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ken meece

AlterNet: Is the Constitution Suited to Today's Church/State Issues? - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...142414

ReadItLater

shared by ken meece on 11 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The government increasingly sees citizens as pastoral-care clients, as persons in need of spiritual care, and I want to describe the law that makes this possible.
  • how religion is being regulated in hospitals and, more generally, how chaplaincies are multiplying in this country: municipal chaplaincies, crisis chaplaincies, hospital chaplaincies, even school and workplace chaplaincies.
  • people are understanding themselves in terms of a new revival of a holistic image of the human being as, in some sense, basically spiritual.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • It's a next step in the radical disestablishment of religion in this country.
  • The exclusivity of materialist/medicalized understandings of the entire range of human capabilities and experience, as well as ecclesiastical capacity to insist on orthodoxy and particularity, are both fast eroding
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Noam Chomsky on the place of human rights in U.S. foreign policy | The European Courier - 0 views

europeancourier.org/...n-rights-in-u-s-foreign-policy

chomsky foreign policy foreign-policy human rights human-rights humanrights politics hegemony

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Feb 11
     
    Chomsky: U.S. concerned about human rights only in the enemy countries http://t.co/ODoBSWy
ken meece

Think Again: God - By Karen Armstrong | Foreign Policy - 1 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...god_0

ReadItLater

shared by ken meece on 19 Oct 09 - Cached
  • An inadequate understanding of God that reduces “him” to an idol in our own image who gives our likes and dislikes sacred sanction is the worst form of spiritual tyranny. Such arrogance has led to atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of secularism in government was meant to check this tendency, but secularism itself has created new demons now inflicting themselves on the world.
  • In the West, secularism has been a success, essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was achieved gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of governance time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of the world, secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by large sectors of the population,
  • Shiism had for centuries separated religion from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s insistence that a cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary innovation.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In the same spirit, Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his movement by translating the social message of the Koran into a modern idiom, founding clinics, hospitals, trade unions, schools, and factories that gave workers insurance, holidays, and good working conditions. In other words, he aimed to bring the masses to modernity in an Islamic setting. The Brotherhood’s resulting popularity was threatening to Egypt’s secular government, which could not provide these services.
  • John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as a shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right.
  • it is not God or religion but violence itself -- inherent in human nature -- that breeds violence. As a species, we survived by killing and eating other animals; we also murder our own kind. So pervasive is this violence that it leaks into most scriptures, though these aggressive passages have always been balanced and held in check by other texts that promote a compassionate ethic based on the Golden Rule
  • "religious" wars, no matter how modern the tools, always begin as political ones.
  • In recent Gallup polling conducted in 35 Muslim countries, only 7 percent of those questioned thought that the September 11 attacks were justified. Their reasons were entirely political.
  • Fundamentalism is not conservative. Rather, it is highly innovative -- even heretical -- because it always develops in response to a perceived crisis. In their anxiety, some fundamentalists distort the tradition they are trying to defend.
  • All fundamentalism -- whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim -- is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation.
  • The Bible and the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews, Christians, and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and produced thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious history that Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve both God and mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max Weber suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was integral to modern capitalism.
  • the religious critique of excessive greed is far from irrelevant. Although not opposed to business, the major faith traditions have tried to counterbalance some of the abuses of capitalism. Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, by means of yoga and other disciplines, try to moderate the aggressive acquisitiveness of the human psyche. The three monotheistic faiths have inveighed against the injustice of unevenly distributed wealth
  • Religion is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.
  • in their rebellion against the modern ethos, fundamentalists tend to overemphasize traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, frontal assaults on this patriarchal trend have often proven counterproductive.
  • But their reading of scripture is unprecedentedly literal. Before the modern period, few understood the first chapter of Genesis as an exact account of the origins of life; until the 17th century, theologians insisted that if a biblical text contradicted science, it must be interpreted allegorically.
  • Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.
  • What has alienated many Muslims from the democratic ideal is not their religion but Western governments’ support of autocratic rulers, such as the Iranian shahs, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, who have denied people basic human and democratic rights.
  • a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent of Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.
  • A fatwa is not universally binding like a papal edict; rather, it simply expresses the opinion of the mufti who issues it. Muslims can choose which fatwas they adopt and thus participate in a flexible free market of religious thought, just as Americans can choose which church they attend.
  • Religion should be studied with the same academic impartiality and accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a region, so that we learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is counterproductive, and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.
  • In the Middle East, overly aggressive secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious establishment more conservative, or even radical.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion, by Juan Cole, Pre... - 0 views

www.juancole.com

politics iraq blogs history war middle-east israel palestine middle-eastern iran terrorism

