Since it is easter weekend. Happy easter. On a religious front, has anyone watched Nation Geographic Channel about the Gospel of Judas. It’s fantastic and has the Fundies in a spin.
The real meaning behind it is Jesus had Judas give him up to the Romans. If we truely celebrated the day of his death, it would be a Wednesday because that when the passover sacrafice took place that year. If you read the other testaments they say “Jesus is the passover sacrafice for us.” What this new Gospel or old rejected gospel says is Jesus set himself up to be the passover sacarfice thus making himself the Messiah. He knew tradition and what the Book said and the Messiah had to be killed on that particular day as the story says about the death angel passing over in Egypt.
Anyway, if Jesus was Gods son, why did he have to arrange his own death to show he was the Messiah? Why wasn’t it done by the hand of God as the four Gospels say?, not pre-arranged according to Juda. The Gospel of Juda blows the devine sacrafice out of the water.
Hows that for a Happy Easter?

Posted by: jdp | Apr 15 2006 13:47 utc | 4

At least some folks stick to common sense: Palestinians to get Russian aid

Russia has said it will grant the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority urgent financial aid, in opposition to the policy of the EU and the US.
…
Mr Lavrov said on Tuesday withholding aid to the Palestinians was a mistake.
“Hamas should… recognise Israel and sit down at the negotiating table. But for that it’s necessary to work with them,” Mr Lavrov said.

Posted by: b | Apr 15 2006 15:56 utc | 6

@jdp:

I don’t put any more stock in the Gospel of Judas than I do in the other Gospels. Which is to say none. If you actually start reading about them, you will find that in early church history there were many such sects, each with its own distinct — and usually mutually exclusive — version of the truth. (After all, if you want to convince the gullible that they have to obey your will, then you’d better give them something they can’t get anywhere else. Designer drugs still being centuries away, they had to settle for mystic truths of suspect origin.)

Even if you charitably assume that the beliefs of the eventual consensus Catholic Church, formalized in the Nicene Creed and held by even most Protestant churches, are rooted in fact and that the church took this stance genuinely out of concern for the souls of their believers, it still leaves you with the uncomfortable notion that many, perhaps most, early Christians priests were liars, presumably motivated by a desire for influence and wealth. And even that involves some big leaps of faith, the Council of Nicaea being what it was. (Only 3 out of every 5 bishops were able to attend!)

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Apr 15 2006 17:07 utc | 8

billmon has another brilliant post up. get ready to lol

Posted by: annie | Apr 15 2006 21:00 utc | 10

Believe or not The Truth, the old testament actaully has rituals that stand for soemthing. The holy days meant soemthing. Jesus knew tha holy days and used the passover sacrifice day as the day of his death. This is the same day that the Israelists slaughtered the lamb and put the blood on the door post so the death angel would passover the Israelites while captive in Egypt and take or kill the Egyptians first born.
I could show you things in the Book that you’ve never heard, but it’s there. In an earlier life I studied much.
Every Jewish holy day has an inner meaning. There was many Messiahs in Jesus times, doing miracles etc. Many considered John the Baptist a messiah or prophet. They were like many enslaved peoples, they had nothing to lose and looked for hope in anything.
Thats all I have to say about that.

Posted by: jdp | Apr 15 2006 23:20 utc | 12

The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of it’s wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history. Our military men and women were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters?”
william sloane coffin

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 16 2006 1:45 utc | 14

I’ve begun to think the wheels of the great hegemon would fly off like some old machine unable to move because of misfitting gears and ungreased zirks somewhere in south america, close to home.
it’d make a great jadorowski film.

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 16 2006 4:18 utc | 16

Interesting how three “attacks” on “faith” came out all at once: the Judas text; the “Jesus walked on FROZEN water” theory; and the “fossil” that disproves creation. All at once.
Also: Please don’t lump all nerds into an evil pot. There are happy band nerds who are great gigglers; and quiet happy biology lab nerds; and happy rich computer nerds, etc. Sadly, there ARE the evil nerds, too. These were children who fell into a horrible childhood fate of being unloved at home, and who were different somehow, in a way that made the other children shy away. Unloved at home and school, these poor kids got sicker and sicker, and now they’re damaged and out for revenge. Take an honest look at both political parties and notice which one has a near monopoloy on this last group.

