Vox Evangelica Volume 2 (1963) now on-line

Volume 2 of Vox Evangelica is now online in PDF:

Ralph P. Martin, "Aspects of Worship in the New Testament Church," Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 6-32.

Donald Guthrie, "Recent Literature on the Acts of the Apostles," Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 33-49.

The notes of Donald Guthrie's article are confused in the original version and should be carefully checked.

E.F. Kevan, "Legalism: An Essay on the Views of Emil Brunner," Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 50-57.

H.D. McDonald, "What is Meant by Religious Esperience?" Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 58-70.

J. Savage, "The Theology of the Christian Mission: A Review Article," Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 71-80.

Meretz USA Weekly Update 12/29/06

Focus on: Government Squabbles

What is the Israeli government thinking? That thought must have crossed the minds of many this week, as government officials made several contradicting promises and authorizations. The Israelis seemed initially to make several concessions to the Palestinians. On Saturday evening, Prime Minister Olmert met, for the first time, with Palestinian President Abbas. During the meeting, Olmert agreed to transfer $100 million of the $500 million in tax money that it has withheld since the Hamas government came into power. At the meeting, the Prime Minister also announced plans to improve the Palestinian's ability to travel in the West Bank, including the removal of 27 checkpoints in the immediate future (there are 400 total in the West Bank). Other plans were to remove 32 other checkpoints; ease security screenings in cars and pedestrians at 16 major checkpoints; increase the number of goods flowing through West Bank crossings, including the Karni and Kerem Shalom border crossings; increase the number of travel permits allowed to Palestinians not involved in terror activities; and to pave interchanges along Route 60 in the West Bank. Early in the week, there were additional signs that the Israeli government would approve a small prisoner release ahead of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which begins this weekend. Such releases often occur around this time of year, and this one would have been as a goodwill gesture, without the simultaneous release of Gilad Shalit, whom the Palestinians have held since the summer. Then, on Thursday, Israel approved an arms transfer from the Egyptian government to Abu Mazen's Presidential Guard, saying that it would "reinforce the forces of peace" in the region. However, the Israeli government also made a decision that was the antithesis of these seemingly conciliatory gestures: on Tuesday, it announced plans, authorized by Defense Minister Peretz, to build the first new settlement in the West Bank, since construction stopped10 years ago. This settlement will be built on a former military outpost, previously inhabited by an IDF Nahal unit. More recently, the area has been the site of a pre-military Yeshiva. It will be settled by families from the former Gaza settlement Shirat Hayam. So what is the reason for these conflicting acts? It's hard to tell for sure, but the answer may lie in the clashing personalities and viewpoints that make up the Israeli government. The rivalry between Olmert and Peretz is no secret, but there are more general divisions in the government. On the one hand is the defense establishment, represented by the Defense Minister Peretz. This week, military and intelligence officials pushed for retaliation in Gaza, following a barrage of Qassam rockets in which two 14 year old boys were injured (Olmert and Peretz ended up authorizing pinpoint strikes against rocket launching cells). In general, the defense establishment is firmly against the Gaza ceasefire as well as the possibility of expanding it to the West Bank, warning that quiet will allow terrorist groups to obtain increased capabilities. On the other hand is the pro-peace, pro-negotiations camp, represented by Foreign Minister Livni who met with Fatah leaders Yasser Abd Rabbo and Salam Fayyad early this week. Livni advocates negotiations, without the precondition of a ceasefire. With Prime Minister Olmert seemingly wavering between the two sides, these contradictory missions are certainly affecting the Israeli government's actions. Certain gestures this week, such as Olmert's meeting with Abbas appeared designed to bolster Fatah in its rivalry with Hamas. Akiva Eldar pointed out in an op-ed that Olmert could easily have released the money without meeting with Abu Mazen. And Gershom Gorenberg's article in the Forward points out that Olmert treated the Palestinian president as the head of a state, flying the Palestinian flag and greeting him as "Mr. President," rather than as "Chairman." Such treatment has never before been accorded to a Palestinian leader. Other gestures -- the decision to build Maskiot -- were clearly aimed in the opposite direction. This decision is being criticized by the US and the EU, and Meretz USA made a statement saying that it "flies in the face of its own commitments... [and] disregards its own best interests." Still other actions appeared confused. The Eid al- Adha holiday begins tomorrow, and so far no checkpoints have been removed and word came today that no prisoners will be released. This week, a Haaretz editorial pointed out that Palestinians may soon have to choose again between a Fatah government and one run by Hamas. Israel must not be a silent observer in this process. It must demonstrate the "rosey" future Palestinians will have if they chose Fatah. At this time, when it's extremely important to work for peace, the Israeli government seems the victim of a tug-of-war between the left and the right. A New York Times editorial writes, "Israel's space for peace diplomacy is tightly constrained." Israel should not now be limiting this space.

In other news

Meretz USA-sponsored student group, the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ), has recently come under attack from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) for its sponsorship of a Breaking the Silence tour. Breaking the Silence is a group of former Israeli soldiers speaking out against some IDF actions. Read the JTA article and the Forward editorial. The debate over Syrian President Assad's negotiation overtures continues, with Military Intelligence and the Mossad disagreeing over Assad's intentions. Syrian blogger Ammar Abdulhamid agrees with the Mossad that negotiations would not be fruitful. However, several US senators have recently made their way to Damascus and would presumably support such talks. Happy New Year!

New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods (1977) to be on-line

I am pleased to announce that Paternoster Press have given me permission to republish on-line the entire contents of I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN: 0853644241. pp.406.

The Howard Marshall's Foreword and Introduction and now available and the rest of the chapters will be gradually added in the New Year.

Al Sharpton, Global Warming & Nuclear Power

ALL CANDIDATES

Rev Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr. is serious about global warming and supports nuclear power as a major part of the solution for mitigating the problem.

Reverend Sharpton showed his knoweledge about environmental and energy issues during his 2004 campaign for president at the Legaue of Conservation Voters-spsonsored debate in Los Angeles. AAEA President Norris McDonald, left with Sharpton, briefed the candidate for the debate.

We assume Rev Sharpton will run for the presidency again in 2008. If he wins we can expect the implementation of dynamic and effective environmental policies.

John Edwards, Global Warming & Nuclear Power

ALL CANDIDATES

The jury is out on presidential candidate John Edwards. Although he was a cosponsor of the McCain/Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, and the subsequent Climate Stewardship & Innovation Act, which included significant support for nuclear power, his specific position on nuclear power is unclear. He missed the vote on the bill - not that it would have made a difference. The ultimate vote was 43-55 against but every little bit helps. He was busy running as John Kerry's running mate for the presidency in 2003 at the time.

