Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

Doomsday Preppers

 

Waiting For The Apocalypse . . . . .

If you have seen the National Geographic's TV series "Doomsday Preppers" it becomes immediately evident that there is large subculture of the USA addicted to fear. I would agree that it is important to prepare for the occasional natural disaster, but as the title of this series states these people are actaully gleefully watiing for the end of the world. 

And for almost everyone of them, it's a question of when, not if, the world will end. Every hour segment begins with the subjects stating the particular scenario they're prepping for, which naturally comes across as myopic. The likelihood of the various scenarios range from "possible but unlikely" to near-impossible to "hard to be sure without more data" to "you're paranoid and need help". But the thing about obsessing about the apocalypse is that you might end up looking forward to it. There's more than a hint of glee in many of the interviewees as they envision themselves and their [mainly nuclear] families safely tucked in their bunkers while the rest of society goes to hell in a handbasket.

And for some of them, this may be more than a figure of speech. While the series stays clear of discussing their political and religious beliefs, most of them are Caucasians who think that social collapse is inevitable, whatever their preferred catalyst: EMP pulse, thermonuclear war, mega-earthquake, global pandemic, hyperinflation. It all leads to the same thing, and they want to be counted among the chosen few, not just another "victim".

Not surprisingly for this "us vs. them" mode of thinking, a lot of preppers are armed to the teeth and trained in hand-to-hand combat. It's almost like they're chomping at the bit for the day when they can unload hot lead on someone for merely stepping on their lawn. One married couple practices navigating their home in the dark like some TV SWAT team, which is stashed throughout with various hidden caches of firearms. One man accidentally blows-off his thumb with his gun during a training exercise. Good thing the camera crew was there that day, or he'd still be missing his entire digit. Another household wants to turn their two pet German Shepherds into attack dogs. They watch as an actual trained dog is let loose on a simulated attacker, who is rather unfortunately cast as African American.

They seem to have a toggle switch, black or white, "us vs them", mentality that I am simply not comfortable with.  [And fortunately it is not a part of daily life here in Thailand].

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Wackadoodle Prayer Warrior

CBN News wonders if prayer moved Isaac away from Tampa to guard Republican delegates. so Rev. Justin Peters of the 'Pray Tampa Bay Team' explains all.  Are these idiots at all aware of the nonsense they are spouting?

Pertinent comment:
"So, they prayed to save themselves and for their God to send the storm on to hit some other city instead? Seems like a very Christian thing to do."

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Bubbles of Delusion

Accidental Gods

"As the motorcade crept up Broadway, the shower of tickertape and confetti was so thick that one might have failed to notice Emperor Haile Selassie I, serene as a saint, buried in the pomp and protocol of his own welcoming. In 1954, the small yet dignified despot arrived in New York to partake in a liturgy of champagne toasts. Accompanied by the exotic Princess Semble and the thunder of a twenty-one-gun salute, the Ethiopian monarch impressed himself upon the Eisenhower White House, the deans of Harvard, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Redwoods of California. On this, his first state visit to America, Haile Selassie swapped Coptic crosses for autographed baseball bats, elephant tusks for honorary degrees, and confessed a taste for milkshakes. Wearing his field marshal uniform, as always, crested with ten rows of medallions, the Emperor flew to Hollywood, where he met Marlon Brando on set as Napoleon. Somewhat perplexingly, Brando exclaimed, “You’ve won more battles than I have.” (By most lights, Selassie’s signal military distinction was surrendering his country to Mussolini in 1936.)"


Thus begins a literary romp of a select few of the accidental gods and divinities of human history.  Interesting reading, and almost too bizarre for comprehension. As humans we seem to want to believe in just about anyone [or anything]. 

But of course those mentioned are no more strange than the belief in the 'real divinities'. 

Teaching People to Think

Why Teaching People to Think for Themselves Is Repugnant to Religious Zealots and Rick Santorum

by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

"Right-wing fundamentalists such as Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum hate public schools, which he suggests are government schools wedded to doing the work of Satan, dressed up in the garb of the Enlightenment. Santorum, true to his love affair with the very secular ideology of privatization, prefers home schooling, which is code for people taking responsibility for whatever social issues or problems they may face, whether it be finding the best education for their children or securing decent health care.

