text:
Augusten Burroughs on addiction, writing, his family and his new book

October 12, 2007

I had an unofficial phone call from Gay Talese last Tuesday. He had just flown back from Colombia and he was cranky. "I'm happy to do an interview with you," he said, "but what the hell could you ask me that's not already out there? Have you even bothered to look?!”

"Jeez, Mr. Talese, lots of things," was my response. I lied. The truth is that when I call people to interview them, I do not have a set of preconceived questions. My agenda is to talk to them and gain a sense of who they are; to flesh them out as humans. To find out what they think about the world around them at that moment. With Gay Talese I had little interest in talking about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and with Augusten Burroughs I had little interest in discussing Running with Scissors. I want to know what they think about things outside of the boxes people have placed them in.

With a memoirist like Burroughs, even this is a challenge. What parts of his life he has not written about himself, other interviewers have strip-mined. When we met for dinner at Lavagna in the East Village, I explained to Augusten this issue. I suggested we make the interview more of a conversation to see if that would be more interesting. "Instead of you in the catbird seat," I said, "let's just talk."

We struck an instant rapport. What set out to be an hour and half interview over dinner had turned into four hours of discussion about our lives similarly lived. I removed half of the interview: the half that focused on me.

Below is Wikinews reporter David Shankbone’s conversation with writer Augusten Burroughs.

On addiction and getting sober
'''David Shankbone: It's difficult to be creative and innovative. When you come up with an idea and then come across a place where it has already been done, how do you overcome disenchantment that can ruin your inspiration?

 * Augusten Burroughs: It's funny; back when I was in advertising that was the one thing I wanted to be:  original.  I didn't own a television and I never watched commercials.  In advertising everyone studies the awards annuals, which are hardcover compendiums of all the best advertising examples.  I would never read them when I first got in.  I didn't want to be polluted, and I think it’s like that with the writing, but much less--I don't think about it to that extent.  The way I work best is not the way I wish I worked best.  The way I actually work best is to not think, but just to do.  Dry was really the first book I ever wrote, and the reason for that is because I was 30, and I got out of rehab, and it was the first time I had been sober in my adult life.  I hadn't been sober since I was …16…I had been a nightly drinker from 16 on.  And I was 30--

'''DS: You started drinking when you were 13, but 16 was when you were really--

 * AB: That was when I was going all the time, and then at 17 it was every night.  I would drink every single night.  And by 18, 19, I was an alcoh--I needed it.  I needed to always drink.  So I went to rehab when I was 30, and when I got out I was living over here on Third Avenue and Tenth Street, in this really crappy little apartment.  I didn't know how to do anything at all.  I was horrified by that.  I couldn't date anybody, because I was so damaged.  I have my background, my history--I could never get through the third date with that.  "Tell me about your family.  Tell me about your past."  You know?  It was like a deal-breaker by the third date, because it was just too much for one person to go through and remain sane.  So I felt already ruined.  And then, on top of that, I was now sober for the first time, so--

'''DS: How did you get over the problems of dating? Just by being sober-?

 * AB: Well, no [nervous laugh], what happened is I got sober, I was sober for about a year and a half, and then I relapsed.  I relapsed in just a huge way--

'''DS: Which is what one tends to do.

 * AB: Yes.  I was much worse than I ever had been.  First of all, when I got sober, that's when I started to write.  I had this just manic energy; if I went downstairs to get cigarettes--I smoked at that time-- I would be gone ten minutes, and I would spend the next four hours writing about it, just the tiniest detail, everything.  Everything I did, I wrote about.  I was working, so I would email the document to myself, pick it up at work and keep on writing.  It was like a security blanket.  Everything I had was this stupid journal.  When I relapsed, I stopped writing completely, and I started drinking and doing drugs I had never done before.

'''DS: As happens.

 * AB: Yeah, as happens, and I got to the point where I started to develop really serious physical symptoms.  I began hallucinating; I had cardiac symptoms, and I got alcohol poisoning--and I knew that I'd end up having a heart attack.  My heart started beating very irregularly and then stopping and starting--

'''DS: I know that feeling.

 * AB: I knew, this is how you die.  This is it.  I always wondered, how do you die from alcohol?  They always say it's a terminal illness, but assuming you don't drive, how do you actually die?  Well, now I was starting to see how.  My system was shot, you could see my liver outlined in the mirror when I stood up, and I was a real mess, and--

'''DS: You saw all this, but how long did it take before you started saying, 'I need to stop'?

 * AB: What happened is I got alcohol poisoning; I began hallucinating spiders on my ceiling.  I went up and Googled 'spiders, alcohol' and saw that that was a symptom of late-stage alcoholism, when it's chronic.  People in the very last stages of their alcoholism, of their illness, often hallucinate spiders; it's a common hallucination.  And it freaked me out.  I developed hives, I was shaking and I was more physically sick than I've ever been in my life.

'''DS: Gin blossoms kind of stuff.

 * AB: And I remember it took me maybe four or five hours to get the strength, the physical strength to go downstairs to get a six-pack of hard cider.  Brought it back up to the apartment and downed a couple of them, just really fast.  That took the edge off.  Then over the next forty-eight hours, I drank the rest of that six-pack--not to get a buzz, but to detox.  I was working my way through withdrawal in a very unhealthy way; I mean, you should never do that.  But that's what I was doing, and so, it was shortly after that that I woke up one morning and I was drinking again.  But I was not drinking quite as much.  I woke up one morning hung over, and I sat down and I wrote something.  It was two pages and it made laugh, and I hadn't laughed for years at that point, and that turned out to be the first couple pages of my first book, which was Sellevision.  It's a novel about the home shopping world, that whole world--and, I didn't know what I had written.  But it amused me, so I kept on writing, and I wrote until very late that night.  And I drank a little bit less.  And the same thing the next day.  Again, I had no idea what I was doing or where it was coming from, but by the seventh day, I was not drinking at all.

[food arrives]

 * AB: Because the drinking just got in the way of this writing that I was doing, and I knew I wasn't writing the next great work, but it was--

'''DS: You were proud of it.

 * AB: It was something.  I'd never written anything beyond an ad, you know, that was long, and  so by the seventh day I had finished the book.  I didn't know if it was a good book or a bad book, but I'd finished the book.  And that’s really when my life changed.  That's when I decided, I'm going to do this the rest of my life.  I'm gonna be a writer, I've just finished writing a book.  Now, it may be a piece of shit, but that doesn't matter, it's 150 pages, and they're in order--

'''DS: That accomplishment is so difficult.

 * AB: Yes, exactly.  I began reading at 24.  I had never read before that.  Once I started reading, I didn't want to do anything else.  But I could never understand how do you keep a whole book in your head.  How does an author do that?  How do you get a book--I mean, it's 250 pages, and yet it resides in your head!  Where?  How?  By writing my book, I saw firsthand how it happens; for me, it was totally subconscious, automatic--it was like watching a movie.  My fingers did the work--I was fully unaware; I didn't think about structure, or characters…I stared at the space between the screen and the keyboard like I was in a trance.

'''DS: That gives you some amount of respect for people who write a book of crap, but yet write a book.

 * AB: Yeah.  Any book is an accomplishment.

'''DS: It’s like,  you can have the talent, but if you don't have that discipline to actually carry it through, the talent's wasted.

 * AB: Exactly--I had never had that discipline, and I didn't know where it came from.  But once I did it, I knew I could do it again and again, and by the time I was 40 or 50, or in my 60s, if I kept doing this, if I kept writing a book every--not every seven days, but a month or two months, or even a year, eventually in my 40s or 50s or 60s, I would have written something that was publishable.  And--

'''DS: How did you get the discipline?

 * AB: It was not so much discipline as I realized, this is me.  This is what I'm going to do.  This is it.  It was an epiphany of, "I'm home."  I'm--what am I doing? I've wasted my life.  I need this--writing felt better than anything had ever felt.  It felt better than any drug, and it felt better than any relationship.  So that really changed a lot about me.  Just the experience of having written it made me not care so much what other people thought.  I then went out and tried to get an agent, and I did get an agent, and he did sell the book.  And he sold it for no money, but it was sold.  And that's when everything really changed in my life.  I became much more confident with just--just  being, you know, just me, just myself.  I didn't feel as damaged--

'''DS: You were sober at the time?

 * AB: Yeah, I was sober at the time.

'''DS: And you couldn't have probably done all this without being sober.

 * AB: Never.  Oh no.  No, nothing.  I never wrote a word when I was a drunk.  Never.  Never wrote a word--very few, very few.  And after I sold Sellevision, I didn't have another idea for a novel, but I did have this journal that I'd written when I got sober.  So I gave it to my agent, who asked, "Why didn't you show me this first?"  And my publisher bought it, and that's Dry.  And then after they bought Dry, which was my journal--it was like selling someone my used tissues--I thought my God! well if you guys like that, I should tell you, I had a really fucked-up childhood.  And they said, "Really? What happened?"  And I said, "Well, here."  And I sat down in half an hour and I wrote a proposal for it and emailed it in, and that was Running with Scissors, and they bought that, and I had to go away and write it.

On the Turcottes and his mother
'DS: Did you read the Vanity Fair'' interview with the Turcottes?

 * AB: Believe it or not--I didn't read it, no.  I heard about it.

'''DS: You just don't have an interest?

 * AB: How can I explain it so it makes sense?  I don't want to see that family anymore.  I don't need to see--whatever they said, it doesn't matter to me.  Because what I wrote is the truth.  So I don't need to hear them yammering on about whatever it is that--

'''DS: A debate that is not a debate.

 * AB: It's not.  I mean, you know what, the world is--

'''DS: It's like Holocaust denial.

 * AB: The world is not flat.  You may not like it.  You don't have to believe it, you don't have to like it, you don't have to think it's polite, but it's true.  You know, I may be an asshole for having written that book because I'm telling family secrets, maybe that makes me an asshole, but I'm not a liar.

'''DS: Do you think the memoirist has a responsibility to inform people that they're writing about that they're writing about them?