Posted by: zeph | Apr 16 2006 4:46 utc | 18

— On Foo —
Last week a friend gave me a box of old 78rpm records. He said they came from his Dads Dad, and he was carrying them around in his car trying to figure out what to do with them, and when I expressed intrest in them, he dumped em’ on me, knowing I suppose, how I love this sort of stuff. Giving them a spin on the old tube drive player this one record got my attention. The name of the song was “What This Country Needs Is Foo” and was a catchy swing (depression) era novelty tune full of weird take-offs on the word Foo. Like:
Everywhere you go, you hear
Whats so wrong with things today.
Smoke goes over makes it clear to,
And whats this I’m prepared to say —
What this country needs is foo.
(chorus)Lets make the future with the foo
What this country needs is foo
(chorus) We can spend lots for foo
Its what all young men can do
etc,etc….
Being curious, I googled foo, And sure enough foo originated in the same 30’s-40’s time period in a comic strip called Smokey Stover by Bill Holman, and used the same nonesensical phrases as the song, like “many smoke but foo men chew”. Holman was to have claimed he first saw the phrase foo on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. But, thats not all.
The phrase stuck around and became more popular during world war II. Early radar operators became known, because of all the mystery of the technology, as “foo fighters”, and yes thats how the band Foo Fighters took their name — but more interestingly, during this time the word bar was added (as in bar foo) to foo, creating foobar, commonly known these days by the acronym FUBAR or fucked up beyond all repair — which oddly is in truth a “recursive acronym”, or a “backronym”, or as an acronym that was not originally intended. Foobar preceded FUBAR, but FUBAR aquired (after the fact) its own meaning.
Which, also happened to catch the attention of the geek community, and logically by osmosis I suppose, the political community as well. Foo entered the computer lexicon as a “metasyntactic variable”. and you gotta love that, because the hackers, ever keen on language understood that foo was a perfect word as a stand in for whatever was under discussion, itself being devoid of meaning, but seeming at the same time to be full of it. But thats not all.
Because this all makes viable the notion of “retroactive continuity” or in geekdom “retcon” where the possibility exists within such a loose modality of foo definition to explain events that have passed, in such a way that preserves the facts and the continuity, while at the same time completely changing their intrepretation. In the TV drama “Dallas” an entire season was altered in meaning the following season by calling it a “dream” in the following season.
So, foo is alive and well, and probably on the cutting edge in both popular culture, technology, and politics. I’ll be waiting for Zalmay Khalizad, as he rushes for the plane on the tarmac, to look back wistfully and say “Goodby Iraq, I hardly foo yah”.

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 16 2006 9:23 utc | 20

@anna missed – nice!
—
Very weird and dangerous. Who owns these guys?
Phantom Force

who, then, is protecting Iraq’s most revered holy sites these days? .. At the first stop on their list—the 10th-century Kadhimiya shrine in Baghdad—two reporters were detained and questioned. The armed men who held them were from an obscure security force called the Facilities Protection Services, which now apparently numbers a staggering 146,000 men.
…
The FPS, as it turns out, is a mutant security agency that has grown from a 4,000-man group of “night watchmen”—the description given to them last year by Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training all Iraqi security forces—into a large, amorphous force that seems to lack any centralized control. Not one ministry contacted by NEWSWEEK would accept overall responsibility for the FPS. The Americans don’t oversee them either: “We really don’t get anywhere near them,” says Tim Keefe, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Facility Protection cops are suspected of committing at least some of the sectarian killings that have plagued the country in recent months. “The FPS have the same uniforms, weapons and vehicles [as regular police], and they are not controlled by either the Ministry of Interior or Defense,” Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr told NEWSWEEK recently. “And they are doing some bad.” According to Jabr, one element of FPS guards called Battalion 16 has been “involved in sectarian killings, explosions and mortar attacks.” Jabr alleged that U.S. forces recently arrested “tens” of FPS members who had slaughtered “over 100 persons” in the Baghdad neighborhood of Doura.

