via Breitbart
It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next.
Michael R, Stebick, a former prosecutor for the Erie County district attorney's office, a former New York State Supreme Court law clerk and former Impressario or leader of the Jesters Buffalo Court #18 was caught with a retired police captain and a former New York State Supreme Judge, both also Jesters, during a fifteen month federal investigation into human trafficking.
Human Trafficking is defined as "the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labor and servitude."
Stebick has agreed to cooperate with the Human Trafficking Task Force/FBI investigation into the scandal plagued Jesters.
Before a man can be a Shriner or Jester, he must first become a Master Mason. He can then join other sub groups like the Scottish Rite, the Knights Templar or the Shriners. So, a man who is a member of the Royal Order of Jesters was first an invited Shriner who was first a Master Mason. (1)
Stebick is the second Jester to enter into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors for Mann Act violations. His plea agreement can be read here.
Last March 20, retired police captain John Trowbridge pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Mann Act by transporting prostitutes to Jester parties in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Trowbridge was originally scheduled for sentencing on July 31, but will now be sentenced on November 4 due to being a witness in other cases. His plea agreement can be read here.
Ronald Tills, the former New York Supreme Court judge, has yet to go public with any cooperative agreements though federal court documents reveal that he was recently added as a defendant in an unrelated RICO complaint.
"Cooperation" for both Stebick and Trowbridge is spelled out in both their plea agreements as:
* Providing complete and truthful information regarding the defendant’s knowledge of any and all criminal activity, whether undertaken by the defendant or others, in any way involving or related to the unlawful transportation of individuals for prostitution or other sexual activity which is prohibited by law.
* Submitting to interviews by government attorneys and agents.
* Testifying truthfully and completely before grand juries and at such pre-trial and trial proceedings.
* Testifying truthfully and completely in local, state, and federal courts in jurisdictions which have agreed to abide by the plea agreement.
* Providing proactive cooperation to the government regarding individuals involved in criminal activity involving unlawful transportation of individuals for prostitution or other sexual activity which is prohibited by law.
* Providing cooperation to any local, state, or federal authorities designated by the government.
In exchange, Stebick could be imprisoned from four to ten months, be fined from $3,000 to $30,000 and be on supervised probation for two to three years.
The plea agreement's factual basis is based on facts that both Stebick and U.S. Attorney's office agreed to. It states that in October, 2005, the defendant, Michael R. Stebick, together with John Trowbridge, Len Wah Chong, a former New York State Supreme Court Judge AKA "Judge" and others whose identities are known to the parties, agreed to knowingly transport a woman who was an illegal alien from New York to Kentucky.
Chong owned four "massage" and "acupressure" businesses that were fronts for prostitution and kept as many as 11 illegal aliens as sex slaves. She pleaded guilty to a Felony Information early last April, charging her with "Sex Trafficking of Persons by Force, Fraud and Coercion." More details can be read here.
Stebick's plea states that Trowbridge picked up the prostitute from Chong's Golden Acupressure business and then "drove her to a parking lot of Leisure Land in Hamburg, New York to board a motor home driven by Stebick to transport her, the co-conspirators and others known and unknown to the U.S. Attorney's office, to Ashland, Kentucky" so she could:
"engage in sexual intercourse and other sexual activity in exchange for money with members of a men's organization of which the defendant, John Trowbridge and the Judge were members, and which organization was holding a gathering in Kentucky the weekend of October 28 - 30, 2005. This organization maintained chapters throughout the United States, including in Western New York, and it was the custom of these chapters to host periodic meetings, usually on weekends, for their members. At most of these meetings, some members of the organization would be tasked to arrange for the presence of women at the meetings, for the specific purpose of utilizing the women to engage in sexual intercourse and other sexual activity with the organization's members in exchange for money...The facts set forth above are those about which the government had independent information prior to the time the defendant indicated a desire to cooperate with the government and agreed to give statements regarding the defendant's involvement in criminal activity. It is understood and agreed to by the parties that additional information provided by the defendant cannot be used against the defendant."
