Penn Jillette's 10 Commandments...For Atheists

1. The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

2. Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let's scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks versus Sun Ra— but when your house is on fire, I'll be there to help.)

3. Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself. (What used to be an oath to (G)od is now quite simply respecting yourself.)

4. Put aside some time to rest and think. (If you're religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you're a Vegas magician, that'll be the day with the lowest grosses.)

5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)

6. Respect and protect all human life. (Many believe that "Thou shalt not kill" only refers to people in the same tribe. I say it's all human life.)

7. Keep your promises. (If you can't be sexually exclusive to your spouse, don't make that deal.)

8. Don't steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes — you know who you are!)

9. Don't lie. (You know, unless you're doing magic tricks and it's part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)

10. Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.

Bertrand Russell's Message to the Future

Click here for short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8&feature=player_embedded

Air Force Pulls Christian-Themed Ethics Training for Nuclear Missile Officers After Publication of Truthout Report

Saturday 30 July 2011
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report

Source: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789

The Air Force, in response to an exclusive report [3] published by Truthout earlier this week, has withdrawn materials used in a training session that relied upon Bible passages and a quote from an ex-Nazi SS officer to teach missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training "has been taken out of the curriculum and is being reviewed," said David Smith, chief of public affairs of Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. "The commander reviewed it and decided we needed to have a good hard look at it and make sure it reflected views of modern society."

Smith said the ethics training has been in place for "20-plus years" and given to about 150 officers a year. The decision to suspend the ethics course was made on Wednesday after Truthout's report was published. He added that it will now be "given thorough scrutiny" and "folks will be appointed to look at what we have and determine its utility and if they think its useful to continue having an ethics course they will develop a new course."

Listen to Jason Leopold discuss his exclusive report on The Peter B. Collins Show [4]

The course was led by Air Force chaplains and took place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Officers who train to be missileers were required to attend the ethics course, which included a PowerPoint presentation [5] on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory [6]" as well as numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament the training materials asserted engaged in warfighting in a "righteous way."

St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way the Air Force characterized it in the 43 PowerPoint slides used in the ethics training, are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."

One of the PowerPoint slides also contained a passage from the Book of Revelation that claims Jesus Christ, as the "mighty warrior," believed some wars to be just.

At the conclusion of the ethics training session, missile officers were asked to sign a legal document stating they will not hesitate to launch the nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) "if lawfully ordered to do so by the President of the United States or his lawful successor."

The use of religious imagery in the slides and the numerous references to the New and Old Testament would appear to constitute a violation of the First Amendment establishing a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits a "religious test."

The PowerPoint was included with more than 500 pages of other documents [7] pertaining to a missile officer's first week in training that was released by the Air Force under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation [8] (MRFF), a civil rights organization.

Another PowerPoint slide quoted Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer who is regarded as the father of the US space program [9]. Von Braun was not cited in the PowerPoint as a scientific expert, rather, he was specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps, captured French anti-Nazi partisans, civilians, and others [10] to help build the V-2, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.

MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 missile officers contacted his organization over the past week to complain about the Christian imagery and biblical passages in the ethics training. He said the decision by the Air Force to pull the ethics course material is a "great victory for the constitution." [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]

"We are not going to commend the Air Force for doing something they should have done a quarter-century ago," Weinstein said. "It's an outrage and a deliberate attempt to torture and distort our constitution when the US Air Force mandatorily teaches its nuclear missile launch officers that fundamentalist Christian theology is inextricably intertwined with the 'correct' decision to launch nukes."

Creative Commons License [11]

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [11].
Jason Leopold [13]

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789

Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/4620
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/4620
[3] http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
[4] http://www.peterbcollins.com/podcast/PBC_20110804p273.mp3
[5] http://truthout.org/files/nuclear_ethics.pdf
[6] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Just_War_Theory.htm
[7] http://www.scribd.com/doc/61068592/ICBM-Training-Material
[8] http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/
[9] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/wernher-von-braun.php
[10] http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/07/28/air-force-teaching-guide-minimizes-history-of-recruiting-nazis-part-one/
[11] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[12] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[13] http://www.truth-out.org/content/jason-leopold
[14] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[15] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
[17] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=religious-civil-rights-why-have-washington-times-and-air-force-academy-savaged-them/130496146

Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons

Wednesday 27 July 2011
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738

UPDATE: Following the publication of this exclusive report, the Air Force suspended [3] its war ethics training for nuclear missile officers.

The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to documents obtained exclusively by Truthout [4].

The mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which includes a discussion on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory [5]," is led by Air Force chaplains and takes place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way it is cited in a PowerPoint presentation [6], are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."

The Air Force documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation [7] (MRFF), a civil rights organization. MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 Air Force officers, a majority of whom describe themselves as practicing Protestants and Roman Catholics, have contacted his group over the past week in hopes of enlisting him to work with the Air Force to have the Christian-themed teachings removed from the nuclear weapons ethics training session. [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]

Included with the PowerPoint presentation, consisting of 43 slides, are more than 500 pages of other documents [8] pertaining to a missile officer's first week of training, which takes place before they are sent to one of three Air Force bases to guard the country's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) arsenal and, if called upon to do so by the president, launch their nuclear-armed Minuteman IIIs.

Listen to Jason Leopold discuss this story on The Nicole Sandler Show [9]

One of the slides quotes Wernher Von Braun [10], a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program [10], is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he's specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.

"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else," Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." [emphasis in document]

Von Braun was part of a top-secret military program known as "Operation Paperclip [11]," which recruited Nazi scientists after World War II who "were secretly brought to the United States, without State Department review and approval; their service for [Adolf] Hitler's Third Reich, [Nazi Party] and SS memberships as well as the classification of many as war criminals or security threats also disqualified them from officially obtaining visas," according to the Operation Paperclip web site [12].

Von Braun and about 500 other Nazi scientists who were part of the classified program worked on guided missile and ballistic missile technology at military installations in New Mexico, Alabama and Texas.

Ethical Questions and The Bible

The Air Force has been mired in numerous religious scandals [13] over the past decade and has been sued for allowing widespread proselytization at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It has been citing Christian teachings in its missile officer training materials since at least 2001. [UPDATE: The Air Force said [3] the ethics course has been in place for more than two decades.]

One Air Force officer currently on active duty, who spoke to Truthout on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media, said he was trained as a missile officer in 2001 and vividly recalls how the chaplain leading the training session on the ethics of launching nuclear weapons said, "the American Catholic Church and their leadership says it's ok in their eyes to launch nukes."

Last year, however, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican representative to the United Nations, said [14] in speeches in Washington and New York City that "nuclear weapons are no longer just for deterrence but have become entrenched in the military doctrines of the major powers."

"The conditions that prevailed during the Cold War, which gave a basis for the [Catholic] Church's limited toleration of nuclear deterrence, no longer apply in a consistent and effective manner," the Archbishop said.

The 381st Training Group and 392nd Training Squadron are responsible for training every Air Force Space and Missile Officer. Several emails and phone calls left for spokespeople at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where the squadron is based, were not returned. The PowerPoint identifies Chaplain Capt. Shin Soh of the 381st Training Group as leading the nuclear ethics presentation.

One of the ethical questions contained in the PowerPoint presented to missile officers asks: "Can you imagine a set of circumstances that would warrant a nuclear launch from the US, knowing that it would kill thousands of non-combatants?

Another question trainees are confronted with asks: "Can we train physically, emotionally and spiritually for a job we hope we never have to do?"

To help the missile officers answer these ethical queries, the ethics course begins with numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament fighting what the PowerPoint refers to as "just" wars.

For example, in the Old Testament, "Abraham organized an army to rescue [his nephew] Lot," God motivated "judges (Samson, Deborah, Barak) to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors," and "David is a warrior who is also a 'man after God's own heart.'"

