Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
At present this includes posts on history of Zionism and modern Israel and Palestine as well as current events. Continue this setup? What of other histories? Adjust name of category? Currently includes Islamism (distinct from Islam) as an ideology of terrorism. Also currently includes Islamophobia and hostile denunciations of Islam — but see the question on Islam in Religion and Atheism.
A year or so ago a friend and I had a little stall at an International Women’s Day function in a park with the usual literature and a nice quota of friends and few newbies taking a look. But nothing beat the results we got when we decided to hold up silly masks in front of our faces and walk through the streets and shopping malls handing out our little pieces of paper spiel. Continue reading “Eggheads need more clowns and theatre”
Election is under way again in Australia hence adding a few more resource links for associates and interested persons over next few weeks.
Costello labels the Social Forum as an “extreme left wing group” consisting in “very large part of former-communists”.
This is part of his attempt to smear Julia Gillard for being a former organizer of Social Forum.
Facts about Social Forum: Continue reading “The (World) Social Forum (WSF)”
Dear conservative affluents,
Would it be too much to ask the right people (those in flash Chevron business suits and expensive cars) very nicely if they would mind withdrawing, very politely of course, their financial support from the Burmese regime — at least until relatives of the missing and arrested have a chance to check on their welfare or arrange for timely funerals as the case may be, and even allow for social workers to assist those with signs of post-traumatic stress resulting from events in recent weeks?
I fully understand that these right oil CEO people do have a priority by law to put their shareholders’ interests first, and they might grumble a bit if there was a dip in the prices of their assets. But with a bit of good-will I am sure at least a few could be persuaded at special meetings to go along with this — and the rest could surely come to some arrangement with certain legislators and executives to perhaps allow any losses to be offset by special tax benefits.
With arrangements like this it would spare me the discomfort of having to read articles like Cindy Sheehan’s here and the Amy Goodman one that she refers to here.
Hoping something can be done to make life a little more comfortable for us all.
Sweetreason
P.S. It might also help end my constant dreams that I am living among French aristocracy in July 13, 1789 and France is the whole world this time.
It’s happening at last. Iraqis are finally coming together to form a united front for American values like liberty, the right to bear arms, to rid their country of foreign influence, and terrorists too, at last.
From The Associated Press comes the report: Six Iraqi insurgent groups announce formation of a “political council” to liberate Iraq
A history of Dispensational Approaches by John Scott . . . .
Christian Zionism: Dispensationalism And The Roots Of Sectarian Theology
Related blog post: Christian Zionism: Assumptions and Dehumanization
Australian journalist Leigh Sales won the 2007 George Munster Award for Independent Journalism as a result of her book Detainee 002: the case of David Hicks.
In her speech in acknowledging this Award she expressed some bemusement at being accused of being in effect too fair or aggravatingly fair. That piqued my interest enough to fast track this book to the top of my “to read” list. (Leigh Sales speech is available on podcast here.)
Fair it is regarding the facts of the history of David Hicks and the history and nature of the legal issues surrounding his trial. The aggravation to my mind comes from Leigh Sales implication that a “pragmatic” approach, the approach she clearly favours, is the only truly humane and caring position for David Hicks as a person. Continue reading “Detainee 002: the case of David Hicks / Leigh Sales”
Language has been manipulated by leaders since 9/11 to instill a state of fear and war in our minds. A new book by academic Mary Zournazi, Keywords to War: reviving language in an age of terror, discusses many of the words manipulated today for this intent. In the process she looks at how the same words have reflected different cultural values since their inception. I outline here her discussion of the history of the word “faith”. Zournazi compares today’s manipulation of the word with reference to Simone Weil‘s criticism of how the word’s use and meaning in the Nazi era. Continue reading “Faith : a keyword to war (or peace)”
Another MHR (“most highly recommended”) Podcast of a Late Night Live (LNL) program on ABC Radio National (only available online another few weeks).
Dr Marc Sageman, an expert on terrorism and counter-terrorism, uses historical analogies to argue that Islamic jihadism does have a limited shelf life. He believes that the zeal of jihadism is self-terminating and that eventually its followers will reject violence as a means of expressing discontent. Given this scenario, do we have our counter-terrorism strategy right? — blurb on the LNL Leaderless Jihad program website.
Additional links to Marc Sageman’s works: Continue reading “Leaderless Jihad”
Yet one more classic on ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind series with Natasha Mitchell:
See Burma: ‘I resist in my Mind only’ — Podcast and live-streaming now available; transcript online soon.
Continue reading “Psychology of people under Burmese dictatorship”
Two excellent interviews today on Radio National‘s The Spirit of Things program, one with cult counsellor Steven Hassan discussing the techniques of mind control and recruitment used for certain suicide and Islamic cults, comparing them with more traditional cults such as the Moonies; another with Abdel Bari Atwan, Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, who first interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1996, discussing the desperation and indoctrination that leads people to join these groups.
Link to the interviews (podcast, livestreaming … transcript soon) and background details of the interviewees.
Points of interest that struck me with the interviews — Continue reading “Death cults and indoctrination”
Yep, it’s a propaganda video and transcript. But until we begin to listen to all sides are we not doomed to be at war without end / to the end?
A message (in English) from the Iraqi resistance
(How many in the west fed on mainstream media — that for economic and nationalist reasons tend to be megaphones for official government or corporate press releases — even know who their governments are fighting in Iraq?)
There’s an excellent radio series now available online (mp3 podcast, live-stream or transcript) that some may find enlightening. At least the first of a two part series is currently available. Continue reading “Demonocratic Iran — threat to the Free(-oil) world”
Since we’re the good guys we’ve done nothing so bad as to deserve all the headaches we have to put up with from Islamic terrorists and the bad guys in the Middle East. When the bad guys wearing the dark skins and having the wrong religion say that the root cause of all the strife in the Middle East – at least till the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 – is “the Palestinian question” and the occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, we can be sure that that is just as fatuous as an armed bank robber appealing for sympathy by telling the judge that he needed the money to pay for his gun and getaway car. Continue reading “When Popeye David beat flabby Goliath and called it a ‘miracle’”
In France new mothers can request the State public institutions for a free nanny to assist them with all the things that new mothers face — the need for someone to babysit, to do the cooking, buy the groceries, clean the house and do the washing, to give them time for needed breaks from the pressures that inevitably arise in modern environments when extended family assistance is not always easy to come by.
While I was in Singapore I read a horrific tragic news story of a stepfather who was to hang for drowning a baby that drove him mad with its incessant crying.
In France people get out into the streets to demand their rights and force the government to behave in the public interest. It is, after all, a publicly elected public body for the public interest. In Singapore and an many other places it works the other way around — governments keep themselves in power and free to do their own factional will by fanning fear among large sections of their citizenry or inculcating wherever possible a public fear of their governing power itself. And as Michael Moore points out in his new documentary, Sicko, no wonder some of those governments are happy to see a public suspicion of anything French. 🙂