"...this monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types." Judge Braswell Dean, in Time Magazine, March 1981 Thanks Faithless and Free

      On the last day of Kent Schaible's life, his parents and pastor intensely prayed over his 32-pound body, which, unbeknown to them, was ravaged by bacterial pneumonia.
      When the 2-year-old boy finally died at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 24 inside the family's Northeast Philadelphia home, the pastor called a funeral director to take the boy's remains to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.
      At no time that day, nor in the week-and-a-half prior, did Herbert and Catherine Schaible seek medical treatment for their son despite his sore throat, congestion, liquid bowel movements, sleeplessness and trouble swallowing, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said in court yesterday.
      "All it would have taken is a simple visit to a doctor for antibiotics or Tylenol, maybe, to keep this child alive," she said during the couple's preliminary hearing.
      After the two attorneys representing the Schaibles argued for their innocence, Municipal Judge Patrick Dugan held them for trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy to commit involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child.
"When you look at this case, it's obvious that what you have are loving parents who also appear to be misguided," Dugan told the couple. "Your child needed medical care. As parents, that's what your duty is, and that's why you are here in court today."
      The Schaibles' case is similar to a growing number around the country in which parents are slapped with criminal charges for turning to religion rather than medical care for sick children who later die.
      Herbert Schaible, 41, and Catherine Schaible, 40, of Rhawn Street near Bustleton Avenue, are free on bail and will be arraigned on Oct. 28.
They are members of the First Century Gospel Church, in the Northeast, which believes that the sick can be healed through prayer rather than by medicine, according to statements that the couple gave homicide detectives two days after their son's death.
      " 'We prayed to God for victory . . . We were praying that he would be raised up, " Detective Stephen Buckley said yesterday, reading from Herbert Schaible's statement.
Herbert Schaible is a teacher at First Century Gospel Church, said his attorney, Bobby Hoof.
      "They believe in faith-healing; that's fine for them," Pescatore said after the hearing. "But this was a two-year-old child."
On Jan. 13 or 14, Kent started showing symptoms of illness that at times improved but generally grew worse until his death on Jan. 24, his parents said in their statements.
" 'He was moody and demanding; you couldn't please him,' " Det. Buckley said, quoting from Catherine Schaible's statement.
      Edwin Lieberman, the assistant medical examiner who did Kent's autopsy, said that he had determined the manner of death to be a homicide because the boy could have been saved with basic medical care.
      Bacterial pneumonia "is very treatable," he said, but without care he "seriously" doubted if Kent improved at all, as his parents had told detectives.
Francis Carmen, Catherine Schaible's attorney, said that the couple's decision to forgo medical attention was not due to their religion, but because they thought Kent had a cold.
"The commonwealth wants to use [the Schaible's] religious beliefs as a self-fulfilling prophecy that, somehow, because they are different and because they exercise religious beliefs that are not necessarily in line with the majority of us," he said, "that is the cause of them failing to recognize that this child was as ill as he was."
      Hoof, on behalf of Herbert Schaible, said that his client did everything in his power to care for his son in the days before he died - feeding him and giving him liquids.
      "He cared for his child and thought his child was getting better," Hoof told reporters.
When asked why he did not call a doctor, he said: "He never said that he would not take the child to a doctor in his statement. He never said that."

Everyone knows the monster named Maximilien Robespierre. He was the leader of the French Revolution’s infamous Committee of Public Safety, the one who wielded the guillotine as others might wield a flyswatter. At the height of the Terror initiated by Robespierre, 1,285 men and women were executed in less than two months. And then the monster who lived by the guillotine, died by the guillotine.
But Robespierre was not a werewolf or a vampire, nor was he insane. He was a mere man, and in the years leading up to the Terror he gave few indications of what he would become. In fact, in the first speech students will read, Robespierre is arguing against capital punishment! Incredibly, Robespierre delivered this speech less than three years before he acquired the power that led to the Terror.
It is wrong to view Robespierre as a monster. He is not an aberration; rather, he proves that Lord Acton’s old maxim that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” holds true for all of us. He did not believe himself capable of administering the death penalty; he spoke as though he believed in an authority higher than himself; but his sin nature ensnared him just as it ensnares every man.
Robespierre used the guillotine so recklessly because he was a child of Adam, as we all are. To dismiss the Terror as an aberration in history initiated by a monster, or to dismiss Robespierre as merely a product of the social forces at work in that era, is to misunderstand the nature of man. Robespierre was capable of the Terror for the same reason any unredeemed man is capable of the Terror: the stain of sin.
by Jeff Baldwin

