Free Birds, reviewed by evangelicals

Feeling down after reading the “Twelve Reasons” post, I was relieved to stumble on this review of the new movie Free Birds by the Christian outfit MOVIEGUIDE.

I have no problem with sociopolitical film reviews as such (in fact, I’m quite fond of them). But what’s funny about MG’s is how earnestly literal they are. Movies shouldn’t be “the ax for the frozen sea within us,” encouraging compassion, moral questioning, and awareness of other perspectives. They're seen as purely didactic, and their messages either promote conservative Christian dogma or subvert it. So MG tots up the “Christian” elements, swearwords, and sexual acts to determine how well a movie performs as a celluloid sermon or, on the other hand, pollutes vulnerable minds.

Here’s their summary of Free Birds:

Light mixed pagan worldview with strong revisionist history regarding the pilgrims mixed with some biblical virtues that include sacrifice, hard work, the importance of standing for something bigger than oneself, and making peace, one pilgrim also says, “Thank God,” the turkeys perform a symbolic ritual over their dead chief where some loose leaves swarm together into the air, as if his soul is ascending heaven, there’s also a reference to “the great turkey” which in the end turns out isn’t a divine being, evolution is briefly suggested; no foul language but “shut up,” “buttocks,” and “son of a gun” are said; some light slapstick animated violence, such as the pilgrims try to shoot the turkeys, and they send their dogs on them, and there’s a tense scene that includes fire; no sexual content, but a light kiss between turkeys; no nudity; no alcohol use; no smoking or drug use; and, one character acts selfishly, but learns his lesson in the end.

I think it was the “light kiss between turkeys” that got me. (Could have been “mixed pagan worldview,” or the mention of a suggestive reference to evolution alongside “foul language,”* sex, drugs, and violence.**)

The very idea that turkeys might have a point of view, from which humans – Americans! – look like terrifying killers is anathema:

One of the main issues with FREE BIRDS is regarding its revisionist view of history. Though the movie does begin with a comical disclaimer stating its fictionalized version of the actual events, it still may confuse young children. The very fact that the movie sets up the pilgrims as the villains is not only wildly outlandish, but also disrespectful. To make mockery of the men, women, and children who starved, suffered and died to build this country shows poor taste in MOVIEGUIDE®’s opinion. The movie doesn’t portray all the pilgrims as evil, only the hunters, but the rest are only shown as spineless sheep who bend to the evil hunters’ every command. Though it’s likely the filmmakers only intention was to entertain children with a admittedly clever plot, it should never be at the expense of damaging a child’s education or perception of America’s heroes.

But here’s the part I liked best:

Also, for a movie about Thanksgiving Day, FREE BIRDS fails at conveying a message of thankfulness. Instead of being thankful for what we have and for what God has provided for us and our country past and present,*** the children seeing this movie might demand a vegetarian replacement of the traditional turkey meal. FREE BIRDS had many opportunities to teach positive lessons of gratitude, but it never did.

For primarily this reason, Free Birds “merits a caution for susceptible children” – those whose capacity to care about the suffering and deaths of others hasn’t been entirely deadened. The film is dangerous, in other words, in that children might be led to question the bogus Christian justifications for killing our fellow animals, see them sympathetically, and wish not to eat them. They might be inspired to act as moral agents who want to avoid causing suffering. How un-Christian.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m almost tempted to recommend it on the basis of this possibility alone. So much of our culture is dedicated to indoctrinating people to subdue or ignore their sympathy with other animals and to rationalize exploitation and killing. A work that has the potential to activate sympathy and encourage children to stand up for those who suffer and are killed has to have something worthwhile about it.

* I’ll resist the obvious pun.

** Calling the humans’ attempts to kill the birds “light slapstick…violence” is pretty much what I’d expect, as was the inability to appreciate any other violence (which appears in the trailer itself).

*** Incidentally, MOVIEGUIDE also awards the Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays (“The primary purpose of the prize is to further the influence of moral and spiritual values within the film and television industries. Seeking to promote a spiritually uplifting, redemptive worldview, the Kairos Prize was founded to inspire first-time and beginning screenwriters to produce compelling, entertaining, spiritually uplifting scripts that result in a greater increase in either man’s love or understanding of God”); the Epiphany Prizes for Inspiring Movies & TV (“for those popular, entertaining movies and television programs which are wholesome, uplifting, inspirational, redemptive, and moral…to encourage filmmakers and television producers to create movies and television shows that help increase man’s understanding and love of God”); and the Chronos Prizes for Inspiring Screenplays by Established Filmmakers (“designed to help established filmmakers who have made successful faith-friendly and faith-based movies and television programs and screenplays. It intends to reward successful established filmmakers who endeavor to create stories that are compelling, entertaining, inspiring, spiritually uplifting, and increase man’s love or understanding of God”).

These awards are all funded by the Templeton Foundation, who also think gratitude should be instilled in the masses, along with other important character traits.

Honoring turkeys

Ashley Capps at Free from Harm shares “12 Reasons You May Never Want to Eat Turkey Again.” It’s heartbreaking, but no one should turn away from it. Facing this reality squarely is something we owe to the turkeys and to ourselves.

I was struck hardest by her discussion of “humanely” raised and slaughtered turkeys (#10), which involves two videos from very different “humane” operations. Capps writes,

I don’t know what’s worse: the near pathological indifference to suffering displayed by the “humane” farmer in the previous video, or the sham piety displayed by this farmer, and the fabricated narrative of cosmic inevitability she imposes onto the turkey’s slaughter in order to feel okay about it: “They know — this is what they’re here for, is this amazing feast,” which is to say, Killing this turkey is something that had to be done, of course. Except, of course, that it didn’t. It bears repeating: decades of scientific evidence have irrefutably demonstrated that humans have no biological need to consume meat, milk or eggs. When we have plentiful access to plant-based foods, and a choice between sparing life or taking it — there is nothing remotely “humane” about inflicting violence and death on others just because we like the taste of their flesh and secretions. Notice, too, the disingenuous maternal rhetoric: “I love these turkeys…they’re good babies…I’ll miss them a lot.” This is humane-washing at its best, and willful self delusion at its worst. Watch the video, then answer me this: what kind of person would do that to any creature they truly cared for and loved?

