I teach a Sunday school class. One person this morning asked whether it was wrong to feel happy about Zarqawi being dead as a consequence of the US Military dropping two 500 pound bombs on his head. We had a good discussion. And I have continued to contemplate the issue.

There are, in the Bible, what are termed the "imprecatory Psalms." These are Psalms which call for the destruction of enemies. Many who read such poems come away very disturbed by what they say. Consider, for instance, Psalm 137, which ends by commenting "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us--he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

The emotions reflected in the Psalm seem at odds with our picture of a loving God and the central biblical command to "love others." And yet, for anyone who has suffered injustice or evil, the emotions reflected in Psalm 137, if we're honest with ourselves, resonate with us and give vent to our own feelings.

And yet, Proverbs 22:17-18 says this: “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.”

Jesus tell us repeatedly to “love our neighbors" and to "love our enemies." So there is a natural tendency for some Christians, perhaps most, to feel guilty if they feel any joy over the death of even a terrorist like Al-Zarqawi, who was responsible for personally murdering many people.

But there is more to the biblical picture that needs to be considered in dealing with this question. We must consider the story of Purim, which is a time of celebration for the death of the evil Haman and his monstrous plans (see Esther 8-9). We might want to consider, too, the sense of the book of Revelation, whose aim is to provide comfort for the persecuted in the face of their persecution, with the promise that those who have tormented them will be destroyed. Consider the words of Revelation 18:20, regarding the destruction of Babylon (i.e., the City of Rome): “Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged her for the way she treated you.' And of course we find the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, where the people rejoice over their deliverance from the Egyptians, and their great pleasure that the army that pursued them perished by drowning in the Red Sea.

So how to reconcile the two ideas of love for the enemy, with joy over his destruction? Can it be done? Or should we consider that the law of love trumps anything else that might seem in conflict?

Perhaps it's akin to the biblical prohibition on murder. If I kill my neighbor for letting dandelions grow in his lawn, then I’m a murderer. But if I’m a soldier who kills the enemy, or a police officer who kills a bad guy, or I kill someone in self-defense or to protect someone else, then I’m a hero. If I take money from your wallet, I'm a theif, but if the government does it, it's taxation and perfectly legitimate.

It is a complex issue biblically, related I think to the question of whether war is ever appropriate. Those who accept pacificism will view it as never being legitimate. Personally, I think that's hard to justify biblically, let alone realistically, as much as I like the sentiment and wish it could be true, and in fact as much as I would prefer it to be true.

The nature of love, what it feels like from God, seems to depend on our relationship to him. Consider another Psalm, Psalm 136, which tells us repeatedly that God's love endures forever. the Psalm lists a variety of things that the Psalmist thinks illustrates how great God's love is:

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.

Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.

Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.

to him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever.

who by his understanding made the heavens, His love endures forever.

who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever.

And so it goes, with the poet talking about a variety of blessings that illustrate how God's "love endures forever." But then the Psalmist writes:

to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt His love endures forever.

And then:

who struck down great kings, His love endures forever.

and killed mighty kings-- His love endures forever.

Sihon king of the Amorites His love endures forever.

and Og king of Bashan-- His love endures forever.

I suspect that the first born of Egypt, Sihon, and Og might not have "felt the love" as they died. But for the Israelites, gaining deliverance from their enemies, the deaths of the first born and these kings seemed quite loving. How we feel about God's love seems to depend on which side we're on; kind of like fire. If we're cold and sitting next to it, it feels good. If we've stuck our finger into it, it feels bad. If I kill the murderer attempting to kill my friend, my friend will "feel the love" from me. The murderer's opinion might be different. But who cares?

In the final analysis, I, personally, cannot feel guilty for being happy that an evil, murderous, depraved thug can no longer kill people. Zarqawi was depraved and the world is a better place without him.

From AP, as reported in several places (emphasis added):

Hamas' military wing on Friday said it would no longer honor a truce with Israel following a deadly Israeli artillery strike that killed seven civilians.

"The earthquake in the Zionist towns will start again," said a leaflet distributed by the militants at a Hamas rally Friday night. "The resistance groups ... will choose the proper place and time for the tough, strong and unique response."

Israel and the Palestinians declared the truce in February 2005. Hamas, which has killed scores of Israelis in suicide bombings, has largely abided by the cease-fire.

"Largely" abided. Kind of like being only a little bit pregnant, eh? So Israel is the one who bears the guilt of violating this truce, not the Palestinians. Those rocket attacks from Gaza that preceded the Israeli strike, and the suicide bomber in Tel Aviv in April, just for example (there have been a lot of attacks) well, those didn't violate the truce. Palestinians can never violate a truce. Only Jews can violate truces, according to the AP. Only if Israel decides to try to defend itself is it then a violation of the truce and so the Palestinians are acting appropriately in ending it. They've been provoked, poor babies.

And yet the AP and those who repeat their report that Israel is the bad guy would be horribly offended if anyone were to suggest that they might be even the slightest bit anti-Semitic. Well, if it quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck...

Palestinian Media Watch has subtitled videos taken from Palestinian TV. An example is a video of eleven year old girls describing how they very much want to become martyrs (Shahid), to experience martyrdom (Shahada):

Interviewer: You described Shahada as something beautiful. Do you think it is beautiful?

Walla: Shahada is a very beautiful thing. Everyone yearns for Shahada. What could be better than going to paradise?

Interviewer: What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people or Shahada?

Walla: Shahada. I will achieve my rights after becoming a shahid. We won't stay children forever.

Interviewer: Ok, Yussra, would you agree with that?

Yussra: Of course. It is a good [sweet] thing. We don't want this world, we want the Afterlife. We benefit not from this life but from the Afterlife. All Palestinians, not like other youth, are hot tempered, they choose Shahada, since they are Palestinian.

For those who wonder why there is no peace in the Middle East, this sort of thing may serve as a bit of a clue.

Many years ago when I was in college, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of my summers working on a kibbutz in Israel. What is a kibbutz? It is a communal farm. So think of communes, but run by hard working people who are not on drugs, wear shorts and t-shirts and often carried guns since this particular commune was on the border next to a country that at the time harbored terrorists and was in a state of war with Israel. The kibbutz was surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. Every morning I was awakened at 4:00 AM by a nice young man toting an Uzi who’d knock on my door and call out “good morning” in Hebrew. I’d toss on my clothes and then stumble out to begin an eight hour shift in the fields. I worked six days a week, from about four in the morning until noon. It was a farm, after all: a farm located 600 feet below sea level where the temperatures rose to over 100 by noon.

Combining socialism and Zionism kibbutzim were a unique Israeli experiment which endured for over fifty years as utopian communities. Today, most kibbutzim which survive are not much different from the capitalist enterprises and regular towns to which the kibbutzim were originally supposed to be alternatives. No more than about seven percent of the Israeli people ever lived on kibbutzim.

Eleven people founded the first kibbutz in 1909 at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, the lake that the Israelis call Lake Kineret (which means “harp”). That first kibbutz was called Degania. By the beginning of World War II there were hundreds of kibbutzim with a combined population of around 25,000, about five percent of the total Jewish population in Palestine at the time.

The kibbutz I worked on was located within five miles of Degania. It had been founded in the 1930s by Jewish people who had come there from Rumania. They called it Kibbutz Massada. When I worked there in the mid 1970’s there were about 300 people living there, men, women and children. Kibbutz Massada was located right on the Jordanian border.

The kibbutzim of Israel raised a variety of crops; many also housed factories and ran hotels for tourists. Kibbutz Massada had a small factory that manufactured valves for engines, but primarily it was a farm. They raised chickens and dairy cows, and had fields of date palms, banana trees, alfalfa, olives, and citrus fruits.

My first job on the kibbutz was working in the banana fields. Banana trees are swamp plants and in the old days, they would actually flood the fields. Today, they use a drip irrigation system, something that the Israelis invented in order to conserve water. Nevertheless, the fields are incredibly muddy, and filled with insects and enormous spiders. How enormous? Their webs stretched between trees for ten feet. There’s nothing like walking down a row of trees to suddenly find yourself face to face with a fist-sized spider hanging midair between trees on a barely visible web.

Each banana tree grows one enormous bunch of bananas that is so large and heavy that it will pull the tree over long before the bananas are ripened. Therefore, the trees need to be propped upright, to keep that from happening. I went throught the fields, putting down two poles for each tree on one day, and then on another day going back and using them to prop the trees upright.

My next job on the kibbutz was working with the date palms. Standing upwards of twenty or thirty feet tall, I had to ride a motorized cherrypicker, very similar to those things you see the workers using to fix street lights or telephone poles in order to reach the tree tops. I’d lift myself up in one of those to the place where the date bunches were growing so I could tie the bunch to a couple of limbs. Otherwise, the bunch would fall out of the tree before the dates were ripe. Like banana trees, date trees are not concerned with their fruits staying nice so that they may be consumed by people. The trees only want their seeds to be scattered.