Posted by: b | Apr 16 2006 9:54 utc | 22

quote from b’s link
“American officials trumpet 2006 as the
“Year of the Police”

Posted by: annie | Apr 16 2006 11:36 utc | 24

happy birthday beq in these sad times

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 16 2006 17:14 utc | 26

And here is a birthday poem for beq, the artist:
Poem Written At Morning
A sunny day’s complete Poussiniana
Divide it from itself. It is this or that
And it is not.
By metaphor you paint
A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit,
A fruit for pewter, thorned and palmed and blue,
To be served by men of ice.
The senses paint
By metaphor. The juice was fragranter
Than wettest cinnamon. It was cribled pears
Dripping a morning sap.
The truth must be
That you do not see, you experience, you feel,
That the buxom eye brings merely its element
To the total thing, a shapeless giant forced
Upward.
Green were the curls on that head.
Wallace Stevens

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 16 2006 20:39 utc | 28

Chief Clearing Brush, I like it, probably doesnt have the attention span to even clear brush for 6 hours straight.

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 16 2006 23:09 utc | 30

billmon has another post up. a doozy, damn it’s good to have him back

Posted by: annie | Apr 16 2006 23:58 utc | 32

cheers to beq & fauxreal!

Posted by: b real | Apr 17 2006 2:59 utc | 34

I covet your 78s, anna missed. I must have broken some commandment in my regard for your treasure.
b real-thank you. and you too, murasakiarumikas.
I remember when I was in the womb and heard the world around me and didn’t understand all the words and then I was born and all stranger when the warm womb of words was made flesh.
And now it’s no longer my birthday.

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 17 2006 4:15 utc | 36

Addendum:
should have added the first two thirds of the movie is Young’s performance of his new album “Prairie Wind” in its entirety which can be listened to here.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 17 2006 7:09 utc | 38

Harbinger of things developing in the deadlocked new Iraqi government? From the LA Times:
Allawi, a onetime CIA protege and leader of a secular coalition with 25 seats in parliament, said in a statement broadcast on Iraqi television that political leaders might have to create an emergency government “that is capable of bringing Iraq to its feet and save it from its current deadly crisis.”
Such a government could include political groups that didn’t win seats in the election and be based on a political agreement rather than the constitution, said Adnan Pachachi, a leading politician in Allawi’s coalition.
Many secular and moderate politicians who came to prominence in the initial period after the U.S.-led invasion failed to win seats in parliament in the December election. Iraqis voted heavily for coalitions based on ethnic or religious identities.
“It would be a genuine, effective partnership between all the political forces in the country,” Pachachi said in an interview. “It would not necessarily be based on the results of the election, which we do not think reflected the voters’ will, anyway.”
Most Shiite religious and political leaders strongly oppose such a government, which they worry could deprive the Shiites of power even though they are a majority in the country.
……………………………………
Not sure whether this is a trial balloon or a plan, hatched during the Rice/Srraw visit. What is pretty sure is that the Sunni/Kurd intrangence toward the Jaafari nomination is becoming more transparent in its effects of spliting the UIA Shiite alliance. The ongoing excuses of Jaafari’s general lack ineffectivness or incompetance seem thin compared to the potential gains that could potentially come from a UIA breakup, that may result from a decision to field alternative canadates. As if there were any that would be any more satisfactory, especially if the canadate would come from SCIRI. It is after all SCIRI that controls the Interior ministry, and fields its own powerful militia. Its hard to see any advantage to the Sunni/Kurd interests in having them consilidate yet more power, unless they expect support for SCIRI to be paid for by giving up control of Interior — not likely in any event. More likely is that they see no disadvantage in allowing the pot to boil even more (in deadlock) until more drastic action seems both necessary and less radical, the reward becoming even more control eclipsing the Shiite majority, in either a defacto or military coup.

