Comet 17/P Holmes

"""... An article in New Scientist tells us that Comet Holmes has brightened by a factor of a million in 24 hours and according to David Morrison, senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, California, “This is equivalent to the planet Saturn suddenly becoming as bright as the Full Moon. ...” """

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=41508


Jews should not call Jesus a "bastard", says cardinal

Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald. The Church Times once described him as a "blood-crazed ferret".

Posted by Damian Thompson on 05 Oct 2007  at 19:41 
Tags: Jesus, Jews, Cardinal Francis George, Abraham Foxman, Hebrew

One of America’s most senior cardinals has called on Jews to scrap “Talmudic descriptions of Jesus as a bastard”.

Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago
Cardinal George: changes to prayers should work both ways

According to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, in return for the removal of controversial references to the Jews in the Old Missal, Jewish religious leaders should make changes to traditional Hebrew texts that describe Jesus as illegitimate.

Here’s the quote, from the cardinal’s interview with John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter:

“Not that any group has a veto on anybody’s prayers, because you can go through Jewish texts and find material that is offensive to us. But if we’re interested in keeping the dialogue strong, and we have to be, we should be very cautious about any prayer that they find insulting. ‘They’, however, is a big tent.

“What my Jewish rabbi friend down the block finds insulting is different from what Abraham Foxman [national director of the Anti-Defamation League] finds insulting. Also, it does work both ways. Maybe this is an opening to say, ‘Would you care to look at some of the Talmudic literature’s description of Jesus as a bastard, and so on, and maybe make a few changes in some of that?’ ”

The interview is long and fascinating and you can find the whole text here. I agree wholeheartedly with the cardinal. What do you think?


Sporin hræða: Óvarlegt að taka mikið mark á raðlygurum

Panel: US Ignored Work of UN Arms Inspectors

By Dafna Linzer

Washington Post
April 3, 2005

Of all the claims U.S. intelligence made about Iraq's arsenal in the fall and winter of 2002, it was a handful of new charges that seemed the most significant: secret purchases of uranium from Africa, biological weapons being made in mobile laboratories, and pilotless planes that could disperse anthrax or sarin gas into the air above U.S. cities. By the time President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein of the deadly weapons he was allegedly trying to build, every piece of fresh evidence had been tested -- and disproved -- by U.N. inspectors, according to a report commissioned by the president and released Thursday.

The work of the inspectors -- who had extraordinary access during their three months in Iraq between November 2002 and March 2003 -- was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration and the intelligence community in the run-up to the war, according to the commission led by former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman.

But the commission's findings, including a key judgment that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little" about nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, are leading to calls for greater reliance on U.N. inspectors to test intelligence where the United States has little or no access. "U.N. inspectors are boots on the ground," said David Albright, a nuclear specialist who accompanied the International Atomic Energy Agency to Iraq in the mid-1990s. Albright and others think the IAEA should be given greater access in Iran, and returned to North Korea. It would be up to the agency's board, which includes the United States, to authorize increased powers.

The Bush administration tussled with inspectors before the Iraq war and maintains a hostile relationship with the IAEA, whose director, Mohamed ElBaradei, the United States is trying to replace this year. The administration also wants to shut down a U.N. inspection regime led by Hans Blix that was set up to investigate biological, chemical and missile programs in Iraq. ...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/2005/0403ignored.htm


America’s Armageddonites

Jon Basil Utley | October 10, 2007

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that tens of millions of Americans, filled with fantasies of revenge and empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are “raptured” to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of judgment. Ironically, they share this utopian fantasy with a group that they often castigate, namely fundamentalist Muslims who believe that dying in battle also means direct access to Heaven. For the Armageddonites, however, there are no waiting virgins, but they do agree with Muslims that there will be “no booze, no bars,” in the words of a popular Gaither Singers song.

These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government’s foreign policy. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for example, has said that their work is "part of God's plan." At the same meeting, where speakers promoted attacking Iran, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay glorified “end times.” Indeed the Bush administration often consults with them on Mideast policies. The organizer of the conference, Rev. John Hagee, is often welcomed at the White House, although his ratings are among the lowest on integrity and transparency by Ministry Watch, which rates religious broadcasters. He raises millions of dollars from his campaign supporting Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including much for himself. Erstwhile presidential candidate Gary Bauer is on his Board of Directors. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson also both expressed strong end-times beliefs.

American fundamentalists strongly supported the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. They consistently support Israel’s hard-line policies. And they are beating the drums for war against Iran. Thanks to these end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.

The Beginning of End Times

The evangelical movement originally was not so “end times” focused. Rather, it was concerned with the “moral” decline inside America. The Armageddon theory started with the writings of a Scottish preacher, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). His ideas then spread to America with publication in 1917 of the Scofield Reference Bible, foretelling that the return of the Jews to Palestine would bring about the end times. The best-selling book of the 1970s, The Late, Great Planet Earth, further spread this message. The movement did not make a conscious effort to affect foreign policy until Jerry Falwell went to Jerusalem and the Left Behind books became best sellers.

Conservative Christian writer Gary North estimates the number of Armageddonites at about 20 million. Many of them have an ecstatic belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. They are among the more than 30% of Americans who believe that the world is soon coming to an end. Armageddonites may be a minority of the evangelicals, but they have vocal leaders and control 2,000 mostly fundamentalist religious radio stations.

