This is truly chilling stuff. The Second World War had some pretty terrible moments (a huge understatement), but the lead up to the Jewish Holocaust and how it was organised and delivered, especially with knowledge of the consequences as we now have, was spectacularly scary to the point where you think something like that would have no chance of ever happening again. Perhaps we too easily forget our history.
Category Politics
Andy Schueler came across this little piece. Although I would be cautious over the definition of oligarchy (“meaning profoundly corrupt” rather than “a small group of people having control of a country or organization.”), this could make for interesting reading:
The other day, the CEO for Mozilla had to step down. This was due to influence from social media – a sort of power to the people. Basically, Mr Elch has held private views on gay marriage which have subsequently become public.
Wednesday 26th is an important day for the National Union of Teachers here in the UK. We have voted to go out on strike and I am going to do so, foregoing my pay for the day. I don’t take this action lightly, but then nor do I accept hat he government is doing to the education system lightly. I would like to elucidate on this and give the reasons to support my action.
Let me just prime you with this scandalous statistic: 40% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years.
A Ugandan tabloid has named the country’s “200 top homosexuals”, a day after President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a bill toughening penalties for gay people.
Red Pepper’s list appeared under the headline: “Exposed”, raising concerns of a witch-hunt against gay people.
Western governments have condemned Mr Museveni’s decision to approve the bill.
Soon, the Scottish people will be voting in a referendum as to whether they want an independent Scotland. Let’s put…
http://youtu.be/mAeS0bCAmjE What a fantastic commentary here. Excellent. More of that, thanks. One point which I have made before is that…
As The BBC reports:
Senior Conservative MP Tim Yeo has lost his fight against being deselected by party activists.
The former environment minister demanded the secret ballot by Tory members in South Suffolk after the association’s committee voted not to re-adopt him as a candidate.
Ack, the Republicans are at it again. Maybe she saw my post on autism meaning that God is unfair.
As HuffPo reports:
“I am not in favor of abortions, I am not in favor of gay rights,” Atanus, who has staged two previous unsuccessful runs for Congress, said during a videotaped portion of the interview, before going into more detail with the paper.
Say what you like about Brand, when he gets going, there ain’t no stopping him. (Rather unspecified) Revolution! http://youtu.be/lLYcn3PuTTk
So I have written a number of times about Gove and his penchant for free market economics in school and his libertarian approach to education. And how it totally sucks. Well, his Free School initiative is terrible and is faltering as the days go by. Between Free Schools and Academies, he is doing a fine job of dismantling education.
El Salvador has one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world. A side-effect is that women who suffer miscarriages are sometimes suspected of inducing an abortion – and can even be jailed for murder.
So, us in the rest of the world can see that the Republican Party in the US are several sandwiches…
On the 17th October, teachers in my area will be striking. Here are the reasons why I support this strike…
This is brilliant. As Upworthy states: What do you do when you’re a politician live on television and a pastor…
Jesus of Nazareth is attributed with saying many things. “Blessed are the meek” was one. “My kingdom is not of this world” was another. As far as we know, he never said, “This thing’s never gonna fly unless my followers can secure a whole raft of legal, political and economic privileges.”
As reported here, the House of Lords recently had what can only be described as a fascinating debate. Whilst some non-UK visitors to this blog may not be able to access the video, thanks to Chris Street at HASSNERS (where you can find the transcript with really useful notes and comments), here is the full transcript from Hansard:
You must must watch this. Hopefully I can embed the video. Watch it from 2.12pm onwards. This is why I love this country. Discussing philosophy fairly and squarely within the confines of our Parliamentary system (even if the House of Lords is our non-elected part).
If I can’t get it to embed, check it out here:
Funny how Republicans want less government, don’t like banning things and Big Brother… until it comes to social engineering and morality when they want stuff they don’t like banned. Silly people.
HuffPo: [H/T Sarah Bee]
Texas state senator Wendy Davis has electrified the pro-choice movement. Not just because of her sheer endurance in a nearly 11-hour filibuster, not just because she stood up to condescension and sexism, and not just because she did it all with aplomb and grace. For pro-choice activists, it has felt far too infrequent that they’ve seen a Democrat – much less one from a deep red state like Texas – unabashedly support reproductive rights without an ounce of ambivalence or calls for elusive common ground.