Have I been too hasty to dismiss the W's plan to drill for oil in the Artic? I tend to immediately discount most of W & Congress because they typically fail on so many (most) issues. I have been totally up in arms about the prospect of the oil drilling in Alaska. I saw the ecostructure invaded by huge machinery threatening the wildlife and the environment. Now this from Gail Norton, Secretary of The Interior. Quite a different picture from what I had imagined. Perhaps she is right, in fact, I'm sure she is that there has been technological advances that present a less intrusive means of gathering oil. Or, have I been taken in by the Bush publicity spin? Hard to know fact from fiction coming from The White House considering how they manipulate the media. If this article is true, perhaps I should a least take a pause, let my guard down and reconsider my stance. What do you think? Another publicity stunt or some encouraging truths that would me the U.S. less reliant on mideast, Canadian, Venezulan oil imports? Hmmmmmm.
March 14, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The New York Times
Call of the Mild
By GALE A. NORTON
Washington — Even though it is noon, the landscape is pitch black. The wind chill stands at 70 below zero. A lone man drives across a vast frozen plain on a road made of ice. He sits atop a large, bug-like machine with enormous wheels. He is heading for a spot on the tundra pinpointed by satellite imagery to explore for oil. When the spring thaw comes and the road melts, any evidence that a man or a machine ever crossed there will be gone.
This is the world of Arctic energy exploration in the 21st century. It is as different from what oil exploration used to be as the compact supercomputers of today are different from the huge vacuum tube computers of the 1950s. Through the use of advanced technology, we have learned not only to get access to oil and gas reserves in Arctic environments but also to protect their ecosystems and wildlife.
Technological advances in oil exploration are at the heart of a debate over America's energy future. Congress will soon decide whether to open up a sliver of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - called the 1002 area - to energy development. Opponents will pretend that new, less invasive technology doesn't exist. It is important for Americans to understand that it does, and that it works.
In past decades, Arctic oil development involved huge amounts of equipment that had to be moved over gravel roads and laid upon large gravel pads. The machines that transported this equipment often scarred the land, especially in spring and summer.
American ingenuity has tackled this problem. Today, oil exploration in the Arctic occurs only in the frozen winter. Workers build roads and platforms of ice to protect the soil and vegetation. Trucks with huge tires called rolligons distribute load weights over large areas of snow to minimize the impact on the tundra below.
Meanwhile, innovations in platform development and directional drilling mean that we need fewer and smaller pads to tap into oil and gas reserves. From a single platform, we can explore an underground area nearly the size of the District of Columbia.
Likewise, satellite infrared imaging helps energy companies to avoid key wildlife habitat and environmentally sensitive areas while 3-D seismic data imaging improves the chances of drilling a successful well by 50 percent, meaning fewer wells.
In 1980, when Congress created the refuge, it set aside the 1002 area for possible future energy development. To date, Congress has not approved this development because of environmental concerns. In the meantime, America's domestic production of energy has declined and we have become more and more dependent on imported oil.
As part of a comprehensive energy strategy of promoting conservation and reducing dependence on foreign oil, we must increase our energy production here at home. The 1002 area is potentially the largest untapped source of oil and gas on American soil. While we cannot promise that there will be no impact on the wildlife and habitat of the 1002 area, we can promise no significant impact.
In fact, legislation to open up the area passed last year by the House of Representatives laid down the strictest environmental standards ever applied to energy development and flatly stated that development must "result in no significant adverse effect on fish and wildlife, their habitat, subsistence resources, and the environment."
We can meet this standard because of the extraordinary advances in oil field technology. If approved by Congress, the overall "footprint" of the equipment and facilities needed to develop the 1002 area would be restricted to 2,000 acres, an area about the size of a regional airport in a refuge the size of South Carolina.
With this advanced technology and the strict requirements of the legislation, the American people will have access to much needed energy to heat our homes and run our businesses while being assured that the Arctic environment and its wildlife will be protected.
Gale A. Norton is secretary of the interior.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Shame on Alan Keyes, She Is His Daughter
Bloord runs thicker than water? Nope, not in conservative politics by Alan Keyes' standards. Outrageous to say the least.
THE ARTICLE:
PERSPECTIVE
Not her father's daughter
By MARC FISHER
Washington Post
03/13/2005
Maya Keyes loves her father and mother. She put off college and moved from the family home in Darnestown, Md., to Chicago to be with her dad on a grand adventure. Even though she disagrees with him on "almost everything" political, she worked hard for his quixotic campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Now Maya Keyes - liberal, lesbian and a little lost - is out on her own. She says her parents - conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn - threw her out of the house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her.
Maya, 19, says her parents cut her off because of who she is - "a liberal queer." She has taken her private dispute with her dad into the open - speaking recently at a rally in Annapolis sponsored by Equality Maryland, the state's gay rights lobby. "I've known so many other people in a position like mine, where their families really don't want much to do with them. Maybe I can help by talking about it."
During his failed campaign last fall against Democrat Barack Obama for the Illinois Senate seat, Alan Keyes lashed out at Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Cheney. Keyes told a radio interviewer that Mary Cheney was a "selfish hedonist." Then, without having been asked anything about his own family, he volunteered that "if my daughter were a lesbian, I'd look at her and say, 'That is a relationship that is based on selfish hedonism.' I would also tell my daughter that it's a sin and she needs to pray to the Lord God to help her deal with that sin."
Maya heard the comments and recoiled. "It was kind of strange that he said it like a hypothetical," she says. "It was really kind of unpleasant."
Alan Keyes has made a career as a controversial, eloquent and passionate defender of traditional values and conservative thinking. He has run for the Senate three times and the presidency twice. Like his daughter, he took time away from education because of his politics, leaving Cornell University as a freshman after getting into a heated dispute with black students who had taken over the student center.
Maya is also an eloquent iconoclast, testing society's limits even as she expects her parents to give her the love and support they always have provided.
Her parents have known that Maya is a lesbian since they found a copy of the Washington Blade, the gay weekly, in her room and confronted her at the end of high school. She went to Oakcrest School for Girls, a Catholic school in McLean, Va., run by the church's devout Opus Dei movement. Ever since, Maya says, her parents have told her that her sexuality is wrong.
"As long as I was quiet about being gay or my politics, we got along," she says. "Then I went to the Counterinaugural," protests in Washington against President Bush. "My father didn't like that."
Maya returned from the demonstration to find she had been let go from her job at her father's political organization.
She says she was told to leave her father's apartment and not to expect any money toward attending Brown University, where she was admitted but deferred matriculation to spend a year teaching in southern India. "In my father's view, financing my college would be financing my politics, in a sense," Maya says, "because I plan to be an activist after college."
After I contacted Alan Keyes' office, press secretary Connie Hair called back with a prepared statement from him: "My daughter is an adult, and she is responsible for her own actions. What she chooses to do has nothing to do with my work or political activities."
Maya has her testy moments too, which she has shared on the Internet. "Sometimes I cannot believe I am related to this man," she wrote in her online diary last fall. "Haha though I'm sure he feels the same way about me."
Maya is more conflicted than her online rants might indicate. She shares some of her dad's political and religious foundations. She deeply opposes abortion as the taking of a life.
If she could talk to her parents now, she would tell them she does not intend to hurt them by going public. "I wish the fact that I was gay was not something that would hurt them either," she says. "It wasn't anything they did that made me this way. I really don't see why what I think should affect him in any way."
During the campaign, other bloggers discovered Maya's Web site and the electronic gossip flew for a while, but her sexuality was barely mentioned in the campaign or corporate media.
The end of the campaign brought no respite from the tensions at home. Then a few weeks ago her parents said she would have to make her own way.
But her friends told her there was nothing inevitable about the break, that political differences and even sexual orientation ought not result in being kicked out. Maya wrote: "They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn't smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks ..., does well in school, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League ..., goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids."
Maya still sounds more sad than angry about her situation. "I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my father," she says. Like other gay relatives of prominent conservatives, she has struggled with how public to be about her sexuality. Like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's sister Candace, who campaigned for John Kerry, Maya says she has come to believe that "while we might be trading on our prominence, it's a good thing to do something good with our situation, and anyway, we didn't choose to be queer."
The Point Foundation, a San Francisco-based charity that provides scholarships to students "who have been marginalized because of their sexual orientation," decided to pay Maya's expenses so she can begin her studies at Brown. "Many of the students we support have been disowned by their families because they've been honest about who they are," said the foundation's executive director, Vance Lancaster. This year, Point has received more than 1,200 applications for about 40 scholarships.
Maya Keyes is looking for answers to all those conservatives who e-mail her about how she's going to burn in hell and to all those liberals who e-mail her about how she's a traitor because she won't disavow her father. Then there are the people who think she's a whiny brat, "that I'm immature for thinking that I want my parents to talk to me."
"It all seems kind of ridiculous because I love him. He's my father."
Contact Marc Fisher at the Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20071.
THE ARTICLE:
PERSPECTIVE
Not her father's daughter
By MARC FISHER
Washington Post
03/13/2005
Maya Keyes loves her father and mother. She put off college and moved from the family home in Darnestown, Md., to Chicago to be with her dad on a grand adventure. Even though she disagrees with him on "almost everything" political, she worked hard for his quixotic campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Now Maya Keyes - liberal, lesbian and a little lost - is out on her own. She says her parents - conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn - threw her out of the house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her.
Maya, 19, says her parents cut her off because of who she is - "a liberal queer." She has taken her private dispute with her dad into the open - speaking recently at a rally in Annapolis sponsored by Equality Maryland, the state's gay rights lobby. "I've known so many other people in a position like mine, where their families really don't want much to do with them. Maybe I can help by talking about it."
During his failed campaign last fall against Democrat Barack Obama for the Illinois Senate seat, Alan Keyes lashed out at Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Cheney. Keyes told a radio interviewer that Mary Cheney was a "selfish hedonist." Then, without having been asked anything about his own family, he volunteered that "if my daughter were a lesbian, I'd look at her and say, 'That is a relationship that is based on selfish hedonism.' I would also tell my daughter that it's a sin and she needs to pray to the Lord God to help her deal with that sin."
Maya heard the comments and recoiled. "It was kind of strange that he said it like a hypothetical," she says. "It was really kind of unpleasant."
Alan Keyes has made a career as a controversial, eloquent and passionate defender of traditional values and conservative thinking. He has run for the Senate three times and the presidency twice. Like his daughter, he took time away from education because of his politics, leaving Cornell University as a freshman after getting into a heated dispute with black students who had taken over the student center.
Maya is also an eloquent iconoclast, testing society's limits even as she expects her parents to give her the love and support they always have provided.
Her parents have known that Maya is a lesbian since they found a copy of the Washington Blade, the gay weekly, in her room and confronted her at the end of high school. She went to Oakcrest School for Girls, a Catholic school in McLean, Va., run by the church's devout Opus Dei movement. Ever since, Maya says, her parents have told her that her sexuality is wrong.
"As long as I was quiet about being gay or my politics, we got along," she says. "Then I went to the Counterinaugural," protests in Washington against President Bush. "My father didn't like that."
Maya returned from the demonstration to find she had been let go from her job at her father's political organization.
She says she was told to leave her father's apartment and not to expect any money toward attending Brown University, where she was admitted but deferred matriculation to spend a year teaching in southern India. "In my father's view, financing my college would be financing my politics, in a sense," Maya says, "because I plan to be an activist after college."
After I contacted Alan Keyes' office, press secretary Connie Hair called back with a prepared statement from him: "My daughter is an adult, and she is responsible for her own actions. What she chooses to do has nothing to do with my work or political activities."
Maya has her testy moments too, which she has shared on the Internet. "Sometimes I cannot believe I am related to this man," she wrote in her online diary last fall. "Haha though I'm sure he feels the same way about me."
Maya is more conflicted than her online rants might indicate. She shares some of her dad's political and religious foundations. She deeply opposes abortion as the taking of a life.
If she could talk to her parents now, she would tell them she does not intend to hurt them by going public. "I wish the fact that I was gay was not something that would hurt them either," she says. "It wasn't anything they did that made me this way. I really don't see why what I think should affect him in any way."
During the campaign, other bloggers discovered Maya's Web site and the electronic gossip flew for a while, but her sexuality was barely mentioned in the campaign or corporate media.
The end of the campaign brought no respite from the tensions at home. Then a few weeks ago her parents said she would have to make her own way.
But her friends told her there was nothing inevitable about the break, that political differences and even sexual orientation ought not result in being kicked out. Maya wrote: "They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn't smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks ..., does well in school, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League ..., goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids."
Maya still sounds more sad than angry about her situation. "I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my father," she says. Like other gay relatives of prominent conservatives, she has struggled with how public to be about her sexuality. Like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's sister Candace, who campaigned for John Kerry, Maya says she has come to believe that "while we might be trading on our prominence, it's a good thing to do something good with our situation, and anyway, we didn't choose to be queer."
The Point Foundation, a San Francisco-based charity that provides scholarships to students "who have been marginalized because of their sexual orientation," decided to pay Maya's expenses so she can begin her studies at Brown. "Many of the students we support have been disowned by their families because they've been honest about who they are," said the foundation's executive director, Vance Lancaster. This year, Point has received more than 1,200 applications for about 40 scholarships.
Maya Keyes is looking for answers to all those conservatives who e-mail her about how she's going to burn in hell and to all those liberals who e-mail her about how she's a traitor because she won't disavow her father. Then there are the people who think she's a whiny brat, "that I'm immature for thinking that I want my parents to talk to me."
"It all seems kind of ridiculous because I love him. He's my father."
Contact Marc Fisher at the Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20071.
Drawing Conclusions On The Human Brain: Don't Twist The Facts To Suit Your Beliefs
I stumbled across this post and found it to be of great interest as certain Harvard Presidents, Conservatives, Ideologist are scrambling to draw conclusions on human bahavior based on the physical makeup of the brain. Some rush to cite evidence of the physical makep of the brain to draw broad generalizations that best serves their ideas and philosophies. This writer clearly says, "Proceed with Caution!'. The POST:
Source: Democrats & Liberals, as posted on WatchBlog
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at March 12, 2005 08:18 AM
March 12, 2005
Mind Your Conclusions About The Brain
I think people take a far too deterministic view of genetics and neuroscience. If the question is, do women and men learn differently, think differently, then I'd say science would support you. If, however, you're saying that there is an innate disability on certain subjects for women, that is not scientifically supportable as far as I can see.
It's easy for conservatives to put forward such notions because it confirms what has been traditionally believed in times past. I recognize that all conservatives are not necessarily subscribers to this belief, but I don't think I would be off if I said that the leadership is more invested in ideas of traditional women's roles than the Democrats are.
All that considered, though, the notion is based on preconceived notions conflated with evidence that satisfies holders of that view.
Let's take the case of the "God Spot".
The story of this starts with Neuroscientist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, and a young man with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. In looking at the boxing glove shape of the brain, The Temporal lobe is the thumb, located below the Temporal bone of the skull (cerebral lobes are named for the pieces of the skull above them.) Like many parts of the brain, it's multipurposed. Many of the tasks it takes care of are related to memory.
The brain, it seems, does not have a hard drive. There is no one location where memories are stored. The changes seem to be in the connections between different parts of the brain. Memory is not simply the recovery of data, scientists like Ramachandran have discovered, it's the recovery of states of mind, feelings even.
How powerful can it be? It can affect a person physiologically. With drug addicts, the place or places where they normally get high can have such an effect on how the brain anticipates the hit, that it can mean the difference between a tolerated dose and an overdose. What we feel from our experiences and what we feel about what we sense int he world around us are integral parts of our memory. Our emotions and feelings can act in turn as gateways to certain sets of memories. Even the substances we take in can have an effect. Take in a lot of caffeine studying for the test, and you may end up needing to drink a few cups of coffee before the test to recall things in the best detail.
Emotional and visceral states of mind are part of the structure of memory. The structures concerning memory have a hardwired connection to our limbic system, a set of midbrain neural nuclei in the brain that regulate our emotional responses.
As we travel through the territory of our daily lives, there is no neutral ground. We feel something about everything we see around us. Looking at Temporal Lobe Epileptics, Ramachandran proposed that the extraordinary mystical experiences that follow their seizures maybe the result of the scrambling of a certain part of the temporal lobe that helps us to make emotional readings of what we feel in the world around us. Like defibrillators stimulate the heart, the Temporal Lobe Seizure redlines the parts of the brain that give us that emotional reading of the world. In the aftermath, Ramachandran theorizes, everything takes on heightened signficance. Everything is one. Everything is meaningful.
Needless to say, there are profound implications to that, and people ran with it. For those who believe religion to be merely superstition, it was evidence that God was merely a product of a neurological quirk. For those who believed it to be a product of evolution, it was evidence that nature selected for religious experience in human beings. For those who believe in God in whatever form, it was one more piece of evidence to trumpet: we are hardwired to worship God!
In short, people saw what they wanted to see in a quirk in the brain that explained nothing except a mechanism by which such experiences may happen in normal people and epileptics alike. It doesn't prove or disprove the presence of a supernatural creator. It's functional enough to where we can't assume it was put there just for mystical experience. It is a profound philosophical question, but I think it's honestly more intriguing in that its sheds light on the complex nature of how the brain works.
The Microprocessor paradigm of understanding the brain is misleading. We do have parts of the brain that serve certain functions, but the waves of impulses that pulse through the brain aren't signals being sent back and forth between fixed processors. Instead, the wiring carrying the signals does the processing, the impulse in perpetual motion.
