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Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers

5 things you should know about Al Jazeera

1. Al Jazeera was the first Arab station to ever broadcast interviews with Israeli officials.
2. Al Jazeera has never broadcast a beheading.
3. George W. Bush has recieved approximately 500 hours of airtime, while Bin Laden has received about 5 hours of airtime.
4. Over 50 million people across the world watch Al Jazeera.
5. The Al Jazeera websites are http://www.aljazeera.net (Arabic) and http://english.aljazeera.net (English). AlJazeera.com, AlJazeerah.info and all other variations have nothing to do with us.

This Friday is Buy Nothing Day

Yes, it's that time of year again! Regular ConNiPtioNs readers will remember Buy Nothing Day from the past three years that I've posted about it. I don't have time to say much about it this year, but click on the banner below for details.

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Also, checkout the Wal-Mart Takedown Center

The President cares about America's poor

The President of Venezuela that is. Hugo Chavez is sending cheap heating oil to two communities in the US.

From HoustonChronicle.com - AROUND THE REGION

Citgo to help poor on heating oil costs

Citgo Petroleum said Thursday it plans to distribute discounted heating oil to the U.S. poor to help them cope with expected record fuel costs this winter.

The Houston-based company, a subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA, said it will send up to 12 million gallons of cheaper heating oil to communities in Boston and the Bronx borough of New York City next week.

It is the second offer of energy assistance from Venezuela — whose leftist President Hugo Chavez is a harsh critic of President Bush — since hurricanes disrupted oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico this summer.

Baby's first Halloween

My sister invited us to bring the baby to the annual Halloween party at her church. So we quickly put together a costume for him. We dressed him in a red sleeper and put a red turtleneck over it. We glued a piece of white fabric over his tummy. Now he just needed something for his head. I ran into the Family Dollar store and found a red knit hat for $1 and a $1 red plastic crazy straw cup that was shaped sort of like a heart with a hole in the middle. I put the lid of the cup inside the hat and screwed the cup on the outside. Put the hat on his head and he was Po. And he looked pretty good for a $2 costume. In fact he won the prize for the cutest. The prize: coupons for Burger King french fries and a small Coke. I guess those coupons will go in the scrapbook. I know that people feed that crap to kids but I can't imagine encouraging it.

My mother and father were there too. Just as we were getting ready to leave my mother said she would hold the baby while I put on my coat. She had him for maybe ten seconds and I turned around to get him and she is wiping white icing from his mouth. He is ten months old and she is feeding him icing, and after she asked me earlier if he could have some and said no. So I took him back from her and said, " Nanny has lost her baby privileges." Grandparents!

Anyhow, we had fun. We felt like we were crashing the party since we do not go there, but it is the family church. I went there as a kid and my parents and sister and various cousins attend, so it is sort of like a family gathering.

We will have another family gathering today at the hospital. My father is getting his knee replaced today. He is probably in surgery right now. He is not in the best health and I'm a bit worried about him having any surgery but he could hardly walk on his knee. I hope this helps him.

Catching up on current events

There has been so much going on and I haven't had time to comment on any of it.

Dubya's approval ratings are at an all-time low.

The FTAA went down in flames. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and Bolivian populist Evo Morales stole the show by leading a peaceful People's Summit of over 450,000 people in Arghentina. Chavez declared, "The FTAA does not exist; let's create a fair trade." But he warned that FTAA supporters will try again to revive it.

Bush continues to "restore honor and integrity" to the Oval Office. Secret prisons.

Bush is now even refusing to listen to his own God (speaking through Bush's own United Methodist Church) and withdraw from Iraq. God told him to invade, now God is telling him to stop the unjust war.

And, of course, the quote of the week that exemplifies the Bush administration:

"Please roll up the sleeves on your shirt -- all shirts. Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this crisis and on TV you just need to look more hard-working ... ROLL UP THE SLEEVES."

-- Sharon Worthy, in email to FEMA Director Michael Brown during the Katrina disaster

There was a lot more that I missed in the past few weeks, but that's all I have time for right now.

Quotes for Veterans Day

“I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind. If nations were to go to war for every degree of injury, there would never be peace on earth.”
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed—those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending its money alone—it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a speech on April 16, 1953

"War is as much a punishment to the punisher as it is to the sufferer."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
-- Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

"War is delightful to those who have not experienced it."
-- Erasmus

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
-- George W. Bush, Newsweek, September 24, 2001

"How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy."
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Baby update

It doesn't seem possible but Baby will be a year old in a few weeks. This year has gone by so fast.

