by Brian Burns

With the recent claim of pseudo-victory in Iraq by the AP’s Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid, anyone with enough common sense to understand how resistance to invasion works could easily assess that these two have fallen off the deep end of reality. As if birthed from faulty Republican think-tanks, the two have written an analysis piece that tells of the tide of war in Iraq and how it has turned to when we can now say we’re “winning the war that two years ago seemed lost”. With Burns being AP’s chief military reporter, and Reid as AP’s chief of bureau in Baghdad, it would be difficult to say that anyone else could have more experience on this particular subject matter other than the troops themselves, and possibly anyone who has ever invaded to occupy a sectarian nation. What the latter has over that of our troops, and apparently Burns and Reid, is the knowledge of the outcome of such a foolish endeavor. And just as history repeats itself, unless Barack Obama wins the presidency and follows through with his promise to bring our troops home, we will undoubtedly see trillions of dollars being spent on a security investment where our military personnel will be continuously picked off a few at a time for many years to come.

The Burns-Reid analysis for the Associated Press contradicts itself from the beginning, where after saying we’re winning the war they admit, “Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years.”

It is important to understand that the “War in Iraq” was never a “war” as western logic defines it. It was an invasion of primarily American forces to take down a leader that wouldn’t play ball with our leaders who desperately wanted to make business deals over their vast supply of natural resources. Initially met with resistance by a militia that fled from an obvious onslaught, our troops had hardly any problem clearing a space large enough to setup a small militarized village from where they could stage their operations. From there the stages of ousting the invaders became more of an opportunity to attack than one of resistance, in that our failure to secure the borders of Iraq gave way to terrorist groups who were able to rush in once Saddam Hussein was gone from his position of power. They would act out their will to take out as much ‘westernization’ as they could, being fully aware that only the allied forces could stop them.

Once George W. Bush declared war on terrorism the Iraq invasion could be considered a “war”, but only to those who bought into the rhetoric. To those Iraqi’s who were suddenly faced with stray bombs killing innocent family members, what the Republicans were calling a “war” was only an invasion to occupy. They were citizens of the communities that dealt with the dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, and though they might not have been happy, they weren’t about to let the Bush Administration replace what they had with a westernized iron fist. They were patriots to their country and a new resistance upwelled. Though they did not want terrorist groups like al Qaida running their country, the citizens didn’t want the U.S. making their laws either, and al Qaida took advantage of this by staying back and planning their attacks in smaller, more precise, bursts. The population was now in resistance in greater numbers than ever, and so Bush thought it would be smart to enact the “surge”. By adding additional forces to patrol the streets, the Iraqi’s who had taken up arms against our troops were forced to retreat to their homes, where they now have to plan their attacks in smaller, more precise, bursts as well. This is what the Burns-Reid analysis is showing us. They are unknowingly spelling out ‘oppression’, but in a different form than they had 5 years ago.

Those lacking common sense believe that peace can be made between religious factions that have spent two thousand years perfecting their hatred for one another, when Saddam Hussein realized the only way to keep order in Iraq is with that said ‘iron fist’. Though even the Bush Administration, after being schooled by our military in the knowledge they’ve gained over the years, has come to understand that to occupy Iraq means to forcibly keep them in order. Instead of Iraqi’s embracing the prospect of peace, they are instead having peace being sold to them from the American government.

In the Burns-Reid analysis they state, “They (Sunnis) launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.” It is now well known that a good portion of the $150 billion the Bush Administration borrowed from China went to paying off Muqtada al Sadr for his agreement to a cease fire against his Sunni rivals. In other words, the only war that was ever going on inside of Iraq’s borders prior to the American invasion was the sectarian war between the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. Now that the terrorist cells are moving on to take advantage of the lack of security in Afghanistan, in Iraq the sectarian war that’s been two thousand years in the making is becoming our main concern. But like oil, our monetary supply also has limitations.

