Over three months in 2006, as her five children grew more emaciated and listless by the day, Estelle Walker made no move to find a job and no effort to scrounge up a meal, her kids told a jury today.
"We were supposed to wait for God to provide," said Walker’s oldest daughter, now 21. "And that’s what we did."
At one point, the daughter said, she and her siblings went 11 days without food. When police were at last summoned to the Sussex County cabin by neighbors, investigators found the children so malnourished they had difficulty talking.
More than three years later, three of the siblings took the stand in a Newton courtroom, describing how their mother watched them nearly starve.
Walker, 50, of Brooklyn, is charged with four counts of second-degree child endangerment. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison on each count. Walker was not charged in connection with her oldest child because she was a legal adult at the time.
The young woman and her two siblings — a 16-year-old sister and a 15-year-old brother, betrayed no resentment toward their mother, speaking in soft, even tones.
Under questioning by Sussex County Assistant Prosecutor Frances Koch, they said Walker never tried to get any assistance for her family, either from her estranged husband or from other relatives. She likewise avoided seeking help from two churches near the Hopatcong cabin where they had been staying, the children said.
Though she had previously worked as a teacher, Walker made no effort to earn money, her children said.
"She never tried to get money or food or get a job," the 16-year-old daughter said.
All five children, now in good health, live with their father in Somerset.
In 2005, Walker and the children — then ages 8, 9, 11, 13 and 18 — had been placed in the cabin by their church, Times Square Church of Manhattan, to help them escape what Walker claimed was her husband’s alcoholism. The cabin is owned by church members who open it for retreats.
Walker was due to leave the cabin in May 2006 but refused, saying God had told her to stay, church members have said. The church then cut off her support and began eviction proceedings.
The invocation of God has been a theme throughout the trial’s first three days. Before the jury entered the courtroom today, public defender Ronald Nicola told Judge N. Peter Conforti that Walker had been refusing to take an active role in her defense.
"She says, ‘God is my defense,’ Nicola told the judge.
Nicola asked that Walker be permitted to undergo psychiatric testing.
Asked by Conforti why she is not participating in her trial, Walker told him she saw no point in it.
"I don’t feel the need to continue to go over the documents that we’ve been going over for three years," she said. "God will defend me."
Conforti, noting that Walker was deemed competent to stand trial in 2007 after mental health evaluations, denied Nicola’s request for further testing.
Last year, Walker rejected a plea-bargain offer that would have required no additional incarceration other than the one year she already served in the county jail, if she agreed to undergo additional psychiatric testing.
Damn it all, why are people so fucking stupid? Congratulations dipshit, you've set the US further back in negotiations with the most repressive and dangerous regime in the world.
CNN) -- The family of a Korean-American missionary believed held in North Korea said Tuesday they are working with U.S. officials to get him returned home.
Robert Park told relatives before Christmas that he was trying to sneak into the isolated communist state to bring a message of "Christ's love and forgiveness" to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. In a written statement issued Tuesday on the family's behalf, his brother, Paul Park, said Park's well-being "has been a source of ongoing concern and anxiety" since they received reports he had entered North Korea.
"He is a very special member of our family. We miss having his love and compassion in our home," the family statement said. "I don't know where he's being held, but if he can receive this message, we want him to know we love him, we miss him and we are waiting anxiously for the opportunity to be reunited with him."
Paul Park said his San Diego, California-area family is working with the U.S. State Department and members of Congress to bring about his "eventual safe return."
North Korea announced Tuesday that it was holding an American who entered the country illegally from China on Christmas Eve. The state-run Korea Central News Agency did not identify the man, who it said was "now under investigation by a relevant organ."
Monday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Washington was concerned by reports that Park had gone into North Korea but could not confirm them. Washington and Pyongyang have no diplomatic relations, but Kelly said the Swedish Embassy -- which looks after U.S. interests in North Korea -- has offered to try to find out more.
A South Korean Web site last week posted a copy of the letter it said Park was trying to deliver to Kim, which urged the North Korean leader in the name of Jesus Christ to free political prisoners and "open your borders so that we may bring food, provisions, medicine, necessities, and assistance to those who are struggling to survive."
North Korean authorities take a dim view of people who enter the country without authorization. Two American journalists who were arrested along the North Korean-Chinese border in March faced a 12-year sentence at hard labor, but were released after a meeting between Kim and former U.S. President Bill Clinton in Pyongyang.
