Deep under the sea

There lurks:



Pikachu of Pokemon fame!:



Now we know where the anime creatures hide out!

But this next picture scares me more. I think I'll blame Morse for making me promise myself never to go ocean swimming again:

"Our Islamist enemies do not give a damn about the way we vote, think, or live. "

So says Michael F. Scheuer.

The following is a letter from Michael F. Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden Unit, to the editor of Antiwar.com, regarding Congressman Ron Paul’s exchange with Rudy Giuliani about why the al Qaeda network has targeted the United States.

Sir,

In the dozen-plus years I have been active in matters relating to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, I have watched them go from a small Islamist organization to a worldwide insurgent movement, while bin Laden has established himself as the primary source of inspiration and leadership for tens of millions of Muslim Islamists. This process has been made possible by two things: (a) the skill, courage, patience, and ruthlessness of bin Laden and his ilk, and (b) the refusal of the U.S. government to understand the motivation of bin Laden and his allies.

Last week, Representative Paul did all Americans an immense service by simply pointing out the obvious: Our Islamist enemies do not give a damn about the way we vote, think, or live. Though any country they ruled would surely not look like ours, they are motivated by the belief that U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam, its lands, and its believers. This, of course, is not to say that America is to blame for the war it is now engaged in, but it is to say that it is foolish – and perhaps fatal – for Americans to believe that are we are being attacked for such ephemera as primary elections, R-rated movies, and gender equality. If our Islamist enemies were motivated by such things their numbers would be minuscule and they would be a sporadic lethal nuisance, not, as they are, the most serious national security threat we face today.

Of the eighteen presidential candidates now in the field from both parties, only Mr. Paul has had the courage to square with the average American voter. We are indeed hated and being warred against because we are “over there,” and not for what we are and how we live. Our failure to recognize the truth spoken by Mr. Paul – and spelled out for us in hundreds of pages of statements by Osama bin Laden since 1996 – is leading America toward military and economic disaster.

At day’s end, Mr. Paul has at least temporarily shaken the pillars of the bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy. Neither party, and none of the candidates, want to discuss the Islamists’ motivation because they would have to deal with energy policy, support for Israel, and the 50-year record of U.S. support and protection for Arab tyrannies. These holy cows of U.S. politics have long been off limits to debate, but Mr. Paul has now accurately identified them as the source of motivation for our Islamist enemies, and implicitly has said that the obsessive interventionism of both parties has inspired al-Qaeda and its allies to kill 7,000-plus U.S. civilians and military personnel since 11 September 2001. The war we are engaged in with the Islamists is a long way from over, but it need end in America’s defeat only if Mr. Paul’s frank statements are ignored.

And no matter how you view Mr. Paul’s words, you can safely take one thing to the bank. The person most shaken by Mr. Paul’s frankness was Osama bin Laden, who knows that the current status quo in U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is al-Qaeda’s one indispensable ally, and the only glue that provides cohesion between and among the diverse and often fractious Islamist groups that follow its banner.

Respectfully,
Michael F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA

Christianists once allowed into the halls of power

Will not leave. They have come too far to let it go now!



Update: link isn't working. Found these links:
"The Rise of Dominionism"
Recorded October 11, 2004, 44 minutes

Play the Real Video version. Works best on faster connections. Dialup users can try the audio only version below.

Play the (Windows) WMV Video version. This is a full motion, but low resolution video for 256Kbps or faster connections.

View the QuickTime Video version.

(Check the TheocracyWatch Materials page to get a copy of this video on DVD or videotape.)

If these links fail, go to this site.

Oh boy....China's toothpaste is toxic....

Are they trying to take over the world by poisoning everybody?

China says is investigating reports that toothpaste contaminated with a potentially lethal chemical had been exported to Central America.

Thousands of tubes of Chinese-made toothpaste have been confiscated in Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The toothpaste contains diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in engine coolants, authorities there say.

A series of scares over the safety of Chinese products have recently aroused global concern.

The Dominican Republic has banned the sale of two different brands of toothpaste, both of which were made in China and imported through Panama.