In the New Testament, citing Timothy 2:3, according to the PowerPoint, "Paul chooses three illustrations to show what it means to be a good disciple of Christ":

    Farmer--work hard and be patient
    Athlete--be self-disciplined, train
    Soldier--be willing to put up with hardship

Moreover, in Romans 13:4, the PowerPoint notes, "In spite of personal blemishes, God calls the emperor to be an instrument of justice," [emphasis in document.]

A PowerPoint slide also contains a passage from the Book of Revelation that says "Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior."

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

Constitutional Violation?

The documents' blatant use of religious imagery and its numerous citations of the Bible would appear to be a violation of the First Amendment establishing a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits a "religious test."

Weinstein, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a former Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG), said a section of the PowerPoint presentation that has been cited by MRFF clients as being at the top of the list of "unconstitutional outrages" is the one "which wretchedly asserts that war is both ethical and part of 'the natural order' of man's existence on earth."

"Astonishingly, the training presentation grotesquely attempts to justify that unconscionable concept of 'war is good because Jesus says it is' by specifically textually referencing allegedly supportive bible passages from the New Testament Books of Luke, Acts, Hebrews, Timothy and, finally even Revelation," said Weinstein, a former White House counsel during the Reagan administration. "If this repugnant nuclear missile training is not Constitutionally violative of both the 'no religious test' mandate of the Constitution and the First Amendment's No Establishment Clause then those bedrock legal principles simply do not exist."

A senior Air Force Space and Missile officer who reviewed the materials, said the teachings are "an outrage of the highest order."

"No way in hell should this have been presented as a mandatory briefing to ALL in the basic missiles class,"  the officer, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly, said in an email. "It presumes ALL missile officers are religious and specifically in need of CHRISTIAN justification for their service.

"If they wanted to help people with their spiritual/religious/secular justification for serving as missile officers, then they should've said something like 'for those of you with religious concerns about missile duty, we've arranged the following times to chat with chaplains from your particular faith group.' For those with secular concerns about the morality of missile duty, we'll have a discussion moderated by a professor [and/or] counselor, a noted ethicist, too. If you're already good with your role and duty as a missile officer, then you're welcome to hit the golf course or gym."

The senior Air Force officer added that the commander of the training squadron "that approved this, along with the Training Group Commander at Vandenberg, should be fired instantly for allowing it."

"Jesus Loves Nukes"

Former Air Force Capt. Damon Bosetti, 27, who attended missile officer training in 2006 and was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, said he and his colleagues used to call the religious section of the ethics training the "Jesus loves nukes speech."

"What I went through in 2006 didn't have that level of inappropriateness in it, but it was still strongly religious," he said of the PowerPoint presentation the Air Force now uses for training missile officers.

Bosetti, who is represented by MRFF, said he believes the intent of quoting Bible passages was to make officers feel "comfortable" about launching nuclear weapons and signing a legal document stating they had "no moral qualms" about "turning the key" if ordered to do so.

The legal document from the Department of the Air Force, Air Education and Training Command, which was also released under the FOIA, states, in part, "I will perform duties involving the operation of nuclear-armed ICBMs and will launch them if lawfully ordered to do so by the President of the United States or his lawful successor." [emphasis in document]

Bosetti, an officer who left active duty in the Air Force last year and is now working as an engineer, said officers were immediately presented with the three-page document to sign after the end of the training session on nuclear ethics.

"I think the average American would be and should be very disturbed to know that people go through training where the Air Force quotes the Bible," Bosetti said. "This type of teaching sets a dangerous precedent because no one above you is objecting. It shifts the group definition of acceptable behavior more and more off track."

Weinstein said the combination of citing fundamentalist Christianity and a Nazi scientist as a way of explaining to missile officers why launching nuclear weapons is ethical is a new low for the Air Force.

"Leave it to the United States Air Force to find a way to dictate the 'ethical' value of nuclear war and it's inevitable role in the 'natural order' of humanity's existence, to it's missile launch officer trainees by merging unadulterated, fundamentalist Christian end times Armageddon doctrines with the tortured 'people who are guided by the bible endorsements of a former, leading Nazi SS official," Weinstein said.

Creative Commons License [15]

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [15].
Jason Leopold [17]


Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738

Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/4535
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/4535
[3] http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
[4] http://www.truthout.org
[5] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Just_War_Theory.htm
[6] http://truthout.org/files/nuclear_ethics.pdf
[7] http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org
[8] http://www.scribd.com/doc/61068592/ICBM-Training-Material
[9] http://traffic.libsyn.com/radioornot/7-28-11_Jason_Leopold_-_Jesus_Loves_Nukes.mp3
[10] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/wernher-von-braun.php
[11] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/
[12] http://www.operationpaperclip.info
[13] http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=%22jason+leopold%22+and+%22air+force+academy%22&pbx=1&oq=%22jason+leopold%22+and+%22air+force+academy%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1797l14016l0l14254l67l40l9l0l0l3l2391l12924l0.6.15.5.3.1.1.0.1.1l33&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=d5ef1517b4bad13f&biw=1280&bih=513
[14] http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2010/05/vatican_questions_nuclear_deterrence.html
[15] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[17] http://www.truth-out.org/content/jason-leopold
[18] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[19] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[20] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
[21] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=CoerciveReligionMisplacedinUSArmedForces/1311096375

Betty Ford, RINO, RIP

By Adele M. Stan | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at July 11, 2011, 9:05 am
This entire article is from: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/632358/betty_ford%2C_rino%2C_rip

I have a confession to make. In 1976, the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote, I pulled the lever for the Republican. But I wasn't really voting for Gerald R. Ford; I was voting for his wife.

At the age of 19, there was one thing that mattered to me more than any other: the fight for women's equality, and Betty Ford was a feminist. When her husband was appointed to the vice presidency by Richard Nixon after Spiro Agnew's resignation in disgrace, she told Barbara Walters in a televised interview that she agreed with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion.

She supported the Equal Rights Amendment even as Phyllis Schlafly led a crusade against it. How ironic then, that even as a woman, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., dares to run for the GOP presidential nomination on a path that was paved for her by the likes of Betty Ford, the congressman claims to subscribe to a religious doctrine of "wifely submission" to her husband.

In the Republican Party of today, Betty Ford would be deemed a RINO -- a Republican in Name Only. Her obituary draws in stark terms the brutal change her party has undergone, and the assault on civility and pragmatism it has come to represent.

The Pragmatic Feminist

Betty Ford dealt with life pragmatically, not from some fantasy world drawn from an antiquated set of patriarchal morals. On "60 Minutes," she told Morley Safer that she wouldn't be surprised if Susan, her then-18-year old daughter decided to "have an affair." (The word "affair" was a euphemism for sex.) Ford said that, of course, she'd want to counsel her daughter on the matter, and know the young man with whom her daughter was getting involved.) If you weren't alive then, it's probably hard to appreciate just how radical a thing that was for any mother to say, never mind the first lady. And a Republican first lady, at that. (In the same interview, Ford said she assumed that her kids had tried smoking pot.)

In those days, despite the fact that the nation was in the throes of the sexual revolution, anything that related to sex, or health issues particular to women and their body parts were taboo in the public dialogue. While in office, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer, and went public with it, even inviting television cameras into her hospital room. Before that, the word "breast" had probably never appeared on the cover of a women's magazine. And the word "cancer" was almost as taboo. We'll never know just how many lives were saved by Betty Ford's public admission of her diagnosis, and the fact that she had a mastectomy, but her admission catalyzed the push for breast screenings and self-examination.

Then, of course, there's the debt that all of us recovering addicts and alcoholics owe her. The fact that I can even include myself in that sentence owes something to Betty Ford, and the public manner in which she treated her own recovery, in 1978, after the Fords left office, from addiction to alcohol, tranquilizers and painkillers. She didn't come to the realization of her addictions on her own: her family staged an intervention. But once she accepted the truth about herself, she did what she had always seen fit to do: she told the truth about herself to the world.

