On This Day...
Oct 31, 2010: Baghdad, Iraq
Worshippers, priests and children are slaughtered
at a Catholic church by six suicide bombers: 58 Killed
Wikipedia - 2010 Baghdad church massacre
Thursday, October 31, 2019
On this day, October 31, 2010, 9 years ago, 6 muslim assholes blew themselves up to kill 58 Catholic morons, including children. There's a link to click if you're interested in religious stupidity.
On This Day...
Oct 31, 2010: Baghdad, Iraq
Worshippers, priests and children are slaughtered
at a Catholic church by six suicide bombers: 58 Killed
Wikipedia - 2010 Baghdad church massacre
Last night Washington DC won America's baseball World Series by defeating Texas 4 games to 3 games. An interesting fact: President Trump was there for the 6th game and everyone booed him and insulted him.
Nationals erupt late in Game 7 thriller to stun Astros for first World Series crown
Nationals rally for thrilling 6-2 win in winner-take-all Game 7
City of Washington celebrates first World Series title since 1924
Washington enjoys brief moment of unity with World Series win
World Series Game 7: Washington 6-2 Houston – as it happened
It was a pitching duel worthy of deciding the destiny of the World Series: Zack Greinke v Max Scherzer in a battle of two aging aces. Yet in the end, the key struggle might have been internal, Scherzer’s spirit in defiance of a sore body that threatened to betray him.
The 35-year-old woke up on Sunday with neck spasms that left him unable to move his right arm, get out of bed or get dressed by himself. He flew to Texas on Monday wearing a neck brace. A couple of days, a cortisone shot and some chiropractic treatment later, he pronounced himself fit and ready, pitched in the decisive game of the World Series and gave up only two runs in five often-agonizing innings: a home run from Yuli Gurriel and an RBI single from Carlos Correa.
That narrow margin proved vital when the contest turned on its head in the seventh inning, as the Washington Nationals scored three times to storm into the lead, spoil Greinke’s stellar performance and deliver the first World Series title either before or since the Nationals franchise emigrated from Montreal in 2005. It is the city’s first since the Senators beat the New York Giants in 1924.
While Greinke cantered through the first six innings, showcasing his fielding skills as well as his finesse, Scherzer was doughty but dodgy over his 103-pitch outing, allowing seven hits. Clearly below his best, he was also playing without his catcher of choice, the injured Kurt Suzuki.
The Astros, who led the majors with 107 wins during the regular season, were undeniably wasteful, stranding 10 runners on base, especially when they had excellent chances to build a big lead. But Scherzer’s stubborn refusal to yield despite his suspect pitch control, doing just enough to keep the deficit down and burnish hopes of a comeback, was emblematic of a Washington team that has proved inspired by adversity.
After all, they saw their superstar slugger, Bryce Harper, leave for Philadelphia in free agency in March; had won only 19 games and lost 31 at the end of May; were on the brink of elimination against the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card round; and carved out an improbable 3-2 series win over the fancied Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series before easing past the St Louis Cardinals in the NLCS. Wednesday’s Game 7 marked their record fifth comeback win in a potential elimination game in these playoffs.
Though this series generally lacked classic encounters – six of the games were won by wide margins – and was pockmarked by some of the worst umpiring since Leslie Nielsen portrayed Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun – it was abundantly weird.
The Astros, who won their first Fall Classic two years ago, were overwhelming favorites entering this series, especially with four games at Minute Maid Park, where they owned the best home record in baseball. This, though, was the series that popularized the concept of home disadvantage. Never before had the visiting team won the first six, let alone seven, games in a World Series – and that goes for the best-of-seven postseason series in the NBA and the NHL, too.
Wednesday’s match-up was also the first seventh game in World Series history to pit two former Cy Young winners against each other. Greinke, 36, was acquired from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a trade in July as the Astros revisited their splashy strategy from two years earlier, when they made a last-gasp trade for Justin Verlander, another veteran ace pitcher, and won their first World Series, sparking joyous scenes in a city that had been devastated by Hurricane Harvey only a few weeks earlier.
But would they get the Greinke who gave up one run in four and two thirds innings in Game 3 last week, or the Greinke who allowed six runs in three and two thirds innings against Tampa Bay in the American League Division Series? On Wednesday he was brilliant … until he wasn’t.
Anthony Rendon, the Nationals’ outstanding third baseman (who was born in the Houston area) punished a rare Greinke mistake with a solo home run in the seventh inning. Greinke, suddenly touchable, then walked Juan Soto, the 21-year-old slugging starlet, and AJ Hinch, the Astros manager, brought down the curtain after 80 pitches. It was a fateful decision.
Barely had the crowd sat down after affording Greinke a standing ovation when Will Harris relieved him and 36-year-old Howie Kendrick – who had shocked the Dodgers with a 10th-inning grand slam - pinged a two-run home run off the right-field foul pole. The atmosphere inside Minute Maid Park, so boisterous and confident a few moments earlier, turned queasy. The Astros players looked ashen-faced.