What Burns and Reid are trying to show us is now that the dictatorship in Iraq has been replaced with a parliament, and now that the usurping power of terrorist groups have left to fight elsewhere, Iraq can begin to form a peaceful democracy. They call it “winning the war”. As we can plainly see by their own words the attacks on our forces will undoubtedly continue, as there will always be citizens that want to expel a military occupancy from their country. It is assumed that a foreign military ultimately has control, and as long as there are outside forces dictating the course of their lives then they are no better off than they were prior to the invasion. With that said, it is impossible to say we’ve won the war, or are winning the war. As stated, they are citizens of Iraq and they are home. They have all the time in their lives to sit back and pluck away at our military.

Only a couple decades ago Russia learned the lesson that an attempt at occupying a Middle East nation is a waste of lives and money, for they too felt the pang of continuous casualties from small arms fire and occasional bombings, until they finally fled Afghanistan. Using the words of Burns and Reid, “It’s not the end of fighting. It looks like the beginning of a perilous peace,” we can see that the Bush Administration has obviously embedded our troops in a situation very similar to what the Russians faced. And it appears that people like John McCain never learned from their lesson in which the outcome was an utter failure. So we’re stuck in a country where the leaders are asking us to leave, and those sympathetic to the expulsion of foreign occupancy will give us the task of managing a “perilous peace”. Aside from the rogue gangs that rushed in and have now moved on, this perilous peace is what Iraq has been dealing with for centuries.

But with all that aside, with sticking to their claim that we’re winning the war, we have to recall that the only war in Iraq was the one that was waged against terrorism. With the terrorists moving on to a new territory it seems that we aren’t winning any war really, but only letting them get away as Bush did with Osama bin Laden. There never was a war waged against Iraq, and so there was never a war to win. And as long as there are people who consider America occupying their nation as further oppression, they will make sure we can never claim victory for a war that was never waged.

by Brian Burns

It seems as though Barack Obama is trying to win over the entire American population as he is slowly sliding from the left toward the center by stretching to reach over to the right. While his health-care policy is sure to alienate the Republican base, the effect his Afghani-war policy will have on the left will be as equally frustrating. With his ideas on expanding faith-based initiatives upsetting a large amount of left-leaners, his opposition to CAFTA and NAFTA will surely tweak a few nerves on the right. It can only be seen as an attempt at being what George W. Bush said he was striving toward, but not surprisingly failed miserably at; being a ‘uniter’, not a ‘divider’, of the American populace.

After eight years of partisan politics, in which Bush helped widen the gap between red and blue to one of canyon sized proportions, Obama seems to be focused on doing the best he can to bring the two sides together. By setting up his policy to reflect a bit of ‘give and take’ from both sides he is moving from his base and setting himself up to be a truly bipartisan presidential hopeful. But are these the necessary steps in what it takes to become a ‘uniter’? Is it even possible to unite the American public?

Partisan politics and the gap which separates the American people politically are as old as the republic itself. From the days in which Thomas Jefferson took control of the presidency and congress after a bitter fight against the Federalist John Adams the unification of politcal philosophies in America have been divisive on a grand stage. It may appear that the red-blue division is somewhat young, something that didn’t really come about since the Republican uprising after the Lewinski-Clinton scandal, but if we think back to Bush Sr., and then back to Ronald’s ‘Reagonomics’ we can see the division in attitude amongst Americans was no less apparent. We can step back one further to Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and on, and with every president we happen upon we notice there was a great divide in the population’s philosophies on who should have been leading our nation and why.

When our country is in a state of progression, and our markets are strong we tend to tuck our complaining and finger-pointing away for a rainy day. Though secretly the opposing side to that which has control is always looking for the first mistake. They’re looking for the single miscalculation in policy, or that first slip of the tongue that they can make a banner from and parade it through town while chanting, “I told you so.” Americans are beyond unification, and have always been, simply because that is what our country is based upon. It is a melting pot in not only race, creed, and color, but also in our philosophies. Any country that has a mixed population will always have a division in political thought, while those that are considered “free” nations the matter will seem ten times greater since the cries of the opposition can be heard through the media across the globe. Fortunately and not so fortunately it’s the foundation of our country - free thought, and the freedom to express those thoughts. Because of these given freedoms we’re allowed to publicly fight tooth and nail for what we believe in. We fight to place those with similar philosophies in the power position since we fear those in power who think otherwise. We are not supposed to be a country where the winner takes all, but a nation of give and take. It’s supposed to be a country where the majority rules but with concessions made to the other side, as those of the opposition are also Americans, and the job of the president is to listen to the will of all of us.

