What My Day Has Been Like

This Is What War Is

From Wikileaks, via BoingBoing

and this . . .

Xeni Jardin provides the following commentary:

Wikileaks claims to have obtained and decrypted video that shows US occupying forces in an Apache helicopter intentionally firing on a dozen civilians in Baghdad, including journalists working for the Reuters news organization: 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

The video is accompanied by audio of the pilots' radio dialogue. No Pentagon response yet. Reuters has been attempting to obtain the video under Freedom of Information Act requests since the incident occurred in July, 2007, but the Pentagon blocked all requests. Reuters news editor-in-chief David Schlesinger says the video is "graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result". Wikileaks director Julian Assange said Wikileaks had to break military encryption on the file to view it, and will not reveal how or from whom the file was obtained.

From the pilot's radio dialogue, it sounds as if they mistook the cameraman's SLR lenses for rocket launchers.

King, Harper and Prisons

Reading through on op-ed piece in the NYT, I came across this quote from Martin Luther King:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Given that our own government has just chosen to increase prison budgets by a whopping 27% when other far more pressing social needs are left with crumbs, could the same be said for Canada?

An Easter Theme -- Hope and Renewal in Defeat

Amid all of the noise about the seemingly endless abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, John Bentley Mays gives a message of the hope of the Gospel and the promise of the Kingdom despite our very human failings

Nothing that has happened in the past 10 days, or in the past 10 years, has made me regret my decision. But the current controversy over Benedict has made certain things about the sex scandals in the church perfectly clear to me.

One is that the time of face-saving, image management and avoidance in the Catholic Church – I mean everyone, including the Pope, the bishops and the rest of us – is well and truly over.

Another is that a new time is dawning for all Catholics, one full of danger for the tired, self-protective, bureaucratic culture of the church, and thus full of hope. It is a time of listening, with renewed rigour, to all victims of clerical abuse, and a time of affording love and justice to each of them.

It is a time of the Kingdom of God, opening into history, as it always does, in the voices of the oppressed, the excluded and sick and weak, those crucified by violence, exploitation and lies. Woe to any church or any Christian that ignores, because of fear for the weary structures of this dying world, the always radical appearing of God's Kingdom.

Greater Internet Dickwad Theory

What can I say?

Greg Boyd on |Evangelicals and Judgement

This is a message that both those within and outside the Church so much need to hear. This is Greg Boyd speaking about his very mixed reception at Rhode Island University

Well, it turns out that not everyone on campus is excited to have me come. In fact, some faculty may boycott the inauguration because of me. The controversy has led to several interesting interviews from local newspapers as well as an interview with theChronicle of Higher Education. Expressing the concerns of some on campus, several reporters have asked me how I felt about the objection that having an “evangelical” pastor give an inauguration address on a secular campus blurred the lines between church and state. As I shared with these reporters, the charge is a bit ironic in that the controversy I’m usually associated with revolves around my emphatic insistence onthe separation of church and state! At the same time, it seems to me that it enhances the message of diversity and open-mindedness for a secular university like RIU to invite contributions from people of faith, so long as they can trust that these people won’t abuse their platform by promoting their particular faith. I assured them that the message I will deliver will be predicated on our shared humanity, not my particular theology.

I was also asked to respond to the concern of some that I might use this platform to speak against homosexuality. “Why on earth would I ever do that?” I emphatically responded to one reporter. The fact that this concern could even arise is a sad commentary on the damage done to the evangelical movement by the self-serving public judgmentalism of certain evangelical spokespeople. It’s one of the reasons I no longer identify myself as an “evangelical” until I know what the word means to a particular audience. Much of what is often associated with this label — including the self-righteous judgmentalism of gays — is stuff I’m adamantly against. As I told this reporter, my conviction is that Jesus calls his followers to consider their own shortcomings to be massive tree trunks sticking out of their eyes compared to the tiny dust particle imperfections they think they see in others (Mt 7:1-3).

“So how would you respond to gays and advocates for gays at Rhode Island University who are concerned about you coming?” one reporter asked. “I’d tell them that, however grieved they are by evangelicals who campaign against homosexuals, I am probably more so. And I’d confess, along with the apostle Paul, that I am the worst of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:16-16).

A wonderful message for Good Friday.

Pandering . . . again

When economic times are tough, people are afraid. And when they are afraid, they are sadly usually willing to lash out at those who have less. Thus it is a time-honored political strategy to ride this populist resentment to electoral success. The last century is littered with examples of this.

Never afraid to stoop lower, the Harper Conservatives have made much use of this. And today comes news that they are going to strike out at that favorite target of demagogues: immigrants.

Because we won't let refugee claimants work, they are dependent on social assistance. Now this government wants provincial governments to tighten the screws on people who are already backed into a corner. And this from a government that claims a foundation in |Christian faith.

Way to be, guys!