Listics

Well, score another one for Bush and the Enron team…

I’m pissed.

Al Jazeera reports:

Ziad
Khasawna said on Wednesday that [Ramsey] Clark, who held the office of
attorney-general under US president Lyndon Johnson, had "honoured and
inspired" the legal team by agreeing to help defend Saddam.

Secular humanism is generally a good thing and fundamentalist religion is generally a bad thing.  Humanists are all about opening, broadening, inclusion.  Fundamentalists are about closing, narrowing, exclusion.  Humanists support distinctions without prejudice.  Fundamentalist distinctions create prejudice.

The label of "secular humanist" has some baggage attached to it based on the bad press it gets from true believers.  Much like the invidious distinction that Limbaugh laid on us around the phrase "tax and spend liberalism," secular humanism is, in some quarters, thought to be a bad thing, faithless, a position to be avoided.

For me it is easy to posit a metaphysical context beyond my understanding.  I’m pretty good in three spatial and one temporal dimension.  Beyond that, it starts to get metaphysical.  But so far it hasn’t required a god for me to grasp that there are limits to my sensoria and my understanding.  On the other hand, the concept of god, the joy, the love, the boundless concern and care we can share with each other, these things have a spiritual aspect that I enjoy.

In the United States, we assert a constitutional separation of church and state under the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution.  There are those that would tear down this wall, people who assert that their biblical beliefs should be taught in public schools, and worse - that information contrary to their beliefs should NOT be taught, or should somehow be qualified as contrary to their precepts.

I think we should respect these people.  I think we should put all their churches’ property on our local property tax rolls and tax their churches’ income, and exercise eminent domain over any holdings that could be used for community purposes and respect their rights to have a say in the way our public schools are run.  They are, after all, citizens, and by putting their church property on the tax rolls they will have a stake in the game.

Here in Madison we have some lovely church properties that we could assess at a fair market value and improve our ability to fund the teaching of evolution, and the public health provision of sexual health care including birth control and abortions.

Air America was the name of the CIA contractor that ran most of the clandestine air ops from WW2 through Vietnam out of a hangar at the Oakland Airport. 

Clear Channel communications, an outfit that seems to me to represent everything that is wrong with media concentration, runs the so called progressive radio network also named Air America.  This trojan horse has to be an inside-joke, a bit of board room branding humor.  As Osama bin Laden represents a combination of the Bush-league inadequacy of the current administration combined with the Orwellian need for an externalized enemy in an age of repression, the Air America offerings represent a straw man set-up to demonstrate a continuing liberal media presence for the likes of Limbaugh and O’Reilly to inveigh against.

The American right, or Nazis as I prefer to call them, eviscerated the power of the liberal media years and years ago.  Gangsterism and corruption, both free-market mob style and state sponsored, have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of journalists in the last ten years.

When the Nazis spread the anthrax following the Reichstag thing in September 2024, they spread it among journalists and liberal politicians.  The Bush administration’s clamp down on anthrax attack information makes it unclear whether this was another Islamofascist incident or a home grown attack.

The emergence of Clear Channel’s Air America, like a greasy turd extruded from the anal sphincter of Limbaugh or O’Reilly,  represents a complex of  market forces, government interest, and monopolist intentions.  The voices on Air America are amusing but not influential.  Franken, Garafolo, and Randi Rhodes provide a liberal broadcast echo chamber for true believers.  Ultimately, their progressive message is not in the best interests of the Clear Channel organization.  Are they among the most effective progressive voices?

For at least two decades Nazi-like propagandists such as Limbaugh have hammered home the lie that there is a strong liberal media establishment that is an enemy of the free market and right wing politics.  While there may have been a strong liberal media presence through the 1970s, it seems clear that it was eviscerated by the time of the Reagan administration.  Even our so called public educational networks now give equal time to bible pounding fundamentalists who want to re-open the Snopes trial.  Having gutted the enemy, it became necessary to raise a straw man… voila!  Air America!

Doc Searls had a good Linux Journal article about Air America.  Fair and balanced it was.   Unlike this post…

Met with friends last night at a home that was originally built and occupied by John R. Commons.  While the house has been remodeled, his study hasn’t been re-done and it was a bit of an inspiration to stand in that room where capitalism was re-worked for the people of Wisconsin at the behest of Robert M. Lafollette, then tidied up ten years later for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It’s time for another whack at it I’m afraid.

Serendipitous conjunction this morning where US Interstate Highway intersects US Highway 53 North…

Current issue of Foreign Policy magazine’s article on blogging by Drezner and Farrell…

Loic Le Meur’s "Global Voices" post, linked to…

Rebecca MacKinnon’s post heralding the launch of a "Global Voices" movement…

…with a link through Global Voices Online to…

The Digital Divide Network.

Join today!

Here in Wisconsin, embarrassingly enough, the christian ignoramuses have locked a school district into teaching something called "creationism."  Makes me want to puke.  Really.  Here’s what some kinder folks than I have come up with in the way of a gently persuasive (we hope) approach to correcting these hopeless dumb fucks:

Mr. David Ahlquist
President
Board of Education
Grantsburg School District
Grantsburg, Wisconsin 54840

Dear Mr. Ahlquist,

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible
literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey information but to transform hearts.

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rest. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation
for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask
that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

Sincerely,
[130 or so signatories representing christian congregations and gathered meetings around the state of Wisconsin]

Now I find embarrassing the stuff about Christ… not being a christian, although my religious group springs from a christian tradition… and I’m embarrassed by capital G-God’s "good gifts" and its "loving plan," but I’m pleased that my meeting embraced the document and didn’t get into one of those lengthy wordsmithing sessions that can take the joy and power out of something like this.  Hard to believe that what we thought were dying embers of superstitious claptrap when we studied 19th century history have flared up anew in the 21st century bonfires of the fanatically ignorant.

[Thanks to Peter for forwarding this so far anonymous bit of journalism from our neighbors to the north…]

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among Left leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt,pray and agree with Bill O’Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say its not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

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