Even before I became a vegetarian (and then vegan), I found this rhetoric about “thanking” the turkey for its alleged sacrifice and the like ridiculous. I don’t believe that anyone genuinely believes what they’re saying when they claim that the animals they’re killing know and accept that’s it’s their purpose to die so humans can eat them - that they’re collaborators in their victimization, offering themselves up to be killed. I don’t believe they really hold that killing and consuming someone is consistent with loving them. I don’t believe they honestly feel they’re honoring animals by cooking or serving them in a certain way or enjoying their consumption. It’s embarrassing that people actually say these things publicly. Such pitiful attempts at justifying violence are unworthy of reasonable and compassionate people. We love, respect, and honor others by refusing to participate in and fighting against their oppression and exploitation.

Meanwhile, back at Scienceblogs…

I recently checked in on Scienceblogs, for little reason other than curiosity. My preferred blogs there left for Freethought Blogs and other networks some time ago, and the whole Pepsi fiasco left a bad taste, so I haven’t dropped in there much over the past few years. (I still do like EvolutionBlog and The Pump Handle, so I may have to add them to my feeds…)

Anyway, looking back in I noticed that the front page headline was “The Downfall of Bora Zivkovic,” which struck me as a little melodramatic. The description also sounded maybe a bit too gleeful, especially at the end: “Bora, a former ScienceBlogger and cheerleader for the trustbusting that occurred here in the midst of Pepsipocalypse, also resigned from his role as Blog Editor at Scientific American.”

Yes, he was a “cheerleader” in that,* and he was right to be so. I was reminded to look back at a blog I’d noticed a while ago and which looked like a space for open corporate and military advertising and public relations: “USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog.” Typical recent posts include “‘Science in Fiction’ Kavli Science Video Contest!,” [UPDATE: see below] “LOCKHEED MARTIN SEES FESTIVAL AS CRITICAL TO INSPIRING FUTURE ENGINEERS” (a guest post by a Lockheed Martin representative),** “Northrop Grumman Foundation Sponsorship Encourages the STEM Message!,” and “GOOD and U.S. Air Force Call for Contributors to ‘Mind of a Quadrotor’ Project” (a guest post by…the Air Force).

Probably the worst is last month’s “Chevron’s Fuel Your School Program Supports Public Education Projects!”:

This fall, Fuel Your School makes it easy for local communities to help generate funding for public schools in 19 markets [note: not districts, but markets - SC].

From Oct. 1 through Oct. 31, 2013, the Fuel Your School program will donate $1, up to a total of nearly $7.1 million, to help fund eligible classroom projects when consumers purchase 8 or more gallons of fuel at participating local Chevron and Texaco stations in 14 U.S. markets.

…Chevron’s Fuel Your School program can make a big impact for public school students and their future. Be sure to tell everyone you know – friends, relatives, even the cashier at the grocery store – about fueling up at a Chevron or Texaco station during the month of October. Also, go to Facebook and “like” Chevron Fuel Your School.

So much to hate. Where do I begin? It’s using public schools to market to children.*** It’s exploiting and naturalizing the defunding of public education to get access to children and encourage people to buy gas to help schools. It’s Chevron. This is the same network that hosts Deltoid, and it’s now providing a platform for Chevron’s image promotion?

Atrocious.

UPDATE 11-23: I had confused the Kavli Foundation with the Kashi company. In my defense, I mix up names regularly. Anything from kasha to kevlar would have been vulnerable there. :)

* You can look through the “archive” section of their blog list to see all of the great bloggers who’ve left, many at that time.

** An excerpt: “…Lockheed Martin’s 60,000 technologists, scientists and engineers work hard every day to defend global security, push the boundaries of scientific discovery and deliver essential services to citizens. They do this because the United States—and the world—face complex challenges that call for innovative solutions….”

*** Check out Stephen Colbert’s bit last night about Toys “R” Us’ anti-nature advertising to children:

The Colbert Report
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The Ghosts in Our Machine

By all accounts, this is a wonderful film. Here’s an interview with Liz Marshall, the director, and the woman at the film’s center, photographer Jo-Anne McArthur. Ashley Capps describes The Ghosts:

The film explores the lives of individual animals living within, and rescued from, the mechanized prison of our modern world. Through the heart and lens of acclaimed animal photographer McArthur, we become intimately familiar with an unforgettable cast of animal subjects. Each story and photograph is a window into global animal industries: Food, Fashion, Entertainment and Research. The film asks the question: Are non-human animals property to be owned and used, or are they sentient beings deserving of rights?

…Jo-Anne writes: “I’m a story-teller by nature, and the camera is a great tool for story-gathering. After a few years of shooting random stories … I learned that I could use this amazing tool, the camera, for social change, and I could also combine my two loves – taking photos, and helping animals – to help make the world a better place.” This means that in her photos, Jo-Anne doesn’t just document cruelty to animals, she helps viewers connect with the animals by showing them as individuals, with individual faces, bodies, and stories.

…[E]ven when we don’t get the full story, we connect with the animals as individuals through the powerful personalizing details McArthur carefully emphasizes: the breath-taking eyelashes on a doomed veal calf; the intimate gesture of a spray-painted pig in a slaughter truck resting her head on the back of another pig; the mix of bravery and terror in the eyes of a caged raccoon as she uses her body to cover the babies she is so desperate and helpless to protect....

Following a successful fundraising effort, The Ghosts in Our Machine opens tomorrow in New York (Ernest Hardy at the Village Voice calls it “utterly engrossing”) and Los Angeles, and later in San Francisco and Chicago. Here’s some information about the theatrical openings, surrounding events, and how you can support the film.

Media coverage of Pavlo Lapshyn, the far Right in Europe, and secularism

In a recent post about the far Right in Europe, I discussed the sentencing of white supremacist murderer and terrorist Pavlo Lapshyn. The threat from movements of the far Right comes not only from the actions of individuals in their ranks but from sympathetic and even encouraging responses from governments. It also comes from distorted public views of these actions, and those views are powerfully influenced by media coverage (or the lack thereof). Steve Rendall at FAIR describes the imbalance in US media coverage of the murders of Mohammed Saleem and Lee Rigby:

This story of terrorism hardly registered in US news media. According to the Nexis news database, Mohammed Saleem and Pavlo Lapshyn were mentioned in just 10 US newspaper and news wire stories, most of them brief Associated Press and States News Service wires (e.g., Associated Press, 10/25; States News Service, 19/25). The New York Times was alone among major newspapers, running a detailed report on October 23.

Saleem’s story can be contrasted with that of British Army Sergeant Lee Rigby, murdered by Islamist assailants in a London street a few weeks later. Rigby and his killers, Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo, were mentioned in 570 US newspapers and news wire stories.

There's more than one reason for that. Rigby's killers stayed at the murder scene and were videotaped talking about killing the soldier. But it's hard to deny that one reason Rigby's story got [more] than 50 times the coverage of Saleem's is that it fits a false and damaging media narrative about who are the perpetrators and who the victims of such horrific acts.

This neglect is one part of the problem. Another is the reluctance even to acknowledge non-Muslim terrorism, especially when the victims are Muslims. Steve Rose suggests that the refusal to call Lapshyn’s intent and actions what they plainly were provides

further proof that terrorism is an empty term, a label reflexively applied when the perpetrator has a specific religious identity. As a result, supporters of the English Defence League can continue to claim, ‘That all the terrorists at the moment are Muslim’, which is another falsehood.

Until we stop dehumanising Muslims to feed the illusion of our own moral and cultural superiority, we will not learn from this tragedy. Nor will we reflect on our own capacity for terror on those we oppose. Nobody has the monopoly on terrorism. It has no nationality or religious faith, it crosses borders and cultures.

Yet, like any fundamentalist, Lapshyn's utopian vision was built on the aggressive removal of the 'Other'. He hoped his campaign would cause Muslims to ‘leave’ a section of Birmingham. In isolation, that idea is closer to the mainstream than many admit.

Public acknowledgment of rightwing violence and campaigns of terror is badly needed. In one incident, last week in France, someone painted Nazi graffiti outside the home of Abdallah Zekri.

Earlier in October, a heated conflict surrounding the slaughtering of conscious animals as part of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, the “Feast of the Sacrifice,” led to the burning of a mosque in Gdansk, Poland.*

Zekri and others are making the connection between the campaigns against Muslims and those against Jews, past and present (it helps when the racists make it so obvious). The Jewish community in Gdansk issued a statement associating the mosque attack with Kristallnacht, the 75th anniversary of which is in a few days:

Representatives of the Jewish community of Gdansk, Poland, said the torching of a mosque had “frightening connotations” of the Nazi-inspired Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews.

The association was inescapable, three of the city’s Jewish leaders wrote in a statement Thursday. “On the eve of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, during which synagogues were burned in the Free City of Gdansk, the burning of the mosque must bear frightening connotations,” the statement said.

Unidentified individuals started the fire early Wednesday morning. It consumed the mosque’s door and some of the equipment, resulting in damages to the tune of $16,000.

“In the face of this cowardly act of barbarism, Jews of Gdansk cannot stand idly by,” wrote the authors of the statement, Michal Samet, Michal Rucki and Mieczyslaw Abramowicz. “We express our deep indignation against the attack on the temple and the sadness of the fact that it took place in Gdansk.”

There are other disturbing developments. Last week, (alleged) secularists held a joint event with Catholics protesting the construction of a mosque in the French city of Metz:

The demonstration was initiated by Génération Patriotes and enthusiastically supported by Résistance Républicaine. You might think this is an odd alliance, as Résistance Républicaine is a front organisation for Riposte Laïque, a militantly secularist group, while Génération Patriotes is fiercely religious. The one claims to be advocating a hardline version of laïcité, while the other aggressively upholds the Christian heritage of France.

However the French far right has been redefining laïcité to incorporate the promotion of Christianity, precisely in order to facilitate unity in inciting hatred of Islam. The forthcoming Résistance Républicaine demonstration in Paris has been called to defend laïcité ‘and our other traditions’. In addition to supporting the 1905 law which established the separation of church and state, it has adopted the slogans ‘Hands off Christmas!’ and ‘Hands off our Christian holidays!’

Fortunately, the Metz event seems to have been about as well attended as a Washington ex-gay rally, but again, the danger doesn’t just lie with the campaigns themselves but with the responses of the powerful and the shaping of public attitudes. The key insight in Pitt’s post is the recognition that “the French far right has been redefining laïcité to incorporate the promotion of Christianity.” (Something similar seems to be going on with…whatever the hell this is.)

I don’t think he has it quite right, though, when he suggests that this redefinition is being attempted “precisely in order to facilitate unity in inciting hatred of Islam.” That’s part of it, but the other aspect is that they’re confident that their religion, as the historically dominant one, will come out ahead to the extent that this view of religion as national tradition – and therefore deserving of public privilege and power even in a nominally secular society - comes to hold sway. Their confidence isn’t misplaced. There are a number of examples in the US and Europe of this sort of cooptation of secularists, who willingly or unknowingly participate in campaigns that tend not only to foster hostility and even violence toward Muslims but also, often, to expand the influence of rightwing Christianity.

There are of course plenty of real religious secularists. But there are also many religious people on the Right who want to use an ersatz secularism to promote both anti-Muslim bigotry and their own religion and its role in government. Genuine secularists should make it clear that our secularism is universal and that secular policies should be developed and applied without partiality to any religion, including when it’s defined as local tradition or heritage.

* I oppose the slaughter of animals in this or any religious ritual, as part of a general rejection of hurting and killing animals. I don’t, as should be well known to anyone who’s read what I’ve written over the years, believe that people should be given a pass or legal exemption on the basis of religion. Causing suffering and killing animals for religion should end just like causing suffering and killing animals for other human purpose.

Focused campaigns such as this, though, are often useful to opportunists looking to exploit the situation to stoke prejudice against marginalized people and spread racist tropes about how barbaric and primitive they are. Further, many who join these campaigns lack a comprehensive understanding of the scale and realities of factory farming and its links to halal slaughter. In voicing our objections, animal activists have to be cognizant of the cultural context into which our protests fall and their possible effects within that context.