Al;though he was out of the Senate for the Energy Policy Act of 2005, he did not support previous versions of the legislation and considered it a giveaway to energy companies, saying that "Republicans wrote this energy bill in secret, and they wrote most of it simply to serve the energy companies, not the American people." This is not a good sign. The EPAct contained significant support for nuclear power. We are sure he will directly address this issue in the future and hopefully, if he is serious about mitigating the effects of global warming, he will support nuclear power because it does not emit any greenhouse gases and does not emit smog forming gases.

Update: On the Feb 4 broadcast of Meet the Press, John Edwards said he opposes Yucca Mountain and believes the waste should be stored at the power plants where it is produced. Edwards is quickly moving to the opposition column. Then again, Nevada, location of Yucca Mountain, is one of the earliest primaries. (More)

Be Aware

John McCain Is Great on Global Warming & Nuclear Power

We like Senator John McCain. John McCain is THE MAN. Republican Senator and presidential candidate John McCain gets it on energy, air quality and climate change. He has cosponsored climate change legislation with Senator Joe Lieberman (another visionary) and he is very approachable in the halls of the U.S. Senate. He cosponsored the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2005, which included significant support for nuclear power in addition to a cap and trade component.

Two years earlier, the Senate voted 43 to 55 to reject S.139, his previous bill, the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, which would have required all U.S. power plants and industries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG). McCain even bypassed Senator James Inhofe and the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee because he believes the GHG issue affects transportation, scientific research and other related issues and should be considered by his committee (Commerce, Science & Transportation).

The McCain-Lieberman legislation would establish a mandatory nationwide cap on emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHGs. Utilities, industries and transportation sources of the major greenhouse gases would have to limit their emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 levels by 2016. The bill would establish a trading system allowing utilities and plants with excessive emissions to buy credits from more efficient companies that have reduced emissions beyond their targets. A similar system for sulfur dioxide has operated for years under the Clean Air Act to limit acid rain.

Be Aware

Cease-fire and summit: Non events?

Israel's government has made two troubling decisions in the wake of what should have been a momentous summit between Olmert and Abbas last week. One was the announcement to establish the first official new settlement on the West Bank in ten years -- a small one in the Jordan Valley. In itself, this need not be horrible; the Jordan Valley is of some strategic interest to Israel and needs to be a point for negotiations. But again it is a unilateral move and tends to undermine the goodwill presumably intended in holding the summit.

The second decision, more understandable, is that Israel would strike back (as they say, in a pinpoint way, but that remains to be seen) at those who continue stupidly and outrageously to launch rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory. At the same time, Israel says it's maintaining the partial cease-fire; this non-cease-fire cease-fire has been a phenomenon in itself, as over 50 rockets have been fired by the brave Palestinian "resistance" against children and other civilians in Israel. I'm all for cease-fires; I wish this one were real. Ami Isseroff reported last week on the Abbas-Olmert non-meeting meeting (click Web link below):

Abbas and Olmert - What meeting?

Maps for "God in Control" by Robert Gurney now on-line

I have have just uploaded the maps for Robert Gurney's book God in Control in PDF.

Hillary Clinton & Rudy Giuliani on Nuclear Power

ALL CANDIDATES

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), left, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), right, could be rivals for the presidency in 2008. They are on opposite sides of the nuclear power issue. Giuliani supports nuclear power and Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. Clinton does not support nuclear power and cited it as one of her objections to voting for the final Conference Committee Report for the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was heavily pro nuclear. She voted for the Energy Policy Act of 2005 initially but voted against the final conference report(she voted for it before she voted against it). She does not call for the shutdown of Indian Point but does not support it either. She will probably oppose relicensing the plant. Clinton wants the NRC to conduct an independent safety assessment of Indian Point and she promotes upgraded emergency and evacuation plans for the facility.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), another potential presidential contender, co-sponsored a bill with Clinton in 2006 requiring plant owners to notify the NRC and local governments whenever a leak is discovered.

Update: Here is what Hillary Clinton says about nuclear power in her new climate change plan published in Nov 2007:

Hillary believes that energy efficiency and renewables are better options for addressing global warming and meeting our future power needs, because of significant unresolved concerns about the cost of producing nuclear power, the safety of operating plants, waste disposal, and nuclear proliferation. Hillary opposes new subsidies for nuclear power, but believes that we need to take additional steps to deal with the problems facing nuclear power. She would strengthen the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and direct it to improve safety and security at nuclear power plants; terminate work at the flawed Yucca Mountain site and convene a panel of scientific experts to explore alternatives for disposing of nuclear waste; and continue research, with a focus on lower costs and improving safety.

Be Aware

Barack Obama and Nuclear Power (Groundwater Leaks)

ALL CANDIDATES

More

Spent Fuel

Tours

Update (2-4-2008): Response To New York Times Article

Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) wants to require reporting of unplanned radioactive releases. He believes the current self-regulation initiative is inadequate and has allowed tritium leaks to occur with a delay in the public finding out about it. The Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) "Groundwater Protection Initiative," describes the current voluntary policy, which aims to improve the handling of inadvertent releases of radioactive material into groundwater at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants. Under the initiative, all nuclear power companies will implement site-specific plans to ensure timely detection and responses when radioactive materials are released to groundwater starting in 2006.

The Nuclear Release Notice Act is backed in the Senate by Obama and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and in the House by Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.). It would require notification of federal, state and county officials when radioactive releases exceed federal limits or when two occur within a two-year span from the same source, process or equipment. It would "impose real penalties on plants" that fail to make notification. According to NEI, the voluntary initiative goes beyond the bill. The NEI initiative, approved unanimously by the trade group's membership, stems in part from Exelon Nuclear's acknowledgement that radioactive tritium spilled at Braidwood Generating Station in southwest Will County between 1996 and 2003, causing groundwater contamination. Exelon is being criticized for waiting years to tell the public about the spills. (Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility)

Be Aware

Barack Obama and Nuclear Power (Spent Fuel)

ALL CANDIDATES

More

Groundwater Leaks

Tours

Be Aware

The Environment and Public Works Committee passed a provision in 2006 sponsored by U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) that requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to track unaccounted-for spent nuclear fuel rods used at power plants in the United States. Because spent nuclear fuel is periodically removed from reactors, Senator Obama believes all nuclear power plants should track their fuel better, and in the same way to keep these materials from falling into the wrong hands.

Obama's legislation was in response to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that showed the need for more adequate handling of spent fuel. The report showed that three plants - the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Connecticut, the Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont, and the Humboldt Bay Power Plant in California - have reported missing spent fuel. The missing nuclear material from Millstone was never found. The unaccounted-for material at Vermont Yankee was found three months later in a location other than the one indicated by inventory records, and officials are still investigating the Humboldt Bay plant's missing spent nuclear material.

