punaboy

Snow says: "It wasn't gratuitious. I think your idealogy is punkish." then mebbe you "misunderestimate me" seriously tho, try the spell check...

PD says: "Although the distinction between "political" and "moral" questions can be pretty fine sometimes, I think there's at least a sharp distinction between political activity on behalf of a candidate or party generally, and advocacy of one position on a single issue that has both moral and political implications. " I agree there is some kind of distinction, but I question whether the effort to examine such things on a policy level will inspire the IRS to maintain the perception of such a sharp distinction. Public and legal scrutiny of such things in the full light of day has a way of causing changes in the playing field. This issue may well go to court, or to congress, and many cooks will get their hands into the froth...

Snow says: "What's your point punkboy?" Typo, or gratuitous name-calling?

"The LDS Church stops a long way from that point -- even forbidding (I believe) individual members to distribute political materials like voter guides in churches, or use church buildings for political rallies, or use ward lists for political purposes. I think they're OK." PD, in general I would agree with you here. But there is much evidence that the church went way beyond these things in the anti-gay marriage efforts of the 1990's. Here in Hawaii, Jack Hoag, a church PR specialist and well-connected businessman/politically savvy operator, was able to prevail on Stake Presidents to begin using quorums to announce his agenda and appeal to members for action and funds. He then appealed to bishops to canvass members for donations, which was subsequently done. In all this, Hoag was just copying the tek used by the CA Area Presidency during the CA "marriage amendment" campaign, where wards were organized for political action, and donations were aggresively sought from the members in church meetings.

the survey study is important, in that it again provides evidence that the spurious figure cooked up by Kinsey is false, and it is way past time for gays to drop Kinsey's lie that "10% of all people" are homosexual.

I'm sure there will be many "rewards" for endorsing the Iraq invasion from the pulpit. I hope they are worth the indelible stains...

interesting link, thanks PD... :) but partisan finger pointing is not the point of the article. The point is that such antics as actually organizing precinct work thru churches, with block captains and group organizers, phone trees and publications for neighborhood distribution (which goes far beyond simply appearing at a church for a photo opp, which is a long-standing American political tradition) is attracting scrutiny, and may well result in the formal banning of such activities under threat of losing IRS tax exemption. Which of course would impact the ability of the LDS church to repeat these tactics in future campaigns.

This article reminds me of the "faith-based" politicking done by the LDS church during the push for a "pro-family" amendment to the CA constitution, and the opposition to same-sex marriage in Hawaii. Seems the Bush admin would like to make this kind of activity legal, and cool with the IRS as to tax exempt status, and separation of church and state. If this doesn't fly, the IRS may watch the LDS more closely in future, even when they are just acting on a moral, rather than a purely political, issue. "June 3, 2004 Bush campaign recruiting church-goers in Pennsylvania By Lara Jakes Jordan The Associated Press WASHINGTON - President Bush's re-election campaign is trying to recruit supporters from 1,600 religious congregations in Pennsylvania - a political push that critics said Wednesday could cost churches their tax breaks. An e-mail from the campaign's Pennsylvania office, obtained by The Associated Press, urges churchgoers to help organize ``Friendly Congregations'' where supporters can meet regularly to sign up voters and spread the Bush word. ``I'd like to ask if you would like to serve as a coordinator in your place of worship,'' says the e-mail, adorned with the Bush-Cheney logo, from Luke Bernstein, who runs the state campaign's coalitions operation and is a former staffer to Sen. Rick Santorum, the president's Pennsylvania chairman. ``We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation,'' the e-mail says. The Internal Revenue Service prohibits political campaign activity, for or against any candidate, from taking place at all organizations that receive tax exempt status under a section of the federal tax code - including most churches and religious groups. Violators could lose their tax breaks and face excise taxes. Bernstein refused comment. Kevin Madden, a Bush-Cheney spokesman at the campaign's headquarters, said the campaign did not mean to imply that religious supporters should actually congregate for the president at their places of worship. But he would not say whether the campaign is taking steps to make sure they don't. ``People of faith feel strongly about the president, are people we want to be part of our campaign,'' Madden said. ``This message is intended to be from individual to individual,'' Madden said. ``This is organizing with individuals who may be members of a church who we hope to identify as supporters and be part of our efforts.'' Madden said the campaign also is targeting ``Friendly Congregations'' in other states, but he could not say where. Pennsylvania is a key political swing state that offers 21 electoral votes. Bush lost the state in 2000 by a mere 204,000 votes. The director of a nonpartisan watchdog group called the campaign's church appeal ``a breathtakingly sad example of mixing religion and politics.'' ``I have never in my life seen such a direct campaign to politicize American churches - from any political party or from any candidate for public office,'' said Rev. Barry Lynn of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ``By enrolling churches in an election scheme like this, I think the Bush-Cheney campaign is actually endangering those churches' tax exemptions without even the courtesy of telling them that they run a risk.''

