In 2017 Idiocracy is a Documentary

[ThreeFlangedJavis]

One of the few good things Ségolène Royal put out as a political project was the reinstatement of mandatory military service in France. I'm 100% for that.

Whammens included?

Nope. Well, at the time I served, women were optional and voluntary (VMF: Volontaire militaire Feminin). Some of the best I served under were women. No puns intended.

They should be made to serve in some capacity for equal time. They would otherwise get an additional unfair leg up on the career ladder. I faced 2 years of compulsory military service when I graduating from uni plus additional yearly camps after that. The women were free to get on with their careers. I decamped to the UK post haste rather than potentially place myself in a combat zone under the control of a mental corporal. I had heard too many horror stories from ex national servicemen who'd had to do things like bury a village after a parachute battalion had removed fugitive SWAPO types with phosporous grenades. I may have ended up sitting in a shebeen for the duration but I wasn't going to take the chance. There were some major operations against the Cubans/MPLA during the period when I would have been serving. I look back at the old SADF with mixed feelings now. On the negative side they were sometimes used as a tool of oppression, but on the other hand they kept the Marxists out of Namibia and South Africa. They and Unita beat up the Cubans to the extent that the Russians forced them to the negotiating table, although revisionists like to make out otherwise. The South African government didn't crow about it because they knew that might force Castro into trying to save face. The Marxist threat is downplayed now, but I don't doubt that things would be a lot worse in Southern Africa now if the SADF hadn't been there.

This is one of the most amazing wars that nobody has ever heard of.... which isn't that surprising as the South Africans, Cubans, Americans, Israel and Soviets all wanted it low-key.

There is a very good book called War for Africa by Fred Bridgland if anyone is interested.

Not so amazing for the poor conscripts who fought in it. They came out of it with the usual psychological damage that comes from combat plus a basket of feelings of betrayal and guilt. For some Afrikaaners who bought the Nationalist propaganda there are feelings of disillusionment which make what they went through harder to deal with. Many are bitter at the way their own government distorts the history of the Border War to play up the ANC's tiny and ineffectual role in it and glorify their Cuban friends role.

[Kirbmarc]

I just think mandatory service gives youth some sense of direction. Whatever that means.

It makes them keep their room tidy, polish their boots and practice self-discipline. May not give them direction, but it probably gives them the discipline to pursue whatever goals they do come up with. Also teaches them to cooperate with others. Career soldiers, on the other hand, can become institutionalised and be completely lost in civvy land.

It teaches thugs how to work with others, preparing them for a life of organized crime. It also teaches them planing and how to kill with their bare hands. =P

Mandatory service is an incredibly expensive way to drill some discipline into young people and an absolute disaster for an all volunteer professional army.
My idea is that instead of spending a fortune on foreign aid, we build something like the Peace Corps. We can send an army of youngsters out to Africa to dig wells and irrigation. Better still there are things they could do on home soil... there is a huge list of things which would be nice to have but aren't economically viable in the capitalist system.

I agree that Civic Service is likely far better than military service. Even better so if it's on a voluntary basis but necessary to get some perks (ideally even voting rights).

[ThreeFlangedJavis]

Career soldiers, on the other hand, can become institutionalised and be completely lost in civvy land.

If I wasn't too busy bulling my boots...

#NotAll. Don't shoot the messenger. A disproportionate number of the homeless in the UK are ex-servicemen. Not surprising as they're often dumped back into civvy life with inadequate preparation.

[Shatterface]

I've worked with ex-offenders and ex-servicemen and I'd be hard pushed to tell the difference.

[VickyCaramel]

Not so amazing for the poor conscripts who fought in it. They came out of it with the usual psychological damage that comes from combat plus a basket of feelings of betrayal and guilt. For some Afrikaaners who bought the Nationalist propaganda there are feelings of disillusionment which make what they went through harder to deal with. Many are bitter at the way their own government distorts the history of the Border War to play up the ANC's tiny and ineffectual role in it and glorify their Cuban friends role.

I might have a different perspective. I knew one South African who fought in it, an indian who spent a career in military and police, obviously he got the shit end of the stick after regime change but was lucky enough to emigrate to the UK. Everybody else I knew was a mercenary of some description, mostly Rhodesians veterans. Obviously none of these guys were conscripts.

In the circles I move in, I tend to meet people who enjoy soldiering.

[VickyCaramel]

Career soldiers, on the other hand, can become institutionalised and be completely lost in civvy land.

If I wasn't too busy bulling my boots...

