Monday, February 23, 2015

The Anti-Vaccination Controversy: What the Amish and the Romans Have to Teach Us

 by Nomad

The question is pretty basic when it comes to the controversy about vaccinations. Are we really committed to progress or will be surrender to an illusion of past stability and simplicity?


The anti-vaccination movement is a good reminder that progress is not a steadily upward climb. It's something we tend to forget sometimes. This safe and convenient means of prevention to a disease that has ravaged civilization should, according to common sense, be hailed as a victory of humanity.
Instead it is viewed with superstitious suspicious and ignorance. 
In fact, the whole idea of progress is actually a quite recent phenomena and shouldn't be taken for granted.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Future Tense: Between Huxley or Orwell

 by Nomad

Originally posted on RecombinantRecords.net
The question is: Which of these visions of the future are we closer to?


Saturday, February 21, 2015

Barbara Jordan Remembered

by Nomad

Today, February 21, marks the birthday of Texas Congresswoman Barbara Charline Jordan, arguably one of the most influential black women in American political history.


Representative Jordan from Texas was the first in many categories: the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South. Additionally, in, July 1976, she became the first African American woman to deliver a keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention.

In fact, on an individual level, it's hard to find, in one person of this period who symbolized the breadth of American diversity. She was an African American, she was a woman and, although it was an aspect of her life she preferred to remain undisclosed, she was most likely a lesbian.

On that basis alone, she had a right to speak on behalf of many people. She once said of the first words of the preamble of the Constitution:
It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”:

Friday, February 20, 2015

This Day in History: When Bankers and Big Business Betrayed a Nation

 by Nomad

When we look back at this date- February 20- we see it was a critical day in modern history. Eighty-two years ago today,  Hitler made his pitch for campaign financing to the leaders of banking and industry. It turned out to be a smashing success.


On this day in 1933, the Nazi party arranged a secret meeting between Adolf Hitler and 20 to 25 industrialists at the official residence of Hermann Wilhelm Göring, the minister of the interior in Hitler's government, 

The aim of this secret meeting was to allocate campaign financing for the Nazi party in the crucial upcoming elections. 

A German economist, banker, liberal politician Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht acted as a liaison/host for the event. As a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparation obligations, Schacht became a supporter of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. He served in Hitler's government as President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics. 

Until his fall from grace in 1937, Schacht proved to be a useful tool for the regime and its rise to absolute power.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Gay Cure Therapy and How the GOP in Texas Officially Endorses Consumer Fraud

by Nomad

Try to picture this. The official party platform of a key state giving its stamp of approval for consumer fraud, namely a kind of therapy which has been thoroughly discredited by professionals and is possibly dangerous.

What does this say about the ethics of that party?


Quackery Therapy


This week, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Peter F. BarsioJr. ruled  against the gay conversion therapy provider Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH). His official ruling in the case filed by Southern Poverty Law Center against the company states:
It is a misrepresentation in violation of [New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act], in advertising or selling conversion therapy services, to describe homosexuality, not as being a normal variation of human sexuality, but as being a mental illness, disease, disorder, or equivalent thereof.
David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director, commenting on the court decision,
“For the first time, a court has ruled that it is fraudulent as a matter of law for conversion therapists to tell clients that they have a mental disorder that can be cured. This is the principal lie the conversion therapy industry uses throughout the country to peddle its quackery to vulnerable clients. Gay people don’t need to be cured, and we are thrilled that the court has recognized this.”
Over the years, organizations, mostly religion-based, were set up  to push  conversion therapy. The idea was that homosexuality was something that could, or needed to be fixed.