Obama's provision would require the NRC to establish specific and uniform guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for individual spent fuel rods or segments at nuclear power plants, including procedures for conducting physical inventories. The legislation would also establish uniform inspection procedures to ensure plants put these procedures in place. Senator Obama's provision was attached to S. 864, a bill to update the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The provision did not become law.

Study: Kids in Suburban Sprawl More Likely to be Obese

"The most likely reason--those living in sprawl are effectively living in their cars. They are getting little exercise walking as part of their daily lives, have less time to be physically active, and may even consume more calories as cars become de facto snack shops."

University of Maryland

An Arab voice against Holocaust denial

The following is by an Arab journalist in London, Jihad Khazen. He’s somewhat rough in his English and in his opinions, but he is also well-meaning. This is published in his newspaper column in Al-Hayat and also in his weblog.

Ayoon Wa Azan (The Other Extremism) by Jihad el-Khazen, in Al-Hayat, Dec. 25, 2006

No sooner had the Holocaust conference in Tehran come to an end than the Iranian voters dealt a resounding blow to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies in the elections....

.... Ahmadinejad represents the "other extremism." He is as stubborn as US President George Bush, and his knowledge is similarly limited....

The Iranian voters have let down their president mainly for internal reasons like mismanagement, the faltering economy despite skyrocketing oil prices and Ahmadinejad's failure to fulfill his promises to the poor.... The Council of Experts is the body that chooses the supreme leader of the Islamic republic. The president's bloc won only three seats in the 15-seat council, while his own sister Perwin, who chairs the bloc, ranked 11th.

The Western press interpreted Ahmadinejad's loss as it liked. The most important point for the West is Iran's nuclear program. However, this program may be the only thing on which the Iranians unanimously agree....

The denial of the Holocaust has caused Iran, and Muslims in general, many unnecessary troubles. We, as Arabs and Muslims, need to build bridges of understanding with the moderate Jews who advocate peace around the world. Denying the Holocaust does not serve this purpose.

President Ahmadinejad, and whoever is interested, should listen to the following:
Firstly, the Holocaust took place within contemporary history. Some of those who had witnessed the massacre, in which six million Jews were killed, are still alive. This figure has been recorded by trustworthy historians not by the revisionist David Irving or the racist David Duke.

Secondly, we did not kill those Jews. I do not understand why some Arabs and Muslims insist to deny a crime they never committed. Yet, they paid the price when the Western butcher tried to do penance for his crime by sending those who survived the Holocaust to Palestine.

Thirdly, the Holocaust did not come out of nothing. It did not come by chance either. The Christian West has been killing Jews for the last 1,000 years since the First Crusade in 1099. Then, they killed the Jewish as well as the Muslim populations of Jerusalem. They did the same in every subsequent crusade attack. Making their way to Palestine, the crusaders killed every Jew they met throughout Europe. Some of these massacres have been recorded in details.

Fourthly, Muslims and Jews have lived together for ages. Jews were non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, but they were not being killed. They even took high state positions sometimes, like in Andalusia or in modern times. The mutual massacres between Jews and Arabs, especially the Palestinians, are nothing compared to a single day's lot in Auschwitz or Treblinka.

Fifthly, there are extremists on both sides who justify the existence of each other. They exploit the enemy's hard-line discourse to respond with more extremism in a widening circle death and destruction.
I believe that a big majority of Arabs and Jews wants to live in peace. I also believe that peace is attainable if they renounce extremism and extremists.

If I were Ahmadinejad, I wouldn't organize a conference to deny the Nazi Holocaust through study. Rather, I would invite Muslim and Jewish moderates to a conference to build up bridges of mutual understanding. We should look to the future instead of living in the past. Racism against Arabs and Muslims has been widespread throughout the world. Muslims and Jews are competing in terms of which is being more persecuted than the other....

Living near car traffic makes you sick

People's risk of having attacks of breathlessness increased by 13% for every 500-meter segments of main street located within 200 meters of their home. The risk of such attacks among people who had never smoked fell by 12% for each additional 100 meters between their homes and a main street.

Individuals whose homes were within 20 meters of a busy road were 15% more likely to regularly have phlegm in their breathing passages, while they were 34% more likely to have wheezing with breathing problems.

Reuters

President Gerald R. Ford 1913 - 2006

Excerpt from Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality. February 27th, 1976

"We can be proud of the progress we have made in improving the Nation's environmental quality. Yet, we must meet additional challenges over the next few years. We must improve our understanding of the effects of pollutants and of the means and costs of reducing pollution. As we develop new energy sources and technologies we must assure that they meet environmental standards. We also must continue the job of cleaning up pollution from existing sources."

GERALD R. FORD
The White House

On Civil Rights: A Mixed Bag: Ford signed the extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, supported affirmative action programs at the University of Michigan, when he was nominated to be vice president by Nixon, all of the members of the CBC voted against him except Andrew Young of Georgia, he opposed busing, and did ot support the bill of Rep John Conyers to make Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. (The Washington Afro-American)

J. Zel Lurie on Carter’s book

This is one of several views we’ve published on this subject, and still more may come. What follows is an edited version of Zel Lurie’s new column, prepared for publication in the Jan. 2, 2007 edition of the South Florida Jewish Journal. Zel’s candid evaluation, not included in his article, is that: “On the whole it's not a very good book. But his discussion of the apartheid occupation is on the mark.”

Similarly, my feeling is that while Carter's book is factually flawed, his ultimate conclusion is sound. As always, Zel is relentless in presenting his point of view (see below).

Why some Jews are angry with President Carter

I am vexed by the vilification of former President Jimmy Carter by Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz over his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” They concentrate on his use of the word, Apartheid, which , they say, verges on anti-Semitism and they forget the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate’s formula for Arab-Israel peace.

Apartheid is actually a weak term for the way in which over two million Palestinians in the West Bank are treated. Apartheid in South Africa was based on race. It was defeated by universal sanctions against the government. Apartheid in the West Bank are regulations, roads, walls, fences and checkpoints, which, under the guise of security, are designed to take over land for the expansion of Jewish settlements.

The critics of Jimmy Carter should read the 96-page brochure published last June by B’tselem, a Jewish organization in Jerusalem which monitors human rights in the West Bank and Gaza. The title is “UNDER THE GUISE OF SECURITY: Routing the Separation Barrier to Enable the Expansion of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank.” It’s an easy read that tells a despicable story.