Here’s a good example of how to address the issue without furthering bigotry, from treekisser and the very funny Vegans Must Be Stopped:

treekisser:

Today commences the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, during which millions of sheep, goats, camels, and other animals have been or will be ritually slaughtered for the occasion. (http://huff.to/19LhGk0)

The concept of sacrificing another being, in this case by slitting the throat of a fully conscious animal, always boggles my mind. Setting aside my personal distain for organized religion, it just doesn’t seem logical. Taking someone else’s life is their sacrifice, not yours. If you believe a magical person in the sky requires you to spill blood to prove your devotion, spill your own.

To the millions of animals mercilessly slaughtered today, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the pain you experienced while your life bled away. I’m sorry for the fear you endured while witnessing family members be killed in front of you. I’m sorry humanity’s superstitions have manifested themselves in a way that costs the lives of so many human and non-human animals every day. Rest in peace.

(**Because this is the internet, and the internet breeds miscommunication and misinterpretation, I should clarify that this is not an anti-Islam post. I’m equally saddened by the 45 million turkeys being slaughtered this month in preparation for Thanksgiving).

EDIT: Based on the comments left so far, apparently I need to clarify a few more things. When I refer to superstition and believing in a magic person in the sky, I’m referencing all religion, not Islam. I realize their are nuances of all religions that I don’t understand, and I don’t pretend to. My overarching point is the sadness and futility of all the lives lost as a consequence of religion/tradition. Today, the focus is on Eid Al-Adha. Next month, you’ll see my same level of outrage regarding slaughter in preparation for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For tradition, for religion, for superstition, for taste preference, for holidays, for sport, for culinary adventures, or for fashion, I will never be okay with needless killing.

To think you had the nerve to actually get people to think about the concept of the killing of animals for ritual purposes in the name of religion is most upsetting. Where does such an outrageous appeal for peace towards sentient life have a place in religion? You should be ashamed of yourself.

Also don’t tell us that you have the same problem with other cruelty caused by other religions as people will not believe that because they will simply not want to, and that should be good enough for you.

I’ll have you know that chopping the head off an animal is an incredibly humane thing to do. Just look at all the people telling you so, and you can bet your bottom dollar that all of these people saying so, have had their heads chopped off, so they know exactly how little pain is involved in the action. They’re not just speaking out of their ass. It’s very scientific.

It’s much more humane than just not doing it in the first place. I hope when somebody non-consensually kills me, they do so in such a peaceful manner.

Also, as other people have mentioned, they give the meat to the homeless, because as well all know that homeless people cannot and will not ever eat plant based foods, so that would just be ridiculous to give them that. Almost as ridiculous as purposely breeding a creature with the pre-meditated reason of killing them, when you can just use that land to grow crops.

I can only hope that you have thought about your actions here. When it comes to disrespecting beliefs that are based on religion, you should be quiet.

I hate it when people give me shit for committing cannibilism under the name of my God, Zandabar, the Underwater Peanut Butter God. I know all of these people who want respect for their actions based on religion, would completely, in turn, respect my religious beliefs and not criticize me in any way, especially when they know nothing of my religion, and my God and I can justify my actions by merely saying My god says it ok, so shut your mouth,

If any of you are upset by my actions under the name of my religion, let me just say that when I do what I do, I make sure to give blessings, show praise, talk about miracles, and a add a bunch of other flowery, theatrical, meaningless, and empty words to justify my behavior, since I can plead ignorance to independent thought.

Day of the Dead assortment

First, vegan DOTD cookies (these are from last year, but they’re cute so who cares?):

(Thank you, you-know-who-you-are, for the link. :))

Second, Death in Paradise:



Beautiful scenery, entertaining stories, a recurring character who’s a lizard, and a fun soundtrack – what’s not to like? I’m disappointed to learn, belatedly, that Ben Miller is leaving during the third season. :(

Third…the Dead:

Anti-atheist bigotry is alive and well

American Atheists' 2014 national meeting (featuring keynote speaker Chris Kluwe) will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah. As Austin Cline describes, though, they’re having some trouble publicizing the event in the state: “[M]ost billboard companies won't even consider running the ads because they are too controversial and/or offensive. Apparently, depicting families and nice-looking people while stating that they are atheists is enough to be ‘controversial’ and ‘offensive’ in Utah….”

Move along, nothing to hear here.

Ecorazzi reports:

A lot of “strange noises” were coming from the Sunshine Dairy Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, earlier this week, causing some alarm among nearby residents. Concerned phone calls came into the police department between midnight and 7AM reporting “inhuman” sounds, but callers were told not to worry – they were just the moans from mourning cows who recently had their baby calves taken away from them.

Newbury police Sgt. Patty Fisher said that it’s the annual separation of cows and calves, and the cries and moans are all part of the process. “It happens every year at the same time,” she said.

The concerned phone calls over the sounds prompted Sgt. Fisher to post a message on the police station’s Facebook page:

“Residents in the area of Sunshine Dairy Farm may notice loud noises coming from the dairy cows at all hours of the day and night. We’ve been informed that the cows are not in distress and that the noises are a normal part of farming practices.”

Nothing to say here, either - comments on the Newburyport News article are now closed.

Yasha Levine reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath as propaganda

It goes well:

"David and Goliath" is the right book for our times. America is in the grips of historic economic inequality, unemployment and misery; it’s being looted and trashed by finance hucksters and extraction industry oligarchs, while its citizens are disengaged and distracted and too tired and overworked to really do much about it.

Gladwell offers to soothe this swirling world of shit, misery, exploitation and corruption with a simple counterintuitive message: People who live paycheck to paycheck or dig in the trash, well, they're not as disadvantaged as popular wisdom would have us believe. The truly disadvantaged are the rich. Because wealth, power, mansions, Porsches, private jets, servants, elite private schools, influence and access — all those great things — are barriers preventing them from realizing their true potential and achieving success. In short: Wealth holds you back.

…You…get to visit the home of pioneering oncologist Jay Freireich, who helped develop the first treatment of leukemia because he grew up in a poor Hungarian immigrant community during the Great Depression, had his father abandon the family and watched his mother waste away in a sweatshop:

"Freireich had the courage to think the unthinkable. He experimented on children. He took them through pain no human being should ever have to go through. And he did it in no small part because he understood from his own childhood experience that it is possible to emerge from even the darkest hell healed and restored.”

