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who’s to blame?

Posted on January 31, 2006 | Filed Under general

From the Los Angeles Times (Exxon Reports Record-Breaking Profits)

Exxon Reports Record-Breaking Annual Profits
By Jesus Sanchez, Times Staff Writer

ExxonMobil Corp. today said its annual profits soared more than 40% last year to a record-breaking $36.1 billion as the world’s largest publicly owned energy company reaped the benefits of soaring prices and demand for crude oil and gasoline.

The company’s annual and quarterly profit figures, which were even larger than Wall Street had expected, sent the company’s shares up more than 3% in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

ExxonMobil’s annual profit was the largest ever reported in corporate history, …

wackos?

Posted on January 26, 2006 | Filed Under the natural world

Environmentalists are just a bunch of wackos …

They believe that every human being is entitled to breathe clean air and to drink clean water.
They believe that a healthy planet is essential to the welfare of all living things, including human beings.
They believe in leaving the world a better place for future generations.
They believe in the virtue of making small sacrifices now to preserve the bounty of the earth’s resources for later.
They want their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children to experience the same awe and wonder they experience in encountering the astounding variety and complexity and …

saying “no” to torture means “no”

Posted on January 20, 2006 | Filed Under torture

I am hopeful that we may be of one mind as a nation in saying an unequivocal “No” to using torture in any and all circumstances. I am concerned, as are the retired miltary officers cited in the following article, that the “signing statement” appended to the bill undermines the intent and effect of the McCain amendment banning cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees in any form.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of retired military officers urged President George W. Bush on Thursday to spell out how he will enforce a ban on the torture of U.S.-held prisoners, complaining …

martin luther king still has something to say to us

Posted on January 16, 2006 | Filed Under justice

An excerpt from the last speech given by Martin Luther King:

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked …

making beauty

Posted on January 14, 2006 | Filed Under arts and culture, beauty, favorite posts, grace, spirituality

(Originally published Saturday, December 31, 2005)

I have been doing a bit of ranting lately … about the horrors of the death penalty, about the scandal of an administration that is reluctant to expressly disavow torture, about the shortsighted greed that would rather despoil an untouched wilderness than spend the time and money to develop alternative energy sources or to find ways to use our present energy resources more efficiently.

But I want to end the year on a positive note! Because in spite of all its ills and all our failings, the world in which we live is filled with …

the year of magical thinking

Posted on January 9, 2006 | Filed Under arts and culture

(Originally published Monday, January 2, 2006)

The opening paragraph from chapter 17 of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion:

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. …

face the facts

Posted on January 9, 2006 | Filed Under general

(Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2005)

Let Them Eat Guns?, Sojourners Magazine/January 2006

World military expenditure exceeded $1 trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of this spending.

$238 billion. Appropriations for the “war on terror” for 2003–05, which exceeded the combined military spending of the entire developing world in 2004 ($214 billion).

$236 billion. The combined arms sales of the top 100 companies in 2003. The top five companies accounted for 44 percent of this total.

$2.5 billion per year: The external funding required by 47 countries with the lowest primary school completion rates in order to achieve the Millennium …