Wednesday, April 27, 2011

of Crazies and ordinary folks

Of Gods and Men: a review.

more HERE.

Yes, holy monks killed by jihadis funded by Islamic charities.

Now if they'd only make a film about my friends who were killed by "freedom fighters" funded by the world council of churches.

It's the extremism, not the violence, stupid. The "True believer" doesn't require religion per se: he only requires a higher cause to give his life meaning, and a bad guy to blame his problems on, and he isn't exactly one to be dissuaded by weak pieties.
Hoffer believes that mass movements are interchangeable, that adherents will often flip from one movement to another, and that the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable; that religious, nationalist and social movements, whether radical or reactionary, tend to attract the same type of followers, behave in the same way and use the same tactics, even when their stated goals or values different.

I have another problem with the film: The film is impressive, but so subtle that it makes you admire the monks as something beyond the ordinary, not something to emulate in your daily life.

And that is not true: The heroism of ordinary folks is all around us, just rarely seen in the media. Storm stories anyone?

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the curse of Tut's Trumpets.streaming audio at BBC4: more HERE.

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Today's Manila Bulletin had a photo of "Greenpeace" anti nuke demonstrators.

Yup. another outside funded group paying for rich yuppies in Manila to "do something" politically correct, instead of doing something practical, like working with street kids, or doing something dangerous, like going after the real problem (i.e. corruption).

Yet in this, I agree with them: the dirty little secret is that Nuclear power is safe, as long as you have obsessive compulsive folks working there, and you aren't hit with a 9.0 earthquake, as the problems in Japan and Chernoblyl show, if you don't, then sometimes things go wrong.

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