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Tuesday, September 30, 2003 "This is an administration of the insiders, by the insiders and for the insiders." Senator John Edwards of North Carolina It is very difficult for me to understand the current political process. They try to pin down administrations on technicalities like a small intelligence leak here or there while being completely oblivious to facts like hijacking a country's command and control to go to war for personal reasons "this guy threatened to kill my dad" and for personal gain "Halliburton, New Bridge Strategies, and more". Read Article posted by durani, 09/30/03 14:54 | link | comments Abortion and the Catholic Church In recent public statements made by the Vatican, the position of the Catholic Church regarding abortion appears absolute and immutable. Catholic teaching on abortion, however, has always been marked by a variety of beliefs, and the anti-choice stance is only one view among many.1 Indeed, the predominantly Catholic countries of Belgium, France, and Italy have abortion laws that are among the world's most liberal. 2 The current Catholic approach to abortion contradicts other long-standing teachings of the Church. It is clear that, for most of its history, the Catholic Church did not consider abortion at early stages of pregnancy to be equivalent to the killing of a human being. Catholic teaching has been historically dominated by the belief in "delayed hominization" - that is, the belief that a fetus is not human until it has developed into a fully human form. Since a less than fully human body is not capable of receiving a soul and a human does not exist without the presence of both a fully human body and a soul, early abortion was historically not thought to constitute the taking of a human life. 3 Because the Vatican's condemnation of abortion has not been reconciled with these contradictory teachings, it is not considered an "infallible" teaching of the Church. 4 Catholics worldwide freely exercise their right to follow personal conscience in the face of theological uncertainty regarding the nature of the fetus. One study found that, in the United States, Catholic women have an abortion rate 29% higher than Protestant women. 5 Although a strong Catholic lobby has managed to keep abortion illegal in most Latin American countries, women who can afford to pay for abortions can easily find doctors willing to perform them. Some professionals even advertise their abortion services in newspapers. 6 MORE posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/30/03 09:24 | link | comments New Law Passed to Block Concert Suicide The St. Petersburg city council passed a law Monday designed to scuttle a rock group's plans to feature an onstage suicide. The hard-rock band Hell on Earth had said that a suicide by a terminally ill person would take place during a concert Saturday to raise awareness of right-to-die issues. Read more... posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/30/03 04:02 | link | comments (1) "Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born." ~Garrett Hardin posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/30/03 03:58 | link | comments The Plame Game The seed usually lies dormant for a brief interval after being planted in a column or news story. If planted in the midsummer heat when journalists and politicians are busy with their vacations, it may take weeks or even months for the tender tendrils to germinate in the back pages of daily papers, in political magazines, opinion columns, and (nowadays, at least) on the Internet before sprouting in the full green of Page One. Read More... posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/30/03 03:09 | link | comments Monday, September 29, 2003 "Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident." -Jean-Paul Sartre posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/29/03 02:52 | link | comments (1) Friday, September 26, 2003 posted by durani, 09/26/03 14:21 | link | comments Social connectivity through the internet is an awesome thing. It is beginning to undermine the vision of brainwashed society which so many sociologists and theorists, including Noam Chomsky, feared that television would create. Whereas TV sapped the will to collective action, the internet facilitates it. While television has killed the art of conversation, the internet is restoring it. The following link to a brilliant essay by Emily Bell, on Microsoft's real motives behind closing chat rooms. Link posted by durani, 09/26/03 07:55 | link | comments (1) "Now we're busy making all our busy plans, built on foundations built to last, but nothing fades as fast as the future and nothing clings like the past." -Peter Gabriel posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/26/03 06:57 | link | comments “I’M NOT LYING, THIS IS NOT A PIPE”
