Pagels uses her analysis of John and Thomas to discuss the struggle that went on in early Christianity between those who believed that Jesus taught that the divine light was present in all people; and those who, like the author of John, claimed that Jesus had taught that humanity inhabited a profound spiritual darkness that only he could illuminate. There was no salvation except through him. Significantly, it is to Thomas in the Gospel of John that Jesus says: "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." The author of John won the contest, of course, and the rest is history. Except that scholars like Pagels are beginning to regret that the victory was so overwhelming and one-sided. She admires the mystical generalities of the gnostics and is temperamentally allergic to the violent certainties of the winning side in Catholic Christianity.
The fact is that humans, if they want one at all, generally craft the kind of religion that suits them. If you want a modern version of this ancient conflict you could compare the fluffy affirmations of New Age spirituality with the flinty negations of Vatican Catholicism. Some people like a spirituality that soothes and affirms their humanity, while others like a faith that has a bit of the lash to it. It usually comes down to a choice between a swamp and a hard place.
This dart misses not only the bullseye but the whole target. Gnosticism is not a fluffy form of hedonistic affirmation, as Holloway disparagingly characterizes it.
Through her cumulative work Pagels has pointed out that gnostics sought an unmediated experience of divinity, while Vatican Catholicism, St. Augustine, and the Gospel of John all demand intermediaries who must necessarily act as a bridge, or gatekeeper, or more likely a tollbooth between the believer and God.
The thrust of her insight is not the soft vs. hard dichotomy but the direct vs. politicized visions of religion. If "divine light [were] present in all people," we wouldn't need go-betweens to tint Jesus's teachings with their biases and prejudices for political gain, a sight we see daily here in the United States.
Without religious leadership, believers would be free to worship God and live virtuous lives. Period. With the onus of religious leadership, however, believers become caught up in and responsible for agendas that have nothing to do with worship or spirituality but are instead the self-directed political goals of those in power: sending missionaries to Iraq, denying birth control to impoverished Africans, or paying vast sums in legal settlements to compensate for the pedophilia of the clergy.
The leadership of the early church existed to serve itself, not Jesus. The church's forefathers had the same morally disappointing quality of political selfishness in common with today's church leaders. Challenges to Christianity's human leaders are the embodiment of heresy because they undermine not the divine universe of matter or spirit, but the power of the people who declare what scripture means and what dogma is. Faith-based inquisitions can be overt or subtle, but they are all aggressions enforcing a human hierarchy that is at its foundation not religious but political.
The biblical canon is a power structure. Gospels that challenge hierarchy are dangerous to political power. Thomas's vision was anti-hierarchical, and that is precisely why his Gospel was squelched.
Nuclear weapons plants have eliminated or reduced training for guards responsible for repelling terrorist attacks, leaving the government unable to guarantee the plants can be adequately defended, the Energy Department's internal watchdog said.
One plant has reduced training hours by 40 percent, and some plants conduct tactical training only in classrooms, according to a report from the department's inspector general.
[...]
The criticisms were the latest leveled against the government's ability to protect nuclear facilities, long considered prime targets for espionage and terrorist attacks.
The inspector general complained in January that security guards who repelled four simulated terrorist attacks at the Y-12 weapons plant in Tennessee had been tipped in advance. The plant processes parts for nuclear weapons and maintains vast supplies of bomb-grade uranium.
That earlier report also determined that at least two guards defending the mock attacks had been allowed to look at computer simulations a day before the attacks.
The newest report said some of the plants are not adequately training guards how to use handcuffs, fight hand-to-hand or defend against terrorists in vehicles.
Nah. Unheard of. Terrorists never use vehicles when conducting their terrorism.
We may be losing the War on Terror as well as the War on Lying in the White House, but at least Janet Jackson, Tommy Chong, and Martha Stewart no longer pose a threat to God-fearing Americans.
*The USA, not Spain. They can throw deceptive government leaders out of office and put terrorist suspects into custody in less than a week, so they must be doing something right.
Before the government froze about $66 million of his assets, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling supplied his high-powered legal team with $23 million for his defense.
