Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

NADA - New American Dark Ages, other voices

Last Week’s WTF?!

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Wolves Terrorizing Catron County

MEXICAN WOLF program personnel are the ones flagrantly and regularly breaking federal laws and regulations and thereby causing intolerable endangerment in Catron County as the people are made to tow the line in all areas regarding safety for wolves.

There are many similarities between dumping killer predators in people’s yards and commandeering airplanes and flying them into buildings. In both cases the targets are people, not government.

These federal functionaries who illegally and/or unsafely dump killer predators are not attacking the U.S. government. They are attacking average citizens in our homes and on our properties. …

Will the Department of Justice explain why cover-ups and the breaking of federal law and rules leading to illegal predator dumping is not terrorism, and why they are shirking their duty? Will the U.S. attorney explain to the world why planned and deliberate acts of terror directed against the people are of no concern to his office, if indeed, that is the case?

MARY MACNAB
Blue, Ariz.

A few years ago, conservative loonies feared The New World Order, enforced by jackbooted thugs, black helicopters and UN forces. Before that, the bogeyman was a communist. (Why do we let the fearful set our agenda?)

This is what happens when we engage in a war without end against a faceless enemy that could be anywhere, anytime (look over your shoulder, look under your bed). Terrorism is the new name for anything you don’t like. It’s becoming meaningless, as are the conservatives. mjh

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Bible Literalism is Voluntary Ignorance

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If you believe the universe is only a few thousand years old, you are wrong. This is not a matter of opinion or perspective. This is willful ignorance. This is choosing to be stupid. That is one’s choice, but unbearable to witness. mjh

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Denver Post – Museum’s biblical take on “history”
Exhibit opens to public Monday
By Dylan T. Lovan, The Associated Press

Most scientists say there’s a gulf of millions of years between humans and the giant lizards, but according to the Creation Museum, they lived in harmony a few thousand years ago. It’s part of the literal interpretation of the Bible adopted by Ham and other creationists.

“People are just fascinated by dinosaurs, but they’ve sort of become synonymous with millions of years and evolution,” he said.

Evolution is derided at the 60,000- square-foot facility, packed with high-tech exhibits designed by an acclaimed theme-park artist, animatronic dinos and a huge wooden ark. In this Old Testament version of history, dinosaurs appeared on the same day God created other land animals.

A Colorado group offers a similar take on area museums. Littleton- based Biblically Correct Tours, founded in 1988, offers religious tours of secular sites, such as the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The Kentucky museum’s displays include fossils, hung in large glass cases. Ham said most fossils were created by the massive flood detailed in the book of Genesis.

“The Bible doesn’t talk about fossils, but it gives you a basis for understanding why there are fossils around the world,” he said. [mjh: what a curious equivocation, to take the Bible literally but then fill in gaps as needed. Why not just say there is no such thing as a fossil because the Bible doesn’t mention them?]

Ham said the stories of the Bible are supported by science, a notion that has drawn the ire of science educators across the country.

“They make such a point of trying to make it appear scientific,” said Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor, author and critic of the museum. “Instead of shying away from those things that clearly disprove what they’re trying to say, they use those things for deception.”

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Speak Truth to Power

My favorite contemporary writer is Dan Neil. I think he pays his bills by writing car reviews for the LA Times, but that earns him the option to write a column labelled “Pop Culture.” Neil is literate; nearly every column includes some deliciously offbeat word that gives me pause.

While I enjoy almost everything Neil writes about contemporary culture, I especially appreciate his take on our war-culture. I’ll let him speak for himself here, but if this excerpt doesn’t impress you, seek him out — he’s worth reading. mjh

[mjh: In a column titled “Bomb Mots,” Neil writes about cable TV shows devoted to military weapons. I’ll resist the urge to highlight a few choice phrases. I think you’ll see them for yourself.]

Bomb Mots – Los Angeles Times

God knows I love to see things blow up. A proper gentleman’s education cannot be considered complete unless he has, at some point, shot a watermelon with a high-powered rifle. But I have a major problem with a lot of this programming, the first being its clinical and morally vacant fascination in killing. You know that familiar wing-camera footage of white-orange napalm blooming in the jungle canopy in Vietnam? There are people under there. At the other end of every smart bomb is some poor dumb bastard who is about to be blown to bits. When I hear some narrator crow about America’s precision bombing, I just cringe. There is nothing precise about a 1,000-pound bomb.

I had a similar reaction to media coverage of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Grand Challenge, DARPA’s annual open competition for autonomous ground vehicles. How many people registered that this was a program to develop robotic weapons? Did anybody even see “The Terminator”?

It’s not about the necessity of armed conflict, or morality of a particular weapon. All of that is, as they say in the military, above my pay grade. It’s about making glib entertainment out of mechanized death. You couldn’t blame a visitor from another country watching this program and concluding that Americans have slipped into a nutty late-Roman fascism.

[mjh: I cut from this Neil’s exchange with one of the hosts of such a show, but here’s the ending.]

Good propaganda fools the people who see it. Great propaganda fools the people who make it.

