Category Archives: Politics

Quote: PZ Myers

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Paul Zachary “PZ” Myers (born March 9, 1957)
Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, Author of the Pharyngula Freethought Blog, Public Critic of Intelligent Design, and Outspoken Atheist

It seems to be an obligatory opinion of people who believe in mockable and ridiculous things that they will oppose mockery and ridicule. I’m afraid there is no magical exemption — there isn’t a set of stupid beliefs that you get to set on a pedestal and declare that no one can call them stupid. 

The Other Debt Crisis: Climate Debt

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The climate crisis in Bolivia is not a headline or an abstraction – it is playing out in people’s lives in real time.

Melting glaciers are threatening the water supply of the country’s two biggest cities. Increasing droughts and floods are playing havoc with agriculture.

So it is no surprise that in climate negotiations, Bolivia is emerging as a leader in the global south – advancing both radical solutions and analysis that make rich countries distinctly nervous.

On this edition of Fault Lines, Avi Lewis travels to Bolivia to explore the country’s climate crusade from the inside.

It is the story of an emerging movement, based in the global south, raising questions about who owes what to whom in confronting the climate crisis.

And it is playing out in Bolivia’s epic landscape – from the tropical glaciers to the endless salt flats. A landscape that in normal times seems to mock the very idea that human beings can change the course of nature.

Watch video here . . .

Bill Looman, Georgia Business Owner, Draws Fire For ‘Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone’

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A west Georgia business owner has been deluged with calls and emails after posting signs on his company’s trucks that say he’s not hiring anyone until President Barack Obama leaves office.

A redneck small business owner in the deep south, who could  have imagined that? He draped himself in the flag with his non subject related mention of military service, but failed to thump the bible while he was at it. What kind of Neoliberal Reactionary is he?  [MSH]

Watch video here . . .  

History too kind to Puritans’ brutal intolerance

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Americans who worry about Muslim countries adopting Sharia law forget that our country was first settled by Christian fundamentalists who codified their own version of religious absolutism — and had no qualms about killing anyone who objected. . . The truth is that the Puritans had no problem with religious persecution. They just wanted to be the ones doing the persecuting.

Read more . . .  

Why Are People Still Afraid of Atheism?

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A landmark 2006 study, analyzing data from a large survey of Americans, found that atheists “are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious and other minority groups.”

There is no actual evidence backing up the assumption that atheism somehow leads to a decline in morality. In a 2009 study, sociologist Phil Zuckerman argued that “a strong case could be made that atheists and secular people actually possess a stronger or more ethical sense of social justice than their religious peers,” adding that they, on average, have “lower levels of prejudice, ethnocentrism, racism and homophobia” than the much larger population of believers. He adds that “with the important exception of suicide, states and nations with a preponderance of nonreligious people actually fare better on most indicators of societal health than those without.”

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No Thanks to Thanksgiving

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We should atone for the genocide that was incited — and condoned — by the very men we idolize as our ‘heroic’ founding fathers. . . Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. . . Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures — such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq — as another benevolent action.

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Overdue Notice: Defend Our Libraries

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. . . [T]oday, in the wake of an inexhaustible economic crisis and the reactionary assault on everything public, the public library is under attack. Local governments across the United States—from New York City to Detroit, and from Denver to Seattle—are slashing library budgets and closing libraries. . . These cuts will disproportionately punish poor and working class people.

Another key aspect of the public library mission is to defend free speech and intellectual freedom. With programs like “Banned Books Week,” libraries are on the front lines of defending the rights of people to examine unpopular points of view so they can make their own informed decisions.

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