Combined with insurance money -- some from Enron and possibly a private policy -- that's enough money to pay his brigade of attorneys for months, perhaps years.
"Maybe his lawyers are just making sure that crime doesn't pay," joked Philip Hilder, a Houston lawyer and former federal prosecutor who represents several witnesses in the Enron cases. "I'm quite sure the entire Enron Task Force, from its inception two years ago, hasn't cost anywhere near that."
Skilling faces 35 felony counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, making false statements to auditors and insider trading. But he also has potential legal liability in about 100 conglomerated civil cases and has been sued by the Securities Exchange Commission and investigated by Congress and the bankruptcy examiner.
"Millions yes, but $23 million is hard to figure. It is stunning," said Gillian Hadfield, a Los Angeles-based University of Southern California law professor specializing in the economics of legal fees. She said the enormous fee shows Skilling is expecting a major battle -- and that the legal system will find a use for as many dollars as a participant is willing to contribute.
[...]
So what will Skilling's $23 million buy?
From the firm of O'Melveny & Myers, which has become so well known for litigation it gets plugs on HBO's The Sopranos, come four main lawyers on the trial team.
Leading is Daniel Petrocelli, a California lawyer who has done everything from winning the civil trial verdict against O.J. Simpson for the family of Fred Goldman to successfully representing Winnie the Pooh for Disney. No stranger to the spotlight, this would-be professional trumpet player doesn't blink at the idea of Skilling being his first criminal client.
"A trial is a trial. This is a business case and Jeff Skilling is no criminal," said Petrocelli.
He brings an intensity to the case shared easily by his colleague Bruce Hiler, the Washington, D.C.-based former Securities and Exchange Commission associate director of enforcement who helped prosecute Ivan Boesky and Charles Keating Jr. Hiler sat by Skilling in his congressional testimony and on Larry King Live. His zeal in claiming Skilling's innocence is palpable.
"You have to believe in your client," said Petrocelli. "Your conviction has to be so strong that you can will the verdict."
Also from the law firm is Randy Oppenheimer, a California lawyer with a general trial practice as varied as representing Carsey-Warner in a dispute with CBS over production costs of the television show Cybill, and successfully representing Exxon in a suit by Alaskan municipalities that tried to recoup cleanup costs from the Valdez spill.
Oppenheimer and Petrocelli worked together representing Unocal Corp. against accusations that it is liable for human rights violations committed by others in Myanmar because the company has a gas pipeline there. That landmark case is in midstream.
"I predict you will see, as we move forward, that there is a smoothness to how we work together," Oppenheimer said.
The two lead criminal lawyers on the team include California O'Melveny partner Mark Holscher, who prosecuted madam Heidi Fleiss and represented scientist Wen Ho Lee against charges he mishandled classified information.
Skilling also has Houston counsel Ron Woods, the former Houston U.S. attorney here and a former FBI agent. Woods defended Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
Woods said the Oklahoma case was about one event but the Skilling case is so much bigger because it's about years of multiple complex financial transactions at Enron. "This case is so broad and could take so much lawyer time, $23 million could be eaten up before we even get to a verdict," Woods said.
The odd thing is that Martha Stewart may go to jail for lying about having made $200,000 in an insider trade... after she had already lost $300 million in the value of her company because the market was displeased with the scandal. She is doubly penalized. But she's a Democrat, and an independent, strong woman, both of which are out of vogue during the Bush-Cheney American Taliban regime. Meanwhile, her company chugs along without her, hurting but still viable. That's because, unlike Enron, it was a real business that didn't play three-card monte with broadband and Nigerian barges.
Skilling, on the other hand, managed to squirrel away $23 million exclusively for his lawyers before his self-made Enron house of cards came tumbling down, and before the government managed to freeze the rest of his assets (such quick thinking being a hallmark of CEOs and crooks alike). Nigerian barge co-conspirators Merrill Lynch and others are pretending none of it happened. Enron, the company, is now just a joke on life support, barely alive after the seedy machinations of Skilling and Ken Lay.
