Funny?

In recent months, proposed burqa bans in Europe have raised many important questions regarding choice, religious freedom, and societal impositions of dress and femininity. Aren’t such bans in observance of some greater good? Aren’t these bans necessary for public safety, eliminating the burqa as an ideal and ready disguise for terrorists or bank robbers? Shouldn’t modern society prevent oppressive Muslims from subjugating women any further? On the other hand, if we regard liberty as the highest value, shouldn’t we respect the freedom of women who choose to wear burqas? Then again, how do we know women really are choosing to wear burqas? And is it any of our business anyway?

Beck, The Movie

(SJ News, Peoples Republic of Utah Bureau, April 2065)


Ging Hua Films announces that their SONY/Paramount division has purchased the film rights to the biography of the assassinated Great Leader.  Prophet Hiram Kaching of the Church of latter Day Saints and Kim il Jung III, President of the People's Christian Republic of the Koreas, reassured the MormansRChristians community that Ging Hua would be respectful of the life and beliefs of the Great Leader.

Ave Maria Biotech has agreed to provide one of its adult clones of leader beck to play the lead. The clone, GB 2.1, was grown form a pinky attained shortly after the assasination, and has been raised by followers of the leader to have a full knowledge of Leader Bech's life and philosphy, Beck Juche.

This is Scary: Ave Maria Biotech

A biotech firm, AVM Biotrech, with roots in the UW is working with the radical religious right to block stem cell research.  A federal judge has recognized AVM's standing in court  because, the Seattle firm claimed such research could hurt their business interests. 

The result is an injunction blocking research using human embryonic stem cell lines!

                         May God help us all!

More details and links at The Ave:

http://handbill.us/?p=346

Who Owns the Kids?

LONDON (RNS) A Roman Catholic adoption agency has lost its fight for the right to continue its policy of refusing to place children with same-sex couples based on religious principles.

The decision in England rules that a Roman Catholic adoption agency can not require that adoptive parents of a child born Roman Catholic be ... Roman Catholic.    If the ruling says the State, not the Church defines who is Roman Catholic, wouldn't this violate America's First Amendment?

This decisions has incredibly deep implications.
 
The assertion of  Christians, Muslims and Jews is that their religion is transmitted to their children.   Native American Children and Jewish children were taken by the Roman Church and baptized.  This was seen by modern liberals as a form of theft. 

If the State claims it has the right to decide that a gay person or a gay couple is Catholic, what happens to the Church's right to define itself?

If the State claims that religion is not transmitted at birth, what about "race?"  

These are dangerous waters.

Glenn Beck Debates the Iman

“We are trying to establish something that follows the YMCA concept but is not a church or a synagogue or, in this case, a mosque, we are taking that concept and adapting it to our time and the fact that we’re Muslims. It’s basically a Muslim Y.”  Faisel Abdul Raul

Former hip-hop star turned Orthodox Jew shot dead in N.Y.

Jamaican born Yoseph Robinson was shot to death at a kosher liquor store where he worked, while trying to protect his girlfriend during an attempted robbery.

One friend told the Daily News, "I would look at him and say, 'Yoseph, how can you be black and be Jewish?' And Yoseph would just look at me with this big smile and say, 'It's not about color, it's about faith.'" His employer at MB Vineyards wine shop in Brooklyn said, "He was a guy that changed his life around. This is the kind of guy we should all emulate."
Robinson allegedly attempted to wrestle the gun from the robber, who entered the Midwood liquor store on Thursday night. Robinson's girlfriend, Lahavah Wallace, said, "He jumped over the counter and wrestled with the guy with the gun and told me to go." Wallace hid in the backroom and then heard shots. When she emerged, Robinson was bleeding on the floor. “He was struggling to breathe."
Robinson was born in Jamaica, but moved to New York when he was 12. At age 16, he began selling drugs. Gail Levi, who recently heard him speak at a synagogue, said, "He was a gangster with all the money, women and drugs that power could buy. But he realized it was empty and wanted to change." At age 23 he converted to Orthodox Judaism. Despite his new life, he still had problems. He was going through a divorce and a custody battle at the time of his death, saying his wife wouldn't let him talk to their six-year-old daughter. He also accused his wife of "straying from an observant lifestyle." However, he seemed to be a beloved character in his neighborhood. One neighbor said, "Most of us Jews in Brooklyn are not that interesting. Yoseph was the most interesting and charismatic person."

The New Mecca

The furor over the Islamic Cultural Center in New York is all too familiar.

The rabid religious right sees 9/11 as a new Mecca.  An American Kaaba.
 The idea that Allah commands that Mecca be free of Jews and Christians is repugnant. The commandment that Islam dominate other peoples is disgusting and should be called that.  The idea that the World Trade Center is profaned bya mosque is just as repugnant.


The price for such rational intolerance, is that we should show the same intolerance of ourselves. Atheists who want to ban God from public places, Christians who see 9/11 as a new Mecca … are ALL doing the same thing.

In the meantime:


Dozens of US soldiers who refused to attend a Christian band's concert at a Virginia military base were banished to their barracks and told to clean them up.

Burlington Burkha Factory in Mecca

Breaking News
Mecca, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
In a striking move, intended to address American concerns about the building of an Islamic Center near to the 9/11 site, the Faisal ibn Hagoldy, Minister of Commercial Development, and Solomon Cohen, CEO of Burlington Coat Factory, have announce that Burlington will open a Burlington Burkha Factory in Mecca.

