Desmond Tutu's Christmas message

Desmond Tutu

As I was driving home from Midnight Mass last night, I heard Desmond Tutu's Christmas message to the BBC on my car radio. He used that occasion to call attention to the plight of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who, by rights, should be the prime minister of Burma but who is under house arrest as a prisoner of conscience. Here's a taste of what he said:

...to Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma...That military regime is dead scared of you - and let me tell you somthing: they have already lost...

Here's something else he said about her at another time:

In physical stature she is petite and elegant, but in moral stature she is a giant. Big men are scared of her. Armed to the teeth and they still run scared.

Please click on the BBC World Service Christmas Greetings page and scroll down to listen to the whole message. It is inspiring. Archbishop Desmond always is.

Here's something Aung San Suu Kyi has said:

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

And something else on the same subject:

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

Please read the Wikipedia article about her. She is clearly a remarkable woman.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a serious meditator. Let that be an inspiration to us all.

May all who are living under oppression this Christmas be sustained by courage and the knowledge that many throughout the world are in solidarity with them - sending them thoughts and the assurance of prayers. Let us do what we can and, wherever we are in the world, let us never be the instruments of our own oppression.

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

This is my favorite Christmas poem:

To Jesus on His Birthday

For this your mother sweated in the cold,
For this you bled upon the bitter tree:
A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.
The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;
Up goes the man of God before the crowd;
With voice of honey and with eyes of steel
He drones your humble gospel to the proud.
Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows
Are all your words to us you died to save.
O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose!
How mute you lie within your vaulted grave.
The stone the angel rolled away with tears
Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.

Let's roll that stone away again, shall we? Let's listen to the real message of the Way-show-er and not what the fundamentalist bigots have proclaimed in his name.

Holiday Manifesto

I go this from Clyde who got it from David:

Stay away from malls
Gather around a table
Re-discover family tradition
Re-live fond memories
Forget bad ones
Play with a toy
Play chess with a friend
Just play
Spike the Eggnog
Think of someone in need
Do something about it
Eat snow
Not the yellow kind
Wear silly hats
Get carried away
Unplug
Order in
Watch a classic
Send your cards out late
Get up early
Sleep in
Take naps
Make a wish
Have hope
Start your blog
Read a book
Write yours
Talk to a stranger
Listen
Laugh
Believe
Slow down
Don't make promises
Give something away
Receive with grace
Watch home movies
Make one
Share it
Take pictures
Share them too
Say goodbye to the past
Say hello to a new year
Smile if it feels right
Find a quiet place
Look out for mistletoe
Don't fake cheer
Be yourself

And I would add: Spend quality time with your animals.

I like the one about sending your cards out late because that's what I'm doing!

We are all the same.

Wesley Clark

I hope he runs again. Can you imagine a Republican saying something like this?

The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.

Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.

-- Wesley Clark

About fascism in the U.S.

Henry A. Wallace

Written in 1944 in the New York Times:

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.

-- Henry A. Wallace

How problems "disappear"

I just read an article by Rosa Brooks in the L.A. Times about how Bush makes problems disappear. Take a look:

For instance, there was this. Problem: In 2005, a congressionally mandated annual State Department report on international terrorism showed that terrorism worldwide was on the rise. Solution: The administration announced that future editions of the report no longer would include statistics on international terrorism. See? Presto! Just like that, the problem went away.

And then there was this. Problem: In 2004, data released by the Department of Education showed that public charter schools, promoted by the administration as a solution to public school woes, were lagging regular public schools in performance. Solution: The administration decided to stop collecting data on charter school performance.

And this. Problem: Environmentalists complained that administration land-use plans for our national parks and forests could have long-term negative effects on the environment. Solution: The administration decided it no longer would conduct environmental impact studies to assess the potential consequences of its land-use plans.

Purely sickening.

Brooks has these recommendations:

Problem: Iraq is patently not yet an oasis of stability on the Middle East map. Solution: Erase the word "Iraq" from all maps in the White House. Write in "Oasis of Stability."
...
Problem: The troops in Iraq are causing trouble, complaining about a lack of strategy, lack of equipment, lack of clue as to what they're doing there and what they're dying for. Solution: Make our troops disappear from Iraq — by bringing them home.

When it comes to solving the president's problems, that last trick might actually work.

Yes, it just might. Will it be tried, however?

Paying attention

I just came across these wonderful words on prayer:

Pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

-- Mary Oliver

Let's pay attention

I've blogged on these issues before but here I want to give two summaries from under-reported stories in 2006.

Here's the first:

Siberia's permafrost is melting: Why is this an important story? Because Arctic permafrost, which in Siberia covers endless miles, contains massive amounts of methane. The melting soil releases the methane into the air, where it is now expected to massively and irrevocably accelerate global warming. It's a process that has already begun, but just. This massive climate bomb literally has the potential to end civilization. Its discovery should have not only been the year's top story, but an impetus for all humanity to unite in a common struggle for survival. Maybe in 2007. Or 2009, when someone who believes in science occupies the White House.

By all rights, humanity as a whole should be panicking. But we're just trucking along as if nothing were happening.

And here's the second:

[S]ince when did torture, suspension of habeas corpus, and domestic warrantless spying become America's status quo? Since 2006, that's when. Three terrifying, textbook examples of how, in short progression, the unthinkable becomes the hotly debated becomes The Way We Do Things. As we enter 2007, all the elements for a fully "constitutional" dictatorship have quietly fallen into place. All it now takes is someone smarter or more ruthless than George Bush to exploit them.

And, by all rights, Americans ought to be panicking. But we're not. History (if there is one) will condemn us.

Friday cat blogging!

Simon

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Global warming and insurance risk

Okay, global-warming-denier Senator Inhofe. Listen up already. Do you think insurance companies are just making this stuff up?

Allstate Corp., one of Maryland's largest insurers, will stop writing homeowners' policies in coastal areas of the state, citing warnings by scientists that a warmer Atlantic Ocean will lead to more strong hurricanes hitting the Northeast.

The company will no longer offer new property insurance beginning in February in all or part of 11 counties mostly along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Existing customers won't be affected; a spokeswoman said Allstate intends to renew those policies even in coastal areas. It will continue to write new policies in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

"We have been looking at hurricane and storm projections, and we're going to see a lot more severe storms further north on the coastline," said Allstate spokeswoman Debbie Pickford. "We are working to minimize our risk."

This is the market at work - you know, the free market that the conservatives worship. How are they going to explain this away?