Douglas Adams is the author of many things, but he was mostly known for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2). Douglas tragically passed away in 2001 from a heart attack at a gym in Santa Barbara, USA, aged only 49.

Douglas Adams is the author of many things, but he was mostly known for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2). Douglas tragically passed away in 2001 from a heart attack at a gym in Santa Barbara, USA, aged only 49.

The gods of Euripides

Copyright (c) 2008 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
http://www.friesian.com/

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In 1969 I was taking a class in reading Greek texts at UCLA. One of the things we read was the play Heracles by Euripides. A friend in the class (Katharine Free, now at Loyola Marymount) and I used to argue with the professor (Frank Lewis, now at USC) about what Euripides believed about the gods. We understood the professor to say that Euripides simply did not believe in the gods at all. The play discredited the gods, and thus discredited belief in the gods. Euripides thus would join the Sophists, who sometimes actually did not believe in the gods -- as Socrates says in the Apology, about the reputation of philosophers, "for their hearers [e.g. of his accusers] believe that those who study these things do not even believe in the gods." Our argument was that Euripides obviously did believe in the gods, since the gods do things in the plays of Euripides, things with terrible consequences; it is just that what the gods do is not very comforting to conventional ideas about what the gods, or God, must be like.
     From plays like Heracles, Hippolytus, and The Bacchae, we get a well rounded, consistent view of the gods. The gods are real, the gods are powerful, but, unfortunately, our well being is not one of their goals. Indeed, this not unlike the picture of the gods that we get in much of ancient religion. The gods have very human personalities, for better or worse, bestow their favors when they are pleased, and withdraw them, or visit disasters, when they are displeased. They live their immortal lives, next to which our existence is ephemeral and insignificant. This is celebrated by Friedrich Nietzsche, for whom it is the only truly satisfying theodicy in the history of religion. The gods are great just because they genuinely enjoy their lives, and they live them to the full, with all the quarrels, fights, adulteries, and excesses of any confident, irresponsible, and indulgent human adults.
     If the rich and powerful could avoid trouble with the law, as indeed they often can, they would or do live lives like this -- a matter of great fascination in the popular media.
But mere humans better watch out. In the Hippolytus and The Bacchae neglect of the requirements of the gods can result in appalling events. Thus, Hippolytus, a devotee of the virgin goddess Artemis, vows to preserve his own virginity and purity out of devotion to her. This seems sensible in relation to the advances of his stepmother Phaedra, but it puts in on the wrong side of the goddess Aphrodite, for whom respect requires sexual activity. In the end Aphrodite kills Hippolytus, and Artemis can only promise vengeance for Hippolytus on Aphrodite's next lover -- Artemis, like her brother Apollo, inflicts silent death by her arrows. Thus, as in much of Greek mythology, mere mortals are caught in the middle, at great cost, of disputes among the gods (the classic case being the Trojan War, which begins as a trivial dispute among the gods).
