February 2012
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Sectarian Theology: The Religion and Politics of...
‘Religion has done much good in the world, but it becomes dangerous when the “us and them” worldview grows rigid — when “we” claim moral (or theological) superiority over others. No one should know this better than Santorum, for Roman Catholics have been among the most persecuted groups in America. Yet for Santorum, history has had no modulating effect. The “phony” remark seems, at worst,...
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10 Science Policies We Wish the Government Would...
10) Creationism is Only Discussed Publicly if it Involves a Randomly Selected Creation Story. 9) Companies That Do Health Research on Their Own Products Must Disclose the Results to the Government. 8) Every Study That Uses Public Funds is Published Publicly. 7) Scientists Must Come Up With A Different Word for “Theory” When Used in a Scientific Sense. 6) The Government Shall Always Be...
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Finding Consensus on Climate Change Through...
‘Religious voices have the power to influence both political leaders and public discourse. Think of the role of religious leaders in the civil rights movement or the earlier fight to abolish slavery. Unlike issues such as abortion and gay marriage that divide religious communities, climate change can be — and is — a unifying issue for many faith leaders. Diverse religious groups...
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Talking About Ritual Magick: Is Magick Scientific?
‘To the emphasis on rationality, logic, critical thinking and even practical common sense must be added a few other important elements, such as divergent thinking, creativity, tolerating ambiguity, being open to the miraculous and accepting that magick and science are very different mental operations. Attempting to make magick conform to an exclusive scientific perspective is likely to...
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Why Can't the Mormon Church Stop Baptizing Anne...
‘There’s been some chatter in the news lately about the Mormon church’s bizarre habit of baptizing non-Mormons who have died. They’ve done it on all kinds of famous deceased people—Elvis, Shakespeare, and even Jesus Christ himself. This past weekend they baptized Anne Frank, WWII diarist and victim of the Holocaust. That’s strange enough, but it turns out this is at...
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Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not...
‘There was surprise when Prof Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100 per cent certain of his conviction that there is no creator. The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: “Why don’t you call yourself an agnostic?” Prof Dawkins answered that he did.’
Read more: Richard Dawkins: I can’t be sure God does not exist
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For atheists of color, ‘coming out’ can be painful
‘As a child, Alix Jules saw people in church speak in tongues, tremble, fall and have what appeared to be very genuine connections with God. But not him. “I never tingled,” he said.
By his twenties, Jules was an atheist. But he never told his family, who were deeply rooted in their predominantly black Catholic congregation. They believed he was having a crisis of faith —...
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Iran, Israel and the US: The Slide To War
‘According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran is building nuclear weapons that pose an “existential” threat to Israel. But virtually no one believes this, including the bulk of Tel Aviv’s military and intelligence communities. As former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said recently, Iran “is not an existential” threat to Israel. There is no evidence that Iran is building a...
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Dow and Monsanto Join Forces to Poison America's...
‘In a match that some would say was made in hell, the nation’s two leading producers of agrochemicals have joined forces in a partnership to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2,4-D, one half of the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which was used by American forces to clear jungle during the Vietnam War. These two biotech giants have developed a weed management program that, if...
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Iran and the Shape of Things to Come
‘Why has Iran’s operational competence suddenly deteriorated so badly, given that our government spokesmen represent it as such a fearsome threat? And why would it seek to hasten a bombing campaign against its own territory as the abortive embassy bombings almost seem calculated to do? And why does the evidence mostly consist of assertions by interested parties?’
Read more:...
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[Video] CNN Arizona Republican Presidential Debate...
‘The four remaining GOP hopefuls, Gingrich, Romney, Santorum, and Paul, gathered in Arizona on Wednesday night for the final debate prior to the Arizona and Michigan primaries coming up on February 28. This debate was sponsored by CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona. It was held at the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona. Original Air Time: Wednesday, February 22 at 8pm ET on CNN.’
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Religion And Politics Don't Mix, Major Religious...
‘After Rick Santorum ignited controversy over the weekend by saying President Barack Obama has a “phony” and “different theology” that’s not “based on the Bible,” and amid ongoing discomfort among some politicians and religious figures over Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, a coalition of major religious organizations is calling on presidential...
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Religion vs. Science's Answers to the Big...
‘We may struggle with attempts at merging science and religion, when, for instance, we watch the Christmas planetarium show “Star of Wonder,” which purports to find logical explanations for the Star of Bethlehem. This is also seen in such bestselling books as The Tao of Physics and the Dancing Wu-Lei Masters, which purport to show that modern physics says the same thing as...
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Who Do You Trust Less: The NSA or Anonymous?