Barack Obama’s quest to become a centrist is honorable, but if he is trying to be a uniter it will never happen. The only times people unify is when an outside force is attacking. Whether it’s a human conflict or it comes by way of a natural disaster, people in those times will subconsciously drop all prejudices and put forth the energy that it takes to quell the issue. Shortly thereafter, when the raging tides have ebbed and there is a moment of calm, is when the people lift their arms to once again point their fingers of blame.

After nearly ten years of terrorizing the people of Darfur, where which over 600,000 people have been killed, and approximately 2.5 million have been displaced, Sudan’s president Omar al Bashir pointed the finger of blame toward the international community. “Every time we take a step forward, make progress and signs of peace emerge, those people try to mess it up, return us to square one and distract us with marginal issues and false allegations,” al Bashir told a group of supporters in the Darfur region, in reference to his July 14th indictment by the International Criminal Court. The charges of genocide pinned against him brought on this public display of lies and deceit that we Americans have grown used to over the past five years, with the only difference coming in the form of civil strife as opposed to our Bush Administration’s Middle East invasion that was formulated and carried out using the same tactics. With the Darfur situation being far worse in the human rights arena, al Bashir was trying to play the role of the Wizard behind the curtain. He was trying to show his sympathy for those run from their villages by the government-backed forces known as the Janjaweed, and at one point said, “The real sickness here is the suffering of the displaced, because they are the ones who lost their sense of security and safety in their hometowns.” Though in one faux-pas he revealed how little he truly cares and showed his defiance toward those who are seeking to help curb the situation by stating, “We will only bow to God, who is the sole provider.”

by Brian Burns

It’s difficult to stimulate our nation’s economy when most of what our leaders collect from our earnings is immediately sent to foreign nations. One might think that investing in our nation, the $700 billion that the Bush Administration has spent so far in the Middle East, could have had a positive effect on our rotting job market, our failing health care, and our overly packed public schools. Maybe it would help to reinvest some of the war-money in private sector incentives to remedy our headache over energy costs, and our insatiable desire for alternative fuels. One would hope that eight years in office would buy the time needed to enact any pro-American policy, but domestic policy was seemingly another one of those things George W. Bush forgot back at the ranch.

It has been eight years of arguably the worst policy making in the history of our country, and the American ignorance towards that fact is astounding. Even though the majority of Americans have accepted that Bush’s presidential run was as close to an utter failure as anyone could imagine, the desire to rid ourselves of an administration whose partisan politics, corporatist policies, and self-serving ideals was seemingly short lived. Now, with presidential hopeful John McCain gaining enough support to where he is running a close race against a man whose campaign slogan includes the word “change”, it’s apparent that a great number of Americans would choose to forego changing our country’s policies for the better, and simply find happiness in knowing the name Bush is no longer carrying the tag ‘Commander in Chief’.

With regard to America’s economic situation, it seems that we’re stuck floating slowly downward like a feather in an abyss. Last Tuesday, the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, gave us the forecast in which we were told we would be continuing our descent right around the time our president announced that our economy is stable. This is important to note because John McCain agrees with the president’s assessment, and his campaign co-chairman went so far as to call Americans a “nation of whiners” who were stuck in a “mental recession”. They listen to Wall Street, and their economic advisors who believe that our degenerating housing market has already hit the bottom, and say that it will undoubtedly take a u-turn. They use the logic behind economics that shows how bad can actually be good. They say that our plummet to the housing market floor will bring out those who want to buy homes at rock-bottom prices. Consequently, the housing market will reverse itself and will once again grow strong. Their logic only works when employment opportunities are strong, however, since it takes a steady income to maintain the cost of owning a home. But with our job market being dragged down by our failing economy, and the misguided trust in free-trade policies, it seems our economists are either reporting their aspirations, or have lost the ability to think beyond step 1 in the process of coming to a realistic conclusion when thinking through a problem. Though both are things we should be used to after listening to the predictions from the Republicans over the past eight years.