 * AB: No.   I changed them in the book.  I changed the house, and I changed the location.  You can't read the book and find the house, and people have tried.  People have tried.  And they're always wrong.  I had people emailing me, maybe about seven, from the area trying to guess.  "I know exactly who this is."  It was funny because they weren't right.  It was not that person that they thought it was--I changed their physical description.  So I think if you're going to write about people on something that's potentially upsetting, you have a moral obligation to at least give them privacy.  Which is what I did.  I changed their name, I mean, we wouldn't have known them if they hadn't announced to the world who they were.  They became public not because--they apparently had said in some magazine that I revealed their name.  But I actually never did.  I've never uttered their name in an interview.  It's been put in my mouth.  But I've never uttered their name.

 * AB: So I didn't read that.  I don't read interviews with me, because…I don't know why.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I'm not really sure why.  Partly because if something's wrong, I can't do a thing about it.  So I don't want to have to obsess over it.

'''DS: Although you could with this.

 * AB: [Laughs]  Well, right.  So I don't know why I don't.  I didn't read that, it was just--you know, it was an upsetting thing to have happen; the lawsuit was upsetting, and I think for me it was most upsetting because of the media glomming onto it and thinking, ‘Well of course, it's because of James Frey!’  Just associating with that whole thing…

'''DS: Did you listen to the NPR interview with your mom?

 * AB: I heard about it.  I didn't hear it.  But my mother--I'll tell you something funny.  The first thing my mother said to me-- it was an email.  I haven't been in contact with her now for years.  But right after or before Running with Scissors came out I told her there's a book coming out, and my mother said to me, "What will I tell my media??"  My mother--and so, it's not surprising--

'''DS: She's still in that ‘I’m Anne Sexton’ thinking?

 * AB: Absolutely.  My mother believes that she's Grace Paley.  My mother believes that she's the most famous woman in the world, or should be--the most famous poet.

'''DS: It’s ironic that the notoriety she's received has been via you; do you think that in some ways she likes it?

 * AB: Oh, I know she likes it.  Oh, absolutely.

'''DS: There's no such thing as bad publicity.

 * AB: Right.  My mother could get published tomorrow now if she wanted to.  You know?  I love my mother because she's my mother, but I don't like her.  I don’t like the woman.  And I don't want to have anything to do with her, and I don't consider her a mother--she's the woman who gave birth to me, but she's not a mother in the sense of mothering a child.  I was watching Annette Benning on the set of the movie Running with Scissors with her daughter.  We were sitting around talking and Annette was telling a story to the crew.   I watched her daughter reach up and grab Annette's earlobe, and then Annette just--without stopping, without breaking the conversation, she bent forward so that her daughter could kiss her.  And it was the most natural thing in the world.  When I saw that, I knew--Annette may very well have a staff of twelve for all I know, but she's changed every diaper on that girl.  I knew she had changed every diaper on her daughter.  Because there was an intimacy.  The daughter was not filled with this desperate need.  She had full access to her mother.  And if she happened to want, in the middle of her mother's story, to have a kiss, it was a given that her mother would acknowledge that need.

'''DS: Make that time.

 * AB: My mother was not like that.  My mother was absolutely focused on her, on her writing--she shouldn't ever have had kids, she should have probably focused on her writing.  I mean, I'm glad she had children.  It's hard to blame, too, because she was ill.  My mother was ill.  She had mental illness that was not treated correctly; it was exacerbated by the treatment of this ridiculously unqualified doctor.

'''DS: Intellectually, that’s nice, but I mean, in the end --

 * AB: Well, I don't have anything to do with her.  You know, in the end.

'''DS: -- it's still your experience too, and what you went through. It's almost like someone who pleads the insanity defense. You can't really blame them. But they still killed your mom, raped your sister or whatever.

 * AB: Right, but they still did--yeah, exactly.  And she still let a lot of things happen that I find--that I would never let happen to my child.  She still allowed a lot to happen that is terrible.  So when she goes for her publicity, I just have to laugh it off.   You know there's--

'''DS: She takes credit for your writing career.

 * AB: Yeah, you know that's the kind of thing she would do.  You know, when really--

'''DS: Does that bother you at all?

 * AB: It--you know, it doesn't really bother me, no, because what she says doesn't bother me.  My mother has said such outrageous--and this is a woman who used to eat cigarette-butt-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, so she's not the most reliable person.  I can't value her opinions.  My mother's going to say whatever--she's a wild card; she's gonna say whatever she says.

 * My brother was more of an influence on me in many respects, in terms of being a writer, because he's such a wonderful storyteller. He would go away and come back with just outlandish stories.  I think I loved watching those stories.

 * But my mother, to her credit, she always did encourage me to write. So she did--she definitely played a part, I think, in getting me to write.

'''DS: Elizabeth Berg writes a lot about parental and domestic relationships. Do you think that you're dealing with latent issues with your mom through your love of Berg?

 * AB: What I love about Elizabeth Berg is that, if she were a man, she'd be John Cheever--she'd have that sort of level of critical respect.  She's never written a false word.  I love the humanity and the absolute emotional truth of an Elizabeth Berg book.  I defy the most cynical reader to read an Elizabeth Berg book and not be able to then say that it is emotionally true.  It rings true.  Now, it may not be the world that you're at all interested in, because it's very domestic, and it's often Midwestern, or at least if not Midwestern geographically, emotionally Midwestern.  It's centered around relationships and moms and husbands and wives having problems.  So yeah.  Probably there is an element of finding comfort in that.

 * But it's also just the prose; I just find it beautiful, the simplicity of it. It's just very beautiful.

'DS: In the Vanity Fair'' article Teresa said that she had come down to New York to visit you with her kids--

 * AB: Right, right, yep.

'''DS: And that you were saying that you want to marry her, how great she is, what a kind person she is…

 * AB: Right before Running with Scissors was published, I was thinking about her, and I thought, "She is going to love this book.”  I remember feeling really excited because I thought, "She is going to be blown away."  That period of growing up together was a very pivotal and central aspect to both of our lives, hers and mine, and we shared it together.  And I thought, “Man, when she reads this she is”--

'''DS: She's really going to be there with you.

 * AB: Yes.  She's going to be like, "Oh, my God, I can't believe you remembered this.  I had forgotten about that.  Oh, my God--"  I thought, she's gonna be so blown away that I remembered so much and brought it all back; I felt like I was giving her our childhood again.  So when the lawsuit occurred, it took me by absolute surprise.  To find out she was involved in it, I was shocked, and then I was disgusted.  I was just blankly disgusted, because it reeked to me of just greed.  It had, you know--

'''DS: Do you think that's what it was, the motivation?

 * AB: I've learned never to try to put a word on them.  I don't know what the fuck it was about.  Did I say one thing in there that really hurt her?  I didn't mean to, but obviously, I guess I did, you know?  Was it about the money--did they think they could get a lot of money?  I'll never know the answer to that, and I don't even want to know, now.

 * It's unfortunate, it's unfortunate, but I'm not at all sorry that I wrote it. And you know, the suit settled-- it settled in my favor.  I didn't change a word of the memoir, not one word of it.  It's still a memoir, it's marketed as a memoir, they've agreed one hundred percent that it is a memoir.  You know, the only thing I--

'''DS: They got what they wanted apparently from settling with Sony?

 * AB: Yeah, right.  There you go, exactly I mean, if it was not about money, and it was about, you know--

'''DS: Setting the record straight?

 * AB: Yeah.  Then they didn't do a very good job of showing that.  I'm just really glad that it's over, and I know I'm not vindicated.  A lot of people are still like, how did that resolve?  I feel vindicated, because of the way that it settled.  They couldn't have done anything else.  They never could have won.  We had such an incredibly strong case.  I mean, the lawyers worked like hell and got witnesses, and I had my journals--I mean, it's--there were a lot of other people around back then, you know?

'''DS: Yeah.

 * AB: Who saw.  And who experienced.  So, it was crazy--the whole thing seemed crazy to me to begin with.

On his work
'''DS: Do you read reviews of your work, and commentary on it?

 * AB: Some of them, not all of them.  Some of them.

'''DS: Did it ever bother you if you came across somebody using the Twelve Steps in a review of your work?

 * AB: I don't know if I've seen that.  What do you mean?

'''DS: I mean comparing the things you did with your writing and comparing them to how they conform to the principles in the Twelve Steps. It happened with Frey too, where all of a sudden you had these alcoholics coming out and saying, "Oh, this is such a typical alcoholic, doing this or doing that. It’s not very Step Eight,” or whatever…  You never came across that?

 * AB: No, I didn't care about that kind of thing.   You know, Dry is not a terribly structured book.  I mean, it is what it is.  It's what happened when I stopped drinking.  I'm the first to admit that right before it came out, I was horrified.  I thought, you know, my God, what am I doing? The world doesn't need another alcoholic book.  It's already been done by so many authors before me…

'''DS: Do you still feel that way?

 * AB: Well, no, I think that--

'''DS: That's the ‘nothing’s original’ thing, isn't it?

 * AB: Yeah, I think everybody is different, and my book's different because it's me.  There are some things about it, I think, that are funny--you know, I'm not the most objective person when it comes to my own work.

'''DS: Do you know anyone who is?

 * AB: Actually, I do.  My friend Haven Kimmel, the writer, has a mind like a finely tuned laser.  She has perspective.  I don't have that ability to step back like that.

On the response to his work from addicts
'''DS: How does it feel to be a hero to addicts?

 * AB: You know what?  I just want addicts to stop.  I want addicts to do whatever it takes.  If it takes thinking of me as a hero, fine.  If it takes thinking I'm a jerk, fine.  If my book makes someone look at themselves, or look at their lives, then that's what I want.  I know that I am absolutely happy in my life.  I'm pretty happy, and I've certainly accomplished a lot, and  I accomplished everything because I don't drink.  That's the only variable.  Nothing else in my life changed except I stopped drinking and taking drugs.  You have to replace alcohol or drugs or sex, or food, whatever the drug is, with something else.  You have to replace it--

'''DS: You replaced it with writing?