‘Intelligence officials seem to be polishing up their case to take on Anonymous like a ‘stateless’ terrorist group. The director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, told various high-level audiences that the loosely affiliated group, Anonymous, would soon have the capability “to bring about a limited power outage through a cyberattack,” according to...
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Politics of Rick Santorum's theology: Is faith a...
‘The language of personal faith appears to be helping GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum turn lingering doubts among Protestant evangelicals about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism (and even President Obama’s Christianity) into a poll surge.’
Read more: Politics of Rick Santorum’s theology: Is faith a kingmaker or deal-breaker?
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God (or the Gods) and Politics
‘Invoking the name of God helps in justifying our own moral and political views. And invoking a God in your own ideological image makes for an even easier justification. The tragedy is when politicians manipulate those images in the interest of narrow, partisan goals. God is no stranger to the culture wars of the past three decades but now the more politically shaped Gods take on a new...
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[Video] Santorum: Satan is Systematically...
‘Video: Rick Santorum speaks at Ave Maria University in 2008 and say that Satan has destroyed academia and politics and even the Protestant Church.’
Watch on YouTube: [Video] Santorum: Satan is Systematically Destroying America
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Do Atheists Really Need a Temple?
‘It sounds naff at first glance. But the British philosopher Alain de Botton has decided to go into the mimicry of religion, into its replication. Cunningly, he hopes to accommodate religious impulses while remaining an atheist.’
Read more: Do Atheists Really Need a Temple?
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Does Santorum Believe Obama Is Part of a Satanic...
‘Does Rick Santorum believe President Barack Obama is literally part of a satanic plot to destroy the United States? This is a serious inquiry.’
Read more: Does Santorum Believe Obama Is Part of a Satanic Plot?
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The Obfuscation of the Two-State Solution: You...
‘Even as I write this, the bulldozers have been busy throughout that one indivisible country known by the bifurcated term Israel/Palestine. Palestinian homes, community centers, livestock pens and other “structures” (as the Israel authorities dispassionately call them) have been demolished in the Old City, Silwan and various parts of “Area C” in the West Bank, as well among the Bedouin –...
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Scared of Anonymous? NSA chief says you should be
‘Anonymous has so far plied its trade in “hactivist” exploits. But according to the director of the National Security Agency, it might soon turn its focus to U.S. infrastructure.’
Read more: Scared of Anonymous? NSA chief says you should be
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[Video] History of U.S. Intervention in Iran -...
‘This video is a basic overview of U.S. imperialism toward Iran that began at the behest of the British Government and big oil interests including British Petroleum also recently known as BP.
The United States’ own CIA led it’s first coup to overthrow a foreign leader against Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, The U.S. has suffered “Blowback: ever since, all the while the...
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PCFIPA: SOPA replacement uses child porn as excuse...
‘The SOPA and PIPA bills that went down in flames earlier this year for their unbearable intrusiveness, used content piracy as an excuse to give the government powerful tools with which to censor Internet content. For 2012 the primary author of those bills has switched to a fallback tactic: using child porn as an excuse to create a vast surveillance network from which the government can...
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Aerial Surveillance, Snipers, Face Masks:...
‘Each time a new measure that the city of Chicago is preparing for the coming NATO and G8 summits is unveiled, the tension in the city ratchets up a notch. The latest news comes in the form of reports that Chicago has purchased face shields, and may be considering the implementation of airborne surveillance technology.’
Read more: Aerial Surveillance, Snipers, Face Masks:...
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Why does Santorum despise the separation of church...
‘Back in 2003 he lamented: “I want to remind people of the societies that have been secular in nature. Starting with the French Revolution, moving onto the fascists, and the Nazis and the communists and the Baathists, all of those purely secularists hated religion, tried to crush religion.” Recently he claimed the Obama administration believes that “secular values should be imposed on people...
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Google, Microsoft, or Facebook: Who Dropped The...
‘Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are locked in a precarious blame game about who failed with your online privacy. First, Google gets caught bypassing a security feature in Safari that allowed the company to track users despite the no-tracking settings in Safari. Then yesterday, Microsoft charged Google for doing a similar thing with Internet Explorer users. Lots of smoke so far, but is there...
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Court says Quebec Catholic Parents can’t pull...
‘Canada’s highest court has ruled that children in Quebec schools cannot opt out of a course on ethics and world religions. The Supreme Court on Feb. 17 unanimously rejected an appeal from Catholic parents who sought to keep their children out of the course because they felt that exposing them to a variety of religions would confuse them.’
Read more: Court says Quebec Catholic...