I agree in general with Shanstress, but it looks like the current admin is going the opposite way, and fast. Can the reinvigorated SS military draft be far behind? Mothers, hug your children: "Stymied in Iraq, Hawks Still Positioning US as Globocop Analysis - by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Jun 15 (IPS) - Although their hopes for transforming Iraq into a pro-U.S. base in the heart of the Arab world have been badly set back, neo-imperial hawks in the Bush administration are proceeding as fast as possible to reinvent U.S. forces worldwide as ''globocop'', capable of pre-empting any possible threat to its interests at a moment's notice. In the last month, the Pentagon has confirmed plans to sharply cut forces stationed at giant U.S. bases in Germany, South Korea and Okinawa, Japan, and to redeploy them to smaller, more widely dispersed facilities -- sometimes called ''lily pads'' -- along an ''arc of crisis'' stretching along a wide band from Southeast Asia to West Africa, as well as to bases in Guam and back home. The planned redeployments, the most sweeping since the onset of the Cold War more than 50 years ago, are all part of a global strategy to build, in Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's words, a ''capability to impose lethal power, where needed, when needed, with the greatest flexibility and with the greatest agility''. As for where the ''need'' is, Pentagon officials state publicly that would be defined by threats to ''stability''. But a closer look at where Washington is most interested in acquiring access to military facilities suggests the determining factor may be proximity to oil and gas-producing areas, pipelines and shipping routes through which vital energy supplies pass. To most analysts, the proposed redeployments make a lot of sense. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need for big U.S. military bases that housed conventional forces in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe evaporated from a strategic point of view, while the steady build-up of well-equipped and well-trained forces in South Korea, where Washington has stationed nearly 40,000 troops for the past 25 years, made it more than a match for North Korea. In addition, the presence and behaviour of U.S. forces in both Western Europe and Northeast Asia, particularly in South Korea and Okinawa, have become increasingly unpopular and a lightning rod for growing anti-Americanism and resentment. Reducing their ''footprint'' might have the opposite effect. Indeed, Washington withdrew its troops altogether from Saudi Arabia over the past year in large part because their presence there had become politically untenable. Nonetheless, both the plans -- and the ways they are being developed and implemented -- are provoking growing criticism at home, as well as abroad. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand, particularly in light of the Iraq war. In the first place, the planned redeployments appear designed to ensure that the United States could indeed enforce a ''Pax Americana'', based on its ability to exert unilateral military control over the production and flow of energy resources from Central Asia, the Gulf region and the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa in the face of potential rivals. In that respect, the strategy is an update of the controversial 1992 draft Defence Planning Guidance (DPG) written under the auspices of current Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President ###### Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, I Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby -- both of whom played key roles in driving the Bush administration to war in Iraq. The 1992 paper, which was significantly watered down at the insistence of then-Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, called for Washington to act as the guarantor of global security and predicted that U.S. military interventions would be a ''constant fixture'' of the future -- a prospect that, in light of the unhappy and costly experience in Iraq to date, is not very popular at the moment, either here or abroad. A second concern is the damage that such a redeployment could do to Cold War alliances, particularly Washington's commitment to Europe, where the Pentagon wants to cut its military presence in Germany -- currently some 70,000 troops and scores of warplanes -- in half. Some of the forces would be sent home, while most would be moved to cheaper bases in Bulgaria and Romania, closer to the Caucasus and the Middle East. ''The most serious potential consequences of the contemplated shifts would not be military but political and diplomatic'', wrote Kurt Campbell, a former senior Pentagon official now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Celeste Johnson Ward, in a 'Foreign Affairs' article last year. The redeployments, they warned, could be construed as the beginning of a withdrawal from what Rumsfeld last year scornfully called ''Old Europe''. And that, in turn, could reinforce traditional isolationist tendencies in the United States that, before World War II, sought to prevent Washington from engaging in political ''entanglements'' with European countries or international institutions in ways that might constrain its freedom of action in the Americas or anywhere else. Indeed, the repudiation of permanent alliances in favour of ''coalitions of the willing'' -- a major feature of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies as it was in the Wolfowitz-Libby paper -- not only recalls isolationism; it is also entirely consistent with the strategy underlying the proposed redeployments. A similar consideration worries South Korea, where Washington is proposing the withdrawal of more than 12,000 troops, including some 3,500 who are being sent to bolster beleaguered U.S. forces in Iraq. The Koreans worry that such a significant withdrawal now might not only complicate a particularly tense time in intra-Korean relations, but may also signal Washington's desire to reduce Seoul's say in whether or not Washington attacks North Korea. ''This is about psychology'', Derek Mitchell, a former Pentagon Asia expert recently told the 'Los Angeles Times'. A related concern was voiced by Campbell and Ward when the proposed redeployments were still on the drawing board. ''Unless the changes are paired with a sustained and effective diplomatic campaign'', they warned, ''they could well increase foreign anxiety about and distrust of the United States''. That, in effect, is what has happened, as officials from both Germany and South Korea have complained that they were not fully consulted about the redeployments before they were leaked to the press or officially announced -- a failure that only increases the impression that Washington is proceeding unilaterally, even with its closest allies. This is not surprising, because most of the same people -- including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy -- who led the drive to war in Iraq remain in charge of implementing the new global strategy. While these officials have lost virtually all influence over policy-making in Iraq as a result of their virtually total failure to anticipate the challenges faced by U.S. occupation forces after the war, they are working feverishly to reconfigure Washington's global military forces for the coming generation. (END/2004) * IPS Special Coverage: Iraq and the Middle East"

