Think Humanely

Lawrence Krauss, an award-winning physicist and best-selling author, recently gave an impressive talk at the Atheist Alliance International 2009 convention. His Hiding in the Mirror dealt with the possibility of multiple dimensions (beyond space and time) and parallel universes. In the video below, Dr. Krauss addresses, amongst several fascinating subjects, how the universe could have come into existence out of “nothing.” Enjoy:

Nota bene: Religious folk may prefer to plug their ears or, as can usually be expected, ignore the video altogether and continue reveling in their steaming ignorance, akin to a pig rolling blissfully in its own feces.

I recently wrote about the rather obscene opposition to Senator Al Franken’s proposed amendment to cease doing business with defense contractors who refuse to allow their employees to sue in court when they have been raped by coworkers or superiors. It would be rational to assume that given the public blowback that resulted from such misogynistic and greedy ideology, the thirty Republicans who voted ‘No’ would either back peddle, devise a better excuse to justify their arcane belief system, or vomit forth some unholy union of these two options. But no. Not this GOP. Watch this clip from The Rachel Maddow Show, which features an interview with Jamie Leigh Jones, one of many who was brutalized by defense contractors and denied her day in court by a company more concerned with profit and protecting rapists than it is in justice, morality, and all things decent:

The senators refuse to defend their vote, but not out of guilt or shame. It’s more likely that it’s out of arrogance and disrespect. We, they think, don’t need to explain ourselves, and certainly not to women. It’s also likely that their refusal to defend their vote is out of the obviously erroneous conviction that they are simply right and everyone else is wrong. Imagine being asked to defend your belief that you’re against slavery or slaughtering infants. You wouldn’t even bother. Such moral truths, like our rights as free citizens, are self-evident. And in their own twisted way, these thirty men (and yes, they are all men) firmly believe that they do not need to answer questions because they actually have the moral, legislative, and judicial high ground.

As disturbing as either of these scenarios is, neither is nearly as contemptible and depraved as the news reported in The Raw Story. Daniel Tencer notes

according to a report at the Huffington Post, the amendment — though considered to be wildly popular — may have trouble getting any further. Reporter Sam Stein cites “multiple sources” who told him Sen. Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, is considering watering down the amendment, or eliminating it altogether, when it goes to a vote on the Senate floor as part of a defense appropriations bill. Stein reports:

“Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up.”

As Rachel Slajda reported at TalkingPointsMemo, despite the horrible optics of appearing to be in favor of rape, both the White House and the Pentagon are opposed to the amendment, at least in its current form.

Liberals and progressives shouldn’t be surprised that the Pentagon is opposed to Franken’s amendment. The fact that Obama, the great liberal hope, also opposes it is shameful and an utter embarrassment to all who consider themselves one of his supporters. Furthermore, that even one of our elected representatives can be bought off to ignore the due process of rape victims should trigger an automatic recall, if not a constitutional convention. There is something deeply, sickeningly wrong with not just our democracy, but with our people. There is a disease eating away at us, and these politicians are our canaries. Their gross immorality, indifference, and corruptness are our warning sign: change now or forever lose your way.

Think what you will of Al Franken the comedian, but as a United States senator Franken has continued to impress. His most recent act of distinction is an amendment that would bar federal business with companies that refuse to allow their employees to seek redress in a court if they are raped, assaulted, or discriminated against by coworkers or superiors.

A number of defense contractors currently force their employees to sign away the right to sue if they are raped. Why would contractors include such a callous contractual agreement? Apparently, it is because rape is a systematic problem within their ranks. Arguably the most notable example of this barbarous behavior is that of Jamie Leigh Jones. A 19-year-old Jones was brutally gang-raped by coworkers at KBR and Halliburton in Iraq. While our troops fight for “freedom” and “democracy” in Iraq, this young woman was locked in a shipping container after the raping finally ended. KBR/Halliburton security guards were posted outside the container and Jones was denied medical attention. While Jones was eventually freed, she was told that she would be fired if she brought attention to what was done to her. And while Jones has received the bulk of the media attention when it comes to this issue, she is, sadly, not alone.

Karen Houppert recounts what happened to Dawn Leamon, a KBR paramedic, during her time in Iraq:

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand–but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Leamon would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp’s military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. “Because then, all of a sudden, if you’ve done exactly what you’ve been instructed not to do–tell somebody–then you’re in danger,” Leamon says.

Houppert goes on to write, “a growing number of women employees working for US defense contractors in the Middle East are coming forward with complaints of violence directed at them. [...] a rash of new sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints are being lodged against overseas contractors–by their own employees. Todd Kelly, a lawyer in Houston, says his firm alone has fifteen clients with sexual assault, sexual harassment and retaliation complaints [...] against Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC (KBR), as well as Cayman Island-based Service Employees International Inc., a KBR shell company.”

Fortunately, Franken’s amendment passed with 68 votes. What is tragic, however, is that thirty Republicans voted against it. In other words, the perverted GOP voted 3 to 1 against Franken’s proposal. Watch Jon Stewart satirical attack of this disgraceful behavior:

Every single one of those thirty GOP senators, all of whom are men, should be forced to tell Jones, Leamon, and every other woman raped while working on behalf of their country, why they shouldn’t be able to seek justice.

Jones said that the passage of the amendment “means the world to me [. . .] It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”

This Saturday is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. It was first recognized by the United Nations in 1992 and is intended to not only raise awareness of the scope and destruction of poverty around the globe, but also to make the voices of the poor heard.

A minimum of 80% of the world’s population are forced to survive on less than $10 a day. Approximately 1.1 billion people have inadequate access to water and more than 2.5 billion lack access to the most basic sanitation. Of these people, 660 million live on less than $2 a day and another 385 million survive on less than $1.

1 in 2 children live in poverty and more than 80% of humanity lives in countries where the gap between the rich and poor is growing even wider. Kofi Annan called eradicating poverty “a central challenge of our age.”

Below you’ll find an interview with Irene Khan, the head of Amnesty International, conducted by DemocracyNow! hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.

Mr. Deity is an irreverent and hilarious series of short YouTube videos created by Brian Keith Dalton (he also plays the titular character). In addition to Mr. Deity, other characters include Lucy (the Devil), with whom Mr. Deity has a sexual relationship, Larry (Mr. Deity’s personal assistant), and, of course, Jesus. Recently, Dalton has entered into agreement with Sony to turn the show into a  regular program for HBO. All of the shorts are wroth watching, but I wanted to draw particular attention to the one below. In it, Mr. Deity is having a conversation with PZ Meyers. Meyers is one of the more notable atheists and was infamously thrown out of a screening of the repellant documentary Expelled (apt title, no?), featuring the equally repellent Ben Stein, for no other reason than that he was PZ Meyers. Meyers is also the author of the blog Pharyngula. Watch and enjoy: