You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2014.
I’m frightened for the wrong reasons.
If I listened and believed what I was supposed to believe I would be afraid that the Russians are provoking the West into military conflict in Ukraine. The problem is that I’m more of afraid of what We are doing to destabilize the situation. John Pilger is with me on this one.
“Washington’s role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia is being torn apart. We in the west are backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with “special units” from the CIA and FBI setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by. A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate … I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.”
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that the attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation”, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” following the Odessa massacre. Illegal and fascist-dominated, the junta is described by Obama as “duly elected”. What matters is not truth, Henry Kissinger once said, but “but what is perceived to be true.”
(Source)
I’m certainly glad that Canada is soundly backing the fascist junta in the Ukraine, I’d hate to think what would happen if we let those people decide for themselves what is best for their country. We most definitely need to
serve our interestsprotect the people of Ukraine during this conflict.
I’m frightened for the wrong reasons…
Dear Religious people,
Have you thanked your local atheist today? If not, you should because atheism and by extension secular society, is saving you from the immoral loopy shit your bronze age beliefs demand. The latest demonstration of how immoral and barbaric religion is comes to us from the Sudan. (read more about Mariam at Al Jazeera)
“Mariam Yehya Ibrahim, a Sudanese mother, doctor and Christian, has been sentenced to flogging and death unless she recants her Christian faith. She is 8 months pregnant and has a two-year-old son. Please, join the international community in asking Sudan not to execute her for being a Christian.”
Wow.
You “go hard” there Islam – the religion of peace and friend to women across the globe.
“Ibrahim is charged with adultery on the grounds that her marriage to a Christian man from South Sudan is considered void under Shari’a law, for which the penalty is flogging. She’s also charged with apostasy, or abandonment of religion, for which the penalty is death.”
Well you can see the problem here, obviously, that if you decide to change from one fatuous belief system to another, the penalty is death. Funny we don’t hear about these sorts of things in North America. You can thank god that the United States wasn’t founded as christian nation – if it was, this sort of egregious crime against humanity would be common place in the lower 48 all the time.
You know why it isn’t? (hint: rhymes with ‘Fecularism’)
The very secular foundations of society that the christian right is chipping away at are the very same foundations that are preserving the “not-allowing-stupid-religious-shit-to-go-down” haven that Americans inhabit.
Witness the fucking evilly deranged face of theocratic rule and tell me that this is what you want for your society? Getting a little closer to god gets you a little closer to barbarity. How depraved must one be, in the pursuit of a religious based society, to somehow think that theocratic rule is good?
“Mariam is the daughter of a Christian woman and Muslim man. She was raised Christian after her father left. However, Sudanese law mandates that children born to Muslim fathers are considered Muslim.
The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is abhorrent.”
This does NOT happen in modern secular society.
Your pious objections to secularism are noted; you can now sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and think about the good that secularism has done for you and your freedom to believe in vacuous mythology of your choice. Maybe, just maybe, instead of campaigning for and electing people with ‘good christian values’ you could decide to support someone that is defending your very (comfortable) way of life, here in reality, where it matters.
Continue to erode the secular aegis at your own peril.
Lastly, get off your damn knees, stop praying, and go do something useful for once – sign the petition to save Mariam’s life.
You can bet your bottom dollar it is not, but let’s allow DarkMatter2525 illustrate yet another putrid facet of the glory of christianity.
Mmm…sweet sweet torture symbols for the winz!
The news: If you’re a 7-year-old in the U.S., you are by law too young to buy a cigarette at the counter — but you are old enough to work in the tobacco fields as a day laborer.
Human Rights Watched released a disturbing report Wednesday on child labor in America’s tobacco farms. The four states that grow 90% of U.S. tobacco — North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia — allow children as young as 7 to work in these farms for minimum wage. And it’s completely legal.
That’s right: Elementary school-age children are harvesting tobacco on America’s farms, exposing themselves to nicotine, toxic pesticides and dangerous machinery.