The founding of the Betty Ford Clinic was revolutionary, not because no such institutions had ever existed before -- they had -- but because the inclusion of the former first lady's name on the letterhead helped remove the stigma from the condition of addiction, and softened the shame so many addicts feel at the simple act of asking for help.

Always an Artist

Part of what facilitated Betty Ford's role as an unusual first lady and cultural lightening rod was her background as an artist. Ford studied with the legendary dancer, choreographer and troupe leader, Martha Graham -- a radical figure in the dance world who changed notions of what classical dance should be. Her decision, at her mother's request, to return to Grand Rapids, Michigan, after having made it into Graham's secondary troupe, could be said to have changed the history of the presidency.

Betty Ford hadn't intended to stay in Grand Rapids upon her return, but it was there that she met Gerald Ford, then a congressional candidate. That she was a divorced woman already, and a dancer, did not deter the college football hero from wooing her. (That speaks well of him; after all, this was in 1946.) And the rest, as they say, is history.

A mere four years after the Fords left office, the Republican Party would take a sharp right turn, thanks to the takeover of the party machinery staged by the religious right, to which Ronald Reagan owed his 1980 victory. It boggles the mind to consider that, just four years prior to that election, 75 percent of the American people judged Betty Ford, in a Gallup survey, to be a very fine first lady. Today, given the rise of a religious minority in the national political arena, presidential spouses of both major parties feel that they dare not speak their minds. I suspect, though, if more political spouses and politicians were like Betty Ford, the American people would respond just as they did to the late first lady, so long ago.

I've always contended that, in this world, the most radical thing you can be is yourself. It's the reason why artists are so often deemed to be radicals; art is the ultimate expression of self. Betty Ford, thank you for your loving example, and for having had the courage to be yourself in every arena of your life. RlP.

Nonviolent Revolution Clarified: Five Myths and Realities Behind Egypt's Uprising

Sunday 10 July 2011
by: Dr. Cynthia Boaz, Truthout | News Analysis
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/nonviolent-revolution-clarified-five-myths-and-realities-behind-egypts-uprising/1310067482

The fall of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has produced prolific analysis by media commentators across the spectrum. Some of this analysis has been excellent, but much of the conventional media interpretation of the why, how and what behind these events leaves much to be desired. There are a handful of misconceptions that have been parroted repeatedly in media coverage of the "Arab Spring." These are important to recognize because the dynamics of how power is shifted matters enormously. In Gandhian language, means and ends are inseparable. That which is won through violence must be sustained through violence. That which is won through mass civil nonviolent action is more legitimate and more likely to be sustainable over the long term.

Additionally, how we understand and interpret the source of the power that emerged in Tunisia and Egypt last spring can go on to shape our long-term views about what is possible. If we consciously or unconsciously reinforce misconceptions or negative stereotypes about nonviolent action, we potentially undermine the morale of people engaged in ongoing struggles and, in the worst-case scenario, we can give credibility to the perspectives of the oppressors. What follows are the five most prevalent ways in which mainstream media has gotten the story wrong on the Egyptian uprising and the corresponding correction to each.

Misconception 1: It was spontaneous. Reality:  Although commentators still tend to talk about the Egyptian revolution as though no one could have predicted it, the key variable in the victory was planning. As we saw during the height of Mubarak's crackdown, the movement was able to keep the people of Egypt unified and, for the most part, nonviolently disciplined. Considering the lengths to which the regime went to try and provoke violence, it was quite remarkable how focused, creative and disciplined the activists remained. None of that would have been possible without several years of laying the groundwork. Egyptian activists worked for years to identify and neutralize the sources of power in the nation of 83 million. Their effort extended to making personal connections with the military forces and the commanders in particular. It's a nuanced divide-and-conquer strategy. After building relationships with members of the regime's pillars of support, the movement then helped them question the legitimacy of the ruler and the system they were upholding. When media analysts talk about an uprising like the one in Egypt as spontaneous, they are revealing their lack of understanding of the dynamics of nonviolent action and, simultaneously, are taking credit away from activists, who in many cases, have worked hard for years - often at great personal risk and sacrifice - to make this kind of victory possible. Regimes like Mubarak's don't fall when people just spontaneously show up in the city square. They only fall when movements are capable of exerting sustained pressure on them over a length of time. And that for that to happen, there must be unity, strategy, vision and, most importantly, planning, planning and more planning.

Misconception 2: It was a military coup. Reality: It was a people-power revolution. This misconception stems partly from the fact that, at the end of the day, much hinged on whose side the military took in the struggle. But instead of giving the people credit for winning the military to their side through effective campaigning and salient messaging, many media commentators erroneously regard the military's defense of the people as a sign that it was they who were actually leading the uprising. But the loyalty demonstrated by the military to the people's revolution should be interpreted as a sign of how well the movement did its job, not just of how powerful the military is in Egypt. The strategy was about unifying around a shared vision of Egyptian society. This misconception also is partly attributable to the fact that many of us cannot conceptualize power as taking any form other than a militaristic one. That perspective reflects adherence to outdated assumptions and frames about violence and power, namely the notion that those two concepts are interchangeable. Fortunately, the people of Egypt know better and they've given the rest of the world an example from which to build.

Misconception 3: It was orchestrated by the United States, either by backroom deals or "training and support" of activists. Reality: This unfortunate misconception shows a gross lack of knowledge of how nonviolent action works. There is really only one condition essential for the success of nonviolent struggle and that without which a struggle can never succeed: it must be indigenous. To claim nonviolent protests of the scale we saw in Egypt last spring can be manufactured abroad is to grossly overestimate the influence of US agents and agencies. How could US agencies organize broad-based protests and manage to get hundreds of thousands of people to maintain nonviolent discipline while under violent assault from half a world away, while these same agencies were, for more than five decades, unable to remove octogenarian Fidel Castro from his perch only 90 miles from the US border and with a population eight times smaller than Egypt's? To say that it was the United States that somehow orchestrated the events in Egypt is also to show contempt for what the people did, which is to take control of their own destiny. To question the Egyptian people's authorship of their own struggle serves the interests of a brutal dictator and others like him, and it risks undermining global support for what was, both at its heart and its implementation, an indigenous people's movement. This, by the way, is not to say that US agencies have taken no interest in or have made no attempts at influencing democracy struggles around the world. It is just to argue that, in the case of Egypt and other successful people-power revolutions, that offer of help was declined.

Misconception 4: It was an Islamist uprising. Reality: Not only is this incorrect, but it flies directly in the face of claims made by the same analysts who say they're interested in promoting genuine democracy. There were Muslims in the movement, yes. But there were also Christians, Jews, atheists, and many others. In order to test the credibility of this assertion, it is important to look at the proclaimed objectives of the movement: it was about more rights, more freedoms and more democracy. Contrast those objectives to the common stereotypes about Islam held in the West: that it is undemocratic, violent and oppressive. There is no way to reconcile those two things. Either Western analysts must concede that the Egyptian revolution was not Islamist or they must concede that Islam is not a violent, undemocratic religion. The ideal course of action would be to concede the former completely and the latter mostly. But short of that, it must be one or the other. A related argument is that we should be wary about the Egyptian victory because it will create space for the Muslim Brotherhood to assert more control in that society. There are several things to note about this claim, however: first, it has never been an acceptable argument against democracy to say that it should be limited because of the outcomes it might produce. Secondly, those who make this assertion might do well to ask themselves if they would accept Egyptians picking their leaders for them. If the answer is no, then they owe the same courtesy to the Egyptian people. And lastly, the Muslim Brotherhood (a group which itself is widely misunderstood in that it formally renounced violence as a means of change of decades ago) seems to have begun evolving along with the Egyptian people. As of last week, it formed a coalition with one of Egypt's most liberal political parties in an attempt to broaden - and moderate - its base.

