Obama has little to say on the School of the Americas

From the WW4 Report:

For a candidate who talks the talk on human rights, Barack Obama has little to say about the infamous School of the Americas (SOA). Originally established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946, the school later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984. …

"Don't drip your blood on my Jesus sandals..."

Here is a poem called "Vietnam, U.S.A." that I stumbled across in an issue of the Holy Cross Quarterly devoted entirely to the Berrigan Brothers. Can we not hear ourselves each whispering the final line of the poem any time prophets confront us with the reality of …

WV my home

Heading to West Virginia for about 2 weeks. Little blogging will occur.

5 questions with William Cavanaugh on torture

Most of my readers are probably familiar with University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN) professor of theology William Cavanaugh. Check out a short interview with him on torture from U.S. Catholic magazine. Cavanaugh is author of Torture and Eucharist: Theology, …

The racism of FOX News

Thanks to the Christian Radical for posting this video.

Vatican sets up anti-terrorist squad

The Telegraph reports:

The Vatican has created an anti-terrorist unit in order to guard the Holy See and the pope from a possible attack.

Vatican security forces now include an anti-bomb squad and a rapid response team, according to Domenico Giani, the head of the …

An interview with James Cone

This past week I attended a conference organized by the Ekklesia Project on the topic of race and racism in the Church. Before the conference I read James Cone's 1970 book A Black Theology of Liberation and after reading it I felt ashamed that it had taken me so …

ep

Welp, I'm off to Chicago for the Ekklesia Project conference. Hope to see some of you there.

Spanish notes

The early church and the military

I hate back-and-forth blog references, but I thought I'd share this. Commenting on one of my recent posts, Andrew offers a correction of the following point I made:

Of course, for the first few centuries of its existence, Christians were not permitted to join the …

Happy 4th of July!

Yes, happy 4th of July! According to the calendar of the Church, July 4th's real significance is that it is the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271-1336), a patron Saint of peacemakers.

The sad fact, however, is that if you were to attend Mass on this day, the …

2 early CDs available again... digitally

Two long-unavailable (lo-fi!) releases of mine are now available for digital download at DownloadPunk.com: 2002's My Terrible Twin EP and the 2003 M Iafrate /Sean Decker split CD. For track listings and other info, check out the discography page at my music website.

Electing not to vote?

M.Z. at Vox Nova had a great post today which gives some perspective on the positions of various VN contributors in the face of continuing (and awfully amusing) accusations from around the Catholic blogosphere. I did want to clarify one thing, though, about his allusion …

Practicing Resurrection Conference

I'm pleased to share that I was asked to give a workshop and play a set at this year's Practicing Resurrection conference hosted by Culture is Not Optional and Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat's Russet House Farm in Cameron, Ontario.

The theme of the conference is "Home …

International MTR coverage

Agence France Presse ran a story today on Mountaintop Removal mining. The spokesperson for the West Virginia Coal Association makes an appearance:

Chris Hamilton, spokesman for the West Virginia Coal Association, played down the environmental impact of the mining …

Oh yeah...

...and happy West Virginia Day!

Ekklesia Project

Welp, I just registered for this year's Ekklesia Project gathering at DePaul, July 7-9. Look forward to seeing some of you there?

Social welfare and anarchism

Countless discussions have taken place at Vox Nova about health care, revisiting debates about whether or not it should be provided, in any way, by the government. When I have expressed the view that, under these current (and probably collapsing) political arrangements, …

New Coldplay

I didn't like Coldplay when I first heard them years ago. A Rush of Blood to the Head turned me on to them, and I liked that X & Y record (or whatever it's called) too. But I heard their new single on the radio the other night and, man, it sucks.

That's all.

Still in motion

Here's an interesting article on the history and current practice of moonshining.