The Onion: Anxiety-Ridden man is ashamed of everything he does

Here's the report from The Onion, and here's an excerpt:

"Tim's the kind of guy who is forever second-guessing his behavior, as if the people in his life are constantly scrutinizing every single move he makes, and he's completely correct about that—we are," said Paula Ramirez, a coworker who admitted she can barely look at Gibula without a medley of his most embarrassing moments replaying in her head. "Anytime he's been petrified at the thought of social interaction or obsessively reexamined something he's said, his fears have been entirely reasonable, given our nonstop monitoring of his behavior."

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About Canada

A few months ago at Truthdig, Chris Hedges had this to say about Canada:

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment. But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

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The Story of 178873: Ben Fainer, Holocaust Survivor

I met 81 year old Ben Fainer two weeks ago at Grand Center Arts Academy in St. Louis. Ben had been invited by one of the social studies teachers to tell the seventh graders about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. As a parent of one of the students, I was also invited to attend. I found his presentation to be stunning and inspiring. One of the things that stood out to me was Ben's admonition that, despite all he went through, he found hatred to be self-destructive. On April 21, 2012, Ben (known as "Bendet Urman Fajner" when he lived in Poland as a boy) allowed me to videotape the story of how he survived six years in several Nazi concentration camps, from 1939 until he was rescued by American soldiers in 1945. He was only 9 1/2 years old when he was captured. Therefore, in this interview, you'll hear what it was like to be a child imprisoned for the crime of being a Jew. At first, he was assigned special chores like shining shoes and cleaning offices for the regime. He grew up in these camps, though, and eventually he was put to work in factories alongside adult prisoners. In this video, you'll hear that he would never have survived had he not lied about his age.

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The Clergy Project: Seeking religious leaders who no longer believe in God

On several occasions, a priest or minister has admitted to me that he (they were all men) sometimes wondered whether God existed. The first occasion was about 25 years ago, and I was surprised to hear this. I now suspect that all honest religious leaders wonder whether God really exists. I had read about The Clergy Project before, and I note that it is still going strong.

The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs. The Clergy Project launched on March 21st, 2011. Currently, the community's 200 plus members use it to network and discuss what it's like being an unbelieving leader in a religious community. The Clergy Project’s goal is to support members as they move beyond faith. Members freely discuss issues related to their transition from believer to unbeliever including: Wrestling with intellectual, ethical, philosophical and theological issues Coping with cognitive dissonance Addressing feelings of being stuck and fearing the future Looking for new careers Telling their families Sharing useful resources Living as a nonbeliever with religious spouses and family Using humor to soften the pain Finding a way out of the ministry Adjusting to life after the ministry
Richard Dawkins' site published an article on the Clergy Project. Here's an excerpt:
The Clergy Project — a private, invitation-only “safe house” community of current and former pastors, priests and rabbis who no longer hold the supernatural beliefs of their religious traditions — was started in March 2011 with 52 members. It has now grown to almost 100 “apostates.” Since the unveiling of the public informational website clergyproject.org on Oct. 7, 2011, the group expects to attract hundreds more. “We know there must be thousands of clergy out there who have secretly abandoned their faith but have nowhere to turn,” says Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher who “lost faith in faith” after 19 years of preaching the gospel. “Now they do have a place to meet, a true sanctuary, a congregation of those of us who have replaced faith and dogma with reason and human well-being.”

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