Blessed are those...

I have always loved the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-10, the simple messages of hope and consolation offered in The Sermon on the Mount:

• Blessed are the poor in sprit: for theirs in the kingdom of Heaven.
• Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
• Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
• Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
• Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
• Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
• Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
• Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Indeed, one of the central tenets of my whole religious concept is the seventh one listed, Matthew 5:9. Friends, meaning members of the Religious Society of Friends, wholly embrace the idea of peacemaking, obviously, and are willing to work towards that end.

The simple comfort offered by these passages is what I cherish in them. Frequently, non-religious friends and acquaintances will tell me that religion is just a crutch to deal with mortality and a host of social ills and that a truly strong mind and person doesn’t need it. They may be right. Probably are, to an extent. These same friends claim that my strong attraction to this passage probably stems from a desire for justice and parity and my deeply-seated lack of faith in humanity that precludes achieving it through anything other than divine means.

When friends try and psychoanalyze me this closely, I tend to lose their numbers.

Anyway, there is a ton of textual criticism on the exact meaning and relevance of the Beatitudes, but I've never really been satisfied with all the conclusions they draw. I think they make it too hard. I prefer to take the passage at face value, as a prescription for a better way to approach the world and its inherent hardships, with the knowledge that hardship can lead to improvement.

All of this is just a long and meandering way of saying I'm moving my blog to a new server and a new domain, www.forgottenbeatitudes.com. I'll keep this one going, because it's free, and maybe even post here occasionally, but it will no longer be my main. A friend who's blog-savvy I deeply respect convinced me that if I want people to read my blog, there are steps I need to take and, in order to take them, I've decided to basically start from scratch. FB will be more personal in nature, although I'm sure politics will creep in.

So, for all five of you who read this, check out www.forgottenbeatitudes.com.

It's Bird Flu Season.

Do you have your paranoia ready?

More and more I'm hearing about people stockpiling water and tuna in an effort to outlast the 6-18 months of projected vital service interruptions that might happen should we have another flu pandemic. This could be due to the nature of website I visit and people I talk to and a general sense of distrust about everything at the moment. It could also be put down to blatant fear mongering from the media and some scientists hoping to cash in as well as government officials who have a vested interest in hyping the H5N1 virus as the Next Big Thing. For example, did you know that Rumsfeld holds between $5 and $25 million in biopharmaceutical producers Gilead Science. He even served as the Research Chairman prior between 1997 and 2001, when he joined BushCo. This is interesting because Gilead Science holds the production rights on Tamiflu, the leading influenza-treatment drug. While fears of an avian flu pandemic have sent Gilead's stocks on a rocket rise from $35/share to $47/share, Rumsfeld has quietly raked it in.

Okay, now, I'm not suggesting that Rumsfeld is necessarily creating panic in order to boost his stock's value. However, he and the rest of the administration are doing very little to rationally address a possible flu pandemic or assert rational science into the process of preparedness.

There are a couple of reasons I'm not hugely worried at this point about H5N1 and the lastest cluster outbreak in Indonesia.

1. H5N1 is currently it's own worst enemy. The virus, for an influenza virus, kills quickly if it kills. In order for a virus to work it's way through a population, it must effectively spread beyond it's inital host before it stops that host's ability to spread it. If you're dead, you're not going to be going places where you can infect others. Thus, at the moment, H5N1 is its own best limiting agent, by taking infected individuals down very quickly, thus making it hard for a H2H transmissable variant of H5N1 to reach a large population area. Now, this could change. One of the viral development theories put forth is that, as the virus undergoes further iterations of it's structure (generations), the genetic change in a generation that would provide the virus with easy H2H transmission would also attenuate the virus, making it not so deadly or more easily treatable. While there is some speculation that this is, in fact, not happening, it is still a possibility as easy H2H transmission mutations still have not occured. Furthermore, the worst case scenario would be that the killer generation would possess all the lethality of the prime generation, but would take longer to present symptoms and kill the host, thus increasing the chances of a carrier coming into contact with a fertile host pool and triggering a pandemic.

2. Clusters are, at the moment, found in family environments. Currently, people who come into contact with body fluids of infected poultry and birds are at risk for developing H5N1 flu. However, clusters of infections have been limited to families. A cluster of infection is important because it may represent a generation of H5N1 that can easily pass between humans. However, the confinement of possible H2H transmissions to immediate families is important. There is a compelling theory that a certain portion of humans are subsceptible to this particular flu strain because of genetic predisposition. This would, for the moment, certainly preclude this from being a true pandemic. Clutering has noted that family units tend to show a pattern of blood relative infection, meaning that a father and the children are infected, while the mother isn't, or vice versa. This argues strongly for a genetic determinate coming into play at some point in the infection process, although is not by any means proof. Furthermore, the fact that cases remain isolated gives more support to the idea that only a subset of world population can be infected by this strain, as it is now, because they have the genetic trait required. Now, current situations don't necessarily rule out future behavior. While the virus may currently be tied to a genetic trait, mutation or genetic hybridization with other flu strains may remove that component of infection, thus opening a gateway for a true pandemic. It is also little comfort to people who possess the genetic marker that makes the subsceptible to H5N1. Finally, while this is a compelling argument, it is by no means assured. The family grouping clusters could be due to shared exposure to an infectious agent, such as a chicken or a person who has become ill (it is possible currently to transmit H5N1 from person to person, it is just very difficult to do) and that could be the limiting factor, rather than genetic makeup.

