Monthly Archives: December 2011

Politics, Religion and the Tea Party

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With a powerful Tea Party movement framing Republican policy in Washington and across the US, Fault Lines looks into the links between the Tea Party movement, the Christian conservative movement and Republican politics ahead of the GOP primaries.

As the race for the Republican presidential nomination for the 2012 elections heats up, Fault Lines follows the Iowa campaign trail to investigate the underlying forces shaping candidates’ strategies.

How have politics, religion and the far-right conservative movement reshaped the political landscape of the US?

Watch video here . . .

I Got Your “Tolerance” Right Here…

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. . . The fact that the Christian or Muslim does not obey their holy books does not change what is in the books, and when you redact the few and far-between messages about peace, love and understanding, you are left [with] books that are basically manuals on how to hate people who don’t agree with you and the various methods of punishment that should be meted out, up to and including death.

Until we can all agree that diplomacy should not even be on the table until the religious leaders of the world agree to remove the bigoted, hateful and discriminatory doctrines and beliefs from their official doctrines, even if that means redacting huge chunks of their holy books, there will be no hope of compromise or co-existence.

Christianity is marketed as a religion of love and tolerance and Islam is marketed as a religion of peace.  However, on their fundamental levels, these belief systems causes division, promote willful ignorance and retard intellectual growth.

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Richard Dawkins attacks David Cameron over faith schools

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Modern society requires and deserves a truly secular state, by which I do not mean state atheism, but state neutrality in all matters pertaining to religion: the recognition that faith is personal and no business of the state.

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Posted by New Statesman – 12 December 2011 11:05

Robert Redford: Keystone XL and Jobs: Just More Pipe Dreams

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The project would provide, at most, 6,000 temporary construction jobs, very few of which would be local hires, according to an analysis performed by the U.S. State Department. Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute did its own evaluation, concluding that the project would employ between 2,500 and 4,650 construction workers. “Most jobs created will be temporary and non-local,” the institute concluded in its report, appropriately titled, “Pipe Dreams?” The real jobs in the region come from the ranches and farms, more than a quarter of a million of them in the Great Plains states the pipeline would pass through. Why would we put these fertile croplands, and the wheat, corn, and cattle they produce, at risk for the profits of the oil industry? It had, by the way, more than $100 billion in profits during just the first nine months of the year. Nothing wrong with profits, but let’s not pretend this is about anything else.

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Bill Moyers: Why ‘We The People’ Must Triumph Over Corporate Power

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Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down by the corporate and political right. Instead of creating a fair and level playing field for all, government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. . . We have already amended the Constitution twenty-seven times. Amendment campaigns are how we have always made the promise of equality and liberty more real. Difficult? Of course; as Frederick Douglass taught us, power concedes nothing without a struggle. To contend with power, Clements and his colleague John Bonifaz founded Free Speech for People, a nationwide nonpartisan effort to overturn Citizens United and corporate rights doctrines that unduly leverage corporate economic power into political power.

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Noam Chomsky: Marching Off the Cliff

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The standard “he says/she says” coverage of the issue keeps to what is called “balance”: the overwhelming majority of scientists on one side, the denialists on the other. The scientists who issue the more dire warnings are largely ignored. . . The Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives is now dismantling environmental measures introduced by Richard Nixon, in many respects the last liberal president. This reactionary behavior is one of many indications of the crisis of U.S. democracy in the past generation.

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Anti-[Choice] Activists Plan To Harass Women With ‘Empty Manger’ [Holiday] Caroling

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This holiday season, anti-[choice] activists in several states are renewing one of their favorite traditions: harassing women in front of family planning clinics with mean-spirited [Holiday] carols.

RH Reality Check reports on the antics of [Anti-Choice] Wisconsin:

Yes, for the few days leading up to [Holiday], [Anti-Choice] Wisconsin has pledged to deck the halls, or at least the sidewalks, of Wisconsin clinics with [Holiday] carols for the “empty mangers” that will exist due to [choice].

Via their website: Last year’s Empty Manger [Holiday] Caroling effort was so popular, we’re doing it again this year, and in more cities to boot! What better way to bring the joy of [Holidays] to a place where [choice] abounds?

Meanwhile, the [Anti-Choice] League’s website lists a jam-packed schedule of anti-[choice Holiday] caroling in the Chicago area. Events are also listed in Birmingham, Alabama, and several California cities.

In the true spirit of the holidays, women who need help from reproductive clinics will now have [to] face a swarm of religious ideologues who have turned their condemnation into song for the occasion.

Please note the bracketing; do not allow the reactionaries to own the language! 

Published on ThinkProgress Health By Marie Diamond on Dec 9, 2011 at 10:32 am