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POPSRadical Islam over-running the streets of London Shocking.Scary. Insane. Watch the British Police be surrounded by a fundie-mental mob. From comments: In 2006, the UN issued Security Briefing #4776 in which it named Islam as the greatest obstacle to a global peace accord. In the report, they noted that "Islam seems incapable of separating itself from the severe abuse of women" and that Muslims "harbor an innate predisposition to extreme violence and close-minded prejudice.
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POPSPlease Send More Complaints
Otherwise how will our taxpayer-funded hate police manage to keep their cozy sinecure? Happily, beginning on July 1, under Ontario's "human rights" reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions. Under the new proposals, " 'hate incident' means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members." "Act or omission"? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from "Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy" as published on the OHRC website: "The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered 'other.' "
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POPSStart Drilling On environmental grounds, the alternatives to more drilling are usually worse. Subsidies to ethanol made from corn have increased food prices and used scarce water, with few benefits. If oil is imported, it's vulnerable to tanker spills. By contrast, local production is probably safer. There were 4,000 platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit. Despite extensive damage, there were no major spills, says Robbie Diamond of Securing America's Future Energy, an advocacy group. Perhaps oil prices will drop when some long-delayed projects begin production or if demand slackens. But the basic problem will remain. Though dependent on foreign oil, we might conceivably curb the power of foreign producers. But this is not a task of a month or a year. It is a task of decades; new production projects take that long. If we don't start now, our future dependence and its dangers will grow. Count on it.
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POPSZiauddin Sardar on the Quilliam Foundation for ex-jihadis Sardar, whose writing I am only a little bit familiar with, is highly critical of any "lionizing" of former members of Islamic extremist groups, since it implicitly devalues the commitment to peace and pluralism exhibited by most "ordinary" Muslims.
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POPSCulture Clash I've wrestled with the question of cultural differences all my life it seems. As a cohesive element it seems to be effective. Yet the dark side to this cohesiveness is that it is divisive also. In addition, morally speaking, cultural issues like those addressed in this clip are simply wrong from a humanist point of view. There is nothing moral about actions such as this. They are antiquated, misogynistic, throwbacks that have no place in 21st Century life. Anyone who defends such heinous acts is as morally bankrupt as the killer father.
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POPS"Mad, Bad and Sad"
If male doctors conspired to define madness, responding to behaviors that flouted the social conventions of their culture, female patients, in the attempt to understand themselves and their context, and maybe even to create or bolster identity, colluded with those same doctors to satisfy the changing definitions of madness. “Often enough,” Appignanesi notes, “extreme expressions of the culture’s malaise, symptoms and disorders mirrored the time’s order.” While “Mad, Bad and Sad” echoes and enlarges upon Elaine Showalter’s book “The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980,” Showalter’s perspective is more exclusively feminist, arguing that psychiatry as practiced on women is a history of their subjugation and control by men. But as Appignanesi makes clear, women have had no little role in creating and fulfilling the definitions of their madness.<< "Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present" by Lisa Appignanesi.
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POPSClown Power!!! I would have loved to have been there to witness this first hand. Hate groups (an estimated 888 this year; a growth of 48% since 2000) evidently can't respond to ridicule and clowns! Their entire existence is predicated by feeding on fear and ignorance. Derision, laughter, and mockery seem perfectly well suited to deal with such people and bypasses the anger and hatred that fuels them. Brilliant!
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POPS"Repelled" Opens Soon While this "documentary" has been widely panned by many people it will have to be the misinformed and scientifically ignorant that save it. Considering the gullibility of the American public and their abysmal understanding of science and evolution I wouldn't be too surprised if this hatchet job did better than expected. Though, I would be extremely disappointed in the level of intelligence and lack of judgment in the movie going public.
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POPSThe perfect library Couldn't get them all and I just mainly clipped the titles. Go to the source - There is also a brief description of each.
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POPSIch Bin Ein Plutonian! There may be a lot of residual sympathy for the little guy. The fight would come to a crest when the candidates start comparing themselves to Pluto as the "underdog" Pluto's a dog. Get it? From there, the story could tangent off to anywhere. Is exclusion of Kuiper Belt objects akin to a prejudice? And if so, is it more like racism or sexism? If it's more like a rock then a planet, was it intelligently designed? Should we subject all celestial bodies to some sort of standardized testing system? Should it be the next destination after the Chinese beat us to Mars? Most importantly, what does Oprah think?<<
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POPSBigotry in Illinois Far from being unique, this latest outburst is simply one of the loudest. There is a wide spread prejudice against non-theists in the US that to a large degree is condoned by a large portion of the population. It's only when the bigots become shrill and irrational, like Rep. Davis did, that it becomes news. Maybe this could be a good thing. It brings it out in the open.
