What Beres found was a quiet community that willingly allowed him onto their property, although he made sure to point out that it’s built in “a clearing of trees” and is “very remote.” One person even joined Beres and Stewart County Sheriff John Vinson — who has said that there is no terrorist activity going on in Islamville — to show them around. What Channel 5 found: |
| Frankly, there was not much to see. |
| It’s a place of prayer, five times of day, and Sheriff Vinson believes that is the focus of what they do: pray, not train terrorists. |
| Nevertheless, that didn’t stop the station from airing a two-part report and lending credibility to the dangerous claims of “Homegrown Jihad.” |
Before Martyrdom, Breakfast |
Flagg Miller, of the U. of California at Davis, has listened to hundreds of audio tapes that once belonged to Osama bin Laden. It’s the everyday conversations among jihadis that he finds the most interesting. |
For the past seven years, Mr. Miller, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of California at Davis, has been poring over hundreds of audio tapes that were part of Osama bin Laden’s personal collection. Some of the tapes feature jihadis making small talk, cooking breakfast, laughing at each other’s lame jokes—not exactly riveting material.
But listen closely and they start to get interesting. |
It begins with mysterious hissing and popping noises. When he first heard it, Mr. Miller imagined militants in a remote outpost fixing a communications balloon or perfecting some as-yet-unknown terrorist weapon.
Turns out, they are making eggs. They are having a hard time, too—the kerosene stove is being uncooperative. |
The Anointing of the Sick (known as “Extreme Unction” before Vatican II) is a Catholic sacrament. Due to the shortage of priests in the U.S., however, Catholics can no longer assume that a clergyman will be available to administer it in an emergency. | Anointing of the sick another loss in U.S. priest shortage |
NEW ORLEANS — It was John B. Baus’s 82nd birthday. When he was getting ready to go out with his wife, he had a heart attack and ended up on his way to the emergency room instead. |
In the midst of the effort Baus asked for a Roman Catholic priest, fearing death was only moments away. |
“He said ‘I’m a dying man, and I want to see a priest,”‘ Mary Baus remembered. “All they said was that they didn’t have one.” |
“There used to be a chaplain available if you needed him,” she said. “Or you could get a priest to come to the hospital. Now it’s not for sure that you will see anyone.” |
Finding a priest to be at the bedside of the dying is becoming harder and harder across the country. The shortage of priests has been a problem for years, but its implications become most clear at dire times for the ill. |
I’ve been trying not to pay too much attention to Pat Robertson and his shenanigans, but this letter to him, written by Satan himself (channeled by a reader of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and sent to the paper’s editors) is too good not to post. | Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. |
| But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. |
| Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. |
| If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. |
| You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan
Read more at www.startribune.com |
A new collection of academic studies reveals a strong strain of violence and militancy that runs through the world’s historically Buddhist cultures. So — it’s not all about “present moment, wonderful moment” after all, I guess. | Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence |
Buddhist monk with toy gun. Bhutan, 2008.
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During my visits between 2006 and 2008, southern Thai monks shared the challenges of living in their fear-infested communities. All but a few concentrated on survival; peacemaking was the last thing on their minds. |
One day after teaching an English class for Buddhist novices at a monastery a young monk came over and pulled back the folds of his robe to reveal a Smith & Wesson. I later learned that he was a military monk—one of many covert, fully ordained soldiers placed in monasteries throughout Thailand. To these monks, peacemaking requires militancy. |
| It was then that I realized that I was a consumer of a very successful form of propaganda. |
In a way, I wish I could return to that dream of Buddhist traditions as a purely peaceful, benevolent religion that lacks mortal failures and shortcomings. But I cannot. It is, ultimately, a selfish dream and it hurts other people in the process. |
It's important to keep in mind here that "dangerous" is a pretty general term -- it could just as easily mean "wrong" as "violent." URL: www.usatoday.com
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Albert Mohler tells Pat Robertson where to stick it (very cordially, and not by name)
I tend to find a lot of Mohler’s views, well, troubling, to put it mildly, but this is a cogent and welcome theological refutation of Robertson’s claim that the recent earthquake in Haiti has something to do with a divine curse.