Hallelujah! What an uplifting story! Just think of all the future pioneering doctors and scientists that will be forged in today's economic depression! There are an estimated three million children in the US living in third-world-level "extreme poverty" subsisting on "$2 or less, per person, per day." Who knew that all that squalor and hardship was really an investment into their future! It would be criminal to allow the government to help these kids — these future inventors and finance tycoons — with "beneficial" programs like food stamps, healthcare or better education. If we were to help them now, we'd be robbing these poor kids of their last valuable possession: the democratic opportunity to strive and struggle and scrape to success!

…In one of the weirder and more disturbing segments of the book, Gladwell tells the story of how the civil rights movement triumphed against the cops of Birmingham, Alabama, and won the hearts and minds of the American public. But in his neoliberal retelling, Martin Luther King and top civil rights organizers are transformed from moral and political activists into a bunch of scrappy PR guys who won because they ran a guerrilla marketing campaign that was better and smarter than that of their segregationist opponents.

…It's a very strange revisionist history that strips all the moral and political elements of the civil rights movement out of the story, reducing it to marketing strategy and tactics. But it's also something potentially much more sinister: it promotes the idea that race relations in the South were not as bad as people believe, and that the civil rights movement was some sort of hoax.

…Now, if you're asking yourself why Malcolm Gladwell, a celebrity journalist for the New Yorker magazine, is spiking his book with libertarian ideology, anti-union propaganda and weird borderline neo-confederate revisionism…well, then you clearly don't know much about Malcolm Gladwell….

(Unfortunately, it appears the full review of the book by “America’s most successful propagandist” will only be freely available for a matter of hours.)

As I’ve argued and will be discussing in some depth in future posts, I do believe that systems of oppression and inequality, in addition to the devastation they inflict on the oppressed, also harm their apparent beneficiaries and prevent them from fulfilling their real needs or “realizing their true potential” as human beings. This is, however, worlds away from Gladwell’s neoliberal apologetics.

The far Right in Spain and across Europe

A couple of recent articles discuss the state of the far Right in Europe.

The first (marred somewhat by anecdotal and unsourced claims and references) focuses on Spain, but situates developments there in the larger context. Andrés Cala describes “a rising public nostalgia for the Franco era in Spain” forming part of “a broader resurgence of extreme right-wing ideology in Europe and globally” (I’ve briefly discussed Greece and Poland):

Renewed sympathy for fascism in Spain…stirs troubling memories because the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s was an early victory for European fascism. Spain also was the last European state to cast off fascism in 1975.

Another point of concern is that nationalist, populist and fascist movements have historically found fertile ground during times of economic pain, like that felt across much of the world since the Wall Street crash of 2008. In reacting to the financial crisis – and in grappling with the public’s anger over lost jobs and lost benefits – mainstream democratic parties have seen their legitimacy questioned and their political support drained.

In Spain – and to a lesser extent in some other European countries – the immediate danger is not so much from a handful of incipient reactionary movements, but rather from the underlying official permissiveness from more mainstream conservative parties, like the Popular Party, bordering on patronage.

…[T]he severe economic recession that spread across the world after the Wall Street crash – and the EU’s austerity-oriented policies imposed in response – hit Spain especially hard with the country’s unemployment rate soaring to around 27 percent. The loss of jobs and the failure of the democratic political structure to devise an adequate response created an opening for the rightists to revive nationalistic and other traditional cultural messages that had underpinned Franco’s politics.

Though the Popular Party is generally considered conservative – not extreme right – it absorbed the pro-Franco fascist “base” after that movement lost its political representation in parliament in 1982, seven years after Franco died. That extreme right now amounts to about 10 percent of the Popular Party’s constituency, according to some studies.

The numbers of far-right members are high enough so that the Popular Party is politically unwilling to chastise fascist sympathies and thus alienate a significant portion of its support. But the party is making a dangerous bet that the pro-Franco faction will not gain effective control of the Popular Party and thus fully hoist the banner of fascism again.

Police estimate there are about 10,000 Spaniards involved in violent extreme-right groups. But the concern is not so much over these very small violent groups. These are mostly contained, experts agree. The bigger worry is that Franco’s political heirs retain significant influence within the ruling Popular Party and – amid the euro crisis – they could gain greater political clout.

…In Spain, the chief concern is that an increasingly desperate public will be attracted to the historical glow that is being created around a mythical era of successful fascism under Franco.

“It’s true that this is not Greece or France, where the extreme right has become a political power,” Félix Ortega, a sociology professor and expert in public opinion in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, told me recently. “But you never know, especially if it seems that the PP tolerates it.”

This was especially disturbing as I read it at the same time I was beginning Paul Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust:



The second article describes a plan to unite the far-Right parties ahead of the European elections:

Europe's far-right parties are set to contest next year's European elections on a common manifesto, according to French National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

At a press conference in the Strasbourg Parliament on Wednesday (23 October), Le Pen, flanked by Franz Obermayr of the Austrian anti-immigration Freedom party, told reporters that she was hopeful of persuading nationalist candidates from across the EU to run on the ticket of the European Alliance for Freedom (EAF).

Despite the comedic frustrations of holding together an assortment of racist nationalists,* even short-lived coalitions should be a cause for concern.

In this connection, I should note that white supremacist murderer and terrorist Pavlo Lapshyn has been sentenced to 40 years in prison in Britain:

Lapshyn found Mohammed Saleem, 82, going home after praying at his local mosque. The student approached him from behind and plunged a hunting knife into him three times with such force that one wound went through to his front.

Lapshyn's campaign began in April 2013, just five days after his arrival from Ukraine, where he had won a prize to gain work experience in Britain. When the PhD student was arrested in July, police found three partially assembled bombs in his Birmingham flat.

After Saleem's murder, Lapshyn started placing homemade explosives outside mosques on Fridays, the main day of Muslim prayer.

The device he planted in July, which had 100 nails wrapped around it to maximise the carnage, was aimed at worshippers at the Tipton mosque, where 300 were people were expected to attend prayers.