In dealing with gender and orientation issues, we must take that and other things into account. I doubt there is a specific switch in the brain on orientation. Like most functions, sexual attraction and arousal are products of many different parts of the brain. Isolating a gay gene in our genetic code or a gay spot in the brain could be no less futile than trying to find the seat of the soul or the place where all the memories are stored. The function may not be that simple, and "correcting" it may have a price we would balk at paying.
Gender issues are complex in this way, too. Math and Science are not taken care of by some discreet processors in the brain, but a variety of different parts working in concert. Granted, the parts in the brain that men have and women are likely a bit dissimilar, but how much so, and to what end? As I suggested in a recent comment to another Watchblogger's entry, the difference may be more in the way women think about math, science, and business, not in the ultimate quality of the decisions. In fact, the differing approach may be exactly what math, science and business need.
The ghost of the old establishment still lingers, an establishment that believes that there is a standard way to think about the world and all other approaches degenerate from it. The truth is, the world doesn't work that way. Our brain is a complex thing, both biologically and in how it experiences the world.
Such differences have already had their effect on the world in which we live.
The words Asperger's Syndrome, for example, may not mean much to the average person, but those with this condition have changed the world. Not may have, have.
People joke about folks with abnormally high focus on esoteric things, about folks with lousy social skills and annoying habits, but at the same time we marvel at intuitive intelligence that certain individuals have in the arts and sciences, with the printed word and the moving image. Our society talks about the folks that are made fun of today being their tormentors bosses tomorrow. We know these people, and yet we don't. They are frustratingly opaque in their manner, but paradoxically straightforward about what they believe and feel.
From a certain perspective, this Autism-spectrum condition would be a disability to be selected against in looking for the ideal in human thought. It's true that Asperger's Syndrome has its pathological, dysfunctional side, and many find those who have it frustratingly out of sync with the ideals of our strongly social, fun-loving, life-in-the-moment obsessed society. But the life of the neurotypical and those who live with Asperger's are more entwined than one might expect, or perhaps care to admit, especially in a day and age with complex technology like ours.
Asperger's is an extreme example, but one that should be paid attention to when regarding the abilities of women in math and science. After all, A woman deserves much of the credit in discovering the structure of DNA, alongside Watson and Crick. A woman discovered the first radioactive element, Radium. Heck, a woman named Ada Lovelace is credited as the first computer programmer. She was a contemporary and associate of Charles Babbage, regarded now as the father of computing.
I guess my point is that we should take these differences in neurology and not use them as some justification to shut people out, but instead exploit the opportunities available in taking on problems and issues from a different point of view, and a different state of mind. America prides itself on using the talents and abilities of all, instead of wasting them over old prejudices and assumptions. It is only American not to underestimate women or unconventional thinkers in business, the arts or the sciences.
Source: Democrats & Liberals, as posted on WatchBlog
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at March 12, 2005 08:18 AM
March 12, 2005
Mind Your Conclusions About The Brain
I think people take a far too deterministic view of genetics and neuroscience. If the question is, do women and men learn differently, think differently, then I'd say science would support you. If, however, you're saying that there is an innate disability on certain subjects for women, that is not scientifically supportable as far as I can see.
It's easy for conservatives to put forward such notions because it confirms what has been traditionally believed in times past. I recognize that all conservatives are not necessarily subscribers to this belief, but I don't think I would be off if I said that the leadership is more invested in ideas of traditional women's roles than the Democrats are.
All that considered, though, the notion is based on preconceived notions conflated with evidence that satisfies holders of that view.
Let's take the case of the "God Spot".
The story of this starts with Neuroscientist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, and a young man with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. In looking at the boxing glove shape of the brain, The Temporal lobe is the thumb, located below the Temporal bone of the skull (cerebral lobes are named for the pieces of the skull above them.) Like many parts of the brain, it's multipurposed. Many of the tasks it takes care of are related to memory.
The brain, it seems, does not have a hard drive. There is no one location where memories are stored. The changes seem to be in the connections between different parts of the brain. Memory is not simply the recovery of data, scientists like Ramachandran have discovered, it's the recovery of states of mind, feelings even.
How powerful can it be? It can affect a person physiologically. With drug addicts, the place or places where they normally get high can have such an effect on how the brain anticipates the hit, that it can mean the difference between a tolerated dose and an overdose. What we feel from our experiences and what we feel about what we sense int he world around us are integral parts of our memory. Our emotions and feelings can act in turn as gateways to certain sets of memories. Even the substances we take in can have an effect. Take in a lot of caffeine studying for the test, and you may end up needing to drink a few cups of coffee before the test to recall things in the best detail.
Emotional and visceral states of mind are part of the structure of memory. The structures concerning memory have a hardwired connection to our limbic system, a set of midbrain neural nuclei in the brain that regulate our emotional responses.
As we travel through the territory of our daily lives, there is no neutral ground. We feel something about everything we see around us. Looking at Temporal Lobe Epileptics, Ramachandran proposed that the extraordinary mystical experiences that follow their seizures maybe the result of the scrambling of a certain part of the temporal lobe that helps us to make emotional readings of what we feel in the world around us. Like defibrillators stimulate the heart, the Temporal Lobe Seizure redlines the parts of the brain that give us that emotional reading of the world. In the aftermath, Ramachandran theorizes, everything takes on heightened signficance. Everything is one. Everything is meaningful.
Needless to say, there are profound implications to that, and people ran with it. For those who believe religion to be merely superstition, it was evidence that God was merely a product of a neurological quirk. For those who believed it to be a product of evolution, it was evidence that nature selected for religious experience in human beings. For those who believe in God in whatever form, it was one more piece of evidence to trumpet: we are hardwired to worship God!
In short, people saw what they wanted to see in a quirk in the brain that explained nothing except a mechanism by which such experiences may happen in normal people and epileptics alike. It doesn't prove or disprove the presence of a supernatural creator. It's functional enough to where we can't assume it was put there just for mystical experience. It is a profound philosophical question, but I think it's honestly more intriguing in that its sheds light on the complex nature of how the brain works.
The Microprocessor paradigm of understanding the brain is misleading. We do have parts of the brain that serve certain functions, but the waves of impulses that pulse through the brain aren't signals being sent back and forth between fixed processors. Instead, the wiring carrying the signals does the processing, the impulse in perpetual motion.
In dealing with gender and orientation issues, we must take that and other things into account. I doubt there is a specific switch in the brain on orientation. Like most functions, sexual attraction and arousal are products of many different parts of the brain. Isolating a gay gene in our genetic code or a gay spot in the brain could be no less futile than trying to find the seat of the soul or the place where all the memories are stored. The function may not be that simple, and "correcting" it may have a price we would balk at paying.
Gender issues are complex in this way, too. Math and Science are not taken care of by some discreet processors in the brain, but a variety of different parts working in concert. Granted, the parts in the brain that men have and women are likely a bit dissimilar, but how much so, and to what end? As I suggested in a recent comment to another Watchblogger's entry, the difference may be more in the way women think about math, science, and business, not in the ultimate quality of the decisions. In fact, the differing approach may be exactly what math, science and business need.
The ghost of the old establishment still lingers, an establishment that believes that there is a standard way to think about the world and all other approaches degenerate from it. The truth is, the world doesn't work that way. Our brain is a complex thing, both biologically and in how it experiences the world.
Such differences have already had their effect on the world in which we live.
The words Asperger's Syndrome, for example, may not mean much to the average person, but those with this condition have changed the world. Not may have, have.
People joke about folks with abnormally high focus on esoteric things, about folks with lousy social skills and annoying habits, but at the same time we marvel at intuitive intelligence that certain individuals have in the arts and sciences, with the printed word and the moving image. Our society talks about the folks that are made fun of today being their tormentors bosses tomorrow. We know these people, and yet we don't. They are frustratingly opaque in their manner, but paradoxically straightforward about what they believe and feel.
From a certain perspective, this Autism-spectrum condition would be a disability to be selected against in looking for the ideal in human thought. It's true that Asperger's Syndrome has its pathological, dysfunctional side, and many find those who have it frustratingly out of sync with the ideals of our strongly social, fun-loving, life-in-the-moment obsessed society. But the life of the neurotypical and those who live with Asperger's are more entwined than one might expect, or perhaps care to admit, especially in a day and age with complex technology like ours.
Asperger's is an extreme example, but one that should be paid attention to when regarding the abilities of women in math and science. After all, A woman deserves much of the credit in discovering the structure of DNA, alongside Watson and Crick. A woman discovered the first radioactive element, Radium. Heck, a woman named Ada Lovelace is credited as the first computer programmer. She was a contemporary and associate of Charles Babbage, regarded now as the father of computing.
I guess my point is that we should take these differences in neurology and not use them as some justification to shut people out, but instead exploit the opportunities available in taking on problems and issues from a different point of view, and a different state of mind. America prides itself on using the talents and abilities of all, instead of wasting them over old prejudices and assumptions. It is only American not to underestimate women or unconventional thinkers in business, the arts or the sciences.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
BBC Science & Nature: Interesting website
CLICK THE TITLE to visit the BBC science and nature website. It is really great. Full of news, psychological tests, reflex test, just lots of material for a fun and interesting place to visit if yo have some free time.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Discrimination: Black & Gay In South Africa
Call me naive, but, this never occured to me. Guess I had never thought about the role of being Gay in the black community of SA nor being a Black Gay in SA period. I found this interesting and disturbing. The role of Blacks in SA has always been of concern but this is a very complex issue. THE ARTICLE:
Taking Gay Pride to South Africa's townships
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Cape Town
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4329017.stm
Published: 2005/03/08 14:54:35 GMT
© BBC MMV
Despite a decade of democracy and one of the most liberal constitutions in the world, South Africa still has trouble accommodating those who are black and gay.
Watching the recent Gay Pride march through the streets of Cape Town, however, you may have got a different impression.
Leading the procession were three open topped cars, and sprawled across their bonnets, Miss Gay Pride's top three transvestites.
Two of them were black, and even though South Africa has come a long way, that is something a little unusual.
It is the third year Cape Town has hosted a pride march, but again it was noticeable just how white-dominated the participants were.
"Being black and gay is a very different place to being white and gay in Cape Town," said Juanita Jacobs, or JJ as she's known, one of the Pride organisers.
SHEBEEN CRAWL:
So this year the festival went a step further towards breaking racial barriers.
"This year we decided to take Pride into the townships to engender understanding," said JJ.
As a young black man I would need to be looking for a wife, making babies, and because I am not fulfilling those roles, society does not know how to deal with me. (Africa Melane, Journalist)
"We wanted to bring the white South African Cape Town community and expose them to a section of the gay community they wouldn't usually see."
And so on the list of events was a gay shebeen crawl - a trip around some of the more liberal of the small bars that can be found scattered all over the black townships of the Cape Flats, outside the city.
Township tours have been laid on for years for tourists keen to see the other side of life outside the beautiful beaches, huge shopping malls and beautiful scenery of the "Mother City".
But this is the first time a tour of gay pubs, or shebeens, has been organised.
TWO EXTREMES:
"It's exciting, I've never been here before. It's wonderful, it's good, it should - could - happen all the time," said one of the Capetonians on the trip.
But it doesn't - while white gay South Africans have been pretty much accepted, certainly in as sexually liberated a city as Cape Town, it is a different story in the black community.
Africa Melane is a presenter on the radio station Cape Talk - he's 27, gay, but did not join the Pride march this year.
"I certainly don't make any secrets about my lifestyle, but at the same time I don't stand on top of Table Mountain and shout to the world: 'Hey, this is who I am'," he said.
His family knows, but they have never talked about his sexuality - he says black African culture doesn't accommodate homosexuality.
"Tradition, ritual, family is paramount in any African culture out there, so as a young black man I would need to be looking for a wife, making babies, and because I am not fulfilling those roles, society does not know how to deal with me.
"You risk not being part of the community, not being part of the family, not being part of society."
Africa Melane has seen two responses - friends becoming introverted, denying it to themselves, and some even committing suicide because of the pressure.
Others go to the other extreme as transvestites or transsexuals.
And in Nyanga township, some of the regulars were certainly not hiding their sexuality, with one guy bounding into a lavish dance routine.
DISCRIMINATION:
As the drinks went down, so the social barriers followed suit. The five minibuses continued their three-bar tour with organisers mumbling about making this a regular event.
There were also some foreign visitors on the tour and the observation was that there does not seem to be much mixing between black and white in the city - you do not see many black people in the gay bars.
"A lot of people don't come out to these areas because of fear - the same fears that fuel racism are the fears that fuel homophobia", Juanita Jacobs, Gay Pride organiser
Ronnie Ngalo owns one of the shebeens - he explained this was due to economic reasons.
"It costs money to get to town on transport, to get into the bars and clubs, to buy drinks," he said.
"We get people from the rural areas who come here after being chased away by their family - we create a new family here in the township.
"There is still discrimination, our culture suppresses us, but gay people are here to stay."
JJ explained the thinking behind the shebeen crawl: "A lot of people don't come out to these areas because of fear - the same fears that fuel racism are the fears that fuel homophobia and the idea of breaking those fears down and meeting the other half is what this is all about."
A lot of things are changing in South Africa, and fast.
Old taboos are being broken and cultural barriers are coming down, but so far few people even in Cape Town can be openly proud of being black and gay.
Taking Gay Pride to South Africa's townships
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Cape Town
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4329017.stm
Published: 2005/03/08 14:54:35 GMT
© BBC MMV
Despite a decade of democracy and one of the most liberal constitutions in the world, South Africa still has trouble accommodating those who are black and gay.
Watching the recent Gay Pride march through the streets of Cape Town, however, you may have got a different impression.
Leading the procession were three open topped cars, and sprawled across their bonnets, Miss Gay Pride's top three transvestites.
Two of them were black, and even though South Africa has come a long way, that is something a little unusual.
It is the third year Cape Town has hosted a pride march, but again it was noticeable just how white-dominated the participants were.
"Being black and gay is a very different place to being white and gay in Cape Town," said Juanita Jacobs, or JJ as she's known, one of the Pride organisers.
SHEBEEN CRAWL:
So this year the festival went a step further towards breaking racial barriers.
"This year we decided to take Pride into the townships to engender understanding," said JJ.
As a young black man I would need to be looking for a wife, making babies, and because I am not fulfilling those roles, society does not know how to deal with me. (Africa Melane, Journalist)
"We wanted to bring the white South African Cape Town community and expose them to a section of the gay community they wouldn't usually see."
And so on the list of events was a gay shebeen crawl - a trip around some of the more liberal of the small bars that can be found scattered all over the black townships of the Cape Flats, outside the city.
Township tours have been laid on for years for tourists keen to see the other side of life outside the beautiful beaches, huge shopping malls and beautiful scenery of the "Mother City".
But this is the first time a tour of gay pubs, or shebeens, has been organised.
TWO EXTREMES:
"It's exciting, I've never been here before. It's wonderful, it's good, it should - could - happen all the time," said one of the Capetonians on the trip.
But it doesn't - while white gay South Africans have been pretty much accepted, certainly in as sexually liberated a city as Cape Town, it is a different story in the black community.
Africa Melane is a presenter on the radio station Cape Talk - he's 27, gay, but did not join the Pride march this year.
"I certainly don't make any secrets about my lifestyle, but at the same time I don't stand on top of Table Mountain and shout to the world: 'Hey, this is who I am'," he said.
His family knows, but they have never talked about his sexuality - he says black African culture doesn't accommodate homosexuality.
"Tradition, ritual, family is paramount in any African culture out there, so as a young black man I would need to be looking for a wife, making babies, and because I am not fulfilling those roles, society does not know how to deal with me.
"You risk not being part of the community, not being part of the family, not being part of society."
Africa Melane has seen two responses - friends becoming introverted, denying it to themselves, and some even committing suicide because of the pressure.
Others go to the other extreme as transvestites or transsexuals.
And in Nyanga township, some of the regulars were certainly not hiding their sexuality, with one guy bounding into a lavish dance routine.
DISCRIMINATION:
As the drinks went down, so the social barriers followed suit. The five minibuses continued their three-bar tour with organisers mumbling about making this a regular event.
There were also some foreign visitors on the tour and the observation was that there does not seem to be much mixing between black and white in the city - you do not see many black people in the gay bars.
"A lot of people don't come out to these areas because of fear - the same fears that fuel racism are the fears that fuel homophobia", Juanita Jacobs, Gay Pride organiser
Ronnie Ngalo owns one of the shebeens - he explained this was due to economic reasons.
"It costs money to get to town on transport, to get into the bars and clubs, to buy drinks," he said.
"We get people from the rural areas who come here after being chased away by their family - we create a new family here in the township.
"There is still discrimination, our culture suppresses us, but gay people are here to stay."
JJ explained the thinking behind the shebeen crawl: "A lot of people don't come out to these areas because of fear - the same fears that fuel racism are the fears that fuel homophobia and the idea of breaking those fears down and meeting the other half is what this is all about."
A lot of things are changing in South Africa, and fast.
Old taboos are being broken and cultural barriers are coming down, but so far few people even in Cape Town can be openly proud of being black and gay.
Canadian Press Speaks Out On Martin/Bush Get-Together & Human Rights
Some strong words from this very opinionated writer. His attack takes so many curves it almost hard to decide where he stands on the matters. Still, a provoking political commentary. Worth a read and some thought about what IS going on in Canadian minds (or at least this writer). THIS from Canada Free Press:
Politically Incorrect
Will Martin lecture Bush on human rights?
by Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Friday, March 11, 2005
Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work as appeared on Newsmax.com, Men's News Daily, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com and The Rant. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com
On March 23, Paul Martin will be in Texas to meet with President George W. Bush and President Vincente Fox of Mexico. It appears that Martin will at least get to visit Bush’s Crawford Texas ranch; something that was always denied to his predecessor.