Creatures of various sorts lived in the date palms. Besides the expected bugs, it was a common occurance to find chamelions, their enormous eyes swiviling in different directions as they watched both you and the fly they were interested in consuming. Chamelions were not the only large animal in the treetops. There were also rats, who would startle me by suddenly leaping out, only to fall the twenty to thirty feet down to the ground below.

The date trees I worked in were located on the edge of the Jordanian border. Next to the field, I could look down and see a dirt road. Beside the road, there was a barbed wire fence; beyond that, there was a smooth track of brown, dusty dirt where one could see little metal mounds every so often: a mine field. A second barbed wire fence separated that mine field from the water of the Yarmuk River.
Occasionally, running along the fence one would see wild boars; they’d dart from the bushes beside the river, and then scurry back again. One day, as I was tying date bunches to palm fronds, I heard a loud “thump” from the direction of the border. I looked over just in time to see a boar arching through the air. It had accidentally hit one of the mines. I have enjoyed telling people ever since that I’ve seen a pig fly.

The kibbutz citizens—kibbutzniks—had many stories to tell. Around the kibbutz, among the gardens and manicured lawns surrounding their homes, were several concrete bunkers: bomb shelters. Kibbutz Masada, like dozens of the kibbutzim near the Sea of Galilee, existed within the shadow of the mountains called the Golan Heights. Until 1967, when Israel took them from Syria following the Six Day War, the Syrians had controlled those mountains. Every night between 1948 and 1967, the Syrians regularly lobbed shells from those mountains onto the kibbutzim. The children grew up spending their nights sleeping in those bomb shelters. Even in the mid 1970s when I was there, the evidence of past shelling was clearly visible in the destroyed buildings. They told me about how one night a bomb landed in the middle of their communal cafeteria. In the date fields, I saw several stumps of date trees that had been destroyed by incoming shells.

Today, those concrete shelters that used to protect the Israelis from the nightly barages are used simply as store rooms. Keep those nightly shellings in mind the next time you hear talk that the Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza are the cause of violence. Between 1948 and 1967 when the Syrians nightly bombed the kibbutzniks, the Israelis weren’t in either the West Bank or Gaza. So what was the excuse then?

Dan Simmons, the well-known science fiction author of Hyperion among other interesting books, has a website. In April, he posted an interesting short story of sorts, which generated a lot of comment from readers, some rather extreme, since it dealt with the ongoing Long War against Islamic Extremism. Now he's posted a commentary or response or explanation to his story. It is a long essay, but worth the read I think.

My publisher just emailed me the final version of the cover of my next novel, Somewhen Obscurely. I like it. The publisher informs me that they've already begun advertising on the web. The book should be out "soon."

Jerry Pournelle likes to say that "despair is a sin." In case you've been watching the news lately and have have felt sorely tempted, a dash of perspective from Michael Barone at US News and World Report.

I read a rather interesting book review in Books and Culture last night while giving a Theological Systems midterm exam. It relates to textual criticism, odd scholarly bias, and a female apostle.

I redesigned the look of the Quartz Hill School of Theology website today; I also did laundry, and some rewriting on my next novel, Fades the Flower.

Got word from my publisher today that Antediluvian has gone to press.

There are now over 150 known solar systems besides our own. For a complete, updated list of them, check out The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia. MSNBC reports today on the discovery of a new system 41 light years away with 3 Neptune sized planets, including one that is located in that star's habitable zone. That means it could, potentially, have life as we know it.

John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is perhaps the world’s best known allegory. Christian, the protagonist, travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Along the way, he passes the Slough of Despond, Giant Despair, Doubting Castle, House of the Interpreter, and Vanity Fair. He faces troubles and pleasures of all kinds, meeting characters such as Worldly Wise Man and Hopeful. The story is to be understood as the picture of a man’s life from his conversion to Christianity until his death. It’s not a subtle piece of work—the names make things pretty obvious—but it has been popular; sales of the book are second only to the Bible.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is another example of the genre, and it is not as obvious to most people what’s going on, since the names of the characters are not quite so transparent. Animal Farm is an allegory of the history of the Soviet Union. Napoleon is Stalin, Old Major is Marx and Lenin, and Snowball is Trotsky. The other characters in the novel can similarly be identified with historical figures. In college I took a history course called Twentieth Century Russia. Toward the end of the semester, my professor had us read Animal Farm. It made perfect sense then and the identifications were pretty easy.

As I’ve listened to the news of late, and watched criticism or even condemnation of the Israelis in their ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, I’ve thought about writing an allegory myself. Sometimes telling the story in analogous terms can help clarify what’s going on for those who might otherwise fail to recognize what should be obvious. Jesus taught in parables for this very reason. People can understand better when you change the setting and characters. It lets them see past the clouded and loaded terms, the obscuring fog of the yelling participants.

My allegory about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be the story of a black family that moves into an all white neighborhood after being chased out of the South by the KKK. They pay too much for a broken down fixerupper and then they work hard, plant grass, fix the broken windows and make it a nice place despite the constant griping and complaining and put downs of the neighbors. The black family refuses to leave, despite the nearly nightly crossburnings on their front yard, the periodic Molotov cocktails tossed through their front door, the robberies, and the shootings. Meanwhile, they face criticism at every turn from the local newspaper for reacting to the attacks against them. When they install a security system, they are condemned for their intransigence. When they arm themselves, they are “escalating the conflict.” When they shoot the rapist climbing in the daughter’s bedroom window, they are slapped with a wrongful death suit.

Their neighbors make a habit of comparing them to the KKK at every opportunity. Moreover, the police do nothing but issue warrants against the black family and cite them for building code violations. The city council decrees the neighbors should be able to build a barbecue and tennis court in their backyard, and that it is unreasonable for the black family to forbid their neighbors from having parties in their living room on Saturday nights. The rapist’s brother has filed a class action lawsuit demanding his right to sleep in the daughter’s bedroom. Meanwhile, the local paper editorializes about how “hostile and inhospitable the black family is. They need to reach out to their neighbors and find a way to get along.”

Another allegory might work if that one is unclear: in marriage counseling, both parties need to be interested in reconciliation if there is going to be much hope for saving the marriage. If the husband, for instance, wants to reconcile, but the wife wants the husband to drop dead, there’s little room for compromise. When the voices in her head tell her he’s an alien and she is mad because he keeps ducking every time she fires her shotgun at his head, how exactly is it his fault that the marriage isn’t a happy one? One can always point out that there are two sides to every conflict, but sometimes, one of those sides is simply nuts.

The Jewish people want peace more than anything. The Palestinians want the Jews to die more than anything. That makes it tricky to find a compromise. The sad reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that right now only one side wants peace. Maybe someday, if the Palestinians get tired of their situation, peace can happen. It did happen between Israel and Egypt, when the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat finally woke up and decided he was tired of being the Moslem world’s canon fodder and made peace with Israel. Now Israelis spend big bucks at tourist resorts in Egypt. Same thing with the Israelis and the Jordanians: they managed to sign a genuine peace accord. So it might happen someday between Israel and the Palestinians. But not until the Palestinians accept the idea that it’s okay for the Israelis to live.

One last thing, a bit of historical context. Jordan and Egypt controlled the West Bank and Gaza from 1948 until 1967. In that entire time, the Palestinians never sent suicide bombers against the Jordanians. The world never condemned Egypt as an occupier or demanded a Palestinian state on the West Bank. But there was never a shortage of violence and condemnation against the Israelis, anyhow.

But maybe it is the case that all the problems in the neighborhood are because of the nasty character of the family that moved into that rundown house. They really are inhospitable. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are black. The voices in my head told me so.

I received preliminary artwork from my publisher on Friday for the two books of mine that they are publishing. Antediluvian tells the story of Noah, but assumes a high tech, solar system spanning civilization involved in an interplanetary war that will destroy everything. I carefully followed the outline of the biblical story and nothing within the novel contradicts the biblical story. This illustrates just how little information we actually have in the Bible about Noah and what happened. The traditional Sunday School version is not the only possibility. Of course, my version is pure science fiction.



The other book that's being published is Somewhen Obscurely, a time travel story about Aramond Smith O'Reily, who had a series of bad breaks in his life. He saw his mother raped and murdered and got sold into the past as a virtual slave, becoming a mohado, a time-slipped worker. Later, he manages to make something of himself and winds up transporting time-slipped workers himself, moving them from depressed time zones to more prosperous time periods in his own time machine. The preliminary cover to that book is still just a pencil sketch; the artist for that book is doing it in oil on canvas.

Interesting news in cosmology according to an article at MSNBC.com, which isn't entirely new:

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology could be explained by a controversial theory in which the universe explodes into existence not just once, but repeatedly in endless cycles of death and rebirth.

Called the cyclic universe theory, it could potentially explain why a mysterious repulsive form of energy known as the "cosmological constant," which is accelerating the expansion of the universe, is several orders of magnitude smaller than predicted by the standard Big Bang model.

