re-nationalise!

As a life long socialist, this is great news to start my day.
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Dunkirk 2017

Just watched this film, god that was hard to watch at times. Liked the music score too, interesting combination of an electronically modified orchestra and electronic effects. Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ was added almost subliminally, clever stuff.

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What do endangered species represent?

As in secular life, religionists recognise no barriers when committing atrocities. Whether against our fellow man or against the animal kingdom we ‘protect’, there are no depths to which humankind won’t sink in its desire to satisfy its greed for wealth and power.

In this story

Tiger killing monk

a Thai monk in his search to find his god, trades in tiger parts to aid his transcendental journey. This is more than sad, that a monk, someone who is supposedly seeking a ‘oneness’ with the universe, defiles himself in such a destructive way. What really annoys me is that nature, the animals, our planet, doesn’t belong to anyone. For our own good we must preserve what we have here, otherwise our future will be less wonderful and possibly barren of many large mammals, creatures that bring us so many psychological and material benefits.

I’m happy for people to have personal gods, just stay the fuck out of secular life and support the protection of our planet!

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The Matthew Passion

Composed in 1727 Bach’s Passion is at the centre of his great religious works. Undoubtedly a Christian, Bach believed, as far as we can tell, that he was creating music that glorified his god. As an atheist I simply replace ‘religious’ with transcendent, thus apart from the sheer turgid nature of some of the text I can enjoy Bach’s wonderful music without the need to supplicate myself before a mythical super-natural monster. Some have argued that this music simply couldn’t exist without the religion it is pinned to, probably not as the text is at its core, but there are many examples of the transcendent in Bach’s instrumental music, without any such religious text being anywhere in sight, or earshot. Listen here Erbarme dich mein gott  for a truly amazing aria from The Matthew Passion, featuring the contralto Delphine Galou.

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special snowflakes

The paintings of Balthus can be thought provoking, particularly those, such as, ‘the guitar lesson’. As adults we can view such images and come to out own conclusions, we really don’t need a group of people who know what is best for us, to gain the upper hand. Thankfully as we can glean from reading the Huff’ Post article

Huff Post

the Metropolitan Museum of Art has ignored their whining and crying and continues to display the Balthus painting, as is their right.

I suppose the painting gives bored, rich people something to talk about, meanwhile artists get on with revealing the difficulties of life and the complexities of the human condition, no matter how unsettling to these ‘snowflakes’.

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Musée d’Orsay

So I visited the Musée d’Orsay and whilst looking at a beautiful desert scene ‘Le Sahara’  by Gustave Guillaumet I entered into a brief conversation with a women from the East coast of America and I remarked, ‘it makes you think, doesn’t it?’ ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘that there is something bigger than us’. ‘For me it’s the weight of our common humanity’, I said. She’d moved a little and didn’t hear me.

Later I revisited the moment and despite feeling both humbled and invigorated by a star filled night sky, hoping that one day we can explore there, I knew that the bigger thing for all of us at the moment is our immediate, fragile and dangerous human condition.  When looking to the stars, we should realise that we need to look after each other, or we will never reach our true transcendent potential; we need to invest in our common humanity.

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Monumentally stupid

Monumentally stupid is how one could describe Donald Trump but I hate to attach that epithet in a general way to a whole country. However it seems to me that Americans are involved in a giant experiment to deconstruct their country. The latest in a lengthening grubby, scrawled line of policies, returning Americans to a former age and ‘unhindered’ by environmental protections, is the repealing of laws, designed to protect America’s waterways. The EPA, controlled by an arch polluter, Scott Pruitt is to role back The Clean Water Rule, a policy that you would think was eminently sensible.

Environmentally induced cancers and related health problems, affect everyone, including the families of Trump and his administration. President Orange and his wacky cronies don’t even acknowledge the danger to themselves and their families.

How stupid can you be?

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Ham salad – sinks!

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/05/24/ark-encounter-has-been-bad-news-for-the-people-of-williamstown-kentucky/

lol…………Ken Ham’s ridiculous, con job on the folks of Kentucky, sinks into the ocean of creationist lies and delusion. So happy that this happened. You didn’t need to see the future to know that this ‘project’ was going to be a failure, just some common sense would have told you that visiting this place would be a ‘one-off’, much like visiting a freak show in Victorian England.

A legitimate museum, full of facts and verifiable, documented history will be visited time and time again, because people realise that they can actually learn something there. Children in particular wandering through the ‘Ark Encounter’, would have seen through the Creationist BS on display. Forgetting what is inside for a second, it should be sufficient to deter all visitors, when it is known that such a large wooden ship, has already been proven to pull itself apart, due to the forces of waves on its colossal timber structure.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/05/24/ark-encounter-has-been-bad-news-for-the-people-of-williamstown-kentucky/

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Alien Covenant

Where Prometheus was utterly brilliant, this is dreadful nonsense. From a contrived plot line, a crew that appears to be made up of weak-willed, stupid Christians, zero sympathetic characters and to cap it all a dialogue sound quality, that was probably recorded in the 1950s. What a disappointment.

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Hypocrite meets hypocrite

So Trump meets the Pope, so happy for them! What a crime that in 2017 one of the most hateful of religions is still held in high enough esteem to meet the President of the ‘free world’. What a massive insult to all those who care about human decency based on empathy, compassion and reason, rather than faith, threats and magic. The Catholic church is a vile cult.

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