New Playlist: Other – Atheism

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KANADAJIN3 On Islam

A big YouTuber with over 200,000 subs, converts to Islam and much video responses ensue on the shallow reasons, phenomenon and potential subversive cultural effect. Kanadajin responds in the comments and further response video attempts are made to encourage her to think about what ideology they really are signing up for and promoting. Finally I caught up with them on twitter at the end of all this.

I actually am interested in hearing the case that a benign monotheism attached to pre-existing traditions might have been a force for good in unifying tribes and advancing science, civilisations etc. And that a reformist/abstractionist religious practice can play a part today in helping the disenfranchised find a voice by using fables in their holy book to find solidarity with each other (Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety), whereas fundamentalists and neocon war mongering cannot. But I would still only regard Islam as an ideology that was the best of a bad bunch that had traction at the time

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The polite face of psychological warfare in mormon chat

An attempt at engaging missionairies on the immorality of a 10% church tax on people on minumum wage or unemployed.

There’s many things I want to help politicize about the mormon church’s antics, from them sending missionairies to the global south, to their online recruitment efforts to convert people going through a dark period in their life.

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Missionaries in the Global South

When it comes to the global south, I think we should stop taking a nicely nicely approach to poor indoctrinated missionaries and say you can’t help here, you will only hurt so you’re message is not welcome here, and activists should actively attempt to shut down their proseltysing efforts.

• 1. “Be thoughtful by not eating too much if food is in short supply.” Not really realistic considering the cultural pressure for all men to go on a mission at 18 without any income for 2 years.
• 2. Preaching abstinence only in HIV hotspots is evil, there are ‘Jack’ Catholic Nuns advocating condom use in Kenya because they’ve seen how much damage it has done and agree with the scientific consensus, for mormon missionairys to go into communities and preach anything that blocks fertility is from the devil is so so wrong.
• 3. “Members should obey, honor, and sustain the laws in any country where they reside or travel” – “Never suggest that people emigrate to another country, even for work or schooling.” Going to countries where people are escaping persecusion and gaining automatic asylum, sustaining the churchs relationship to that oppressive government over the refugees international rights is evil. How that worked out for the mormon church in Nazi Germany.

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Online Missionaries

Facebook and mormon.org chat has become a powerful wing of the church in creating a platform for lonely and vulnerable people to come to them. By each missionary talking to 3-10 people at one time, 24hours a day, it’s not hard to imagine they have better results than walking door to door.

If you ever want to remind yourself the mental jumping jacks orthodox Mormons go through to accept certain scripture or church policy, I find it quite funny, a breif look at r/exmormon shows it’s pretty cathartic for ex-members too depending on how traumatic their departure was.

If we wanted to go further and create a publicity stunt, I’m sure we could organise a communications blockade for a day, by getting many people to log on at one time (using an IP scrambler like Tor to chat multiple times) with a central message, e.g. to stop their preaching of practising healthy sexual desires (masturbation, homosexuality) being from the devil.

• HuffPost article on the Mormon church online mission
• Phone blockade tactic working for Nottingham solidarity network

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New Playlist: Archiving – Vegan vs. Carnist Debate

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Earthling Ed vs. InfoWars – See what they included & cut out.

InfoWars reporter goes to slaughterhouse vigil to make heavily quote mined conspiracy video and bumps into vegan street advocate Earthling Ed. Mind-numbingly stupid debate ensues. Almost as bad as the time socialist podcaster trolls infowars reporter when she proposes eating the rich.

See full debate here.

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Matt Dillahunty vs. Vegan Gains with a summary from Unnatural Vegan

Vegan Gains makes an ass out of himself trying to corner Dillahunty with Isaac Brown’s ‘name the trait’ consistency test before first understanding the basis of Matt’s philosophy. Attached a video to the end of Unnatural Vegan giving a good argument for why Matt should be open to veganism, basically it helps advance the cause of rationality and secular morality, to not draw an arbitrary line at the level of species.

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Vote Milkjar 2018 – “Some people deserve to be raped”

A very disturbed anarcho-primitivist, raw meat idealogue.

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New Playlist: Film Clips & Analysis

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Tony Benn – Will & Testament Clips

Went to see the film in a small cinema in Liverpool. It’s a deeply personal portrayal of his family life and career which affected the lives of so many in this country and internationally, which had people in the cinema tearing up and standing to clap at the end.

• Tony Benn – A History of the Labour Movement
• Tony Benn vs. The House of Lords
• Tony Benn – A Representative Of The People

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Hell or High Water Clips

Brother outlaws aim to payback a loan on their recently deceased mother’s house, with money taken from the predatory bankers who gave out the high interest loan, betting on them never being able to pay and getting to seize the house.

2 sherrifs, one coming up on retirement, the other a first nations person, wrestle with their modern values in relation to what historical values they’re supposed to have and what it is they’re supposed to be protecting.

• Childhood abuse to criminal lifestyle
• What does it mean to be authentic in light of history?
• No place for traditional way of life
• Camanche enemy of everybody
• Capitalists are the new colonisers

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Suzanne 2013 Clip – Sisters jailhouse reunion

Really amazing drama, even just the time-span they manage to cover so well from childhood to motherhood:

Film Description: A single mother in adolescence, Suzanne lives with her father and sister. Her life changes when she falls in love with Julian, a petty criminal.

