FOR's Vision: We envision a world of justice, peace, and freedom. It is a revolutionary vision of a beloved community where differences are respected, conflicts are addressed nonviolently, oppressive structures are dismantled, and where people live in harmony with the earth, nurtured by diverse spiritual traditions that foster compassion, solidarity, and reconciliation.
FOR's Mission: FOR seeks to replace violence, war, racism, and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace, and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions, and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally.
Since 1915, The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) has carried on programs and educational projects concerned with domestic and international peace and justice, nonviolent alternatives to conflict, and the rights of conscience. A Nonviolent, Interfaith, tax exempt organization, The FOR promotes nonviolence and has members from many religious and ethnic traditions. It is a part of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), which has affiliates in over 40 countries.
I have to be honest with you. I much prefer to see images of young Americans overseas competing in the 2004 Olympic Games on MSNBC, Bravo, and NBC than seeing them with camo and kevlar on Fox news in Bush's Iraq.
I'm actually watching some of the Olympic coverage because I'm awake when they air it in the middle of the night. Oddly, but perhaps out of corporate rivalry, I don't hear Fox News getting all uber-patriotic over U.S. athletes winning medals in Athens. Maybe Rupert Murdoch will green-light an olympic story on Fox News if an Australian wins something cool. It's too bad we can't vote someone else to be in charge of Fox News -- Oh Wait. I forgot we can vote with our TV remote control. I guess there is a place for Fox News in the media world, right along the lines of Al-Jazeera. I always thought it was interesting that Fox News came after the Sci-Fi channel on the cable channel food chain. Sorry, I'm just thinking out loud.
Have you been following the Summer Olympics in Athens? I mean, you know, the athletes -- not just the pretty women that are making their mark in Playboy and FHM magazines. Do you have a favorite sport in the Summer Olympics? Are you any good at these sports? Here's a list of the Summer Olympic sports to ease the burden on the few, tired and overworked brain cells you have left sparking between your ears:
Click on the sport name to check out the latest news in Athens. Click on USA to go to that sport's team USA web site. I'm cheering for all the Teams USA to go for the Gold!
These photographs were taken by the intrepid staff photgraphers at the Naples Daily News. If you wish to help the people in this area, there are many ways.
Early this month, I asked, will U.S Christians overlook obvious Bush sins? I pointed out that some Christians not so hardened in their hearts and myopicly focussed on Republican candidates' perrenial re-election promises on so-called 'family values' issues are taking a more critical look at the incumbent candidate for the top job -- George W. Bush -- evaluating his performance and subsequently concluding that he and his administration's policies leave much to be desired. Specifically, U.K.-based Christian Aid reports that billions of dollars in Bush's Iraq Defense Fund has gone MIA. Billions of dollars from the sale of the Iraqi people's own oil for which the Bush administration remains totally unaccountable.
I appreciate all the comments you cared to share on that topic. While this topic is definitely related, it isn't about Bush or his oil buddies stealing $20 billion. So, in order to give Dubya the benefit of the doubt in this one matter alone, given his dismal track record of running his own businesses in the past, I'll just assume that like the those stockpiles of Iraqi WMDs, the IDF billions of dollars are buried in some unlocateable sand dune in the vast desert of the growing Bush World government bueracracy. Big oil, corporate thieves, and inept or corrupt politicians are such common place things to discuss in the Bush World culture, I publicly challenge any late night TV comic to find a humorous angle to drum up a chuckle over them.
Bush chewed the head off of one of his aborted but adopted fetus collection. Blink.
Bush and his cronies stole $20 billion dollars from the Iraqi people! Crickets.
Wait just a minute, Sparky. Before you go firing off some vitriolic hate email to me that would rival the Satanic Verses for my fetus remark, I would just like to say that I haven't put my office workspace back together post-Hurricane Charley so I wasn't able to make an eye-catching image for you. In this case, that's probably a good thing. I do have the skillz to make that fetus remark a mere caption to a visual image. You might be thankful that I'm limited to a linguistic two-by-four to get your bovine attention on this entry.
