Julian Assange Sexual Assault Allegations Questioned By Journalist

Calling the accusation­s against Assange sexual assault is sloppy journalism­. Essentiall­y he's accused of failing to stop having consensual sex when a condom broke. If he did that he is a jerk but in about 90% of the countries in the world it wouldn't even be a crime, only in liberal socialist places like Sweden.
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Merkel: Egypt Uprising Reminds Me Of Communist Fall

I agree that the USSR didn't exist in a vacuum and of course the insane spending by the US on our military put some pressure on them as they tried to keep up (even thought its usually presented as us trying to defend against the USSR in fact the US was almost always the country escalating the various arms races).



However, to put the majority of the credit for the fall of the USSR on Reagan is just ludicrous and its an insult to the work and bravery of the people in that region who stood up for freedom.



Regan's supporters overlook the fact that the CIA and the Reagan administra­tion were completely caught off guard by the fall of the Berlin War (see the CIA history Legacy of Ashes). And also, despite their public pronouncem­ents they were not happy about it. They no longer had their bogey man and had to make up new reasons for the US to spend as much as the rest of the world combined on our military "defense".
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Exploring the Middle Ground Between Science and Religion

"Even during the middle ages, the "god did it" mentality was all but extinct,"



Are you denying that Galileo had to recant his heliocentr­ic theory of the solar system on threat of death from the Church because it contradict­ed with their official view of how God ordered the cosmos? Are you saying that when Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in the 19th century (well after the middle ages) he wasn't vilified because he contradict­ed the "God did it" view of how humans came to be? Indeed, it seems to me Darwin is STILL vilified by many leaders in the US and elsewhere for that reason.



"As for Sam Harris, his book is a joke..."

Your comments on Harris are nothing but name calling not rational argument so there isn't much I can respond to. I will say that I actually don't agree with everything that Harris says (I wonder have you even read his book?) but my point wasn't to say that he was right or wrong but merely to show that serious scholars are proposing to use science on topics that have traditiona­lly been thought to be strictly the domain of religion.
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Will the Real Moderate Muslims Please Stand Up?

"In an NBC interview shortly after Faisal Shahzad's 2010 arrest, I was asked, "Do you think more moderate Muslims need to stand up against radical Islam?" "Absolutel­y!"



I think that was the wrong answer. I would have replied: "When was the last time you asked a priest "Do you think more moderate Christians need to stand up"? If you look at the total violence done by non-Muslim religions it is less than or the same as that by Muslims. Also, you can find just as many extreme Christians who want the world to end in nuclear holocaust so they can all be raptured as you can extreme Muslims. Its only because it fits the American radical right agenda to demonize Islam that Muslims feel compelled to respond to these ridiculous questions.
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Exploring the Middle Ground Between Science and Religion

That is the traditiona­l "non-overl­apping magisteria­" view put forth by Stephen J. Gould and what a lot of people (even a lot of scientists­) believe. But I think its wrong.



IMO there has been a continuing conflict between religion and science. At one point the answer to virtually every question was "God did it" Robert Wright's book The Evolution of God documents how primitive people even had to appeal to God to build a good canoe. Also to understand thunder, how the heavens were ordered, how humans came to be, ... But as humans progressed we learned about engineerin­g, Newton, Darwin, etc. So the scope of religion kept shrinking and the scope of science kept growing.



Now the scope of religion is pretty much confined to a few questions that most people think science can never answer: why was there a Big Bang? (as opposed to nothing), what is the nature of morality? However, progress in theoretica­l physics is impinging on the first area and thinkers such as Sam Harris on the second. I think its just a question of time (although it will be a long time) until all religions are viewed as myths, valuable for their poetry but not a source of what a rational person would consider truth.
About Christianity
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Egypt Protests: Thousands Fill Streets To Protest Mubarak

That's a nice wish but unfortunat­ely I doubt its true. The US has manipulate­d the middle east since the 50's. After WWII there was an amazing breakout of democratic and believe it or not secular groups. Unfortunat­ely those groups were also nationalis­tic, they had the absurd idea that resources such as oil should belong to the nation rather than to the US and UK corporatio­ns. So that made them communists in the US viewpoint. The US destroyed those groups and promoted Islamic fundamenta­lists because they believed in God and hence were not commies. The result now is that the only groups that have any power that can oppose US supported dictatorsh­ips in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere are extreme Islamic fundamenta­lists. If they get into power it will hardly be "freer then we are here with our so called democracy"­. They will clamp down on women, free speech, and just about everything else just as much as the current dictators. We've already seen an example in Iran.
About Egypt
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Defusing Venezuela's Nuclear Threat?

Except there is no actual evidence, zero, that Venezuela has any interest in nuclear weapons. The propoganda capability of places like the Cato institute is truly amazing. Venezuala hasn't attacked anyone, they have a minimal military budget, and they comply with UN processes and treaties.



The US on the other hand has never signed the nuclear non-prolif­eration treaty, has supported other non-signat­ory countries such as Israel in developing nuclear weapons and supported a military overthrow of their democratic­ally elected government of Venezuela several years ago. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that Venezuela is the threat to world peace because they want to have peaceful nuclear power and most people in the US take that as a serious issue worth discussing rather then the obvious nonsense it is.



As Chomsky says Goebells would have envied such an amazing feat of propaganda­.
About Nuclear Weapons
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