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POPSReligious Tests? Once again we're presented with examples of outright bigoted prejudice. Perhaps not surprising if it was put forth from a stereotypical Nascar dad but from a contender to the presidency it seems a bit out of line.
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POPSMuslim true/false What you think you know about them is likely wrong -- and that's dangerous. By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
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POPSSilent Racism and White Privilege "Her book contends that “silent racism” fosters routine actions not recognized by an individual as racist, but upholds the status quo. Trepagnier says that some whites become detached from the race issue while others are so concerned with it that they become apprehensive about it, avoiding even the mention of the topic. In both cases, this passive stance silently provides the racist actions of others an endorsement, or worse, encouragement. Trepagnier claims that even individuals who feel enlightened in race relations often miss the point. In one of her studies, 25 white women who considered themselves progressive voiced their opinions to Trepagnier in eight group sessions from Santa Barbara, California. In the discussions, the women who were most race-aware said that they could identify racist actions they had performed as recently as a week ago. Among the least race-aware was a woman who responded, “Racism has nothing to do with me."
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POPSGrandpa McCain Don't Like Them Atheists! Promulgating the idea of bigoted, separatist thought seems to take up a lot of the energies of the Republicans these days. Of course this has been their bread and butter issue for years. Give us someone to hate and forget about the real issues that plague the common man. They're the first to cry foul over class issues but they certainly have no qualms about using them to instill fear and prejudice if it suits their corporate aims.
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POPSIraq Teachers Told to Re-write History--Propaganda They plan to strike over it. This is typical of all wars and reconstruction, to justify everything done. (E.g. the U.S. established government "free schools", now compulsory, as part of Reconstruction after the Civil War)
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POPSThe Mission Statement That Changed The World His first response was one of anger.He was so angry that he wanted eye for eye justice. He wanted to respond violently to the people that humiliated him. But he stopped himself, and said ‘that’s not right.’ It was not going to bring him justice. It might make him feel good for the moment, but it wasn’t going to get him any justice. From that point onward, he developed the philosophy of non-violence and practiced it in his life, as well as in his search for justice in South Africa. He ended up staying in that country for 22 years. And then he went and led the movement of India. And that movement ended up with an independent country, something that no one would have ever envisioned.”
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POPSOn Travel - Inspirational Quotes “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Miriam Beard “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” - Bill Bryson “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” - Robert Frost “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” - Paul Theroux “A wise traveler never despises his own country.” - Carlo Goldoni
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POPSChurch Must Change or Die The traditional church always fights every new intellectual insight, making it difficult for educated people not to stray. Recall the fate of Galileo in the 17th Century. Observe how the church still fights Darwin with such silly things as intelligent design. Look at the present debate in the church over homosexuality in which people use a definition of homosexuality that is no longer saluted anywhere in scientific or medical circles upon which to justify their prejudice. When knowledge collides with traditional faith change is inevitable. I welcome it and if the church cannot engage this intellectually driven change, then it probably should die.
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POPSReligious Dogma Invades Healthcare Cline makes a good point that professionals like doctors and pharmacists knowingly enter professions that could compromise their religious beliefs. What could be their justification for then using these religious beliefs to refuse services to certain individuals?
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POPSA Flawed Feminist Test "As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies."
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POPSMary Seacole: Black British Heroine Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier, and her mother a Jamaican. Mary learned her nursing skills from her mother, who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers. Although technically 'free', being of mixed race, Mary and her family had few civil rights - they could not vote, hold public office or enter the professions. In 1836, Mary married Edwin Seacole but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844.
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POPSHope For the Future While the future of this election is still undecided, I catch a glimmer of hope by the irrelevance of race among young people. I've fought on the sidelines since the sixties for equality for all peoples and it seems a cultural shift is occurring. For a substantial segment of the population to be unconcerned about race is a collossal breakthrough in societal change. I think it was understood that this was a generational problem and would not vanish at the drop of a coin. Reality shows that racism is still rampant, particularly among less educated peoples however this election has demonstrated what I'd view as substantial progress in large scale shifts in the countries views. This pleases me beyond words.