Open Thread - Friday, January 1, 201<del>5</del>6
Happy New Year! A couple of the recent threads got me thinking about some people's reality. Particularly the end timers and their infiltration of the religious, media and political complexes.
The road of violence and hatred does not resolve humanity's problems. And using the name of God to justify this road is blasphemy. ~ Pope Francis ~
I can not understand how anybody considers these clowns credible, or sane.
Apocalypse soon: the scientists preparing for the end times
The men were too absorbed in their work to notice my arrival at first. Three walls of the conference room held whiteboards densely filled with algebra and scribbled diagrams. One man jumped up to sketch another graph, and three colleagues crowded around to examine it more closely. Their urgency surprised me, though it probably shouldn’t have. These academics were debating what they believe could be one of the greatest threats to mankind – could superintelligent computers wipe us all out?
I was visiting the Future of Humanity Institute, a research department at Oxford University founded in 2005 to study the “big-picture questions” of human life. One of its main areas of research is existential risk. The physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists, computer scientists and mathematicians of the institute are students of the apocalypse.
Oh Magog! Why End-Times Buffs Are Freaking Out About Syria
In early 2012, best-selling novelist Joel Rosenberg came to Capitol Hill for a meeting with an unidentified member of Congress to discuss the end of the world. "I thought the topic was going to be the possible coming war between Israel and Iran," Rosenberg explained on his website. "Instead, the official asked, 'What are your thoughts on Isaiah 17?'"
For the better part of an hour, Rosenberg says, the writer and the congressman went back forth on something called the "burden of Damascus," an Old Testament prophecy that posits that a war in the Middle East will leave Syria's capital city in ruins—and bring the world one step closer to Armageddon. As Rosenberg put it, "The innocent blood shed by the Assad regime is reprehensible and heart-breaking and is setting the stage for a terrible judgment."
But Rosenberg and his anonymous congressman aren't alone in viewing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's actions through a biblical lens. With Congress set to vote next week on the authorization to use military force in Syria, the Damascus prophecy has taken on a new significance among the nation's End Times industry—writers and pastors who believe the world is hurtling toward the return of Christ as forecasted in the Book of Revelation—and its adherents in the pews and in public life. On Saturday, Rosenberg will travel to Topeka, Kansas, at the invitation of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
The idea behind the prophecy is a fairly straightforward one. In Isaiah 17, the prophet explains that, in the run-up to Armageddon, "Damascus is about to be removed from being a city, and will become a fallen ruin." The implication is that it will be leveled by God on behalf of Israel as part of the last great struggle for mankind.
It must be all the guns that has made society so polite that these clowns are not mercilessly mocked and ridiculed.
Well, here we are with a brand new year to fuck up. But enough with the joviality, there are important things going on. It's Funk Friday.
Stanton Moore - Blues for Ben
Stanton Moore - Sprung Monkey
Stanton Moore - Blackbird Special
Comments
enders,
spiritual or secular, perceive, dimly, as through a glass darkly, the message of mortality embedded in their own cells, and then project it upon all the world.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8md8py8yVxY]
Plus they went to set the parameters for judgement
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
Puerto Rico to default on Monday
for the second time
Where I was last night
Thanks, Johnny. Time to climb aboard the mothership,
I guess ...
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
While Obama promoted the toothless Paris Climate Agreement...
he was doing this
Hypocrisy thy name is
Barack Obama.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
"Refuse to Fly"
For all practical purposes ...
May be good to put into a sig line:
[video:https://youtu.be/hxtGcznwQGE]
Bernie Sanders' Big Bro, Larry, Serves Up Some New Insight on His Kid Brother.
Oh well, I can relate to that life story. I just wonder how many Americans can't.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Happy New Years to you, Tim, and all of y'all 99ers!
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons
To fight Trump
promote open dialogue
Yeh, that makes sense
American occupation
The Narco-Terror trap
it's a scam
This issue should be paid attention to ...
Hmm, this is one reason, why I can't stand reading the gos anymore. I think it has come to a point that is clearly very ugly and not at all pretty or helpful.
There is this diary from Denise Oliver Velez.
Recruit Trump supporters? Hell no.
Well, I always get the willies if I see movements from the left or parties from the left working together or reaching out to people of the populist right. I can't remember that that was ever the case in the sixties and seventies or eighties in Europe. Nowadays it seems there is something like it. I can't stand it, think it's dangerous and it insults any sane person's intelligence. That's Europe. (France, Germany, Greece, Spaign, Portugal etc. You don't mix Socialists with right-wing NPD-style of German National Socialists of the current times. There seems to be a wicked movement around undermining the leftist socialists with right-wing national socialist. Some people count on the stupidity of people who don't know historically the difference between the two. Twitter has assholes trying to mess with that.
In that sense it's the blah blah about getting cozy with Trumps right-wing followers of the working class. Trump has played his games with this issue and any sane person should just grab Trump by his frigging hair and dump him to wherever he would never be able to return and utter one more frigging word.