It's necessary to know Jesus in an intimate and personal way. That's what it means to be an evangelical. I don't think it means evangelicals are necessarily in favor of capital punishment. I'm one evangelical that is opposed to capital punishment. I do not believe being an evangelical means women should be debarred from pastoral ministry. I believe women do have a right to be in ministry. It doesn't mean evangelicals are supportive of the Republican party in all respects, because here's one evangelical who says "I think the Republican party has been the party of the rich, and has forgotten many ethnic groups and many poor people.
I am an evangelical who holds to those three positions [Creed, Bible, personal relationship with Jesus] and is a strong environmentalist. I am an evangelical who raises very specific questions about war in general, but specifically the war in Iraq. The evangelical community has been far too supportive of militarism.
Being a progressive libertarian myself, I always cringe when I think about the historical political enemy of the last few decades of individual liberty. The nasty hair on my back stands up on end when I think of the self-labelled moral majority calling themselves conservative when in fact they continuously sell out our country's founding principles of civil liberty to the lowest bidding politician: like privacy, free expression and church-state seperation. Campolo's Belief Net articles dispel the myth that BACs are a monolithic ideological and voting demographic.
While a large percentage of FOX News viewing BACs might forsake their deeply held beliefs, and leave them outside the polling place in November, and vote for Bush -- it makes me hopeful that there are some more credibily-thinking and progressive Christians who will also be voting.
I am John Furie Zacharias and I approve this message.
First of all, I want to thank everyone who expressed their concern in email and on the little Thunderstorms live TAG board.
Believe it or not, when I was packing, moving and waterproofing the PCs hours before Charley was to hit land (about the time I snarfed up that radar image), it was comforting to know someone might be paying attention to the situation should my little world and I get utterly obliterated by tornadoes spawning off of the storm or by Charley himself.
Helleena had to go to work at the nursing home early on Friday afternoon about the time I was digging through the NWS radar loop pages, trying to dig out the raw image data they used for their java application. It took me a few minutes to find the right server where they were storing their raw images, and even longer to actually copy any of them from their server to my hard drive through the dialup. All NWS/NOAA servers were peaking out Friday afternoon.
Anyway, after converting the image file formats, compiling and optimizing them -- I was able to create those two GIF animations -- one from Key West radar imagery and the other one closer to where I live with Tampa radar imagery. In the process of creating those animations, it seemed to me that Charley's path was turning more east and heading for Fort Meyers. That just made me worry about Melicious y Mondo while I was unplugging the PC. I told Helleena that if Charley cut across Florida far enough south of us, the potential for serious damage would be a lot less from the bands of severe storms that spiral out to the north and east of the hurricane. At the time, though, the latest broadcasted prediction still had it making landfall around the Tampa area which would mean it would likely continue on to come straight at us. Who are you going to believe -- a pixel monkey like me making GIF animations right before the world is supposed to end or the people on the TV? ROFL.
Even if the eye wasn't to come straight over the house, I took the threat of total annihilation seriously enough to continue hobbling and bouncing around the house that afternoon waterproofing things in storage containers and garbage bags should one of the three crappy live oak trees hanging over the house decide to come down or should all of some of the windows blow out and spray the interior of the house with water like children dancing next to an opened fire hydrant.
It's not easy for me to walk, let alone carry stuff. I started off toward the big green commercial trash dumpsters with several kitchen garbage bags full of trash on my little electric scooter to get that out of the house should the place get tumbled, but I didn't make it twenty feet out of the house when one of the hurricane bands instantly dumped a blinding rain seemingly out of nowhere. I turned around and drove back inside the house. I was already pretty beat from carrying things all over the house. I actually packed most of it into the bedroom because it's the northern-most room. Then I half-assedly barricaded the one window, put a few things in a gym bag (local officials were talking about evacuations), turned on the TV, and plopped down on the bed. I was tired and in pain. I ended up falling asleep for two hours.
If you want to know my state of mind on Friday, you can listen to this MP3. It is what was droning through my mind at the time. It reminds me of Soft Cell a little. It's the melody I used to mindlessly practice on my Korg when I would get stressed out before it got stolen. Get the MP3 while you can -- I'm not going to leave it on Hygelic's server space for very long.
I may add more to this entry over the next few days ... especially if I hear anything from Melicious directly that she'd care to share with the class.
