31 Years After John Lennon’s Death, His Dream Lives On
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Monthly Archives: December 2011
Christopher Hitchens: On Fascism
Why Are Theists Angry?
Most religious believers really can’t even attempt to defend their beliefs and so they get angry at atheists for forcing them to think. If everyone believes in God, then they can continue to live in blissful delusion, but if just one person rejects that belief then the delusion is diluted. The possibility arises that God might not exist. The more people reject the belief in a god, the more religious believers have to accept the possibility that they are wrong and that God doesn’t exist.
Police More Militarized Than Ever
Updated Version of Noam Chomsky’s “9/11” Book Takes On Bin Laden’s Death, Imperial Mentality
Chomsky argues that the US government has done exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted it to do: Dig into a series of expensive and bloody wars in Muslim countries, draining the American economy and causing many civilian casualties. . . 9-11 is a crash course in America’s terrorism against inconvenient regimes, and a primer in the ways that those in power have misled the American public by suggesting that September 11 happened in a vacuum. . . He explains the hypocrisy of the US government’s definition of terrorism – the use of violence for political or psychological goals rather than monetary gain – in light of the fact that US government agencies have been using exactly those methods for decades, directly and indirectly.
Irrationality
Activist Elijah with Michele Bachmann
Chaplains Wanted For Atheists In Foxholes by NPR STAFF
Military Religious Demographics Source: MAAF
Listen to the Story on NPRs All Things Considered here . . .
Hazmat Suits to Break Up Occupations? How Mayors Feign Concern for Health to Trash a Growing Movement
Mayors and police around the country have pretended public health is the reason for shutting down Occupy protests, but their actions belie their words. . . Michael Ratner [president of the Center for Constitutional Rights] noted that the idea of protesters being unclean has a long history in this country, that various generations of immigrants were described as dirty, as outsiders, as not really American. “What it does is it paints the protesters as a dangerous infection in america that has to be cut out, it’s like saying they’re a cancer or radioactive, that’s saying they’re not part of our country, not part of our tradition of protest.” . . . Instead, it seems that the real contagion is community, as Fagin said, but more than that, the very idea of fighting back. Whether it’s a mayor shutting down an occupation in his or her city or a businessman complaining that his workers want to collectively bargain, the idea that people might work together appears to be, itself, a hazard.
Stephen Fry loses it on QI
They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is . . .
Always Question Authority 