yeah I didn't say anything about exclusivity or specialness, why are you reading that into my comment? Just like the temple, if you don't go you don't know. There are meanings in the Hawaiian culture that have to be experienced to be understood. I'm sure that anyone of any group CAN understand the more esoteric aspects of Hawaiian culture, but as I say, some things must be experienced to be understood, and outsiders have shown that they generally have a long learning curve on some things. I said it wasn't easy for non-Hawaiians to understand, but I didn't say it was impossible. And yes, some things are just secret, that is what "ka huna" means. If you come to live in Hawaii, and are fortunate enuff to be accepted as a disciple by a native huna practitioner, and devote yourself, over long years, to huna, then perhaps you also will learn the secret. ya gotta go to know... :)

The Iraqis don't seem to like their liberators very much these days: "Poll reveals hostility to US and support for rebel cleric By Anne Penketh Diplomatic Editor 17 June 2004 The Bush administration's last remaining justification for the invasion of Iraq has been demolished by a private poll revealing that only 2 per cent of Iraqis regard the occupying forces as liberators. The poll results are devastating for both President George Bush and Tony Blair, who are fond of saying that future generations of Iraqis will thank them for liberating their country. Tony Blair has consistently said that history will prove him right for engineering the downfall of a cruel tyrant, even if weapons of mass destruction were not found. President Bush, giving a pep-talk to American soldiers in Florida yesterday, said: "We have come not to conquer, but to liberate people and we will stand with them until their freedom is secure." Yet the main findings of the poll, which was commissioned by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) last month and which was leaked yesterday, reveal that only 2 per cent of the Iraqis polled in mid-May see coalition troops as liberators, while 92 per cent said they were occupiers. In a crumb of comfort for the coalition, only 3 per cent expressed support for Saddam Hussein. A total of 54 per cent believed that all Americans behaved like the guards at Abu Ghraib. But 71 per cent of those polled in face-to-face interviews in six Iraqi cities said they were surprised by the guards' behaviour. Safety and security emerged as a major concern for the population in general, as nearly half of Iraqis said they felt unsafe in their neighbourhoods. Asked whether they would feel safer if the 138,000 US troops left immediately, 55 per cent agreed, nearly double the 28 per cent who held that view in a poll carried out in January. Asked if the Americans should leave immediately, 41 per cent agreed, while 45 per cent said they preferred US forces to leave once a permanent Iraqi government was installed. Hostility towards the Americans was also reflected in strong support for the rebel Shia leader, Muqtada Sadr, who galvanised the resistance to the occupation in April. His blend of religion and populism has proved popular The CPA's poll shows that 67 per cent of Iraqis say they support or strongly support him, making him the most popular man in the country after the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. A total of 81 per cent of Iraqis had an improved opinion of Sadr in May from three months earlier, and 64 per cent said the acts of his insurgents had made Iraq more unified. But only 2 per cent would support him for president. The coalition's confidence rating in May stood at 11 per cent, down from 47 per cent in November, while the troops themselves had the support of only 10 per cent. The survey questioned 1,093 adults who were selected randomly in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Diwaniyah, Hillah and Baquba between 14 and 23 May. The White House spokesman, Scott McClelland, put on a brave face when reacting to the survey: "The President has previously said no one wants to be occupied. And we don't want to be occupiers," he said But a coalition official in Baghdad interviewed by the Associated Press news agency, which obtained the survey, was despondent. "If you are sitting here as part of the coalition, it [the poll] is pretty grim," said Donald Hamilton, a career diplomat who helps oversee the CPA's polling of Iraqis. In Washington, Congressman Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he found the poll "disturbing. ... It demonstrates quite jarringly that we are not winning the hearts and minds" of Iraqis. Among the poll's other findings, 63 per cent believed conditions would improve when the Iraqi interim government takes over at the end of the month, and 62 per cent believed it was "very likely" the Iraqi police and army would maintain security without US forces. A State Department spokes- man said: "Let's face it. That's the goal, to build those up to the point where they can take charge in Iraq and they can maintain security in Iraq." The Foreign Office had no comment last night." The US didn't finish the job against Al Qaeda, in Afghanistan or elsewhere. That was job one, after 9/11. The Iraq invasion has not reduced terrorism by much, either, with more willing jihadists entering Iraq daily. But the very failures of this policy of US aggression have inspired the "nuke all the Muslims" crowd all the more. Funny kine...