Letters-to-the-Editor, NADA - New American Dark Ages

How Some People Celebrated Earth Day (updated 5/8/07)

As I do every other day, I walked Lucky Dog around the neighborhood park today. Our park has two soccer fields, both of which are in use most Saturdays and, maybe, Sundays. Today, all around the two fields, I picked up small water bottles thoughtlessly tossed on the ground by players or fans (parents). We tell ourselves many lies, one of which is that “sports build character and discipline.” The evidence of that litters fields all over the world. Another lie: “environmental consciousness has become mainstream.” Or any kind of consciousness, for that matter.

To all the coaches, referees and parents: how about a post-game sweep of the field to clean-up? Show some leadership, teach some discipline, encourage some character. To the athletes: it’s up to you to keep your world from becoming a pigsty. mjh

PS: original blog entry 04/23/07; printed in abqjournal.com 5/8/07

Dump Duhbya

Who Represents Diversity and Change?

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Republicans at first debate

Democrats at first debate

The choice among Democrats is clearly diverse, though the largest minority group represented is Senators. What isn’t obvious from looking at all the old white men among Republicans is that they, too, are unusually diverse (for Republicans), including an Italian-American and a Mormon. Which party represents change? Which party represents holding your nose and sticking with 8 years of failure?

Of course, where the debates were held also has intentional symbolism. Each location was named after the party’s most revered icon. Democrats met at a historically black college in the South (where they avoided discussing race), in a hall named for Martin Luther King, who represents suffering and struggling along the road to a better world. Republicans met at the Raygun Library, named after a privileged white guy and B-actor they love beyond any understanding.

Do Republicans have the slightest hope of winning any office in 2008? Sure, with swiftboats full of money, you can do anything in America. mjh

’08 Republicans Differ on Defining Party’s Future

There were revealing moments that went past the well-rehearsed lines by all the candidates. Three of the candidates — Mr. Huckabee, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — raised their hands to signal that they do not believe in evolution. [mjh: splitting the cretin vote]

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070504/ZNYT02/705040353/1005/SPORTS0106

NADA - New American Dark Ages, other voices

This Week’s WTF?!

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

The temporary global warming that we are now enjoying is indeed being caused by the same phenomenon that created the infamous “dust bowl” in the Midwest during the 1930s, namely a 40-year drought cycle. We are in the middle of another one. It, too, shall pass.

No one yet knows what causes short-term climate cycles. Real scientists think that they are the result of periodic, but not yet fully understood, solar activity. There is apparently a correlation between climate cycles and fluctuating sunspot activity. …

The important point is that there is no evidence for any over sweeping global warming caused by manmade carbon dioxide production, or any other greenhouse gas for that matter. The longer, drier summers and shorter winters we are now experiencing are a result of the 40-year cycle that we are about half way through.

In another decade or so, we will pass back into a cooler, wetter cycle like last occurred during the 1980s. At that time, I am sure the alarmists will be out again, as they were back in the 1980s, decrying the inevitable, inescapable and entirely destructive global cooling. They will, of course, exhort you to stop using valuable energy for the enjoyment of your life, because it will be needed to melt the great ice sheets. You can’t win.

JOHN BLAYLOCK
Los Alamos

John has figured out the environmentalists: we live to make you miserable. Yup, all we want to do is force you to live a primitive, bleak lifestyle (like ranching, except we want to destroy that, too). Fortunately, the good people who grow rich off of your ignorance are standing up to us. Show your support by wasting something every day! Join the oxymorons at Conservatives For Waste! mjh

Dump Duhbya

Four More Years? Or Forty?

Mission AccomplishedApril Toll Is Highest Of ’07 for U.S. Troops
Over 100 Killed in Month; Iraqi Deaths Far Higher
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD, April 30 — The deaths of more than 100 American troops in April made it the deadliest month so far this year for U.S. forces in Iraq, underscoring the growing exposure of Americans as thousands of reinforcements arrive for an 11-week-old offensive to tame sectarian violence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/30/AR2007043001929_pf.html

Republicans Buck Bush On Iraq Benchmarks – washingtonpost.com, By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Brushing aside White House opposition, Republican leaders in Congress said yesterday that negotiations on a second war spending bill should begin with benchmarks of success for the Iraqi government, and possible consequences if those benchmarks are not met.

Democratic leaders will send a $124 billion war funding bill to President Bush today that would establish such benchmarks and tie them to troop withdrawals, which would begin as early as July 1 if they are not met. The bill will arrive at the White House on the fourth anniversary of Bush’s speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq before a banner that proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.”

The administration dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday to try to slam shut bipartisan talk of punishing the Iraqi government for not meeting benchmarks. Bush took the same uncompromising tone yesterday when he reiterated his veto promise.

“That’s not to say I’m not interested in their opinions. I am,” he said of congressional leaders. “I look forward to working with members of both parties to get a bill that doesn’t set artificial timetables and doesn’t micromanage and gets the money to our troops.”

But GOP leaders did not take the benchmark issue off the table. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested last week that although Republicans could not accept linking benchmarks to troop withdrawals, they could tie them to $5.7 billion in nonmilitary assistance for the Iraqi government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/30/AR2007043001527_pf.html