Martha leaves a viable company in her wake over a stupid but relatively small $200,000 error, and she might go to jail. Skilling got to steal the money (by leaving with his overcapitalized stock) and then crash the company, and still manages to use $23 million of that purloined cash to mount what may be the biggest defense in history. But he's had a fantastic advantage: nearly three years to destroy all the evidence.
And we will watch Skilling drive his $23 million Ford Bronco slowly, slowly, slowly... and the legal proceedings won't be pleasant, but he might just walk in the end. Because no matter how many thousands of employees he had to fuck over to get that way, he's very, very rich.
Jeff Skilling and O.J. Simpson... separated at birth?
Leave no college graduate behind.Atrios leads us to Max who leads us to this picture that shows how US employment has deteriorated to the point now where there are more unemployed college graduates than unemployed high school dropouts.
From the look of the chart, it appears that something awful, something truly cataclysmic in economic terms, took place in January 2001. What was it?
While it's almost impossible to figure out the exact figure on Ashcroft's bill, one can estimate. Five days in an ICU unit alone at Providence Hospital in Washington, for example, would run up to $30,000. And then there's the laparoscopic gall bladder surgery and the five days in recovery -- which could cost an additional $28,000 (according to Fairview University Medical Center in Minneapolis). But there are still all the expert doctors who've visited him daily and have their own separate charges. That price tag might run Ashcroft as much as $5000 for the ten days he's in the hospital, says Dr. Quentin Young, PNHP's National Coordinator and former Director of Medicine at Cook County Hospital. Using such rough estimates, Ashcroft is told he'll have to fork over at least $63,000.
Shocked at such an outrageous figure, Ashcroft insists there's no way in hell he can pay that amount of money and begins to explain his situation.
A financial counselor enters the room and tells Ashcroft that the hospital has done a little research on his "situation," and because he does have assets and a steady source of income, however small, he's not eligible for the hospital's charity fund, reserved for those who truly have no resources. The counselor says the hospital can put Ashcroft on an assistance program, where he'd be charged an incremental fee depending on his financial status. Or, if he's lucky, the hospital might eat a percentage of the bill -- again, based on his status.
The counselor doesn't mention it, but he knows that if Ashcroft doesn't make his payments he can send collection agents after him, and eventually take him to court if need be. After all, the hospital is already strapped for cash and has spent a lot of money treating Ashcroft. Besides, just letting uninsured patients walk out the door could force the hospital to close. Everyone knows what happened to D.C. General.
The D.C. Hospital Association doesn't keep track of how often its hospitals go after patients who cannot pay, but as David Sparks, Chief Financial Officer of Providence Hospital, puts it, "Collections happen every day and every week. It's part of the standard process."
In the end, says Dr. Quentin Young, there's a good chance Ashcroft will have to pay much of the money he owes in some capacity, or face a lien on everything he owns. The fact is, according to Roger Whelan, a resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute and a former bankruptcy judge, medical bills attributed to a lack of insurance or insufficient coverage are a leading reason why a record 1.7 million bankruptcies occurred in this country last year.
Mad cows, furious people. mmw of bad things called our attention to this article last week, but as a public service we're reprinting the whole damn thing because it's so damn important (WSJ, sub. req's.):
USDA Prohibits Mad-Cow Tests By Outside Labs, Causing Outcry
By SCOTT KILMAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Susan Brownawell, a mother of three, wants to be able to have her family's beef screened for mad-cow disease. And Missouri rancher David Luker, who supplies much of the family's meat, is willing to do just that.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is all that stands in their way.
The USDA, which conducts only limited testing on its own, doesn't allow private testing for the fatal brain-wasting disease in cattle, in part because officials worry that potential marketing for tested meat would confuse consumers. That is, if some beef is labeled as coming from cattle tested for mad cow, it may imply that untested beef isn't necessarily safe.
Federal officials also say they fear that private laboratories would report false positives, upsetting overseas customers and causing cattle prices to crash. By keeping mad-cow testing within USDA walls, officials argue, the government can confirm test results before they become public.
But with the first appearance of the disease in a U.S. cow more than two months ago, pressure is mounting on the department to give up the government monopoly on testing.