Actually, Santorum and many of his allies dislike any public institution that enables people to think critically and act with a degree of responsibility toward the public. This is one reason why they hate any notion of public education, which harbors the promise, if not the threat, of actually educating students to be thoughtful, self-reflective and capable of questioning so-called common sense and holding power accountable. Of course, some progressives see this as simply another example of how the right wing of the Republican Party seems to think that being stupid is in. But there is more going on here than the issue of whether right-wing fundamentalists are intellectually and politically challenged. What makes critical education, especially, so dangerous to radical Christian evangelicals, neoconservatives and right-wing nationalists in the United States today is that, central to its very definition, is the task of educating students to become critical agents who can actively question and negotiate the relationships between individual troubles and public issues. In other words, students who can lead rather than follow, embrace reasoned arguments over opinions and reject common sense as the engine of truth. What Santorum and his allies realize is that democracy cannot function without an informed citizenry and that, in the absence of such a citizenry, we have a public disinvested from either thinking reflectively or acting responsibly. There is nothing more feared by this group of fundamentalists than individuals who can actually think critically and reflectively and are willing to invest in reason and freedom rather than a crude moralism and a reductionistic appeal to faith as the ultimate basis of agency and politics. What Santorum and his appeal to theocracy longs for is a crowd of followers willing to lose themselves in causes and movements that trade in clichés and common sense. This is the Tea Party crowd with their overt racism, dislike for critical thought and longing for outlets through which they can vent their anger, moral panics and hatred for those who reject their rigid Manichean view of the world. This is a crowd that embraces the likes of Santorum and other fundamentalists because they provide the outlets in which such groups can fulfill their desire to be amused by what might be called the spectacle of anti-politics. ,,,,,"

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Three Jailed Over Gay-hate Leaflet In U.K.

Three jailed over gay-hate leaflet

"Three men have been jailed after becoming the first to be convicted of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation for handing out a leaflet calling for gay people to be executed.

Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed gave out the pamphlet, entitled The Death Penalty?, that showed an image of a mannequin hanging from a noose and quoted Islamic texts that said capital punishment was the only way to rid society of homosexuality. Ali was jailed for two years and Ahmed and Javed for 15 months each.

Following a trial at Derby Crown Court last month, they were convicted by a jury of distributing threatening written material intending to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation - the first prosecution of its kind since legislation came into force in March 2010.

The Death Penalty? leaflet stated that the Islamic verdict on anyone caught committing homosexuality is to apply capital punishment to both parties involved.

Sentencing the men, Judge John Burgess, Recorder of Derby, told them: "You have been convicted of intending to stir up hatred. It follows that your intention was to do great harm in a peaceful community."

He went on: "Much has been said during the course of this trial about freedom of expression, and the freedom to preach strongly held beliefs; beliefs, which may have some foundation in scripture. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy and a basic ingredient of any free society.  . . . . "

 

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Visions of 'Hell'

Ho hum. Religious people never cease to annoy me with their babble about an intimate knowledge of hell — especially American Evangelical Christians.  Hell is a mythologica lconcept first recorded by the ancient  Egyptians and was later adopted by other cultures in the Middle East.  But it really took off when the American Puritans and Evangelicals jumped on the hell bandwagon.

I much prefer Satre's vision of hell in his play 'No Exit', in which he contends that "L'enfer, c'est les autres,"  translated as "Hell is other people.". 

Visions of Hell

"Bill Weise is a clean-cut real estate agent from Southern California. His wife, Annette, describes him as emotionally stable, churchgoing and certainly “not a complainer.”

Yet Weise can’t stop talking about what happened to him on Nov. 23, 1998, the night he tumbled into one of the raging theological debates of modern times, the night he was plucked from his bedroom and sent straight to hell.

“We came home from a prayer meeting on the night of the 22nd, went to bed, and at 3 o’clock in the morning, the Lord picked me up and dropped me off in a prison cell in hell,” Weise explained in a recent television interview. “I did not realize where I was, but I noticed immediately the heat.”

Sharing his cell, Weise says, were two 13-foot-tall reptilian creatures, pacing around and cursing God. When they noticed Weise arrive, the first one set about breaking Weise’s bones against a stone wall, and the second one used its huge claws to tear the flesh from Weise’s body. Later, Weise beheld a lake of fire crammed with sinners, and was carried up a long tunnel to kneel at the feet of Jesus before being returned to his house in California.  It’s a story Weise has spread worldwide since the release of his book: 23 Minutes in Hell: One Man’s Story of What He Saw, Heard and Felt in That Place of Torment.

The funny thing about hell is that a decisive majority of Americans believes it is an absolutely real place, but those who try to describe what goes on there come off sounding like lunatics. . . . . . "

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A Recollection of 9/11 - Córdoba, Veracruz, México

I was going up the broad staircase at the 'Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey [ITESM], Veracruz campus, prior to my first class of the day.  I had been teaching at the university for some 9 years since I moved to eastern Mexico from northern California.  Suddenly a colleage grabbed my arm, said 'you have to see this' ['tienes que ver esto'] and forcefully ushered me into the office of a fellow professor.  A number of teachers were standing around the large TV on the wall in hushed silence.  I saw one of the large towers in New York with smoke billowing out it and since it was a relay broadcast from Mexico City the  announcer somehow presumed that a plane had accidently crashed into the tower.  Then no more that a few minutes later what appeared to be a large passenger airplane flew into the second tower.  It suddenly became evident that this was a purposeful act.  I, like all of those in the room, was in a state of shock.  Things like this just didn't happen in the USA, the most powerful nation on the planet.

