Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2005 23:59 - Category: Unfiled ;
The most comprehensive survey yet completed of glaciers in the Antarctic has discovered widespread movement, especially in the past five years. The findings, published today in the journal Science, indicate that the rate of sea-level rise could increase if ice shelves in the area continue their retreat.
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2005 08:29 - Category: Unfiled ;
From Wood at The John Heron project in Wales, commenting on my post, The Question of Nonviolence
My mate Bob thinks nonviolence is a mug’s game.
Hmm. Dunno about that. Sometimes I agree with Bob, sometimes I don’t. Here, I think he’s right out (apropos to nothing, Bob’s about thirty years older than me. I keep feeling like a Young Fogey to his Old Turk).
Now, It seems to me that there’s this current in Western (OK, specifically American) culture, on both left and right, conservative and liberal axes, that believes that violence is an adequate and complete solution, that it fixes things, that it sorts things out. Walter Wink called it ‘the Myth of Redemptive Violence’, and it boils down to the idea that violence is the only real solution for a greater, less principled, chaotic violence that it opposes.
I don’t think violence is an “only” solution. What Ghandi and MLK did was inspirational and changed history. However when faced with serious nasty violence, pacifism offers no real answer that I can see. With Ghandi and MLK, the authorities weren’t opening fire with machine guns. In other times and other struggles, they did just that. In a national struggle or a liberation struggle, the people involved have the right to defend themselves in whatever way they deem necessary. Sometimes that may be by nonviolent means, sometimes that could be picking up a gun. But only the psychotic will take violence as their first (or second, third, or fourth) choice. There’s many other means and ways to achieve political ends besides the gun, which should be a last resort.
I’m a Christian. Call me a starry-eyed idealist (although increasingly I feel like the girl in that great Roger Sanchez video, one of those videos where the song plays second fiddle to the story and the dialogue) but I was under the impression that my faith had to mean something for the world, as it is, now.
We’re not living in the End Times any more than we were a thousand years ago. We have time, and time means that we have to address the consequences of our actions. Violence begets violence, suffering, pain and tyranny, and I’ve seen nothing to convince me otherwise. We’ve got a world to do something with now, and I’ll be damned if violence is any kind of way to do it, Christian or not.
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2005 08:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
From Slugger O’Toole, the excellent Irish blog about Northern Ireland politics.
Weighing the pen and the sword
Jude Collins and Ed Moloney have ended up in a bit of a public barney about an almost blog style debunking of Anthony McIntyre’s LA Times Op Ed piece on how he believes the IRA is morphing into a criminal gang.
McIntyre, a former IRA member, spent 18 years in prison and resigned from the IRA after release. His Op-Ed was a hardcore attack on the IRA for selling out, losing track of their goals, and becoming criminals in the process. Not surprisingly, he’s been attacked (and defended) in turn. Jude Collins says his attacks are baseless, Moloney says McIntyre may have been marked for death by the IRA because of them.
It’s difficult for outsiders to read and properly understand these articles because the politics, players, and history are complex and go back for decades. Still, doing so helps one understand the pressure cooker that is Northern Ireland politics. Things are still very much in flux., destination unknown.
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2005 07:56 - Category: Unfiled ;
Taped at a private conference, the leaders outline ways to punish jurists they oppose.
An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.
Among the things that most offended these deeply compassionate Christians was the ban on executing minors.
Perkins and Dobson laid out a history of court rulings they found offensive, singling out the recent finding by the Supreme Court that executing minors was unconstitutional
They are the American Taliban.
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2005 07:50 - Category: Unfiled ;
Critical components and specialized tools destined for Libya’s nuclear weapons program disappeared before arrival in 2003 and international investigators now suspect that they were diverted to another country, according to court records and investigators.
The parts disappeared in 2003 and they just figured it out now?
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