     In the greatest play of Euripides, The Bacchae, we also have a character, King Pentheus of Thebes, trying to maintain certain moral standards. He is scandalized by the behavior of the devotees of the god Dionysius, the Bacchae, whose orgiastic rites violate all propriety. Unfortunately, the god will not be denied, and in the end Pentheus is killed and decapitated by his own frenzied mother. In the 1981 movie My Dinner with Andre, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, both playwrights, are having dinner. Andre recalls how once he wanted to stage The Bacchae and provide an actual human head to be circulated among the audience. Fortunately, this did not happen, but one wonders if this was a real ambition of the real Andre Gregory. It would not be consistent with the conduct of Greek plays, where shocking events take place off stage. Nevertheless, the events of The Bacchae are shocking and could easily be represented in their full horror in any movie version of the play. The power of the god is manifest with a grisly force far beyond what we see in the Hippolyus.
     There is thus in Euripides no escaping the gods. Personal devotion and the standards of propriety are irrelevant. There is something owed to Aphrodite or Dionysius which can only be neglected or opposed at one's great peril. To modern judgment this might well be grounds for disbelieving in such gods. However, it was an innovation of Greek philosophy, of philosophers like Xenophanes and Socrates, to see the gods, not only as immortal, powerful, and happy, but also as good and wise. It is a subsequent, modern development to take this as a reducio ad absurdum of the existence of the gods, or of God, at all. If the gods were good, they would protect us; and in great measure this does not seem to happen. The Mighty Hand of the LORD brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, where they were forced to make bricks without straw, while the same God seems to have left Judah, and many others, to die in Nazi death camps, without a hint of miraculous rescue. Thus, those who at least did not lose their lives in the camps nevertheless often left having lost their faith in an apparently indifferent God.
     The frequent indifference of the gods, however, would surprise few in ancient religion, and certainly not Euripides. The gods have their own lives to live and enjoy. It can help us to attract their favor, but we also run risk of losing that favor or inciting their wrath. The innovations in belief of Xenophanes and Socrates set the gods up to be discredited by events. Hence the rejection by Nietzsche of gods like those of Socrates. But Nietzsche was also unhappy with Euripides. The reason for that we get in the Heracles. Heracles, the son of Zeus, has returned from his Labors covered with glory and honor. He has not, however, escaped the wrath of Hera, who is jealous of Zeus's adulteries and bastard children, like Heracles. So Hera visits a madness on Heracles (whose name, ironically, means "the fame of Hera"), and he kills his wife and children.
     Zeus does nothing in response, and Heracles is thrown back on the comfort of his human father, Amphtiryon. Thus, it avails Heracles nothing that he is the son of a god; and, like Hippolytus and Pentheus, he is caught in the middle of the disputes and grudges that exist among the gods and have nothing to do with us.
     Consequently, Euripides sees the value of human life as occurring separately from the gods. Morally indifferent to us, the gods are thus morally discredited, despite their very real existence, power, and danger. It is now common to see moral value as derived from religion and so, ultimately, from God. Nietzsche believes this himself, which means that his self-interested and brawling gods discredit the very existence of traditional altruistic, Judeo-Christian morality. However, although Plato shared the views of Socrates about the gods, his metaphysics made provision for value entirely independent of the gods. The Good thus exists separately, at the summit of the World of Being, where we have the Forms of things, including living things, but not those living things themselves, not even the gods. This reflects another feature of the theology of Socrates and Plato:  goodness is not created by the will of the gods; but the gods instead conform themselves to what is independently good. This is not something amenable to the monotheistic religions, and attempts in the Middle Ages to continue a Greek sensibility, and limit the Will of God, in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, tended to be rejected by orthodox opinion. Nothing exists prior to, beyond, or superior to the Will of God. This results in a certain paradox, if one then wants to believe that God is good; and only Islam faced it in the most logically consistent way:  "God does what He wishes," , Allâhu yaf'alu mâ yashâ'u [Qur'ân, Surah 3:40 or 3:35]. Nevertheless, even Islam does not seem wholly indifferent to God being good and just.
