Assassination

I was reading this article and it occurred to me; more often than not, assassinating the leader of a group almost always ends up making the group stronger in the long run. Few leave the group or give up, but many come together more strongly and many more join after seeing an act they consider unjust.
Assassination is really... stupid, but I suppose the meat puppets of the world doing stupid things is nothing new.

Do you know what love is?

It seems many Christians can't even get along with each other, much less show tolerance and love for others. Whatever happened to loving your enemies?

Above all else, these two factions seem to be getting into a fight in Bethlehem because their religions celebrate Jesus's birthday on different days. Do these people really think that when they get to Heaven, God will turn some of them away because they used the wrong date to let Jesus blow out his 2000-some-odd candles?

This sort of thing frustrates me, and just goes to further the stereotype of Christians as being hateful, malicious people who are incapable of any semblance of tolerance above forcing others to be exactly like them.

Christian or not, one thing holds true: If you only love those that are like yourself, then you do not know love, because you only love yourself.

Bhutto assassinated.. by who?

It seems that Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated. The first time I read this article... well it seems to me..

Pervez Musharraf hated this woman, but now that this happens he declares three days of mourning, and conveniently blames it on this unnamed 'extremist' organization that he supposidly declared martial law to fight. A martial law that Bhutto opposed. Two birds with one stone anyone? Taking her out and blaming it on his imaginary enemies would both eliminate his opposition and cause some of her supporters to take his side, imagining that he was trying to find her killer despite being the killer himself.

There's your conspiracy theory of the week. I have no information, so I don't know, but it sure seems like a great plan to me.

China and freedom

As if they hadn't limited the freedom of their people enough, you can now be arrested for sending text messages that 'spread rumors' in China. This is largely because people would use text messaging to spread word about demonstrations. I would like to know which phone companies are cooperating with their government on this, because those are the ones I will try to avoid even if they aren't doing it here.

China is always worried about how word spreads, and have cracked down on online communications as well. Of course in the case of online, this or things like this are great tools to get around pesky internet blocks and avoid detection by your government when organizing those protests.

So yes, at this point I have to admit that though it is bad, the US is not as bad as it could be. May it never be otherwise, but we still have a lot of catching up to do to make for our recent back-sliding.

Africans and Christmas and Christianity

Have a happy Christmas/Frostfell/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Saturnalia/Winter Solstice/Winter Veil/Yuletide.

Something I have been thinking. Some African-Americans honor their heritage by observing Kwanzaa, but if they really wanted to honor their heritage wouldn't they leave the religion that was forced upon them by their oppressors (Christianity or Muslim depending on who took over their particular region) and instead go with one of the many good ancient religions of Africa?

Faith begets violence and death

So in this article on faith in the military, one soldier says his faith helps him justify his actions in the war.

And that is the whole problem.

Faith justifies violence. People say atheists are amoral and faithless, and think that this makes them violent, but this makes them the opposite of violence.

I have no faith in God or fate. Thus I have no excuse for violence, and I would not kill another human being EVEN IN MY OWN DEFENSE. How many Christians will make that vow, despite all the talk of 'turn the other cheek'? Few if any, because they believe everything is written in the sky for them, and that their actions are justified even if it means innocents will die.

Want to argue this? Tell me just one single military conflict of the last decade that wasn't based on someone of one religion hating another. Just one.

And these soldiers saying that God will protect them need to wake up. To say that you are certain God will protect you is to say that all those troops that have died were faithless and evil, which is clearly not the case, especially from their view.

No. Your God, supposedly both all powerful and all loving, has allowed this mess to continue. Again, either your God is all powerful, in which case he couldn't be all loving when you look at the results of his creation, or he is all loving, in which case he wants to help but is powerless to do so because of the mass idiocy of his followers.

Where is your God now?

A terrible tragedy occurred when a young child was crushed by a church parade float. I don't mean to make light of this at all, quite the contrary. But..

Anyone that is a member of that Church should think. They believe in an all-mighty loving God; -why- would an all powerful God allow -his- float to crush a small child? Where was their all-powerful loving God when their innocent child was crushed?

They should consider this, and then find a new religion that doesn't include such a contradiction.

Homophobic

So what is a homophobic person really?
Someone that is afraid of gay people? Obviously they aren't or they wouldn't be so aggressive towards them.
Someone that hates gay people? ... almost.
But no, a homophobic person is a gay person who is so afraid of their own homosexual feelings that they lash out at gay people they see in an effort to prove they are not gay. I have seen so many anti-gay senators like Larry Craig turn out to actually be gay. And this isn't the first allegations this man has had, even prior to the whole restroom incident. I remember an old supervisor I had that was similar; he always had derogatory things to say about gay people, constantly touted how much he had sex with women as if afraid we wouldn't take note, and actually refused to eat fruit because it might make him look 'fruity'. This man was so gay it HURT... literally if you think of it in a psychological fashion for him.
Seriously, gay people do not choose to be gay, so do what your DNA tells you.
Someone argues that being gay is a choice? Ask them why, if it were a choice, ask them why people would make a choice that will only bring them pain, hate, and in some nations execution?