STAN'S BLOGS

[My theology doesn't have a name, the best I can come up with is deist... and it sure looks like I'm in good company] There's been much talk lately about Michael Newdow, a Californian atheist who has fought a series of legal battles seeking to bar religious references from American public life suing to remove the phrase " In God We Trust " from U.S. money and coins. No doubt this latest battle over how much GOD we want in our government will take a long time to be resolved, but before we really get started, let's consider this: The first six and four later Presidents of the United States had strong deistic or allied beliefs. Deism (the belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation) was championed by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Thom

[Last night PBS-KVIE aired a "stirring" Independent Lens documentary called The Real Dirt on Farmer John ; think we don't need our farms] Los Angeles - 15 Jun 2006 Los Angeles Police Forcibly Evict and Bulldoze the South Central Farm Despite widespread popular resistance, including years of struggle against the city and developers on the part of farmers, a three-week old occupation and treesit, a successful effort to raise millions of dollars in order to try to buy the land on which the farm stood - a bid which was ultimately rejected, and a day full of nonviolent civil disobedience including lockdowns and blockades, the largest urban farm in the United States was evicted on the morning of June 13th. The farm, which had been started on property taken from developers under eminent domain laws after the 1992 popular uprising following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, and which provided healthy food for over three hundred and fifty families as well as

"What if" you doggedly drew the living room window shades open one morning and this was the scene in your neighborhood... I have a particular fascination with world events, follow them daily, and find international conflicts and struggles for democracy, theocracy and anarchy WAY more interesting than our own homegrown, getting staler-by-the-day politics. With 42 countries hosting current conflicts and/or hearing the rumblings of civil war, there is plenty of material to cover and I'm always looking for better ways to do it. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." —Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Flashpoints does a terrific job of illustrating and analyzing ongoing conflicts around the world. On their website they say "Flashpoints strives to provide the information needed to make informed judgements about the nature of specific violent political conflicts , the aspirations of the advers

[I found that the Peace Corps offered some of the most exciting possibilities I've encountered in my search to serve] One of today's CNN.com headlines reads: Timor violence spreads beyond Dili . The piece goes on to say, "Attackers burned down a district office of East Timor's ruling party on Thursday, the Parliament's speaker said. It was the first reported violence outside the capital since fighting broke out in Dili last month. The attack occurred in the town of Gleno, the capital of Ermera district, lawmaker Francisco Guterres said. A group of rebel soldiers who were dismissed in March and have clashed with government forces are based in the area." What does this news story have to do with the Peace Corps? Last year, having had twenty-five successful years in business, deciding there's no end to having enough money and looking for something more meaningful to do with my life, I applied for a two year commitment with the Peace Corps . It was a long, b