When Martin recently went to China he was criticized by some Canadians for not criticizing that country’s human rights practices. While trying to deflect the criticism away from him and onto Conservative Party MP Jason Kenney, Martin countered that he indeed did discuss human rights with Chinese leaders. There is no doubt that Martin did what previous Canadian leaders have done; casually mentioned China’s less than stellar human rights situation to Chinese officials, get it out of the way, and get down to the business of selling Canada’s resources to one of the few remaining Communist countries.
Everyone in Canada knows the difference between Canadians and those that inhabit the land south of the border. It is a well known fact that we are morally superior, more enlightened and more caring and compassionate than those yahoos and rednecks that call such places as Texas, Arkansas, or the Bronx home. It is also very well known that the United States has extremely poor human rights records when it comes to gays and lesbians. Although there is a rumour that it is now illegal to shoot such persons for sport, Americans are still not allowed to marry persons of the same gender. Locking up and torturing Chinese members of Fulan Gong pales in comparison with those who are denied license to marry.
To give Martin credit where credit is due (which doesn’t happen very often), he has been consistent in saying that allowing people of the same gender to enter into matrimony (holy or unholy) is a matter of human rights. So we expect that Paul Martin will give George Bush a talking to about the terrible lack of human rights for gays and lesbians in the land of free and the home of the brave.
Now as most everyone, maybe even Paul Martin, knows, human rights are those rights that accrue to people by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. Decisions of Canadian courts are necessarily limited to jurisdictions within Canada which does not alter the fact that "human rights" have international application. Martin could have taken the position (or at least dithered on the matter) that allowing gays and lesbians to marry is necessary under Canada’s Charter of Rights and left it at that. But he went further; he keeps insisting that allowing gays and lesbians to enter into civil unions short of marriage was a matter of human rights. That necessarily means that it is a right that is due to all persons regardless of where they live.
We all understand that Paul Martin would be reluctant to mention the denial of human rights to leaders of countries that he admires such as Cuba, France and Syria, the latter being the country that provides those wonderful peacekeepers to Lebanon. But if Martin is sincere in his belief that same sex marriage is a human right, he shouldn’t hesitate to bring the subject up with the president of the country that is the subject of scorn to Canadian leftists.
To begin with, Martin hasn’t got the guts to confront George Bush on the issue of human rights where it involves the issue of same sex marriage. Bush, love him or hate him, has shown over the last few years, he is a real leader; something that we sadly lack in Canada. Martin should consider himself lucky if he comes away with any hope of resolving U.S.-Canada trade issues. George W. Bush after all is a fighter, not a ditherer.
The main reason that Martin won’t mention same sex marriage to the U.S president is that the Canadian PM knows that it is not a human rights issue. It is as it has always been — a political issue, nothing more, nothing less.
When all is said and done, even the Right Honourable Prime Minister Dithers doesn’t believe his own rhetoric.
Politically Incorrect
Will Martin lecture Bush on human rights?
by Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Friday, March 11, 2005
Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work as appeared on Newsmax.com, Men's News Daily, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com and The Rant. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com
On March 23, Paul Martin will be in Texas to meet with President George W. Bush and President Vincente Fox of Mexico. It appears that Martin will at least get to visit Bush’s Crawford Texas ranch; something that was always denied to his predecessor.
When Martin recently went to China he was criticized by some Canadians for not criticizing that country’s human rights practices. While trying to deflect the criticism away from him and onto Conservative Party MP Jason Kenney, Martin countered that he indeed did discuss human rights with Chinese leaders. There is no doubt that Martin did what previous Canadian leaders have done; casually mentioned China’s less than stellar human rights situation to Chinese officials, get it out of the way, and get down to the business of selling Canada’s resources to one of the few remaining Communist countries.
Everyone in Canada knows the difference between Canadians and those that inhabit the land south of the border. It is a well known fact that we are morally superior, more enlightened and more caring and compassionate than those yahoos and rednecks that call such places as Texas, Arkansas, or the Bronx home. It is also very well known that the United States has extremely poor human rights records when it comes to gays and lesbians. Although there is a rumour that it is now illegal to shoot such persons for sport, Americans are still not allowed to marry persons of the same gender. Locking up and torturing Chinese members of Fulan Gong pales in comparison with those who are denied license to marry.
To give Martin credit where credit is due (which doesn’t happen very often), he has been consistent in saying that allowing people of the same gender to enter into matrimony (holy or unholy) is a matter of human rights. So we expect that Paul Martin will give George Bush a talking to about the terrible lack of human rights for gays and lesbians in the land of free and the home of the brave.
Now as most everyone, maybe even Paul Martin, knows, human rights are those rights that accrue to people by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. Decisions of Canadian courts are necessarily limited to jurisdictions within Canada which does not alter the fact that "human rights" have international application. Martin could have taken the position (or at least dithered on the matter) that allowing gays and lesbians to marry is necessary under Canada’s Charter of Rights and left it at that. But he went further; he keeps insisting that allowing gays and lesbians to enter into civil unions short of marriage was a matter of human rights. That necessarily means that it is a right that is due to all persons regardless of where they live.
We all understand that Paul Martin would be reluctant to mention the denial of human rights to leaders of countries that he admires such as Cuba, France and Syria, the latter being the country that provides those wonderful peacekeepers to Lebanon. But if Martin is sincere in his belief that same sex marriage is a human right, he shouldn’t hesitate to bring the subject up with the president of the country that is the subject of scorn to Canadian leftists.
To begin with, Martin hasn’t got the guts to confront George Bush on the issue of human rights where it involves the issue of same sex marriage. Bush, love him or hate him, has shown over the last few years, he is a real leader; something that we sadly lack in Canada. Martin should consider himself lucky if he comes away with any hope of resolving U.S.-Canada trade issues. George W. Bush after all is a fighter, not a ditherer.
The main reason that Martin won’t mention same sex marriage to the U.S president is that the Canadian PM knows that it is not a human rights issue. It is as it has always been — a political issue, nothing more, nothing less.
When all is said and done, even the Right Honourable Prime Minister Dithers doesn’t believe his own rhetoric.
Hate Hides Under The Veil Of Religion
As far as I am concerned, these people are as dangerous as recognized terrorists groups. To hate this much and hide behind the veil of religion is disgraceful and disgusting. No 2-ways about it, THIS IS A HATE GROUP.
FROM: Anti Defamation League
Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church In Their Own Words
At the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard, they held up signs reading "No Fags in Heaven" and "God Hates Fags." According to their Web site, they have staged "20,000" protests across the nation and around the world in the last decade. They believe that "God's hatred is one of His holy attributes." They are the congregants of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.
Incorporated in 1967 as a not-for-profit organization, the virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) considers itself an "Old School (or, Primitive)" Baptist Church. The Church is led by the septuagenarian Reverend Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., and many WBC congregants are related to Phelps by blood. His wife, several of his children and dozens of his grandchildren frequent the church.
While WBC has picketed the gay community at hundreds of events nationwide, most of the individuals protested by the Church are not homosexual. In fact, WBC most often targets people it mistakenly claims are gay or those it believes to be encouraging homosexuality. Many WBC fliers emphasize the race or religion of these individuals, suggesting that the Church's hate spreads beyond its abhorrence of homosexuality. What appears to be anti-gay rhetoric is often a vehicle for WBC's anti-Semitism, hatred of other Christians, and even racism, though in the 1980s Fred Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP for his work on behalf of Black clients.
Trained as a lawyer, Fred Phelps was disbarred in 1979 by the Kansas Supreme Court, which asserted that he had "little regard for the ethics of his profession." The formal complaint against Phelps charged that he misrepresented the truth in a motion for a new trial in a case he had brought, and that he held the defendant in the case up to "unnecessary public ridicule for which there is no basis in fact." Following his disbarment from Kansas State courts, Phelps continued to practice law in Federal courts. In 1985, nine Federal court judges filed a disciplinary complaint charging him and six of his family members, all attorneys, with making false accusations against them. The Phelpses fought the complaint but lost. In 1989, Fred Phelps agreed to surrender his license to practice law in Federal court in exchange for the Federal judges allowing the other members of his family to continue practicing in Federal court.
In 1991, WBC staged its first public demonstration, targeting a park in Topeka allegedly frequented by gays. Thousands of protests have followed, and WBC shows no sign of slowing down. In addition to speeches on the picket lines, the Church spreads its hateful message via faxed fliers and "News Releases." These faxed documents also appear at WBC's notorious Web site, Godhatesfags.com, along with photos of Church pickets and a schedule of upcoming demonstrations. A second WBC Web site, Godhatesamerica.com, contends that the United States is "doomed" because it supports gays. According to Fred Phelps, "God invented the Internet for us to preach on."
The following quotations from WBC materials and other sources expose the Church's views on Jews, gays, Blacks, Christians and the United States. WBC's own words best demonstrate the wide range and disturbing nature of its hatred.
On Jews
"Whatever righteous cause the Jewish victims of the 1930s-40s Nazi Holocaust had, (probably miniscule, compared to the Jewish Holocausts against Middle Passage Blacks, African Americans and Christians -- including the bloody persecution of Westboro Baptist Church by Topeka Jews in the 1990s), has been drowned in sodomite semen. American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust...Homosexuals and Jews dominated Nazi Germany...just as they now dominate this doomed U.S.A....The Jews now wander the earth despised, smitten with moral and spiritual blindness by a divine judicial stroke...And god has smitten Jews with a certain unique madness, whereby they are an astonishment of heart, a proverb, and a byword (the butt of jokes and ridicule) among all peoples whither the Lord has driven and scattered them...Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda...The American Jews are the real Nazis (misusers and abusers of governmental power) who hate God and the rule of law."
-- "WBC to picket Holocaust Memorial Sodomite Museum in D.C. Jan. 20," WBC "News Release," December 26, 1996
"The only true Jews are Christians. The rest of the people who claim to be Jews aren't, and they are nothing more than typical, impenitent sinners, who have no Lamb. As evidence of their apostacy [sic], the vast majority of Jews support fags. Of course, there are Jews who still believe God's law, but most of them have even departed from that."
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"As Hitler controlled the courts, prosecutors and police (Gestapo) in persecuting German Jews, so do Topeka Jews today in persecuting Baptists. As first century Jews stirred up the Roman tyrants in persecuting the primitive church, so do Topeka Jews today stir up Kansas tyrants in persecuting Westboro Baptists. They whine about the Nazi Holocaust, while they perpetrate the Topeka Holocaust."
-- "Topeka's Baptist Holocaust," WBC flier, March 23, 1996
"The Jew lawyers and judges of Temple Beth Sholom bastardize and prostitute the legal system to maliciously prosecute and persecute innocent Westboro Baptists, just as their Jewish ancestors manipulated the Roman legal system to torture and crucify the Lord Jesus Christ and persecute His disciples. The Jew psychiatrists and other shyster brain-washers of Temple Beth Sholom write columns and conduct seminars to vilify and slander innocent Westboro Baptists, just as their scribes, Rabbis, Pharisees and Sadducees did to the Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples in Bible days...The Jews of Temple Beth Sholom are sinful, greedy, Hell-bound, money-grubbing sodomites; and they have dedicated their synagogue to be a gay and lesbian propaganda mill and recruiting depot, soliciting young people to sodomy."
-- "Westboro Baptists will picket the Jewish Arts Festival at Jewish Community Center...Temple Beth Sholom for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur," WBC "News Release,"
September 7, 1996
"Fag Jew Nazis are worse than ordinary Nazis. They've had more experience. Jews stirred up the Romans to butcher 6 million Christians in the catacombs in the 1st century. The First Holocaust was a Jewish Holocaust against Christians. The latest Holocaust is by Topeka Jews against WBC..."
-- "Topeka's Dominant Fag Jew Masters are now agitating for: Same-Sex Fag Jew Marriage!" WBC flier, April 19, 1996
"Worldwide Jewry and worldwide Fagery [sic] appear to have the same problem: They both want to criminalize Gospel preaching under misleading labels. Jews label Gospel preaching as Anti-Semitism; Fags label Gospel preaching as 'Hate Crimes.' Both groups -- Fags and Jews -- are doomed!...WBC buys trees for Israel. WBC prays for the peace of Jerusalem. But isn't there a logical correlation between Jewish tyranny & Anti-Semitism?"
-- "An appeal to Pres. Clinton and Prime Minister Netanyahu," WBC "News Release," June 10, 1997
On Gays
"WBC engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth. We display large, colorful signs containing Bible words and sentiments, including: GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, NO NOT MOCKED, FAGS ARE NATURE FREAKS, GOD GAVE FAGS UP, NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR FAGS, etc... WBC has conducted some 20,000 such demonstrations during the last nine years at homosexual parades and other events (including funerals of impenitent sodomites, like Matthew Shepard). WBC teams have picketed major fag parades in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, San Diego, Dallas, Orlando, Kansas City, etc. The unique picketing ministry of Westboro Baptist Church has received national attention, and WBC believes this gospel message to be America's last hope."
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"The only true Nazis in this world are fags. They want to force you by law to support their filth, and they want to shut you up by law when they hate what you say. They would be perfectly happy to make it a crime to preach that 'God hates fags' under the guise of 'hate speech legislation.' "
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"It's NOT OK to be gay. It will damn the soul, destroy the life, and doom any nation that tolerates such evil. God Hates Fags is a profound theological statement, which America needs more than it needs oxygen or bread."
-- "WBC to picket UC (Tar Heels) graduation and Binkley Baptist Church," Westboro Baptist Church "News Release,"
May 3, 1999
"WBC picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, to inject a little truth and sanity into the irrational orgy of lies consuming this world. WBC does not support the murder of Matthew Shepard...However, the truth about Matthew Shepard needs to be known. He lived a Satanic lifestyle. He got himself killed trolling for anonymous homosexual sex in a bar at midnight. Unless he repented in the final hours of his life, he is in hell. He will be in hell for all eternity, 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' Mark 9:44. For each day that passes, he has only eternity to look forward to. All the candlelight vigils, all the tributes, all the acts of Congress, all the rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States, will not shorten his sentence by so much as one day. And all the riches of the world will not buy him one drop of water to cool his tongue."
-- "Perpetual Gospel Memorial to Matthew Shepard," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"Filthy sodomites crave legitimacy as dogs eating their own vomit & sows wallowing in their own feces crave unconditional love."
-- "Week 344 of the Great Gage Park Decency Drive," WBC "News Release," January 15, 1998
"All gays & lesbians are liars and murderers at heart, like their father, Satan."
-- "____________. A black dyke! An abomination! Clinton & the Senate made her a U.S. Judge!" WBC "News Release," November 24, 1996.
On Blacks
"Anybody babbling about 'multicultural affairs' and 'celebrating diversity' is a propagandist for the militant sodomite agenda...Westboro Baptists will picket this black obfuscator, in religious protest and warning. Being black won't get you to Heaven. But promoting fags will take you to Hell."
-- "WBC Will Picket ___________________, Ph.D. She's a Multicultural, Diversity-Celebrating Blabbermouth," WBC "News Release," November 13, 1996
"Forget the American Bald Eagle. Since June 23, 1994, the only fitting emblem for the Great Seal of the United States Judiciary is this beast...Just call me: 'Yo Honuh'!!!... Here Come De Judge!!!"
--Text surrounding a racist caricature of an African-American female judge, "The Federal Judiciary: A Menagerie of Demonic, Libidinous, unclean Beasts: A Curse from God Upon an Apostate Nation," WBC flier, November 28, 1996
"Me ______________. Me lots smarter now. Me be Deputy Mayor...This crowd could dumb down the Western Hemisphere."
-- Text surrounding a drawing of a gorilla, "Wagnon's 'Friendlier Topeka,'" WBC flier, June 13, 1997. The named individual is an African-American city council member in Topeka, Kansas
"Black Female Dyke ___________ is a child of the Devil, peddling her satanic father's fag lies...She's dangerous because she plays the race card, the female card, & the poor-little-broken-home-orphan card like a fiddle to gullible fools who give her money."
-- "WBC to Picket Pervert ________, & Her Devil's Angels," WBC "News Release," May 20, 1996
"The recent race riots in New York over the senseless killing of young Yusef Hawkins, and the waves of Black students clashing with police in Virginia Beach, remind us that racism is not quite dead in America the beautiful. But most of us are sick and tired of self-flagellation. Shall a few isolated racist acts keep us all in sackcloth forever, repenting the sins of slave-owning ancestors?"
-- Fred Phelps in The Spotlight newspaper, October 30, 1989
"Meet _______________, black criminal...this black goon heads for 15-year-old Sharon Phelps...to beat her and hospitalize her."
-- "Boycott the Vintage...Black Bullies Beat White Kids and Women," WBC flier, March 31, 1996
"On Feb. 1 this sorry smear of Hamitic Sludge who sold his black soul to the Courthouse Whore ordered a fellow black murderer...released without bond & without an AIDS test!"
-- "Black Slime ____," WBC flier, February 6, 1995
On Christians
"Most 'Christians' today are Christians by name only, and should be ashamed of themselves. They are cowardly, lukewarm, and ashamed of Christ's Word. They have substituted their own pathetic ideas for God's clear commandments... Don't listen to the money-grubbing heretic who stands at the front of your church. Listen to God."