Part of Stebick's plea agreement was to "immediately criminally forfeit" his 2000 Challenger 335 MHA motor home. It will be sold, with the proceeds also forfeited.
This is the second sex scandal to hit the Royal Order of Jesters after it was reported last March that nineteen members were also called as witnesses in a separate federal lawsuit to testify about their first hand knowledge of sex with minors while on a sanctioned Jesters fishing trip in Brazil.
Additionally, these three will most likely face disciplinary actions overseen by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York, which could result in expulsion from the worldwide order. The Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York, Edward Savitzky, referred questions about the disciplinary process and the Grand Master's reactions to the Lodge's public relations firm, with no answers yet.
Stebick and Tills, both attorneys and members of the New York Bar Association, also face automatic disbarment upon pleading guilty to federal felonies.
A call placed to the Royal Order of Jesters headquarters to get reaction from executive director Alex Rogers was unsuccessful because their phone number has been disconnected.
This investigation is being conducted by New York Western District's Human Trafficking Task Force and Alliance.
According to a Department of Justice announcement, the task force was created in November, 2006 and "is a collaboration of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and non-government service organizations working together to identify, rescue and assist victims of human trafficking, human smuggling and other civil and human rights offenses in the 17 counties of the district, through aggressive investigation, prosecution, training, education and outreach to law enforcement, non government organizations, vulnerable and affected persons and the general public."
These groups include the FBI, Erie County Sheriff's Office, Custom and Border Protection, Unted States Border Patrol with the assistance of the Niagara County Sherriff's Office and the Tonawanda Police Department. The case is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert C. Moscati, who is also in charge of the task force.
In closing, Moscati said "We will go wherever the evidence leads us."
(1) The Royal Order of Jesters is an invitation-only fraternal sub-group of the Shriners, best known for operating a network of 22 hospitals that provides free medical care to burned and crippled children. The Revised Constitution and Bylaws of the National Court of the Royal Order of Jesters spells out the close relationship between the two groups. It can be read here. Both groups have been classified as "non profit" or "tax exempt" by the IRS. A Shriner committee that was tasked with investigating the alleged unethical conduct of hospital leaders Ralph Semb and Gene Bracewell. The committee's report revealed, among other things, that Semb may have knowingly executed a fraudulent tax return. Semb and Bracewell are also Jesters. The Interim Report can be read here.
All copies of material reprinted or duplicated from "by Sandy Frost" must include the following credit line: From http://sandyfrost.newsvine.com/ Copyright © 2008 by Sandy Frost. Used by permission.
The mummified remains of two foetuses found in the tomb of Tutankhamun
via Breitbart
Egypt is to carry out DNA tests on the mummified remains of two foetuses found in the tomb of Tutankhamun to determine if they were the children of the boy king, antiquities authorities said on Thursday.The bodies of the two still-born children were found in 1922 in the tomb of Tutankhamun in the ancient Nile city of Luxor by British explorer Howard Carter and have since been stored at the University of Cairo.
Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said the tests will determine whether the foetuses were the offspring of Tutankhamun and his wife Ankhesenpamon, daughter of Nefertiti, who was renowned as one of history’s great beauties.
“It is thought that the tiny bodies may be those of the young king’s stillborn children,” said a statement from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“The study aims at identifying the lineage and the family of king Tutankhamun, particularly his parents. The DNA test and the CT scan may also help to identify the foetuses’ mother,” Hawass said.
He said the results of the studies would also help in identifying the mummy of queen Nefertiti.
Mystery still surrounds the identities of Tutankhamun’s own parents — while his father is known to be the Pharoah Akhenaton, his mother remains unknown.
Some believe her to have been Nefertiti, the first wife of Akhenaton who is remembered for having converted his kingdom to monotheism with the worship of one sun god, Aton.
