Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation's 50 nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.

Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido went offline for mandatory routine maintenance.

After last year's March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor halted for checkups has been restarted amid public worries about the safety of nuclear technology.

"Today is a historic day," Masashi Ishikawa shouted to a crowd gathered at a Tokyo park, some holding traditional "koinobori" carp-shaped banners for Children's Day that have become a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.

Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.

Well, whaddya know?

Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we're now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion - both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.

Put it this way: If something like the financial crisis of 2008 had occurred in, say, 1971 - the year Richard Nixon declared that "I am now a Keynesian in economic policy" - Washington would probably have responded fairly effectively. There would have been a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of strong action, and there would also have been wide agreement about what kind of action was needed.

But that was then. Today, Washington is marked by a combination of bitter partisanship and intellectual confusion - and both are, I would argue, largely the result of extreme income inequality.

Respected historian Alice Kessler-Harris recently published a biography of Lillian Hellman entitled "A Difficult Woman" -- which book critic Maureen Corrigan describes as the most tactful adjective one can use to describe Hellman. Hellman was likely the most successful American woman playwright of the 20th century -- one who also drank heavily, chain-smoked, and lived a sexually liberated life, while also having a 30-year open relationship with fellow writer Dashiell Hammett.

Hellman's success as a playwright began with her 1934 play "The Children's Hour," telling the story of a two teachers at a girls' school falsely accused of lesbianism -- a subject so explosive at the time that when the play was adapted into the movie "These Three" in 1936 the accusation had to be changed to a conventional affair with a man. Over the years, Hellman achieved financial success with other plays like "The Little Foxes," "Watch on the Rhine," and "Toys in the Attic."

Hellman lived a controversial life -- besides her unconventional personal life, she was an avid supporter of the Soviet Union even after Stalin's crimes became well-known, and refused to "name names" before Congress during the early 1950s; yet, she escaped punishment and became something of a hero for refusing to testify. After giving up play-writing, she wrote three best-selling memoirs.

And there her reputation might have rested were it not for an incident in 1979 when Dick Cavett interviewed writer Mary McCarthy.

Boris Tadić, president of Serbia from 2004 until he resigned ahead of the May 6 2012 elections, was said to have gained the largest share of votes but would face off against second-placed Tomislav Nikolić in a run-off presidential election on May 20, going by exit polls.

Media in Belgrade reported Tadić as having got somewhere between 26 and 27 per cent of the vote, with the vote for Nikolić, of the Serbia Progressive Party, estimated at 25.6 to 25.9 per cent.

Socialist Party of Serbia leader Ivica Dačić was said to have got just more than 14 per cent and Democratic Party of Serbia leader Vojislav Koštunica just more than seven per cent.

Voter turnout was close to 59 per cent, out of about 6.7 million eligible voters, in an election reported to have passed without serious incidents in Serbia, barring some opposition allegations of irregularities and at least one arrest for vote-buying.

Election campaigns ahead of Serbia's May 6 presidential and parliamentary vote were dominated by concerns about the country's economy. Unemployment is said to be about 24 per cent in a country that lately has been turning in an extremely poor economic growth performance, and where average salaries are said to be the equivalent of 350 euro monthly.

For 39 years, the Trinity Broadcasting Network has urged viewers to give generously and reap the Lord's bounty in return

The prosperity gospel preached by Paul and Janice Crouch, who built a single station into the world's largest Christian television network, has worked out well for them.

Mr. and Mrs. Crouch have his-and-her mansions one street apart in a gated community here, provided by the network using viewer donations and tax-free earnings. But Mrs. Crouch, 74, rarely sleeps in the $5.6 million house with tennis court and pool. She mostly lives in a large company house near Orlando, Fla., where she runs a side business, the Holy Land Experience theme park. Mr. Crouch, 78, has an adjacent home there too, but rarely visits. Its occupant is often a security guard who doubles as Mrs. Crouch's chauffeur.

The problem of US military veterans falling into a life of crime after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan has reached such levels that a law enforcer in Georgia has opened what is believed to be America's first county jail devoted to veteran inmates.

John Darr, the sheriff of Muscogee County in Columbus, Georgia, has created the new facility in an attempt to break the cycle of recidivism by providing them with specialist services to help them deal with the problems they carry with them when they decamp.

"It's really unique. What we're bringing together is a lot of resources," Darr told the local Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

Among the partnerships that are being set up is a link to Veterans Court, a community group that works with veterans in prison suffering from mental illness. The new dormitory, that will house 16 incarcerated veterans, will also provide those soon to be released with advice and support as they transition back into the community.

Exit polls in the Greek parliamentary election suggest the two main parties have suffered dramatic losses.

The latest polls put centre-right New Democracy in the lead with 19-20.5% of the vote, down from 33.5% in 2009.

Centre-left Pasok is put in third place with 13-14%, down from 43.9%. Syriza, a left-wing coalition, is put ahead of it in second place with 15.5-17%.