Update: J. Goodrich of The Prospect writes an article on food imports and unregulated markets. Her last two paragraphs:

Whether the Bush administration is up to these challenges remains to be seen. A recent Washington Post article reports that the administration has opposed new safety rules for foreign foods, and that it views China more as a market for American products than as the source of potentially contaminated products later found in the United States. Add to that conservatives' general anti-regulation beliefs and their faith in unregulated markets, and one begins to have some doubts about reform. But the resumption of high-level trade talks with China this week gives the administration a good opportunity to dispel them by imposing stricter regulations on imports from China.

The administration should also promptly address the problem of the overburdened FDA, the firewall that is supposed to keep all of us safe. And how safe are we right now? Are we any better off than in the era before the passage of the 1938 food safety legislation? To return to the glycerin story, in early May of this year the FDA sent out an advisory which recommends -- but does not require -- that pharmaceutical manufacturers in this country test solvents marked as glycerin for the possible presence of diethylene glycol. Our next major food-safety scandal may be just around the corner.

And so... here comes diethylene glycol. What other surprises await us in foodstuffs from China?

Brownback blowback

Brownback is shocked that a teacher did not get tenure because of his beliefs. Read his qualifications carefully.

DES MOINES, Ia— U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, Republican candidate for President, today commented on the denial of tenure to Iowa State University Professor Guillermo Gonzales.

"When I was informed that Professor Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure, I was puzzled given his excellent academic record of achievement and faithful service. I understand that now two of Dr. Gonzalez's colleagues have indicated that Gonzalez's interest in intelligent design theory was, at least in part, responsible for this denial of tenure. This is rather alarming."

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is currently an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University, and has authored more than 65 scientific papers and articles. Dr. Gonzalez developed the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone and co-authored "The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, which was published in 2004." The Privileged Planet provides scientific evidence for intelligent design theory, which challenges neo-Darwinism's claim that the development of the universe is the result of an unpredictable and purposeless process. Intelligent design theory rather explores recent discoveries in the fields of physics, cosmology, biochemistry, genetics, and paleontology that logically point to an intelligent cause in the development of life and the cosmos.

Brownback continued, "Observation, testing, and the development of reasonable hypotheses have long been integral to good science. Scholars, such as Professor Guillermo Gonzales, ought not to be intimidated nor silenced by those in the academic community who would rather dismiss a well-reasoned hypothesis than debate it on its merits. Such an assault on academic freedom does not bode well for the advancement of true science."

John Pieret of Thoughts in a Haystack has a different explanation:

Senator Sam ("I ain't no monkey") Brownback, who famously made his case for being the second President of the 21st Century by demonstrating that he hasn't yet made it through to the end of the 19th, is shocked … shocked … that Guillermo Gonzalez has been denied tenure despite his allegedly "well-reasoned hypothesis" set forth in a popular work of supposed science published by Regnery Publishing, which describes itself not as a publisher of works of science but as the "nation's leading conservative publisher." The writing of the book was actually funded, as Ed Brayton points out, by the John Templeton Foundation, instead of a scientific organization like, oh, say, NASA.

Update 5/24: PZ Myers at Pharyngula has more:

It also includes comments from Bob Park, which reflect my own views on this—his ID ideas were fair game for the tenure review.

But Park says that a researcher's views on intelligent design cannot be divorced from the tenure decision. Anyone who believes that an intelligent force set the Earth's location doesn't understand probability's role in the Universe, Park argues. Such a person is hardly qualified to teach others about the scientific method. "We're entrusting the minds of our students to this person," he says.

And there's also the best informed person on this topic, the chair of the department.

Eli Rosenberg, who chairs Iowa State's physics department, concedes that Gonzalez's belief in intelligent design did come up during the tenure process. "I'd be a fool if I said it was not [discussed]," he says. But, he adds, "intelligent design was not a major or even a big factor in this decision." Four of twelve tenure candidates have been turned down in the past decade, he says. "We are a fairly hard-nosed department."

What big teeth you have, T-Rex....

The better to open coconuts, my dear!

