It's time to stop acting like slaves, boys.

Galatians 4:4-7

4 At ubi venit plenitudo temporis, misit Deus Filium suum factum ex muliere, factum sub lege,
5 ut eos, qui sub lege erant, redimeret, ut adoptionem filiorum reciperemus.
6 Quoniam autem estis filii, misit Deus Spiritum Filii sui in corda vestra, clamantem : Abba, Pater.
7 Itaque jam non est servus, sed filius : quod si filius, et hæres per Deum.


4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law:
5 That he might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons.
6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father.
7 Therefore, now he is not a servant, but a son. And if a son, an heir also through God.

From the totalitarians who brought you global warming...

From ChemicalOnline:

U.S. EPA Removes Saccharin From List Of Hazardous Substances

Saccharin, an artificial sweetener in the form of a white crystalline powder, is 300 times sweeter than sucrose or sugar. It is typically an ingredient in diet soft drinks, juices, sweets, and chewing gum. Saccharin can also be found in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

In December, 2010, EPA amended its regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to remove saccharin and its salts from the lists of hazardous constituents and commercial chemical products which are hazardous wastes when discarded or intended to be discarded.

EPA also amended the regulations under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to remove saccharin and its salts from the list of hazardous substances.

In response to a petition submitted to EPA by the Calorie Control Council (CCC) to remove saccharin and its salts from RCRA and CERCLA, EPA will no longer list these substances as hazardous on the above mentioned lists.

EPA granted CCC's petition based on a review of the evaluations conducted by key public health agencies concerning the carcinogenic and other potential toxicological effects of saccharin and its salts. In addition, EPA assessed the waste generation and management information for saccharin and its salts, concluding that the wastes do not meet the criteria for hazardous waste regulations.

See the Democrasses melt like those Nazis in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

From PR Newswire via Yahoo! News:

American Legion Applauds House's Constitutional Reading

"Music to America's ears," was how The American Legion's National Commander characterized today's reading of the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"The Constitution should be revered by all Americans but it is especially so by the veterans of this country, all of whom swore an oath to defend this document with their lives," said National Commander Jimmie L. Foster. "While The American Legion has its own constitution under which it operates, it is the U.S. Constitution that guides our reason for existing. The freedoms which it guarantees are the values that many of our brothers- and sisters- in-arms have died for. We operate a number of youth programs designed to instill a deep appreciation for this remarkable document among the next generation. The American Legion applauds Congress for providing this poignant reminder of America's greatness."

Speaking of the Jews, their crackup continues apace.

Challenging orthodoxies, Shas maverick seeks to put Israeli haredim to work

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Not so long ago, few Israelis had heard of Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, a soft-spoken Shas backbencher in the Knesset.

Over the past few weeks, however, Amsellem has emerged as a maverick in Israeli politics. Having broken ranks with the Orthodox-oriented Shas and its haredi leaders, he is talking about establishing a new party to challenge for the Sephardic vote.

It’s not so much the politics that makes Amsellem’s move significant; the chances are slim that other Shas Knesset members will break with the party to join Amsellem.

Rather, Amsellem’s very public rejection of Shas orthodoxy is part of an emerging movement in the Israeli Sephardic world against the rigid Orthodoxy that Shas leaders have tried to impose on followers.

Indeed, Amsellem speaks of nothing less than a Sephardic "social and cultural revolution," which his new party would both tap into and promote.

At the heart of the movement is a novel reassessment of the idea of the "society of Torah scholars," perhaps the most fundamental formative principle of the haredi world.

Both Shas and the Ashkenazi haredi parties hold that virtually all young haredi men should devote themselves solely to Torah study, as a society of Torah scholars who are exempted from mandatory army service as long as they stay in the yeshiva. This has led to deep poverty in the haredi community because rather than serve in the Israel Defense Forces, many haredi men choose to stay on indefinitely in the yeshivas.

Amsellem and others want to change this approach. Amsellem advocates a society of Torah scholars comprising only a small elite of specially gifted students, with all others serving in the army and joining the labor force. This, he argues, is the true, more lenient Sephardic approach: a productive, working life combined with Torah study whenever time allows. Amsellem says excessive Ashkenazi or "Lithuanian" influence led Sephardim to embrace the model of an all-inclusive society of Torah scholars.

Now, he says, it’s time to break free from such thinking, mainly because it perpetuates a state of poverty among the haredim.

Good luck, Rabbi. You will need it.

"Our goal is that people who genuinely study should get a real cost-of-living stipend, not just pennies,” Amsellem told JTA in an interview. “This will be possible only when those who are genuinely part of the society of Torah scholars devote themselves to study, and those who aren't combine Torah study and work, the way the Sephardim down the ages have always done.”

Amsellem's ideas reflect major social changes already under way in the haredi world.

"Over the past few years we are witnessing a dramatic increase in the number of haredim enlisting in the army,” said Asher Cohen, a Bar-Ilan University political scientist who focuses on religious parties and movements. “We also see a growing trend of both men and women going to colleges of higher education. People are trying to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty, as happens in any normal society. They are studying and looking for work."

Cohen believes the notion of the society of Torah scholars is already collapsing; it’s just that haredi leaders are not ready to admit it or condone it.

The numbers alone suggest that something serious is happening. A decade ago, hardly any haredim served in the IDF. When a special haredi infantry battalion was established in 1999, it had just 30 soldiers. Today it numbers more than 1,000, including three companies at various stages of training and two combat units. Another 1,000 haredim serve in special haredi technological units in the Air Force, Navy and intelligence corps.

