I’ve donated my weblog to a political party.

Have a look

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“The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now,” says Professor Ellen van Wolde, a “respected” Old Testament scholar and author.

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Her thesis is that the Hebrew verb “bara” in the opening sentence of the Book of Genesis does not mean “to create” but “to spatially separate”. So God did not create the Heaven and the Earth, but separated them.

“And God separated the light from the dark, and did two loads of laundry”

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The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a proposed copyright treaty that contains provisions that criminalize non-commercial file-sharing; require net-wide wiretapping for copyright infringement and border-searches of hard-drives and other devices; and disconnection from the Internet for people accused of violating copyright. The actual text of these provisions is a secret, though, as the treaty is being negotiated away from the UN, behind closed doors; the Obama administration denied a Freedom of Information Act request for it on the grounds that it is a matter of “national security.”

The NGO Knowledge Ecology International pressed the US Trade Rep on this, and received a reply stating that 42 DC insiders — including some reps from activist groups — have been shown the treaty, after signing a vow promising to treat it as classified. KEI has researched the 42 people and their bios and corporate affiliations

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The following is the KEI statement on the USTR policy:

USTR has decided that the views of the public are unimportant. The use of non-disclosure agreements to this hand picked group is an insult to any pretense of openness. Apparently everyone representing a giant corporation, including foreign owned publishers, could see the text through an NDA. No academic experts were consulted. Among the many civil society groups that pressed USTR to disclose the text, only Public Knowledge and CDT were given access, and both groups are bound by the NDA to not discuss the contents.

KEI was not offered access to the text under an NDA, and we would not have signed an NDA if we had had the chance. The White House needs to make the ACTA texts public, so that everyone can read them, and speak freely about them.

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Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.

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“It is a very serious trend that we need to follow and influence if we want to minimize its adverse impacts on our economies and our people,” Mr. Sabban said in an e-mail message to other OPEC officials. “That does not mean we would like to obstruct any progress or that we do not want to join any international agreement. We will do that if the deal is fair and equitable and does not transfer the burden to us.”

Those, poor, poor oil princes…

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For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in their yards. Five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued the plant’s owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing respiratory diseases and acid rain.

So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year before they escaped into the sky.

But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.

“It’s like they decided to spare us having to breathe in these poisons, but now we have to drink them instead,” said Philip Coleman, who lives about 15 miles from the plant and has asked a state judge to toughen the facility’s pollution regulations. “We can’t escape.”

Of course from The Onion..

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Police along with the Secret Service are investigating after a local country club discovered a symbol that represents eastern religious beliefs carved into the green.

Lakeville Country Club workers discovered the vandalism early Monday morning.

Police believe the vandals meant to carve a swastika next to President Barack Obama’s name on the 18th hole; however, the symbol was backwards and means hope and peace in some Eastern countries.

Not surprising to see such a mistake – after all, their main television guru can’t spell “oligarchy”..