Pasok and New Democracy, in coalition since last November, were expected to lose support to anti-austerity parties.

There is widespread anger across Greece to harsh measures imposed by the government in return for international bailouts.

Syriza opposes the government's austerity measures.

Ramallah - The number of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails has grown to at least 2800, human rights groups say, while two of the inmates hovered close to death as they entered their 69th day without food. The Israeli prison service disputes the numbers.

Israel's practice of jailing people without charge - known as administrative detention - is the main issue driving the hunger strikers, whose images are seen on posters throughout the West Bank and Gaza as the protests backing the prisoners grow.

About 320 Palestinians are being held in administrative detention in Israeli prisons, 24 of them are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

They are not informed of the accusations or evidence against them, there is no trial and they have no opportunity to defend themselves, the prisoners' rights group Addameer said.

The Israeli prison service disputes the number of prisoners on hunger strike and rejects the claims that lawyers are not being given access to the prisons.

"A system of specialization requires the abdication to specialists of various competences and responsibilities that were once personal and universal. Thus, the average - one is tempted to say ideal - American citizen now consigns the problem of food production to agriculturalists and 'agribusinessmen,' the problem of health to doctors and sanitation experts, the problems of education to school teachers and educators, the problems of conservation to conservationists, and so on. This supposedly fortunate citizen is therefore left with only two concerns: making money and entertaining himself. He earns money, typically as a specialist, working an eight-hour day at a job for the quality or consequences of which somebody else - or, perhaps more typically, nobody else - will be responsible. And not surprisingly, since he can do so little else for himself, he is even unable to entertain himself, for there exists an enormous industry of exorbitantly expensive specialists whose purpose is to entertain him."

I suppose specialization is a feature, and not a bug, of the modern, industrial economy. To run such a complex and industrial infrastructure as we have come to rely upon, we need millions of people carrying out very specific and specialized tasks. This infrastructure is made up of uncountable widgets and devices and roles that all have their own particularity and that, thus, require their own particular machines or trained humans to be run and maintained. Broad classifications of generalized and necessary economic activity have been broken apart and splintered into much more specific niches, and then have been absorbed as a fraction into a far more sprawling beast we might refer to as the discretionary economy. In today's industrial economy, the necessities of life - food, water, shelter, a clean and functioning environment, community - are now almost an afterthought to the vast and consuming industry of non-necessity: distraction, destruction, profit-driven specialization, a massaging of and attentiveness to human ego both impressive and horrifying. We have discovered an infinite number of economic niches driven not by the particularities of place and community - which would be the basis of niches in a functioning and sane economy - but on the basis of catering to the human ego by creating an infinite number of variations on conformity so that we might convince everyone that, no matter how much they immerse and then lose themselves in the base homogeneity of our culture, they truly are a unique human being, as proven by their particular combination of iPhone apps, or which of the many Nabisco snacks they prefer, or which Anheuser-Busch-owned beer they drink.

Of course, as we've created this insanely complex yet oddly generic economy and industrial base, we've come to worship at the alter of specialization. We know that we need years upon years of education and training so that we may be successful in today's high tech, globalized economy. We know that to seize the bright future that is rightfully ours, we must *insert cliche here* so that *tribal term here* may compete in today's *overtly positive economic buzzword here*. And we know this because we're told it again and again, each time with slightly varying terms, and always emerging from the mouth of a respected "leader" or, even better, a certified expert.

We try to persuade people out of almost every kind of idea there is. Why should religion be the exception? 

Why should religion, alone among all other kinds of ideas, be free from attempts to persuade people out of it?

We try to persuade people out of ideas all the time. We try to persuade people that their ideas about science, politics, philosophy, art, medicine, and more, are wrong: that they're harmful, ridiculous, repulsive, or simply mistaken. But when it comes to religion, trying to persuade people out of their ideas is somehow seen as horribly rude at best, invasive and bigoted and intolerant at worst. Why? Why should religion be the exception?

I've been writing about atheism for about six years now. In those six years, I've asked this question more times and not once have I gotten a satisfying answer. In fact, only once do I recall getting any answer at all. Besides that one exception, what I've gotten in response has been crickets chirping and tumbleweeds blowing by. I've been ignored, I've had the subject changed, I've had people get personally nasty, I've had people abandon the conversation altogether. But only once have I ever gotten any kind of actual answer. And that answer sucked. (I'll get to it in a bit.) I've heard lots of people tell me, at length and with great passion, that trying to persuade people out of their religion is bad and wrong and mean... but I haven't seen a single real argument explaining why this is such a terrible thing to do with religion, and yet is somehow perfectly okay to do with all other ideas.

So I want to get to the heart of this matter. Why should religion be treated differently from all other kinds of ideas? Why shouldn't we criticize it, and make fun of it, and try to persuade people out of it, the way we do with every other kind of idea?