Hirshi Ali spent to much of her time after the Van Gogh murder hanging out with conservative think tanks (AEI in the US).

Maybe she has interesting thoughts about Islam and integration, but her opinions just drown in the well funded martyrdom. There are others out there saying the same things who're not allied with the Le Pen/Pim Fortuyn wing of European politics.

...actually Ali more or less got kicked out of Holland for having lied when she applied for asylum way back in the day.

(an illegal immigrant at AEI, oh sweet irony)

Interesting links, Norm, thanks for sharing :)

@sfo: I didn't find anything particularly partisan-sounding coming out of the Hirsi Ali radio interview. Her "if the US invaded Somalia" scenario made me grind my teeth a bit, not so much what she had to say about the idea itself, but the naive assumptions behind it. However, my overall impression is that Hirsi Ali is a brave and intelligent human being, and we could use more of those.

Hi guys, I will really appreciate it if someone can confirm the information below for me with at least a credible link or reference. I want to read up for myself, rather than take anyone's word at aface value. No offense intended. < <

I've been reading Crooksandliars comments on the Jesus movie and there are some interesting posts, which I summarised below.

The point here is whether there are over 600 Commandments, mostly dealing with Kosher laws. And that the Ten Commandments are arbitrarily taken from the first 10 commandments. And that they were never referred as the Ten Commandments.

That would explain why they needed so many men to carry that Ark of the Covenant. A Ten Commandment Ark should need far less men, right?

"The Hebrews often traveled around with a few arks, which held their sacred writings. Again, most people assume there was One Ark, as in THE Ark of the Covenant... mainly because it is prominently featured throughout the Old Testament."

"The Septuagint scholars mistranslated the Hebrew word for "young woman"... ... into the Greek word for "virgin". It was an easy mistake to make... ... because there was only a subtle difference in the spelling. So, they came up with a prophecy: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear us a son." You understand? It was "virgin" that caught people's attention. It's not everyday a virgin conceives and bears a son. But leave that for a couple of hundred years to stew... ... and next thing you know you have the Holy Catholic Church."

"A sizable minority of Biblical scholars believe that the whole virgin thing popped up from a mistranslation to either Greek or Latin. "Young woman" and "virgin" were sort of the same word back then."