But Park's parents told CNN affiliate KFMB that their son was willing to risk his life to deliver his message to Kim.
What the fuck did this guy think was going to happen!
Crazy man, "John 3:16"
Kim, "*gasp* Jesus loves me! I never realized how empty my life was, release all the political prisoners and call the US. We're adopting democracy!"
Later in a speech to the nation: Kim, "Citizens, I am not a god, Jesus is the son of the only true God. We shall now become a peaceful Christian nation, just like the wonderful US..... oh yeah, Americans aren't evil, I made all that shit up. We love them now."
I probably take a little more offense to this than most, specifically because I am an American living abroad. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you necessarily should. There have been too many Americans getting their asses in trouble for being either irresponsible or just plain stupid (John Yettaw going into Myanmar because he had a dream he had to save Aung San Suu Kyi, the two California bitches who got bailed out of North Korea by Bill Clinton, and those American hikers who wandered into Iraq).
If you are going to go to a foreign country, you need to recognize the differences in laws, and how your choices can have impacts on other people. I live in China. China has plenty of its own issues, but I let those be, because they're not my issues. Trying to get myself involved in any sensitive issues would get me thrown in jail with ruthless efficiency. Then the embassy would more or less tell me "good job dumbass, what did you think would happen?"
The same applies here to this new guy. There is absolutely no possible way this douchebag thought anything different than this was going happen. He's Korean American. He knows the relationship between the North and the South. He should also know that every damn time some American wandered into North Korea the regime used them as political pawns in getting concessions from the US. In a country that is known for executing Christians for believing in something different than the Great Leader, there was only one possible outcome for a deluded Korean American walking into North Korea to tell Kim Jong Il to love Jesus Christ and to reverse everything he's been doing for the last few decades.
Personally, I think the American government should leave him there. We need to stop spending political capital to bail out dumbasses who don't think about the consequences of their actions.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland – A political scandal riveting Northern Ireland has a certain cinematic feel: an affair by 58-year-old woman named Mrs. Robinson with a 19-year-old male lover.
Five separate Facebook groups with hundreds of followers have sprung up, lampooning the affair and comparing it to the 1967 film, "The Graduate."
But there is a serious side to the story of Iris Robinson, who also happens to be a member of Parliament and the wife of Peter Robinson — Northern Ireland's government leader.
The BBC reported that Iris Robinson allegedly solicited 50,000 pounds ($80,000) from businessmen so her young lover could open a restaurant — without disclosing the fact to lawmakers.
Iris Robinson has said she would not seek re-election because she was suffering clinical depression that left her unable to function in public life and revealed that she attempted suicide. She also begged forgiveness from her husband, Peter, and the public.
"Everyone is paying a heavy price for my actions. ... I am so, so sorry," she said.
Peter Robinson, who in 2008 succeeded the Rev. Ian Paisley as head of Northern Ireland's government and its major Protestant political party, vowed Friday to stay on following the revelations about his wife.
"I will be resolutely defending attacks on my character and contesting any allegations of wrongdoing," Peter Robinson said after the BBC investigative team in Belfast exposed the scandal. He stressed that he hadn't known key details of his wife's affair before the program.
On Wednesday, Peter Robinson invited four journalists to his home to give his own agonized account of his family's private turmoil — an unprecedented display from a man renowned for an icy demeanor.
The Robinsons neglected to mention the nub of the BBC report: That Iris Robinson's lover, 39 years her junior, had received third-party cash from her that should have been disclosed to Parliament.
The BBC interviewed the former boyfriend, Kirk McCambley, now 21, who had a relationship with Iris Robinson in 2008 that lasted several months. She had been friends with the boy's father, who died earlier that year.
"She looked out for me to make sure I was OK," McCambley told the BBC.
He said Iris Robinson, now 60, gave him two checks for 25,000 pounds ($40,000) each, but she then asked him for 5,000 pounds ($8,000) back, possibly to donate to the evangelical Protestant church she attends.
The BBC said Peter Robinson was aware of the financial deal — which should have been reported to British parliamentary standards authorities in both Belfast and London. Peter Robinson denies having known about the deal.
