Now three rainy seasons were spent by the Lord in the Bambu Grove. It was in the fifth season, when he was residing in the Kutagara Hall of the Great Forest near to Vesali that there arose a dispute between the Sakyas and the Koliyas regarding the water of the river Rohini, which, because of a great drought, did not suffice that year to irrigate the fields on both banks. The quarrel rose high, and matters were come nearly to battle, when the Buddha proceeded to the place, and took his seat on the river bank. He enquired for what reason the princes of the Sakyas and Koliyas were assembled, and when he was informed that they were met together for battle, he enquired what was the point in dispute. The princes said that they did not know of a surety, and they made enquiry of the commander-in-chief, but he in turn knew not, and sought information from the regent; and so the enquiry went on until it reached the husbandmen, who related the whole affair. "What then is the value of water?" said the Buddha. "It is but little," said the princes. "And what of earth?" "That also is little," they said. "And what of princes?" "It cannot be measured," they said. "Then would you," said the Buddha, "destroy that which is of the highest value for the sake of that which is little worth?" and he appeased the wrath of the combatants by the recital of sundry Jatakas. The princes now reflected that by the interposition of Buddha much bloodshed had been avoided, and that had it not been so, none might have been left to report the matter to their wives and children. And since, had he become, as he might if he had so pleased, a universal monarch, they would have been his vassals, they chose two hundred and fifty of their number, from each party, to become his attendants, and join the Order. But these five hundred were ordained at the wish of their parents, and not by their own will, and their wives were filled with grief for their sake.

"(W)hile it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's heritage. Our Founders expected that Christianity -- and no other religion -- would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples' consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference. As for our Hindu priest friend, the United States is a nation that has historically honored the one true God. Woe be to us on that day when we relegate him to being merely one among countless other deities in the pantheon of theologies." -- Family Research Council, Culture Facts newsletter 9/21/2000, commenting on a Hindu priest giving the opening prayer in the House of Representatives.

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." -- Randall Terry, The News Sentinel, (Ft. Wayne, IN.), 8/16/93.

"We are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody that gets in our way." -- Jay Grimstead, February 1987.

"Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody's pseudo-right to worship an idol." -- Rev. Joseph Morecraft, Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, "Biblical Role of Civil Government" speech given 8/31/93 at Biblical Worldview and Christian Education Conference.

"This is God's world, not Satan's. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians." -- Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 102.

"[W]e need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture." -- Keith A. Fournier, ACLJ brochure "Religious Cleansing".

"America is under the judgment of God. And if we are ever going to rebuild this country, it must be under God's law. Our goal must be simple: We must have a Christian nation built on God's law, on the Ten Commandments. No apologies." -- Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, address to "Cities of Refuge" campaign, Willoughby Hills, OH, July, 1993.

"A cult is any group that has a form of godliness, but does not recognize Jesus Christ as the unique son of God."....."One test of a cult is that it often does not strictly teach that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who HImself is God manifested in the flesh."......"Christian-oriented cults include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), the Worldwide Church of God, Christian Science, Unity, Unitarianism, The Way International, Rosicrucian Society of America, Bahai, Hare Krishna, Scientology, the Unification Church, and the Jehovah's Witnesses." -- CBN pamphlet "Cults," 1992.

"When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil." -- Gary Potter, president of Catholics for Christian Political Action.

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." -- Jerry Falwell.

"What this is coming down to is who runs the country. It's us against them. It's the good guys versus the bad guys. It's the God-fearing people against the pagans, and some of the pagans are going to church." -- Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, speech in Jackson, Miss., 4/92.

"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." -- Gary North - Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism, Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989, p. 87.

"There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America." -- David Barton, president of Wallbuilders, 1994 Anti-Defamation League Report.

"Most politically active Christians don't want equal time with homosexuals, abortionists, animal worshipping pagans, witches, radical feminists and pornographers. We want them silenced and mercifully disciplined according to the word of God." -- Jay Rogers reviewing Ralph Reed's Politically Incorrect in "Chalcedon Report," 2/95.

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -- President George Bush, August 27, 1988.

"Christianity and politics not only do mix, but for democracy as we have known it to survive, they must mix." -- Rev. Donald Wildmon, Miami Herald, (11/16/93).

"We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe." -- Gary Bauer, Family Research Council.

"We're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America." -- Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan addressing the anti-gay rally in Des Moines, 2-11-96.

"...If a local community provides for school prayer, and the children of that community voluntarily choose to participate in it, this collective decision allows God to intercede in the public dimension of that community. Restoring school prayer will allow God's angels to leap into action to arrest hellish energy patterns before they can sprout and spill over into the public square." -- Steven Showers, Director of The School Prayer Resource Center, Newbury Park, California, in a letter to The Simi Valley Star and Enterprise, January 1, 1995.

