What Is a "Charity"?

Is giving money to these creeps "charity" too?

By Hos

Bill Maher last Friday brought up on his show the question of what is a charity and what is not. The discussion was sparked by a point made on his show the week before. He had a right wing guest who claimed that Mitt Romney, the aristocrat, was not such a bad person after all, because he had given millions to "charity". For Romney, of course, that means the Mormon Church. But Maher's guest wasn't at all happy that this was even brought up.

I must say I find it stunning that the hypocrisy here is ignored. First, Romney was a Mormon bishop. He is giving to the organization he, himself, is and has been a senior member of. How much more self-serving can you get? Second, the Mormon Church spends a lot of this money on missionary activity, which essentially is meant to bring in more members and ultimately, more revenue. It is amazing that churches get to call money spent on advertising for more business "charity" while restaurants don't.

And when not busy recruiting, the church spends its money ruining the lives of gay people. Their role in financing Proposition 8 in California was the subject of a full length documentary.

So much for the claim that giving to charity makes Romney a decent person. Bill Maher said that he devoted a whole segment to this topic on his next show because of the flak that he got; "Oh, Bill, but Mormons do a lot of good work!".

But I want to go a step further. Charitable work is what criminals, money launderers, and terrorists often hide behind. Quite frankly, I find it rather despicable when I am told I should respect Mr. X for all the "charity work" that he does, regardless of what kind of person he is otherwise. Exhibit A would be the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. They are often involved in extensive charitable activities serving the poor (and, of course, recruiting them to get involved in the "armed struggle"). That is the point Christopher Hitchens brought up when pressured by Sean Hannity to "eulogize" Jerry Falwell, and that is what I would have said in response to the smarmy praise for Mitt Romney.

The comment is about 8 minutes and 10 seconds into the video.

But the hypocrisy doesn't end even here. Only today, we learn that the state of Arizona has banned one major charitable organization, the Planned Parenthood, from receiving public funds.

Planned Parenthood does a lot of good work too, and provides health-related services to the poor that will otherwise be missing. But it has become the target of the rage of the religious right because of what is in fact a smaller part of what it does-providing abortions. It seems that those who claim that giving to their churches makes them good people understand rather clearly, that not all charity is good.

Clergy Sexual Abuse

by Edd Doerr

The Vatican's clergy sexual abuse scandal will not go away. Here's the latest:

New York Times editorial on May 7, "More Time for Justice: States need to extend the time for victims to bring claims against sexual abusers",  praises Hawaii for extending the statute of limitations for lawsuits by child victims, and notes that the Catholic bishops have been leading the fight to block such extensions.

Washington Post editorial on same day, "The Catholic Church's passivity: Despite avowals of progress, the church still grapples with sex abuse scandals", discusses the case of Rev Bradley Schaeffer, who became the head of the Jesuit order in the US. Schaeffer reportedly participated in the coverups of abusers. "Worryingly", the Post opines, "there are even signs that the church's passivity has morphed into hostility toward its accusers.".

My files on the matter are bulging just in the past two years with material from the Times, the National Catholic Reporter, and reports from Ireland. Meanwhile, what we hear from the Vatican and the bishops are pleas for tax support for the church's declining private schools and attacks on US nuns for pushing social justice while failing to jump into the bishops' campaigns against contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage.

Most Catholics are disgusted with the Old Boys Club with the funny hats and skirts.

"What good is journalism?"

by Edd Doerr

"What good is journalism?" asks a character in Paco Ignacio Taibo II's 1994 detective novel "Sensing That the Battleground ... " ("Sintiendo que el campo de batalla ... "). Taibo is Mexico's finest detective story writer and a historian (two books about Che Guevara). Much of his work is available in English.

Another character, a professor, responds (my translation):  "Journalism is the last barrier that keeps us from falling into barbarism. Without it, without the circulation of information, we would all salute when 'Big Brother' tells us to. It's the voice of the silent and the extra hearing that God gives to the deaf. It's the only miserable occupation that is worth a damn in the last half of the 20th century. It's the moral equivalent of ethical piracy,  the breath of slave rebellions. It's the only punchy fun work left. It's what impedes the return of the Stone Age. Contradictorially, it's where we can find eternal things like truth, evil, ethics, the enemy. It's the best literature, because it's most immediate. It's the key to real democracy because people need to know what's going on so they can decide how to deal with life. It's the re-encounter between the best moral traditions of Christianity and those of the revolutionary left of the late 19th century. It's the soul of a country. Without journalism we would all be dead or blind. Without the circulation of accurate information  we would all be morons. It's also the refuge of crooks, the most contaminated zone in society, a space that is dignified because you share it with shills and the corrupt. But it offers possibilities for heroism. It's as if you put heaven and hell in a blender and you had to work in that whirlpool. It's like a brick factory. Need I go on?"

