No Easter eggs for Ahmaddy

Ahmadibunny

Even at Easter, following Ahmadinejad’s generous theatrical gesture releasing the Brit sailors, the United Stupids remain fixed in a characteristically un-Christian mind frame. They continue to refuse Iran access to their 5 officials abducted by the United Stupids.

“I think there’s no inclination right now to let them go,” Mr Gates said in Washington when asked about the fate of the five Iranians captured by US forces in Iraq and held since January.

“Iraqi government officials and US officials are discussing if there’s some way, perhaps, that there could be some kind of Iranian access to them,” he said. “But as far as I know, there’s no requirement for that.”

“I don’t think that consular access is being considered. I think the issue is whether there’s some other means by which some other access might be given,” he said.

Mr Gates’s comments appeared to fall short of a statement by US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell, who told reporters in Baghdad that a consular request to visit the five Iranians was “being assessed”.

The United Stupids’ hostage taking may blow up their faces, as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has agreed with Tehran that

the men were operating with the knowledge of the Iraqi government and were not involved in any sort of “clandestine operation”.

“They were known by us. They were under surveillance by regional security. They operated with the approval of the regional government and with the knowledge of the Iraqi government.

“We were in the process of formalising that liaison office into a consulate. Then they would have diplomatic immunity,” he said.

As usual, Doodoo’s peculiar god must be telling him fibs.

Bush’s assertion that “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job” brings to mind God as a dull-witted, cognitively-impaired nationalist unable to utter a simple declarative sentence who spends his time preaching “blessed are the warmongers and profit-makers.”

Pagan Easter Greetings

John Howard Easter Tribulations

Lamenting that “God often struggles for media coverage in the modern world”, the unctuous Asstralian Archbishop George Pell gave his beleaguered deity a hand, advertising to his flock to “refocus on their personal faith and morality”.

Apparently, despite the Vatican’s interpretation of the Fifth Commandment “You shall not kill”, Pell doesn’t think war is a personal moral issue. Instead, in his yearly Easter homily, he preached

a preoccupation with issues like the war in Iraq and global warming can distract people from their personal responsibilities.

With a supposed direct connection to his deity through the Vatican on the other side of the planet, Pell assured us

“Jesus calls us to address the challenges in our own hearts, families and communities before we moralise about distant worlds, where we are usually powerless.”

Really. Where did Jesus instruct us to do this? In Matthew 5:16 Jesus is recorded as saying “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.” Nothing there about quenching this light at the borders.

To avoid hypocrisy and bearing in mind the Second Commandment, Pell must insist the Vatican take his disempowering advice, retreat back inside its Roman walls, and pull its representatives out of other countries where historically it has proven to be one of the most powerful, moralising, interventionary forces.

“Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet.” – Acts 7:48

NB Notes on the Pagan origins of Easter and its political expropriation by the Catholic Church are here. Briefly

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastic History of the English People”) contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards Christianity instead of to their indigenous gods (whom the Pope refers to as “devils”), “to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God.” The Pope sanctioned such conversion tactics as biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices.

Funky Tsunami hits Queensland

Noosa TsunamiThe folks from FunkyPix2 have a series of photos of this week’s tsunami which devastated Queensland doomsayers, rapturites, real estate sharks and other drooling nincompoops. We’re in awe of people’s ability to put natural events in our place as much as the ability of natural events put people in their place.

Before Hastings Street was demolished, we had positioned ourselves to capture the first wave’s impact on Noosa’s trillion dollar vulnerable asset – see right.

Our sympathies of course go out to our neighbours in the South Pacific who were affected by the natural disaster.

Bin Laden, BEcon, Jeddah

Bin Laden, BEcon, Jeddah

The learned Sun Tzu wrote in “The Art of War” more than 2,000 years ago:

One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles.

One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose.

One who does not know the enemy and does not know himself will be in danger in every battle.

Over recent years, there has been considerable confusion in the West about what university qualifications Osama Bin Laden actually possesses. A firm knowledge of his various expertises would seem to be of great import if his adversaries wished to benefit from Sun Tzu’s dictums.

In this interview with Robert Fisk in 1996, he says “I am a construction engineer and agriculturalist.” At that time, indeed he was. The interview does not, however, mention his educational qualifications.

Wikipedia is currently ambiguous.

Bin Laden may have studied economics and business administration[16] at the Management and Economics School of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Some reports suggest bin Laden earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979,[17] or a degree in public administration in 1981.[18]

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