Those who have never been really involved in religion sometimes do not realize how intense discussions can be about what seems (to outsiders) like trivial matters over the meaning of words. A recent example is the controversy over the decision of the Presbyterian church to reject a popular new hymn for inclusion in its official hymnal because the song’s authors objected to a change in the wording. [Read more…]
Jonathan Turley seems to have decided that the law-breaking behavior of the US government has become too extensive to maintain even the façade of being a free society. Here are the ten reasons that he gives for his conclusion and he elaborates on each one in his article. [Read more…]
Those who have lived in majority Buddhist countries know that being a follower of that religion does not make one more peaceful. But people in the west have this image of Buddhists as meditative and contemplative people who do not resort to violence. But the Buddhists in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand seem determined to destroy that image and it looks like they are succeeding, as this NPR report suggests. [Read more…]
Here is a video of an event. What do you think it was for? The answer is below the fold.
We have seen how David Miranda was questioned for nine hours and had his electronic equipment taken from him by British security forces in the transit area of Heathrow airport. This article describes how the NSA actually pays the British secret service to spy on their behalf because the British have weaker regulations of their government officials’ actions. [Read more…]
There are two difficult issues that an atheist in a religious family or community faces: whether and how to tell your parents that you no longer believe and how to answer your young children when they ask you whether god is real. [Read more…]
The CIA has finally acknowledged its role, along with British MI6, in the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953, replacing him with the despised Reza Pahlavi who adopted the grandiose title of the Shah of Iran. That event poisoned relations between the two countries ever since. Iranians deeply resented the foisting of the despotic Shah on them who, with massive US support, ruled until his overthrow in 1979. [Read more…]
Some of you are having difficulties with the video clips. There could be a whole host of reasons for this but one easy thing to do is to go to the website Qualys. It checks to see if your browser plug-ins are up-to-date and if not directs you to the appropriate site to download the update.
I do this every few months or so.
The famous quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me” that is usually truncated as “The rich are different from you and me”, captures the fascination that people have with trying to define what makes someone rich and in what way they differ from those who are not. [Read more…]
While much has been written about the Snowden effect, another interesting feature of the recent NSA revelations is the Greenwald effect, which is the label I apply to the irrational hostility that Glenn Greenwald evokes from so many quarters in the media. I can understand those people in the mainstream media who hate him. Long before his involvement with the Edward Snowden NSA revelations, he had no hesitation in calling out the media and naming names when they carried water for the government and were hypocritical in the way they covered events when the US government or its allies/clients did it or when countries that were considered hostile did it. His relentless exposing of legacy media shallowness was not something they were used to. The last straw was him getting the opportunity to break the biggest story in decades precisely because they had proven themselves to be so feckless and unprincipled and untrustworthy. [Read more…]