The brazen demands of religious extremists never cease to amaze me. In the London borough of Hackney we have the case of members of a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) community putting up posters in Hebrew and English telling women which side of the street they should walk on.
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The Guardian reports that 43 members of Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the US’s NSA or UK’s GCHQ, have refused to take part in what they see as surveillance of innocent Palestinians that was leading to blackmail and extortion and serving the personal agendas of Israeli politicians..
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Howard Kurtz of Fox News tried to act superior with Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, the popular media outlet that obtains and releases videos such as the one of footballer Ray Rice punching a woman in an elevator. Kurtz tried to imply that TMZ was practicing a low form of journalism by paying money for videos. Levin was having none of it and put Kurtz in his place and stopped him from trying to weasel out of his statements. It was fun to watch.
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The young people behind the vicious beating of a gay couple on the streets of Philadelphia seem to be all former students of a Catholic school who had been having a get together of some sort in a restaurant prior to accosting the two men on the street. The group was identified by people using social media.
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As a result of the fuss about the person who was not allowed to re-enlist in the Air Force because he struck out the words ‘so help me God’ in the oath, the Air Force has reversed course and said that saying those words are no longer required, thus bringing it into line with the other military branches. The American Humanist Association had vowed to sue if the policy was not changed.
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Now that the Scottish referendum has resulted in a vote to remain in the union by a surprisingly large margin of 55-45%, some thorny issues will have to be resolved. I had not realized until I started following the referendum what a complicated political structure exists in the UK leading to all manner of problems, one of the major ones being has come to be known as the West Lothian question.
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The Northeast Ohio Center for Inquiry is holding its biennial one-day conference on Saturday, October 4, 2014 from 9:00am-4:00 pm in Independence, Ohio. The theme is Science Peers Into the Future: Research for the 21st Century and Beyond and four scientists will be featured speakers.
More details and registration information can be found here.
The Hobby Lobby case, where the US Supreme court ruled that under some vaguely defined circumstances, owners of companies had right to impose their religious views as company policies as if the companies were individuals under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), was widely predicted to open up a Pandora’s box with others seeking similar exemptions from following the law because of their ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’.
And lo, what the prophets foretold has come to pass.
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This is, of course, a rhetorical question. Even though he is always wrong, he gets on TV because he and TV stations know that fear and war draws viewers and he has made a niche for himself as the go to person when the networks want someone to scare the bejeesus out of everyone. He is a like a clockwork toy that you can wind up and get the same result all the time
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Togo is one of the many nations of the world whose name I recognize but about which I know nothing. I hope to change that over time since Alicia, the daughter of a cousin, will be spending the next two years on a Fulbright Fellowship in the town of Kara in the north of that west African nation, working with an HIV/AIDS treatment program.
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