“I just had a feeling it was going to get real quiet that inning,” said Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who became the first No 1 overall draft pick to be named World Series MVP after earning victories in Games 2 and 6, surrendering a combined four runs over 14 and one third innings. “And it did.”
Houston’s bullpen misery deepened when a Soto single added a run, scoring Adam Eaton, and continued as Washington plated two more runs in the ninth inning.
The Astros’ smooth progress had been snapped with sudden brutality. They were finished, and Scherzer, whose night had seemed likely to be remembered as an exercise in heroic failure, was a World Series champion, dancing with his ecstatic teammates as they sprinted on to the infield after the final out, all the pain forgotten.
“It’s impossible to call a season in which you reach Game 7 of the World Series and have the lead going into the seventh inning as not good,” Houston manager AJ Hinch said. “It feels really bad. This is going to sting for a really long time, and it should.”
Nationals rally for thrilling 6-2 win in winner-take-all Game 7
City of Washington celebrates first World Series title since 1924
Washington enjoys brief moment of unity with World Series win
World Series Game 7: Washington 6-2 Houston – as it happened
It was a pitching duel worthy of deciding the destiny of the World Series: Zack Greinke v Max Scherzer in a battle of two aging aces. Yet in the end, the key struggle might have been internal, Scherzer’s spirit in defiance of a sore body that threatened to betray him.
The 35-year-old woke up on Sunday with neck spasms that left him unable to move his right arm, get out of bed or get dressed by himself. He flew to Texas on Monday wearing a neck brace. A couple of days, a cortisone shot and some chiropractic treatment later, he pronounced himself fit and ready, pitched in the decisive game of the World Series and gave up only two runs in five often-agonizing innings: a home run from Yuli Gurriel and an RBI single from Carlos Correa.
That narrow margin proved vital when the contest turned on its head in the seventh inning, as the Washington Nationals scored three times to storm into the lead, spoil Greinke’s stellar performance and deliver the first World Series title either before or since the Nationals franchise emigrated from Montreal in 2005. It is the city’s first since the Senators beat the New York Giants in 1924.
While Greinke cantered through the first six innings, showcasing his fielding skills as well as his finesse, Scherzer was doughty but dodgy over his 103-pitch outing, allowing seven hits. Clearly below his best, he was also playing without his catcher of choice, the injured Kurt Suzuki.
The Astros, who led the majors with 107 wins during the regular season, were undeniably wasteful, stranding 10 runners on base, especially when they had excellent chances to build a big lead. But Scherzer’s stubborn refusal to yield despite his suspect pitch control, doing just enough to keep the deficit down and burnish hopes of a comeback, was emblematic of a Washington team that has proved inspired by adversity.
After all, they saw their superstar slugger, Bryce Harper, leave for Philadelphia in free agency in March; had won only 19 games and lost 31 at the end of May; were on the brink of elimination against the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card round; and carved out an improbable 3-2 series win over the fancied Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series before easing past the St Louis Cardinals in the NLCS. Wednesday’s Game 7 marked their record fifth comeback win in a potential elimination game in these playoffs.
Though this series generally lacked classic encounters – six of the games were won by wide margins – and was pockmarked by some of the worst umpiring since Leslie Nielsen portrayed Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun – it was abundantly weird.
The Astros, who won their first Fall Classic two years ago, were overwhelming favorites entering this series, especially with four games at Minute Maid Park, where they owned the best home record in baseball. This, though, was the series that popularized the concept of home disadvantage. Never before had the visiting team won the first six, let alone seven, games in a World Series – and that goes for the best-of-seven postseason series in the NBA and the NHL, too.
Wednesday’s match-up was also the first seventh game in World Series history to pit two former Cy Young winners against each other. Greinke, 36, was acquired from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a trade in July as the Astros revisited their splashy strategy from two years earlier, when they made a last-gasp trade for Justin Verlander, another veteran ace pitcher, and won their first World Series, sparking joyous scenes in a city that had been devastated by Hurricane Harvey only a few weeks earlier.
But would they get the Greinke who gave up one run in four and two thirds innings in Game 3 last week, or the Greinke who allowed six runs in three and two thirds innings against Tampa Bay in the American League Division Series? On Wednesday he was brilliant … until he wasn’t.
Anthony Rendon, the Nationals’ outstanding third baseman (who was born in the Houston area) punished a rare Greinke mistake with a solo home run in the seventh inning. Greinke, suddenly touchable, then walked Juan Soto, the 21-year-old slugging starlet, and AJ Hinch, the Astros manager, brought down the curtain after 80 pitches. It was a fateful decision.
Barely had the crowd sat down after affording Greinke a standing ovation when Will Harris relieved him and 36-year-old Howie Kendrick – who had shocked the Dodgers with a 10th-inning grand slam - pinged a two-run home run off the right-field foul pole. The atmosphere inside Minute Maid Park, so boisterous and confident a few moments earlier, turned queasy. The Astros players looked ashen-faced.