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"Any church that allows fags to be members in good standing is a fag church... Any church that ordains fags is a fag church...Any church that marries fags is a fag church...Churches...like the Southern Baptists and Assembly of God churches are as much to blame as the out of the closet fag churches...Why? Because they have created an atmosphere in this world where people believe the lie that God loves everybody. This soul-damning lie is the reason that fags are so out-spoken today."
-- "Fag Churches," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, Northern and Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, etc. have all departed from God. Most well-known preachers (Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc.) have departed from God, and disassociated themselves with pure Gospel preaching."
-- "Churches," WBC "Godhatesamerica.com" Web site
"Yes, this monstrous hydra, which grows back two heads for every one slain, must be destroyed by the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God...Must be a comfort to you sodomite Episcopalians, that your Catamite church was founded by a faggot king (butt-buddy to Rev. Erasmus of Rotterdam)...Episcopalians hate God."
-- "Pastor Phelps will expose the corrupt Episcopal Church," WBC "News Release," January 3, 1996
"Filled with shyster lawyers and crooked judges, the Episcopal Church USA is a cesspool of sodomite sin and crime."
-- "WBC to picket Episcopal General Convention (fag orgy) in Philly July 18-20," WBC "News Release," May 21, 1997
"The Episcopal Church, founded by the holy whoremonger Henry VIII, welcomes you...to the joys of anal copulating...to exquisite misery in this world, and to everlasting damnation & hell fire in the next!"
-- "Westboro Baptist Church will picket Olathe schools & Supt. _________ for caving to 'Annie' and filthy fags," WBC "News Release," January 2, 1996
"Like the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, et al., the so-called Christian Church-Disciples of Christ (generally, Congregational Churches) are sodomite churches. They are not true churches of Jesus Christ."
-- "Filthy Fags Own Australia," WBC "News Release,"
October 14, 1996
"Apostate Methodism is being cursed by God in sending them sodomite heretics as pastors, who are withered & blind...These Satanic evangelists from Hell...for lucre, traffic in the souls of men, walking in craftiness & handling the Word of God deceitfully."
-- "WBC to picket Bishop _________ and St. Paul's Methodist of Lenexa," WBC "News Release," March 14, 1998
"Considering the dispositions of priests and parishioners, more accurate names for some of Topeka's Catholic churches would be: Most Foul Heart of Satan, Antichrist the King, Our Lady of Sodom, Unholy Name."
-- "Whore __________ can't Help Elmer Now," WBC "News Release," September 28, 1998
"There is a difference between the sense of the sacred...and the goofy 'communal sensitivity' at Topeka's sodomite Mexican Catholic Church...Mexican idolaters worship bloody rectums..."
-- "Week 394 of the Great Gage Park Decency Drive," WBC "News Release," December 31, 1998
"Fag priests and dyke nuns is the order of the day for Kansas Catholics. They deserve the sick, perverted leadership that now dooms and damns them."
-- "WBC to picket Catholic fag bash," WBC flier, June 5, 2000
"The Kansas City Star ran a 3-day, multi-page story about the sex sins of Catholic priests. Botton [sic] line in approximations: one-third are gay, one-third are womanizers, and -- with important exceptions -- the other third mostly covers, pimps and enables the lust-driven two-thirds. WBC will picket Sacred Heart and St. Catherine's Catholic Churches in Emporia in religious protest and warning."
-- "WBC to picket ___________ in two victim churches in Emporia," WBC flier, June 3, 2000
On America
"The reason for the violence that has been erupting in the United States of America in recent years is that GOD HATES AMERICA."
-- "Children are their oppressors,"
WBC "Godhatesamerica.com" Web site
"The same Bible that prescribes the death penalty for murderers, also prescribes the death penalty for those who engage in homosexual conduct. It is a measure of the perversion of our country -- our near-total alienation from God -- that the masses cannot see this great national hypocrisy."
-- "Homosexuals, also, should have the Death Penalty!" WBC flier, June 14, 1997
"In our experience, no modern country is more repressive of human rights than the U.S.A. The vaunted First Amendment is nothing but empty words on paper...we will journey to China at our expense, and tell our story of modern American repression of human rights, upon invitation."
-- Fred Phelps, writing to the Ambassador to the United States from the People's Republic of China, February 26, 1997
"Homosexuals now pervade and control American government at every level and branch. Thus, only those churches that support and promote the militant homosexual agenda enjoy religious freedom. Any church in America that dares to preach what the Bible says about soul-damning, nation-destroying moral filth of the vile homosexual beasts among us, loses all Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and speech rights."
-- Fred Phelps, in a letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, July 5, 1997
"We understand that Iraq is the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets without fear of arrest and prosecution. Alas, the United States no longer allows the Gospel to be freely and openly preached on the streets, because militant sodomites now control our government, and they violently object to the Bible message...The same majoritarian sodomite tyranny that now guides the Clinton administration's repressive policies toward Gospel preaching on America's streets, is apparently responsible -- at least in part -- for the merciless slaughter by starvation of 400 innocent Iraqi babies each day in your country. If our government and laws will allow it, and at the invitation of your government, we would like to send a delegation from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, to preach the Gospel on the streets of Baghdad for one week in the near future."
-- Fred Phelps, in a letter to Saddam Hussein,
November 30, 1997
FROM: Anti Defamation League
Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church In Their Own Words
At the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard, they held up signs reading "No Fags in Heaven" and "God Hates Fags." According to their Web site, they have staged "20,000" protests across the nation and around the world in the last decade. They believe that "God's hatred is one of His holy attributes." They are the congregants of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.
Incorporated in 1967 as a not-for-profit organization, the virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) considers itself an "Old School (or, Primitive)" Baptist Church. The Church is led by the septuagenarian Reverend Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., and many WBC congregants are related to Phelps by blood. His wife, several of his children and dozens of his grandchildren frequent the church.
While WBC has picketed the gay community at hundreds of events nationwide, most of the individuals protested by the Church are not homosexual. In fact, WBC most often targets people it mistakenly claims are gay or those it believes to be encouraging homosexuality. Many WBC fliers emphasize the race or religion of these individuals, suggesting that the Church's hate spreads beyond its abhorrence of homosexuality. What appears to be anti-gay rhetoric is often a vehicle for WBC's anti-Semitism, hatred of other Christians, and even racism, though in the 1980s Fred Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP for his work on behalf of Black clients.
Trained as a lawyer, Fred Phelps was disbarred in 1979 by the Kansas Supreme Court, which asserted that he had "little regard for the ethics of his profession." The formal complaint against Phelps charged that he misrepresented the truth in a motion for a new trial in a case he had brought, and that he held the defendant in the case up to "unnecessary public ridicule for which there is no basis in fact." Following his disbarment from Kansas State courts, Phelps continued to practice law in Federal courts. In 1985, nine Federal court judges filed a disciplinary complaint charging him and six of his family members, all attorneys, with making false accusations against them. The Phelpses fought the complaint but lost. In 1989, Fred Phelps agreed to surrender his license to practice law in Federal court in exchange for the Federal judges allowing the other members of his family to continue practicing in Federal court.
In 1991, WBC staged its first public demonstration, targeting a park in Topeka allegedly frequented by gays. Thousands of protests have followed, and WBC shows no sign of slowing down. In addition to speeches on the picket lines, the Church spreads its hateful message via faxed fliers and "News Releases." These faxed documents also appear at WBC's notorious Web site, Godhatesfags.com, along with photos of Church pickets and a schedule of upcoming demonstrations. A second WBC Web site, Godhatesamerica.com, contends that the United States is "doomed" because it supports gays. According to Fred Phelps, "God invented the Internet for us to preach on."
The following quotations from WBC materials and other sources expose the Church's views on Jews, gays, Blacks, Christians and the United States. WBC's own words best demonstrate the wide range and disturbing nature of its hatred.
On Jews
"Whatever righteous cause the Jewish victims of the 1930s-40s Nazi Holocaust had, (probably miniscule, compared to the Jewish Holocausts against Middle Passage Blacks, African Americans and Christians -- including the bloody persecution of Westboro Baptist Church by Topeka Jews in the 1990s), has been drowned in sodomite semen. American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust...Homosexuals and Jews dominated Nazi Germany...just as they now dominate this doomed U.S.A....The Jews now wander the earth despised, smitten with moral and spiritual blindness by a divine judicial stroke...And god has smitten Jews with a certain unique madness, whereby they are an astonishment of heart, a proverb, and a byword (the butt of jokes and ridicule) among all peoples whither the Lord has driven and scattered them...Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda...The American Jews are the real Nazis (misusers and abusers of governmental power) who hate God and the rule of law."
-- "WBC to picket Holocaust Memorial Sodomite Museum in D.C. Jan. 20," WBC "News Release," December 26, 1996
"The only true Jews are Christians. The rest of the people who claim to be Jews aren't, and they are nothing more than typical, impenitent sinners, who have no Lamb. As evidence of their apostacy [sic], the vast majority of Jews support fags. Of course, there are Jews who still believe God's law, but most of them have even departed from that."
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"As Hitler controlled the courts, prosecutors and police (Gestapo) in persecuting German Jews, so do Topeka Jews today in persecuting Baptists. As first century Jews stirred up the Roman tyrants in persecuting the primitive church, so do Topeka Jews today stir up Kansas tyrants in persecuting Westboro Baptists. They whine about the Nazi Holocaust, while they perpetrate the Topeka Holocaust."
-- "Topeka's Baptist Holocaust," WBC flier, March 23, 1996
"The Jew lawyers and judges of Temple Beth Sholom bastardize and prostitute the legal system to maliciously prosecute and persecute innocent Westboro Baptists, just as their Jewish ancestors manipulated the Roman legal system to torture and crucify the Lord Jesus Christ and persecute His disciples. The Jew psychiatrists and other shyster brain-washers of Temple Beth Sholom write columns and conduct seminars to vilify and slander innocent Westboro Baptists, just as their scribes, Rabbis, Pharisees and Sadducees did to the Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples in Bible days...The Jews of Temple Beth Sholom are sinful, greedy, Hell-bound, money-grubbing sodomites; and they have dedicated their synagogue to be a gay and lesbian propaganda mill and recruiting depot, soliciting young people to sodomy."
-- "Westboro Baptists will picket the Jewish Arts Festival at Jewish Community Center...Temple Beth Sholom for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur," WBC "News Release,"
September 7, 1996
"Fag Jew Nazis are worse than ordinary Nazis. They've had more experience. Jews stirred up the Romans to butcher 6 million Christians in the catacombs in the 1st century. The First Holocaust was a Jewish Holocaust against Christians. The latest Holocaust is by Topeka Jews against WBC..."
-- "Topeka's Dominant Fag Jew Masters are now agitating for: Same-Sex Fag Jew Marriage!" WBC flier, April 19, 1996
"Worldwide Jewry and worldwide Fagery [sic] appear to have the same problem: They both want to criminalize Gospel preaching under misleading labels. Jews label Gospel preaching as Anti-Semitism; Fags label Gospel preaching as 'Hate Crimes.' Both groups -- Fags and Jews -- are doomed!...WBC buys trees for Israel. WBC prays for the peace of Jerusalem. But isn't there a logical correlation between Jewish tyranny & Anti-Semitism?"
-- "An appeal to Pres. Clinton and Prime Minister Netanyahu," WBC "News Release," June 10, 1997
On Gays
"WBC engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth. We display large, colorful signs containing Bible words and sentiments, including: GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, NO NOT MOCKED, FAGS ARE NATURE FREAKS, GOD GAVE FAGS UP, NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR FAGS, etc... WBC has conducted some 20,000 such demonstrations during the last nine years at homosexual parades and other events (including funerals of impenitent sodomites, like Matthew Shepard). WBC teams have picketed major fag parades in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, San Diego, Dallas, Orlando, Kansas City, etc. The unique picketing ministry of Westboro Baptist Church has received national attention, and WBC believes this gospel message to be America's last hope."
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"The only true Nazis in this world are fags. They want to force you by law to support their filth, and they want to shut you up by law when they hate what you say. They would be perfectly happy to make it a crime to preach that 'God hates fags' under the guise of 'hate speech legislation.' "
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"It's NOT OK to be gay. It will damn the soul, destroy the life, and doom any nation that tolerates such evil. God Hates Fags is a profound theological statement, which America needs more than it needs oxygen or bread."
-- "WBC to picket UC (Tar Heels) graduation and Binkley Baptist Church," Westboro Baptist Church "News Release,"
May 3, 1999
"WBC picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, to inject a little truth and sanity into the irrational orgy of lies consuming this world. WBC does not support the murder of Matthew Shepard...However, the truth about Matthew Shepard needs to be known. He lived a Satanic lifestyle. He got himself killed trolling for anonymous homosexual sex in a bar at midnight. Unless he repented in the final hours of his life, he is in hell. He will be in hell for all eternity, 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' Mark 9:44. For each day that passes, he has only eternity to look forward to. All the candlelight vigils, all the tributes, all the acts of Congress, all the rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States, will not shorten his sentence by so much as one day. And all the riches of the world will not buy him one drop of water to cool his tongue."
-- "Perpetual Gospel Memorial to Matthew Shepard," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"Filthy sodomites crave legitimacy as dogs eating their own vomit & sows wallowing in their own feces crave unconditional love."
-- "Week 344 of the Great Gage Park Decency Drive," WBC "News Release," January 15, 1998
"All gays & lesbians are liars and murderers at heart, like their father, Satan."
-- "____________. A black dyke! An abomination! Clinton & the Senate made her a U.S. Judge!" WBC "News Release," November 24, 1996.
On Blacks
"Anybody babbling about 'multicultural affairs' and 'celebrating diversity' is a propagandist for the militant sodomite agenda...Westboro Baptists will picket this black obfuscator, in religious protest and warning. Being black won't get you to Heaven. But promoting fags will take you to Hell."
-- "WBC Will Picket ___________________, Ph.D. She's a Multicultural, Diversity-Celebrating Blabbermouth," WBC "News Release," November 13, 1996
"Forget the American Bald Eagle. Since June 23, 1994, the only fitting emblem for the Great Seal of the United States Judiciary is this beast...Just call me: 'Yo Honuh'!!!... Here Come De Judge!!!"
--Text surrounding a racist caricature of an African-American female judge, "The Federal Judiciary: A Menagerie of Demonic, Libidinous, unclean Beasts: A Curse from God Upon an Apostate Nation," WBC flier, November 28, 1996
"Me ______________. Me lots smarter now. Me be Deputy Mayor...This crowd could dumb down the Western Hemisphere."
-- Text surrounding a drawing of a gorilla, "Wagnon's 'Friendlier Topeka,'" WBC flier, June 13, 1997. The named individual is an African-American city council member in Topeka, Kansas
"Black Female Dyke ___________ is a child of the Devil, peddling her satanic father's fag lies...She's dangerous because she plays the race card, the female card, & the poor-little-broken-home-orphan card like a fiddle to gullible fools who give her money."
-- "WBC to Picket Pervert ________, & Her Devil's Angels," WBC "News Release," May 20, 1996
"The recent race riots in New York over the senseless killing of young Yusef Hawkins, and the waves of Black students clashing with police in Virginia Beach, remind us that racism is not quite dead in America the beautiful. But most of us are sick and tired of self-flagellation. Shall a few isolated racist acts keep us all in sackcloth forever, repenting the sins of slave-owning ancestors?"
-- Fred Phelps in The Spotlight newspaper, October 30, 1989
"Meet _______________, black criminal...this black goon heads for 15-year-old Sharon Phelps...to beat her and hospitalize her."
-- "Boycott the Vintage...Black Bullies Beat White Kids and Women," WBC flier, March 31, 1996
"On Feb. 1 this sorry smear of Hamitic Sludge who sold his black soul to the Courthouse Whore ordered a fellow black murderer...released without bond & without an AIDS test!"
-- "Black Slime ____," WBC flier, February 6, 1995
On Christians
"Most 'Christians' today are Christians by name only, and should be ashamed of themselves. They are cowardly, lukewarm, and ashamed of Christ's Word. They have substituted their own pathetic ideas for God's clear commandments... Don't listen to the money-grubbing heretic who stands at the front of your church. Listen to God."
-- "FAQ," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"Any church that allows fags to be members in good standing is a fag church... Any church that ordains fags is a fag church...Any church that marries fags is a fag church...Churches...like the Southern Baptists and Assembly of God churches are as much to blame as the out of the closet fag churches...Why? Because they have created an atmosphere in this world where people believe the lie that God loves everybody. This soul-damning lie is the reason that fags are so out-spoken today."
-- "Fag Churches," WBC "Godhatesfags.com" Web site
"Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, Northern and Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, etc. have all departed from God. Most well-known preachers (Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc.) have departed from God, and disassociated themselves with pure Gospel preaching."
-- "Churches," WBC "Godhatesamerica.com" Web site
"Yes, this monstrous hydra, which grows back two heads for every one slain, must be destroyed by the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God...Must be a comfort to you sodomite Episcopalians, that your Catamite church was founded by a faggot king (butt-buddy to Rev. Erasmus of Rotterdam)...Episcopalians hate God."
-- "Pastor Phelps will expose the corrupt Episcopal Church," WBC "News Release," January 3, 1996
"Filled with shyster lawyers and crooked judges, the Episcopal Church USA is a cesspool of sodomite sin and crime."
-- "WBC to picket Episcopal General Convention (fag orgy) in Philly July 18-20," WBC "News Release," May 21, 1997
"The Episcopal Church, founded by the holy whoremonger Henry VIII, welcomes you...to the joys of anal copulating...to exquisite misery in this world, and to everlasting damnation & hell fire in the next!"