We were told that our troops would be celebrated as liberators, and that they would be greeted with roses in Baghdad, while we were pointing out step 2 in the process of thinking that showed what happened to Russia when they tried occupying a Middle East nation. We were told Bush’s tax cuts would stimulate the economy, while we again pointed to step 2 which clearly shows that his Republican predecessors, both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., helped drive our economy further into recessions with tax cuts. We were told NAFTA and CAFTA are beneficial for Americans, but once again, that pesky step 2 is showing that the federal government has regulations enacted that make it more expensive for foreign companies to operate here than in nations where they can setup shop without providing healthcare benefits, a safe work environment, and where they can pay the worker a pittance in comparison. Therefore, their prediction that there would be as much insourcing as there is outsourcing seems to be one dream through which John McCain seems to still be sleeping.

The problem Americans now face is who to choose to hasten the upswing. Barack Obama chants, “Change,” while John McCain claims he’s the “Best to lead since day one.” And though it appears McCain wants to continue upon the same trail from which Bush is preparing to flee, his supporters are coming out of the Kudzu in droves. The citizens are feeling the pressure from the cost of living, and are aware that it’s one of the few things on the rise. They’ve lost sight of our children’s education as it fell from their view of the price at the gas pump. They’ve forgotten about our troops in the Middle East because they can’t take their eyes off the price stamped on a milk jug. John McCain is fully aware of this and so he is doing what most Republicans do during their presidential campaigns - they avoid talking about their policy and scare the American public by threatening that their opponent in the donkey costume will raise their taxes. Judging by the numbers of supporters McCain has managed to recruit, the scare tactic apparently works well. 

John McCain’s plan on spending trillions of dollars in an attempt at occupying Iraq, for what he said could be a hundred years, is a wad of spit in the eyes of Americans who want the war to end and for our troops to return home safely. It’s an upturned middle finger aimed at the faces of us who want to reinvest our earnings into bettering our own country, and who can read where step 2 tells that the best method of securing our nation is not by trying to eliminate everyone who opposes our views. And like his predecessor, McCain has no plan on how to go about occupying Iraq. He avoids telling us that the money could only come from raising taxes, or by borrowing from foreign nations like the $150 billion loan Bush took from China. While we lose jobs, and watch the economy break beneath our feet, they spend our money building walls in Baghdad in their efforts to keep the local Muslim factions separated from each other. We’re led to believe that we’re giving them freedom, but creating tiny enclaves and setting up Baghdad to look like Algernon’s maze is hardly the blueprint for a free land.

It’s apparent the Republicans are back to their old selves - those who refuse to think their way through to step 2. If they read further to where it says that ending the war in Iraq would help our economy a great deal, even if it means the corporations backing the war having to lose out on hundreds of millions in annual profit, they might see that John McCain’s ‘tax and spend on foreign nations’ policy has no way of helping to regrow our economy. If they were to find a true sense of patriotism, unlike those they hang from flagpoles or stick to their bumpers, they might find that it’s best to vote for the candidate who is not wearing the elephant costume, but for the donkey-guy who at least wants to end the war and reinvest that money and our tax dollars into our own nation.

Rock Port, Missouri celebrated becoming the first town being fully powered by the wind. With 4 wind turbines erected on farmland, the town of 1,300 residents will be able to receive 16 million killowatt hours of electricity annually. Since they currently only use 13 million killowatt hours they will be able to sell what they don’t use to the Missouri Joint Municipal Utilities to be used elsewhere. This bodes well for the agricultural community, for farmland usually carries high property taxes in comparison to the income from the yield produced. Now the residents will see additional income, as they can lease a portion of their land to wind-energy developers such as the St. Louis based Wind Capital Group, who currently leases land in Rock Port for their 4 turbines.

Jim Crawford, a natural resource engineer at the University of Missouri Extension, stated that “Anybody who is currently using Rock Port utilities can expect no increase in rates for the next 15 to 20 years.” With 20 years being the lifespan of a wind turbine the residents would then have to have them replaced, but with recycling technology gaining ground in the field of heavy machinery, the cost could be substantially less for turbines 20 years from now.