Of course, three years before, the Israel government agreed to freeze all settlement activity as written in the Road Map presented in 2003 by the Quartet – the United States, Russia, the UN and the EU. Carter publishes the 14 caveats which the government attached to its agreement, which made a mockery of the Road Map. Settlements have increased like rabbits ever since, while all eyes were on Iraq.

B’Tselem can’t think of a better word than “apartheid” for what it describes in its 46-page pamphlet on “FORBIDDEN ROADS: Israel’s Discriminatory Road Regime in the West Bank.” It also has plenty of colored maps. Hundreds of miles of roads have been built on expropriated Palestinian farmland, which the Palestinian farmers are forbidden to use.

Another B’tselem booklet is entitled “MEANS OF EXPULSION,” which deals with lawlessness and violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers aimed at expelling the Palestinians from their land.

A fourth deals with “FORBIDDEN FAMILIES” which tells the sad story of the forced breakup of intermarried families. It is ongoing. Last week Mahsom Watch reported on a Palestinian who had gone to the Soviet Union many years ago to study. He married a Russian woman and brought her back home where she gave birth to three children. The family visited Russia recently which was a big mistake. Upon their return home the Russian mother was returned to Russia with her youngest child.

Let me talk for a moment on Carter’s formula for peace. It has three basic premises:
1. Israel’s right to exist and to live at peace within secure borders must be recognized by everyone.
2. The killing of non-combatants cannot be condoned.
3. Palestinians must live in peace and dignity on their own land as specified by international laws unless modified by good faith negotiations with Israel.

Good faith negotiations will never occur without forceful intervention by the president of the United States. Carter should know. When he was president he brought Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin together at Camp David. He did not allow the two to face each other. For thirteen days he shuttled between their cabins. Several times Sadat packed his bags ready to leave. Finally an agreement was fashioned which was supposed to be followed by a peace treaty in three months. But it took almost two years with several trips to the Mideast by Carter.

“To get that agreement ,” comments Rabbi Michael Lerner, “Carter had to twist the arms of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Sometimes that is what real friends do. They push you on to a path that is really in your best interest.”

Carter is a real friend of Israel. But Israel has taken a terribly wrong path in the West Bank and Carter is crying out against it.

A word about Dershowitz’s criticism. He makes ten points [which] deal with Israel’s history and American lobbying. None deal with the central theme of the book, the treatment of the Palestinians. He makes a big tzimmes over half of a sentence on the outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967: “Israel launched preemptive attacks first against Egypt and Syria, then against Jordan.”

Carter knows that the attack on Jordan was not preemptive. [Jordan shelled Jerusalem and suburbs of Tel Aviv– Ed.] In at least two of his 21 books he has correctly described how Jordan foolishly attacked and in three days Israel had overrun the entire West Bank. This may have been an error by an editor who was trying to shorten the history and get to the core of the book.

Meanwhile Jews and others are buying the book in droves. The truth will out. It reached number seven on the best-seller list on December 17 and was up to number five on December 24. If Abe Foxman continues his ad campaign against the book it may reach number one.

The Jews who are buying the book are not the ones who listen to AIPAC. They are [among] the majority of the over 80 percent of American Jews who voted against Bush last November despite his friendship with Sharon and Olmert.

As Tom Segev wrote in Ha’aretz, under the heading, “MEMOIR TO A GREAT FRIEND”:
“One reason the book is outraging ‘friends of Israel’ in America is that it requires them to reformulate their friendship. If they truly want what’s good for Israel they must call on it to rid itself of the territories. People don’t like to admit they erred, therefore they’re angry at Carter.”

Word of the Year 2006: Carbon Neutral

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary the Word of the Year for 2006 is "Carbon Neutral." Okay. So it is two words, but you get the idea. Oxford University Press explains:

"Being carbon neutral involves calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset: paying to plant new trees orinvesting in 'green' technologies such as solar and wind power."

Of course we would add nuclear power to the offset mix.

An Israeli Rosa Parks

This disturbing news and hopeful holiday wish is from Lilly Rivlin, the president of Meretz USA: “I bring to your attention the [Dec. 15 Haaretz] article below and I ask, how can this be happening in democratic Israel? Has a new Rosa Parks arisen? May the women of Israel be inspired, again, to take action. This is morally reprehensible.”

Ms. Rivlin “sent this to our [Meretz] M.K. Zehava Gal-On, and she replied that she has made inquiries to the Egged bus company and to the minister of transportation regarding what happened on the bus.”

Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat By Daphna Berman

A [religious] woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating."

Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.

"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."

Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle."

'Stupid American'

Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong."

According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he said. "Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to the Kotel [Western Wall], she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the police."

Shear says that when she first started riding the No. 2 line, she did not even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She also says that sitting in the front is simply more comfortable. "I'm a 50-year-old woman and I don't like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately and I was on a public bus."

"It is very dangerous for a group of people to take control over a public entity and enforce their will without going through due process," she said. "Even if they [Haredim who want a segregated bus] are a majority - and I don't think they are - they have options available. They can petition Egged or hire their own private line. But as long as it's a public bus, I don't care if there are 500 people telling me where to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so can anyone else."

Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen anything like it."

Word of Shear's story traveled quickly after she forwarded an e-mail detailing her experience. She has been contacted by a number of groups, including Shatil, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Center for Social Change; Kolech, a religious women's forum; the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform movement; and the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).

In the coming month, IRAC will be submitting a petition to the High Court of Justice against the Transportation Ministry over the issue of segregated Egged buses. IRAC attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski is in touch with Shear and is considering including her in the petition.

Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred is not actually defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's story is further proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About 30 Egged buses are designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines, but they are not marked to indicate this. "There's no way to identify a mehadrin bus, which in itself is a problem," she said.

"Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing [the gender segregation] even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the danger," she said.

On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the "women's section." A child is usually sent forward to pay the driver.

The official responses

In a response from Egged, the bus driver denied that Shear was physically attacked in any way.

"In a thorough inquiry that we conducted, we found that the bus driver does not confirm that any violence was used against the complainant," Egged spokesman Ron Ratner wrote.

"According to the driver, once he saw that there was a crowd gathering around her, he stopped the bus and went to check what was going on. He clarified to the passengers that the bus was not a mehadrin line and that all passengers on the line are permitted to sit wherever they want on the bus. After making sure that the passengers returned to their seats, he continued driving."

The Egged response also noted that their drivers "are not able and are not authorized to supervise the behavior of the passengers in all situations."

Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Avner Ovadia said in response that the mehadrin lines are "the result of agreements reached between Egged and Haredi bodies" and are therefore unconnected to the ministry.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case is still under investigation.

Carfree Street in NYC

Lovely use of video for activism.

Show me don't tell me.

