Jews No Longer God’s Chosen People
I just wanted to let you all know that God came to me in a vision last night and told me that Jews are no longer His chosen people.
It has been over 2000 years since He last spoke to us, so He said the time had come for some revisions. The "Eternal Deed on the Holy Land" now includes everyone, not just the Jews (except of course first-generation Ammonite's or Moabite's). He still loves the Jews just as much as everyone, but He said He was really just joking around about the "chosen people" bit. People shouldn't take him so literally, He likes to joke around (dinasour fossils anyone?).
He asked me to let everyone know. He said that once people learn of this, the world will be a much more peaceful place, so let's spread the word as quickly as we can.
And, as you all know, He can't really enforce these things Himself so He again relies on us all to enforce His commands and deal a quick death to anyone who disobeys. Hell is waiting.
“We Have More Than Enough Oil To Make This Planet Completely Unihabitable”
Rolling Stone has a good interview with Al Gore about his new movie, The Inconvenient Truth. It's titled "Al Gore 3.0." It's pretty good. Al Gore sans political advisors. He's positive, energizing and motivating. I'm gonna have to see the movie now.
One point he brought up that's new to me:
We have more than enough oil, not to mention coal, to completely destroy the habitability of the planet. The real constraint on oil and coal is not supply, but global warming. There's a saying: "The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones. And the Age of Fossil Fuels won't end because we run out of fossil fuels."
Rolling Stone also has some of the before and after pictures.
Patagonia, Argentina, 1928
Patagonia, Argentina, 2004
Pretty undeniable. Even the skeptics are convinced. And there's a few posts per hour about it on Technoratti. Can't wait to see Bush eat crow on this one. Although I doubt his pea-sized brain is capable of understanding it.
Understanding Israel’s Declaration of War on Lebanon
Democracy Now did an excellent show (video, other options here) yesterday on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Really. If you're interested in having the beginning of an understanding what's going on over there you realy ought to listen to these guests exchange arguments over the issue. I haven't watched commercial television news programs in a few years, but I doubt you'd ever hear an exchange like this. Commercial = Profit Motive, i.e. no motivation to report bad news.
Democracy Now brings in a very informed South Lebanese professor, As'ad Abukhalil, who is quite outspoken and sheds a lot of light on the issues and the history. For instance, in South Lebanon, everyone supports Hezzbollah. Hezzbollah was born out of the aftermath of Israel's last invasion of it's neighbors in the 1980's. He says the only way to get rid of Hezzbollah is to kill every single person in South Lebanon. It'd be like trying to expel Mormon's from Utah. There'd be nobody left.
Somebody will stand up to the extremists and racists in the Israeli government. (Yes, when you evict people because they are the wrong race for the neighborhood, that's racism. Israel has done this to 500,000 people.) Wonder who it will be, since our president is completely incapable of comprehending the situation. Did you see the footage of Bush talking with food in his mouth to Blair about his completely ignorant view of the situation there. His solution, "They just need to get Syria to stop pulling this shit and it's over." Wow. Well that sounds easy. Why doesn't he just do that then? He is the leader of the goddamn "free" world. Oh right, that would require tact and diplomacy, of which he has none to offer.
Oh yea, and there's no way in hell I'm voting for Hilary now. Hillary speaking at a pro-Israel rally.
''We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.''
- Sen. Hillary Clinton, speaking at a New York pro-Israel rally today
Israeli values? American values? What about these American values?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Hamas was democratically elected, baby. According to American values, they have every right to protect their safety and happiness. We should not forget that the reason the two Israeli soldiers were taken prisoner is because Israel holds over 400 Palestinian children under the age of 16 in their prison, Israel refused to address it and was warned that soldiers . Harassment of Arabs by Israeli "settlers" and soldiers is systemic, unrelenting racism and most definitely is denying Palestinians in the Occupied Territories their opportunity for "Safety and Happiness."
And Israeli values? Israel belives in racial segregation. They believe in imprisoning entire countries. Israel believes that they have the "right" to "the entire land of Israel."