“I just had a feeling it was going to get real quiet that inning,” said Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who became the first No 1 overall draft pick to be named World Series MVP after earning victories in Games 2 and 6, surrendering a combined four runs over 14 and one third innings. “And it did.”
Houston’s bullpen misery deepened when a Soto single added a run, scoring Adam Eaton, and continued as Washington plated two more runs in the ninth inning.
The Astros’ smooth progress had been snapped with sudden brutality. They were finished, and Scherzer, whose night had seemed likely to be remembered as an exercise in heroic failure, was a World Series champion, dancing with his ecstatic teammates as they sprinted on to the infield after the final out, all the pain forgotten.
“It’s impossible to call a season in which you reach Game 7 of the World Series and have the lead going into the seventh inning as not good,” Houston manager AJ Hinch said. “It feels really bad. This is going to sting for a really long time, and it should.”
I wrote a comment for the New York Times about Muslim morons. Will the cowardly wimpy New York Times vaporize my comment? Probably yes. Political correctness is a disease and the NYT is infected with it.
My comment: "It might not be politically correct to write this, but I suggest letting Muslims enter civilized countries is not a good idea."
New York Times: "We'll notify you via email when your comment has been approved."
Death of ISIS Leader Is Scant Consolation to a Changed France
The Islamic State’s crimes, and the fear they instilled, have long since woven themselves into the fabric of French life.
PARIS — The killing of the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was met this week with no outpouring of joy or even relief in France, even though this is the European country that suffered most from his depredations.
The reason is simple: the Islamic State’s crimes, and the fear they instilled in the national psyche, are so ingrained in France that the daily fabric of life has been inexorably altered.
As if proof were needed, within the last month, a former far-right candidate shot two Muslims who stopped him from burning down a mosque. A Muslim mother was reprimanded by an official for wearing a head scarf. And President Emmanuel Macron called for a “society of vigilance” after a Muslim employee at Police Headquarters in Paris killed four officers in a knife attack.
These recent symptoms of what some call an ongoing trauma for France demonstrate why Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death was ‘‘no more than a step,” as Mr. Macron put it Sunday in a muted reaction to the news.
The demise of the terrorist leader did nothing to heal the wound that the Islamic State opened in French society with the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016. Every day, in the persistent mutual fear and suspicion that exists between France and its large, imperfectly integrated Muslim minority, the wound festers.
In a survey published Sunday by IFOP, a respected polling firm, in the Journal du Dimanche, 61 percent of respondents said that Islam was “incompatible with the values of French society,” an increase of 8 percent over February. Nearly 80 percent said they felt that the vaunted French creed of secularism was “in danger,” largely because of Islam.
The wound existed well before the Islamic State attacks of November 2015 at the Bataclan and elsewhere in Paris. But the massacres perpetrated by al-Baghdadi’s foot soldiers — roughly 1,700 French citizens joined the Islamic State, of whom perhaps 700 were fighters — exacerbated the split between France and its Muslims.
The massacres also amplified the scope of judicial and police control over French society, and created a far more receptive climate for tough police repression. That was evident in this year’s gloves-off handling of the Yellow Vest protesters, which was largely accepted by the French despite thousands of wounded.
There is dispute in France about the extent of the civil liberties rollback since the terrorist attacks. A prominent constitutional lawyer and sometime-adviser to Mr. Macron, François Sureau, published a much-discussed pamphlet last month in which he lamented the “crumbling of the legal edifice of liberties” in France, partly because of 2015.
Other experts call this an exaggeration.
But there is no doubt that the mood has remained tense since Mr. al-Baghdadi unleashed his agents on France four years ago. There are few calls for the state to lighten its grip. The attack of November 2015, in which 131 died, changed France, and the country’s leaders have benefited from popular recognition that new circumstances required new methods.
“It’s clear that it had an extremely powerful traumatic effect, which has inserted itself into the debate associated with Islam in France,” said Zaki Laïdi, a political scientist at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, who was an adviser to France’s then-prime minister, Manuel Valls, at the time of the attacks.
Another adviser to Mr. Valls at the time, Chloe Morin, now at the IPSOS polling firm, said, “There’s a diminished tolerance toward Muslims now.”
But the attacks only exacerbated an already troubled relationship between France and its Muslim population, nearly all agree.
“The attacks heightened this climate of fear regarding Islam,” said Tareq Oubrou, an imam in Bordeaux who is a leading proponent of a reformist strain of Islam. “The ordinary citizen makes no distinction between terrorism, Islamism and sectarianism,” he said.
The existing difficulties, pre-2015, between France and French Muslims were “considerably amplified by the wound that France suffered, of course,” said Mr. Laïdi.
“It was a massive shock, this huge eruption of the Islamist presence,” he said.
In the prime minister’s office, “they said to themselves, ‘How will the country manage this shock?’” Ms. Morin recalled.
The government they both served quickly imposed a state of emergency.
It survives in part to this day, codified permanently in French law by Mr. Macron — the very measures deplored by civil libertarian jurists like Mr. Sureau.