Virgil Goode's bigotry

Just in case you're not familiar with what he said, take a look:

[I]f American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran ... I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

Just try substituting the word "Jews" for "Muslims" and see if you think this kind of bigotry is acceptable in America. It's beyond outrageous.

The Israeli apartheid

The Nation has published an article entitled Get Carter and it underscores the cowardice of the American press. Take a look:

Jimmy Carter, by publishing his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, walked straight into the buzz saw that is the Israel lobby. Among the vitriolic attacks on the former President was the claim by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, that Carter is "outrageous" and "bigoted" and that his book raises "the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress, and the U.S. government." Many Democratic Party leaders, anxious to keep the Israel lobby's money and support, have hotfooted it out the door, with incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing that Carter "does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel."

Carter's book exposes little about Israel. The enforced segregation, abject humiliation and spiraling Israeli violence against Palestinians have been detailed in the Israeli and European press and, with remarkable consistency, by all the major human rights organizations. The assault against Carter, rather, says more about the failings of the American media--which have largely let Israel hawks heap calumny on Carter's book. It exposes the indifference of the Bush Administration and the Democratic leadership to the rule of law and basic human rights, the timidity of our intellectual class and the moral bankruptcy of institutions that claim to speak for American Jews and the Jewish state.

The bleakness of life for Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, is a mystery only to us. In the current Israeli campaign in Gaza, now sealed off from the outside world, almost 500 Palestinians, most unarmed, have been killed. Sanctions, demanded by Israel and imposed by the international community after the Hamas victory last January in what were universally acknowledged to be free and fair elections, have led to the collapse of civil society in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as widespread malnutrition. And Palestinians in the West Bank are being encased, in open violation of international law, in a series of podlike militarized ghettos with Israel's massive $2 billion project to build a "security barrier." This barrier will gobble up at least 10 percent of the West Bank, including most of the precious aquifers and at least 40,000 acres of Palestinian farmland. The project is being financed in large part through $9 billion in American loan guarantees...

We have a lot to answer for. The treatment of the Palestinians is beyond reprehensible. But the American popular press won't cover it. Thank goodness Jimmy Carter is at least trying.

Bears in Spain

This is worrying:

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.

In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the forests of Spain's Cantabrian mountains, when normally they would already be in their long, annual sleep.
...
The behaviour change suggests that global warming is responsible for this revolution in ursine behaviour, says Juan Carlos García Cordón, a professor of geography at Santander's Cantabria University, and a climatology specialist.

You might like to click through to the article to read about other seasonal freaks.

The right kind of resistance

Starhawk

While I'm tapping into Starhawk's wisdom, I want to bring you this as well:

On some deep cosmic level, we are all one, and within us we each contain the potential for good and for destruction, for compassion and hate, for generosity and greed. But even if I acknowledge the full range of impulses within myself, that doesn't erase the differences between a person acting from compassion and love, and another choosing to act from hate and greed. Moreover, it doesn't erase my responsibility to challenge a system which furthers hate and greed. If I don't resist such a system, I am complicit in what it does. I join the perpetrators in oppressing the victims.

Let us continue to challenge the system which furthers hate and greed.

Winter Solstice

May the day be meaningful to you:

This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops;
the center is also the circumference of all.
We are awake in the night.
We turn the Wheel to bring the light.
We call the sun from the womb of night.
Blessed Be!

-- Starhawk

"...the values upon which our system is built."

Remarks in the Senate, June 29, 1961:

It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril.

-- James William Fulbright (1905–95)

Sadly we have already departed from these values and our peril is, indeed, upon us.

Things just aren't right

With the weather, I mean. Here in Tulsa we had a few days of cold and snow and then the weather turned balmy. A few days ago, I saw people out with tank tops on. It certainly doesn't feel like Christmas as warm as it's been. Well, the Washington Post has published an article about this phenomenon in Europe:

MOSCOW, Dec. 19 -- Scattered flurries teased Moscow on Tuesday afternoon with the promise of a real winter, the birthright of a city whose people take pride in trudging through snow and in ice fishing and cross-country skiing in white countryside beyond the outer beltway.

The winter of 2006 has yet to arrive, however, and Muscovites are deeply discombobulated. "I want snow. I want the New Year's feeling," said Viktoria Makhovskaya, a street vendor who sells gloves and mittens. "This is a disgusting winter. I don't like it at all."

Moscow is not alone in the unexpected warmth -- it stretches across the continent.

Preliminary data from the Met Office, Britain's national weather service, and the University of East Anglia indicate that 2006 has been the warmest year in Britain since record-keeping concerning weather conditions began in central England in 1659.

Trees are sprouting leaves in Switzerland. And low-altitude ski resorts across the Alps look more like springtime meadows. "We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, told the Associated Press in Vienna.
...
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warns in a report this month "that climate change poses serious risks to the snow reliability of Alpine ski areas, and consequently to the regional economies that depend upon winter tourism."

Up to 80 million people visit Alpine resorts each year, and they are a key contributor to the local economies, the report says.

I wonder if Senator Inhofe reads newspapers. I would like to confront him with this information and then let him try to tell me that global warming is a hoax.

Bush's dreams?

I thought the first rule of war was "Know your enemy." Well, if you are part of the Bush administration, you can't be bothered. I want to call your attention to an article called "Bush Madness Becomes Apparent" and, among other things, it's about willful ignorance. Take a look:

Jonathan Alter of "Newsweek" magazine reminds us that that a section of the Iraq Study Group Report explains our diplomatic efforts have a serious handicap because, as the study notes, "our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communications with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage."

And look at this ignorance about terrorism and as well as Islam:

Dale Watson, the FBI's top counter-terrorism official before and after 9/11, now retired, was asked..., "Do you know who Osama bin Laden's spiritual leader was?"

Watson: "Can't recall."

Lawyer: "And do you know the difference in the religion between Shiite and Sunni Muslims?"

Watson: "Not technically, no."

The same question was posed to John Lewis, who until recently was the FBI's assistant director of counter-terrorism.

Lewis: "You know generally. Not very well."

Lawyer: "Was there any relationship between the first World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 attacks?"

Lewis: "I'm aware of no immediate relationship other than all emanates out of the Middle East, al-Qaeda linkage, I believe. Not something I've studied recently that I'm conversant with."

Don't bother studying anything important. Be like Bush -- run with your gut, lump everything in the Middle East together and brand it as terror. The FBI director is tolerating this inexcusable ignorance and he should be held accountable for it.

