If you had any lingering support for the New Atheists...

...now is probably a good time to abandon it. I though Hitchens was the worst one of the bunch but Richard Seymour at Lenin's Tomb highlights a post Dawkins made in which he calls Islam unmitigated evil.

I've heard from time to time critics say atheism as an ideology is very much a first world thing and not something that can be applied globally. I still believe that is not universally the case but the New Atheism that has become very popular in the last few years does seem to have a strong first world and perhaps even a colonialist component.

And speaking of colonialism and religion in Africa I'll highlight this article by the war nerd (one of several he did on the subject in the space of a few days) which examines the situation of religious and ethnic tensions in Africa, especially West Africa. Makes it a bit clearer why Dawkins, a right winger, wants to protect Christianised Africans.

Weekend Watch 07/01/11

The excuse this time is me getting into twitter but thats irrelevant, excuses aren't good enough.

So anyway, here is part 3 of the power of nightmares:

Israel ever more openly fascist.

Will try and do a proper post on this soon but the Israeli cabinet has approved legislation to force all Israeli citizens to recite a loyalty oath to the country as a Jewish Democratic State. Or to put it another people who live in Israel who aren't Jewish or refuse to regard it as a solely Jewish state, which would affect dissenting Israelis of European origin as well as the Arab minority, will no longer be Israelis and can be expelled. Yay

There already was a Mosque at ground zero.

Jonny linked me this a while back and it fell into the elephant graveyard of tabs. Anyway as the title suggests the proposed Muslim Community centre, if it were a mosque, wouldn't be the first Mosque at the site of the two towers. Man this would've had more impact if I posted it when I was linked it. :sigh:

sorry jonny

American elites like totally annoyed about Qur'an burning.

Yeah so some shitty little 50 member congregation church in Florida is going to burn some Qur'ans because gubmint wont let them burn crosses where black folk live no more. Its an unpleasant but minor act of intolerance in a state, heck a nation, which sees a good deal of unpleasant acts of intolerance. But the "great and the good" are falling over themselves to condemn it, heck General Petraeus has entered the public sphere to boost his image for a presidential run taken a break from killing Afghanis and Pakistanis to publicly complain about this minor event and how it threatens the TRoops"

Of course this is because the powerful in the US care about the lives of the poors they send off to die in the middle east and how their favourite punching bag minority is treated. What they certainly aren't doing is deliberately making a big deal about this in the hopes it inflames anger among Muslims around the world (which it has) and makes westerners afraid of Muslims and their possible retaliations, people who are divided, afraid and angry and thus unable to realise their common interests are certainly not something they find desirable. Of course the absolute worst case scenario they'll do everything in their power to prevent is this anger over a storm in a tea cup leading to another terror attack, the further curtailment of civil rights this would force our leaders to impose is something that turns their very stomachs to think about.

Fun fact: Hitler was Austrian.

A far right party in Austria, one of the most intolerant and racist countries in the EU (something there is hot competition for) has launched a web game on their website in which you attempt to kill muezzins and blow up mosques. This comes days after a German banker and members of the Social Democrats said Jews and Muslims were to blame for all of Germany's ills, his bank are yet to fire him. You know how after the Wall Street Crash lots of anger was directed towards the Jews rather than addressing real problems? Well this is totally different because,

The Guardian is absurdly optimistic.

So apparently some amongst the GOP are beinging to worry their hatemongering, xenophobia and racism will hurt their election chances. Quite why they're worrying their core principles might be failing them when they've worked so well in the past I'm unsure. Their central concern seems to be their hysteria about brown people building a religious community centre is distracting voters from their efforts to shift the blame for the aftermath of Bush era "free" market policies onto Obama.

"Rising star" of the party Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie is worried about it for some reason, he of course blames the Democratic party as much of the GOP of course. But seriously, Christ Christie? I can only imagine his middle name is Christ with his parents fervently hoping he would be so "Christian" that he would be Christ Cubed.

But heck, when part of the GOP is worried you're being too racist and hateful albeit for political reasons and not common decency, you must be being spectacularly hateful.

Of course the final paragraph illustrates another potential reason members of the party might be backing away from Islamophobic hysteria:

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has called for an official investigation into the opposition. "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some," she said. "And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded." "How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we've been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City."

Given the corporate astroturfing of the Tea Party movement it could just be that the popular anger over this issue has been calmly bought and paid for rather than spontaneously emerged.

Computerised profiling halted, for now.

I mentioned a while ago about this project to monitor two predominantly Muslim areas of the UK with CCTV that tracked people movements. Well it seems thanks to the Guardian investigation it has been halted while a "full and in-depth consultation" takes place but both the Police and local government seem determined to bring the scheme online so the consultation is likely a delaying tactic so as to wait for public anger to subside and then bring it in.

My lord though, imagine British governmental agencies delaying something so as to maintain their current course!