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Practicing God--Not Being God
Listening intently, yesterday
A few hours ago, in front of the White House, The World Can't Wait protesters sponsored a press event on the theocratic takeover of the U.S government.
Speaking today were:
Rev. Luis Barrios, assistant clergy at the City University of New York
Rev. Phil Wheaton, Episcopal co-pastor, Community of Christ, Washington DC
Rev. Graylon Hagler, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington DC
Rev. Wheaton and Rev. Barrios
I spoke with them, asking some of the questions that I thought bloggers might want to ask:
Me: Rev. Barrios, what will the actions of worldcantwait.org accomplish?
Rev. Barrios: First of all, we are about breaking the silence. It is important to be in the streets. Many of us are talking but we're not talking in the correct places. The correct place is in public.
There are three steps: first, identify the problem. THe problem is George Bush. Secondly, denounce the problem. Thirdly, we must attack the problem and that requires a strategy.
Me: What IS the strategy?
Rev. Barrios: It is a two-fold strategy. One: raise consciousness. Understand that terrorism, poverty, and war are happening right here, in this country. Two: Build public opinion. Bush is angry, he gets frustrated and depressed. He is driving us all crazy. Maybe we should drive him crazy instead! Public opinion needs to build to the point where he would have to resign.
Next, I spoke with Rev. Wheaton about his statement that "no saviour is coming" and that people need to "speak the prophetic word" of Jesus in order to understand what is happening to us.
Rev. Wheaton: President Bush has used the silence of the people who refuse to speak out against the misuse of scripture to amass power. We must all speak out because voices have lain silent for too long.
Me: I keep thinking about how tight-lipped the rightwing Christians were before the election; as if they were frightened and praying for some outcome.
Rev. Wheaton: Let's look at before and after the invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration had an urgency about that invasion. Why? They saw they were losing control of the people. They HAD to invade--their only trump card was the sacrifice of "our boys". So they shifted their approach to the war justifying the cause, rather than the other way around. It's just diabolical. During the Vietnam war, the lies were countered by the numbers of coffins we were seeing. But those numbers are not here yet. They will be soon.
Me: What can you say to those Christians who feel that Bush is a good Christian and should be respected as such?
Rev. Wheaton: Bush has not one clue as to how to be a Christian. Half of Jesus' message is prophecy, which he ignores. Jesus wanted us to choose between life and death. According to Deuteronomy, empire wars are the way to choose death. He is a false prophet, speaking with a false voice. He is using the right wing Christians because he is control and power-mad. This is the worst news for the naive. He is tearing this nation down.
2005, we have come to the BRINK. This has been the most disastrous environmental year, we may have avian flu, stock market issues. People need to understand: DO NOT FOLLOW BUSH. There is nothing but disaster ahead.
Me: What actions can people take?
Rev. Wheaton: READ and SPEAK OUT PUBLICLY.
Rev. Hagler said, "The Taliban is here. It is a hypocrisy that a government uproots a group from tyranny, only to force them to become what the government wants them to become."
"It is an irony that they speak about religion but do not understand the word of Jesus. Lift up the message of the Gospel."
*********
People walking by are curious about the new people on the block--there are wonderful conversations going on all the time as people stop to question the signs, especially the ones that say "15 days to go"...
"15 days and what happens?" they ask. "The beginning of the end of the Bush Administration", is the response. More questions follow; ideas are discussed and debated. Not all agree; some walk away in disgust. But those who stay are treated to something that needs to keep happening all over the country: civil discussion.
It is the sound, and the sight, of THINKING. Talking it through--debating the pros and cons of a course of action, following the logic, and feeling the deep concerns of Americans and visitors from other countries--THIS is what democracy looks like. And this how we take back America.
Karen,
I love the on-the-scene reporting you are doing. It's nice to see important stories of people taking action.
Great work.
These guys are great!
What a great story and inspiration to see people start thinking for themselves. Other nations shake their head in disbelief at the choices we make, we have a lot of making up to do.
This Administration sacrafices its young for political cause without concern.
Its time we sacrafice this Administration.
Here we go again with Republicans and Hitler.Its a political disaster which will hopefully undermine Kilgore's election in a few weeks.
Ads in Va. governor race mention Hitler
By BOB LEWIS, Associated Press Writer
Last Updated 1:35 pm PDT Tuesday, October 18, 2005
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The Republican candidate for governor is drawing fire for campaign ads that suggest his Democratic opponent is so averse to the death penalty he would have spared Adolf Hitler from execution.
