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POPSMore Theocratic Lunacy For all you American Christians that cling to your notion of a Christian Nation, perhaps you should look to other countries that actually have a theocracy. Doesn't look as appealing as you thought, does it?
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POPSGod(?) Endorses Obamacare? now imagine that sentence coming from George W Bush and the spittle-flecked invective it would generate on say The Puffington Host
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POPSChristian Nation? Perhaps the Right Wingers who trumpet the canard that this is a Christian Nation should take a second and reflect on what it might be like to live in a theocracy. Yeah, like that will ever happen!
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POPSHard-Line Force Extends Grip Over a Splintered Iran “It is not a theocracy anymore,” said Rasool Nafisi, an expert in Iranian affairs and a co-author of an exhaustive study of the corps for the RAND Corporation. “It is a regular military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system.” The corps has become a vast military-based conglomerate, with control of Iran’s missile batteries, oversight of its nuclear program and a multibillion-dollar business empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy. It runs laser eye-surgery clinics, manufactures cars, builds roads and bridges, develops gas and oil fields and controls black-market smuggling, experts say. Its fortune and its sense of entitlement have reportedly grown under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since 2005, when he took office, companies affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards have been awarded more than 750 government contracts in construction and oil and gas projects, Iranian press reports document.
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POPSLyrical Voices "Nooriala has written about the failures of the Islamic revolution, erotic love and such taboo women's subjects as abortion and menopause. She recently posted a piece dedicated to Iranians protesting the country's presidential election. I have seen your nightmares in my dreams I have kept your sorrows in my heart I picked a dandelion flown about by the wind Bringing me news, anxiety and trembling hands If you are tied down I shall be your wings If you are at war I shall be your armor Your voice will fly through the blue sky again, And your free hands will weave through the sun again."
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POPSReligious Law Granted, Somalia has major problems as a country. IMO, these draconian religious actions can't be in the best interests of the Somali people. But such is the power of religious indoctrination. Another stunning example on how theocracy is a cancer when used as a governing method.
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POPSIgnorance is Strength The "hero" of the American media, is a bloody terrorist, a.k.a. the Butcher of Beirut. I thought the US was supposed to pretend to be fighting terrorists, not supporting them? Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time.
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POPSPersian Paranoia By Christopher Hitchens
Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed. (Hint: Don't make your sole reference to Iranian dictatorship an allusion to a British-organized coup in 1953; the mullahs think that it proves their main point, and this generation has more immediate enemies to confront.) There is then the larger question of the Iranian theocracy and its continual, arrogant intervention in our affairs: its export of violence and cruelty and lies to Lebanon and Palestine and Iraq and its unashamed defiance of the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the nontrivial matter of nuclear weapons. I am sure that I was as impressed as anybody by our president's decision to quote Martin Luther King"rather late in the week"on the arc of justice and the way in which it eventually bends.
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POPSWeep For Iran, Cheer The Iranians What Americans now see is that Iranians are a people with spirit who are not easily broken. For all the claims that Americans are an unsophisticated bunch, they know that a regime and its people are not one and the same. What has happened in recent weeks has confirmed that instinct. Are those protesting true believers in democracy? We do not know, because they have never been given the chance. What we do know is that they reject the dishonesty of a repressive theocracy. For that reason alone, we should stand with them. Let us weep for Iran. Let us cheer the Iranians. Posted by Howard Baskerville at June 21, 2009
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POPSConfessions of a Lapsed Atheist "And enlightened as they are, they've come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our Founding Fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion." "You see, for liberal Atheists, the only thing worse than religion is the Religious Right, a term they use to encompass all Christian conservatives. And what better way to siphon fuel from the Religious Right than to convince Americans that the government is perpetually on the verge of becoming a theocracy? " "But above all, Atheists stoke fear among religious and nonreligious alike that conservatives view government as a tool to force religion down your throat."
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POPSHope & Change -- but Not for Iran Krauthammer notes that this revolution "would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier." He notes that our President doesn't want to be seen as "meddling"...the very "president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world."
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POPSAn Idea for Liberals The only way Ahmadinejad could better epitomize everything you hate is if he were fervently pro-America and a woman. Instead of imagining Bush doing every evil thing you can think of, you can try imagining Ahmadinejad doing the same — except he might actually be doing them. Of course, I’m not saying you should hate him as much as you hated Bush — I don’t think that’s possible — but you could maybe spare a little anger for him.