Oddly enough even more income is coming by way of tourism, since the town has noticed an influx of “outsiders” funnelling in to catch a glimpse of the spectacle in their fields.

by Brian Burns

For many years now Evangelicals in America have been positioning themselves inside of Washington D.C., and have twisted the definition of the First Amendment to our Constitution to mean something that it never has. The First Amendment in our Bill of Rights states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Evangelicals take this to mean they have the right to erect religious icons in our government buildings and public spaces, and completely miss the mark when they claim our nation is a “Christian nation”. The fact behind their matter is faith-based, and it has grown to where the ‘wall of separation between church and state’, the true essence of the First Amendment, is being torn down before our eyes by those who have either sworn, or are preparing themselves to swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

The ‘wall of separation’ between church and secular affairs was first introduced to us by a Christian preacher in colonial Massachusetts named Roger Williams. As a Separatist from the Church of England, Williams was steadfast in his faith, but the Puritanical version he practiced was at odds with England’s state-sanctioned Anglican religion, and so he set sail for Boston. After turning down the offer to replace a minister in an “unseparated” church, he accepted one offered by his fellow Puritans in Salem. Salem, however, was under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Boston authorities stopped Williams from settling there. Instead, he moved on to Plymouth Colony, where he was more than welcomed by the citizens to lead the teachings in their church, as they too were Puritans who held Separatist views akin to those of Williams. Though still under the rule of England, the colonists considered their New World as one that was removed from their native lands, and many wanted it to be regarded as an independent state. They wanted to enact their own laws, and wanted to be able to worship without being scrutinized by the Church of England. In general, they were seeking religious freedom, and Williams preached their sentiments loudly.

Roger Williams was enthusiastic when he saw that the American colonies were booming with religious variations from across Europe. He saw it as somewhat of a refuge for ‘Separatists’ around the world, and was happy to find that it wasn’t only his people seeking freedom from religious persecution. He noticed that people led moral lives regardless of their faith, accepted all good people, and soon after Williams even befriended the local pagan tribes of Native Americans. Williams believed in religious freedom for not only the sect of Puritans that had come to populate Massachusetts, but for all people in general, and he spoke of it during his sermons.

Although Williams soon found that those who desired religious freedom from the Church of England were no more accepting of the notion of religious freedom than that which they fled, for after only two short years he was forced from the church and back to Salem. There he lived as the assistant to the pastor in their church, before taking over his predecessor’s position after the pastor died just a year after. Salem, however, did not take kindly to Williams’ sermons, in which he preached the acceptance of people with opposing beliefs, and was soon after brought up on charges of spreading “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions”. Both the lawmakers and his own Puritanical people thought it would be best if he were excommunicated to England, and so Williams went into exile.

A year later, in 1636, Williams along with some of his followers settled in a section of land southwest of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and called it Providence. Soon after, Williams saw the area flourishing with those who had escaped persecution in the new colonies, and founded the Colony of Rhode Island. It was the first colony that made civil issues a matter of majority rule, but gave acceptance and equality to all religious and non-religious people, and by 1639 Baptists, Quakers, Puritans, Huguenots, and even Jews had established congregations in Providence and its neighboring territories. Scattered amongst them were Atheists who had no gods guiding their morals, but Williams saw that they were ethical people with their own opinions on religious matters, and was happy to treat them as equals. In 1640 Williams wrote in his ‘The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution’, “No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.”

In his fervent battle for the ‘freedom of religion’ Williams wrote many treatises on why the cities and towns of the New World needed to be open to what he referred to as varying “opinions” of spirituality. He recognized the morality of individuals who held opposing views on religion, and later in his life would write, “God requirth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil wars. . . . It is the will and command of God that . . . a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-Christian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries.”

As the Puritans in Massachusetts were hanging Quakers, and taxing 100 pounds to each ship carrying Quakers onto shore, Roger Williams was planting the seeds of his vision of a melting-pot of free people. He saw the persecution that takes place when governments have preferred or “official” religions, and the dangers in closed-mindedness toward matters of opinion. He saw the dangers in governments that involve themselves in religious affairs of the populace, and he saw the same dangers in religions that involve themselves in politics. In 1644 Williams wrote, “When they (the Church) have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World.” This was the inspiration for what Thomas Jefferson would later call “The wall of separation between church and state.”

