Beauty And The "Beach" - A Preview

Photo Credit: champcarworldseries.com

2006 is here and it really all begins (in LA) at the Long Beach Grand Prix. This year will be the 32nd year the vision of Chris Pook will be run in the streets of Long Beach.

It is this venue that helped add to the legends of racing elites like Mario and Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr., Bobby Rahal, Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan, Alex Zanardi, Paul Tracy, and Sebastien Bourdais to name a few.

The green flag drops on the first qualifing session today at 2:05 PM PST. Sebastien Bourdais from the Newman-Haas Racing Team (ChampCar champion of the last two years) was second quickest to Justin Wilson in the testing sessions held last week at Fontana. Bourdais looks to be the first driver to "three-peat" as champion of an open-wheel racing series since Ted Horn did it through 1946-1948.

The beauty is the venue (photo above).

This from Robin Miller at Champ Car World Series -

ROBIN MILLER'S STRAIGHT FROM THE GEARBOX

There are several plausible reasons why Sebastien Bourdais won't walk away with his third straight Champ Car title this year.

Bruno Junqueira, three times a bridesmaid in this series, has the fire and experience to unseat his teammate at the top of the heap.

Justin Wilson, a two-time winner in 2005, is real comfortable with his surroundings as he begins his third season and he's got the team and talent to pull it off.

Paul Tracy, whose 30 victories are tops among active drivers, certainly possesses all the right stuff and has the added incentive of making up for last year's disappointment.

A.J. Allmendinger, a champion at every level during his still developing career, is as quick as anybody on four wheels and just needs to improve his consistency to be a challenger.

Oriol Servia, runner-up in the point standings a year ago, has moved to a new team but his smarts and savvy should bring out the best of PKV Racing.

Any or all of these drivers could unseat Bourdais but, at the end of the 15-race schedule, the championship is going to have to come through the 27-year-old Frenchman.
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"It's going to be a learning process but there are some very clever people on this team and we'll do our best to be competitive," said the 31-year-old Spainard, who will also be tutoring rookie teammate Katherine Legge.

At the end of the day, it's going to take an idiot to pick against Bourdais. Or somebody who flunked out of Ball State.

I'm going with Mr. Wilson in 2006 so that should make Sebass feel pretty confident
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By the way, this is a track where the IRL has never been!

UPDATE: from CCWS website -

Sebastien Bourdais paced the opening practice session of the 2006 Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford season today, besting the 18-car field in Friday morning's 75-minute practice at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Bourdais got around the 1.968-mile street course in 1:08.948 (102.756 mph) to pace the morning's outing, coming in a tenth-of-a-second ahead of Team Australia's Alex Tagliani.

Tagliani (1:09.030) , A.J. Allmendinger (1:09.043), Justin Wilson (1:09.180) and Paul Tracy (1:09.225) rounded out the top five in the session, which was run without incident. Team Australia's Will Power led the six-car rookie class in the morning and was 10th overall.

NOTE: The first eight places were within one second of each other.

Da Vinci Code Found To Be "New" Fiction

A copy of the book The Da Vinci Code is displayed outside the High Court in London, February 27, 2006. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

Yes, Dan Brown did not steal (word for word) the fiction of the novel titled "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail".

Excerpts from Reuters -

“Da Vinci Code" publishers win case
By Gideon Long 42 minutes ago

LONDON (Reuters) - The publishers of "The Da Vinci Code," the blockbuster novel by author Dan Brown, won their UK court case on Friday over accusations of plagiarism.
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Judge Peter Smith gave his verdict at the end of a trial which lasted nearly a month and was followed intensely by reporters, copyright lawyers and fans of the novel, which has sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

"The plaintiffs' case has failed," he said. "Dan Brown has not infringed copyright. None of this amounts to copying The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
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They had based their argument on the similarities between the books, which both raise the possibility Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene, that she fled to France after the Crucifixion and that Christ's bloodline survives to this day.
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Cool, an "original work" of fiction. Now we can sleep.

When Is A Leak NOT A Leak?

Photo Credit: Slate.com

When the President asks someone to divulge the contents of a "formally classified" document to someone else.

Also, when the L.A. Times puts the story about what "Scooter Libby" testified to (according to court papers) on page A-20 ... that's all anyone really needs to know!

Excerpts from the New York Post -

DUBYA CAN'T LEAK
April 7, 2006 -- AND INFO WAS ALREADY PUBLIC
By John Podhoretz - Opinion

IT'S amazing how the common topics and subjects of discussion three years ago should vanish so quickly from memory.