posted by durani, 09/26/03 06:05 | link | comments (2) CAPRICE, MISTAKE, AND THE DEATH PENALTY posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/26/03 05:30 | link | comments This is for my fellow night owls...I'm sure you relate. "I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it's hallow, when ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so -- this has always been my dream -- so that while everyone else is that frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to be done, like the elves who make the shoes while the children sleep." - Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/26/03 03:18 | link | comments (2) Thursday, September 25, 2003 Amina Lawal Conviction Overturned http://www.msnbc.com/news/971612.asp?0cv=CB10 posted by queenbee, 09/25/03 12:19 | link | comments Reality is an Illusion, caused by lack of alcohol! Omar Khayam posted by durani, 09/25/03 09:14 | link | comments (4) "I don't believe in anything. If I have to believe in it, it isn't true. If it were true, it would just be." -Mars Saxman posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/25/03 08:15 | link | comments "The fact that the United States can label other countries as terrorist states itself is quite remarkable because it not a secret that the United States is incontrovertibly a terrorist state." -Noam Chomsky posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/25/03 08:05 | link | comments (2) "I think it's a responsibility of logical, thoughtful people to take anything they read with a grain of salt..." - Sean Johnston posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/25/03 08:04 | link | comments A bit of late-night humor:
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/25/03 04:52 | link | comments Right-wing Media Over the last decade or so, right-wing media has achieved a peculiar status in mainstream America. Conservative commentators, radio personalities, and publications have ingeniously justified their naked partisanship as a necessary “response” to a wholly invented enemy - media bias. When you step back and look at this, you begin to realize the resulting inequity of information dissemination in this country. Article continued here. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/25/03 03:26 | link | comments Wednesday, September 24, 2003 “It's not improbable that the near future will see some breakdown in the world economic system." Willis Harman A time of shaking-up is coming, a bottleneck of trends in which all assumptions would be up for grabs. This period would last for years before things settle down into a new equilibrium. Business strategy visionaries call this period “The Rapids” Without an immediate action from profit-making supra-organisms (business social forms) to live up to their social responsibilities everyone will suffer including the profit-based social forms themselves. The following is a link to an interview with Willis Harman that I would like to share with members of this esteemed community. It is about “times of turning”. HTML - PDF posted by durani, 09/24/03 04:53 | link | comments (2) War Against Marijuana Consumers
For more on this topic, click here. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/24/03 04:41 | link | comments In 1999, 1,350 wiretaps were authorized by state and Federal courts. Of these, 978 – a total of 72.4% -- were for drug investigations, 139 (10%) were for racketeering, 60 (4.4%) were for gambling, 62 (4.6%) were for homicide or assault, and only 7 – about half a percent – were for kidnapping. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/24/03 04:33 | link | comments Bush to World: Drop Dead!
Here were the world's foreign ministers and heads of state, anxiously awaiting some sign of an American concession to realism—even the sketchiest outline of a plan to share not just the burden but the power of postwar occupation in Iraq. And Bush gave them nothing, in some ways less than nothing. Article continued at: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088799/ For the transcript of today's speech: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/22TEXT-BUSH.html?pagewanted=1 posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/24/03 02:45 | link | comments (1) Tuesday, September 23, 2003 The Buzzwords of Wesley Clark Hands-on Example: "I'd be different than they [the current Democratic candidates] are. I spent my life in … a different form of public service. It's been more hands-on leadership in a different way, more directive, more executive type authority. … I've got hands-on experience in foreign policy and military affairs that some of them don't have" (Buchanan and Press, MSNBC, July 25, 2003). And more at: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088542/ posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/23/03 06:15 | link | comments (1) Ashcroft Limiting Prosecutors' Use of Plea Bargains
The policy directive issued by Mr. Ashcroft is the latest in a series of steps the Justice Department has taken in recent months to combat what it sees as dangerously lenient practices by some federal prosecutors and judges. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/23/03 05:58 | link | comments This is an excellent article! DECONSTRUCTING REAGAN posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/23/03 04:11 | link | comments
Atlantic Monthly, October 2003
Bit taken from:http://slate.msn.com/id/2088317/