Prayers that particular Friday were held an hour later, thus avoiding mass casualties. The device was so powerful it left nails embedded in tree trunks, police said.

…After sentencing, Louise Gray, a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service counter-terrorism division, said: "Pavlo Lapshyn is a dangerous man with a dangerous agenda. Just a day after his arrival in Britain from the Ukraine he was researching rightwing supremacist websites, including those linked to convicted racist murderers in Russia."

* The author mentions that

difficulties maintaining discipline and a failure to agree on common programmes have dogged previous attempts to unite the far-right.

The Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) group was set up in 2007 but only lasted ten months before collapsing when three MEPs representing the Greater Romania party walked out in protest at inflammatory remarks made by Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the Italian dictator, about Romanian people.”

Animals and Women

“If the cutoff for perceived dignity and worth, and for the right to be free from exploitation and abuse, were not the border between human and nonhuman, the suggestion that women are somehow less human than men would have no political force….

…When human society moves beyond speciesism – to membership in animalkind – ‘animal’ imagery will no longer demean women or assist in their oppression, but will represent their liberation. When we finally cross the species boundary that keeps other animals oppressed, we will have crossed the boundary that circumscribes our lives.” – Joan Dunayer

I think I’ll have to make my fiction and nonfiction social justice and animal liberation reading lists into continually updated resources as I become aware of and read new books and articles. I’ve just started Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Perspectives (1995), which, judging from what I’ve read so far, is very likely to be added to the list of recommendations.*



The editors and authors speak to other feminists, calling for an inclusive feminism that’s morally consistent, empirically grounded, and practically effective. In response to the “historical alignment of women and animals” at the heart of patriarchy, the editors note, “liberal feminists have stressed that women are intellects and have rational minds – like men and unlike animals.” While sympathetic to this impulse,** they advocate “a broader feminism, a radical cultural feminism, which provides an analysis of oppression and offers a vision of liberation that extends well beyond the liberal equation, incorporating within it other life-forms besides human beings”:

We believe that all oppressions are interconnected: no one creature will be free until all are free – from abuse, degradation, exploitation, pollution, and commercialization. Women and animals have shared these oppressions historically, and until the mentality of domination is ended in all its forms, these afflictions will continue.

…[W]e believe that women, as themselves victims of objectification and exploitation, must not abandon other victims of such treatment in their rush to be accepted as ‘persons’ entitled to equal rights. Women must not deny their historical linkage with animals but rather remain faithful to them, bounded as we are not just by centuries of similar abuse but also by the knowledge that they – like us, often objectified as Other – are subjects worthy of the care, the respect, even the reverence, that the sacredness*** of consciousness deserves. Such an assertion of subjectivity is necessarily subversive of domination in all its forms.

The first chapter, “Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots” by Joan Dunayer, is especially relevant to ongoing discussions of bigoted slurs and woman-animal comparisons. Dunayer notes that feminists “have long objected to ‘animal’ pejoratives for women and the pseudogenerics man and mankind.” “These linguistic habits,” she explains, “are rooted in speciesism, the assumption that other animals are inferior to humans and do not warrant equal consideration and respect.”

Denigrating humans by comparing them to other animals works within and because of a context of speciesist habits of thought and practices of exploitation, which it in turn helps to perpetuate:

Although nonhuman animals cannot discern the contempt in the words that disparage them, this contempt legitimates their oppression. Like sexist language, speciesist language fosters exploitation and abuse. As feminist philosopher Stephanie Ross (1981) has stated with regard to women, ‘oppression does not require the awareness or cooperation of its victims’ (199).

Dunayer discusses the tendency among women and feminists to respond by emphasizing our alleged distance from other animals and likeness to (the ideological image of) men:

When a woman responds to mistreatment by protesting ‘I’m a human being!’ or ‘I want to be treated with respect, not like some animal’, what is she suggesting about the acceptable ways of treating other animals?

Perhaps because comparisons between women and nonhuman animals so often entail sexism, many women are anxious to distance themselves from other animals. Feminists, especially, recognize that negative ‘animal’ imagery has advanced women’s oppression. However, if our treatment and view of other animals became caring, respectful, and just, nonhuman-animal metaphors would quickly lose all power to demean. Few women have confronted how closely they mirror patriarchal oppressors when they too participate in other species’ denigration. Women who avoid acknowledging that they are animals closely resemble men who prefer to ignore that women are human.

As I move on to the subsequent chapters, I’m sure I’ll find much with which to disagree, but I suspect all of it will be worthwhile.

* There are animal studies bibliographies available (this one isn’t as intimidating as it looks, since several books are listed under more than one category), but I prefer to limit my recommendations to those works with which I’m more familiar personally. I was pleased to notice there a book that seems to be what I’ve been looking for.

** They suggest that “It may be that this emphasis on severing the woman-animal identification was a necessary phase in the transformation of cultural ideology about women.” I’ve never believed that liberation movements have necessary phases that are contrary to the culture and society they’re trying to create.

*** Not loving this language.

Needs improvement #1: The New York Times on atheism and religion

Some recent responses to articles in the New York Times have led me to consider in more depth their coverage of certain topics. First was the response to Templeton-funded T. M. Luhrmann’s most recent offering in the paper, “Conjuring Up Our Own Gods.” As Quodlibet remarks at Ed Brayton’s blog,

As a regular reader of the NYTimes, I’ve followed with interest — akin to rubbernecking at a traffic accident — the monthly columns by T.H. [sic] Luhrmann. They are a flagrant waste of pixels and the energy required to transmit them. I also have read with interest, the many comments appended to her columns by other readers, most of whom have disagreed with her and call her out for what she is – an apologist for religiosity, specifically Christian religiosity. I also have posted comments to her columns, criticizing not only Luhrmann’s weak arguments, but also criticizing the editors at the NYT for their poor judgement in publishing her columns at all, and also for failing to cast a more editorially-critical eye on their contents. Luhrmann’s columns are poorly-reasoned, her assumptions are too often based on anecdotes, and her analysis is underlaid by the gross assumption that religious faith is a default for all people, when actually the reverse is true: people are born without religion and gain it only through indoctrination and manipulation.

The NYT chose not to publish my most recent comment, but I published it on my blog* anyway. (nyah nyah NYT)

I find it fascinating that the NYT no longer accepts comments on ANY of her columns.