(Source)
I’ve never been a fan of “the good ole days”. Exploitation of the working class and families was always front and center in my mind as I read about the industrial revolution and our glorious path to the society we have today. Cue this story about elementary children working in the fields to remind ourselves of how advanced and how far we’ve come.
Bleh.
More on the happy fun times religion is bringing to the US over at the Experiential Pagan. :)
Here in Sunny Alberta, our seasons don’t quite match what the calendar might have you believe. So while it may be that it has officially been spring for some time now, the threat of frost up until last week kind of detracted from any sense of rebirth or new life. But this week’s forecast is full of double digit predictions. I feel we are finally catching up with the calendar. It’s time to bust out the short pants and sandals; pump up the tires on your bicycle; and, as always, enjoy some Vivaldi.
A while ago I wrote a post, Roads: Why Are They Still Asphalt? In it I expressed my desire for the future of road materials. No more hours idling in construction zones as they pour more oil to patch another season’s worth of a billion or so potholes. Better drainage and more traction during slippery conditions. Why weren’t these goals being pursued by the best and brightest of engineers? It turns out, someone was indeed working on this problem and it’s looking even better than I had hoped.
Julie and Scott Brusaw in Idaho are developing solar roadways. Here’s the quick version of all the awesome their new road promises:
- They use high-durability, textured glass to cover hexagonal solar modules with internal heaters and LED lights.
- It exceeds standards for weight tolerance, toughness, and traction.
- LED’s mean clear road lines forever, no paint, and alerting drivers to pedestrians as they step out onto crosswalks.
- Heaters deal with snow and ice.
- Modular roads mean broken pieces are quickly identified and replaced.
- Electric cars will be able to plug into the road to recharge.
- More features and details in their FAQ
- No more potholes-ever
What we have here is technology that greatly increases road safety, greatly decreases the use of fossil fuels, and it encourages the development and use of electric vehicles. It’s everything my last article asked for and more.
The obvious question is, while this all sounds great, can this new road feasibly deliver on all that it promises? I don’t know, but in the spirit of my last article, I don’t think it matters that much. If we really are at the cusp of a road revolution and kids 20 years from now look back at asphalt roads the way we currently look at VHS tapes, all the better. However, my cynical side is well trained, and I doubt such a smooth victory is forthcoming. But I’m STILL excited. These solar roadways are here, they are being tested, and people are talking about them. Even if, in this iteration, they are a dismal failure, the seeds of progress have been planted. Whatever unforeseen problems arise, we will learn from them. While I’m unsure of the rate of road progress, I’m thrilled to know that, slow or fast, it’s actually happening. So read all about it, spread the word, and let’s see if we can get this happening sooner, rather than later.
The source of many major problems in society is an overwhelming lack of science awareness. Climate change, evolution, vaccinations, homoeopathy – none of these should be creating any kind of controversy anywhere. The science on each of these issues is pretty damn clear. It is not the case that everyone need to be an expert on such things, but they ought to have a basic understanding on where the scientific community stands. This, however, is not always easy. The public doesn’t get too much info directly from scientists and this is a problem. So is where we actually do get our info, but that’s another post. Science needs a PR boost in a big way. Enter today’s hero.
Neil deGrasse Tyson not just one of the smartest people alive today, he is also one of the coolest. He gives talks, hosts tv shows, writes books, and by so doing, spreads scientific understanding to people all over the world. Most important, he does it in an inviting way, presenting science, not as something to fear or be wary of, but as something we can all revel in. Here is one of my favourite examples of bringing some cosmological perspective to people who crave it, need it, and will be better people because of it.
Neil carries on the tradition of Carl Sagan, not only in the new Cosmos series, but in making accessible a sense beauty and the transcendence only available through scientific eyes.
And for those of you who like a side of social progress with your people of unparalleled brilliance, Neil has that covered too.
There is so much super cool stuff that science can share with us, but many of us may never hear about it. We need more people who will bring the fantastic marvels of the world and the universe to the masses, particularly in way that highlights just how cool it is. How? Just watch the master in action. Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…