Pre-Emptive Prayer Cards

Why wait for karma to kick your teeth in before you start whining
for divine intervention?

Personalized Cards by request

"Big darkness, soon come. Take my word for it." 
HST, interview

Frank Zappa's Warning

The late Frank Zappa, best known for fronting The Mothers of Invention, a difficult-to-categorize late sixties/early seventies group of disparate musicians,was a dynamic figure; a composer, singer-guitarist, bandleader, graphic artist, filmmaker, satirist, political commentator and author of The REAL Frank Zappa Book. 

He was also a passionate defender of the First Amendment and testified before Congress on censorship-related issues. His most publicized appearance was on September 19, 1985, before the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, where he spoke out against the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music censorship organization founded by then-Senator Al Gore's wife Tipper Gore, and several other political wives, including those of five members of the committee.

During his 1986 appearance on CNN's Crossfire, Zappa made it clear that the hullabaloo surrounding the censorship of rock lyrics was an attempt to suppress free speech. In the tradition of the late Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, Zappa said that he didn't "believe there are any words that need to be suppressed." 

After getting steadily bashed by his counterpart, the conservative Washington Times columnist John Lofton, he turned toward him and told him to "kiss my ass." The program, which hadn't started out with any references to smooching, devolved to that point after an exasperated and infuriated Lofton kept accusing Zappa of refusing to condemn rock lyrics that encouraged incest.

During those early days of "Crossfire", and some might argue it has remained that way until only the past few years, the left was barely distinguishable from the right. "From the left" was Tom Braden, who ran the C.I.A.'s covert cultural division in the early 1950's and 30 years later could barely muster up a coherent progressive thought, and "from the right" was a younger and surprisingly less irascible Robert Novak. 

Later, when Lofton claimed that America's families were under attack and threatened by out-of-control musicians, Zappa stated clearly that the "the biggest threat to America is not communism, it's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan Administration is steering us right down that path."
 (For more on Zappa's life see Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Graven Images R Us

Do You Need to talk to Moses?

The line of Biblical dolls is known as Messengers of Faith.

A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, 
as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families. 

The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on its back, 
while the Moses doll will recite the Ten Commandments. The Mary doll will recite a long Bible verse. 

 Hear  the Moses  Doll  recite the  2nd Commandment :
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing 
that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. "

Today's Sermon: 

Let Them Eat Bombs
The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling 
by Terry Jones 

A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now. 

This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations. 

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering. 

These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them. 

A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it." 

But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling. 

And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the general public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military techniques that we have so far failed to apply to the children of Iraq, please let us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that, under our present leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children. 

In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense. 
Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 by the Guardian (UK) 

Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python. He is the author of Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror. 
Check out   www.terry-jones.net 

Onward and Upward