 * AB: Yeah.  With introspection, reporting on what I find inside.  And it feels very much like a drug, in the sense that it's--I binge.  I don’t write four hours a day, and then do lunch, and then call friends and return emails--I don't have that sense of structure.  I tend to wait too long, and then I tend to work for 15 hours, 18 hours, 48 hours straight.  I tend to do just like I drank.  You know, binging.

'''DS: Have you ever had an alcoholic write you and ask you to be their sponsor?

 * AB: I have not had someone ask me to be their sponsor, no, but I've had some amazing letters.  I had a homeless guy in a big city write me and tell me that he shoplifted my book from a Barnes & Noble.  He only intellectually shoplifted it.  He sat on the sofa and read it.  And he said that he had never read a book about recovery that hit him with the force that Dry hit him.  He realized, "My God! I'm 50.  I'm young."  And he checked into the same treatment program that I myself went to and got sober.  I mean, that to me was just--I--it blew the top of my head off.  So I've had things like that happen, but I've not actually had anybody ask if I would be their sponsor.

'''DS: When people write to you, and they say they relate to your work, what element do they say they responded to--your upbringing, your relationship with your mother, your contending with alcoholism? You write on such a variety of topics--

 * AB: It so varies, yeah, it’s all so much.

'''DS: Is there a theme that seems to resonate most with people in your life?

 * AB: Well, certainly being raised in a very untraditional and chaotic childhood.  And addiction; also being single and dating in the city.  I mean, there are so many.  Probably the two are having a crazy childhood or a chaotic childhood or being sort of abandoned by parents; and drug abuse or alcoholism.  I hear from a lot of alcoholics.  It's interesting to me because I've heard from a lot of famous people--whose names you would absolutely know, and politicians, whose names you know, anyone in America would know--soccer moms--and working dads, and--

'''DS: George W. Bush?

 * AB: [laughs]  And . . . straight and gay, just a whole range of people.  And the thing that is so amazing to me is how absolutely dead similar they all are.  You know?  I mean, it's shocking.

On belief in a higher power
'''DS: Do you believe in a higher power?

 * AB: I wouldn't say that I believe in one.  I don't know.   I don't know if there's an organizing principle to the universe, or if there's  a sentient being that is the architect of everything--you know, everything being the "observable-and-beyond" universe.  I don't know.  I would like to know.  I would like to know--I don't believe in any  God that has been described by man in any way.  I certainly don't believe in the Islamic or the Jewish or the Christian God.  I don't believe a word of the Bible, I don't believe a word of any organized religion and I don't have any firm belief whatsoever, other than I don't know.  I can't say that I don't believe, because I really don't know.  I would love to know.

'''DS: Did you ever come close to believing?

 * AB: Yeah.  Oh, yeah.  Oh, yeah, I have.  As a child, I was very--I would almost say religious, as a child.  I prayed constantly, obsessively even.  So I was very, very, very religious as a child, or spiritual as a child.  And I went through another burst of spirituality, I think, when I got sober.

'''DS: Through a program?

 * AB: Yeah, yeah.  Yeah.

'''DS: Did it feel false to you?

 * AB: You know, it was funny, because I was able to really go with it and suspend--

[dishes are removed from table]

 * I was able to just go with it and just--pretend--I acted as if, and it just totally worked.

'''DS: Which I think a lot of people do.

 * AB: Mmm-hmmm.  And that's the thing, I mean if you--

'''DS: 'Fake it 'til you make it.'

 * AB: Yeah, yeah, and I mean, now I'm making it, and I don't really have to fake it.

'''DS: What was your higher power, then?

 * AB: I used to visualize--it's ridiculous, it's ridiculous.  But I just visualized a cartoon Jesus in the sky with a pet cow --

'DS: [chuckles'']

 * AB: The baby Jesus, you know, like--that's what I visualized--just a very cartoon version of Jesus, plucked from the manger with a pet cow.

'''DS: Sounds like something--that it would be great if one of your fans drew for you.

 * AB: Yeah, that would be great.  I wish they would.

'DS: [chuckles'']

 * AB: And now I'm going to get a stack--

'''DS: A swarm of cows and cartoon Jesuses. You’ll have to start a collection.

 * AB: I'm going to get a stack of them.

 * I would like to be a physicist. I would like to find out--because that's the question that physics seeks to answer, ultimately.

'''DS: When did you lose it, though? When did you lose the belief in the higher power?

 * AB: I couldn't--it's very diff--It wasn't even that much of an existential crisis.  It was much more like, um, it's just hard for me to believe--

'''DS: I meant more so in recovery, when you said to yourself, ‘I'm just not getting the higher power thing’, or, ‘I just have to give up on the cartoon Jesus.’

 * AB: It sort of faded away, I think. It sort of faded away.

'''DS: Once you were stronger.

 * AB: Yeah.  It's difficult for me to believe in something when I don't; when I don't have evidence.  Now, that's obviously the point of faith.  Faith is not meant to be logical:  faith is meant to be.  The argument for faith is it's meant to be a higher form of human functioning.  We don't use our base intellect, that we're supposed to go beyond that.  And…and… what more proof do you need?  I mean, someone would say, what proof do you need?  My God, the glass is not elevating off the table--there's your proof.  Gravity!  You know?  And maybe that's true.  It very well may be true.  It may be true.

 * I certainly know that--that if there is God, that God does not care that the person I watch TV with also has hairy arms. I mean, that's a ridic--the idea that a God would not like homosexuals, now, is patently absurd.  That doesn't even begin to become logical in any way.  The idea that the architect of gravity, the being that created the ability for elemental particles that are absolutely nothing to come together and create living organisms and bricks and buildings and cars and jets--the architect of absolutely everything would care--the sex of the person the little human loves?  It's a pitiful thought.  It's pitiful.

'''DS: It's a very small thought.

 * AB: It's an absolutely, profoundly small thought.  And there's no way it's true.

On the gay community
'''DS: What are your feelings about the gay community? Do you feel part of it?

[Waiter stops by]

 * AB: No, I've never really felt like part of the gay community.  I never questioned my sexual orientation.  I didn't go to school, so I didn't have that high school indoctrination.  I was raised without a formal religion.  When I was religious as a child, it was on my own.  I was the one asking the questions, and I was the one believing in Jesus.  It wasn't because I went to church.  If we went to church, it was because I wanted to go.  So I never had that indoctrination to believe it was wrong, and then I was plunged into such extraordinary living, uh, circumstances, that my--and I then had to think about my very survival and my very sanity--that sexual orientation just was--I didn't even think about it.  It was just like totally on the back burner.  And as a result of that, it was never really an issue.

'''DS: You had bigger issues to--

 * AB: Yeah.  I think of it as I'm right-handed.  I'm right-handed and attracted to men.  To me, it's the same thing.  I'm not "proud" of it, because it's not an accomplishment.  It's like being--

'''DS: I always found the idea of pride--I mean, I understand the genesis of it.

 * AB: Yes.

'''DS: I do understand where it came from. But now when I hear it, it sounds like such an anachronism. It's like--

 * AB: Well, we needed it originally, so that we could--

'''DS: "I proudly serve Starbucks coffee." The word "pride" is so bandied about in so many venues, and it's like, what do you mean, you “proudly” serve Starbucks coffee? What do you mean that you're “proud” about being gay, or --

 * AB: Right.  Where's your personal accomplishment?  Here's the thing:  I would be proud if I had been raised Evangelical Christian, and I had been taught from birth that it was wrong, and against the backdrop of that history, I was gay.

'''DS: You accepted yourself--

 * AB: Then, I would be proud.

'''DS: Yeah. I can understand that.

 * AB: That's the difference.  It was handed to me basically on a silver platter that was stuffed with mental illness--that's not a good metaphor, I mean it was--

'DS: [Laughs''] That's great…

 * AB: I never dealt with it.  It was never an issue.  I had so many other more life-critical issues to deal with that it was never something I thought about.  And therefore I never worked for it.  I never had to struggle to be gay.  It was the easiest thing, it was just like writing with my right hand.  So I'm not entitled to really be proud, but if I had to fight for it, I would be.  And I think that's the difference--

On his new book, A Wolf at the Table, a memoir about his father
'''DS: How did you teach yourself to write about difficult things in your life with such humor?

 * AB: Well, there was no teaching involved with that.  That's just the way that I wrote about myself.

'''DS: But originally you didn't, right? I heard an interview where you said you started writing something and you were like, 'Oh, God, this is just so depressing'--

 * AB: Oh, well--

'DS: And then you put it away, and decided that you were going to write something funny, which I think was Sellevision''?

 * AB: Yeah, I didn't probably explain that well--no, no, that wasn't Sellevision.  That was when I was working on Running with Scissors, when I sat down to begin writing it.  I began writing the book with a scene that was me and Bookman in a cornfield kissing, and it was so depressing to go back there and remember that.  It just felt so ugly that I thought, no, this--I can't do this.  I've got to start with something funnier.  So I started with a funnier scene from the book, and I focused on the parts of my life that to me, were fun and funny and wild.  So, that was really about that specifically.  The humor has always been such a part of my survival mechanism; that it was really organic to the writing.  It was just sort of one step back and removed and then, judging or commenting on, is something I do when I'm in a horrible situation.  I distance myself from my life this way, so that I can get through it.  So that's really where the humor comes from.  My next book, which is a memoir about my father, is not funny at all.  It's deadly serious.  And it's, um, just devastating.

'''DS: Did you make a choice--

 * AB: I made a deliberate choice with that book, yeah.

'''DS: Why was the choice made?

 * AB: Because it was the only way I could write that book, and I had to write that book.

'''DS: Did you try to write it funny at first?

 * AB: I was terrified--no.  And I know this may turn a lot of people off.  Because there are going to be people who approach this book with a smile on their face--

'''DS: 'Oh, another Burroughs!'

