Bits and pieces
I love this story!
Kansas woman, 95, prepares for final exams:
On Friday, the last day before fall break, her family and fellow classmates threw her an impromptu birthday party during her Biblical Studies class. Her son, Alan Ochs, flew in from Jetmore for the occasion. Her granddaughter, Alexandra Ochs, didn't have to travel as far — she's in the same class as her grandmother.
Deja Vu isn't just a movie starring Denzel Washington. White House Brushes Off CIA Report on Iran
"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," according to the article.
Read also: White House ‘Stovepiping’ Iran Intelligence.
Israeli forces launch raids in Gaza
"I emphasize that our hand is outstretched in peace, but anybody who rejects it ... should know that ... we will do all we can to sever the hand which uses terror," Peretz said in a speech carried by Israeli radio.
"We have no intention of making concessions to anybody, we have no intention of being dragged in to reoccupying Gaza, but we have every intention of protecting our citizens."
Six Muslim Imams removed from U.S. airliner
The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, Calif., he said.
Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.
“I never felt bad in my life like that,” he said. “I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It’s terrible.”
Five years of being terrorized by our own government leads to this. We're afraid of six men praying. So it isn't surprising to read that U.S. is most unfriendly country to visitors.
Gore Vidal: Living Through History, an interview with Robert Scheer.
Fantastic interview. There are some great lines here:
I’m now a creationist. Because the distance from George Washington to George W. Bush makes a monkey out of Darwin.
There are a few crazies who want to cheer the flag and this yappy little terrier as though he were a real president—well he’s not a real president. He’s a thing, a chimera who was put together by the supreme court, first time around, and reelected by Diebold, Sequoia and some other interested parties. Everybody knows he isn’t there. Or what is there isn’t for us—it’s not our president. We do have a real, uh, a shadow president in vice president Cheney, whose wife is a famous novelist given to tales of unnatural love...But Lynne, more power to you. She’s my kind of novelist.
And sobering:
So this election, coming up, although it’s a mere off-year, this is the on year election of all our lives. And if we don’t turn it around the right way, we’re not going to have representative government. We’re not going to have the people’s voice ever again expressed quadrennially in the presidential election, because they can falsify it each time now. So now’s the time to use a new Congress, hoping we get one, to tidy up.
Where do you stand on God:
This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.
The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.
Warning: this is seven pages long. Well worth reading, however.
