Brazil needs your help

Governments that aspire to oppressiveness love to restrict the flow of information and communication, and that’s happening in Brazil right now. The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies is considering legislation to control internet access.

Next week, Congress could vote to radically restrict internet freedom in Brazil — criminalizing everyday online activities like sharing music and restricting fundamental blogging tools. We have just six days to stop them.

Public pressure defeated an attack on internet freedom in 2009, and we can do it again! The bill is in three committees in the Chamber of Deputies to stop the bill from passing. These politicians are carefully watching public response to the proposed bill in the days leading up to the big vote — now is our chance to launch a national outcry and force them to protect internet freedoms.

Brazil has over 75 million internet users — we can be deafening if we join together. Send a message now to leaders of the Constitution and Justice, Science and Technology, and Public Safety Committees, then share it with your friends and family across Brazil!

Sign the petition and save Brazil’s internet!

Why we shouldn’t take the Tea Party seriously

I can’t believe we elected any of these hypocritical loons to office anywhere. Look at the shenanigans in Dayton, Ohio.

Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague’s idea.

“Creationism is a significant part of the history of this country,” Kohls said. “It is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country.”

That’s not true. It is neither a significant part of our history nor is it a valid “theory” — it doesn’t even deserve the label of theory, since it doesn’t integrate a large number of scientific hypotheses and observations. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a hypothesis, since it’s made in direct contradiction to the evidence. It might best be called a myth, nothing more.

One other fine piece of hypocrisy: she and many Teabaggers are getting elected on promises of fiscal conservativism. Clearly, they didn’t mean it: peddling creationism in the public schools means they’re going down the Dover path, and we all saw how much that cost the school district. This should be seen as a ploy to destroy public education.

Also, how’s this for irony? Kohls filed for bankruptcy. They own a house valued at $450,000 (in Ohio? What kind of mansion did they splurge on?), on which they owe… $829,000. Yeah, she’s a smart money manager.

Why we shouldn’t take the Tea Party seriously

I can’t believe we elected any of these hypocritical loons to office anywhere. Look at the shenanigans in Dayton, Ohio.

Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague’s idea.

“Creationism is a significant part of the history of this country,” Kohls said. “It is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country.”

That’s not true. It is neither a significant part of our history nor is it a valid “theory” — it doesn’t even deserve the label of theory, since it doesn’t integrate a large number of scientific hypotheses and observations. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a hypothesis, since it’s made in direct contradiction to the evidence. It might best be called a myth, nothing more.

One other fine piece of hypocrisy: she and many Teabaggers are getting elected on promises of fiscal conservativism. Clearly, they didn’t mean it: peddling creationism in the public schools means they’re going down the Dover path, and we all saw how much that cost the school district. This should be seen as a ploy to destroy public education.

Also, how’s this for irony? Kohls filed for bankruptcy. They own a house valued at $450,000 (in Ohio? What kind of mansion did they splurge on?), on which they owe… $829,000. Yeah, she’s a smart money manager.

Smart-alecky Australian kids…and a poll

A member of the Australian parliament, Fred Nile, has been pushing an interesting cost-saving measure. You know how Australian schools are saddled with chaplains and religious instruction? Well, he wants to keep that nonsense and kill the ethics classes that students can take as a secular alternative.Seems backwards to me, but then he is presumably a Christian, and so is perverse and backward by nature.

So Charlie Fine wrote an op-ed defending the ethics courses. Fine is 11 years old, and smarter than a member of parliament.

The facts show that only 33 per cent of the world is Christian, and in NSW a quarter of children choose not to attend lessons on theological scripture. I think it is possible to be non-religious and a good person.

By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.

Your views are out of step with modern society, so I would ask you to reconsider your actions and continue to allow parents and children a choice in their classrooms.

There’s a poll with the opinion piece. I guess Charlie Fine is very persuasive.

Where do you stand on ethics classes in schools?

For them

92%

Against them

8%

Oh, sure, you can go vote on the poll too, but I think Charlie has it all well in hand.

Smart-alecky Australian kids…and a poll

A member of the Australian parliament, Fred Nile, has been pushing an interesting cost-saving measure. You know how Australian schools are saddled with chaplains and religious instruction? Well, he wants to keep that nonsense and kill the ethics classes that students can take as a secular alternative.Seems backwards to me, but then he is presumably a Christian, and so is perverse and backward by nature.

So Charlie Fine wrote an op-ed defending the ethics courses. Fine is 11 years old, and smarter than a member of parliament.