Transportation Alternatives - NYC

Green Buildings

On December 5, 2006, the DC City Council unanimously passed the DC Green Building Act and the mayor is required to submit a comprehensive set of green building standards by no later than January 1, 2008. The GB Act requires private developers to apply standards that will make new buildings environmentally friendly, applies to buildings 50,000 square feet and larger and to all buildings that receive public financing of 20 percent or more.

The Washington, DC-based Green Building Council (GBC) certifies environmentally friendly buildings via its Leadership Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), above left. The Portland, Oregon-based Green Building Initiative (GBI) also issues green buildings certifications called Green Globes. The GBC standard was adopted in the DC bill is considered to be more stingent than the GBI standard.

Standards do not require specific features, but award credits in categories such as site selection, energy and water efficiency, and materials. A building must get a certain number of credits to be certified. Green buildings include natural light, windows that open, low-flow water fixtures or no-flush urinals, which use a chemical trap instead of water.

Washington, DC joins Pasadena, Calif., and Montgomery County, Md, which adopted the standards earlier this year. LEED standards have been adopted in 18 states and 11 federal agencies for their own projects.

‘Tis the Season to be Pagan

At first I chuckled at the subject-line of an e-mail addressed to the “Facing A Challenge within” (FAC) listserve: “just sharing my great news about progress in the pagan community.” But then I came to share the writer’s good feeling and had some serious thoughts – which I hope won't offend anyone.

FAC is a progressive e-mail list that emerged from the 2004 Oakland, California conference on antisemitism within the left. Evidently, the writer is a neo-pagan who also shares her Jewish heritage to an extent with her co-religionists.

In Biblical times, 2500-3000 years ago, the Israelite religion (evolving into but not yet Judaism as we'd recognized it) was at war with polytheism and probably paganism as well. But Christianity came to be by far the most cruel and effective anti-pagan force, systematically suppressing the Wickan tradition and other nature-worshiping religions. Under the rule of medieval Christendom, Jews and pagans both suffered persecution.

Judaism remains very different philosophically from forms of paganism, but Judaism similarly expresses itself seasonally. The Hebrew calendar is key; as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: Judaism builds "cathedrals in time." Many holidays track closely with nature's annual cycle -- spring planting (Passover), harvest (Sukkot), and winter (Hanukkah). And Janette's story reminds me that both Hanukkah and Christmas are, at their roots, winter solstice celebrations (emphasizing lights).

Greetings of the season to all of our readers!

On 12/21/06, Janette wrote:
Hi folks, I couldn't resist dropping in with a lovely little report back from the Reclaiming winter solstice ritual that I just came from. After the main ritual was over I announced that we'd be lighting the menorah in observance of Hanukkah, and that anyone who wanted to could participate. We ended up with a group of about 12 - 15, singing Hanukkah songs and then dancing the hora around the menorah (hey, that rhymes!).

Afterwards, a few stayed around singing lots of other Yiddish & Hebrew songs and finally this one guy remarked that he's been seeing more & more Jewish stuff at the rituals & how awesome it was! Eventually, we brought the menorah back near the main bonfire & drummed for quite awhile with everyone dancing. It is really remarkable, that by now I don't even feel nervous about openly announcing a Jewish observance at these rituals. It shows how far I've come.

People are getting used to this and seem to have dropped the mentality of "Judaism is oppressive and no self-respecting pagan would have anything to do with it" (my paraphrasing). I know that I got the strength and motivation to do this as a result of being part of the facing a challenge conference, so a big thank you to everyone!!

Intercounty Connector Lawsuit Is 20th Century Thinking

Environmental Defense, the Sierra Club, Audubon Naturalist Society, Maryland Native Plant Society and a family on the Intercounty Connector (ICC) route filed lawsuits in U.S. District Court contending the air air quality anaylsis was inadequate and federal officials failed to consider reasonable alternives to the highway. This is a nuisance lawsuit that seeks to thwart the will of the people in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Fortunately, governor-elect Martin O'Malley is committed to completing the essential thoroughfare.

The two court challenges reperesnt the outdated thinking of environmental groups that oppose all development projects as a reflex action. Congestion will be relieved by the ICC, thus reducing additional smog production and reducing travel times. An outer beltway would go far in further enhancing the air and travel times in the region. AAEA supported the project during the public hearings. We are sure it will withstand legal scrutiny. We just wish these groups would spend their time and resources on real solutions to air pollution in the region instead of relying on anachronistic litigation to impose their faux-green views on the region. (AP, Wash Times, Wash Post)

Gospel Perspectives Vol 1 article

After careful consideration I have decided to use Robert H. Stein's article "The 'Criteria' For Authenticity." I am not aware of many articles on this subject and I am sure that it will prove helpful. Professor Stein has already given his permission for me to go ahead.

Richest Black County Has Most Violent Schools in State

Prince George's County is the richest majority black county in the United States. It also leads the state of Maryland in students suspended for offenses. There were 13,598 students suspended during the 2005-2006 school year. This represents ten percent of the 133,000 students in the county. Offenses leading to suspensions range from carrying weapons, fighting and disrupting classes to areson and sex offenses.

There were 22,564 offenses in the 2005-2006 school year (exceeds suspensions because of multiple offenses by same student). Most offenses, 9,063, were for disrespect, insubordination or disruption. There were 6,073 attacks, threats or fighting, 492 weapons offenses, 358 dangerous substance offenses, 158 arson, fire or explosives offenses, 148 sex offenses and 6,272 offenses listed as "other."

Unfortunately, of the 6,073 attacks, 333 suspensions were for physical attacks on teachers or staff members and 339 suspensions for verbal or physical threats to teachers or staff members. One thing is clear, there needs to be more severe penalties for all acts of violence in the schools (Sources: Maryland State Department of Education, The Gazette: Clinton, Ft. Washington)

Factional fighting: a microcosm of Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Again, an excellent item by Jonathan Edelstein, appearing in his blog, The Head Heeb.

>> Arieh

A choice of models
Sometimes it's hard not to look at the current Palestinian factional fighting as a microcosm of the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So many of the elements are there: the tit-for-tat escalation of rhetoric and violence, the intransigence of both parties in compromising their power and ideology, the factional indiscipline that prevents truces from lasting long enough to become self-sustaining, the constant degeneration of peace talks into bickering over petty details. I suppose it's only natural that this should be so; like the conflict between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, the power struggle between Hamas and Fatah stems from competing nationalist visions for the future of the same land. Civil wars are the most bitter of conflicts, and both the intra-Palestinian fighting and the battle between Palestine and Israel bear many of the stamps of civil war.

