Thought I’d treat you to a little Bill Hicks. I’m sure plenty of people who spend the whole day eating bratwursts and going to furniture sales would be a bit put off by it, but thems the breaks.

-Abu Sinan’s eldest son, Sinan, is sick right now. Everyone please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.

-Some asshole just stole about $100 from me by using my credit card. I canceled the card and am trying to get the money back before the 1st, when I need it for rent and bills. I have to wonder what goes through peoples’ heads; the person ordered a bunch of things to be delivered to their place, which means they’ll likely be easy to find, which means they’ll probably be in big trouble for theft and for what? Some videos from Colombia House and some tracks off of itunes? Peoples’ priorities never cease to astound me.

-McCain has disowned Hagee’s endorsement. No, not because of the anti-Catholic or Anti-Muslim sentiment, or even the remarks about Hurricane Katrina being a punishment for homosexuals (a weird view to take, N’awlins is not exactly a hub of gay life). No, apparently back in the 90s, Hagee said this;

“Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said ‘I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.’ So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah writing — ‘They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,’ meaning there’s no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don’t let your heart be offended. I didn’t write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

I don’t get the uproar. The statement is both idiotic and offensive, but it’s just a logical extension of all the evangelical nuttiness over Israel. I mean, Pat Robertson says that during the rapture the Jews “will call out in vain to the one they have so long denied” (and he doesn’t mean Jesse Jackson). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; evangelicals love Israel like child molesters love playgrounds, and any Jews allying with them are wading in some bad waters.

-As much as Tibet protesters piss me off sometimes and in my view acted disgracefully during the Olympic torch’s move to China (as if Americans have any fucking room to criticize anyone else for unjust occupations), I am also not a sinopologist and I hope that the recent controversy will bring some real attention to the issue. I would like to simply see an honest dialog for once where people don’t dismiss Tibet as a “hippy cause” or present the Dalai Lama as some sort of demigod presiding over a perfect state before the mean ol’ Chinese invaded. Change needs to come, but not in the form of a return to a medieval theocracy propped up by the CIA.

-Trying to stay eating healthy lately, and have discovered a great breakfast for that; ricotta cheese pancakes. Seriously, try them. Delicious, filling, and if you do them right, healthy.

-My USB cable is not working, so haven’t been able to put up the newer pics on my flickr page. Hopefully I’ll have some up later this week. In the meantime, though, anyone who reads the blog and has flickr, throw me a contact message. http://www.flickr.com/photos/parallel_sidewalk/

Back from a couple interesting days, which I’ll write about later probably. For now I just want to say; when I see someone with a ‘Calvin pissing on [whatever]‘ decal on their vehicle, or fake bullet holes, I just assume I could never be friends with them. Is that shallow of me?

Nah, just gonna be out of touch with the electronic world for a couple days. Out in nature and all that. I’ll try and bring back some cool pictures. Everyone take care.

Apparently a Muslim imam led the prayer session for the Arizona House of Reps last week and I missed it. I’m only learning of it now because right wing bloggers are seeing here, as they do everywhere, the creeping tide of a caliphate at the hands of the heartless, barbaric Islamic hordes.

I would actually be okay with skipping prayer sessions at government functions, not because they offend me on some kind of “separation of church and state” level (though I do believe in this principle) but because it’s sanctimonious bullshit. It’s done purely for pomp and show. When you get together to decide how to wrangle more money away from the poor for your rich buddies, how to cut down on school lunches for poor kids, how to get Americans to jump at the next shadow enemy you’re manufacturing, and how to find ways to lock up non-violent criminals for longer and execute retards, I’d just as soon you left God out of it. Just get to the plundering and murder without feeling compelled to remind me you’re a “man of faith” every two minutes, there’s a good man. My feelings on the idiots who say bismillah before they conduct government business in Egypt and Iran are similar, but I don’t live or pay taxes in Egypt or Iran so ultimately I don’t think about it as much.

Now, as much as I could do without the phony-baloney mock piety of politicians, I realize that it’s not going away any time soon. As this is not, nor ever was, nor ever will be a “Christian nation”, I’m just as okay with an imam, a rabbi, a wiccan priestess, a Sioux medicine man, or whoever giving the opening prayer, and in fact if it has to happen then I insist that these people be allowed to do so once in a while. Man, imagine a Sadhu giving the prayer; some drealocked Indian guy in a loincloth and facepaint standing on daggers and speaking in Hindi about the ultimate godhead and the ultimate human destiny to merge with it. I may have to drive down to Phoenix if they ever do that.

But anyway, back on point, there are quite possibly more Muslims than Jews in America today. They are part of this country and they deserve representation and respect in it as much as anyone. In a way, an imam showing up to held the thieves lend a godly aura to their mischief is about as American as it gets. Ultimately, I’d just as soon get rid of it all, but if we’re going to have it, let’s try and have it at least somewhat fairly.

For an explanation about the tracks and how they work, http://parallelsidewalk.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/hell-weeks-shuffle/

When I get a handle on using sendspace etc, I’ll post fully downloadable mixtapes for whoever want them. Til then, this is what I’m listening to this weekend.

The Roots- Clock With No Hands (Somehow simultaneously one of the best Islamic and existentialist tracks ever)

Wilco- Jesus etc.

