Well, it looks like we have diversity problems here in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon. The following is an excerpt from a story in the Oregonian.
Prayer organizers disinvite Muslim; mayor bows outAn effort to make the annual Washington County breakfast of religious testimonials more inclusive fall by the wayside
BEAVERTON -- Organizers of the annual Mayors' Prayer Breakfast of Washington County have voted to bar a local Muslim leader from offering a prayer at the event, leading Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake and other city officials to say they'll skip the May 5 event.
"It's just broken my heart," Drake said Friday of the organizing group's decision this week to renege on an invitation for Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque Association in Beaverton, to sit on the dais and give the concluding prayer as previously scheduled."I thought we had found openness and the ability to honor diversity," said Drake, mayor since 1993.
He explained that because of a controversy about the event's inclusiveness last year, he had invited Ahmed and Rabbi David Rosenberg of Portland's Congregation Shaarie Torah to help diversify the 19th annual prayer breakfast.
Rosenberg said he also would not attend the breakfast. "I don't want to see this kind of thing, where somebody's blackballed," the rabbi said.
Last year, a Jewish member of Beaverton's City Council, Fred Ruby, objected to the breakfast's appearance of being a city-sponsored event, although no city employees were involved in organizing it during work hours.
The breakfast typically draws more than 400 local officials and Christian church members to the Greenwood Inn for two hours of prayer and religious testimonials.
Friday, two officials of the organizing group, the Beaverton-Tigard Chapter of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship & Concerned Citizens, said its board met Wednesday after hearing complaints from longtime Christian participants about having Ahmed offer a prayer.
Good news for those who, like me, appreciate the Ross Institute. NXIVM (pronounced Nexium, like “the purple pill”) lost again in court this week in its legal effort to remove critical reports about its programs from the Ross Institute (RI) database.
Since I think this is important and I think this should be disseminated I'm goint to put the whole post from the CultNews.com blog below. Check out the original post, though, because that's where the live links are.
NXIVM continues its losing streak in federal courtNXIVM (pronounced Nexium, like “the purple pill”) lost again in court this week in its legal effort to remove critical reports about its programs from the Ross Institute (RI) database.
The group alleges “copyright” violations and sought an injunction to delete from the Internet the critical analyses written by noted mental health professionals Dr. Paul Martin and John Hochman, MD.
NXIVM sells "Executive Success Programs" concocted by Keith Raniere its self-proclaimed “Vanguard.”
NXIVM, which has been called a "cult," claims that the doctor’s reports violate its copyright because they quoted the group’s manual.
However, a district court in Albany rejected Raniere’s request for a preliminary injunction so his lawyers appealed.
This week The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City handed down their decision (NXIVM Corp v. The Ross Institute -- Docket No. 03-7952).
“We agree with the district court that the website’s use of quotation from the manual to support their critical analyses of the seminars…[was used] for the purpose of ‘criticism, comment scholarship, or research,’” wrote the court.
The Second Circuit also noted that NXIVM’s claim that the doctors had unlawfully copied “the heart of their ‘services” within the reports was meaningless, because “such services…are not copyrightable expression.”
The appellate court decision also agreed with the lower court that “in order to do the research and analysis necessary to support their critical commentary, it was reasonably necessary for defendants to quote liberally from NXIVM’s manual.”
This decision further defines copyright law and goes some distance in precluding spurious copyright claims made by “cults” as a means of silencing their critics.
The court said that use of a group's material “might well harm, or even destroy, the market for the original,” but that this “is of no concern to us so long as the harm stems from the force of the criticism offered.”
Regarding NXIVM’s trademark claim, the court stated that it is “without merit.”
The Second Circuit also offered this withering assessment of NXIVM’s lawsuit; “Plaintiffs are not likely to succeed.”
Judge Dennis Jacobs summed up the situation succinctly, “Ross and his co-defendants quoted from NXIVM’s manual to show that it is the pretentious nonsense of a cult…Certainly, no critic should need an author’s permission to make such criticism…”
A motion to dismiss the lawsuit entirely is currently pending before an Albany Federal Judge.
Is looney psychiatrist Dr. Ron Turco of Washington County, Oregon still consulting with members of the psycho Roger Weinder gang before he diagnoses somebody with the dreaded "homosexual Satanist/Illuminati/New World Order" syndrome?
Cobb has a post about Audie Murphy and an opinion worth reading.
Audie Murphy is one of my favorite all time heroes. I read his autobiography "To Hell and Back" when I was a teenager. I still like to watch his old movies.
Critical Mass has a post about (hahaha - this is too funny) university professors who have been signing their names to op-eds they did not write but that a PR firm employed by the nuclear energy industry did. I guess when you're a prof and you're too busy to write your own words, it's always nice to have a PR firm do it for you.
I guess when two or more professors sign an editorial and claim they each wrote it, you could call it "academic osmosis to the max".
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.