By now, the events that triggered the present round of violence should be familiar. On December 11, in an atmosphere already fraught with tension after national-unity talks collapsed, gunmen sprayed the car of Fatah-affiliated intelligence official Baha Balousheh with bullets, killing his three young children and sparking a firestorm of rage. Although the identity of the gunmen has yet to be ascertained, Fatah supporters immediately blamed Hamas for the attack, and responded with retaliatory strikes including an attack on a Hamas rally in Ramallah and a possible assassination attempt on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

On Saturday, amid the rising violence, President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he intended to dissolve the Hamas-dominated parliament and call fresh presidential and parliamentary elections. This isn't something that he has the power to do: the PNA Basic Law allows the president to dismiss the prime minister but not to dissolve the legislature, and requires even his own resignation to be approved by a two-thirds majority of parliament. Although he justified it as a necessary measure to end factional infighting, Hamas was quick to describe it as a coup attempt, and indeed, the doctrine of necessity is most often used to justify coups. Alberto Fujimori, also faced with civil disturbance, would view Abbas as a kindred spirit.

Whatever Abbas' reason for making this announcement - whether he intended to strong-arm Hamas into resuming talks on a unity government, or whether he genuinely believed new elections were the only way out of the crisis - it had the effect of bringing matters to a head. On Sunday, after another attempted hit on foreign minister Mahmoud a-Zahar, the two sides called a truce with terms that included an end to incitement and resumption of unity negotiations. The same indiscipline that has stymied Israeli-Palestinian ceasefires also dogged this one, however; a number of the Fatah-affiliated militant groups refused to accept the truce, Hamas responded in kind, and today full-scale fighting broke out on the streets of Gaza. At least five people have been killed - three slain in battle, and two kidnapped and executed by Hamas - and the governments of Jordan and Egypt suddenly found themselves taking time out of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking to put out the Gaza fire.

As I argued in the opening paragraph, there are distinct parallels between the factional fighting and the larger regional conflict, and it's hard to escape the thought that they might end the same way. Although all sides are now professing their commitment to a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, there's neither a mechanism nor a sufficient level of mutual trust to achieve one, and it doesn't seem that either party has yet given up its dream of total victory. The result, as in other places, may be an ongoing stalemate with neither side able to win a military victory but both seeing no readily available alternative. In such a war, there is no victor and no vanquished, but in the worst possible way: rather than becoming a basis for a peace settlement, the inability of either side to win a decisive victory degenerates into an endless low-level bloodletting powered by the cruel force of inertia.

But the fighting also carries echoes of another, and paradoxically more hopeful, model: opening stages of the Irish Civil War. I'm aware that comparisons only go so far, especially across cultures and continents, but the situation in Ireland at the end of 1921 bears more than a passing resemblance to that in Palestine now. The Irish were in the final stages of a bloody and inconclusive independence struggle, and were faced with the choice of fighting on or accepting a partition of their country. Like the Palestinians, they were divided into a number of militant factions, not all of which answered to the provisional government and which were sharply different in their ideology and goals. The result was a year of factional fighting between the pro- and anti-Treaty forces, which was distinguished not only by its bitterness but by the use of unconventional tactics and the concentration of fighting within the political class.

It's hard to miss the echoes of that war within the current Palestinian political class. Faced with the prospect of statehood on less than ideal terms and disputes over the allocation of domestic power, the bitterness between the "pro-Treaty" Fatah leadership and the Hamas "Republicans" is escalating, and each has become the other's target. The raids, street gunbattles and kidnap-executions happening in Gaza now wouldn't have been out of place in Dublin in 1923 and, like the earlier conflict, the political leaders of both sides are the ones at the greatest risk. The situation seems as much poised to replicate the Irish conflict as the intifada.

It may seem strange to describe the Irish civil war as a "more hopeful" model, given the bloodletting and atrocities that occurred during that conflict. But in contrast to the endless stalemate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Irish factional fighting resulted in the political class becoming as war-weary as the public, and ultimately led to a general amnesty and the conclusion of a stable peace. The civil war didn't end the conflict entirely, and its loose ends came back to bite both sides on many occasions during the next three generations, but it resulted in an arrangement under which the Irish could get on with their lives and eventually cooperate in settling the future of Northern Ireland. If the Palestinian infighting also ends in consolidation of the pro-Treaty forces - and, by the end of the Irish civil war, even the Republicans acquiesced in the Treaty - then it might be possible to build something from the ashes.

-- December 19, 2006

Carfree Living in Freiburg Germany

Welcome to Germany's best-known environmentally friendly neighborhood and a successful experiment in green urban living. The Vauban development - 2,000 new homes on a former military base 10 minutes by bike from the heart of Freiburg - has put into practice many ideas that were once dismissed as eco-fantasy but which are now moving to the center of public policy.

Common Dreams

E. Earle Ellis on Jesus' Use of the Old Testament

I have just uploaded the following article in PDF:

E. Earle Ellis, "Jesus' Use of the Old Testament and the Genesis of New Testament Theology," Bulletin for Biblical Research 3 (1993): 59-75.

Earle Ellis is always worth reading when it comes to the study of the use of the OT in the New and this article is no exception to the rule.

Unified Search across different ECM systems

Posted by Max Ziff, Engineering Lead, Google Enterprise Team

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems are useful to manage and version control the information assets of the organization. But lets be honest, they don't necessarily have the most best search mechanism to retrieve the valuable information contained within. The default search capabilities provided by ECM systems create new silos where users must log-in to multiple applications to retrieve the information. Our mission at Google is to provide a unified search experience across all enterprise content sources. Due to technical differences in the interfaces and the different security mechanisms supported by ECM systems there is need to build specific connectors to these systems.

We just open-sourced an interesting project that will make it easy to build connectors to ECM systems. This new connector framework provides rich service provider interfaces (SPI) to write connectors to different content sources. It also provides a security infrastructure to securely index and serve documents stored in ECM systems. Finally it provides rich administrative capabilities to configure the connectors to different ECM systems in a centralized way. The connector framework is designed for building connectors to ECM systems as well as other content sources that may or may not have web-enabled content.

The open source project contains source for Connector Manager, Connector SPI interfaces, associated javadocs, sample code and test suites. This is an early technical preview of the connector manager project and is not (yet) an officially supported feature in the Google Search Appliance. We wanted to get the word out sooner and invite the broader developer and partner community to give us feedback. Check out the connector manager project and let us know your thoughts on it.