He has one more physical therapy appointment for his CMT. There has been a great improvement. When we started PT he had about 50% range of motion on one side of his neck and now it is almost 100%. We do stretching exercises three times a day with him. I wish that I would have pushed the doctor to send us to PT earlier. He waited three months after I first asked about it, so now Baby's head is flat in one spot.

We are still signing. He uses several signs--more, milk, eat, book, shoes, hat, all gone. And he understands more but does not make them. He has even started to put some signs together like more milk or more eat. He says a few words--dada, mama, bye-bye, bubble, pap pap.

He is also walking pretty well for an eleven month old. He hasn't quite mastered the stopping part. He usually just keeps going until I stop him or he falls over. I have lost about five pounds in the last month or so. I think it is from chasing him and carrying him up and down the stairs about five or six times a day.

He is still a really good sleeper. He almost always takes two naps during the day and the sleeps from about 8:30 until 7am. We are afraid that if we have another baby we won't be able to handle it because he has been so good and relatively easy to take care of.

Roman Catholics have the "obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer"

So says The Vatican.

What's this? An order from upon high for Roman Catholics to believe Science? Did you hear that Mrs Proctor?

Earlier this year she stated, "Just like with evolution, people of faith TEND to be inclined to disbelieve it and dismiss the 'science' that is used as evidence (although it's a theory)." And then in February she said, "I believe in the creationism movement and frankly think all Christians should unless science can PROVE otherwise, which (it) has not been able to do." Like any good hypocrite she will no doubt use science if it supports her beliefs and dismiss whatever she disagrees with.

Newsday.com: Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science

Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer

November 4, 2005, 10:12 AM EST

VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.

By the way, we are still waiting for the results of Dumbgirl's investigation of Global Warming. I can't wait to find out what she has uncovered.

Memories

I heard a piece on NPR's All Things Considered tonight called Grandmother: A Story of Aging, Decline and Love by Jake Warga. It brought back memories for me of a similar situation.

The woman who lived in the house next to ours for my entire childhood was like a grandmother to me. She was a registered nurse who retired when I was about five years old. She was the youngest daughter of Irish immigrants and lived almost her entire life in that house. I would visit her almost every day. Sometimes we would have lunch together, or I would help her make cookies, or just do household errands for her. My job was to take out the trash each day. In return I was treated to her delicious homemade pies, cakes, and cookies. Not a bad deal.

As the years went by, I was old enough to drive and her vision was failing due to cataracts, I became her chauffeur. We would run to the farmers' market or we would load gallon jugs into the trunk of her 1971 Chevy Malibu and go to a spring than ran out the side of a mountain through a metal pipe. We filled the jugs with water and put them back in the trunk. When we returned home I would carry them to the house and place them under the cellar steps.

Each visit I was also treated to stories. Some of the stories I had heard dozens of times, but once in a while she would tell me about something I had never heard before. About being in New York for nursing school during The Depression. About registering to vote as a Republican by mistake and never telling her father and never switching parties because she didn't want to be a "turncoat" like Ronald Reagan.

By the time I started college she was in her late 70s and starting to have mini-strokes. My visits became less frequent because I was two hours away, but my parents still lived next door and they checked in on her often. Then she broke her hip. That was the beginning of the end. Up until that point she was very active. She attended mass every day, she cooked dinner for her friend nearly every day, and she often went out to eat. After the broken hip she needed a home health aid and soon she needed full-time nursing care and ended up entering a nursing home.

Each time a visited she was a little more out of it. At first she knew who I was and would talk about sports and current events. But gradually she started to forget my name. She still knew who I was but could not remember my name. Then maybe a few months later she would call me by her brother's name. Her brother died in WWII. Then she would ask me to do something because she wanted the place to look nice when Mary (her sister who died 30 years before) came to visit later that day.

Eventually when I went to visit we would just sit there silently. She was almost completely deaf for most of her adult life but she could read lips. In her mid-80s her cataracts were back and she could not see to read lips, so she was trapped in a silent fuzzy world full of strangers.

