On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 10:31 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 8/16/2015 11:13 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > >> >> and yes they were totalitarian and many atheists claim not to be. They >> killed to support atheism, which is indisputable, >> >> >> It's not only disputable, it's unevidenced. They didn't care what people >> believed about the supernatural, just so they didn't oppose the regime. >> > > Brent, I am not expert in these matters, but as everyone I heard frequent > allusions to the famous Marxist motto: "religion is the opium of the > people". > > > The full quote is,*"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the > heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless > situation. It is the opium of the people."* He was not especially > interested in denying people the comfort of religion except that he saw it > as an instrument of pacifying the peasants and supporting oppressors. > I think he was right, and I also think that he would have been horrified by Stalin. Also Christ, assuming he existed as described in the bible, would have been horrified by the southern baptist church. The inquisition didn't care about "love thy neighbor", and the communist movements that followed Marx also didn't care about the rest of that sentence. But I'll come clean: I don't think that communists are atheists, nor do I think that most people who claim to be atheists are atheists. I suspect many true atheists claim to be devoutly religious, because that is strategically convenient. Why wouldn't they? Why would a true atheist care about proselytizing? > > > Wikipedia seems to disagree with you: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union > > "Soviet policy, based on the ideology > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology> of Marxism–Leninism > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism>, made atheism > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism> the official doctrine of the > Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, > suppression, and the elimination of religious beliefs > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion>.[1] > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union#cite_note-country-data.com-1> > " > > Is this wrong? Can you point us to any credible historical sources that > contradict these claims? > > > The source you cite also says: > > *Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic > support for the war effort and presented Russia as a defender of Christian > civilization, because he saw the church had an ability to arouse the people > in a way that the party could not and because he wanted western help.[5] On > September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) > and Nicholas (Yarushevich) were officially received by Soviet leader Joseph > Stalin who proposed to create the Moscow Patriarchate. They received > permission to convene a council on September 8, 1943, that elected Sergius > Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.[79] The church had a public presence > once again and passed measures reaffirming their hierarchical structure > that flatly contradicted the 1929 legislation and even Lenin's 1918 decree. > The official legislation was never withdrawn, however, which is suggestive > that the authorities did not consider that this tolerance would become > permanent.[80] This is considered by some a violation of the XXX Apostolic > canon, as no church hierarch could be consecrated by secular > authorities.[81] A new patriarch was elected, theological schools were > opened, and thousands of churches began to function. The Moscow Theological > Academy Seminary, which had been closed since 1918, was re-opened.* > > So Stalin, who had studied to be a priest himself, saw religion as just > another tool of oppression. If they were on his side they were fine. > Stalin was insane and went through various psychosis. There have been periods in history were people were killed in the name of atheism. Some of them were during Stalin's reign and some were in other periods and in other countries. I'm not saying this to argue that people should not be atheists. I am not religious myself. My point is that atrocities are committed in the name of absolute belief. I don't think they are ever committed in the name of doubt. Atheism is absolute belief. > > > > >> >> and out of loyalty to Mao, Stalin, and your pal Bamers, Oops! Did I say >> that? >> >> >> You mean President Obama, the guy passed universal health insurance >> > > Perhaps a step in the right direction. I agree that universal access to > health care should be a low bar requirement for civilized countries in > 2015. I do have the impression that what he did was to make the slightly > less poor pay for the health care of the poor, while the interests of the > super-rich are left untouched. Why is medical care one order of magnitude > more expensive in the US than in most other advanced economies? That's the > root of the problem! > > > It's not an order of magnitude more expensive - except on a binary scale. > It's about twice as expensive as other OECD countries. And remember that > the numbers cited are just the total spent on health care, divided by the > population. So it's not just doctors and medicine; the expentidure counts > all kinds of administrative overhead. A big part of the difference is the > amount insurance companies spent trying to deny coverage by citing a > pre-existing condition. They hired staffs of doctors just to review > medical records and claims. Obamacare eliminates that. Another part is due > to the complexity of the insurance system. Medicare operates on about 2% > overhead. Private insurance incurs about 20% overhead: every doctor's > office has to hire an insurance billing specialist to deal with the > complexity. And no doubt there is some over-treatment, motivated by > wanting to pay for expensive