       

I eventually made my way to the 'Méthodos de Investigacíon Científica' classroom, attempted to explain why there would be no class that day, stopped by the main office to have the secretary cancel my other classes, and walked home, still in a state of confusion and shock.  I utilized a shortcut to my home which passed through a coffee plantation filled with an abundance of nature.  The birds were singing, butterflies were floating through the air and this walk had always the most peaceful part of my day.  What I had just witnessed a few minutes before occuring in New York seemed more like a nightmare than reality. 

            
        

I like millions of others around the world sat as if glued to the TV for the rest of the day and early evening, attempting to make sense of it all.  I don't now recall how long before it was established that this horrendous act was perpetrated by Al Qaeda and was the result of Moslem fanaticism.  And since I was liviing in a predominately Catholic country, I couldn't very well proclaim with indignation that this barberous act was the end result of what religious fanaticism can produce.

I recalled the childhood history lessons from my father, a history professor, when he told me about the Albigensian Crusade, initiated by Pope Innocent III, which resulted in the deaths of at least a million innocent people in Europe, and the dreaded Spanish Inquisition which had also killled and tortured an untold number.  My own father had been a victim of the Nazi occupation of our country.  Our neighbors had been sent off to concentration camps from which they never returned.   Since childhood I have been made painfully aware of what any religious/political fananticism is capable of,  but especially during those troubling days after 9/11, I kept my thoughts to myself.

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Christine O'Donnell Is At It Again

Christine O'Donnell bails on "Piers Morgan" to avoid gay questions

Self-described trouble maker Christine O'Donnell appeared on the Piers Morgan Tonight show on Wednesday, trying to talk about her book, "Trouble Maker: Let's Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again."

O'Donnell, a tea party favorite, is best known in Delaware for defeating the heavily favored nine-term Congressman and former governor Michael Castle in the state's September 2010 Republican Senate primary. She lost in the general election to Democrat Chris Coons.

So last night Christine O'Donnell walked off CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" to avoid answering questions regarding her views on gay marriage and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

O'Donnell = Palin = Bachmann
 
Combining the I.Q.s of all three probably woudn't produce a double digit figure.  And this my friends is representative of  the 'Tea Party of America' — moronic loosers, each and every one, and is it any surprise that they are ALL fervent Evangelical christians.

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Sam Harris: 'Holy Scriptures lose against Modernity'

Sam Harris talks about how our modern understanding of the world has forced religions to change.

We live in the 21st century. 
The stories and tales in the Torah, Bible, Koran, Upanishads, Dhammapada, etc, quiant and charming [and occasionally gruesome] though they may be, cannot be used to dictate how we live today.

Time for people to recognize the fact that no book was ever written by anyone other than a human being. There is no factual proof that a 'god' has ever dictated a book.

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The Importance and Necessity of Free Speech

Johann Hari: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

"This is a column condemning cowardice – including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did.

You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as "the Prophet Mohamed", so our ability to explore this story is stunted. The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it "a national security issue". Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones's publisher has pulped the book. It's gone. .

In Europe, we are finally abolishing the lingering blasphemy laws that hinder criticism of Christianity. But they are being succeeded by a new blasphemy law preventing criticism of Islam – enforced not by the state, but by jihadis. I seriously considered not writing this column, but the right to criticise religion is as precious – and hard-won – as the right to criticise government. We have to use it or lose it.

Some people will instantly ask: why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? How did it stop spreading shame about natural urges – pre-marital sex, masturbation or homosexuality? Because critics pored over the religion's stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them. They asked questions. How could an angel inseminate a virgin? Why does the Old Testament God command his followers to commit genocide? How can a man survive inside a whale?

Reinterpretation and ridicule crow-barred Christianity open. Ask enough tough questions and faith is inevitably pushed farther and farther back into the misty realm of metaphor – where it is less likely to inspire people to kill and die for it. But doubtful Muslims, and the atheists who support them, are being prevented from following this path. They cannot ask: what does it reveal about Mohamed that he married a young girl, or that he massacred a village of Jews who refused to follow him? You don't have to murder many Theo Van Goghs or pulp many Sherry Joneses to intimidate the rest. The greatest censorship is internal: it is in all the books that will never be written and all the films that will never be shot, because we are afraid.

We need to acknowledge the double-standard – and that it will cost Muslims in the end. Insulating a religion from criticism – surrounding it with an electric fence called "respect" – keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. The smart, questioning and instinctively moral Muslims – the majority – learn to be silent, or are shunned (at best). What would Christianity be like today if George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell had all been pulped? Take the most revolting rural Alabama church, and metastasise it. . . . . . "


In the following video Mr. Hari speaks not only about Islam, but this intelligent and impassioned plea is extended to include and challage ALL of the world's religious fundamentalists. [Thanks to Unreasonable Faith for the heads up on this video.]

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit attrocities" - Voltaire

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