"I was actually wondering a while back if "Punaboy" referred to the Punahou School. Auwe!" Some of my 'ohana attended Punahou, but not me. Puna has ancient and secret meanings, not easily understood by haoles. "When the truth was published in the Expositor, Joseph had the press destroyed, indicating the level of feeling and secrecy associated with these doings." nb, I should have said, "when the truth about polygamy in the church". Sorry if my comment was misleading! B)

http://michnews.com/artman/publish/article_4035.shtml Rep. Cannon is going, and maybe voters will wise up to the fact that he is in the same pod with Hatch, and dump that neocon toady as well. Neocons, your days bossing the LDS church are numbered! New leadership is coming!

bye!

Here in the Kingdom of Hawaii (currently illegally occupied by the armed forces of the USA imperium), I doubt there would be one LDS member in 50 who would know of the diaries (some by faithful "saints") telling of Joseph marrying other men's wives. The truth was kept in secret by the Council of Fifty. When the truth was published in the Expositor, Joseph had the press destroyed, indicating the level of feeling and secrecy associated with these doings..

Faerie says: "Perhaps one secretary's reply is sufficient: QUOTE politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event. The senator went, she said, because the Ambassadors promised to hand out awards to people from his home state, people who were genuinely accomplished. When the ceremony morphed into a platform for Moon, she said, people were disconcerted. "I think there was a mass exodus," she said. "They get all these senators on the floor, and this freak is there." Get a life dude...stop reading the conspiracy theories and try and present us w/ something real... " Perhaps one secretary's reply, from a lady who denied her congressman was even there at all (when he palpably was), is NOT sufficient. This matter is quite real. You are just real good at denial :) Anyone who associates with Moon is at least a prostitute of the worst kind in Washington, and anyone involved with crowning this Moon wacko as king of the universe is at worst a complete traitor. Either way, Cannon should be relieved of his temple recommend for directly supporting another church. Either way, is this the type of person who should be representing Utah and SLC? Judging from the response to this matter here at LDStalk, perhaps he is...