#NotAll. Don't shoot the messenger. A disproportionate number of the homeless in the UK are ex-servicemen. Not surprising as they're often dumped back into civvy life with inadequate preparation.

This has always happened, I suspect that the army gives a home to a certain kind of person. Modern life is complicated, I don't think everybody is cut out for it.

[VickyCaramel]

If you thought Kilroy was bad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaxEpmwPqKE

[free thoughtpolice]

The whole story smelled really fishy and did not add up. Now the man-hostage in the Afghanistan hostage case is being charged with sexual assault and confinement. Of course being a Canadian case, we are not getting all of the details. We have no details as to if he is being charged with abusing other hostages, his wife or his children.

Former hostage Joshua Boyle charged with sexual assault and confinement
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joshua-boy ... nfinement/

I guess deLurch has me on ignore or didn't notice that I posted this yesterday.
He committed the crimes since he returned to Canada. Likely, the victims aren't named because at least one of them is a minor and naming any of the victims would reveal the identity of the minor. Likely, the victims are his wife and kids.
Something else that is a bit fishy, Joshua Boyle was apparently briefly married to a woman called Zaynab Khadr, whose father was close to Osama Bin Laden and and whose family actually lived in the same compound in Afghanistan with him. Two of her brothers ended up in Guantanamo.

[free thoughtpolice]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadr_family

[Sunder]

I'm sympathetic to the Starship Troopers idea, as long as service isn't just in the military, but any kind of voluntary civic service. If you want a say in how your nation is ruled, do something for it, even if it's just many hours of cleaning streets or helping elderly people.

Plenty of countries have mandatory civil or public service, but that's a step removed from making basic rights conditional upon doing them.

Once you place a single hurdle in front of the voting booth, you open the door to abuse, manipulation, and disenfranchisement.

One man one vote is the worst system except for all the other ones that have been tried.

[shoutinghorse]

More on the Kilroy debacle.

This from Computing Dave.


And Stix has pulled out now.

[free thoughtpolice]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

[MarcusAu]

Well aren't we now fortunate that there are now more ex-muslims and less fundamentalist (or literally minded) muslims that are speaking up about their experience of the Islamic world.

Also why did it take so long for PZ to find his own damn voice and speak up on the issue if he thought there was something wrong?

[Matt Cavanaugh]

I ended up rooting for the bugs.

I think that was very deliberate in the movie.

In the movie, definitely. Halfway through the book, I wanted all the human characters to die.

[SM1957]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

I guess Dawkins was to be credited for the post-9/11 trope of 'Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.' PZ Myers would never have thought of something as clever as that.

[SM1957]

Well aren't we now fortunate that there are now more ex-muslims and less fundamentalist (or literally minded) muslims that are speaking up about their experience of the Islamic world.

Also why did it take so long for PZ to find his own damn voice and speak up on the issue if he thought there was something wrong?

Well aren't we now fortunate that there are now more ex-muslims and less fundamentalist (or literally minded) muslims that are speaking up about their experience of the Islamic world.

Also why did it take so long for PZ to find his own damn voice and speak up on the issue if he thought there was something wrong?

Possibly he was too busy desecrating Korans to speak up about the atheist obsession with Islam.

[Tigzy]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

Yes, Peez was totally above all that anti-muslim shite. Peez, woke before woke was even a thing, would never have done nuffin like, say, promote Pat Condell DVDs.

Word of advice, Peez - as engaging as Orwell's idea of 'he who controls the present controls the past' seems to you, it is contingent of actually being in control of the present in the first place, you stupid old fat spasm.

[Shatterface]

So it wasn't Myers drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a paedophile half-pig and talking about being infested by the fleas of a thousand camels after talking to some Muslims?

Is it too early to nominate him for the 2018 Cunties?

[deLurch]

I guess deLurch has me on ignore or didn't notice that I posted this yesterday.
He committed the crimes since he returned to Canada. Likely, the victims aren't named because at least one of them is a minor and naming any of the victims would reveal the identity of the minor. Likely, the victims are his wife and kids.
Something else that is a bit fishy, Joshua Boyle was apparently briefly married to a woman called Zaynab Khadr, whose father was close to Osama Bin Laden and and whose family actually lived in the same compound in Afghanistan with him. Two of her brothers ended up in Guantanamo.

Why is everyone PMing me about this free thoughtpolice character? I have him on block for a reason

...just kidding. I must have scrolled past your prior post. Sometimes it can be rough to keep up with the pit. But I very much appreciate additional information that basically answers my questions on this case. I am going to bet this boils down to his wife who now has full free rights as a person. Assaulting a 6 year old would be just too far beyond pale.

