BUSH GOVERNMENT, ASHAMED OF ITS OWN RECORD,
WITHDRAWS FROM UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNE

Quoting from a story appearing on the Huffington Post:

[SNIP]
According the the Human Rights Tribune, the news of the U.S.'s withdrawal drew a note of concern from Human Rights Watch's Sebastien Gillioz, who said: "The message is worrying...Ever since September 11, 2001, the US has constantly interpreted international standards in an 'a la carte' manner that has eroded human rights. Its behaviour has served as an example to a stream of states, including Pakistan, Egypt and other, who are not embarrassed to review human rights standards on homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment. It is a step backwards."
[PASTE]

O'REALLY(!?) FOP CAUGHT DOING AMBUSH JOURNALISM

[SNIPPET]
At the National Conference for Media Reform 2008, a producer for FOX's The O'Reilly Factor, Porter Barry, ambushes PBS's Bill Moyers and peppers him with questions regarding his political affiliations and his "refusal" to appear on O'Reilly's show. Moyers disputes FOX's "facts" for the record and asks to interview someone at The O'Reilly Factor about Rupert Murdoch and the show's coverage during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The journalist crowd then reacts, chasing down Barry and intentionally giving him a dose of FOX-style bullying reportage.
[PASTED IN]

A MODERN DESERT TRIBE

I hate to sound so inhospitable, but modern believers in religious superstition sound like tribal people who don't fit into the modern world. At least they do to me. When my mind envisions the modern Universe and I see myself as a creation of star dust or when I study the human brain as an adapted recorder of the modern Universe and see myself afoot in this modern ecosphere between the atmosphere and the oceans' bottoms, I am filled with wonder and awe at the grandeur of what we know about the Big Bang and evolution and the human animal's place in this grand and nearly incomprehensible Cosmos.

To descend from those visionary heights to talk to a Bible literalist is very much like parachuting into a jungle to encounter a tribe of people who have not read a newspaper, have not been in contact with a TV, know nothing of written history, have not walked the streets of a modern city nor jet-boated up the Snake River, in fact, know nothing about flight except to worship those strange, silvery birds in the heavens that leave their slime trails across the top of their jungle clearings. Truly, I mean that. Talking to modern fundamentalists about their god is like talking to tribal peoples about their imaginings about gods.

To speak with people who still believe Bible creation myths and the musings of Genesis is truly like meeting uneducated jungle tribes. Not to blame tribal people who cannot be blamed for not knowing about evolution and other facts of nature. In fact, I suppose it is an insult to tribal people to compare them to Bible literalists who ought to know better but don't. I apologize to any as yet undiscovered tribal people for comparing them to modern day Bible literalists. I just want to be ahead of the game when we do meet such people.

Again, I must admit, I have failed to fully explain my mental state when I try to imagine those beings who, as yet, don't know enough about science to understand the nature and reality of the world that evolution and physics have given us. It boggles my imagination to attempt it. Yet I keep trying.