Whats So Great About Christianity
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We’re seeing a surge of atheist confidence and atheist belligerence. The best-selling atheist books like Hitchens’ God Is Not Great and Dawkins’ The God Delusion are one indication of this. Another is the militancy of atheism on many campuses today. In a way, the atheist attacks on God and religion are a bit odd. I don’t believe in unicorns, but I don’t go around writing books about them. I suspect what has given atheists a boost is the Islamic radicalism we’ve seen in the wake of 9/11. The atheists glibly equate Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism, and then conclude that religion itself is the problem.
Dollar and Oil Hit New Records
Oil hit a new record high of $93.80 and the dollar struck a new low yesterday as investors showed their growing certainty that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates on Wednesday.
The same conviction also saw gold approach $800 a troy ounce – its highest price for 28 years – while equities made gains. The move into gold reflects how investors fear rising inflation from the twin forces of higher oil prices and a weaker dollar.
What is Robert Schuller Rethinking?
October 31, 2007 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Its called the “Rethink Conference,” and Schuller promises 30 “Aha” moments from the 30 different speakers confirmed for the event.
Not everyone is thrilled about this meeting of the minds. Some, including Christian author and former New Age devotee Warren Smith, suspect an agenda to subvert the church – to take the focus off biblical truth and absolutes.
“From my perspective as a former New Age follower, I believe that Robert Schullers mission has always been to rethink and change biblical Christianity into something new – as in New Age/New Spirituality,” he says.
Smiths “Deceived on Purpose: The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church” documents Schullers contacts and endorsements of New Age stars such as Gerald Jampolsky, Neale Donald Walsch and Bernie Siegel.
“As a former New Age follower I could hardly believe it,” says Smith. “On October 17, 2004, more than 20 years after his first appearance on the Hour of Power, New Age leader Gerald Jampolsky was once again Robert Schullers featured guest. I was not surprised on one level, because I had always been aware of Schullers affection for New Age teachings. What did surprise me was Schullers willingness to still be so openly aligned with a veteran New Age leader like Jampolsky.”
5.6 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes San Francisco Bay Area
A magnitude-5.6 earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area Tuesday night, rattling homes and nerves, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.
The moderate temblor struck shortly after 8 p.m., about 9 miles northeast of San Jose, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Residents reported feeling the quake as far east as Sacramento and as far north as Sonoma.
The California Highway Patrol has received no reports of damage or injuries, spokesman Tom Marshall said.
It was the strongest tremor in the Bay Area since 1989, when a magnitude-7.1 quake killed 62 people.
Does World War III and Armegeddon Loom?
If the US and Russia continue a course of mutual belligerency — albeit gloved — the road to Armageddon will be short.
The West must understand that Russia newly flushed with energy wealth is no longer an underdog but a major world player. Russia, in its turn, must quit sending its bombers to tease Western countries. The US should come to terms with the fact it’s no longer the only policeman on the block.
People are generally given to shrugging off mentions of a third world war. This is mainly because the next one could be mankind’s last. Those who sprinkle their speeches or articles with dire warnings of a massive nuclear conflagration are often written off as scaremongers. Those who lived through the horrors of World War II and later witnessed the battered planet coming together to draft the Geneva Conventions and form the United Nations had hope that we had truly learned our lesson. Never again!
Surely it is inconceivable that world leaders would be prepared to put their nations on a suicidal collision course for any reason. Indeed, even during the most critical periods of the 45-year-long Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States, successive leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain were careful to exercise restraint.
It was, therefore, surprising – nay shocking – to hear President George Bush admit he had told world leaders “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon”.
Was this a warning? Was this a threat, or was it merely overblown rhetoric intended to be a global wake-up call? Whatever the intent behind the statement, it brought the ugly specter of another world war back into the public conscious as a potential reality.
President Bush refrained from spelling out who the protagonists of any such world war might be but in light of the current cool climate between the US and Russia — and to a lesser extent between the US and China — over ways to eliminate Iran’s uranium enrichment program one can be forgiven for speculating.
