More on the Systematic Rape of Children by Catholic Priests in Ireland

Posted on June 7, 2009

Music and Spirituality

Posted on April 16, 2009

I got this email in my inbox today:

Your Name	Justin St. Vincent
Your email address	——-@xtrememusic.org
Subject:	Emcee Lynx: Music/Spirituality Interview
Message:	Dear Emcee Lynx, I hope all is well – my name is Justin St. Vincent, Editor of Xtreme Music, and a new and exciting series exploring “The Spiritual Significance of Music”. I’d love the opportunity for you to e-mail your response, around 200+ words, to the question: “What do you believe is the spiritual significance of music?” For more information and a preview of this online portfolio, please feel free to explore Xtreme Music: where music meets spirituality: www.xtrememusic.org Blessings and Best Regards, Justin St. Vincent Xtreme Music ———@xtrememusic.org

So I went and took a look at his website.  Apparently he’s going through and systematically contacting as wide a range of musicians as he can in one genre at a time, asking them all the same question, and then posting al their responses.  I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that there’s a sort of general Christian slant to his project, at least Christian Musicians were one of the first groups he did an interview set on, but I figured it doesn’t take long to write a short article like what he asked for and – worst case scenario – I get a post for this blog out of it, so I might as well put something together.

Here’s what i came up with:

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Despite the Riots….

Posted on March 21, 2009

Check this out:

Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone – and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

Here’s how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states have successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists – of all stripes – have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be “respected” – by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of “adulterous” women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are “religious” issues, and it is “offensive” to talk about them.

- Johann Hari: Despite the Riots and Threats, I Stand By What I Wrote.  Read the full article here

The author touches on some deep issues in the article (which goes on quite a bit longer and which I highly recomend that ya’ll go read) but I think the best is that Freedom of Speech must be unrestricted in order to function and that the antidote to people who use it to say stupid and ridiculous things is more freedom of speech from other people who oppose them – not government or religious censorship in the name of “public decency” or any such garbage.  Public Decency laws have nothing to do with decency and everything to do with the people who control the State using morality as an excuse to silence those who threaten the status quo.

The Satanic Verses

Posted on March 8, 2009

I’ve just finished watching this documentary, in 9 parts on youtube. ya know, the more I see of Islam the less I like it – it’s everything that’s wrong with Christianity to the Nth degree. Not that I’m gonna go all anti-muslim bigot or anything, but these fuckers are scary.

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Colbert, Dan Savage, Olberman, and me on Prop 8

Posted on November 12, 2008

I think it’s a good thing that media types are talking about it now, I just wish they’d talked about it before the election instead of being too busy talking about Obama and McCain; and not allowed the bastards who passed it to go unchallenged spreading lies about schoolchildren being indoctrinated and other nonsense.  This ties directly into the article i posted right before the election about how the puppet show of “representative” democracy distracts people from the real issues that they can actually do something about.

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