Slattsnews

This blogster doesn’t hyper-ventilate over God matters. We’re content to believe the basic credos of most religions are decent platforms on which to build law-abiding societies and that Judean-Christian guidance has led civilisation to enlightenment.
And dammit, I don’t know any seriously religious people who are not fine specimens of humanity. A bloke I work beside goes to the Praise The Lord Hall several times a week and I couldn’t ask for a friendlier, more helpful, interested and interesting colleague.
Anyway, despite all the huff and puff, separation of church and state is an ideal that will not be realised until churches suffer the same treatment at the tax office as secular organisations. And hear ye, brothers and sisters, dat ain’t about to happen, praise the Lord.
In the meantime, such trivials as religious symbols in state schools are best sorted at the local level, with a vote of parents if necessary.
To let the politicised bureaucracy decide such matters ends only in hypocrisy and deceit as exemplified in action by the loony left-controlled New York schools system:
Pursuant to New York’s policy, City schools display the Jewish Menorah and the Islamic star and crescent during Hanukkah and Ramadan, but not the Nativity scene during Christmas. One public school principal issued a memo encouraging teachers to bring to school “religious symbols” that represent the Islamic and Jewish religions. No mention of Christianity was made in this memo. At times, teachers would have students make the Jewish Menorahs that would often adorn the halls of the schools as part of the “authorized” displays. However, the students were not allowed to make and similarly display Nativity scenes. When a parent wrote to her son’s teacher to complain about this, the teacher responded by sending the parent a copy of the school’s “Holiday Displays” policy.

US haters are prone to gloat over what they claim is a paucity of links between Bin Laden and Saddam.
The Weekly Standard has just atomised such certainty.
Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:
31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda personnel.
37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi’s procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.

It’s a lengthy read and extremely convincing.

Just the place to visit on a bicycle built for two:

Worm warning for bloggers using PayPal:
A new variant of the MiMail worm, MiMail I, is spreading around the world.
The worm attempts to trick people out of their credit card details by purporting to be from online payment services company PayPal, which is owned by eBay.
An email with the headline ‘YOUR PAYPAL.COM ACCOUNT EXPIRES’ claims that the company is implementing a new security policy.
The email is especially sneaky in that it correctly advises people not to send out credit card details by email.
But when the attachment in the email (www.paypal.com.scr) is opened the software displays a PayPal-branded window requesting all credit card information.
The worm then mails itself out to all email addresses on the infected hard drive.