It is the Central Florida billboard condemned by Christians. Now it is pulling people into a big debate over God in Lakeland. Atheists invited people to join them, and Christians are pushing back firmly.
Thanksgiving Day, Nov 28,1986 first appeared in the chapbook Tornado Alley, with illustrations by S. Clay Wilson. Gus Van Sant then made a short film of Burroughs reading the text. This poem resonates today as exposing what has gone horribly wrong in the USA, or maybe what has always been wrong. Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986
William S. Burroughs For John Dillinger In hope he is still alive Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces thanks for Kill a Queer for Christ stickers thanks for laboratory AIDS thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business thanks for a nation of finks — yes, thanks for all the memories all right, lets see your arms you always were a headache and you always were a bore thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.
America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers, calls out Mormons and schools all Americans on the unconstitutional craze of doling out civil rights by popular vote.
Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, Assistant Director of Operation Save America, is worried. According to studies by the Barna Research Group, California pollsters specializing in tracking religious and spiritual attitudes, only nine percent of teenaged Christians believe in moral absolutes. What’s more, Barna reports that the vast majority of kids raised Christian will abandon all or part of their faith by the time they finish high school. "Assembly of God leaders estimate between 65 and 70 percent will depart, while the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life estimates roughly 88 percent will leave," Thomas writes.
Sometimes religion can be the reason of a family break-up. Orthodox jews in Israël, for instance, can be completely ostracised when they decide to give up the faith of their parents.
Maddow on child labor endorsing, pro-slavery freaks.
The Senate Finance Committee has included sections in the Customs Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Reauthorization Act of 2009, that would ban the importation of goods made “with convict labor, forced labor, orindentured labor under penal sanctions.”
Industry lobbyists and foreign governments profiting from child labor form an “ad hoc” coalition to oppose it.
Herb friendly, secular humanist. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and a hatchetman in the fight against ignorance. I pride myself in taking a punch and will gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject, absolutely, revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method, is love.