And that is why I am a news junky, addicted to MSNBC, the New York Times, The Nation, Free Inquiry, Mother Jones, etc, and even read conservative stuff even though it makes me gag. And why retirement is not in my vocabulary. And why I write and blog. And why I am pissed when fellow humanists allow themselves to be distracted by trivia and faulty prioritizing.

Oh, well, have a nice day.

Against Democracy

by Luis Granados



Turkey was in the news last month, for putting on trial the two surviving generals who helped lead a successful coup against a popularly-elected government in 1980. Terrible thing, isn’t it, for unelected generals to undermine democracy like that? Or is there more to the story than meets the eye?

The story begins at the dawn of the twentieth century, when Turkish army officers, then the most well-educated, forward-looking people in the Ottoman Empire, overthrew centuries of rule by Muslim sultans. There isn’t space to talk about that in detail here, but you can sneak a peek at a chapter from my forthcoming book to get the full story. Ultimately the military, led by the extraordinary Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, established a secular republic, in a revolution more sweeping (and less bloody) than anything that occurred in America, France, Russia, or China. Not without intense resistance, though, from the Muslim God experts displaced from power, who forced Atatürk to put down a number of armed revolts. When his successor allowed free elections in 1950, a party dominated by imams took power, and promptly began whittling away at the provisions of Atatürk’s secular constitution for their own benefit.



God expert power in Turkey waxed and waned over the next two decades. A tectonic shift occurred in 1973, though, as a result of the stunning success of the Arab oil embargo (which in turn had resulted from Muslim fury over American military support for Israeli God experts). Suddenly, Saudi Arabia had more money than it knew what to do with. While some of it went to race horses and yachts, much of it was plowed into propaganda to increase Muslim political influence around the world. The campaign kicked off with a 1976 conference in Pakistan, under the auspices of the Saudi-funded “Muslim World League,” attended by representatives of Turkey’s religious political party. The goals the conference decided upon were straightforward:

1. The constitutional frameworks of the Islamic countries should be restructured according to Islamic principles and the Arabic language should be spread among the people.
2. Civil laws should be replaced by the Sharia.
3. Women should obey Islamic restrictions.
4. Necessary economic and political steps should be taken to establish modern Islamic states based on the Sharia.
5. At every level of educational training, Islam should be taught as a mandatory subject.
6. The five principles of Islam should be memorized by all primary school students.
7. Secondary school students must learn the entire Koran.
8. In order to promote these goals, Islamic educational institutions must be established in each country.
9. In order to recreate Islamic unity, all Muslim states should first recognize and accept their Islamic attributes and then establish a confederation under the guidance of a commonly elected Caliph.

Saudi oil money began pouring into Turkey. If the shining example of Atatürk’s achievement could be smashed, humanist reformers in other Muslim-majority countries would be marginalized. Some of the money went to capitalize Islamist entrepreneurs; some went directly to Turkey’s religious political party; some went to illegal groups associated with that party, sporting colorful names like the Rapid Freedom Fighters of Islamic Revolution, the Global Brotherhood Front Suicide Squad of Sharia, the Fighters of the Universal Islamic War of Liberation, and the Sharia Liberation Army of the World.

One predictable result of this cash influx was that the religious party grew in electoral strength, becoming a partner in a series of unstable coalition governments. Another predictable result was that political violence soared, especially because the Soviet Union was simultaneously funding its own underground groups. Thousands of political assassinations occurred in Turkey from 1975 to 1980, including parliament members, professors, journalists, and even a former prime minister. By 1980, the assassination pace reached over 20 per day. The combination of the lunacy of Sharia finance and the loss of personal security laid waste to the Turkish economy, which began to experience triple-digit inflation.

Meanwhile, the Muslim World League initiative was having stunning success in other countries. Pakistan turned to radical Islam in early 1979, when General Zia ul-Haq seized power in a coup and imposed Sharia law, which remains in place today. A few months later came the Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic revolution in Turkey’s neighbor Iran, which also remains in place today.

Turkey’s military leaders, who saw themselves as the custodians of Atatürk’s revolution, were gravely concerned. In December 1979, they wrote a letter to the president, warning bluntly that:

Our nation no longer has the patience for people who sing the communist international instead of our national anthem; who invite the sharia; who want to bring all sorts of fascism by replacing the democratic regime; and who want anarchy, destruction, and separatism by misusing freedoms that are provided by our Constitution.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came in September, 1980, at a mass rally to protest Israel’s announcement that Jerusalem would become its capital. Backers of the religious party openly called for the destruction of the secular Turkish state, shouting slogans such as “Sharia will come, brutality will end,” “Sovereignty belongs to Allah,” “The Constitution is the Koran,” “Secularism is atheism,” “Government with Allah’s rules,” “We are ready for jihad,” and “Sharia or death.” The Islamists refused to sing the national anthem, instead declaring “We want the call of prayer, we do not sing this anthem.” A few days later, a military junta led by Gen. Kenan Evren took away democracy by seizing control of the state from its duly elected officials.