The facts show that only 33 per cent of the world is Christian, and in NSW a quarter of children choose not to attend lessons on theological scripture. I think it is possible to be non-religious and a good person.

By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.

Your views are out of step with modern society, so I would ask you to reconsider your actions and continue to allow parents and children a choice in their classrooms.

There’s a poll with the opinion piece. I guess Charlie Fine is very persuasive.

Where do you stand on ethics classes in schools?

For them

92%

Against them

8%

Oh, sure, you can go vote on the poll too, but I think Charlie has it all well in hand.

Newt Gingrich redefines what it means to be pathetic

Newt Gingrich has 1,325,842 followers on twitter.

Who cares, you might be asking. The criteria for being popular on twitter are rather different than the criteria for being a competent statesman; if twitter mattered in that way, Ashton Kucher would be president. It’s irrelevant. But Gingrich is unhappy because his vast appeal is unappreciated by the media: “I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn’t count because if it counted I’d still be a candidate; since I can’t be a candidate that can’t count.”

Wow. Gingrich believes having lots of twitter followers gives him credibility? That’s pathetic.

But wait, that’s not pathetic. This is pathetic: he bought most of those followers!

About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various “follow agencies,” another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt’s profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn’t follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich. If you simply scroll through his list of followers you’ll see that most of them have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated. Pathetic, isn’t it?

That’s just sad.

(Pssst. By the way, to the hundred thousand readers who aren’t my sockpuppets: I’ll get the paychecks to you later. We’re having a little cash flow problem, what with the transition to a new site and all that.)

Newt Gingrich redefines what it means to be pathetic

Newt Gingrich has 1,325,842 followers on twitter.

Who cares, you might be asking. The criteria for being popular on twitter are rather different than the criteria for being a competent statesman; if twitter mattered in that way, Ashton Kucher would be president. It’s irrelevant. But Gingrich is unhappy because his vast appeal is unappreciated by the media: “I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn’t count because if it counted I’d still be a candidate; since I can’t be a candidate that can’t count.”

Wow. Gingrich believes having lots of twitter followers gives him credibility? That’s pathetic.

But wait, that’s not pathetic. This is pathetic: he bought most of those followers!

About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various “follow agencies,” another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt’s profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn’t follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich. If you simply scroll through his list of followers you’ll see that most of them have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated. Pathetic, isn’t it?

That’s just sad.

(Pssst. By the way, to the hundred thousand readers who aren’t my sockpuppets: I’ll get the paychecks to you later. We’re having a little cash flow problem, what with the transition to a new site and all that.)

What the f&#* is wrong with Chris Hedges?

Hedges has been totally nuts for the last few years: he’s got this crazy irrational hysteria about atheists that makes him utterly unhinged whenever he writes about us. His latest is of a piece with his mania:

The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway. I worry more about the Anders Breiviks than the Mohammed Attas.

What? Muslims riot over cartoons, Breivik massacres young people in the name of reactionary Christian nationalism, and Hedges blames the atheists? Madness. Pure madness.

Don’t read Hedges. Read Sam Harris, who as calmly as is possible when you’ve been slimed by a lunatic, tears Hedges to pieces. It’s a lovely read.

I disagree with him, slightly, on one point. Harris is concerned about a jihadist regime getting their hands on nuclear weapons, because they will lack the ethical restraint to hold back from using them. I have another worry: a crusading regime in the US military. Our men and women who are trained to use nuclear weapons are getting instructions…from Christians.

Reports show the mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which takes place during a missile officer’s first week in training, is led by Air Force chaplains and includes a discussion on St. Augustine’s Christian “Just War Theory.” Also included in the PowerPoint presentation is a slide containing a passage from the Book of Revelation that attempts to explain how Jesus Christ, as the “mighty warrior,” believed war to be “just.”

The presentation goes on to say that there are “many examples of believers [who] engaged in wars in [the] Old Testament” in a “righteous way” and notes there is “no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history.”

Now that’s chilling. Perhaps Hedges should take note that it isn’t atheists telling soldiers that it is just to annihilate your enemy by all means possible.

More right-wing distortions of Breivik’s ideology

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show did a marvelous job of showing how right-wingers were desperately straining to get out from under the taint of Breivik’s clearly extremist nationalist/rightist/Christian/anti-Muslim ideology. They’re clearly in denial.

