The Humanist articles from March 2006

The Humanist archives from March 2006

Humanist profile: Daniel C. Dennett (1942-present) 2004 Humanist of the Year.
March 1, 2006... "We are all around you: we're doctors, nurses, police officers, schoolteachers, crossing guards and men and women serving in the military.... Among scientists, we are a commanding majority.... We are, in fact, the moral backbone of the nation...

Kudos.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... The most recent incarnation of the Humanist (January-February 2006) was the best work you've done. Donald Gutierrez's "The Extraordinary Cruelty of Extraordinary Rendition" moved me to write angry letters to my senators and congressperson...

Different perspectives.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Alon Ben-Meir's article, "Lost Perspectives in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (January-February 2006), offers a sense of moral equivalence as if, whenever there is conflict, both sides share the moral high ground. For example, he...

Christians don't own values.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Jeff Nail's encouraging piece, "The Emergence of the Religious Left," shows that all is not war between Christians and Humanists and rightly encourages the two to work together on common goals. However, Humanists can't continue to allow...

Enemies of the state?(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... I am an atheist. I am also a believer in the vital need to preserve America and the U.S. Constitution. This means that I want Humanism to be perceived as a positive force in protecting the security of this nation. To my dismay, however, I...

The issue at hand.
March 1, 2006... THREE YEARS AGO, on March 20, 2003, the United States of America and the United Kingdom, plus a "coalition of the willing" (primarily land troops from Australia and Poland representing about 2 percent of the total), invaded the Republic of...

Death in Darfur.(UP FRONT: NEWS AND OPINION FROM INDEPENDENT MINDS)(genocide)
March 1, 2006... IT HAS BEEN A DECADE since the genocide in Rwanda took the lives of over 800,000 people. This tragedy was forever memorialized by the film Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle. A poignant movie, this is an example of Hollywood giving a voice to...

Win the war of ideas through community development.(UP FRONT: NEWS AND OPINION FROM INDEPENDENT MINDS)(public diplomacy)
March 1, 2006... THE PERCEPTION OF THE United States in the Islamic world remains very dismal in this great struggle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim people. Western nations are competing with those religious proponents whose ideology seeks to impose a...

Minimum security.(Cartoon)
March 1, 2006... The uninvited guest from hell... Well, I mustn't be keeping you... I wouldn't dream of leaving 'til I've helped you tidy up! Besides, I haven't shown you my rope tricks yet! Whoops! Hope that wasn't valuable! ...

Yes, we murder journalists: part three in a troubling series.(Al-Jazeera)
March 1, 2006... REMEMBER FALLUJAH? It's the Iraqi city of 300,000 that we had to destroy in order to save back in April 2004. Over thirty Americans died and over 400 American troops were wounded and airlifted away. And at least 1,200 Iraqis were killed. A Red...

Why are you here?(destruction of Iraq War)
March 1, 2006... Some things were better before the war than they are now.... For instance security was better.... Psychologically, security is an essential part of life and it was available, aside from many other things Mohammed, twenty-one years old,...

Examined lives in the shadow of Iraq.(Adolph Eichmann's participation in Nazism)(Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt)
March 1, 2006... IN HER 1964 BOOK Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt attributed Adolph Eichmann's participation in Nazism not so much to any malevolent intent as to his very ordinary refusal to think--that is, his failure to...

The mythologizing of war from Vietnam to Iraq.
March 1, 2006... THROUGHOUT U.S. HISTORY there have always been political leaders, convinced of the nation's manifest destiny, who urged unconditional acceptance of war's necessity and warrant. During the Vietnam Era, for example, our national conscience was...

Food sovereignty: ending world hunger in our time.
March 1, 2006... THIS PAST THANKSGIVING, while millions of Americans sat at a table overflowing with food, more than thirty children died each minute around the world due to hunger related causes. Certainly hunger isn't a result of food scarcity. In fact,...

The war against pluralism.
March 1, 2006... THE YEAR WAS 1972. The young woman seated across from me in my study was the first "Jesus freak" I'd ever met. She was in her early twenties, bright-eyed and assertive, dressed in the thrift-shop motley that was the hippie fashion of the 1960s....

A communion.(social conditions of Ongesas)
March 1, 2006... LYN AND I ARE SITTING in the house of Joshua and Raili Ongesa. This is in the East Africa village of Tabaka, in the Kisii area, not far from Lake Victoria. We've known Joshua and Raili for more than forty years, ever since we became friends...

Constitutional ennui?(CIVIL LIBERTIES WATCH)(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, George W. Bush's antiterrorism measures)
March 1, 2006... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.--George W. Bush The...

Federal snoops: nothing new.(HUMANIST FLASHBACK)(William Sullivan's mail to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , electronic surveillance)
March 1, 2006... THE HEAD OF THE FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, William Sullivan, mailed the following letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on November 21, 1964, anonymously: King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a...

