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Category: Bigotry

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“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”
By Brynn Jacobs on November 11th, 2009

“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”

The shootings at Fort Hood last week have provoked a media feeding frenzy. Questions abound, and there is no dearth of speculation as to the shooter’s motives. Most articles I have seen waste no time pointing out that the shooter was a Muslim, that he exclaimed “Allahu akbar” before shooting, and that he is linked with radical imams and possibly Al Qaeda. That’s from the ostensibly “impartial” media, but there are also a few extremely distasteful editorial perspectives that are unfortunately quite mainstream that I wanted to comment on today. I’m afraid my ability to edit sarcasm out of my posts declines in direct proportion to the insanity and hypocrisy with which I’m confronted, so bear with me.

First, Forbes featured an article by Tunku Varadarajan entitled “Going Muslim“, a play on the old phrase “going postal”. He describes it thusly:

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

Bigotry • Current Events • Featured • Military • Religion
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By Mark Tiedemann on November 07th, 2009

Success and Sources: the Self-Created Problem of Christianity

I’m sure this will annoy a lot of people, some more than others.

This is one of those notions I stumble on from time to time while daydreaming or free associating. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about religion of late—as how could many people not be, what with the state of the world (he says with tongue in his other cheek, being both ironic and absurd)?—and trying to come up with some theory of it that might bleed off the poisons that seem to bubble up from it from time to time.

Someone said something to me that triggered this idea and it’s probably not original. But we were discussing Roman Catholicism and the observation was made that in its long history it has absorbed more than it has suppressed.

“Of course it has,” I responded. “That’s how it began, after all, as a congeries of pagan beliefs subsumed beneath an orthodox umbrella. It is the perfect example of an assembled religion.”

Regardless where the initial push came from, whatever its core ideology, the fact is that Roman Catholicism came to fruition as a political entity and it was a model of almost democratic universalism. The holidays (holy days) are mostly borrowings from other disciplines, retrofitted to make people comfortable with the new paradigm. Its rituals and mysteries are all adaptations of older religious ideas and practices, including a marvelous transplantation from Egyptian mythology of the entire Jesus myth (Horus—almost all of it is duplicated, including certain names, such as Lazarus, and the whole virgin birth motif, which itself is nothing particularly new). The architects of Roman Catholicism, let us assume to be more gracious than not, recognized a core set of beliefs that did not of themselves require the trappings of a religion or its concomitant institutions, but also saw that most people would prefer (or require) all that such physical and cultural manifestations afford. Romans above all understood in their bones the function of public architecture and ceremony. They seemed instinctively attuned to the idea that to get people to behave a certain way they should live within the physical representations of the philosophies behind such behavior. Romans were Romans as much because of their cities and roads as because of any political philosophy. The two supported each other. The church borrowed that big time.

But as an assembled religion, it had a problem, which was the necessity to obscure all the past manifestations, cut the ties to all the pagan practices they’d taken over, and embark on a long-term campaign to evoke cultural amnesia in order to represent themselves as The Truth. The problem with this is two-fold: [more . . . ]

American Culture • Bigotry • Culture • Politics • Religion
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If the Methodists can do it, why can’t everyone?
By Mike Pulcinella on October 26th, 2009

If the Methodists can do it, why can’t everyone?

While shooting footage for a documentary in Brooklyn this past weekend I came upon this sign outside of a Methodist church and felt compelled to share it with you. It made me feel good to see tolerance so boldly stated.

parkslope2

American Culture • Bigotry • Quality of Life • Religion • Uncategorized
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By Erich Vieth on October 20th, 2009

How to worship a loving God away from female priests and gays

Are you tired of worshiping the God of Love under the same roof as uppity women priests and gay people? Look no further, says the Vatican, because the Roman Catholic Church wants you. Come let us give you a safe place to worship, says the Church famous for harboring at least 4,000 pedophile priests.

Bigotry • Religion
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By Mark Tiedemann on October 18th, 2009

Rage and Injustice

When people ask why laws must be changed to protect behavior that seems “outside” social norms, it can sometimes be difficult to make the point that rights must accrue to individuals and their choices or they mean nothing. So when a woman is stoned in some backwater country for adultery (whether she is in fact married or not) or a young girl has her clitoris snipped off without having any say in the matter or when a child is allowed to die from a treatable illness because his or her parents believe that only prayer can save them or when people are denied basic civil rights because they don’t play the social game the same way as everyone else or—

If this were an issue of a racially mixed marriage, everyone would be aware and outraged. In this case it is not, it is a lesbian couple with children, who suffered a dual outrage—the first being denial of partner’s rights at the hospital where one perished and the second being the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the survivor against those who callously disregarded their basic humanity. The assumption by strangers that because they didn’t fit some cookie-cutter definition of Normal that their fundamental humanity could be abridged in a life and death situation is not something that is redressable other than by law, because without a law people will make up any old justification to be assholes. And without a law, the rest of us will let them get away with it.