Even before the scandal, Iris Robinson had caused her husband political problems when she condemned homosexuals as revolting and called on them to seek help from psychiatrists and Christianity.
"Just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual," she said.
The Robinsons have been married for 40 years and have three grown children. When Iris joined her husband in Parliament in 2001, they became the United Kingdom's first husband-and-wife lawmakers.
The exposure of Iris Robinson's affair had Protestants and Catholics united in gossip Friday — including at the Lock Keepers Inn, McCambley's thriving cafe on a popular River Lagan walkway.
McCambley himself spent most of the morning standing outside the inn talking on his cell phone. Then he carefully walked across an icy river bridge to a waiting car without speaking to journalists who had also poured into the inn.
"It is just such a surprise, to think with someone so young," said Janice Richards, 33, sipping tea with her baby asleep beside her in a stroller.
Another customer, 43-year-old Carol Blaney, leaned over and agreed furtively: "I know there is the whole political thing. But to me it is the fact he is so young."
Peter Robinson's many political rivals in Northern Ireland have questioned whether he can remain head of a shaky coalition with Irish Catholics _the central achievement of the province's 1998 peace accord. Many within his own Democratic Unionist Party — a movement with a deeply conservative Protestant base — expressed doubts about his political survival as well.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, the senior Irish Catholic in the coalition, sought an urgent meeting Friday with Robinson but failed to get one. The two have had an increasingly tense relationship in the past year.
The political tensions coincide with ongoing attacks by IRA dissidents against police and British soldiers in Northern Ireland. On Friday, IRA dissidents badly injured a policeman when a booby-trap bomb exploded under his car as he drove to work.
By Eugenie C. Scott, Ph.D.
Ray Comfort and I agree that "science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted." We agree that it would be nice for students to get a free copy of Darwins best-known book, On the Origin of Species. I'll even go further than he might: The Origin —like Shakespeare and the Bible—should be on every educated person's bookshelf. If you don't understand evolution, you can't be considered scientifically literate. And we agree that students should read the Origin thoroughly.
Unfortunately, it will be hard to thoroughly read the version that Comfort will be distributing on college campuses in November. The copy his publisher sent me is missing no fewer than four crucial chapters, as well as Darwin's introduction. Two of the omitted chapters, Chapters 11 and 12, showcase biogeography, some of Darwin's strongest evidence for evolution. Which is a better explanation for the distribution of plants and animals around the planet: common ancestry or special creation? Which better explains why island species are more similar to species on the mainland closest to them, rather than to more distant species that share a similar environment? The answer clearly is common ancestry. Today, scientists continue to develop the science of biogeography, confirming, refining, and extending Darwin's conclusions.
Likewise missing from Comfort's bowdlerized version of the Origin is Chapter 13, where Darwin explained how evolution makes sense of classification, morphology, and embryology. To take a simple example, why do all land vertebrates (amphibians, mammals, and reptiles and birds) have four limbs? Not because four limbs are necessarily a superior design for land locomotion: insects have six, arachnids have eight, and millipedes have, well, lots. It's because all land vertebrates descended with modification from a four-legged ("tetrapod") ancestor. Since Darwin's era, scientists have repeatedly confirmed that the more recently two species have shared a common ancestor, the more similar are their anatomy, their biochemistry, their embryology, and their genetics.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," as a famous geneticist said. That's why evolution is taught matter-of-factly in the biology and geology departments of every respected university in the country, secular or sectarian, from Berkeley to Brigham Young. That's why the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science wholeheartedly endorse the teaching of evolution in the public schools. That's why thousands of papers applying, extending, or refining evolution are published in the scientific research literature every year.
But there's no reason for students to refuse Comfort's free—albeit suspiciously abridged—copy of the Origin. Read the first eight pages of the introduction, which is a reasonably accurate, if derivative, sketch of Darwin's life. The last 10 pages or so are devoted to some rather heavy-handed evangelism, which doesn't really have anything to do with the history or content of the evolutionary sciences; read it or not as you please.
But don't waste your time with the middle section of the introduction, a hopeless mess of long-ago-refuted creationist arguments, teeming with misinformation about the science of evolution, populated by legions of strawmen, and exhibiting what can be charitably described as muddled thinking.
