The main effect of the globalism fad of the past 30 yearrs — lowering the protective barriers to trade that countries for centuries have used to make sure their own local economies are self-sufficient — has been to ship manufacturing (the creation of wealth) from developed nations to developing nations. Transnational corporations love this, because in countries with lower labor costs and few environmental and safety regulations, it’s more profitable to manufacture products. They then sell those products in the “mature” countries — the places that used to manufacture — and people burn through the wealth they’d accumulated in the earlier manufacturing days (home equity, principally, along with savings and lines of credit) to buy these foreign-manufactured goods. At first, it looks like a good deal to consumers in developed nations. Goods are cheaper! But over a decade or two or three, as the creation of real wealth is reduced and the residue of the old wealth is spent, the developed nations become progressively poorer and poorer. At the same time, the “developing” nations become wealthier — because those are the places that are producing real wealth. Thom Hartmann ☀
The framers of the US Constitution were wary of all such public piety. Not for nothing did they omit the word “God’’ from its clauses. Official government exercises that assume divine license for the nation, whether celebrated with china and linen in Washington or with meals-ready-to-eat at Special Forces camps in Afghanistan, are bad politics. Equally troubling, their presumptuous appropriation of God’s will makes them bad religion. With an ideological past, and a banal present, the national prayer breakfast, given our self-sanctifying wars, bodes ill for the future. James Carroll ☀
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation. Augustine slams Creationism ☀
Yesterday, in the middle of a discussion, I found out how tied some people are to the promotion of their party of choice. If there is a Republican (Nixon) who says abortion is necessary for inter-racial children (indicating an inherent racism and a pro-abortion stand), he is considered less pro-abortion than a Democrat who says abortion should be a choice (Obama).
Verizon Wireless is said to be filtering HTTP traffic to/from boards.4chan.org (all image boards). From status.4chan.org: “After an hour and a half on the phone, we’ve received confirmation from Verizon’s Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are ‘explicitly blocked.”
Yes, I do like and have tried to champion OpenSource software. How can I square that with my love of Apple? I’m complicated. I’m a human being. I also believe in a mixed economy and mixed nuts. I love our National Health Service and the National Theatre, but I also love Fortnum and Mason’s and Hollywood movies. Stephen Fry ☀
Armstrong is right that we all seek a deeper meaning behind our lives. Yet merely glorifying our ignorance by professing awe at some “ultimate mystery” or ascribing the patent injustices of the world to “God’s will,” which no one can truly fathom anyway, doesn’t seem like a very enlightened approach. Nor is it intellectually honest; contrary to her assertions, religions do make empirical claims. Was the universe created, or is it self-created? Is there a supernatural being to whom we are morally responsible? Is there life after death? All these are questions that demand some basis in fact, not merely “allegorical” merit.
Or maybe not. It’s folly, Armstrong says, to expect religion to “provide us with information. Is there a God? How did the world come into being? But this is a modern aberration.” Let’s say she’s right. Yet if religion should not be expected to say even whether God exists, what “case” is there for Him?
I used to be into flagellation, necrophilia and bestiality, but then one day I realised I was flogging a dead horse. Spam and flagellation ☀
We’ve gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible. First, we are in a scientific mess. Fundamentalism again and again paints itself into a corner by requiring that the Bible be treated as a divinely dictated science textbook providing us true information in all areas of life, including when and how the earth was created, what the shape of the earth is, what revolves around what in space, and so on. Brian McLaren ☀
Future historians who try to chart the unraveling of the USA’s political tapestry might point to two events of the past week. The obvious first one was the Tea Party convention at Nashville. It was held not accidentally at the ridiculous Opryland Hotel and resort in the city’s outer suburban asteroid belt, right next to the circumferential freeway, and next door to the defunct (1997) Opryland USA theme park, an attraction based on the cute idea that Tennessee rubes were too dumb to spell the word opera — so the symbolism was perfect. Behind the incoherent cargo of conflicting complaints that makes up Tea Party doctrine — like “keeping the government’s hands off our medicare!” — stands the more basic dissolution of the Sunbelt’s miracle economy, along with the pain and bewilderment of the southern peckerwood political nexus that rose out of the dust after World War Two to build the suburban nirvana of universal air-conditioning, happy motoring, Jesus tub-thumping, over-eating, and Friday night football that defined Sunbelt culture. They sense now that history is about to thrust them back into the okra patch, with the hookworms and the chiggers, as the economy whirls down the drain, and the car dealerships close up, and the idle production homebuilders succumb to methedrine addiction, and the price of Reba McEntire tickets exceeds their dwindling resources, and they are none too happy about any of that. James Howard Kunstler ☀
I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror. Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. Chris Hedges ☀
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