There is no doubt, too, that Russia is increasingly flexing its newly developed muscle. Earlier this month, Caspian Sea states (including Iran) signed a declaration upon Russia’s urging to the effect they will never allow their soil to be used by a foreign country to launch a military attack against another Caspian nation. They also stressed that all signatories to the NPT have the right to generate and utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes — a snub to US thinking.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has told Washington in no uncertain terms that his country will not accept military strikes on Iran and reinforced that message with an unprecedented invitation to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit him in Moscow.
Pundits noted that the body language between Putin and Ahmadinejad appeared jolly and relaxed in contrast to the Russian leader’s earlier more sober meetings with Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and France’s President Sarkozy.
And last week, Putin turned his ire on Bush comparing the stringent new US sanctions against Iran and the American president’s attitude toward Tehran with that of a madman “running about with a razor blade in his hand”. Putin believes the sanctions will achieve little other than to undermine any hope of constructive dialogue between Iran and the West.
Highlighting the reality of war talk in the air, the Director-General of the Kazakhstan Institute of Strategic Studies Dr. Bulat K. Sultanov was recently driven to announce that Kazakhstan would side with Russia in case of a US-Russia confrontation. Wouldn’t such a confrontation amount to World War III?
But the method of ensuring Iran does not acquire the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons is far from being the only bone of contention between Russia and the US.
Russia vehemently objects to what it views as Washington’s interference in the politics of former Soviet republics. Moreover, the two nuclear giants do not see eye-to-eye on an independent Kosovo and neither can they agree on Bush’s plan to deploy a missile interceptors in Poland and a radar-tracking facility in the Czech Republic, which Russia believes would pose a threat to it despite American assurances to the contrary.
Last week, the Russian leader compared the atmosphere surrounding the US missile defense proposal with a severity parallel to the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s when the Cold War heated up to the point of becoming a nuclear confrontation.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced today that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer requiring surgery in the coming months but vowed to stay in office, confident of a full recovery.
“Following the results of a regular check-up, I was diagnosed with initial signs of prostate cancer,” the 62-year-old prime minister told a hastily convened news conference in Jerusalem.
“According to my doctors, this is a microscopic growth without metastasis that is removable through short surgical treatment. According to the medical assessment there will be no need for chemotherapy or radiation,” he said.
Olmert, 62, who has always prided himself on his good health and is a renowned sports fanatic, said the surgery was scheduled for the coming months as his doctors rushed to reassure the public that his condition was curable.
“I will be able to fully carry out my duties before the treatment and several hours after it,” he said. “My doctors told me there is a full chance for a complete recovery.”
The shock announcement comes with Israel and the Palestinians preparing for a Middle East conference in the United States later this year that the international community hopes will revive full-blown peace talks.
Olmert last met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday and pledged to work towards a rapid and meaningful agreement for the conference despite chronic disagreements that have hampered progress to date.
Professor Kobi Ramon, Olmert’s personal physician, told the news conference that the tumour had been discovered at an early stage and was fully curable.
“The tumour was discovered when the prime minister was in perfect health and without any symptoms,” he said.
“The treatment may have side effects, but they will not limit his duties as prime minister,” he added.
Olmert’s spokesman Jacob Galanti told reporters that Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is currently on a three-day official visit to China, had earlier been informed of the prime minister’s condition.
Her office said that she will not be cutting short her visit, however. Livni is the official number two in Olmert’s cabinet and would ordinarily take over temporarily in the event of his incapacitation.
Olmert first took office in January 2006 after his predecessor Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke that ended his public career before going on to win a general election victory at the helm of the centre-right Kadima party.
During his 21 months in office he has come under immense pressure and suffered abysmal approval ratings stemming from last year’s war in Lebanon and a string of corruption and sex scandals implicating him and his government.
He has kept up a punishing schedule of meetings and foreign tours. Last week he was in Britain and France after a fleeting visit to Russia as part of a campaign to encourage the United Nations (UN) Security Council to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.
His cancer announcement comes eight days after Israel unveiled an apparent plot to kill Olmert in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians charged that releasing the news was intended to dim expectations for the US meeting.
The prime minister, considered one of Israel’s most accomplished politicians and a lawyer by profession, was born in 1945 in the central village of Shoni.
In 1973, he became the youngest member of parliament, running for the right-wing Likud party.
He later opposed both the 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt and the 1993 Oslo agreement with the Palestinians.
After entering the cabinet in 1988, Olmert was elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1993, a post he held for a decade but in which he never really shone.
