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This is a meme that deserves to be propagated.
Majority of Karzai cabinet nominees rejected
The Associated Press
Afghanistan’s parliament has dealt a stinging rebuke to President Hamid Karzai by rejecting 70 per cent of his nominees for a new cabinet.
The Saturday voting in which 17 of 24 nominees were turned down confronts Karzai with a severe challenge as he tries to get his second term in office into full swing.
Not really surprising, but the first comment I saw on the post was near perfect. Here it is, thank you ‘appraiser from Ontario’:
“Karzai is widely viewed within Afghanistan as an American puppet. It should be no surprise that most of his choices for cabinet have been rejected.
There should be riots in the streets over the blatant corruption and ballot-box stuffing that has ocurred. But having hundreds of thousands of NATO troops and various other U.S. friendly foreign mercenaries on Afghan soil tends to dampen dissent. The entire situation is a complete fraud, propped up by the imperial war machine that is America.”
I don’t think I could have said it better myself.
One of my first posts was about the silly legislation that was going to codify the insipid notion of blasphemy. Well it happened and an Irish Atheist group is fighting back.
They have set out 25 statements that contravene the law and here they are:
“If you run a website, blog or other media publication, please feel free to republish this statement and the list of quotes yourself, in order to show your support for the campaign to repeal the Irish blasphemy law and to promote a rational, ethical, secular Ireland.”
List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland
1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.
2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.
3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.
4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy – he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.
5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”
The CBC sagely intones:
“Two high-profile international events bookended Harper’s year: welcoming the immensely popular U.S. President Barack Obama to Ottawa in February and making an overdue sojourn to China in December. Both generated mainly positive reviews.”
Wow, our PM is really rocking the house with deeply important meetings and visits vital to all Canadians. 
“Harper began the year facing huge political potholes at home but opted to hit the road internationally — a time-honoured coping mechanism of Canadian prime ministers.”
I guess we can gloss over stimulus-gate, the imperial misadventure in Afghanistan, and the perilous state of the Canadian social fabric.
“Move along move along…nothing to see here….”
*rolls eyes*
Unsurprisingly, not much happened at the latest and greatest climate conference. Many thanks to the hackers who spun up a flurry of negative PR for a meeting that only had the slightest chance of reaching a meaningful agreement in the first place.
What is utterly discouraging is that nothing will come of this. It was a waste of time (emphasis mine):
“The agreement recognizes that an increase in global temperature should be kept to two degrees Celsius — the threshold that UN scientists say is needed to avert serious climate change — but the deal is not legally binding and has no long-term global targets for emissions cuts.”
So really, in essence, let us continue to our plunder of the earth. We will make the requisite noises:
“Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the agreement “realistic” and said Canada was “very comfortable” with it.”
You know if Harper agrees with this particular tidbit of climate folly it is can only be a hollow shell of dank turpitude and risible half truths. In other words nothing will change.
For the eternally optimistic:
“Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, welcomed the climate deal as an “essential beginning,” but said it must be transformed into a legally binding treaty next year.”
Yep. The US will also get Israel to respect the 1967 borders, pay reparations to Iraq for ruining their country and will make peace with Osama bin Laden. I’ll also be having a piping hot mug cocoa and a blueberry scone with Pope while we discuss how he should not act like such a douche bag.
Crazy comes in many flavours. These particular douche nozzles are prime candidates for most insipid video ever posted on youtube.
During the holiday season with all the choral concerts to attend and sing at sometimes I can feel a little (very little) thaw in my heart toward religion as it is at least partially responsible for all the wonderful music. Then I see this.
Ah yes, intolerance, ignorance and vapidity all rolled into one supernova explosion of Stupid representing the ugly facade that religion is.
Happy Holidays to all.
Objectivism remains one of my pet peeves. I meet and cross swords with many who are beguiled with this particularly noxious dogma. From the blog Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature this post details yet another Randian disciple waking up and choosing reality instead of “rationality”.
Greenspan’s breaking away from Objectivism. In his autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan explains why he stopped being an orthodox acolyte of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy:
Like any new convert, I tended to frame the concepts [of Rand’s philosophy] in their starkest, simplest terms. Most everyone sees the simple outline of an idea before complexity and qualification set in…. It was only as contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge that the fervor receded.
One such contradiction I found particularly enlightening. According to the objectivist precepts, taxation was immoral because it allowed for government appropriation of private property by force. Yet if taxation was wrong, how could you reliably finance the essential functions of government, including the protection of individuals’ rights through police power? The Randian answer, that those who rationally saw the need for government would contribute voluntarily, was inadequate. People have free will; suppose they refused?…
I still found the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition compelling, as I do to this day, but I reluctantly began to realize that if there were qualifications to my intellectual edifice, I couldn’t argue that others should readily accept it. By the time I joined Richard Nixon’s campaign for the presidency in 1968, I had long since decided to engage in efforts to advance free-market capitalism as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer.
Greenspan here admits what has been suspected for some time: that he came to believe that Objectivism was flawed and so ceased being an orthodox advocate of Rand’s philosophy.
Not really surprising, but thanks Alan, for fueling the latest bust in a run-away neoliberal capitalist dream we’ve all been participating in as of late.
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