The most notable of these measures allow for expanded and renewable house arrests of persons under suspicion, searches without judicial warrant, and the imposition of electronic bracelets. Mr. Sureau, in his pamphlet, wrote that “the state of emergency was 6,000 searches for 40 arrests, of which 20 were for excusing terrorism.”
But there was little sustained opposition to the new measures, either when they were first imposed or later enacted into law.
Mr. Laïdi observed that “the immense majority of French don’t feel that their civil liberties are threatened” — and the evidence for that is the stillborn debate over the harshness of police tactics in response to the violent Yellow Vest demonstrations. Scattered protests led to nothing.
Mr. Sureau, the lawyer, himself won several important appeals of emergency measures at France’s Constitutional Council, the equivalent of the Supreme Court, including one that criminalized looking at “terrorist” websites — proving, in the eyes of his critics, that civil liberties in the country are in good shape.
“Historically, the French demand protection from the state,” said Mr. Laïdi. “The attacks only reinforced that expectation.”
Yet the muted reactions in France to two recent policy balloons floated by Mr. Macron show that despite the attacks of 2015, the French are not ready to tighten the screws further and become a full-bore national security state.
Mr. Macron issued his call for a “society of vigilance” after the October killings at Paris Police Headquarters, enjoining the French to be “on the lookout at school, at work, in places of worship, close to home” for signs of radicalization among fellow citizens.
The idea fell flat and there has been no follow-up.
For the French elites, Ms. Morin of IPSOS observed, it sounded too much as though the president was calling on citizens to snoop on and denounce one another. For some, the chief of state appeared to be renouncing a traditional government role in France, providing protection.
Vexed by the sharp rise in asylum seekers, Mr. Macron earlier had sounded a warning about immigration, in a speech to members of his own party.
“Are we to be the bourgeois party, or what?” Mr. Macron asked. “The bourgeois don’t have to deal with immigration. It’s the poorer districts that are on the receiving end,” he said. “We don’t have the right not to look this issue in the face.”
Again, public reaction was unenthusiastic to what was seen in his own party as the equivalent of harsh, far-right rhetoric on immigration.
For some political analysts, the legacy of 2015 is mixed: heightened public awareness of risks, but unwillingness to forsake traditional French liberties.
“There was a consciousness-raising,” said Mr. Laïdi of Sciences Po. “But there’s no xenophobia,” he said. “French society is extremely attached to individual liberty.”
New York Times: "We'll notify you via email when your comment has been approved."
Death of ISIS Leader Is Scant Consolation to a Changed France
The Islamic State’s crimes, and the fear they instilled, have long since woven themselves into the fabric of French life.
PARIS — The killing of the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was met this week with no outpouring of joy or even relief in France, even though this is the European country that suffered most from his depredations.
The reason is simple: the Islamic State’s crimes, and the fear they instilled in the national psyche, are so ingrained in France that the daily fabric of life has been inexorably altered.
As if proof were needed, within the last month, a former far-right candidate shot two Muslims who stopped him from burning down a mosque. A Muslim mother was reprimanded by an official for wearing a head scarf. And President Emmanuel Macron called for a “society of vigilance” after a Muslim employee at Police Headquarters in Paris killed four officers in a knife attack.
These recent symptoms of what some call an ongoing trauma for France demonstrate why Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death was ‘‘no more than a step,” as Mr. Macron put it Sunday in a muted reaction to the news.
The demise of the terrorist leader did nothing to heal the wound that the Islamic State opened in French society with the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016. Every day, in the persistent mutual fear and suspicion that exists between France and its large, imperfectly integrated Muslim minority, the wound festers.
In a survey published Sunday by IFOP, a respected polling firm, in the Journal du Dimanche, 61 percent of respondents said that Islam was “incompatible with the values of French society,” an increase of 8 percent over February. Nearly 80 percent said they felt that the vaunted French creed of secularism was “in danger,” largely because of Islam.
The wound existed well before the Islamic State attacks of November 2015 at the Bataclan and elsewhere in Paris. But the massacres perpetrated by al-Baghdadi’s foot soldiers — roughly 1,700 French citizens joined the Islamic State, of whom perhaps 700 were fighters — exacerbated the split between France and its Muslims.
The massacres also amplified the scope of judicial and police control over French society, and created a far more receptive climate for tough police repression. That was evident in this year’s gloves-off handling of the Yellow Vest protesters, which was largely accepted by the French despite thousands of wounded.
There is dispute in France about the extent of the civil liberties rollback since the terrorist attacks. A prominent constitutional lawyer and sometime-adviser to Mr. Macron, François Sureau, published a much-discussed pamphlet last month in which he lamented the “crumbling of the legal edifice of liberties” in France, partly because of 2015.
Other experts call this an exaggeration.
But there is no doubt that the mood has remained tense since Mr. al-Baghdadi unleashed his agents on France four years ago. There are few calls for the state to lighten its grip. The attack of November 2015, in which 131 died, changed France, and the country’s leaders have benefited from popular recognition that new circumstances required new methods.
