Flexible Reality
Saturday, June 19, 2004
� News � Out of Thin Air - Hacker tool allows Wi-Fi password grabs
As Wi-Fi users anticipate better wireless security, a new tool allows a hacker to yank you from the web and grab your login information before you've even sipped your latte.
'Airsnarf' is the latest utility to annoy wireless enthusiasts. The tool is the focus of attention this morning at both Computer User and DailyWireless.org. The tool, developed by a group that dubs themselves 'the Shmoo Group', allows an individual to yank connectivity from an unsuspecting user. Then the tool broadcasts a powerful signal, mimics the network logon, and tricks the user into providing the hacker with their login data when they think they're logging back on to the wireless network. "
Daily Wireless: "Welcome to Daily Wireless
Here are some ideas from the DailyWireless archives that could also be fun.
Note: This is a great site for Wireless Info
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Former US officials say 'Bush must be defeated in November'
The Daily Star
By Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Friday, June 18, 2004
A group of former senior diplomatic officials and retired military commanders - several of whom are the kind who "have never spoken out before" on such matters - has just issued a bracing statement arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged US national security and calling on Americans to defeat him in November. It's too early to tell if the statement will have an impact on this fall's campaign. But the group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, reveals (again) how dangerously isolated the Bush administration is not just around the world but even within America's own bipartisan foreign policy and military establishments.
This latest missive was sent by Democratic and Republican former officials who refuse to stay silent in the face of Bush's extremist and ideological foreign policy which, they say, is squandering America's moral standing. The signatories aren't exactly a "who's who" of the American left.
Jack Matlock, who served as an ambassador to the Soviet Union under the former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, has signed the statement, as has Retired Admiral William Crowe, who served as Reagan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Retired Marine General Joseph Hoar, a Marine who commanded US forces in the Middle East under former President Bush, has added his name to the list, as has Phyllis Oakley, who served as a State Department spokesperson under Reagan. The vast majority of signatories are, in fact, either conservative Republicans who served in the previous Reagan or Bush administrations, or they are bipartisan, consensus-driven ex-diplomats who believe in America's leadership role around the world.
Now they feel so enraged by Bush's extremist foreign policies that they can no longer stand by as the current Bush administration makes America less secure by upending alliances and alienating much of the world. Against the metastasizing scandal of Abu Ghraib, the botched post-war occupation of Iraq and the administration's lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the run-up to the war, these old hands are now taking an uncompromising, intelligent stand against what they see as an arrogant, unilateral and incompetent foreign policy.
The signatories join a large and growing chorus of former officials who were so enraged by Bush's conduct in Iraq that sitting on the sidelines wasn't an option. John Brady Kiesling, now a retired diplomat, led the charge in February 2003, when he courageously quit his Foreign Service job with the American Embassy in Athens and wrote a stinging rebuke of Bush's headlong rush to war in Iraq. Then another career diplomat, Gregory Thielmann, went public, telling Bill Moyers that Iraq didn't pose an "imminent security threat" to America. Thielmann attacked Bush for hyping intelligence reports and for misleading the American people about the need to go to war. The administration, he said, "has had a faith-based intelligence attitude: 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers.'"
Around the same time, retired military commanders were growing aghast at Bush's inept lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq. That's why, for example, a former US Central Command commander, General Anthony Zinni, went on "60 Minutes" last month and argued that if Bush stuck to the current course in Iraq, America was "headed over Niagara Falls." Hoar, the retired Marine general, has publicly declared that the United States is "absolutely on the brink of failure" in Iraq.
Meanwhile, other former ambassadors and career Foreign Service officers began speaking up, on their own timetables. Republican Party strategists with ties to the White House were quick and shameless in denigrating the critics. Ronald Spiers, a former ambassador to Turkey and Pakistan and someone well versed in Middle Eastern politics, argued that Bush administration policies had unraveled America's most important global alliances. Spiers faulted Bush for causing the US to lose "a lot of our international partnerships. We've lost a lot of lives. We've lost a lot of money for something that wasn't justified."