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/23/03 03:34 | link | comments Waging War on Wesley Clark A Newsweek poll released today shows Gen. Wesley Clark leading the Democratic race less than a week after he threw his hat in the ring. In July 2001, Christopher Caldwell and Debra Dickerson discussed Clark's book Waging Modern War in Slate's "Book Club." They were not impressed. Caldwell identified "an agenda of score-settling and ass-covering" at the book's core, and Dickerson, who spent 12 years in the U.S. Air Force, declared, "Given the overpoliticization of today's soldiers, we'd all have been better off had … Clark kept this book, his mind games and coup-counting, to himself." Article From: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088743/ posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/23/03 03:27 | link | comments (1)
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| Howard who? When he announced his candidacy, Wesley Clark became the Democrats' new It Boy | |
| Campaign 2004: Clark’s Charge | |
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The Race: The general did what he always does—shot to the top of his class. But his skin is thin, and the climb is steep. What Wesley Clark’s arrival does to the Democratic field? Article Contiued at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/969659.asp?0ql=c8p |
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/22/03 08:25 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/22/03 06:04 | link | comments (2)
MYTH:
MARIJUANA POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS IS A FAILURE. Dutch law, which allows marijuana to be bought, sold, and used openly, has resulted in increasing rates of marijuana use, particularly in youth.
FACT:
The Netherlands' drug policy is the most nonpunitive in Europe. For more than twenty years, Dutch citizens over age eighteen have been permitted to buy and use cannabis (marijuana and hashish) in government-regulated coffee shops. This policy has not resulted in dramatically escalating cannabis use. For most age groups, rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands are similar to those in the United States. However, for young adolescents, rates of marijuana use are lower in the Netherlands than in the United States. The Dutch people overwhelmingly approve of current cannabis policy which seeks to normalize rather than dramatize cannabis use. The Dutch government occasionally revises existing policy, but it remains committed to decriminalization.
For more myths/facts on cannabis, go to: http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/22/03 05:39 | link | comments (1)
Sunday, September 21, 2003
I'd like to go back to NakedandAlive's
(N&A) question
about the Constitution, posed, right here in this blog, last Friday.
Prodding us to think about our Constitution as an antiquated document
in need of reform, N&A endorsed the idea of calling
for
a
convention to modernize it. But doesn't the problem reside not in the
document
itself, but in its interpretation by the courts? A more activist,
left-leaning Supreme Court could find even more protections of
individual and community rights. I'm sure that we agree that in the
current political climate that's quite impossible to imagine.
Perhaps it is just this need for interpretation that bothers
N&A.
Let's
just put it right, she
might argue. OK, apart from the fact that
this is clearly a theoretical argument because there is no way in hell
that today anyone could find the votes to shift the American culture
from
consumerism and militarism to a more liberal humanism, but doesn't
changing the document that has survived 200+ years of tumultuous
history risk tinkering with the built-in vagueness that has insured its
very survival? ...a survival that helped fuel and support civil
rights movement with the force of law and continues to allow us to
challenge right wing attacks on our liberties. Strict adherence to its
articles
and amendments gives us everything we need to have a just society, as
long as we could convince our fellow citizens (and the Supreme Court)
to come along for the
ride.
The Constitution, now under serious attack by the Bush administration
in the form of the diabolically named Patriot Act, needs, more than
ever, our support.
I provide a link to an interview with Nat Hentoff, a columnist and long
time defender of the Bill of Rights, entitled, "If We Lose the Constitution, Who Wins
Then?"
What do you citizens of the world think?
(Thanks to the fabulous NakedAndAlive for the guest appearance!)
posted by howard, 09/21/03 15:33 | link | comments (5)
Saturday, September 20, 2003
The Human Rights Watch released new report about child soldier in Colombia. Estimated that 11,000 children were fighting in this nation's civil war, serving as messengers, foot soldiers and even executioners for leftist rebel bands and right-wing paramilitary armies.
Our paper (I am a reporter to sort news from the internet) worked on this story and I was responsible for search similar background information such as what's happening in some countries such as Uganda, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Burma and so.