And, sadly, here's a Democrat who's not any better:

Lawmakers responsible for overseeing U.S. intelligence are not much better. "Congressional Quarterly's" National Security Editor Jeff Stein asked the man incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tapped to chair the Intelligence Committee what branch of Islam al-Qaeda is linked to.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, answered, "They are probably both." Then he said, "Predominantly probably Shiite." Nice try. He had a 50-50 chance and was flat wrong.

You know, this is really scary when you think about it. This contempt for the responsibility of informing oneself is truly unsettling. Are we, as Americans, so arrogant that we think our ignorance will have no consequences?

Top Ten Ways to Change the World in 2007

By Micky Z.

1. Wear a "Free Tibet" t-shirt
2. Switch to recycled toilet paper
3. Watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert
4. Adopt a Third World orphan
5. Start a discussion about Africa
6. Eat free range chicken
7. Drive a hybrid SUV
8. Subscribe to The Nation
9. Chant for peace in your yoga class
10. Vote Democrat

I would add:

11. Use compact florescent light bulbs
12. Use recycled paper towels and napkins
13. Buy fair trade coffee
14. Give to the ACLU
15. Meditate

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net/.

The racist message of Apocalypto

First of all, let me say that I have no intention of seeing Apocalypto for two reasons: the violence, and Mel Gibson's drunken anti-Semitism. But I'm very interested in the reviews. I want to call your attention to one that points out the inherent racisim in Gibson's approach. Here are a couple of excerpts from the article entitled "The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto":

As a cultural anthropologist who has worked for thirteen years among different Maya peoples of Mesoamerica and who speaks the Q'eqchi' Maya language fluently, I found Apocalypto to be deeply racist. The Maya in the film bore no resemblance to the hardworking farmers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen and women of Maya descent that I know personally and consider among my closest friends.

I fear the repercussions Apocalypto will have on contemporary Maya people who continue to struggle for survival and political governments under discriminatory governments that consider them stupid, backward, and uncivilized for wanting to maintain their customs and language. Gibson's slanderous film reinforces the same stereotypes that have facilitated the genocide of Maya peoples and the plunder of their lands starting with the Spanish invasion of 1492 and continuing through the Guatemalan civil war to the present.
...
While keeping some of the archaeological details accurate for "authenticity," Gibson then jumbles together mass Aztec sacrifices with Maya rituals, as if they were the same. Certainly at the height of classic Maya civilization, the ruling classes made occasional human sacrifices to their gods, but nothing on the Holocaust-level scale that Gibson portrays in Apocalypto with fields of rotting, decapitated corpses that his hero, Jaguar Paw stumbles across as he attempts to escape his own execution in the city. With the advice of archaeologist Richard Hansen, Gibson seems to have researched anything the Maya might have done badly over a thousand year history and crammed it all into a few horrific days. How would the gringos look if we made a film that lumped together within one week the torture at the Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo prisons, the Tuskegee experiments, KKK lynchings, the battle at Wounded Knee, Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, the Salem witch hunts, Texas death row executions, the Rodney King police beatings, the slaughter upon the Gettysburg battlefield, and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and made this look like a definitive statement on U.S. culture?

You know, when I was a young person in the 60s, I thought that certainly by 2006 racism would have been erradicated in this country or at least so socially unacceptable that no one would publicly reveal it. Sad to have been so very wrong.

Preaching in the classroom

Dan Nerren sent me a New York Times article that has disturbed me greatly. It's called "Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights". Take a look:

KEARNY, N.J. — Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

Since Matthew’s complaint, administrators have said they have taken “corrective action” against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.

In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.
...
On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, “I’m on the teacher’s side all the way.”

What really bothers me here is the support for the teacher. The fundamentalists, of course, claim that freedom of religion entitles them to proselytize in class. Here's what I want to know. Would they like it if a Muslim teacher tried to convert students to Islam as part of a history lesson? Would they then say that Muslims shouldn't be hired as teachers? How is that not violating the establishment clause of the Constitution?

Relief

From a CNN article:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Tim Johnson has shown significant improvement after brain surgery and doctors say "everything is going to be just fine," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Sunday.

Remember, if Johnson had died or resigned due to incapcitation, the Republicans would have regained power in the Senate.

Sunday prayer blogging

I first because acquainted with this prayer many years ago when I found it printed in a yoga book. I loved it then and am glad to have come across it again:

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth;
The glory of action;
The splendor of achievement;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

- Attributed to Kalidasa

Attacking soy

All right. Have you heard that the right wingers are now saying that eating soy products makes you gay? Yeah, I'm serious. Pathetic isn't it? I really want to steer you toward an article refuting a piece that's been floating around the internet on this subject. It's called That's Soy Gay! There's really no way to give you excerpts that will summarize this so please click through and read it all.

The other Rocky

I've blogged about the mayor of Salt Lake City before and today I want to recommend that you click through and read the entire article I'm calling to your attention about Rocky Anderson. What grieves me about this talented and conscientious man is that he's essentially unelectable when it comes to national office:

Standing at the top of the imposing stone staircase leading up to the entrance to City Hall on a blustery late August day, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson finishes his speech denouncing George W. Bush, a man he calls "the most dangerous President the country's ever had," a leader he believes has precipitated an "incredible moral crisis" for America.
...
"You should run for President," people keep telling him, as they mill around in front of the heavily guarded federal building. Mindful that this is his last year in office, Anderson doesn't pooh-pooh the sentiment or issue exaggerated disclaimers. Instead he answers, carefully, that you need money to run, that you need a state machine backing you--which, in a place as virulently conservative as Utah, known until fairly recently as "the Mississippi of the West," is not going to happen for Anderson--that you need to know when to shut up and not speak your mind. Successful national politicians listen to handlers and spin doctors, and that's something he won't do.
...
Anderson has restructured the city's criminal justice system and, suspicious of the tenets of the war on drugs, thrown the Just Say No DARE program out of the city's schools. Instead of pushing for more and more low-end offenders to be sent to jail or prison, he has built one of the country's most innovative restorative justice programs, for which he was nominated for a second World Leadership Award--in December the judges in London announced that Stuttgart, Germany, had edged Anderson's city for the prize. Mental health courts now channel mentally ill criminals into mandatory treatment programs rather than dumping them behind bars; a misdemeanor drug court similarly replaces punishment with treatment; and the city now has one of the most active victim-offender reconciliation programs in America. People arrested for driving under the influence or soliciting prostitutes are sent through a comprehensive course of counseling rather than automatically being handed criminal records.
...
More than thirty years ago, as an undergraduate at the University of Utah, Anderson studied political philosophy, religious philosophy and ethics. He read books by Sartre and other existentialists, and, he remembers, he had a "powerful epiphany. We can't escape responsibility, there's no sitting out moral decisions, and whenever we refuse to stand up against wrongdoing we're actually supporting the status quo."

