Archive for May 2008
President Tom Wants To Meet The Pope
Ahmadinejad has requested a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. To what end?
Vatican sources said earlier this week that it was not yet clear if the pope would meet individual heads of state attending the U.N. event or hold a collective audience for them in order to save time.
The Vatican has criticized Ahmadinejad for calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.
The Holy See has diplomatic ties with Iran and Pope Benedict has met Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. The pontiff has repeatedly encouraged dialogue to resolve differences over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at making nuclear bombs.
Who Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? There is a full internal consistency in Ahmadinejad. Below are a few examples of his sayings, beliefs and actions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with them,
they all fit perfectly into a consistent pattern.
- He literally believes in the imminent emergence of the Mahdi – the Shiites promised one who is expected to appear to set aright a decadent and wretched world.
- He views himself as the vassal of Mahdi, working for him and being accountable to him.
His main task is to prepare the world so to hasten the Mahdi’s coming. If this preparation requires much destruction and bloodshed, so be it. - As a former mayor of Tehran, he developed elaborate detailed plans preparing the city
for the arrival of the Mahdi. - He allocated generous sums for extensive road improvement to a mosque at Jamkaaraan near the city of Qum where it is believed the promised Mahdi is hiding in a well since the age of nine, over 1100 years ago.
- He reportedly visits the well frequently and drops his written supplications into the well for the hidden Mahdi to act upon them.
- He has said in private that it was he who asked the Mahdi to inflict the massive stroke
on Ariel Sharon. - He sees the Jews as the sworn enemies of Islam. The hostility dates back to the time of Muhammad’s own treatment of the Jews in Medina. At first, expediently, Muhammad called the Jews “people of the book,” and accorded them a measure of tolerance until he gained enough power to unleash his devastating wrath on them.
- He says that the Holocaust is a myth. He is, in this respect, in good company with a number of other revisionist claimants.
- He wants Israel to be wiped out of the map or transferred to Europe.
- In his speech at the UN general assembly, he implored the Mahdi to come and save
the world. He claimed that during his speech of some twenty odd minutes, a
powerful light enveloped him and all participants were held transfixed unable to
move their eyes. - He believes that the earth is Allah’s and all people must either become believers of his brand of Islam or must perish as infidels najis (unclean) who by their very presence defile Allah’s earth.
- He believes that this earthly life is passing and worthless in comparison to the afterlife
awaiting a devoted and faithful believer. Hence, he holds to the old belief that if a faithful kills an infidel, he goes to Allah’s paradise; and, if the faithful gets killed in the process of serving the faith, again he goes to Allah’s paradise. Hence, it is a win-win proposition for the faithful. - Ahmadinejad is a true devoted Muslim. Being unpredictable, self-contradictory and inconsistent are major symptoms of the mentally unhinged.
By these standards of insanity, Ahmadinejad emerges as completely sane. He is fully predictable, consistent and has shown no self-contradiction. He does not even pretend that he misspoke or apologizes for his outrageous statements. He is not a typical politician who practices the devious art of doublespeak, deception and change of position to suit him.
He knows who he is, what hebelieves, what he holds as veritable truth and what his own mission in life is – serving as the instrument for the revered Mahdi whom Allah shall make him emerge from the well as soon as the world’s conditions hit the absolute hopeless bottom. Ahmadinejad sees himself as a driver who can play a critical role in doing just that – driving the world to the very bottom.
Iran’s Anti-Catholicism coalition
Islam Will Conquer All The Mountain Tops In The World.
Past Posts:
Talking Bubblehead
How embarrassing is it for Hollywood that Sharon Stone is out without someone monitoring her. What is she doing making comments in public? She can’t utter a coherent sentence, a complete sentence, and golly gee, the Dalai Lama (although, I’m guessing Sharon spells it Dolly) is her good friend.
Painful just to watch her.
Oops, she doesn’t like people to be unkind. Oh, well.