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How Obama should fight the ‘war on religion’
‘It seems far-fetched, from my perspective, to think that God should have any opinion at all about contraceptive technology, let alone about which corporate entity should pay for it. Yet that is the argument the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops made last week. God doesn’t like birth control, they said. To force Catholic organizations to pay for birth control goes against God and so...
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French far-right turns to halal meat as next...
‘A TV documentary’s revelation that slaughterhouses around Paris have switched meat production entirely to halal methods has stirred a political storm in France, where attitudes to Europe’s largest Muslim minority are a subtext in a presidential election campaign.’
Read more: French far-right turns to halal meat as next political wedge issue
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Israel’s newest politician breaks his silence,...
“The Palestinians don’t need to battle us,” Lapid said. “They can make a cup of coffee, light a cigarette and wait 12 years and the Zionist country will crumble from within.”
Read more: Israel’s newest politician breaks his silence, attacks ultra-Orthodox and political corruption
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Google & Facebook Trick Internet Explorer into...
‘Google was caught last week bypassing default privacy settings in the Safari browser in order to serve up tracking cookies. The company claimed the situation was an accident and limited only to the Safari web browser, but today Microsoft claimed Google is doing much the same thing with Internet Explorer.’
Read more: Google & Facebook Trick Internet Explorer into Accepting...
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Santorum Takes Climate Change Denial To A Biblical...
‘Climate change denial has become a litmus test for modern Republicans, but Rick Santorum, in his fondness for melding faith and government, has become one of the precious few to cite the Bible as evidence that the science-accepting crowd has it all wrong — and apparently the first to bring that thinking to the presidential stage.’
Read more: Santorum Takes Climate Change Denial To A...
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Santorum: Obama ‘a Christian,’ but theology not...
“I wasn’t suggesting the president’s not a Christian,” Santorum laughed. “I accept the fact that the president’s a Christian. I just said when you have world view that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth like things that are not scientifically proven like the politicization of the whole global warming debate.”
Read more:...
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Campaign against birth control is religious...
‘We used to have a different kind of debate on the role of the Catholic Church in US politics. Granted, that debate was bigoted and paranoid about grubby papist hordes from Italy, Ireland and Poland who privileged loyalty to Rome over pledging allegiance to the United States flag. But from that 19th century tension arose a fundamental belief that we now more or less take for granted: the...
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In the Spirit of Activism: When Politics and...
‘Last Tuesday, as clergy members and labor activists lined up at First United Methodist Church in Downtown Madison for a joint march to the Capitol to protest limits on public sector collective bargaining, their sometimes delicate partnership was evident.’
Read more: In the Spirit of Activism: When Politics and Religion Intersect
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Education can solve religion-science conflicts
‘A PERCEIVED conflict between science and religion has led Americans to rank nearly last among industrialised countries in understanding evolution, a major science conference heard this weekend.’
Read more: Education can solve religion-science conflicts
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Delusions of the Corporate State
‘In 2008, this oligarchy precipitated one of its periodic national, financial meltdowns in order to reverse progress toward equality and democracy. The Wall Street bankers wrecked the lives of millions of Americans. And yet, the government did not punish the Wall Street bankers. In fact, the government itself is under their sinister influences.’
Read more: Delusions of the Corporate...
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Why I'm Suing the FBI, the DoD and the CIA
‘Over the past year, I’ve filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and other government agencies in hopes of prying loose documents I need to support my investigative reporting efforts on a wide-range of issues and policies. One of the frustrating realities about the FOIA process is the enormous backlog of requests government...
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Pope puts his stamp on Catholic Church’s future...
‘Pope Benedict, putting his mark on his Church’s future, on Saturday inducted 22 men into the exclusive group of cardinals who will one day elect one of their own to succeed him as leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics.’
Read more: Pope puts his stamp on Catholic Church’s future with 22 new cardinals
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Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears
‘This week’s revelations that Google Inc, Twitter and other popular Internet companies have been taking liberties with customer data have prompted criticism from privacy advocates and lawmakers, along with apologies from the companies.’
Read more: Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears
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Rick Santorum's Political and Biblical Mistake
‘The language of politics is different than the language of religion — politics is not religion. The language of religion is based on creedal affirmation, while the language of politics, when it works, is the language of compromise. To confuse politics for religion results in gridlock from the political perspective. To confuse politics for religion from the religious perspective is...
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FBI Foils Magical Make-Believe D.C. Suicide Bomb...
‘The FBI once again proves it is the best in the world at disrupting the terrorist plots it creates. A Moroccan man in his 30s was arrested on his way to what he thought would be a suicide bombing on the U.S. Capitol. But the bombs strapped to his chest were fakes, supplied by the FBI. See, the guy thought he had been plotting with al Qaeda, but it was FBI agents the whole time!’
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