The Affront to Democracy



Winston Churchill smugly observed in 1947 that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Maybe so. The point to be made, though, is that “democracy” covers a pretty broad spectrum of possibilities, some of which are not really any better than other forms of government.

Suppose the people voted, and those responsible for counting the ballots simply lied about the results. Would that be a good form of government? Of course not; it would be fraud. One step further: suppose there were two otherwise evenly matched candidates, and one candidate prevails by spreading false information that his opponent was a serial child molester. Anything admirable about that? Again, no. Now go one step further: picture the same two evenly matched candidates, and one of them succeeds in using revered God experts to spread the message that God is on his side, and against the other guy. If you want to get in good with God, you’d better vote the right way. Is that a lot different from the first two cases? It’s still fraud, isn’t it? And it happens all the time, not only in the Muslim-majority world but right here in the United States. Which presidential candidate is it who boasts that “We do what we do because God is with us”? (Hint: he kicked off his re-election campaign yesterday.)

Atatürk understood this. He tried, twice, to have free elections in Turkey with a robust but loyal opposition. He abandoned both efforts when he saw that opposition being hijacked by God experts intent on having one election to get back into power, and then staying there permanently to carry out God’s will. Instead, he installed rules in Turkey’s constitution that in their current form state that “No one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings, or things held sacred by religion, in any manner whatsoever, for the purpose of personal or political influence, or for even partially basing the fundamental social, economic, political and legal order of the state on religious tenets.” That’s a sound rule that eliminates a huge impediment to real democracy – but only if it’s enforced.

Turkey’s military and judicial authorities in 1980 and at other times have used their muscle to enforce this rule. Unfortunately, though, Evren was no Atatürk. Once in power, he discovered that he rather liked Saudi money, so long as he could channel it into what he thought would be a “moderate” Islam that he could control. He was ruthless in cracking down on the communist element of Turkey’s instability (which helped him attract American money as well), but he oversaw a massive program of mosque construction and reintroduction of Islam into public education that would have enraged Atatürk.



Now Evren is discovering that he didn’t use Islam; Islam used him. Levels of religiosity in Turkey grew rapidly in the 90s, and the successor to the religious party Evren broke up in 1980 won a sweeping “democratic” victory in 2002. Leading secular generals were forced out of office last year. Dozens of other humanist journalists and politicians have been clapped into prison. Evren himself, now 94 years old, is being subjected to a show trial from his hospital bed so the Islamists can prove to Turkey’s humanists that “No matter how long it takes, we’ll get you someday.”

If Evren had shown a little more Atatürk steel in dealing with Turkey’s God experts in the years after 1980, do you think he’d be on trial today?

Freedom of the Press: A Cautionary Tale

Map from elpais.com

By Hos

Freedom House is the organization the publishes annual reports on the status of freedom of the press in the world. It divides nations into 3 groups in this regard: Free, Partly Free and Not Free. The report was released yesterday for 2011 in Washington.

It is a bleak report. Less than 15% of world population live in nations were there is free press. There have been important improvements in North Africa as a result of the "Arab Spring". That is perhaps the only positive points in the 2011. But the improvements have been offset by deteriorations elsewhere.

The situation is Latin America has gotten worse in more places than one. Our neighboring nation to the south, Mexico, is one of the worst examples. Down there the deterioration is due to crackdowns by local governments as well as kidnappings and killings of journalists by drug cartels, which do not exactly care for free expression. Another unfortunate example is Venezuela, a country once with thriving press, now losing freedom of press as a result of pressures from the authoritarian government of Hugo Chavez. I shudder when I see some in the US, like Sean Penn and Noam Chomsky, rooting for Chavez.

But there is no room for complacency. In the report, the US is number, regarding freedom of the press. Freedom House mentions that some states have repealed laws that protect journalists from having to divulge their sources.

And guess which are the nations that rank the highest for freedom of the press? Norway, Sweden and Finland. Yep, the gold once again goes to "godless Scandinavia".

War Is Peace. Slavery Is Oppression. Ignorance Is Strength.

Once again, it seems that the word "Family" in an organization's name can be more accurately replaced with "patriarchy". The Illinois Family Institute didn't like President Obama's National Day of Prayer proclamation. No, they didn't:

President Obama’s proclamation has raised the eyebrows of some because he is thankful that we live in a country that “respects the beliefs and protects the religious freedom of all people.” Critics have noted that this point seems to fly in the face of the President’s failure to defend the Defense of Marriage Act which would have huge ramifications for religious freedom should marriage be undefined to allow for homosexual couples. (The repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is already causing problems for military chaplains.) The President’s prayer proclamation also contradicts his actions associated with his health care plan that could force people to pay for abortions and contraceptives against the teachings of their faith

Got that? Failing to uphold a law that tells gays they can't marry the person they want is at odds with religious freedom. Not forcing gay soldiers to live a lie is at odds with religious freedom. Telling religious employers that they have to play by the same rules as everybody else is at odds with religious freedom.

I once had a discussion with my friend JB about the Civil War, and mentioned the argument that the war was fought not over slavery, but over states' rights. She snorted and said, "Yeah. The right to own slaves." Your right to religious freedom ends when it affects people outside of your sect. Your right to worship as you see fit does not include the right to be kowtowed to, the right to make other people live by your rules, or even the right not to be offended. Put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.

Counter Attack of a Secularist

by Gary Berg-Cross

Sean Faircloth, Director of Strategy and Policy at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, is the MSC speaker (May 5th from 2-4) at the Wheaton library. The topic related to his general activism and arousing the sleeping secular giant in the context of his new book Attack of the Theocrats which has an extensive critical review of religious bias in American politics and the social arena. For example:

More than ten states allow federally funded, unlicensed religious child-care facilities. Depending on the state, this can mean that some of these religious child-care facilities are exempt from a broad range of health and safety laws. Others are offered fewer exemptions, but the real question is why would any exemption exist at all, particularly when the safety of children is at stake?

As Richard Dawkins notes in his not-to-be-missed Forward the Sean provides:

a sobering picture, but fortunately, as anyone who has heard his speeches knows, he also has an inspiring and invigorating vision to offer. . . . Readers will finish the book exercised, energized, and eager to join Faircloth in a bold rediscovery of the secular dream of the European Enlightenment and America’s enlightened Fathers.”
-- Richard Dawkins, from the foreword to Attack of the Theocrats!

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

If you want to get warmed up for the event watch Sean talking at the Reason Rally and there is an interview on the Friendly Atheist site.

A 3000 Year Old Question And Its Modern Day Relevance

The death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David, 1787

The oft-heard claim that "our morality comes from God" or "without God, people would act out of control" is one of the oldest and most heinous lies used to scare people into giving their hard earned cash to the clergy. The right wing propaganda website conservapedia (which I won't link to) gives us this gem: "Not possessing a religious basis for morality, atheists are fundamentally incapable of having a coherent system of morality". Anyone who parrots these claims is a bald faced liar or flaming idiot, and you shouldn't be ashamed to call them out.

Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher and social critic famously asked religious expert Euthyphro, "is the pious loved by gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by gods"? Translation into modern language: "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God"? While Socrates's heresies and social commentary (including this one) earned him the title "gadfly" from Plato and ultimately lead to his trial and death, the legacy of this question remains with us to this day.

The pagan gods of Ancient Greeks were many and so, presumably, they had different tastes. Today though, all Jews, Christians and Muslims profess to be followers of the same Abrahamic God. Still, this God seems to have an awfully hard time making his mind about anything, as his making different and often contradictory claims about what he likes or doesn't like. As Abraham Lincoln famously said regarding the question of emancipation, "I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men who are equally certain that they represent divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respect both(!)...if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others...it might be supposed that he would reveal it directly to me". Truly, God could not speak with one voice on slavery. For a more thorough discussion on more recent issues on which God seems to be having an awfully hard time "having a coherent system of morality", check out this article in Psychology Today. It turns out that anytime there is some controversy, "there are people of faith on both sides of the issue" who are positive God is on their side. Things have changed very little from the days of Lincoln. For a taste of the most basic questions of morality that God gets wrong (and not just in the Old Testament, but New Testament), check out this video by Dan Savage (even though he subsequently made a partial retraction so as not to cause "offense".)

Turning to the second question, is there reason to think that without religion people would behave badly? I have found it frustrating the answers based on statistics do not seem to persuade in the least those who have already made their minds. For instance, if you point out to them that crime rates in the most godless region of the world, Scandinavia, are actually lower than the US, this is the kind of answer I once got: "Oh, but you cannot compare the masses in the US to the Scandinavians, they are held back from crime only by religion". While New Atheists are often accused of arrogance, it is their critics that, as far as I can tell, are the most patronizing and presumptuous people in this world.

But as we learn more, there is less that we need to guess on. According to a new study, generosity toward others exists in the secular people as well as religious people. The difference is not that the religious are generous and the secular aren't; rather, it is that generosity in secular people is often directed by compassion (the feeling of empathy towards others), whereas in religious people it is controlled by other factors, which may include "doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns". In other words, it is not that people will behave badly if they are less religious; it is that they are more likely to actually help the poor and needy, rather than pay for maintenance of expensive churches/mosques/synagogues and salaries of the clergy.