equipment, defensive treatment, or simple > venality. > http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/how-much-does-it-cost-to-go-to-the-er/273599/ This looks like an order of magnitude more expensive than what I would expect in Europe, in the decimal scale. Who knows. > > > Let's also not forget that Obama signed-off on the greatest transfer of > wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of humanity, through the > bailouts of 2007-09. > > >> and ended U.S. occupation of Iraq >> > > Bush's decision to invade Iraq was both absurd and criminal. Obama's > decision to abandon the Iraqi people to their own fate after the US > destabilized such a delicate region is perhaps also absurd and criminal. > > > It wasn't his decision. George W. Bush negotiated the withdrawal date with > the Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki in 2006. Obama proposed to keep more > troops and stay longer, but only if the Iraqi's would continue to agree > that American troops would be immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts. > Al-Maliki of course wouldn't agree (it would have been politically > impossible in Iraq then). > I don't see any difference between the two. They both expect US actions to be above the law. They both only give a shit about the people suffering in Iraq until it becomes a slight political inconvenience. > > Now they have ISIS and other lunatics. > > > Yes, and you and Jeb are trying to blame Obama for a mess he inherited. > I am not blaming Obama, I am blaming the corruption of democracy. If I was interested in blaming Obama, I would be participating in the sickness. > > > >> and has avoided getting us into a war in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, >> > > I must be really confused, but what I seam to remember is that he wanted > to go to war in Syria but was eventually dissuaded by massive popular > opposition to that idea. > > > No, that's revised history. He made some threats about "line in the sand" > and doing something if Assad continued to use poison gas and saying "Assad > must go." But then Assad agreed to get rid of the poison gas. Obama > listened to his advisors that told him there were no reliably moderate > groups fighting Assad and decided against supporting any of the rebels. He > was then castigated by the Republicans for not sending planes and troops to > Syria to destroy Assad after saying "he must go". Then with the rise of > ISIL he was castigated for not sending planes and troops to fight ISIL. > Ok, I cannot know for sure what people's motivations are. Maybe you're right. I find it a terrible coincidence that the plan got canceled after a very negative opinion poll came out, but who knows. I also don't understand what's so special about poison gas. Is it more atrocious than mass public decapitations? > > > >> Ukraine >> > > Nobody in the US would possibly consider going to war in Ukraine. That > would mean a direct confrontation with Russia, which is out of the > question. > > > It didn't seem to be out of the question for John McCain > Do you honestly believe that this was a possibility that Obama prevented? Surely the majority of Americans, even those in power, do not desire a nuclear confrontation. > > Instead there was an indirect confrontation. The western powers wanted > Ukraine to join the EU and possibly NATO, and they covertly funded > anti-russian groups in Ukraine. Putin won that conflict and ended up > expanding to Crimea. Putin is a murderous psychopath, but he his also much > smarter than this current generation of mediocre western leaders. > > > Now you're sounding like Donald Trump. What clever trick to you think > superior western leaders would have used to prevent Russia from taking the > Crimea - an area that is on their doorstep and which they've held for > decades. The stupid part was trying to get them into the EU and NATO in the > first place. > Exactly. Not trying to get them to EU and NATO would have been the clever trick. > > > >> and all those other places you'd like send your fellow citizens to attack? >> > > I am on your side in being against war (unless for real defensive purposes > -- no preemptive strike bullshit). This is why I don't understand why you > approve of Obama. He is exactly like the others: he authorizes drone > strikes that cause horrible collateral damage to civilians. > > > I hardly know what to say when a rational person like you refers to > "horrible collateral damage". Drone strikes are extremely precise compared > to almost any other form of warfare: bombing, artillery, strafing, even > machine gun fire. It's the typical human reaction, well documented in > psychology experiments, that if one innocent child little girl is killed or > endangered you get a lot of sympathy and concern for her. But if she has a > little brother alongside her the level of sympathy and concern drops. And > in fact every time you increase the number of people killed or threatened > in the story, the sympathy and concern drops a little more. So when a > drone strike kills a terrorist leader, three cohorts, two wives and five of > his children, it's "horrible collateral damage". But when a few simple > ignorant soldiers are killed by artillery fire along with 30 other people > who happened to be the same building, it's only war. > I don't think it's so simple. The problem with drone strikes is that they completely insulate the attacker from all danger, and also from seeing, hearing and smelling the horrors being created in high-def. This makes it more politically feasible to sustain an attack on remote populations. The big question is, why are these attack even necessary? Do they make the US safer from terrorism in the long run? Or do they just fuel the next generation of US-haters? If the danger of terrorism is real, wouldn't it be much more effective to help these populations as much as possible, so that they will like you? > There was even a joke going around on that point during the Iraq war: > > *George Bush and Dick Cheney are drinking at a bar. Cheney calls to the > bartender to come over. He says, "Bartender, what would you say if I told > you we were going to bomb Iraq and kill 200,000 Iraqis and a nun on a > bicycle."