Tag: Fundamentalism

Fundamentalist Pandemics

Some of the loudest and foolish voices to re-open the country have come from the mental midgets within the evangelical community…..

I have written about these religious leaders that want their flocks to give them their checks from the government….and then there are the voices to return to “normal”…..

In the U.S., a variety of evangelical religious leaders have failed the test of reasoned public policy in outrageous ways. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, railing at “tyrannical government,” refused to close his mega-church in Florida until the local police arrested him in March. He even insisted that church members in those services of 500 or more true believers should continue to shake hands with one another because “we’re raising up revivalists, not pansies.”

As he saw it, his River Tampa Bay Church was the “safest place” around because it was the site of “salvation.” Only in early April did he finally move his services online and it probably wasn’t to protect the health of his congregation either. His insurance company had cancelled on him after his arrest and his continued defiance of local regulation

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/19/fundamentalist-pandemics

These religious tools are only concerned about the loss of revenue not lives……

Not to worry for the fools have Donald the Orange in their corner and he has issued dire warnings if he is not obeyed…..

President Trump issued orders to the nation’s governors to allow houses of worship to open “right now,” saying he’ll “override” them if they don’t. The president made the unscheduled announcement Friday at the White House, taking no questions from reporters. He pronounced houses of worship “essential places that provide essential services,” Politico reports, and said the CDC is preparing pandemic guidance for them. Americans “are demanding to go to church, and synagogue, or to their mosque,” Trump said, adding that “ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders will make sure that their congregations are safe” when they gather. Trump said that if governors have issues with his instructions, they’ll have to call him, “and they are not going to be successful in that call.”
The president lacks the legal power to override state orders, reports the Hill. But Justice Department lawyers have told Gov. Gavin Newsom that California’s plan to let schools and businesses reopen first makes for “unequal treatment of faith communities.” Health officials have said houses of worship are especially worrisome for spreading the coronavirus, and a blanket rule might be a bad idea. “You have to be careful,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday. “If you’re in an area where there’s a relatively little infection, as there are in certain regions of the country, versus an area where there is still a high degree of infection, how you approach what you do in houses of worship really varies.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/23/861386816/president-trump-sides-with-churches-asserting-a-right-to-reopen

This move is about the election and nothing else for the Orange man could care less if they are safe just how it looks to the spin doctors.  We are truly living in the most ignorant of times….this would give the Dark Ages a run for the ribbon of stupidity.

By The Way….you know all those sites that are calling for the re-open…….About half are bots!

As parts of the US have lifted shutdown orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a fierce argument online about the risks and benefits of reopening. New research suggests that bots have been dominating that debate.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and related issues since January and found that roughly half the accounts — including 62% of the 1,000 most influential retweeters — appeared to be bots, they said in a report published this week.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nearly-half-of-reopen-america-twitter-accounts-are-bots-report-2020-5

Here is a thought for the “religious” ……..

Image

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Have You Heard The News?

The good news is that the Saudis have come up with a master plan for fighting ISIS….It seems that they now have a 34 nation coalition that will do the trick…..I said when I heard the news that it was too good to be true…..maybe I am a psychic….or something…..

Some key members of the 34-nation anti-Islamic State coalition announced by Saudi Arabia have a fundamental question: just what is it?

Indonesia did not know it was going to be a military alliance, which it does not want to join. A senior Pakistani lawmaker only learned the news from a Reuters reporter.

And while Western governments welcomed this week’s initiative, there was uncertainty over how it would work.

Comments from several of the countries that signed up to the initiative appeared to reveal a lack of preparation by Riyadh, which approached partners with an invitation to join a coordination centre but then announced a military alliance.

When Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced the new group at a sudden midnight press conference, he called it an “Islamic military coalition”, a description that appeared to surprise some of the governments involved.

OOPS!  Our Bad!

Looks like someone may have spoken too soon…..some of the countries have trust issues with the Saudis…..why?

Modern jihadist groups follow an extreme interpretation of Islam’s Salafi branch, of which Wahhabism was the original strain, and whose clerics regard Shi’ism as heresy, laud the concept of jihad, urge hatred of infidels and back harsh penalties for religious offences.

This is a problem….because?

Saudi is the home of the salafist movement and they follow a strict fundamental line of Islam…….sound familiar?

I was betrayed by Republican religion: What my years as a Christian fundamentalist taught be about right-wing faith – Salon.com

I am not a particularly religious person….although I consider myself spiritual…..so I do not write much on religion….basically, religion is a private thing between you and your deity……I have tried to understand where the Christian fundamentalists are coming from…..cannot for the life of me get a grip on it…….to me they flying into the face of everything called Christian…..

I still cannot find where their involvement in politics has done anything good for the country or to help others see the light when it comes to Christianity……most are hypocrites in the highest order.

I read this piece by a fundamentalist and sort of understand the situation a little better…..if you have  problem with these religious types maybe this article will assist in your knowledge…..it is a GREAT piece!

 

I was betrayed by Republican religion: What my years as a Christian fundamentalist taught be about right-wing faith – Salon.com.

Why Senseless Destruction?