In the May 5 issue of the journal Science, Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Cambridge University propose that the constant was once much larger, but that its value decayed with each incarnation of the universe.

The idea of a cyclic universe has been posited before, that a big crunch follows the big bang in the far future. In fact, Tipler's The Physics of Immortality required this. Until recently, the idea of a cyclic universe seemed unlikely. How quickly theories change as new information comes available.

There is an urban legend that goes like this:

Thought for the day.

During the space race back in the 1960's, NASA was faced with a major problem. The astronaut needed a pen that would write in the vacuum of space. NASA went to work. At a cost of $1.5 million they developed the "Astronaut Pen". Some of you may remember. It enjoyed minor success on the commercial market.

The Russians were faced with the same dilemma.

They used a pencil.

Amusing story. Just happens not to be true. NASA never spent money to develop a space pen. Ever. For the full story of what really happened, see what Dwayne A. Day
on The Space Review writes about it.

It looks like a new Star Trek movie is planned. Scheduled release is 2008. I'm very pleased by this news. Yahoo News has the details.

Occasionally sanity prevails. Six years ago Amaani Lyle, 32, alleged that raw sexual remarks during work sessions and conversations in the writer's meetings for the TV show Friends amounted to sexual harrasment and sued the writers and producers. She had been hired to transcribe the writer's meetings, when the writers came up with ideas and dialogue for the weekly scripts. She was fired after only four months for not being able to transcribe quickly enough or to capture the flavors of the meetings.

The California Supreme Court ruled against Lyle's lawsuit. It decided today, 7 to 0, that trash talk was part of the creative process and, therefore, the studio and its writers could not be sued for raunchy writers' meetings.

Justice Marvin Baxtor wrote that no jury would believe the writers' assistant was the target of harassment during profanity-laced script sessions "for an adult-oriented comic show featuring sexual themes." After all, she'd been warned when she was hired what the writer's meetings where they hashed out their scripts were like. And one would think that she had likely watched an episode or two of the show, so she should have known just from that, anyhow.

A ruling in favor of the former assistant Lyle would have made it virtually impossible to produce TV programs or other creative works. How could you work creatively if you had to worry that anything you said might get you sued? Censoring the creative process is simply not a good idea, and that, in essense, is what Lyle was going for. Creativity must be unfettered during the process of creation. Otherwise, it tends not to happen at all.

I'm really glad she lost her case.

Of course, the whole "PC" thing is generally just a way for censorers to try to justify being prigs. There seem to be a whole flock of people on both the left and right who just can't abide the thought of letting people say and do what they want. They must force people to not say words they find offensive, not to express ideas they disagree with, not to think thoughts they find offensive, and not to eat or drink or otherwise injest products that they have decided are bad for them. Teaching people to be polite is usually a good thing. But legislating it? Sueing people over it? Banning stuff? That's insane. And oppressive. Fascists always think they have everyone's best interests in mind.

CNN has a full report.

A suicide bomber, a terrorist, detonated himself in front of a Falafel fast food restaurant in Tel Aviv on Monday. At least nine people died and more than fifty were wounded, some critically.

Hamas, the current government of the Palestinian territories, is not interested in peace. They praised the bombing and promised more to come. Not that the previous government under Fatah was particularly interested in peace either. The destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews has been and remains their aim. When they speak of "liberating Palestine" from "oppression" they are not speaking of just Gaza and the West Bank. They mean Israel as a whole, from Haifa to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And yet somehow Israel is the one that so many people want to demonize. Why are those who fight terrorists criticized so frequently, while those who kill indiscrimitately are so often portrayed as victims? Why is it so hard for so many to figure out that those who bomb busses, discos, and restaurants are the bad guys? Why is it so hard to recognize that the reason the terrorists and the jihadists do what they do is not because of legitimate gripes, some sin on the part of the West, but simply because they hate those who are not Moslem? Instead of reading the pundits and apologists for the terrorists, maybe people should actually listen to what the bad guys are saying themselves and believe them.

I found this description of the bombs used in suicide bombings of interest. An exerpt from Meryl Yourish:

Primary blast injury is caused by the rapid outward spread of the shock wave. Injury to gas-containing organs, such as perforation of the middle ear and blast lung injury (BLI) are most common (22.1% and 18.2% of victims, respectively). Of all patients with BLI, 82% of victims aboard buses and in semiconfined spaces will suffer from moderate and severe forms of BLI compared with 33% of victims in open spaces. S econdary blast injury is caused by penetrating missiles that are propelled by the blast wave. More than 85% of victims of suicide bombing attacks (SBA) suffer from penetrating shrapnel and debris, most commonly to the head. Tertiary blast injury results from a patient’s body being displaced by expanding gases. Burns are termed quaternary blast injury and are also notably more common after explosions inside confined spaces compared with open spaces (33.9% versus 5% of victims, respectively). The hallmark of injuries after an SBA is the combination of blunt injury, multiple penetrating injuries with extensive soft tissue damage, and burns. Half of all patients hospitalized will be seen in a trauma unit setting and the same proportion will be admitted to an intensive care unit. Victims of SBAs are more severely injured compared with other trauma victims. Typical injuries include penetrating injury to the head (55%), extremities (49%), and torso (40%), burns (27%), open fractures (22%), and BLI (18%).

Here is an article I have referenced before, which contains X-Rays of the victims of palestinian terrorist bombs.

Messing said one of the victims he saw while in Jerusalem had around 300 individual metallic fragments within his body. The metal fragments, measuring from millimeters to centimeters, were imbedded in the young man literally from head to toe, he said.

“Several of the fragments penetrated into his vital organs. He sustained a punctured colon, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated liver and kidney. I could actually feel the nails under his skin where they had burrowed and lodged,” Messing recalls.

Shrapnel is what killed Phillip Balhasan, who stayed alive long enough to realize his children had survived, and to hug them tightly before he collapsed.

But even this is not enough for the terrorists. They also soak the shrapnel in rat poison, because it causes hemorrhaging — victims may bleed to death before they can get to the hospital.

Remember all of this, when you hear the world tell Israel to “use restraint” in responding to this attack. Remember all of this, when you read about the innocent metal shop owners who insist their shops were only making nails and screws for construction purposes.

Remember all of this, when Israel is the nation that is demonized by the blind, hateful people who wear checked kaffiyehs at anti-war protests, and call Israel an “apartheid state” for building a separation barrier — to keep out the monsters who would use bombs like I have just described.

Remember this, when you look at the pictures of the results of the bombing, and notice the thousands of dents in the metal surrounding the bombing area — the mark of the ball-bearings and other metal shrapnel.

These are the people with whom the world sympathizes: Those who create and set off the bombs. Not the victims. The bombers.

And that’s the worst evil of all.

For the whole thing, read Meryl Yourish. I have not done extensive research yet to fact check everything, but it matches information I have read elsewhere.

Tonight, April 12, 2006, is Yuri’s Night, a celebration of Yuri Gargaran’s launch in 1961 to become the first human being in orbit; it is also the 25th anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle, back in 1981.

An article in the Los Angeles Times today tells the story of xxxChurch.com, a ministry outreach to those caught up by pornography. They wanted to have some Bibles printed up that had this on the cover: "Jesus Loves Porn Stars". The Bible publisher wouldn't go along. According to the article, "The publisher said that while it applauded the outreach to those who make a living off pornography, 'the wording is misleading and inappropriate for a New Testament,' according to a letter the pastors received from Barbara Bernstengel, the executive in charge of standards at the nonprofit Bible publishing company."

"Misleading and inappropriate?"

Really?

The Bible publisher would doubtless have no trouble with this phrase: "Jesus loves sinners." But they, like many Christians, seem to lose their minds if you insert a specific sort of sinner is loved in place of the generic word: "Jesus loves rapists" or "Jesus loves murderers" or "Jesus loves self-righteous pricks" doesn't seem as reasonable somehow. Why is that? Because the radical nature of what Jesus did for us isn't reasonable. Paul wrote:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:7-10)

Jesus loved us and gave his life for us when we were his enemies. He died for all the people that give us the creeps. He died for those of us who give others the creeps. We can do nothing to contribute to our salvation. But he loves us anyhow.

It is amazing the number of Christians, even publishers of Bibles, who apparently don't really believe the gospel message or understand just how uncomfortably radical it really is.

The Los Angeles Times had a negative review of Michael Baigent's silly book, The Jesus Papers. Good for them. As I read the review, I was reminded of something odd that I've noticed among certain people when they discuss the Gnostic materials. The reviewer noted that Michael Baigent "laments that vibrant texts like the Gnostic gospels were buried in the desert to protect them."

Vibrant? It tires me when people say such nonsense, or wonder why Christianity didn't embrace something like the "Gospel of Thomas." Well, here's a quote from the text; it is a good example (out of many reasons) of why Christians rejected the "Gospel of Thomas":

(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."

Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

If you want to find misogyny, just look in that "vibrant" Gnositc literature. It's the sort of thing that many Muslim fundamentalists might like, I suppose, but why anyone else would I simply don't know. And incidentally, it's not hard to find Gnostic literature. You can find nice translations in most libraries and bookstores, and just about every Christian seminary on the planet.

Baigent wrote another book a few years ago that Dan Brown used while researching his novel, The DaVinci Code, a fine mystery novel, but really backwards in its theology. It's not early Christians who would have been bothered by the idea of Jesus being married (after all, Christian doctrine argues for his humanity as much as his divinity. If he was married and had kids, that would serve as an even stronger demonstration of his humanity.) It's the Gnostics that would have been appalled. Maybe Dan Brown can fix that in the next edition.

Pollen season is upon us. This time of the year, through the end of April, is the worst for me. But my allergy medications have been very effective. If you have pollen allergies, Pollen.com is a handy place to visit. Just put in your zip code and you'll get an idea of how bad the pollen is where you live, as well as what sorts of plants are responsible. You can even get free email allerts.

About three years ago, perhaps more, I realized a connection between my lifelong severe pollen allergies and my tendency toward depression. One evening I was feeling really gloomy, very despondent. I was also starting to get the sniffles--it was early March--and so I took my prescription allergy medication before I went to bed. In the morning, what I noticed first was the fact that my depression had lifted and I began wondering at that moment whether there might be a connection between that and my severe allergies. After doing a bit of hunting on the web, I discovered that such a link had been noted, for instance, Here. The connection seems more definite for women than men. However, since I realized that possibility and more consistently took my allergy medication, and especially since my allergist has, over the last couple of years, diagnosed my adult onset asthma and prescribed some additional medications, my sneezing, runny nose, watery eyes have gone away to the point that I'm essentially symptom free. Even more significantly for me, my depression is mostly non-existent now, too.

I've taken some steps in addition to the medication to deal with my tendency toward depression. For instance I write a personal journal every night that I share by email with my wife and a friend (I do this to make sure I keep at it, among other things; accountability is useful, as well as the value of complete openness with at least someone in my life). In addition, I regularly read poetry, reread certain passages of the Bible that encourage me, and practice regular prayer, and meditation. All these things have been helpful in correcting a lifetime of bad thought ruts. The consequence is that I have eliminated my depression nearly entirely. I still have the occasional gloomy moment, but nothing like the pain I used to experience.

Early indications are that a fuel leak caused the failure of the first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1. Some details are now available at Spaceflight Now.

I have been under a deadline to finish the rewrite of my novel, Somewhen Obscurely. It was due today and so today I emailed it to the editor. Now to wait and see if it's okay.

Sad to say, SpaceX's first attempt at launching their Falcon 1 Rocket didn't quite work. It blasted off the pad okay, but was destroyed moments later during the first stage burn. Not too surprising, really, given that it was a new rocket. Most new rockets, especially during the early days of the space program, suffered numerous failures. If they keep at it, as they say they will, SpaceX will get it right eventually.

Spam and spammers are justly despised. Not only do I despise them for wasting my time sending me offers for viagra, stocks, and loans that I don't need, I despite them even more because they create problems on the server side of things.

On Sunday morning, about 3:00 AM the Quartz Hill School of Theology website and mailserver went down. Why? Because, sometime back in 2004, a spammer hacked into our server and used it for spam. Since then, the hard drive of the server has slowly been filling up with junk, making the drive run hard. The junk finally filled the hard drive to capacity: there was no space left on it at all. When Rick Curtis and Patrick, at Quantum Computing began working on it, they discovered an awful problem that took them more than 14 hours to fix. They finally had to yank the hard drive out of the server and wound up clearing more than 30 gigabytes of junk from it.

Thankfully, the website and mailserver are finally back on line and in the next few weeks, Rick will be moving the School of Theology site to a new server, which is newer and faster. We may even get a redesigned look out of it.

The premise of the Sci-Fi Network TV show Stargate SG1 is that the US Government has a secret project based on alien technology. Unearthed in Egypt back in the 1920s, the Stargate is a device that creates a wormhole between Earth and thousands of other worlds across the galaxy. The Stargate allows teams of explorers to travel to those strange planets. Additionally, thanks to other captured alien technology, the government has built a small fleet of interstellar spaceships.

The fascination that people have for secret government military bases such as the one at Groom Lake, Nevada, often referred to as Area 51, is the delicious hope that things like what we see in science fiction shows such as Stargate are really squirreled away there.

The reality is doubtless much more pedestrian. Still, it was intriguing this week to read the article in Aviation Week and Space Technology (a magazine that some refer to as “Aviation Leak”) that something very interesting indeed is hidden there. According to the article in the current issue of AW&ST, “U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or operational goals. This two-vehicle "Blackstar" carrier/orbiter system may have been declared operational during the 1990s.”

The article went on to describe the vehicle in quite a bit of detail, indicating that they had a number of sources to back up what they were describing. Blackstar was a two-part vehicle, like the White Knight and SpaceShipOne combo that Burt Rutan designed to win the X-Prize in 2004. But the military version was considerably larger and could put the spaceplane into orbit. The carrier craft was similar to the XB-70, a supersonic bomber that the military developed back in the 1960s. According to AW&ST, the mother ship is a clipped wing delta aircraft about 200 feet long. The orbiter that it carried apparently comes in two versions: the small one is about 60-65 feet long and a larger version that was 97.5 feet long. Either apparently can haul two astronauts and cargo into low earth orbit.

The mother ship has the designation SR-3 and the orbiter is called an XOV (Experimental Orbital Vehicle). The engines on the XOV burn a new fuel that is a boron-based gel having the consistency of toothpaste and high-energy characteristics, but occupying less volume than other more ordinary sorts of fuels.

What was the Blackstar used for? AW&ST said that it was used for reconnaissance, taking the place of Lockheed’s SR71 which was phased out of service during the 1990s. Additionaly Blackstar could insert small satellites into orbit, service other spacecraft, and retrieve items from orbit. Conceivably, such a vehicle could serve as an anti-satellite or space-to-ground weapons-delivery platform, as well. One thing it might be used for is to drop what’s called “rods from God”: tungsten rods that are dropped from orbit and hit with rather extreme kinetic energy with no explosive warhead necessary. Because of their impact speed, they would be able to take out deeply buried bunkers.

Jerry Pournelle, now known primarily as a science fiction writer, first conceived of such a weapon back in the 1950’s; he called it Thor. In commenting about the Aviation Week and Space Technology article, he wrote on his website: “As some of you may know, I ‘invented’ Thor a long time ago. I have no idea who decided to call it ‘Rods from God,’ but while I was in operations research back in the 1950's I developed the notion of ‘orbital telephone poles’ made of tungsten, to be coupled with the Thoth Missile guidance systems we were developing at Boeing. Thoth was a ground control system to be used by a forward observer team.”

Going on about the article in AW&ST, he wrote: “And for years we all knew there was something like this, but it was REALLY classified.... Space ‘cruisers’ were part of the original High Frontier SDI [President Reagan’s so-called Star Wars] concept. General Graham's team included Max Hunter, me, and a number of others. High Frontier was mostly interested in strategic defense, so my development of Thor was never part of that.”

Given that there has been no official confirmation of the Blastar program, some questions have been raised by critics about the accuracy of Aviation Week and Space Technology’s report. However, the objections thus far can be summarized as, “well, in the 1950’s or 1960’s we thought about this or that aspect of Blackstar, but there were technical issues we couldn’t overcome.” Given that Blackstar would have only begun flying in the 1990’s, such technical issues of the 1950s and 60s would seem not particularly relevant.

The sad aspect to the article is that Aviation Week and Space Technology indicates that the Blackstar fleet has probably been mothballed, perhaps for budgetary reasons. One would wish that if this kind of technology has really been developed that it could be declassified and turned over to our civilian space program. I suspect NASA could figure out something to do with it.

I've been busy rewriting. A publisher wants to publish one of my novels, but the editor asked for some changes. The biggest was wanting me to make all my flashbacks linear; this necessitated creating some bridging material to connect the time frame of the flashbacks with the time frame of the rest of the book. Thankfully, today I finally completed the first draft of that bridging material. I can breathe again. Now all I have to do is rewrite it, then make some corrections and additions here and there in the rest of the novel, and make sure all the continuity issues are taken care of.

Okay, so I still have a lot to do. But today was a milestone, nevertheless.

Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times once again had an interesting article. He points out the hypocrisy of the Times in not showing any of the Dutch cartoons that certain tyranical governments have used to stir up unrest in the Middle East.

Earlier this week, I proposed illustrating this column with examples of the caricatures first published last fall in a Danish newspaper. If readers are to form rational opinions about both the ferocity of Islamic reaction and the American news media's response to it, I thought, surely at least a glance at one or two of these mild cartoons is required. I suggested that the cartoons run inside the Calendar section with a notice in this space concerning their location. That way, those who wanted to see them could, while those who might be offended simply could avoid that page.

I fully expected the proposal to be rejected, and it was — quickly and in writing, though the note also expressed the hope that the column would be as forceful and candid as possible.