-- "Westboro Baptist Church will picket Olathe schools & Supt. _________ for caving to 'Annie' and filthy fags," WBC "News Release," January 2, 1996
"Like the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, et al., the so-called Christian Church-Disciples of Christ (generally, Congregational Churches) are sodomite churches. They are not true churches of Jesus Christ."
-- "Filthy Fags Own Australia," WBC "News Release,"
October 14, 1996
"Apostate Methodism is being cursed by God in sending them sodomite heretics as pastors, who are withered & blind...These Satanic evangelists from Hell...for lucre, traffic in the souls of men, walking in craftiness & handling the Word of God deceitfully."
-- "WBC to picket Bishop _________ and St. Paul's Methodist of Lenexa," WBC "News Release," March 14, 1998
"Considering the dispositions of priests and parishioners, more accurate names for some of Topeka's Catholic churches would be: Most Foul Heart of Satan, Antichrist the King, Our Lady of Sodom, Unholy Name."
-- "Whore __________ can't Help Elmer Now," WBC "News Release," September 28, 1998
"There is a difference between the sense of the sacred...and the goofy 'communal sensitivity' at Topeka's sodomite Mexican Catholic Church...Mexican idolaters worship bloody rectums..."
-- "Week 394 of the Great Gage Park Decency Drive," WBC "News Release," December 31, 1998
"Fag priests and dyke nuns is the order of the day for Kansas Catholics. They deserve the sick, perverted leadership that now dooms and damns them."
-- "WBC to picket Catholic fag bash," WBC flier, June 5, 2000
"The Kansas City Star ran a 3-day, multi-page story about the sex sins of Catholic priests. Botton [sic] line in approximations: one-third are gay, one-third are womanizers, and -- with important exceptions -- the other third mostly covers, pimps and enables the lust-driven two-thirds. WBC will picket Sacred Heart and St. Catherine's Catholic Churches in Emporia in religious protest and warning."
-- "WBC to picket ___________ in two victim churches in Emporia," WBC flier, June 3, 2000
On America
"The reason for the violence that has been erupting in the United States of America in recent years is that GOD HATES AMERICA."
-- "Children are their oppressors,"
WBC "Godhatesamerica.com" Web site
"The same Bible that prescribes the death penalty for murderers, also prescribes the death penalty for those who engage in homosexual conduct. It is a measure of the perversion of our country -- our near-total alienation from God -- that the masses cannot see this great national hypocrisy."
-- "Homosexuals, also, should have the Death Penalty!" WBC flier, June 14, 1997
"In our experience, no modern country is more repressive of human rights than the U.S.A. The vaunted First Amendment is nothing but empty words on paper...we will journey to China at our expense, and tell our story of modern American repression of human rights, upon invitation."
-- Fred Phelps, writing to the Ambassador to the United States from the People's Republic of China, February 26, 1997
"Homosexuals now pervade and control American government at every level and branch. Thus, only those churches that support and promote the militant homosexual agenda enjoy religious freedom. Any church in America that dares to preach what the Bible says about soul-damning, nation-destroying moral filth of the vile homosexual beasts among us, loses all Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and speech rights."
-- Fred Phelps, in a letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, July 5, 1997
"We understand that Iraq is the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets without fear of arrest and prosecution. Alas, the United States no longer allows the Gospel to be freely and openly preached on the streets, because militant sodomites now control our government, and they violently object to the Bible message...The same majoritarian sodomite tyranny that now guides the Clinton administration's repressive policies toward Gospel preaching on America's streets, is apparently responsible -- at least in part -- for the merciless slaughter by starvation of 400 innocent Iraqi babies each day in your country. If our government and laws will allow it, and at the invitation of your government, we would like to send a delegation from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, to preach the Gospel on the streets of Baghdad for one week in the near future."
-- Fred Phelps, in a letter to Saddam Hussein,
November 30, 1997
Is The Message "Gays Aren't Welcome To Be Doctors"?
College continues ban on gay students group
By KEITH EDDINGS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: March 11, 2005)
New York Medical College yesterday rejected an appeal from a national organization of gay doctors to end a ban that prohibits gay students from organizing on campus, the head of the organization said after meeting with the school's dean.
"The dean expressed openness to the idea of expanding the coverage of (gay-related) health topics in the curriculum," Joel Ginsberg, the executive director of Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, said after the meeting.
But he added he was disturbed that "the school does not seem prepared to permit" the formation of an independent lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) campus group.
"I question whether a school that bans its gay club can ever effectively teach its students to be accepting and nonjudgmental about the LGBT patients they treat," Ginsberg said.
The dean, Dr. Ralph O'Connell, has not responded to several requests for an interview with The Journal News since the decision to ban the gay group became public in December. Yesterday, a guard blocked a reporter from entering the building where O'Connell works and an aide in his office referred the reporter to college spokeswoman Donna Moriarty. She could not say whether the ban was discussed at the meeting.
In a guest column in The Journal News on Jan. 10, O'Connell wrote that the college withdrew its funding and sanction from the campus group, Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender People in Medicine, because its activities would be inconsistent with the college's "Catholic tradition." The school has been affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York for 26 years.
The Westchester County Human Rights Commission is investigating whether that longtime affiliation is strong enough to exempt the college from county anti-discrimination laws. Alison Greene, the commission's executive director, said yesterday that the investigation was wrapping up. But she expressed a wish that the college "would be more cooperative so that we can resolve this quickly." She would not elaborate.
Ginsberg discussed the ban with Greene yesterday by telephone, and also met with Westchester County Health Commissioner Joshua Lipsman, who recently resigned from the medical college faculty to protest the ban. He said he would meet in Washington tomorrow with Dr. John Nelson, president of the American Medical Association. Nelson brought national attention to the issue in an interview defending the ban, which he likened to Brigham Young University's decision to suspend four athletes accused of rape, because "you have to follow the rules" set by the college.
Laura Fasulo, the president of the medical college's student senate, was also in O'Connell's office during the dean's meeting with Ginsberg, but she could not be reached afterward.
On Monday, the student senate adopted a nuanced resolution saying it "has always and will continue to support the creation and recognition of a (gay and lesbian) club on this campus." But adding that the goal should be achieved "with respect to the values of a college in the Catholic tradition."
At the meeting, Ginsberg gave O'Connell a petition signed by 1,150 health care professionals and students that said banning the campus group was a signal to medical students that gays were "not fully welcome within the medical profession" and could help make graduates ignorant of the gay community's health needs.
"This is kind of historic," Ginsberg told 13 students who met him outside O'Connell's office before the meeting. "Eighty percent of the medical schools in the country have a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender People in Medicine chapter of the American Medical Student Association. This school doesn't. No other school has done this — said you can't have a gay club."
Joshua Sahara, president of the banned group, was not invited to yesterday's meeting.
"It's just frustrating," he said afterward. "It's still very difficult to be an LGBT student at New York Medical College."
By KEITH EDDINGS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: March 11, 2005)
New York Medical College yesterday rejected an appeal from a national organization of gay doctors to end a ban that prohibits gay students from organizing on campus, the head of the organization said after meeting with the school's dean.
"The dean expressed openness to the idea of expanding the coverage of (gay-related) health topics in the curriculum," Joel Ginsberg, the executive director of Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, said after the meeting.
But he added he was disturbed that "the school does not seem prepared to permit" the formation of an independent lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) campus group.
"I question whether a school that bans its gay club can ever effectively teach its students to be accepting and nonjudgmental about the LGBT patients they treat," Ginsberg said.
The dean, Dr. Ralph O'Connell, has not responded to several requests for an interview with The Journal News since the decision to ban the gay group became public in December. Yesterday, a guard blocked a reporter from entering the building where O'Connell works and an aide in his office referred the reporter to college spokeswoman Donna Moriarty. She could not say whether the ban was discussed at the meeting.
In a guest column in The Journal News on Jan. 10, O'Connell wrote that the college withdrew its funding and sanction from the campus group, Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender People in Medicine, because its activities would be inconsistent with the college's "Catholic tradition." The school has been affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York for 26 years.
The Westchester County Human Rights Commission is investigating whether that longtime affiliation is strong enough to exempt the college from county anti-discrimination laws. Alison Greene, the commission's executive director, said yesterday that the investigation was wrapping up. But she expressed a wish that the college "would be more cooperative so that we can resolve this quickly." She would not elaborate.
Ginsberg discussed the ban with Greene yesterday by telephone, and also met with Westchester County Health Commissioner Joshua Lipsman, who recently resigned from the medical college faculty to protest the ban. He said he would meet in Washington tomorrow with Dr. John Nelson, president of the American Medical Association. Nelson brought national attention to the issue in an interview defending the ban, which he likened to Brigham Young University's decision to suspend four athletes accused of rape, because "you have to follow the rules" set by the college.
Laura Fasulo, the president of the medical college's student senate, was also in O'Connell's office during the dean's meeting with Ginsberg, but she could not be reached afterward.
On Monday, the student senate adopted a nuanced resolution saying it "has always and will continue to support the creation and recognition of a (gay and lesbian) club on this campus." But adding that the goal should be achieved "with respect to the values of a college in the Catholic tradition."
At the meeting, Ginsberg gave O'Connell a petition signed by 1,150 health care professionals and students that said banning the campus group was a signal to medical students that gays were "not fully welcome within the medical profession" and could help make graduates ignorant of the gay community's health needs.
"This is kind of historic," Ginsberg told 13 students who met him outside O'Connell's office before the meeting. "Eighty percent of the medical schools in the country have a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender People in Medicine chapter of the American Medical Student Association. This school doesn't. No other school has done this — said you can't have a gay club."
Joshua Sahara, president of the banned group, was not invited to yesterday's meeting.
"It's just frustrating," he said afterward. "It's still very difficult to be an LGBT student at New York Medical College."
"Love Rocks", CD With A Pro-Homosexual Message Released
Pop Music Stars Push Homosexual Agenda
AFA Journal
March 11, 2005
Over 30 music artists spanning a broad spectrum of generations and genres are singing in one accord on a recently released album titled "Love Rocks."
Although the two-disk CD set is a compilation of 32 different songs from some of the nation's top names in the music industry, the artists are harmonious in the pro-homosexual message they are voicing.
The CD was scheduled for release February 8, just prior to Valentine's Day, by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the HRC Foundation in partnership with Centaur Entertainment. One hundred percent of the album's net proceeds will go toward HRC's push for "equality." The HRC is the nation's largest "gay," lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights organization.
"The artists who joined together to create 'Love Rocks' understand, like millions of Americans, that commitment should be treated with dignity, respect and equality," said Gregory Lewis, an HRC associate director who managed the project.
For example, singer and actress Mandy Moore, who is a contributor to the CD, said, "Humankind has its problems, but love isn't one of them.
"When two people -- regardless of gender -- long to care for each other, to protect each other, to treasure each other, we should do everything we can to foster that. I'm proud to be part of this album, which does just that."
Yoko Ono, who sings "Every Man Has a Man," is also swelling with pride to be able to use the CD as a megaphone for her beliefs.
"The Constitution of this country is based on human rights and justice and freedom ...," Ono said. "For [politicians] to say, 'OK, we're going to change the Constitution so the gays can't get married,' I think it is outrageous .... I just immediately started to feel that it was important to send that message out that anybody can fall in love regardless of the difference of religion, or race, or sex, or age. Love is love. It's beautiful."
But according to Melissa Fryrear, a former lesbian and now a gender issues analyst at Focus on the Family, the CD's connotation of the word "love" is deceptive.
"Gay activists are trying to find an argument that carries emotional weight: 'love,' after all, sounds good to everyone," Fryrear said. "... Their definition is meant to mean the acceptance and the celebration of homosexuality."
Due to the blatant agenda of the CD and the artists behind it, Fryrear views the project as "another example of celebrities using their platforms to promote the liberal ideological agenda that equates homosexuality with heterosexuality."
Other artists featured on the CD include: Christina Aguilera, Pink, Dixie Chicks, Carole King, Melissa Etheridge, Kimberly Locke, Dolly Parton, and Randi Driscoll, who sings an arrangement of the hymn "Amazing Grace" combined with her single, "What Matters."
AFA Journal
March 11, 2005
Over 30 music artists spanning a broad spectrum of generations and genres are singing in one accord on a recently released album titled "Love Rocks."
Although the two-disk CD set is a compilation of 32 different songs from some of the nation's top names in the music industry, the artists are harmonious in the pro-homosexual message they are voicing.
The CD was scheduled for release February 8, just prior to Valentine's Day, by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the HRC Foundation in partnership with Centaur Entertainment. One hundred percent of the album's net proceeds will go toward HRC's push for "equality." The HRC is the nation's largest "gay," lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights organization.
"The artists who joined together to create 'Love Rocks' understand, like millions of Americans, that commitment should be treated with dignity, respect and equality," said Gregory Lewis, an HRC associate director who managed the project.
For example, singer and actress Mandy Moore, who is a contributor to the CD, said, "Humankind has its problems, but love isn't one of them.
"When two people -- regardless of gender -- long to care for each other, to protect each other, to treasure each other, we should do everything we can to foster that. I'm proud to be part of this album, which does just that."
Yoko Ono, who sings "Every Man Has a Man," is also swelling with pride to be able to use the CD as a megaphone for her beliefs.
"The Constitution of this country is based on human rights and justice and freedom ...," Ono said. "For [politicians] to say, 'OK, we're going to change the Constitution so the gays can't get married,' I think it is outrageous .... I just immediately started to feel that it was important to send that message out that anybody can fall in love regardless of the difference of religion, or race, or sex, or age. Love is love. It's beautiful."
But according to Melissa Fryrear, a former lesbian and now a gender issues analyst at Focus on the Family, the CD's connotation of the word "love" is deceptive.
"Gay activists are trying to find an argument that carries emotional weight: 'love,' after all, sounds good to everyone," Fryrear said. "... Their definition is meant to mean the acceptance and the celebration of homosexuality."
Due to the blatant agenda of the CD and the artists behind it, Fryrear views the project as "another example of celebrities using their platforms to promote the liberal ideological agenda that equates homosexuality with heterosexuality."
Other artists featured on the CD include: Christina Aguilera, Pink, Dixie Chicks, Carole King, Melissa Etheridge, Kimberly Locke, Dolly Parton, and Randi Driscoll, who sings an arrangement of the hymn "Amazing Grace" combined with her single, "What Matters."
Music Anxiety: Coldplay's New Album "X&Y Release Date
Lucky Europeans to see Coldplay World Tour, I'm Jealous!
COLDPLAY NEW ALBUM / SINGLE DETAILS....
Coldplay's new album X&Y will be released by Parlophone on 6th June,
preceded by the single Speed Of Sound on 23rd May.
The follow up to 2002's Brit and Grammy award winning 'A Rush Of Blood
To The Head', X&Y was recorded over the past year at studios in the UK
and has been produced by Danton Supple (Morrissey, Elbow), Ken Nelson
(Badly Drawn Boy, Kings of Convenience) and the band.
"We wanted to try new things out, to move our sound along," says Jonny,
"but the focus remains on the songs, and Chris's voice is sounding amazing.
Everyone is playing at the top of their game."
Following the release of X&Y the band embark on their biggest world tour yet,
starting with dates in Europe. Support Acts confirmed for the UK & Eire leg
of the tour include Doves, Supergrass, Elbow, Interpol, and Morning Runner.
COLDPLAY NEW ALBUM / SINGLE DETAILS....
Coldplay's new album X&Y will be released by Parlophone on 6th June,
preceded by the single Speed Of Sound on 23rd May.
The follow up to 2002's Brit and Grammy award winning 'A Rush Of Blood
To The Head', X&Y was recorded over the past year at studios in the UK
and has been produced by Danton Supple (Morrissey, Elbow), Ken Nelson
(Badly Drawn Boy, Kings of Convenience) and the band.
"We wanted to try new things out, to move our sound along," says Jonny,
"but the focus remains on the songs, and Chris's voice is sounding amazing.
Everyone is playing at the top of their game."
Following the release of X&Y the band embark on their biggest world tour yet,
starting with dates in Europe. Support Acts confirmed for the UK & Eire leg
of the tour include Doves, Supergrass, Elbow, Interpol, and Morning Runner.
A Moral Issue: Life For Sale?
This article struck me in ways I had never really thought about with regards to stem cell research and cloning. But, for me, it clarified my opinion. I tend to agree with the writer. Prior to this I just thought "I support stem cell research". But, there are points here that I had never considered. A well informed writer states his views. Your thoughts?
Thou Shalt Not Create
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A23
The Washington Post
"I will work with Congress to ensure that human embryos are not created for experimentation or grown for body parts, and that human life is never bought and sold as a commodity." (Applause)
-- State of the Union address, Feb. 2, 2005
That declaration drew more than applause. It received a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle -- demonstrating that even amid the confusion and dishonesty in this country's bioethics debates, some truths remain self-evident. And one of those truths is that human embryos are to be created for the purpose of producing babies, not for commerce and not to be dismembered for study or spare parts.
Yet what was remarkable about this moment -- at the time, and for over a month now, almost entirely overlooked by the media -- was that the Democrats who rose to join the applause were endorsing a principle that is at war with a key part of their own biotech agenda: research cloning.
Let me explain. When you clone a (somatic, i.e. adult) human cell, you turn it first into an embryonic cell with which you can do two things: (a) let it grow (in theory, with implantation in a uterus) to become a cloned baby, or (b) take it apart very early to derive stem cells (research cloning).