George Harrop, a former ambassador to Kenya and Israel, spoke for many in the diplomatic corps and, I suspect, for onetime Republican administration officials, when he said: "I really am essentially a Republican. I voted for George Bush's father, and I voted for George Bush. But what we got was not the George Bush we voted for." And former Ambassador Joseph Wilson has reminded Americans of just how many lies the present administration was willing to tell in its quest to convince people that Iraq posed a nuclear threat to the US.
Then, of course, there are the former National Security Council officials who, after getting a ringside seat watching Bush's bungling national security strategies, decided that now was the time to take a stand. Rand Beers left the White House after serving under Reagan and the former President Bush, and is now running foreign policy operations for John Kerry's presidential campaign. Richard Clarke is one of the most experienced counter-terrorism officials America has produced in the last three decades; he, too, could no longer stand idly by as the Bush administration pursued a fool's errand by starting a war against Iraq.
Just last month a separate group of 53 former diplomats and other former high-level national security officials wrote a letter to Bush in which they excoriated the president for sacrificing America's credibility in the Arab world and squandering America's status as honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The statement just issued marks the high-water point of dissent among diplomats and military commanders who cannot stomach Bush any longer. But there is still time, and a need, for more officials to come forward and voice their opposition to policies that are undermining US security. The latest letter was a profound wake-up call to all Americans: George W. Bush must be defeated next November.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Fantastic News !!!
Novell v. SCO: The Telling Blow?By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, eWEEK
June 11, 2004
Opinion: In an eventful week for SCO, Linux & Open Source columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols thinks the biggest event by far is that SCO now must face Novell in federal court to battle for Unix's copyright. It's a battle, he thinks, that SCO is likely to lose.
It's been a busy time for SCO watchers. First, the company—somehow, some way—managed to twist its way out of its deal with BayStar Capital with the lion's share of the cash, and BayStar was left holding millions of shares of underwater stock.
Then, in this week alone, we've seen SCO report an absolutely awful second quarter, and a U.S. District Court granted it more time to get its ducks in line for its IBM case.
And last, but by no means least, the same judge told SCO that its case over who really owns Unix's copyright, Novell or SCO, would be fought out in federal court instead of in state court.
Now, if you didn't have a scorecard, you might think the last point was the smallest one. But if you've been playing along at home, or at Groklaw anyway, you'll know that the seemingly small change in venue is all-important.
That's because it completely changes the rules by which SCO will have to show that it, and not Novell, owns Unix's copyright. And without that copyright, all of those other cases SCO is pursuing against AutoZone, DaimlerChrysler, IBM and Red Hat fall apart like a house of cards in a summer thunderstorm.
I'm no lawyer; I'm just a working journalist who's been following SCO since the late 1980s. But heck, you don't have to take my word that SCO may now be in serious legal hot water. Let me introduce you to Michael R. Graham, intellectual property attorney and partner with the Chicago-based law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP.
Graham tells me, "Judge Kimball's decision is a serious loss for SCO. Not only in its slander of title case against Novell, but in SCO's case against IBM. The threshold issue in both cases is whether SCO owns copyright in the Unix software code."
"SCO wanted the case remanded so that the only issue would be contractual: whether the APA [Asset Purchase Agreement] and Amendment No. 2 transferred ownership of the Unix code," Graham says.
"But Judge Kimball concluded that a more fundamental issue is whether the APA and Amendment No. 2 constitute the type of 'writing' required under the federal copyright law to effect a transfer of copyright. This federal analysis could prove fatal to SCO's claim."
<------------------------------------->
Travesty of Justice
NY Times Op-Ed
By PAUL KRUGMAN
No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.
For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure.
We can't tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise.
First, there's the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant — that of the "Detroit 3" — appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. (The lead prosecutor has filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Ashcroft, accusing him of botching the case. The Justice Department, in turn, has opened investigations against the prosecutor. Payback? I report; you decide.)
Then there is the lack of any major captures. Somewhere, the anthrax terrorist is laughing. But the Justice Department, you'll be happy to know, is trying to determine whether it can file bioterrorism charges against a Buffalo art professor whose work includes harmless bacteria in petri dishes.
Perhaps most telling is the way Mr. Ashcroft responds to criticism of his performance. His first move is always to withhold the evidence. Then he tries to change the subject by making a dramatic announcement of a terrorist threat.
