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Silentlambs is asking for any French-speaking JW or ex-JW abuse survivors from Canada to come forward for a possible interview with key media in Canada.

If are such a victim or you know of such a victim who can assist, please contact info@silentlambs.org for more information.

To my chagrin, I have never seen an episode of Boston Legal. If only it aired an hour (or two) earlier.

It looks like a show to which I could easily have become addicted.

Here’s ten minutes on Guantanamo. What’s not to love? Never mind the cast (wow. the cast.) – this is a succinct overview of the views of the left and the right. Based on the real situation, naming names too. Democrats would love it except that they are implicated here too.

Having the debate we should be having.

Nicely done.

Here’s an interesting list from AlterNet – their ten most popular stories of the year. ALterNet is a great resource, although a couple of the stories surprised me.

They also have the top ten most discussed (which leans hard on 9/11), the top ten Iraq myths, the top ten outrageous right-wing comments of 2006, the top ten most popular book reviews, the top ten sex and relationship stories, and my personal favorite – a meta-list of the top ten top-ten lists of 2006.

AlterNet published thousands of articles in 2006 — here are the 10 that readers liked the most.

10. Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as “the prize.”

9. Stephen Colbert: New American Hero
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
When Colbert turned up the heat on Washington’s elite, he revealed the big split between those basking in power and those fighting for change.

8. Where Bush’s Arrogance Has Taken Us
By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
An illegal war, a long list of eroded rights, and a country run by and for the benefit of corporate campaign donors — all courtesy of the imperial presidency.

7. Lobbying for Armageddon
By Sarah Posner, AlterNet
Some influential evangelical leaders are lobbying for an attack on Iran. But it’s not about geopolitics — it’s about bringing about the End Times.

6. Why Religion Must End
By Laura Sheahen, Beliefnet
A leading atheist says people must embrace rationalism, not faith — or they will never overcome their differences.

5. Tyranny of the Christian Right
By Michelle Goldberg, AlterNet
The largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation — evangelical Christianity — has set out to destroy secular society.

4. Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
by Jan Frel, AlterNet
A Nuremberg chief prosecutor says there is a case for trying Bush for the ’supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.’

3. Iraq’s War Porn
By David Swanson, Tomdispatch.com
We believe the war would end if the media showed more images of the human horrors in Iraq, yet we turn away when they’re placed in front of us. Not anymore.

2. Men Who Love Burgers and Loathe Sex
By Susie Bright, HuffingtonPost.com
There’s an unhappy host of young men who seem to have soured on the mating game — but why?

1. Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State
by Allan Uthman, Buffalo Beast
From secret detention centers to warrantless wiretapping, Bush and Co. give free rein to their totalitarian impulses.

Check out the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006, too.

Remind the FCC and Congress that they must serve the public interest by making nondiscrimination on the Internet a permanent condition of the AT&T-BellSouth merger. Be heard today!

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The AT&T and BellSouth merger would resurrect the Ma Bell monopoly that ruled communications for decades. But this new corporate behemoth would no longer control just phone calls. The new AT&T wants to become gatekeepers to all digital media — television, telephone and Internet — at the expense of the free and open Internet that so many Americans rely upon.

The merger is now in the hands of the FCC. They’ll rubber stamp the deal unless the public speaks up.

We can’t let the new AT&T jeopardize essential Internet freedoms. Tell the FCC to make Net Neutrality a permanent condition of the merger.

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Oh please. When will these dolts wake up? Who were the people at CBS who came up with the incredibly stupid choice of Couric as an anchor in the first place? It tarnishes their reputation. Of all the women they could have selected to be the first solo evening news anchor, they chose her. Ick.

To reintroduce Katie Couric to the country as a serious yet still accessible evening news anchor on Sept. 5, CBS has embarked on an image campaign worthy of a presidential candidate. The network’s efforts will put her face on the front of every city bus in New York next month as part of a promotion that would cost in excess of $10 million if the national television commercials featuring her were bought by an outsider.

Now – good money after bad (check how how much they are paying her)? I’m disappointed in CBS.

I rarely have strong opinions about newspeople. For me what is most important is the content, not the carrier.

My primal and quite uncharitable feelings for Couric are an exception. There are plenty of other horrible superficial people on television, so I’m not sure why she inspires such revulsion in me. For whatever reasons Couric has always, always, always made my skin crawl and my neck hairs bristle. I have had to acknowlege, and dismiss from my mind, images such as slapping her little face. I don’t have such personal animus toward many people. It is somewhat puzzling. Perhaps I can locate the source of my repulsion and heal it somehow. Perhaps I could watch her as a kind of penance. But no, I don’t think I can, not yet.

Lightweight Couric has little to recommend her. She clearly has very little empathy for others, and she is one of the worst interviewers I have ever seen. She trivializes everything she touches. She seems to deliberately misunderstand almost anything someone says to her. Her questions are trite or whiney or patronizingly hostile, and she doesn’t have the personal charisma to carry off any part of that. It is bad enough when an intelligent and well-informed person is patronizing, but from her it is so much worse.

I cannot tolerate watching important events in our world being narrated by that irritating pneumatic fluffball under almost any conditions I can imagine.

Watching the news is serious business at our house. I guess I’ll be watching Brian Williams on NBC, with a little Charles Gibson on ABC as a change. The Lehrer News Hour is ok (I like Mark Shields), although not as good as it used to be.

I sorely miss Peter Jennings and Dan Rather.