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09
     
    Wednesday, September 16, 2009 Goldstone Report Finds Israeli Military Guilty of War Crimes in Gaza The Independent reports that a United Nations fact-finding inquiry has found that Israel committed war crimes during its attack on Gaza last winter, as did the Palestinian Hamas. The lion's share of blame in the report, however, falls on Israeli forces, which stand accused of planning out a disproportionate use of force, the punishing of a civilian population, and reckless disregard for civilian lives-- all of which are war crimes in international law. The report suggests that some Israeli actions may have gone beyond being mere war crimes to being crimes against humanity. The report will go to the UN Human Rights Commission, which will likely accept it. The findings could in theory drag Israeli officials before the World Court in the Hague, though in practice this outcome is highly unlikely. Both the Israeli government and Hamas rejected the report as biased, which is a pretty good indication that it is even-handed.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Occupy Wall Street finally releases their one demand « OntheWilderSide - 0 views

wilderside.wordpress.com/...ally-releases-their-one-demand

occupywallstreet occupywallst demand protest wallstreet

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 25 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 25 Sep 11
     
    KW writes: My goodness. In a wise, creative, and mischievous response to the nasty rhetoric of the press, the Occupy Wall Street folks have answered propaganda with poetry. What a graceful maneuver in the struggle for social change. Beautiful and heartwarming! For a discussion on the media's quest for one, clear demand from the Wall Street protesters, the group created the following consensus document: A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five) Published 2011-09-22 07:51:42 UTC by OccupyWallSt at OccupyWallStreet.org This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street. On September 21st, 2011, Troy Davis, an innocent man, was murdered by the state of Georgia. Troy Davis was one of the 99 percent. Ending capital punishment is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, four of our members were arrested on baseless charges. Ending police intimidation is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, the richest 400 Americans owned more than half of the country's population. Ending wealth inequality is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, we determined that Yahoo lied about occupywallst.org being in spam filters. Ending corporate censorship is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly eighty percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track. Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly 15% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing. Ending political corruption is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of Americans did not have work. Ending joblessness is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of America lived in poverty. Ending poverty is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly fifty million Americans were without health insurance. Ending health-profiteering is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, America had military bases in around one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and sixty-five countrie
avivajazz jazzaviva

Crooked Timber | Blog - 0 views

crookedtimber.org

politics culture humanities sociocultural sociopolitical political opinion blogs

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09
     
    Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
avivajazz jazzaviva

Iraq: Detainees Describe Torture in Secret Jail | Human Rights Watch - 0 views

www.hrw.org/...s-describe-torture-secret-jail

iraq torture humanrights detainees occupation usa HRW

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10
     
    Detainees in a secret Baghdad detention facility were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized, Human Rights Watch said today.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law | WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB125314088285517643.html

corporate law corporations rights sotamayor

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 18 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 18 Sep 09
     
    Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics." Heritage Foundation: it "doesn't give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded."
avivajazz jazzaviva

Many Eyes : Information Visualization for Socio-Political Understanding - 1 views

manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes

infovis datavis infographics datagraphics infoesthetics infoaesthetics information visualization data visualization knowledge management influence mapping demographic mapping social network analysis

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 02 Oct 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 02 Oct 09
     
    Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. The magic is when an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. Information visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data. We all deal with data that we'd like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.
avivajazz jazzaviva

C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...16tapes.html

usa cia corrupt fraud corruption warcrimes criminal justice human-rights human-rights-violations war-crimes yoo holder