This ‘wall’ – the notion of government affairs being kept out of religion and vice versa, was imperative for the assembling of a free country, as it was imperative to have the freedom to worship as each citizen saw fit. It was never intended to become a nation where only certain sects of Christianity were free to worship. Nor was it ever intended to be a land where only god-fearing people are free to live and practice their beliefs. America never had a state sanctioned religion because this nation was born from those who sought the freedom to worship away from state sanctioned religions, and by those who desired the freedom to not worship any god at all. The very first amendment to our Constitution, this being on the fore-front of the minds of our Founding Fathers, gives everyone the right to live freely in America without having to be burdened by the dogma of a lone religious sect. America is an Atheist nation as much as it is a Jewish nation, as much as it is a Christian nation, and as much as it is a nation of pagans that are our Native American Indians.

A century after Williams’ death, our nation’s Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution of the United States of America, and shortly thereafter the first ten amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights. The man responsible for authoring both bills, appropriately known as the ‘Father of the Constitution’ and the ‘Father of the Bill of Rights’, was James Madison, our nation’s fourth president. He was also known as Thomas Jefferson’s protégé, and worked by his side in drafting and passing into law ‘The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom’. In the first section of the document Jefferson expounds on various points including two points influential in Madison’s First Amendment rights. Jefferson wrote, “The coercion of a person to make contributions—especially monetary—to a religion he doesn’t support is tyrannical and creates favoritism among ministers,” and, “Civil rights do not depend on religious beliefs, and what a person thinks is no business of the government.” In the second section Jefferson wrote, “…no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” Given this history it is without a doubt that Madison had the explicit intention of erecting a wall between church and state in our Bill of Rights that the Founding Fathers signed into law.

Today’s Evangelicals understandably fear their lives being without purpose, and their entire belief system being nullified as gains in evolutionary-science march forth. Many fear the thought of not having an after-life, and the nothingness that life becomes when we as an organism die off. They fear the loneliness that could accompany ‘being without god’, and the autonomy they would be left with. They fear not having the comfort they feel from their spiritual protection, and the safety of the omnipresence watching over them. They see the social-society in America running amok from the civil chastity that comforts them. They see our children becoming more open with their sexuality, and more independent with their thoughts, and they fear its contagiousness. They fear their children growing up being influenced by the hypotheses of scientific experiments because it is killing their notion of gods, and would gladly smother space exploration for the further we reach to the stars the further their heaven fades. And as they grow, and their lives become more orderly, they find safety in believing their god has ultimate control over the situation, and believing it would never let the situation get too far out of hand. But what they fail to see is that humanity is moral by nature, not by bibles and scripture.

As stated earlier, the fact of their matter is faith-based, and faith is an individual viewpoint. The faith one has religiously might be identical to another’s at the apex of the subject, but when broken down into particulars their views could differ greatly. If a Christian and a Hindu were asked if they believe in the presence of an omnipotent being their answers would be identical. However, once the particulars of their individual views of omnipotent beings came into light we would see vast differences, to when we could conclude that they hold opposing beliefs. Even in Christianity alone, where according to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are over 33,000 sects worldwide, this act of breaking the matter down into particulars is what is ultimately responsible for the formation of the multitude of sects. It is the multitude of sects that proves that Christians alone do not have an answer of what their god truly wants, for if they did there would be uniformity, and so they’re left with faith in their beliefs; they are left with their opinions. It is the recognition of religion being solely opinion-based that led to the religious freedom clause in our First Amendment. The Founding Fathers realized that every sect believes they ‘know’ what their god wants, but since they all provide different answers they only ‘know’ what they believe to be true. Nevertheless, the Evangelicals wage their war on the Constitution because it doesn’t mix well with their vision of American culture. They want their religion erected in every government building and in every town square they choose. They believe it is their right.