Read the story. Be outraged. But do not be silent.

American Culture • Bigotry • Civil Rights • Court Decisions • Culture • Current Events • Featured • Law • Meaning of Life • Quality of Life • Social justice • children • ignorance
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By Erich Vieth on October 18th, 2009

Dan Choi: Love is worth fighting for.

Dan Choi is a well-decorated combat veteran who was dismissed from the military because was gay. His message at the National Equality March rally was simple and compelling. Choi made it clear that he is done asking and he is now telling. Don’t ask, don’t tell must be repealed immediately.

Bigotry • Military
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By Dan Klarmann on October 01st, 2009

New Direction in the World Wide Web

The U.S. Government is considering loosening the hold on the group created by the U.S. Government to oversee internet naming for the world. This recent PC Magazine article describes how ICANN Begins Moving Away from U.S. Control.

One big milestone will be to allow alphabets other than Latinate (English) in website names. This is a big change; going from one-byte letters to unicode two byte letters to accommodate the thousands-of-letter alphabets of pictographic languages. You browser already can handle this. And the next billion new internet users won’t need to first become fluent in the Roman Alphabet.

But the change that has the business community abuzz is that they are opening up the Top Level Domains. You know, .com, .org, .us, etc. Back when they added .com and .org there was some sputtering about the lack of need. After all, we had .gov, .org, .edu, and all the country domains. Why have specific virtual realms for-profit and non-profit suffixes? Then the web took off, and “everyone” soon associated the commercial superdomain (.com) with “the web”. Eventually, even government entities gave up on .gov, and made .com their native home, like usps.com.

Now, businesses are worried that opening up these suffixes completely will get expensive. One likely suggestion being debated is “.food”. Will McDonalds have to pony up to buy its suite of names in .food as well as in .com? What if someone opens up .burger? Want dot fries with that? It could get expensive and confusing to have dozens or hundreds of names for any given website.

Will this become a new boom time for cyber-squatters, those who buy up names and hold them for ransom?

And what about “www”? 15 years ago, there still was a subtle distinction between hyper-text transfer protocol (http://) and the Web (www). The former originally applied to text-only Bulletin Boards. But this has long evaporated, and www has become an artifact that remains mainly because it is easier to type than “http://” as an indicator to a browser of what you mean by a URL.

American Culture • Bigotry • Communication • Current Events • Internet
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Discharged gay soldier receives Harvard award
By Erich Vieth on September 23rd, 2009

Discharged gay soldier receives Harvard award

Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military because he had come out as a gay man, received a Service to Humanity award from the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. As part of his eloquent speech, Choi burned his discharge letter at the podium.

My initial reaction: Any society that can’t rectify a situation involving this much gross injustice probably can’t get much of anything done. Hint to Congress: Simply write a law that says you won’t kick highly competent soldiers out of the military just because they are gay.

Bigotry • Featured • Military
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Great Britain admits the obvious: Alan Turing was treated appallingly
By Erich Vieth on September 10th, 2009

Great Britain admits the obvious: Alan Turing was treated appallingly

Gordon Brown stepped up and plainly said what should have been said long ago. Alan Turing was a hero, yet he was treated terribly by the British government. Here’s an excerpt from The Guardian:

Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay.

Describing Turing’s treatment as “horrifying” and “utterly unfair”, Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. “We’re sorry, you deserved so much better,” Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.

Bigotry • Featured • Technology
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By Tim Hogan on September 04th, 2009

The Right is wrong

My 10 year old daughter came home from school last week, and while she sat with me eating her after-school snack asked me;

“Is President Obama a racist?” she said.

“No, honey, where’d you hear that?” I said.

“Well, [so and so] said that in class to me today and I just wanted to know,” she said.

“Did the person tell you where they had heard such a thing, honey?” I asked.

“Yeah, [their] grandpa said it,” my daughter replied. “He heard it on TV.”

My daughter and I had a discussion on what is racism, its source in ignorance, and how it’s just plain wrong. We also talked about the TV and radio shows which spread intolerance and bigotry for profit and political gain. My daughter’s eyes glazed over a little, and I said;

“Thanks for letting me know what’s up with you! Go play with your friends!”

Well, I never thought it could happen but, there is obviously no lowest depth of putrid vile chicanery that the far right wing racists will go to block anything that President Obama is up to keep his promise of change in America. Now they’re indoctrinating racism into 10 year old school children.

Bigotry • Politics
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Government-Hating: An American Value
By Mark Tiedemann on August 27th, 2009

Government-Hating: An American Value

G.O.P. Chairman Michael Steele made a few remarkably in-your-face comments recently about the health care debate. Here, in his own words, is pretty much where he thinks the nation is going, why it shouldn’t go there, and what the Republican Party stands for.

