In a discussion Harris says:
“Given a choice between Noam Chomsky and Ben Carson, in terms of the totality of their understanding of what’s happening now in the world, I’d vote for Ben Carson every time,” Harris stated. “Ben Carson is a dangerously deluded religious imbecile, Ben Carson does not…the fact that he is a candidate for president is a scandal…but at the very least he can be counted on to sort of get this one right. He understands that jihadists are the enemy.”
When people think of violent Islamist groups, the image they have may be of disaffected young people who are the outcasts of society, poor and poorly educated. But a new book titled Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education based on research done by two academics Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog finds a surprisingly large number of engineers among the people labeled as Islamic radicals.
[Read more…]
I think we have to be resigned to two things: (1) Donald Trump will keep raising the stakes on saying crazy things and that many of the other Republican candidates will follow him and even try to outdo him; and (2) his popularity among Republican voters will keep increasing even as the rest of us look on in horror.
[Read more…]
That is an attention-grabbing title, right? It is the kind of story that people will read and remember. And there was such a story that emerged during the American Civil War. It involved a field doctor’s published report of a man who was shot through the scrotum and the bullet subsequently got lodged in a woman and ended up impregnating her. The story grabbed the imagination of people for many years.
[Read more…]
I had been wondering when Michael Moore would come up with another of his zany documentaries and whether he was working on one at all. I was glad to see that he was and that he did it in secret to enable him to employ his usual guerilla filmmaking tactics more effectively. It is going to be out soon. In this one, Moore ‘invades’ Europe to see how those countries differ from the US and to seize all their good ideas, rather than invade countries for their oil.
[Read more…]
Readers will have noted that I am an admirer of Matt Taibbi’s writings, quoting extensively from his articles because I see him as an accurate observer of the American political scene with a witty style. I also cannot stand New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and am baffled by the admiration he seems to generate with his vacuous pieties. I first came across Taibbi a long time ago when he was writing for a regional paper because of his hilarious and brutal takedown of Friedman’s inanities. Taibbi and Friedman seemed to be made for each other. (See here, here, and here.)
[Read more…]
A couple of days ago I watched once again this classic western. It is one of the few films that I have watched more than once and it still grips me. It is a western but has little action, its fascination lying in the human drama. For those few who have not seen the film, the entire action takes place in almost real time. It stars Gary Cooper as marshal Will Kane who has cleaned up a western town. At 10:30 am one morning he gets married to Amy Fowler (played by Grace Kelly), a Quaker, and following he ceremony he gives up his badge in order to accommodate his pacifist wife and leave town and start a new life elsewhere as a shopkeeper.
[Read more…]
Jeb! Bush’s plan to prevent terrorists sneaking into the US by hiding among the refugees fleeing from the chaos in that region is to allow only Christian refugees. When asked how he could distinguish who was a Christian he replied vaguely that it should be easy for them to prove it. And he is right, as this cartoon shows.
[Read more…]
The Westboro Baptist Church is notorious for its anti-gay focus and activities and its claims that god is going to destroy America because of its accommodation of homosexuality. The primary slogan of the church and the most prominent sign displayed at their pickets is “God Hates Fags” and even the church’s website URL is godhatesfags.com.
[Read more…]
On our recent trip in Sri Lanka, the coaches that we used to travel over the country would stop at points for people to stretch their legs, have something to drink, and use the toilets. And the usual situation occurred in that the line for men’s toilet was non-existent while that for the women was long, at least until I gave the women the all clear that the men’s toilet was unoccupied and they commandeered the men’s toilet for their own use until the line was cleared.
[Read more…]