I am taking this time to remember Erick. He was a true friend.
Naked chocolate Jesus rises again
Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:38pm EDT
By Daniel Trotta
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A life-size chocolate sculpture of a naked Jesus will finally be displayed in New York starting in late October, seven months after an outcry by Roman Catholics forced a different gallery to cancel its exhibition.
The chocolate Jesus will be joined by sculptures of several fully clothed saints, but the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said it will not protest because, unlike before, there are no plans to put the "anatomically correct" Jesus in public view during Holy Week.
The Proposition gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood will present "Chocolate Saints ... Sweet Jesus," an exhibition timed to coincide with All Saints' Day on November 1. The show will run October 27 to November 24.
Back in March, the chocolate Jesus by artist Cosimo Cavallaro was to be exhibited in a street-level window of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, giving casual passers-by a view of Jesus's private parts.
Protests, including a call to boycott the affiliated Roger Smith Hotel,
forced the gallery to scrap the showing.
"We still don't approve but the conditions have changed," said Kiera
McCaffrey, spokeswoman for the Catholic organization.
The new exhibition will take place indoors in a neighborhood full of art galleries, she said.
Images on the Proposition gallery's Web site
(http://www.theproposition.c...) show the work suspended in air, depicting Jesus as if on the cross.
A gallery statement said Cavallaro was raised as a Catholic altar boy and questioned church precepts but always held a fondness for Holy Communion.
"Remembering the mystical/transcendental quality and rushes of memory associated with the Catholic wafer received during Holy Communion, he recalls equating that ritual of ecstasy to his own experience of chocolate," the statement said.
The flap recalled another New York clash between art and religion. In 1999, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to withdraw a grant from the Brooklyn Museum of Art over a painting depicting the Virgin Mary as a black woman splattered with elephant dung and adorned with cut-outs from pornographic magazines.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
According to this article Fred Thompson is facing a complaint alleging that he is violating federal election laws. The article notes that he raised $3.5 million and has spent just over a half a million.
Because he is not an official candidate, it appears he is benefiting in ways which candidates who have already announced can't.
Bush War Adviser Says Draft Worth a Look
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 10, 2007
Filed at 7:32 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.
''I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,'' Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's ''All Things Considered.''
''And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another,'' Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.
President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a ''major policy shift'' and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.
''The president's position is that the all volunteer military meets the needs of the country and there is no discussion of a draft. General Lute made that point as well,'' National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
In the interview, Lute also said that ''Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well.''
Still, he said the repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan affect not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military.
''There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families,'' he said. ''And ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions.''
The military conducted a draft during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. The Selective Service System, re-established in 1980, maintains a registry of 18-year-old men.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has called for reinstating the draft as a way to end the Iraq war.
Bush picked Lute in mid-May as a deputy national security adviser with responsibility for ensuring efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated with policymakers in Washington. Lute, an active-duty general, was chosen after several retired generals turned down the job.
Original Link: http://www.medpagetoday.com...
Abstinence Ineffective in HIV, Pregnancy Prevention
OXFORD, England, Aug. 3 -- Abstinence-only programs to prevent HIV and pregnancy in high-income countries are ineffective, according to a systematic review of 13 U.S. trials.
Participants in the trials did not report significant differences either in risky sexual behaviors or biological outcomes compared with controls, according to Kristin Underhill, M.Sc., and colleagues, at the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention.
The finding parallels an earlier study, which found that such programs in developing countries had little effect, Underhill and colleagues reported in the Aug. 4 issue of BMJ.
The investigators undertook an international literature search, looking for randomized or quasi-randomized trials of abstinence-only prevention programs aimed at HIV, pregnancy, or both.
Despite its international focus, the search found only 13 randomized trials that met standards for inclusion -- all conducted in the U.S. and all focusing on youths. No quasi-randomized trials met inclusion criteria.
The 13 studies, enrolling almost 16,000 youths -- had such a wide variety of participants, control groups, and outcome measures that a formal meta-analysis wasn't possible, the investigators said.
Interestingly, none of the trials -- even those whose focus was HIV alone -- used incidence of HIV as an outcome measure. Instead, the studies used unprotected vaginal sex as a proxy for HIV risk.
Sexual behavior was not reported in all of the studies and was limited to vaginal sex. None of the studies evaluated oral sex, anal sex, or same-sex behavior, the researchers said.
Control groups included usual care (which was rarely defined), safer sex counseling, no treatment, time-matched abstinence-plus programs, and abstinence programs without enhancements such as parent-child homework.
Outcomes -- all based on self-reported questionnaires -- included diagnosis of sexually transmitted infection, pregnancy, first sexual experience, having sex recently, having unprotected sex recently, and having sex without a condom.
Despite those limitations and others, "the evidence from this systematic review is clear," the investigators said:
"When compared with a variety of control groups, the participants in these 13 abstinence-only program trials did not report differences in risky sexual behaviors or biological outcomes."
Specifically:
- No trial reported a significant benefit in preventing sexually transmitted infections and one reported short- and long-term harm.
- None of the trials reported any benefit in preventing pregnancy and one reported that the program increased the risk, compared with usual care or no treatment.