For example, Comfort's treatment of the human fossil record is painfully superficial, out of date, and erroneous. Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man—one a forgery, the other a misidentification, both rejected by science more than 50 years ago—are trotted out for scorn, as if they somehow negate the remaining huge volume of human fossils. There are more specimens of "Ardi" (the newly described Ardipithecus ramidus) than there are of Tyrannosaurus —and any 8-year-old aspiring paleontologist will be delighted to tell you how much we know about the T. rex!
But you wouldn't learn any of this from reading Comfort's introduction. He says, "Java Man [a Homo erectus], found in the early 20th century, was nothing more than a piece of skull, a fragment of a thigh bone, and three molar teeth." Well, that was from a single site—excavated in the 1890s. What about the dozens of other sites where fossils of H. erectus are found, from China to Kenya to Georgia? Another whopper: "Java Man is now regarded as fully human." Trust me, if one sat down next to you on the bus, you would know the difference.
In fact, the fossil record for the human lineage is impressive, providing the evidence on which our understanding of the big events of human evolution is based. We and modern chimpanzees shared a common ancestor millions of years ago; the main feature separating us from our chimpanzee cousins is bipedalism, followed by toolmaking, and then brain expansion, and then the substantial elaboration of behavior we call human culture. More fossils will provide more details, but this outline of human evolution is not in serious doubt among scientists.
It's not just human evolution that Comfort misrepresents. His main gripe is the old creationist standby, the supposed lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. (Darwin addressed the objection in Chapter 9 of the Origin, interestingly not included in Comfort's version.) Comfort sneers at the fossil evidence for the terrestrial ancestry of whales and the dinosaurian ancestry of birds. Too bad for him that he has a knack for picking bad examples: There are splendid fossils of dinosaurs that have feathers and of whales that have legs—and even feet. Faced with ignorance like this, I'm reminded of a jeremiad: "Oh foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not."
But if you are willing to use your ears to listen to what paleontologists say about transitional features and use your eyes to look at the evidence described in the scientific literature (as well as displayed in many museums and science centers around the country), you will find transitional fossils galore. There are clear transitional series from aquatic vertebrates to land vertebrates, from primitive land vertebrates to mammals, from dinosaurs to birds, from land vertebrates to whales, and of course a wonderful series of fossils leading to Homo sapiens. A good place to begin is a marvelous website dismissively mentioned (and erroneously described) in Comfort's introduction, the University of California Museum of Paleontology's Understanding Evolution.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, both occasions worth celebrating by anyone who cares about our understanding of the natural world. So it's no surprise that creationists are trying to piggyback on the festivities with cynical publicity stunts like Comfort's. But I have faith that college students are sharp enough to realize that Comfort's take on Darwin and evolution is simply bananas.
EDIT: I should point out that Ray Comfort caved under pressure and did hand out full versions.
Chinese officials offered their first reaction Thursday to Google's (GOOG) decision to reject Chinese censorship -- and potentially quit the country altogether -- as the dispute over free speech and internet security threatened to create a geopolitical rift between the United States and China.
"China's Internet is open and the Chinese government encourages development of the Internet," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told Reuters. "China welcomes international Internet businesses developing services in China according to the law," she said. "Chinese law proscribes any form of hacking activity."
On Wednesday, as Chinese citizens laid flowers at Google's Beijing office, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a statement expressing "serious concerns" about the massive, China-based cyber-attack at the root of the controversy, and demanded answers from China's leaders. "We look to the Chinese government for an explanation," Clinton said. "The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy."
On Tuesday, Google revealed it had been the victim of a massive cyber attack that compromised its corporate security. Even worse, the company said an investigation showed the targets of the attack were Chinese human rights activists, whose Gmail accounts were hacked.
A Bold Challenge
On its face, Google's move is an audacious challenge toward China's communist government, which has guided the huge nation through a decade of rapid growth, but also faced criticism over its human rights practices, media censorship and lack of democracy. But typically, those complaints come from Western governments or Interest groups, not corporations. In fact, most Western companies are so desperate to crack the Chinese market that such a defiant gesture is almost unthinkable.
That's changed now.
"In a world in which we are so used to public relations massaging of messages, this stands out as a direct declaration," Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School and co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said in comments reported by the San Jose Mercury News, Google's local newspaper. "It's amazing," he said.