This paper has ample company. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today all have declined to run the cartoons because many Muslims find them offensive. The people who run Associated Press, NBC, CBS, CNN and National Public Radio's website agree. So far, the only U.S. news organizations to provide a look at what this homicidal fuss is about are the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Austin American-Statesman, the Fox cable network and ABC.

Then, later in the collumn he points out:

Nothing, however, quite tops the absurdity of two pieces on the situation done this week by the New York Times and CNN. In the former instance, a thoughtful essay by the paper's art critic was illustrated with a 7-year-old reproduction of Chris Ofili's notorious painting of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung. (Apparently, her fans aren't as touchy as Muhammad's.) Thursday, CNN broadcast a story on how common anti-Semitic caricatures are in the Arab press and illustrated it with —you guessed it — one virulently anti-Semitic cartoon after another. As the segment concluded, Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera and piously explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures.

He didn't even blush.

If the Danish cartoons are, in fact, being withheld from most American newspaper readers and television viewers out of restraint born of a newfound respect for people's religious sensitivities, a great opportunity to prove the point is coming. A major American studio, Sony, shortly will release a film version of Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code." It's fair to say that you'd have to go back to the halcyon days of the Nativist publishing operations in the 19th century to find a popular book quite as blatantly and vulgarly anti-Catholic as this one.

Its plot is a vicious little stew of bad history, fanciful theology and various slanders directed at the Vatican and Opus Dei, an organization to which thousands of Catholic people around the world belong. In this vile fantasy, the Catholic hierarchy is corrupt and manipulative and Opus Dei is a violent, murderous cult. The late Pope John Paul II is accused of subverting the canonization process by pushing sainthood for Josemaría Escrivá, Opus' founder, as a payoff for the organization's purported "rescue" of the Vatican bank. The plot's principal villain is a masochistic albino Opus Dei "monk" for whom murder is just one of many sadistic crimes. (It probably won't do any good to point out that, while it's unclear whether Opus Dei has any albino members, there definitely are no monks.)

Now many Catholics, this one included, regard Opus Dei as a creepy outfit with an unwholesome affinity for authoritarianism gleaned from its formative years in Franco's Spain. But neither it nor its members are corrupt or murderous. It is a moral — though thankfully not legal — libel to suggest otherwise. Further, it is deeply offensive to allege — even fictionally — that the Roman Catholic Church would tolerate Opus, or any organization, if it were any of those things.

So how will the American news media respond to the release of this film?

Certainly, there should be reviews since this is a news event, though it would be a surprise if any of them had something substantive to say about these issues. But what about publishing feature stories, interviews or photographs? Isn't that offensive, since they promote the film? More to the point, should newspapers and television networks refuse to accept advertising for this film since plainly that would be promoting hate speech? Will our editors and executives declare their revulsion at the very thought of profiting from bigotry?

Naaaaww.

It won't happen for a simple reason that has nothing to do with the ideas being expressed or anybody's sensitivities, religious or otherwise. It won't happen because Pope Benedict XVI isn't about to issue a fatwa against director Ron Howard or star Tom Hanks. It won't happen because Cardinal Roger M. Mahony isn't going to lead an angry mob to burn Sony Studios, and none of the priests of the archdiocese is going to climb into the pulpit Sunday and call for the producer's beheading.

On the other hand, perhaps the events of the last two weeks have shocked our editors and news executives into a communal change of heart when it comes to sensitivities of all religious believers.

Right.

That will happen when pigs soar through the skies on the wings of angels, when the lion reclines with the lamb on high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and no one bothers to beat the world's very last sword into a ploughshare because all the hungry have been fed.

Until that glorious day, those of us who inhabit this real world will continue to believe that the American news media's current exercise in mass self-censorship has nothing to do with either sensitivity or restraint and everything to do with timidity and expediency.

Read the whole thing:Let's be honest about cartoons. It is intersting to me that the Los Angeles Times allows such harsh criticism of its editorial policies on its own pages.

Apparently Moslem prohibition on images of Muhammed is only when it serves their propaganda purposes; here is an interesting website that shows images of Muhammed made by Moslems over the last few hundred years. See here.

Tim Rutten writing in today's Los Angeles Times had another interesting aricle. He writes about the current controversy regarding some cartoons that many Moslems take offense at:

THERE'S a difference between a piece of journalism that unavoidably provokes and one that is merely provocative. So which were the cartoon caricatures of Muhammad published in European newspapers from Bulgaria to Madrid this week?

The cartoons, which really are rather mild little doodles, first were published in a Danish newspaper last fall. Outraged Muslims in the Persian Gulf states launched a boycott of Danish goods that lead the government in Copenhagen to express regret for the offense, but to defend the paper's right to publish. By this week, the Danes were facing not only violent protests in the Islamic streets but also mounting demands from governments in the Mideast and elsewhere that they apologize and do something to the paper.

By week's end, papers and magazines across Europe had republished some or all of the cartoons in a gesture of solidarity with their Danish colleagues and in defense of their refusal to be intimidated out of free expression. Muslim outrage mounted. Palestinian gunmen surrounded the European Union mission in Gaza and others threatened to kidnap Westerners in reprisal. Violence spread and Western diplomats including Kofi Annan and the British foreign secretary began falling all over themselves to apologize for their news media's insensitivity.

All this would be slightly more edifying if it didn't reflect the destructive and dangerous double standard that the Western nations routinely observe when it comes to the government-controlled media in Islamic states. There the media is routinely rife with the vilest sort of hate directed at Jews and, less often, Christians. The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" remain widely available in countries where nothing is published without government permission, and quotations from that infamous forgery are a staple of commentaries published across the Middle East. In recent years, government-owned television stations in Egypt and Syria have broadcast dramas that repeat the blood libel.

Where were the united and implacable Western demands for apologies?

If you want to see the continuing consequences of this double standard, consider these reactions to this week's events as reported Friday by the Associated Press: In Gaza City, Palestinian terrorists tossed a bomb into the French cultural center. Ismail Hassan, a 37-year-old tailor marching in an anti-European protest there, said, "Whoever defames our prophet should be executed."

Meanwhile, the imam who preached the Friday sermon in Gaza's Omari Mosque told 9,000 worshippers that the cartoonists who executed the caricatures should be beheaded.

In the remainder of the article, he makes the argument that the reaction in the Moslem world is a consequence of philosophical/theological presuppositions that are radically different from what exists in Judaism and Christianity:

Whatever the religious sensitivities involved, reactions such as these may strike you as threateningly — even viciously — irrational. That's because they are, and there's a reason.

Back in the High Middle Ages, the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — reached one of those fundamental forks in the historical road. For centuries, a series of Islamic scholars had preserved the works of Aristotle that one day would lay the foundations for the secular logic and science that have made the modern world possible. Their "rediscovery" by medieval scholars provoked a crisis. They recognized that reason was a powerful tool, but were fearful that using it would undermine faith, which was the basis for authority in all three communities.

What to do — or, more precisely, how to think?

Three intellectual giants rose to the challenge. Two of them — the philosopher and jurist Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes, and the great rabbi and physician Moses Maimonides — actually were contemporaries, both born in the Spanish city of Cordova. Tradition has it they even met and befriended each other while on the run from the Almohads, Islamic fundamentalists from the Maghreb, who had captured Andalusia and destroyed its storied culture of tolerance. The third was Thomas Aquinas — of whom his admiring coreligionists one day would say, "He led reason captive into the house of faith." Recall that this was an age in which the literate West, not unlike today's Islamists, still regarded theology as "the queen of the sciences."

Averroes' exposition of Aristotle was so widely admired and influential that when Aquinas took it up a century or so later at the University of Paris he referred to Aristotle simply as "the philosopher" and to Averroes as "the commentator." But while Maimonides and, later, Aquinas — who also read and admired the philosopher rabbi — held that there exists a single truth and that faith, properly understood, never can conflict with reason, Averroes took the other fork. He held that there were two truths — that of revelation and that of the natural world. There was no need to reconcile them because they were separate and distinct.

It was a form of intellectual suicide and cut off much of the Islamic world from the centuries of scientific and political progress that followed.

As the events of the last week have demonstrated pretty forcefully, all this is more than an historical curiosity, because the globalization of markets and peoples has brought the rest of the modern world to Islam whether Muslims want it or not. One of the minor paradoxes at work here is that long before the imams' fiery sermons sent people into the streets this week, they'd been whipped into a frenzy by quintessentially modern creations — cellphone text messages and the Internet. Islamic societies are enthusiastic consumers of nearly everything the modern West produces — except such indispensable values as separation of church and state and freedom of expression.

Read the entire article: Drawn Into a Religious Conflict, by Tim Rutten (Saturday, February 4, 2006) Los Angeles Times.

I get thoughts on occasion. Like yesterday, as I was reading Mark 6, something popped into my head. I'm still toying with it; perhaps I'll write an article.