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 17 2006 8:25 utc | 40

Okay, I like use to laugh at the conspiracy nuts as much as the next person…..but there was a post about some guy warning of a nuclear explosion in Texas City this weekend. This is the second time I have come across a story about nuking Texas. I was amused at the time, and wanted to revisit the story and re-read it in light of the following story( which is a different story )…..but the post is gone.
Texas City a strike point for nuclear attack?
I put nothing past these murdering megalomaniac’s.*
War Pigs

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death’s construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning

*meg·a·lo·ma·ni·a:
n.
1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.
2. An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions.
3. a pathological egotist
Function: adjective
: belonging to, exhibiting, or affected with megalomania

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 17 2006 10:02 utc | 42

Is this translation to be disputed? Sounds pretty rational to me. I wonder where all those headlines come from that supposedly reflect his thinking.

Posted by: ww | Apr 17 2006 17:35 utc | 44

never mind, found it, sorry

Posted by: annie | Apr 17 2006 18:20 utc | 46

b, you can find a lot of stuff on Iran’s official news site. I suppose it is about as credible as any other state’s information service. IRNA

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 17 2006 19:14 utc | 48

Iraq update:
        
————————————————————————
Al-Jaafari’s Party Stands Behind Him
– By BUSHRA JUHI, Associated Press Writer
Monday, April 17, 2006
(04-17) 08:31 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) —
The political snarl over choosing Iraq’s new government tightened Monday as Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s party indicated it was standing firm for him to keep the post for a second term despite opposition from Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
Ali al-Adeeb, a top official in the Dawa party, said the group would not put forward anyone else as the Shiite Muslim nominee for premier unless al-Jaafari decided to step aside.
The announcement pointed to further delays in negotiations to form a broad-based government, an effort that has stumbled along for four months since the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
An alliance of seven Shiite parties has deferred to Dawa to decide whether the bloc should stand with its February decision to nominate al-Jaafari to head the new government. Sunnis and Kurds oppose him, saying he has failed to stop the recent surge in sectarian bloodshed, and neither side has enough votes to force a decision.
The standoff over al-Jaafari forced Iraqi officials to call off a plan for convening parliament Monday.
“Dawa cannot present any candidate unless al-Jaafari decides to step aside,” al-Adeeb told The Associated Press. “So far his position has not changed. If he decides to quit, then Dawa will try to agree (by consensus) on a candidate. If not, we will resort to voting.”
Al-Adeeb said he conveyed that position to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been pushing Iraqi leaders to break the impasse and form a new government that Washington considers vital for calming the insurgency as well as sectarian fighting that has worsened tensions the past two months.
…………………………
This is good.

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 17 2006 19:20 utc | 50

better not miss united 93:

As terrifying as United 93’s flight was, this movie does not make me afraid to fly. Or ride the subway. It does not heighten my fears in any way. It makes me proprietary about my home, my family, my friends, my city and country. For whatever this country’s ills may be — and they’re certainly there — no one is justified in taking the lives of innocent citizens. It’s never too soon — or too late — to be reminded of that.

cultural criticism as great as any ruskin or arcades.

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 18 2006 0:42 utc | 52

ICC Article
.. and as Kirt Nimmo and numerous tin-foil hatters have been saying for years ..

In my own research, I have spend a few evenings going over hundreds of articles on Zarqawi to find anything that might confirm his existence. As noted earlier, there are no reliable eyewitness accounts. What we find instead, is sometimes as many as 2,200 articles appearing on any given day pointing to Zarqawi’s involvement in a bombing without any tangible proof of his authenticity.
The news has simply become another “faith based” operation like the Bush administration.
Zarqawi-related news is devoid of any factual content. The accepted policy of the news agencies (without exception) is to reiterate the same Pentagon talking points, suspicions, and baseless claims as their peers. This gives us some insight into the collaborative relationship between the corporate media and their allies in the defense establishment. The Pentagon’s apparitions immediately become part of the national dialogue completely unchallenged by anyone in the news industry.
We should not expect that the Zarqawi myth will disappear anytime soon. The Bush administration has demonstrated a stubborn determination to cling to their fantasies no matter how threadbare they become. Besides, as Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt noted, “The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date”.