* http://quodlibet-sarah.blogspot.com/2013/08/cotton-candy.html

It appears from my brief, unscientific, and quite possibly inadequate investigation* that Luhrmann’s regular posts form part of a larger pattern in how the Times covers atheism, religion, and secular humanism. My impressions from a cursory article search:

On October 10, 2012, the Times featured the article “Percentage of Protestant Americans Is in Steep Decline, Study Finds”: “The study also found that nearly one in five Americans identify as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’, a seismic shift from 50 years ago.” Despite this rapid growth, particularly among young people, atheists and other nonreligious people don’t have much of a voice at the NYT.

Generally the paper features few positive articles about atheists, and even fewer by atheists - offering their point of view on philosophical, moral, and political questions. These do appear from time to time:

• “The Blessings of Atheism” (op ed), by Susan Jacoby (January 5, 2013): “The absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.”

• “Good Minus God,” by Louise M. Anthony (December 18, 2011): “Atheists do not lose morality by giving up God. Instead, they must find it where it lives: in the natural world.”

But they’re few and far between. The sorts of articles Greta Christina publishes at AlterNet, and that she and others post regularly on blogs, almost never appear in the Times.

A search for “secular humanism” within the category of atheism turned up a meager selection of articles since 2011, which fail to offer a fair representation of outspoken atheists. Two concern Teresa MacBain. The first of those:

• “After a Crisis of Faith, a Former Minister Finds a New, Secular Mission,” by Samuel G. Freedman (September 21, 2013): “The path for a minister who loses faith in God can be murky. But for one lapsed Methodist, fate — or something — intervened.”

The previous three:

• “Children, Choosing Their Religion,” by KJ Dell'Antonia (January 03, 2013): “Raising children outside of a religious tradition doesn't mean there's no room for religion in their lives.”

• “In a Crisis, Humanists Seem Absent,” by Samuel G. Freedman (December 29, 2012): “At a time when more Americans are without religious affiliation, the ‘nones’, as they are known, seem conspicuous in their absence from recent scenes of grief and mourning.”

• “Beyond ‘New Atheism’,” by Gary Gutting (September 14, 2011): “Most believers come to religion because of personal experience, not philosophical argument. A new brand of atheism takes this fact seriously.”

As this last title suggests, there seems overall to be a preference for the Harvard Humanist flavor of atheism, which carries a candle for religion and tends toward hostility to those atheists who are openly critical of and have little use for it. They’re also fond of covering religious leaders and people with religious training in atheist and humanist organizations. Aside from MacBain’s, the other atheist “leader” profiles offered:

• “From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader” (August 26, 2012): “The new heroes within the secular movement are coming from unlikely places — like the pulpit.”

• “In the Bible Belt, Offering Atheists a Spiritual Home” (June 24, 2013): “A former Pentecostal preacher, saying nonbelievers often miss the sense of community of church, held what he called Louisiana’s first atheist service.”

There’s an apparent uneasiness about the atheistic rejection of religion and a tendency to suggest that atheism doesn’t or shouldn’t mean dismissing it, as implied in some of the pieces cited above and several others:

• “Learning to Respect Religion,” by Nicholas D. Kristof (April 8, 2012): “Easter is the perfect day to reflect on the new intellectual tide that expresses grudging admiration for religion as a cohesive force….”

• “Alain de Botton’s ‘Religion for Atheists’,” by David Brooks (March 16, 2012): “Alain de Botton suggests how culture might still save our souls.”

• “A Religious Ritual Attracts Even Nonbelievers,” by Mark Oppenheimer (March 16, 2013): “An embrace of Lent is seen by some who call themselves atheists as cultural nostalgia and as claiming a sense of community.”

(There’s a real reluctance, as this last example with its reference to people who “call themselves atheists” suggests, even to recognize a wholly atheist identity.)

As the articles above indicate, pieces about atheists tend to cluster around religious holidays, and also frequently concern clashes over religious displays in government contexts. While the latter can be explained in part by the journalistic attraction to stories about conflict, the articles to seem to frame these conflicts in ways that isolate atheists and suggest that they focus on targeting religion rather than on defending the law and their own and others’ human rights:

• “Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Replaced by Atheists” (also titled “Where Crèches Once Stood, Atheists Now Hold Forth”), by Jennifer Medina (December 22, 2011): “Atheists who objected to Nativity scenes in a park in California won the right to put up their own messages, which now outnumber the religious ones.”

• “To Fight Religious Monuments, Atheists Plan Their Own Symbols,” by Laurie Goodstein (July 5, 2013): “Starting with a bench in Florida, the group American Atheists intends to install 50 more secular totems near displays of the Ten Commandments nationwide.”

There have been some sympathetic articles about atheists experiencing marginalization:

• “African-American Atheists,” by Emily Brennan (November 27, 2011): “African-Americans who say they don’t believe in God are often at odds with family, friends and potential romantic partners.”

(Note the “say they don’t believe in God.”)

• “For Indonesian Atheists, a Community of Support Amid Constant Fear,” by Sara Schonhardt (April 27, 2013): “In predominantly Muslim Indonesia, where trumpeting one's disbelief in God can lead to abuse, ostracism and even prison, atheists find careful ways to build a community of support.”

But generally there’s little attention to discrimination against atheists or resistance to religious privilege in the US. Even the coverage of the Jessica Ahlquist story, about as straightforward a case of someone courageously standing for the First Amendment and for religious freedom and being threatened and harassed for it as you’ll find, seemed to take an odd course beginning with “Rhode Island City Enraged Over School Prayer Lawsuit” (January 27, 2012) and moving, following reader responses to the report, to an op ed entitled “A Brave Stand in Rhode Island” (February 1, 2012).

And why does the Times timidly rely on atheist objections and lawsuits to call attention to violations of the separation of Church and State? Of course, they can’t be expected to go into every school or local government office scouting for religious displays or practices, but there are many examples of religious involvement with government that warrant coverage, independent of whether any organizations have (yet) brought a legal challenge – see, for example, The Atlantic’s recent story “Using Christianity to Fight Crime” (a lawsuit is now being discussed).

