Miscellaneous Video

Plenty of stuff to discuss in the world, with the focus on causes
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Dennis
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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Thanks for the link Bernard. I've bookmarked it. I saw they have Orwell Rolls in His Grave there, which I've seen. I can really recommend that one. I'll watch Slacker Uprising later this week.

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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I've enjoyed watching Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising because it showed a side of the US of which we in Sweden don't see much of. It's unbelievable how much effort some people have made to stop Moore for speaking out. For the Republicans, freedom of speech seem to be only valid for themselves.

The movie is basically an account of his USA tour during the Bush-Kerry Election in 2004. Not just the many supporters of Moore speak out, also his opponents. One girl explained that Bush prayed every evening to God, and she wants to follow God, so because Bush follows God, she would vote for Bush. When a group of Christians interrupts Moore during a lecture, by chanting a prayer as if he's the anti-Christ, he shuts them up by asking what Jesus would have bombed. Also many opponents had an opinion about Moore and admitted that they never had seen a movie by him.

It's a funny country, the US. If in Europe a political leader would say he would pray every evening to God, he would be locked up in an institution. But there's a powerful and extreme Christian elite in the US who seem to control many places of power. And they don't like anything or anyone that undermines the Christian belief. Even if they have to contradict themselves.

For those who like to see the movie but live outside North America, send me a pm.

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Dennis wrote:It's a funny country, the US. If in Europe a political leader would say he would pray every evening to God, he would be locked up in an institution.
There has been a lot of discussion about it on the Topica Psychohistory list. One example: Religion And Morality In Europe.

I see a difference between Christian fundamentalist sects in the deep south of America and Christianity as represented by the Vatican and other world-wide Christian denominations. The Holy See, the Vatican's observer mission to the United Nations, was one of the first countries to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Vatican's current publicly-stated position is that children should not be subjected to spanking. Somewhere on the forum someone mentioned that the Vatican opposes the teaching of 'Intelligent Design' in schools (I thought it was in the "Religious backlash" topic, but I couldn't find it there). I don't reject progressive thinking from the Vatican - in the present - just because, historically, their record is not so good. Religion is not going to go away anytime soon.... I think it's better to applaud what's progressive than to polarize the debate. Extremist Christianity is an American disease for the most part.
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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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If you look at the roots of extreme Christianity in the US and South Africa, it comes from the European immigrants several centuries ago. They left everything behind except their religion. In a new world people tend to bring back the past and reinforce it. Religion has never been really organized even though it may look like that. Every religious individual interprets it on his or her terms and act upon that. Then they justify it by arguing quotes from the religious group they belong to.

When I think of progressive thinkers, the pope is at the bottom of my list. The pope has always been an opportunist, always trying to catch up with popular world views.

Extremist Christianity seems indeed like an American disease. But if those extremists are at the buttons that can blow up the world, we cannot stay passively. Much like the Nazis in the 1930s, we cannot ignore the most powerful (and therefore most dangerous) country in the world.

Talking about religion, Bill Mahler has a new one out called Religulous, where he comes to the conclusion that religion is just ridiculous.
Everything I write here is my opinion, not absolute truths but I don't want to start every sentence with[i] in my opinion[/i]...
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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Dennis wrote:Every religious individual interprets it on his or her terms and act upon that. Then they justify it by arguing quotes from the religious group they belong to.

When I think of progressive thinkers, the pope is at the bottom of my list. The pope has always been an opportunist, always trying to catch up with popular world views.
I'm an atheist, so I'm in agreement about those points. It just seems obvious to me that all the anti-religious books mentioned in the "Religious backlash" topic, and Bill Maher's new addition, are not going to achieve anything more than trigger psychological defense mechanisms in American religious fundamentalists (example). Atheists have been trying to persuade 'believers' to give up their beliefs since free speech ceased to be a punishable offense. Christianity's hold on Europe may have weakened a little bit, but Bible Belt America remains as fundamentalist as ever.

