The superb film, "Soldiers of Conscience," is now available in its entirety for free as a streaming online video until November 18th: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/soldiersofconscience/fullfilm.html

"Soldiers of Conscience is a dramatic window on the dilemma of individual U.S. soldiers in the current Iraq war — when their finger is on the trigger and another human being is in their gunsight. Made with cooperation of the U.S. Army and narrated by Peter Coyote, the film profiles eight American soldiers, including four who decide not to kill, and become conscientious objectors and four who believe in their duty to kill if necessary. The film reveals all of them wrestling with the morality of killing in war, not as a philosophical problem, but as soldiers experience it — a split-second decision in combat that can never be forgotten or undone."

Story Highlights:

• U.N.: Executions of innocent civilians "systematic and widespread"
• U.S.-backed Colombian forces killing civilians in counterinsurgency campaign
• Top U.N. human rights officer: Killings could constitute a "crime against humanity"
• President fired 25 army members after executions of at least 11 young men

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Colombia's U.S.-backed security forces are engaging in "systematic and widespread" extrajudicial executions of innocent civilians as part of their counterinsurgency campaign, a top United Nations diplomat said Saturday.

Watch Video Report from DemocracyNow.org

"More than 10,000 indigenous Colombians have begun a protest march against President Alvaro Uribe. Marchers are protesting the militarization of their territories, the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and the failure of Uribe’s administration to fulfill various accords with the indigenous communities. We speak to Rafael Coicué, an indigenous leader who lost sight in his left eye when he was assaulted by masked gunmen in his home, and Mario Murillo, a US journalist and professor currently in Colombia."

a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
October 28, 2007

Text: John 18:1-12

On September 2, 1945, a gray, grim day, General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. After all the documents were signed, General Douglas MacArthur stepped to a microphone and spoke to the entire world, “We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system (to resolve our differences by a means other than war) Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advance in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”

by Bruce Gillette

Have you, like me, been receiving a lot of email notes about political candidates? Some of these emails, like the political ads on TV, are not true. Before you forward an email to others about anyone, political candidate or any other human being, please remember the Ten Commandments: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Ex. 20:16; Deut. 5:20). Our church’s Heidelberg Catechism explains it: