Why Jon Stewart isn’t funny – The Boston Globe
Intersting take on the unintended consequences of the “Daily Show”.
People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ”The Daily Show” would never choose to enter the political fray full of ”buffoons and idiots.”
The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : From Eisenhower to Clinton to Bush
An editorial in today’s edition of The Hindu, one of India’s largest circulation newspapers, suggests that while the burgeoning middle class seems to embrace the “American Dream,” this country’s poorest citizens remain suspicious, if not indifferent, to the U.S. agenda.
Salman Rushdie should soon have some more compatriots with his Fatwah death threat; after he and 11 leading secular Muslims published this manifesto in a Danish paper. Click on the link above to read the full original. Here is an excerpt:
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
Latest Jyllands-Posten
Why I Published Those Cartoons The Danish Editor answers his critics.
Needing to wake up, West closes its eyes
Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:
”We won’t stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.”
Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it’s in the grip of sharia, and the other half’s feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates.
A common sign in Pan-Islamist demonstrations reads: “2030 – We Take Over”
Conversational Terrorism: How NOT to Talk!
First, we have the Ad Hominem Variants where you attack the person as a way to avoid truth, science, or logic which might otherwise prove you wrong. Next are the Sleight of Mind Fallacies, which act as “mental magic” to make sure the unwanted subject disappears. Then, we move on to Delay Tactics, which are subtle means to buy time when put on the spot. Then, the ever popular Question as Opportunity ploys, where any question can be deftly averted. Finally, we have the Cheap Shot Tactics and Irritants, which are basically “below the belt” punches.
Hamas, the Islamic radical party now ruling the Palestinians, announced that they don’t really care about financial aid from Europe or the U.S. This is because Hamas believes that soon the world will be largely Islamic, and the Christian nations will amount to little, or nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Hamas believes they are on a mission from God, and that their success is preordained. This creates some difficulties when trying to negotiate with Hamas.
Cathy Young: Modernity’s threat –
Freedom from religion
In a New York Times column (IHT, Feb. 10), David Brooks wrote that the West, with its “legacy of Socrates and the agora” and its “progressive and rational” mindset, is open to a multiplicity of arguments, perspectives, and “unpleasant facts,” while radical Muslims cling to “pre-Enlightenment” dogmatism and shrink from the “chaos of our conversation.”
Yet Brooks overlooks the fact that a large segment of the population in the West, and especially in the United States, rejects the progressive, rational mindset and embraces pre-Enlightenment values as well. Fundamentalist Christians, traditionalist Catholics and ultra-Orthodox Jews do not, with very few exceptions, call for violence in response to heresy. But they too often equate criticism (let alone mockery) of their beliefs with “religious bigotry” or “hate speech.” And they, too, often seek not simply to protest but to shut down offensive speech.
The truth is that modernity, with its “chaos of conversation,” its chaos of lifestyles, its attitude that there is nothing more sacred than freedom of expression, is profoundly threatening to many religious traditionalists of different faiths. (Last year, quite a few American conservatives applauded Pope Benedict XVI’s assault on “the dictatorship of relativism.”)
At present, for a variety of historical and cultural reasons, radical fundamentalism holds a particular sway in the Muslim world, where it is wedded to political violence in ways that have no parallel in other religions. To ignore this difference and this danger would be foolish. But it is also unwise to ignore the religious backlash against modernity in the West, and its own tensions with individual freedom.
Observer | The end of freedom?
When is it a crime to give off ence and when is it reasonable to take it? Who decides? The Danish cartoon affair and last weekend’s violent protests around the world raise crucial questions about tolerance and free speech. In a provocative essay, Andrew Anthony claims Britain’s government and the liberal left have failed us
Los Angeles Times: Drawn into a religious conflict
“Back in the High Middle Ages,” writes Tim Rutten, “the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — reached one of those fundamental forks in the historical road.” Rutten says Judaism (largely thanks to Moses Maimonides) and Christianity (largely thanks to Thomas Aquinas) chose to believe that reason and faith led to the same truth. Ironically, Islam, whose early scholars had preserved the works of reason’s first apostle, Aristotle, “held that there were two truths — that of revelation and that of the natural world. There was no need to reconcile them because they were separate and distinct. It was a form of intellectual suicide and cut off much of the Islamic world from the centuries of scientific and political progress that followed.” Well done, Mr. Rutten!
