Monday, February 17, 2003

Another View of a Peace Rally



Pictures and commentary from a San Francisco peace rally.





Right-Thinking Comments - Live from Baghdad, Part III

Vatican to Issue Ten Commandments for Motorists



From Total Catholic:



The Vatican has been asked to draw up a 'Decalogue for road users' to counter a worsening accident rate throughout Europe. 'The prime commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill', is just as binding when a person sits at the driving wheel,' said an outline document, tabled by Spanish priests at a meeting of the Papal Council for Migrants and Travellers.



'The second is that the road should unite people, rather than bringing loss and death. The third is that the Christian driver should show courtesy, correctness and care which help in unforeseen situations, while the fourth is that mercy and help should always be extended to neighbours who fall victim to accidents,' the document states.





I wonder if there will be a day of rest for the vehicle?
Stock Car Racing and Conclusions



An anticlimatic ending to the Daytona 500 with rain falling. Saturday's Busch race ended under caution which had about the same effect. NASCAR needs to realize that no one wants to sit for hours watching a race that in the end doesn't really end. The 500 should have started even earlier at Noon when the television viewing began. This would have enabled them to run the whole race. They knew it was going to rain, they moved it up about 15 minutes. They should have moved it up sooner.



On Saturday they made some inane rule that if a caution is thrown in the last five laps the race will end under caution. This after a year of throwing red flags to ensure that the race would end under the green flag. I was no fan of that but it is better than watching cars go around the track behind the pace car and seeing the checkered flag fly.



If they want to keep their fan base large, NASCAR will have to figure out a better way to deal with rain delays and caution flags. Here is an idea--don't count caution laps.

Sunday, February 16, 2003

Documents Prove that Pope Pius XII Sought to Aid Jews During World War II



From the Daily News in the UK:



The documents undermine critics' claims that Pius - condemned by critics as "Hitler's Pope" - put the interests of Rome first and did not protest about the fate of Jews during the Holocaust.



A letter, signed by the Pope in October 1940 and sent to Giuseppe Palatucci, Bishop of Campagna in southern Italy, instructed him to give money "in aid to interned Jews", to whom Pius also referred in an earlier letter as "suffering for reasons of race".



The bishop was already involved in assisting Jews through his nephew, Giovanni Palatucci, the police chief in Fiume, in north-eastern Italy. Palatucci had distributed false identity papers to 5,000 Croatian Jews, enabling them to leave local internment camps for relative safety in his uncle's southern Italian diocese, an operation that would later lead to the police chief's death in Dachau.



A second letter to Bishop Palatucci in November 1940 contained a cheque for 10,000 lira that was to be used for the "support of Jews interned in your diocese".



Supporters believe that the letters will help to repair the reputation of a man whom the present Pope, John Paul II, is seeking to make a saint but who has been accused of being anti-semitic, culturally Germanophile, rabidly anti-communist and conspicuously silent about the fate of Europe's Jews.

Saturday, February 15, 2003

Massive Peace Rallies Around the World Today



Most of us might see this as some un-American enterprise. I think it would be better to conceive of it as a good thing. We should all actively be praying for peace. None of us should desire that thousands of innocent people perish so that a dictator can be removed from office. Better I say to move in and take out the dictator and his associates than to wage a full blown war. Better to imitate what we did in Panama in this case rather than what we did in Afghanistan.



The Pope isn't a stooge for Sadam. He is a stooge for Christ and those of us who follow Christ cannot ever sit idly by while the innocent suffer for the sins of some. We should take up the arms of prayer and believe that God can intervene to bring peace out of this situation even at this late stage.
Bin Laden son, al Qaeda terrorists spotted in Iran



From the Washington Times:



U.S. intelligence agencies say Osama bin Laden's oldest son, Sad, is in Iran along with other senior al Qaeda terrorists, as Iranian military forces have been placed on their highest state of alert in anticipation of a U.S. attack on Iraq, according to intelligence officials.



Sad bin Laden was spotted in Iran last month, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports. Sad is believed to be a key leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network since U.S. and allied forces ousted the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan
.

Friday, February 14, 2003

Dolly, World's First Cloned Mammal, Dies



From the Washingtonpost.com:




Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, died on Friday, her creators at Scotland's Roslin Institute said.



Veterinarians gave the world famous six-year-old sheep a lethal injection after they discovered signs of progressive lung disease.



The birth of Dolly in July 1996 made headlines around the world and sparked criticisms and fears that human cloning would not be far off.



"Dolly is dead. I can confirm that," a spokeswoman at the institute told Reuters.