There is a tendency in the church to regard all ethical standards as unchanging absolutes. Almost goes without saying. The idea that there could be a progressive quality to it strikes most as absurd. But in Mark 6:7ff Jesus sends his disciples out to preach the gospel and heal the sick and gives them instructions on how they should conduct themselves. Later, in Luke 22:35ff when he sends them out again, he gives them different instructions for when they go out. The purposes and needs have shifted. We recognize, as theologians, the progressive nature of God’s revelation to his people, but somehow imagine that this is not the case with ethics, or that progressive development ceased with the appearance of the closed biblical canon.

But perhaps a consideration of Jesus’ changing instructions to his disciples gives us a principle for the interpretation of morals and biblical injunctions: they may sometimes be more circumstantial in their implementation than many might think. Or be comfortable with. Circumcision seems clearly an eternal command in the Old Testament, impossible to ignore or do without. And yet Paul dismisses it entirely for in the NT without qualms. More than that, he actively argues against it—-despite the clear-cut biblical commands to the contrary, and despite the severe criticism he faced for his position from traditional Judaism and even from many within the Christian sect. Likewise, Christians (including Paul and Peter) jettisoned the kosher laws regarding what could be eaten. Peter’s vision of the animals let down in a sheet contributed to a shift, despite clear cut biblical commands to the contrary; the Jerusalem Council’s letter (as recorded in Acts) makes it clear that the church very early decided that the dietary regulations no longer needed to be enforced.

So, it appears that simply because some may think that certain biblical commands or injunctions are eternal truths does not necessarily mean that they actually are. The principles of grace and love are ever important, more than the strictures of the law. Jesus points out that the law comes down to just two commands, to love God and love people; these remain the guiding principles in morality, rather than the detailed lists that appear within the sacred texts. Consider the story of the woman caught in adultery and Jesus’ consistent violation of Sabbath restrictions: mercy, love, justice take precedence over any legalistic following of the biblical laws.

No one has a problem recognizing that certain injunctions in the Bible are contextually specific, rather than universal, eternal commands. For instance when Jesus tells Peter to pay the temple tax by going fishing, I know of no one who imagines that Jesus has given Peter an eternal command that tells us we are going to be instructed in how to pay our taxes today. Perhaps the same is true of other legalistic formulations as well?

The Bible is not a frozen thing. From it, we can alter and adjust our understanding of ethics to fit new circumstances, not remain hidebound in stasis. The temptation, of course, for some will be to use such a realization to rationalize selfish and unloving behavior. If you imagine that now, based on this idea, you can justify taking an axe to your annoying neighbor, then you're missing the point. Perhaps revisiting the central theme of love, mercy, grace would be useful in considering behavior. But that central theme must, I believe, have a role in making sense of how we interpret the bilical texts.

I signed up for a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone service a couple of days ago and set it all up late this afternoon. The setup was easy and everything worked right the first time. It seems to work well, at least so far: good voice quality and no issues of any sort. It seems, frankly, indistinguishable from our old phone company. The big plus in all of this for me is that our phone bill (combined local and long distance) now drops to nearly a third of what the old phone bill was monthly, from about 100 dollars per month down to 35, and that's with having a separate fax line! And we now have unlimited minutes; we can call anywhere in the US and Canada for as long as we like for that flat rate of 35 bucks a month. I like it!

An interesting review of the book Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror by Mary Habeck, published by Yale University Press (243 pp. $25). Mary Habeck is a military historian and associate professor in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Here's an excerpt from the review by Tim Rutten from the Los Angeles Times:

Habeck contends that Western analysts err when they insist on attributing the rise of jihadism to secular causes — economic deprivation of the Muslim masses, the legacy of European imperialism, American sympathy for the state of Israel. Taking the 9/11 terrorists as her examples, she convincingly argues that they did what they did because of what they believed as Muslims:

"Muhammad Atta and the other 18 men who took part in the September 11 attacks were middle-class and well-educated and had bright futures ahead of them," she writes. "They participated in the hijackings not because they were forced to do so through sudden economic or social deprivation, but because they chose to deal with the problems of their community — for religious/ideological reasons — by killing as many Americans as they could." Similarly, "If the entire purpose of jihadism is to break an imperial stranglehold on the Islamic world symbolized by U.S. support for Israel, why did the U.S. become the focus of [jihadi theorist] Sayyid Qutb's anger in the early 1950s (more than a decade before the United States became associated with Israel)? Moreover, how do the effects of colonization account for the fact that one of the earliest jihadist thinkers, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, developed his version of radical and violent Islam long before the West colonized Islamic lands? … The consistent need to find explanations other than religious ones for the attacks says, in fact, more about the West than it does about the jihadis. Western scholars have generally failed to take religion seriously."

(It's worth recalling that Wahhab's interpretation of Islam is Saudi Arabia's official orthodoxy and that Riyadh's petrodollars are financing its missionary work around the world at this very moment.)

Because Habeck is deadly serious about the jihadis' religiosity, she is scrupulous about their relationship to contemporary Islam. It would be "evil," she argues, to contend that a billion-plus Muslims supported or desired the mass murder that occurred on 9/11. Nor is it correct to conflate jihadi ideology with Islamist politics, such as those of Turkey's Justice and Development Party. On the other hand, she writes, it "would be just as wrong to conclude that the hijackers, Al Qaeda and the other radical groups have nothing to do with Islam."

Nor can the jihadis' key beliefs be dismissed as "the marginal opinions of a few fanatics. The principal dogmas that they assert … have roots in discussions about Islamic law and theology that began soon after the death of Muhammad and that are supported by important segments of the clergy today."

Here an American reader confronts the necessity of reaching beyond the undergraduate impulse that equates a facile acceptance with tolerance. It's a step that requires the recognition, as the philosopher Richard Rorty once put it, that some ideas, like some people, are just "no damn good."

Habeck does an efficient job of demonstrating how the jihadis pick and choose texts from the Koran and the hadith (traditions concerning the life of the prophet) and insist on their right to interpret them for their ideological convenience. The texts and traditions, however, are there to pick.

She locates the origins of contemporary jihadism first in the writings of Wahhab and the 13th century Koranic commentator Ahmad ibn Abd al Halim ibn Taymiyya. Then came the crucial contributions of the 20th century Egyptians Hasan Banna — founder of the Muslim Brotherhood — and Qutb, who lived for a time in the United States, as well as a Pakistani, Sayyid abu al-ala Mawdudi.

Banna contributed the notion that every aspect of Western thought was as much a threat to Islam as any imperial occupation. Mawdudi argued that since God's sovereignty is absolute, no law but that of Islam is valid. Qutb held, among other things, that Muslims who do not conform to the jihadi interpretations of the Koran are unbelievers, which makes it permissible to kill them at will, and that the whole notion of separating church and state in any way was "hideous schizophrenia."

The entire review is available on the LA Times website.

Diplomacy is described sometimes as saying "nice doggy" while you look around for a rock.

Sometimes when I hear the President or other administration officials describe Islam as a "religion of peace" and other politically correct nice-nice, I think about that description and wonder if it's not just their way of saying "nice doggy."

Twenty years ago today the Challenger was destroyed shortly after lift off. I remember it vividly; I was just pulling into the parking lot at Los Angeles Baptist College, where I expected to teach my morning class on the Minor Prophets. I was listening to coverage of the launch on KNX, the local all-news station here in Southern California.

It was a devastating feeling. I told my class, then I went through the motions of the lecture; afterward, I went to the student lounge and watched coverage of the disaster on the TV there; quite a number of students and other faculty were there.

That evening, I tried to console myself by watching some science fiction movies; the one I remember was the movie 2010: Odyssey Two. Not the greatest movie, but I found comfort in the thought that our quest for space would surely continue.

Thankfully it has, even after the loss of a second shuttle, Columbia, in 2003.

Here in the Antelope Valley, they renamed 10th Street East Challenger Way. Last year they renamed Avenue M Columbia Way. Given that all the orbiters were built here, that seems appropriate.

It is useful to keep in mind that when Hamas speaks of "the occupation" of Palestine, they are not referring to just the West Bank and Gaza. They mean all of Israel. Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, has labelled the Jewish state as a "tumour" that should be "wiped off the map" or moved as far away as Alaska, and has branded the Holocaust a "myth".

Iran and Hamas are allies and declared in December that they represented a "united front" against Israel. Today, Memri.org reported the following translations of statements by leaders of Hamas:

Special Dispatch - Palestinians
January 27, 2006
No. 1079

Hamas in Run-up to Elections: Relatively Pragmatic Statements Alongside Extremist Statements

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD107906 .

TO VIEW CLIPS ON HAMAS, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S5&P1=151 .

In the run-up to the Palestinian elections, Hamas members in the Palestinian Authority began to make relatively pragmatic statements, while continuing to make extremist statements. According to media reports, Hamas has retained a media consultant to improve the movement's image - though Hamas claims that the consultant was hired to provide technical advice on enhancing contacts with the media(1). It should be noted that the relatively pragmatic statements were made by Hamas members involved in the elections, and not by the movement's central leaders, who live abroad. These leaders, in particular political bureau head Khaled Mash'al, emphasize continued resistance alongside "diplomatic activity," and state that there is no contradiction between the two.

