ABC News and Facebook in Joint Effort to Bring Viewers Closer to Political Coverage

"Facebook, the popular social networking site, has become a full-fledged platform for communicating, sharing and advertising. ABC News is betting that it will become a platform for political coverage, as well...

...ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership — the site’s first with a news organization — that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “U.S. Politics” category."

The New York Times says that no money was exchanged but "For ABC News, the collaboration puts political content on a site with 56 million active users. For Facebook, it adds an authoritative source and fresh content for the site’s political section."

There are supposed to be polls and debates and all sorts of other fun things, but I can't find anything about release dates on either ABC's or Facebook's sites. If you come across anything, do let me know. I can always be reached at jacpac123@aol.com.

'Criminal' Botnet Stumps for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege

"If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who've analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate."

Addition: A second anti-spam researcher, Chris Barton of McAfee, has also taken notice of the Ron Paul spam campaign. You can read his findings here.

GPO head: Death of Gazan aged 12 was staged

The title of this blog links to an article on a quite controversial subject: the murder of Mohammed al Durah.

Al Durah was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy whose violent death was caught on film by a France 2 reporter and his Palestinian camera man, was broadcast around the world and became a symbol of the brutality of the Zionist movement at the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada. At first, the IDF was blamed for his death, but now that is not so clear. The article above, with its many insinuations, prompted us to do a bit of research on this story. What we found was quite surprising and very informative, but there was still not enough for any one person to place blame with the certainty one should have when dealing with such a touchy subject. We invite you to review all of the information we found and decide for yourself what happened on September 30, 2000, and who is to blame for the death of Mohammed al Durah.

MTV Wants Its Youth Voters

YouTube has a gone political with its "You Choose" page. So has MySpace, which features the "Impact" site on its homepage and will co-host a presidential forum next week.

Not wanting to be outdone, MTV has launched Think.MTV.com -- an online social community that focuses on the young, Web-savvy electorate. The site reads (and flatters the readers its courting): "The last time we checked, you are the best-informed, most technologically-advanced, inspired, on fire, creative generation this planet has ever seen." It's the latest effort from the once unsinkable MTV, whose hip, cool, in-the-know factor has suffered a serious blow in a popular culture dominated by the likes of MySpace and YouTube.

The Politics of God

Mark Lilla, in his new book The Still Born God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West details the rise of the "separation of church and state" concept, how it probably will never work out for every country, and how it may actually be making current international relations worse.

The title link takes you to the NYT Sunday Magazine, which published an excerpt of Lilla's book, but a Slate article has provided us with wonderful bullet points summarizing the main theses.

* The notion of a "separation" of church and state comes from a unique historical contingency of desperate and destructive warfare between discrepant Christian sects, which led Thomas Hobbes to propose a historical compromise in the pages of his 17th-century masterpiece, Leviathan. There is no general reason why Hobbes' proposal will work at all times or in all places.
* Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all, and they are thus (in an excellent term derived by Lilla from Jean-Jacques Rousseau) by nature "theotropic," or inclined toward religion.
* That instinct being stronger than any discrete historical moment, it is idle to imagine that mere scientific or material progress will abolish the worshipping impulse.
* Liberalism is especially implicated in this problem, because the desire for a better world very often takes a religious form, and thus it is wishful to identify "belief" with the old forces of reaction, because it will also underpin utopian or messianic or other social-engineering fantasies.

The secret history of the Nazi mascot

The story of a boy, no more than six-years-old, who escaped a Nazi death squad, was rescued by a Latvian soldier and became the mascot of the entire Nazi party.

"In newsreels, he was paraded as 'the Reich's youngest Nazi' and he witnessed some unspeakable atrocities.
But his SS masters never discovered the most essential detail about his life: their little Nazi mascot was Jewish."

"They didn't know that I was a Jewish boy who had escaped a Nazi death squad. They thought I was a Russian orphan."

Religious Rights on Trial as Circumcision Case Reaches Oregon’s High Court

In what may prove to be a groundbreaking trial, a case has been brought before the Oregon Supreme Court that may determine how much influence a parent has over his or her child's religious upbringing. James Boldt, who has custody of his 12-year-old son, has recently converted to Judaism and wishes to have his son circumcised. His ex-wife, however, believes her son does not want to be circumcised and is afraid to tell his father.

The case, which is scheduled to be heard this fall, is drawing much attention from several different organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and Doctors Opposing Circumcision. Generally, courts side with the custodial parent in cases involving the religious affairs of a family.

Kill or Convert, Brought To You By The Pentagon

In a not-so-surprising but slightly disturbing move, Operation Straight Up, an official arm of the Defense Department's America Supports You program, is providing U.S. soldiers with free copies of Left Behind: Eternal Forces a video game based on the Left Behind series of books.

From the article: "We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region," OSU declares on its website about its planned trip to Iraq. "We'll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq."