Neo-Nazis living in Israel

Link Strangely there are indeed anti-semitics in Israel. Non-Jews have arrived from Russia including some Neo-Nazis.

Can't keep too many boys in a Polygamist camp

Link There is a numerical problem with keeping more than one wife if you have equal numbers of boys and girls being born. The result? Some boys need to get removed from the group one way or the other. I'm surprised there isn't infanticide.

British Gov't refutes Intelligent Design as Not Science

Slashdot pointed to the Register article saying that Intelligent design isn't science. Vastly different from what our government under the Bush administration would say.

Faith-based group flips earmarked coast guard cutters

Link This is supposed to be a moral organization, but they're not averse to asking for money/donations for a particular humanitarian purpose and doing something else entirely with that money.

Closeted Mark Foley might have many fellow shut-ins

Link The first is pastor Ted Haggard at the evangelical New Life church with 14,000 members. A male escort says he had a business (sexual) relationship with the pastor for 3 years. The pastor has already stepped down and his replacement has said that the pastor admits some of the charges are true. (BBC News story)

Link The second is the Republican candidate for Florida governor Charlie Crist. A convicted felon says he had an ongoing romantic relationship with Crist.

-- updated 11/4

Link Church finds Haggard committed sexually immoral conduct and dismisses him. Not sure if it means they didn't approve of his having an affair or having gay sexual relations.

Christians saving the environment

Link An amazing story about a church which cares about the environment and saves money at the same time.

Europe worries on Islam

Link NYTimes piece on how even European progressives are becoming concerned about the lack of integration of Muslims into relatively liberal European societies.

A Hamas figure appears to say something reasonable

Link I think it's encouraging that Palestinians might accept what the outside world might see as a reasonable arrangement (I'll not say compromise, because it was given unilaterally by the Israelis); i.e. a cessation of hostilities and Gaza strip under Palestinian control including the lucrative hot-house farms which Israel had built there.

US versus China, bad idea; US versus Islam, bad idea

There's an estimated more than 1 billion Muslims in the world. It's behind Christianity at around 1.7 billion. Just as in the old days, the US thought it was wise not to piss off the Chinese who had a 1 billion population, it seems the Americans might have dealt with Muslims the same way.

Still, there's a lot not to like about the Muslim faith. In extreme incarnations, they persecute women and kill homosexuals. Iran recently hanged two homosexual youths. They seem inclined to resort to violence to resolve problems including promoting the idea that suicide bombers/killers of 'infidels' will go to heaven. (Another reason it's a Islamist's duty to have a lot of children, and yet another example of war by population. It's very practical that suicide bombers are typically young folks. You don't want people you've invested in greatly -- older wiser people -- blowing themselves up. And by the way, what a nice way to get rid of that black sheep who never listened to you anyway?) By contrast, Christianity most successfully spread because of more gentle persuasion tactics (okay, well at least we've forgotten about how violent they might have been). Islam today is just not a very tolerant religion it seems. Buddists and Christians are saints by comparison.

There is a lot not to like about Chinese government policies including censorship, although by constrast the Chinese seem a lot more humane.

Still, it seems like it would be have been wise to use the same methods that we used on China to deal with Muslim countries. In China's case, we pointed out human rights violations. We told China we would defend the Taiwanese democracy. But essentially we waited for the liberalism of capitalism to take hold. Maybe we would have philosophically liked the communist dictatorship to fall, too, but that would have been very destabilizing and unpredictable.

Now Afghanistan seems a bit more clear cut case where military force was needed. However, it seems to me that Iraq might have been treated the same way as China. It does seem that Saddam (and his likely successor sons) were more corrupt and stupid than the Chinese politicos. But we still had lots of time -- probably years -- before the US absolutely needed to do anything in Iraq specifically and independently. (Probably the UN could have dealt with instability at the time of Saddam's eventual death?)

One might ask, but what about this general hatred of the US being fomented in Muslim countries by Al Qaeda. We need to somehow prevent terrorism from spreading. It seems to me possible that quiet prevention of terrorist activity might be more effective than the more direct attack -- but in the wrong country -- that we are conducting now. The US is a rich country, it could do a lot through financial rewards to convince people to be our friends and the right kind of friends. The ones who try to minimize radical pan-Islamic teachings. The ones who liberalize their religions to be more inclusive and tolerant. Maybe the US should've given money to the more peaceful Fatah in Palestine. But by giving attention to the terrorists and raising stakes by getting directly involved, we are becoming a great marketing machine for the 'successes' of radical Islam.
#

As a side note, the US military put too much stake in "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" argument in invading Iraq. One might have thought we should have garnered significant Shiite good will around the world, including in Iran, by toppling Sunni dictator and oppressor Saddam. But clearly this has not happened. The more radical Shiites have made their position clear that unless we renounce our allegiance to Israel, they still don't consider us their friends. And probably there's some natural feeling that they could have taken care of their own affairs. And besides it seems only 'true' Moslim countries can be friends of such countries.

Adult Americans least likely (except Turks) to believe in evolution

Link There's an interesting graph there. Weird. I never thought the most technologically advanced country would also be the most lacking in it's belief in a fundamental part of science. A harbinger of doom for the country's current pre-eminence.

NYTimes Op-Ed: Reasonable Doubt

Op-Ed Contributor: Reasonable Doubt: "Baruch Spinoza's life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so intractable and overwhelming."

An interesting piece on religious intolerance. Now some people will claim that I'm intolerant of religious people. I'll admit I feel a certain contempt for believers who have contempt for non-believers. But this is purely a defensive reaction. I have never advocated elimination of marriage rights to believers or abolishing of church groups or churches.

# #

Another Times article mentions how one pastor lost 1/5 of his congregation by trying to unlink Republican politics from his church.