“It’s clear that it had an extremely powerful traumatic effect, which has inserted itself into the debate associated with Islam in France,” said Zaki Laïdi, a political scientist at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, who was an adviser to France’s then-prime minister, Manuel Valls, at the time of the attacks.
Another adviser to Mr. Valls at the time, Chloe Morin, now at the IPSOS polling firm, said, “There’s a diminished tolerance toward Muslims now.”
But the attacks only exacerbated an already troubled relationship between France and its Muslim population, nearly all agree.
“The attacks heightened this climate of fear regarding Islam,” said Tareq Oubrou, an imam in Bordeaux who is a leading proponent of a reformist strain of Islam. “The ordinary citizen makes no distinction between terrorism, Islamism and sectarianism,” he said.
The existing difficulties, pre-2015, between France and French Muslims were “considerably amplified by the wound that France suffered, of course,” said Mr. Laïdi.
“It was a massive shock, this huge eruption of the Islamist presence,” he said.
In the prime minister’s office, “they said to themselves, ‘How will the country manage this shock?’” Ms. Morin recalled.
The government they both served quickly imposed a state of emergency.
It survives in part to this day, codified permanently in French law by Mr. Macron — the very measures deplored by civil libertarian jurists like Mr. Sureau.
The most notable of these measures allow for expanded and renewable house arrests of persons under suspicion, searches without judicial warrant, and the imposition of electronic bracelets. Mr. Sureau, in his pamphlet, wrote that “the state of emergency was 6,000 searches for 40 arrests, of which 20 were for excusing terrorism.”
But there was little sustained opposition to the new measures, either when they were first imposed or later enacted into law.
Mr. Laïdi observed that “the immense majority of French don’t feel that their civil liberties are threatened” — and the evidence for that is the stillborn debate over the harshness of police tactics in response to the violent Yellow Vest demonstrations. Scattered protests led to nothing.
Mr. Sureau, the lawyer, himself won several important appeals of emergency measures at France’s Constitutional Council, the equivalent of the Supreme Court, including one that criminalized looking at “terrorist” websites — proving, in the eyes of his critics, that civil liberties in the country are in good shape.
“Historically, the French demand protection from the state,” said Mr. Laïdi. “The attacks only reinforced that expectation.”
Yet the muted reactions in France to two recent policy balloons floated by Mr. Macron show that despite the attacks of 2015, the French are not ready to tighten the screws further and become a full-bore national security state.
Mr. Macron issued his call for a “society of vigilance” after the October killings at Paris Police Headquarters, enjoining the French to be “on the lookout at school, at work, in places of worship, close to home” for signs of radicalization among fellow citizens.
The idea fell flat and there has been no follow-up.
For the French elites, Ms. Morin of IPSOS observed, it sounded too much as though the president was calling on citizens to snoop on and denounce one another. For some, the chief of state appeared to be renouncing a traditional government role in France, providing protection.
Vexed by the sharp rise in asylum seekers, Mr. Macron earlier had sounded a warning about immigration, in a speech to members of his own party.
“Are we to be the bourgeois party, or what?” Mr. Macron asked. “The bourgeois don’t have to deal with immigration. It’s the poorer districts that are on the receiving end,” he said. “We don’t have the right not to look this issue in the face.”
Again, public reaction was unenthusiastic to what was seen in his own party as the equivalent of harsh, far-right rhetoric on immigration.
For some political analysts, the legacy of 2015 is mixed: heightened public awareness of risks, but unwillingness to forsake traditional French liberties.
“There was a consciousness-raising,” said Mr. Laïdi of Sciences Po. “But there’s no xenophobia,” he said. “French society is extremely attached to individual liberty.”
John McDermott - Morning Has Broken
Morning has broken like the first morning Blackbird has spoken like the first bird Praise for the singing Praise for the morning Praise for them springing fresh from the world Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven Like the first dewfall on the first grass Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden Sprung in completeness where his feet pass Mine is the sunlight Mine is the morning Born of the one light Eden saw play Praise with elation, praise ev'ry morning God's recreation of the new day
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Muslim morons should not be allowed on airplanes.
Sam Harris - IN DEFENSE OF PROFILING
April 28, 2012
Much has been written about how insulting and depressing it is, more than a decade after the events of 9/11, to be met by “security theater” at our nation’s airports. The current system appears so inane that one hopes it really is a sham, concealing more-ingenious intrusions into our privacy. The spirit of political correctness hangs over the whole enterprise like the Angel of Death—indeed, more closely than death, or than the actual fear of terrorism. And political correctness requires that TSA employees direct the spotlight of their attention at random—or appear to do so—while making rote use of irrational procedures and dubious technology.
Although I don’t think I look like a jihadi, or like a man pretending not to be one, I do not mean to suggest that a person like me should be exempt from scrutiny. But other travelers fit the profile far less than I do. One glance at these innocents reveals that they are no more likely to be terrorists than walruses in disguise. I make it a point to notice such people while queuing for security at the airport, just to see what sort of treatment they receive at the hands of the TSA.