The following are excerpts from statements by Hamas members:


Establishing a Palestinian State Within the 1967 Borders as an Interim Solution

Isma'il Haniyya, who headed the Hamas list of candidates for the Legislative Council, said in an interview with the French news agency AFP that "Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in the territories occupied [by Israel] in 1967 - as an interim solution. However, Hamas will continue to maintain its views regarding the boundaries of historical Palestine, and [in terms of] refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation."(2)

In an interview with the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Rumhi, a candidate on the Hamas list, explained: "Hamas is aware of the changes that have occurred in the region and in the world, and is therefore proposing an interim solution. This solution is not new. I first mentioned it in 1988, and referred to it again in the 90s. The shahid Sheikh Ahmad Yassin repeated these statements in 2002 and 2003, and announced that [Hamas] is willing to accept an interim solution based on the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in the territories that were occupied in 1967, removal of the settlements, and return of the refugees - all this in return for a hudna [truce] of limited duration. This does not stand in contradiction to [the fact that] we have a strategic position..."(3)

Another candidate on the Hamas list, Ahmad Bahr, repeated at a Gaza election rally that "Hamas is willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders as an interim solution, but without giving up a single grain of Palestinian soil, without recognizing the State of Israel, and on condition that Hamas retain the right to possess arms."(4)


Hamas Election Platform Does Not Include Eradication of Israel

The Hamas election platform includes a declaration of intent to "eliminate the occupation," but does not mention the eradication of Israel. Upon the publication of the platform, there were various reactions to the omission of this objective, which is often mentioned by Hamas and appears in its charter. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri vehemently denied that there was any contradiction between the platform and Hamas's charter: "The platform refers to details and implementation methods for the next four years, while the charter lays out our permanent strategic views."

Salah Al-Bardawil, another candidate on the Hamas list, stated that "Hamas has never proposed to change or amend its charter. The platform presents a realistic view that reflects Hamas's goals for the next four years. Had we spoken of eliminating and eradicating Israel within this period, we would have been be deceiving our people and repeating false slogans. But this does not stand in contradiction [to the fact that] we place emphasis on the elimination and non-recognition of Israel."(5)

Muaman Bseiso, columnist for the Hamas weekly Al-Risala, wrote: "The charter is not the Koran, which is unchangeable. I believe that one day it will be changed or replaced according to the views of the Hamas, in order to realize the national interests of the Palestinians."(6)


On Negotiating With Israel

Hamas candidate for the Jerusalem area Muhammad Abu Teir said, "Negotiations [with Israel] conducted by Hamas would be more effective than the negotiations that have been held for the past 10 years without achieving anything."(7) On the following day, Abu Teir denied having made this statement.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Rumhi said that "a distinction must be made between negotiations with the occupation towards a political [settlement], and day-to-day contacts regarding services [for the population]. For example, after Hamas won [the municipal elections] in Qalqiliya, it naturally had dealings with the municipality of [the Israeli town of] Kfar Saba regarding water, electricity and sewage [management]."(8)

However, in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV aired January 23, 2006, Khaled Mash'al stated that Hamas would not negotiate with Israel. Likewise, Isma'il Haniyya said: "Negotiations with Israel are not on the Hamas agenda, since past negotiations between Israel and the PA have been unsuccessful. Hamas will not repeat attempts that have [already] failed. [Moreover,] the stronger side always has an advantage in negotiations."(9)

In contrast, senior Hamas member Mahmoud Al-Zahar said at a press conference: "There is no prohibition on negotiating with Israel, but the political crime is to sit with the Israelis, exchange smiles, and say that there is progress, when in reality there is no progress... If Hamas wins [the elections], it will be able to come up with thousands of appropriate ways [to hold negotiations], provided that the Israeli side has anything to offer in terms of stopping the aggression, withdrawal [from territories], and release of prisoners." Al-Zahar mentioned as an example the indirect contacts between Israel and Hizbullah via German mediation regarding the release of Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails. "Negotiations with Israel," he said, "have brought the Palestinians only destruction, martyrdom and injuries, in addition to economic disaster."(10)


Resistance is Hamas's Strategic Policy

Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri said: "The resistance plan is Hamas's strategic policy until [we achieve] the complete liberation of our land... Hamas wants to reinforce the option of jihad and resistance in order to ensure the release of the prisoners, the return of the refugees, and the restoration of all the other rights that [the Palestinians] have been robbed of."(11)

At an assembly in Damascus, Khaled Mash'al said: "This assembly holds special significance, since it takes place after Gaza was liberated against the will of the Zionist aggressors. Who knows when we will celebrate the liberation of Gaza, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, and all the rest of Palestine. Hamas, together with the Palestinian people, will implement its policy using a new language, without feeling any urge to meet with the enemy or negotiate with it. Was Gaza liberated through negotiations?! Hamas will continue to wield its weapons and to [claim] its right to resist. Resistance will [continue to] be a strategic option until the last piece of Palestinian land is liberated, and until the last refugee returns."(12)

Endnotes:
(1) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), January 21, 2006.
(2) Al-Ayyam (Palestinian Authority), January 22, 2006.
(3) Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 19, 2006.
(4) Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 22, 2006.
(5) www.islamonline.org, January 14, 2006.
(6) www.islamonline.org, January 14, 2006.
(7) Al-Ayyam (PA), January 16, 2006.
(8) Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 19, 2006.
(9) Al-Ayyam (PA), January 22, 2006.
(10) Al-Ayyam (PA), January 24, 2006.
(11) Al-Risala (Gaza), January 16, 2006. On a different occasion, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said that his movement "has no choice but to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to negotiate their exchange with prisoners held in Israel." Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 19, 2006.
(12) www.irna.ir/ar/news/view/menu-269/0512314399085311.htm, December 31, 2005.



*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
Search previous MEMRI publications at www.memri.org

If you no longer wish to receive this publication via email, please reply and enter only the word "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line.

Some people think we are unbalanced in our support of Israel versus the rest of the Arab world or the Palestinians. Odd, really. Where exactly do you stand to balance a free, democratic nation against totalitarian anti-semitic thugs who believe sending suicide bombers into discos is a fine foreign policy? To me, it would seem to be analagous to the stand I might take between the police and rapists. Sure, the police make mistakes sometimes, but that doesn't give me any warm feelings for rapists.

Critics of Israel seem to forget that Israel is a pluralistic liberal western democracy. Free press, lots of ideas and disagreements and discussions; wide range of beliefs. Freedom. Did I mention that? And certainly, Israelis make mistakes. And those Israelis who are guilty of attrocities, just as the members of the military who mistreated detainees at Abu Graib, have a habit of winding up in prison.

Hamas is equivalent to the Nazi party in Germany. In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his plans. The Nazis were quite open about their desires. And yet few believed them, except for Churchill and a few others, who were branded as extremists and roadblocks to peace until it was nearly too late.

Hamas tells us that they want to destroy the nation of Israel. They regularly kill Jews just because they are Jews. Their allies in Iran say that they want to wipe Israel out.

Me, I tend to believe that these people are telling us what they really think. And I have no reason to suspect that the Palestinian people who happily voted for these thugs have any doubts about what they intend either. It wasn't just corruption and a bad economy that made them vote as they did. They voted as they did because they hate the Jews and like the Nazis are happy to blame them for their own problems. Pardon me if I have no sympathy for a bunch of people who honor bombers who kill Jews and danced in the streets and celebrated on 911. Pardon me if I believe them when they tell everyone that they intend to destroy Israel and have no wish to negotiate, except as an "interum" step toward their ultimate goal of destruction.

Things that most people believe that simply are not true:

1. You can boil a frog to death if you heat the water very slowly. NOT TRUE.
2. You only use ten percent of your brain. NOT TRUE.
3. You have to wait a half hour after eating before going swimming. NOT TRUE.

As Snopes explains about such things:

Regardless of the exact version heard, the myth is spread and repeated, by both the well-meaning and the deliberately deceptive. The belief that remains, then, is what Robert J. Samuelson termed a "psycho-fact, [a] belief that, though not supported by hard evidence, is taken as real because its constant repetition changes the way we experience life." People who don't know any better will repeat it over and over, until, like the admonition against swimming right after you eat, the claim is widely believed. ("Triumph of the Psycho-Fact," Newsweek, 9 May 1994.)