Misconception 5: It wasn't nonviolent. Reality: It is unrealistic to imagine that a revolution of this scale and with a target as brutal as this regime can be totally nonviolent. But there is a distinction between saying there were a few violent outbursts by undisciplined individuals and that there was violence by the movement. This movement itself was strictly nonviolent and that is what is most relevant. In a country as large as Egypt, it is impossible to train every person individually in nonviolent strategy. And so, not understanding the necessity of nonviolent discipline, there were some incidents of rock throwing, clashes with police, vandalism and a few outbursts of individual rage. There was a militant flank in many historical nonviolent struggles - South Africa, Chile and the US civil rights movement, to name a few. In each case, as in Egypt, the presence of that contingent undoubtedly made the work of the movement both more difficult and more essential. Because of the potential for possible outbursts, the movement had to: a) distinguish itself from undisciplined radicals, b) make it clear that no violence would be tolerated and c) train new activists on the ground. Consider the lengths to which the regime went to provoke violence by the people in order to create the perceptions that what the movement was doing was not nonviolent and, therefore, not legitimate. It was critical that the movement girded against vulnerability to these kind of agents provocateurs and they did that extraordinarily well, especially considering the movement's enormous size. At the end of the day, the Egyptian uprising was one of history's most significant nonviolent struggles and that is how history will remember it.

It is important that events like the ones in Egypt are conveyed as accurately as possible by media for many reasons, but one of the most significant is that the victory of mass nonviolent action in Egypt has implications for terrorist organizations and the perceived efficacy of terrorism itself. As nonviolent methods to push grievances succeed, they de-legitimize violence as a means of promoting change. Nonviolent action offers a realistic alternative to both violence and the status quo and it is, simultaneously, a very powerful form of struggle. If we consider that terrorist organizations and members of movements tend to share the same recruitment bases - disaffected people demanding significant change - then the victory in Egypt has likely done serious damage to the PR campaigns of terrorist networks. Because of that, the people of Egypt should not only be lauded for taking back their freedom through almost entirely democratic means, but for making the world a little bit safer for everyone.

--------------------------
Dr. Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, where her areas of expertise include quality of democracy, nonviolent struggle, civil resistance and political communication and media. She is also an affiliated scholar at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace International Master in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain. Additionally, she is an analyst and consultant on nonviolent action, with special emphasis on the Iran and Burma cases. She is vice president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and on the board of Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation. Dr. Boaz is also a contributing writer and adviser to Truthout.org and associate editor of Peace and Change Journal.

Why U.S. is not a Christian nation

(CNN) -- As America celebrates its birthday on July 4, the timeless words of Thomas Jefferson will surely be invoked to remind us of our founding ideals -- that "All men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These phrases, a cherished part of our history, have rightly been called "American Scripture."

But Jefferson penned another phrase, arguably his most famous after those from the Declaration of Independence. These far more contentious words -- "a wall of separation between church and state" -- lie at the heart of the ongoing debate between those who see America as a "Christian Nation" and those who see it as a secular republic, a debate that is hotter than a Washington Fourth of July.

It is true these words do not appear in any early national document. What may be Jefferson's second most-quoted phrase is found instead in a letter he sent to a Baptist association in Danbury, Connecticut.

While president in 1802, Jefferson wrote: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ... "

The idea was not Jefferson's. Other 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment writers had used a variant of it. Earlier still, religious dissident Roger Williams had written in a 1644 letter of a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."

Williams, who founded Rhode Island with a colonial charter that included religious freedom, knew intolerance firsthand. He and other religious dissenters, including Anne Hutchinson, had been banished from neighboring Massachusetts, the "shining city on a hill" where Catholics, Quakers and Baptists were banned under penalty of death.

As president, Jefferson was voicing an idea that was fundamental to his view of religion and government, expressed most significantly in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he drafted in 1777.

Revised by James Madison and passed by Virginia's legislature in January 1786, the bill stated: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened (sic) in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief ..."

It was this simple -- government could not dictate how to pray, or that you cannot pray, or that you must pray.

Jefferson regarded this law so highly that he had his authorship of the statute made part of his epitaph, along with writing the Declaration and founding the University of Virginia. (Being president wasn't worth a mention.)

Why do Jefferson's "other words" matter today?

First, because knowing history matters -- it can safeguard us from repeating our mistakes and help us value our rights, won at great cost. Yet we are sorely lacking in knowledge about our past, as shown by a recent National Assessment of Educational Progress.

But more to the point, we are witnessing an aggressively promoted version of our history and heritage in which America is called a "Christian Nation."

This "Sunday School" version of our past has gained currency among conservative television commentators, school boards that have rewritten state textbooks and several GOP presidential candidates, some of whom trekked to Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in early June 2011.

No one can argue, as "Christian Nation" proponents correctly state, that the Founding Fathers were not Christian, although some notably doubted Christ's divinity.

More precisely, the founders were, with very few exceptions, mainstream Protestants. Many of them were Episcopalians, the American offshoot of the official Church of England. The status of America's Catholics, both legally and socially, in the colonies and early Republic, was clearly second-class. Other Christian sects, including Baptists, Quakers and Mormons, faced official resistance, discrimination and worse for decades.

But the founders, and more specifically the framers of the Constitution, included men who had fought a war for independence -- the very war celebrated on the "Glorious Fourth" -- against a country in which church and state were essentially one.

They understood the long history of sectarian bloodshed in Europe that brought many pilgrims to America. They knew the dangers of merging government, which was designed to protect individual rights, with religion, which as Jefferson argued, was a matter of individual conscience.

And that is why the U.S. Constitution reads as it does.

The supreme law of the land, written in the summer of 1787, includes no references to religion -- including in the presidential oath of office -- until the conclusion of Article VI, after all that dull stuff about debts and treaties: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (There is a pro forma "Year of the Lord" reference in the date at the Constitution's conclusion.)

Original intent? "No religious Test" seems pretty clear cut.

The primacy of a secular state was solidified when the First Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. According to Purdue history professor Frank Lambert, that "introduced the radical notion that the state had no voice concerning matters of conscience."

Beyond that, the first House of Representatives, while debating the First Amendment, specifically rejected a Senate proposal calling for the establishment of Christianity as an official religion. As Lambert concludes, "There would be no Church of the United States. Nor would America represent itself as a Christian Republic."

The actions of the first presidents, founders of the first rank, confirmed this "original intent:"

-- In 1790, President George Washington wrote to America's first synagogue, in Rhode Island, that "all possess alike liberty of conscience" and that "toleration" was an "inherent national gift," not the government's to dole out or take away

-- In 1797, with President John Adams in office, the Senate unanimously approved one of America's earliest foreign treaties, which emphatically stated (Article 11): "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) ..."

-- In 1802, Jefferson added his famous "wall of separation," implicit in the Constitution until he so described it (and cited in several Supreme Court decisions since).

These are, to borrow an admittedly loaded phrase, "inconvenient truths" to those who proclaim that America is a "Christian Nation."

The Constitution and the views of these Founding Fathers trump all arguments about references to God in presidential speeches (permitted under the First Amendment), on money (not introduced until the Civil War), the Pledge of Allegiance ("under God" added in 1954) and in the national motto "In God We Trust" (adopted by law in 1956).

And those contentious monuments to the Ten Commandments found around the country and occasionally challenged in court? Many of them were installed as a publicity stunt for Cecile B. DeMille's 1956 Hollywood spectacle, "The Ten Commandments."

So who are you going to believe? Thomas Jefferson or Hollywood? On second thought: Don't answer.


Links referenced within this article:
National Assessment of Educational Progress
http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/15/perrys-principles-american-fourth-graders-dont-know-much-about-history/


Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/04/davis.jefferson.other.words

The Atheism Movement's Misogyny Problem

PZ Myers : "[Rebecca Watson] asked for some simple common courtesy, and for that she gets pilloried. Sorry, people, but that sends a very clear signal to women that calm requests for respect will be met with jeers by a significant subset of the atheist community."

