A Microchip to Track HIV/AIDS?- US News and World Report

Leaders in Indonesia's Papua province say they support a bill that would require some people with HIV/AIDS to get a microchip implant, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The bill—which targets 'sexually aggressive' patients—is part of extensive efforts to monitor the disease. Lawmakers say they hope the microchips will enable them to track and punish people who deliberately infect other people with HIV/AIDS. The bill is expected to pass, and it could become law next month" ...source

It's the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda

Millions of Americans live in a non-reality-based belief system informed by childish clichés - they can barely differentiate between lies and truth

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and cliches. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. ...More

THE CONSERVATIVE MALAISE

I suspect that the malaise that has afflicted the conservative movement is not simply due to the defeat of John McCain and Sarah Palin. I think that their despondency goes much deeper than an electoral defeat. My hunch is that their depression is much more owing to a sense of serious discomfort arising from the knowledge that Democrat Barack Obama is about to acquire all the omnipotent powers that conservatives relinquished to President Bush as part of his “war on terrorism.”

The power to arrest people, including Americans, as “enemy combatants.” Indefinite detention. Torture. Isolation and sensory deprivation. Rendition. Military tribunals. Denial of due process and trial by jury. Suspension of habeas corpus. Secret judicial proceedings. Use of hearsay and tortured testimony. Warrantless searches. Signing statements. Spying on Americans. The power to ignore constitutional and statutory constraints on presidential power. The power to invade and occupy foreign countries with no congressional declaration of war.

Conservatives were willing to let President Bush acquire and exercise all those dictatorial powers because, they said, national security depended on it. The terrorists were everywhere, they said, and they hate America for its freedom and values, not because of the U.S. government’s foreign policy. The war would last for decades, perhaps even forever. We have no choice, conservatives said, but to vest the president with full power to wage this war until we kill them all.

Whenever libertarians and some liberals defended civil liberties and the Bill of Rights during the past 8 years, conservatives went on the attack. We were just soft on terrorism, cowards, pacifists, unpatriotic, even treasonous, they said.

The conservatives know that they have boxed themselves in. Can they now argue that the war on terrorism is over when they previously said it would last for decades? Can they now argue that the president should not be trusted with such omnipotent powers? Can they now argue that such powers are unconstitutional? Can they now argue that national security no longer turns on the president’s wielding of such powers?

No, in their hearts conservatives know that they must now argue that President Obama, the man they are convinced is coming to take away their guns, increase their taxes, spend more money than even President Bush, has ties to terrorists, has a Muslim name, and is friends with a radical Christian preacher, should wield all the same dictatorial powers that they relinquished to President Bush.

No wonder conservatives are suffering from malaise, despondency, and depression Jacob G. Hornberger, The Future of Freedom Foundation

Vatican evolution congress to exclude creationism, intelligent design

Speakers invited to attend a Vatican-sponsored congress on the evolution debate will not include proponents of creationism and intelligent design, organizers said.

The Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana are organizing an international conference in Rome March 3-7 2009 as one of a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

Jesuit Father Marc Leclerc, a philosophy professor at the Gregorian, told Catholic News Service Sept. 16 that organizers "wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific" and that discussed rational philosophy and theology along with the latest scientific discoveries.

He said arguments "that cannot be critically defined as being science, or philosophy or theology did not seem feasible to include in a dialogue at this level and, therefore, for this reason we did not think to invite" supporters of creationism and intelligent design....more