"And as a species, are we not waddling toward the cliff? Why has no great leader stood upon a rock with sufficient persuasion to halt the march and save the day? Are the forces now too great against mere words? Are the zombie masses, holding the hands of their children, on a Jonestown-like death march we cannot fathom or halt? Is it evolution itself we are watching, with our species automatically pre- wired for extinction when, say, there are, by God's count, more Washington lobbyists than tree frogs-and with stickier fingers?"

Doris "Granny D" Haddock/CommonDreams 31.May.06

Take that, Infidel!

Tuesday 30 May 2006:
A defence witness in Saddam Hussein's trial over the killing of Iraqi Shia villagers has said that many of those allegedly executed are still alive and that the prosecution case has been built on bribes.
Aljazeera.Net
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Wednesday 31 May 2006:
Four defence witnesses in the trial of Saddam Hussein were arrested on Wednesday after the court ordered them held on suspicion of making false allegations against the prosecution, the ousted leader's attorney said.
Khalil al-Dulaimi, who heads the defence team, said the witnesses were arrested after "their testimony destroyed the credibility of the court."
Reuters

"The ruling is a victory for every crooked politician in the United States."

"Hank shares my philosophy that the economy prospers when we trust the American people..."
XXXX- G.W.B.

"The whole world is dependent upon the U.S. economy as a major engine of its growth. And our economy's strength is rooted in the entrepreneurial spirit and the competitive zeal of the American people, and in our free and open market. It is truly a marvel, but we cannot take it for granted.
We must take steps to maintain our competitive edge in the world."
- Paulson, speaking at nomination ceremony

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An edge in competition gets held against the other competitiors. This is the nature of competition. It's kind of a winner/loser thing.
The world depends on us "maintaining our competitive edge" against - the world.

a point by point analysis of the map of Bethlehem

Children in the news:

The notorious US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay has been hit by fresh allegations of human rights abuses, with claims that dozens of children were sent there - some as young as 14 years old.
Lawyers in London estimate that more than 60 detainees held at the terrorists' prison camp were boys under 18 when they were captured.
They include at least 10 detainees still held at the US base in Cuba who were 14 or 15 when they were seized
[...]
British officials last night told the IoS that the UK had been assured that any juveniles would be held in a special facility for child detainees at Guantanamo called Camp Iguana. But the US admits only three inmates were ever treated as children - three young Afghans, one aged 13, who were released in 2004 after a furore over their detention.
[...]
A senior Pentagon spokesman, Lt Commander Jeffrey Gordon, insisted that no one now being held at Guantanamo was a juvenile and said the DoD also rejected arguments that normal criminal law was relevant to the Guantanamo detainees.
"There is no international standard concerning the age of an individual who engages in combat operations... Age is not a determining factor in detention. [of those] engaged in armed conflict against our forces or in support to those fighting against us."

Severin Carrell/Independent UK 28.May.06

"Our people were used and abused
as a tool of their mania for destruction and domination"

killed by his countrymen:

After passing beneath the iron arch emblazoned with the lie "work brings freedom", the man who was unwillingly enrolled into the Hitler Youth and the Nazi army said he bowed before the victims as "a son of the German people".
[...]
"In a place like this, words fail. There is only a stupefied silence and a cry to God."

Daniel McLaughlin in Auschwitz/Guardian UK 29.May.06
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Instances might be multiplied, but these are sufficient to show that the early Church regarded the Pope as the infallible voice of God on earth in matters of religion.
The Pope, like the rest of us, is human.

Papal Infallibility
Things Catholics Are Asked About
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"I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful"
[...]
to confirm a doctrine "preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents," which "pertains to the Church's divine consitution itself"

Letter of October 28, 1995
Regarding the [Pope John Paul II's] SCDF Responsum on Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
by His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Prefect, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
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God: Very clear on the ordination of women into the priesthood.
Vague as can be on the Holocaust.

"The Book of Revelation [says] God will destroy those who destroy his creation," Gore said, noting that some evangelical Christian leaders have expressed concern about climate change. "Whatever works," Gore added, prompting applause and laughter.
Gore departed the event, sponsored by Wired Magazine, with his wife Tipper in a chauffeur-driven black Lincoln Town Car provided by a New York City limousine service.
Gore noted that the Bible promotes good stewardship of the Earth. "Noah was commanded to preserve biodiversity," he said.