In Israel, where the IDF is a vehicle for giving young Israelis marketable skills for later in life, these numbers are significant not just to the military but for Israeli society as a whole: These haredim are picking up skills for the job market.

An additional 1,000 haredim are enrolled in National Service, an alternative to military service that makes it possible for them to join the job market without being drafted into the IDF.

The number of haredim studying mainly vocational secular subjects in haredi colleges or secular colleges with special programs for haredim has more than quadrupled since 2005, to approximately 5,000. Most of the students are women -- many of them, ironically, in institutions supported by Shas.

The government also is playing a key role. Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar has proposed a blueprint to increase the numbers by another 3,000 over the next five years. The Trade and Industry Ministry has launched special vocational courses for haredim and offers incentives to businesses that employ them.

These programs clearly are meeting a growing need. In a recent poll conducted by Chakima, an institute that helps haredim prepare for higher education, 53 percent of haredim said they would be interested in studying for a secular profession in a religious, gender-segregated classroom environment.

The new trend seems to be fueled by a confluence of interest between haredim desperate to break out of the cycle of poverty and a government eager to bring them into the labor force. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has even suggested waiving for haredim the national requirement to serve in the IDF, so they can go straight into the workforce.

Employment of haredi men will increase rapidly over the next decade, the Ministry of Trade and Industry forecasts. Some Israelis are talking about the emergence of a haredi middle class.

Others, however, see a much slower change. They note that some 50,000 haredi students still have IDF exemptions that are valid only as long as they stay in yeshiva and don't work (until a certain age).

Holding back change are haredi leaders who believe that dramatic or rapid change may destroy the very fabric of haredi society.

"It's only happening at a snail's pace because there is no real leadership," Amsellem said. "No one has stood up and openly said this is the way things ought to be except me."

Amsellem wants to build a genuinely socially concerned party independent of rabbinic fiat. Unlike conventional haredi Orthodoxy, which turns its back on modernity and often on the secular Israeli state, Amsellem is willing to entertain a working symbiosis between haredi Orthodoxy and the modern world. He also is unabashedly ready to call himself a Zionist.

His positions have earned him rogue status in Shas. In late November, the Shas Council of Torah Sages expelled Amsellem from the party and demanded that he hand over the Knesset seat he had won on the Shas ticket. Amsellem refused, resulting in a campaign of discreditation. Placards in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak compared Amsellem to Amalek, the biblical Israelites' worst enemy.

Among the haredi leadership, Amsellem is very much a lone figure. His ideas, however, enjoy wide public support. In an early December poll by the Panels Research Institute, 52 percent of Israelis polled said enlisting haredim in the army and having them join the workforce was the only way to save haredi society. An astonishingly high 22 percent of haredim concurred.

Despite evidence of some support among haredim for such change, the chances of Amsellem being politically successful are minimal as long as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the nonagenarian spiritual mentor of the Shas Party, is alive. His impolitic remarks about non-Jews notwithstanding, Yosef commands universal praise within Shas, and even from Amsellem.

"I don't think anyone could defy Rabbi Ovadia and win votes," Bar-Ilan University's Cohen observed. "And I don't see rabbis, even those who say privately that Amsellem is right, joining a political movement that challenges a rabbinical authority of Ovadia's stature."

Are shark and vulture kosher?

Golly, you infect Hungadunga's centrifuges with a worm and whack one of his atom bomb builders and all of a sudden everybody thinks you are Dr. Doolittle's evil twin. Or maybe Aquaman.


From IsraelNationalNews.com:

Egyptian Official Blames Mossad for Sinai Shark Attacks

Egypt's Governor of southern Sinai lays the blame for recent shark attacks on Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad. Southern Sinai Governor Abed Al-Fadij said: “We must not discount the possibility that Mossad threw the shark into the sea, in order to attack tourists who are having fun in Sharm al-Sheikh.”

"Mossad is trying to hurt Egyptian tourism in any way possible, and the shark is one way for it to realize its plan,” he explained.

Last Thursday, Egyptians killed two sharks that were suspected in a series of attacks on bathers. One of the sharks was 2.1 meters long and weighed 150 kg. The other was 30 cm longer and weighed 250 kg.

In the last few days, Egypt has lifted the ban on bathing that was issued after four Russian tourists were attacked by sharks.

And from The Register:


MOSSAD SPY VULTURE seized in Saudi Arabia

A cunning Israeli plan to use Mossad-operated spy vultures to glean valuable intelligence on Arab nations went seriously awry when one of the feathered spooks was arrested in rural Saudi Arabia.

According to Israel's Ha'aretz, government operatives' attempts to disguise the bird as a participant in a vulture migratory study - by equipping it with a GPS transmitter and a tag bearing the ID code "R65" and "Tel Aviv University" - didn't fool locals, who quickly alerted the powers that be.

Residents and on-the-spot reporters were happy to denounce this "Zionist plot" to Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper, and the black helicopters were soon circling in force as the accusations went viral and "hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums" decried the vulturine black op.

Claims that Israel is mounting a zoological assault outside its borders are not without precedent. Sinai regional governer Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha recently suggested that a shark which killed and maimed tourists off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh was playing Jaws at the behest of Israeli agents.

Reports that the beast was equipped with a frikkin' laser stamped "Made in USA" are unconfirmed.

Hey Pastis, that's not funny...

...besides, the beer goes on the left when you're playing a divisional opponent.