As Mr Warga points out in his NPR piece, his grandmother has been slowly fading away and is now all but gone. That is how I felt with each visit. Her body was still there, the person that I had known for the past 25 years was already gone.

A few months after my last visit she passed away in the nursing home. I returned for the funeral. My brother and I were pallbearers. It was sad to see that very few people attended the funeral. She had out-lived most of her friends, and all of her family. She never married and had no children. There were just a few neighbors and the old ladies who attend all of the funeral masses.

After the mass we travelled to the cemetary. To the gravesite that she showed me dozens of times as we tended the graves of her parents, grandparents, and siblings. "There's Mom and Pop, I'll be down here on the end next to Mary," she'd say.

Baby Update

It was an exciting day here, Baby took his first steps. I didn't think that it would be exciting, but it was. I have been encouraging him to walk for a few weeks but he usually will just stand there for a second and then dive towards me. Today he stood there and then took about three steps before he toppled over. So this is first-time parent excitement at its best.

He is 9 months and three weeks now. He has five teeth and he's working on number six. That probably explains his relative crankiness lately. And he has decided that instead of an afternoon nap he prefers to jump up and down in his crib until his legs give out.

I'm an idiot

I was fooling around with some files and I did something wrong so our old pal Blogger is back until I figure out what I did to my Movabletype installation. I may have to remove everything and install from scratch.

Baby steps

George "I'm a War president" Bush made history yesterday with the following statement:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

-- George W. Bush, September 13, 2005

This may be the only time that he has even hinted at making a mistake. I won't count his attempt to dodge the question during a presidential debate when he answered, "Now, you ask what mistakes -- I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them." And while he said yesterday, "I take responsibility," look at the words that precede it. First he tries to spread the blame to "all levels of government," and then he qualifies his statement by adding, "to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right."

I wonder what Bush's inquiry into "what went right and what didn't go right", headed by Bush himself, will find. I bet anything that falls into the "what didn't go right" category will be things that the state and local governments did or didn't do. Maybe he will admit that the appointment of Michael Brown to head FEMA was one of those mistakes that he hinted at during the debate.

But I applaud the War President for taking responsibility. In the years to come he will have to take responsibility for many more things. When he and Rummy are sitting before the War Crimes Tribunal they will have to answer charges of genocide that they directed in Fallujah. They bombed the city and cut off power and supplies, the US bombed hospitals and mosques, they allowed women and children to leave the city-- but not men--and then gave orders to shoot and kill men whether they were armed or not. That sounds like genocide to me--even if the United States did it.

Will the War President take responsibility for violating the Article 147 of Geneva Convention(IV)(among others).

Art. 147. Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

Anyhow, I'm proud of you Georgie. You still have to work on it, but you are are making baby steps.

Site of the Day

Reality Check

It has been two years since Bush invaded Iraq with the Shock & Awe^TM Show so it is time for a reality check.

• 1520 US military deaths


• 176 "Coalition" deaths


• 11,220 US wounded in action


• 212 foreign contractors killed in Iraq


• 24 journalists killed, at least six of them killed by US military


• thousands and thousands of dead Iraqi civilians


• American taxpayers have paid over $156 Billion so far


• No WMD


• No link between Iraq and 9/11


• There is a link between Iraqi Oil and Bush's War

File under: Politics, Iraq, War

Only Christians

In her latest post Dumbgirl posits that it is only Christians who change the world for the better. She goes on to ask:

"I'd love to see a long list of non-Christians who have changed the world for the better."
-- Amy "Dumbgirl" Proctor

Someone mentioned Gandhi and she admitted that he was a non-christian who changed the world for the better. I know that she would not allow me to comment there so here is a brief list of some other non-christians who have changed the world for the better:

• Thomas Jefferson
  
• Tenzin Gyatso
  
• Margaret Sanger
  
• Shirin Ebadi
  
• Friedrich Nietzsche
  
• Pythagoras
  
• Bill Gates
  
• Steve Wozniak
  
• Benjamin Franklin
  
• Elie Wiesel
  
• Voltaire
  
• Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa
  
• Ani DiFranco
  
• Socrates
  
• Plato
  
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
  
• Eddie Vedder
  
• Aristotle
  
• Euclid
  
• Confucius
  
• Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
  
• Lao Tzu
  
• John Adams
  
• John Quincy Adams
  
• Richard Leakey
  
• David Hume
  
• Wangari Maathai
  
• Vandana Shiva
  
• Aung San Suu Kyi
  
• Bertrand Russell
  
• ...