Marc Morano/CNS 26.May.06
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The Book of Revelation clearly has nothing to say about going around in "a chauffeur-driven black Lincoln Town Car provided by a New York City limousine service".
The only people trying to paint that in moral terms are those whacked-out environmentalists. And apologists for the Grand Satanic Scheme of Self-Inflicted Human Extinction With No Causative Ulterior Moral Intent, of which group Mr. Morano appears to be one very active member.
People who would rather see Al Gore ridiculed for his personal material quandaries than paid attention to for his rational grasp of the dire complexities of the current and immediate future.
It says that in there, though not in so many words.
Also the Bible says that, though, again, not in so many words.
Cars are absolutely morally neutral however, the Bible is very clear on this.
Because it doesn't mention them at all, not even between the lines, unless various fiery chariots are to be so construed.
While the Bible is very precise and specific about fire and torment etc. cars are nowhere mentioned as such in the eschatological scenario.
Making them morally disambiguous while at the same time keeping them outside the judgment of sin and righteousness to which most other human activities and aspirations are subject.
Flat-line.
Neither good nor evil.
Like air. Air is neither good nor evil. Water also.
Trees maybe just a little smidgeon toward the good.
Bears are pretty much evil.
Wolves, too. Coyotes by extension, though of course they're not mentioned in the Book.
Sheep and cows are good.
Goats are evil, or potentially mostly so.
Crustaceans very bad.
Whales pretty much kind of bad, sharks definitely.
Yet cars are morally beige.
This helps, once you understand what it means - to know this helps a lot.

Ted Rall gets right to the heart of the heart of the problem

Children in the news:

A Washington Post story, "Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos," read, "After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein."

Not only is the US occupation starving Iraq's children, but occupation forces regularly detain them as well. It is common knowledge in Iraq that there have been child prisoners in the most odious prisons, such as Abu Ghraib, since early on in the occupation. While most, if not all, corporate media outlets in the US have been loath to visit the subject, the Sunday Herald in Scotland reported back in August 2004 that "coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees - some as young as 10 - are also being subjected to rape and torture."

Dahr Jamail/truthout 22.May.06
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link wood s lot

Tens of thousands?
Tens of thousands.

But I must say that while Bush was in Delhi, at the same time on the streets were -- I mean apart from the protests, there were 60 widows that had come from Kerala, which is the south of India, which is where I come from, and they had come to Delhi because they were 60 out of the tens of thousands of widows of farmers who have committed suicide, because they have been encircled by debt.
And this is a fact that is simply not reported, partly because there are no official figures, partly because the Indian government quibbles about what constitutes suicide and what is a farmer.
If a man commits suicide, but the land is in his old father's name, he doesn't count. If it's a woman, she doesn't count, because women can't be farmers.

Arundhati Roy/DemocracyNow! 23.May.06

Market Slide:

Indian police are watching out for brokers and investors attempting suicide after a market slide wiped out billions of dollars in share values.
Policemen were keeping a watch near lakes and canals on Monday - possible places where people in distress could head to kill themselves. They said rescue teams were on alert.

Al Jazeera.net 22.May.06
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An estimated 5,000 orangutans are killed each year in Malaysia and Indonesia by the burning of vast tracts of virgin forest to supply the world's growing demand for palm oil. Building roads to the plantations has made the situation worse, by opening up the jungle for poachers, who kill orangutan mothers and sell their babies as pets to Asian families.
WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, estimates that 80 per cent of orangutan habitat has been lost in the past 20 years. Experts warn that at current rates of deforestation, the orangutan will be extinct in the wild in just 12 years.

Hickman/IndepndentUK/CommonDreams 23.May.06

Coals to Newcastle:

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here to swear in Dr. Gregg Rickman as our Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism.
[...]
President Bush has said that defending freedom also means disrupting the evil of anti-Semitism. Today ethnic and religious differences are still viewed by some as a license to kill. And we are reminded of the sad history of humankind when prejudice and hatred turn violent against those who are simply different.
More than six decades after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just an historical fact, however. It is a current event. Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise still at home and abroad. And governments must take decisive action against the perpetrators of those crimes and new generations have to be inoculated against the dangerous bigotry that is instilled often through education in intolerance. That education in intolerance must be replaced by education in tolerance.
[...]
President Bush has pledged that America will always stand for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. Defending human dignity means defeating anti-Semitism. Gregg, you have no stronger supporters of this mission than President Bush and me.