"This is ridiculous. If people want to have their beef tested, they should be able to," says Ms. Brownawell, a Web page designer in Fulton, Mo. "Isn't this how the free market works?"
The mad-cow discovery spotlights whether shoppers should be able to verify the safety of their food however they want, particularly if the government won't do it for them. The dispute pits consumer advocates and some beef entrepreneurs against the USDA and big-beef interests.
The USDA's qualms about allowing private testing reflects the agency's sometimes conflicting missions to promote the $27 billion cattle industry at the same time it is supposed to protect consumers from bad meat. Indeed, the USDA is respecting the wishes of most big meatpackers, which want a tight lid on mad-cow testing. The USDA also has a vested interest in keeping testing out of the hands of private companies, since their work could challenge the Bush administration's position that mad cow isn't a problem in the U.S.
The USDA's monopoly on mad-cow testing frustrates Mr. Luker, who owns Missouri Valley Natural Beef, in Chamois, Mo., a company that sells naturally raised beef door-to-door to customers such as Ms. Brownawell.
The mad-cow discovery prompted some of Mr. Luker's customers to ask whether he tests his cattle for the disease, because consumption of tainted meat products can trigger a very rare but always fatal brain disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. After a lot of phone calls, he tracked down the USDA's only mad-cow testing laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Mr. Luker says he asked the laboratory to screen his cattle -- a service for which he is willing to pay -- but he says he was rebuffed and told that the beef supply is safe.
"I think the question is whether the USDA has such a far-reaching right to make such a far-reaching risk assessment for me," says the rancher, who has 160 head of cattle on his ranch. He says the inability to test for the disease, technically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, has cost him at least one potential customer.
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef LLC, a meatpacker that slaughters cattle at a plant in Arkansas City, Kan., in February said it would build its own mad-cow testing laboratory -- an announcement that prompted a USDA warning that anyone testing without its approval could face criminal charges.
Creekstone says it is trying to restart shipments to Japan, which insists on 100% testing first. The Bush administration's refusal to satisfy this request is forcing some U.S. meatpackers to lay off workers. The borders of more than 50 countries remain closed to American beef exports, which last year totaled about $3 billion.
"If we can improve food safety, keep our customers happy and protect the jobs of our workers, I would walk into jail," says Bill Fielding, chief operating officer of closely held Creekstone, which is trying to enlist support from Kansas's congressional delegation.
"Private companies should be able to test if they want," says Michael Levine, president of the meat business at Organic Valley, a nationwide cooperative of organic farmers. "I think the USDA is just petrified of finding more instances of BSE," he adds.
Meat companies already screen their products for contaminants such as pathogenic microorganisms and drug residues. But certain animal diseases are dealt with differently, thanks in part to the Virus Serum Toxin Act. The 1913 law gives the USDA authority for ensuring that veterinary diagnostic test kits are safe and accurate. The department has extraordinary powers to fight livestock epidemics -- it can eradicate animals without the consent of owners -- and the department claims the act gives it sweeping authority over how testing for animal diseases is done in the U.S.
The only laboratory in the nation testing for mad-cow disease is the USDA facility in Ames, Iowa. Scientists there analyze the samples collected for a federal mad-cow surveillance program that last year screened one out of every 1,700 cattle slaughtered in the U.S. They use a procedure called immunohistochemistry in the search for signs of the disease agent, which causes sponge-like holes to form in the cattle's brain. The process takes a few weeks.
While the method for detecting mad cow is complicated -- there are no tests that work on live cattle -- the federal government isn't the only entity with the capability. Indeed, several state-run laboratories use immunohistochemistry to look for chronic wasting disease, a similar brain illness that affects deer and elk.
Testing for mad-cow disease is getting easy enough for many private labs to do. Four testing firms make rapid diagnostic kits that can tell, in a matter of several hours, whether a dead cow was infected. They're widely used in Japan and in the European Union.
The USDA is preparing to license some of these companies to sell their wares in the U.S., but the government may end up as their only customer.