We need a system in this country to make people like Anderson electable. It is an indictment on our system of government that someone like George Bush can get elected and someone like Rocky Anderson can't.

Separation of church and state

The point has been made that although the actual phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the Constitution, the principle is there and the phrase itself was in wide use by the founding fathers.

To the right wingers today who say that the United States is "a Christian nation", look at this:

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?

--James Madison

About reality

This deserved to be passed on:

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this may be true.

-- James Branch Cabell

So Bush sleeps well

But at least he acknowledges that there's a reason people would think he couldn't sleep nights:

I must tell you, I'm sleeping a lot better than people would assume.

- George W. Bush

Jesus and the Board of Education

My friend, Brad Griffith, sent me the following:

Ellie- This story was reported on the St. Louis NPR station yesterday. I did not know that a personal relationship with Jesus was a qualification for appointment. It's interesting that I have not seen this comment in any of the print media reports...

Blunt names another school voucher supporter to board - Frank Morris, KCUR

KANSAS CITY, MO (2006-12-14) Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has appointed another supporter of school vouchers to the State Board of Education.

Rev. Stanley Archie is pastor at a small store-front church in Mid-town Kansas City, and president of the Kansas City Leadership Federation, and sits on the board of a charter school.

Blunt spokesman Brian Hauswirth says Archie is well qualified for the 8-year appointment: "He's a Democrat, he's willing to ask tough questions, impeccable integrity - He's accepted Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, and he's very, very, very committed to his relationship with Jesus."

Hauswirth says Archie is open to idea of school vouchers, though he insists Governor Blunt does not support them.

Last month, Blunt appointed another voucher advocate to the board - Donayle E. Whitmore-Smith, of St. Louis. Both appointments are subject to Missouri Senate approval.

A religious test for office is blatanly unconstitutional. Calling a "personal relationship with Jesus" a qualification for office is very troubling. And, of course, the support for vouchers is about undermining and eventually destroying the public school system.

Iraq and the press

Here's a comment I found on AMERICAblog today:

If you get a chance watch DemocracyNow today. Dennis Kucinich held a conference on Iraqi civilian deaths yesterday, hosting Juan Cole and other experts.

Tidbits:

1. Extreme under reporting of Iraqi civilian deaths in the western press.
2. 80%+ of civilian deaths reported in the western press is in and around Baghdad, though the violence is wide spread throughout the country.
3. Estimates are that on any given day when 50 civilian deaths are reported in the press that up to 500 have died throughout the country.
4. By academic definition Iraq is not only in a civil war but a civil war times ten - i.e., no question here.
5. All of Kucinich's experts agreed that the 600,000+ Iraqi civilian deaths is an accurate number - and that the western press has been down playing and not reporting these high numbers...

Lots of other facts - well worth the watch. Thanks Ohio, for giving us Kucinich - he is one of the few great Americans in politics today.

I agree with the writer's assessment of Kucinich. He would make a great president. It's a real pity he is unelectable.

Friday cat blogging!

Simon

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Isn't Cynthia an incredible photographer? I love this picture!

Senator Johnson

By now you all know the following:

South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson, reportedly recovering after brain surgery Wednesday, reminds Americans of one of the most troublingly undemocratic aspects of this country's uneven and often dysfunctional political process.

If Johnson is incapacitated, the decision about how to fill his seat will not be made by the voters of South Dakota but by one man: the state's Republican governor. And if, as is expected, that governor were to appoint a fellow Republican, control of the upper chamber of the Congress would turn on his whim.

The writer of this article, published in The Nation, concludes in the following way:

Though senators must be elected by the people in all states, when they are incapacitated during their terms they can be replaced in a variety of manners. Some states, such as Texas and Wisconsin, hold special elections to fill open seats -- thus keeping decisions about who sits in the Senate with the people. Other states, such as South Dakota, allow a gubernatorial designation that is roughly akin to a royal appointment.

The United States should have a uniform system for replacing senators. The system should be democratic, placing authority in the hands of the electorate rather than a single man or woman. Instead, we have a lingering remnant of royalism -- gubernatorial appointment -- that could in this rare circumstance upset the will not just of the people of one state but of the United States.

Everybody pray for Senator Johnson or send good thoughts or do whatever you do to support his getting better. It would really be horrible if we lost control of the Senate.

Global warming and Santa's traditional home

This is very distressing. It's an article from The Independent entitled "Lapland can only dream of white Christmas". Here's how it gets started:

It should be a winter wonderland; instead, it's just piles of slush. British holidaymakers travelling to Lapland for a pre-Christmas holiday got a shock when they arrived in Santa's traditional home this week: no snow.

Rovaniemi, a town on the Arctic Circle in northern Finland which is the Lapp capital, is normally covered in deep drifts at this time of the year, with accompanying temperatures going down to -20C.

But this week it has been completely snow-free and temperatures have been up to three degrees above freezing. As a result, disappointed families hoping to go on husky and reindeer sleigh rides, as part of increasingly-popular Father Christmas package tours, have found excursions cancelled, and they have had to make do with slush at best.

A spokesman for First Choice holidays, the British tour operator that takes thousands of Britons to Lapland, said yesterday that the conditions were "incredibly unusual". However, they have occurred in the week that US scientists warned that the Arctic region is now warming so fast that all the ice in the Arctic ocean, which covers the North Pole, could melt away in as little as 35 years - meaning extinction for polar bears, which depend on the floating ice to hunt.

Ever since I first learned of what is happening to the polar bears, I experienced enormous pain about that reality. It grieves me to think of them drowning and starving because there are no ice floes. They must be so confused on top of the obvious suffering. Their plight is simply heart-breaking.

About peace

When will the world learn this?

There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degradation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful.