To read more, click here.

Book review - The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars

The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars
By John Tirman
Oxford University Press. 416 pages.

For review by Amitabh Pal see: http://www.progressive.org/sites/default/files/mag/pdfs/theprogressive_july11_web.pdf (Page 43-44)

DSK, Lies, and the Myth of the Perfect Victim

Source: http://www.good.is/post/dsk-rape-case-and-perfect-victims/
July 1, 2011 - Jaclyn Friedman

The Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case has taken a turn for the complex. Actually, media-frenzied sexual assault allegations are always pretty thorny. Perhaps it's more accurate to say the case has taken a turn for the even-more-complex.

News broke today that the Sofitel Hotel maid, who claimed that DSK dragged her into his hotel suite, locked her in the bathroom, and orally raped her on the afternoon of May 14, has been lying to prosecutors about a number of issues. This pattern of lying has seriously threatened the prosecution's chances of presenting a compelling case, because the maid's credibility will be weighed heavily during legal proceedings. DSK claims their encounter was consensual.

The newly revealed inconsistencies in her testimony raise more questions than answers. Did she launder money? Did she lie about a previous gang rape in order to gain asylum? What did she actually say about the case to her incarcerated friend on the day of the assault?

I'm wondering why so few people are asking the most important question of all: How does any of this prove that DSK didn't rape her?

I know this may come as a shock to some, but the U.S. justice system isn't perfect. If it were, black men wouldn't be eight times more likely than white men to be sent to prison, and rape wouldn't be so disproportionately under-prosecuted and even less frequently convicted. Since some commentators are inclined to go all Occam's Razor on this case, why are we so unwilling to consider the possibility that an imperfect, possibly criminally-involved woman, whose status in the U.S. is precarious at best, was raped on the job by a very powerful man?

It's not that hard to hold both of these ideas at once. On the one hand, we've got an international left-wing rock star with a history of harassing and abusing women, who, when first questioned about the incident in the hotel, claimed it never happened. Only when the incontrovertible evidence of his very personal DNA showed up on her clothes did he change his story to claim that something did, in fact, happen, and she consented. This is a guy whose wife has made public statements about how awesome it is to have a hubby who is a powerful seducer of the ladies. So why would he lie to cover a consensual dalliance?

On the other hand, we've got a poor, immigrant woman of color, in the United States on an asylum visa. She's been linked to drug deals. She's got too many cell phones. She receives mysterious financial deposits from felons. You can bet she's attached to her legit hotel job and doesn't want to get tangled up with the authorities. She's also likely smart enough to know that a whole host of personal details make her the less credible witness in a he said/she said case against one of the most powerful white dudes on the planet. All of that adds up to serious motivation to keep those details hidden from the prosecutors she's relying on for justice.

Still, she ran to coworkers and the police in an agitated state to get help on the day in question. Has she done some sketchy things? That seems pretty likely. Are people who do sketchy things still raped sometimes? Yes. They're just a lot less likely to see their attackers brought to justice.

Given the realities of the U.S. criminal justice system, the prosecution may be unable to salvage this case. But just because that system fails victims on the regular doesn't mean we have to, too. French commentators are already calling for DSK to jump back into the country's presidential race and ride a wave of sympathy into office. Really, the stakes are greater than even that political prize. If we accept the narrative that only perfect women are raped, we risk sacrificing justice not only for this woman, but for victims of sexual assault everywhere. After all, nobody's perfect.

How Many US Deaths Are Caused by Poverty and Other Social Factors? About the Same as Deaths from Heart Attacks and Stroke, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2011) — How researchers classify and quantify causes of death across a population has evolved in recent decades. In addition to long-recognized physiological causes such as heart attack and cancer, the role of behavioral factors -- including smoking, dietary patterns and inactivity -- began to be quantified in the 1990s. More recent research has begun to look at the contribution of social factors to U.S. mortality. In the first comprehensive analysis of such studies, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that poverty, low levels of education, poor social support and other social factors contribute about as many deaths in the U.S. as such familiar causes as heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer.

To read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110616193627.htm

Video - Bill Maher on Rick Perry, current GOP presidential runner

Click here to see video.

God Diagnosed With Bipolar Disorder

May 2, 2001 | ISSUE 37•16

NEW HAVEN, CT–In a diagnosis that helps explain the confusing and contradictory aspects of the cosmos that have baffled philosophers, theologians, and other students of the human condition for millennia, God, creator of the universe and longtime deity to billions of followers, was found Monday to suffer from bipolar disorder.

Rev. Dr. J. Henry Jurgens, a practicing psychiatrist and doctor of divinity at Yale University Divinity School, announced the historic diagnosis at a press conference.

"I always knew there had to be some explanation," Jurgens said. "And, after several years of patient research and long sessions with God Almighty through the intercessionary medium of prayer, I was able to pinpoint the specific nature of His problem."

Bipolar, or manic-depressive, disorder is a condition that afflicts millions. Characterized by cycles of elation followed by bouts of profound depression and despair, the disorder can wreak havoc on both the sufferer and his or her loved ones, particularly if it goes undetected and untreated for an extended period. Though the condition is estimated to affect, in one form or another, 5 percent of the world's population, Monday marks the first time it has been diagnosed in a major deity.

Evidence of God's manic-depression can be found throughout the Universe, from the white-hot explosiveness of quasars to the cold, lifeless vacuum of space. However, theologians note, humanity's exposure to God's affliction comes primarily through His confusing propensity to alternately reward and punish His creations with little rhyme or reason.

"Last week, I lost my dear husband Walter to the flood," said housewife and devout churchgoer Elaine Froman of Davenport, IA. "I asked myself, 'Why? Why would God do something like this, especially when He had just helped Walter overcome a long battle with colon cancer, and we were so happy that we finally had a chance to start our lives anew?'"

New York attorney Ruth Kanner also gained firsthand knowledge of God's wild mood swings.

"Last Saturday, on a gorgeous spring afternoon, I was jogging in Central Park with my daughter. We were marveling at the beauty and majesty of nature, and I remember thinking what a wonderful world we live in. Then, out of nowhere, I heard the gunfire," said Kanner, speaking from her hospital bed at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. "All they took was a measly $17, and for that, the doctors say my daughter will never walk again. If only Our Holy Father didn't have those mental problems, my precious Katie might not be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life."

Jurgens stressed that God's earthly subjects need to understand that, because of His bipolar condition, He is not in control of His actions and does not realize how they affect others.

"What He needs from us is understanding and patience," Jurgens said. "To paraphrase the words of the Lord God Himself, 'Humans, forgive Him, for He knows not what He does.'"

While such drugs as Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft have proven effective in the treatment of bipolar disorder among humans, there is no modern earthly medicine that can be prescribed for a deity as vast and complex as God. Jurgens is in the process of forming a support group, "Living With A Bipolar Creator-Deity," for all of humanity to "get together and discuss their feelings about living in a universe run by an Omnipresent Loved One not fully in control of his emotions."

Jurgens said he believes God's essential condition is seasonal, as evidenced by the bursts of energy and elation associated with springtime and summer, followed by the decay and bleak despair of fall and winter. Sometimes, however, the condition cycles even faster.

"The average person with bipolar disorder may go through as many as 10 or 12 cycles of mania and subsequent depression in a lifetime. In severe cases, a sufferer may experience four or more per year, which is known as 'rapid cycling,'" Jurgens said. "We believe God suffers from the even rarer 'ultra-rapid cycling,' which would account for the many documented cases in which He alternates between benevolence and rage toward humanity within a matter of seconds. For example, last week, He brought desperately needed, life-giving rain to southern Mali while simultaneously leveling Turkey with a devastating earthquake."

