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A vehicle for venting on philosophy, religion, and the general state of things. Proprietor: C. W. Powell

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Why aren't these stories told by the talking heads on TV?

"Otwell and Lindner tour the building, which is cold and dusty. But inside several of the rooms are old products they can sell - hundreds of Iraqi flags they've sewn, dresses and pillowcases. Already the team has arranged for the factory to produce all the uniforms for Iraq's civil defense forces, and piles of cut brown pant legs line the floor.
Now the workers are getting $60 a month, part of which is spent on housing them at the factory. Otwell and Lindner promise to come back soon, and ask the workers to make a list of things that they really need, so maybe next year the factory can get some upgrades. On the way out, the workers jump and clap, as Lindner and Otwell escort the old boss - who had come back to the factory despite a previous arrest by Iraqi police for beating the workers - away from the building.
Across town, another mission is under way.
'Welcome, welcome to our school,' chants a line of 7-year-old girls in Arabic at the Abu Ghuraib Primary School, which the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion took under its wing to restore after it was badly looted postwar.
The now-bright-blue school has new equipment and new electrical wiring that feeds bright bulbs by the teachers' blackboards.
As each soldier walks through the entrance to the official ribbon-cutting, the girls chant louder in Arabic, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'
Inside, headmistress Ibistam Mahdi cuts a yellow ribbon, and thanks the men through a translator.
'For the 350 girls here, it is a lot better,' Mahdi says."
My computer has been in the shop since last Thursday, so what I do on these sites is done at New Geneva Seminary in my office. The computer just quit on me and wouldn't boot. It is very frustrating, but the nerds at the computer repair [they look 'way too young to be professionals and holding my very life in their hands] assure me that they will save all my data and get it up to running by late this afternoon. Until then, I have had time to talk to my wife, so the days have not been completely wasted.
It will come to America eventually--the suicide bomber, I mean. Ralph Peters has some perceptive remarks in the NY Post.

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion: "But the terrorists will not and cannot win. They'll only renew our determination. We'll hit back even harder. They'll shed our blood, but we'll do even more to frustrate their dreams of a global dictatorship of merciless dogma.
The only winners will be the media, who will magnify each suicide bombing until it seems to have happened a hundred times and to have done a thousand times more damage than it did.
In the age of global communications, the television image, too, is a weapon of genius. And our enemies know it. Ultimately, the suicide bomber's real target isn't the casualties. It's the cameras. "
If those who have the name "Christian" the answer should not be confusing. The Bible is clear on homosexuality, and all who live in that life are under the wrath of God, for it is an abomination in the eyes of God. [These are not my ideas, but the ideas of the Holy
Spirit who speaks in Scripture]. Christians ought not to equivocate, but make the case: homosexuality is sinful.

The case against same sex 'marriage' - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED: " How much difference can one person pressing an argument make? In the case of Andrew Sullivan and marriage rights for gays, the answer is a huge and perhaps decisive difference. In the eight years since he published 'Virtually Normal,' which concluded with a call for gay marriage rights, he has refined his argumenttoforcethose confronting it tomakea choice among three options: 1) accepting gaymarriage; 2) stating a moral objection to homosexuality and homosexual life itself; and 3) incoherence. "

Monday, December 08, 2003

I said it back there then, and have been saying it since. It took 9/11 for it to make the public media. Jeremiah said centuries ago that the reality of Scripture would trump dreams every time [Jeremiah 23].

PREVIEW: Imagining "Imagine": "Imagine there's no heaven . . . No hell below us . . . Imagine all the people living for today. Okay, let's imagine that; let's imagine six billion people who believe that flesh and blood is all there is; that once you shuffle off this mortal coil, poof, you're history; that Hitler and Mother Teresa, for example, both met the same ultimate fate. Common sense suggests that such a world would produce a lot more Hitlers and a lot fewer Teresas, for the same reason that you get a lot more speeders / murderers / rapists / embezzlers when you eliminate laws, police, and punishment. Skeptics and atheists can say what they like about religion, but it's hard to deny that the fear of an afterlife where one will be judged has likely kept hundreds of millions from committing acts of aggression, if not outright horror. Nothing clears the conscience quite like a belief in eternal nothingness."

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