 * AB: And as soon as they hear the title, A Wolf at the Table, they'll already chuckle.  And then as they read it, they'll think, "Well, my God, he's lost it.  This isn't funny!"  And then the more they read, they'll realize: this is just horrible.  I mean, it's just a devastating, terrifying story.  But I had to write it for me--and, um, I mean, it's, it's definitely scary, because it's--I don't, you know, I don't want to alienate my readers, or my fans, but you know, I can't think about that.

'''DS: No.

 * AB: I can't…I can't write books to sell.

'''DS: But also, too, your fans should realize that you're not one-dimensional.

 * AB: Right.

'''DS: With your writing, that you don't have a--

 * AB: Well, that's the other thing.

'''DS: It's like, "Oh, we wanna see Data from 'Star Trek' be Data; we don't want to see him in his full range of emotions," you know--

 * AB: I don't want to be just funny, or just sarcastic, because you know I am--

'''DS: Versatile.

 * AB: I'm very serious--that's the weird thing; in person, I'm very serious.  I'm not so funny.  I'm, like, as funny as your dentist.  So, this book is…is--it's another side of me.

'''DS: Why do you think you are so serious in person?

 * AB: Well, I get a lot of it out in the books.  I used to be funnier, which is funny, ironic.

'''DS: Is it like a purpose-ness? That you're very purpose-driven now, or--?

 * AB: It's not that I'm purpose-driven; I've always been serious.  I've always been really, really serious.  I've always been very introspective and introverted, and--

'''DS: Do you and Dennis yuk it up at home?

 * AB: Some, yeah.  He's on the serious side, too.  [Laughs] It's like--whoo! what a fun time--no, we do have fun, we do laugh.  We have a very similar sense of humor, very dark  It's not to say that I'm always deadly serious; it’s that I'm not a person always "on" you know, in that funny way.

'''DS: How can anyone--

 * AB: You know?  I like being able to just-- I like that this book is going to show another side.

On women's breasts and tattoos
'''DS: What's your favorite curse word?

 * AB: My favorite curse word?  Let me think about that . . . . I like "cunt."

'DS: [Chuckles''] That's always the one that--

 * AB: It seems to offend so many people still.

'DS: It does.''

 * AB: There's something about it I like, or--

'''DS: It’s a cutting word. Do you have a favorite euphemism for women's breasts?

 * AB: Oh yeah, let's see…what do I call them…?  I like the old-fashioned words for breasts, like "boobies."  I like "boobies," um "girls," "my girls" or "your girls”;  I like the idea of naming breasts, like "Jen" and "Stacy."  I think every girl should name each breast.  "Stacy hangs a little lower"; "Stacy needs a tuck, but Beth doesn't."

'DS: [Chuckles''] What would you name your breasts?

 * AB: I would name them--"Regina" and "Claire."

'''DS: Would Claire be the bigger one?

 * AB: I'm glad I don't have them--actually, if I had them, I would have them sawed off.  I wouldn't be able to stand it.

'DS: [Laughs'']  Really?

 * AB: Yeah, I'd be like, "Chop these fucking things off."

'''DS: You're not like most gay men who have a fascination with breasts?

 * AB: I would want them gone.  They look uncomfortable.

'''DS: Do you like them on other people?

 * AB: Yeah, I do.

'''DS: Do you have a breast fetish?

 * AB: No, because you know what, I saw this picture of this woman who had breast cancer, and she had a radical mastectomy, and she had these massive scars, and then she had them tattooed.  And I thought that it looked soooo cool.  She looked great and she was in shape.  And I thought it would make me want breast cancer if I'd seen that picture; I would have thought, "I want it!"

'''DS: My sister has stretch marks on her stomach that she's really self-conscious about--

 * AB: Tattoo it.

'''DS: We've been talking about that!

 * AB: It's a good look.

'''DS: I had suggested to her tattooing a band of stars across it, that--

 * AB: Oh, what a great idea!

'''DS: Yeah, like where it starts out small, and goes like bigger over the marks?

 * AB: Yes.  Yep.  That's a beautiful idea.

'''DS: And she was all for it. We were going to take her to my tattoo guy, over here on First Avenue--

 * AB: Such a good idea.

'''DS: And she all of a sudden has been like, "Mmmmm, I don't really know." And she's like, "Maybe I'm going to get a belly button ring." But that's going to highlight it!

 * AB: Yeah.  Not the thing to do.

'''DS: No!  So--

 * AB: Get her drunk and get her tattooed.

'DS: [Laughs''] I should--it would only take one drink with her.

 * AB: I think it'd be cool to have razor stubble tattooed here on my head, so that it'd look like I have really thick hair, but choose to have it very short.

On losing his hair
'''DS: Was it difficult losing your hair?

 * AB: It was funny, because I've always been really good--I'm not--I'm not someone who goes into denial a whole lot.  Even though I was a big lush, I knew it.  I'm really honest with myself.  And when my hair cutter told me, "Oh, you're losing your hair," I said, "Oh, no, I'm not.  I've always had a high peak."  Then I went home and looked at it, and I saw that I was really losing it.  And I was horrified.  It was my--it mattered too much.  And so I deserved to lose it.

'''DS: It's really hard.

 * AB: It is hard.  Women don't--it's like losing your breasts.  Imagine if your breasts shrank up and shriveled away to cork nubs.  I mean, it would really be--it's traumatic, it is.

'''DS: I freaked out on my mom one time because she made a joke about it. I went overboard, I just freaked out. This was years ago, when it was just first starting to go a little bit. But I also always had a high peak, always.

 * AB: Right.

'''DS: As a matter of fact, people made fun of me about it in my Georgia high school.

 * AB: That is something that people would make fun of you about in a Georgia high school.

'''DS: Yeah. [In a southern accent] "Sportin' a pretty big forehead, there, Day-vid."

 * AB: Yeah, yeah.

'''DS: I freaked out. "You don't know what it's like! You don't have any idea!”  It was Christmas.  But a person has to get to a point where he accepts it.

 * AB: You do.

'''DS: Like when you see guys who try all these creative styles to--

 * AB: Yeah.

'''DS: You know, pushing all their hair forward, when it's really--

 * AB: Not good.

'''DS: You know, and you think--

 * AB: You need to let it go.

'''DS: Let it go. It makes it seem like they have trouble dealing with things.

 * AB: Oh, yeah!

'''DS: There's wider implications.

 * AB: Hair becomes your psychological issue, you know?

'''DS: Or reflection of psychological issues.

 * AB: Exactly.  Yeah, exactly.  It's the externalization of your denial.  Better just to chop it off, although, you know, I have to say…

'''DS: Yeah. You look very nice, without…

 * AB: Oh, thank you. I've been toying lately with getting a really good hairpiece, like a beautiful quality lace-front, but I would wear it on Tuesday, but not Wednesday, do you know what I mean?

'''DS: Yeah, yeah.

 * AB: Because some--why not--

'''DS: Like a hat.

 * AB: Exactly, exactly.  That's what I'd call it--my hair hat.  Like one day, you have Brad Pitt hair, but then the next you have no hair.

'''DS: Wouldn't it be great if you were Jewish, and you could have a yarmulke with a hairpiece underneath it?

 * AB: Yes.

'''DS: Or, or you wore a hairpiece as a yarmulke.

 * AB: Well, I have like a flesh yarmulke--my balding pattern's become like a little--

'''DS: But you have one of those really great heads that are conducive to having a shaved head. Like sometimes you see guys, and you're like, "Oh, you don't really have the head for having a shaved head," you know?

 * AB: Yeah, they have no option.

'''DS: Misshapen heads…

 * AB: Well, you do, too.  You look good like that.

'''DS: Thank you, thank God. I was told that by my sister, and I was like, "Oh, thank God," And she’s very honest with me.

 * AB: Thank God.

'''DS: And I said, "Thank God," because I don't really have a choice?

 * AB: You have a square jaw; that's why--

'''DS: Well, this is why I also do the scruff here, because I'm losing my hair. It's completely like…

 * AB: Yeah.  It happens.  Gotta have it somewhere.

'''DS: I used to think that beards were a form of male self-mutilation. Now, if I don’t do it I feel like I look like Norman Mailer or something.

 * AB: Ugh.

'''DS: Do you have nightmares?

 * AB: I used to, I used to.  And you know what, usually they're about being back in the house, from Running with Scissors, and I'm in the front TV/sitting room.  And I look down at myself, and I think, "Oh my God, what am I doing in this place?  I've got to get out of here before I get sucked back in.  They're going to see me here, and I'm going to get sucked back into this family.  I've got to get out of here."  I've had that recurring nightmare.

 * I've had some nightmares about my father hunting me in the woods-- some old dreams from childhood--I mean, my father used to do that, when I was very little. So I have those.  But very, very infrequently now.


text:
AMC Airlines charter plane makes emergency landing on belly in Istanbul

October 11, 2007 An aging McDonnell Douglas MD-83 passenger jet (registration: SU-BOY) of Egypt's AMC Airlines with 156 passengers and seven crew on a charter flight made an emergency belly landing at the Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey after requesting permission to perform an emergency landing for technical reasons.

The plane was returning vacationers to Poland from Hurghada and was bound for Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport.

The plane caught fire while belly landing and overshot the runway. One person was hurt. There were no fatalities. The plane is likely a total loss.

The Norwegian pilot said that the landing, which was made in darkness, was possible because of speckless sky at the time.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Talk:Augusten Burroughs on addiction, writing, his family and his new book

OR
Interview conducted in person with Augusten Burroughs on October 4, 2007. --David Shankbone 23:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Shouldn't the intro be in the third person? The rest of your interviews seem to be third person introduced. --  99.228.47.168 17:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Typically they are, and I don't usually deviate from the third person. This interview was a little special to me; it had an impact on me, so I broke from my third person narration.  I don't know if interviews "should" be in the third person (many interviews done at other publications and websites are not), but I, personally, prefer doing third person introductions.  But, this one was a unique experience, so I broke the mold a little.  --David Shankbone 18:54, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

suggestions
1. sorry to be nitpicky, but "I removed half of the interview; the half that focused on me" should have a colon instead of semi-colon. semi-colons are used when the part before the semi is a complete sentence and so is the part after. in this case, the part after isn't a complete sentence.