Further evidence of God's manic-depression can be found in the Bible, in which the erotomania of the Song of Songs sharply contrasts with the sadness and existential despair of the Book of Ecclesiastes. The Book of Job, Jurgens noted, marks the best example of His condition. The book begins with the bleak lamentations of Job and ends with a full-blown manic episode by God, complete with such classic bipolar symptoms as the illusion of omnipotence and delusions of grandeur.

"One of the major 'heresies' of Christian history is the Gnostic belief that the Creator, or 'demiurge,' of this troubled world is a blind, idiot god who is insane," Jurgens said. "This idea surfaces in many religious traditions around the globe. As it turns out, they were only half right: God has His problems like anyone else, but He is essentially trying His best. He just has a condition that makes His emotions fly out of control at times."

"So it's up to us to make the best of God's emotional problems," Jurgens continued. "Thus, mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upward."

Source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-diagnosed-with-bipolar-disorder,348/

Book - Partners, Not Rivals, Privatization and the Public Good. By Martha Minow

"What happens when private companies, nonprofit agencies, and religious groups manage what government used to - in education, criminal justice, legal services, and welfare programs? As for-profit companies run schools, where will they make their profit margin? As religious groups provide job training and food stamps, will they respect public rules against discrimination and forcing people to pray?" Renowned legal scholar Martha Minow takes on this unexamined change in our public life. She acknowledges that private commercial interests are here to stay and that religious providers have long played crucial roles in health care, social services, and schooling. New arrangements expanding these trends are not necessarily bad - market forces can be useful in improving public services, and the motivation and know-how of religious groups can help many of the most needy. Minow shows us how to guard against the dangers of privatization and preserve essential public values of due process, freedom from discrimination, and democratic participation.

In a War-Loving Society, Peace Activism Takes a Lot of Guts and Bravery

Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522

Monday 30 May 2011
by: Clancy Sigal, Alternet

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -- John F. Kennedy

I lost a friend recently with whom I'd grown up. As adolescents, we'd shared enthusiasms, and death-defying leaps into Lake Michigan off the Adler Planetarium, and chased the same girls. He had a puckish sense of humour, sometimes ghoulish, the kind of stuff you laugh at only when you're 15. He could crick his neck with a loud snap, as if being hanged from a gallows, a party trick that revolted grownups but we thought hilarious. He could pick out a tune on a banjo on first hearing and sing political parodies of pop songs. As we grew up, we shared a history, not only of our acne-scarred, ego-obsessed selves, but something broader and deeper I best call antifascism.

We ran wild in the streets of Chicago itching for showdowns with anyone who disagreed with us - we were young Communist fronters and couldn't wait to enlist or be drafted. In the middle of the second world war, it was patriotic to be a red - "communism is 20th-century Americanism", went the slogan. Passion, not cynicism or detachment, was our deal.

With his death, I've lost a big part of the thread, a connection to the original meaning of things. I'm not alone in this broken thread on Memorial Day.

If you're in the United States while reading this, try a little test: ask someone, anyone, what Memorial Day memorialises? I've queried several friends and none could tell me that Memorial Day, once called "Decoration Day", began in the aftermath of the civil war to honour the more than 600,000 dead Confederate and Union soldiers - the deadliest war in US history.

Once, Memorial Day was a fairly solemn occasion when local communities lowered the courthouse flag to half-mast in salute to the "fallen", with jamboree parades to follow. In the 1960s, Congress changed the date to the last Monday in May so that people might have an extra day off on the weekend. Hence the current barbecues and shopping mall mania - and national amnesia. Except for the boy and girl Scouts, who still place little American flags on grave sites in our veterans' cemeteries, like the one almost within sight of my house, and a few soldiers' and sailors' relatives who come to visit, the original meaning of it has fallen into dust.

Curious, this. Because the publishing industry continues to pump out torrents of civil war books to feed a niche audience with pop biographies of bearded generals and Pickett's charge-type battle studies. Historians continue to debate the core cause of the war, and movies get made like Glory, Gettysburg, Cold Mountain and Robert Redford's recent The Conspirator.

No matter, most of us like to go on a Memorial Day shopping spree, warm up the coals, pull out the cooler and slap shrimp tacos on the broiler.

I don't care how Memorial Day is spent, whether in a relaxed holiday mood or a visit to the dead. I've walked through the military graves at my nearest military graveyard, the 114-acre national cemetery near UCLA with its huge adjacent Veterans Administration hospital and old soldiers' home, full of sick and traumatised ex-combatants, and a homeless encampment of veteranos under the 405 freeway, a grenade's throw away from cemetery where some of their buddies lie under white crosses or stars of David.

Meaning no disrespect, but on this "war heroes' weekend", isn't it time to also honour those who have "fallen" in a different battle - against the slaughtering wars?

Over time, my attitude to conscientious objectors and deserters has shifted. Once, I held them in contempt. But the Vietnam war, when I came into contact with war resisters, changed me. I saw then, and see now, that often it takes a different kind of moral and, yes, even physical courage to resist a call to serve your country in a war you believe is a crime, when all your family, friends, teachers and the vast American majority support joining up. When I was called to my war, I went with shining eyes and revenge in my heart and couldn't wait to get my hands on a .30-calibre machine-gun to wipe out those Nazi bastards.

But what about those "cowards", "traitors" and "slackers" who don't want to kill other people? They're an odd breed who count among their number such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Sergeant York, David Hockney, three US weapon-refusing combat medics who won the medal of honour, and the 27 Israeli air force pilots who refused orders to "track and kill" civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his command - after spending $20bn on an "anti-IED" project - still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)

But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors, whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites or secular, who simply don't want to kill?

On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about the outcasts who refuse to take life.

Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522

Memorial Day, 2011, and Obama’s Selling of War and Empire

By Matthew Rothschild, May 30, 2011

Prepared remarks of Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, for delivery at the Veterans for Peace rally at James Madison Park, Madison, Wisconsin,

I’d like to thank Veterans for Peace for inviting me to speak this Memorial Day, and I’d like to thank you all for coming.

On Memorial Day, it’s customary to honor soldiers who have lost their lives. And so we do so.

And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to ask what did they lose their lives for, and whom did they lose their lives for.

In almost every war, they did not die for their country. They died for their country’s rulers, the politicians who lie about the real reasons for war.

They died for the corporations that profit from war and for the top 1 percent of Americans who run this country.

They died for a concept, the concept of nationalism, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for an inflated sense of their own country’s mission.

Or they died for the concept of religion, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for a phantom god.

And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the innocent people killed in our wars.

John Tirman’s new book, The Deaths of Others, tallies them up.

In the Korean War, about three million civilians died.

In the Vietnam War, about three million civilians died.

In Bush’s Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died.

And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the duped or conscripted soldiers of our so-called enemies. The 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War, for instance, many of whom the United States mowed down in the so-called Turkey Shoot.

And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor not just war veterans but peace veterans who have lost their lives.

Adam Hochschild’s new book, “To End All Wars,” points out what University of Wisconsin history professor Harvey Goldberg taught us, also: that the real heroes of World War I were not the soldiers but the peace activists, like Bertrand Russell and Eugene Victor Debs.

So today I honor the memory of peace veterans whom I’ve known and who’ve had an influence on me.

I honor Clarence Kailin, veteran of the Abraham Lincoln brigade and longtime Madison peace and justice activist, who is honored in this park.

And today I honor the memory of Sam Day, the great Madison anti-nuclear activist and practitioner of civil disobedience, and Erwin Knoll, my predecessor at The Progressive and a fierce opponent of all war.

And today I honor the memory of Midge Miller, who, by organizing Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, helped bring down LBJ.

And today I honor the memory of Nan Cheney, who helped put together the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

And today, I honor the memory of Linda Farley, who stood for peace and for universal health care.