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But here’s another case. The Discovery Institute, under the name of that wretched ‘scholar’ John West, has gone through Breivik’s manifesto and somehow come to the conclusion that the reason he went on a killing spree was — I bet you can guess — Darwinism. How? Because Breivik was not the familiar anti-science fundamentalist Christian that we are so familiar with here in the US, he was moderate in his piety and wedded it to an acceptance of modern science and a vicious hatred of Muslims…and contra West, it wasn’t science that compelled him to kill, it was xenophobia and nationalism and apparently, an inhuman lack of empathy.

Nick Matzke does an excellent job of showing that a warped Christianity provided a more significant rationale for his actions than did ‘Darwinism’.

I’d add one more thing. West’s hobby horse is eugenics, and Breivik did endorse a nasty interpretation of eugenics in his tirade. However, you can’t use that to tar modern science with guilt for his crimes; we aren’t going to be saying, “Oh, Breivik was right in this one thing,” because only fringe characters within science endorse killing undesirables as he did; this guy was no friend of science. West cites one fellow, Lee Silver, who does promote the idea that emerging technologies in molecular genetics will allow people to voluntarily modify the DNA of their children; this has absolutely nothing to do with culling or ejecting whole ethnic groups as inferior, and I’m sure Silver would condemn that interpretation of his work.

I was amused to see that Breivik is a fan of Joseph Farah and World Net Daily. Now there’s a connection West was afraid to draw.

They’re like lice — you can’t just shake them off

It takes real effort to purge yourself of parasites, and Australia’s got ’em: rabbits, cane toads, and now…chaplains. In a nation that prides itself on its secular government, Australia has this bizarre and inappropriate relic, the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP), which somehow manages to suck large sums of money out of the government to pay to infest the schools with useless little leeches whose sole purpose seems to be the indoctrination of nonsense into the brains of children.

Being subject to individual State and Territory education policies, since its introduction, the NSCP applies varying degrees of religiosity across Australian state schools. NSCP federally-funded state school chaplains within Queensland conduct Christian prayers on all-school assembly and at significant school ceremonies while holding lunchtime prayer/Bible ‘clubs’, activities and study sessions. Chaplains enjoy ‘access all areas’, wandering in and out of classrooms, work as de facto teacher aides and freely engage with students in the playground, on school excursions, school camps and sport. Chaplains co-ordinate, oversee and conduct Religious Instruction classes and on-campus church-designed and run programs including Hillsong ‘Shine’ for girls, and ‘Strength’ for boys which ‘connect’ children with evangelistic off-campus clubs, programs and intensive ‘Jesus’ boot camps. Correspondence from hundreds of concerned parents in every Australian State and Territory reveals that occurrences of the federally-funded National School Chaplaincy Programme being blatantly utilised as a Christian evangelic ministry are the norm within the nation’s state schools.

During his keynote address at the Australian Christian Lobby annual conference in November 2009, then Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered high praise to the NSCP and school chaplaincy in general while claiming responsibility for the introduction of Scripture Union provided state school chaplaincy in Queensland during the early 1990s when working within the Goss government. During his speech, Kevin Rudd pledged an ‘investment’ of $42m to extend the NSCP to 2011.

Not only is it contrary to the mission of an educational system to have wandering jesters in the schools, teaching stupidity, but it drains real money from resources that should be used, for instance, to hire more teachers.

Ron Williams was not happy with this situation, and he’s fighting back. He has a case being tried before the Australian high court to end this ridiculous program nationwide, and he needs help, since he’s now opposing the highest officials in the land.

After years of correspondence and meetings with then federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, state education and DEEWR executives as well as personal meetings with two Education Ministers and their Directors General, in 2009, a frustrated Mr. Williams sought advice regarding a possible High Court challenge to the constitutional legality of the Commonwealth providing treasury funds to the National School Chaplaincy Programme. In February 2010, Horowitz & Bilinsky accepted the case. Consequently, Horowitz & Bilinsky appointed Bret Walker SC, Gerald Ng Barrister to the case. The case is now proceeding.

Ironically, in August 2010, the newly appointed Labor Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard, while endorsing and awarding high praise to the NSCP, pledged a further $222m toward extending the programme to at least 1000 more Australian schools. This sum was to represent almost one third of Labor’s 2010 pre-election four-year schools policy education pitch of $704m. At the time, when questioned regarding the Christian faith-based nature of the National School Chaplaincy Programme being maintained, Julia Gillard was adamant that the NSCP would continue as a ‘chaplaincy’ programme “with everything that that implies”, thus echoing John Howard’s sentiments of 2006.

Ron Williams has made a plea for your assistance in fighting nonsense.

If you’d like to donate, visit his High Court Challenge site. Come on, Williams is also the guy who wrote this song — secularism with a sense of humor deserves some reward.