures of the Dalai Lama around here before. Several were published in the newspaper during the 2008 riots in Tibet. Pictures of the Dalai Lama in his younger years abound. Though that story about the shirt is pretty funny…or disturbing.
So the t-shirt is about as accurate as the Bible.
That seems fair.
My father does missionary work with Youth with a Mission in the Sudan, and apparently that group works closely with the VotM. I get the sense, from what my father shares with me, that they’re all about posturing as fighting against evil Muslim oppression of innocent and holy Christians who are just bringing food and medicine (and the Word) to the benighted polytheistic/animistic heather natives.
And some more names, I hope. Must be confusing, having all the natives named Heather.
:smack:
HEATHEN. HEATHEN natives.
Although a whole tribe of Heathers might make the movie of the same name that much more awesome.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, I gave them a chance to get the benefit of the doubt, but I wrote the above “review” of the shirt and they said my review of the shirt “has been received”.
But they never put it up on the site. I have a feeling it may never show up. Other reviews are posted by people that “haven’t bought a shirt, but it’s a worthwhile investment, and a spectacular way to evangelize.”
So maybe their censorship is part-and-parcel of their commitment to Truth-In-Tshirt-ness.
Nigerias sectarian violence is only marginally about religion (though I have no doubts that the general trend towards religious polarization is increasing the fundamentalist base and adding an element of religious radicalization to the conflict.) You can just as easily say it is about light skinned people versus dark skinned people. Or about desert-dwellers fighting the lush rainforest people. It’s about several separate groups of people, each with a long and proud history of sovereignty going back more than a thousand years, rather suddenly having to share limited but often stunningly lucrative resources and political power with each other. Yes, one of those divides is religion. But religion is just a surface aspect to things- although if we frame the debate right we can probably ensure that radicals get to frame the debate and it does become a religious fight.
Anyway, the whole “Nigeria hates Christians” thing is funny because Nigeria is where you find people with names like “God’s-Precious-Joy” and places like “The Praise Jesus on the Mountain We are Saved Hair Salon and Tailor.” Southern Nigeria is e a big evangelical’s wet dream of religious tackiness and the tee shirt would fit right in.
Echoing sven, the claim is, “This shirt is illegal in 52 countries.” No. It’s not.
I’m guessing that the shirt might get you in trouble with the law in 4 countries – North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and possibly Afghanistan.[1] The Chinese example from over 20 years ago leaves me unimpressed. Anyway I pose that question to the board: in how many countries is that shirt illegal?
[1] Yemen? Libya?
It fails even at that, since it infers that “Wearing this shirt is perfectly OK in 140+ countries, including every country anyone’d *choose *to live in”
Not that it matters that much, since I somehow doubt most of the folk purchasing, wearing or even designing these shirts has ever or will ever go past the county line… The shirts themselves are probably made in China though 
But are Catholics likly to outlaw a shirt with a cross on it?