Now, it's possible that the movement of Trump supporters getting into rallies of Sanders and basically allowing the "racism" issue become a problem for the Sanders campaign, is done on purpose. I don't know that. But whatever it might be, a conscious move to derail his campaign, or an innocent mix-up of people, who are frustrated, it's a very dangerous thing to happen.
That said I understand Denise Oliver Velez "horror" over "recruiting Trump supporters". But she clearly points to Sanders campaign as being in the game of recruiting Trump supporters, who are dirty poor racists (in her view) and that means Sanders is a racist too and she warns, he better be prepared about the response from the Afro-Americans who won't "like that".
I found her diary really inciting the race issue in ways that is very destructive.
I was glad about JekylINHydes forceful response to her. To me the comment thread in that diary has put people on the line and the picture is ugly.
Whatever, I hope Sanders doesn't overlook this attempt to "racialize" his campaign through his "deracialized" way he relates to the white working class among which are some Trump supporter. Racializing the Sanders campaign via Trump and his followers is a very bad development and I think it can clearly be seen in Dee's diary's comment threads.
Sorry for being too tired to search for links that prove how devastating it can be, if right-wing populist, catering to the working class poor by coddling their "enemy" visions of the bad "other ethnicity" in them, get together with left-wing socialists, catering to the working poor as well out of need to "win in the elections". These coalitions, which some times come into being, are imo never healthy and never going to work because of exactly the racism issues involved. At least in Europe they have been. I would say here in the US attempts like that are even more toxic. They should be a no no.
I commend JekkylINHyde. He/she could have needed some support in that diary. What comes out of this diary thread is "Dreck" and that is a word Denise has once used for the EB. What goes around comes around. What else can I say.
May be I haven't understood what's going on, but you can always teach me a lesson. I am listening.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Imo
Not all Trump supporters are racists in white sheets - some are just anarchist. Some are just those "entitled white people" DO talks so much about, who think income equality is a much bigger issue than color, gender, abortion, and sexual preference. JH does deserve credit for standing up to her racist rant.
I understand that Europe has a much longer and different history than the US, but nobody is talking about joining with Trump or the fascist right. They are talking about giving some of his supporters a productive alternative/path. If it was Hillary's strategy, DO and gang would be cheering it. I also believe in the enemy of my enemy is friend. Trump will not hesitate to savage the Clintons on issues others would do much more delicately if they did it at all -such as Bill's history with women. It could backfire like his impeachment, but Trump wouldn't hesitate to counter her gender campaign with her husband's past. Salon is running a three part article by a feminist (Paglia?) that compares Bill Clinton to Cosby.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
that link to the Salon article doesn't work /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
Try...
this one.
that's not a bad article
From here
Agree with that statement. There is lots of stuff in there I agree with, because I have witnessed it up close. I am not much in the mood to try to talk about it.
This paragraph for example is talking about a fact that a Western feminist can't usually grasp. These "oppressed" women in the Third world (thinking mostly about sub-saharan Africa - muslim or otherwise-), as much as they are for a fact oppressed and lack equal civil rights more often than not, have methods to cope with them that Western feminists have not. Pretty surprisingly to many Western feminists out of those "oppressed" women in Third world countries, arise very strong female leaders and politicians, who are by no means conservatives.
Oh well, what the heck. I have no appetite to talk about it. But the article series is one that should be read. The series promises to be a good read. Thanks, JtC and dkmich.
https://www.euronews.com/live
imho
GOS is so obsessed with race that it has become a caricature of itself.
To be honest, I don't trust anything anyone on GOS says about race anymore because of it.
As for Trump supporters, yes, there are some racists. But I bet the majority don't care about race, and that's not a bad thing.
I would say the majority are dumb shits, no,
more than the majority, just about all of them. Doesn't mean they're racist per se. But one way or another, they're dumb shits. And I know some of them. One was my brother although I think I've talked him out of it. But if not, even he is a dumb shit.
dumb shits able to be rescued..... yes?
That makes Bernie's strategy just like Dean's strategy when he went after the guys with confederate flags and guns strapped to their trucks. One thing about people, they all have a common need to eat, shit and pee. (Sorry for being so vulgar.)
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Oh ya, dumb shits can be turned.
We're all susceptible to being dumb shits in one way or another. Racists are another story. But then again, much of the racism is manufactured by the ruling class with their propaganda system such as with Muslims and Mexicans.
GOS makes money off people discussing race relations obsessively
and compulsively. That's shameful, imo. Or off-putting. Or miserably cheap. Or politely said ... not helpful.
Race is not something you care about, it's something you have in your dna. That's why it impacts everyone equally. And it's abused by everyone equally, when they see it being convenient for their purposes. No exceptions.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Two things drive dkos
1) Mocking Republicans
2) Outrage Porn (race falls into this category)
It is all very simplistic and avoids addressing policy issues. That is not to say that racism should be ignored, but the context in which it is discussed at dkos does not address the underlying and often structural issues of racism. Instead, it becomes a way to fire up outrage without looking for real solutions.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I started writing a thing about that and comparing it to
Bernie Sanders running with the Democratic party. There are parallels.