And today I honor the memory of Ben Masel, who stood for peace, and civil liberties, and the legalization of marijuana.

And in the national peace community, I honor Molly Ivins, who used all of her writing energy while fighting cancer to oppose Bush’s Iraq War.

I honor June Jordan, a warrior for peace.

I honor Andrea Lewis, a peaceful presence behind the mic at KPFA.

I honor, most dearly, Howard Zinn himself.

Please take a moment now to honor the peace activists you have known who are no longer with us. And feel free to shout their names out.

Thank you.

So where are we, this Memorial Day, as a nation?

We’re a nation that is creating more tombstones for next year’s Memorial Day.

We have a President much more adept in the rhetoric of war and more agile in the governing of empire than his gonzo predecessor.

More bombs, less bombast is Obama’s motto.

Obama has just this weekend violated the War Powers Act for the second time with his bombings in Libya.

The first time was by sending bombers there when there was no imminent risk from Libya.

And this second time was by not getting Congressional approval from Congress within 60 days, as required by statute.

He said, on Friday, the 60th day, in a letter to Congress that “it is better” to get Congressional support, but he knew it was too late for that.

And note the phrase “it is better.”

Obama acts as though getting approval from Congress is a mere option, a mere preference, not the law or the Constitution that he’s obliged to follow.

This is the audacity of power.

So that’s Libya, the third war he is waging.

The second is Afghanistan, the war he has escalated by tripling the number of U.S. troops there to 100,000. Already, 1,571 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, and the entire reasons for them being there—to overthrow the Taliban, find bin Laden, and rout Al Qaeda—have been accomplished. But we’re still there because Obama and the Pentagon see the strategic value of a country sandwiched between Iran and China.

The first is still the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of 4,442 of our soldiers and wounded more than 30,000. Today, we still have 50,000 U.S. troops there, and Obama had vowed to bring them home by now and then extended it until the end of this year, and now wants an extension on the extension. Can you say a permanent military presence, anyone?

So he’s started one war, against Libya. He’s escalated another, in Afghanistan. And he hasn’t ended the third in Iraq.

But his rhetoric has been less bellicose than Bush’s, his manner less cowboy.

Obama is a sophisticated warmonger, a smooth manager of the empire.

But like his predecessor, he feeds the American people the drivel that we are the greatest country on Earth with a “special burden” to carry the torch of freedom around the world. Unfortunately, the historical record does not bear that out and many of the graves being visited today are graves of soldiers who went not to fight for freedom but to fight for the U.S. empire.

When he won the Nobel Peace Prize Obama went to Oslo and gave one of the most inappropriate speeches ever delivered at that podium. He used the occasion to justify war. He said war is sometimes necessary “because of the imperfections of man.”

We are here today to say that war is unnecessary.

We are here today to say that wart comes about not because of the imperfections of man but because of the unequal distribution of power and the force of irrational ideas.

We can challenge that unequal distribution of power.

We can combat those irrational ideas.

So that a generation from now, or two generations from now, it won’t be necessary to salute our war dead, but it will be customary to salute our peace activists.

Source: http://www.progressive.org/wx053011.html

Video - Robert Jensen - What Does It Mean to Be a Human Being: The Mistaken Identities of Nation, Race, Gender

Click here: http://vimeo.com/23709632

Book -The Moral Combat: Black Atheist, Gender Politics and the Value Wars - by Sikivu Hutchinson

"In the book I examine the implications of black Christian religiosity, skepticism, humanism, and atheism from an African American feminist perspective, taking on Christian fundamentalist fascism and the hijacking of public morality....despite longstanding traditions of secular humanism, skepticism, and Freethought espoused by such thinkers as Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen and Richard Wright, atheism remains a taboo belief system in black communities."

Here is an excerpt: http://www.thenewhumanism.org/authors/sikivu-hutchinson/articles/moral-combat

Once Upon a Time

Click on image for larger view.

One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide

A respected, mainstream theologian is seriously arguing that as long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to kill pretty much anybody.


In a recent post on his Reasonable Faith site, famed Christian apologist and debater William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. For God, at any rate -- and for people following God's orders. Short version: When guilty people got killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad... and when innocent people got killed, even when innocent babies were killed, they went to Heaven, and it was all hunky dory in the end.


To read more, click here.

Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers - Atheists Don't Have No Songs

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ngMz92vwA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Humanistic Awareness Day

See: www.humanisticawarenessday.org

Stephen Hawking: Heaven, God are Fairy Stories

Revered Physicist Stephen Hawking, who has lived a life that has been quite personally and professionally spectacular, weighed in definitively on the potential existence of an afterlife in the Guardian:

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added.

Hawking's latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserted that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an "elementary fallacy" of logic.

Hawking's comments, in repsonse to a series of questions from Guardian editors and readers, come on the eve of his talk at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London. When asked what humans should do with our lives, he said "We should seek the greatest value of our action."

Source: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/588881/stephen_hawking%3A_heaven%2C_god_are_fairy_stories/#paragraph4

Bill Maher - If U Celebrated Bin Laden's Death, U're Not Really A Christian, Not What Jesus Would Do

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giVXvveef8Y

Trust Me, I'm a Scientist

Why so many people choose not to believe what scientists say

"We want our beliefs to be accurate—to align with what is really true about the world—and we know that science is a reliable guide to accuracy. But this desire to be accurate conflicts with other motives, some of them unconscious." 

To read more click here.
(May 2011 issue of Scientific American) 

Book: The Luck of the Draw - The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making - By Peter Stone

About the Book:

From the earliest times, people have used lotteries to make decisions— by drawing straws, tossing coins, picking names out of hats, and so on. We use lotteries to place citizens on juries, draft men into armies, assign students to schools, and even on very rare occasions, select lifeboat survivors to be eaten. Lotteries make a great deal of sense in all of these cases, and yet there is something absurd about them. Largely, this is because lottery-based decisions are not based upon reasons. In fact, lotteries actively prevent reason from playing a role in decision making at all.

Over the years, people have devoted considerable effort to solving this paradox and thinking about the legitimacy of lotteries as a whole. However, these scholars have mainly focused on lotteries on a case-by-case basis, not as a part of a comprehensive political theory of lotteries. In The Luck of the Draw, Peter Stone surveys the variety of arguments proffered for and against lotteries and argues that they only have one true effect relevant to decision making: the “sanitizing effect” of preventing decisions from being made on the basis of reasons. While this rationale might sound strange to us, Stone contends that in many instances, it is vital that decisions be made without the use of reasons. By developing innovative principles for the use of lottery-based decision making, Stone lays a foundation for understanding when it is—and when it is not—appropriate to draw lots when making political decisions both large and small.

About the Author:

Peter Stone is Faculty Fellow in the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University. He has been researching the theory and practice of random selection for over a decade, and his work on the subject has been published in such journals as the Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Theory, and Social Theory and Practice. He also works on broader issues relating to justice, democracy, and rationality.

Peter Stone
April 2011
208 pp.
HB: 978-0-19-975610-0  $49.95

Obama and the Earthers

May discussion topic: Humanism and Politics

Dear friends,

 

You are invited to join us for a fun discussion and food. See details below.
(NOTE: venue and eating arrangements have been changed from previous discussion meetings)

Date and time: May 14, 2011 at 5:30 PM. 

Food: This is a potluck, so bring something to share.

Place: Armineh and John’s place. Email me at armineh.noravian@gmail.com for address.

Moderator: Armineh Noravian – Please bring a question that you would like to discuss on the readings.

Readings:

a)      Faith on the Hill (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1846/religious-composition-112th-congress)  

b)      Humanism and Politics (http://san-francisco-bay-area-humanists.blogspot.com/2010/11/humanism-and-politics.html)

Format: You can (1) read any or all of the article(s) that is provided for each meeting, (2) read something somewhat related to it, or (3) be prepared to share a situation that has some connection to it. We'll have a moderated discussion of all the above. If anyone has another somewhat related reading they wish to share please let me know.