His mother could also have been Akhenaton’s second wife, the foreign princess Kiya, or Maya, Tutankhamun’s childhood nurse.
The antiquities council statement said all royal mummies will be CT scanned for identification and that samples from several unknown female mummies found at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have been taken for DNA testing.
The supposed face of King Tutankhamun
“All of the results will be compared with each other, along with those of the mummy of the boy king Tutankhamun, which was CT scanned in 2005,” it said.
The boy king’s death more than 3,00 years ago remains the subject of dispute among historians, with some believing he died when an injury to a leg turned to gangrene, others that he was murdered with a blow to the head.
Last year, the true face of Tutankhamun, who was proclaimed pharaoh at the age of nine, was revealed to the public for the first time since he died at just 19 as the 12th and last pharaoh of the 18th dynasty.
The pharaoh’s mummy was moved in November from its ornate sarcophagus in the tomb, where its 1922 discovery in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings caused an international sensation, to a climate-controlled case where experts say it will be better preserved.
Chicago-Sun Time religion columnist Cathleen Falsani (”God Girl”) Editor’s Note:
At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, 2004, when I was the religion reporter (I am now its religion columnist) at the Chicago Sun-Times, I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee joint at 330 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, to interview him exclusively about his spirituality. Our conversation took place a few days after he’d clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won. We spoke for more than an hour. He came alone. He answered everything I asked without notes or hesitation. The profile of Obama that grew from the interview at Cafe Baci became the first in a series in the Sun-Times called “The God Factor,” that eventually became my first book, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (FSG, March 2006.) Because of the staggering interest in now U.S. Sen. Obama’s faith and spiritual predilections, I thought it might be helpful to share that interivew, uncut and in its entirety, here.
GG
————————————–
Interview with State Sen. Barack Obama
3:30 p.m., Saturday March 27
Café Baci, 330 S. Michigan Avenue
Me: decaf
He: alone, on time, grabs a Naked juice protein shake
GG:
What do you believe?
OBAMA:
I am a Christian.
So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith.
On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences.
I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10.
My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim.
And I’d say, probably, intellectually I’ve drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith.
(A patron stops and says, “Congratulations,” shakes his hand. “Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you.”)
So, I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there’s an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.
And so, part of my project in life was probably to spend the first 40 years of my life figuring out what I did believe – I’m 42 now – and it’s not that I had it all completely worked out, but I’m spending a lot of time now trying to apply what I believe and trying to live up to those values.
GG:
Have you always been a Christian?
OBAMA:
I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.
GG:
Any particular flavor?
OBAMA:
No.
My grandparents who were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. This was at a time when I think the Methodists felt slightly superior to the Baptists. And by the time I was born, they were, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church.
So, my mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We’d go to church for Easter. She wasn’t a church lady.
As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn’t particularly, he wasn’t a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you’d hear the prayer call.
So I don’t think as a child we were, or I had a structured religious education. But my mother was deeply spiritual person, and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world’s religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view always was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good.
And, so that, I think, was what I carried with me through college. I probably didn’t get started getting active in church activities until I moved to Chicago.
The way I came to Chicago in 1985 was that I was interested in community organizing and I was inspired by the Civil Rights movement. And the idea that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. And there was a group of churches out on the South Side of Chicago that had come together to form an organization to try to deal with the devastation of steel plants that had closed. And didn’t have much money, but felt that if they formed an organization and hired somebody to organize them to work on issues that affected their community, that it would strengthen the church and also strengthen the community.
So they hired me, for $13,000 a year. The princely sum. And I drove out here and I didn’t know anybody and started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job training programs, or afterschool programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communites.
This would be in Roseland, West Pullman, Altgeld Gardens, far South Side working class and lower income communities.
And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened because I’d be spending an enormous amount of time with church ladies, sort of surrogate mothers and fathers and everybody I was working with was 50 or 55 or 60, and here I was a 23-year-old kid running around.
I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and it’s importance in the community.
And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.