[deLurch]

So it wasn't Myers drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a paedophile half-pig and talking about being infested by the fleas of a thousand camels after talking to some Muslims?

Is it too early to nominate him for the 2018 Cunties?

Let's at least give it a month or two before we start the preliminary 2018 nomination discussion thread. We need to see some real talent first. Not some washed up has-been.

[MarcusAu]

Wow deLurch - way to eliminate half the candidates.

[Kirbmarc]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

Scott Atran is a weird one. He says a lot of clever and insightful things on the specifics of the dynamics of specific terrorist groups, and I think he's pegged ISIS right as the equivalent of nazi-fascism in the muslim world, then he also writes clickbait garbage like "nobody actually believes in the Muslim Paradise" (LOLWUT?) or tries to argue that the Islamic State has little to nothing do with religion (!!) and a lot with "male bonding" (??).

He strikes me as someone who really, really wants to absolve islam because he's met lots of muslims who were merely conservative and not actively reactionary. But his analyses on how the Islamic State is a movement based on identity politics and grievance policies are true but hollow given his weird emphasis on "nothing to do with religion", just like it'd be true to say that christo-fascists or christo-conservative movements are based on identity politics and grievance narratives, but hollow if you kept saying that Christianity didn't have anything to do with Franchism or with the Pinochet regime or, in a less destructive but more modern fashion, with the American Religious Right.

He also leaves out the elephant in the room, namely that Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries have trained, financed and supplied Salafi groups like the Islamic States, and that the Islamic State policies, along with those of all other forms of Salafi militias, are clearly based on Wahabism, which is clearly a literalist approach to islam.

He's not wrong in saying that ISIS appeals to disenfranchised and counter-cultural youths, but he fails to understand that the "countercultures" are never a completely a-contextual, spontaneous phenomenon, but have their own cultural elites, media, ideology and propagandists just like "state cultures". And in the case of Islamic terrorism/Islamic militias the role of Gulf countries (for the Sunni) or of Iran (for the Shia) is ESSENTIAL for the "countercultures" to emerge, and in both cases everything IS ultimately based on islam.

The fact that same of the old conservative elites are opposed to the newfangled more militant approaches means very little in practice, since they share basically the same worldview. An imam which preaches that the Jews will be turned into swines, or that immodest western women are whores, may not be preaching terrorism, or even oppose it, but he's still fueling the narrative of anti-modernity that animate the militias.

Doing what Atran is doing is like saying that the Religious Right in the GOP has nothing to do with megachurches, or that the anti-modern messages of the Catholic Church have nothing to do with Christianity. In both cases it's true that the Holy Books can be re-interpreted, and that some people can find rationalizations for accepting modernity without giving up their religion, but it's exactly those "modern" believers which are the first targets of the conservatives (politically and socially)/reactionaries (even physically so).

[Kirbmarc]

So it wasn't Myers drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a paedophile half-pig and talking about being infested by the fleas of a thousand camels after talking to some Muslims?

Is it too early to nominate him for the 2018 Cunties?

Surely that was kolnnauzer?

[shoutinghorse]

The Gaza strip comes to Berlin

[CommanderTuvok]

New Year, new country. It's Ireland's turn to for some cultural diversity now.

Must be Ireland's "foreign policy", I guess.

[Old_ones]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

What they are saying is complete fiction. Back in the '00s we had a push by creationists to get "Intelligent Design" taught in schools, and Christian creationists were a big focus of the movement. I remember people giving the horsemen and others (like Peez) crap about how they were disproportionately critical of Christianity and unwilling to do the same thing to Islam. The retort was usually to say that Christians have a disproportionate amount of power in western society, and that their religious baggage was therefore disproportionately more dangerous. They would also point to criticisms they had made of Islam to refute the charge of bias. I think it would be far more accurate to say that New Atheism formed in response to the power of the (Christian) religious right, and a wave of attempts by the right to push creationism.

Since then the right has gotten less overtly Christian, the new growth on the right has been increasingly secular, and creationism has also died down substantially (at least as a publicly debated issue) since the creationists mostly failed to get into classrooms. On the other side, the left has gotten more and more in bed with Islam, and a certain set of anti-western Muslims are increasingly trying to blackmail concessions from western governments. That is what is destroying organized atheism - atheists who are in bed with Islam rather than seeing its excesses as a problem for religious freedom and the preservation of secular government.

