'Sam Harris rips academics who ceaselessly deny that religion can inspire brutal violence' [RawStory]

Sam Harris rips academics who ceaselessly deny that religion can inspire brutal violence Scott Kaufman 05 Mar 2015 at 10:33 ET                  Neuroscientist and public intellectual Sam Harris conducted a wide-ranging interview with journalist Graeme Wood that was supposed to be about the latter’s cover story in this month’s Atlantic, but which turned into an opportunity for Harris to outline what, to his mind, is the psychological state of a jihadist. Harris began by arguing that it was rational to believe that most believers understand religious texts at a literal level. “There are more or less plausible, more or less straightforward, more or less comprehensive readings of any scripture,” he said. “And the most plausible, straightforward, and comprehensive readings tend to be the more literalistic, no matter how self-contradictory the text. So, for instance, when it says in the Qur’an (8:12), ‘Smite the necks of the infidels,’ some people may read that metaphorically, but it’s always tempting to read it literally.” “In fact,” he continued, “a line like that fairly cries out for a literal reading. Of course, some Muslims believe that such violent passages must be read in their historical context. But it seems even more natural to assume that the words of God apply for all time. So it’s no accident that the Islamic State has made a cottage industry of decapitation.” Because “the Islamic State is giving a very plausible reading of the Qur’an and the hadīth. That’s a terrible problem, because one can’t stand up and say that this behavior is un-Islamic.” Harris then wondered why so many academics refuse to believe the statements made by jihadists at face value. “No one doubts the political and economic justifications that people give for their behavior. When someone says, ‘Listen, I murdered my rich neighbor because I knew he kept a pile of money in a safe. I wanted that money, and I didn’t want to leave a witness,’ nobody looks for an ulterior explanation for that behavior,” he said. “But when someone says, ‘I think infidels and apostates deserve to burn in hell, and I know for a fact that I’ll go to paradise if I die while waging jihad against them,’ many academics refuse to accept this rationale at face value and begin looking for the political or economic reasons that they imagine lie beneath it. So the game is rigged.” The reason those academics refuse to believe the statements of a believer is that they are too committed to their secular understanding of the world to fully comprehend the power of belief. But “once you imagine what it would be like to actually believe in paradise, and in martyrdom as the surest way of getting there, it becomes obvious why someone would want to join the Islamic State. If a person truly believes that the Creator of the universe wants him to wage war against the evil of unbelief and that the Islamic State is the very tip of His spear, he has to be insane not to join the cause.” “I see no reason to think that most jihadis are psychologically abnormal,” Harris said. “The truth is far more depressing: These are mostly normal people — fully capable of love, empathy, altruism, and so forth — who simply believe what they say they believe.” “The fact that most jihadis are generally rational, even psychologically normal, and merely in the grip of a dangerous belief system is, in my view, the most important point to get across.” “It is amazing how resolutely people will ignore the evidence of this,” he concluded. “Justin Bieber could convert to Islam tomorrow, spend a full hour on 60 Minutes confessing his hopes for martyrdom and his certainty of paradise, and then join the Islamic State — and Glenn Greenwald would still say his actions had nothing to do with the doctrine of Islam and everything to do with U.S. foreign policy.” http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/sam-harris-rips-academics-who-ceaselessly-deny-that-religion-can-inspire-brutal-violence/ COMMENT Interesting points raised by Sam Harris.  The bit about Beiber & Greenwald made me laugh. A heap of media focus and blame on 'radicalisation' at the moment, and not enough discussion of belief systems (although I'm sure US foreign policy also has a significant role in Middle East dramas). The 'psychologically normal' part isn't something I'd accept.   To my way of thinking, it isn't psychologically normal for modern man to believe he is on a mission from an almighty creator to destroy others or, at the other end of the spectrum, to seriously believe in any kind of religious being, powers, rituals and so on, no matter what belief system they represent. In other news: "Less Porn, More Scripture on New Russian Orthodox Search Engine" [MoscowTimes] Imagined a Soviet Union that had rid itself of the shackles of religious superstition.  But that's far from the case in post Soviet Russia.  It's encouraged.  Very disappointing.