Remarks at the Swearing-in of Gregg Rickman as the Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice/ScoopNZ
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Eliot Cohen in the Washington Post on Walt&Mearsheimer:

Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information -- why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

Stephen Plaut in the FrontPageMagazine/Campuswatch on Juan Cole:

Cole, who led the lobby to clear Saddam of any ties with terrorism, believes that a group of Jewish "neo-conservatives" largely runs U.S. policy toward the Middle East. His recurrent theory is that a nebulous
'pro-Likud' cabal controls the U.S. government from a small number of key positions in the Executive Branch. Jonathan Calt Harris has declared: "He (Cole) is blindly anti-Israel to the point of being an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, an apologist for radical Islam, and someone who despises American public opinion."
-

from Juan Cole's petition in defense of Walt&Mearsheimer:

We fear that the real motive in the brandishing of the serious charge of "anti-Semitism" so readily at any discussion of the US relationship with Israel is an attempt to chill public debate and to discourage the critical evaluation of American Middle East policy and of Israeli policy in the region. Such a misuse of the word "anti-Semitic" is profoundly anti-democratic. Democracy requires free public debate of all issues affecting the public weal.
We deeply fear that this practice is becoming a form of "crying wolf," and that the force of the term "anti-Semite" is being rapidly eroded as a matter of moral sensibility. True anti-Semitism does exist and is an evil. Let us vigilantly combat it rather than mischaracterizing academic papers.
We also fear that an impression is being created that elements in the American Jewish community are hostile to academic freedom of speech and inquiry, and are hostile even to the first amendment of the US constitution. As admirers of the historic role the American Jewish community has played in furthering civil liberties in the United States, we are concerned and saddened at this development

When, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress voted to declare war against Japan, Jeannette Rankin once again voted "no" to war. She also, once again, violated long tradition and spoke before her roll call vote, this time saying
"As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else"
as she voted alone against the war resolution.
She was denounced by the press and her colleagues, and barely escaped an angry mob.
She believed that Roosevelt had deliberately provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor.
-

The Jeannette Rankin Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds for, and awarding grants to, low-income women, ages 35 and older. Each grant recipient has a vision of how a college education will benefit herself, her family, and her community. Most recipients are in truly meager financial circumstances and may have other hardships or disabilities.
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Rankin's most famous quote:

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

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link path Quote of The Day on the Google personalized home page

Xymphora's rational point-by-point on Darfurist hypocrisies

A minor sermon:

Magic Christians clearly have hidden the meaning of this command up their sleeves. Today they justify violence against enemies explaining that we are dealing with good verses evil and never in history has there been such a battle as the one which rages today . They explain we have "evil" people who behead others, and suicide bombers who kill innocent people. They quake in fear saying our culture is debased and sinful unlike any in the history of human kind.

This is blatantly false! Be-headings are as old as time.

Jesus Isn't Magic
Karen Horst Cobb/CommonDreams 21.May.06
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An important part of the formula that produced the outrage toward the beheadings Cobb cites, the shock and violent reactions to them, is hidden in the placental boundaries of the culture that saw those images as the assault of evil against its own proprietary and benevolent good.
These are people who were raised in the womb and never left it. Who went from the swaddled fluff of infancy to the swaddling fluff of television and consumerist shopping in seamless transition. And to whom these reminders of the presence of mortal danger in the world have become a goad, wielded intentionally like any other goad, to move the domesticated into and out of paddock and pasture.
Every other predator above the microscopic, except people themselves, and one sacred invisible harvester of human beings - has been removed from the human landscape.
That sacred harvester being the automobile, killer of the greatest number of children in America. Beheader of the innocent. The random sword.
There's a tacit understanding that the automobile and its damage are morally neutral. Accidental.
This comes from the received sense of morality as rising entirely from intent - no intent, no evil. The actual event mattering less than the act of will that did or didn't cause it.
The question we need to ask is whether or not there are actions and events whose natures are inherently evil, whether or not they've been caused directly by willed intent, or by accident, or by something in between.
It would be hard to find someone in the past who specifically willed the destructive assault of exhaust gases on the natural world. Yet here we are. Basically decent people in a tither because some dubious character got his head cut off on television, while 40,000 plus lose their lives every single year to the car and its worship. Where is the evil in that? How can it not be evil? How can it not be evil that the North Pole is being turned into clouds and rain?

A shortage of mercy in Gaza