In fact, Google's move is nothing short of an invitation to other companies to stand up to China's communist rulers. Which Western company will be next to stand up to this gang of authoritarian cadres who hold dominion over 1.3 billion people? Will Microsoft, Yahoo and other companies operating in China match Google's human-rights stance?
As tech-watchers, journalists, human rights workers and government officials digested Google's threat to leave China, there was a palpable sense that something very important had happened, not only in technology, but also in the history of contemporary international relations. There was a sense among internet freedom advocates that a global campaign had been launched.
Google's "China Doctrine"
As of Wednesday morning, Google had already begun removing censorship filters from several controversial keywords, according to sources reached by Brian Pitz, an Internet analyst at banking giant UBS.
As a result, Google.cn may be disabled within days.
By Wednesday evening, Google's new policy of refusing to work with Chinese censors was being referred to as Google's "China Doctrine."
Human rights groups and internet freedom advocates hailed Google's denunciation of China's repressive censorship policies. Danny O'Brien, International Outreach Coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, praised Google for its "brave and forthright declaration to provide only an uncensored Chinese language version of its search engine."
Human Rights Groups Rejoice
"Google has stepped up to this challenge," O'Brien wrote. "Now it's up to technologists and policymakers to build the tools and to apply the political, economic and cultural pressure to allow citizens in repressive regimes to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through an uncensored Net and maintain their access to the collective knowledge of humanity that it makes possible."
Rebecca MacKinnon, a China expert who specializes in technology, called Google's decision "tough" and predicted that the company "is going to have a great deal of of difficult fallout." Still, she said that Google is living up to its famous credo, "Don't be evil," which co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have tried to embed in the company's DNA since its inception.
"They are sending a very public message -- which people in China are hearing -- that the Chinese government's approach to Internet regulation is unacceptable and poisonous," MacKinnon said.
But even as Google's decision drew praise, some observers questioned the business logic of the move. "We admire the company's principled stand, but our job is to analyze the investment impact," Broadpoint AMTech Internet analyst Ben Schachter wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. "In the near-term, the financial impact is relatively insignificant. However, the obvious concern is that China's growth has been solid and its market potential is enormous."
Whipped By Baidu.com
Google's China operation contributes only 2% to its annual revenue of $22 billion, and the company is getting whipped by Baidu.com, which controls 60% of the Chinese web search market.
Pitz, of UBS, observed that Google's decision may cost it dearly in the future, as China continues its rapid growth and internet access becomes more ubiquitous there. "If Google were to exit China, we believe this represents a significant lost growth opportunity in the long term," Pitz wrote on Wednesday. "China is the world's largest Internet market with roughly 298 million users, with only 22% of the population penetrated."
But for top Google executives, led by co-founder Brin, a Russian immigrant whose family escaped the Soviet Union, the China-based attack on human rights advocates was simply more than they could tolerate.
In China itself, the news of Google's decision was heavily restricted by the communist government, which controls the internet via its infamous "Great Firewall of China." Still, word trickled into the country via citizens who use proxies and other means to evade China's web blockers.
Yes. This is pretty major news around here. Though this whole fiasco only gets modest reporting from small corners of China's newspapers, it's front page news just about everywhere in the West.
Some background first, Google has not been having a great time here in China. Though regular American google, google.com, has been accessible since around 2000, they set up their Chinese domain, google.cn, in 2006. This is when Google took on a lot of criticism around the world, because they agreed to censor information in accordance with Chinese laws. As of right now, this is what they're talking about uncensoring in China.
Google has not been doing well here in China. It is in a strong, but distant second place in internet search engines with around a 25-30% market share; China's home grown and government sponsored Baidu (www.baidu.com) has a whopping 60% market share and growing. Furthermore, Google has frequently come under criticism by Chinese media and government, especially over the last few months. They alleged Google was doing a bad job censoring smut on the internet and ran a series of scathing articles about it (though Baidu was literally no better, the news stories *accidentally* forgot to mention this).
As the article states, China only makes up for a couple percent of its global revenue. It won't hurt Google in the short term by pulling out. The government, on the other hand, will be outwardly angry and vocal about being called out like this, but on the inside it will probably be very happy. Google does not censor information as vigorously as Baidu, and when certain search engine queries trigger the censors, Google displays a notice that roughly states "in accordance with local laws, some search results have been censored". Baidu does not do this. So if Google leaves the picture, then China will have a much stronger grip on censorship.