While leaving JFK last week, I found myself standing in line behind an elderly couple who couldn’t have been less threatening had they been already dead and boarding in their coffins. I would have bet my life that they were not waging jihad. Both appeared to be in their mid-eighties and infirm. The woman rode in a wheelchair attended by an airport employee as her husband struggled to comply with TSA regulations—removing various items from their luggage, arranging them in separate bins, and loading the bins and bags onto the conveyor belt bound for x-ray.
After much preparation, the couple proceeded toward the body scanner, only to encounter resistance. It seems that they had neglected to take off their shoes. A pair of TSA screeners stepped forward to prevent this dangerous breach of security—removing what appeared to be orthopedic footwear from both the woman in the wheelchair and the man now staggering at her side. This imposed obvious stress on two harmless and bewildered people and caused considerable delay for everyone in my line. I turned to see if anyone else was amazed by such a perversion of vigilance. The man behind me, who could have played the villain in a Bollywood film, looked unconcerned.
I have noticed such incongruities before. In fact, my wife and I once accidentally used a bag for carry-on in which I had once stored a handgun—and passed through three airport checkpoints with nearly 75 rounds of 9 mm ammunition. While we were inadvertently smuggling bullets, one TSA screener had the presence of mind to escort a terrified three-year-old away from her parents so that he could remove her sandals (sandals!). Presumably, a scanner that had just missed 2.5 pounds of ammunition would determine whether these objects were the most clever bombs ever wrought. Needless to say, a glance at the girl’s family was all one needed to know that they hadn’t rigged her to explode. (The infuriating scene played out very much like this one.)
Is there nothing we can do to stop this tyranny of fairness? Some semblance of fairness makes sense—and, needless to say, everyone’s bags should be screened, if only because it is possible to put a bomb in someone else’s luggage. But the TSA has a finite amount of attention: Every moment spent frisking the Mormon Tabernacle Choir subtracts from the scrutiny paid to more likely threats. Who could fail to understand this?
Imagine how fatuous it would be to fight a war against the IRA and yet refuse to profile the Irish? And yet this is how we seem to be fighting our war against Islamic terrorism.
Granted, I haven’t had to endure the experience of being continually profiled. No doubt it would be frustrating. But if someone who looked vaguely like Ben Stiller were wanted for crimes against humanity, I would understand if I turned a few heads at the airport. However, if I were forced to wait in line behind a sham search of everyone else, I would surely resent this additional theft of my time.
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.
Needless to say, a devout Muslim should be free to show up at the airport dressed like Osama bin Laden, and his wives should be free to wear burqas. But if their goal is simply to travel safely and efficiently, wouldn’t they, too, want a system that notices people like themselves? At a minimum, wouldn’t they want a system that anti-profiles—applying the minimum of attention to people who obviously pose no threat?
Watch some of the TSA screening videos on YouTube—like this one—and then imagine how this infernal stupidity will appear if we ever suffer another terrorist incident involving an airplane.
Addendum (5/1/12):
Many readers found this blog post stunning for its lack of sensitivity. The article has been called “racist,” “dreadful,” “sickening,” “appalling,” “frighteningly ignorant,” etc. by (former) fans who profess to have loved everything I’ve written until this moment. I find this reaction difficult to understand. Of course, anyone who imagines that there is no link between Islam and suicidal terrorism might object to what I’ve written here, but I say far more offensive things about Islam in The End of Faith and in many of my essays and lectures.
In any case, it is simply a fact that, in the year 2012, suicidal terrorism is overwhelmingly a Muslim phenomenon. If you grant this, it follows that applying equal scrutiny to Mennonites would be a dangerous waste of time.
I suspect that it will surprise neither my fans nor my critics that I view the furor over this article to be symptomatic of the very political correctness that I decry in it. However, it seems that when one speaks candidly about the problem of Islam misunderstandings easily multiply. So I’d like to clarify a couple of points here:
1. When I speak of profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim,” I am not narrowly focused on people with dark skin. In fact, I included myself in the description of the type of person I think should be profiled (twice). To say that ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, dress, traveling companions, behavior in the terminal, and other outward appearances offer no indication of a person’s beliefs or terrorist potential is either quite crazy or totally dishonest. It is the charm of political correctness that it blends these sins against reasonableness so seamlessly. We are paying a very high price for this obscurantism—and the price could grow much higher in an instant. We have limited resources, and every moment spent searching a woman like the one pictured above, or the children seen in the linked videos, is a moment in which someone or something else goes unobserved.
2. There is no conflict between what I have written here and “behavioral profiling” or other forms of threat detection. And if we can catch terrorists before they reach the airport, I am all for it. But the methods we use to do this tend to be even more focused and invasive (and, therefore, offensive) than profiling done by the TSA. Many readers who were horrified by my article seem to believe that there is nothing wrong with “gathering intelligence.” One wonders just how they think that is done.
There may be interesting arguments against profiling (or anti-profiling of the sort I recommend here), but I haven’t noticed any amid the torrents of criticism I’ve received thus far. If there is an expert on airline security who wants to set me straight, I am happy to offer this page as a forum.
