Here it is a glorious sunshining Sunday. I have time to actually write something. Here is what I have found in the news today:

1) James Dobson, he of Colorado Springs "I can cure any man of being gay fame", now claims that the furor over global warming is going to be the death of the evangelical movement. Too many evangelical ministers are actually taking seriously the call in the New Testament to be Stewards of the Earth. By golly, those ministers are having to interact with lefties and progressives and conservative values may be tainted. Also, there is a schism forming in the conservative evangelicals where the environment is taking an important level of importance. The stranglehold of the paradigm that the world is there for man's use may be challenged by the paradigm that the world may actually exist for its own use and we are citizens and stewards of it. That could change everything.

2) Here is an interview from http://sideshow.me.uk --

The Talking Dog: Too many Americans are willing to just assume that a European Moslem in Afghanistan in 2001 was up to some kind of mischief. Please describe what you were actually doing there. Also, please correct me if I am wrong, but did not a fair number of men doing what amounts to humanitarian work get swept up in the so-called war on terror and ended up at Bagram, Kandahar and/or Guantanamo Bay, where many are still held to this day?

Moazzam Begg: I went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001. We had planned, funded and supported a school in Kabul- a girl's school. The program was to go to help, teach, expand and advance and to get some social value. I was also involved in digging some wells and a water project in a drought stricken region in NorthWestern Afghanistan.

It is hard to believe that the U.S. imprisoned this man and then moved him and kept him in jail for almost three years. It is a national embarrassment that we have been such bullies. On an international scale, we have broken rules and will not own up to it. We are an international embarrassment and yet refuse to admit it to ourselves. I am reminded of the Milgram experiment where actors were hired to act as if they were being shocked and "scientists" said they would take responsibility for the pain caused to the subject/actors as average, ordinary people administered supposedly increasing electroshocks. Every participant "shocked" the actors. And this is what we have now. Bullies doing everything and taking responsibility and telling us it will be all okay. When will we ever respond with a resounding "NO! "?

rojo