On the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), a fairly small group of people held a rally in the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. They were stunned when tens of thousands of anti-gay protestors attacked them, breaking through the ranks of the police and assaulting the people at the rally. [Read more…]
If Edward Snowden is causing problems for liberals and Democrats because of what his revelations say about president Obama, Glenn Greenwald’s role as his main chosen conduit has increased their discomfiture. Greenwald has become a thorn in the side of liberals and Democrats because of his unsparing criticisms of the actions of the Obama administration . The problem is that even the most loyal supporters of Obama have difficulty countering his criticisms because they are based on facts and reasoned analysis. So, as often happens, when you cannot criticize on content, you shift your criticisms to style and tone. Greenwald used to be good, they say regretfully, and he still says some good things but the problem is that he has become much more rigid and shrill and this undermines his message. [Read more…]
Bryan Fischer is a well-known evangelical leader and Director of Issues Analysis of the American Family Association who also has a radio show. He has the usual reactionary beliefs of his group, such as that men should rule over women in households and that the recent rise in the number of households in which women are the primary breadwinners was a bad thing. [Read more…]
The Guardian has released video of the second part of the interview that Edward Snowden gave on June 6 to Glenn Greenwald. Laura Poitras, and Ewan MacAskill. (The first part can be seen here.) In this seven-minute clip, he explains what made him do what he did, saying, “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. And that’s not something I am willing to support, it’s not something I am willing to build, and its not something I am willing to live under. So I think anyone who opposes that sort of world has an obligation to act in the way they can.” He says he acted because the people who should have spoken up or stopped it did not do so. [Read more…]
The local branch of Americans United for Separation of Church and State is having a forum on the above topic.
Date and Time: Wednesday, July 10, 6:30-9:00 pm
Where: The Moot Court room in CWRU Law School building
The program is free and open to all and refreshments will be served afterward. [Read more…]
Those who dislike what Edward Snowden did but approve of what Daniel Ellsberg did have struggled to find ways to distinguish the actions of the two in ways that support of that goal. But Ellsberg keeps pulling the rug out from under them, repeatedly praising Snowden’s actions and saying that they follow in the same whistleblowing tradition as him. [Read more…]
The issue of dress codes is one that arouses strong passions. Part of the problem is the gender bias involved. What women wear comes under much closer scrutiny than what men wear and the stringent dress codes that Muslim (and Orthodox Jewish) women must operate under in many parts of the world is one of the hottest of issues. In 35 nations some form of veiling of women is compulsory. [Read more…]
It is easy to say that the Republicans lost the presidential election in 2012 because their nominee Mitt Romney was a lousy candidate. And he likely was. But I think that we pay too much attention to the personality of the candidates and not enough to the structural features of campaigns, and it is the latter that I want to focus on. [Read more…]
The front page of the Sunday edition of a major Brazilian newspaper O Globo today had the headline “US spied on millions of emails and calls of Brazilians” and was a story about how the NSA was spying on the communications of millions of Brazilians. (Rough English translation here.) This story was also provided by Edward Snowden, just as the earlier Der Spiegel story about spying on Germans. [Read more…]
It has been established that the number of people in the US who self-identify as unaffiliated with any religion is steadily on the rise, now reaching about 20%. One would expect that those who are religious would see it as a bad thing, while the non-religious would see this as a good thing, resulting in an 80-20% split as to whether this trend was bad or good. [Read more…]