" Good laws...ROFLMAO..thanks for the laugh!!! WHERE OH WHERE does it say that QUOTE Utah and LDS church luminaries Rep. Chris Cannon and Dr. Steven Covey help organize and participate in a crowning ceremony in DC for Rev. Sun Myung Moon as World Messiah?" Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? I am pretty sure the link I gave to Gorenfield's blog shows a program page that lists both Cannon and Covey as primary organizers of the event. Check with them if you like. Rep. Curt Wheldon is also listed as an organizer, but his office, as mentioned in a link (below) in the Gadfly page's links section on the right side of the linked page, denied Rep. Wheldon had anything to do with the event, and was not there. However, they had to backtrack when a look at the video plainly showed Rep. Wheldon prominently in attendance. (here's the link) http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=131 I haven't been thru all the video as I am on dialup, but there is a likelihood that Cannon and Covey could also appear in the video or stills. But their names are listed on the program as primary organizers, so the ball is in their court. Here's the text for the above link, I agree it's pretty funny stuff, altho crowning a religious leader "king of the world" in the Dirksen office building prolly constitutes treason for elected leaders, as such things are forbidden by law and constitution: "Moon Over Washington Why are some of the capital’s most influential power players hanging out with a bizarre Korean billionaire who claims to be the Messiah? by John Gorenfeld, Contributor 6.09.04 Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah – with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building? The Washington Post didn't think so. For a moment on April 4, a quote from the keynote speech was in the Web version of its "Reliable Sources" column. The speaker: Sun Myung Moon, 84, an ex-convict whose political activities were at the center of the 1976-8 Koreagate influence-peddling probe. That's when an investigation by Congress warned that Moon, after having befriended Richard Nixon in his darkest hour, was surrounding himself with other politicians to overcome his reputation: as the leader of the cult-like Unification Church, which recruited unwary college students, filled Madison Square Garden with couples in white robes, wed them in bulk and demanded obedience. That was before he launched the Washington Times – "in response to Heaven’s direction," as he would later say – and a 20-year quest to make his enemies bow to him. He has also claimed, in newspaper ads taken out by the Unification Church, that Jesus, Confucius, and the Buddha have endorsed him. Muhammad, according to the 2002 ad, led the council in three cries of "mansei," or victory. And every dead U.S. president was there, too – because Moon's gospel is inseparable from visions of true-blue American power. Now, this March, Moon was telling guests at the Dirksen Senate Office Building that Hitler and Stalin, having cleaned up their acts, had, in a rare public statement from beyond the grave, called him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent." But not long after it appeared on the Post's web site, the paper erased the quote. Columnist Richard Leiby told me via e-mail that it shouldn't have gone out in the first place. The paper replaced it with breaking news about "Celebrity Jeopardy!" with Tim Russert. The Return of the King So no one covered this American coronation, except Moon's own Times, which skipped the Messiah part. It wasn't in other newspapers, which only wink at the influence of Moon's far-right movement in Washington, when they cover it at all. In fact, the only place you could read about the new king, unless you bookmarked Moon's Korean-language website, was in the blog world. There, dozens of the most CSPAN2-hardened cynics reacted to the screenshots with a resounding "WTF," the sound of dismay and confusion at a scene that news coverage hadn't prepared them for. The images might as well have come from Star Trek's Mirror Universe. First, we're shown a rabbi blowing a ram's horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense. Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He's having a ball. Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner. But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation. Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. "Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it," press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. "I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional co-host, but we have nothing to do with the agenda, the organization, the scheduling, and our role would be limited explicitly to the attendance of the Congressman." The spokeswoman for one senator, who asked that her boss not be named, said politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event. The senator went, she said, because the Ambassadors promised to hand out awards to people from his home state, people who were genuinely accomplished. When the ceremony morphed into a platform for Moon, she said, people were disconcerted. "I think there was a mass exodus," she said. "They get all these senators on the floor, and this freak is there." A new world order The last time someone declared himself Emperor of the United States, it was the Gold Rush's Joshua Norton, a sort of failed dot-commer of the 1850s. But he was broke, whereas a random sampling of Moon's properties might include a healthy chunk of the U.S. fishing industry, the graphic tablet company Wacom, and swaths of real estate on an epic scale. The money-losing Times is paid for by the $1 billion he's sunk into it, along with untold funding for conservative policy foundations like the American Family Coalition. George Soros has recently gotten lots of coverage as a supposedly eccentric billionaire influencing U.S. politics. But Soros is no Moon. In Moon's speeches, a "peace kingdom" is envisioned, in which homosexuals – whom he calls "dung-eating dogs" – would be a thing of the past. He said in January: "Gays will be eliminated, the three Israels will unite. If not, then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring, but this is what happens. It will be greater than the communist purge but at God's orders." And ignoring every mainline Christian denomination's rejection of the idea of Jewish collective guilt, Moon's latest world tour calls on rabbis to repent for betraying Christ, the Jerusalem Post reported last week. Speaking in Arlington, VA in 2003, Moon said Hitler killed six million Jews as a penalty for this rejection. And he's frank about calling for democracy and the U.S. Constitution to be replaced by religious government that he calls "Godism," calling the church-state separation the work of Satan. "The church and the state must become one as Cain and Abel," he said in the same sermon. Towards this end, Moon's "Ambassadors for Peace" have been promoting his goal of a "Religious United Nations" organized around God, not countries. In the June 19, 2003 Congressional Record, Rep. Davis joins Rep. Weldon in thanking Moon and the Ambassadors for "promoting the vision of world peace." He praises their plan to "support the leaders of the United Nations" through interfaith dialogue. Much of the dialogue has consisted of getting Moon's retinue of rabbis, ministers and Muslim clerics to hug each other, and be photographed handing out awards to politicians. The Ambassadors have addressed the United Nations and the British House of Lords. They have also honored at least one neo-Nazi, William Baker, former chair of the Holocaust-denying Populist Party. And far from the free lunches that Emperor Norton received in San Francisco, Moon's groups have taken home grant money from the Bush Administration, which has given his anti-sex missionaries $475,000 in Abstinence-Only dollars to bring Moon's crusade against "free sex" to both black New Jersey high-schoolers and native Africans. The Centers for Disease Control briefly announced that another Moon foundation was the only group qualified to receive another, no-bid grant for HIV education in Africa. Only after a competitor raised objections did the CDC cancel the grant program entirely. Meanwhile, one of Moon's top political movers, David Caprara, has been appointed by George W. Bush to head AmeriCorps VISTA; and another former church VIP, Josette Shiner, was given a senior trade position. Friends in high places In the early stages of the Reagan Revolution that embraced the Washington Times and Moon's anti-Communist movement, it was embarrassing to be caught at a Moon event. Until George H.W. Bush appeared with Moon in 1996, thanking him for a newspaper that "brings sanity to Washington," famous guests often spoke at front groups that concealed ties to the Unification Church. Bill Cosby was horrified to discover he'd agreed to speak at one. The reputation of future "Left Behind" author Tim LaHaye suffered after his wife accidentally gave Mother Jones a recording of him dictating a fond letter to Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, plotting to replace Vice-President Bush with Jerry Falwell on the 1988 ticket. To many Christians, Moon was offensive, preaching that Jesus failed and that he would clean up the mess. But now that he's forged unbreakable ties with conservative Christians, Moon has moved on to African-American ministers, and, through them, allies in the Democratic Party. This has been below the radar of the press, but not for lack of outlandishness. Moon celebrated Easter Sunday, 2003 by launching a coast to coast series of "tear down the cross/Who is Rev. Moon?" events, targeting pastors in poor neighborhoods. From the Bronx to L.A., Moon's people were convincing pastors to pull the crosses off their walls and replace them with his Family Federation flag. An old hymn was invoked: "I'll trade the old cross for a crown." To Congressmen attending earlier stops in this roadshow, all this mysticism may have seemed too murky and exotic to understand. But the storyline is simple enough, if you take a step back. Moon's newest followers were invited to tear down the traditional symbol of Christianity, told they could swap it for a crown. But unlike the crown in the hymn, it wasn't for them. It was the one that Congressmen gave, March 23 at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to a wealthy right-wing newspaper owner, one described by Time magazine in 1976 as "megalomaniacal," not much of an exaggeration for someone who claims to be the Second Coming. Unless of course he actually is. The next day, according to a speech posted to a Moon mailing list and Usenet by a Unification church webmaster, Damian Anderson, Moon said he was leaving the country. "True Father spent 34 years here in America to guide this country in the right way," he told followers. "Yesterday was the turning point." But you can't buy Moon's high opinion of your country so easily (he's called the U.S. "Satan's harvest"). America, he said, was on the road to its doom. Why? "Homo marriage.""