Yesterday, breathless news reports suggested that President Bush had directed the "leak" of classified information in July 2003. Yet the "leak" in question was from a document called the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE - and by the time this "leak" occurred, the contents of the NIE as they related to Iraq were almost entirely public.

On Oct. 7, 2002, nine months before Bush's supposed "leak," the administration released an unclassified version of the very same NIE at the urging of Senate Democrats. And in early 2003, reporters hostile to the administration (primarily John Judis and Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic) were being told all sorts of things about the still-classified portions of the NIE.

And this "leak" wasn't a leak in any case. A "leak" is the unauthorized release of government information. The leak of classified information is a crime. But according to Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to the vice president who gave the information from the NIE to a reporter, he only released it because he was authorized to do so by the president himself.

Constitutionally, the authority to declare documents "classified" resides with the president. So, under the terms of an executive order first drafted in 1982, he can declassify a document merely by declaring it unclassified.
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Also lost in the mists of recent memory is the reason we're talking about this in the first place. Fitzgerald is involved in this story because he was asked to investigate whether the public exposure of Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment was a crime. For it to be a crime, she had to be a covert CIA operative who had served in that capacity at some point in the five years prior to her exposure - and the person exposing her had to be doing it consciously and with knowledge that she was covert.
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Wilson's appalling lies were revealed in 2004. And yet, here we are, in 2006, fighting the same old battles. Guess this is what happens when you don't win a war quickly enough.
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Of course, that is the whole point. There is the world war against terrorism due to 9/11 ... and then there is the war for power inside the U.S. (which is also never won quickly enough) by people who will try to win at ANY COST.

The Democrats in congress first complain that the Bush administration is to secretive about what it is doing and "we" need more information. The Bush administration releases information so then the Democrats in congress complain that the information is a "leak". What is a President to do?

"Classified" information communicated to the press is NOT a leak when the President says it is NOT a leak. To the members of the fourth estate and the Democrats in congress ... get elected President, then you can do the same! Oh yes, you tried that in the last election (with Kerry) and FAILED.

Let's move on.

Creationism vs. Truth

Photo Credit: volny.cz

NBC works overtime to create news. Dateline, in a stroke of controversy genius, decided to plant ethnically dressed Muslims in the stands at a recent NASCAR automobile race and then tape and report on the reactions of the crowd.

With this kind of "set-up" we could only imagine how the editing is going to go.

Excerpts from AP -

Apr 5, 6:45 PM EDT
NASCAR: Dateline NBC's Plan 'Outrageous'
By JENNA FRYER AP Motorsports Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- NASCAR said it was "outrageous" that "Dateline NBC" targeted one of its race tracks last weekend for a possible segment on anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.

NASCAR said NBC confirmed it was sending Muslim-looking men to a race, along with a camera crew to film fans' reactions. The NBC crew was "apparently on site in Martinsville, Va., walked around and no one bothered them," NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said Wednesday.

"It is outrageous that a news organization of NBC's stature would stoop to the level of going out to create news instead of reporting news," Poston said.
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"'Dateline' is looking into this story," NBC said in a statement. "We were intrigued by the results of a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll and other articles regarding increasing anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States.

"It's very early on in our newsgathering process, but be assured we will be visiting a number of locations across the country and are confident that our reporting team is pursuing this story in a fair manner," it said.
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And one wonders WHY people do not tune in to Main Stream Media anymore. Let us just say we have a problem with their credibility when they, themselves, create the news. Remember Dan Rather and Mary Mapes in the run-up to the last presidential election? Oh, yea! That turned out well.

I love it that NBC lays the blame on pursuing this story because it was "intrigued by the results of a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll". The MSM inciting the MSM - This is rich.

- Day By Day cartoon over at Partisan Pundit -

Of Faith & Floating Ice

A basilisk lizard, or Jesus lizard, runs across water during an experiment. These lizards can run across water for up to 15 feet (4.5 meters). Photograph courtesy PNAS

Excerpts from the Washington Post -

Floating Ice May Explain How Jesus Walked on Water, Researchers Say
By Alan Cooperman - Washington Post Staff Writer - Thursday, April 6, 2006; Page A03

Combining evidence of a cold snap 2,000 years ago with sophisticated mapping of the Sea of Galilee, Israeli and U.S. scientists have come up with a scientific explanation of how Jesus could have walked on water.

Their answer: It was actually floating ice.

The scientists acknowledge that the Sea of Galilee, in what is now northern Israel, has never frozen in modern times. But they say geological core samples suggest that average temperatures were lower in Jesus's day, and that there were at least two protracted cold spells in the region 1,500 to 2,500 years ago.