2. when reading the intro, i was very confused when you jumped from talking about talese to burroughs, with no explanation why. granted, i know nothing about the two men. but still, perhaps some logical connector would be helpful?

cheers Wikisoup 18:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't mind nit-picky stuff, especially if it corrects grammar/punctuation issues. I included the Talese to Burroughs transition because Talese raised an issue that was pertinent to Burroughs: what do you ask someone who has been asked everything?  There are arguments that a new venue can use recycled questions because new readers will find information in that forum; but as someone who wants to be a bit innovative in the discussion, no matter how foolish that attempt is, it can be difficult.  I opened the interview up with the "Talese Question" so I thought I would start the published piece with it as well.  I thought the transition was clear in the intro the way that I wrote it, but maybe not.  --David Shankbone 21:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I understood the connection after re-reading, and I like the way you parallel the two. There was just something that seemed a little abrupt in the transition to talking about Burroughs. Even a simple addition to your "With Gay Talese I had little interest in talking about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and with Augusten Burroughs I had little interest in..." sentence, like, "With Gay Talese I had little interest in talking about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and with Augusten Burroughs, in my recent interview, I had little interest in..." might help? I don't know ... you're the writer ... I'm just the dumb reader you have to communicate with. Wikisoup 22:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * (i should have put a smily face or something at the end there to show that was my attempt at humour) :p
 * I'm just glad you read it :-) (there's a smiley face for you). --David Shankbone 22:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


text:
Talk:AMC Airlines charter plane makes emergency landing on belly in Istanbul

It's "Istanbul", not "Instanbul". Could someone please fix the article title (e.g. move the page)? I'd do it myself, but I'm afraid of messing something up. 4.245.224.49 02:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, fixed.  —Fellow Wiki  Newsie 02:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * WOW, that was fast! Thank you. 4.245.224.49 02:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup. I watch the recent changes all the time :)  —Fellow Wiki  Newsie 02:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


text:
Turkey outraged over U.S. Armenian genocide resolution

October 12, 2007 Turkish officials have expressed outrage over a United States congressional resolution labeling the Ottoman Empire's World War I era killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians as "genocide". The Turkish government has warned that the resolution threatens its strategic partnership with the U.S.

The resolution, passed 27-21 by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, states that "[t]he Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed". The resolution calls on the President " to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide."

The World War I era killings, commonly referred to as the Armenian Genocide, have been recognized as genocide by 22 countries, including France, Russia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Canada. The killings have also been officially labeled as "genocide" by 40 of the 50 U.S. states. Turkey acknowledges that Armenians were killed, but calls it a massacre rather than an organized campaign of genocide.

On Thursday the Turkish government released a statement saying that "It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation should be accused of a crime that it never committed in its history." "We still hope that the House of Representatives will have enough good sense not to take this resolution further," the statement added. A statement on the Turkish Foreign Ministry web site said that the resolution "will not only endanger relations with a friendly and allied nation but will also jeopardize a strategic partnership that has been cultivated for generations."

On Thursday, Turkey recalled its U.S. ambassador Nabi Sensoy, and warned of further repercussions. "Yesterday some in Congress wanted to play hardball," said Turkish foreign policy adviser Egemen Bagis. "I can assure you Turkey knows how to play hardball."

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he was "disappointed" by the vote. While acknowledging that "[w]e understand the feelings that people have about the tragic suffering of the Armenian people," Stanzel warned that "Turkey is playing a critical role in the war on terror and this action is problematic for everything we're trying to do in the Middle East and would cause great harm to our efforts." U.S. President George W. Bush had lobbied against the resolution, saying that it would damage relations between the U.S. and Turkey.

House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said the resolution will go forward for a vote in the House despite Turkish opposition. "As long as there is genocide, there is a need to speak out against it," Pelosi said.


text:
Comments:Turkey outraged over U.S. Armenian genocide resolution

I hope it won't get passed in the senate. Turks have been burning U.S. flags for a wile now already. They are going to be the next France. Contralya 03:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

 * *shrugs* it was a genocide. Lyellin 04:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I don't know, I wasn't there. But shouldn't it be left up to historians? There is no reason to bash a nation based on what may of happened 80 years ago if it jeopardizes supply lines and stability. A big percentage of turks hate the U.S. already, after the hood event, as illustrated by a certain book and certain movie. If this thing is passed, than most Turkish will be happy at any American death and terrorists will probably start recruiting there.

 * oh come on. i'm not going to say charles manson wasn't a murderer if he gets mad at me for calling him that. even the turks have admitted that 300,000 Armenians were killed, so likely there were more than that. estimates go so high as 1,500,000. according to wikipedia, "Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group". that many Armenians killed in 3 years sounds pretty systematic to me. Turkey should own up to what happened as other countries with awful embarrassing pasts have had to. it's not like the US said that modern Turks were responsible for it. Wikisoup 17:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

It is a real shame, Turkey is one of the big players in NATO. Though, since many other government have passed similar things calling the events genocide, I doubt they can afford to be against everyone. Contralya 08:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Hypocritical?
It is reprehensible that the U.S. is divided on the issue of whether or not to call the Armenian Genocide a genocide or not. Divided 40-10 (10 states agree that the genocide did not happen), the U.S. seems to take issue with mass killings of non-military personnel. Is there not proof of the killings? Is President Bush willing to overlook one genocide in order to continue performing his own in the Persian Gulf states?

 * Did you even read the article? They are concerned about supply lines and stability in the middle east! Contralya 09:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Consider it drawing the lines and deciding where all of the major players stand on the fundamental issues. If Turkey is to be accepted as a true ally of the Free World, they have to acknowledge their past misgivings and learn from them, like the West already did with colonization and the World Wars. Then we will know that they do indeed share our basic values. Otherwise, they are no more allies than the islamofascist theocracy of Saudi Arabia is. 195.214.233.225 13:15, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Someone should tell the turks that. Contralya 16:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Truth is Truth.
Denying historical events because it jeopardizes our current or future military goals is nothing but pure fallicy. It was a genocide and should be classified as such.

 * Not passing a resolution calling it genocide is NOT saying that it wasn't genocide. And many U.S. states have already ruled that it is genocide. Contralya 09:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Indian Genocide!
While we are at it, let's label the elimination of American Indians as what it is: a genocide.

I say, lets consider what is driving this vote in senate. Did we suddenly come to the realization of this "genocide"? Consider the foreign policy implications and current goals of the lobbyist and you'll have the answer.

 * No one is denying anything. What happened in the past should be determined by historians. Most people know that it was genocide, putting it into law can only hurt the relationship with Turkey. Contralya 09:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Please
Please actually read the article before posting a comment, thank you. Contralya 09:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Another hamstrining move by the Glorious People's Democratic Party of America
As if insulting Turkey (a nation hosting critical forward USArmy and USAF bases) over the acts of their previous government against the peoples of Armenia (a nation NOT hosting or helping the US and/or coalition members) were not enough, perhaps the Pelosi-led coalition could pass a resolution against the British for their role in the genocide they participated in against the Native Americans or even one against the Germans for their genocide against the Celts or Romans. At what point do we continue to punish modern peoples for the crimes of their predecessors? I'm firmly waiting for the Democratically-led Congress to reprimand themselves for the genocidal activities of their predecessors against the Iroquois, the Spanish, and the Japanese.

First step in moving on is to acknowlege the crime.
A good chunk of the world recognizes it at genocide, as do most historians. It was done by their predecessor government. This is just like Russia refusing to acknowledge the crimes the USSR inflicted on it's enslaved territories. The Germans don't seem to have a problem on weather or not the Holocaust happened. I guess the problem is, in Germany, the horrible acts were done by a radical racist fascist group: Nazis and Hitler, but in other places in the world, they don't have a group like the Nazis to blame (Japan also has the problem.)

The Turks have been lying to themselves. If they hadn't been, this thing would of passed decades earlier and the Turks wouldn't be so bent out of shape because of it. Contralya 16:12, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Map Issues
Since when are states countries? The map has several states shaded, however they have little meaning in context of the map which indicates countries. 97.86.227.103 02:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


title: File:12October2007.pdf


title: File:12October2007.sxw


text:
Violence increases as Darfur peace talks approach

October 12, 2007 United Nations Envoy Jan Eliasson said Thursday that negotiating a ceasefire in the conflict occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan will be the main goal of the peace talks scheduled for later this month.

"The first very concrete step ... is that we will go for and hopefully achieve a credible cessation of hostilities," Eliasson said in Khartoum.

"I find the situation on the ground ... deeply alarming. The military escalation is a great source of concern...Haven't we seen enough violence and hopelessness? Don't we see what is happening to the social fabric of Darfur ... torn apart completely -- is this what we want to perpetuate?"

Eliasson also warned that any delay in the negotiations would be detrimental in stopping the violence in the region. Despite protests from rebel leaders, he pleaded for affiliates from all of the numerous rebel groups to attend the peace talks, currently scheduled for October 27th in Libya. Mark Malloch Brown, Britain's Minister for Africa, said Wednesday that rebel groups who do not participate in the peace talks will not benefit from any possible ceasefire deals.

"Anybody who wants to be a legitimate representative of the Darfuri people needs to go," Lord Malloch Brown said.

"If they opt out, they should understand the consequences of doing that - probably their role in the peace negotiations may be finished."

These comments came on the same day that forces believed to be from the Sudanese government and janjaweed militias attacked a fortification in Muhajiriya of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), the only rebel group to co-sign a 2006 peace agreement with the Sudanese government. At least 40 people were killed in the attack.

"Until now the number of dead civilians are at least 40, with 80 missing and a large number of injured," the SLA said in a statement sent to Reuters. They believe that Sudan's army was responsible for the attack, although the government has refuted this accusation. "There has to be an international investigation immediately," said Minni Arcua Minnawi, an SLA leader who became a presidential advisor in Khartoum. Speculation is rampant about the motivations for the attack, although analysts in Nairobi claim that the rebel movement and the government were barely allies even after the signing of the peace pact.