Although little focused on in America, Armageddonites attract the attention of Muslims abroad. In 2004, for instance, I attended Qatar’s Fifth Conference on Democracy with Muslim leaders from all over the Arabian Gulf. There, the uncle of Jordan’s king devoted his whole speech to warning of the Armageddonites’ power over American foreign policy. ... [meira]

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4630


Nokkrir lýsandi punktar um kjarnorkumál Írana

David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, speaking in November 2004 at a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies said:

The first thing - of what we do know, and it's amazing how many Americans seem to skate over this - the first nuclear reactor given to Iran was given by the United States in 1967 - a five-megawatt trigger reactor, research reactor, under the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace Program. Still operated ... The other thing that Americans forget is that in 1974, the shah announced a policy of 23,000 megawatts of nuclear energy in Iraq. The US reaction? [Former US national security adviser and secretary of state] Henry Kissinger beat down the door to be sure that two US constructors, General Electric and Westinghouse, had a preferred position in selling those reactors. We did not say, "it's a stupid idea, why would you want to do that when you are flaring gas and you have immense oil reserves?" We said, "That is very interesting; it's an example of how the Iranian economy is moving and becoming modern." Imagine in Iranian ears how it sounds now when we denigrate that capacity. They remember. We were sellers of nuclear reactors and wanted to be sellers of nuclear reactors to the shah.

 

A recent article in Foreign Policy journal noted:

Iran is the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] and has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves. But its energy needs are rising faster than its ability to meet them. Driven by a young population and high oil revenues, Iran's power consumption is growing by around 7% annually, and its capacity must nearly triple over the next 15 years to meet projected demand. Where will the electricity come from? Not from the oil sector. It is retarded by US sanctions, as well as inefficiency, corruption and Iran's institutionalized distrust of Western investors. Since 1995, when the sector was opened to a handful of foreign companies, Iran has added 600,000 barrels per day to its crude production, enough to offset depletion in aging fields, but not enough to boost output, which has stagnated at around 3.7 million barrels per day since the late 1990s. Almost 40% of Iran's crude oil is consumed locally. If this figure were to rise, oil revenues would fall, spelling the end of the strong economic growth the country has enjoyed since 1999. Plugging the gap with natural gas is not possible - yet. Iran's gigantic gas reserves are only just being tapped, so Iran remains a net importer.

 

With regard to its gas reserves, it bears noting that there are needs for gas in Iran that are much higher priorities than the construction of gas power plants. As academics William Beeman and Thomas Stauffer noted:

First, gas is vitally needed for reinjection into existing oil reservoirs [repressurizing]. This is indispensable for maintaining oil output levels, as well as for increasing overall, long-term recovery of oil. Second, natural gas is needed for growing domestic use, such as in cooking fuel and domestic heating (Iranians typically use kerosene for both), where it can free up oil for more profitable export. New uses such as powering bus and taxi fleets in Iran's smoggy urban areas are also essential for development. Third, natural gas exports - via pipelines to Turkey or in liquefied form to the sub-continent - set an attractive minimum value for any available natural gas. With adequate nuclear power generation, Iran can profit more from selling its gas than using it to generate power. Fourth, the economics of gas production in Iran are almost backwards, certainly counter-intuitive. Much of Iran's gas is "rich" - it contains byproducts, such as liquid-petroleum gas [LPG, better known as propane], which are more valuable than the natural gas from which they are derived. Iran can profit by selling these derivatives, but not if it burns the natural gas to generate power. Furthermore, Iran adheres to OPEC production quotas, which combine oil and natural gas production. Therefore Iran cannot simply increase natural gas for export to make up for what it burns at home.

Allt frá:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH24Ak02.html

 


Nýju biblíusögurnar

Ég hef nú ekki kíkt í nýju útgáfuna ennþá en vafalaust hafa einhverjir hérna þegar lesið megnið af henni og væri forvitnilegt að heyra frá þeim hvað hefur verið gert með hin ýmsu líflátsfyrirmæli sem þessi bók hefur að geyma. Þar er skipað svo fyrir að ódælir unglingar skuli grýttir til dauðs, þeir grýttir til dauðs sem vinna á sabbatsdeginum, þeir grýttir til dauðs sem halda framhjá - svo aðeins brot af þessum grýtingaboðskap sé nefnt. Er þetta kannski komið í pólitískan réttrúnað núna? Grin

Nýja Evrópskan

European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

In the sekond year there will be growing publik enthusiasm when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w"with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze first plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.


Heilaþvegnar "þurrfyllbyttur" sem verkfæri?

Þetta er náttúrlega of augljóst í okkar þjóðfélagi sérstaklega vegna yfirlýstrar aðdáunar heilaskemmdra fyllibyttna á erlendum heilaskemmdum og siðvilltum þurrölkum. En einhvern tíma neyðumst við til að ræða þessa hluti.

LA Times: Bush á að vera í spennitreyju. Mikið var að þeir föttuðu það.

Straitjacket Bush

The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really.
October 25, 2007

Forget impeachment.

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment. ...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks24oct25,0,7749742.column?coll=la-util-opinion-commentary


Margfölsuð vitleysa í kreppu

Megnið af biblíunni var soðið saman á miðöldum og sama er raunar að segja um fornaldarsöguna. Þetta skín í gegn sé textinn skoðaður á gagnrýnan hátt en því miður er gagnrýn hugsun ekki kennd í skólakerfinu (af skiljanlegum ástæðum). Menn éta delluna hver eftir öðrum og vitleysan rennur í gegnum þá viðstöðulaust. Klassískt dæmi um þetta er að gler er nefnt nokkrum sinnum í opinberunarbókinni sem er sérkennilegt þar sem menn lærðu ekki að búa það til fyrr en í fyrsta lagi fyrir 1000-1200 árum.

Samsuðan fór í gang á endurreisnartímanum með prentlistinni og skiljanlega klofnaði kaþólska kirkjan í framhaldinu og við tóku hroðaleg trúarbragðastríð í Evrópu.  


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