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Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim.  That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…

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Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

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Is LGBT-Muslim Clash Aiding Rise of Right in Europe?

…he said. Participants in a “Straight Lives Matter” rally in Sydney were outnumbered by police and counter-protesters. Meanwhile, ballots have reportedly been stolen from people’s mailboxes. In other news, the Tasmanian Parliament approved legislation to allow people convicted under pre-1997 laws against homosexual activity to have those offences stricken from their records. Philippines: Anti-discrimination bill gets final House approval; legislati…

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Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

…otos of two teenagers who died together in a scuba diving accident; and thousands of tributes to grandparents. The temple was full of memorials brought from home and assembled on site. Thousands of messages were written on every inch of the temple walls, doorways, stairs, and railings. Many of us recorded the letters, altar pieces, collages, and beautifully arranged mementos in photographs, disregarding their impermanence. The temple has also come…

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What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…

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What the Lost Finale is Really About

…soul) damned.” To be lost is not merely a geographic problem for marooned airline passengers, or for men unwilling to stop and ask for directions—it’s a spiritual and moral condition. These days a google search turns up over 500,000,000 hits (that’s half a billion); not too surprising for a basic and often-used term. Similar numerical results come from google searches on terms like “run” and “hide.” Meanwhile, “found” yields over 1.3 trillion hit…

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U.S. Religious Right Groups Support Move Toward ‘Illiberalism’ of Hungary and Poland; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…Grozny before this year’s purge against gay men. Bula, handed me his cell phone, showing me a picture of himself with a broken nose and a black eye. “This happened in Moscow where I was hiding after I fled from Grozny. I was attacked by two Chechens who came to look for me. After that I escaped to Western Europe in 2016.” Even then, the threats continued. “A few days ago,” Bula said, “the police came to my parent’s house in Chechnya. They demande…

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Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

…planation offered for the panic was that the cheering of Olympics fans for Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters sounded like gunfire. In an episode titled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” from the The Twilight Zone‘s first season, aliens discover that they can conquer Earth most easily by using flickering lights to infuse paranoia and fear in its human inhabitants. They found that communities thus charged would turn on each other and…

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An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

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Invited by Allah

…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…

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