(okay, this is half so far. I am not done yet, but I have to take the bus to work. I'll post more later).
Though in the end, the people who really lose from Google leaving are the Chinese themselves. There are still tens of millions of people who use gmail, google docs, and other related features that will not be happy to see them go. And, most importantly, the Chinese will lose a valuable avenue to freer information. Literally minutes after Google's announcement about their intent to uncensor google.cn, there were millions of searches conducted on the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, and plenty of other topics the government tries its hardest to pretend doesn't exist.
Google has been coming under a little criticism for the move too, as people are claiming that it was planning to leave anyway, and was just waiting for an opportune time to do it. That may be true, but only a handful of people at the top actually know for sure. I am a little skeptical of this, because even if they have 30% market share, that's 30% of an internet user base of over 300 million people in a country with upwards of another billion people without active internet connections yet. There are unprecedented business opportunities here, even for people in second place. This is why so many foreign businesses are willing to tolerate government interference that would be unacceptable in other countries.
So now Google is at a standstill with the government. It has actively called out Beijing by stating that the hacking attempts at its accounts of human rights activists originated from China. Whether China actively does it or not is irrelevant; there are several hardline nationalist groups within China that can carry out attacks like this that the government may either turn a blind eye to or indirectly support. But Google has basically come out with a propostion that will not happen. There is absolutely no way China will allow an uncensored Google to remain on its net. And by making this political and bringing so much attention to it, Google will have effectively burned the bridge forever in China if it leaves.
Whether that affects google.com... I dunno. Naturally google.com search results aren't technically censored, trying to search for sensitive topics within China on google.com will trigger the domestic IP filters and temporarily block your google access for a few minutes. I could easily see google getting a spite blocking if it leaves; it has happened before.
I still don't know how this is going to play out. Logically, it would look like Google is going to leave, but I don't fully see that happening either. A compromise would be best, letting both sides save face, but lately China has been tightening its grip on information; it recently published an internal report on threats to CCP rule (threats in this context basically means people with different opinions). They're becoming a bit more militant these days. On the other hand, seeing a heavyweight like Google leave in disgust because of the government will have very serious ramifications for other foreign companies and has the potential to affect foreign direct investment. Though others say that the dollar rules over morals, and it won't affect other companies too much.
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.
The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.
U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.
One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.
'It violates the Constitution'
The company's vision is described on its Web site: "Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom."
"We believe that America is great when its people are good," says the Web site. "This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals."
Spokespeople for the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps both said their services were unaware of the biblical markings. They said officials were discussing what steps, if any, to take in the wake of the ABCNews.com report. It is not known how many Trijicon sights are currently in use by the U.S. military.
The biblical references appear in the same type font and size as the model numbers on the company's Advanced Combat Optical Guides, called the ACOG.
A photo on a Department of Defense Web site shows Iraqi soldiers being trained by U.S. troops with a rifle equipped with the bible-coded sights.
"It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws," said Michael "Mikey" Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.
'Firearms of Jesus Christ'
"It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they're being shot by Jesus rifles," he said.
Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they've told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as "spiritually transformed firearm of Jesus Christ."
He said coded biblical inscriptions play into the hands of "those who are calling this a Crusade."
According to a government contracting watchdog group, fedspending.org, Trijicon had more than $100 million in government contracts in fiscal year 2008. The Michigan company won a $33 million Pentagon contract in July, 2009 for a new machine gun optic, according to Defense Industry Daily. The company's earnings from the U.S. military jumped significantly after 2005, when it won a $660 million long-term contract to supply the Marine Corps with sights.
"This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country," said Weinstein. "It's literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we're fighting. We're emboldening an enemy."
JESUS CHRIST! How fucking stupid can you get? How could these assholes not see the potential problems with sending these products to the Middle East? Though I do like the line, "spiritually transformed firearm". That should be the main selling point. They can sell Holy bullets, too.
EDIT:
This is most definitely not a violation of church/state separation, so that guy needs to chill the fuck out. However, the potential recruiting tool this provides to radical middle eastern fighters is scary and reprehensible.
Yeah. The Church/State argument is weak at best, because the government didn't know it at the time, and the company puts this on all their rifle scopes, military purchased and other.