The radio and TV ads feature victims' relatives who tearfully recount the crimes that killed their loved ones and say they don't trust Democrat Tim Kaine to administer the state's death penalty.
Kaine, who says his moral objections to capital punishment are rooted in his Roman Catholic faith, responded with an ad pledging to carry out death sentences "because it's the law."
One of the ads supporting Jerry Kilgore, Virginia's attorney general, cites a Richmond Times-Dispatch column that said Kaine had "suggested he would not favor sending even Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Idi Amin to the gallows."
A commercial featuring death penalty proponent Stanley Rosenbluth has him looking into the camera and saying: "Tim Kaine says Adolf Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty. This was one of the worst mass murderers in modern times."
Some Jewish leaders said Friday that the commercials trivialize the Holocaust and should be withdrawn.
Commentary on today's WaPo page 1 article on Bob Ney courtesy of Bradblog:
Ney, Ney, Ney. Dirty, Dirty, Dirty.
Little-Known, but Powerful U.S. Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) up to Eyeballs in DeLay, Abramoff, Corruption Probe Tied to Gambling, Illegal Favors and TeleCom 'Election' Fixing Investigations...
In an extremely detailed 2891 word page one Washington Post report today by James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt, Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) is tied to at least four different aspects of ongoing probes being carried out by criminal investigators looking into the corruption of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay -- both of whom have been indicted recently on charges relating to the various investigations.
Ney has not yet been indicted, but the WaPo exposé ties him to several different scandals including the SunCruz casino boat fraud/murder investigation (for which Abramoff has recently been indicted), several illegally funded overseas vacations, support of Indian gaming in apparent trade for favors received in the form of cash contributions and other gifts from Abramoff and -- yes -- the apparent "fixing" of an election administered by Ney of telecommunications companies to determine who would receive a large contract at the U.S. Capital building.
Ney is chairman of the powerful U.S. House Administration Committee. BRAD BLOG readers will remember Ney's committee as holding a "show hearing" earlier this year on "Election Irregularities in Ohio" during the 2004 Presidential Election. That hearing, which attempted to whitewash the thousands of troubling reports calling the Ohio election into question, called just one witness from a "voting rights" group. That witness turned out to be Mark F. "Thor" Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), self-described "non-partisan" organization which had appeared out of the blue just days prior to the hearing. Hearne, identified himself in the hearings as a "long time voting rights advocate", but failed to mention that he was actually the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. The other "non-partisan" founder of ACVR was Jim Dyke, former RNC Communcations Director, and recently installed White House spokesman for Dick Cheney.
~snip~
read more here:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001930.htm
WaPo article link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701918_pf.html
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION...
Published on Monday, October 17, 2005 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)
Halliburton's New Low in Treachery
by Dave Zweifel
The Chicago Tribune produced an incredible story last week detailing how unsuspecting young men from poor countries are tricked into working in dangerous jobs for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq.
The two-part series retraced the journey of a group of Nepalese men who were lured to the Mideast with fraudulent paperwork that promised them jobs at a luxury hotel in Amman, Jordan, but instead wound up in Iraq working for the Halliburton subsidiary KBR, America's biggest private contractor there.
What was even more startling was the stories' revelation that the operation is financed with U.S. taxpayer money.
According to the Tribune, American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor into Iraq. Most of those falling for the fraudulent job offers are impoverished Asians who, the newspaper said, "often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way with little protection."
The Tribune got on the story after 12 young civilians from Nepal were kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq and a few days later publicly slaughtered. The newspaper sent a reporter and photographer to Nepal, where they interviewed families and friends and soon discovered that thousands of men are routinely recruited for "good" Mideast jobs, but wind up in the most treacherous stretches of Iraq territory working in private jobs for the U.S. military.
A brother of one of the kidnapped men told Cam Simpson, the Trib reporter, that the last time he heard from his brother was when he called from his supposed job in Jordan. He was being sent against his will to Iraq, the brother said, and then blurted out, "I am done for." The phone then went dead. The next time the young Nepalese was seen was on a TV screen two weeks later, his hands tied behind his back and a gun pointed at his head.
Simpson reported that the trail of those dozen men from Nepal revealed a chain of brokers, middlemen and subcontractors along the way, all of whom stood to profit from the trade.
