Rebel Monks

is a term you just don't hear all that often. How this only made page A23 of the Philadelphia Inquirer, I don't know. It's fantastic irony.

The story is, some monks in Greece are fighting some other monks in Greece for control of a monastery. The Orthodox Church wants the rebel monks, who are occupying said monastery, gone. Courts have ordered their eviction. The rebel monks aren't leaving, and they oppose any effort to improve relations b/w the OC and the Vatican.

Where is Ratzinger, I mean Benedict XVI, in all this? He's busy making friends with the Orthodox Church but apparently has no words for (cue Peter Gunn) rebel monks.

Sledgehammer-wielding monks: it's practically a Python sketch.



http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/16286135.htm
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/60/story_6021_1.html

El está muerto pero tan es la justicia

I wish that I felt happy enough about Augusto Pinochet's death to go into the street and bang pots and pans and throw confetti, like some Chileans did today. But part of the premise of being concerned with human rights and social justice is that justice will ultimately occur. The effort to make Pinochet accountable for his crimes was admirable and unceasing. Yet it was thwarted at almost every turn. So I don't feel happy. I feel sad for the victims and their families for what I see as their double loss.

I have heard some of Pinochet's victims discuss their horrific torture, some of which went on for years. I have heard the anguished voices of the families of people who were disappeared. I have seen Margaret Thatcher greet Pinochet with immense gratitude while he was under house arrest. The blood of thousands of people was spilled at his hands, but the hands of neocons who supported his torturous reign to prevent the spread of communism aren't clean, either. What a neoconservative coincidence that Jeane Kirkpatrick died this week, too.

When it's decided that communism is too terrible to bear but we'll allow lawless killing of people to ensure it doesn't happen, a thinking person is bound to wonder how much worse communism could be. When a country like Great Britain sends people to war to fight Saddam Hussein in violation of international law, but won't extradite a criminal to Spain in compliance with international law, I don't know where we go from there.

I'm not sure why we keep reliving this lesson: When law becomes optional, no one is very safe.

Bolton boltin'

Man, is there just no end to my good luck? First my team takes over, then Rummy leaves, and now Mr. Broomstache is also going away. Bye, John. We'll miss your ill-tempered comments and inability to get along with everyone.

But I think the far more interesting part of it is that the White House is now saying it's not a resignation. This administration has always understood the value of framing, a careful choice of the words we use to describe something. Partial-birth abortion is one such carefully framed term, Social Security reform is another. In the words are the view they want you to take, and if you say them long enough, you'll think it soon enough.

The interesting part is not that they're still recognizing the impact of the word choice itself. It's that they so clearly don't have the upper hand on it.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign...

Sources.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061204/ap_on_re_us/bolton_resigns
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/12/04/white-house-contests-claim-that-bolton-resigned/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fblogs%2F2006%2F12%2F04%2Fpubliceye%2Fentry2224533.shtml&frame=true