Month: May 2005

Calvin College ad to protest Bush visit

UPDATE: Everyone I know who has blogged about this has received a highly focused comment spam from someone who signs himself “John Calvin” and comes from the IP address 68.77.152.22 (at least he was coming from there when he spammed me). He cut and pastes some large articles about Bush at Calvin and rants things like: “SADDAM and his henchmen inflicted the death and destruction. Bush and the troops liberated 25 million people. Your moral equivalence is disgusting.” He never shows any sign of having read the posts he is “replying” to. The built in spam filter in WordPress 1.5.1 correctly tagged his rants as spam and put them in moderation. He apparently does searches with things like “bush” “calvin” “leave comments.” I wonder if he does this by hand or has a script to do it for him? Anyone know anything more about this dude?

ORIGINAL POST:

College ad to protest Bush visit – The Washington Times: Nation/Politics – May 17, 2005:

One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush’s commencement speech.

“As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort,” the ad will say. “We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.”

The 130 signatories, which include 20 staff members, work at Calvin College. Founded in 1876 as a school for pastors of the Christian Reformed Church, it now is one of the nation’s flagship schools for a Christian liberal-arts education.

I’m so proud of my Alma Mater. :)

BushFish.org: Supporting God and Country

BushFish.org: Supporting God and Country.

Via Fr. Jake.

Can this possibly be serious?

I mean, it pretty much sums up Republicanism and Fundamentalism and much of Evangelicalism today in an easy to parse message. But I didn’t realize it was a message anybody would be willing to spell out so clearly…

Fr. Jake doesn’t think it’s a joke, but I’m thinking it must be parody.

Bushehr. Remember that name.

If we suddenly find ourselves in a crisis which “requires” us to bomb a nuclear power plant at Bushehr shortly after Bolton is installed at the U.N., remember that the America-hating liberals told you that was what they were up to. Just like they told you about the trumped up pretexts for war in Iraq.

BTW, if we don’t end up bombing Iran, I will be very happy; this will be a situation where it would be wonderful not to be able to say “I told you so.”

“Backfired”?

I’ve heard about a half dozen times this morning (because I’m in a location where CNN Headline News is on) that an attempt to show support for gay Catholics by wearing rainbow sashes to Communion has “backfired,” in that the sash wearers were denied Communion.

That term is not used in the story online.

It seems nonsensical to me, because it makes it sound like this is a defeat for the Rainbow Sash Alliance. But thinking of it as a defeat shows a complete lack of understanding of the process of nonviolent protest. The point of nonviolent protest is to make injustice visible, to bring injustice into such sharp relief that people are no longer willing to tolerate it — including, in the best case scenario, the people who had previously been perpetrating it.

A hundred faithful Catholics being denied communion for supporting the people who are being marginalized and oppressed by the Catholic Church is not a defeat. It is a victory.

No one can defeat people calling for justice and calling attention to injustice. Only they could defeat themselves, by giving up. Anything else is victory.

I’ve also noticed that CNN is speaking every 5 minutes about how appalling it is that one of the sources Newsweek used in the “Koran in the toilet” story has withdrawn his story, and yet, Newsweek ran with it anyway despite the fact that in the future he was going to withdraw it. Their psychic powers failed them.

CNN’s not mentioning at all that that source wasn’t where the story originated — that source was confirming (and now is not confirming in terms so certain) the stories that detainees themselves had given about what was done to their Korans when they were in custody.

I’m pretty sure this is CNN, but the way this news is being reported makes me wonder they aren’t rebroadcasting Fox News stories by mistake…

But hey, at least they’re making sure we know what’s important — I’ve also heard about a half dozen times this morning that Everybody Loves Raymond is reaching its last episode, and Motley Crue are teaming up with America’s Most Wanted. So we’re getting the real hardcore investigative journalism too.

And I’m gonna have to leave soon because my brain is beating its tiny fists against my skull trying to escape.

Brothels Of Grand Rapids

Too funny. Via MeFi, a Yahoo story tells us that googling on “brothel” and a zip code turns up interesting results.

  • Goodrich Radio and Theaters, Inc
  • Acton Institute
  • These Last Days
  • Urban Institute for Contemporary Art
  • Cornerstone University: Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary
  • Kalamazoo College

I had no idea.

Not surprised about the Acton Institute though; as far as I can tell their entire raison d’etre is to be whores for Microsoft.

BTW, the “These Last Days” web page is not to be missed.

Oh, also BTW — the Yahoo story acts like it’s some big conspiracy mystery why these things show up as “brothels” but it’s easy if you employ a few brain cells. Click on a result, and it will give you a link to the relevant web page. In every case it is a page containing the word “brothel” and the address of the relevant organization (e.g. in a footer).