"One day, I hope in the next ten years, I trust that we will have more Christian day schools than there are public schools. I hope I will live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be! -- Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979.

"America's public schools, we consciously deny them all religious instruction, and deny them access to that primary source of morality, God's own word. The Bible is the one book from which they are expressly not allowed to be taught." -- Pat Buchanan, "The City and The Crusade", Commencement Address for Christendom College, May 6, 1996.

"The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ." -- D. James Kennedy, "Education: Public Problems and Private Solutions," Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993.

''We are completely void of anything to do with God. Teachers can't touch a child - even to hug a crying child. Young boys are on Ritalin and a lot of the problem is because we have a female-dominated educational system which tries to make little boys act like little girls.'' -- William "Bill" Murray, addressing the "God and Country II" rally, speaking about the need for prayer and Bible recitations in school.

"The public school system is damned. Let me tell you how radical I am. Christian students should be in Christian schools. If you have to sell your car, live in a smaller house, or work a night job, put your child in Christian schools. If you can't afford it home school." -- Jerry Falwell, "Trends in Christian Higher Education," Regent University, 9/22/93.

"So let us be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will be get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." -- Gary North, "The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25.

"The judges need to be intimidated, they need to uphold the Constitution. If they don't behave, we're going to go after them in a big way." -- House Majority Whip Rep. Tom DeLay, The Washington Post.

"Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free." -- Pat Buchanan, speech to the Christian Coalition, Sept. 1993, as reported in ADL Report, 1994.

"The 'Owner's Manual' for the Constitution is the Bible." -- Tony Nassif, California Christian Coalition and the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

"A religion that doesn't discriminate wouldn't exist, because it wouldn't stand for anything." -- Janet Parshall, Family Research Council's "Washington Watch Radio Commentary," Sept. 1, 2000 - Comments about a church firing a lesbian worker.

"Only stupid parents would leave their children in the filthy, immoral, dangerous, public 'education' institutions for indoctrination by socialists ... who don't seem to care about the safety of children ... only their pay checks." -- J.M. Sutherland, Ph.D - The Christian Alert Network.

"But integration and equality are myths; they disguise a new segregation and a new equality...Every social order institutes its own program of separation or segregation. A particular faith and morality is given privileged status and all else is separated for progressive elimination." -- R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 296.

"We wonder why they [students] carry guns and kill each other. Well, we've told them "You're nothing, you're a freak, you're an accident of nature. That's all'" -- Benny Proffitt, President of First Priority of America - comments on teaching evolution.

"This is our land. This is our world. This is our heritage, and with God's help, we shall reclaim this nation for Jesus Christ. And no power on earth can stop us." -- D. James Kennedy, Character and Destiny: A Nation in Search of Its Soul, 1994 (p. 85).

"The end goal of gay activism is the criminalization of Christianity." -- Robert H. Knight, Director of Cultural Studies at FRC.

"As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children." -- Anita Bryant, 1977.

"If personal safety means discrimination, then I'm all for it." -- Janet Parshall, FRC Washington Watch Radio Commentary, Sept. 21, 2000 - Comments regarding the ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood.

"I want to coin a phrase here, and I don't mind help. What would be the communication version of "ethnic cleansing?" Because that's what in particular the homosexual activists try to do." -- Dr. Laura Schlessinger, August 11, 1999.

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers." -- Jerry Falwell.

"Now I have learned that the radical, perverted homosexuals and lesbians are already promoting their '2000 Disney Gay Day' -- with Disney's help! And they are timing it to occur in June -- right when children out of school will be flocking to Disney-owned parks! This proves the true intent of these homosexuals: they are after our children!!" -- Bonnie Mawyer, wife of Christian Action Network founder, in a March 2000 letter blasting Disney for allowing gay groups to visit Disney World.

"God Hates Fags!" -- Rev. Fred Phelps.

"I am not ready to give this great nation over to one-world government extremists...radical, disease-carrying homosexuals...or anti-family lesbian feminists...or hate-mongering atheists who despise our religious beliefs...or the ACLU who would deny us our free speech rights...or anti-American U.N. globalists!" -- A February 2000 mailing from the Christian Action Network soliciting support to help conservatives keep control of Congress.

"We've got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts." -- Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), on why he opposed approval of the Ryan White CARE act, which funds AIDS research.

"Someone must not be afraid to say, 'moral perversion is wrong.' If we do not act now, homosexuals will 'own' America!...If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way...and our nation will pay a terrible price!" -- Jerry Falwell quoted in People for the American Way's, "Hostile Climate," 1997, p.15.

