The List: The World's Worst Religious Leaders

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:47:43 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: You may not be too surprised at the nominations - add if you wish.

Clip Source: richarddawkins.net

Hassan Nasrallah

Religion: Shiite Islam

Who is he?: Secretary-General of Hezbollah

Joseph Kony

Religion: Christianity/personality cult

Who is he?: Commander of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)

Yogi Adityanath

Religion: Hinduism

Who is he?: Religious leader and member of parliament from Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous province

Athuraliye Rathana

Religion: Theravada Buddhism

Who is he?: Monk and member of parliament

Dov Lior

Religion: Hasidic Judaism

Who is he?: Head rabbi of Kiryat Arba settlement

Quote: "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli."

Quote: "I want Muslim votes, too. But wash them in Gangajal [Ganges water] first."

Quote: "Peace negotiations simply made the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] stronger. We mustn't talk to them; we can crush the LTTE. It is like surgery."

Quote: "A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail."

Tags: religion

The Torture Memo

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:27:58 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: When lawyers in private practice mess up, they face serious jeopardy. They can be fired, sued for malpractice, disbarred or prosecuted. Yoo and Bybee face no such risks. The President won't protest. He got what he wanted. And while a state disciplinary body can investigate, that is unlikely without Justice Department help.

Clip Source: www.truthout.org

The Justice Department is investigating the lawyers whose memos gave the Bush Administration the legal support it needed for waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques. We are "examining whether the legal advice in these memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys," H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote to two Democratic senators in February.

The torture memos from 2002 were mainly the work of Jay Bybee, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and now a federal appellate judge in San Francisco, and Bybee's deputy, John Yoo, who has since returned to teaching law at the University of California, Berkeley. This month the Pentagon released a long-rumored torture memo from 2003 written solely by Yoo, which is even more adamant in its embrace of unfettered presidential power.

Tags: politics, lies, deception, sold-down-the-drain

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The List: The World's Worst Religious Leaders

The Torture Memo