The Dicks- Dicks Hate The Police

Iron and Wine- Bird Stealing Bread

Donny Hathaway- The Ghetto

Judas Priest- Electric Eye

Brother Ali- Uncle Sam, Goddam

Brother Ali- Dorian

John Coltrane- A Love Supreme first section

Cannibal Ox- Iron Galaxy

Propagandhi- Anchorless

Everlast- I Can’t Move

Blackfire- Indian Corn Song

Sage Francis- Makeshift Patriot

Bob Dylan- Isis

Blind Willie Johnson- Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

Dead Kennedys- Holiday in Cambodia

Ozomatli- Cumbia De Los Muertos

Bad Religion- Hooray For Me

Warsaw- S’Get Budded

Burning Spear- Marcus Garvey

Tito Puente- Mambo Diablo

The Silver Jews- I’m Gonna Love The Hell Out Of You

Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip- Thou Shalt Always Kill (a new favorite).

I can’t claim to be a fan of the Moorish Orthodox Church, mainly due to their support of pederast Hakim Bey (when I was a Muslim, my laundry list of grievances was a bit longer). However, I find this portrait truly remarkable. It’s Rumi, but done in a style that is almost always used for Eastern Orthodox icons. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before. So, credit where it’s due.

It’s been common lately for creationists, largely rallying around Ben Stein’s “Expelled”, to argue that evolutionary theory in particular and science in general led to the Holocaust. I can see how someone could come to that view, if they were completely unversed in science, philosophy, history, theology, and basic logic, and sadly, most Americans are.

A few of the more common remarks I’ve seen and a few comments;

Hitler was a disciple of Darwin

Interesting, then, that Darwin is never mentioned in Mein Kamph or any major speech or public doctrine of Hitler that I’m aware of. Hitler does repeatedly invoke Christianity, nationalism, and cultural supremacy, all big favorites with the right wing crowd that most pretty much all American creationists belong to.

Hitler merely tried to enact the Darwinist maxim “survival of the fittest”.

Not true. First of all, Darwin’s expression refers explicitly to the way species observably act in a natural setting. This is not a moral imperative, nor did Darwin ever say it should be. While Darwin’s views on race were not exactly enlightened by our standards (though they were significantly advanced for his own times), he never makes any sort of reference to human “races” being gradable. This was, however, a favorite view of many Christians, who used the bible to justify, among other things, the violent dispossession of the American Indians and the transatlantic slave trade.

At any rate, Darwin believed in natural selection as an observable part of nature, nothing more. Saying he believed that it should be applied to human society is like saying that Newton wanted people forcible held to the ground because he believed in gravity. At any rate, what Hitler did is not natural selection, but artificial selection, its opposite. Breeding dogs or horses is an example of a more widespread version of this, controlling traits through selective breeding, much like eugenics.

Without the moral absolute of religion, one has no basis not to murder

Let’s stay away from the very, very obvious fact that Hitler was a proudly avowed Christian, if only for a moment. In my eyes, a strong, unyielding, unexplored “moral absolute” is exactly what caused the Shoah. Deciding to exterminate a race because they are ‘a disease’ is not an act of relativism, it’s an act of very powerful belief. The holocaust didn’t happen because Germans were bored and chose and amoral way to blow off steam, the holocaust was an expression of a very ingrained set of morals.

It seems peculiar to me as well that creationists seem unaware that when Europe was almost entirely Christian, with no evolutionary theory to speak of, there was still plenty of killing to go around. Jews were randomly brutalized and slaughtered regularly, and hatred of Jews was encoded in the books of many prominent Christian theologians. Hitler was not working in a vacuum, but rather followed in the footsteps of men like Martin Luther, who in turn followed in the footsteps of many church policy makers. The inquisition and crusades also took place in the name of Christianity. Look, I’ll throw you righties a bone you’ll eat up. Do you think Muslim terrorists do what they do because their beliefs aren’t strong enough?

By the way, I’m not an atheist so don’t bother with mentioning Stalin, especially because he’s not the point of this, and you know it.

ID should be presented alongside/instead of evolutionary theory in schools to keep children in reverence of life.

Point the first, there’s no evidence that this works and in fact history seems to speak against any idea that creationist thought leads naturally to a respect for life (though I’m sure there are many creationists who are compassionate people). Having the same people urge a respect for life AND the invasion of the middle east is a bit off, but one thing at a time.

Second, ID is not and never will be science. Period, end of story. There’s no more reason to give kids a chance to “figure it out for themselves” in a classroom setting than there is to study phrenology side by side with neurology or flat earth theory with geography.

Science leads you to kill people

Yeah, those scientists who invented the smallpox vaccine sure were heartless bastards. Seriously, not even going to bother with this one.

Faith in the highest and scientific progress are compatible; willful ignorance and scientific knowledge are not.

Thanks for your visit, but just let me say; me being an ex-Muslim does not suddenly make me your buddy.

Hey party people

I am headed to work in a few hours and then after a 16 hour shift plan to grab my rucksack, tent, a bottle of good beer, a couple cans of food, a map and a compass, and head out into nature for a couple days. I don’t think there’s much in the way of wireless out there, so I probably won’t be posting anything Sunday through Tuesday. Catch you all soon and take care.

One Love

Dave