-- The Dalai Lama

That "war on Christmas" again

Yes, it was going on last year and apparently the right-wingers are at it again - playing the martyr when people say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". There's an RJ Eskow article about that entitled "A St. Francis Prayer in Reverse For the 'War On Christmas' Whiners". It's worth a read for the diabolical prayer but what I want to show you is the part where Eskow addresses the aggrieved Christianists:

Tell me: How is this"Happy Holidays" business making you suffer, exactly? Do you depend on the greeters at Wal-Mart for your theological guidance? Does the absence of the Savior's name in the Sears catalog leave you spiritually adrift in a hostile cosmos?

Nah. You're just falling back on the worst kind of Me-Generation, touchy-feely, self-pitying behavior. You're complaining because it makes you uncomfortable. It's Christian Dominionism for the "feel good" crowd.

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned stoicism?
...
St. Peter was crucified upside down, and Polycarp was stabbed to death. You didn't hear them complaining. But you guys live in wealth and privilege under the most powerful nation in history, and yet with all your political influence you can't stop mewling like kittens.
...
And you guys are bitching because the Christmas Tree some condo association put up doesn't have a cross on it this year. What a bunch of whiners.

Or is your faith in your own religion so weak that you think it will collapse if it doesn't have the official endorsement of the Pine Hill Homeowners Cooperative?

Couldn't have said it better myself.

That "family values" crowd again

And not only "family values" but "personal responsibility". Take a look:

'Mallard Fillmore' creator arrested for DUI

Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.

Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.

On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department. Mallard Fillmore, about a conservative duck, appears in almost 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Indianapolis Star.

Do liberals get arrested for drunk driving too? Of course they do. That's not my point. The issue is conservative hypocrisy. The conservatives inflict their self-righteous, moralistic judgment on the rest of us and then expect a pass when they're the ones caught being irresponsible.

Native American wisdom

Frank Ford sent me this meditation:

In our language there is no word to say inferior or superiority or equality because we are equal; it's a known fact. But life has become very complicated since the newcomers came here. And how does your spirit react to it? It's painful. You have to be strong to walk through the storm. I know I'm a bridge between two worlds. All I ask is for people to wash their feet before they try to walk on me.

--Alanis Obomsawin, ABENAKI

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone considered it a "known fact" that we all are equal?

The so-called "war on drugs"

It's labeled "The Other War We Can't Win" by Neal Peirce. Here's how his article gets started:

Pick your week or month, the evidence keeps rolling in to show this country's vaunted "war on drugs" is as destructively misguided as our cataclysmic error in invading Iraq.

There are 2.2 million Americans behind bars, another 5 million on probation or parole, the Justice Department reported on Nov. 30. We exceed Russia and Cuba in incarcerations per 100,000 people; in fact, no other nation comes close. The biggest single reason for the expanding numbers? Our war on drugs — a quarter of all sentences are for drug offenses, mostly nonviolent.

So has the "war" worked? Has drug use or addiction declined? Clearly not. Hard street drugs are reportedly cheaper and purer, and as easy to get, as when President Richard Nixon declared substance abuse a "national emergency."

The article goes on to describe our efforts to erradicate drug use through prohibition and through unsavory relations with other countries who supply our drugs. Then this point is made:

We'd be incredibly better off if we had treated drugs as a public-health issue instead of a criminal issue — as the celebrated Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, in fact advised us. Friedman, who died last month at 94, witnessed America's misadventure into alcohol prohibition in his youth. "We had this spectacle of Al Capone, of the hijackings, the gang wars," wrote Friedman. He decried turning users into criminals: "Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse — for both the addict and the rest of us."

And in one of his last interviews, Friedman asked the relevant questions: "Should we allow the killing to go on in the ghettos? 10,000 additional murders a year? ... Should we continue to destroy Colombia and Afghanistan?"

The ironic truth is that humans have used drugs — psychoactive substances ranging from opium and coca to alcohol, hemp, tobacco and coffee — since the dawn of history. Problems get triggered when substances are associated with despised or feared subgroups, according to a careful study by the King County, Wash., Bar Association.

It's time to end prohibition. Prohibition doesn't help. It makes things worse.

“A Way Forward?” To Where, Exactly?

How's this for a limerick?

Iraq’s current state is abysmal,
With its prospects of peace rather dismal.
Dubya started this war,
Yielding blood, sweat and gore,
And success odds quite infinitesimal.

By Madeleine Begun Kane

And this happened to an American citizen

The article I want you to see is called "Routine and Systematic Torture Is at the Heart of America's War on Terror" and it's by George Monbiot. Here's the subtitle:

In the fight against cruelty, barbarism and extremism, America has embraced the very evils it claims to confront.

Oh, it has. Yes it has.

Read on:

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

Last week, defence lawyers acting for José Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant", released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk - taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture". The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for more than three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he "does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, ie, post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation". José Padilla appears to have been lobotomised: not medically, but socially.

I suggest you read the rest of the article. It grieves me that we have sunk to this incredible low. But also remember this: it happened to a U.S. citizen. The constitution no longer protects us.

Israel blocks Tutu

Take a look:

GENEVA - South African Nobel prize winner Desmond Tutu said on Monday he was distressed that Israel had blocked his planned mission to Gaza to investigate last month's killing of 19 Palestinian civilians by Israeli shells.

The former archbishop of Cape Town and peace laureate was due to lead a team asked by the United Nations' Human Rights Council to investigate the incident at
Beit Hanoun in Gaza on November 8.

But after waiting in Geneva for the green light from Israel, Tutu and his fellow team member British law professor Christine Chinkin said they no longer had time to complete the visit by the end of the week as planned.

"We find the lack of cooperation by the Israeli government very distressing," they said in a joint statement.

In the meantime, Jimmy Carter is being villified for his new book that calls the situation between Israel and the Palestinians an "apartheid".

Smoking addiction

Here's some information I just stumbled upon:

More than a third of smokers who had surgery to remove early stage lung cancer were smoking again within a year, a new study finds.

The study involved patients who were forced to quit smoking for surgery. Many were puffing away within two months of the surgery, and nearly half eventually resumed the habit.

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

Devastation

I want to share with you the top story for today on the Common Dreams website. It's entitled "Small Nuclear War Would Cause Global Environmental Catastrophe". I was actually thinking of this possibility today as I drove to the Center this morning. I found myself remembering how the president is undoubtedly just itching to use nuclear weapons against Iran. And now this story:

SAN FRANCISCO - A small-scale, regional nuclear war could disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, with environmental effects that could be devastating for everyone on Earth, researchers have concluded.

The scientists said about 40 countries possess enough plutonium or uranium to construct substantial nuclear arsenals. Setting off a Hiroshima-size weapon could cause as many direct fatalities as all of World War II.