- Only five trials had enough data to allow an estimate of rates of recent unprotected vaginal sex and none showed a benefit or harm.
- Seven trials reported the incidence of any vaginal sex-six found no effect and one found the program cut the risk by 47% at two months follow-up compared with usual care.
- Four trials assessed frequency of sex and none found any effect.
- Nine trials looked at condom use and none found an effect.
- Ten trials looked at sexual initiation and again none found a significant effect.
The fact that all 13 trials took place in the U.S. could be explained two ways, the researchers said: Either studies in other countries are "inaccessible by search methods" or abstinence-only programs are not popular as HIV prevention strategies in other high-income nations.
The study raises the question of whether such programs are an effective use of public money, said Nancy Kiviat, M.D., of the University of Washington, and colleagues.
In an accompanying editorial, they noted that abstinence has become a "politically charged issue" because a large share of the money allocated for prevention in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) must, by law, be spent on promoting abstinence.
While the review makes clear that such programs don't work in the U.S., Dr. Kiviat and colleagues said, there is abundant evidence that promoting condom use does prevent HIV transmission.
"Therefore," they said, "priority should be given to culturally sensitive, sex-specific, behavioral interventions that target black and Hispanic patients in clinics for sexually transmitted infections, men who have sex with men, and adolescents being treated for drug misuse who are at highest risk of acquiring HIV."
From the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007...
Alaska Home of Senator Is Raided by U.S. Agents
Published: July 31, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 30 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service raided the Alaska home of Senator Ted Stevens on Monday in search of evidence about his relationship to a businessman who oversaw a remodeling project that almost doubled the size of the senator’s house, federal law enforcement officials said.
The decision to raid the home suggests that the corruption investigation focused on Mr. Stevens, a long-serving Republican and former chairman, has taken on new urgency.
The businessman, Bill J. Allen, the founder of an oil fields service company that has won tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts with the senator’s help, has pleaded guilty to bribing state legislators.
The F.B.I. confirmed that the raid on Mr. Stevens’s home in the Alaskan ski resort city of Girdwood, about 40 miles south of Anchorage, began about 2:30 p.m. Alaska time, or about 6:30 p.m. Eastern time.
In Washington, Mr. Stevens issued a brief statement: “My attorneys were advised this morning that federal agents wished to search my home in Girdwood in connection with an ongoing investigation. I continue to believe this investigation should proceed to its conclusion without any appearance that I have attempted to influence the outcome.”
A spokesman for the Anchorage office of the F.B.I., David Heller, would not discuss details of what was being sought in the raid and referred calls to the Justice Department’s public integrity division in Washington. The division handles major corruption cases involving public officials.
Mr. Stevens is one of more than a dozen current and former members of Congress who are known to be under scrutiny by the F.B.I.
His case may be the most politically consequential. He is the only senator known to be under criminal investigation, and he continues to wield power on the Appropriations Committee, which controls how the federal budget is distributed. Mr. Stevens, 83, is up for re-election next year and has suggested that he will seek another term.
Mr. Stevens has been caught up in a larger corruption investigation in Alaska that resulted in raids last year on the homes of six state lawmakers, including the senator’s son, Ben, who was then president of State Senate. All of the state lawmakers are under scrutiny over their relationships with Mr. Allen and his company, VECO, and other large Alaska companies.
Senator Stevens’s home in Girdwood was renovated in 2000 with the help of Mr. Allen, a longtime friend, and contractors have said that bills for their work went to VECO before they were passed on to Mr. Stevens.
The remodeled home has 2,471 square feet of living area, about double its original size, with a taxable value of about $420,000, tax records show. The carpentry work alone for the renovation is known to have exceeded $100,000.
Girdwood, which is surrounded by the Chugach Mountains, is popular among skiers and is a second home to many of the most affluent residents of Anchorage, the state’s largest city.
“I will tell you that we paid every bill that was given to us with our own money,” Senator Stevens told reporters in Washington earlier this month.
Mr. Stevens is also a business partner of Mr. Allen. The two men, along with several others, purchased a racehorse, named So Long Birdie, and were occasionally seen dining together at a Girdwood restaurant owned by another of the horse owners, Bob Penney. Mr. Penney testified last month before a federal grand jury in Anchorage that has gathered information in the corruption cases.
Last week, the state’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski, a fellow Republican, announced that she and her husband would sell a large plot of land back to Mr. Penney after a complaint was made to the Senate Ethics Commit
Article Link: http://prod.midiaindependen... (Pictures in question are at this site)
Vatican threatens to sue Indymedia By FREEDOM OF PRESS
It looks clear to us that the trial is going to restrict the liberty of expression and is politically motivated, trying to silence satirical criticisms published in a letfist site about the political positions of the new pope.
Back in April 2005, the World Press reported that the Italian Public Departmen's attorney, Salvatore Vitello, intends to take legal action against a satirical photomontage picturing Cardinal Ratzinger, the then newly chosen pope, in Nazi uniform. A few months ago, the intention materialized in the form of a letter of request that is now being considered by the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ). The request letter asks for the the page to be taken down and disclose the identity of the people deemed responsible for the site, which is registered in Brazil.