Rules: Listen and contribute to a diversity of views respectfully, especially ones you don't agree with. 


I look forward to seeing you, your friends, and family.

Armineh

Colbert Report an interview with A C Grayling, author of "The Good Book: A Humanist Bible"

The interview begins about 16 minutes from the beginning.

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-april-26-2011-a-c--grayling

Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

By Gregory Pauland Phil Zuckerman, Friday, April 29

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-americans-still-dislike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.

Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.

As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.

While many studies show that secular Americans don’t fare as well as the religious when it comes to certain indicators of mental health or subjective well-being, new scholarship is showing that the relationships among atheism, theism, and mental health and well-being are complex. After all, Denmark, which is among the least religious countries in the history of the world, consistently rates as the happiest of nations. And studies of apostates — people who were religious but later rejected their religion — report feeling happier, better and liberated in their post-religious lives.

Nontheism isn’t all balloons and ice cream. Some studies suggest that suicide rates are higher among the non-religious. But surveys indicating that religious Americans are better off can be misleading because they include among the non-religious fence-sitters who are as likely to believe in God, whereas atheists who are more convinced are doing about as well as devout believers. On numerous respected measures of societal success — rates of poverty, teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, drug use and crime, as well as economics — high levels of secularity are consistently correlated with positive outcomes in first-world nations. None of the secular advanced democracies suffers from the combined social ills seen here in Christian America.

More than 2,000 years ago, whoever wrote Psalm 14 claimed that atheists were foolish and corrupt, incapable of doing any good. These put-downs have had sticking power. Negative stereotypes of atheists are alive and well. Yet like all stereotypes, they aren’t true — and perhaps they tell us more about those who harbor them than those who are maligned by them. So when the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly and Newt Gingrich engage in the politics of division and destruction by maligning atheists, they do so in disregard of reality.

As with other national minority groups, atheism is enjoying rapid growth. Despite the bigotry, the number of American nontheists has tripled as a proportion of the general population since the 1960s. Younger generations’ tolerance for the endless disputes of religion is waning fast. Surveys designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism have found that as many as 60 million Americans — a fifth of the population — are not believers. Our nonreligious compatriots should be accorded the same respect as other minorities.

Gregory Paul is an independent researcher in sociology and evolution. Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College, is the author of “Society Without God.”

Atheists Seek Chaplain Role in the Military

By JAMES DAO - April 26, 2011

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — In the military, there are more than 3,000 chaplains who minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of active duty troops, regardless of their faiths. The vast majority are Christians, a few are Jews or Muslims, one is a Buddhist. A Hindu, possibly even a Wiccan may join their ranks soon.

But an atheist?

Strange as it sounds, groups representing atheists and secular humanists are pushing for the appointment of one of their own to the chaplaincy, hoping to give voice to what they say is a large — and largely underground — population of nonbelievers in the military.

Joining the chaplain corps is part of a broader campaign by atheists to win official acceptance in the military. Such recognition would make it easier for them to raise money and meet on military bases. It would help ensure that chaplains, religious or atheist, would distribute their literature, advertise their events and advocate for them with commanders.

But winning the appointment of an atheist chaplain will require support from senior chaplains, a tall order. Many chaplains are skeptical: Do atheists belong to a “faith group,” a requirement for a chaplain candidate? Can they provide support to religious troops of all faiths, a fundamental responsibility for chaplains?

Jason Torpy, a former Army captain who is president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, said humanist chaplains would do everything religious chaplains do, including counsel troops and help them follow their faiths. But just as a Protestant chaplain would not preside over a Catholic service, a humanist might not lead a religious ceremony, though he might help organize it.

“Humanism fills the same role for atheists that Christianity does for Christians and Judaism does for Jews,” Mr. Torpy said in an interview. “It answers questions of ultimate concern; it directs our values.”

Mr. Torpy has asked to meet the chiefs of chaplains for each of the armed forces, which have their own corps, to discuss his proposal. The chiefs have yet to comment.

At the same time, an atheist group at Fort Bragg called Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, or MASH, has asked the Army to appoint an atheist lay leader at the base. A new MASH chapter at Fort Campbell, Ky., is planning to do the same as are atheists at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

Such lay leaders can lead “services” in lieu of chaplains and have access to meeting rooms, including chapels.

Chaplains at Fort Bragg near here have seemed open to the idea, if somewhat perplexed by it.

“You’re not a faith group; you’re a lack-of-faith group,” First Lt. Samantha Nicoll, an active atheist at Fort Bragg, recalled a chaplain friend’s saying about the idea. “But I said, ‘What else is there for us?’ ”

Atheist leaders acknowledge the seeming contradiction of nonbelievers seeking to become chaplains or receive recognition from the chaplain corps. But they say they believe the imprimatur of the chaplaincy will embolden atheists who worry about being ostracized for their worldviews.

Defense Department statistics show that about 9,400 of the nation’s 1.4 million active-duty military personnel identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, making them a larger subpopulation than Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists in the military.

But atheist leaders say those numbers are an undercount because, they believe, there are many nonbelievers among the 285,000 service members who claim no religious preference on military surveys. Many chaplains dispute that interpretation, and say that most people in that group are religious, just not strongly so.

Those same statistics show that Christians represent about one million, or 70 percent, of all active-duty troops. They are even more dominant among the chaplain corps: about 90 percent of the 3,045 active duty chaplains are Christians, most of them Protestants.

Military atheist leaders say that although proselytizing by chaplains is forbidden, Christian beliefs pervade military culture, creating subtle pressures on non-Christians to convert.

As an example, they cite the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, created to help soldiers handle stress and prevent suicide. The program requires soldiers to complete surveys assessing emotional, social, family and spiritual well-being. Based on their answers, some soldiers are asked to take “resiliency” training.

Atheists say the survey and training are rife with religious code words that suggest a deity or afterlife. The Army counters that the program is intended to determine whether a soldier has “a strong set of beliefs, principles or values” that can sustain him through adversity — and not to gauge religiosity.

Atheist and secular humanist groups in the military are hardly new. But at some bases, they have become better organized and more vocal in recent years.

Last fall, atheists at Fort Bragg objected to an event by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association called Rock the Fort. The base command, at the urging of its chaplains, provided some money and manpower for the event as well as a choice location on the post’s parade grounds.

A communication sergeant, Justin Griffith, argued that the event was an Army-sponsored platform for the Graham organization to recruit converts. The post commander, Col. Stephen J. Sicinski, denied that, saying soldiers were not pressured to attend. In a recent interview, the colonel said Rock the Fort was intended to boost morale as well as “bolster the faith.”

In response, Sergeant Griffith has recruited a star lineup of atheist musicians and speakers, including the writer Richard Dawkins, to headline a secular event, possibly for the fall. He calls it Rock Beyond Belief and has asked Colonel Sicinski to provide resources similar to what he gave Rock the Fort.

Colonel Sicinski has refused, saying the event will not draw enough people to justify using the parade grounds and that money from religious tithes, which helped finance Rock the Fort, cannot be spent on it. Sergeant Griffith has appealed.

A high school dropout raised near Dallas, Sergeant Griffith, 28, was a passionate Christian and creationist until his teens. Now his dog tags list his religious preference as atheist, and he is pushing to create MASH chapters on as many bases as possible.

He is also giving thought to becoming a chaplain himself, though it would take years: He would have to earn a graduate degree in theology and then be commissioned an officer. He would also need the endorsement of “a qualified religious organization,” a role Mr. Torpy’s organization is seeking to play.

Sergeant Griffith said he believed there were already atheist chaplains in the military — just not open ones.

“I support the idea that religious soldiers need support from religious chaplains,” he said. “But there has to be a line between supporting religious soldiers and promoting religion.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/us/27atheists.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all