"Considering the relatively small number and size of the weapons, the effects are surprisingly large," said one of the researchers, Richard Turco of the University of California, Los Angeles. "The potential devastation would be catastrophic and long term."

The lingering effects could re-shape the environment in ways never conceived. In terms of climate, a nuclear blast could plunge temperatures across large swaths of the globe. "It would be the largest climate change in recorded human history," Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers' Cook College and another member of the research team.

The results will be presented here today during the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union.

Of course, our president doesn't believe in science so that's a problem.

CNN Quick Vote

Created: Monday, December 11, 2006, at 12:07:40 EDT:

Do you believe President Bush will be able to successfully shift the course of the war in Iraq?

Yes - 18%

No - 82%

Sunday prayer blogging

Whatever you believe, do pray for peace:

Let us know peace.
For as long as the moon shall rise,
For as long as the rivers shall flow,
For as long as the sun will shine,
For as long as the grass shall grow,
Let us know peace.

(Source: Native American)

The latest Bushism

I'm tellin' ya, that boy ain't right:

Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die. I understand there's sectarian violence.

-- George W. Bush

He has a point

Look at this:

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

-- Stephen Hawking

'Truthiness' is the word of the year

Stephen Colbert

CNN had the article. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But for "truthiness" to sum up the year 2006 tells us just how far we - or our politicians - have strayed from a reality-based understanding of life.

Take a look:

SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts (AP) -- After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness."

The word -- if one can call it that -- best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We're at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "'Truthiness' is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue."

Other Top 10 finishers included "war," "insurgent," "sectarian" and "corruption." But "truthiness" won 5-to-1, Morse said.

I'm glad Colbert coined the word because it points to the current administration's contempt for facts. I'm not sure I think of it as "playful", however. Bitingly satirical, yes, and maybe a little sad.

Friday cat blogging!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

A free press

We need to pay attention to this:

The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people.

- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black

Christian Peacemaker Teams Press Release

The following press release was sent to me today by the Tulsa Interfaith Alliance:

Stop Depleted Uranium Weapons

For Immediate Release: Thursday, November 30, 2006

Media Contact: Craig Etchison
phones: 304-298-4704 or 800-896-1425 or 913-397-9660
email: cetchison@allegany.edu or RhoadsPrtg@aol.com

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and our partners around the world call for an end to the manufacture of depleted uranium (DU) weapons and the deployment and use of DU in theaters of war and practice ranges.

The United States and others have used DU munitions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and currently in Iraq. This has left behind a documented legacy in the civilian populations, of cancers and birth defects due likely to both DU's toxicity as a heavy metal and the radioactivity of tiny DU particles that are inhaled or left in the soil to become part of the food chain. The biological half life (decay rate) of DU is 4.5 billion years.

The high number of returning veterans who are sick and the deaths of nearly one in six of all US military personnel deployed to the Gulf in the last sixteen years also strongly point to the need to end the use of DU for the sake of our own troops. Congressional legislation mandating a comprehensive study of DU and its effects on US military and their offspring is most appropriate.

Because of its ongoing and indiscriminate harm to civilians long after a war has ended, the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions declare DU to be an illegal weapon of mass destruction. The European Union and other human rights groups have called for a ban on any further use of DU weapons.

Therefore, Christian Peacemaker Teams call on:

1. Alliant Tech/ABL, Rocket Center, WV, to stop all DU manufacture as well as the shipping of all DU products;
2. all world militaries to stop using DU weapons;
3. all military personnel to refuse to load DU ammunition or use it in any of its forms;
4. the US. Defense Department and all manufacturers of DU products, to join with BAE Systems of Great Britain and the British Defense Ministry as they have stopped DU weapons production and stopped its use in war theaters and practice ranges;
5. the U.S. Army and Air Force to follow the lead of the U.S. Navy as it has stopped its use of DU weapons. If the Navy has recognized the dangers of DU's use, it follows that the other military services should also end their use of DU weapons.

I wonder if the organizations called upon will listen to CPT. We are poisoning our own military - not to mention innocent civilians and the earth itself. There need to be more such protests.

Bush today

This is almost unbelievable. Except that I'm used to Bush's contempt for the press and his inappropriate snideness. Just look:

At a press conference this morning with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a reporter asked President Bush whether his use of the word “unsettling” to describe the violence in Iraq would “convince many people that you’re still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq.”Bush responded curtly, “It’s bad in Iraq. That help?” and then chuckled.

You can actually see the video right here if you like.

(Hat tip to Watertiger at Dependable Renegade.)

Have a green Christmas

Greenpeace has a page devoted to making your holiday season more green. You might want to check it out. Here's a sample:

1: Give a compact fluorescent light bulb or two as gifts. Save your friends and family money and save the planet too. Old-fashioned light bulbs waste 85% of their energy in heat and don't last long. Compact florescent bulbs these days come in all shapes, sizes, and colours. A 100% compact florescent household makes a great New Year's resolution, and a good investment in energy (and money!) savings.

There are eleven more suggestions.

And, on the subject of New Year's commitments, you might like to take a look at the page called 12 Steps which is about using less energy.

Pregnant Mary

Well, by now you probably know that Mary Cheney is pregnant. And, of course, the religious right is freaking out over it. Take a look at what this CNN article says:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservative leaders voiced dismay Wednesday at news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, is pregnant, while a gay-rights group said the vice president faces "a lifetime of sleepless nights" for serving in an administration that has opposed recognition of same-sex couples.

Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are expecting a baby in late spring, said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president.

"The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation" to the arrival of their sixth grandchild, McBride said.

Mary Cheney was an aide to her father during the 2004 campaign, and now is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL. She and Poe moved from Colorado to Virginia a year ago to be closer to the Cheney family.
...
"Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child," said Family Pride executive director Jennifer Chrisler.
...
Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America described the pregnancy as "unconscionable."

What is unconscionable is that Mary Cheney campaigned for a party that generates hate toward gays and lesbians and many in the glbt community believe she has sold them down the river. She has.

Dog Comes To Aid Of Injured Man

Cynthia sent me this story this morning:

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ore. -- A Crawfordsville man stranded in the dark was saved with the help of his dog last Thursday morning.

Jerry Hadler, a rancher near Sweet Home, went out to perform his daily chores with his dog, U-Kome, last Thursday morning. While walking in the dark, Hadler slipped and fell.

“I hit an incline and it just went out from underneath me,” Hadler said. “I fell on it and I broke my ankle.”