April 28, 2012
Much has been written about how insulting and depressing it is, more than a decade after the events of 9/11, to be met by “security theater” at our nation’s airports. The current system appears so inane that one hopes it really is a sham, concealing more-ingenious intrusions into our privacy. The spirit of political correctness hangs over the whole enterprise like the Angel of Death—indeed, more closely than death, or than the actual fear of terrorism. And political correctness requires that TSA employees direct the spotlight of their attention at random—or appear to do so—while making rote use of irrational procedures and dubious technology.
Although I don’t think I look like a jihadi, or like a man pretending not to be one, I do not mean to suggest that a person like me should be exempt from scrutiny. But other travelers fit the profile far less than I do. One glance at these innocents reveals that they are no more likely to be terrorists than walruses in disguise. I make it a point to notice such people while queuing for security at the airport, just to see what sort of treatment they receive at the hands of the TSA.
While leaving JFK last week, I found myself standing in line behind an elderly couple who couldn’t have been less threatening had they been already dead and boarding in their coffins. I would have bet my life that they were not waging jihad. Both appeared to be in their mid-eighties and infirm. The woman rode in a wheelchair attended by an airport employee as her husband struggled to comply with TSA regulations—removing various items from their luggage, arranging them in separate bins, and loading the bins and bags onto the conveyor belt bound for x-ray.
After much preparation, the couple proceeded toward the body scanner, only to encounter resistance. It seems that they had neglected to take off their shoes. A pair of TSA screeners stepped forward to prevent this dangerous breach of security—removing what appeared to be orthopedic footwear from both the woman in the wheelchair and the man now staggering at her side. This imposed obvious stress on two harmless and bewildered people and caused considerable delay for everyone in my line. I turned to see if anyone else was amazed by such a perversion of vigilance. The man behind me, who could have played the villain in a Bollywood film, looked unconcerned.
I have noticed such incongruities before. In fact, my wife and I once accidentally used a bag for carry-on in which I had once stored a handgun—and passed through three airport checkpoints with nearly 75 rounds of 9 mm ammunition. While we were inadvertently smuggling bullets, one TSA screener had the presence of mind to escort a terrified three-year-old away from her parents so that he could remove her sandals (sandals!). Presumably, a scanner that had just missed 2.5 pounds of ammunition would determine whether these objects were the most clever bombs ever wrought. Needless to say, a glance at the girl’s family was all one needed to know that they hadn’t rigged her to explode. (The infuriating scene played out very much like this one.)
Is there nothing we can do to stop this tyranny of fairness? Some semblance of fairness makes sense—and, needless to say, everyone’s bags should be screened, if only because it is possible to put a bomb in someone else’s luggage. But the TSA has a finite amount of attention: Every moment spent frisking the Mormon Tabernacle Choir subtracts from the scrutiny paid to more likely threats. Who could fail to understand this?
Imagine how fatuous it would be to fight a war against the IRA and yet refuse to profile the Irish? And yet this is how we seem to be fighting our war against Islamic terrorism.
Granted, I haven’t had to endure the experience of being continually profiled. No doubt it would be frustrating. But if someone who looked vaguely like Ben Stiller were wanted for crimes against humanity, I would understand if I turned a few heads at the airport. However, if I were forced to wait in line behind a sham search of everyone else, I would surely resent this additional theft of my time.
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.
Needless to say, a devout Muslim should be free to show up at the airport dressed like Osama bin Laden, and his wives should be free to wear burqas. But if their goal is simply to travel safely and efficiently, wouldn’t they, too, want a system that notices people like themselves? At a minimum, wouldn’t they want a system that anti-profiles—applying the minimum of attention to people who obviously pose no threat?
Watch some of the TSA screening videos on YouTube—like this one—and then imagine how this infernal stupidity will appear if we ever suffer another terrorist incident involving an airplane.
Addendum (5/1/12):
Many readers found this blog post stunning for its lack of sensitivity. The article has been called “racist,” “dreadful,” “sickening,” “appalling,” “frighteningly ignorant,” etc. by (former) fans who profess to have loved everything I’ve written until this moment. I find this reaction difficult to understand. Of course, anyone who imagines that there is no link between Islam and suicidal terrorism might object to what I’ve written here, but I say far more offensive things about Islam in The End of Faith and in many of my essays and lectures.
In any case, it is simply a fact that, in the year 2012, suicidal terrorism is overwhelmingly a Muslim phenomenon. If you grant this, it follows that applying equal scrutiny to Mennonites would be a dangerous waste of time.
I suspect that it will surprise neither my fans nor my critics that I view the furor over this article to be symptomatic of the very political correctness that I decry in it. However, it seems that when one speaks candidly about the problem of Islam misunderstandings easily multiply. So I’d like to clarify a couple of points here:
1. When I speak of profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim,” I am not narrowly focused on people with dark skin. In fact, I included myself in the description of the type of person I think should be profiled (twice). To say that ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, dress, traveling companions, behavior in the terminal, and other outward appearances offer no indication of a person’s beliefs or terrorist potential is either quite crazy or totally dishonest. It is the charm of political correctness that it blends these sins against reasonableness so seamlessly. We are paying a very high price for this obscurantism—and the price could grow much higher in an instant. We have limited resources, and every moment spent searching a woman like the one pictured above, or the children seen in the linked videos, is a moment in which someone or something else goes unobserved.
