Poor Billy. Billy the goat is a military mascot for the British army. He's a "ceremonial" pet goat and marches in military parades and attends formal ceremonies. At the ripe old age of 6, Billy has fallen into disgrace after his last official performance. The Queen of England celebrates her 80th birthday this year and on a British army base in Cyprus, during a birthday celebration and march, Billy darted back and forth from side to side, throwing the soldiers off their stride. Afterwards the decision was made to demote Billy. Yeah, that's right. The goat has a military rank. For his poor performance before a bunch of dignitaries during the parade, Billy was demoted from the rank of lance corporal to fusilier - the same status as private- and soldiers are no longer expected to salute him as a sign of respect.
I can't make this stuff up.
Updating the recent history of decision making by the Presbyterian Church's leadership, now the decision has been made to "revise" the 2 year old policy on Mideast investments. Now Presbyterian holdings will be invested in Israeli and Palestinian territory "in peaceful pursuits." The official statement of the church urges an end to terror against both Israelis and Palestinians. That's more like it.
The Presbyterian Church has a ban on homosexual ministers, yet the national assembly last week voted to let local bodies have homosexuals serve as clergy and lay officers is they so wish. I didn't realize there was an official policy one way or the other. The Presbyterians are one of the more liberal under the Protestant religions umbrella, second only to Episcopalians in my opinion, so this decision was interesting. Apparently in 1997 the church passed a measure that said ministers must practice fidelity if married and chastity if single and this was suppose to handle the whole homosexual question. Whatever. A vote was also taken concerning abortion. Again, I didn't know there is an official policy outside of traditional bible teaching. The Assembly voted to establish abortion is ok up to the point where the baby is viable outside the womb. I'm a pro-choice woman, but I don't know what point that would mean. I say establish your position and stick with it, I don't like all this wishy-washy stuff. Trying to appease everyone doesn't make for good church policy.
Saturday night we watched an excellent program on the Discovery Times Channel. "Guests of the Ayatollah" is the title of the new book by Mark Bowden, author also of "Blackhawk Down". This program went through the history of what is now known as the first battle with militant Islam. President Carter's ultimate disgrace of the 444 days American hostages were held in Tehran at the American Embassy and the attempted rescue by Delta Force. Eight soldiers were killed in the desert from an aircraft collision and the Iranians paraded the dead bodies before cameras shown worldwide. The program had interviews with members of Delta Force as well as Bowden. I am looking forward to reading the book.
The new president of Iran was one of those involved in the hostage taking back in 1979. Bowden makes the point that we know who we are dealing with here. History repeats itself.
2 comments:
Will Billy get a decrease in pay? Poor Billy.
Sometimes organized religion just baffels me...why can't we all just get along (I'm with you on abortion).
History DOES repeat itself (((scary))).
They may be referring to what is called "partial birth abortion" which is a horrific process. I am against abortion unless the mother's life is in danger or in the case of rape and incest. I saw too many women using abortion as birth control. I don't think anyone knows what far reaching physical and emotional effects it has.
Wouldn't it have been nice to have a president who would have had the backbone to stand up to Iran, back then? Who knows where we would be today, probably a better place. I think Jimmy Carter is probably a good man, just not a good leader.
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