Opinion from the desk of the Editor

Before I start I would like to thank my followers….as of today I have 801 official followers.  That number is my important number….some bloggers look for hits to say their blog is a success…..for me it is the number of followers…….why?  I means that every single post goes out to 801 followers and hopefully they read them and appreciate the effort that I try to put into every post.  So thank you my friends….i appreciate your patronage very much.

Now onto the meat of the post…….I recall in those dark days when the extreme fundamentalists of the Taliban came to power….one of their first actions was to dusty a huge statue of Buddha that had been carved into the mountain in Afghanistan……

It was destroyed because that it somehow offended their sensibilities….a totally piece of crap.  they destroyed part of their heritage in Afghanistan for some moronic religious thinking….that is sad…..

And then in Mali, the west African nation that is having a massive outbreak of extreme fundamentalism,  in towns they occupied they have set about destroying the shrines to the Muslim saints of Sufism, a sect of Muslim…..in the 13th century Timbuktu was the center of Muslim learning…..but the Wahhabi, that extreme sect, thought that the shrines were an a front to Allah and must be destroyed…..many were destroyed before they were stopped….

Now in the area of Mosul and the surrounding territory occupied by ISIS….these extremists are at it here too…..

Militant Sunni Islamists who seized swathes of northern Iraq last week have destroyed symbols of Iraq’s heritage in the city of Mosul, including statues of cultural icons and the tomb of a medieval philosopher.

Witnesses said militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had destroyed a statue of Othman al-Mousuli, a 19th Century Iraqi musician and composer, and the statue of Abu Tammam, an Abbasid-era Arab poet.

The tomb of Ibn al-Athir, an Arab philosopher who travelled with the army of warrior sultan Salahuddin in the 12th century was desecrated after ISIL took the city. Witnesses said the domed shrine had been razed and a park around it dug up.

ISIL and other militants, whose strict Salafi interpretation of Islam deems the veneration of tombs to be idolatrous, have destroyed several tombs and mosques inside Syria and now in neighbouring Iraq where they have seized towns and cities.

I am sorry but there is NO logical reason to destroy one’s heritage in the name of religion……..How long will this type of senseless destruction continue?

Destruction for the sake of destruction is NOT an act to preserve one’s religion or beliefs…..it is senseless and moronic and an act of ignorance!

Is This What We Are Fighting For?

We are in Afghanistan for almost 10 years and things are NOT going so well…….we fight…we die…and this is what we are there for….

A man and a woman who allegedly had an adulterous affair have been stoned and killed in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz.

The punishment happened in a crowded bazaar on Sunday in the Taliban-controlled village of Mullah Quli.

The Taliban asked the villagers to attend the stoning through an announcement on loudspeakers in the mosque, two witnesses from Mullah Quli told the BBC.

“There was a big crowd of people,” one said.

“The Taliban made the women wear black clothes and the men were made to stand. The Taliban started throwing stones. We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive.

The Taliban operates a shadow government, consisting of judges, tax collectors, district governors and commanders, in several parts of Kunduz, he adds.

the Taliban were seeking to create and exploit a power vacuum, and some are urging the government and the ostensibly pro-government Council of Ulema (religious scholars) to take a stronger stance against extremism.  So far that has been a hollow dream….

Remind me again why we are in the country……and how our presence there will change things for the people for the better…….

Terror Attempt Thwarted!

By now everyone has heard about the failed terror attempt over Detroit….all the papers, the airwaves and bloggers have been typing their scrawny asses off with this opinion or that……it is Obama’s fault…it is GW’s fault, it is Napolitano’s fault…… it is UK’s fault…it is…….on and on…..

Just in case you were tossing off and missed the news……..

This year’s attack came on Christmas.  Obama was on vacation in Hawaii when the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly used plastic explosives in his bid to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. Bush was at Camp David when Reid used similar explosives to try to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight, which diverted to Boston.

Yes there are similarities…but neither man can be blamed for either of those two attempts…..but there are those that deserve the blame and are not getting any of the heat in the blogs…..

Of course the partisan crap began to flow from the minute of the attempt……the Right taking every opportunity to play the political game that is killing the American system of governance….

So the mental midgets want to blame someone…….I have an idea…try blaming the morons that caused the situation……NO it is not the UK…they tried to warn us…..No it is not Obama’s fault….No it is not GW’s fault…..then Professor whose damn fault is it?

Let us think back……UK warned us……NSA had info that a Nigerian was being groomed for an attack…..the guys father did everything but bring him in in handcuffs……..and the list goes on and on…..and then we have shooter Cheney mouthing off which does not help the situation it only a diversion from reality…..maybe we should give him his own Reality Show and just let him talk and talk…..a thought…..where was all this concern when he was VP?…..sorry I digress…

Let us look at what is known:

• Abdulmutallab’s father, a prominent retired banker and ex-government minister, had visited the US Embassy in Abuja more than a month before the attempted bombing to warn CIA officials that his son had become involved with Al Qaeda elements in Yemen. He provided them with information with which the young man could have been located, and he followed up his visit with at least two phone calls.