It comes at these times – the twilight of sectarian power backed by prejudice and fear, when we see the births of historical religious wars, and inquisitions. We see today’s Evangelicals manipulating their way into our nation’s government through what seems to be a large hole in the wall of separation between church and state. They believe we should rewrite the Constitution to “reflect god’s laws”. However, the inspiration of Roger Williams and those who wrote all three of our Charters of Freedom, are the only ‘divine spirits’ which back our nation’s First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

In September 2010 NASA’s Space Shuttle Program will be closing down, and its three remaining ships put to rest. The maiden launch of Columbia in 1981 brought fame to the shuttles as being the first re-usable space vehicles. Since, we’ve seen two tragic missions when in 1986 Challenger exploded soon after launching, and again in 2003 when Columbia was destroyed upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. 14 astronauts lost their lives in the two missions combined, and NASA has now decided to scrap the program so they could focus on the construction of the International Space Station.

The three remaining ships, Endeavor, Atlantis, and Discovery, have been successful in 85 missions so far, and will have upped the tally to 95 by the closing of the program. With the final mission scheduled for launch in May 2010, Endeavor will be headlining as it will take critical supplies to the International Space Station before passing off the wand to their successor-ships in the Constellation Program, including Orion and Ares.

To many of us, the program’s initial launching of Columbia was as awe-inspiring as Neil Armstrong’s ”giant leap for mankind” was to our parents, and watching them retire will most likely produce some sentiment similar to what my father felt toward the death of the Studebaker. 

“Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon”
- Neil Peart

With a heap of issues to talk about, the G8 leaders are proving their annual summit is a waste of jet fuel and travel expenses. In what could be an annual meeting through video-conferencing, the leaders would rather spend their people’s money to gather for 3 days to bicker and cut business deals.

President Bush, a lone trooper on the issue of war, played out his usual childishness when he told the world that he will not help cut back on global pollution unless China and India agree to do the same. And as the job market in the U.S. continues to shrink he reiterated his belief that the only way to help the impoverished in the world is through free trade agreements.

Though he was able to boost the value of a buck by speaking highly of the world’s need of a strong dollar, the boost was less than one-hundredth of a cent against the Euro. And though he spoke out against the situation in Zimbabwe, calling Robert Mugabe’s election a “sham,” he is pushing for India to accelerate their nuclear development program, without signing anti-proliferation agreements, to where it can be in full swing before Bush leaves office.

With more issues yet to talk about, like the inflated cost of food and oil and the loss of wildlife and the environment, it appears that the G8 leaders are taking care of business the hard way. When they could be at home prioritizing their seemingly screwed up policies and taking action, they instead waste more time and money with words. Of course, that is assuming that government leaders can do more than setup walls of red tape and botch the processes in addressing global concerns.

Click here to read how mixed up the gene pool could be in the evolution toward a One World Government.

It is difficult for us to imagine the desperation one must experience before taking their own life. Even those who have had someone close to them commit suicide, we often hear them speaking rather dumbfoundedly about the matter, with themselves questioning, and rather clueless to the depth of their loved one’s state of depression. Though we see the numbers of suicides in our own country add up every day, it is still a very foreign matter to us, because most of us simply cannot imagine that life could ever be that bad.

When news of ’suicide bombers’ first became widespread during the Iraq invasion we were astounded. Many Americans couldn’t believe the enemy would sink so low as to use their own lives as weaponry in their attack on western forces. Others couldn’t believe how little they valued their lives. To the rest of us who thought beyond the act of ’suicide bombing’, we realized that having been promised the riches of an afterlife in the realm of Allah the value they placed on their current lives was minimal in comparison. The truth is that none of these female suicide bombers are angrilly strapping bombs to themselves and running into the public-square to blow up unwanted foreigners, as much as they are doing it because they are severely depressed individuals, whose life beyond that of the present is much more promising.

The women in rural areas of Iraq, who have lost their loved ones to either imprisonment or that have been killed find themselves in such deep depression they become easilly preyed upon by the men trying to expel the western forces from their country. Because of their lack of rights in certain regions, they often feel as if they have no hope left in this life, and so are willing to take their own lives to help gain access into their holy afterlife.

Click here to read about the motivations of suicide bombers, and why their lives were already over before ever committing the heinous act.