by cameron | May 18, 2009 | Christianity, US politics
Via Pharyngula:
Just another demonstration of how Christians use their Bible to justify violence and intolerance. As I’ve said many times before, violence is at the CORE of Christianity. It’s built into the very fabric of their scriptures. That’s why the history of Christianity is replete almost 1700 years of bloodshed and intolerance.
The final lines of Joshua 1 (from the OT) says it all:
Whoever rebels against your word and does not obey your words, whatever you may command them, will be put to death. Only be strong and courageous!
Getting back to the White House under GWB, I agree with Pharyngula’s final comment:
We lived under the rule of monsters for eight years. We can’t just pretend it didn’t happen, we need to fight back in the courts to condemn these people and their actions.
by cameron | May 16, 2009 | climate change
John Quiggin blogs about a slap down of climate change skeptic Ian Plimer that ran in the Australian recently:
In the Oz of all places, a demolition of Ian Plimer so scathing, and so convincing, that it’s hard to imagine how he can salvage any kind of academic reputation, other than by a full retraction (which would be a pretty impressive move, admittedly).
As Plimer seems to be the last person of any credibility denying human-caused climate change in Australia, this has got to be a blow for his supporters.
by cameron | May 2, 2009 | geopolitics
I just finished watching THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, a fictional tale set in Uganda during the reign of Idi Amin (1971 – 1979). I know little about Amin – I was born in 1970 – but I remember his name being featured in the TV news during my childhood.
When Amin died in 2003, in exile in Saudi Arabia (US ally) where he’d been since 1979, apparently never deported for crimes against humanity (it is said somewhere between 80,000 and 500,000 Ugandans died during his years in power), the major news outlets around the world said things like:
Amin, who almost single-handedly turned a nation’s prosperity into economic ruin and plunged a peaceful society into a nightmare of chaos and terror, was admitted to King Faisal Specialist Hospital on July 18. He had been in a coma and on life support since his admission. (The Age, borrowed from the LA Times.)
Amin’s eight years as president of Uganda were characterised by bizarre and murderous behaviour. (The Sydney Morning Herald)
The eight-year rule which followed was characterised by bizarre and brutal behaviour. (The BBC…. eerily almost word-for-word the SMH’s version)
Amin brought bloody tragedy and economic ruin to his country, during a selfish life that had no redeeming qualities. (The Guardian)
THEN… I found this fascinating article, The Making of Idi Amin, which was originally written in 1979 by Pat Hutton and Jonathan Bloch and was re-published on this site in 2001. The re-published version starts:
British government documents, recently declassified under the 30-year rule, have supported earlier accounts by the journalists Pat Hutton and Jonathan Bloch which said the rise of Idi Amin was engineered by outside interests to stop President Milton Obote’s nationalisation drive in which the state had taken 60% interest in all foreign and Ugandan-Asian-owned businesses.
The article goes on to describe the involvement of Britain, the USA and Israel in supporting Amin’s rise to power and his years at the helm. The story is that Amin’s predecessor, President Obote, was planning on nationalising British interests in Uganda – the thing Western imperialists hate the most – and that Amin – a former soldier in the colonial British army – was brought to power by British interests to reverse the nationalisation.
Was Idi Amin another in a long line of brutal dictators brought to power by Western governments who murdered thousands upon thousands of his own people? And the people in the West who brought him to power – like they also did with Saddam and Suharto and Somoza and Batista and Trujillo and Mobutu and Pinochet and Pahlavi – go untouched.
by cameron | May 2, 2009 | geopolitics
On a recent show, Jon Stewart said that he thought Harry Truman should have been tried as a war criminal for authorizing dropping nuclear bombs on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He backed it up with some justification as to why the acts were just plain wrong. I cheered when I heard it because it’s very rarely that I hear Americans recognize the fact that the bombings were completely unjustified and a war crime of huge proportions. Even my American friends who are pro-justice and anti-war find it extremely hard to say “Yes, the bombings were wrong”. They justify it anyway they can.
Then, on last night’s show, he started by apologizing, saying he was wrong, and completely backing down!
You have to wonder what happened behind the scenes? I totally don’t believe his whole “Oh I knew it was wrong when I said it” shtick. The powers-that-be obviously came down on him HARD. But which powers? The Comedy Central powers? MTV? Viacom? And why? It’s not like Stewart doesn’t say lots of things that the elite don’t like on a nightly basis. Why this one statement?
If anyone can help me understand it, I’d appreciate it. Here’s Stewart talking about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
Here’s the segment where he backs down:
by cameron | Apr 29, 2009 | capitalism
TAX TIME: Just in time for April 15, the folks at the
Institute for Policy Studies have released a report that
documents the stunning generation-long reversal of progressive tax
policies and offers seven concrete proposals for restoring basic
fairness to the IRS’s methods–and hundreds of billions in lost revenue
to the Treasury. Their report, Tax Day 2009, notes that America’s
most affluent 1 percent–taxpayers who averaged $1.3 million in income
in 2006–saw a federal income tax rate of 22.8 percent. In 1986 that
same cohort averaged $507,520 in inflation-adjusted income and paid 33.1
percent of it in taxes. Over the past twenty years, this elite 1 per-
cent saw their share of the nation’s income double, from 11.3 percent to
22.1 percent, but their tax burden shrank by about one-third. |
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A fascinating article in The Nation about how the wealthy elite in the US have been getting richer while reducing their taxation over the last 20 years. The top 1 percent of Americans earn 22.1 percent of the nation’s income. 22 PERCENT!!!! Over a fifth of the incomes is earned by 1 percent of the people. Why aren’t people taking to the streets and rioting? My guess – because the media has turned them into pacified sheep. We’ve been taught not to cause trouble, not to try to change things outside of voting inside of a corrupt system controlled by the wealthy elite.BTW, I heard this quote in a terrific recent podcast by Bill Moyers where he interviews David Simon, creator of THE WIRE, probably the smartest television drama ever produced. It’s a commentary on the state of ‘the system’ in America (and we’re not that different). You should listen to this show:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/profile.html
And, of course, if you haven’t seen The Wire, make it a priority. It’s truly brilliant, insightful drama.
