Not much going on here unless Susan posts her report from PCRT. I'm not expecting that until sometime later this week or next week :-). So, might I suggest you read our archives? The news that we write about, usually isn't even current when we write about it and we've only been blogging for four months, how dated can some of this stuff be?
Though, while I was writing this I checked out the Drudge Report (why, yes, I do have ADD, how did you guess :-) and noticed that the Vatican is urging Catholics to boycott The Da Vinci Code movie. I was hoping that this wouldn't happen, why give them anymore publicity then they are going to get already? Don't bother boycotting. See it and be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is in you with gentleness and love.
And I see that ten thousand people marched in NYC against the war :
Tens of thousands of protesters marched Saturday through lower Manhattan to demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, just hours after this month's death toll reached 70.
Cindy Sheehan, a vociferous critic of the war whose soldier son also died in Iraq, joined in the march, as did actress Susan Sarandon and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
This is news? When are they not marching? And yeah, you've been marching for how many years now? And are we out yet? That marching thing doesn't appear to be working for ya, does it?
Organizers said the march was also meant to oppose any military action against Iran, which is facing international criticism over its nuclear program. The event was organized by the group United for Peace and Justice.And marching against the war in Iraq before we went to war was so successful that you are trying to prevent a war in Iran by marching again. Yeah, that's a working strategy, influencing change there aren't ya. The reason you are so angry is because you have no control over what is going to happen. Bush will do what he thinks he should, not what protestors demand he do.
"We've been lied to, and they're going to lie to us again to bring us a war in Iran," said Marjori Ramos, 43, of New York. "I'm here because I had a lot of anger, and I had to do something."
A country of religious zealots, who are under a totalitarian regime is not going to listen to reason, we can't negotiate with them. If we learn nothing from history we should learn this lesson: you cannot negotiate with those who don't share your moral standards. As I have previously noted, Dorothy Sayers wrote of the futility of trying to reason with those who do not share a standard code of conduct (WWII Germany):
"We have been very slow to understand this. We persist in thinking that Germany 'really' believes those things to be right that we believe to be right, and is only very naughty in her behavior. That is a thinking we find quite familiar. We often do wrong things, knowing them to be wrong. For a long time we kept on imagining that if we granted certain German demands that seemed fairly reasonable, she would stop being naughty and behave according to our ideas of what was right and proper. We still go on scolding Germany for disregarding the standard of European ethics, as though that standard was something which she still acknowledged. It is only with great difficulty that we can bring ourselves to grasp the fact that there is no failure in Germany to live up to her own standards of right conduct. It is something much more terrifying and tremendous: it is that what we believe to be evil, Germany believes to be good." (Creed or Chaos? pg. 29)
