a review of religion and media
The convention floor was the village of The Scarlet Letter, where the elect and aspirants must name their enemies, expelled into the wilderness, in order to preserve the core of their society. Continue Reading →
From an October 2011 article at Human Life International World Watch, a “pro-life and pro-family” organization dedicated to monitoring “anti-life forces operat[ing] under the radar implementing their destructive agenda”:
…You would think, in an empty nation like Kazakhstan, there would be groups encouraging people to have more children, but exactly the opposite is the case. Family Health International and USAID distribute contraceptives by the ton, the Population Council writes long reports supporting the continued availability of abortion for any reason or no reason at all, and, of course, the lethal alphabet soup of the United Nations coordinates everything — UNAIDS, CEDAW, UNDESA, UNDP, UNIFEM, and the omnipresent UNFPA.
Nobody could explain why all of these population control groups are necessary in a nation that has an average of only 15 people per square mile.
From Matthieu Aikins at Foreign Policy Magazine:
Indeed, the Global War on Terror has illustrated the troubling contradictions that underpin our age: That the West’s attractions of modernity, material progress, and liberalism can prove unsatisfying to smart and ambitious young men; that our allies in the Muslim world might be among the greatest sources of the terrorists who would do us harm; that the freedom promised by an age of unlimited connection across information and physical space might engender a draconian self-repression; and that a new golden age of capitalism might leave such ruined states and peoples on its margins. Today, we find the roots of terror in the growing instability of the world’s economy and climate, which in turn prefigures deeper coming threats to the global order. The perverse irony of the War on Terror is how badly it is has distracted our political and moral will from the great challenges of our time. This is bin Laden’s legacy.
What was once a rallying cry by U.S. evangelical organizations to limit access to birth control here and abroad (see former Revealer managing editor Kathryn Joyce’s 2008 article at The Nation, “Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies”) is now a Vatican topic for discussion at a UN panel. Continue Reading →
What was once a rallying cry by U.S. evangelical organizations to limit access to birth control here and abroad (see former Revealer managing editor Kathryn Joyce’s 2008 article at The Nation, “Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies”) is now a Vatican topic for discussion at a UN panel. Continue Reading →
What was once a rallying cry by U.S. evangelical organizations to limit access to birth control here and abroad (see former Revealer managing editor Kathryn Joyce’s 2008 article at The Nation, “Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies”) is now a Vatican topic for discussion at a UN panel. Continue Reading →
Rachel Sladja at Talking Points Memo has a good piece up about the roots of all the recent Shar’iah-is-coming-for-your-freedom hysteria. It’s worth a read for the research TPM did to trace the anti-Muslim commentary in the media over the past decade. But I can’t help but wonder if Islam (and Shari’ah) doesn’t just conveniently fit into the bogeyman placeholder that’s been consistently used by conservatives to manipulate foreign policy. Continue Reading →
Foreign Policy, in collaboration with The Fund for Peace, has posted their 6th annual analysis of the most vulnerable states in the world. One can’t help but cringe at the biblical/apocalyptic references: “In the Beginning, There was Somalia,” and “Postcards from Hell.” And critics have noted that one man’s hell is another man’s donkey cart. Yet… you will “know hell when you see it.” I’ve been to more than half a dozen of the countries in the top (or bottom) 30. There’s a difference between poverty and not having a flat screen TV; between law and justice and a police state; between development and decay. Continue Reading →