3. Again, H5N1 works against itself in it's pathology. Currently, H5N1 resides very low in the lungs when it infects a host. Death from H5N1 occurs not beacause of the virus itself, exactly, but from the body's own auto-immune system basically drowning the infected person in blood and mucus in the lungs in an attempt to flush out the H5N1 virus. It's deadly pathology, however, works against it's easy spread. It's prime infection site makes it hard for it to get out of an infected host. H2H transmission must currently happen the same way as avian to human transmission: direct contact with infectious bodily liquids, preferably blood and mucus. For the virus to be a true pandemic threat, it needs to obtain a more readily dispersable infection mechanism. Just coughing or breathing is not enough to cause infection.

So while the latest cluter in Indonesia is interesting in the sense it comprises the larges family cluster seen to date, it is not exactly the clarion call of doom that the media are making it out to be. WHO has wisely decided that this incident should be looked at closely, but it does not necessitate an increase in the pandemic threat level. Ultimately, from what I know at the moment, the only difference in this cluster is it's size in comparisson to other clusters, not it methodology. If it was an entire village rather than one extended family that, I believe, shares the same family tree branch, it would be cause for more worry. Even then, though, depending on the relative isolation/remoteness of the area, genetics may still be the determining factor because more isolated areas experience more common genetic traits due to a certain level of inbreeding.

At the moment, I'm far more worried about Bush giving Negroponte the power to keep government contractor assets on the downlow.

Mr Rogers And The 20 Million Dollar Grant

This is how things should work.

Mr. Rogers Goes To The Heart.

God bless you, Mr. Rogers, wherever you are.

Muscles make you gay...

Finally, there's an explanation for why so many gay men are so much more muscular than straight men. CNN's Deborah Feyerick brings us the answer and, according to unliscensed therapist Richard Cohen (lol, don't forget his "M.A." that he proudly displays on his book jacket cover), ex-gay and ex-slut (apparently), they're just carrying around a lot of "gay" in their muscles.

As usual, it's mother's fault.

Cohen says "breaking out of the gay lifestyle" is as simple as picking up a tennis raquet and beating the hell out of a pillow while screaming about how your mom made you want to suck dick by committing "emotional incest" (which just has buzzterm written all over it).

Of course, it could also be because of your "cold, distant" father. The way to remedy this is to have another man hug you. A lot. On a couch. Like a baby.

I'm fairly sure Cohen's next "theraputic technique" will involve slathering his penis in tabasco sauce and then barebacking with his clients, making them not crave the anal invasions so much. Or possibly there will be aggression therapy where he takes the prospective Not-Really-Ex-Gay-But-Much-Happier-Through-Repression gay out to a special gun range where they shoot at popup targets of Barbara Streissand, Judy Garland, Cher and Madonna to counteract the gay-ifying influence of show tunes and dance music.

Seriously, this is just some messed up shit right here.

Well, we've got "checks" covered....

To bad we are in serious want of some balances.

Bush tells Negroponte that he can get companies off the hook from reporting laws because the knowledge that the CEO raided the corporate funds to build a beach house in the Bahamas might threaten national security.

Now, as the article points out, sitting Presidents have had the ability to do this since the late 70s. However, given this administration's close ties to corporations like Halliburton and their "reconstruction" efforts in Iraq, as well as the wiretapping scandal and it's relation to the big telecom companies, this is interesting. Now, not only can the Department of Justice not investigate the wiretaps because they can't get clearance, future programs by the big telecoms to provide governmental traces on citizen's phone lines can't even be traced by the large and mysterious paper trail left by the telecoms spending huge sums of money.

Nice. So, exactly, what separates the CIA/NSA from the Soviet-era KGB again?

You know, real Republicans should be in an uproar over this because it represents another broadening of governmental powers, restrictions and control that the Republican party was initially created to work against (an ideology which has been tacitly handed to the Libertarians). However, the Religio-Licans and RepubCo will probably support it because it has the words "national security" and promises that companies might be able to get away with asset-reporting murder if they play along with the Bush administration.

Disgraceful what they've done to this country. Disgraceful.

Go To Hell, Olmert.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, really, at the blatant hypocracy of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Even as he claimed Israel would be a "willing partner in peace", a highly dubious and historically inaccurate claim, with the Palestinians, he threatened that it was willing to go it alone.

Well, not really alone, mind you, because the United States is pretty much Israel's bitch.

Before I get into this, I want to be completely clear. I am not anti-semetic, but I am rabidly anti-Zionist. Frequently these two different positions are lumped into one by people who then turn around and accuse governmental bodies of oversimplification of issues. I wish no harm to jewish people (I wish no harm to anyone), however there is absolutely no sane reason on the face of the planet that Israel, as a nation, should exist or that we as the United States should support it's existance.