Hadler, who said he has suffered several broken bones in the past, knew instantly he had broken a bone in his foot.

His dog, too, knew something was wrong and began barking.

“She washed my face and my ears, ran circles around me, and barked and barked,” Hadler said.

Hadler’s dog then ran back to the barn, where friend Mark Marvin was starting his day as well. U-Kome ran circles around Marvin and began barking, Marvin said.

“I said ‘Go play, go to Jerry,’” Marvin said.

But U-Kome was persistent and didn’t take no for an answer. The dog led Marvin to Hadler, who was unable to walk.

“If it wouldn’t have been for that dog, it would have been quite awhile before I found him,” Marvin said.

I just wanted to share that with you because stories like this bring me much joy. There's just nothing like a dog!

Wales, Canterbury and Gore

Oh my goodness, I'd love a picture of the three of them together. Here's what the Telegraph has to say in an article called "Prince recruits Gore for 'green' campaign":

Theirs is an unlikely alliance: the heir to the throne, the leader of the Church of England and the man who so nearly got the most powerful job in the world.

But the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Al Gore will this week launch a new project to encourage big business to become more "green".

Prince Charles is said by aides to be "totally committed" to the scheme in which companies will be urged to assess – and reverse – the damage they are doing to the environment.
...
Prince Charles will be one of three speakers at the launch of his Accounting for Sustainability project. The others are the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Lord Browne of Madingley, the chief executive of BP, the petroleum giant.

It is understood that companies will be encouraged to follow Prince Charles's example by "offsetting" their carbon emissions. This is a service that allows individuals and companies to repair some of the damage caused by harmful emissions by channelling funds into projects that reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Just today I got an email about carbon offsets. Read about it at Carbonfund.org.

Littering

The coffee shop I often visit has a little freebie news sheet called "Coffee News". Here's an article in this week's edition:

Harvey Bennett threw five bottles into the sea near his home on Long Island, New York and waited. Six months later, he got a letter in the mail from a return address in England. The 55-year-old was excited, then shocked. The letter, allegedly from a person in Bournemouth, in Dorset County, wasn't thrilled to find the bottle washed up on his beach. In fact, he chastised Bennett for littering and scolded the American for his "profound eperiment." "I felt like I was being punished," said Bennett, who added that coincidentally, the bottle ended up in an area from which his ancestors embarked for American in 1644.

What are the odds? For any of this?

That we may fear less

If only our president understood this:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

--Madame Marie Curie

Retirement courage

This is good:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that it is time to face reality and recognize that Iraq is in a state of civil war. Powell made the statement after growing what are known as "retirement balls."

--Amy Poehler

Stranger Than Fiction

Cynthia and I played hookey today and went to the movies. We saw "Stranger Than Fiction" with Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson and I really, really, really want to recommend it.

Here's part of a review I found on Amazon:

The idea of "Stranger Than Fiction" appealed to me the moment I first heard of it. Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, wakes up one day and hears a voice. An omniscient narrator is relating his life with precision and no one can hear that voice but himself. It turns out that the voice is Emma Thompson, playing a famed author who is actually writing a novel about a character named Harold Crick. And it's the same Harold Crick. What is being put down in fiction is also concurrently happening in real life. It's a tricky concept, one that I felt might be impossible to pull off effectively. Well, not only does "Stranger Than Fiction" pull it off--it succeeds grandly as a surprisingly thoughtful, amusing, and moving contemplation of life. For Harold must immediately confront his mortality when the narrator informs him/us that he will soon die!

The complicated narrative of the film is pulled off brilliantly. The overlapping structure necessary to maintain the momentum and cohesion of the film must be attributed to a clever, intricate screenplay. Literate, witty, and real--it's a real treat. Lots of interesting effects help to pull the two worlds together making even the most mundane moments of Harold's life visually compelling. The movie's construction is fascinating and enjoyable.

I really loved this film. Go see it!

Please buy "Fair Trade"

Most of the time the only thing you can easily buy that's "fair trade" is coffee. I can get that at an ordinary grocery store. But I managed to buy most of my Christmas presents at a fair trade bazaar here in Tulsa (sponsored by a church that's committed to social justice) and I'm glad that was possible. Fair trade products can be ordered, of course. What is fair trade, anyway? A website I just found called "I'm Organic" explains:

•Paying a fair wage in the local context.
•Offering employees opportunities for advancement.
•Providing equal employment opportunities for all people, particularly the most disadvantaged.
•Engaging in environmentally sustainable practices.
•Being open to public accountability.
•Building long-term trade relationships.
•Providing healthy and safe working conditions within the local context.
•Providing financial and technical assistance to producers whenever possible.

What's sad is that the above criteria are not just standard for all products. But every time we buy just one fair trade item, we're making a little bit of a difference in the world.

About psychopaths

The current Human Nature column of Slate published the following:

Psychopathic brains are measurably unmoved by other people's fear. MRI scans indicate that exposure to frightened faces makes blood flow to key brain regions increase in normal people but decrease in criminal psychopaths. Theory: Psychopaths "lack empathy because they have deficits in processing distress cues." Excited reactions: 1) The blood-flow defect causes psychopathy. 2) Genes or childhood abuse cause the defect. 3) We can cure psychopaths by fixing their blood flow. 4) We can use MRIs to catch psychopaths who pretend to be cured. Skeptical reactions: 1) Maybe psychopathy causes the blood-flow defect. 2) Psychopaths will learn to game MRIs just as they've learned to game polygraphs.

Well, it's very interesting. Like those who have the skeptical (or I would call them cynical) reactions, I am concerned that psychopaths will be able to game the MRIs.

The Bolton resignation

I want to recommend a short and simple article called "It's time, yet again, to call bullshit on Bush." Here's how it gets started:

In the wake of the resignation of John Bolton, now, thankfully, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the president is laying it all at the feet of political obstruction instead of the fact that the Senate, for once, used good sense in not affirming his nominee for this delicate job.

According to an Associated Press report, the president is bitter, "deeply disappointed that a handful of United States senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate."

"They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate...this stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation," he said.

Bullshit.

Bolton was forced to cut and run, a victim of his own inability to function as a tactful and patient diplomat, a fact recognized by both parties who let his appointment as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations die on the vine and force his resignation.

I'm glad he's out but a comment posted at the end of the article gives me pause:

There's already a buzz about the possibility that Bush might appoint Joe Liebermann to the same spot during the Christmas recess. This would allow Connecticut's Republican governor to appoint his replacement and thus return GOP control to the Senate.