In 2003, he returned to government as deputy premier under Sharon who handpicked him as his successor.
Steeped in the ideology of a Greater Israel in all historic Palestine, he underwent a late-career conversion, coming to believe Israel had to withdraw from Palestinian territory if it were to remain a democratic Jewish state.
He joined the centrist Kadima party founded by Sharon shortly before his stroke and is married to left-leaning artist Aliza, who brought up their four children with equally liberal views.
Dollar Falls To Record Low
The dollar fell to a record low against the euro on speculation the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this week as a U.S. housing slump reverberates through the economy. The U.S. currency also slid to its lowest in 23 years versus Australia’s dollar as prospects the Fed will lower its 4.75 percent overnight lending rate between banks by at least a quarter-percentage point on Oct. 31 prompted investors to seek higher-yielding assets overseas. Yields on two-year Treasuries are near the lowest since September 2005.
“I remain bearish on the dollar,” said Greg Gibbs, a currency strategist at ABN Amro Holding NV in Sydney. “The U.S. has the lowest yields of all other major countries except Japan and Switzerland. This is sending people into a whole range of higher-yielding currencies.”
The dollar fell as low as $1.4426 per euro, the weakest since the introduction of the 13-nation common currency in 1999, before trading at $1.4408 as of 9:41 a.m. in Tokyo from $1.4393 in late New York on Oct. 26. It may drop as low as $1.4530 this week, Gibbs said.
The U.S. currency fell against 10 of the 16 most-actively traded currencies, declining the most against the higher- yielding dollars of New Zealand and Australia. It slid to 76.95 cents versus New Zealand’s from 76.62 late last week and as low as 92.15 cents against Australia’s dollar, the weakest since May 1984, before buying 92.07 from 91.84 on Oct. 26.
The U.S. dollar was at 114.25 yen from 114.19 yen.
23 Kentucky Schools Shut Down To Disinfect From MRSA
A county in Kentucky will close all of its 23 schools Monday after one student was diagnosed with the drug-resistant MRSA “superbug” bacteria, CNN reported Saturday.
Pike County superintendent of schools Roger Wagner said he made the decision to wage war on the bacteria by disinfecting virtually everything, according to the report.
About 10,300 students will be affected by the shutdown, Wagner said.
He named classrooms, restrooms, cafeterias, hallways, locker rooms, buses, and even outdoor areas such as playgrounds and sports fields as areas that would be swabbed down.
“We’re not closing schools because there’s been a large number of breakouts, but as a preventative measure,” he added.
A student in the county was diagnosed in September with MRSA.
Known as the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),the bacteria can be treated with other antibiotics. But it is potentially deadly if left untreated.
A government report estimates that 90,000 Americans may contract MRSA each year.
God Banished From Washington Monument
October 28, 2007 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
The National Park Service has banished God from a key display of America’s Christian heritage in Washington, and a California pastor who regularly leads teams of visitors to see markers of the nation’s religious history wants Him restored.
The reference is an engraving of “LAUS DEO,” which is Latin for “Praise be to God,” and is on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap of the Washington Monument.
Since the actual inscription on the cap, which on the other three sides provides other information, is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the National Park Service has created a replica, which is on display inside the white-colored obelisk of marble, granite and sandstone.
The following photograph shows how the display was seen in 2000, when that inscription could be seen by visitors, even if at an angle:
Putin Compares U.S. Defense Shield To Cuban Missile Crisis
President Vladimir Putin on Friday evoked one of the most dangerous confrontations of the Cold War to highlight Russian opposition to a proposed U.S. missile defense system in Europe, comparing it to the Cuban missile crisis of 45 years ago.
The comments — made at the end of a summit between Russia and European Union that failed to resolve several festering disputes — were the latest in a series of belligerent statements from the assertive Putin.
Emboldened by oil- and gas-fueled economic clout, Russia is increasingly at odds with Washington and much of Europe on issues ranging from Iran and Kosovo to energy supplies and human rights.
Putin used a news conference at the summit’s conclusion to reiterate Russia’s stalwart opposition to U.S. plans to put elements of a missile defense system in the former Soviet bloc countries of Poland and the Czech Republic — both of which are now NATO members.