So, to return to where I started, there’s a lot more where Luhrmann’s opinion pieces came from. In the most recent example, doing my “research” for this post I noticed a new article from just the other day – an interview by John Williams with Francis Spufford about the silly thesis of his book Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. (It received equally fawning treatment last year in the Guardian.)

Based on my reading, I give these suggestions:

1. Offer more coverage of both the growth of atheism and the continued marginalization of atheists.

2. Feature a broader range of atheist voices, including those who are openly critical of religion, and offer opportunities for atheists, including those who are openly critical of religion, to discuss morality, social justice, and politics.

3. Make reporting on potential violations of the First Amendment – at the national, state, and local levels and in a variety of contexts - a normal part of your journalistic practice.

4. If you must publish these gooey interviews with and inane commentary by religious apologists, at least allow atheists (preferably not named Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris) an equal opportunity to respond, particularly to the apologists’ characterizations of atheism.

* Aside from its brevity and non-systematicity, the search was hindered by the fact that I’ve reached my limit for the month and can’t go back and read most of the articles. I’m sure the titles and brief descriptions don’t fully capture their arguments, and I would appreciate corrections if I’m mischaracterizing any of them on that basis; on the other hand, these titles and descriptions have an importance all their own.

That’s not love, CBS.

CBS’ 48 Hours tonight is about “breakup violence,” a descriptive enough term. The report centers on high school student Lauren Astley, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2011.

It’s an important issue to highlight, but the show’s title – “Loved to Death” – is incorrect, ill-considered, and counterproductive. The cultural and personal factors that lead people to abuse others or to hurt or kill the person who’s broken off with them are not love, and the show is inadvertently promoting harmful ideas by suggesting that violence is an extreme expression of love.

I’m going to include this video, which I hope isn’t seen as trivializing this violence (or worse, blaming women for remaining in dangerous situations) but as pointing to a cultural problem - the romanticization of painful relationships:

A great new app for finding vegan meals and a dairy-free guide

Introducing the new PlantEaters app, Mariann Sullivan of Our Hen House says: “The most brilliant ideas are the ones that when you hear about them, you immediately think, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?!?’” I did, as it happens, think of it, a couple of months ago, as my family and friends can attest (my name was the Vegan Menu Project, but PlantEaters is nice, too. :)) So obviously I agree that it’s a brilliant idea.

Here’s their press release from earlier this week:

PlantEaters Makes Finding Vegetarian Meals at Any Restaurant Easy

PlantEaters, a new iPhone app, opens up a world of dining opportunities for vegetarians by helping them find meatless meals at any restaurant, regardless of whether or not the restaurant itself is vegetarian or vegan. Users can rate and share meals that they’ve had when dining out.

New York, NY (PRWEB) October 22, 2013 – PlantEaters is a new iPhone app that helps you find vegetarian meals at restaurants all around you, regardless of whether or not the restaurant itself is vegetarian or vegan. This focus on meals, instead of restaurants, opens up a new world of dining opportunities for vegetarians, vegans, or those just looking to enjoy a meatless meal.

Finding a vegetarian meal at a nearby restaurant can often be a challenge. By leveraging the collective dining experiences of the PlantEaters community, vegetarians can dine out without having to settle for the house salad. Whether it’s a night out in a new city, or dinner with some meat-eating friends, PlantEaters can help make sure that vegetarians and vegans have a great dining experience.

Over time, the majority of meals in PlantEaters will come from the community itself adding and rating meals (including photos). To help get the ball rolling, the database has been pre-populated with thousands of meals covering a number of major metropolitan areas, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Founded by the husband and wife team of David and Tracy Hersh, PlantEaters represents a passion project for the couple, who have been vegan for four years. David is a serial entrepreneur with deep experience in product design, having been a founder at pioneering efforts in the social networking, e-commerce and fantasy sports industries.

“In our hometown of New York City, we are fortunate to have a great selection of vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Even here though, the number of those restaurants pales in comparison to the thousands of other restaurants the city has to offer,” says David. “Increasingly, these restaurants are offering more meatless dining options and Tracy and I were struck by the fact that there was no easy way to find those meals. PlantEaters was created to fill that need.”

“Most of our friends aren’t vegetarians and until PlantEaters it has always been a challenge finding a place everyone would enjoy,” says Tracy. “We used to always sacrifice our dining experience because we didn’t want to inconvenience others, but now we can easily find a place that makes everyone happy.”*

One of the criticisms Sullivan had was that since the app also includes vegetarian meals, vegans would have to sort through them to find the vegan options. But David Hersh explained in a response that it’s easy to limit your search to vegan meals only, and they also posted about this on the PlantEaters blog.

Another useful resource comes from Ashley Capps at the Free from Harm blog. She’s put together a useful guide to dairy-free milks, cheeses, and more. For the products I’ve tried, I agree with her assessments and recommendations. I also can’t wait to get the Non-Dairy Formulary and try out the recipes.

* This framing bothers me, I have to admit.

From Edmund Burke to the Twitter jerk

Over the past couple of weeks, Public Shaming has featured callous and hypocritical tweets about the loss of public benefits for poor people during the government shutdown: see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

These examples provided the perfect context for reading Corey Robin’s post about conservative icon Edmund Burke:

…Throughout his career, Burke’s financial state had been precarious. Much to his embarrassment, he was periodically forced to rely upon well timed gifts and loans from his wealthier friends and patrons.

So terrified was he of dying in a debtor’s prison that he struggled in his retirement to learn Italian. His hope, claimed one of the many visitors at his estate, was to flee England and “end his days with tollerable Ease in Italy.” (He also floated, apparently, the possibility of fleeing to Portugal or America.) “I cannot quite reconcile my mind to a prison,” he told a friend.

Thanks to the interventions of his well connected friends, Burke secured from Pitt in August 1795 two annuities that would wipe out his debts and a pension that, along with an additional pension and the income from his estate, would enable him and his wife to live in comfort into their old age.

Three months later, when Burke took up his pen against a proposal for the government to subsidize the wages of farm laborers during bad harvest years (so that they could sustain themselves and their families), he wrote, “To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government.”

Ah, a fine tradition of thought persisting through the centuries. Also, it's funny to imagine Burke tweeting.