So that, one of the churches I met, or one of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church.
GG:
Did you actually go up for an altar call?
OBAMA:
Yes. Absolutely.
It was a daytime service, during a daytime service. And it was a powerful moment. Because, ti was powerful for me because it not only confirmed my faith, it not only gave shape to my faith, but I think, also, allowed me to connect the work I had been pursuing with my faith.
GG:
How long ago?
OBAMA:
16, 17 years ago
1987 or 88
GG:
So you got yourself born again?
OBAMA:
Yeah, although I don’t, I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.
I’m a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it’s best comes with a big dose of doubt. I’m suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.
I think that, particularly as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.
GG:
Do you still attend Trinity?
OBAMA:
Yep. Every week. 11 oclock service.
Ever been there? Good service.
I actually wrote a book called Dreams from My Father, it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity.
GG:
Do you pray often?
OBAMA:
Uh, yeah, I guess I do.
Its’ not formal, me getting on my knees. I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. I think throughout the day, I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why am I doing it.
One of the interesting things about being in public life is there are constantly these pressures being placed on you from different sides. To be effective, you have to be able to listen to a variety of points of view, synthesize viewpoints. You also have to know when to be just a strong advocate, and push back against certain people or views that you think aren’t right or don’t serve your constituents.
And so, the biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I’m having internally. I’m measuring my actions against that inner voice that for me at least is audible, is active, it tells me where I think I’m on track and where I think I’m off track.
It’s interesting particularly now after this election, comes with it a lot of celebrity. And I always think of politics as having two sides. There’s a vanity aspect to politics, and then there’s a substantive part of politics. Now you need some sizzle with the steak to be effective, but I think it’s easy to get swept up in the vanity side of it, the desire to be liked and recognized and important. It’s important for me throughout the day to measure and to take stock and to say, now, am I doing this because I think it’s advantageous to me politically, or because I think it’s the right thing to do? Am I doing this to get my name in the papers or am I doing this because it’s necessary to accomplish my motives.
GG:
Checking for altruism?
OBAMA:
Yeah. I mean, something like it.
Looking for, … IT’s interesting, the most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I’m talking to a group and I’m saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I’m just being glib or clever.
GG:
What’s that power? Is it the holy spirit? God?
OBAMA:
Well, I think it’s the power of the recognition of God, or the recognition of a larger truth that is being shared between me and an audience.
That’s something you learn watching ministers, quite a bit. What they call the Holy Spirit. They want the Holy Spirit to come down before they’re preaching, right? Not to try to intellectualize it but what I see is there are moments that happen within a sermon where the minister gets out of his ego and is speaking from a deeper source. And it’s powerful.
There are also times when you can see the ego getting in the way. Where the minister is performing and clearly straining for applause or an Amen. And those are distinct moments. I think those former moments are sacred.
GG:
Who’s Jesus to you?
(He laughs nervously)
OBAMA:
Right.
Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.
And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.
GG:
Is Jesus someone who you feel you have a regular connection with now, a personal connection with in your life?
OBAMA:
Yeah. Yes. I think some of the thigns I talked about earlier are addressed through, are channeled through my Christian faith and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
GG:
Have you read the bible?
OBAMA:
Absolutely.
I read it not as regularly as I would like. These days I don’t have much time for reading or reflection, period.
GG:
Do you try to take some time for whatever, meditation prayer reading?
OBAMA:
I’ll be honest with you, I used to all the time, in a fairly disciplined way. But during the course of this campaign, I don’t. And I probably need to and would like to, but that’s where that internal monologue, or dialogue I think supplants my opportunity to read and reflect in a structured way these days.
It’s much more sort of as I’m going through the day trying to take stock and take a moment here and a moment there to take stock, why am I here, how does this connect with a larger sense of purpose.
GG:
Do you have people in your life that you look to for guidance?
OBAMA:
Well, my pastor is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for.
I have a number of friends who are ministers. Reverend Meeks is a close friend and colleague of mine in the state Senate. Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely.