The real concern is the effect it will have on the wars in the Middle East. The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and everyone else that we're trying to kill all ferverently believe that this is a war by the Christian West on Islam itself. The people who put these verse references on the scopes do this because they believe in the perceived righteousness of their cause, while the insurgents will fight harder against Christianity and the West for the perceived righteousness of their cause, and while atheists like me will sit back and think they're all goddamn retarded.
That's a pretty overblown way to perceive the situation. I can understand labeling the war as a religious war, but the inscription on the freakin' ACOG is nowhere near evidence to support it. It's one company's belief, and they played it out in probably the most immoral way ever. I wouldn't imagine the military would recall a whole bunch of perfectly fine scopes just because they have inscriptions on them. Besides, most of the soldiers in the middle east are most likely very God loving Christians, and this could easily be a reminder of the God they put so much of their own values into, whether it be geared towards killin' as many towel heads as possible. I certainly don't agree with Trijicon's methods, since they were entirely underhanded and immoral, but they made what they made because it was a quality product for a great contract.
It doesn't support the notion of religious war from OUR side, but it's all the other side needs to know. Ironically though, had this not made mainstream news, there's a good chance insurgents wouldn't know about it, since I doubt they're intimately familiar with the quotes of Jesus anyway and would not have noticed their verses subtly tacked on to the end of serial numbers.
Yeah, recalling hundreds of thousands of sights would be a wase of money. Just tell the soldiers where the inscriptions are, and they can scratch them off with a knife or file or something.
It doesn't support the notion of religious war from OUR side, but it's all the other side needs to know. Ironically though, had this not made mainstream news, there's a good chance insurgents wouldn't know about it, since I doubt they're intimately familiar with the quotes of Jesus anyway and would not have noticed their verses subtly tacked on to the end of serial numbers.
I doubt there's anything that wouldn't convince whoever it is we're fighting nowadays that what we're doing isn't religiously motivated. Islam is a pretty life engulfing religion, no matter what sect you are. When every aspect of your life and government is controlled by your religion, it's pretty impossible to see these large, pale and dark skinned invaders clad from head to toe in armor and weapons, you're gonna pray to Allah to strike them down anyways. Why not view this whole Reich as a Christian invasion of your homeland?
Was not sure if this would go in the Effed-Up News Thread or the Somewhat Amusing News Thread. (so I put in both just for good measure)
Avatar kills Taiwanese man 3D excitement beyond endurance
Blockbuster movie Avatar has added to its impressive list of accomplishments - which to date include inducing suicidal despair, attracting Golden Globes, provoking civil unrest and creating a plethora of Pandoras - by killing a Taiwanese man overcome by the 3D experience.
According to AFP, the 42-year-old cinemagoer, surnamed Kuo, had a history of high blood pressure and suffered a stroke while watching the film in in the northern city of Hsinchu.
He was taken to hospital unconscious, where a scan revealed "his brain was haemorrhaging". He died 11 days later.
Emergency room doctor Peng Chin-chih told AFP: "It's likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms."
The China Times reported that the incident represented "the first death linked to watching James Cameron's science-fiction epic".
Comments
North Korea says it's holding American
Crazy man, "John 3:16"
Kim, "*gasp* Jesus loves me! I never realized how empty my life was, release all the political prisoners and call the US. We're adopting democracy!"
Later in a speech to the nation: Kim, "Citizens, I am not a god, Jesus is the son of the only true God. We shall now become a peaceful Christian nation, just like the wonderful US..... oh yeah, Americans aren't evil, I made all that shit up. We love them now."
If you are going to go to a foreign country, you need to recognize the differences in laws, and how your choices can have impacts on other people. I live in China. China has plenty of its own issues, but I let those be, because they're not my issues. Trying to get myself involved in any sensitive issues would get me thrown in jail with ruthless efficiency. Then the embassy would more or less tell me "good job dumbass, what did you think would happen?"
The same applies here to this new guy. There is absolutely no possible way this douchebag thought anything different than this was going happen. He's Korean American. He knows the relationship between the North and the South. He should also know that every damn time some American wandered into North Korea the regime used them as political pawns in getting concessions from the US. In a country that is known for executing Christians for believing in something different than the Great Leader, there was only one possible outcome for a deluded Korean American walking into North Korea to tell Kim Jong Il to love Jesus Christ and to reverse everything he's been doing for the last few decades.