In addition to chilly weather, their explanation depends on a rare physical property of the Sea of Galilee, known to modern-day Israelis as Lake Kinneret. It is fed by salty springs along its western shore that produce plumes of dense water, thermally isolating areas that could freeze even if the entire lake did not, they assert.
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This is not the first time that Nof, 61, has attempted to debunk a biblical miracle. In 1992, he and Nathan Paldor, an atmospheric scientist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote a scientific article proposing that strong winds across the narrow, shallow Gulf of Suez could have lowered the Red Sea by 10 feet, allowing the Israelites to cross to safety and then swallowing up an Egyptian army within a few minutes when the wind stopped, just as the book of Exodus says.

Nof, who described himself as a nonreligious Jew, said he hopes that critics will realize that he is an "equal opportunity miracle buster" who has taken on both Moses and Jesus.

"This isn't going to convince a believer not to believe, and nobody's trying to do that. At least, I'm not trying to do that," he said. "I personally believe that all these biblical stories are based on some truth."
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Wendy Cotter, professor of scripture at Loyola University Chicago, a Roman Catholic school, wrote her doctoral dissertation 15 years ago on biblical accounts of Jesus's stilling the wind and walking on the sea. When she heard about Nof's theory, she said, her first thought was: "Anything's possible -- but that's not what the writer means."

To the Romans, she said, the sea was "the ultimate force of nature, which was why the Caesars always claimed control over it." Jews in the time of Jesus also feared the sea and, moreover, were familiar with the Book of Job, in which God is described as the one who can "walk on the sea," she said.

In attributing to Jesus the power to walk across the waves, "Christians were using the imagery that had previously been used by both the Romans and the Jews to show that a person has been given authority by God," Cotter said. "Water, or ice, is not the point."
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I think MAXINE would rather "Aim At Heaven ...". It is time to read today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers - Prayer Edition.

Today's reading is titled - The Collision Of GOD And Sin ... and the prayer is ... O, Lord, I would praise Thee for Thy mighty Redemption at the heart of all our problems. By Thy great power raise us up to newness of life.

Good Day!

To FiOS, Or Not To FiOS - That Is The Question

For high-speed internet, there are more choices if you happen to live in lucky service areas. It not just a choice between DSL (formally fast) or cable access anymore.

This extensive review from CNET -

Some assembly required
By Matt Lake - CNET Reviews - April 3, 2006

Some roads to broadband Internet access are smooth. Because of this, they are the roads most traveled in the quest for ever more streaming video and a Web and e-mail experience without an overture of modem beeps.

Take DSL, if it's available in your area. Sign up for it, get a self-install kit, and after you've plugged in a few filters and installed the hardware and software you need, you're online. It's not as easy as installing AOL software, perhaps, but about the same price and a lot faster.

Or take cable. If you happen to have a cable outlet in the room where you'll be computing (or the one you're using for a wireless access point), you do another self-install. If you don't have a convenient outlet, you pay Comcast 50 bucks to come out, drag wire into your computer room, and sign on the line that commits you to paying about $45 per month. Assuming you can tolerate the other kind of "broad band" (the extrawide time slot needed to allocate to a visit from the cable guy), it's that simple.

But just because these two types of Internet access are the most common and the smoothest to install, don't assume they're your only choice. In a few regions, there are two other ways to get online. If they were available in my area, I'd be all over them.These two alternative broadband technologies are consumer-grade fiber-optic access (spearheaded by Verizon's FiOS) and municipal wireless, such as the newly available service in Upper Dublin, Pennsylvania.
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Roads less traveled

So there are two other ways to zoom onto the Internet. For now, sadly, they're available only in a few communities. FiOS will most likely spread faster than municipal wireless, but who knows which service will land in your community first.

So here's a question for you: If you had the choice between FiOS, BreezeAccess, or the DSL/cable route, which would you take?
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Ahhhh ... choices, choices, choices!

Two Chickens, Hold The Arsenic!

Photo Credit: whyfiles.org

Yes, arsenic ... a poison to the human body. Added to chickens to help reduce parasitic disease and promote growth when raising large flocks for food production. This is not the only use of arsenic in our dietary environment. It is common practice that this poison is purposely added to our drinking water, farm raised fish and even rice production. And all we really thought we had to worry about was the flu!

OKAY? - Beef, it's what's for dinner!

