All the Propaganda That's Fit to Print

The Iran warmongering that gets reported uncritically in the MSM just boggles my mind. This bit on the BBC site makes me want to tear my hair(what's left of it) out, see here;
US wants fresh Iran talks on Iraq

It is painfully obvious to me, and I imagine everyone else that has been screaming about how the US lied and cajoled the US and Britain into invading Iraq, that the same BS tactics are being used again to insinuate that a country is 'cruisin for a bruisin' because of their evil threat to the US, (and of course, world freedom and democracy and Christianity). But the recent spate of 'intelligence reports', or just 'reports' of Iran backing, or promoting, or sheltering militants and sending them and weapons into Iraq for use against the good old boy freedom fighters from the U.S. of A. have been glaringly bereft of any sort of corroboration from sources outside of the U.S. military. Today, we get a supposedly tangible source of such intel. Well, what a surprise!:

Early in July, the US military in Iraq accused Iran of orchestrating an attack that killed five US soldiers and of using Lebanese militants to train insurgents.
The information came from a top Hezbollah fighter recently captured in southern Iraq, an army spokesman said.
Brig-Gen Kevin Bergner said the suspect admitted working with the Quds Force, linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Read between the lines. They tortured a confession out of someone! That they even have such a 'someone' in detention, let alone that he confessed - well you just have to take the military's word on that, but if they do, you can be sure he didn't spill his guts (figuratively) out of a sense of gratitude for 5 star treatment while being a guest at Abu Ghraib, or a sudden burst of a guilty conscious for that matter. More likely, he was threatened with having his guts spilled before, and if, he decided to sing, then I imagine he was just taking requests (saying whatever he thought the interrogators wanted to hear).

But the whole report just stinks of blatantly dishonest insinuations, for instance(emphasis mine):

Iran's foreign minister said his country would respond positively to talks if requested by the US.
The two sides held a ground-breaking meeting in Baghdad in May - the first since they severed ties in 1979.
But the violence in Iraq has continued unabated since then - despite the sending of nearly 30,000 extra US troops there.

SO FUCKING WHAT!?!! The fucking violence in Iraq has fuck-all to do with Iran, and the troop surge (and the original occupation) has nothing to do with Iran interference in the fucking first place! FFS!

But here you have the BBC blindly spouting spun propaganda in a yet further dishonest and leading manner.

Mascot for Hamas TV Show Is a Mouse No More

Hamas television, which was criticized for a Mickey Mouse-like character named Farfur who spouted anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish nostrums at children, has replaced the mouse with a bee named Nahoul, who says he is Farfur’s cousin.

Farfur was beaten to death by an Israeli who wanted his land on the previous episode of the children’s show “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.”

Nahoul, the bee, says: “I want to continue on the path of Farfur, the path of ‘Islam is the solution.’ The path of heroism, the path of martyrdom, the path of jihad warriors.”

Shee-it! Why are these Old Testament based religions so selfish and ruthless in their indoctrination of little children? They see kids as just more tools to use in their holy task of doing god's/allah's/yahweh's work.

"The Old Testament is the history of the Hebrew People, and it is the point of commonality where Christianity, Judaism, and Islam intersect. The Koran, and the Hebrew scriptures also use the Old-Testament of the Christian bible.
The commonality is the Yahweh/Allah monotheistic God and the historical link with the ancient Hebrew nation."
Interpreting The Old Testament

It's the same god!!! For all of them!!! What The mother of Mary Fuck??? - "Allah, of course, is the same God Jews and Christians worship. Islam is not only a Western, monotheistic religion rather than an Oriental, pantheistic religion, but explicitly bases itself on the historical revelation of the God of the Jews, tracing itself to Ishmael, Isaac's brother, to whom God also promised special blessings according to Genesis. Isaac and Ishmael, Jews and Muslims, have been engaged in sibling rivalry ever since."
Comparing Christianity & Islam

And there is 'Jesus Camp'

The children are all so eager to please, and this element of the film is the most difficult for me. If the adults decided to hand out the special Kool-Aid at this camp, the children would all unquestionably partake. With arms in the air, they are 'instructed' on how to let the spirit take over their bodies and speak in tongues. The children imitate. Many of them cry. Some fall to the ground and shake on the floor in what looks like an epileptic seizure. More cry. I wanted to cry with them, or more accurately for them. This all looked very unhealthy, I could only imagine what it was doing to them psychologically. I had the striking thought that this was all completely unforgivable. These adults, no matter their intentions, were performing horrific acts of mental child abuse.
Then comes the guilt, and mountains of it. "A lot of you say you're Christians, but how many of you are leading two separate lives?" Pastor Becky lays it on thick over the PA. She leads the children on through ideas of what they might be sinfully doing at school with their friends, and how they should be ashamed of themselves for it. I considered vomiting into my drink cup. She asks the children to gather around her and reach out their hands if they wish to be cleansed of these newly uncovered sins. Their cleansing source: A 20 oz. bottle of Nestlé-brand water poured over their grouped hands. Talk about product placement! There is of course more crying. There is more of me yelling at the screen, and more of my friend elbowing me in embarrassment.