GG:
Those two will keep you on your toes.
OBAMA:
And theyr’e good friends. Because both of them are in the public eye, there are ways we can all reflect on what’s happening to each of us in ways that are useful.
I think they can help me, they can appreciate certain specific challenges that I go through as a public figure.
GG:
Jack Ryan [Obama's Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race at the time] said talking about your faith is frought with peril for a public figure.
OBAMA:
Which is why you generally will not see me spending a lot of time talking about it on the stump.
Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root ion this country.
As I said before, in my own public policy, I’m very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.
Now, that’s different form a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values tha tinform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.
A standard line in my stump speech during this campaign is that my politics are informed by a belief that we’re all connected. That if there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago that can’t read, that makes a difference in my life even if it’s not my own child. If there’s a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that’s struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it’s not my grandparent. And if there’s an Arab American family that’s being rounded up by John Ashcroft without the benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
I can give religious expression to that. I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, we are all children of God. Or I can express it in secular terms. But the basic premise remains the same. I think sometimes Democrats have made the mistake of shying away from a conversation about values for fear that they sacrifice the important value of tolerance. And I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.
GG:
Do you think it’s wrong for people to want to know about a civic leader’s spirituality?
OBAMA:
I don’t’ think it’s wrong. I think that political leaders are subject to all sorts of vetting by the public, and this can be a component of that.
I think that I am disturbed by, let me put it this way: I think there is an enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God’s mandate.
I think there is this tendency that I don’t think is healthy for public figures to wear religion on their sleeve as a means to insulate themselves from criticism, or dialogue with people who disagree with them.
GG:
The conversation stopper, when you say you’re a Christian and leave it at that.
OBAMA:
Where do you move forward with that?
This is something that I’m sure I’d have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.
GG
You don’t believe that?
OBAMA:
I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell.
I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity.
That’s just not part of my religious makeup.
Part of the reason I think it’s always difficult for public figures to talk about this is that the nature of politics is that you want to have everybody like you and project the best possible traits onto you. Oftentimes that’s by being as vague as possible, or appealing to the lowest commong denominators. The more specific and detailed you are on issues as personal and fundamental as your faith, the more potentially dangerous it is.
GG:
Do you ever have people who know you’re a Christian question a particular stance you take on an issue, how can you be a Christian and …
OBAMA:
Like the right to choose.
I haven’t been challenged in those direct ways. And to that extent, I give the public a lot of credit. I’m always stuck by how much common sense the American people have. They get confused sometimes, watch FoxNews or listen to talk radio. That’s dangerous sometimes. But generally, Americans are tolerant and I think recognize that faith is a personal thing, and they may feel very strongly about an issue like abortion or gay marriage, but if they discuss it with me as an elected official they will discuss it with me in those terms and not, say, as ‘you call yourself a Christian.’ I cannot recall that ever happening.
GG:
Do you get questions about your faith?
OBAMA:
Obviously as an African American politician rooted in the African American community, I spend a lot of time in the black church. I have no qualms in those settings in participating fully in those services and celebrating my God in that wonderful community that is the black church.
(he pauses)
But I also try to be . . . Rarely in those settings do people come up to me and say, what are your beliefs. They are going to presume, and rightly so. Although they may presume a set of doctrines that I subscribe to that I don’t necessarily subscribe to.
But I don’t think that’s unique to me. I think that each of us when we walk into our church or mosque or synagogue are interpreting that experience in different ways, are reading scriptures in different ways and are arriving at our own understanding at different ways and in different phases.
I don’t know a healthy congregation or an effective minister who doesn’t recognize that.
If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn’t have to keep coming to church, would they.
GG:
Do you believe in heaven?
OBAMA:
Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings?
GG:
A place spiritually you go to after you die?
OBAMA:
What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.
When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see in them that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.
GG:
Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA:
Yes.
GG:
What is sin?
OBAMA:
Being out of alignment with my values.
GG:
What happens if you have sin in your life?
OBAMA:
I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.
GG:
Where do you find spiritual inspiration? Music, nature, literature, people, a conduit you plug into?
OBAMA:
There are so many.
Nothing is more powerful than the black church experience. A good choir and a good sermon in the black church, it’s pretty hard not to be move and be transported.
I can be transported by watching a good performance of Hamlet, or reading Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, or listening to Miles Davis.
GG:
Is there something that you go back to as a touchstone, a book, a particular piece of music, a place …
OBAMA:
As I said before, in my own sort of mental library, the Civil Rights movement has a powerful hold on me. IT’s a point in time where I think heaven and earth meet. Because it’s a moment in which a collective faith transforms everything. So when I read Gandhi or I read King or I read certain passages of Abraham Lincoln and I think about those times where people’s values are tested, I think those inspire me.
GG:
What are you doing when you feel the most centered, the most aligned spiritually?
OBAMA:
I think I already described it. It’s when I’m being true to myself. And that can happen in me making a speech or it can happen in me playing with my kids, or it can happen in a small interaction with a security guard in a building when I’m recognizing them and exchanging a good word.
GG:
Is there someone you would look to as an example of how not to do it?
OBAMA:
Bin Laden.
(grins broadly)
GG:
… An example of a role model, who combined everything you said you want to do in your life, and your faith?
OBAMA:
I think Gandhi is a great example of a profoundly spiritual man who acted and risked everything on behalf of those values but never slipped into intolerance or dogma. He seemed to always maintain an air of doubt about him.
I think Dr. King, and Lincoln. Those three are good examples for me of people who applied their faith to a larger canvas without allowing that faith to metasticize into something that is hurtful.
GG:
Can we go back to that morning service in 1987 or 88 — when you have a moment that you can go back to that as an epiphany…
OBAMA:
It wasn’t an epiphany.
It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them. For me it was probably because there is a certain self-consciousness that I possess as somebody with probably too much book learning, and also a very polyglot background.
GG:
It wasn’t like a moment where you finally got it? It was a symbol of that decision?
OBAMA:
Exactly. I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me.
-END-
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Prince Charles has warned that the adoption of genetic modification in farming has set the world on course for "the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time".
In an outspoken assault on GM crops, the prince accused unnamed "gigantic corporations" of "conducting a gigantic experiment with nature, and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong".
In an interview given to the Telegraph at the Castle of Mey, a Windsor family seat in Caithness, the heir to the throne reiterated his antipathy to industrialised agriculture.
He delivered a vividly-worded prediction that small farmers across the globe would be forced from their land into city slums through companies planting GM crops.
"We [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness," the prince said.
"What we should be talking about is food security, not food production - that is what matters, and that is what people will not understand.
"And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then count me out because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
As evidence, the prince cited environmental problems in countries which have used GM crops to increase food production.
He said he had seen first hand the result of over-demand on irrigation systems and the water table in Punjab because of the hybrid seeds and grains used.
"Look at Western Australia," he added. "Huge salinisation problems. I have been there, seen it ... some of the excessive approaches to modern argriculture."
Prince Charles first set out his opposition to GM crops in 1998 when he said that "genetic modification takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone".
His latest remarks are likely to set him against the British government, which has approved 54 trials of GM crops since 2000, the latest being a trial by the chemical giant BASF to test a blight-resistant potato at a site in East Yorkshire.
However, Europe is proving more resistant to the spread of GM crops than the rest of the world, and no GM crops are being grown commercially in the UK.
Almost all the trials to have taken place in Britain have been disrupted by protesters.
Meanwhile, the area planted with GM crops worldwide has soared almost 70-fold in 10 years to 114m hectares.
That is predicted to double by 2015, according to a report published in February by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, a GM industry group.
Greenpeace believes the spread of GM crops has been "a disaster" and that they "pose a serious threat to biodiversity and our own health"
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