“Analogous actions by the Soviet Union, when it deployed missiles in Cuba, prompted the ‘Caribbean crisis,’” Putin said, using the Russian term for the Cuban missile crisis.
“For us the situation is technologically very similar. We have withdrawn the remains of our bases from Vietnam, from Cuba, and have liquidated everything there, while at our borders, such threats against our country are being created,” he said.
The October 1962 crisis erupted when President John F. Kennedy demanded that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev remove his country’s nuclear missiles from Cuba because they could have been used to launch a close-range attack on the United States. The Americans imposed a naval blockade on Cuba and the world teetered on the edge of war before the Soviets backed down.
Putin also suggested that the tension was much lower than in 1962 because the United States and Russia are now “partners,” not Cold War enemies. His relationship with President Bush, Putin said, helps solve problems, calling him a “personal friend.”
The Russian leader said there has been no concrete U.S. response to his counterproposals for cooperation on missile defense, but added that the United States is now listening to Russia’s concerns about its plans and seeking to address them.
In Washington, White House press secretary Dana Perino underscored those remarks rather than the Cuban missile crisis analogy, saying “there’s no way you could walk away without thinking that he thinks that we can work together.”
The U.S. plan is part of a wider missile shield involving defenses in California and Alaska which the United States says are to defend against any long-range missile attack from countries such as North Korea or Iran.
Russia strongly opposes the idea, saying Iran is decades away from developing missile technology that could threaten Europe or North America, and it says the U.S. bases are aimed at spying on Russian facilities and undermining Russia’s missile deterrent force.
U.S. Prepared To Strike Iran
A senior Palestinian intelligence official said that based on meetings with American diplomats he “understood” the U.S. plans to target Iran’s suspected nuclear installations in two to three months if negotiations with Tehran don’t generate a major breakthrough. The official, speaking to WND yesterday on condition of anonymity, said according to what he “understood,” the U.S. will “pay” for Arab support for a U.S. strike against Iran by creating a temporary Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank by next summer.
The official met last week with U.S. secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her trip here earlier this month to prepare for a U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit slated for next month in which Israel is expected to outline a future Palestinian state in most of the West Bank
Much of U.S. Facing Drought
October 28, 2007 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Across America, the picture is critically clear – the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association.
Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.
“We’ve hit a remarkable moment,” said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency.”
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach’s utilities director.
It’s not just America’s problem – it’s global.
Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry spell, and population growth in urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources. Asia has 60 percent of the world’s population, but only about 30 percent of its freshwater.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists, said this year that by 2050 up to 2 billion people worldwide could be facing major water shortages.
The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000, the latest figures available from the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes residential, commercial, agriculture, manufacturing and every other use – almost 500,000 gallons per person.
Coastal states like Florida and California face a water crisis not only from increased demand, but also from rising temperatures that are causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. Higher temperatures mean more water lost to evaporation. And rising seas could push saltwater into underground sources of freshwater.
Florida represents perhaps the nation’s greatest water irony. A hundred years ago, the state’s biggest problem was it had too much water. But decades of dikes, dams and water diversions have turned swamps into cities.
Little land is left to store water during wet seasons, and so much of the landscape has been paved over that water can no longer penetrate the ground in some places to recharge aquifers. As a result, the state is forced to flush millions of gallons of excess into the ocean to prevent flooding.
How Close To World War III Were We on September 6th 2007
A meticulously planned, brilliantly executed surgical strike by Israeli jets on a nuclear installation in Syria on 6 September may have saved the world from a devastating threat. The only problem is that no one outside a tight-lipped knot of top Israeli and American officials knows precisely what that threat involved.
Even more curious is that far from pushing the Syrians and Israelis to war, both seem determined to put a lid on the affair. One month after the event, the absence of hard information leads inexorably to the conclusion that the implications must have been enormous.
That was confirmed to The Spectator by a very senior British ministerial source: ‘If people had known how close we came to world war three that day there’d have been mass panic. Never mind the floods or foot-and-mouth — Gordon really would have been dealing with the bloody Book of Revelation and Armageddon.’
According to American sources, Israeli intelligence tracked a North Korean vessel carrying a cargo of nuclear material labelled ‘cement’ as it travelled halfway across the world. On 3 September the ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartous and the Israelis continued following the cargo as it was transported to the small town of Dayr as Zawr, near the Turkish border in north-eastern Syria.
