A story about dog loyalty for National Dog Day

Today is National Dog Day so I would like to share this story about how dogs can be extremely loyal and dutiful. I heard it on the radio program The World on Friday, August 25, 2017. It tells the story of two dogs of Lynn Landry, a sheep rancher in British Columbia, who was forced to evacuate due to raging forest fires.

Landry and her husband took their four border collies, but they had to leave behind their flock of 90 sheep and their Maremma sheepdogs, Tad and Sophie.

“There was nothing we could do,” says Landry. “We had to leave.”
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White nationalists and religion

Atheists are well aware that the religious texts are full of awful things that if anyone reads and takes seriously will discredit religion. But it seems that some white nationalists are interpreting the Bible in far more extreme terms than any secularist could possibly imagine, according to a new book Blood & Faith: Christianity in American White Nationalism by Damon T. Berry.
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Mobs rampage in support of Indian religious rapist

It is not just in America or in the Catholic church that we find religious people exploiting the trust people place in them and indulging in sexual abuse. This happens frequently among Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim religious figures as well, though not reported as widely here. Just today in India, supporters of a flamboyant Indian ‘holy man’ Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh went on a rampage after he was convicted of a 2002 rape. At least thirty people have been killed and over 250 injured.
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Signs that Trump is getting desperate

I have mentioned before that Donald Trump is like a dangerous animal that will lash out indiscriminately when cornered or frustrated and there are already signs that this is happening. There is no doubt that he is feeling increasingly frustrated that more than seven months have passed and there has been no advancement on any of his major promises, nor is the prognosis good for any of them in the future. There has been no progress on his signature issue of building a border wall. The idea that Mexico would pay for it was always utterly ridiculous and his pleading with the Mexican president to not keep saying publicly that they would not pay is a sign that he realizes that it is not going to happen. His promise to repeal Obamacare has gone nowhere and although he says that he will bring the issue back, it is still far from reality. The tax cuts he promised have not materialized either. His promise that he knew how to destroy ISIS and win the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria has so far not been borne out and in fact he is now even more firmly embedded in Afghanistam. So he is zero for four on his major promises.
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The Big Fool says to push on

One of the many problems with prolonged wars, apart from the intense suffering it inflicts on the people on whose territory it is being fought, is that over time the whole purpose of the war becomes obscure. I am not talking about so-called ‘mission creep’ where the goals keep getting expanded, morphing from a quick effort to achieve a specific goal to becoming broader, such as creating a new government or infrastructure to replace what was destroyed, what is sometimes referred to as ‘nation building’.
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TV review: Shetland

This BBC series is set in the Shetland Islands off the northeast coat of Scotland. It tells the story of a small police department investigating crimes on the sparsely populated islands where everyone pretty much knows everyone else. I found the series to be quite gripping, even though the murder plots did not quite satisfy me, having some serious implausibilities. The first two seasons consist of four two-hour episodes based on books by Ann Cleeves and the third season consists of a single six-hour story that was written by others using the same characters. It is in the portrayals of the gritty life of the people that the series has its strength.
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If you want to be a racist, then own it

One of things that, if the issues were not so serious, would be comical about the recent spate of actions by neo-Nazis and white supremacists is how they try to hide their true intent under innocent-sounding explanations. For example, we suddenly find that the people who oppose the removal of statues of Confederate heroes are really just ardent devotees of history, and their only interest is in making sure that the history of the country is accurately represented. Advocating racism? Oh, heavens, no! How could you possibly think that? Then there are those who want to wear or fly the swastika symbol. They stoutly deny that they are doing so to promote Nazi ideology but insist that it is merely a religious symbol.
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