For an example of how Mr. Ashcroft shuts down public examination, consider the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former F.B.I. translator who says that the agency's language division is riddled with incompetence and corruption, and that the bureau missed critical terrorist warnings. In 2002 she gave closed-door Congressional testimony; Senator Charles Grassley described her as "very credible . . . because people within the F.B.I. have corroborated a lot of her story."
But the Justice Department has invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege" to prevent Ms. Edmonds from providing evidence. And last month the department retroactively classified two-year-old testimony by F.B.I. officials, which was presumably what Mr. Grassley referred to.
For an example of changing the subject, consider the origins of the Jose Padilla case. There was no publicity when Mr. Padilla was arrested in May 2002. But on June 6, 2002, Coleen Rowley gave devastating Congressional testimony about failures at the F.B.I. (which reports to Mr. Ashcroft) before 9/11. Four days later, Mr. Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference and announced that Mr. Padilla was involved in a terrifying plot. Instead of featuring Ms. Rowley, news magazine covers ended up featuring the "dirty bomber" who Mr. Ashcroft said was plotting to kill thousands with deadly radiation.
Since then Mr. Padilla has been held as an "enemy combatant" with no legal rights. But Newsweek reports that "administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention — that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological `dirty bomb' — has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used in court."
But most important is the memo. Last week Mr. Ashcroft, apparently in contempt of Congress, refused to release a memo on torture his department prepared for the White House almost two years ago. Fortunately, his stonewalling didn't work: The Washington Post has acquired a copy of the memo and put it on its Web site.
Much of the memo is concerned with defining torture down: if the pain inflicted on a prisoner is less than the pain that accompanies "serious physical injury, such as organ failure," it's not torture. Anyway, the memo declares that the federal law against torture doesn't apply to interrogations of enemy combatants "pursuant to [the president's] commander-in-chief authority." In other words, the president is above the law.
The memo came out late Sunday. Mr. Ashcroft called a press conference yesterday — to announce an indictment against a man accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio. The timing was, I'm sure, purely coincidental.
U.S. Baptists Split from World Group
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Reuters) - The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, voted on Tuesday to cut its links with the Baptist World Alliance, saying the global group is too liberal on gay rights and other issues.
Note: From the Southern Baptist Convention's "Abstract of Principles" it is clear the SBC has a different worldview than the World Council of Churches, when the latter wrote: in their "Statement of Faith":
"The National Council of Churches is a community of Christian communions, which, in response to the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord. These communions covenant with one another to manifest ever more fully the unity of the Church. Relying upon the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the communions come together as the Council in common mission, serving in all creation to the glory of God." --from the Preamble to the NCC Constitution.
The SBC offers it's adherents an exclusive Church with an autocratic God; the WCC offers an inclusive Church with a benevolent God. The SBC spiritual homebase is in Texas, the WCC's is in New York. The SBC claims 15 million members, the WCC claims over fifty million.
The SBC split from BWA as seen by the SBC is here. And then we have the linkage from the SBC to President Bush, shown below.
Bush speaks to Southern Baptists, reiterates stances on life issues, same-sex 'marriage'
Jun 15, 2004
By Erin Curry
President Bush addresses SBC messengers via satellite
President George W. Bush speaks live via satellite from the Oval Office of the White House June 15 to messengers assembled for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in the Indiana Convention Center June 15-16 for the 147th session of the SBC, in its 159th year. Photo Kent Harville
INDIANAPOLIS (BP)--President Bush spoke directly to Southern Baptists June 15, upholding a "culture of life" and the sanctity of marriage. Bush, speaking live from the White House via satellite, also addressed issues relating to faith-based organizations, the judicial system and the war on terror.
The president told messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis he and his wife are thankful for their prayers, which he has felt "at crucial hours." The president said he will keep working to build a culture of life in America, adding to the progress he has made by signing the Born Alive Infants Protection Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
"Common sense and conscience tell us that when an expectant mother is killed, two lives are ended, and the criminal should answer for both crimes," he said in his 12-minute speech. Also, Bush signed a law last November to end the practice of partial-birth abortion.
"This law is not only valid and constitutional, it is compassionate and urgently needed, and my administration will fight to uphold it," he said. Bush said his administration also will continue its support for crisis pregnancy centers, incentives for adoption and parental notification laws.