The destination was not a complete surprise. It had already been the subject of intense surveillance by an Israeli Ofek spy satellite, and within hours a band of elite Israeli commandos had secretly crossed into Syria and headed for the town. Soil samples and other material they collected there were returned to Israel. Sure enough, they indicated that the cargo was nuclear.
Three days after the North Korean consignment arrived, the final phase of Operation Orchard was launched. With prior approval from Washington, Israeli F151 jets were scrambled and, minutes later, the installation and its newly arrived contents were destroyed.
So secret were the operational details of the mission that even the pilots who were assigned to provide air cover for the strike jets had not been briefed on it until they were airborne. In the event, they were not needed: built-in stealth technology and electronic warfare systems were sophisticated enough to ‘blind’ Syria’s Russian-made anti-aircraft systems.
What was in the consignment that led the Israelis to mount an attack which could easily have spiralled into an all-out regional war? It could not have been a transfer of chemical or biological weapons; Syria is already known to possess the most abundant stockpiles in the region. Nor could it have been missile delivery systems; Syria had previously acquired substantial quantities from North Korea. The only possible explanation is that the consignment was nuclear.
The scale of the potential threat — and the intelligence methods that were used to follow the transfer — explain the dense mist of official secrecy that shrouds the event. There have been no official briefings, no winks or nudges, from any of the scores of people who must have been involved in the preparation, analysis, decision-making and execution of the operation. Even when Israelis now offer a firm ‘no comment’, it is strictly off the record. The secrecy is itself significant.
Israel is a small country. In some respects, it resembles an extended, if chaotic, family. Word gets around fast. Israelis have lived on the edge for so long they have become addicted to the news. Israel’s media is far too robust and its politicians far too leaky to allow secrets to remain secret for long. Even in the face of an increasingly archaic military censor, Israeli journalists have found ways to publish and, if necessary, be damned.
Attack Iran And You Attack Russia
The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration’s relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear
The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration’s relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.
But then, as if this were not enough of a political bombshell, came the abrupt resignation of Ali Larijani as top Iranian nuclear negotiator. Early this week in Rome, Larijani told the IRNA news agency that “Iran’s nuclear policies are stable and will not change with the replacement of the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council [SNSC].” Larijani will keep attending SNSC meetings, now as a representative of the Supreme Leader. He even took time to remind the West that in the Islamic Republic all key decisions regarding the civilian nuclear program are made by the Supreme Leader. Larijani actually went to Rome to meet with the European Union’s Javier Solana alongside Iran’s new negotiator, Saeed Jalili, a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), just like President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
In itself, the Putin-Khamenei meeting was extraordinary, because the Supreme Leader rarely receives foreign statesmen for closed talks, even one as crucial as Putin. The Russian president, according to the diplomatic source, told the Supreme Leader he may hold the ultimate solution regarding the endlessly controversial Iranian nuclear dossier. According to IRNA, the Supreme Leader, after stressing that the Iranian civilian nuclear program will continue unabated, said. “We will ponder your words and proposal.”
Larijani himself had told the Iranian media that Putin had a “special plan” and the Supreme Leader observed that the plan was “ponderable”. The problem is that Ahmadinejad publicly denied the Russians had volunteered a new plan.
Iranian hawks close to Ahmadinejad are spinning that Putin’s proposal involves Iran temporarily suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for no more United Nations sanctions. That’s essentially what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei has been working on all along. The key issue is what – in practical terms – will Iran get in return. Obviously it’s not the EU’s Solana who will have the answer. But as far as Russia is concerned, strategically nothing will appease it except a political/diplomatic solution for the Iranian nuclear dossier.
US Vice President Dick Cheney – who even Senator Hillary Clinton now refers to as Darth Vader – must be foaming at the mouth; but the fact is that after the Caspian summit, Iran and Russia are officially entangled in a strategic partnership. World War III, for them, is definitely not on the cards.
Let’s read from the same script
The apparent internal controversy on how exactly Putin and the Supreme Leader are on the same wavelength belies a serious rift in the higher spheres of the Islamic Republic. The replacement of Larijani, a realist hawk, by Jalili, an unknown quantity with an even more hawkish background, might spell an Ahmadinejad victory. It’s not that simple.