Why did Utah and LDS church luminaries Rep. Chris Cannon and Dr. Steven Covey help organize and participate in a crowning ceremony in DC for Rev. Sun Myung Moon as World Messiah? http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2004/05/back...emory-hole.html http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=131

Tr2 says: "The authors of those idiotic articles are making every attempt they can to demonize the soldiers that are defending the country that you live in." Not so, the authors are trying to demonize the politicians who are ordering your soldiers to commit atrocities. The fact is, torture is against some very strict US laws, and conspiracy to commit torture is an impeachanle offense. To wit: Authorization of Torture by Bush an Impeachable Offense The United States DID ratify the Convention back in 1994. (CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE) We also passed a federal statute outlawing it, and assigning severe criminal penalties. See: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/pIch113C.html and http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2340A.html. (a) Offense. - Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life. (B) Jurisdiction. - There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if - (1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or (2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender. © Conspiracy. - A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy. So, arguably, it's an impeachable offense for the President of the United States to authorize the use of torture under any circumstances. I sure hope Dubyah doesn't mind the color orange. http://counterspin.blogspot.com/2004/05/to...-logic-umm.html ----------------------------------- CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html An excerpt - Article 2 1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. 2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. 3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. Article 3 1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. 2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. PD says: "Could you please do us the courtesy of pointing out exactly where I misstated the content of the article you quoted? " Actually, I invited you to read more carefully, but you refused, and repeated your errors. I am not here to teach you how to read. "I will let the absurdity of the likes of you presuming to comment on my intelligence speak for itself -- and suggest that there is enough discourtesy on these boards from time to time without the benefit of your puny version thereof." I will be courteous, when you stop calling me a liar just because I have a different opinion than you.

you *might* be able to read this one PD, but if not, your coloring is very nice today : "US 'Not Bound By Torture Laws' BBC News 6-7-4 A Pentagon report last year argued that President George W Bush was not bound by laws banning the use of torture, according to the Wall Street Journal. The document also argued that torturers acting under presidential orders could not be prosecuted, the paper said. The report was written by military and civilian lawyers for US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It came after staff at Guantanamo Bay complained normal interrogation tactics were not eliciting enough information. The document outlined why restrictions on torture under US laws and international treaties might be overcome by considerations for national security or legal technicalities, the newspaper reported. Vital intelligence The draft argued that because nothing was more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens" normal strictures on torture might not apply, according to the Journal. The report contended that the president, as commander-in-chief, has the authority to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, including torture, the newspaper reported. It said it had reviewed a draft dated 6 March, 2003, and had not seen the full final report. But people familiar with the final text said there were few substantial changes from the draft version, the Wall Street Journal added. It is not known whether President George W Bush has ever seen the report. The Bush administration has said it supports the Geneva Conventions and humane treatment for detainees. © BBC MMIV http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/378...83869.stm"