USDA officials say they worry meat companies might mislead consumers into thinking that cattle that test negative are free of the infection, of which there is no way to be sure. The disease agent -- which distorts the shape of normal body proteins called prions -- is present in cattle for years before it reaches the brain, where it multiplies so dramatically that it can be detected by today's tests.
"These tests aren't really designed to be food safety tests" but rather surveillance tests, says Ron DeHaven, the USDA's chief veterinarian.
But regulators in other countries deal with this testing limitation by simply forbidding BSE-free claims. That doesn't stop companies from saying the meat comes from cattle that has been tested. In Switzerland, some McDonald's Corp. restaurants advertise on paper place mats that the hamburger comes from screened cattle.
The discovery of a single diseased cow doesn't scare most U.S. meat eaters; retailers say beef consumption hasn't suffered. Still, a late February poll by NPD Group Inc. found 22% of the 556 people surveyed were extremely or very concerned about mad-cow disease. In hopes of reassuring consumers, the USDA is close to announcing plans to test hundreds of thousands of cattle this year, compared with about 20,000 last year. But any expansion won't satisfy the consumers who want to know that the beef on their plate came from a tested cow. About 35 million cattle will be slaughtered this year.
What's more, a controversy over the detection of the first U.S. case of mad cow is fueling fears that the discovery was a fluke. The department's testing program focuses on injured and ill cattle, called "downers," because the inability to walk is one symptom of BSE. The USDA said the infected Holstein cow was discovered at a Washington state meatpacking plant because the federal veterinarian there tagged her as a downer.
But men who claim they saw the infected cow that day say she was ambulatory. If the men are correct, say consumer advocates, the government's testing theory could go out the window.
Phyllis K. Fong, the inspector general of the USDA, told Congress last week that her office is investigating whether official records about the infected cow were illegally altered.
Cattle contract the disease by eating the remains of infected cattle. That can happen because the rendering industry grinds dead livestock into protein ingredients for the feed industry. To keep the disease out of the cattle population, the U.S. government bans feed producers from using cattle remains in products meant for cattle, but critics worry that feed meant for another animal could wind up being fed to cattle.
Updated March 9, 2004
Test your own beef, and you're a criminal. You'd think that this is one of the few cases in which food advocates of a pinko persuasion and free-market conservatives on the other side of the aisle could join into a coalition to support meaningful USDA reform.
...a drama now unfolding in both Zimbabwe and the tiny oil-producing nation of Equatorial Guinea is highlighting the growing demand for mercenaries in West Africa, a volatile region that's becoming a key exporter of oil to the United States.
The saga began March 7 when Zimbabwean officials stormed a Boeing 727 in Harare, the capital. On board they found "military materiel" and more than 60 men, including South Africans, Angolans, and Namibians. All were accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea and may face the death penalty. They are currently awaiting charges.
Equatorial Guinea's repressive regime, meanwhile, has had mercenary help of its own. In 2000 the oil-rich government hired a private American security firm called MPRI to beef up its military. The contract didn't last long, but it hints at why mercenaries - both the corporate and shadowy types - are thriving in this region.
[...]
Equatorial Guinea, nestled in the crook of Africa's west coast, is the region's third-biggest oil producer. In 1995, the year a big oil field was discovered, the country's per capita annual income was $370. By 2002, it had jumped to $5,000. But as in most of West Africa, much of the wealth is held by the ruling elite. This can spark envy - and coup attempts, thus boosting a government's desire to protect itself by hiring military muscle.
But oil is just one reason for West Africa's growing demand for guns for hire. The US, for instance, is now more engaged in West Africa. But with troops tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, it's increasingly hiring private security firms to represent it.
In a recent speech, Theresa Whelan, a top official for Africa at the US Department of Defense, put it this way: "The use of contractors in Africa ... means that the US can be supportive in trying to ameliorate regional crises without necessarily having to put US troops on the ground, which is often times a very difficult political decision."
We learn that the MPRI contract of Equatorial Guinea's repressive regime "didn't last long." It stands to reason that our oil-crazed White House wouldn't be content to let the third-biggest oil producer in West Africa collapse, unless its conversion to American interests was supervised and enforced in one way or another.