What I'm saying is.... if there's small amounts of progress from major world religions (even for opportunist reasons) that's better than waiting for extremist Christians to renounce their beliefs in a short space of time. What could realistically change in the space of a decade or two is that Bible Belt Americans could start to become more open-minded because they see the changes in Christian attitudes world-wide.
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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Dennis wrote:we cannot ignore the most powerful (and therefore most dangerous) country in the world.
Hey! Hey! That's right! Not only did we go to the moon but we also (still) got (among other things) the grossest national product on earth. And we got more stuff out on the Internet about us than Heinz has pickles! So the rest of all you...'persons' out there jes' better be polite! Why, we even got one of THESE:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10061
Saw it with my own eyes this summer. We'll just see who has the last laugh when the rain starts falling!

A 'freethinker's' group I go to sometimes (the ones who thought I might be a scientologist at first) is maybe getting together for the local opening of Religulous, and dinner, in a week or two, whenever it happens. It is scary, to me, who is an absolute nothing on all fronts, that it seems like unless maybe you're Penn & Teller, to be atheistic you do very much gotta also be a leftist pinko commie hippie or something. Which makes no sense, frankly. It's just atheism, for crying out loud, not the blankety-blank musician's union or screenwriter's guild!! Anyway if we do this thing I thought I'd bring along my video camera in case there are any religious protests or lynchings or crossburnings outside the theater. (Who knows, really?) But I'm really hoping to go.

I think (as I've alluded here before) that it was Eric Idle who first said "Shut up! Shut up, you American. You always talk, you Americans. You talk and you talk and say 'let me tell you something' and 'I just wanna say this'!" --But I really DO want to say something:

There are people here, religious ones--I can even think of at least one Protestant minister--who are without question vocally anti-corporal punishment, both privately and as it exists within the school system. Some are likely among the most outspoken activists for children in this regard on the planet. I personally happen to think that religion is part--even a large part--of the problem of propagating cruelty in humanity. I can't stand religion or the religious generally, actually, and that can be a problem for me at times. Even 'moderate' forms of it have been a source of nausea (even despair) for me for most of my life. But between trying to persuade a religious person that "there is no God" and convincing abusive adults (of any stripe) that using pain and fear to control is amoral, there's no doubt which is more important. To me it's clear that unmessed-up kids are the only people that can possibly pull this world out of its nosedive. Obviously there's nothing moral about saying "Your choice is either to accept and believe these inane stories we're feeding you or to burn horribly in Hell for eternity (or come back in your next life as a grapefruit)." Or whatever. Those threats in themselves are direct forms of terrorism so far as I'm concerned. But I consider myself very much on the "side" of anyone who is willing to help put an end to at least the stupid physical violence that generally accompanies those "offers". I will continue to respect any superstitious person who at least respects children in that regard.

Atheists seem to generally concur these days that religion (or perhaps respect for it) is the most dire threat facing the world today in terms of human survival. And they make a good case. And they're coming out of the closet like never before (just to say that very thing, it seems) and I guess I'd say that's good. But I find myself wondering if there's anybody else that needs 'liberated' before kids finally get their turn. If they'd won their freedom first none of the rest of this stuff would have been necessary. I'm sure of it.

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Steve wrote:Why, we even got one of THESE:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10061
Saw it with my own eyes this summer. We'll just see who has the last laugh when the rain starts falling!
Is Noah's Ark being rebuilt in case there's another disaster like New Orleans? It's not easy to prove that hurricanes are getting worse because of global warming/climate change - Republicans have been in denial about it - but maybe the Bible Belt freaks are getting worried.

New Orleans. An act of God.... So why did God dump it on the deep south?
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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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I understand that religious fanatics are not open to change or an open-minded debate. I used to have 2 good friends (who didn't know of each other's existence) who were quite extreme in their Christian believes. One ended up at the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who believed everything literally in the Bible. That Earth was made in 6 days, etc. These Christian extremists believe in the return of Jesus Christ and the Bible says that he will come back during the last days of mankind (Armageddon). So in order to have Jesus return, they wouldn't mind seeing mankind going down the drain. They play the survival game and some of them live in bunkers or sects, waiting for their VIP seat in Heaven. Others are at highly placed governmental positions in the US, responsible for defense, among others.