Everyone opposes (a) because everyone agrees that cloning children is a monstrous idea that deserves to be banned. But congressional Democrats (with the support of some equally confused Republicans) support (b), research cloning. But that means you've just created a human embryo for the exclusive purpose of experimentation and dissection -- the banning of which most everyone in the House chamber stood up to cheer.
The Democrats were oblivious to this contradiction. It jumped out at me because three years ago, in working out my own contribution to the cloning report of the President's Council on Bioethics (on which I serve), I had proposed creation as the bright line to separate what is permissible from what is impermissible in embryonic research.
The principle I suggested (and elaborated in "Crossing Lines: A Secular Argument Against Research Cloning," the New Republic, April 29, 2002) was this: No creating human embryos for experimentation. That means no to all cloning. And that means yes to using existing embryos such as the thousands of frozen and/or discarded embryos left over from work by in vitro fertilization clinics -- embryos that were created for the purpose of becoming children but which, for one reason or other, were not used.
I support that research. The president does not. In his Aug. 9, 2001, address to the nation, he opposed embryonic research using newly discarded embryos from fertility clinics. I initially thought that the 2005 State of the Union declaration was signaling a retreat from that position. My firm understanding from subsequent inquiries is that it was not. The administration continues to oppose such research.
But note that Bush only prevented federal funding for it. Bush did not ban it. It continues legally in the private sector. His State of the Union proposal would do nothing to change that balance. (Because it deals only with creation, it leaves aside the question of discarded embryos.)
Presidents come and go. And when this president goes, the next president could, and probably will, reverse the Bush policy and allow federal funding for stem cells derived from newly discarded embryos. I would applaud that. But I deplore the step that proponents of such research are already demanding: research cloning, i.e., creating special embryos entirely for the purpose of using them for their parts.
This is crossing a critical moral red line. We may honorably disagree about the moral dignity due a tiny human embryo. But we must establish some barrier to the most wanton, reckless and hubristic exploitation of the human embryo for our own purposes.
The line is easy to find: You do not create a human embryo to be a means to some other end. Most people with a moral sense, as demonstrated by the spontaneous response to the State of the Union declaration, understand immediately that there is something fundamentally different, fundamentally corrupting, fundamentally dangerous about allowing -- indeed, encouraging -- the manufacture of human embryos for the purpose of their dissection and use for parts.
It is time to act on precisely that intuition and pass a law that draws that line: no creation for the purpose of destruction. We need to do it consensually. And we need to do it now. Tomorrow is too late. By tomorrow we will have an embryo manufacturing industry, and we will already be numb to it.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Thou Shalt Not Create
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A23
The Washington Post
"I will work with Congress to ensure that human embryos are not created for experimentation or grown for body parts, and that human life is never bought and sold as a commodity." (Applause)
-- State of the Union address, Feb. 2, 2005
That declaration drew more than applause. It received a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle -- demonstrating that even amid the confusion and dishonesty in this country's bioethics debates, some truths remain self-evident. And one of those truths is that human embryos are to be created for the purpose of producing babies, not for commerce and not to be dismembered for study or spare parts.
Yet what was remarkable about this moment -- at the time, and for over a month now, almost entirely overlooked by the media -- was that the Democrats who rose to join the applause were endorsing a principle that is at war with a key part of their own biotech agenda: research cloning.
Let me explain. When you clone a (somatic, i.e. adult) human cell, you turn it first into an embryonic cell with which you can do two things: (a) let it grow (in theory, with implantation in a uterus) to become a cloned baby, or (b) take it apart very early to derive stem cells (research cloning).
Everyone opposes (a) because everyone agrees that cloning children is a monstrous idea that deserves to be banned. But congressional Democrats (with the support of some equally confused Republicans) support (b), research cloning. But that means you've just created a human embryo for the exclusive purpose of experimentation and dissection -- the banning of which most everyone in the House chamber stood up to cheer.
The Democrats were oblivious to this contradiction. It jumped out at me because three years ago, in working out my own contribution to the cloning report of the President's Council on Bioethics (on which I serve), I had proposed creation as the bright line to separate what is permissible from what is impermissible in embryonic research.
The principle I suggested (and elaborated in "Crossing Lines: A Secular Argument Against Research Cloning," the New Republic, April 29, 2002) was this: No creating human embryos for experimentation. That means no to all cloning. And that means yes to using existing embryos such as the thousands of frozen and/or discarded embryos left over from work by in vitro fertilization clinics -- embryos that were created for the purpose of becoming children but which, for one reason or other, were not used.
I support that research. The president does not. In his Aug. 9, 2001, address to the nation, he opposed embryonic research using newly discarded embryos from fertility clinics. I initially thought that the 2005 State of the Union declaration was signaling a retreat from that position. My firm understanding from subsequent inquiries is that it was not. The administration continues to oppose such research.
But note that Bush only prevented federal funding for it. Bush did not ban it. It continues legally in the private sector. His State of the Union proposal would do nothing to change that balance. (Because it deals only with creation, it leaves aside the question of discarded embryos.)
Presidents come and go. And when this president goes, the next president could, and probably will, reverse the Bush policy and allow federal funding for stem cells derived from newly discarded embryos. I would applaud that. But I deplore the step that proponents of such research are already demanding: research cloning, i.e., creating special embryos entirely for the purpose of using them for their parts.
This is crossing a critical moral red line. We may honorably disagree about the moral dignity due a tiny human embryo. But we must establish some barrier to the most wanton, reckless and hubristic exploitation of the human embryo for our own purposes.
The line is easy to find: You do not create a human embryo to be a means to some other end. Most people with a moral sense, as demonstrated by the spontaneous response to the State of the Union declaration, understand immediately that there is something fundamentally different, fundamentally corrupting, fundamentally dangerous about allowing -- indeed, encouraging -- the manufacture of human embryos for the purpose of their dissection and use for parts.
It is time to act on precisely that intuition and pass a law that draws that line: no creation for the purpose of destruction. We need to do it consensually. And we need to do it now. Tomorrow is too late. By tomorrow we will have an embryo manufacturing industry, and we will already be numb to it.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
The Worry War: Setting Priorites On What To Dread Most
As we say, "Now what?" There's plenty to worry about everyday but perhaps the general public's top-line worry list is out of sync with reality. Here, some good examples:
Sum of Our Fears
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A23
The Washington Post
Today we eschew both cotton-candy indulgence (the Michael Jackson trial) and eat-your-peas sobriety (whither Social Security?) to tuck into more starkly existential fare: If you're the worrying kind, what do you choose from the smorgasbord of dread laid out upon the table of modern life?
Osama bin Laden still out there scheming, somewhere at large? Terrorists with a radioactive "dirty bomb" or just a Ryder truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil? A laboratory accident that looses a real-life Andromeda strain? Iran (almost) with nukes? North Korea (it boasts) with nukes? Something as general as global warming, or as specific as the dangerous intersection on the way to your daughter's school?
Now comes avian influenza, a virus that has jumped from chickens, ducks and geese to humans. Avian flu has infected fewer than 100 people we know of, all in faraway Southeast Asia, yet the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already sees "a very ominous situation for the globe," while a World Health Organization official warns of "the gravest possible danger."
So are we supposed to stop fretting about everything else and focus a laser beam of anxiety toward Vietnamese barnyards? To help make sense of it all, I rounded up a few experts in the burgeoning field of risk analysis.
Paradoxically, the exercise was a comfort. It turns out there's no "right" or "wrong" way to calculate the sum of our fears.
Elizabeth Anderson, who runs a risk-analysis firm and edits an academic journal devoted to the field, pointed out that in deciding what to worry about, "you're comparing risks with varying degrees of certainty, and some may be low probability but high consequence."
In other words, few people (except the parents of teenagers) worry themselves sick about car accidents, which are common but usually minor. An explosion at a nuclear plant, on the other hand, is vastly less likely -- but utterly devastating if it ever happens. Also, one man's risk can be another man's breakfast: Europeans see grave dangers in genetically modified "Frankenfood"; Americans generally don't care if their corn flakes were engineered in a lab.
Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon, did a striking experiment in which he asked experts and laymen to rank a list of 30 dangers. "Nuclear power," ranked most dangerous by regular folks, was just 20th on the experts' list. The experts, who knew the statistics, were far more concerned about such things as medical X-rays and surgical mishaps.
Further research has led Slovic to conclude that this subjectivity is inherent. We tend to overestimate risks that strike us viscerally with dread -- a dirty bomb that spews radiation, say -- and underestimate risks that don't. Slovic found that we even change our evaluation of a risk depending on the language used to describe it: Illogically, we perceive "20 out of 100" as a greater risk than "one out of five" or "a 20 percent chance."
The experts agreed that there's one thing that can be fixed: how authorities communicate with the public about the risks we face.
Health authorities can give us more than blurted pronouncements of certain doom. They can give us enough information to make an informed assessment. Is there still a good chance the flu will fizzle out? What is that chance, realistically? What's the plan if and when the first human case shows up in this country?
The Department of Homeland Security should lead a similar conversation about terrorism threats. Basically, all we get now is the green-blue-yellow-orange-red color chart, which tells us nothing. Occasionally there's an all-points bulletin for a few people whose only crime may be their swarthiness, but the alert always comes with the admonition to go about our normal lives. Michael Chertoff, new DHS secretary, here's a job for you: Talk to us constructively about what "normal" means these days.
Baruch Fischhoff, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who heads the Society for Risk Analysis, said, "Risk analysis is easier when you have a historical record, but it's a matter of theory when you don't." Trying to judge the risk of any kind of terrorist attack is hard, because by definition, it's an exercise in reading the terrorists' minds.
On the other hand, he noted, there's a long historical record of how influenza outbreaks grow into epidemics that explode into pandemics, and "it's not as if we have to read the minds of the microbes." That record includes the Spanish influenza of 1918-19, which killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide.
So if eminent epidemiologists are running around with their hair on fire over avian flu, I'm afraid we might want to pay attention.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
Sum of Our Fears
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A23
The Washington Post
Today we eschew both cotton-candy indulgence (the Michael Jackson trial) and eat-your-peas sobriety (whither Social Security?) to tuck into more starkly existential fare: If you're the worrying kind, what do you choose from the smorgasbord of dread laid out upon the table of modern life?
Osama bin Laden still out there scheming, somewhere at large? Terrorists with a radioactive "dirty bomb" or just a Ryder truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil? A laboratory accident that looses a real-life Andromeda strain? Iran (almost) with nukes? North Korea (it boasts) with nukes? Something as general as global warming, or as specific as the dangerous intersection on the way to your daughter's school?
Now comes avian influenza, a virus that has jumped from chickens, ducks and geese to humans. Avian flu has infected fewer than 100 people we know of, all in faraway Southeast Asia, yet the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already sees "a very ominous situation for the globe," while a World Health Organization official warns of "the gravest possible danger."
So are we supposed to stop fretting about everything else and focus a laser beam of anxiety toward Vietnamese barnyards? To help make sense of it all, I rounded up a few experts in the burgeoning field of risk analysis.
Paradoxically, the exercise was a comfort. It turns out there's no "right" or "wrong" way to calculate the sum of our fears.
Elizabeth Anderson, who runs a risk-analysis firm and edits an academic journal devoted to the field, pointed out that in deciding what to worry about, "you're comparing risks with varying degrees of certainty, and some may be low probability but high consequence."
In other words, few people (except the parents of teenagers) worry themselves sick about car accidents, which are common but usually minor. An explosion at a nuclear plant, on the other hand, is vastly less likely -- but utterly devastating if it ever happens. Also, one man's risk can be another man's breakfast: Europeans see grave dangers in genetically modified "Frankenfood"; Americans generally don't care if their corn flakes were engineered in a lab.
Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon, did a striking experiment in which he asked experts and laymen to rank a list of 30 dangers. "Nuclear power," ranked most dangerous by regular folks, was just 20th on the experts' list. The experts, who knew the statistics, were far more concerned about such things as medical X-rays and surgical mishaps.
Further research has led Slovic to conclude that this subjectivity is inherent. We tend to overestimate risks that strike us viscerally with dread -- a dirty bomb that spews radiation, say -- and underestimate risks that don't. Slovic found that we even change our evaluation of a risk depending on the language used to describe it: Illogically, we perceive "20 out of 100" as a greater risk than "one out of five" or "a 20 percent chance."
The experts agreed that there's one thing that can be fixed: how authorities communicate with the public about the risks we face.
Health authorities can give us more than blurted pronouncements of certain doom. They can give us enough information to make an informed assessment. Is there still a good chance the flu will fizzle out? What is that chance, realistically? What's the plan if and when the first human case shows up in this country?
The Department of Homeland Security should lead a similar conversation about terrorism threats. Basically, all we get now is the green-blue-yellow-orange-red color chart, which tells us nothing. Occasionally there's an all-points bulletin for a few people whose only crime may be their swarthiness, but the alert always comes with the admonition to go about our normal lives. Michael Chertoff, new DHS secretary, here's a job for you: Talk to us constructively about what "normal" means these days.
Baruch Fischhoff, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who heads the Society for Risk Analysis, said, "Risk analysis is easier when you have a historical record, but it's a matter of theory when you don't." Trying to judge the risk of any kind of terrorist attack is hard, because by definition, it's an exercise in reading the terrorists' minds.
On the other hand, he noted, there's a long historical record of how influenza outbreaks grow into epidemics that explode into pandemics, and "it's not as if we have to read the minds of the microbes." That record includes the Spanish influenza of 1918-19, which killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide.
So if eminent epidemiologists are running around with their hair on fire over avian flu, I'm afraid we might want to pay attention.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
Social Security Report Due, Read Between the Lines Of The Spinmeisters
March 11, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST, The NY Times
Slanting Social Security
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Many people involved in the debate over Social Security's future worry that the 2005 trustees' report will be slanted in favor of privatization.
I don't expect to see books that are literally cooked: Stephen Goss, the agency's chief actuary, has an excellent reputation. But it's not out of the question. After all, in 2003 the chief actuary of Social Security's sister agency, which oversees Medicare, was told that he would be fired if he gave Congress accurate information about the cost of the Bush Medicare bill.
Even if the numbers aren't fabricated, however, it's a good bet that they will be presented in a way intended to make Social Security's financial outlook seem much bleaker than it really is.
Why should we expect a slanted report?
First, this administration has politicized analysis across the board, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Food and Drug Administration.
Second, the White House has been using taxpayers' money to sell its privatization plans in ways that would have been considered out of bounds for any previous administration. The Treasury Department has set up a "war room" to promote privatization; its first three hires were former aides in the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Third, Social Security officials have been playing a clearly partisan role. James Lockhart, the deputy commissioner, has become a regular fixture at pro-privatization rallies - and has been dispensing misinformation. Last week Mr. Lockhart echoed a misrepresentation by President Bush of a statement in last year's report, telling the audience that each year that there are no changes to the program costs "hundreds of billions."
A few weeks ago, Progress for America issued a press release describing Thomas Saving, one of the Social Security trustees, as an adviser and spokesman. This announcement drew some unwelcome attention; the organization now says it was incorrect to call Mr. Saving a spokesman.
But it's still extraordinary to have one of the Social Security trustees associated with a group that is "dedicated to a conservative issue agenda" and has been running ads in support of the Bush privatization plan. (You may have seen the ad that features Franklin Roosevelt; James Roosevelt Jr., F.D.R.'s grandson, wrote to Progress for America to demand that the ad be withdrawn.)
Finally, the Social Security Administration has already begun to slant the information it provides to the public in ways that exaggerate the program's problems. Even the recorded message callers get when the agency puts them on hold disparages Social Security's future prospects.
House Democrats have made a striking comparison between the 2000 and 2004 versions of a public information booklet titled "The Future of Social Security."
The 2000 version was hardly complacent about the future: it presented a chart showing that the trust fund would be exhausted in 2037, and warned that at that point, "Social Security will be able to pay only 72 percent of benefits ... unless changes are made."
By 2004, evidence that the productivity boom that began in the mid-1990's was continuing had led to more optimistic projections: the trust fund was expected to last until 2042. But the caption on the corresponding chart in the 2004 booklet reads, "Current Social Security system is unsustainable in the long run." That's simply false - we can argue about whether it's a good idea to maintain the present system, but there's no question that the basic form of the system could be maintained indefinitely through some combination of tax increases and/or benefit cuts.
What efforts to slant the presentation should we expect in this year's report? A recent op-ed article by Mr. Saving, in which he insists that we face a $74 trillion crisis - 20 times the funding gap estimated in the 2004 trustees' report - offers some hints.
Look for an attempt to conflate Social Security with Medicare. Look for an emphasis on "infinite horizon" estimates, which the American Academy of Actuaries, in a letter to trustees, said "provide little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise ... into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated."
The trustees' report has always been a very useful document, providing a wealth of information. But this year, more than ever before, it will have to be read with an eye to the ways it will try to mislead.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Bob Herbert is on vacation.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
OP-ED COLUMNIST, The NY Times
Slanting Social Security
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Many people involved in the debate over Social Security's future worry that the 2005 trustees' report will be slanted in favor of privatization.
I don't expect to see books that are literally cooked: Stephen Goss, the agency's chief actuary, has an excellent reputation. But it's not out of the question. After all, in 2003 the chief actuary of Social Security's sister agency, which oversees Medicare, was told that he would be fired if he gave Congress accurate information about the cost of the Bush Medicare bill.
Even if the numbers aren't fabricated, however, it's a good bet that they will be presented in a way intended to make Social Security's financial outlook seem much bleaker than it really is.