You're excused from this one, PD. You can color, quietly: "Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture Justice Dept. Gave Advice in 2002 By Dana Priest and R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A01 In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained memo. If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later. The memo seems to counter the pre-Sept. 11, 2001, assumption that U.S. government personnel would never be permitted to torture captives. It was offered after the CIA began detaining and interrogating suspected al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the wake of the attacks, according to government officials familiar with the document. The legal reasoning in the 2002 memo, which covered treatment of al Qaeda detainees in CIA custody, was later used in a March 2003 report by Pentagon lawyers assessing interrogation rules governing the Defense Department's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At that time, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had asked the lawyers to examine the logistical, policy and legal issues associated with interrogation techniques. Bush administration officials say flatly that, despite the discussion of legal issues in the two memos, it has abided by international conventions barring torture, and that detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere have been treated humanely, except in the cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for which seven military police soldiers have been charged. Still, the 2002 and 2003 memos reflect the Bush administration's desire to explore the limits on how far it could legally go in aggressively interrogating foreigners suspected of terrorism or of having information that could thwart future attacks. In the 2002 memo, written for the CIA and addressed to White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, the Justice Department defined torture in a much narrower way, for example, than does the U.S. Army, which has historically carried out most wartime interrogations. In the Justice Department's view -- contained in a 50-page document signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and obtained by The Washington Post -- inflicting moderate or fleeting pain does not necessarily constitute torture. Torture, the memo says, "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." By contrast, the Army's Field Manual 34-52, titled "Intelligence Interrogations," sets more restrictive rules. For example, the Army prohibits pain induced by chemicals or bondage; forcing an individual to stand, sit or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time; and food deprivation. Under mental torture, the Army prohibits mock executions, sleep deprivation and chemically induced psychosis. Human rights groups expressed dismay at the Justice Department's legal reasoning yesterday. "It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I've seen since this whole Abu Ghraib scandal broke," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of military doctrine and standards on interrogations." But a spokesman for the White House counsel's office said, "The president directed the military to treat al Qaeda and Taliban humanely and consistent with the Geneva Conventions." Mark Corallo, the Justice Department's chief spokesman, said "the department does not comment on specific legal advice it has provided confidentially within the executive branch." But he added: "It is the policy of the United States to comply with all U.S. laws in the treatment of detainees -- including the Constitution, federal statutes and treaties." The CIA declined to comment. The Justice Department's interpretation for the CIA sought to provide guidance on what sorts of aggressive treatments might not fall within the legal definition of torture. The 2002 memo, for example, included the interpretation that "it is difficult to take a specific act out of context and conclude that the act in isolation would constitute torture." The memo named seven techniques that courts have considered torture, including severe beatings with truncheons and clubs, threats of imminent death, burning with cigarettes, electric shocks to genitalia, rape or sexual assault, and forcing a prisoner to watch the torture of another person. "While we cannot say with certainty that acts falling short of these seven would not constitute torture," the memo advised, ". . . we believe that interrogation techniques would have to be similar to these in their extreme nature and in the type of harm caused to violate law." "For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture," the memo said, "it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years." Examples include the development of mental disorders, drug-induced dementia, "post traumatic stress disorder which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression." Of mental torture, however, an interrogator could show he acted in good faith by "taking such steps as surveying professional literature, consulting with experts or reviewing evidence gained in past experience" to show he or she did not intend to cause severe mental pain and that the conduct, therefore, "would not amount to the acts prohibited by the statute." In 2003, the Defense Department conducted its own review of the limits that govern torture, in consultation with experts at the Justice Department and other agencies. The aim of the March 6, 2003, review, conducted by a working group that included representatives of the military services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the intelligence community, was to provide a legal basis for what the group's report called "exceptional interrogations." Much of the reasoning in the group's report and in the Justice Department's 2002 memo overlap. The documents, which address treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, were not written to apply to detainees held in Iraq. In a draft of the working group's report, for example, Pentagon lawyers approvingly cited the Justice Department's 2002 position that domestic and international laws prohibiting torture could be trumped by the president's wartime authority and any directives he issued. At the time, the Justice Department's legal analysis, however, shocked some of the military lawyers who were involved in crafting the new guidelines, said senior defense officials and military lawyers. "Every flag JAG lodged complaints," said one senior Pentagon official involved in the process, referring to the judge advocate generals who are military lawyers of each service. "It's really unprecedented. For almost 30 years we've taught the Geneva Convention one way," said a senior military attorney. "Once you start telling people it's okay to break the law, there's no telling where they might stop." A U.S. law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon group's report, prepared under the supervision of General Counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority." The Pentagon group's report, divulged yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Post, said further that the 1994 law barring torture "does not apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel" at Guantanamo Bay. It also said the anti-torture law did apply to U.S. military interrogations that occurred outside U.S. "maritime and territorial jurisdiction," such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it said both Congress and the Justice Department would have difficulty enforcing the law if U.S. military personnel could be shown to be acting as a result of presidential orders. The report then parsed at length the definition of torture under domestic and international law, with an eye toward guiding military personnel about legal defenses. The Pentagon report uses language very similar to that in the 2002 Justice Department memo written in response to the CIA's request: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," the draft states. "In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions." The draft goes on to assert that a soldier's claim that he was following "superior orders" would be available for those engaged in "exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful." It asserts, as does the Justice view expressed for the CIA, that the mere infliction of pain and suffering is not unlawful; the pain or suffering must be severe. A Defense Department spokesman said last night that the March 2003 memo represented "a scholarly effort to define the perimeters of the law" but added: "What is legal and what is put into practice is a different story." Pentagon officials said the group examined at least 35 interrogation techniques, and Rumsfeld later approved using 24 of them in a classified directive on April 16, 2003, that governed all activities at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon has refused to make public the 24 interrogation procedures. Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