Personally, I think the American government should leave him there. We need to stop spending political capital to bail out dumbasses who don't think about the consequences of their actions.
/rant
Mrs. Robinson's affair with teen rocks NIreland
How Creationist 'Origin' Distorts Darwin
EDIT: I should point out that Ray Comfort caved under pressure and did hand out full versions.
Some background first, Google has not been having a great time here in China. Though regular American google, google.com, has been accessible since around 2000, they set up their Chinese domain, google.cn, in 2006. This is when Google took on a lot of criticism around the world, because they agreed to censor information in accordance with Chinese laws. As of right now, this is what they're talking about uncensoring in China.
Google has not been doing well here in China. It is in a strong, but distant second place in internet search engines with around a 25-30% market share; China's home grown and government sponsored Baidu (www.baidu.com) has a whopping 60% market share and growing. Furthermore, Google has frequently come under criticism by Chinese media and government, especially over the last few months. They alleged Google was doing a bad job censoring smut on the internet and ran a series of scathing articles about it (though Baidu was literally no better, the news stories *accidentally* forgot to mention this).
As the article states, China only makes up for a couple percent of its global revenue. It won't hurt Google in the short term by pulling out. The government, on the other hand, will be outwardly angry and vocal about being called out like this, but on the inside it will probably be very happy. Google does not censor information as vigorously as Baidu, and when certain search engine queries trigger the censors, Google displays a notice that roughly states "in accordance with local laws, some search results have been censored". Baidu does not do this. So if Google leaves the picture, then China will have a much stronger grip on censorship.
(okay, this is half so far. I am not done yet, but I have to take the bus to work. I'll post more later).
Google has been coming under a little criticism for the move too, as people are claiming that it was planning to leave anyway, and was just waiting for an opportune time to do it. That may be true, but only a handful of people at the top actually know for sure. I am a little skeptical of this, because even if they have 30% market share, that's 30% of an internet user base of over 300 million people in a country with upwards of another billion people without active internet connections yet. There are unprecedented business opportunities here, even for people in second place. This is why so many foreign businesses are willing to tolerate government interference that would be unacceptable in other countries.
So now Google is at a standstill with the government. It has actively called out Beijing by stating that the hacking attempts at its accounts of human rights activists originated from China. Whether China actively does it or not is irrelevant; there are several hardline nationalist groups within China that can carry out attacks like this that the government may either turn a blind eye to or indirectly support. But Google has basically come out with a propostion that will not happen. There is absolutely no way China will allow an uncensored Google to remain on its net. And by making this political and bringing so much attention to it, Google will have effectively burned the bridge forever in China if it leaves.
Whether that affects google.com... I dunno. Naturally google.com search results aren't technically censored, trying to search for sensitive topics within China on google.com will trigger the domestic IP filters and temporarily block your google access for a few minutes. I could easily see google getting a spite blocking if it leaves; it has happened before.
I still don't know how this is going to play out. Logically, it would look like Google is going to leave, but I don't fully see that happening either. A compromise would be best, letting both sides save face, but lately China has been tightening its grip on information; it recently published an internal report on threats to CCP rule (threats in this context basically means people with different opinions). They're becoming a bit more militant these days. On the other hand, seeing a heavyweight like Google leave in disgust because of the government will have very serious ramifications for other foreign companies and has the potential to affect foreign direct investment. Though others say that the dollar rules over morals, and it won't affect other companies too much.
Whew. Anyone have any questions or comments?
Scary.
U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes
EDIT:
The real concern is the effect it will have on the wars in the Middle East. The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and everyone else that we're trying to kill all ferverently believe that this is a war by the Christian West on Islam itself. The people who put these verse references on the scopes do this because they believe in the perceived righteousness of their cause, while the insurgents will fight harder against Christianity and the West for the perceived righteousness of their cause, and while atheists like me will sit back and think they're all goddamn retarded.
I doubt there's anything that wouldn't convince whoever it is we're fighting nowadays that what we're doing isn't religiously motivated. Islam is a pretty life engulfing religion, no matter what sect you are. When every aspect of your life and government is controlled by your religion, it's pretty impossible to see these large, pale and dark skinned invaders clad from head to toe in armor and weapons, you're gonna pray to Allah to strike them down anyways. Why not view this whole Reich as a Christian invasion of your homeland?
From here.