Another crisis in the peace process occurred Thursday when the main southern political party pulled out of the government due to Khartoum's inability to share power. Former rebels from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew from the national government after the escalation of violence against rebels.

Adding even more to the uncertainty leading up to the peace talks, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a report that Khartoum was delaying the deployment of the African Union-UN hybrid peacekeeping force.

"The implementation timeline for UNAMID is being delayed owing to ... delays in obtaining feedback regarding the list of troop-contributing countries submitted to the government of Sudan," said the Secretary General's report.

"I remain extremely concerned about the continuing violence in Darfur. The ongoing loss of life and displacement of civilians is unacceptable and is not contributing to an atmosphere conducive to peace talks."

Though these events have put the peace talks at risk, all involved know that the success of the talks is critical for the well-being of the region. As Eliasson said, "To miss this opportunity is a tragedy -- this is the moment of truth,".


text:
Sam Brownback on running for President, gay rights, the Middle East and religion

October 15, 2007 is perplexed. The U.S. Senator from Kansas and Presidential candidate is a Republican whose politics—he is against marriage for gay people, he is against abortion, and he has a clean image in a party tainted by scandal—should speak favorably to the party's base. But it has not. "I'm baffled by that myself," Senator Brownback told Wikinews reporter David Shankbone. "We haven't been able to raise money."

A recent poll in Iowa has put him in eighth place, with 2% supporting his campaign. "If we don't finish fourth or better in Iowa...we'll pull out."

Senator Brownback's relationship with God infuses almost every answer you find below. Although he doesn't feel "competent" to explain why God would dislike gays, he does feel strongly that allowing two men or two women to enter into the union of marriage will destroy it for heterosexuals. Pointing to the research of Stanley Kurtz at the, Brownback asserts that Northern Europeans have "taken the sacredness out of the institution."

In the interview, Senator Brownback discusses the tug-and-pull that befalls him when his constituents show up at his office and say, "Look, I'm a conservative, but we need this bridge, we need this subsidy, we need this hospital.” Brownback feels this spending system needs to be changed; however, when it comes to energy policy, Brownback is there for his constituents.  David Shankbone asked the Kansas Senator, a supporter of, why he doesn't support the lowering of tariffs on sugar since  delivers 8 times the energy output of cellulosic ethanol.  Brazil, in particular,  because of its sugar ethanol program.  It's cheaper to produce, and there is vastly more bang for the buck in sugar fuel than in corn fuel; an entire country no longer needs to import oil because of it.   currently make sugar ethanol too expensive in the United States.  "You're going to kill the ethanol industry here just as it gets going," was Senator Brownback's response. However, there is a to make corn ethanol uses more energy than the ethanol itself produces.

Below is David Shankbone's interview with Senator Sam Brownback.

On running in and possibly leaving the Presidential race
'''David Shankbone: Senator Brownback, how are you?

 * Sam Brownback: I'm fine; headed into Iowa.  I’m doing a big event with Joe Biden tomorrow on a political solution in.

'''DS: I read that.

 * SB: Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty excited about that.  Maybe we can get some attention for a prospect that would really work.

'''DS: Is it pretty gratifying for you to work with people on the other side of the aisle to try and find solutions?

 * SB: It is, because I think it defies what the country views Washington as being, which is as so hopelessly polarized that it can't get anything done.  It shows some hope that even on tough issues like Iraq, we can get things done.  So I think it gives some hope to the country, too, when we do things like that.

'''DS: I remember sort of the old days where you'd hear about  being best friends with ; do you think that the  period ushered in an era where people were too opposed to each other on the sides of the aisle?

 * SB: Oh, I think we too often look for ways to fight, rather than ways to get along.  And that's been a feature in recent years.  Yeah, maybe that time is coming to a bit of an end as people have such low opinions of Congress and of politics, that maybe people will start finding these ways forward, and people will reward folks for doing that.  We'll see.  I don't know that the divisive period is over, but it does strike some interest in people when you do do it.  Maybe we can.

'''DS: Running for President has to be a grueling experience, and there must be a million things that you see out there when you're on the road that either you had not thought about before or you didn't know existed. Could you tell me about one?

 * SB: Well, you know, I just heard one.  I was doing a big  interview with a group out of, doing a call-in, and I had a couple of callers coming from the left in the political spectrum talking about their willingness to more engage in a discussion of faith and cut back on abortion.  I thought it was very encouraging--and these are quite sincere people--part of what they're looking for in the Democratic party is more of a way forward on tough issues that have been divisive.  I found that very encouraging.

'''DS: That's great. Throughout my life, my father, who is an avid lifelong Republican, he used to tell me--this is a question that I'd asked Tom Tancredo as well, but I think it really comes down to one of the central issues in this race--he had said, "All we need is a Republican Congress, a Republican Senate, and a Republican White House to get the country on the right track." And last year, he expressed to me that he was very disappointed with where things have gone with the Republicans running things. He feels let down; he feels like he was lied to by the Party, either through the rationale for the Iraq war, the sex and bribery scandals, the pork barrel projects, and, as said, the fiscal irresponsibility. He feels like there have been many broken promises. Why should someone like my father vote Republican today? And I can assure you he will. But why do you think he should?

 * SB: If he's looking for any of those issues to be addressed by the Democrats, they're not going to be.  And I would hope he could also see that we've got two people on the Supreme Court now that are, we hope, pro-life votes to overturn, that he will see that  legislation was passed, that taxes were cut. And what I would also say to him is that I think we also have to see that the system is built to spend.  I hear from Republicans and Independents alike that the biggest thing they've been upset about, if you set aside opinions on the war, has been spending.  And the system's just built to spend.  Whether Republicans or Democrats are in control, you just constantly get that.  I've said many times—I’ve represented Kansas since 1995--I have yet to have a single constituent come in my office and say, "Hey, we're getting too much Federal money; would you please cut it?"  I get all the time people saying, "Look, I'm a conservative, but we need this bridge, we need this subsidy, we need this hospital.”  And the system's just built to spend.  That's why you've gotta change the system, and I've been pushing aggressively, taking the  process they'll use for military bases and applying it to the rest of government.  So you've got an actual culling process that you're regularly requiring Congress to vote on.  Because you've just got to change the system of its spending proclivities.

'''DS: When you think about dropping out of the race, what emotions do you feel?

 * SB: Well, that presumes I'm taking that step, and what we're--

'''DS: You've discussed it, and I'm just wondering when it's a thought that occurs to you-- not an inevitability---just when you think about it as a possibility, how do you feel when you reflect upon it?

 * SB: You know, what I've said is that if we don't finish fourth or better in Iowa that we'll pull out. And I think you just--if you look at it in that context, and I do, and this is a fabulous country, it's a great honor to be running for President, sharing big ideas with the country, and what a great place, that a guy can grow up on a farm in Eastern  and run for President of the United States.  I love a country like that.

'''DS: Do you feel sad when you think about possibly leaving?

 * SB: No, I feel the great honor of putting ideas out there, and we continue to do it.  We're giving a big speech on Sunday in Boston, and we're going to talk there about the expansion of the  agenda, the need for racial reconciliation and an official apology for slavery and segregation....continuous talk about big ideas.

On the role of religion in the Presidential race
'''DS:  candidates haven't fared particularly well in this primary season. What do you think is the reason for that?

 * SB: I don't know.  I'm baffled by that myself.  We haven't been able to raise money.  But you would think we should be able to do that.  If you look at both  and myself in particular.  I've had some difficulty based on the immigration issue, because I've supported a .  I think it's part of looking at every human as having dignity.  We should try to enforce the laws, and we should enforce the laws and build a fence on the border, but at the same time see every person as a beautiful person created in the image of God, and that's been a very tough topic on our side of the aisle.  Why we haven't gotten more traction, I don't know.

'''DS: The Democrats often have concerns about the electability of their candidates;, for example. Do you think that it might scare some people that in this point in time that Evangelicals aren't particularly electable?

 * SB: Oh, I suppose it could be.  I suppose it actually applies in reverse more, in that the reason why  is getting support is because of 9/11 and he is seen as the most likely person able to beat Hillary.  I think it probably applies to that setting more than not seeing an Evangelical as electable, because  I think would generally be seen in that category and was elected twice.

'''DS: Do you think 's  is an issue that people should take into consideration?

 * SB: I don’t.  There's no religious test for public office in this country.  There shouldn't be.  I think people should run on who they are and their record, and there I think he has a challenge, based on his record.  But his faith should not be an issue.

'''DS: What if someone was a ?

 * SB: Well, let's see what their policies are.  Uhh--

'''DS: Or a.

 * SB: Let's see what their policies are.

'''DS: Really?

 * SB: There's not a religious test in this country, and let's see what their policies are.

'''DS: Even though religious beliefs are so fundamental to a person? It's more of a policy issue than it is a faith issue?

 * SB: I think you'll see a person by what they produce, in their fruit, if you'll let me use that religious phrase.  I think you'll know a person by their fruit.  And that's what I think you'll see more coming through in people, and that that's what you should look for, and that's, I think, an observable--about how they live their own life, about what policies they advocate, about what are their priorities.

'''DS: If someone told you that they were scared to vote for someone who doesn't believe in, what would you say to that person?

 * SB: Well, I'd say to them that, for my part, I think most people agree that Man is not an accident, and that evolution is something that's taught in science class by state standards, they're not set by the Federal government, really shouldn't be something that would enter into their mind, not a Federal issue, it's one that's set by the states.  I think most people that are concerned about evolution from a faith side want to see more taught about the science of how we got here, both at the very start--how did we get the initial cells, the initial biological entities, how did we get this incredible physics set up of this planet, universe that could have a carbon-based system here, all based on science.  Just teaching science.  And to teach more science, not less, on it.  For me personally, I just have no doubt that God created us.  How he did it, what mechanisms he used, I don't know.  The fact that he did it, I have no doubt.

