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Tag Archives: Johann Hari

Richard Dawkins: “Faith School Menace?”

August 22, 2010 – 2:33 pm

Jerry Coyne relays this truly eye-opening new documentary from Richard Dawkins which aired in the UK last week: Here’s a link (thanks to Johann Hari) for donating to the cause of abolishing state funding of faith schools in the UK. Your Thoughts?

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Education, Law & Politics, Religion, Religion, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State | Also tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Dying British Church Prone To Whining

August 11, 2010 – 12:05 am

Johann Hari does a little pre-mortem dancing on the foreseeable grave of British Christianity: And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State | Comments (0)

Multicultural Human Rights

June 19, 2010 – 7:39 am

Johann Hari makes the argument that we have the right to stand up for the rights of those in other cultures without fear that we are not “multicultural” enough: Should you shut up about human rights abuses because they are happening far away, to people you don’t know, who have a different culture or colour [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Politics | Also tagged | Comments (1)

Heaven As Weapon

April 21, 2010 – 8:34 am

Johann Hari details some of the pernicious ways religions exploit the desire for heaven: Even some atheists regard heaven as one of the least-harmful religious ideas: a soothing blanket to press onto the brow of the bereaved. But its primary function for centuries was as a tool of control and intimidation. The Vatican, for example, [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Islam, New Atheism, Religion, Roman Catholic Church | Also tagged | Comments (0)

Arrest The Pope?

April 8, 2010 – 4:45 pm

Johann Hari argues that London should do just that. The interesting discussion in which he makes this case takes place in the entire first video and the beginning of the second video: Your Thoughts?

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Law, Music Videos, Pope Benedict XVI, Roman Catholic Church, Videos | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Understanding British Jihadis

November 17, 2009 – 1:06 am

Johann Hari has a fascinating article trying to understand homegrown British Islamists: Yet they felt equally shut out of British or democratic identity. From the right, there was the brutal nativist cry of “Go back where you came from!” But from the left, there was its mirror-image: a gooey multicultural sense that immigrants didn’t want [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Islam, Religion, Religious Extremism | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Johann Hari On Ayn Rand

November 8, 2009 – 12:00 am

Johann Hari has two exquisitely written and detailed pieces on Rand, one from 2005 and one from this past week.  I have to admit that she is held with so much contempt by philosophers that I have never bothered to read her, even if only to understand the influence of her infamously crude appropriation of [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Authoritarianism, Right Wing Politics | Also tagged , , | Comments (4)

Gore Vidal On America, Obama, Homosexuality, and Timothy McVeigh

October 14, 2009 – 6:29 am

Johann Hari has an interview with Gore Vidal, in which Vidal expresses some wild opinions. First Hari’s rundown of Vidal’s one of a kind biography: At 83, he has lived through one third of the lifespan of the United States. If anyone incarnates the American century that has ended, it is him. He was America’s [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Barack Obama, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Politics | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Jamaica's Violent Homophobia

September 19, 2009 – 9:39 am

In reply to this brutal story about the murder of the honorary consul to the British High Commission in Jamaica which involved a note threatening the same fate for all other gays, “Sendai Anonymous” points me to a must-read article by the invaluable Johann Hari about the extent of the homophobia in Jamaica. Key excerpts: [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Music Videos, News Discussion, Politics, Religious Extremism, Videos, World Affairs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

An Icon Is A Mirror

July 24, 2009 – 7:43 am

Johann Hari has a neat piece which can be summed up with this eminently quotable nugget: An icon is a mirror: it tells you how a group sees itself, distilled into a single personality. He uses his article to explore various gay icons who have made it into an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Homosexuality | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Pat Condell Excoriates The Left For Not Standing Up To Islamism

July 24, 2009 – 5:35 am

There is a lot to chew on in this latest rant from Pat Condell on the need for the tolerant to be more intolerant of intolerant religions than they are intolerant of denouncers of intolerant religions.  While Condell’s  attack on multiculturalism is too broad and at times his rhetoric is cringe-inducingly counter-productive, I do share [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Christopher Hitchens, Ethics, News Discussion, Pat Condell, Politics, Rape, Religious Rights, Women's Rights | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Gayby Boom?

July 20, 2009 – 11:27 am

Johann Hari on the rise of open gay parenting in the UK and the research indicating no averse effects for children: The children of gay couples are desperately and passionately wanted. They are, by definition, planned, with parents who have to go to a great deal of hassle and heart-searching before they are created. Compare [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Gay Marriage, Homophobia, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Sociology | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Johann Hari Provides Background On Honduras

July 6, 2009 – 3:55 pm

A really interesting read: On Sunday morning, a battalion of soldiers rammed their way into the Presidential Palace in Honduras. They surrounded the bed where the democratically elected President, Manuel Zelaya, was sleeping, and jabbed their machine guns to his chest. They ordered him to get up and marched him onto a military plane. They [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in News Discussion, Politics, World Affairs | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Gay Rights and Persecution Around the World

July 4, 2009 – 9:01 am

Johann Hari celebrates the remarkable progress for gay rights, achieved through peaceful democratic pressure around the world in the 40 years since Stonewall.  But then he highlights some of the places where being gay means being murdered: Jamaica is Taliban Afghanistan for gay people. If caught, gays and lesbians face ten years’ hard labour – [...]

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By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Civil Rights, Fundamentalism, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Islam, News, News Discussion, Torture, World Affairs | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)