"I propose to double federal funding for abstinence programs in schools and community-based programs," Bush told the standing-room-only crowd. "And I will work with Congress to pass a comprehensive and effective ban on human cloning. Life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man."
The president then said his administration is defending the sanctity of marriage against activist courts and local officials who seek to redefine marriage.
"The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. And government, by strengthening and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. So I am calling for funding for healthy marriage programs, and I support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as a union of a man and a woman," he said to messengers' applause.
Bush said he also will continue working to defend the liberty of faith-based organizations, which have the right to provide publicly funded social services just like any other group. He said he has called on Congress to codify his faith-based initiative into law "so that people of faith can know government will never discriminate against them again."
Turning to the judicial system, Bush noted that some senators are resorting to unprecedented tactics to block votes on his judicial nominees, and he urged them to stop.
"Every nominee deserves a fair hearing and a timely vote on the Senate floor. It is time for those senators to stop playing politics with American justice," he said.
Speaking of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush again said freedom is not America's gift to the world but is Almighty God's gift to every man and woman who lives in this world.
"In Afghanistan and Iraq, we will finish the job," Bush said, thanking Southern Baptists for their strong support of the war.
In closing, Bush offered hope in the future of America.
"These years have brought trials we did not ask for and challenges we never expected to face," he said. "We have worked together, and we are rising to meet the duties of our time. Now we look forward with confidence and faith toward greater security and wider prosperity and a stronger culture of life. We pray always for God's guidance and strength in our lives and for this great nation."
Just before Bush spoke, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson led the messengers in prayer for the president and the nation, asking God to give him "wisdom beyond Solomon."
SBC President Jack Graham, speaking to the Executive Committee June 14, said Southern Baptists are not looking to endorse candidates, but instead to have candidates endorse Southern Baptist values.
"One of the reasons we loved Ronald Reagan so much is because he endorsed so many of our values and helped us in our country and our culture," Graham said. "That's the way I feel about any candidate, whether it's this president or any other president. We're seeking that candidate to endorse us. ... We're thankful that George W. Bush has endorsed many of the values that we hold dear."
Bush has now addressed the Southern Baptist Convention three times. In 2002, he spoke via satellite, and in 2003 he sent a taped message.
Note: Nothing else needs to be said on the stark differences between the orientation of the SBC as compared to the WBA and the WCC.
<------------------------------------->
Number of Americans with no formal religion increasing, survey finds
Signs of religious 'reawakening' hard to find, researchers say
by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International
January 11,2002
NEW YORK - Though the United States remains a strongly religious nation, the percentage of Americans saying they have no formal religious identity is growing, the authors of a recent survey have concluded.
A national survey of U.S. religious affiliation suggests the existence of a "wide and possibly growing swath of secularism" in the American population.
The American Religious Identification Survey 2001, released by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), also suggests that the proportion of Christians in the U.S. has dropped - from 86 percent in 1990, when the study was first conducted, to 77 percent in 2001.
The survey was based on random telephone interviews from February to June 2001 of more than 50,000 adults. Researchers estimated the responses to be representative of the entire U.S. adult population.
The study was released late in 2001 after the Sept. 11terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC - events that, by nearly all accounts, swelled the numbers of people attending religious services.
But Egon Mayer, one of the co-authors of the study, said Sept. 11 had not permanently altered the US religious landscape. Increased attendance at religious services immediately after the attacks did not change the basic religious affiliations that he and co-author Barry Kosmin studied, Mayer said.
"People didn't attend church or synagogue just for religious reasons. They wanted to be around other people," Mayer told ENI. "People probably feel more religious, but whether they have changed behavior is another question."
(Ed. The idea that religion, particularly Christianity, has as its main goal to "change behavior" is a cultic heresy among both Catholics and Protestants. Orthodox Christianity's main goal is to expose sinners to the Savior through the message of Law and Gospel so that the Holy Spirit will turn them to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit God for His grace in Jesus. A change of behavior will result from that "turning" as one learns the expressed will of the true God from His revelation, the Bible.)
Another survey, conducted by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and released last month, confirmed part of Mayer's contention.
In the Pew study, 78 percent of those surveyed in November 2001 said the influence of religion in the United States was growing - an increase over an earlier, March survey, in which only 37 percent of those questioned had felt the influence of religion on the rise.
And yet the November Pew survey found no evidence that religion was suddenly playing a larger role in Americans' personal lives. The proportion of those surveyed post-Sept. 11 who said that religion was important in their own lives - 61 percent - was virtually unchanged from what it had been in the March study.
Other findings of the CUNY American Religious Identification Survey for 2001, based on extrapolations:
* Fifty-two per cent of adults were Protestant, 24.5 percent were Catholic, and 14.1 percent adhered to no religion. Jews and Muslims remained relatively small groups in the U.S., the study concluded, Jews representing 1.3 percent of the population, and Muslims, 0.5 percent.
* Some 33 million American adults - about 16 percent of the total adult population - had changed their religious identification at some point.
* The groups making the largest gains since 1990 included Evangelical Christians, non-denominational Christians and those who professed no religion. The latter group accounted for the largest single increase since the previous, 1990 study. "One of the most striking 1990-2001 comparisons is the more than doubling of the adult population identifying with no religion, from 14.3 million (8 percent) in 1990 to the current 29.4 million (14.1percent)," the study said.
Those who claimed no formal religious affiliation were not, however, atheists: only 0.4 percent of the people surveyed identified themselves as atheists.
Despite a strong sentiment in the United States that the country has undergone something of a "religious re-awakening" in recent years, the study concluded that the population's large secular segment should not be ignored.
The finding was "completely consistent with similar secularizing trends in other Western, democratic societies," the authors concluded. "The magnitude and role of this large secular segment of the American population is frequently ignored by scholars and politicians alike."
<------------------------------------->
Halliburton Under Fire on Capitol Hill for Iraq
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon auditors criticized Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm Halliburton on Tuesday for its Iraq contracts as questions lingered over White House influence in giving work to the company.
CIA Restricts One-Third of U.S. Senate WMD Report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has decided that about one-third of a U.S. Senate report criticizing prewar intelligence on Iraq contains secret information that should not be released to the public, intelligence sources said on Tuesday.
Sharon Wins a Crucial Victory as His Bribery Case Is Dropped
The decision is expected to lend new momentum to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Smart-phone worm has a hang-up
World's First Cell Phone Virus
By Robert Lemos
CNET News.com
June 15, 2004, 2:40 PM PT
A recently created "concept virus" designed to show that a worm could spread between smart phones won't get very far in the real world, antivirus companies said Tuesday.
As previously reported, the so-called Cabir worm is written for the Symbian operating system, the OS used in a majority of smart phones--devices that combine the features of a cell phone and a personal digital assistant. The worm's creators sent a copy of it to antivirus researchers Monday, and it's not yet known if the program has made its way to the general public.
Some researchers initially thought Cabir would automatically run on phones based on the Symbian OS, but an analysis of the program has changed that assessment. In order for the worm to spread, said Kevin Hogan, senior manager for security company Symantec, the user of a targeted phone has to approve of a download from an unknown source.
"The way in which (this worm) replicates itself will severely limit its spread, even if (the worm) was to be made public," Hogan said. "It is not relying on a vulnerability in the operating system; it is relying on the underlying vulnerability of the person who is using" the OS.
To propagate, the worm has to clear three hurdles, Hogan said. First, the target device's user must allow the infected phone to connect to the target device through the Bluetooth wireless protocol. Then, the potential victim must accept the data for download. Finally, the user has to agree to install the application.
"We still haven't seen this thing in the wild," Hogan said. "So far, it is what we call a 'zoo virus'--it is only in the hands of researchers and the person that wrote it."
While the worm is not likely to spread, antivirus companies warned that other virus writers may use it as a departure point for their own development, placing the digital code at the beginning of a chain of evolution that could result in an actual threat to users of smart phones.
"We see it as a pretty significant step forward," said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of Network Associates' antivirus emergency response team. Two other minor variants of the program, which remove extraneous code, have appeared already, he said.
"The saving grace is that you have to accept the program, it just doesn't show up on your machine," Gullotto said.