Why should we expect a slanted report?
First, this administration has politicized analysis across the board, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Food and Drug Administration.
Second, the White House has been using taxpayers' money to sell its privatization plans in ways that would have been considered out of bounds for any previous administration. The Treasury Department has set up a "war room" to promote privatization; its first three hires were former aides in the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Third, Social Security officials have been playing a clearly partisan role. James Lockhart, the deputy commissioner, has become a regular fixture at pro-privatization rallies - and has been dispensing misinformation. Last week Mr. Lockhart echoed a misrepresentation by President Bush of a statement in last year's report, telling the audience that each year that there are no changes to the program costs "hundreds of billions."
A few weeks ago, Progress for America issued a press release describing Thomas Saving, one of the Social Security trustees, as an adviser and spokesman. This announcement drew some unwelcome attention; the organization now says it was incorrect to call Mr. Saving a spokesman.
But it's still extraordinary to have one of the Social Security trustees associated with a group that is "dedicated to a conservative issue agenda" and has been running ads in support of the Bush privatization plan. (You may have seen the ad that features Franklin Roosevelt; James Roosevelt Jr., F.D.R.'s grandson, wrote to Progress for America to demand that the ad be withdrawn.)
Finally, the Social Security Administration has already begun to slant the information it provides to the public in ways that exaggerate the program's problems. Even the recorded message callers get when the agency puts them on hold disparages Social Security's future prospects.
House Democrats have made a striking comparison between the 2000 and 2004 versions of a public information booklet titled "The Future of Social Security."
The 2000 version was hardly complacent about the future: it presented a chart showing that the trust fund would be exhausted in 2037, and warned that at that point, "Social Security will be able to pay only 72 percent of benefits ... unless changes are made."
By 2004, evidence that the productivity boom that began in the mid-1990's was continuing had led to more optimistic projections: the trust fund was expected to last until 2042. But the caption on the corresponding chart in the 2004 booklet reads, "Current Social Security system is unsustainable in the long run." That's simply false - we can argue about whether it's a good idea to maintain the present system, but there's no question that the basic form of the system could be maintained indefinitely through some combination of tax increases and/or benefit cuts.
What efforts to slant the presentation should we expect in this year's report? A recent op-ed article by Mr. Saving, in which he insists that we face a $74 trillion crisis - 20 times the funding gap estimated in the 2004 trustees' report - offers some hints.
Look for an attempt to conflate Social Security with Medicare. Look for an emphasis on "infinite horizon" estimates, which the American Academy of Actuaries, in a letter to trustees, said "provide little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise ... into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated."
The trustees' report has always been a very useful document, providing a wealth of information. But this year, more than ever before, it will have to be read with an eye to the ways it will try to mislead.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Bob Herbert is on vacation.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
A Disgrace: Bush's Federal Judge Nominees NOT Up To The Task
Qualifications for these judges? They are archconcervatives. Don't we deserve better? THIS fron the NY Times:
EDITORIAL
The New York Times
3/11/2005
They're Back, and Still Unworthy
The Senate is preparing for a major showdown over the Democrats' use of the filibuster to block a handful of President Bush's judicial nominees. When the arguments about procedures are over, the key question will remain: Has Mr. Bush put up men and women who deserve lifetime appointments to the federal bench? The three nominees who had hearings this month - a mining and ranching industry flunky, a much-reversed judge with an antipathy for individual rights, and a lawyer with a bad habit of not following the rules for practicing law - show why Democrats should stand firm.
There have been widespread calls for the White House to sit down with Senate Democrats and come up with a list of nominees who would be acceptable to both sides. The previous three administrations, of both Republican and Democratic presidents, at least tried to work toward consensus candidates. But the Bush administration has refused to negotiate. It has begun its second term on a particularly controversial note by resubmitting seven nominees who failed to win approval last year after Democratic filibusters. It has also sent back several other nominations on which the Senate had failed to act.
William Myers III, one of the seven filibustered nominees, has built a career as an anti-environmental extremist. He was a longtime lobbyist for the mining and cattle industries. Then, as the Interior Department's top lawyer, he put those industries' interests ahead of the public interest. In one controversial legal opinion, he overturned a decision that would have protected American Indian sacred sites, clearing the way for a company to do extensive mining in the area. Mr. Myers has been nominated to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco. That court plays a major role in determining the environmental law that applies to the Western states.
Terrence Boyle, who has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, is also a troubling choice. He has an extraordinarily high reversal rate for a district court judge. Many of the decisions that have been criticized by higher courts wrongly rejected claims involving civil rights, sex discrimination and disability rights. Mr. Boyle's record is particularly troubling because the court reversing him, the Fourth Circuit, is perhaps the most hostile to civil rights in the federal appellate system, and even it has regularly found his rulings objectionable.
Thomas Griffith, who has been nominated to the powerful Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has the unfortunate distinction of having practiced law in two jurisdictions without the required licenses. While practicing law in Washington, D.C., he failed to renew his license for three years. Mr. Griffith blamed his law firm's staff for that omission, but the responsibility was his. When he later practiced law in Utah as general counsel at Brigham Young University, he never bothered to get a Utah license.
Mr. Myers, Mr. Boyle, and Mr. Griffith were chosen for their archconservative political views, not their qualifications for the bench. No impartial person interested in choosing only the best possible judges would have put them at the top of the list. The federal judiciary is one of the cornerstones of American government - one of the three branches the nation's founders created, and set against one another, to guide the nation and keep it free. Surely this vital institution deserves better.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
EDITORIAL
The New York Times
3/11/2005
They're Back, and Still Unworthy
The Senate is preparing for a major showdown over the Democrats' use of the filibuster to block a handful of President Bush's judicial nominees. When the arguments about procedures are over, the key question will remain: Has Mr. Bush put up men and women who deserve lifetime appointments to the federal bench? The three nominees who had hearings this month - a mining and ranching industry flunky, a much-reversed judge with an antipathy for individual rights, and a lawyer with a bad habit of not following the rules for practicing law - show why Democrats should stand firm.
There have been widespread calls for the White House to sit down with Senate Democrats and come up with a list of nominees who would be acceptable to both sides. The previous three administrations, of both Republican and Democratic presidents, at least tried to work toward consensus candidates. But the Bush administration has refused to negotiate. It has begun its second term on a particularly controversial note by resubmitting seven nominees who failed to win approval last year after Democratic filibusters. It has also sent back several other nominations on which the Senate had failed to act.
William Myers III, one of the seven filibustered nominees, has built a career as an anti-environmental extremist. He was a longtime lobbyist for the mining and cattle industries. Then, as the Interior Department's top lawyer, he put those industries' interests ahead of the public interest. In one controversial legal opinion, he overturned a decision that would have protected American Indian sacred sites, clearing the way for a company to do extensive mining in the area. Mr. Myers has been nominated to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco. That court plays a major role in determining the environmental law that applies to the Western states.
Terrence Boyle, who has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, is also a troubling choice. He has an extraordinarily high reversal rate for a district court judge. Many of the decisions that have been criticized by higher courts wrongly rejected claims involving civil rights, sex discrimination and disability rights. Mr. Boyle's record is particularly troubling because the court reversing him, the Fourth Circuit, is perhaps the most hostile to civil rights in the federal appellate system, and even it has regularly found his rulings objectionable.
Thomas Griffith, who has been nominated to the powerful Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has the unfortunate distinction of having practiced law in two jurisdictions without the required licenses. While practicing law in Washington, D.C., he failed to renew his license for three years. Mr. Griffith blamed his law firm's staff for that omission, but the responsibility was his. When he later practiced law in Utah as general counsel at Brigham Young University, he never bothered to get a Utah license.
Mr. Myers, Mr. Boyle, and Mr. Griffith were chosen for their archconservative political views, not their qualifications for the bench. No impartial person interested in choosing only the best possible judges would have put them at the top of the list. The federal judiciary is one of the cornerstones of American government - one of the three branches the nation's founders created, and set against one another, to guide the nation and keep it free. Surely this vital institution deserves better.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Thursday, March 10, 2005
You Gotta Laugh Even If The Problem Is Real
CLICK THE TITLE for Jib Jab's funny animated video "The Drugs I Need".
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Kid's First: A Healthcare Priority That We Can Afford
THIS from John Kerry, CLICK the title to sign to be a co-sponsor.
Dear Friend,
Please join me in co-sponsoring the Kids Come First Act on johnkerry.com.
A sick child is always a worry. A sick child that you can't get help for is a parent's worst nightmare. Helping the 11 million children who have no health coverage isn't even on the radar screen of the Bush administration and the Republican leaders in Congress. But, we're going to put it there.
It is totally unacceptable that, in the greatest country in the world, millions of children are not getting the health care they need. That's why I have introduced the Kids Come First Act . Here's why it's so important to do something now:
1/4 of children are not fully up to date on their basic immunizations.
1/3 with chronic asthma do not get a prescription for medications they need.
1/2 of uninsured children have not had a well child visit in the past year.
1 in 6 has delayed or unmet medical needs.
1 in 5 has trouble accessing health care.
1 in 4 does not see a dentist annually.
1 in 3 had no health insurance during 2002 and 2003.
In the Senate, I am working hard to convince my colleagues to co-sponsor this vitally important bill. But, the most important co-sponsors - the ones who can help push this legislation through a Republican Congress and the Bush White House - are the hundreds of thousands of grassroots activists in the johnkerry.com community.
To date, over 470,000 Americans have signed our Kids Come First petition. We're closing in on our immediate goal of 500,000 before President Bush makes his State of the Union Address on Wednesday. We'll build from there until we stand one million strong. We've got to put getting our children the health care they need at the top of our national agenda. It won't be easy, but we will never relent until we find a way to put Kids First.
Dear Friend,
Please join me in co-sponsoring the Kids Come First Act on johnkerry.com.
A sick child is always a worry. A sick child that you can't get help for is a parent's worst nightmare. Helping the 11 million children who have no health coverage isn't even on the radar screen of the Bush administration and the Republican leaders in Congress. But, we're going to put it there.
It is totally unacceptable that, in the greatest country in the world, millions of children are not getting the health care they need. That's why I have introduced the Kids Come First Act . Here's why it's so important to do something now:
1/4 of children are not fully up to date on their basic immunizations.
1/3 with chronic asthma do not get a prescription for medications they need.
1/2 of uninsured children have not had a well child visit in the past year.
1 in 6 has delayed or unmet medical needs.
1 in 5 has trouble accessing health care.
1 in 4 does not see a dentist annually.
1 in 3 had no health insurance during 2002 and 2003.
In the Senate, I am working hard to convince my colleagues to co-sponsor this vitally important bill. But, the most important co-sponsors - the ones who can help push this legislation through a Republican Congress and the Bush White House - are the hundreds of thousands of grassroots activists in the johnkerry.com community.
To date, over 470,000 Americans have signed our Kids Come First petition. We're closing in on our immediate goal of 500,000 before President Bush makes his State of the Union Address on Wednesday. We'll build from there until we stand one million strong. We've got to put getting our children the health care they need at the top of our national agenda. It won't be easy, but we will never relent until we find a way to put Kids First.
A Call To Action, Stop the Republican Corruption
Sad but true, the legislative balance is gone. We are a minority and our rights are being denied. CLICK the link above if you are able to donate to the DCCC to regain control and reclaim our rights.
THIS FROM NANCY PELOSI:
Dear raycolex,
Yesterday, Congresswoman Slaughter and I released a report, "Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy," meticulously documenting the alarming assault on our democracy as framed in the Constitution.
The report is a 47-page indictment of the unprecedented lengths to which the Republicans have abused their power and manipulated the rules in efforts to squelch dissent, to protect their Members from voting on popular measures that their special interests opposed, and to shut down any and all input from the minority side representing half of this great country.
Democrats are not second-class citizens, and we will not stand by quietly as Republicans manipulate our very democracy to cram through Congress a partisan agenda that only rewards their campaign donors.
Yesterday we exposed them to the world, but in order to bring it all to a screeching halt, we must have the majority.
Congress was intended to be the primary check on the Executive Branch, a responsibility that the Republicans have not only abdicated themselves, but have done everything in their power to prevent us from fulfilling either.
For Republicans, democracy and the Constitution are valuable only to the extent they can be used to ensure Republican power, and are to be shunted aside the moment they might get in the way.
This is the single most important reason we need to have a Democratic majority in the House - to set the agenda, and restore a government where President Bush and Tom DeLay are not free to run rampant without fear of repercussions.
As we show in our report, in 10 short years House Republicans have become the most arrogant, unethical and corrupt majority in modern Congressional history. Stifling deliberation and quashing dissent in the House of Representatives has become the standard operating procedure.
Democrats MUST attain the majority in House to bring all of this to an abrupt end. No longer will Republicans be able to marginalize dissent, cover up President Bush's scandals and their own ethical abuses, or manipulate the process to kill legislation that the American people desperately want.
Please make a secure contribution today so that we can continue our efforts to recruit candidates, hold the Republicans accountable for their records, and establish the conditions to restore a Democratic majority in America.
Sincerely,
Nancy Pelosi
House Democratic Leader
THIS FROM NANCY PELOSI:
Dear raycolex,
Yesterday, Congresswoman Slaughter and I released a report, "Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy," meticulously documenting the alarming assault on our democracy as framed in the Constitution.
The report is a 47-page indictment of the unprecedented lengths to which the Republicans have abused their power and manipulated the rules in efforts to squelch dissent, to protect their Members from voting on popular measures that their special interests opposed, and to shut down any and all input from the minority side representing half of this great country.
Democrats are not second-class citizens, and we will not stand by quietly as Republicans manipulate our very democracy to cram through Congress a partisan agenda that only rewards their campaign donors.
Yesterday we exposed them to the world, but in order to bring it all to a screeching halt, we must have the majority.
Congress was intended to be the primary check on the Executive Branch, a responsibility that the Republicans have not only abdicated themselves, but have done everything in their power to prevent us from fulfilling either.
For Republicans, democracy and the Constitution are valuable only to the extent they can be used to ensure Republican power, and are to be shunted aside the moment they might get in the way.
This is the single most important reason we need to have a Democratic majority in the House - to set the agenda, and restore a government where President Bush and Tom DeLay are not free to run rampant without fear of repercussions.
As we show in our report, in 10 short years House Republicans have become the most arrogant, unethical and corrupt majority in modern Congressional history. Stifling deliberation and quashing dissent in the House of Representatives has become the standard operating procedure.
Democrats MUST attain the majority in House to bring all of this to an abrupt end. No longer will Republicans be able to marginalize dissent, cover up President Bush's scandals and their own ethical abuses, or manipulate the process to kill legislation that the American people desperately want.
Please make a secure contribution today so that we can continue our efforts to recruit candidates, hold the Republicans accountable for their records, and establish the conditions to restore a Democratic majority in America.
Sincerely,
Nancy Pelosi
House Democratic Leader
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
W Starts The Effort To Dismantle The U.N.....Bolton AS Ambassador
You have to give it to Bush, he sure knows how to pick 'em. In yet another disastrous choice, W pick John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. This just after his European vacation where he delivered his package of lies, now he undermines every effort to deliver diplomacy just when it is needed most at the U.N. Clearly a calculated move to inflame any country with U.N. ties. Just what does this guy have to prove? He's done well in proving himself a calculating, self-centered right wing extremist, but this is a new low even for him. The Nation serves up a fast read on this guy Bolton.
Bush Gives the UN the Finger
Mon Mar 7, 4:55 PM ET
Op/Ed - The Nation
David Corn
If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.
Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."
Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those two (representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for years. Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But what message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to the UN a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding of the institution? And this move comes right after Bush went to Europe to mend fences and after he has started working closely with France in an admirable effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. The Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if viewed as a payback to the neocons. This band of Bush-backers were considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an undersecretary at the State Department, was not appointed to the number-two slot at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) took over the State Department. But this is some consolation prize. Imagine Jerry Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in Massachusetts.
Bush Gives the UN the Finger
Mon Mar 7, 4:55 PM ET
Op/Ed - The Nation
David Corn
If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.
Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."
Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those two (representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for years. Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But what message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to the UN a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding of the institution? And this move comes right after Bush went to Europe to mend fences and after he has started working closely with France in an admirable effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. The Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if viewed as a payback to the neocons. This band of Bush-backers were considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an undersecretary at the State Department, was not appointed to the number-two slot at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) took over the State Department. But this is some consolation prize. Imagine Jerry Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in Massachusetts.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Goss In Over His Head
Hardly a suprise considering that Porter Goss was never qualified to head the CIA. Just another "Yes sir, Mr. Bush" floundering in his new position. Still, intriguing that even he knows this and outright says so. His first move to rid the CIA of truly informed individuals; career professionals that did not becon to W's call but chose to express their voices of wisdom. And now, they are gone and we have Goss lost in space floundering. Overwhelmed by the reality of a job that he is unprepared for, Goss should be let go at the end of his 90 day probation (fictional in relation to him but very real to most US workers, of course he had health benefits day 1 on his job, a rarity these days for the average worker). Yes, we should all feel more secure with this leader (chuckle) who just this week was comforted by W that he (Goss) would still have a hotline to the White House undermining John Negroponte's new position (that W never wanted in the first place). Let's guess Goss's 90 day overall fictional evaluation, is it?
A) Does not meet the requirements of the job and is dismissed
B) Does not fully meet the requirements of the job and requires a 30 day follow-up
C) Meets the requirements of the job
D) Exceeds the requirements of the job
Laughable if it were not real time--real life.