That would not be good. That would not be good at all.

Sunday prayer blogging

This touching prayer is by someone whose screen name is LadyLovelyBug. I found it on the beliefnet website:

I pray for all of humanity to one day feel the pulse of the Mother Earth in their feet as they tread. I pray for mankind to find the faith to believe in the messages carried by their dreams and to see beyond the visible world. I pray that everyone I come in contact with can walk away with much, or at least some, of the happiness that lives within me. I pray for peace, acceptance, and tolerance for all who express their love for the higher power (whatever that name may be). Most of all, I pray for an end to the violence and depravity that darkens many souls. Peace be with us all!

Anyone can pray this prayer - regardless of his or her belief system. May we, indeed, pray it together.

Women veterans and PTSD

There's a really very interesting article on the CNN web site today about the particular pyschological and emotional challenges of the female Iraq war vet. They actually are more prone to PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) than men. Here's one reason why:

Mental health experts say one of the biggest contributors to psychological problems for women in uniform is military sexual trauma -- a term that covers verbal harassment and physical assault, which is a strong risk factor for PTSD.

Studies conducted by the VA health system vary, but generally about 20 percent of women report a physical assault during their service, Westrup says. "Unfortunately, a huge aspect of that experience is guilt and self-blame and shame on top of stress," she adds.

Last year, the Pentagon announced a new policy of confidentiality, so sexual assault victims can report the incident and get help but law enforcement and senior commanders are not immediately notified.

I read some time ago that in one particular camp, women could not go to the latrine at night without a severe risk of being raped. And it's high time the Pentagon announced that new policy of confidentiality. Up until then, women risked retaliation from their superior officers for simply reporting sexual assault. There is absolutely no excuse for this. The military is responsible for allowing this kind of climate to prevail.

The article goes into more reasons why women face special pressures both in the military and in adjusting once again to civilian life. Recommended.

So much for freedom

I'm wondering if by now you know about Newt Gingrich and Dennis Prager and their assaults on the Constitution. Take a look at what Cenk Uygur has to say:

Newt Gingrich started the attack against the US constitution in the beginning of the week. He launched operation shock and awe by striking against one of the most cherished principles of this country - the freedom of speech. It worked, because after all we've been through in the last six years, I was still shocked by this.

The first amendment! I am not sure I can name something more sacred to the principles of America.

Then Dennis Prager came in and delivered the second blow to the first amendment (if you don't know him, don't worry, you're not alone; he is a buffoonish conservative talk show host who has made a cheap living desperately trying to copy Rush Limbaugh his whole life). Prager went after the establishment clause. He argued that every member of Congress should show their allegiance to the Bible in order to be allowed into Congress. The first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

How much clearer did they have to be?

I was shocked too. Uygur then says the following:

The problem with these conservatives is that they truly don't understand the idea of America. They have no idea what this country stands for. If all we stand for is the religious views of the majority, then we are no different than any country in the Middle East. If we strike out against our enemies by trying to shut down their right to speak, then we are no better than communist China or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A commenter on this article said that they actually do understand the idea of America. They just detest that idea and want to destroy it. I'm afraid that person had a good point.

Gingrich says he wants to "close down every website that is dangerous." Well, boys and girls, you know what that means. He want to shut down dissent.

If that doesn't alarm you particularly, remember, this man wants to run for president.

A fraud of extremely great magnitude

Imagine a trial known as "United States v. George W. Bush et al." That's the title of a new book by Elizabeth de la Vega. You can read an excerpt on a page at Common Dreams. Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor and knows how to build a legal case.

Here is Exhibit 1 in the trial:

Evolution of the Fraud

* Bush, Cheney, et al. were predisposed to invade Iraq even before they were elected.
* They secretly began to plan the invasion immediately after September 11. Bush requested an Iraq war plan in November 2001 and began escalating military activity.
* They enlisted biased political appointees to find evidence to justify a war beginning in October 2001.
* They began, without a reasonable basis, to imply that Iraq was linked to the September 11 attacks and posed an urgent threat in the fall of 2001.
* They began a massive fraud campaign in September 2002 to overcome weak public support for an invasion and manipulate Congress into passing an authorization allowing the President to use force against Iraq.
* They invaded Iraq in March 2003, knowing that their stated grounds for war were false, fraudulent, and without reasonable basis.

Do click through to read the testimony that demonstrates the above assertions. It's riveting reading.

Something Jim Wallis said

This is from a recent radio address:

Because we have lost a commitment to the common good, politics is failing to solve the deepest crises of our time.

-- Jim Wallis

We are beset with the politics of selfishness. How did we get this way? It is tragic.

Friday cat blogging!

Simon

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Environmental catastrophe

Well, this is interesting. I want to share with you a CNN article about the extinction of the dinosaurs. It's called "Study: Single massive asteroid wiped out dinosaurs" . Here's part of what it says:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A single, gigantic asteroid slammed into Earth 65 million years ago, dooming the dinosaurs and many other species, scientists said on Thursday in a new study rebutting theories that multiple impacts did the deed.

An examination of rock sediments drilled from five sites at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean strongly supports the notion that one massive hunk of space rock caused the mass extinction, a research team led by University of Missouri-Columbia geology professor Ken MacLeod found.

"It's a completely straightforward, single-impact scenario," MacLeod, whose findings appear in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, said in an interview. "It was a haymaker that nobody saw coming. One shot, and that's all you need to explain it."

Scientists believe that an asteroid about 6 miles wide hurtled to Earth 65.5 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period, plunging into what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to carve out the Chicxulub crater measuring about 110 miles across.
...
The dinosaurs, which had ruled for 160 million years, were wiped out. So were large marine reptiles like the mosasaurs and the plesiosaurs, the flying reptiles known as pterosaurs, the tentacled ammonites that populated the seas and many species of marine plankton. The birds suffered losses but
survived.

The mammals made it through as well, allowing these warm-blooded, furry little creatures to eventually dominate the land and ultimately setting the stage for the rise of human beings.

Evidence of the single-asteroid calamity, in the form of debris from the impact scattered worldwide, is contained in rocks dating back to 65 million years ago.

I wonder what form of life will evolve after human beings are wiped out. If we blow ourselves up, we're pretty sure that cockroaches will survive. I wonder what will come next.

Or will we prevent that scenario by actively working to save our world? Do we have the will to do it?