* > > *The bartender says, "Why a nun on a bicycle??"* > > *Cheney turns to W and says, "See, I told you nobody would care about > 200,000 Iraqis."* > > It is unfortunate that the irrationality of human psychology makes more > precise killing of our enemies a propaganda benefit for their side, but I > would expect you to have a clearer picture of the ethics. > Sure, Stalin also famously said this. > > He's an accomplice to two horrible treasons on his own people: total > surveillance and the NDAA. > > > He didn't originate any of them and it's certainly not treason (it doesn't > give aid and comfort to an enemy in war; which is the definition of > treason). > Ok, replace "treason" with "betrayal". Total surveillance and the NDAA are against the basic principles of western democracy. An elected leader is expected to respect these principles, that's the social contract of democracy. > Many people (including my wife for example) think the collecting of > telephone call records is perfectly reasonable and useful in anticipating > terrorist activity. > Many well-meaning people feel that way. I believe most would change their minds if given a demonstration of what is possible with current computational power and data mining algorithms. Also, if they thought a bit more about the implications for democracy, balance of power between the very-rich and the middle class. If your wife is a democrat like you, aren't you both afraid of what a crazy neocon could do with this power in the future? Obama is not going to be the president forever. The next one could be a christian fundamentalist nutjob, or someone like Trump. > Most courts have upheld the practices, so you can't even say they're > illegal. Obama has pulled back the surveillance in response to Snowden's > revelations; he has ordered the NSA not to maintain a database of phone > records, to require a court order to by specific phone number to research, > and to allow searches only two steps from that number instead of three. > It's not just call records unfortunately. It's much, much worse than that. The problem is that the short-attention span of the media (and probably self-censorship, to say the least), left the general public with an awareness of the first and least important revelation. What the NSA and other western agencies have been up to: - Splitting underwater cables in international waters to divert all the traffic to gigantic data aggregation facilities; - Cooperating with the five eyes to side step the spirit of the law (importantly, a bedrock of western democracy, that you need a warrant to stick your nose in people's private affairs); - Infiltrating consortiums and public organizations to undermine the implementation of cryptographic algorithms; - Infiltrating companies like Google to install spying software on their servers; - Social engineering of Internet discussion forums; We now know undoubtedly, from Snowden's revelations, that the NSA has been storing *all* of the world's private communications and created an internal search engine to make it easy to access. We know that the access to this search engine is/was internally unrestricted, to the point that some low-level employees were using it for stalking. The keep your private email, location history from your several devices, social media communications, etc. etc. There are strong indications that they possess the ability to listen through microphones and see through cameras in computers. This all sounds like paranoid delusion, but it's well documented by serious sources and a google search away. > > He has been the most aggressive President so far in going after whistle > blowers, and he is an accomplice to the torture of Bradley/Chelsea Manning > > > I agree with that criticism. > > as well as countless Guantanamo prisoners. > > > He order all practices that could be considered torture stopped. He did > that soon after taking office. > Ok. That sort of language ("considered torture") worries me a bit. Part of the art of politics is to follow the letter of the law, but not necessarily it's spirit. > > > If you are a pacifist and a liberal you should applaud Ed Snowden, not > Barack Obama. > > > I applaud Ed Snowden for doing right thing. > Ok. > I applaud Barack Obama for doing about as much of the right thing as the > political system allows. > Ok, perhaps. > > > George W. Bush, Barack Obama and all of the current candidates for the > next presidential election, from both parties, are all part of the > sickness. They are all clones of the same robotic, opportunistic douchebag > politician, except for Trump, who is an independent douchebag. > > > Yes and that's an attitude which will guarantee typical politician will > get elected. > My contention is that the dominant political parties have been hijacked long ago, and the only way to get something different is to vote for outsiders. > But you're wrong. It's not opportunistic politicians, they're realitively > benign. > They, themselves, maybe. But they are bought and sold, this is painfully evident. Trump bought most of his current opponents at some point. > In fact I'm funding Bernie Sanders campaign. > Ok, I googled him and he sounds good. The problem is always the same: can he actually do anything once he gets there, especially if he goes through the big party route? Can you obtain the level of funding and political compromises necessary to be elected as a Republican or Democrat without selling your soul to the devil in the process? > It's the knowing-nothing, anti-intellectual, bellicose, ideologues like > Huckabee, Santorum, Trump, Walker, Carson that worry me. > There we can agree, they worry me too. Have a nice weekend Brent! Telmo. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