     The theology of Euripides could easily coexist with the metaphysics of Plato. This is what Nietzsche did not like. But this can also just be the beginning of another unusual take on religion, C.G. Jung's Answer to Job. There we have a God who is not originally always good and just, and is really much like the other gods of ancient religion, but who grows, morally, because of interaction with human beings, culminating in the idea that God must become a man, Jesus, in order to morally redeem, not humanity, but divinity. This startling theory has not caught on in any version of Christianity, but it definitely has its own internal logic. Nevertheless, even if appealing, it suffers from the difficulty that the conduct of God does not otherwise seem to have changed. God may be love, and Jesus may have redeemed the mistreatment of Job, but in the 21st century God still fails to appear at the slaughter of innocents or refute the lies of the powerful.
     All in all, the behavior of the gods of Euripides is what seems to match our real experience the most closely. But why gods at all? Have we need of any such hypothesis? Again, Jung has a suggestive take on the matter. The gods of Euripides are forces that we must take into account in human life lest they cause great damage. To Jung, such forces are "archetypes" in the Unconscious. Being a Kantian, Jung sees the Unconscious extending beyond our own minds into the reality of things-in-themselves. The forces represented by Aphrodite or Dionysius thus are not merely psychological; they derive from levels of reality not evident in the phenomenal world. As with Jung's God as an archetype, these things can function independently, and even function as personalities, i.e. as personal gods, yet still owe something of their nature and their existence to the Kantian "conditions of a possible experience." Thus, in our experience, they become phenomenal gods, even if there remains a disconnect between the blind causal doings of the world we perceive and beliefs that develop about these divine beings. But this is something already familiar from Kantian philosophy, where the Moral Law imposes a requirement, the Categorical Imperative, to do right, that is incongruous and even impossible in the conditions of mundane life. It is, as Schopenhauer says, "like a meteorite, sprung from an order of things different from that which prevails here." The gods, or God, are also just such a meteorite. The meaning they convey is not that of morality or even mundane good fortune, but the peculiar meaning of religion, the meaning of numinosity, a mysterium tremendum, that reality is sacred, and not just "atoms and the void." Even the gods of Euripides, despite their indifference, cannot be objects of indifference to us. It is thus, overall, a challenging doctrine. The consolations of life may depend, as for Heracles, on our humanity, but then we are not alone with our humanity in the universe.
     There is something going on beyond the blind pinball game of physics and chemistry, and we better pay attention to it, or else. Thus, Jung believed that the denial of the Unconscious by those he called the "super rationalists" could result in a reaction, a reaction of forces kept out of conscousness and left in their own blindness, a reaction that consequently will manfest all the ferocity of the irrational and the primal -- a reaction, indeed, rather like the one that rendered Pentheus limb from limb, a reaction that then looks like a great deal of what went on in the history of the 20th century.

