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POPSMeme War “Eastern European banking bomb” as an example of meme warfare
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POPSDear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, After that, it should be relatively easy. Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate taste. We don't like redistributive taxes so you can have those. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. And since you hate guns and you hate war, we'll take the firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. But you are going to be responsible for finding a biodiesel vehicle big enough to haul them around. We'll keep the capitalism, the greedy corporations, the pharmaceutical companies; we will keep Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have the homeless, the homeboys, the hippies and illegal aliens. We will keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, the greedy CEOS and all of the rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and we'll let you have NBC and Hollywood.
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POPSWho is your 'special friend' ? The 'special relationship' between Britain and America may have had some validity during WW2. However, over the ensuing decades it has turned into a very 'one way' affair. I think that it is time to agree to an amicable separation!
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POPSPalestine/Israel: Water and international law - Things could get worse The United Nations' General Assembly reaffirmed in several resolutions that the Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) is applicable to the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and again and again condemned Israel's policies and practices against the population in the occupied territories. Very startling, the chutzpah with which Israel withstands the imminence of being classified as a rogue state.
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POPSCultural Differences Now imagine you’re a Jewish country, wherein the prevailing attitude is to value life, and on your borders are a large population that embraces a philosophy in which death trumps. Seems to me that building a wall is the most moderate approach that comes to mind.
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POPSMy Politics in One Paragraph Except I do care about abortion and church/state separation. I wouldn't want any woman I know to have an abortion, but I don't want the government restricting it. And I want the wall of separation between church and state to be strong.
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POPSAtheists Don't Deserve Freedom And as Joan Walsh added: But I wasn't reassured, I was alarmed. Romney blasted "the new religion of secularism," referring to those who continue to argue for strict separation of church and state, which apparently, like certain of the Geneva Conventions under the Bush administration, is becoming "quaint." I sometimes find the anti-God stridency of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens grating. Listening to Romney's speech I realized what a necessary corrective it is to corrosive political pandering. Calling secularism "religion" is a cheap shot worthy of Bill O'Reilly, not a major presidential candidate. I can't help hoping Romney's speech fails to soothe religious conservatives, because the sooner the Republican Party faces up to the destructive cost of its electoral dependence on religious extremists, the better off our country will be.
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POPSRomney - Panders to the Right I concur, he's no John Kennedy. And most telling is the contrast between Kennedy's assertion of the soundness of the Wall of Separation and Romney's Radical Right Wing whine of how the Wall of separation is taken too far. Just another reach around for the fundies.
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POPSA Look into the Muslim Headscarf Hysteria in France
The Conseil d'État eventually ruled that students could not be refused admission simply for wearing headscarves, but it also gave teachers and principals the power to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether such signs of religious affiliation were permissible. In 2003, two teenage sisters were expelled from their high school for refusing to take off their headscarves. The Lévy sisters are the daughters of a lawyer who considers himself "a Jew without God" and a Kabyle teacher who had been baptized a Catholic during the Algerian war. The girls had converted to Islam after their parents' separation and had donned the scarves as part of that process. In an interview with Le Monde, the girls' father declared, "I am not in favor of the headscarf, but I defend the right of my children to go to school. In the course of this business I've discovered the hysterical madness of certain ayatollahs of secularism who have lost all their common sense."
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POPSIsrael Bulldoze Convent Land for Apartheid Wall 
Ziyada also tells IPS that the settlement practices collective punishment in many ways to eradicate the villagers from their land. "The water supply comes from the settlement, so they control it. Last month, we didn't have running water for three weeks. They cut the water and said there was damage to the pipes, even though we knew it wasn't true." Last year, the Israeli military blocked every road but one in and out of Wadi Rahaal and installed a locking metal gate on the remaining road that imprisons the villagers every evening. The soldiers lock the gate at arbitrary times; there is no set schedule, and many residents find themselves unable to enter or leave their village at regular hours. "The settlers enter Wadi Rahaal, they walk around to intimidate and frighten the villagers. They throw rocks at our heads and they are all armed. There are also Israeli helicopters that fly over the village very low. There are checkpoints all over the village," she says.
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POPSPetraeus wants to drop ban on domestic propaganda According to this article, General Petraeus wants to tear down the wall between the military's public affairs operation, which is supposed to truthfully communicate with the US media and public, and the military's information operations, which is given leeway to use deception and propaganda to communicate with foreign populations. I don't understand why we tolerate the use of deception in any kind of public communications whatsoever, with the US public or with the publics of other countries. Via Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise
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POPSPrayer and Terrorism I particularly liked the "spiritual prayer wall" concept. The idea is so elegantly simple. I'm surprised Bush doesn't immediately seize the opportunity to withdraw all the troops and erect this "prayer wall" around the country. Problem solved. The terrorists couldn't possibly penetrate it and the country would be safe. Also,what was McIntyre thinking? If atheists prayed might that cause problems? I'm not sure how the prayer pipeline operates but this seems problematic at best. It seems atheists might cause prayer static to be generated that could block the prayers of true believers. Maybe they should rethink this whole prayer thing. Maybe do something concrete like begin talks with parties in the middle east? What do I know though. I guess I'll try prayer and see if I get any answers....hello....hello....anybody home?
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