A statement like that is just stupid. Is she that wrapped up in christianity to see beyond it? Is she unaware that there are non-western cultures? At least sixty-seven percent of the world's population is non-christian.

File under: Religion

Attention people of "faith"

You must be coming here because you long for my message...

Message #1

My message today is that you should follow the lead of the United Church of Christ. Instead of saying who isn't good enough to be a christian they welcome anyone who is interested. Instead of pointing at the people who are suffering because they are poor or sick the UCC's Justice and Peace Action Center acts as an advocate for those without a voice. Instead of praying that those in need find God and comfort it out through its Neighbors in Need program.

There are others that do similar things, but this is the one with which I am most familiar. In fact, I would guess that the hate-spewing bigots that call themselves christians are a small minority. They are just the most noticeable.

I call on those of you who call yourselves "Christians", to work within your congregation or parish to move in this direction; to work for those who need help. And do so without asking for anything in return; no strings. No need for the recipients to convert or attend church services or to personally accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Do what is right and good things will follow.

Message #2

Also, more news on fake news. Please see this frontpage story from yesterday's New York Times:

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
By DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN
Published: March 13, 2005

File under: Politics,Religion

Dumbgirl is hot

In her post entitled "Democracy & Freedom Are On the March!!" Dumbgirl regurgitated some Bush Administration propaganda about the United States making the world safe for democracy or something. One of her followers commented about the report in The Lancet that found 100,000 Iraqi civilians died because of American intervention in Iraq. I tried to correct her mistaken interpretation of the study; Dumbgirl promptly deleted my comment and banned my ip.

I tried again with another comment on the topic of Dumbgirl accepting public assistance in the past and her belief that she should not have her tax dollars used to pay for abortions.

All women should receive free pre-natal care, free births, and receive a stipend to care for the baby once it is born and free health care for children.

Amy, do (you) approve of your tax dollars going to pay for breast augmentations and liposuction for military people?
see: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040726ta_talk_schaler
Abortion maybe abhorrent to you but breast augmentation and liposuction are abhorrent to me. Why should I pay for military women to have bigger boobs?

March 9, 2005 | Rob

Dumbgirl responded:

Rob,

I will address you once, then never again.

As for the military breast augmentations, keep in mind that they are not all for vanity reasons. Medical care in the military has in the past covered masectamies (sic) for removal of the breast due to cancer and tumors, but not an implant to recover the form. If you think that these "boob jobs" are sickening, that's on you, but for the military to cosmetically replace the breast taken through surgery is very humane. As for doing it for vanity purposes, I am opposed to this. It is unnecessary and frivolous. However, being the anti-conservative that you are I'd think you'd 1) like seeing "bigger boobs" and 2) believed in bigger (pardon the pun) government.

So because I am liberal, or as she says "anti-conservative", that means that I like seeing "bigger boobs"? Actually I think big plastic breasts are as disgusting as abortions, but I am not going to try to pass laws or amend the Constitution to stop women from doing either.

And I'm for "bigger government"? Bigger than Dubya's government and his record budget deficit? I'm for a big government in the right places. If by big government she means keeping people out of poverty or making sure that people get health care and stuff like that, then okay, I'm for big government. If she means filling up the prisons with non-violent drug offenders and building a missile defense system, then no.

She goes on:

Finally, I can only assume you bypass my IP bans because you need to hear what I have to say. I am being sincere when I suggest you have a longing inside for the message of Jesus, since you beat down my internet door to come in and hear it. True, you attempt to discredit it, but I believe this is your attempt to quite your conscience and justify your own views to yourself. This is typically what people in need of saving do: if they know they need saving, they accept. If they don't want to change their lifestyle or their minds, they make it their life's work to make the truth wrong (which cannot be done) This really has little to do with me (unless you just think I'm hot) and everything to do with you.

Oh yeah, I think she's hot. Uh huh. Middle-aged, Catholic mothers of four are my thing.

I am not "longing for the message of Jesus" either. I know what it is and I agree with it. She is the one who discredits the message of Jesus more than I do. Would Jesus volunteer to work for George Bush and jump out of a plane to shoot at Muslims to secure a supply of oil? Or would Jesus be one of the millions of people protesting Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq?