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Journey behind closed doors into a secret world where faith and devotion lead to desperation and despair. From the bizarre prophecies of Charles Manson to the desperate paranoia of Jim Jones, cult leaders draw followers into worlds of power, paranoia, and death. Why do people join? Why do they stay? And how can we stop them? Through interviews with world-renowned scholars and the survivors of cultic tragedy, DANGEROUS DEVOTION unmasks the mystery of cults.

Meet survivors of modern-day cults and true believers who still number among the faithful. Hear from mothers and fathers who have lost a child to a cult and observe FBI agents working to identify exploitative groups that endanger individuals or even the entire nation. And delve through history to examine how cults have seized hearts and minds throughout time.

CULTS: DANGEROUS DEVOTION is a truly eye-opening examination of a world that few of us will ever see, but that potentially affects us all.

Just some of the charismatic leaders and cults examined in DANGEROUS DEVOTION are: * Charles Manson * Jim Jones and Jonestown
Warren Jeffs and the Yearning for Zion Ranch * Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo * David Koresh and the Branch Davidians * The Nizari, the drug-fueled assassins from the time of the Crusades

 Zionism and Anti-Semitism

We implore and beseech our Jewish brethren to realize that the Zionists are no
t the saviors of the Jewish People and guarantors of their safety, but rather the instigators and original cause of Jewish suffering in the Holy Land and worldwide. The idea that Zionism and the State of “Israel” is the protector of Jews is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the Jewish People. Indeed, where else since 1945 have Jews been in such physical danger as in the Zionist state?!
Jews are enjoined by their religious laws to be loyal to the country of which they are citizens.   Ever since the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish People some two thousand years ago, we have been enjoined to be scrupulously loyal to the countries we reside in. One of the great biblical prophets, Jeremiah, in chapter 29 of his book proclaimed G-d's message to all the exiled; verse seven reads, "Seek out the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray for it to the Almighty, for through its welfare will you have welfare."   This has been a cornerstone of Jewish morality throughout our history to this very day.
Torah-true Jews wish to live in peace and harmony with their neighbors in every country among the community of nations, including in historic Palestine.  They deplore acts and policies of violence carried out by those who, misusing the name of Israel our forefather, have substituted the ideal of chauvinist nationalism for the eternal values of the Torah, the eternal divinely bestowed inheritance of the Jewish people.
It has been the age-old intention of Zionism to intentionally stir up anti-Semitism anywhere possible, and even more commonly, to take advantage of any Jewish suffering anywhere in order to enhance its cause Indeed, hatred of Jews and Jewish suffering is the oxygen of the Zionist movement, and from the very beginning has been to deliberately incite hatred of the Jew and then, in feigned horror, use it to justify the existence of the Zionist state – this is, of course, Machiavellianism raised to the highest degree. Thus, the Zionists thrive on hatred and suffering of Jews, and seek to benefit thereby through keeping Jews in perpetual fear, causing them to ignore the true nature of Zionism, and instead to consider the Zionist state is their salvation.

ANTI-SEMITISM BY POLITICAL ZIONISM

Although Zionists and others dispute it, the undeniable fact is that revolutionary secular and apostate elements in the Jewish community in Europe contributed greatly to hostility towards Jews after World War I. This aroused hatred of Jews in general among many non-Jews. While a prisoner in 1924 in the fortress of Lansberg on the River Lech, Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf.  When he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he was assisted by Goebbels, Roseberg and Streicher.  From them came the declarations, “The Jews of Germany caused the defeat of Germany in the 1914-1918 war; the Jews of Germany were responsible for the terrible conditions in Germany that followed the war; the Jews of Germany are foreigners and they wish to remain foreigners; they have no loyalty to the country of their birth; they are not human; they are filthy dogs; they have no right to intrude into Germany’s affairs; there are too many Jews in Germany.
As far as Zionism is concerned, the founder of Zionism and apostate, Theodor Herzl,  sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his “pearls”:

“It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . .I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews.  The anti-semites shall be our best friends”. (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)

Additional words from the vivid imagination of this dreamer, from p. 68 of Part I of his Diary.

So anti-Semitism, which is a deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character, education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt.

Hateful views of Jews as being subhuman did not have to be invented by Nazi theorists such as Hitler, Goebbels, Rosenberg and Streicher. This ideology was simply adapted from statements of political Zionists such as those found in the writings of the Zionist Yehezkel Kaufman in 1933.
In 1920 there were statements hostile to Jews expressed at Heidelberg University. These statements, arguing that Jews of Germany had caused the turmoil that followed the war; that the Jews of Germany had nothing in common with Germans, and that Germans had the right to prevent the Jews of Germany from intruding into the affairs of their volk were not made by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, but by Nahum Goldmann, who went in to become the President of the World Zionist Organization and head of the World Jewish Congress, and, indisputably, the most influential political Zionist in the world, second only to the Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
In 1921, Germans in Germany were told that:

“We Jews are aliens… a foreign people in your midst and we… wish to stay that way.  A Jew can never be a loyal German; whoever calls the foreign land his Fatherland is a traitor to the Jewish people“.