THE SOURCE ARTICLE IS:
The CIA Chief Steps Into It... Yet Again
By Mark Hosenball, Newsweek
Monday 14 March 2005 Issue
"The jobs that I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal... I'm a little amazed at the workload."—Porter Goss
March 14 issue - Bush critics and veteran intel operatives alike were amazed when CIA Director Porter Goss, in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library last week, apparently said he found his job overwhelming. The embarrassing report only reinforced the belief among some intel professionals that Goss's tenure has been troubled. The controversy erupted after the Associated Press quoted Goss as saying, "The jobs that I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal... I'm a little amazed at the workload." Goss also reportedly said there was such "ambiguity" in the intel-reform bill that he didn't know what his official relationship was supposed to be with John Negroponte, the newly named director of National Intelligence.
Intel officials initially said the CIA chief's lecture was supposed to be closed to the media and that the emcee who introduced him told the audience that Goss's remarks should be treated accordingly. But Joanne Drake, chief of staff of the Reagan Library Foundation, told NEWSWEEK that while the media were not explicitly invited and recording equipment was banned, the speech was publicly announced. She said anyone, including journalists, who bought a $45 ticket was welcome to attend. Drake and an intel official acknowledged the emcee never explicitly declared the session off the record.
Intel officials said Goss was aware the media were not absolutely banned from the luncheon. The officials said Goss nonetheless tried to use self-deprecation and folksy anecdotes to explain to a lay audience how full his plate really is. "This was a humorous way of saying the job has grown larger than any one person," said Jennifer Millerwise, a CIA spokeswoman. Millerwise said the AP misconstrued Goss when it paraphrased him saying he was "overwhelmed" by the many roles he had to play. "The remarks were taken out of context. They were spoken in the context of championing the new structure of the intelligence community," she said. Intel officials note that until Negroponte takes over such tasks as coordinating the work of all intel agencies and briefing the president daily, these jobs are being handled by Goss. Goss also has to supervise CIA analysis and espionage operations and carry out Bush's orders to increase the CIA's corps of expert spies and analysts by 50 percent. Officials argue that this makes Goss, at least until Negroponte comes onboard, the most powerful --and busiest-- director in CIA history. Not all intel sources were convinced by Goss's explanations. Some critics said the comments only validated Washington chatter that Goss is dismayed that his CIA schedule is nothing like the one he had as a congressman, when he could go to his Florida district on Thursday night and not return to the capital until Tuesday morning. An intel official maintained that Goss is "energized daily by the challenges of his job."
A) Does not meet the requirements of the job and is dismissed
B) Does not fully meet the requirements of the job and requires a 30 day follow-up
C) Meets the requirements of the job
D) Exceeds the requirements of the job
Laughable if it were not real time--real life.
THE SOURCE ARTICLE IS:
The CIA Chief Steps Into It... Yet Again
By Mark Hosenball, Newsweek
Monday 14 March 2005 Issue
"The jobs that I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal... I'm a little amazed at the workload."—Porter Goss
March 14 issue - Bush critics and veteran intel operatives alike were amazed when CIA Director Porter Goss, in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library last week, apparently said he found his job overwhelming. The embarrassing report only reinforced the belief among some intel professionals that Goss's tenure has been troubled. The controversy erupted after the Associated Press quoted Goss as saying, "The jobs that I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal... I'm a little amazed at the workload." Goss also reportedly said there was such "ambiguity" in the intel-reform bill that he didn't know what his official relationship was supposed to be with John Negroponte, the newly named director of National Intelligence.
Intel officials initially said the CIA chief's lecture was supposed to be closed to the media and that the emcee who introduced him told the audience that Goss's remarks should be treated accordingly. But Joanne Drake, chief of staff of the Reagan Library Foundation, told NEWSWEEK that while the media were not explicitly invited and recording equipment was banned, the speech was publicly announced. She said anyone, including journalists, who bought a $45 ticket was welcome to attend. Drake and an intel official acknowledged the emcee never explicitly declared the session off the record.
Intel officials said Goss was aware the media were not absolutely banned from the luncheon. The officials said Goss nonetheless tried to use self-deprecation and folksy anecdotes to explain to a lay audience how full his plate really is. "This was a humorous way of saying the job has grown larger than any one person," said Jennifer Millerwise, a CIA spokeswoman. Millerwise said the AP misconstrued Goss when it paraphrased him saying he was "overwhelmed" by the many roles he had to play. "The remarks were taken out of context. They were spoken in the context of championing the new structure of the intelligence community," she said. Intel officials note that until Negroponte takes over such tasks as coordinating the work of all intel agencies and briefing the president daily, these jobs are being handled by Goss. Goss also has to supervise CIA analysis and espionage operations and carry out Bush's orders to increase the CIA's corps of expert spies and analysts by 50 percent. Officials argue that this makes Goss, at least until Negroponte comes onboard, the most powerful --and busiest-- director in CIA history. Not all intel sources were convinced by Goss's explanations. Some critics said the comments only validated Washington chatter that Goss is dismayed that his CIA schedule is nothing like the one he had as a congressman, when he could go to his Florida district on Thursday night and not return to the capital until Tuesday morning. An intel official maintained that Goss is "energized daily by the challenges of his job."
Taming Of The Shrews
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times Editorial, Sunday March 6, 2005
In my opinion, nobody can capture politics in a tongue-in-cheek manner better than Dowd. This is an excellent topic and extremely well written:
Arabs put their women in veils. We put ours in the stocks.
Every culture has its own way of tamping down female power, be it sexual, political or financial. Americans like to see women who wear the pants be beaten up and humiliated. Afterward, in a gratifying redemption ritual, people like to see the battered women be rewarded.
That's how Hilary Swank won two Oscars. That's how Hillary Clinton won a Senate seat and a presidential front-runner spot. And that's how Martha Stewart won her own reality TV show and became a half-billion dollars richer while she was in prison.
We've come a long way, baby, from the era of witch trials, when women with special power who knew how to curse were burned at the stake. Now, after a public comeuppance, they are staked to a lucrative new career. In this century, the scarlet letter morphs into a dollar sign.
Maybe temperamental, power-mad divas always needed to be brought down a peg. They used to do it to themselves. Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe were gorgeous monsters, but were so self-destructive there was no need to punish them further.
But Hillary and Martha - the domestic diva with the new ankle bracelet echoed Judy Garland on her Web site yesterday that "there is no place like home" - are not self-destructive. They are brass-knuckled survivors who elicit both admiration and an enmity that Alessandra Stanley memorably dubbed "blondenfreude."
From pornography to "Desperate Housewives," women being degraded has an entertainment value far greater than men being degraded. People liked Hillary and Martha a lot more once they were "broken," like one of Martha's saddle horses, ice queens melted into puddles of vulnerability.
Maybe it's because both women sometimes overreached, treated the help badly and displayed an unseemly greedy streak. Maybe it's because a dichotomy about their roles made them seem disingenuous: they gained renown for traditional feminine roles, and apron-and-hearth books, assuming guises to achieve male power and taking a route to the mahogany epicenter through the kitchen.
Hillary was America's first lady, photographed smiling in her designer dress as she oversaw table settings and placement for state dinners, even though we knew she did not care about such domestic piffle and was instead maneuvering to take over huge chunks of domestic policy.
Martha was America's first lady of gold-leaf designer lifestyle nesting, even though we knew that her über-nest was so scary that her husband had flown the coop. Though she was the ultimate professional homemaker and nurturer, she left her daughter out of the litany of things - cats, canaries, horses, chickens and dogs - she would miss in jail.
Obviously, many men are uncomfortable with successful women, so when these women are brushed back, alpha men can take comfort in knowing that alphettes are not threateningly all-powerful and that they had better soften those sharp edges.
I learned covering Geraldine Ferraro's vice presidential bid that the reaction of women to extraordinarily successful women is also ambivalent, with as much hostility as sisterly pride. An Icarus crash can mitigate the jealousy, while intensifying the feminist attachment.
After her husband's philandering with Monica, Hillary played the victim card all the way to the Senate. After her own bad judgment about her stocks, Martha metamorphosed from jailbird to phoenix.
Why don't we need to see Oprah, another titan known by her first name, slapped back? Probably because Oprah never had an icy or phony side to her public persona and because her struggles in her childhood and with her weight take the edge off any animus that might be leveled at her for a net worth of $1.3 billion.
And what about Condi, who's now being touted for the Republican ticket in 2008? Perhaps she does not need to play the victim to make people feel better about her power because she was never seen as a termagant, pushing people around and bending them to her will. She always seemed subservient to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, a willing handmaiden and spokesman for their bellicose bidding.
One Democratic image maker admiringly predicts that, having survived their virago and victim phases, our two most relentless blondes will outlast everyone: "When the world ends, there will be left only a few cockroaches, Cher, Hillary and Martha."
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
New York Times Editorial, Sunday March 6, 2005
In my opinion, nobody can capture politics in a tongue-in-cheek manner better than Dowd. This is an excellent topic and extremely well written:
Arabs put their women in veils. We put ours in the stocks.
Every culture has its own way of tamping down female power, be it sexual, political or financial. Americans like to see women who wear the pants be beaten up and humiliated. Afterward, in a gratifying redemption ritual, people like to see the battered women be rewarded.
That's how Hilary Swank won two Oscars. That's how Hillary Clinton won a Senate seat and a presidential front-runner spot. And that's how Martha Stewart won her own reality TV show and became a half-billion dollars richer while she was in prison.
We've come a long way, baby, from the era of witch trials, when women with special power who knew how to curse were burned at the stake. Now, after a public comeuppance, they are staked to a lucrative new career. In this century, the scarlet letter morphs into a dollar sign.
Maybe temperamental, power-mad divas always needed to be brought down a peg. They used to do it to themselves. Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe were gorgeous monsters, but were so self-destructive there was no need to punish them further.
But Hillary and Martha - the domestic diva with the new ankle bracelet echoed Judy Garland on her Web site yesterday that "there is no place like home" - are not self-destructive. They are brass-knuckled survivors who elicit both admiration and an enmity that Alessandra Stanley memorably dubbed "blondenfreude."
From pornography to "Desperate Housewives," women being degraded has an entertainment value far greater than men being degraded. People liked Hillary and Martha a lot more once they were "broken," like one of Martha's saddle horses, ice queens melted into puddles of vulnerability.
Maybe it's because both women sometimes overreached, treated the help badly and displayed an unseemly greedy streak. Maybe it's because a dichotomy about their roles made them seem disingenuous: they gained renown for traditional feminine roles, and apron-and-hearth books, assuming guises to achieve male power and taking a route to the mahogany epicenter through the kitchen.
Hillary was America's first lady, photographed smiling in her designer dress as she oversaw table settings and placement for state dinners, even though we knew she did not care about such domestic piffle and was instead maneuvering to take over huge chunks of domestic policy.
Martha was America's first lady of gold-leaf designer lifestyle nesting, even though we knew that her über-nest was so scary that her husband had flown the coop. Though she was the ultimate professional homemaker and nurturer, she left her daughter out of the litany of things - cats, canaries, horses, chickens and dogs - she would miss in jail.
Obviously, many men are uncomfortable with successful women, so when these women are brushed back, alpha men can take comfort in knowing that alphettes are not threateningly all-powerful and that they had better soften those sharp edges.
I learned covering Geraldine Ferraro's vice presidential bid that the reaction of women to extraordinarily successful women is also ambivalent, with as much hostility as sisterly pride. An Icarus crash can mitigate the jealousy, while intensifying the feminist attachment.
After her husband's philandering with Monica, Hillary played the victim card all the way to the Senate. After her own bad judgment about her stocks, Martha metamorphosed from jailbird to phoenix.
Why don't we need to see Oprah, another titan known by her first name, slapped back? Probably because Oprah never had an icy or phony side to her public persona and because her struggles in her childhood and with her weight take the edge off any animus that might be leveled at her for a net worth of $1.3 billion.
And what about Condi, who's now being touted for the Republican ticket in 2008? Perhaps she does not need to play the victim to make people feel better about her power because she was never seen as a termagant, pushing people around and bending them to her will. She always seemed subservient to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, a willing handmaiden and spokesman for their bellicose bidding.
One Democratic image maker admiringly predicts that, having survived their virago and victim phases, our two most relentless blondes will outlast everyone: "When the world ends, there will be left only a few cockroaches, Cher, Hillary and Martha."
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Finally, Justice may be served...Rummy under fire
Suit Alleges Rumsfeld Approved Torture
Politics - Reuters
By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. human rights groups on Tuesday sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying he first authorized and then failed to stop torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed suit in federal district court in Rumsfeld's home state of Illinois on behalf of eight former detainees who said they were severely tortured. All eight were subsequently released without being charged.
"Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for this descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop torture," said Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel in the case.
The Pentagon said it was studying the complaint and had no immediate comment.
The ACLU filed similar complaints against three other senior officers: Col. Thomas Pappas, Gen. Janis Karpinski and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez on behalf of prisoners mistreated at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
The suit against Rumsfeld focuses on an order he signed on Dec. 2, 2002 which authorized new interrogation techniques for detainees in the "war on terror" being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The techniques included "stress positions," hooding, 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, exploiting phobias to induce stress, prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation.
Later, when evidence became overwhelming that prisoners were being tortured, Rumsfeld turned a blind eye and allowed the mistreatment to proceed, the suit alleges.
"Secretary Rumsfeld knew full well that his orders were causing torture and he knew that torture was occurring on a widespread basis and he did not stop it," Guttentag said.
SEEKING DAMAGES
The plaintiffs want the court to declare Rumsfeld's actions unconstitutional and a violation of U.S. and international law and are also seeking monetary damages for their injuries. All eight are willing to come to the United States to testify.
The plaintiffs -- four Afghan citizens and four Iraqis -- allege treatment that included beatings, being cut with knives, sexual abuse and humiliation, being locked in coffin-like boxes for extended periods, being deprived of food and water and threatened with execution and being hung upside down for hours on end.
Arkan Mohammed Ali, a 26-year-old Iraqi held for a year from June 2003 to 2004, alleges that U.S. personnel twice beat him unconscious, used a large knife to repeatedly stab and slice his forearm, burned and shocked him with a small metal device, locked him naked for several days in a small wooden box, urinated on him and made death threats against him.
Mehboob Ahmad, a 35-year-old Afghan citizen held for five months in 2003, said he was probed anally, hung upside down from the ceiling by a chain and hung by his arms for extended periods. Soldiers once forced him to drink 12 half-liter bottles of water in five minutes.
The mistreatment of prisoners became an international scandal after the appearance last year of pictures showing sexual abuse of men -- naked and bound -- at Abu Ghraib. The administration led by President Bush says only a handful of low-ranking personnel were involved.
Dozens of other cases have been brought against soldiers for abusing detainees elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan but previous efforts to charge senior officers and administration officials have not proceeded very far.
An August 2004 report by a panel appointed by Rumsfeld stated that he and other top Pentagon leaders contributed to an environment in which prisoners suffered sadistic abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Politics - Reuters
By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. human rights groups on Tuesday sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying he first authorized and then failed to stop torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed suit in federal district court in Rumsfeld's home state of Illinois on behalf of eight former detainees who said they were severely tortured. All eight were subsequently released without being charged.
"Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for this descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop torture," said Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel in the case.
The Pentagon said it was studying the complaint and had no immediate comment.
The ACLU filed similar complaints against three other senior officers: Col. Thomas Pappas, Gen. Janis Karpinski and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez on behalf of prisoners mistreated at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
The suit against Rumsfeld focuses on an order he signed on Dec. 2, 2002 which authorized new interrogation techniques for detainees in the "war on terror" being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The techniques included "stress positions," hooding, 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, exploiting phobias to induce stress, prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation.
Later, when evidence became overwhelming that prisoners were being tortured, Rumsfeld turned a blind eye and allowed the mistreatment to proceed, the suit alleges.
"Secretary Rumsfeld knew full well that his orders were causing torture and he knew that torture was occurring on a widespread basis and he did not stop it," Guttentag said.
SEEKING DAMAGES
The plaintiffs want the court to declare Rumsfeld's actions unconstitutional and a violation of U.S. and international law and are also seeking monetary damages for their injuries. All eight are willing to come to the United States to testify.
The plaintiffs -- four Afghan citizens and four Iraqis -- allege treatment that included beatings, being cut with knives, sexual abuse and humiliation, being locked in coffin-like boxes for extended periods, being deprived of food and water and threatened with execution and being hung upside down for hours on end.
Arkan Mohammed Ali, a 26-year-old Iraqi held for a year from June 2003 to 2004, alleges that U.S. personnel twice beat him unconscious, used a large knife to repeatedly stab and slice his forearm, burned and shocked him with a small metal device, locked him naked for several days in a small wooden box, urinated on him and made death threats against him.
Mehboob Ahmad, a 35-year-old Afghan citizen held for five months in 2003, said he was probed anally, hung upside down from the ceiling by a chain and hung by his arms for extended periods. Soldiers once forced him to drink 12 half-liter bottles of water in five minutes.
The mistreatment of prisoners became an international scandal after the appearance last year of pictures showing sexual abuse of men -- naked and bound -- at Abu Ghraib. The administration led by President Bush says only a handful of low-ranking personnel were involved.
Dozens of other cases have been brought against soldiers for abusing detainees elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan but previous efforts to charge senior officers and administration officials have not proceeded very far.
An August 2004 report by a panel appointed by Rumsfeld stated that he and other top Pentagon leaders contributed to an environment in which prisoners suffered sadistic abuse at Abu Ghraib.
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