To maintain the flow of cheap labor that is key to the military support and reconstruction in Iraq, the U.S. military has allowed KBR to partner with subcontractors that hire workers from Nepal and other countries that prohibit their citizens from being deployed in Iraq, the story said. That means that the brokers operate illicitly and falsify documents that describe far different jobs near Iraq, which eventually turn out to be smack dab in the middle of the country.
"Even after foreign workers discover they have been lured to the Middle East under false pretenses, many say they have little choice but to continue into Iraq or stay longer than planned," the story continued. "They feel trapped because they must repay huge fees demanded by brokers."
KBR, which has a multibillion-dollar contract with the U.S. Defense Department, pays the subcontractors for finding it employees to do the cleanup and rebuilding work in Iraq.
The tentacles of this war keep getting this country deeper and deeper into places we shouldn't be, including this atrocious practice that the Chicago Tribune has uncovered.
Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1017-25.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1017-25.htm
Posted by: dwahzon at October 18, 2005 05:24 PM
Oh my god. Oh. my. god.
Help us all. What have we become?
Indictments coming down the pike; O'Reily contemplating retirement. Golly gee Santa!
What's hate got to do with it?
Plenty, because media firebrand Bill O'Reilly spawns enmity in all that he does - and he's sick of it
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/nyc-etlede4473201oct18,0,2306533.story
It's beginning to look alot like Fitzmas, everywhere you go......
It's beginning to look alot like Fitzmas, everywhere you go......
Posted by: Florida Dem at October 18, 2005 06:03 PM
LOL Made my day!
He's making a list (Dick, Karl, Scooter...)-He's checking it twice...
Gonna find out who's naughty and indict...
Satan Clause is Coming to Town
He sees you that you’ve been Freeping
He knows you’ve been AWOL
He knows if you ‘ve been bad or badder so be gooder for goodness sake !
Oh, you better not cry – you better not shout
Better to keep a low profile till the word gets out
Satan Clause is coming to Town !
Hilarious.
"Ten Tips for Dealing with Fitzmas"
http://georgia10.dailykos.com/
Oh my god. Oh. my. god.
Help us all. What have we become?
Posted by: Amy at October 18, 2005 05:51 PM
There is a one word answer for that..
Empire
Speaking of empire...
Bolton: Tough road ahead for U.N. reform
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) -- United Nations Ambassador John Bolton told Congress Tuesday that he's working hard to press the U.S. case for an urgent overhaul of the world body, but he expects a tough diplomatic campaign to win the necessary support.
Making his first appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since President Bush used recess-appointment to install him over the objections of Senate Democrats, Bolton said he has been engaged in "a matter of intense diplomacy in New York" to try to rally support for changing the U.N.
Bolton said that while rich countries like Japan, Britain and others in Western Europe support the U.S. proposals, the trick will be to get developing countries, which are needed to reach a consensus, on board. He said he has met with 70 of the organization's 191 member states.
"This cannot be seen as simply an American initiative," Bolton said. "This is going to take a sustained diplomatic campaign, not only in the United Nations but in capitals" of U.N. member countries, he added.
Bolton testified before the committee that refused to endorse him as Bush's ambassador; Bush bypassed the Senate during its midyear recess and appointed Bolton anyway.
Bolton told the committee that many changes were needed at the United Nations, including a way to fix a discredited human rights commission that he said routinely had as members such countries as Cuba and Zimbabwe, despite their frequent rights abuses.
But, Bolton said, it will take time to complete the overhaul.
"We're not going to declare victory after a few cosmetic changes," he said. "Reform at the United Nations is not a one-night stand. Reform is forever."
more...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/18/us.un.ap/index.html
Posted by: monkey at October 18, 2005 08:21 PM
Someone should tell him:
Reform of human rights abuses starts right here at home.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19leak.html?hp&ex=1129694400&en=adcf3adabff56617&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WHAT A GREAT THREAD!!
THANKS, YOU GUYS.....
Voting Machine Company CEO Refused Visa for Entry into U.S.
His Machines Are Allowed to Count Millions of American Votes, But He's Not Allowed to Visit
{Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org http://www.VotersUnite.org
The CEO of Smartmatic Inc. http://www.smartmatic.com/ , Antonio Mujica, has been denied a tourist visa by the US embassy and will not be allowed to return to the United States according to a recent report in VCRISIS http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200510160629 , a Venezuelan news source.
Smartmatic Inc. is the Florida-registered, Venezuelan-owned parent corporation of Sequoia Voting Systems http://www.sequoiavote.com/ , one of the leading voting machine companies in the US. Its ownership has also been tied to Hugo Chavez http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=1536 and other shadowy multi-national organizations.