Posted by: DM | Apr 18 2006 3:54 utc | 54

One may hope that this
interview from Der Spiegel may signal
an emerging consensus. In any case the views expressed
there are certainly not new, but Rogoff’s academic cachet
will certainly help to make them “respectable”, at least
outside of corporate boardrooms and Washington’s
laissez faire think tanks.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Apr 18 2006 4:59 utc | 56

‘5.5 Tons of Coke’ Planes Owner: Royal Sons, Tom Delay Appointee

One of the two owners of the DC9 (tail number N900SA) busted at an airport in the Yucatan last week after lumbering in from Caracas, Venezuela carrying an astonishing 5.5 TONS of cocaine was appointed in 1993 to the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee by then-Congressional Majority Leader Tom Delay.

Rip, Gary Web…
Well wishes and good thoughts to Sibel Edmonds.

Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 18 2006 8:38 utc | 58

@Uncle$cam
Your forgetting where we are — at the bottom of a very deep rabbit hole. Only Alice would question such logic.

Posted by: DM | Apr 18 2006 9:18 utc | 60

There is nothing as ubiquitous as a white van, with or without the ladders. Remember the d.c. snipers? They found them in a mid-size sedan.

Posted by: beq | Apr 18 2006 12:48 utc | 62

a couple reminders re the zawrqawi psyops revelation
chossudovsky: Who is behind “Al Qaeda in Iraq”? Pentagon acknowledges fabricating a “Zarqawi Legend”

What the Washington Post fails to mention, however, is its own role in sustaining the Zarqawi legend , along with network TV, most of the printed press, and of course CNN and Fox News, not to mention a significant portion of the alternative media.

counterpunch: The Zarqawi Gambit, Revisited
…it is relevant to note that the Times has yet to own up to its role in helping the liars in the Bush Administration to pull off the Zarqawi gambit.

Posted by: b real | Apr 18 2006 17:52 utc | 64

embed links into a Word-type document
There’s plentry of IT types here, so (we) should be able to help.
To keep it simple, you can just cut and paste links directly to word. You can then save this as an html page and add this page to your favorites. If it’s your own “master links” page that you want to achieve, this should work. You can use a simple ‘table’ in Word (or similar WP program) – 1st column the description, 2nd column the URL. Other than that, we might need to know a bit more about what you are trying to achieve.

Posted by: DM | Apr 19 2006 3:28 utc | 66

Okay, some news I haven’t seen mentioned:
From debka.com, a development as Israal’s now confirmed, after 100 days of Sharon coma and one election, Prime Minister deals with 9 dead in their recent Hizbollah (claimed) suicide attack:

The special cabinet meeting the acting PM called held the Hamas government responsible for the Palestinian suicide attack, which claimed 9 lives, injured 65 people in Tel Aviv. But the ministers rejected the military’s demand to declare the Palestinian Authority an enemy entity and so be able to target its institutions.
DEBKAfile’s Special Report below elaborates on the Israeli cabinet’s decision and its grave shortcomings as an anti-terror vehicle.

Next, another website with an agenda has something for us about China and the U.S.:
[like Debka, a guilty pleasure. The following is from TBR News’ Voice of the White House weekly column. http://tbrnews.org/Archives/a2276.htm%5D

“One of my best sources for Asian/PRC information is the bureau chief of a major international news service, now stationed in Beijing. He sent me. this morning. a thirty page email containing his views on the current Sino/US relations, both economic, political and military.
…
China has atomic weaponry and the means to deliver them. China has no oil and needs it badly for its burgeoning economy. China buys oil from Venezuela and Iran. The Bush Administration has clearly indicated their strong desire to oust both governments by internal (read CIA) subversion or, as a final resort, threats of military action. The US has interfered with PRC/Taiwan relations, threatening the PRC with vague military action in the event of hostilities between the two entities. Now, China has determined to draw a line in the sand between themselves and the unstable Bush people. They are going to say, in public, that the PRC will certainly offer support to any other country (read Iran and Venezuela) who feel themselves physically threatened by the Bush people.

Posted by: jonku | Apr 19 2006 4:37 utc | 68

@DM and Jonku:
Thanks very much.

Posted by: Groucho | Apr 19 2006 5:31 utc | 70