Hanukkah's Zionist Legacy

For about a half year, I've been locked in an epic e-mail argument with David McReynolds (retired leader of the War Resisters League and the Socialist Party candidate for US President in 1980 and 2000) and a few of his comrades. All are vehemently anti-Zionist, and some quite vile about it. What follows is one of my responses in this dialogue, which also attempts to place Hanukkah and Zionism in historical context. – R. Seliger

I want to comment on a mistaken idea that came across in one message that the Jews only had a "kingdom of Israel" for two centuries. But even speaking as a Zionist, I don't believe that the Jews' origins in the ancient land of Israel provides full justification for modern political Zionism. The only moral justification for Zionism as the quest for a secure homeland was the unacceptable situation of harsh antisemitism that the Jews experienced in most lands where they lived – especially in Europe.

However, when the Jews' national culture transformed into a mostly religious culture during nearly 2,000 years of diaspora, the revered memory of the ancient homeland and the time of national sovereignty provided Zionism's spiritual basis. This became important when some Jews advocated various schemes for establishing some refuge or "homeland" for the persecuted masses of Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century ( e.g., Patagonia and Uganda). When Theodor Herzl himself, desperate for some place of refuge during these years of mounting antisemitism in Europe and widespread impoverishment and pogroms in Russia, embraced the British notion of a Jewish homeland in Uganda, his own World Zionist Congress overwhelmingly rejected it (and him) in favor of the original vision of Palestine. Herzl had to publicly repent before the Congress to regain leadership of the movement.

The tenure of the Hebrew tribes in ancient Israel, and then of what became the Jewish people, was much longer than two centuries (add a thousand years and you're closer to the truth). First, there are the years (probably more than one century) of the tribal Hebrew confederation that had no king. Then there's the united kingdom of Saul, David, Solomon and one of Solomon's sons; this united kingdom did not last long, being split into the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of "Israel." It's probably the two-century existence of the northern kingdom of Israel that is mistakenly being taken as the "only time" that the Jews were sovereign in ancient Israel/Palestine.

The northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians. The southern kingdom of Judah (whose capital was Jerusalem) remained another couple of centuries until destroyed by the Babylonians. It is from Judah that the Jewish people take their name.

The Jews survived captivity and exile in Babylonia and were permitted to return under Persian rule; a large diaspora Jewish community remained in Mesopotamia voluntarily, but returnees rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem and rebuilt a political community under Ezra and Nehemiah. A couple of centuries later (around 300-200 BC), after Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire, Judea (as it came to be called) was fought over by the competing Greek dynasties in Syria and Egypt (Cleopatra was the last of the Greek rulers of Egypt). It was during this confusing time of dynastic warfare that the Jews rebelled under the leadership of the Hasmonean priestly family (the famed Maccabees, celebrated during Hanukkah).

The Hasmoneans eventually established their dynasty as rulers of the kingdom of Judea and conquered all or most of what came later to be known as Palestine. The Hasmoneans were rotten dynastic rulers and during the last century BC, their rule ended violently when Herod married into their family and maniacally murdered the last of them, including his son and his beloved wife.

Soon after, Judea fell under Roman rule – not by war, but the Romans cleverly infiltrated their influence until an exhausted Judea fell into their hands like ripe fruit. In the first century of the Common Era, the Jews launched a massive rebellion that was brutally put down and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed (this is also the time of the famous mass suicide at Masada); and Jewish prisoner-slaves built the Coliseum in Rome. A large Jewish population remained, however and they again rebelled in the 130s AD under a talented military leader known as Bar Kochba. Again, however, after a long, hard fight, the Jews suffered catastrophe. And this time, the Romans eradicated the name of Judea, renaming it Palestine.

The mass killings and forced expulsion of the Jews by the Romans in both wars, but especially the last – what we would now call ethnic cleansing – mostly depopulated "Palestine" of its Jews. Still, Jewish communities have returned over the centuries, especially to Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed. (A significant Jewish population was massacred by the Crusaders upon their conquest of Jerusalem.)

To reiterate my point before this historical discourse: ancient history does not justify Zionism, but it establishes the spiritual basis. The Jews would never have thought of Palestine as a potential place of refuge, without the memory, preserved by the Jewish faith, of the ancient homeland(s).

Black Duck in Decline in Mid-Atlantic Region

According to The Washington Times the black duck is in decline and scientists do not know why. The article states that the black duck is favored by hunters yet there are questions as to why the black duck is nowhere to be seen in hunting country. Scientists speculate that it could be waterfront development ruining the wetlands and fading duck foodstuff. Of course white mute swans are considered to be in overabundance and even pose a threat to submerged vegetation.

According to the article, Ducks Unlimited has begun a $1 million research project to better understand the decline of the black duck. Man, the inner city could use some of that money. No black ducks there either. Virginia wants to put satellite-tracking devices on some black ducks to see where they go. (Hopefully away from the hunting areas).

John N. Oswalt on The Egyptian Concept of Deity

The following article is now available for download in PDF:

John. N. Oswalt, "The Golden Calves and the Egyptian Concept of Deity," Evangelical Quarterly 45.1 (Jan.-Mar. 1973): 13-20.

In this brief but extremely helpful article Dr Oswalt explains why the worship of the Golden Calves was so offensive to Yahweh. He also demonstrates how valuable a knowledge of archaeology can be in biblical studies.

Carter’s new book reviewed by Gidon Remba

Gidon D. Remba is co-author of the forthcoming book, “The Great Rift: Arab-Israeli War and Peace in the New Middle East.” He served as senior foreign press editor and translator in the office of Israel’s Prime Minister during the Egyptian-Israeli peace process of 1977-‘78. His essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times, the Nation, the Jerusalem Report, Ha'aretz, Tikkun, the Forward , the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Chicago Jewish News, JUF News, and the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

He currently lives in Chicago where he’s active in the Zionist peace camp and blogs at “Tough Dove Israel.” The following is a version of his review that was published at the British online publication, the Engage Forum, at my suggestion as an advisory editor. It should be emphasized that Remba does not view Carter as an enemy of Israel and feels that the situation in the West Bank actually does bear a resemblance to apartheid, but this detailed critique appears harsh because of the factual shortcomings of “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

A close reading of Carter's Palestine-Israel book leads to the inescapable conclusion: it's even worse than the critics say. The book is replete with major errors of fact, all systematically biased against Israel. Carter never makes a single factual error that works in Israel's favor, or against the Palestinians. He offers an abundance of misstatements and distortions that paint Israel black. Some of the most egregious have already been highlighted by others. But Carter's approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is as one-sided as that of the Israel haters.

Though Carter himself is no Israel hater, at times he does an uncanny impersonation of one, serving up a morality tale of Israeli demons and Palestinian angels forced to descend to hell by the depredations of the evil Israelis. Throughout the book Carter unfailingly shows deep sympathy for Palestinian perceptions, while displaying little understanding for Israeli attitudes or needs. The book suffers from a deep and uncritical pro-Palestinian bias that makes a mockery of Carter's pretensions to fair arbiter and peacemaker.