Cabir uses components of Nokia's Series 60 development platform, a platform used not only by Nokia but also by other major smart phone manufacturers, including Siemens, Samsung, Sendo and Panasonic. Symantec and other antivirus companies confirmed that, theoretically, the worm could spread between Nokia Series 60 phones running Symbian 6.1 or higher. Security company Network Associates found that the program could infect a Nokia 6600 phone.
Representatives of Symbian and Nokia were not immediately available for comment.
Even if Cabir could spread quickly, it might not gain much traction because smart phones still have not taken off, especially in the United States. Symbian's operating system currently dominates the smart-phone market, which remains small, representing only a thin slice of the more than 1 billion cell phones in circulation. The Symbian OS is expected to battle a similar product from Microsoft for the lead in the operating system market through the end of the decade.
Threats like the Cabir worm could be further stymied by Symbian Signed, a new campaign that will require all applications for the Symbian platform to be digitally signed, attesting that the company has looked at the code. Users could refuse to install any unsigned applications.
Cabir doesn't have a destructive payload, but it constantly scans for other Bluetooth devices it can target, severely shortening the battery life of any system it's already infected, according to Symantec's analysis.
<------------------------------------->
Southern Baptists May Leave World Body
By REUTERS
Published: June 14, 2004
CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) - A dispute between the Southern Baptist Convention and a global Baptist group may result in a split this week.
At issue is the Southern Baptist Convention's continuing membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella organization for the faith that it sees as too liberal. The convention's financial support of the world group is also at stake. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is based in Nashville and has 16 million members, are holding their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis. They have said the Baptist World Alliance espouses a "liberal theology" that threatens to infect the church in the United States.
The convention's leadership has been dominated since 1979 by conservatives who maintain, among other things, that the Bible as written is without error.
Another issue that may surface this week involves a call for Baptists to boycott United States public schools. A resolution circulated before the meeting says children in public schools are taught that "God is irrelevant" and that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable. It suggests that home schooling or private religious schools are proper alternatives.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Baptist World Alliance has taken an increasingly anti-American tone. They have criticized it for supporting gay rights and the ordination of women, and for consorting with "socialist" figures, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
The convention's executive committee approved the move to split from the alliance at a meeting in February, leaving a final decision to delegates at this week's meeting.
The committee's report said the alliance "no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation."
Monday, June 14, 2004
Southern Baptists May Leave World Body
By REUTERS
Published: June 14, 2004
CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) - A dispute between the Southern Baptist Convention and a global Baptist group may result in a split this week.
At issue is the Southern Baptist Convention's continuing membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella organization for the faith that it sees as too liberal. The convention's financial support of the world group is also at stake. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is based in Nashville and has 16 million members, are holding their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis. They have said the Baptist World Alliance espouses a "liberal theology" that threatens to infect the church in the United States.
The convention's leadership has been dominated since 1979 by conservatives who maintain, among other things, that the Bible as written is without error.
Another issue that may surface this week involves a call for Baptists to boycott United States public schools. A resolution circulated before the meeting says children in public schools are taught that "God is irrelevant" and that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable. It suggests that home schooling or private religious schools are proper alternatives.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Baptist World Alliance has taken an increasingly anti-American tone. They have criticized it for supporting gay rights and the ordination of women, and for consorting with "socialist" figures, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
The convention's executive committee approved the move to split from the alliance at a meeting in February, leaving a final decision to delegates at this week's meeting.
The committee's report said the alliance "no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation."
Southern Baptists May Leave World Body
By REUTERS
Published: June 14, 2004
CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) - A dispute between the Southern Baptist Convention and a global Baptist group may result in a split this week.
At issue is the Southern Baptist Convention's continuing membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella organization for the faith that it sees as too liberal. The convention's financial support of the world group is also at stake. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is based in Nashville and has 16 million members, are holding their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis. They have said the Baptist World Alliance espouses a "liberal theology" that threatens to infect the church in the United States.
The convention's leadership has been dominated since 1979 by conservatives who maintain, among other things, that the Bible as written is without error.
Another issue that may surface this week involves a call for Baptists to boycott United States public schools. A resolution circulated before the meeting says children in public schools are taught that "God is irrelevant" and that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable. It suggests that home schooling or private religious schools are proper alternatives.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Baptist World Alliance has taken an increasingly anti-American tone. They have criticized it for supporting gay rights and the ordination of women, and for consorting with "socialist" figures, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
The convention's executive committee approved the move to split from the alliance at a meeting in February, leaving a final decision to delegates at this week's meeting.
