This kind of cultural destruction has been part and parcel of Islam since its inception. According to Dr. Bill Warner, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, “Political Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated to by destroying the host culture.”
Dr. Warner cites the extinction of a once-Christian Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa, and a Zoroastrian Persia, as a result of Islamic jihad. He also includes the decimation of Hindus and Buddhists as well. All told, he totals more than 270 million “nonbelievers,” including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Africans, and Jews, who have died in Islamic massacres since the birth of Islam 1400 years ago.

Chairman of the Suprerme Islamic Council in Jerusalem Dr. Ekrima Sabri has declared that after twenty-five years of digging, archaeologists are unanimous that not a single stone has been found related to Jerusalem’s alleged Jewish history.

The poll was taken in advance of this Tuesday’s national day of mourning, known as Tisha B’Av, on which the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed, 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, respectively.

Forty nine percent said they want the rebuilding of the Holy Temple, while 23% said they do not. The remainder said they were unsure.

Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E.

“All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010,” a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. “This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly.”

Relativism has been with us since at least the 5th century B.C., when the Greek sophist Protagoras claimed: “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.” That is, the truth is what we make it. Such a man-centered philosophy cannot help but mire itself in self-referential relativism due to the absence of any transcendent standard.

The following century, along came the celebrated Prussian Immanuel Kant. Kant agreed on the primacy of pure reason but amended Descartes by adding a kind of semi-empirical approach that vaguely resembles what we would call “science.”

The Jerusalem Post and various watchdog groups have reported that the Iraqi Cultural and Antiquities Authority are implementing plans to erect a mosque on top of Ezekiel’s Tomb. Last month, the process began as the ancient Hebrew inscriptions adorning the inside of the Tomb were defaced, perhaps irrevocably, and covered over by plaster.

Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in modern-day Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as “the rose-red city, ‘half as old as time,’” and which provided the climactic backdrop for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

The sensitivities run deep. Archaeologists are cautioned not to talk about pre-Islamic finds outside scholarly literature. Few ancient treasures are on display, and no Christian or Jewish relics. A 4th or 5th century church in eastern Saudi Arabia has been fenced off ever since its accidental discovery 20 years ago and its exact whereabouts kept secret.

In an interview, he said Christians and Jews might claim discoveries of relics, and that Muslims would be angered if ancient symbols of other religions went on show. “How can crosses be displayed when Islam doesn’t recognize that Christ was crucified?” said al-Nujaimi. “If we display them, it’s as if we recognize the crucifixion.”

An explosion is coming: a devastating blast against Darwinism in the form of a dynamite new film from Illustra Media: Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. The Cambrian explosion, which Darwin admitted was the greatest challenge to his theory, has not been solved in the 150 years since The Origin. In fact, it has gotten much worse. This film does more than demolish a defunct idea. It offers the only alternative that does explain the sudden appearance of all the animal phyla: intelligent design.

We have seen this appropriation of other traditions many times in the past — indeed, the Qur’an’s depiction of the Biblical prophets as Muslim prophets indicates that this kind of appropriation is foundational in Islam: “Abraham was not a Jew, nor yet a Christian; but he was an upright man [Muslim hanif] who had surrendered (to Allah), and he was not of the idolaters” — Qur’an 3:67

1907: Earl S. Tupper, inventor of the famous Tupperware “burping” plastic kitchenware, is born. Baby Tupper may well have burped for the first time on this day. More…

Archaeologists using sonar scan five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks

ROME – A team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a “graveyard” of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene. More…

TORONTO — Crowds at the Royal Ontario Museum’s heavily hyped Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition — Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World, which runs until January 3, 2010 — have far exceeded the museum’s own expectations. More…

The concept of time for us today is taken to be an absolute unchangeable system. We measure time from the fixed point of Christ’s birth so that this is the one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seventh year since he was born. The ancients, however, could not look forward to Christ’s birth; instead, they worked on a regnal dating system where events happened in the Nth year of the reign of a particular king.

For most of the Old Testament, we can find a good deal of archaeological evidence in the Middle East to corroborate the historical record e.g.: Moabite, Canaanite, Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian artefacts and excavation. This is not surprising as these neighbouring states had considerable interaction between them. However, from the period of the United Monarchy under Saul, David and Solomon back, only the Egyptian chronology and archaeology is good enough to corroborate the biblical record and here there has been supposedly very little evidence for the existence of Saul, David, Solomon, the Judges, Moses and Joshua or the Patriarchs. More…

EIN GEDI, Israel – Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive in the 30-foot- deep pit, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.
After 14 hours a search party pulled him from the hole unhurt, and five years later the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.
These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.
The phenomenon, Raz said, stems from a dire water shortage, compounded in recent years by tourism and chemical industries as well as a growing population. “This is the most remarkable evidence of the brutal interference of humans in the Dead Sea,” he said. More…

Recently, the second chapter of Forty Centuries of Wages and Price Controls by Robert L. Schuetting and Eamonn Butler was released for a free read at the Mises Institute.

You may be wondering why I would post about ancient Rome on a day like today. Iran is boiling over. Dozens were killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq over the weekend. The stock market has turned downward and there seems to be no end to the bad news. Well, I suppose I am posting this for several reasons.

1. Governments rarely learn from history, as you are about to read. America – and just about every government – debases their currency for the same reason the Romans did: it concentrates power in the hands of government.

2. Inflation always follows currency debasement. It’s mild at first, but then escalates out of control quickly. Furthermore, once it becomes “ok” to increase the money supply “just a little,” it becomes harder to stop the government from doing it on a regular basis.

3. Almost all governments in modern times use the same methods to combat inflation that the Romans tried, they just have new names for these policies.

4. Although much is known about Roman military exploits and leadership, little is known about Roman economics.

5. If the rest of the book is as good as this chapter, it may be worthwhile to purchase.

I hope you enjoy the read. I’d love to hear comments about the similarities you see in Roman and American fiscal policy. More…

A new Jewish interfaith initiative launched last week argues building the Third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem would not necessitate the destruction of the Dome of the Rock.

“God’s Holy Mountain Vision” project hopes to defuse religious strife by showing that Jews’ end-of-days vision could harmoniously accommodate Islam’s present architectural hegemony on the Temple Mount. More …

The Framework series is taught biblical event by biblical event and in contrast to the pagan viewpoint that was prevalent at the time of each event. Truths of God and His working are set into their original contexts in history to show they are as much a part of reality as any secular history or science. In an age when men despair trying to find sense in life, the Framework presents the inner coherence of God’s message to us. Each part of His historic conversation is linked to every other part and to every truth outside of the Bible.   More…