Oh, I see--you not only have no critical thinking skills, you also cannot read for content. Very Sad, dude! Can you take classes for that?

"Thus we see the ultraliberal Ralph Nader and the ultraliberal Pat Buchanan agreeing on numerous points." Yeah, I see...kinda like the ultraconservative GW Bush and the ultraconservative Adolph Hitler agree on so many points?

Proud Duck: "The dolt ought to read his own article. The response team did think it was dealing with a real detainee, not "one of its own soldiers." The natural conclusion is that generally, Afghan and Iraqi prisoners get treated the same way unruly American prisoners do." read carefully: "If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way - allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up - then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis." this sentence doesn't refer to the "response team" you mention, but to the commanders who set this fiasco up, and then lied about it. and yes, Tr2, folks will draw logical conclusions about such things. There is nothing wrong with using logic to extrapolate to conclusion. This is not fantasizing, but deduction.

Beating Specialist Baker By Nicholas D. Kristof NYTimes Op-Ed 6-7-4 The prison abuse scandal refuses to die because soothing White House explanations keep colliding with revelations about dead prisoners and further connivance by senior military officers - and newly discovered victims, like Sean Baker. If Sean Baker doesn't sound like an Iraqi name, it isn't. Specialist Baker, 37, is an American, and he was a proud U.S. soldier. An Air Force veteran and member of the Kentucky National Guard, he served in the first gulf war and more recently was a military policeman in Guantánamo Bay. Then in January 2003, an officer in Guantánamo asked him to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill. As instructed, Mr. Baker put on an orange prison jumpsuit over his uniform, and then crawled under a bunk in a cell so an "internal reaction force" could practice extracting an uncooperative inmate. The five U.S. soldiers in the reaction force were told that he was a genuine detainee who had already assaulted a sergeant. Despite more than a week of coaxing, I haven't been able to get Mr. Baker to give an interview. But he earlier told a Kentucky television station what happened next: "They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he - the same individual - reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn't breathe. When I couldn't breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was `red.' . . . That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: `I'm a U.S. soldier. I'm a U.S. soldier.' " Then the soldiers noticed that he was wearing a U.S. battle dress uniform under the jumpsuit. Mr. Baker was taken to a military hospital for treatment of his head injuries, then flown to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va. After a six-day hospitalization there, he was given a two-week discharge to rest. But Mr. Baker began suffering seizures, so the military sent him to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. He stayed at the hospital for 48 days, was transferred to light duty in an honor burial detail at Fort Dix, N.J., and was finally given a medical discharge two months ago. Meanwhile, a military investigation concluded that there had been no misconduct involved in Mr. Baker's injury. Hmm. The military also says it can't find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident. Most appalling, when Mr. Baker told his story to a Kentucky reporter, the military lied in a disgraceful effort to undermine his credibility. Maj. Laurie Arellano, a spokeswoman for the Southern Command, questioned the extent of Mr. Baker's injuries and told reporters that his medical discharge was unrelated to the injuries he had suffered in the training drill. In fact, however, the Physical Evaluation Board of the Army stated in a document dated Sept. 29, 2003: "The TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise." Major Arellano acknowledges that she misstated the facts and says she had been misinformed herself by medical personnel. She now says the medical discharge was related in part - but only in part, she says - to the "accident." Mr. Baker, who is married and has a 14-year-old son, is now unemployed, taking nine prescription medications and still suffering frequent seizures. His lawyer, Bruce Simpson, has been told that Mr. Baker may not begin to get disability payments for up to 18 months. If he is judged 100 percent disabled, he will then get a maximum of $2,100 a month. If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way - allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up - then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis. President Bush attributed the problems uncovered at Abu Ghraib to "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Mr. Bush, the problems go deeper than a few bad apples. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company