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10
     
    In 2005, former CIA director 2005 approved a decision by a top aide to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting criminal torture of two detainees.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Free Political Documentary Films - 0 views

www.diigo.com/...%2F%2Ffreedocumentaries.org%2F

documentaries films videos political progressive 9-11 war

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10
     
    Films are national / international. Film topics include: 9/11 investigative efforts, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, peak oil and oil wars, corporatism, financial industry fraud, civil rights violations, Bush-Obama torture and detention policies, animal protection, Assassination Documentaries Financial Reform Documentaries Election Fraud Documentaries Environmental Documentaries Female Focused Documentaries George Bush Documentaries Globalization Documentaries Health Documentaries Human Rights Documentaries Media Documentaries Politician Documentaries Religious Documentaries Slavery Documentaries Societal Documentaries War Documentaries
avivajazz jazzaviva

The Crime of Our Time | The Business of America - 0 views

dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/...al-reviewed-by-stephen-lendman

oligarchy kleptocracy banksters wars hegemony world domination crimes corruption fraud corporatism

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 15 Oct 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 15 Oct 09
     
    "The business of America is big business with a strategic long-term plan for co-opting world governments, waging permanent wars for profit, dominating everywhere militarily, ending social safety net protections, crushing civil liberties and freedom, tolerating no concern for human rights, controlling global markets and resources, turning workers everywhere into serfs, and extracting, unimpeded, as much public wealth as possible."
avivajazz jazzaviva

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear | Politics | Vanity Fair - 0 views

www.vanityfair.com/...monsanto200805

monsanto background history

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 18 Dec 11 - Cached
  • Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented.
  • in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover “a live human-made microorganism.”
  • So far, the company has produced G.M. seeds for soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. Many more products have been developed or are in the pipeline, including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • marketing an artificial growth hormone for cows that increases their output, and it is taking aggressive steps to put those who don’t want to use growth hormone at a commercial disadvantage.
  • It’s estimated that Monsanto seeds now account for 90 percent of the U.S. production of soybeans, which are used in food products beyond counting.
Anne Hulthen

Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1 - 0 views

thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html

shared by Anne Hulthen on 30 Oct 13 - Cached
  • He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish;
    • Anne Hulthen
      Anne Hulthen on 30 Oct 13
       
      This is kind of like Jimmy Carter, How sometimes the best person doesn't make the best president, because they lack the ability to persuade the caucus or play the politician.
  • All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. 
  • "This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other."(
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.(15) There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do,
  •  It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that
  • Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.
  •   All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.
  • There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves.
  • "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico; — see if I would go";
  • ow many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow (17) — one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern,
  • and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute
Anne Hulthen

Nature: Introduction - 0 views

www.rwe.org/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=42

shared by Anne Hulthen on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes.
    • Anne Hulthen
      Anne Hulthen on 25 Oct 13
       
      This is the same argument that we have all been having for centuries. What is originality? Are we just reusing the same ideas as our forefathers? Honestly I think the society goes through these perpetual cycles of reuse, even as we progress. Its simply a part of human life. But perhaps that's why we need thinkers like the transcendentalists. To challenge our reliance on the ideas of the previous generation.
  • He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.
  • But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Nature and the Soul
  • essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.
avivajazz jazzaviva

politics + culture :: avivagabriel on twitter - 0 views

twitter.com/avivagabriel

twitter politics culture music psychology tweets healthcare healthreform progressive political progressives liberal liberals leftist leftists

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 21 Sep 09 - Cached
  • The Paranoid Style in American Politics | Richard Hofstadter on the "Radical Right" http://im.ly/86791 #p2
  • Check the veritable wealth of 'fact checkers' at Dog-Whistle Racism--scroll down left for long link roll: http://bit.ly/89azk #p2 #hcr
  • Yup. Shoq proposed the "MT," or "modified tweet." As far as 'human years' under my belt--I have MANY. 'Course, it's all relative!
avivajazz jazzaviva

@Flaganatas "Rumsfeld Flees... - 0 views

@Flaganatas "Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest" He ran like a dog with tail between legs.

torture human rights humanrights rumsfeld bush criminal investigation waterboarding

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