One young teenage girl told that she become a child soldier in Colombia and look for freer live, but once she refused to sleep with one of the senior officer she got abused and she escaped from the camp.
I feel sick when I read those case studies of child soldiers, their character and esteem were denatured by war and they are deprived from normal school live and childhood. Their lives are ruined by wars.
Please refer to Human Rights Watch web page.
P.S. Thanks for NAKEDandALIVE invite me 
, I am so happy to be here!
posted by stenoeon, 09/20/03 12:41 | link | comments (3)
Friday, September 19, 2003
The Netherlands has just become the world's first country to make cannabis available as a prescription drug in pharmacies to treat chronically ill patients. It seems the Dutch health authorities, one of the most progressive in the world, is turning the tide towards a more humane potentially enjoyable world .more. 
posted by durani, 09/19/03 10:25 | link | comments (2)
"On the East coast, [more than] 100,000 people are getting ready to flee Hurricane Isabel. And thanks to President Bush's economic plan, many places have already gotten a head start boarding up their businesses."
—Jon Stewart
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/19/03 07:42 | link | comments
While looking at various presidential candidates and various articles that wave the U.S. Constitution, I have to wonder:
Why does America pride itself on having the oldest constitution?
Shouldn’t a state be more progressive? Of course, some articles are seen as fundamental, but others are simply outdated or without definition in our modern time. The vagueness of our constitution has resulted in mass debates and violations by both individuals and the state using it to serve their own needs/wants/desires. It’s time for an update….
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/19/03 05:47 | link | comments (2)
As a physician, I do not believe Congress or the President should practice medicine. Abortion is a deeply personal decision, which ought to be made between a woman and her physician. It's none of the government's business. 
- Howard Dean
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/19/03 05:31 | link | comments (1)
Addictive Qualities of Popular Drugs
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|---|
Isn't this table interesting? It's amazing how international drug prohibition began and evolved, but it is truly scary when we have come to accept whatever the drug czar says. We have been socialized to not question the government stance on illicit drugs. The government limits research and it seems as though we will never have an honest and sensible drug policy in this nation. Lets focus on facts rather than propaganda.
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/19/03 04:23 | link | comments (4)
| Newsbrief: Dutch Government Seeks to Ban Cops from Enjoying Coffee Shops 9/12/03
The conservative Dutch government's interior minister, Johan Remkes, is leading an effort to bar Dutch police officers from enjoying the fare offered in the country's world famous marijuana "coffee shops." The effort comes as Amsterdam police are reeling over a highly publicized drug use scandal, but the police union remains steadfast in opposing any move to keep the cops out of the shops. In an interview with De Telegraaf (Amsterdam), Remkes said the spectacle of pot-smoking police damaged the force's respectable image and would lead to charges of hypocrisy when police attempted to enforce other drug laws. "A police officer has an exemplary role to fulfill and has to show some authority," Remkes said. "They could be in a difficult position if they have to stop and search people for drugs." Police officers would be banned from the coffee shops whether on or off duty, Remkes added. Remkes' effort comes in the wake of a widely aired television documentary by investigative journalist Peter de Vries. De Vries found police commanders popping ecstasy, allegations of small-scale dealing among police officers, and stories of doped up cops trashing vacation homes. De Vries' documentary led to the firing of 12 Amsterdam police officers, two of whom claimed that a quarter of the central Amsterdam police use hard drugs. Remke and his VVD party want to extend the coffee shop ban to other officials, including mayors and government ministers, but first they have to get past the police. And the Dutch police union is standing firm on the coffee shop issue. "Visits to coffee shops are not forbidden, so it is strange that police officers would be barred from going in their free time," a police union spokesman told the Guardian (London). |
From: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/302/dutchcops.shtml
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/19/03 04:19 | link | comments
With the announcement the Wesley Clark would be running for the Democratic nomination, questions arise. Can his military resume overshadow his complete lack of political experience? Where does he stand on the issues? And can he catch up with the race having not been in two debates and behind in fundraising? I am currently a Howard Dean supporter, but more than anything, I want Bush out! Dean may very well end up falling back in the race and Clark could surge forward because of his military experience. Below are a few links regarding his views: Official Campaign Site for Wesley Clark: http://www.americansforclark.com/ The Worldview of Wesley Clark: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088624/ The Buzzwords of Wesley Clark: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088542/ Listen up, Wesley Clark! Here's how generals get elected president:
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/19/03 02:47 | link | comments (4)
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Ah...a telling quote by Jeb Bush: "No Child … what's it called?"
(Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, explaining to June Kronholz in today's Wall Street Journal that the failure of 87 percent of Florida's schools to meet to meet Florida's self-imposed benchmark under President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act "doesn't bother me." Gov. Bush said Florida scored so poorly because "we didn't game it. We didn't lower our standards." President Bush touted the program last week in a speech delivered in Jacksonville, Fla.)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 08:30 | link | comments
I had someone send me this email earlier this week. I'm not sure if the origin is correct, but interesting....
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 07:33 | link | comments (1)
Breast Implants Linked to Suicides
Increased Suicide Risk Shown Among Women Who Get Breast Implants
Sept. 12, 2003 (Philadelphia) -- A second study in only seven months shows that women who get breast implants commit suicide three times more often than women who don't - but at least one expert cautions that the findings could be misleading. Article continued at: http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/73/88985.htm
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 06:36 | link | comments
Joke Time!
Teach your children: A first grade teacher in the Midwest is explaining to her class that she is a Republican and how nice it is that a new Republican president has taken office. She asks her students to raise their hands if they, too, are Republicans and support George Bush. Everyone in class raises their hands except one little girl. "Mary," says the teacher with surprise, "why didn't you raise your hand?" Because I'm not a Republican," says Mary. "Well, what are you?" asks the teacher. "I'm a Democrat and proud of it," replies the little girl. The teacher cannot believe her ears. "My goodness, Mary, why are you a Democrat?" she asks. “Well, my momma and papa are Democrats, so I'm a Democrat, too." "Well," says the teacher in an annoyed tone, "that's no reason for you to be a Democrat. You don't always have to be like your parents. What if your momma was a criminal and your papa was a criminal, too, what would you be then?" "Then," Mary smiled, "then we'd be Republicans."
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 06:20 | link | comments (2)
 Farmers say spraying kills all crops and ruins their livelihood |
Drug cultivation in Colombia has fallen by more than 30% so far this year, according to a United Nations report.
The Colombian Government is heralding the findings as proof that its massive aerial eradication programme is paying off.
But critics claim the scheme is not eradicating drug fields, simply displacing them, and fear it will damage the Amazon's delicate eco-system.
While crops are down in Colombia, they are on the increase in Peru and Bolivia - and, tellingly, cocaine supply to the United States has not been interrupted and prices stay the same.
Military aid
The news that drug cultivation in Colombia has fallen by 32% comes amid concern over its controversial crop-spraying programme.
The scheme is financed by the US and is Washington's principle condition for continuing military aid.
But peasants and human rights groups oppose the spraying of toxic chemicals over drug fields, many of which are in the vulnerable Amazonian rainforest.
The glyphosate chemicals, which are sprayed from planes kill all plant life, not just drug crops, and leave peasants destitute.
Critics allege the spraying simply feeds displacement and leads to more virgin rainforest being cut down, and that manual eradication is the only way forward.
There are those that dispute the UN figures. Large industrial drug plantations have disappeared in most parts of the country. But smaller fields, too tiny to attract the notice of spray planes and perhaps even the satellite imagery, proliferate.
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 06:03 | link | comments (1)
September 16, 2003
The Israeli government of Ariel Sharon must live in a parallel universe.
How else to explain its open discussion of removing Yasser Arafat, including by out and out assassination?
Leaving aside the gross violation of international law and protocol that such an act would involve, consider the practical results.
The Arab world as a whole would be enraged, which is the last thing Israel--and the United States, for that matter--needs.