The Holy Land, whose boundaries were prescribed by the Holy One, blessed be He, in His holy Torah, was granted to the nation of Israel, the eternal people. Any sacrifice of the Holy Land that was granted to us by God is of absolutely no validity.
Apparently they believe once the rest of the world understands this, everything will be ok. As we can see, this right comes not from any human conveyance (in fact they hold the world record for UN resolutions against their illegal enforcement of this "right"), but from ancient religious texts that are claimed to have been psychically dictated to their human authors by the Invisible Creator of the Universe. Today when these men have visions, they're just crazy. But I guess a long, long time ago, the Omniscient Real Estate Broker used to use this method of psychic dictation to pen an Eternal Deed on the Holy Land to one specific race of humans. I guess when he created the world he forgot to tell us who was allowed to live where, so now he has to write books, or, sorry, psychically dictate them.
Fuck you, Hillary. Israel is not standing up for American values and, apparently, neither are you.
You'd think, since Jews were the victims of similar repression in recent history, they'd be more sympathetic to those they now attempt to repress. Some interesting comments on Al Jazeera: “They blame Hitler for their misery and they are doing worse than what Hitler did to them.”
If Jews blew themselves as their only method of resisting German Nazis, would we call them terrorists and build a wall around them?
Ok, not related to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, at the end of the Democracy Now broadcast they get time for a press conference with Bush and Russian President Putin about the state of Russian democracy. It's great. Bush, when asked by the press what happened in the meeting, starts spouting off meaningless polispeak, bringing up Iraq and their free press and "free religion," but conceding that Russia is going to have a Russian style democracy. Putin gets in a wonderful little dig at the end.
President Bush:
"Ahhh, I thought, I thought the discussion was a good discussion. It's not the first time the Vladimir and I have discussed our ... ... governing philosophies. I shared with him ... ahh ... my desires for our country and he shared with me his desires for his. I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq, where there's a free press and free religion, and ahh, I told him that a lot of people in our country, ya know, would hope that Russian would do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy."
President Putin responds:
"We certainly would not want, for instance, the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I tell you quite honestly."
Laughter from the audience.
President Bush responds:
"Just wait."
Magic mushrooms really cause ‘spiritual’ experiences
From New Scientist - Magic mushrooms really cause 'spiritual' experiences
“Magic” mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus's active ingredient.
About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes.
Griffiths's team recruited 36 healthy volunteers who had not experimented with the drug before. They were informed that they would receive a hallucinogen but did not know in which of two or three sessions they would receive it. Each session was separated by two months.
They either received a substantial dose – about 30 milligrams – of psilocybin or a similar dose of an "active" placebo, Ritalin. The latter has a stimulating effect but is not known as a hallucinogen. An inactive placebo would be easy to identify by the volunteers when compared to psilocybin, which could bias the experiences they reported.
The researchers used psychological questionnaires and found that 22 of the 36 volunteers had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin – far more than the four who reported this type of experience after taking Ritalin.
More than one-third of the volunteers said that their encounter with psilocybin was the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes – no person given Ritalin said the same. Experts say the study is the most rigorous study of psilocybin’s potential to elicit spiritual feelings because it is the first to use an active control.
I'm not exactly sure what this proves. What exactly is a "complete" mystical experience? As opposed to a partial mystical experience?
mystical. adjective; inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination.
spiritual. adjective; of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.
So they've really just proved that people say its mystical/spiritual. They should have used meth amphetimine as the other one instead of Ritalin. That would have been actually interesting. Anyone could have told them that shrooms are more 'spiritual' and Ritalin.
They’re Suppose To Make You Smile
My friend Lynn Bryant made these. She says they're supposed to make you smile.
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Gunkanjima
In 1974 the world's once most densely populated island become totally deserted. The island, after all its inhabitants departed leaving behind their belongings, became an empty shell of a city where all its people disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God.
Read the breif story then look at the pictures. Creepy and cool.
Even mice show empathy for each other
PRIMATES aren't unique in their ability to register a companion's pain after all. Mice apparently feel pain more keenly if another mouse is going through the same experience, but only if the co-sufferer is a cage-mate.