Happy Face

You're right there, Harris isn't bringing along the rednecks who are already pretty right wing. Trump, Cruz, Fox News and all the flat out bigots we liberals hate already have them sewn up. The bigotry of Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Maher and co is more nuanced and needs to be if it's going to convince the liberal class to keep applauding the global war as a noble act.

Happy to call them bigots, don't see the name as important. That Hitchens quote (not actually his, he took it from Andrew Cummins) that Islamophobia is “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.” says nothing about the argument whatsoever. If "Islamophobia" doesn't exist, and we can't have new words that build upon, reflect and re-purpose existing words in order to reflect a position, then that's not an argument I'm interested in. I think the semantic argument is daft. The fact that anti muslim bigotry not only exists, but is what ISIS crave and is what fuels the fires of radicalistation is inarguable imo. That's not to say islam cannot be criticised, obviously. Violence, speech limitations, sexism, homophobia and all the other heinous aspects of that religion, other religions, cults, nations and policies should always be called out, but directly, not with the broad brushstroke that takes Harris from pointing at a muslim terrorist to then insisting all muslims should be profiled.

I pulled Parky on here for posts he was putting on N-O

No, not stoked by atheist writers, stoked by any writers or people who repeat the mantra common among the new atheists that islam is uniquely evil, dangerous and savage.

If not "Islsmophobia", what do you want to call this sort of thing? http://metro.co.uk/2015/11/20/man-shouts-all-muslims-are-terrorists-towards-muslim-speaker-at-town-hall-meeting-5514908/ I'd assume no-one would think it acceptable, and we're frequently told hating on Muslims can't be called racist because they're not a race. Whatever you want to call it, it clearly exists and is stoked by Harris and co.

To borrow Dawkins title, if God is nothing but an intellectual delusion then the billions of believers are, well, deluded; a collection of feeble saps in need of enlightenment from their intellectual superiors. Thats the basis for the dickishness that so many people now associate from the New Atheism, a movement too often exemplified by privileged know-it-alls telling the poor that theyre idiots. But thats only part of it. For, of course, the privileged know-it-alls are usually white and those they lampoon the most are invariably Muslim. For the extraordinary contemporary popularity of the New Atheism also relates to something else that happened at the dawn of the new century namely, the terrorist attacks on 2001. Its 9/11, more than anything else, that divides the old atheism from the new. The best illustration is Christopher Hitchens, a writer who built his stratospheric literary career by transitioning between the two atheist traditions. As a young man, Hitchens was a Trotskyist and for many years he remained a leftwing polemicist. During that time, his atheism attracted no particular attention: it went almost without saying that a prominent representative of the British left didnt believe in God. By 2001, Hitchens was already beginning his shift to the right. 9/11 provided the catalyst for a complete break. He signaled the shift with an extended polemic against you guessed it! Noam Chomsky, the man Sam Harris distrusts so much. Chomsky insisted (then as now) that bin Laden arose from a particular context and history, that al Qaeda wasnt merely the result of inexplicable Muslim rage. Hitchens, like Harris, would have none of it. It was actually Chomsky who had lost or is losing the qualities that made him a great moral and political tutor. Hitchens, for his part, wrote that the forces represented by Al Qaeda and the Taliban are fairly easy to comprehend, but not very easy to coexist with. He deployed a vulgar critique of religion, along lines that are now so drearily familiar. The problems in the Middle East stemmed, not from imperial meddling in an oil-rich region but from Islam itself, a faith that resulted from (and then fostered) delusional thinking. On that basis, Hitchens was increasingly able to ally himself with the worst elements of the American right while insisting he remained a progressive. You can see how the argument works. If belief in God stems from intellectual inadequacy, then all believers are feebleminded and the most devout are the most feebleminded of all. All religions are bad but some religions especially those in the Middle East, by sheer coincidence! are worse than others. In the name of enlightened atheism, you thus arrive at an old-fashioned imperialism: the people we just happen to be bombing are simple-minded savages, impervious to reason and civilisation. That was the secret of Hitchens success: he provided a liberal rationale for the war on terror. You can proclaim youre an atheist, a freethinker, a devotee of the enlightenment and yet somehow still end up backing rightwing Christians like George W Bush and Ben Carson in their campaigns against the Muslim hordes. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/30/we-can-save-atheism-from-the-new-atheists?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

When he started posting I thought CT was an old man in his 40s and I was a young 20 something with only 60% of his years. Now, as I approach 40 and CT is barely 50 I feel very old all of a sudden. I'm 72% as old now and CT looks like a lean, mean sharp headed machine with none of the gut I have. The long walks looking for milk tops are serving you well. Happy birthday.

I blame Bob Dylan

Brilliant Jar Jar Bink's theory... http://www.tickld.com/x/sp/this-guy-just-changed-the-way-we-see-star-wars-jar-jar#page-3

FYP

Glocks on sale for black Friday. Same day a man kills 3 at an abortion clinic as life is sacred. America in microcosm

We called it tiggy, but family from the Midlands visited during early development so happy to concede we could have been contaminated by looking at that map. Knocky door neighbor as well And at school we cheered on fighting with "scrappy! Scrappy!"

Here you go hmhm. All you need from spotify...

For me it's just to try new music. Read a review, get a recommendation off a mate, hear a song on an advert, anything in year end lists that I miss.... Takes a second to add them to a playlist so I can give them a proper listen before using any space on my hard drive with it.

Got one for me mam as well. Awful compared to other tablets ten times the price, obviously, but for the one email a week she sends and her monthly website visit to check her bank balance it's spot on.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/26/syria-airstrikes-cameron-case-highly-contentious Good read. Especially the link back to Blair sexing up the case for war in Iraq. The claim of 70,000 rebels ready to take up arms is just a lie. The us invested hundreds of millions in training this force but could find only "4 or 5" willing to fight. Not thousand, single digits. Couldn't enter a five a side tournament, let alone liberate a nation.

I put the car in reverse when I pulled away after my emergency stop. Needles to say I failed that one.

I was more interested in seeing public enemy last night but in the end enjoyed prodigy more. Both class, but I've been up front for PE before, only previously seen prodigy from the back. Being up front in the circle pits that were persistent through the full 90 minutes was great fun, like nothing I've been in before. Flew by in what seemed like half an hour and atmosphere seemed to be the same a long way back and up the sides, even with all the back seats empty. Aching all over today though. Smack my bitch up.

What do Muslims think of Islamic state? http://flip.it/DhRES

Nice , personal, view on Syrian refugees from David (The Wire) Simon http://davidsimon.com/2376-2/

All the leading neocons, from Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol, to Paul Wolfowitz, Abram Shulsky, and Richard Perle, either studied under, or independently studied, the teachings of Leo Strauss. The neocon movement is definitely made up of Straussians and Strauss is often referred to as the father of the neoconservative movement. http://www.deism.com/neoconsbible.htm Think Cheney was the only one that did it for money.

Thought the position was that Islam is fundamentally more evil and ultimately to blame. I think religion has a lot to answer for on both sides

Bush sold the invasion of Iraq to Chirac by telling him he saw "Gog and Magog at work" . The epitome of Religious nutjobbery

Snowball making gun!! Snowball Blaster Pro The Snowball Making Launcher http://flip.it/Pb_ts

I really enjoy building toot toot cities at the minute.