Burlington, the owner of the site planned for the Islamic Center in NY, has agreed, in return for the access to Mecca to donate the site in NY, to Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam Behind the Islamic Cultural Center.
Burlington’s press release states that the company sees this as “a golden opportunity to bring Burlington’s low prices ans quality to the expanding market of Muslim women who desire fashionable outer clothing that complies with Islamic law.”

SJ News Service

"The sight of Muslims praying at Dachau stopped other passers-by in their tracks, she said."By Jeff Diamant Religion News Service CARLSTADT, N.J. (RNS) The scenario might have seemed unlikely: prominent Muslims and Jews from the United States, trekking across the Atlantic in mournful, spiritual solidarity to visit two Nazi concentration camps. Together.

By Jeff Diamant
Religion News Service
CARLSTADT, N.J. (RNS) The scenario might have seemed unlikely: prominent Muslims and Jews from the United States, trekking across the Atlantic in mournful, spiritual solidarity to visit two Nazi concentration camps. Together.

Tony Judt .. a Jew Dies.

I have never read Tony Judt and did not even know he was such a critical figure in modern Judaism.  Then he died.  

“More than I sometimes understand, I think, I am both writing in and about the tradition and spirit of Jewish cosmopolitanism: caught somewhere between Marx’s ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing’; pil-pul; zahor!; bearing critical witness; social responsibility; and perhaps a certain davka. I’ve never written about this directly, but I think it informs the tone – and probably the subject matter – of much of my work. I also makes me smile when American ultras accuse me of being ‘un-Jewish’ in my criticism of Israel, etc. It seems to me that, for good and ill, I am decidedly Jewish and in a long and worthy tradition.”

Tony Judt

Why Man Makes God

Over at Pharyngula,  PZ Myers, a  critic of all things religious and pious evangelist for Richard Dawkins, is taking on Raymond Kurzweil.  Kurzweil is a great thinker, inventor and prophet .  After inventing the synthesizer, Kurzweil has gone onto write books about the wonder of science ..especially about the ways he sees computer science and neurobiology growing together.  

Sadly, PZ is dissing Kurzweil sense of wonder,  arguing that the brain is too complex for Man to understand. PZ needs to worship at the temple of Spinoza, a place where reality is wonderful.

The News ... from North Korea

Floral Basket from Japanese Delegation

Pyongyang, August 16 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket from the delegation of the Japanese Society for the Study of the Juche Idea on a visit to the DPRK. The floral basket was handed over to an official concerned on Monday by Seiichi Sakugawa, president of the National Liaison Council of Societies for the Study of the Juche Idea who is leading the delegation.

The Mosque at Ground Zero

Why Cordoba?

Why is the Mosque at ground zero to be called the Cordoba Center?

Cordoba was the home of the caliphate that rule Andalusia before the conquest by Christianity.

For many Muslims and Jews, the Andalusian Era in Spain  Cordoba, has become a mythical golden age.  From that age , we have great teachers .. Maimonides, Halevy, Abravanel, ... the Kabala and much of modern medicine began in this tolerant society.  The Ground Zero Islamic center was named for a period in Spanish-Muslim history that some call a golden age of tolerance.


The achievements of that culture are very true, but unlike America, Islam never treated "others" as equals.  Jews were repeatedly confined to ghettos or forced to convert.  There is  a huge difference between the exceptional ism of America, where all peoples are accepted as Americans, and Cordoba where the dominant Islamic proudly tolerated Jews and Christians.

Sadly, the right in America has an idea of tolerance a lot like the ideas of Cordoba.  They see America as a tolerant place, a place where they arfe the majority and they tolerate the rest of us.

I recommend that the right read Washington's letter to the synagogue at Newport, RI.  The Jews of Rhode Islam had written expressing hope that the new nation would tolerate us.  Washington said, no, "we" can not tolerate you because we are all the same.

That is the American view. 

I also strongly recommend Mark Tracy's essay on  the history of Islamic Tolerance and the name "Cordoba."

AtheistTS VS. True Believer

From Aki at HorsesAss

“The difference between a “true believer” and an atheist is VERY small. A “true” believer knows there are 175 religions around the world, and 174 of them are made up and not true. An atheist knows there are 175 religions around the world, and 175 of them are made up and not true.”

GREAT!

Another traditonal industry beat the dust....

Beate Uhse erotica hit where it hurts by free online porn

Free porn available on the internet is hitting erotic shopping empire Beate Uhse where it hurts – in the bottom line

Democracy

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On God

Reality, is what's still there even after you stop believing in it.
                                                                    Philip K. Dick

The Day the Jews Ended

Great short story about the end of the Jews .. read me!

excerpt ...

Suddenly there came a furious knocking at my front door. Outside stood an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, with a big black hat, a long black beard, and a red canister of gasoline in his hand. Two young yeshiva students were at his side, one holding a clipboard, the other holding a baseball bat. I opened the door.
“Shalom Auslander?” the rabbi asked.
“Yes?”
“Shalom Auslander, the Jew?”
“What an odd question,” I said.
“Yes or no,” he said.
“Yes.”
The yeshiva student with the clipboard checked something off on his sheet of paper, and the rabbi handed me a small wooden box.
“It is my duty to inform you,” he said, “that you are no longer Jewish.”