Pro-choice activists "are usually pretty big, heavyset women who look like they've been over working Oktoberfest for the last six years. You know, there's six beer mugs in each arm. All right, it's a stereotype, but I swear looking at that footage, that's what you see - a lot of people who are angry, women who have shed their femininity and adopted a masculine outlook and are fiercely protective of abortion, which is the holy sacrament of feminism." -- Robert H. Knight, Director of Cultural Studies at FRC.

"Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." -- Pat Buchanan (11/22/83).

"The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer." -- Pat Buchanan, "Right from the Beginning," p. 149.

"Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way we're made you've got to take it up with God." -- Phyllis Schlafly.

"It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind or brain-damaged baby (even ten years later when she may be happily married)." -- Phyllis Schlafly, founder and leader of the Eagle Forum.

"There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'Negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours." -- Pat Buchanan, "Right from the Beginning," (his 1988 autobiography), p. 131 - Commenting on race relations in the 1940s and 1950s.

"How, then, can the feds justify favoring sons of Hispanics over sons of white Americans who fought in World War II or Vietnam?" -- Pat Buchanan, discussing affirmative action (01/23/95).

"The god of Judaism is the devil. The Jew will not be recognized by God as one of His chosen people until he abandons his demonic religion and returns to the faith of his fathers--the faith which embraces Jesus Christ and His Gospel. " -- David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1984), p. 127.

"The Church doesn't believe in book-burning, but it believes in restricting the use of dangerous books among those whose minds are unprepared for them." -- Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958.

"The Church has through the centuries, understood that ideas are really more dangerous than other weapons. Their use should be restricted." -- Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958].

"Don't let anything like trees in the Clearwater National Forest get in the way of providing jobs and fueling the economy, even if that means cutting down every last tree in the state." -- Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth R-ID during her 1994 campaign.

"Most of these feminists are radical, frustrated lesbians, many of them, and man-haters, and failures in their relationships with men, and who have declared war on the male gender. The Biblical condemnation of feminism has to do with its radical philosophy and goals. That's the bottom line." -- Jerry Falwell.

"There are so many women on the floor of Congress, it looks like a mall." -- Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), repeating a joke he heard.

"Men in the pro-choice movement are either men trapped in women's bodies...or younger guys who are like camp followers looking for easy sex." -- Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA).

"When the temptation to masturbate is strong, yell "Stop!" to those thoughts as loudly as you can in your mind. Then recite a portion of the Bible or sing a hymn." --Mormon Guide to Self-Control.

"When I see a first-class individual who makes $80,000 a year, he's lower middle class. When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000 a year, that's middle class. When I see anyone above that, that's upper middle class." -- Rep. Fred Heineman (R-NC), explaining that his yearly income of $180,000 leaves him short of middle-class status.

"[T]he president wants even more money from the tobacco industry. He announced a new Justice Department lawsuit supposedly to recover the costs of smoking. But the government really saves money because of smoking. Many smokers die before Medicare and Social Security pays them the usual benefits." -- Janet Parshall, FRC Washington Watch Radio Commentary, Feb. 1, 1999.

"Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the founders had in mind in the First Amendment of the Constitution... [W]e must fight against those radical minorities who are trying to remove God from our textbooks, Christ from our nation. We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours." -- Jerry Falwell, March 1993 sermon.

"Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory." -- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart.

"We are talking about Christianizing America. We are talking about the Gospel in a political context." -- Paul Weyrich, founder and president of the Free Congress Foundation.

"What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time... I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians..." -- Religious News Service, 5/1/1990

"Indeed, the time has come for Congress to call into question the very legitimacy of the Supreme Courts status as sole and final arbiter of what the Constitution means." -- Chuck Colson, "Whose Constitution Is It Anyway?," June 26, 1997

"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed." -- Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, speaking of doctors who perform abortions, in an address to the U.S. Taxpayers Alliance, 8/08/95

"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people." -- Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC instructor

President Bush today sought support for his goal to increase federal funding for religious charities, which he called "vital to the future of the country."

"The government should not fear faith-based programs. We ought to welcome faith-based programs, and we ought to fund faith-based programs," he said in a speech at a New Orleans church.

Bush argued that the question posed by such charities is how the government, "the mighty check-writer," reacts to them and he called on Congress to support him in funding programs he said could solve some of society's "intractable problems" by saving "one soul at a time."

Bush was warmly received at the pulpit of Union Bethel A.M.E. Church in New Orleans, where, he noted, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached 42 years ago. Today would have been King's 75th birthday.

Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez gave $540 to each of the 28 former combatants. Fourteen had deserted from the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's biggest rebel group; 12 from the National Liberation Army, or ELN; and two from paramilitary bands.

The two rebel groups and the paramilitary factions all finance themselves by trafficking in cocaine and ``taxing'' cocaine production, and by extorting money from Colombians. The rebels also kidnap for ransom.

One rebel deserter urged other fighters to abandon the war, saying the fight was no longer about ideology but over control of criminal enterprises.

``I call on all outlawed organizations - because they have lost their bearings - to put down their weapons and begin a dialogue,'' said the former rebel, who was not identified for his own security.

It's a special offer for this month only: a race-based bonus in the name of integration, diversity and the good Lord himself. A church in Louisiana will pay white people to attend its services, offering $5 per hour for those who attend its Sunday services and $10 for anyone who comes on Thursday.

"Our churches are too segregated and the Lord never intended for that to happen. It's time to do something radical," said Bishop Fred Caldwell, of the Greenwood Acres Full Gospel church in Shreveport.

Religion is more racially segregated than anything else in America, including housing and socialising, and nowhere more so than in the south, where 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning is said to be the most segregated hour of the week.

Among the most dangerous of these fictions concerning a future life are those which counsel virtue as a means of arriving at happiness. In that case virtue is no longer worth anything, since one only abstains from voluptuousness in the hope of being doubly repaid in the future. The brave will only seek death to evade a worse evil. The good will only respect the belongings of others in order to acquire twice as much.

Wine is forbidden because it excites wickedness and quarrels; but I am preserved from those excesses by wisdom: I take it only to sharpen my wits.

Until such time that the life of every Israeli citizen is in jeopardy, the Sharons and Netanyahus of Israel will not make the required concessions to make peace a possibility. Consequently we shall sooner or later witness a more virulent cycle of violence and, true to form, Mr Bush will condemn the Palestinians for trying to liberate themselves from slavery while applauding the Israelis for the brutal measures they will take to contain the violence. In the meantime, the road map, like all the road maps or accords that came before, will fade into history.

The Palestinians have long been the Native Americans of the contemporary world. In the nineteenth century, Americans showed little regard for America's indigenous inhabitants, taking their land and harrying them ever further westward before huddling them into reservations. So ruthless was this conduct that it evoked the admiration of Hitler who declared that the Germans should 'look upon the [East European] natives as Redskins'. For the last half-century by providing arms, subsidy and support, America has enabled Israel to dole out similar treatment to the Palestinians.

Baruch Kimmerling, professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Joel S. Migdal, professor of international studies, University of Washington, do not draw this parallel, although, referring to the Gaza Strip, they - perhaps coincidentally - entitle one of their sub-chapter headings 'A Palestinian Reservation'.

But they reject the standard Israeli claim that no self-identified Palestinian people existed until very recently, an idea that was memorably expressed in 1969 by the then Israeli Prime Minister. 'There was no such thing as Palestinians,' maintained Golda Meir, who hailed from Milwaukee. 'It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.'

While similarly rejecting the claim of the Palestinians that they had existed as a people from time immemorial, the authors argue that 'a self-identified [Palestinian] people' was the result of their encountering over two centuries, first, 'the powerful forces stemming from European markets and governmental administration, and later, Jewish settlements'. Throughout their book the authors' sociological-historical approach is original, illuminating and convincing.

The crucial stage in the 'Native Americanisation' of the Palestinians was 'the catastrophe' of 1948-9, when some 750,000 of them - 90 per cent of the Arabs living in the territory that became the Jewish state, or 50 per cent of the population of mandatory Palestine - were driven from their homes by the Israelis' brutal ethnic cleansing. This 'transfer' (the Zionist euphemism) was accomplished by massacres, force and intimidation. Refusing to allow the refugees to return, Israel obliterated 40 Palestinian villages.

... Concluding their acute, thorough, fair-minded history, Kimmerling and Migdal see the Palestinians facing Prime Minister Sharon's 'renewed attempts to wipe out their political autonomy - what we might call politicide'. Although President Bush now says he favours a Palestinian state, his administration has so far done everything that Sharon, who opposes such a state and whom Bush ridiculously called 'a man of peace', has wanted. Moreover, nearly all the far-Right ideologues now ascendant in Washington follow the Israeli line. They are Sharonistas, for whom justice for the Palestinians is no more on their agenda than was justice for the Native Americans on that of the US pioneers. So it is hard to be optimistic. The Palestinians may eventually get something that is called 'a state'. Very possibly, however, it will in reality be a Bantustan or a reservation.