More Evidence Carter Is Dangerous To US Security
Former President Carter blurted out in a Welsh conference over the weekend how many nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, and Israel’s arsenal. Classified information that has never been confirmed.
Asked how a future US president should deal with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, the 83-year-old said: “The US has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (sic) has about the same; Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more.”
“We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry, not only of enormous weaponry, but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target,” he said at a press conference in Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, on Sunday, according to a spokesman for the Guardian Hay Festival.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East but has a policy of neither confirming nor denying its arsenal.
Who does Carter think he is and why is our government allowing this 83 year old man to traipse around the world dive-bombing our security and our allies?
On This Day: Jesuits Banned In Massachusetts
Interesting historical tidbit today unseen for the military and business holiday. On this date in 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Puritans banned the Society of Jesus priests, God’s Soldiers, on penalty of death if caught. No Jesuits were martyred for disobeying the law, but anti-Catholicism prejudice lived on in Massachusetts and experienced a revival up during the Irish immigration of the 19th century. It wasn’t until Massachusetts produced a Roman Catholic president that state pride in it’s native son was felt, his religion be damned, or at least tolerated.
Psychiatrists Volunteer To Help Soldiers Come Home
It’s so reassuring that when help is needed, Americans step up to the plate. In a media cycle of condemning the US government for not helping our soldiers when they come home to re-enter civilian society, private psychiatrists are offering free services to military with emotional problems.
On this Memorial Day, America’s armed forces and its veterans are coping with depression, suicide, family, marital and job problems on a scale not seen since Vietnam. The government has been in beg-borrow-and-steal mode, trying to hire psychiatrists and other professionals, recruit them with incentives or borrow them from other agencies.
Among those volunteering an hour a week to help is Brenna Chirby, a psychologist with a private practice in McLean, Va.
“It’s only an hour of your time,” said Chirby, who counsels a family member of a man deployed multiple times. “How can you not give that to these men and women that … are going oversees and fighting for us?”
There are only 1,431 mental health professionals among the nation’s 1.4 million active-duty military personnel, said Terry Jones, a Pentagon spokesman on health issues.
About 20,000 more full- and part-time professionals provide health care services for the Veterans Administration and the Pentagon. They include psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, social workers and substance abuse counselors.
According to veterans groups and health care experts, that is not enough for a mental health crisis emerging among troops and their families.
“Honestly, much is being done by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist. “But the need to help these men and women goes far beyond whatever any government agency can do.”
The VA says it has seen 120,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have symptoms of mental health problems, half with post-traumatic stress disorder. Although rates are high from those two wars, most of the 400,000 patients seen in VA last year for PTSD were Vietnam-era veterans, officials said.
Civilian groups are trying to step in for troops from the current conflicts.
“There are over 400,000 mental health professionals in our great country,” said Barbara V. Romberg, a clinical psychologist who practices in Washington. “Clearly, we have the resources to meet this challenge.”
Romberg founded Give An Hour, a group of 1,200 mental health professionals donating one hour of free care a week to troops, veterans or family members. They have to commit to doing it for a year.
Romberg, in cooperation with the American Psychiatric Foundation, hopes to find 40,000 volunteers over the next three years, or about 10 percent of available civilian professionals. The effort to get the word out to those who need the help and to recruit and train volunteers is being backed by a $1 million grant from the Lilly Foundation.
Romberg’s group is the largest of a number across the nation.
Nearly 200 also have volunteered for the Soldiers Project, started by psychiatrists at the Ernest S. Lawrence Trauma Center of the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies – and now operating in Chicago, Seattle and New York.
The Coming Home Project in the San Francisco area has dozens of volunteers. A group of veterans, psychotherapists and interfaith leaders, it offers everything from retreats and workshops to yoga and other stress management programs as well as the counseling.
Thank you to all of the volunteers.
Smile: You’re On Google Maps
Live viewing of an automobile crash, a bikini car wash, a child possibly being shot by a pistol? What online sleuths have been able to find is more than directions on Google Maps.