These believes are so ridiculous, so far-fetched, so illogical and irrational, that it's impossible to debate it with them. I have no illusions to change the minds of extreme religious people, but maybe their kids can grow a seed of doubt that we have planted.

Talking about Noah... Another believe these folks have is that the earth used to be covered by water, when God got mad one day. Now they interpret the melting of the North Pole as a sign that we're heading again that way. They claim that they have calculated that once the North Pole has melted, it does cover all land.

Religion versus Atheism is an interesting topic. Some years ago there was an good discussion on John Speyrer's Forum (one of the few), claiming that Atheism is a belief as well. Something for another thread perhaps. And I'm Agnostic...

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Dennis wrote: Something for another thread perhaps.
Or dedicated subforum. I think the relationship between religion and the mistreatment of children and disregard for their rights is too obvious and strong to be ignored. Last I checked, Alice Miller was mentioned once in the tens of thousands of posts at RichardDawkins.net forums. Immediately pooh-poohed by someone who I'm sure knew himself to be intelligent and rational as sounding "like psychobabble", the subject then just died.
Bernard wrote:Is Noah's Ark being rebuilt in case there's another disaster like New Orleans?
No, thirty-four years ago God just told some guy to do it, is all. The guy's dead now but people still work on it now and then.

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Any suggestions for the title of that subforum, Steve? It's worth having a subforum because I know a lot can be said about it. On the other hand, I feel that the subforum on Poisonous Pedagogy is the most important one and at the same time the least used. Being the agnostic I am (coming from atheism), I despise all religion. I accept that there can be a greater force out there but us humans cannot grasp that. It's like asking an ant how a human works. The only way an ant would "understand" us, is to bring us humans back to the ant level. That's what people have done with "the force"; bringing it back to the human level so they can explain it and scare kids with it.

Like I said before, I've had fanatic Christians as friends some time ago, and one of them had an atheist father. One of the reasons she had become so religious was because she couldn't stand his rational life style. He was a real son of a bitch by the way, giving every other atheist a bad name out there. :evil:

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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Oh shoot. I was hoping to slip in here, post this link http://video.msn.com/?mkt=mk_us&playlis ... n&fg=gtlv2 without comment, and then just sneak away.

I'd have to think about a subforum 'name'...

"Religion: Poisonous Pedagogy Petrified"...

I dunno Dennis, I think you're maybe asking the wrong guy. I'm down to one or two good ideas per year. And I think I hit my quota last July. I'll keep thinking about it though.

There's no question in my mind that religion itself is not the root of all evil. It's arguably one of its trunks but even at that it's of course possible for kind people and kind parents to exist within it. (In spite, not because of religious doctrine, in my strongly held opinion.) And not subscribing to a faith of some sort is certainly no guarantee that one will be healthy.

Can anyone help me source a notion I have that while Josef Stalin was an atheist, his mother whom he apparently loathed was herself completely devout?

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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28 minutes, from "Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark", thesciencenetwork.org. Jonathon Glover, Director of the Center for Medical Law and Ethics, King's College, University of London speaks "qualitatively" on the connection between childhood and psychopathy.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... over&hl=en

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

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I ran a search here on "Bulgaria" before deciding to write about this video. Apparently it's not been mentioned or discussed: "Bulgaria's Abandoned Children", Kate Blewett directed, aired by the BBC and posted to Googlevideo fourteen months ago.

It deserves a strong trigger warning: "may not be suitable for anyone with a shred of a heart left in them".

Couple quick thoughts:
We are the children in this film--we are very much those children--and we are also very much those childrens' "caretakers". If you manage to get past nightmare #1, in other words, nightmare #2 sits there leering. The denial is indescribable, maybe because it's universal. It occurs to me that absolutely identical mechanics are in play at "normal" modern American "nursing homes".

Lasts an hour and a half. Seriously: be prepared to be affected for a much longer time. It's the kind of thing that will likely ruin more than just an evening.

Background article from The Independent, November, 2007:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 00539.html

The video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 8151&hl=en

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Re: Miscellaneous Video

Post by Steve »

The psychologist in this video, James Prescott, is mentioned on this site in a topic called "Counterculture".

10 minutes 15 sec.

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