Who spoke these vile words? It was Jacob Klatzkin, the second of two political Zionist ideologists in Germany at the time, where the Jews of Germany were enjoying full political and civil rights.  It was he who had advocated undermining Jewish communities as the one certain way of acquiring a state.  “They had no qualms concerning tearing down the existing Jewish communities.”
Who spoke in a public address at a political Zionist meeting in Berlin and declared that “Germany… has too many Jews”?  Was it Hitler or Goebbels? No, it was Chaim Weizman, later to become the first President of the State of Israel.  This address was published in 1920, and, thus, four years before Hitler had even written Mein Kampf.
How many Zionist Jews know of this vicious treachery uttered by these senior political Zionist leaders, these apostates from the Jewish People?  At the Nuremberg Trials of Major War Criminals, Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher testified:  “I did no more than echo what the leading Zionists had been saying”, it is clear that he had told the truth.
In addition to Hitler, Rosenberg, Goebbels and Streicher, many other Nazi leaders used statements from Zionists to validate their charges against the Jews of Germany.  Such are the efforts of Zionist leaders to this very day to maintain a high degree of anti-semitism in order to enable them, in feigned horror, to then point to anti-semitism to support their idolatrous and anti-Jewish cause. In 1963, Moshe Sharett, then Chairman of the Jewish Agency, told the 38th Annual Congress of the Scandinavian Youth Federation that the freedom enjoyed by the majority of Jews imperiled Zionism, and at the 26th World Zionist Congress, the delegates were told that the Jew is endangered by the easing of anti-Semitism in the United States  “We are endangered by freedom” he declared.


As we stated earlier, Zionism thrives on anti-Semitism.  Ben Gurion declared, “…not always and not everywhere do I opposed anti-Semitism”.  Zionists regularly pull out their handy “anti-Semite” race card against anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who dares to speak out against the wickedness of Zionism.
During World War II, the Lehi organization, an offshoot of Begin’s Irgun that was headed by Yitzchak Shamir sought an alliance with Nazis! The following is a quote from the writings of the Lehi in their contact with the Nazis:

"The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East ... The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany's side ... The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it."

To those who assume that Zionists have been on the side of freedom and equality, these words seem strange. However, to those who understand the root of Zionism, which is the transformation and eradication of the concept of the traditional Jew and Judaism, these statements are not strange at all. They are to be expected.
The Zionists agreed with Nazism in general, even prior to the advent of Nazism. They believed that Jews could not, and should not, live in harmony in any other society in the world, and that should be removed from those societies for the benefit of those societies. They believed that the new Jewish existence in its own State would remake the image of Jews as “useless” and “parasites.” These ideas existed long before Adolf Hitler!
There is a huge amount of literature describing how the Zionists made it very difficult to save Jews during and after World War II. As various individuals and organizations were trying to arrange departures of Jews to western countries, the Zionists worked overtime to prevent this from happening. They expressed the opinion that building up the Jewish population of Palestine was more important than enabling Jews to go to third countries, and they insisted to western powers that Jews should not be accepted anywhere other than Palestine. Indeed, Yitzchak Greenbaum, a famous Zionist, proclaimed that “one cow in Palestine was worth more than all the Jews in Poland.” The infamous David Ben-Gurion said in 1938:

"If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."

Read about the brutal Zionist role in the Holocaust.

After the war, a Zionist “religious” leader, Rabbi Klaussner, who was in charge of displaced persons presented a report before the Jewish American Conference on May 2nd, 1948 :

"I am convinced people must be forced to go to Palestine...For them, an American dollar appears as the highest of goals. By the word "force", I am suggesting a programme. It served for the evacuation of the Jews in Poland, and in the history of the 'Exodus'... To apply this programme we must, instead of providing 'displaced persons' with comfort, create the greatest possible discomfort for them...At a second stage, a procedure calling upon the Haganah to harass the Jews."

It is ironic that the Zionists proclaim their State as the safe haven for the Jewish People, when since World War II no place on earth has been as dangerous for Jews, both spiritually and physically, as the Zionist state.
The Zionists worked relentlessly to create fear among Jews in the Arab countries after the Zionist state was established. Their tactic work most successfully in Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia.
It is common knowledge among Iraqi Jews that during 1949-1950 the famous Zionist, Mordechai ben Porat, who had the nickname of Morad Abu al-Knabel (Mordechai Bomber), was instrumental in seeking to bribe Iraqi officials after the creation of the Zionist state to pass laws to encourage Jews to leave Iraq. This was enhanced by the Zionists planting bombs in synagogues in Baghdad in March 1950. Information about this is readily available on the internet.

