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The Perry Bible Fellowship now has it's own website. Previously here on MeFi.
comment posted at 8:52 PM on Apr-21-06
comment posted at 8:56 PM on Apr-21-06
comment posted at 8:56 PM on Apr-21-06

Gay and Muslim groups getting together in the UK? plans are to look at homophobia in the Muslim community and Islamophobia in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The Muslim Council of Britain is also admitting that if you have nothing positive to say keep your mouth shut, which is a very good first step. Can two groups often on the receiving end of hatred work together ? “British Muslims welcome working with everyone including members of the Lesbian and Gay community against a common enemy, fascism.” I don't know if they have the likes of Michael Savage there (or the many many others), who rail against (and call for the death of) both Muslims and gays on the airwaves daily, but it seems hopeful, no?
comment posted at 9:06 PM on Apr-20-06

A Powerful Lobby The Middle East scholar Martin Kramer takes on the various writers, sites, that proclaim that the American invasion of Iraq is but one more indication of the Jewish/Israeli Lobby influence in America. One of the nuttiest passages in "The Israel Lobby," the co-production of professors Stephen Walt (Harvard) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), occurs in the very first footnote. (It's in the full version, on the website of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.)... and, in addtion addresses our involvement in Iraq, caused, claim some, by "Jewish/Israeli interests." [more]
comment posted at 6:06 PM on Apr-12-06

Advice for weary, wandering Democrats Note to Democrats: "Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream." Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers. ..."
comment posted at 8:00 AM on Apr-11-06
comment posted at 8:28 AM on Apr-11-06
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Apr-11-06

One-link post about blog post without additional explanatory text
comment posted at 7:01 AM on Apr-11-06

Six Visions of the End: Fall Down Six Times, an essay by Ran Prieur, describes six possible scenarios for the near future: Worst Case ("Meanwhile computer technology keeps accelerating, leading by 2050 to an insane and nearly all-powerful artificial intelligence, which exterminates all life on Earth except a single human, who it keeps alive to torture for all eternity: you."), Ridiculous Best Case ("In 2016 Dean steps down and the new president is an anarchist who spends eight years peacefully dismantling the federal government and building local systems that make central control irrelevant and impossible."), Naive Sci-Fi Utopia ("Everyone can live forever, and have kids, and enjoy wide open spaces. No one is sure how this is possible, but it probably has something to do with the Mayan calendar or the word "quantum.""), and three others. Whether or not you agree with his vision, the exercise of imagining different futures is a useful one that might help us see a way through the multiple crises the Earth is going through. What does your apocalypse look like?
comment posted at 3:09 PM on Apr-11-06

Will it be a Prague Spring? Protestors in France have actually influenced their government as this morning Chirac scrapped the Youth Job Law. Will the immigration bill protestors in U.S. streets be able to equally influence the American government? With Latin America shifting to the left, and with Berlusconi probably shifting out, and if FitzEaster delivers a special basket, is it a sign of the tide turning? Is another Prague Spring in the making, or is a long, dark, Russian Winter more likely before the approaching apocalypse?
comment posted at 8:41 AM on Apr-10-06

Speaking as a Canadian who is fond of judicious language, I feel that this situation deserves careful and measured thought. So let me just open with: Is your entire fucking country on crack?
comment posted at 11:42 AM on Apr-9-06

Goat on a pole: Institute for the study of The Goat, The Pole, Their Relative Positions
comment posted at 9:51 AM on Apr-9-06

Eighth grader Anthony Soltero shot himself on Thursday, March 30, after the assistant principal at De Anza Middle School told him that he was going to prison for three years because of his involvement as an organizer of the April 28 school walk-outs to protest the anti-immigrant legislation in Washington. The vice principal also forbade Anthony from attending graduation activities and threatened to fine his mother for Anthony's truancy and participation in the student protests." Anthony was learning about the importance of civic duties and rights in his eighth grade class. Ironically, he died because the vice principal at his school threatened him for speaking out and exercising those rights," ...
comment posted at 9:51 PM on Apr-7-06

One upping the bad guys
comment posted at 7:35 PM on Apr-7-06
comment posted at 7:37 PM on Apr-7-06
comment posted at 9:48 PM on Apr-7-06

Silence in class. "University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors. Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal?" From today's Guardian.
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Apr-4-06
comment posted at 9:44 PM on Apr-4-06
comment posted at 9:45 PM on Apr-4-06
comment posted at 6:04 PM on Apr-5-06
comment posted at 7:50 PM on Apr-5-06

"If Hamas fails to agree to a permanent ceasefire, we will have to create another leadership, just as we did before with Sheikh Yassin." Former head of the double ISO (Mossad), Efraim Halevy Spoke at the Middle East Forum in Boston last week (yes, he's selling a book) and had some interesting things to say. Earlier post here. (More inside).
comment posted at 5:55 PM on Apr-3-06
comment posted at 8:02 PM on Apr-3-06
comment posted at 7:28 PM on Apr-4-06
comment posted at 8:39 PM on Apr-4-06

H.R. 4437 will make illegal immigrants Felons. Protests have occured nation wide.
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Apr-3-06

Prayer as placebo. Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.
comment posted at 7:25 PM on Mar-31-06

Vladimir Putin can add a new line to his resume: plagiarist.
comment posted at 1:29 PM on Mar-26-06

At one point, after most of the vehicles had finally driven away, an Israeli soldier stuck his gun out of his armored vehicle, aimed at a pre-pubescent boy nearby, and pulled the trigger.