This morning on NPR he tangled with Steve Inskeep, in particular over this.

One quote in particular caught my eye: ” Simply put, we believe that health-care reform must be centered on patients, not government.”

When you listen to the NPR interview it’s clear that we’re hearing another in the now decades-long tirades against the government which has become the hallmark of Right Wing politics in this country.

In this country, in theory, the government is supposed to be us, the people. We elect our representatives, we tell them how we want them to vote, we change our minds, we are supposed to be in charge. In theory. Obviously, the reality is far from that. For one, we are not a full-fledged democracy, we are a republic, and while we elect those who operate the machinery of the republic on our behalf, we do not have a direct say in the running. Nor could we, really. it is simply too complex. We send our representatives to the various points of departure—state capitols, Washington D.C., county seats, city halls—to do that for us because it is a big, complex, often indecipherable melange of conflicting goals, viewpoints, and problems. We do not have the time to pay the necessary attention to do that work ourselves, so we pay people to do it for us.

So why do we distrust it so much?

Well, because we distrust each other.

American Culture • Bigotry • Communication • Community • Culture • Current Events • Featured • History • Medicine • Politics • hypocrisy • ignorance
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By Erich Vieth on August 23rd, 2009

Israeli lobby: if you’re against illegal settlements, you’re for ethnic cleansing of Jews

The Israeli lobby is at it again, according to a recent article by the U.K. Guardian. If you are against Israel’s illegal settlements on the land of Palestinians, you must supposedly be for ethnic cleansing of Jews:

The Israel Project, with an advisory board that includes 20 members of Congress from both parties, issued the confidential document to its supporters at about the time Obama came to power in January.

The report, marked as “not for distribution or publication” but since widely disseminated outside of the organisation, says that those who back the removal of the settlements should be told they are supporting ethnic cleansing and antisemitism. The guide offers what it describes as “the best settlement argument”.

Not coincidentally, there is a growing movement among British unions for the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel for its treatment of Palestinians and its failure to work toward peace.

Bigotry • Corruption • Politics • snake oil
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The My Of It
By Mark Tiedemann on August 17th, 2009

The My Of It

Listening to the harangue over the health care reform squabble, I can’t help thinking—even I saw a few episodes of West Wing, I who do not watch television, so of all the Lefties out there who probably hung on every second of that show, why is it so hard to grasp how things don’t get accomplished in D.C. ? Yeah, it was fiction, but it was, in my opinion, pretty accurate in terms of the culture.

But people complain and wonder why Obama doesn’t just “ram his reforms through.”

Well. The man is a consensus builder. We just got done with a president who wasn’t. Obama has not yet been in office a year and already people are ready to jump ship because he’s not the second coming of FDR.

How thoughtless, ill-informed, and shallow supposedly intelligent people can be. It should not be surprising, yet…

First off, instead of presenting his reform package, he handed it to Congress—which is where all the arguing was going to happen anyway. Suppose he had presented a package. What is happening now would have happened anyway, and then he would be directly blamed for having drafted a lame plan. His plan would have been eviscerated and Congress wouold then proceed to draft something possibly worse than what it emerging now since Obama’s plan would have been discredited through failure. As it is, the plan being touted is All Congress’s. Anything wrong with it, it’s on them. Obama has been arguing that regardless what happens, things have to change—which is frightening. With the stimulus package, things were already broken. With health care they are merely on the verge.

Secondly, he’s got lots of balls in the air just now. A lot. Most of them are disasters he inherited.

Now, the metaphor has been used before, but that doesn’t make it any less true—this country is a Big Ship and you don’t turn it around on a dime. If you do that, you break more than you fix. Maybe that’s what needs to happen, and sometimes we’ve had leaders who did that when there was but one maybe two major things that needed to be tended to. But that’s not the case just now.

Everything is in a mess.

I’m not going to fault the man for failing to meet impossible expectations. Let’s assume he did just start “ramming things through” and taking a dump all over Congress in the process, and things would inevitably get worse. For the ideologues who are displeased with what they perceive as half-measures just now, he might be a hero. Maybe, but quite certainly he would be a one-term hero. The Republicans could make good book on a spectacular failure and be right back in power, at least in Congress, and then what?

So I think it a stupid thing to start bailing on him this soon into his term when he is possibly the most unifying, certainly the most intelligent and well educated president we’ve had since…hm.

Here’s what’s going to happen. Congress will put together a lame package. It will pass. Then likely as not it will fail. The system will collapse. On its own.

Then the big fix will come in. Congress will be discredited and Obama will be able to present a plan with legs and the public will back it because they will already have seen what happens when the really necessary steps are not taken.

Right now, the reality is that health care costs too damn much.

American Culture • Bigotry • Communication • Culture • Current Events • Economy • Education • Featured • Health • Language • Noteworthy • Politics • Psychology Cognition • ignorance • snake oil
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