No reason is given for denying renewal of Mujica's visa in the VCRISIS article which describes an agitated confrontation with US Embassy officials. According to the story, Mujica "argued that he was legal, that he had an important company in the USA and that he had to travel with urgency to that country."
Sequoia Voting Systems was recently purchased by Smartmatic from a UK firm for $16 million. The surprisingly small sale price has brought into question the stability of Sequoia Voting Systems, which would seemingly stand ready to make millions of dollars in sales of voting systems around the United States as money from the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) continues to pour out to counties and states. However, the company's ability to provide technical support to their customers has now come into question as this blogger was recently told by a high level official at a competing American-owned voting machine company.
Sequoia is also involved in a lawsuit filed http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001319.htm by attorney Paul Lehto in Snohomish County, Washington. The suit calls for the county's contract to be voided with the company due to the proprietary "trade secret" software used by the company. Lehto has published a report http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/mediaSnohomishCounty.htm detailing a number of disturbing irregularities found in Snohomish's general election last November.
The Smartmatic company slogan is "All Things Connected". Setting aside whether all things being connected in an election system is a good thing (it isn't), their website has the following text on the front page:
“Smartmatic is the device networking company. We envision a world where everything will be connected. And we’re making it happen…here and now.”
The irony here...and now...of course, is that the entire situation demonstrates how utterly dysfunctional the election administration in America has become. While US law allows a Venezuelan man to control the secret counting of America's votes, the US State Department doesn't consider him fit to enter the country, even temporarily.
Further pointing out the absurdity of it all, in a media release published earlier today at VoteTrustUSA http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=199&Itemid=50 , Ellen Theisen, Executive Director of VotersUnite.Org http://www.VotersUnite.org says, "It's ironic that when we take vote-counting to Iraq, we take it in the form of paper ballots deposited into clear plastic ballot boxes, but in our own country, vote-counting is in the form of electronic ballots and secret software controlled by a man our government has declared ineligible to set foot in the country."
Just another day in the decline of American democracy...
I am playing Dog...
A little furry but at least I have no shame.
Make Bush
I am playing Dog...
A little furry but at least I have no shame.
Make Bush your biatch!!!
Hump his leg!!!
Hurricane Wilma a Category 5 monster
'Extremely dangerous' storm has top sustained winds of 175 mph
Wednesday, October 19, 2005; Posted: 4:34 a.m. EDT
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Wilma has strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 5 hurricane, with sustained maximum winds of 175 mph, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.
The hurricane's minimum pressure is 892 millibars -- the lowest pressure observed in 2005.
Forecasters warn that the storm could possibly slam into southwestern Florida by this weekend.
At 2:30 a.m. EDT, the National Hurricane Center reported an Air Force plane had found 175 mph winds with higher gusts in Wilma.
Wilma "has become an extremely dangerous Category Five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale," the center said in an advisory.
The storm's minimum pressure of 892 millibars "is equivalent to the minimum pressure of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys," the advisory added.
The latest in a slew of devastating storms to sock the Gulf region, Wilma became a hurricane Tuesday -- tying the record for both most hurricanes in a season with 12 and most named storms at 21.
Just nine hours after becoming a hurricane, Wilma's wind speeds had jumped from 75 mph to 100 mph. Then, within two hours, the winds intensified from 110 to 150 mph. A short time later, its winds had increased to 175 mph.
At 2 a.m. EDT, the center of the storm was located 170 miles south-southwest of Grand Cayman Island and about 400 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico. It was moving west-northwest at nearly 8 mph and is expected to turn to the northwest over the next 24 hours, the hurricane center said.
A Category 5 hurricane can cause a storm surge of more than 18 feet above normal.
Projections for Wilma's path suggest the storm may skirt the western tip of Cuba on Friday, possibly as a Category 4 storm with winds of greater than 130 mph, before curving eastward and barreling toward the southwestern Florida coast.
"All interests in the Florida Keys and the Florida peninsula should closely monitor the progress of Wilma," the NHC said.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward about 15 miles from the eye, and tropical-storm-force winds stretch up to 155 miles from the center.
October 19, 2005
No Final Report Seen in Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak
By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.
The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.
A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report.
By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury's findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.
With the term of the grand jury expiring Oct. 28, lawyers in the case said they assumed Mr. Fitzgerald was in the final stages of his inquiry.
The focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry has remained fixed on two senior White House aides, Karl Rove, who is President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Both had conversations with reporters about a C.I.A. officer whose name was later publicly disclosed.
It is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has learned who first identified the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003.
Some of the lawyers in the case say Mr. Fitzgerald seems to be wrestling with decisions about how to proceed, leaning toward indictments but continuing to weigh thousands of pages of documents and testimony he has compiled during the nearly two-year inquiry.
In recent days, Mr. Fitzgerald has repeatedly told lawyers in the case that he has not made up his mind about criminal charges.
more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19leak.html?ei=5088&en=9be032e1d4f42e2b&ex=1287374400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
Bush whacked
Rove on CIA leak
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005
WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.
"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."
Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.
As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President in deep political trouble.
Asked if he believed indictments were forthcoming, a key Bush official said he did not know, then added: "I'm very concerned it could go very, very badly."
"Karl is fighting for his life," the official added, "but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that."
Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.
Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.
But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.
A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.
"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.
None of these sources offered additional specifics of what Bush and Rove discussed in conversations beginning shortly after the Justice Department informed the White House in September 2003 that a criminal investigation had been launched into the leak of CIA agent Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak.
A White House spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of Fitzgerald's investigation.
If the above story is true, then George Bush was an active participant in a cover-up to conceal the truth about White House involvement in the Plame affair throughout the 2004 Presidential campaign.
What did W know, and when... and who told him he should know it...
NBC Breaking News: Saddam Hussein trial adjourned until Nov. 28. Details to come...
Help us all. What have we become?
Posted by: Amy at October 18, 2005 05:51 PM
I hate to say it Amy, but unfortunately you are absolutely right.
WE are responsible for trafficking in human sacrificial labor. WE have not done enough to stop the horrible things that have happened to this country. WE have chosen not to take the lead. WE have not convinced our fellow citizens that our country has been sold to the highest bidders. WE have let theocrazy (not a spelling mistake) become the standard for governing this country. WE have not done enough to make people aware that our election system is corrupt. WE have not held the media accountable for disseminating propaganda.
No doubt WE have tried to change things, but WE have been catastrophically unsuccessful.
WE THE PEOPLE, have our chance this next election cycle. If WE don't make the effort for change, WE have only ourselves to blame.
~ snip
But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.
~ snip
"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.
Posted by: Matthew Carnicelli at October 19, 2005 07:36 AM
You have NO IDEA how angry I am right now.
NBC Breaking News: Saddam Hussein trial adjourned until Nov. 28. Details to come...
Posted by: monkey at October 19, 2005 08:28 AM
???
Truth,
It was pretty well known before yesterday that there would be a delay. NPR had a story sometime last week that talked about how secretive the tribunal processes have been. That some of the process does not seem to have been worked out yet and that the defense teams have not even been given the written charges yet, much less the material that the prosecution has gathered so that they can review it in preparation for defense. The person speaking last week said that it was very likely that it would simply be a day for hearing the charges read aloud and then a motion to defer the court date until the defense teams could get and read the material that they need and are due to receive.
Odd but interesting.. (from Canada)
Re: If it walks like a penguin, and talks like a penguin ..., Peter McKnight, Oct. 15
So conservative Christians, in their blissful ignorance of evolutionary biology and animal behaviours, and in a fit of anthropomorphism, have decided that emperor penguins are the epitome of "traditional values." As Peter McKnight points out, the birds' actual behaviour is nothing like the conservatives believe. In any case, like the behaviour of all animals, it's amoral.
The gulf between reality and the world view of conservative Christians has always been wide. Sometimes it is amusing, but sometimes, as in the case of so-called creation science, it is frightening. The conservatives' longing for a simple and secure world -- a golden age that in reality never was -- is tolerable. Their determination to directly or indirectly impose their faith on others is not.
Emperor penguins are fine proof of evolutionary biology. They're birds, but can't fly, although their swimming has been described as flying. They're paranoid about savage carnivores, including orcas and leopard seals. Even if they were faithfully monogamous, and invariably made enormous sacrifices to rear their children, would they be a good role model for anyone, let alone evangelicals?
They do live in an isolated part of the world, one that is dark, frigid and windy. They can be obsessive about some behaviours, and travel in herds (flocks?). But all they eat is fish, which might be OK if they were Roman Catholics, but seems a bit odd for the other brands of Christianity.
Also - depressed? Become a Republican!!
http://www.thefrown.com/player.php?/frowners/becomerepublican