Excerpts from the New York Times via FMI Daily Lead -

Eating Well
Chicken With Arsenic? Is That O.K.?
By MARIAN BURROS Published: April 5, 2006

ARSENIC may be called the king of poisons, but it is everywhere: in the environment, in the water we drink and sometimes in the food we eat.

The amount is not enough to kill anyone in one fell swoop, but arsenic is a recognized cancer-causing agent and many experts say that no level should be considered safe. Arsenic may also contribute to other life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease and diabetes, and to a decline in mental functioning.
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Human exposure to it has been compounded because the consumption of chicken has exploded. In 1960, each American ate 28 pounds of chicken a year. For 2005, the figure is estimated at about 87 pounds per person. In spite of this threefold rise, the F.D.A. tolerance level for arsenic in chicken of 500 parts per billion, set decades ago, has not been revised.
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"When this source of arsenic is added to others, the exposure is cumulative, and people could be in trouble," said Dr. Ted Schettler, a physician and the science director at the Science & Environmental Health Network, founded by a consortium of environmental groups.

Those at greatest risk from arsenic are small children and people who consume chicken at a higher rate than what is considered average: two ounces per day for a 154-pound person. The good news for consumers is that arsenic-free chicken is more readily available than it has been in the past, as more processors eliminate its use.
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McDonald's, the country's largest fast-food chain, said it does not use chicken with arsenic but the test revealed the presence of more than incidental amounts. Perhaps the chickens were purchased before the company started demanding arsenic-free chickens a couple of years ago.

Because there are still many more arsenic-fed than arsenic-free chickens for sale, consumers can reduce their exposure by buying from companies that have stopped using arsenic, or by choosing chickens labeled organic or antibiotic-free. They can also remove the skin from the chicken treated with arsenic, which reduces levels significantly.
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PETA should be a little more vocal about the human toll chickens bring to our lives instead of worrying about the condition of the lives of chickens themselves.

The Democrat Security Plan Released - Yea ... Really!

Photo Credit: Slate.com - Howard Dean

This from Slate via a friend -

Real Vague
The Democrats' national-security plan is bland and banal—but the Republicans' is worse.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, April 3, 2006, at 6:16 PM ET

The Democrats' biggest challenge these days is persuading the American public that they, too, have the cojones to storm shores and drop bombs should the need arise, and so last week the party's congressional honchos released a brief, stars-and-stripes-lined document titled Real Security: The Democratic Plan To Protect America and Restore Leadership in the World.

It's more a rough outline than a "plan"; it raises at least as many questions as it answers; it reeks of banality.
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One item on the checklist: "Rebuild a state-of-the-art military by making the necessary investment in equipment and manpower so that we can project power to protect America wherever and whenever necessary." What is the "necessary investment"?
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Another: "Eliminate terrorist breeding grounds by combating the economic, social, and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive." OK, but with what money and what kinds of projects? "Redouble efforts to stop nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea"? Any ideas how?
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I especially like this item: "Eliminate Osama bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan, and end the threat posed by the Taliban."
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The real contest will begin when both parties nominate their candidates, at which point this document may or may not be a dead letter. For now, though, the Dems have hoisted a banner: real security vs. rhetorical security; tough and smart vs. tough and, well, not so smart. Let that debate begin.
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The way MAXINE see it is that this writer has it wrong.

The Democrat leadership (as represented by Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Kerry, Kennedy, and etc.) does not have a bland national security plan (let me throw in Cynthia McKinney's reaction and attitude on security as well). It is non-existent combined with a dangerous cut-and-run / moral equivalency component.

The Republicans, for their part, have forgotten how to lead. It is not worse than the Democrats ... it is just bad.

We need to put up a fence at the border. We will either put one up now, or we will put one up after someone launches a terrorist attack after it is proven that they used the open border to launch the attack.

The wish is that this issue of national security would be as simple as being about power politics and Hispanic racism. It just isn't - we are at war - and our leaders and citizens who get their primary information from the mainstream media, really do not know how much our way of life based on Christian respect and self-determinate freedoms are under attack.

"Real Vague" does even begin to describe the stance the Democrats (or the Republicans for that matter) currently have in regards to our national security.

Ugliest Sports Face Of All - A Winning Smile

Corey Brewer and the Gators won Florida its first title in three Final Four appearances, the second under coach Billy Donovan. Photo: Bob Rosato/SI

Or would that be a losing frown ... !

This from AP via Yahoo Sports -

(3) Florida 73, (2) UCLA 57
By EDDIE PELLS, AP National Writer
April 4, 2006

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- There go the Florida Gators again, runnin' it up on their way to a national championship.