'''DS: You don’t think that evolution is incompatible with an  theory? That we could have evolved based upon the evolution idea, but that it could have still been the work of God?

 * SB: There's some people that look at it that way.  I think there's some--I think that's kind of an interesting way of looking at it.  I don't--

'''DS: What's your personal belief on that?

 * SB: I don't know.  Just what I said--that I don't know how God did it.  A number of people would in what you're describing a kind of, I don't know what you'd term it, a faith-based evolution or--that's not the term that some would call it.

'''DS: It works.

 * SB: A guy at the, , I've met with several times, I've read his book , is in that category. And I find that very interesting.  I think there's some rationality, too, when you look at the consistency of the genetic code between species, the different lengths, the different pieces that are in it, but there's a lot of the same genetic language that's there.  Where I think we're really lost is we're segregating science and faith.  And they ask and answer different questions.  Science asks how, and faith asks why.  And I think we'd be so much richer, and in societies in the past in Western civilization they did this a lot more, if you had the interaction of the two, of faith and science.  Because these don't conflict.  If they do, you need to either check your science or check your faith.  But they conflict, and for most people's lives in the United States, they want somebody to strongly support science. And whatever we can do to understand better the cosmos and how we work and improve our lives.  And yet it's a faith-based country.  You have ninety percent of the country that believes in God.  Most people, they don't see conflicts in this, and we would be so much richer if we had the discussion, rather than really trying to pit one against the other.

On the culture of life
'''DS: What do you think is the greatest threat to humanity?

 * SB: The lack of regard for life as being sacred I think would be my biggest threat to humanity.

'''DS: What is the ? How would you describe that phrase?

 * SB: It's seeing all life, at all places, at all stages as beautiful and unique, sacred, a child of a loving God.  To me that's what a culture of life is, and us having walked away from that, we've had millions of abortions here, hundreds of millions around the world, people that should be here but are not.

'''DS: Bobby Schindler, 's brother, endorsed your candidacy by saying that "Sam Brownback is the pro-life conservative we can trust to stand for all life, regardless of political calculations." Do you think the detracts from the culture of life?

 * SB: I do, and that's why I am not a supporter of a death penalty, other than in cases where we cannot protect the society and have other lives at stake.  But again, I understand people who support the death penalty saying, "This is different," whether it's an innocent human life or somebody that's committed a heinous crime.  In trying to move forward with a culture of life, I think we need to try to do that in every setting, including the use of the death penalty by the State.

On the Iraq War and the Middle East
'''DS: A common question I've asked in my interviews is about the Iraq War and how it has affected someone as a person. People often proffer their opinion on the war, but they don't really talk much about how it has affected them personally, perhaps in their world view. The writer insisted the war has not affected him at all. "I wish it had," he said. Talese thinks there's a problem with Americans not sacrificing enough, and he argued that we need. Do you think we need conscription, if not to support the manpower of the war, to make Americans more involved with the wars that we are fighting?

 * SB: Absolutely not.  I'm absolutely opposed to conscription.  The military opposes conscription; they want a  that signs up to be a part of the military, not people that are forced into it.  And I don't think that's a necessarily right way to look at it, as far as that we need to feel more of the pain of the conflict.  We're getting close to four thousand young .  I think a lot of people know individuals personally that have been touched by this war in that most difficult way.  I think it's impacted a lot of people in very strong and profound ways.

'''DS: What you think the proper role of Congress is in a time of war?

 * SB: To, which we did in the , is, I think, a proper role of Congress; to fund it, as we have been, and if people don't like the war, to stop the funding for the war.  That's the role.  I think there's an oversight role for Congress to play that can be very effective and helpful.  I think there are suggestions that we can make, critical or complimentary in fashion, like what Joe Biden and I are doing on suggesting our political setup in Iraq is not working, and we think it should go another route.  That ultimately has to be decided by the Iraqis, and not by us, but we can highlight these issues.

'''DS: Do you feel the American people were misled with the war in Iraq?

 * SB: Based on the information we had at the time, I do not. On what we have found since, we have not found weapons of mass destruction.  But the information we had at the time, from our intelligence service and from intelligence services overseas, was that they had weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, and they were working on nuclear, and they had used them in the past, which we know they had--used them.  There's also, I think, David, a real tendency, a decision made in 2003 through the eyes of 2007.  In 2003, we're within two years of 9/11.  The country is still in shock of what had happened at 9/11, and there was no way we were going to let somebody else, if we could stop it, get in a position to be able to use weapons of mass destruction, give them to terrorists, and come after us. And that seemed like an all-too-plausible scenario with Saddam Hussein having had weapons of mass destruction--we thought still had them.  And having terrorists operate on this soil.  We had a strong thought that he would mix the two against us.  And we were not going to let that happen in light of that close proximity to 9/11.  Now you go to 2007, you say, "Well, that doesn't seem like a very highly likely scenario, but in 2003, it seemed an all-too-plausible scenario.  And the first charge of the Federal government is to protect the people.  When a bipartisan majority strongly voted to support the war in Iraq, it was with the thought of protecting the American people.

'''DS: What do you think is going to happen to Egypt after Mubarak?

 * SB: It looks like now he's grooming, and they may well be able to pull off that succession.  I would hope over a certain period of time they would get a more democratic, open economic system and that they would bring in people with the courage for that.  I'm fearful of the  taking over if there was an open election today in Egypt.  It seems to me they have the upper hand in a general election in Egypt today.

'''DS: Do you think it's a bad idea to have elections in countries if it's possible that an  will win, such as happened in Palestine with ?

 * SB: No, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, but I also don't think elections necessarily mean that you're going to have an open, free society, as we've seen taking place in the Palestinian authority and the activities of Hamas and now them even throwing out  from the, and this huge conflict that's taking place there.  I think we're just gonna have to be a lot more  about this in the Middle East and the Muslim region of the world, about how far you can push and how hard you can push the governmental systems without just going into the  regime.  One of the things I think we've gotta push a lot better, David, is to have the governments there provide services to the people, like health care and education, that are all too often being provided by these radical Islamic groups, so that people look more to the radical elements to meet their daily needs than the role that the government should be playing.  I think that's bad for us.  I think it's bad for the governments of those countries, and they need to do better about taking care of their own people.

'''DS: Do you think that things like the  are projects that shouldn't be funded? And I'm using that popular phrase--I realize it's a little emotionally charged--but things such as that.

 * SB: Yes, I agree that they shouldn't be funded.  What I'd like to see is, again, you change the system.  You require an authorization before you can get an appropriation, so I think that'll cut down more on those projects more than anything else.

'''DS: You support the  that would essentially allow Israel to keep the entire West Bank while taking little responsibility for its Arab residents. The plan is against U.S., Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian policies. Why do you think that would advance peace in the Middle East?

 * SB: Well, at first, I didn't endorse the plan.  We put out a statement yesterday on this;  I think this is an interesting entry into a discussion that we haven't gotten very far at all with, this land-for-peace-type concept.  It has not produced peace.  I think what you're seeing in the Gaza Strip just further clarifies that.  The Palestinian authority was given full control over this--what happened, you had Hamas run Fatah out in a gun battle.  That's not a civil society. What I'm saying here is that it seems to me a good idea to look at a different model where you can get settlement of the Palestinian refugees and bring the Jordanians back into the picture on the West Bank, so you're not--you're looking more at a stable country like Jordan being involved, rather than trying to have the Palestinian authority take over when they've just shown no capacity to be able to govern.  That's why I think this is an interesting way for us to look forward.  I have not and I do not endorse the plan, but I do think we've gotta get different models on the table for discussion.

On gay rights
'''DS: I interviewed the writer Augusten Burroughs. I would like you to answer a question that he posed. He said that "God does not care that the person I watch TV with also has hairy arms, that the idea that a God would not like homosexuals is patently absurd, that it doesn't even begin to become logical in any way, that the idea that the architect of gravity, the being that created the ability for elemental particles that are absolutely nothing to come together and create living organisms and bricks and buildings and cars and jets, that the architect of absolutely everything would care about the sex of the person that this little human loves seems ridiculous." Why is that not ridiculous?

 * SB: I think He cares about everything.  I don't know that everybody would take this as authoritative, but the Bible talks about a  not falling without Him knowing that--He's numbered the hairs on your head, so that He cares about everything, and He's certainly a God of love-- He loves us very much.  That's one of His central attributes, that He's a God of love, so I think He cares about everything and that there's nothing that would escape His view.  We also have absolute  to do as we see fit; we're not robots by any means.  But I think He cares about everything.

'''DS: Why do you think it would bother God that somebody is gay?

 * SB: Well, you're asking a theological question on something I'm just really probably not competent to answer.  It usually gets asked in a context of the institution of marriage, and there, where I think the great need is for our society, is to uphold the institution as it has been, to recognize its great contribution to the raising of the next generation, and to see that more people, more of our next generation, is raised in a setting where you have a mom and a dad bonded together for life.  The reason there is a State interest is that in all the social data--we know from all the social data that the best place to raise a child, is between a mom and a dad bonded together for life, that your highest percentage of children in that setting will get a good education, will generally get a good working environment, life—they’ll perform best.  Now you can raise a good child in a single-parent family; you can raise a terrible child in a two-parent, stable setting.  So things don't always work that way.  But we do know from all the data that the best place for most is in that two-parent setting.  When you redefine marriage--the countries that have done this, they've see their marriage rates go down, and the institution be weakened, and fewer children raised in that setting.  That's why I think it's important to really stand for marriage being the union of a man and a woman.

'''DS: In what country that has passed same-sex marriage has traditional marriage declined?

 * SB: --there's--Stanley Kurtz is the lead researcher on this.  He's out at the, and you see in--I've talked about when you pull the sacredness out of marriage, the marriage rates go down, you've seen this probably as pronounced as anywhere in a number of countries of Northern Europe, where you're now getting close to eighty percent out-of-wedlock birth rates on first children in some counties in Northern Europe.  They've kind of gone from "Well, we don't really need to be married; anybody, any two people can get married"-you've just, you've taken the sacredness out of the institution.  This is the work that I'm citing though, off of that.