There was an election in the Palestinian Territories. Hamas won. And what can we say about Hamas? It is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just like al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists, it infuses nationalism with religious faith. What is their goal? The ethnic cleansing or the death of all Israelis, and the incorporation of their land into the new state of Palestine. Suicide bombing is one weapon they have used on a regular basis. Hamas leaders have already been quick to say that they will take their place in the legislative assembly and keep their weapons. Commentators patiently explain how corrupt the other politicians were in Gaza and the West Bank, and so the people wanted change, they wanted to get rid of corruption. That's what motivated the Palestinians to elect Hamas. They don't really buy in to all that Jew hatred and suicide bombing. It was just about the economy stupid! The economy in those places is so poor, of course the people were desperate and picked Hamas. But the election is over and now and the slogans will be only slogans, but they will have to moderate themselves since they need to focus on building roads and hospitals and collecting the garbage and they'll have to compromise and work for a peaceful solution.

No. It is 1932 and the Nazis have come to power. Hamas is a terrorist organization; they preach hatred against the Jews and use the same arguments that the Nazis did. They do not believe in compromise. They belive in sending youths to blow themselves up in the hopes of killing Jewish women and children. And they will no more moderate themselves than the Nazis did when they gained the chancellorship of Germany. The Palestinian people do not want peace. They want war. They just voted for it. And war there shall be. Bet on it.

And for the ethically challenged who live among us, a reminder of what actual repression and actual torture are can be seen on video available at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Not for the faint of heart.

Occasional forays to MEMRI.org can also help remind people what's really going on in the world, too--for instance, if you ever have the thought that the terrorist organization Hamas might be moderated by participating in elections in the Palestinian territories (see moronic reports here and here). Um, yeah, just like the Nazi Party was moderated by participating in elections in Weimar Germany back in the 1930s. What part of "anti-Semites are dangerous" don't people get?

Ah, yes, hypocrisy, thy name is Google:

SAN FRANCISCO — Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday....

Google's decision rankled Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group that has sharply criticized Internet companies including Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com for submitting to China's censorship regime.

"This is a real shame," said Julien Pain, head of Reporters with Borders' Internet desk. "When a search engine collaborates with the government like this, it makes it much easier for the Chinese government to control what is being said on the Internet."

Once again, we see how, for the sake of business, Google will bend over and take anything. Meanwhile, the US Govt is criticized for wanting to examine searches that are related to child pornography, while Google is praised for their brave stand against the attempted "oppression" and "dangerous infringement on privacy." But Google will happily restrict the access of Chinese people to whatever the Chinese government would prefer they not see, and they are happy to do the same thing for the governments of France and Germany.

When Google censors results in China, it intends to post notifications alerting users that some content has been removed — to comply with local laws. The company provides similar alerts in Germany and France when, to comply with national laws, it censors results to remove references to Nazi paraphernalia.

And yet I do not hear Belefonte and those like him raising a peep about this actual repression. Real censorship is of no great importance to him. Instead he prefers to believe in imaginary things, for instance that it is Americans that are repressed and facing the loss of all their freedoms. I wonder if Belefonte also believes in unicorns? Perhaps he'd be interested in buying a bridge in Brooklyn?...

You know, people like Harry Belafonte puzzle me. There are many like him. According to MSNBC.com he said:

“We’ve come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended,” Belafonte said in a speech to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference.

What puzzles me is that if what he said is true, then how is it that I know what he said? If this was the fascist, repressive state that he wants us to imagine, I don't understand how it could be that his words were reported in newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. If this is a fascist state, then how odd that he is sleeping peacefully in his bed with no fear that there will be a knock on his door at two in the morning. He probably ate in a fancy restaurant today, where he was treated with respect. I suspect he has no fear at all that he might wind up in a concentration camp, nor does he have to fear gas chambers. Doubtless, he will continue to be well-paid for what he does. And yet, despite the fact that he is free, can say and do and go wherever he likes, he will continue making these insane comments. And there will be many people who will agree with him, and will repeat his words, and like him, they will sleep peacefully, too, with no fear of harm.

Meanwhile, he and those like him, and those who applaud him, will continue to remain silent about the actual dictatorships in the world, they will ignore the nations that actually torture, who actually toss people in jail for speaking their minds, or worse, they will embrace fondly the brutal oppressors of the world and spout praise in their capitals while their artists, writers, and intellectuals are locked away, and where critics of the regime are actually killed or jailed.

But if someone dares disgree publically with Belafonte, or someone in the current US government says an unkind word about him, he'll shout that he's being silenced, even as thunderous applause floods over him from his next speaking engagement.

MSNBC.com reports that Google is rebuffing the US goverment's efforts to get data on what terms are searched:

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration’s demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet’s leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.

It should be pointed out that the US government's request very specifically, excludes personally identifiable information. The same MSNBC.com article points out that:

...the government says it isn’t seeking any data that ties personal information to search requests...

So I can't see that any privacy issues are in view here. They just want the data about what is being searched for, because they wonder what the percentages are for searches for child pornography. They want to know how significant the problem is.

This doesn't seem like a bad thing.

But when the Chinese government asked Google to restrict searches in China and block sites that the Chinese government doesn't like--sites that are critical of Beijing--Google happily complied:

Google's recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from websites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil".

Dynamic Internet Technology, a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the internet in China.

Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by China.

"That's a problem because the Chinese people need to know there are alternative opinions from the Chinese government and there are many things being covered up by the government," said Bill Xia, Dynamic's chief executive. "Users expect Google to return anything on the internet. That's what a search engine does."

Mr Xia suspects Google is co-operating with the Chinese government's censorship efforts to smooth the way for expansion plans that could help the Mountain View-based company boost future profits.

Why is it that people will protest freely in our democracy, stand on "principle" but lose their principles when they are in a totalitarian dictatorship? Oh, yeah. dictatorships shoot people who protest. Google appears guilty of gross hypocrisy. They are not principled, they just know if they don't do what the Chinese government says, they'll lose that market; but if they don't do what the US government wants, they'll lose nothing. They aren't alone, of course. Microsoft took down a Chinese blog, and Yahoo turned over data that led to the conviction of a Chinese journalist. But I'm sure their principles would kick back in if the US government needed something.

The Washington Post, among other sources, reports the following words from the mayor of New Orleans:

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 16 -- Mayor C. Ray Nagin suggested Monday that hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" -- and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Pat Robertson is not alone is being an asshole, apparently. But then the false theology of Job's friends, that bad things happen only to bad people, and that if you suffer, you must have deserved it, is a widely believed lie.

CNN reports that Pat Robertson apologized:

Evangelist Pat Robertson apologized in a Wednesday letter for saying that the major stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was divine retribution for "dividing God's land."

The apology -- offered in a letter to Sharon's son, Omri -- followed a threat by Israel to exclude Robertson from a proposed $50 million Christian heritage site in northern Israel.

Of course, it took him until Wednesday on January 11 to say anything--after his spokespeople had initially come out to reinforce and argue in favor of his stupid remark--and then his apology arrives only in the face of Israel deciding that maybe doing business with a rude jerk is a bad idea. Frankly, his apology strikes me as little better than the babbling of a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar. Certainly the child is sorry--sorry he got caught. And the apology sounds more like an excuse than anything else, since he blames those who reported his remarks claiming that somehow they misconstrued what he meant. Hardly. Frankly, he remains a jerk and this apology doesn't much help his case, since he still believes that what he said was true. I don't see that his theology has shifted. I think he's just worried about losing money.

A "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government. The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine. They also report that a test engine could be online within five years.

See New Scientist for the article.

See here for a PDF of the actual scientific paper.

I am very skeptical of all of this; but it sure would be cool.

It is reported that Pat Robertson has once again opened his mouth. As is usually the case when this happens, he has reminded everyone that he is an asshole:

The Reverend Pat Robertson says Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke could be God's punishment for giving up Israeli territory.

The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network told viewers of "The 700 Club" that Sharon was "dividing God's land," even though the Bible says doing so invites "God's enmity."

Robertson added, "I would say woe to any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course."

He noted that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

Robertson said God's message is, "This land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone."

Assuming this news report is an accurate portrayal of his words, I have to wonder once again why Robertson can't learn to keep his mouth closed. If God was really in the business of punishing people for being "bad" like Pat Robertson believes, well...what I'm thinking isn't very nice.

Hey Pat, here's a hint for you. When someone gets ill, or something bad happens, the proper response is simply, "we'll be praying for him/her and his/her family." Duh. Maybe if Robertson would just reread the book of Job and ask himself if it's really a good idea to keep acting just like Job's friends, he could avoid being a jackass all the time.

UPDATE:

Well, both CNN and MSNBC are reporting what Robertson said. And now his spokesperson had this to say:

Robertson spokeswoman Angell Watts said of critics who challenged his remarks, “What they’re basically saying is, ‘How dare Pat Robertson quote the Bible?”’

“This is what the word of God says,” Watts said. “This is nothing new to the Christian community.”

Um. No. This is not what the Bible says. Robertson is guilty of misquoting it and pulling things out of context. In point of fact, Robertson's position is unscriptural, in the sense that it stands opposed to what the Bible actually says. But his spokesperson is right: it's not new to the Christian community. We seem to have no lower percentage of assholes among us than the human race as a whole. Not too surprising, I guess. It's just too bad Roberson is one of those assholes, whose theology is that of Job's friends: stupid and wrong.