In basketball, believe it or not. Against UCLA, of all teams. And with a tennis player's son as the star.

Joakim Noah dominated the Bruins on Monday night with 16 points, nine rebounds and a record six blocks to key a 73-57 blowout for Florida's first title in that other sport.

"It's like I'm in a cloud," Noah said. "Not only does this feel good, but it smells good and it tastes good. I can't even describe it."

The Gators and all their fans would certainly agree, especially after watching this runaway -- a pick-your-score kind of game that was decided early.
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USF Definition>>

Not MSM Worthy - More News From Iraq

This from the New York Daily News -
(ht - Carol Platt Liebau)

American death toll in Iraq hits 2-yr. low
BY RICHARD SISKDAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - U.S. casualties fell to their lowest totals in two years this month as Iraqis increasingly aimed attacks at each other rather than coalition forces, the U.S. military said yesterday.

Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch noted "a decrease in the number of casualties of the coalition forces and a significant increase in Iraqi casualties, both security forces and innocent men, women and children."

Figures from the Pentagon and watchdog groups showed that, through yesterday, 30 U.S. troops had been killed in March, the lowest total since the 20 who died in February 2004.
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While fewer Americans were being killed or wounded, "the number of attacks against the Iraqi security force members has increased 35% in the last four weeks, compared to the previous six months," Lynch said. "What we're seeing them now do is shift [their] target from the coalition forces to Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces."
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Highlighted: Isn't this what John Kerry advocated last fall? You know ... That Iraqi's should be killing Iraqi's? Just asking!

Report From The Iraqi North

Image Credit: http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/ug/kurdistan.jpg

This development is generally ignored by the Main Stream Media. Free Kurds in northern Iraq, want to spread the wealth!

Imagine that. This can only mean trouble for our own "cut-and-run" crowd here in the U.S.. Where's Cindy Sheehan, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Al Franken, John Murtha, and etc. to speak against the "unprovoked" Kurdish incursion into Iran to promote freedom?

This posting from Captian's Quarters -

April 03, 2006
Iranian Kurds Take On Teheran

The Kurds of Iraq have enjoyed their taste of freedom so much that they wish to extend it to their cousins across the border. The Washington Times reports on the efforts of a secular, Western-sympathetic band of insurgents that have targeted the Iranian military in a region of the Islamic Republic that has four million Kurds living under the mullahcracy's thumb:

A little-known organization based in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is emerging as a serious threat to the Iranian government, staging cross-border attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's 4 million Kurds.

The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, better known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK, claims to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers in three raids against army bases last month, all staged in retaliation for the killing of 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku.

Three more soldiers from Iran's elite Republican Guard were killed last week in a gunbattle near the Iraqi border, Iran's official news agency reported.

But the greater threat to the Tehran regime may come from the group's underground effort to promote a sense of identity among Iranian Kurds, who make up 7 percent of that country's population. PEJAK leaders say the effort is spreading quickly among students, intellectuals and businessmen.

"The Iranian government's plan to create a global Islamic state is destroying our people's culture and values," said Akif Zagros, 28, a graduate in Persian literature who was interviewed in a simple stone hut at the group's headquarters. "So we fight back. But our aim is not just to bring freedom to Kurds, but to liberate all the peoples of Iran."

It's amazing that the Kurds remain so pro-Western, considering the raw deal that the West has given them since Winston Churchill started dividing up Southwest Asia.

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UPDATE: The National Organization for Women should be involved in these efforts.

More excerpts directly from The Washington Times article -

Tehran faces growing Kurdish opposition
By James Brandon

Unlike most other rebel groups in the Middle East, PEJAK (The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, better known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK) is secular and Western-oriented. When the group's members talk, their Kurdish is peppered with such Western words as "freedom," "human rights" and "ecology."

PEJAK's ideology combines the Kurds' traditionally low-key Islam and pagan-influenced culture with the movement's political opposition to the dogmatic Islamic government in Tehran.

Nearly half the group's members are women, attracted by its promotion of sexual equality. Female volunteers receive the same training as the men, wear the same clothes, and greet visitors with a steady eye and firm handshake.

"Here in our camp, the women learn to be strong so that when they go back to Iran, they can teach women and, in fact, all people about our struggle for democracy and human rights," said Gulistan Dugan, 36, a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran and a member of the leadership council.

"The daughters of our movement take part in all our operations, including military ones."

It is to bad that the looney left NOW could not adopt some of the principles that PEJAK has adopted for their struggle to be free.