'''DS: Got you.

 * SB: But it's looking at the totality of--within the last forty years, it's a different societal view of marriage.

'''DS: Why did you vote against the Federal expansion of hate crimes to include sexual orientation?

 * SB: Well, for a couple of reasons.  One, it was in the defense bill, which I didn't think it was appropriate to be in there.  Number two, it's a state issue.  I think it's unconstitutional to put this out at the Federal level.  For the Federal government to enact a crime, there has to be an interstate commerce nexus to it.  Number three, the states are handling this well; the two cases cited--the  case in  and the case in Texas, you've got the death penalty in one case and life imprisonment in the other.  You can't get much harder on somebody there.  And the final issue on this is that there's a substantial possibility of a chilling effect on free speech of people of religion--if there are ministers speaking from the pulpit on their view of homosexuality from a spiritual perspective.

'''DS: Ministers speaking out against homosexuality would come under the province of a hate crime?

 * SB: A number of people believe strongly that it will.  Those are a series of reasons why.

 * See also: Wikinews Interview with gay marriage movement founder Evan Wolfson

Brownback on Brownback
'''DS: If you could choose your manner of, how would you die?

 * SB: I hadn't thought much about that....

'''DS: It's a  question.

 * SB: Gosh, I don't know.  I more just--I want to be prepared to die, that I would pray at that point in time that I'm ready to meet my Maker, that I have a clean soul, that I've done what the Lord would have required of me and have lived as loving and caring a life as possible.

'''DS: But you've never thought about how--if you could choose how you'd prefer to die?

 * SB: No, that's--

'''DS: It seems like such a basic human thing to contemplate, one's mortality. I mean, I believe you, but--

 * SB: I've contemplated my mortality a lot.  Because I had  eleven years ago, and I thought a long time about my mortality.  But what it did to me, it didn't make me think about how I wanted to die; it made me think about how I was living.  And I just wasn’t happy with how I was living.

'''DS: What weren't you happy with?

 * SB: I was too ; I was too -driven.  I was not paying near the attention to my family that I should have been.  I was more interested in climbing the ladder, rather than helping people.  And it really came around to me that if I were to die with this, I wouldn't have been happy with how I'd lived my life.  And it just--it made my faith much stronger; it radically changed me, in looking at that.

'''DS: That was your--

 * SB: I still get it wrong a lot.  I am nowhere, anywhere near perfect.  I am a sinful, fallen man, but my faith really drives me much more now, and I do a lot of things that before, I wouldn't have done.  And I'm much happier with my life now than before that episode.

'''DS: Was that your impetus to run for the Senate?

 * SB: No, but it did shape me, because it was just ahead of that run for the Senate that that episode happened.

'''DS: What trait do you deplore in other people?

 * SB: I have too many of my own I deplore; it's hard for me to pick on somebody else.

'''DS: Oh...

 * SB: I get judgmental quickly.  I don't see, as I should, the image of God as much in others as I really want to.  They're not traits in others that I deplore; it's ones in myself.

On environmentalism and energy
'''DS: Do you believe that a good Christian should also be a good environmentalist?

 * SB: Yes.

'''DS: How so?

 * SB: Well, we're given the planet and given dominion over it, and I believe we should be good stewards of that.  Now, the question becomes how do you do that, but I think the admonition to do that is God's creation, and we're the stewards of it.  I think we clearly should be.

'''DS: And you don’t think that Arctic drilling contradicts that notion?

 * SB: I don't think the  drilling has been proscribed.  We're talking about drilling in an area--I think the size is about ten miles by ten miles in an area that's the size of South Carolina.  We do need resources to be able to continue to run--that our dependency on foreign oil generally favors some people who are--who do a lot of pretty bad things, out of, or , and that if we were less dependent upon that they would have less chance of doing some of the things they're doing.  To me, I think you've got to look at it in a balance…I'd love to see us using a lot more electricity in our car fleet, reduce our dependence on oil drastically.

'''DS: What about ?

 * SB: Sure.  Sugarcane ethanol?

'''DS: Do you think we should lower tariffs on sugar in order to be able to import more Brazilian sugar ethanol?

 * SB: You're gonna kill the ethanol industry here just as it gets going.

'''DS: But it would reduce our dependency on foreign oil, thus increasing our national security, wouldn't it? Or is the ethanol industry here more important?

 * SB: Well, I think on the equation you're talking about, I think getting the ethanol industry here going--and particularly on .  And that's our big play to make here; we're--

'''DS: But the energy that you derive from that.

 * SB: I don't--you may be right on that.  I've not looked at that energy ratio, but--it's a sound environmental way to go, on cellulosic ethanol, and that's, I think, the big play we need to be making and pushing aggressively towards in this country for energy independence and good environmentalism.  I'm the lead Republican on a bipartisan bill that pushes this concept, and a big piece of it is getting plug-in cars on the marketplace than can do the first twenty or thirty miles off of electricity instead of either gasoline or ethanol, because half of the country doesn't drive over twenty or thirty miles a day.  And that way, you can really drop your imported oil use quickly; it's good for the environment, too.

On Wikipedia
'''DS: Senator, do you think that  is important?

 * SB: Yes, a lot of people use it to get a quick kind of reference point review of a lot of different topics, including politics.  And political figures.

'''DS: Definitely. What do you find important about it?

 * SB: Just that.  I mean, it's an easy access; it can be amended.  I've not used it, but I've been with other people that have accessed it and know a lot of people that all say, "Yeah, I looked it up on Wikipedia," so I know it's broadly and widely used.

'''DS: I tried to get an interview with  of the, and I spoke to their Director of Public Relations; I had about a twenty-minute phone call with him, and he was very hostile to it. One of the things that I'd said to him--because he was saying that a lot of information is incorrect--I made the point to him that, "You know, it may be incorrect, but the idea is that you can have Scientologists go on there to correct it." It's not a one-sided place for information; if you feel that there's inaccuracies, the idea is that you can also have people who know the truth go on there and correct it and debate about it, if that is what is necessary to get an accurate view. Whereas if you say something to Newsweek, and they print something that's incorrect, you're stuck.

 * SB: You're stuck, because that happened to us in  magazine, and we got to do a nice letter to the editor that less than probably two percent of the people that read the big article saw.  Wasn't fair that way.  Hey, good to talk to you, David.

'''DS: Very good to talk to you. Best of luck, Senator Brownback.

 * SB: Thank you.  Bye.


text:
Al Gore and Climate Panel awarded Nobel Peace prize 2007

October 12, 2007 The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to former U.S. Vice President Albert Arnold Gore Jr. and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Nobel committee cited "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" as the reasons for awarding the prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is the name of one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor. The other prizes are given out in Sweden, in different categories, but the Peace prize is given out by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway. Last year, and the  won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Oslo, the capital of Norway. The actual prize always is presented on the 10th of December, the anniversary of the death of Nobel. The Norwegian king is in attendance. For the past decade, the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony at the Oslo City Hall has been followed the next day by the, which is broadcast to over 150 countries and more than 450 million households around the world. The Concert has received worldwide fame and the participation of top celebrity hosts and performers.

By the provisions of Nobel's will, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Norwegian Nobel Committee
The Committee's five members are entrusted with researching and adjudicating the Prize as well as awarding it. Although appointed by the (Stortinget), they are independent and answer to no legislative authority. Members of the Norwegian government are not permitted to sit on the Committee. Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors (in certain disciplines), international judges, and special advisors to the Prize Committee.


text:
Kordia's annual report shows increase in profit

October 12, 2007 New Zealand state-owned enterprise (SOE), Kordia published its annual report a few days ago for the financial year ending June 30, 2007.

Formerly known as Broadcast Communications Ltd (BCL) prior to the name change in November 2006, the Crown-owned company offers contracting, consulting, and networking services. They operate a national communication network and provides network feeds and broadcast services for the major television and radio networks in New Zealand.

The annual report shows Kordia Group Limited's net profit, after tax, at NZ$11.9 million, the 2006 result was $9.8 million. Revenue was up from $201 million in the 2006 financial year to $264 million this year; a 31% increase. Chairman of Kordia, Wayne Brown, described this financial year as "solid achievement" while being "on track to record further growth in the exciting fields in which it operates."

These increases is despite the major acquisition of Orcon Internet Limited, an ISP (Internet service provider). Kordia will use Orcon, acquired on 2 July, 2007, to invest and deliver the possibilities of the current progress of local loop unbundling, new Wi-Fi zones, and WiMAX technology. CEO of Kordia, Geoff Hunt, said, "Orcon will soon offer a complete range of Voice over IP products". Orcon is being operated at arms-length to the rest of the company.

Other areas where Kordia is advancing itself is mobile television transmission where they are already prepared to start services once content providers have been secured. Hunt said, "Spectrum is available, so all we need are the content providers and some good consumer demand. Then we'll be ready to roll."

Kordia is also immersing itself further in the television sector as well as its mobile television service. Other advances includes New Zealand's new digital television service, Freeview with it set to start terrestrial transmission next year.

Parliament TV also began this year in July. All House proceedings are available via the Parliament website and a broadcast quality feed is provided to all broadcasters, with full coverage being televised by Freeview and Sky Network Television. The manager of Kordia's Transmission Control Centre, Merv Brooks, said, "This is another example of people and technology coming together to deliver a truly unique product to New Zealanders."

Being a SOE, Kordia is required to give the Government a dividend. The Government will receive a total dividend of $8.4 million; $6.8 million in 2006. A $3 million dividend had already been received by the Government so a payment of only $5.4 million was made.


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Talk:Kordia's annual report shows increase in profit

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I was sent the annual report (two booklets) in the mail after I asked for them via email. --Nzgabriel | Talk 08:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


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Talk:Turkey outraged over U.S. Armenian genocide resolution

Seems worth mention that factoid from wikipedia about it being the second most studied case of genocide after the holocost. Nyarlathotep 08:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)