The bogus blurring of terrorism and insurgency in Iraq.(MEDIA BEAT)
March 1, 2006... WITH PUBLIC SUPPORT for the Iraq war at low ebb, the White House is more eager than ever to conflate Iraq's insurgency with terrorism. But in early December, just after President Bush gave yet another speech repeatedly depicting the U.S. war...

Cutting carbon emissions.(ENVIRONMENTAL WATCH)
March 1, 2006... SOME TIME AGO I had a call from my son Brian, who had come across a huge new wind farm as he was driving on one of the interstate highways in west Texas. He described the rows of wind turbines receding toward the horizon. Interspersed among...

Warrantless wiretaps and your EZ Pass.(TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY)
March 1, 2006... ON DECEMBER 16, 2005, the New York Times revealed that, in an attempt to combat terrorism, the National Security Agency had been conducting warrantless phone-taps on people in the United States who were calling people outside of the country....

The Bible makes a comeback in public schools.(CHURCH AND STATE)
March 1, 2006... PERIODICALLY AN ORGANIZATION comes along promising to defuse the long-running battle over religion in public education by increasing instruction about religion as an academic discipline. At first glance, such proposals have great appeal. The...

Tragedy in West Virginia: did religious exuberance lead to bad reporting and false hopes?(THE POPULAR CONDITION)(mine accidents )
March 1, 2006... IT WAS A DRAMA THAT kept many Americans glued to overnight cable television news coverage and fueled prayerful hopes of a "miracle" on behalf of endangered coal miners in West Virginia. It began around 6:30 a.m. on Monday, January 2, 2006,...

What is a freethinker and why does it matter?(HUMANISM 101)
March 1, 2006... IN HIS 1957 ESSAY, "The Value of Free Thought" Bertrand Russell writes: What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he...

Facing the biblical truth.(The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love BY JOHN SHELBY SPONG (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005); 315 pp.; $24.95 cloth; ISBN 0-06-076205-5. IN THE SINS OF SCRIPTURE: Exposing the...

First elected women heads of state.(WORTH NOTING)(Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Two nations saw their first elected women heads of state sworn into office in January 2006. Sixty-seven-year-old Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist, was elected president of Liberia, and voters in socially conservative Chile...

Extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi.(WORTH NOTING)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The military government of Burma has extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi indefinitely. The elected leader of the opposition party and 1991 Nobel peace laureate, interviewed in the November/December 1997 Humanist, has spent ten of the...

Persecution of activists in Uzbekistan.(WORTH NOTING)(International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights warns the persecution of activists in Uzbekistan has worsened since May 2005 when security forces sprayed machine gun fire on unarmed demonstrators in Andijan. Case in point: Saidjahan...

Target Americans as terrorists.(WORTH NOTING)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... New York Federal Court Judge William Skretny ruled on December 22, 2005, that the U.S. government can target Americans as terrorists when returning to the United States from religious conferences. Based on this, the Department of Homeland...

Cut the cost of HIV tests and AIDS treatment in developing countries.(William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation and pharmaceutical firms' deal)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The Clinton Foundation, founded by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, has negotiated a deal with a handful of small pharmaceutical firms that will cut the cost of HIV tests and AIDS treatment in developing countries. Under the deal, the tests...

Israel Tourism Ministry has pulled out of $50 million deal with Robertson.(WORTH NOTING)(Pat Robertson)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Televangelist Pat Robertson got more than his hand slapped for his offensive remark in January that Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was "divine retribution" for withdrawing troops from Gaza. The Israel Tourism Ministry has pulled...

Sued for teaching "intelligent design.".(WORTH NOTING)(Frazier Mountain High School by Americans United for Separation of Church and State)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, California, is being sued for teaching "intelligent design." The federal lawsuit was filed January 10 on behalf of a group of parents by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which recently...

Vetoed a bill that would have forced doctors.(WORTH NOTING)(Jim Doyle)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... On January 6, 2006, Democratic Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle vetoed a bill that would have forced doctors to tell women seeking abortions after their fifth month of pregnancy that their fetuses could suffer pain. Three other states--Arkansas,...

Requires insurance companies to include contraceptive coverage.(WORTH NOTING)(Women's Contraceptive Equity Act)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... A New York Court of Appeals upheld in January the Women's Health and Wellness Act which requires insurance companies to include contraceptive coverage in their drug benefit packages. A similar law, the Women's Contraceptive Equity Act, was...

Uphold the 1997 Oregon state physician-assisted suicide law.(WORTH NOTING)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... In a major defeat for the Bush administration and former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court voted six to three in January to uphold the 1997 Oregon state physician-assisted suicide law. The majority opinion was written...