"People in need of saving"? Saved from what? I need to be saved from over-zealous christians who think that they know what is best for their neighbors and the rest of the world.

Actually I'm on my own little anti-witnessing campaign. Every week I have christian pamphlets left in my door. On my radio, where I once picked up local community radio stations, I get a satellite feed from Tennessee or somewhere with christian preachers. In the public or university library when I check out a book there is a pretty good chance that there is a Chick tract in it. I guess it is okay for christians to come univited into everyone else's lives.

I am just trying to do my part to provide an alternative to "all Bush, all Jesus, all the time". If I comment and she deletes it then at least I know that she read it.

I am sick of the holier-than-thou attitudes of these people.

I am also sick of Rick Santorum's weaselly face. He will lose in 2006.

And now the baby is crying so I may have to come back and edit later.

File under: Religion,Hypocrites

Quote of the Day

"[W]hat ever happened to turn the other cheek" and garbage like that. Guess what? That only works for so long and the time has come for us to stand up to what we know is evil and wrong. Bottom line is MAJORITY RULES and, well, I think you are sweating because we might just have a majority.
--Alice, Christian wife and mother

That's one Christian housewife who is mad as hell and she's not going to take it any more.

File under: Religion, Hypocrites

Where have I heard this before?

Of course you can't believe anything this guy says because he's a member of the Liberal Media, but this all sounds familiar:

Neocon Amorality

By Robert Parry
March 3, 2005

For a government that wraps its actions in moral absolutes about good versus evil, while deriding liberal relativism, the Bush administration may rank as the most committed in modern American history to an ends-justify-the-means ethos.
[more]

File under: Politics

On Religion

And other stuff

Much of my mother's side of the family belongs to the United Church of Christ (UCC). I was raised in the UCC--Sunday School, confirmation, youth group, etc. My problem was that I never believed in God so as soon as I graduated from high school I stopped going to church. Looking back on it now I see that God was a very small part of the experience. The focus of the local church was (and is) community, except for the 45 minutes on Sunday morning that were set aside for God talk. I still support the UCC--financially and otherwise. My niece and nephew also go to that church so I've been back for baptisms and children's programs.

My dad's family is Roman Catholic. My son is (or will be) Catholic. Not because I agree with the Church on a lot of things, but because I think that every person should get a good religious education. There is a fine line between education and indoctrination, so I will have a lot work to do. His mother is a practicing Catholic. As a child she attended the Methodist vacation bible school and did other things with protestant churches and she is pretty open to other religions. We discussed other options like joining the Unitarian Universalist congregation, but because of her experience and because she regularly attends mass it just makes sense to take him along. I think that my job will be to help him see that there is no one true religion and to help him get a background in comparative religion.

My personal, face-to-face contact with fundamentalist christians has been very limited. They've invited me to Wednesday night Bible study, I've been handed cassette tapes of 'christian rock', but I also I worked a summer job with a few girls from a nearby bible college. The college girls were very nice normal people. They were intelligent and witty and I enjoyed talking to them.

I also had another job that took me into people's homes to work with their children. (I know, people let a liberal atheist in their homes with their children!) It is a real eye-opener to go into the homes of strangers. And I've seen everything; from the homes where the children have their own suites with a bedroom, bathroom, and playroom with full entertainment center to the hot, smelly 40 year old trailer with cockroaches scurrying about. The children, however, were pretty much the same. Infants like to be held and talked to, toddlers want someone to play with them, and the 4 to 8 year olds ask question after question. Of course, each has her own personality but the differences are not due to income or ethnicity or anything like that. I loved that job. Well, I loved the part of it that involved the kids.

Anyhow, for some reason I visited a lot of fundamentalist Christian home schoolers. I always felt bad for those kids. First, because they were getting a really poor 'education' but also because they were generally lacking social skills and the one thing that they were learning was hate. They were being taught that anyone who disagrees with the their parents is worthless and going to hell. I don't know, it's hard for me to decide if it is worse that these children get a poor education from their mothers or for them to be in public school with their parents trying to get the curriculum changed to include 'Creation Science' and a morning prayer. I always wonder what the school prayer people would think if their kids were forced to say or attend Muslim prayers at school. Would they still be in favor of school prayer?

File under: Religion