[jet_lagg]

I'm sympathetic to the Starship Troopers idea, as long as service isn't just in the military, but any kind of voluntary civic service. If you want a say in how your nation is ruled, do something for it, even if it's just many hours of cleaning streets or helping elderly people.

Plenty of countries have mandatory civil or public service, but that's a step removed from making basic rights conditional upon doing them.

Once you place a single hurdle in front of the voting booth, you open the door to abuse, manipulation, and disenfranchisement.

One man one vote is the worst system except for all the other ones that have been tried.

I'd be happy to strip the Rebecca Watson's of the world of their voting rights. The only objection I have to disenfranchisement is when it's done in a non-principled way (gerrymandering, arbitrarily applied standards, tests designed to cull anything we haven't explicitly stated we want culled). Presumably civic service, military or non-combat paramilitary, would instill the sort of values we want to instill on the people with the most political power.

[CommanderTuvok]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

Funny that, because it was dickheads like PZ Myers and CJ Werleman who would "dehumanize" Muslims, more so than restrained people like Dawkins or Harris.

[InfraRedBucket]

I remember Scott Atran commenting at a conference way back. I think the one Myers was also attending way back.
All I remember from Atran was him saying it was all about the "soccer clubs". the terrorists got together to play football/soccer (?)
and bond and then become radicalised or something.
Anyway I just found a passing reference to it though cant say I'm much clearer

https://vridar.org/2013/05/27/someone-g ... am-harris/

[shoutinghorse]

I'd be happy to strip the Rebecca Watson's of the world of their voting rights.

Sorry no. as odious as even that vacuous cunt is, I would never take away her right to vote. Nor anyone else unless they were in prison.

[Kirbmarc]

I remember Scott Atran commenting at a conference way back. I think the one Myers was also attending way back.
All I remember from Atran was him saying it was all about the "soccer clubs". the terrorists got together to play football/soccer (?)
and bond and then become radicalised or something.
Anyway I just found a passing reference to it though cant say I'm much clearer

https://vridar.org/2013/05/27/someone-g ... am-harris/

Yeah, that's an example of Atran's clickbait/deliberately provocative rhetoric, which leaves me baffled. A more serious thinker would point out that those "soccer clubs" are parts of, or sponsored by, muslim associations/society, and wonder about where do the radicalizing message which are so eerily similar come from in those supposedly "spontaneous" associations. Then try to follow the money as to who finances or gives material to these associations.

Talking about "soccer clubs" with no context is like spreading the myth of the "lone wolf radicalized on the internet".

[DrokkIt]

UK Labour minister with some frankly red-pilled shit:

READ ALL ABOUT IT

White working class boys left behind because of 'negative impact' of focus on ethnic minorities and women, Labour's Angela Rayner claims

How long till she gets fired?

[MarcusAu]

I'd be happy to strip the Rebecca Watson's of the world of their voting rights.

Sorry no. as odious as even that vacuous cunt is, I would never take away her right to vote. Nor anyone else unless they were in prison.

It's hardly a major issue - she's usually so highly self medicated that she would not likely remember to leave the house on the right day, let alone find the polling station.

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

So it wasn't Myers drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a paedophile half-pig and talking about being infested by the fleas of a thousand camels after talking to some Muslims?

Is it too early to nominate him for the 2018 Cunties?

If anyone's got a link to this post of Meyers's I will try to kirbmarc him by dropping it into the convo over there.

[Hunt]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

It was even something of a cliche that western atists were overwhelmingly focused on Christianity. Remember fatwa envy, anyone? As usual, Myers revises history as it suits him.

[Hunt]

*atheists

[Pseudomonas]

Happy New Year Pitsters.

Spent my annual transition at the Woodford Folk Festival

Wow, most people transition once in their life, you do it every year? Are you polytrans?

Actually, he's trans-Tasman. :rimshot:

Pseudomonas

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Meyers is hilarious when he does his hardman act.

https://i.imgur.com/9rwNOHK.png

[Hunt]

PZ pictures himself with the physique of Dwayne Johnson.

[shoutinghorse]

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Triggered. :lol:

[Ape+lust]

I'd be happy to strip the Rebecca Watson's of the world of their voting rights.

Sorry no. as odious as even that vacuous cunt is, I would never take away her right to vote. Nor anyone else unless they were in prison.

It's hardly a major issue - she's usually so highly self medicated that she would not likely remember to leave the house on the right day, let alone find the polling station.