2. There is no conflict between what I have written here and “behavioral profiling” or other forms of threat detection. And if we can catch terrorists before they reach the airport, I am all for it. But the methods we use to do this tend to be even more focused and invasive (and, therefore, offensive) than profiling done by the TSA. Many readers who were horrified by my article seem to believe that there is nothing wrong with “gathering intelligence.” One wonders just how they think that is done.
There may be interesting arguments against profiling (or anti-profiling of the sort I recommend here), but I haven’t noticed any amid the torrents of criticism I’ve received thus far. If there is an expert on airline security who wants to set me straight, I am happy to offer this page as a forum.
I recommend doing what I just did.
This blog has 310 posts about Charles Darwin at Charles Darwin.
I recommend doing what I just did. I clicked Charles Darwin and I found lots of interesting stuff.
Also, you could scroll down to find the word "Labels" in the right column of this blog. Then click a label that might be interesting.
This blog has more than 8,000 posts. Lots of those posts suck because I wrote them. But the copy & paste jobs are often very interesting.
I recommend doing what I just did. I clicked Charles Darwin and I found lots of interesting stuff.
Also, you could scroll down to find the word "Labels" in the right column of this blog. Then click a label that might be interesting.
This blog has more than 8,000 posts. Lots of those posts suck because I wrote them. But the copy & paste jobs are often very interesting.
Science is killing the ridiculous god fairy fantasy. Nothing can be more obvious.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. It is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
-- Charles Darwin
"If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator."
-- Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist
“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”
-- Stephen Hawkings
-- Charles Darwin
"If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator."
-- Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist
“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”
-- Stephen Hawkings
2016 - President Obama’s speech in Hiroshima, Japan
New York Times
Text of President Obama’s Speech in Hiroshima, Japan
President Obama spoke after a wreath-laying ceremony with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Friday.
May 27, 2016
The following is a transcript of President Obama’s speech in Hiroshima, Japan, as recorded by The New York Times.
Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.
Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.
It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind. On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. Empires have risen and fallen. Peoples have been subjugated and liberated. And at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.
The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.
Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction. How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.
Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.
Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.
Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.
The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.
That is why we come to this place. We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow.
Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.
Some day, the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.
And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war. The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed people and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.
Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done. We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we form must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.
We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.
And yet that is not enough. For we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.
For this, too, is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.
We see these stories in the hibakusha. The woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. The man who sought out families of Americans killed here because he believed their loss was equal to his own.
My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.
That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.
Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.
The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.
Text of President Obama’s Speech in Hiroshima, Japan
President Obama spoke after a wreath-laying ceremony with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Friday.May 27, 2016
The following is a transcript of President Obama’s speech in Hiroshima, Japan, as recorded by The New York Times.
Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.
Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.
It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind. On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. Empires have risen and fallen. Peoples have been subjugated and liberated. And at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.
The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.
Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction. How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.
Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.
Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.
Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.
The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.
That is why we come to this place. We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow.
Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.
Some day, the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.
And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war. The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed people and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.
Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done. We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we form must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.
We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.
And yet that is not enough. For we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.
For this, too, is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.
We see these stories in the hibakusha. The woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. The man who sought out families of Americans killed here because he believed their loss was equal to his own.
My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.
That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.
Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.
The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.
4 years ago an atheist was murdered because he was an atheist. Of course the murderers were cowardly Muslim scum. Muslims kill for Allah. Muslims are stupid fucking assholes and they need to be wiped off this planet.
On This Day...
October 30, 2015: Dhaka, Bangladesh
A publisher is hacked to death for printing
atheist and scientific writing: 1 Killed
October 30, 2015: Dhaka, Bangladesh
A publisher is hacked to death for printing
atheist and scientific writing: 1 Killed
My favorite movie: "Creation". I recommend it. People can rent or buy it at Amazon.
"Has atheism ever happened in a movie?"
"Creation"
Charles Darwin threw out Christianity and his wife was very concerned about it.
"A fascinating look at the life of Charles Darwin and his struggle to uphold his scientific theory amidst a society seated in religion."
"Torn between faith and science, and suffering hallucinations, English naturalist Charles Darwin struggles to complete 'On the Origin of Species' and maintain his relationship with his wife."
Amazon - Creation
"Creation"
Charles Darwin threw out Christianity and his wife was very concerned about it.
"A fascinating look at the life of Charles Darwin and his struggle to uphold his scientific theory amidst a society seated in religion."
"Torn between faith and science, and suffering hallucinations, English naturalist Charles Darwin struggles to complete 'On the Origin of Species' and maintain his relationship with his wife."
Amazon - Creation