And the Palestinian people would not by any means be subdued. Somehow, Sharon and his advisers have convinced themselves that offing Arafat will solve everything.
They're dead wrong. The terrorist bombings from Hamas and Islamic Jihad will continue, whether Arafat is dead or alive, in Tunis or Ramallah. And if he's killed, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of new Palestinian recruits, eager to blow themselves up--and scores of Israeli civilians--to avenge his murder.
That Sharon and his advisers are even talking about such an act reveals how far gone they are.
One more point: If the head of any other country in the world was openly threatening to kill the elected leader of another country, there would be a huge international outcry, and if the targeted leader happened to be an ally of Washington, then the President and Congress and all the rightwing radio blowhards would be up in arms.
But when the targeted person happens to be Yasser Arafat, you hear barely a peep of protest from our officials, and plenty of bloodcurdling encouragement from the right.
So much for standing on principle.
-- Matthew Rothschild
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 05:38 | link | comments (1)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 04:01 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 03:55 | link | comments
Scientists scouring ancient rocks in Scotland have discovered fossils of the world's oldest genitals belonging to 400-million-year-old insects.
Jason Dunlop says the fossils of the ancient harvestmen insect, commonly known as a daddy-long-legs, show its penis was two-thirds the length of its body and remarkably similar to the modern-day species.
Mr Dunlop says his team of researchers from Humbolt University in Berlin has also uncovered a long egg-laying organ called an ovipositor from a female.
He says as well as the genitals, the fossils have the oldest known arachnid respiratory system, suggesting the insects' ancestors had long since crawled out of the sea and learned to breathe.
The previous oldest penis, dating back 100-million years, had belonged to an ostracod, an early crustacean related to crabs, shrimps and water fleas.
Article from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s948293.htm
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 03:09 | link | comments (1)
US President George W Bush has clarified his administration's position on links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, amid American confusion over the issue.
In a recent justification of the war on Iraq, Vice-President Dick Cheney emphasised relationships between Saddam Hussein and militant Islamic groups.
However a recent opinion poll in the United States found that 70 per cent of those polled believe that Saddam Hussein himself was involved in the September 11 attacks.
Under questioning today, Mr Bush says that has not been proven.
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September the 11th," he said.
"What the Vice President said is that he has been involved with Al Qaeda."
Mr Bush went on to say that he had no doubt that Saddam Hussein had links with Al Qaeda affiliated groups in Iraq, such as Ansar al-Islam.
Critics of the Bush administration have accused it of deliberately encouraging public confusion over the issue.
Taken from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s948452.htm
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 03:04 | link | comments
Passion Misplay
Yes, Jews probably really did kill Jesus.
By Steven Waldman
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 10:12 AM PT
You probably won't find many Jews conceding the point that, biblically speaking, Jewish leaders were complicit in the death of Jesus. In fact, given the history of this topic—with the Christ-killer charge having helped provide the justification and fuel for European anti-Semitism—it's no surprise that it is nearly impossible to have a constructive interfaith conversation about the Crucifixion.
Article continued at: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088417/
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/18/03 02:44 | link | comments (1)
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/17/03 07:01 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/17/03 06:56 | link | comments (1)
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
Voltaire
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/17/03 05:06 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 09/17/03 05:01 | link | comments (1)
"Sometimes, when you look around, everything seems still and calm on the surface. But then you detect a slight disturbance and you know for sure that beneath the surface lies some other secret world."
-Peter Gabriel
Our country's war on drugs places great emphasis on arresting people for smoking marijuana. Since 1990, nearly 5.9 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges, a greater number than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined. In 2000, state and local law enforcement arrested 734,498 people for marijuana violations. This is an increase of 800 percent since 1980, and is the highest ever recorded by the FBI. 
ASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — Attorney General John Ashcroft today made it tougher for federal prosecutors to strike plea bargains with criminal defendants, requiring attorneys to seek the most serious charges possible in almost all cases. 