In the middle of the lobby of the 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a 20-foot waterfall tumbles. Two life-size figures of children with long black hair and in buckskin clothes play in the stream a few feet from two towering Tyrannosaurus Rex models that can move and roar. The museum, which cost $25 million to build and has a sea of black asphalt parking lots for school buses, has a scale model of Noah’s ark that shows how Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into the three levels of the vessel—he loaded only baby dinosaurs. And on the wooden model, infant dinosaurs cavort with horses, giraffes, hippopotamuses, penguins and bears. There is an elaborate display of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve, naked but strategically positioned so as not to display breasts or genitals, swim in a river as giant dinosaurs and lizards roam the banks.

Before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, museum visitors are told, all of the dinosaurs were peaceable plant-eaters. The evidence is found in Genesis 1:30, where God gives “green herb” to every creature to eat. There were no predators. T-Rex had such big teeth, the museum explains, so it could open coconuts. Only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise did the dinosaurs start to eat flesh. And Adam’s sin is a key component of the belief system, for in the eyes of many creationists, in order for Jesus’ death to be meaningful it had to atone for Adam’s first sin.

[snip]

The movement desperately needs the imprint of science to legitimize itself. It achieves this imprint by discrediting real science and claiming creationist science as true science. All attempts to argue the creationists out of their mythical belief, to persuade them with logic, evidence, scientific inquiry and fact, will fail. They have created a “fundamentalist science.” They know they cannot return to the pre-Darwinian innocence that let them believe the Bible alone was enough. They need, in the midst of their flight from reality, to reassure their followers that science, science not contaminated by secular humanists and nonbelievers, is on their side. In this they are a distinctly modern movement. They seek the imprint of science and scholarship to legitimize myth. This is a characteristic they share with all modern totalitarian movements, which co-opt the disciplines of law, science, medicine and scholarship to give a modern veneer to their primitive and superstitious belief systems, systems that allow the rulers to dictate reality and truth. The “paraprofessional” organizations formed by the Christian right, organizations of teachers, journalists, doctors, lawyers and scientists, mimic the activities of real professional groups. They seek to challenge the legitimacy and the power of the traditional organizations. The duplication of the structures and methods employed by the non-totalitarian world, the use of pseudo-science to dress up fantasy, is slowly undermining our legitimate scientific and educational institutions. It is destroying the foundations of our open society. It is ushering us into a world where lies are true.

Others are saying the coconut theory about T-Rex is false, but all dinosaurs ate green herbs in Eden until Eve fucked it all up.

To counterbalance the Creation Science Museum opening, send P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula ideas for his Creation Museum Carnival.

Tengrain from Mock Paper Scissors and I posted on this 'museum' earlier. They posed light-skin colored children in clothes up to their chins near a velociraptor.

Green herbs indeed.

(update: fixed grammar and added link)

Why does food safety go down when Republicans are in power?

From Paul Krugman's article via jurassicpork at Welcome to Pottersville:

The Washington Post, reviewing F.D.A. documents, found that last month the agency detained shipments from China that included dried apples treated with carcinogenic chemicals and seafood “coated with putrefying bacteria.” You can be sure that a lot of similarly unsafe and disgusting food ends up in American stomachs.

Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005, the F.D.A. suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra, which sells the product under multiple brand names, might be contaminated with salmonella. According to The New York Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed some product but declined to say why,” and refused to let the inspectors examine its records without a written authorization.

According to the company, the agency never followed through. This brings us to our third villain, the Bush administration.

Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated over the past six years. We don’t know how many times concerns raised by F.D.A. employees were ignored or soft-pedaled by their superiors. What we do know is that since 2001 the F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety regulations except those mandated by Congress.

This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure. The Bush administration won’t issue food safety regulations even when the private sector wants them. The president of the United Fresh Produce Association says that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines.

Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry that actually wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that they would create a precedent for public-interest regulation of other industries. But they are also influenced by an ideology that says business should never be regulated, no matter what.

Fredo's Revenge

Godfather Part IV...


(via d r i f t g l a s s)

Vote for impeachment

Of Bush.

The British show us how it's done

Without declaring that society will collapse and suddenly unmarried citizens will take to the streets:

Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue.

It's a NON-ISSUE. Even with our own military:

According to a recent Zogby poll of active personnel, 73% of military members say they are comfortable around lesbians and gays. For that matter, more than one in five U.S. troops already knows a gay person in their unit, including combat units. So where’s the “intolerable risk”?