The committee's report said the alliance "no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation."
Friedman's low road to the high ground
Taking the High GroundBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: June 13, 2004
At a time when the Israeli rightist parties are going through a wrenching debate over whether to approve Ariel Sharon's proposal for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, it's worth recalling Israel's previous experience in this regard — its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Although that withdrawal is remembered as a failure, it deserves to be rehabilitated. Israel's Lebanon withdrawal was a great strategic success — for reasons that Israel should be studying now.
First, a few facts: After years of bloody guerrilla warfare that cost Israel dearly in lives and treasure, on May 22, 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew from south Lebanon to the internationally recognized border. On July 27, 2000, the U.N. passed Resolution 1310, confirming that Israel had "withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Resolution 425."
With that U.N.-approved pullout, Israel completely reversed its situation: It went from holding the strategic and moral low ground, to holding the strategic and moral high ground. When Israel was occupying south Lebanon it was embroiled in a guerrilla war in which it could never use its vast military superiority. It was going mano a mano with Hezbollah. Worse, any Hezbollah attack on Israel was seen by the world as legitimate resistance. Once Israel was out, it could use its superior air power to retaliate for Hezbollah attacks — and the world didn't care.
"Sure," say the critics, "But the Palestinians saw the Israeli withdrawal as a sign of weakness and it triggered their Intifada II." Well, maybe the Palestinians did watch too much Hezbollah TV. Their mistake. But I'll tell you who didn't misread Israel's withdrawal: the people it was directed at — Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria.
Hezbollah knows it can't launch any serious attack on Israel from Lebanon now without triggering a massive retaliation in which Israel's air force would destroy all the power plants of Beirut. This would bring down the wrath of all of Lebanon on Hezbollah — because the Lebanese public would not consider an unprovoked Hezbollah attack on Israel as legitimate, or worth sacrificing for, now that Israel is out of Lebanon and Lebanon's sovereignty is restored.
"In every conflict, the extent to which a party can muster domestic support and international support, and the extent to which its public will withstand higher thresholds of pain, is very much a function of the degree of international legitimacy for that cause," argues Shibley Telhami, Middle East studies professor at the University of Maryland. "As soon as Israel withdrew from Lebanon to the internationally recognized border, the legitimacy factor shifted from Hezbollah to Israel. This may seem abstract, but it's not."
When you have legitimacy on your side, your people, and the world, support you more, and the other side's people, and the world, support them less. Yes, the Israel-Lebanon border is still tense, but very few Israelis have been killed there in four years. That's my idea of peace. There is no total victory to be had by Israel over Hezbollah or the Palestinians, without total genocide. There is, though, the possibility of long cease-fires, with Israel holding the moral and strategic high ground, so it can lead its life. In north Israel today, Israelis can focus on what they want, which is making microchips, leaving the unlucky south Lebanese — who are trapped under the brain-dead Syrian and Hezbollah regimes — to make potato chips.
The lesson for Israel is clear: If you are going to get out of Gaza unilaterally, get out all the way to the U.N.-blessed international border. Do not do it halfway; otherwise you end up with the worst of all worlds: still embroiled in a guerrilla war, still taking casualties, unable to use your superior firepower and getting blamed for everything. Gaza may be easier than Lebanon, too, because unlike Syria and Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt would not have an interest — after an Israeli pullout — in keeping Gaza boiling. Because that would empower Hamas.
The Israeli right insists that Israel is surrounded by implacable foes. That may be true. It may be that Israel can only hope for different models of insecurity with its neighbors. If so, I'd choose the Lebanon model: Get out all the way to an internationally legitimized, U.N. border and deal with enemies from the moral and strategic high ground. The view is better — and it's much safer up there.
The New York Times > International > Israel Pushes Deeper Into West Bank for Barrier
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 14, 2004
Filed at 7:26 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- An Israeli air strike in the West Bank late Monday killed two Palestinian militants, including a local leader, as Israel started building the most controversial section of its separation barrier, confiscating Palestinian land."
