Seth in CA (for the summer)

New theme?

What do you think of the new theme?

Friday abstract art blogging

(1872-1944)

Information about Mondrian from Artchive.com and Wikipedia.

Iraq

Josh Marshall and Paul Begala are both right. Now there’s got to be some way for the people to get this message to Senate Democrats (and Republicans like Chafee). Hmm…

Decided to check my referers

Apparently I’m the fourth link on Google for “Summer and Seth Pictures.”

Sorry, anonymous reader. There’ll be none of that here. OK, maybe just one:

Well…

I bowled a 132. And then a 166.

But I still miss Derech (a bowling alley near OSRUI).

Go John

Run Edwards, run!

Fundación Nueva Esperanza opens new classrooms, library

If you only have a minute, please sign this petition, End Impunity – Support the Spanish Investigative Commission in Guatemala. If you’re confused, read to the end.

This is really exciting news. Over spring break I went to Fundación Nueva Esperanza, a school for the indigenous Maya Achi in Rabinal, Guatemala with Hillel and American Jewish World Service. Guillermo Chen Morales, who we interacted with a lot while we were there writes:

Dear friends,

We would like to share with you the success of the Foundation Nueva Esperanza and our secondary school which are: an opening of our new classrooms, our new scince lab and the library. This achievement is for all young indigenous people of Rabinal. Best wishes.

When we were there we stayed in two rooms that weren’t in use for anything else. I’m pretty sure one of them is now the library. We were also there when they were working on the new classrooms. We weren’t qualified to actually help with the construction, but we did clean up. You can see part of one of the new classrooms on the right in the back of this picture:

And here’s a picture from a newspaper clipping of it completed. Wow:

There’s a bunch more pictures from the newspaper article here.

AJWS, which is itself a wonderful organization, has more information about the vitally important work that the Fundación does for a people that has, at the hands of the Guatemalan government and paramilitaries, been at best neglected and at worst massacred. The founder of the organization, Jesús Tecú, is himself a survivor of the Rio Negro Massacre. Before founding the school and since, Jesús has worked for justice, testifying against paramilitaries in one court case and encouraging others to speak up.So now, if you haven’t already, please sign the petition: End Impunity – Support the Spanish Investigative Commission in Guatemala.

One more picture:

Investment, not Divestment

Good:

The Presbyterian Church (USA), which previously had called for divestment from companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine, adopted a different strategy of engagement in the Middle East today with a decision to back selective investment in companies committed to peace in the conflict between Israel and their Palestinian neighbors.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is meeting this week in Alabama.

Last summer the United Church of Christ adopted a similar policy to the one adopted this week by the Presbyterians and just this month the UCC and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) released a new guide book for churches committed to peace in the region.

The United States of North America?

Look, I’m no fan of NAFTA, but what world do these people live in?

Author Jerome Corsi filed a Freedom of Information Act request yesterday asking for full disclosure of the activities of an office implementing a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada that apparently could lead to a North American union, despite having no authorization from Congress.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the White House has established working groups, under the North American Free Trade Agreement office in the Department of Commerce, to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005.

Corsi specifically has requested the partnership’s membership lists, constitutive documents, meeting minutes, meeting agendas and meeting schedules as well as all findings, reports, presentations or memoranda.

…

Corsi believes President Bush effectively agreed to erase U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada when he signed the SPP.

…

“This is all being done by the executive branch below the radar,” Corsi told WND. “If President Bush had told the American people in the 2004 presidential campaign that his goal was to create a North American union, he would not have carried a single red state.”

The president, Corsi maintains, has charged the bureaucracy to form a North American union “through executive fiat … without ever disclosing his plans directly to the American people or to Congress.”

Attorney Robert A. McGuire, who filed the request on Corsi’s behalf and is preparing further requests, says if the president “is creating a new North American union government without the full and complete knowledge of the American people, we are facing a severe constitutional crisis.”

The purpose of the FOIA, he said, is to get the “full facts exposed in the light of day, available for the American people and for Congress to examine and decide.”

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is demanding the Bush administration fully disclose the activities of the SPP office.

Tancredo wants to know the membership of the SPP groups along with their various trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements reached with counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form. Author Jerome Corsi filed a Freedom of Information Act request yesterday asking for full disclosure of the activities of an office implementing a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada that apparently could lead to a North American union, despite having no authorization from Congress.

More here: “Tancredo confronts ‘super-state’ effort: Demands full disclosure of White House work with Mexico, Canada”

Lions, hunters, and media consolidation

“Until the lions can tell their own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” — African proverb

Which is to say, media consolidation matters (excerpt from a United Church of Christ pamphlet For faith groups [PDF]):

They had had enough. No longer would an ecumenical group of ministers from Arizona be lumped together with preachers spouting venom in the name of Christianity. No longer would they allow Christianity to be hijacked by hate mongers.

So the Arizona ministers formed “No Longer Silent,” but found that their message of unconditional love was a harder sell than one of hate. “We tried to buy a billboard in a prominent, well-traveled area of Phoenix,” says the Rev. Eric Elnes, No Longer Silent member and pastor of Scottsdale (Ariz.) Congregational United Church of Christ.

Elnes says that more than 150 local pastors wanted to proclaim that God loves everyone, including gay and lesbian persons. But Clear Channel and Viacom, who owned the billboards, labeled the message “too controversial,” effectively telling the pastors to shut up.

No Longer Silent couldn’t overcome the censorship, but its energy was already created and, as the rules of science teach, energy can’t be destroyed: it only can be transformed.

So Elnes rallied help and formed Cross Walk America, a 2,500-mile pilgrimage from Phoenix to Washington, D.C., between Easter Sunday and Labor Day weekend 2006. The pilgrimage would include speaking at local churches and interviewing with local media along the way, and would conclude with the posting of 12 affirmations on a Washington landmark — affirmations of unconditional divine love, justice and respect for all God’s creation. The grassroots effort is “a voice from the heartland that can’t be ignored by the media,” says Elnes, “a voice of hope for those who are spiritually homeless.” Elnes says he hopes Cross Walk America continues as a catalyst within the Christian mainstream.

“We need to make sure that the average person knows that there is more than one thought out there,” he says, “that the public voice of Christianity isn’t only fundamentalist.”

I found this pamphlet through a new group that just launched called the StopBigMedia.com Coalition.