Totalitarian Britain, CIA Lawsuit, Sacred Cows & Incongruous Libertarian Package

UK Police State Unbelievable harassment of politically active university students by the police state in Britain: Monitoring of protest groups “raw, unvarnished intimidation and activist-busting."  http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/25/police-covert-recruit-activists-spies-cambridge?CMP=share_btn_tw ......................................................... VIDEO UK Police try to recruit activist to spy on Cambridge students & political groups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hGQETyhXk ......................................................... CIA IS SUED CIA sued by “non-official cover” operative  “Madhouse: A Forbidden Novel of the CIA"  http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/7805012-74/cia-lawsuit-officer ......................................................... SACRED COWS & INCONGRUOUS LIB PACKAGE Snowden praised for fighting government surveillance… by group that LOVES corporate surveillance By Mark Ames  On February 20, 2015 Last Friday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden Skyped into a Washington DC Marriott Hotel conference hall to proudly accept “The Students For Liberty Alumnus of the Year Award.”  http://pando.com/2015/02/20/strange-bedfellows/ The Gist NSA whistleblower, Snowden, accepts Students for Libery award. Peter Thiel, founder of one of NSA’s biggest contractors, Palantir Technologies Gets Students For Liberty award  "Snowden’s nemesis, former NSA chief Keith Alexander, praised Palantir’s usefulness to the spy agency"  Greenwald has characterized Pando’s criticism of him as CIA plot hatched by Thiel  Thiel Founders Fund $300k in Pando previously Students for Liberty is anything but that: awarded “Event of the Year” to anti-Marxist 'libs' at Honduras’ National University Hey, Students of Liberty: Leftists & journalists in Honduras terrorized since 2009 US-backed coup!!!!!!  Snowden  “If the government will not be stewards of our rights, we can encode our rights into our system.”   Source:  http://pando.com/2015/02/20/strange-bedfellows/ Students For Liberty  gets most of its money from Koch brothers worked closely with US govt big corporate sponsors Students For Liberty’s Board Advisors incl Prince von Liechtenstein offshore banking tax haven of global billionaires / Switzerland too transparent Students For Liberty f. 2008 Alexander McCobin (emp @ Cato Institution, neé “The Charles Koch Foundation”) 💥 Koch Alarm 💥 Students for Liberty Ron Paul + Andrew Napolitano, Cato Institution / FoxNews truther Ron Paul presidential campaign 2012 Thiel funded /Snowden & Greenwald support Sen. Rand Paul Presidential campaign 2016 funded by Thiel’s co-founder at Palantir: Joe Lonsdale (Rand Paul’s finance team) 2011 Palantir sponsored Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Awards winners incl: >Glenn Greenwald >Laura Poitras >Tor Project >EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor >EFF Fellow Cory Doctorow Palantir & Peter Thiel   bravely fighting type of govt surveillance ably assisted by … Palantir & Peter Thiel   [LOL ... Pando] ......................................................... COMMENT Above are some of the things that caught my attention. The police attack on what is supposed to be a democratic right in Britain is disgraceful and, really, quite frightening and totalitarian, if you stop to think about what's going on.  And this is just the tip of an iceberg in Britain. More press on the CIA lawsuit would be good: The officer filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under a pseudonym, Mack L. Charles. The CIA declined to comment but did not dispute the plaintiff's former association with the agency. [1] CIA stands accused of illegally barring publishing of a novel (which isn't a first, as I recall). Finally, there's the hilarious Pando article (I love those guys).  No idea if they're really the 'bad' guys, if they're just funny bastards poking at some sacred cows, or if there is indeed something very odd about the convergence of these incongruous relationships. Trying to keep an open mind, but Koch, Thiel (NSA praise), Students for Liberty and the rest of it is a package way hard to swallow. Koch is 'cook' in German, by the way. Hmmmm ...

Greenwald Article: Australia's Prime Minister gives a Master Class in Exploiting Terrorism Fears to Seize New Powers

AUSTRALIA Tony Abbott >> Gives a Master Class in Exploiting Terrorism Fears to Seize New Powers http://interc.pt/1r1sgC0  >> #auspol >> #FreeAssangeNow Glenn Greenwald is so funny: greater chance of being killed by following causes than you do by terrorist attack: slipping in bathtub ...LOL #auspol "It’s our acceptance that ppl can live & worship in the way they choose that bothers them, not our foreign policy” - [ABBOTT] LOL > “a sweeping suppression order will prevent reporting of ..preventative detention orders.." / No Press = No democracy #auspol -----------------------------------------  COMMENT The Greenwald article was informative and made its point; but it was also very funny.  Well, to me, it was.   The need to broaden existing powers of authorities is questionable, when they have extensive powers already. And, yes, I would have to agree that those in power use the fear-factor and 'matters of national security' to pronounce whatever laws they want. Mind you, governments tend to rush through whatever they want once they're in power, so this is probably just the extreme version of what goes on -- the extreme version that involves widening powers to ridiculous degrees (eg 'preventative detention') AND, worse yet, muzzling the press who are prohibited from reporting what's going on.   That right there is a recipe for abuse of power by the state. The state can basically do whatever it wants to do with you and there's nobody out there that can even report on it! Is this Stalinist Australia?

NSA spies and Israel's spies are buddies

NSA has close partnership with Israel Mon Aug 4, 2014 10:5AM New documents show a “far-reaching” collaboration between the US National Security Agency and Israeli intelligence services most of which was directed against Palestine.  The NSA "maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU) sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting," according to an NSA document dated April 13, 2013, which is among other documents revealed by The Intercept on Monday.  The documents show the US has provided Israel with cash, raw data and analysis under agreements reached between the NSA and Israeli SIGINT National Unit also known as Unit 8200, the secretive signals intelligence organization.  The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald wrote that the documents "underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the US government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters."  The documents also show Unit 8200 along with the US, Britain and Canada attempt to collect signals from throughout the Middle East.  In 2003 and 2004, the US explored a "massively expanded intelligence-sharing relationship called 'Gladiator.'" But the Israelis demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for the project, which "appears never to have been consummated," one document shows.  The documents, however, revealed receipts for cash payments to Israel worth $500,000; though it is not clear if the receipts represent one or multiple payments, and that their precise purpose is undocumented.  ... FULL @ SOURCE ... Source - Press TV - here.

The $500,000 must be the 'petty cash' of the spy world.

The other stuff can't be that surprising. 

Everyone's in the five eye or whatever it is, so of course they're spying and sharing intelligence.