I doubt she votes. She complains about any inconvenience, but I've never heard her complain about getting called to jury duty, which would happen if she was registered to vote.

[Brive1987]

I'd be happy to strip the Rebecca Watson's of the world of their voting rights.

Sorry no. as odious as even that vacuous cunt is, I would never take away her right to vote. Nor anyone else unless they were in prison.

... or had failed to register for National Service.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/imag ... Uoz_CzlhEx

We found that charging people a nominal rate brought forth more people to our events than free entry. Funny that.

[Brive1987]

So it wasn't Myers drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a paedophile half-pig and talking about being infested by the fleas of a thousand camels after talking to some Muslims?

Is it too early to nominate him for the 2018 Cunties?

If anyone's got a link to this post of Meyers's I will try to kirbmarc him by dropping it into the convo over there.

It was a moo-ham-ed hybrid. With tits.

Google PZ Myers “everyone draw Mohammed” circa 2010.

Not sure about the fleas ref.

[Brive1987]

Oh yes. The fleas comes from “I get mail” June 2011.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula ... -email-84/

[Brive1987]

RW is living second-speaker substantive argument for my one vote per child rearing family model.

[free thoughtpolice]

I wonder if the under boob look will ever get as popular as the tramp stamp/ ass antlers?

[screwtape]

I remember Scott Atran commenting at a conference way back. I think the one Myers was also attending way back.
All I remember from Atran was him saying it was all about the "soccer clubs". the terrorists got together to play football/soccer (?)
and bond and then become radicalised or something.
Anyway I just found a passing reference to it though cant say I'm much clearer

https://vridar.org/2013/05/27/someone-g ... am-harris/

The happy days of the 'Beyond Belief' conferences (the first one was good, the second and third less so). Videos here.

Atheism thrived when it had an opponent it was allowed to push against. Once the islamoterrorism started, and the intersectionalists declared opposition to Islam in any form was racism it folded up, the dogs barked, and the caravan moved on. And it seems I'm left with an Oxford comma, such is life.

[Brive1987]

I'd be happy to strip the Rebecca Watson's of the world of their voting rights.

Sorry no. as odious as even that vacuous cunt is, I would never take away her right to vote. Nor anyone else unless they were in prison.

In Alabama a person convicted of a felony loses the ability to vote if the felony involves moral turpitude. RW is lucky she lives in North Mexico.

[Brive1987]

I'm sympathetic to the Starship Troopers idea, as long as service isn't just in the military, but any kind of voluntary civic service. If you want a say in how your nation is ruled, do something for it, even if it's just many hours of cleaning streets or helping elderly people.

Plenty of countries have mandatory civil or public service, but that's a step removed from making basic rights conditional upon doing them.

Once you place a single hurdle in front of the voting booth, you open the door to abuse, manipulation, and disenfranchisement.

One man one vote is the worst system except for all the other ones that have been tried.

In Australia voting is compulsory but civic service isn’t.

My 20 yo son got his first $50 fine for not exiting his university pre-exam study to attend to some rando local council vote.
A poor student did the mental calculation and decided he would rather pay $ than participate.

Let that sink in.

My wife and I voted, but only because we saw the cluster fuck at the school gate. I bestowed by democratic gift on the chick whose pamphlet supported better fenced dog parks.

[Brive1987]

Mykeru must be pissed that he valued his t-shirts @ $4 less than those celebrating the girl-cock of a pundit with half his sense of humour.

[Sunder]

PZ has a post up about how the upcoming The Atheist Conference looks to be another flop. Why is the atheist movement failing?

k_machine
3 January 2018 at 11:13 am

In retrospect, it seems like the post 9/11 atheist movement was nothing but a movement designed to dehumanize Muslims as they were being invaded by the US

PZ Myers
3 January 2018 at 11:21 am

That was a major driving force, I agree. One of the first atheist conferences I attended back in those early years was with Dawkins & Harris & Dennett, and that was all they talked about: those damn Muslims. Especially Harris.

That was a conference that was also attended by Scott Atran, and he was the only one talking sense on the Muslim Question. He was also the only one with real first-hand experience in the Islamic world.

What they are saying is complete fiction. Back in the '00s we had a push by creationists to get "Intelligent Design" taught in schools, and Christian creationists were a big focus of the movement. I remember people giving the horsemen and others (like Peez) crap about how they were disproportionately critical of Christianity and unwilling to do the same thing to Islam. The retort was usually to say that Christians have a disproportionate amount of power in western society, and that their religious baggage was therefore disproportionately more dangerous. They would also point to criticisms they had made of Islam to refute the charge of bias. I think it would be far more accurate to say that New Atheism formed in response to the power of the (Christian) religious right, and a wave of attempts by the right to push creationism.