We discovered that an AP cameraman had filmed the entire incident.... What happened next is unfathomable. Did AP broadcast it? No. Did AP place the video in safe-keeping, available for an investigation of this crime? No.

According to its cameraman, AP erased it.
Linked from "The farcical end of the American 'free press'"
comment posted at 8:53 PM on Mar-19-06

The Earth is Not Moving. From the foreword: "The second [goal] is to establish a real understanding of how the theory which says that the Earth turns on an axis and orbits the sun has triumphed in spite of having no evidence whatsoever to support it." The explanation of why tides can't possibly be due to the Moon's gravity is particularly enlightening. As Wikipedia's page on modern geocentrism points out, General Relativity says that all frames of reference are equally valid, so at least some of these people aren't completely wrong. Will the return of geocentrism be the next step after creationism? When do we get to burn witches again? First link [via].
comment posted at 8:56 PM on Mar-13-06

One of the most powerful blog entries I've ever stumbled across. This woman writes her two young sons a letter to be opened and read in twelve years. It's a profound piece on what she expects of them as men.
comment posted at 11:07 AM on Mar-11-06

'This is a difficult and sad day for Catholic Charities," says a representative of the church, who announced their decision to stop helping all foster children find homes rather than allow any of them be adopted by gay parents. After one hundred three years of service, Catholic Charities of Boston is exiting the adoption assistance arena because state anti-discrimination laws force them to allow same-sex couples to adopt children (despite the fact that the church considers this to be a sin).

While adoptions in progress will not be affected, on or about June 30, the group that proffers a "just and compassionate society rooted in the dignity of all people" will make chrystal clear who is included in that definition of "all." (Of the 720 children placed in homes through CCAB, 13 of them were placed with "same-sex families" [sic].)
comment posted at 10:40 AM on Mar-11-06

Incredibly bold opinion offered on Al-Jazeera by Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian expatriate, psychologist and woman giving her opinions on the root cause of the current Islam/Western conflict. (video with subtitles).
comment posted at 2:42 PM on Mar-5-06
comment posted at 9:15 PM on Mar-5-06
comment posted at 9:10 PM on Mar-6-06
comment posted at 7:52 PM on Mar-8-06

The Answer : A one minute video shot in Iceland. (google video)
comment posted at 10:53 AM on Mar-5-06

Cheney accidently shoots a hunter. oops.
comment posted at 1:16 PM on Feb-12-06
comment posted at 1:19 PM on Feb-12-06

It's on. Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.
comment posted at 9:36 AM on Feb-12-06

paved prophets house, put up a parking lot.. “What makes this demolition worse is the fact that the home of the Prophet is to make way for a parking lot, two 50-storey hotel towers and seven 35-storey apartment blocks; a project known as the Jabal Omar Scheme, all within a stone’s throw of the Grand Mosque. Yet despite this outrage, not a single Muslim country, no ayatollah, no mufti, no king, not even a Muslim Canadian imam has dared utter a word in protest. Such is the power of Saudi influence on the Muslim narrative.”
comment posted at 9:46 AM on Feb-12-06

"We can't do anything about it. We just have to obey." Fulton (Mo.) High School drama students learn that resistance is futile.
comment posted at 5:41 PM on Feb-11-06

Ski Jumping - the only Olympic discipline to ban women. [thanks occhiblu]
comment posted at 10:40 AM on Feb-11-06

We could bomb Iran. But we wouldn't really know what to hit because we don't know enough about Iran's nuclear program. If the Russians don't work something out, maybe helping Iran is the best way to figure out what they have and to stop them from getting the bomb.
comment posted at 10:51 AM on Feb-10-06
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Feb-10-06

U.S. Force Feeding Prisoners at Guantánamo [NY Times]. In response to hunger strikes, U.S. military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees. This is accomplished using the sometimes deadly restraint chair, also known as the "we care chair". Well, that's what they get for being terrorists, right?[pdf]
comment posted at 7:04 AM on Feb-9-06
comment posted at 9:06 AM on Feb-9-06

The Mohammed Dance! We all remember the Hampster Dance (more) and the Jesus Dance. Now, with the ongoing cartoon controversy, comes the Mohammed Dance.
comment posted at 6:50 AM on Feb-9-06
comment posted at 12:56 PM on Feb-10-06