Since it's horribly misguided and shockingly unfair creation in the 1940s on the basis of a nightmarish decision by the United Nations (which for me serves as one of the strongest arguments against the existance of the United Nations as well, an organization who's ideals and aims I tend to support), Israel has done nothing but agitate and anger it's region the entire Middle East, secure in the knowledge that it had the full support of the United States.

It continues that policy of agitation and aggression to this day. Olmert and his recent press junket tour of the U.S. is little more than an excuse for syncophants to come oozing out of the woodwork like blood pouring down the walls of the Amityville Horror house. It's also a blatant attempt to ramp up to a military action in Iran. The fact alone that Israel is pushing for such action should be enough for us to be against it.

Olmert's latest salvo was his address to Congress where he said choice bits of propoganda like, "We will not yield to terror." Israel, however, hasn't the slightest problem with using terror tactics to achieve it's ends. After all, it's only terror if it's not government-sponsored. Since it's inception, Israel has been guilty of blatant acts of terror and atrocity, but those go unconsidered because there are so many money links between the U.S. and Israel that it would be too inconvenient to own up to sponsoring a nation as guilty of "terrorism" as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

Israeli military historian, Aryeh Yitzahki, former Director of the Israeli Defense Force archives and lecturer at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, has documented the shopping list of Israeli atrocities against Arabs during the War of Independence. Speaking about the battling around Arab villages between May and July of 1948:

Sometimes the report tells about blatant massacres which were committed after the battle, sometimes the massacres are committed in the heat of battle and while the villages are ‘cleansed’.

For example, author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed points to a massacre that occured at al-Dawayima village on the 29th of October in 1948. A soldier present at the incident testified that, after the 89th Battalion entered the village without a fight, the killings commenced:

“The first wave of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 Arabs, women and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms was employed to clean the courtyard.... (they) shot her and the baby.... This was not in the heat of battle.... but a system of expulsion and destruction”.--From Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949.

Israel was born in terror and has not renounced it's practice since, preferring to call it "self-defense" by moving it to a state-sponsored level.

This makes Olmert's claims of peace and willingness to work with Palestinians not only false, but particularly disgusting in that he still forget's Israel's own terrorist activities while attacking and punishing random Palestinian civilians for the same acts carried out on a smaller scale.

But he's getting what he wants. Olmert has secured a Yee-Haw backing from Bush, who has said unequivocably that if Israel is attacked, we will side with them. Olmert urges action against Iran, saying, "If we don't take Iran's bellicose rhetoric seriously now, we will be forced to take its nuclear aggression seriously later." Whereas, Israel's bellicose rhetoric and their confirmed possession of nuclear weapons (as well as their continuing unwillingness to officially disclose that information) is all right. And what action would be appropriate? A UN resolution? A laughable suggestion coming from Israel, as it frequently ignores UN resolutions passed against it. For 35 years, the U.N. has been calling on Israel to withdraw unconditionally from Palestinian territories, yet Israel willfully ignores these resolutions when it wishes . Thus, Israel continues to violate international law, secure in the knowledge that the U.S. will protect them from any U.N. fallout. This undermines the authority of the international body that gave them the supposed right to exist in the first place.

So, Olmert, go home. Never come back. If Israel wishes to play such hard ball, then it should do so by itself, and we, the United States, who are the purported leaders in the worldwide fight against terrorism, should dissolve all contact with this terrorist rogue nation.

Mind you, I know this will never happen. Still, it would be nice for us to be clean at least once in the past ten years or so.

Don't Make Me Pull This Quagmire Over!

In a pathetic attempt to try and convince...well, just about everyone, that he hasn't sold out faster than tickets to Jenna Jameson replacing Julia Roberts on Broadway and doing the show nude AND on a pogo stick, Senator John McCain recently made some "off the cuff" remarks to the rich and powerful in New York.

Leaked examples intended to show us, the peons, that McCain only addresses those who have cashed in their souls and isn't souless himself.

I think my favorite bit is where, when asked what he would do in Iraq, McCain said,

"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’”

Golly. What's next? Making Osama bin Laden go to his room and just think about what he's done? A vicious round of spankings for Saddam Hussein which are guaranteed to hurt you more than they do him? If only someone would have thought of that in Viet Nam. Of course, it might have been hard to find just two parties to sit down and force to make nice in that situation. Luckily Iraq is so much more clear cut, eh, John?

When you get schooled by a student young enough to be either your daughter or the sexual indiscretion that ends your political career and then have to set your Chief of Staff on her like an attack dog because you lack either the balls or the off-the-cuff wit to address her immediately and personally, then some vaguely "intergrity-esque" comments to rich and powerful New Yorkers are just not going to cut it.

However, I'm sure there are a lot of women and gay men out there with a daddy complex that would love for you to take them across your lap and paddle out some campaign contributions. At least that would be an honest exchange. Remember honesty, John? It's something you lost when you climbed into bed with BushCo.

I Choose You, NYC!

I can't help but think the giant Pikachu balloon that attacked NYC today is somehow related to the negative response to Nintendo's changing the Revolution to the Wii.

Of course, he might have just wanted to see "The Color Purple: A New Musical."