The case in question is a good example of the double standards in dealing with the freedom of the press. In the incident of the cartoons that satirized prophet Mohammed in the Danish journal Jyllands-Posten, the public opinion of the liberal democracies jumped to condemn the fanaticism and the restriction of the freedom of expression. Now that the satire concerns a religious figure that occupies a privileged position in the international setting, the Italian Judiciary, in accordance with the Vatican, initiates forms of cyber political pursuit.
The photomontage at the heart of the trial is a satirical composition published on the Italy Independent Media Center site in April 2005. IMC, or Indymedia, is a global network of open publishing websites, where readers can publish news and opinion, established in 1999 to cover the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The photomontage is an anonymous contribution by one of the site users and puts the face of the Pope Benedict XVI to the body of a Nazi officer. The picture is accompanied by following comment, which the Italian Public Department considered offensive: "Nazi pope - happiness to all the faithful. After the anti-communist reactionary, now comes the ultra-reactionary Nazi."
The satire is clearly a composition that ridicules and criticizes persons and institutions by means of funny exaggeration. The right of satire is one of the foundations of the freedom of expression and press, and is what guarantees that all papers and magazines carry cartoons and caricatures on their pages every day. As an exaggeration, satire is always based on some elements of truth that are then maximised, aiming for a funny effect. In the case of the Pope photomontage, the truth element is that Pope Benedict XVI was member of the Hitler Youth in Germany when he was 14, as well as the fact that his politics, as Mayor of the Faith Doctrine Congregation during John Paul II rein, was considered ultra-conservative. The cartoon does not have as its object the Catholic faith but, rather, the political orientation of the person in charge of the Papacy, as highlighted in the comment.
Despite the fact that the photomontage contains all the elements that qualify as a satire and, therefore, should be protected by the laws that defend the freedom of expression, the Italian Public Department used an article of the Italian penal code that criminalizes the "contempt of a minister of the Catholic faith", Catholicism being the "state religion" there.
However, the jurisprudence established in Italy already regards as outdated and illegitimate the argument that fuses State and Religion. That means that the core argument that substantiates the solicitation of the letter of request is questionable in its own country of origin.
Although Indymedia is not the author of the post concerned, the maintenance of the page where it is published is to us a question of principles. We believe that the photomontage is a satirical criticism of the political positions assumed by the Pope during his ecclesiastical career and that attorney Salvatore Vitello is criminalizing a publication based on outdated articles of the Penal Code, especially that this very Penal Code has recently had substantial changes to its writing.
The letter of request sent to the STJ is based on a judicial agreement of mutual cooperation between Brazil and Italy which limits this cooperation to predicted cases in the legislation of both countries and to crimes that are not of a political nature. However, the Brazilian law does not offer special protection for the ministers of the Catholic faith. Further, the letter of request, although claiming the trial is not of political nature, does highlight that the Independent Media Center website is the "expression of the information circuit of the antagonist left".
It is pretty obvious that the trial is going to restrict the freedom of expression and is politically motivated. It is trying to silence satirical criticism, published on a leftist site, about the political positions of the new pope. We expect the Minister entrusted by the trial in the Superior Court to have the same understanding. We also expect that the Brazilian civil society, as we as the international community, would express their opposition to this attempt by the Italian attorney to silence any criticism of the controversial political orientations of the Catholic Pope.
Recently, the request for filing the case was sent to the Italian Judicial authorities by the Italian Public Department itself. However, the request letter sent to Brazil is still being processed by the Federal Justice.
Does mob rule reign on the internet? What do you think?
(CNN) -- A Korean woman receives death threats because she wouldn't clean up her dog's mess on the subway; a Chinese man suspected of philandering is besieged by angry emails and phone calls; an American college student caught plagiarizing online is turned in by incensed bloggers.
Forget Big Brother, it's the Internet mob that's watching you...
For the rest of the story click here.
We know what they're hiding.
Original Link: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/...
Cheney lawyers ordered residence visitor records destroyed: DOJ letter
Brett Murphy at 9:45 AM ET
[JURIST] Lawyers for US Vice President Dick Cheney [official profile] instructed the Secret Service to destroy data on who visited his official residence at the Naval Observatory, saying that the information was protected by the Presidential Records Act [text], according to a letter [PDF text] included in a response filed Friday by the US Department of Justice to a lawsuit by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [advocacy website]. CREW filed the suit seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at the residence. Chief counsel for CREW has asserted that the destruction of the data was illegal, saying that the letter proves that "the administration has been...entering into secret agreements in violation of the law."
CREW filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in January seeking compliance with a CREW Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents relating to the destruction of White House visitor record logs kept by the Secret Service. In another case, US Justice Department lawyers asked [JURIST report] a federal appeals court in December to overturn an October district court ruling [PDF text] that ordered the Secret Service to release visitor logs [JURIST report] for the personal residence and office of Vice President Cheney in the context of a FOIA request made by the Washington Post during a probe of lobbying practices. AP has more.
|