• For at least four months, US intelligence had information from Yemen that Al Qaeda operatives there were preparing “a Nigerian” for a terrorist attack.

• The information from Yemen was further substantiated by the National Security Agency’s interception of communications discussing preparations for an impending attack and the use of the “Nigerian.”

Moreover, Abdulmutallab’s $2,800 ticket was paid for with cash, apparently at the last minute, and he made the transatlantic trip having checked no luggage, carrying only a backpack.

So you want to blame someone…..point that finger where it belongs ….the BUREAUCRATS!

That is right those little insignificant toads that run the government….all the intel was missed handled because everyone of these people wants to preserve their little sphere of influence and by working within the system and with others would lessen their importance…..so if you people have to blame someone for the miscues then please take a moment and think about it and then blame the idiots that have caused this situation….the BUREAUCRATS!

Over the years I have heard many quotes by many different people, but one of the best about bureaucrats was from James H. Boren, “Guidelines for Bureaucrats:  When in charge ponder.  When in trouble delegate.  When in doubt mumble”……

And let me see…..GW invented the country’s largest bureaucracy, the DHS, and where has that proven to be a successful organization?  He just added to the rolls of bureaucrats that are afraid for their jobs and because of that info is NOT shared as it should be….all these toads are worried about their evals and their jobs….NOT THE SAFETY OF THE COUNTRY!

“Bureaucracy is a huge mechanism operated by pygmies”  Honore de Balzac……well said.

Understanding Iran–Part 3

From the Professor’s Classroom:

The recent election and the results have brought a familiar name to the forefront of the opposition, Rafsanjani, an old “friend” from the past.  The media analysts are saying that he has the key to the modernization of Iran and the possibility of a slackening of the hostiles between Iran and the US.  The media calls him a moderate and as such he is in direct opposition to the ruling mullahs.

That analysis is not quite accurate.

Once again it is to the “way back” machine.

It is 1989 and the ayatollah has died, one Khomeini and with that the speaker of the Iranian parliment becomes the presdident of Iran, Rafsanjani.  He is a shia cleric and a founding father of the Islamic Republic Party.  Late that same year aftyer the US releases some of Iran’s frozen funds, Rafsanjani attempts to massage the west but is quickly slapped down by the Supreme Council.

Then in 1991 with a slump in oil prices and the debt from the war with Iraq, Rafsanjani tries to slide economic reform through the parliment and was not too successful.  Then in 1993 Rafasanjani runs for his second term as president and squeeks out a win, not the resounding 95% total he had first got, his popularity was waning.

During his second term, his presidency was marked with western sanctions,  most of them financial and economic in an attempt to bring down the regime of the clerics.  When Rafsanjani bowed out in 1997, he could not run for a third term, there was NO popular front runner to take his place,  It seems that the Supreme Council had learned their lesson with Rafsanjani.

It is to be known that the candidates for the presidency are put up by the clerics on the Council of Guardians, therefore they are basically all fundamentalists.  That can explain the present president and his support within the Council.

Rafsanjani’s name keeps reappearing occassionally when analyst talk about any reform in Iran.  But he does not have the support he once had, but he seems to stay in the running, at least in the minds of westerners.  Just remember, whoever becomes president can do nothing without the approval of the Council of Guardians and they hate the west and all it stands for.

In the recent protests over the election results Rafsanjani and his daughter are mentioned as leaders, as well as the losing candidate, Moussavi.  Are they truly the leaders or just names mentioned in passing?

Understanding Iran–Intro

This is from Professor’s classroom.

Iran has election….present pres. wins…protests follow….crack down follows that……bloodshed and accusations fly…..

The AP is reporting that after the mullahs warning…the protests continued.

Iran braced for the possibility of more bloody confrontations between protesters and security forces on the streets of Tehran as fresh images of brutality emerged Sunday despite the regime’s attempts to impose a news blackout.Witnesses claimed that numerous demonstrators were injured — and several allegedly killed — in clashes with black-clad police wielding guns, truncheons, tear gas and water cannons on Saturday as protests over disputed elections escalated into Iran’s most serious internal unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Authorities did not confirm any deaths, and the reports from bloggers and Twitter users inside Iran could not immediately be verified.

All eyes are on Iran and how the election protesters are handled.

Iran is one of those countries that is mystery to most people…the only info they have is what they read or hear in the media.

Iran?  Yep….the country seems to always be in the news and on the lips of American politicians….some analysts say we need to inject the US into the protests and others say we need to stay out of it…..do not give the Supreme Council any more reason to hate the US.  What should we do?

Iran has made it in the news again…this time it is not about whether the holocaust happened or what to do about nukes…..it is all about the recent election and the protests that followed.

Analysts are jumping for joy over the protests they say it is a show of weakness for the mullahs and a strength of the people.  Many are encouraged by the protests and say that it shows the strength of the moderates.  Personally, I think that it is a bit too optimistic.  Some see the popularity of Mousavi as a turning point in Iranian politics.

Unfortunately, not many people understand Iran and what is happening.  For this reason too much misinformation is out there and people are playing to that erroneous information.

In the next parts of this post I will explain, as best I can, why I feel that this is not as good of news as most seem to think it is.