To read the entire article, click here.

Hey (Username) Your lights are on!

Posted by Dave Girouard, VP and General Manager, Google Enterprise

Our OneBox technology has been part of our Search Appliance product since last April and it's really taking off with our customers. We're constantly hearing about cool and interesting uses of the technology for integrating realtime data into enterprise search results, just like weather forecasts can be integrated into Google.com results. One sly Google engineer connected our internal search appliance to a database of Googler's license plates, thus greatly easing the process of finding that sad soul who left their headlights on, blocked somebody else in, or was sideswiped by a runaway Prius. Just type in "plate" followed by any series of numbers or letters and you can immediately drop a message to the car's owner.

E.P. Sanders on the Uniqueness of Jesus' Teaching

I have just uploaded the following lecture in PDF:

Prof. E.P. Sanders, The Question of Uniqueness in the Teaching of Jesus. London: University of London, 1990. Pbk. ISBN: 0718709616. pp.31.

My thanks to Professor Sanders for his kind permission. Sander's makes some interesting points in this lecture, particularly about the need for humility in New Testament scholarship.

13 States & DC Sue EPA Over Soot

EPA issued a rule in Sept 2006 to reduce the amount of soot in the air in a 24-hour perod from 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35 micrograms. Blue states wanted a 13 microgram per cubic meter per day standard so they sued EPA, believing that thousands of additional premature deaths could be prevented: 1) New York 2) Vermont 3) Rhode Island 4) Pennsylvania 5) Oregon 6) New Mexico 7) New Jersey 8) New Hampshire 9) Maine 10) Illinois 11) Delaware 12) Conecticut 13) California & Wash DC.

Some industry groups believe the 35 microgram standard is too stringent and have sued to increase the starndard: Nat'l Cattlemen's Beef Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau Federation & Nat'l Pork Producers Council. (Wash Post)

What I should have said to Tony Judt

On the evening of Dec. 4, New York University historian Tony Judt, having achieved the esteemed rank of "University Professor," delivered an address before a packed auditorium at the NYU School of Law. As expected, he was erudite, eloquent and feisty. He also continued as a side theme – not his main focus – to drum away at the integrity and honor of the State of Israel.

Entitled "Liberal Intellectuals in an Illiberal Age," he began by noting the hundredth anniversary of the exoneration of Captain Alfred Dreyfus and how a now-obscure right-wing French intellectual had advocated for the interests of "the nation" over universal values. His was an artful talk that critiqued United States policy for taking a neoconservative direction in its perceived self-interest. He also defended the university as the last bastion of the disinterested intellectual who has the freedom and the duty to speak truth to power; he indicated the ebbing of this role with the disappearance of intellectual journals and the growing prominence of privately funded think tanks. So far, so good.

Judt is cold to the argument that he may be stirring up antisemitism with his views. He insists on "the truth" but also, curiously, admits that "free speech is not completely non-negotiable." He provided the example of a planned Berlin production of a Mozart opera to be staged with the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammad. Judt came to discuss this with German defenders of this staging and suggested that they should have added the head of a rabbi. This produced the shocked objection that that would be insensitive and hateful. And that was Judt's point about the heads, particularly Mohammad's head. My point is that this commendable awareness of Muslim feelings is completely absent when he addresses emotional Jewish issues.

Still, he very validly decried the "binary fallacy -- that everything is either itself or its opposite." Yet my concern is that he is contributing to an intellectual climate that does something like this to Israel – that if Israel is not a good example of a Western, peace-loving liberal state, then it is the opposite, without legitimacy.

His comments included a cutting remark on the Bush administration taking Israel's side and delaying a cease-fire in the recent war against Hezbollah (without his mention of Hezbollah's aggression) and a riff on US silence in the face of a "fascist," Avigdor Lieberman, being elevated to Israel's cabinet. He contrasted this with the outcry when Haider's party rose to a share of power in Austria. Yet Judt did not also indicate that parties that are arguably fascist, and clearly antisemitic, form the government of the Palestinian Authority and are in the government (and fighting for power) in Lebanon.

Judt feels no compunction about discomforting American Jews, whom he derides for being so well off and influential, yet so insecure. It's astonishing to me that an historian with a global vision of the past – when Jewish havens in such place as Moorish Spain, Poland and Germany turned bad – would take this insensitive view.

In the Q & A, I was surprised at the relative lack of response (other than an ovation) to his speech from the hundreds, up to a thousand, in the hall. I felt my heart thumping as I decided to get to the wide-open mike a few feet away. I asked if Prof. Judt still held with his view that "an ethnic state" in this day and age was "an anachronism," prefacing this by pointing out that the proposed European constitution had been defeated by popular referenda and that there were other examples of the Europeans shying away from further consolidation in the European Union.

Judt flashed a knowing smile and reminded the audience of his article in the New York Review of Books ("Israel: The Alternative," Oct. 23, 2003) in which he described Israel as an "ethno-religious" state that’s "an anachronism" and argued for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his response, he mentioned the extreme-right Flemish nationalist movement in Belgium – which he gratuitously mentioned won many Jewish votes despite its antisemitic roots. But somehow (I doubt that his reasoning was strong here because it went totally by me), he wound up reiterating his notion that Israel's Law of Return, privileging Jews, is unique and unjust.

I had made a tactical error in sitting down for his answer. If I had still been up there, I might have responded that Germany and other countries have promulgated a similar right of return for ethnic kin and that Israel, although less than perfect in civil rights terms, is more liberal than any other country in the Middle East in the access of all its citizens (including Arabs) to judicial redress and the democratic process. (This is not to mention the separate problem of Palestinian Arabs in the territories who do not have comparable protections.) I might also have added that Israel's Law of Return should be regarded as affirmative action for a minority group that has widely suffered persecution and discrimination throughout history.

Until Jan. 1, 2000, Germany did not even confer citizenship upon German-born children of "guest workers"; Germany has over two million people, mostly of Turkish origin, living long-term as non-citizens. As indicated in the Wikipedia: "children born on or after 1 January 2000 to non-German parents acquire German citizenship at birth if at least one parent:

* has a permanent residence permit (and has had this status for at least 3 years); and
* has been residing in Germany for at least 8 years.

Such children will be required to apply successfully to retain German citizenship by the age of 23."

If Judt were only advocating liberal positions and making valid criticisms of Israel, he would be unremarkable. I remember fondly his great book reviews in The New Republic – a moderately liberal pro-Israel publication that once listed him as a contributing editor and now doesn't even include his relatively recent articles in its online archive (a real pity). What is profoundly disturbing is that a liberal such as he, not an extremist, questions Israel's right to exist.