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POPSWhat Just Happened? 06.17.2009 “In the most dramatic turnabout since the 1979 revolution,” they wrote, “Iran has evolved from theocratic state to military dictatorship.” If this analysis is correct – and right now, it looks like it is – the White House may need to start over from scratch. Iran is the same country it was a week ago, but it no longer has quite the same government. Some will argue that Mr. Ahmadinejad may be in a conciliatory mood because he needs talks with the United States to underscore his own legitimacy, but that can only be read as a self-serving Washington perspective. Meanwhile, the Iranian people will have suffered the consolidation of power by a ruthless regime and the transformation of a theocracy to an ideological military dictatorship. That Iran neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West.
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POPSIs A Free Iraq Coming Home To Roost In Iran? "In the weeks prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Johns Hopkins Professor and noted Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami wrote that a free Iraq might have a profound impact on neighboring Iran:"
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POPSDon't Call What Happened in Iran an Election I know this is getting a lot of play right now but I couldn’t help clipping this mainly for the comment about the image of fascism being “Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told they're special”.
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POPSFascism at Home Means Fascism Abroad Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that “the genuine will and desire” of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with. Earlier this year, I spent a week with Hitchens in Lebanon, and at one point he wandered off to attend a Hezbollah rally in the suburbs south of Beirut. I thought I had seen enough Hezbollah rallies over the last couple of years and could hardly stand the thought of sitting through yet another one of those bigoted scream fests. I wish now that I had gone, though, because Hitchens witnessed an alarming escalation.
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POPSIran Documentaries Right now, there are massive protests in the streets of Tehran , calling the latest election victory of Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a fraud. America has a long, complex history with Iran. Did you know the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president of Iran in the 1950s? Did you know that after Sept 11th, Iranians in Tehran marched in the streets chanting "Death to Terrorists"? Did you know that Iran assisted the US Invasion of Afghanistan? Iran is an ancient, complex culture. In many way, culturally the West has more in common with Shia Iran than we do with Sunni Saudi Arabia. Remember, al Qaeda is a Sunni group, and they consider the Shia to be heretics. They Iranian theocracy is no peach, but A: They are rational and survival-oriented in a way that Sunni terrorists are not. B: Iran has a massively YOUNG population who are on the 'net. They are not fanatic America haters.
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POPSOh, Texas, this guy runs your school board? Spoken like a true politician. Wait. . .What?? Did this guy say anything? This is why we should have stricter national standards for education. The right-wing creationists realized years ago they needed to fill the school boards and local political structures with their believers to create a nation of brainwashed zombies. This is proof of the success they’ve had getting the ignorant and the ill-informed into places of power. I’m still waiting for creationists to come up with a scientific model instead of trying to tear down one that has taken billions of years to build.
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POPSWhy We Fight U.S. Troops Die For Rapists Afghan Senator Humaira Namati calls the rape bill "worse than during the Taliban" and said it was rammed through parliament without debate. "Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam," she said. Several hundred women protesting the law on the streets of Kabul were viciously assaulted by men as police stood back and watched. Remember this column the next time you watch a flag-draped coffin returning from Afghanistan. The young man inside that box didn't die for nothing. He died to protect rapists.
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POPSDay of Prayer - No Biggie Aw shucks! James Dobson's disappointed. Just breaks my heart. After 8 years of a quasi-theocracy (mostly a smoke screen to appease the nutso base) we finally have a president how actually believes in getting things done instead of wasting time in meaningless demonstrations of religiosity.
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POPSDealing with the Christian Taliban Before all of you folks start writing angry emails directed my way, give some thought as to just what the Christian Taliban are doing in this country today. They have openly called for a “Fatwah” against so-called “activist judges” and they openly defend hatred directed toward gays, as well as single women with children. They censure, with excommunication as well as other sanctions, anyone who strays from their dogmatic and narrow viewpoint.
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POPSThe next moral quagmire: Conscience "The form it takes now, in an age dominated by post-religious viewpoints, is a kind of 'atheistic theocracy' that poses just as real a threat to divergent beliefs as the old kinds of theocracy,"
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POPSLiving in a Theocracy We often hear of the need to "protect" cultures from contamination. Of what good would it do to protect a culture like show in this clip from outside influence except to introduce the concept of equality, liberty, and morality stripped from the repressive theistic dogma that exists there now? Some things are simply wrong. Justifying them on the basis of culture or religion is no justification at all. It's an excuse.
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POPSYouTube Blocked In China More: "While most of the rest of the world thinks of the Dalai Lama as a peaceful leader in exile, the official view in China is that he hides behind a facade of non-violence while inciting the same in Tibet, in an attempt to achieve Tibetan independence and restore the old feudal system. They paint the latter as a theocracy with serfdom, diametrically opposed to Democratic Reform. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time believing any talk of “democracy” from a government that suppresses the free expression of ideas. Whom do you believe?"
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