Jesus Camp Bush Insanity

Christian Missionaries

There is much discussion on the blogs and other sites I frequent, as well as Main Stream media, that focuses on the effects of religion on society. The usual discourse centers on morality with the more vocal proponents of Christianity (read fundies, neo-con wingnuts, and the like!) asserting that without religion dogma to teach right from wrong, society would be basically amoral.
On the other hand, some of us atheists point out the cruelties and wars perpetrated in the name of God, and sometimes we note a correlation between faith and lack of critical reasoning skills.
Something very important I think we often overlook is the damage to and eradication of cultures caused by missionary work. I remember reading, in the '70s, that anthropologists hate Christian missionaries because they wipe out cultures before they have a chance to observe them, and more importantly, often leave 'primitive' peoples unable to integrate into western society and therefore spiritually and financially destitute.
So I Googled:

In the past, the damage done by missionaries were shared equally between the Protestant and Catholic churches. Today, most of the damage is done by fundamentalist, pentacostal and evangelical protestant sects, mostly from the US, Canada and Europe. Numbering about 80,000 strong [1] these fundamentalist missionaries spread like locusts throughout the world. Their destruction of native cultures, and in some cases actually causing the deaths of these natives, can only be described as a modern cultural and genocidal holocaust. more

Kona Kava Blog:

Even though the Christian Missionaries tried to eradicate the use of this ancient and sacred plant,...

The horses mouth:

...
For the Church of this period the purpose of evangelisation was clear. The purpose was to bring people into the Church, to get conversions to the faith. Outside the Church, it was seen that there was no, or at least little chance of salvation. The alternative was to leave people in their sins, and eventually, to torment in hell. Given this situation, evangelisation was not merely a nice thing to do, it was an overwhelming moral imperative. (Hill, 1992) Perhaps this helps one understand the zeal of the early missionaries and their “convert at all costs” attitude. It might also resonate with some when reflecting on dominant themes and motives in their own experience of school religious education or parish missions.
...

Shorter fundamentalists: "I don't care that you have existed for hundreds of perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of years in harmony and contentment, that your way of life gives you meaning, you are a sinner and I will save you, no matter how devastating it is to your way of life."

Keeping tabs

I am just basically keeping tabs on comments I make to hysterically wingnutted blogs to see if they publish my comments. This may evolve into sort of an experiment, or research, into just how biased, or unbiased, these blogs are esp. when contrasted to some of their claims: 1 - about their own fairness, or 2 - about their claims of unfairness against others (ie, being censored). It would be nice to have some sort of a track record to fall back on.
I already had one 'no show' in the comments two days ago at the site I posted about previously( Post-Darwinist), and today I just made this comment after reading about a post at SDA here at Canadian
Cynic

I gotta wonder what this picture has to do with the data collected and used for climate research. I also wonder wether Norcalblogs knows for sure those are the sensors, what data they are collecting (presumably temp recordings), and how relevant those data sets are to the overall work at NOAA, and finally, just who uses that data? They are only a small part of this consensus , and while it is interesting if any of the data, or groups compiling it, is suspect, we really only have a couple of photographs, labelled with image editing software, from an unknown, possibly unbalanced, 'claimed' observer.

Lots of questions, of relevance, and credibility, but don't let that stop you all from sprinting to your preformed conclusions!

Ta-ta.

In any event, I am also taking screenshots of my replies, just for the hell of it and for corroberation, if I ever decide to question my integrity (I am assuming you are the only one to ever read this anyways, mikmik, and BTW, hows the typing practice coming along - did you find a good excuse to practice keyboarding yet?).

Ya never now, now I have a legacy, and perhaps the start of a Magnus Opus, or at least a ticket to some free psych medication. Ta-ta ha ha .. ha cough kAFF! .. choke gaaack... help.... gasp, someone get me some water... barf...ack...

Hey, you got earn those stripes first, sparky!

Post-Darwinist : This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing "intelligent design" controversy. Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

I suppose being obsolete before you start wouldn't get you to reconsider, would it?

Anyways, not having a clue as to relevance but acting like you know what you are talking about does not make a valid viewpoint, and Michael Behe never in his wildest dreams does this pertain:
Asking the mainstream science community to declare that new discoveries in molecular biology and DNA render materialism inadequate
He wants to talk about supposed incongrueties (that he can't support), yet show him that large, staggering incongruencies in Creationism/ID, and that doesn't mean anything, no retractions, no silently admitting he (you all) doesn't have a point. Yeah, 'scientists' are supposed to cave and fold if presented with (faulty) contrary evidence, but IDers have massive logical inconsistencies and don't 'resign'. Why not? You try to hold scientists to some standard you yourself won't adhere to?

“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.”
~ Ferdinand Magellan
Let's start where you are supposed to. Prove your point, then use it as an alternative. That is how rational thought works. You have to prove there is a designer, and it had better be a proper theory, then you have some weight behind your claims. Otherwise, quit already, like, the people Behe admoshises about.
Understand this first.
In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations that is predictive, logical and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections or inclusion in a yet wider theory. Commonly, a large number of more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a general rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory.
That there is a designer doesn't even pass the laugh test, let alone have any way of being scientifically' tested.

Here: The creation account in the Bible is clearly not literally true. All physical evidence points against it. For example, it has light being created after the earth and after water. It has creation happening only about 4000 years ago where the geological record shows it has to be much much older. Since God presumably created all the misleading physical evidence, it would seem He does not want us to believe the Genesis account either. Which evidence is more trustworthy, that penned by man or created directly by God? Surely God did not forget how He actually created the universe, and how celestial dynamics work. Why is it then the Old Testament is so full of error on such matters. If you will recall, it claims the earth is square and flat and that the sun revolves around the earth. Did God have a temporary lapse of memory while composing the Old Testament? Or did human Biblical authors, in their hubris, imagine their works were of divine origin.

Monday, July 09, 2007 12:32:02 PM