Google collects the images for its Street View feature using cameras strapped to the top of vehicles, and some of the pictures uncovered by Street View sleuths even show the drivers of the Google vehicles paying tolls at interstate exits.
But other images uncovered in Street View are more notable for what is going on around the car. One sequence of images detailed by the Web site Gawker purports to show the many angles of a drug deal going down.
Tree Top View Of Kew Gardens
Can’t get to London this summer to visit the beautiful Kew Gardens? Click on the 360 degree panorama camera view from the comfort of your home. Don’t get dizzy!
Three different perspectives:
- Treetop walkway at Kew Gardens: Click to view 360 degree panoramic image
- Treetop walkway at Kew Gardens: Click to view 360 degree panoramic image
- Treetop walkway at Kew Gardens: Click to view 360 degree panoramic image
The £3 million steel structure, which runs for 650ft through the Capability Brown woodland at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, aims to help show the importance of trees to wildlife and the climate.
It is hoped it will be the highlight of Kew’s summer festival celebrating trees.
The creators of the Xstrata Treetop Walkway hope people may catch a glimpse of animals such as the purple hair streak butterfly, which is rarely seen because it lives its entire life high up in oak woodland, as well as woodpeckers and nuthatches.
The permanent structure, which also includes a “Rhizotron” underground exhibit to highlight the root-life of trees, follows on from the success of a smaller temporary walkway at Kew several years ago.
Putting the huge steel structure in the middle of woodland posed significant challenges for designers Marks Barfield Architects – creators of the London Eye – who had to sink foundations as deep into the earth as the structure is high.
The steel walkway had to be secured without damaging the roots of the sweet chestnuts, limes and deciduous oaks, some of which are more than 200 years old.
As well as getting close to the trees, the structure promises a bird’s-eye view of the site and the London skyline, including the Gherkin building and Wembley Stadium – when the weather and leaves allow.
Visitors to Kew will also be able to “tune into trees” through super-sensitive microphones, listening to them creaking and pulling up water from the roots, and see a series of other exhibitions celebrating trees and woodland.
Personal aside – The slideshow does cut the photographs off, and only gives a small view. You can see the entire photographs here from our Seventh Day Of Honeymoon at Kew Gardens. The first and last photographs are of the low and high tide of the river Thames in the morning and in the evening. The red fruit floating in the pond are cranberries from the United States, (which are not grown in England) showing the English how cranberries are harvested.
Cuba Has More Centurians Than Any Other Country In The World
What does Cuba have that the rest of the world does not have? Isolation from disease and germs, hard work, pedestrian lifestyle, limited food supply with ample fruit and vegetables, but little modern transfat fast food restaurants, and warm tropical climate.
Who says that global warming and Communism isn’t healthy? Michael Moore will be so pleased.
But France says they have the oldest: France’s Oldest Citizen 113 dies.
Solignac died early Sunday morning surrounded by her family, in a retirement home in Vorey-sur-Arzon in the central Haute Loire region, the town where she was born on September 7, 1894. Her funeral will take place on Wednesday.
She was married in 1921 to Michel Solignac, who lost a leg in World War I. Together they had a single daughter, and ran a small farm until Michel’s death in 1961 when Clementine Solignac moved in near her daughter.
Until the age of 106, she led an independent life, cooking for herself each day on a wood-burning stove and milking her grandson’s cows, according to relatives.
When asked about her age, she would reply “The good Lord has forgotten about me!”
France has a reputation for being home to some of the longest-living people on the planet. The oldest person on record was the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122.The country’s oldest citizen is now 112-year-old Eugenie Blanchard, from Saint-Barthelemy in the French Caribbean, according to the INSERM medical research institute.
Currently, the world’s oldest living person is a US woman from Indiana, Edna Parker, who celebrated her 115th birthday on April 20.
First Individual Female DNA Sequenced
Finally after researching individual male genomes, gorilla genomes, chimpanzee genomes, dog genomes, cat genomes, and even a playtpus genome, Dutch scientists know how women work.
Sma' Talk Wi' T 