Read "The Jews of Iraq" by Naim Giladi, a first hand account of violence and intimidation of Iraqi Jews to leave their homeland.

The writings of Mr. Naim Giladi document in detail what the Zionists did in Baghdad in 1950 to provoke the departure of the Jews to the Zionist state. The Zionists do not care what effect their policies have on the Jewish communities of any country. When they accuse European nations of every sin under the sun, do the Zionists care that this will produce hostility towards Jews? No! Not a bit. On the contrary, as we have discussed, they thrive on such circumstances, clinging to the vain hope that these Jewish communities will rush for the “salvation” of the “safe haven” of the Zionist Paradise where Jews are in constant danger as the Zionist regime undertakes every form of cruel provocation against non-Jews.

In more recent times the Zionists have sought every opportunity to encourage Jews to leave their home countries. Anytime there is even the smallest event of hostility toward Jews on the heels of Zionist policy, or if there are signs of economic distress and dislocation, the Zionists magnify it a thousand times, seek to ruthlessly humiliate the nations involved, and agitate for Jews to go to the Zionist state, the so-called “natural home” of the Jewish People.  This has been the case in countries such as France, Argentina, Uruguay, the former Soviet Union and Egypt.
The promises of the Torah are always to be realized. This verse from the Torah demonstrates that those who are his enemies will pay a price when The kingdom of G-D will prevail.
Deuteronomy 32:43: Praise his People, O Nations: For he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will render vengeance against his adversaries and make expiation for his land and his People.
SOURCE: http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/zanda.cfm

By Peter Schweitzer
PoHo contributor

You can’t mix oil and water, and you sure can’t mix politics and religion. It’s not because one is more noble than the other. It’s because their goals are at odds with each other.

Religion is based on a belief in what is true about the world and the hereafter. It necessarily presupposes an adherence to credal formulas that express a certain world view. Religion has to do with truth, albeit one’s perception of it. It has to do with how things ought to be. Religion concerns itself with how a follower believes, acts, and interacts with others. Those who practice a particular religion adhere to a certain belief system (orthodoxy) and a corresponding way of behavior (orthopraxy).

Politics is just the opposite. It’s based on the art of compromise.  It’s the practice of what can be, not necessarily what should be. This is by no means a criticism. Politics concerns itself with the possible and the practical, not the ideal.

In a pluralistic society with a diversity of religious beliefs, politics necessarily and correctly absents itself from the religious realm. Politics has to determine what is just and fair for everyone regardless of their particular religious belief system.

When politicians pander to religious groups by calling our nation a “Christian nation,” they’re doing a huge disservice to the body politic and its citizens. It’s simply not true that we’re a Christian nation. Such statements make governing a nightmare. An elected official must represent all the people regardless of their beliefs or lack thereof.

Thus far, President Barack Obama has been able to nimbly deal with this “third rail.”  Unlike his predecessor, his world view is broad enough to encompass everyone, not a particular religious constituency.

Anyway, doesn’t belief in a divinity presuppose that he/she is big enough to deal with us all?

Source: http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/2009/06/13/like-oil-and-water-politics-and-religion-dont-mix/

In Texas: Court gives Santeria priest OK to sacrifice goats.

It's all about doing it in the privacy of their home:

The image shows a random goat sacrifice.

You can read Paul’s discussion at the Journal of Religion & Society.  Based on a study on contemporary rates and patterns of atheism published by Phil Zuckerman, Ph.D., an Associate Professor at Pitzer College, Hector, who writes on the Kirainet blog, created a chart of the top 50 non-religious countries. The top 15 non-religious countries include: