To Sille and Alchemist,

You seem to be both using your noggins the right way, different
than too many others, icluding our grand-daughter who has joined the Pestocolo's and says, grandpa you are wasting your time with all this study, because it has to happen, you just can't do anything about it.

My Goodness, if this is the way our young people are beginning to think, and including even a group from our Anglican church in Mandurah who says they have gone charismatic?
No wonder our newspapers seems to be dumbed down to everything else bar homes and car sales and sport.

What in blue blazes has happened to our people? Is this why John Howard has performed so well after he gave praise to the Hillsong church, which also is said to be charismatic.

And, indeed, is this also why Dear John is so friendly with
George W Bush who is also said to have been saved by the American Religous Right, said to be very charismatic or something like it?

Is this the way, just shut all humsanities in our universities and besides science and literature and the practical studies, just let the smart-arse law sections take over, which Howard was one of, anyhow?

Well, goodbye any online friends who have not gone pestocolo',
for why worry about our futures if they've all been written in the sky, as the old Greeks would say?

I think the only answer to this is an international agreement for all countries to agree to not discriminate against Islamic countries, Israel, or Hindu countries like India. We missed the chance when George W Bush stupidly gave India permission to go nuclear. This now looks like favouritism. It has let the jeanie out of the bottle and this is the most foolish move in strategy. Now all countries expect the same right.

Lets put all paranoia of Iran and the motives of Islam aside now and look at the reality of nuclear power. To make this safe costs money, and plenty of it, and it takes very careful and professional scrutiny, and the highest possible standards just to contain it. Besides, we are running out of high grade uranium, so the future for the energy is bleak anyway.

The only way to deal with this is a UN agreement that NO MORE nuclear power stations can be built in any country on the planet. This does not politically discriminate, but it is a responsibility that we must take in looking to better alternatives, as a species. The agreement can trade the dismantling of a set number of power stations in every nuclear country of the planet. This way, the responsibility does not descriminate, nor does it give any arguement that it isolates any particular country, with any validity or credibility.

If the USSR could not control Chernobyl, how are other dysfunctional countries that are really insecure, supposed to manage such a dangerous substance? The only way to stop them is to practice what we preach, and to demand our own countries to do the same as any other country. Stop this madness now while we still can. That is the only hope we have. This means that any nonsense that Australia should have any nuclear power must end. As I have mentioned in other pages, this is not just an environmental issue, it is a matter of national security.

One of the problems that will need attention is the fact that the Iranian president thinks he is the Mahdi. Having created an aura around himself it will be hard for him to say: "Oooops! I'm sorry. I think I made a big mistake. I'm not the Mahdi I'm just an ordinary guy".

It will be hard for him to back down unless he can find a passage in the Qur'an that allows an adherent to have bouts of entheomania occasionally swamped by periods of boanthropy.

Ever since Ahmadinejad became president, I've been wondering who he reminds me of. Suddenly the name 'Hitler' flashed and I can see a physical resemblance and mannerisms between the two.
Then today's news said that Iranians are going to make Jews,Christians and others wear a distinctive badge or coloured cloth to identify them. The Jews must wear yellow, shades of the Nazi's yellow star.
There must be something in that re incarnation business.
I wonder how Iranians in the west would take to being forced to wear a distinctive badge.

Not just that but they also have cruel and nasty public executions of homosexuals. Last year, two teenage homosexuals were tied to a stake, and the whole community threw rocks at them. Then they gauged their eyes out, cut their tounges at, and finally, after they were covered in blood, were slit with many cuts, and finally they shot them. They were just kids. Probably just a little effeminate.

What causes such hate? I cannot comprehend how you could do this in the name of God. There might be worse in places in Africa, I'm just not aware of it. They are every bit as bad as the Taliban in Afghanistan, but at the same time they are not going to change, and I still think we have to be realistic.

All we can do is accept the refugees, and with nuclear power, we have to show consistancy so that they don't perceive us as isolating them. Too much confrontation will result in making things worse. The US and their allies are simply running out of money, will and recourses. This is not an easy call.

The Author said:

[.... reinforced by the Persian-speaking majority's unique ethno-linguistic heritage and profound sense of cultural superiority over its immediate neighbours.]

and there we have it... human nature (much as I'd love to point the bone and say its just 'Persian/Iranian' nature...) and we also have the seeds of pretty much every war since Adam was a lad.

Its one thing to recognize you are 'different' and therefore have a right to express your cultural differences without the intrusion of neighbours, its another to believe it is actually 'superior'.
Specially so when you have a goose stepping army, want to 'label' Christians with a green sticker and Jews with a Yellow one.. are seeing visions and listening to the chirping and muttering of various false prophets who will feed such a situation!

*Scratches Head*....I'm SURE I've come across this kind of thing in the not so distant past.... somewhere in Central Europe....

Bible....

King Jehoshaphat decides to go and beat the stuffing out of the Arameans..so enquires 'of the Lord'.. to his 400 yes men...

So the king of Israel brought together the prophets—about four hundred men—and asked them, "Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?"
"Go," they answered, "for the Lord will give it into the king's hand."

He decides to get a second opinion, and finds good old Maicaiah ( a real prophet)....who never says what he wants to hear... and asks..

"Should we ?".......I LOVEEEE his answer...

"Attack and be victorious," he answered, "for the LORD will give it into the king's hand."

AH HAH ! the king smells a rat... but when he hears the truth (You will be destroyed) he gets irritated and decides to attack anyway.

It's all shaping up just like this today with Iran.