Since then the right has gotten less overtly Christian, the new growth on the right has been increasingly secular, and creationism has also died down substantially (at least as a publicly debated issue) since the creationists mostly failed to get into classrooms. On the other side, the left has gotten more and more in bed with Islam, and a certain set of anti-western Muslims are increasingly trying to blackmail concessions from western governments. That is what is destroying organized atheism - atheists who are in bed with Islam rather than seeing its excesses as a problem for religious freedom and the preservation of secular government.

Come on man, don't you remember the book that got Sam Harris's name on the map was "Letter to an Islamic Nation"? Or Dawk's even more infamous "The Allah Delusion?"

Can Peez go crawl back to the mirror universe he apparently believes he came from?

[Sunder]

My 20 yo son got his first $50 fine for not exiting his university pre-exam study to attend to some rando local council vote.
A poor student did the mental calculation and decided he would rather pay $ than participate.

Let that sink in.

I'm confused. Are you trying to argue that voting isn't all that important and thus his judgment was correct or that voting is very important, kids take it for granted, and thus they don't need the right because they don't respect it?

[free thoughtpolice]

My 20 yo son got his first $50 fine for not exiting his university pre-exam study to attend to some rando local council vote.
A poor student did the mental calculation and decided he would rather pay $ than participate.

Let that sink in.

I'm confused. Are you trying to argue that voting isn't all that important and thus his judgment was correct or that voting is very important, kids take it for granted, and thus they don't need the right because they don't respect it?

Brive jr. is a muslim and doesn't believe in democracy and voting is haram.
He is just rebelling against his parent's gross islamophobia. :ugeek:

[Guest_d2e60302]

The Batman of the Online World.

(via Will Shetterly)

[free thoughtpolice]

[Brive1987]

My 20 yo son got his first $50 fine for not exiting his university pre-exam study to attend to some rando local council vote.
A poor student did the mental calculation and decided he would rather pay $ than participate.

Let that sink in.

I'm confused. Are you trying to argue that voting isn't all that important and thus his judgment was correct or that voting is very important, kids take it for granted, and thus they don't need the right because they don't respect it?

Umm. Which one would win the argument?

......

Ok. I’m saying that voting should be important but isn’t. Son was free to ascribe perceived value and society is damned by his calculus.

In fact anything freely offered up to RW (with good grace) is best considered suspect.

[Brive1987]

My 20 yo son got his first $50 fine for not exiting his university pre-exam study to attend to some rando local council vote.
A poor student did the mental calculation and decided he would rather pay $ than participate.

Let that sink in.

I'm confused. Are you trying to argue that voting isn't all that important and thus his judgment was correct or that voting is very important, kids take it for granted, and thus they don't need the right because they don't respect it?

Brive jr. is a muslim and doesn't believe in democracy and voting is haram.
He is just rebelling against his parent's gross islamophobia. :ugeek:

My wife has not forgiven him for calling her a bigot just because she would rather re-route through Singapore (at expense) than stop over in the Gulf. Due to the “horrible people there that don’t respect women”.

It didn’t help that last time she was trapped behind a bin Laden look alike in a sweaty transit queue at 0’fuck a clock while the call to prayer played over loud speakers.

[Brive1987]

Some salt to shake at will.

[Brive1987]

Die Skeptic, Die!

[Kirbmarc]

Ogvorbis pitches in with his ideas as to what killed movement atheism:

It’s like anything else. The only way to have unity in a movement is to remove everyone who is different — in thought, looks, education, outlook, not having a penis (or failing to worship penises), etc. What you have left is unity. Much the same way that the GOP has achieved unity. Though, after Bannon’s Breitbart Bomb, unity seems to be slipping away from God’s Own Party.

Yeah, it was the evil anti-SJW who wanted to remove anyone who hadn't a specific outlook :bjarte:

FTB never ever ever removed anyone who dared to have even slightly different ideas from the SocJus consensus. Jamila Bey and Anjuli Pandavar never existed. Thunderfoot was never part of FTB. Neither was Ophelia Benson.

No, it was the Evil Anti-SJWs who suggested that freedom of speech and tolerance of different opinions within atheism who were excluding people on the basis of looks, education, thought, outlook, etc.