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Calvary Film Clip – On Integrity

Can’t recommend the film enough, try to get the directors cut for a long winding road through every facet of the moral challenges a preist is expected to deal with in a modern day village in Ireland.

Film Description: An honest and good-hearted priest (Brendan Gleeson) wrestles with a cynical, spiteful community after he receives a death threat from an unknown parishioner.

Snippet from a review called Calvary: A religious movie for atheists:

Ostensibly a black comedy, Calvary is more often frightening than funny. Father Lavelle (a superb Brendan Gleeson) visits a former pupil-turned-cannibalistic serial killer (played to creepy effect by Gleesons real-life progeny, Domhnall) in prison, and asks what human flesh tastes like; he replies, icily, and with sickening relatability, like pheasant its very gamey. Later, the local doctor, in the form of old-reliable Aidan Gillen, relays the story of a procedure gone wrong, in which a young boy was put under a mishandled dose of anaesthetic for a routine operation and subsequently woke up blind, deaf, dumb and paralysed.

In the horror of a world like that our world Calvary doesn’t treat some unseen force, one which it accepts not everyone can relate to, as the saviour. Instead, it is the good man at the heart of this wicked tale, a man driven by a moral code, who acts as the ultimate hero. Calvary makes the argument that the modern church lives not in the service of God, but in the service of people, and its a film that might even make sense of religion for atheists.

I’ve not become born again after watching Calvary, but McDonaghs film succeeds where Noah didn’t because it tolerates both believers and non-believers equally, and isn’t as violently opposed one way or the other, in the way that, say, The Passion of the Christ was strictly for and PTA’s cynical There Will Be Blood was vehemently against. It takes a long-overdue stand against loud, unglamorous media reports and counters that not all of religion is corrupted. Calvary is a stunning film, not least because it convincingly argues that there are still good people of faith out there, as it successfully speaks to both the religious and non-religious alike.

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House M.D. | The Social Contract

Ruminations on nature & nurture, existence & essence, belief, social contract and egoist practice.

Snippet from a review by Barbara Barnett:

“Does it bother you that we have no social contract?” House (Hugh Laurie) asks Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) regarding the unique nature of their relationship in this weeks’ House, M.D. episode, appropriately titled “The Social Contract.” While exploring the necessity of the social niceties and collaborative lies we sometimes need in order to survive in society, the story provides a framework for examining House and Wilson’s personalities and their deep friendship — and their own somewhat perverse “social contract.”

At the end of the episode, House asks Wilson if it bothers him that they “don’t have the normal social contract?” But as their conversation continues (Nick’s life resumes as if it had been merely on “pause”) it is clear that House and Wilson do have a social contract. It’s a bit perverse certainly, but it exists. Although House cannot tell Wilson beautiful lies to make him feel better, he can tell him beautiful truths. And for someone who beats himself up out of guilt, beautiful truths can be much more effective — especially coming from House.

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Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond Clip – Commitment to character gets personal

Still not sure how I feel about Jim’s portrayal of Andy, but they’re both amazing comedians & actors in their own right. A lot of people want to find and re-watch a scene like this to figure out what it means to them.

It also got put up in this article of a high profile website interviewing celebrities, so it’s reached 179,884 views anyhow.

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Last Cab to Darwin – Just the phone calls

Really great film, based on a true story and adapted from a theater play.

“A terminally ill cabdriver picks up an indigenous drifter and a backpacker while traveling through the Australian Outback to get euthanized.”

You can watch the trailer here.

Director: Jeremy Sims
Screenplay: Reg Cribb
Actors: Michael Caton, Ningali Lawford

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Dead Man Analysis – Psychedelic Western, Colonialism & Spiritual Purgatory

The original video contained a lot of unverified film theory which I think does hold weight, but for this video just wanted to spread the really great analysis contained within for quick viewing.

Analysis of the film Dead Man, asking why is William Blake in purgatory?:

• Introduction and plot summary
• Purgatory – Who is Mr Dickinson and what do horses symbolise?
• Stupid Fucking White Men – Why does Nobody ask for tobacco? Themes of genocide and broken contracts (land treaties).
• Blake’s Journey – Peyote, spirit quest and new found reverence for culture.

You can watch the original longer version here, with further character analysis, reincarnation theory and more detail on the genocide theme.

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Christopher Hitchens On Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’

When it isn’t luridly statistic and demagogic it’s fortunately boring so Mr. Gibson and his father who both support this they claim sometimes we Catholics but actually they are in rebellion against Rome, they’re members of a right-wing schismatic fundamentalist group as I said, have absolutely assured themselves a wave of publicity by picking a quarrel with the Jews and by recycling the most ancient primitive Christian allegations of Christ killing against the Jewish people. In the film the Roman authorities are – pictured as puppets you know in a Jewish Empire completely without power of their own always having to answer to Jewish high priest enforced to torture to death a man who they believed to be innocent, this is this is a very very old slander and misrepresentation it’s unbelievably crued and irresponsible of Gibson to do so he’s done so in order to try and sell tickets I think it’s a great cultural disgrace.

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