Photo, above: Yazidis burn oil lamps for one the saints.  

The Kitêba Cilwe "Book of Illumination", which claims to be the words of Tawûsê Melek, and which presumably represents Yazidi belief, states that he allocates responsibilities, blessings and misfortunes as he sees fit and that it is not for the race of Adam to question him. Sheikh Adî believed that the spirit of Tawûsê Melek was the same as his own, perhaps as a reincarnation. He is reported to have said:

I was present when Adam was living in Paradise, and also when Nemrud threw Abraham in fire. I was present when God said to me: 'You are the ruler and Lord on the Earth'. God, the compassionate, gave me seven earths and throne of the heaven.

Yazidi accounts of creation differ from that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They believe that God first created Tawûsê Melek from his own (God's) illumination (Ronahî) and the other six archangels were created later. God ordered Tawûsê Melek not to bow to other beings. Then God created the other archangels and ordered them to bring him dust (Ax) from the Earth (Erd) and build the body of Adam. Then God gave life to Adam from his own breath and instructed all archangels to bow to Adam. The archangels obeyed except for Tawûsê Melek. In answer to God, Tawûsê Melek replied, "How can I submit to another being! I am from your illumination while Adam is made of dust." Then God praised him and made him the leader of all angels and his deputy on the Earth.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Eli Lake, senior national security correspondent, Daily Beast, in re: ISIS Baffling U.S. Intelligence
 It’s been two months since ISIS took over Iraq’s second largest city, but U.S. analysts are still trying to figure out how big the group is and the real identities of its leaders.

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block B:  Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re: All this scrutiny does not help Clinton’s standing. The convulsions in Syria, Ukraine, Gaza and Iraq are still too raw. Hillary should have distanced herself not only through claiming past differences with the president, but also by allowing more time to pass. Hillary may be terrified that she’ll drop out of sight. Or, maybe Hillary was prodded by a rare moment last April, when she was caught off guard.

Appearing before a friendly audience at a Women in the World meeting, Clinton was asked an obvious but apparently unexpected question: what was her proudest achievement as secretary of state? Astonishingly, she stammered and, according to The New York Times “seemed flustered” – a response that delighted right-wing bloggers, who were equally unable to come up with a single Clinton “win.”  Clearly she has decided she needs to assemble her talking points but, two years from now, will the country still be listening?

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: Howard Dean isn't laying claim to the Internet but acknowledges he had a hand in spurring its impact on modern politics.  Ten years after Dean quit his Democratic campaign for president, he understands what he didn't then: perhaps he was meant to pioneer web-based, grassroots organizing.  Click  HERE  for link and video.

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  Henry Fountain, NYT, in re: Corralling Carbon Before It Belches from Stack So much soot belched from the old power plant here that Mike Zeleny would personally warn the neighbors.  “If the wind was blowing in a certain direction,” Mr. Zeleny said, “we’d call Mrs. Robinson down the street and tell her not to put out her laundry.”  That coal plant is long gone, replaced by a much larger and cleaner one along the vast Saskatchewan prairie. Sooty shirts and socks are a thing of the past.  But as with even the most modern coal plants, its smokestacks still emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, the invisible heat-trapping gas that is the main contributor to global warming. So this fall, a gleaming new maze of pipes and tanks — topped with what looks like the Tin Man’s hat — will suck up 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from one of the boilers so it can be shipped out for burial, deep underground.  If there is any hope of staving off the worst effects of climate change, many scientists say, this must be part of it — capturing the carbon that spews from power plants and locking it away, permanently. For now, they contend, the world is too dependent on fossil fuels to do anything less.

If all goes as planned, the effort in Saskatchewan will be the first major one of its kind at a power plant, the equivalent of taking about 250,000 cars off the road. And at least in theory, that carbon dioxide will be kept out of the atmosphere forever.  “Think about how far we’ve come,” said Mr. Zeleny, who recently retired after . . .

Hour Two

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College (1 of 2), in re:  international disorder

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College (2 of 2), in re:  international disorder

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block C:  Michael Daly, The Daily Beast, in re: The 44-Year-Old American Who Loved ISIS  How could a grown man from North Carolina end up swearing allegiance to what are not just the bad guys but the very worst guys around? Inside the arrest of a former bodybuilding champ.

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: The flight of gifted engineers from NASA   Rather than work in NASA, the best young engineers today are increasingly heading to get jobs at private companies like SpaceX and XCOR.

It's a long article, worth reading in its entirety, but this quote will give the essence:  As a NASA engineering co-op student at Johnson Space Center, Hoffman trained in various divisions of the federal space agency to sign on eventually as a civil servant. She was graduated from college this year after receiving a generous offer from NASA, doubly prestigious considering the substantial reductions in force hitting Johnson Space Center in recent months. She did have every intention of joining that force — had actually accepted the offer, in fact — when she received an invitation to visit a friend at his new job with the rising commercial launch company SpaceX.

Hoffman took him up on the offer, flying out to Los Angeles in the spring for a private tour. Driving up to the SpaceX headquarters, she was struck by how unassuming it was, how small compared to NASA, how plain on the outside and rather like a warehouse.

As she walked through the complex, she was also surprised to find open work areas where NASA would have had endless hallways, offices and desks. Hoffman described SpaceX as resembling a giant workshop, a hive of activity in which employees stood working on nitty-gritty mechanical and electrical engineering. Everything in the shop was bound for space or was related to space. No one sat around talking to friends in the morning, “another level from what you see at NASA,” she said. “They’re very purpose-driven. It looked like every project was getting the attention it deserved.”

Seeing SpaceX in production forced Hoffman to acknowledge NASA might not be the best fit for her. The tour reminded her of the many mentors who had gone into the commercial sector of the space industry in search of better pay and more say in the direction their employers take. She thought back to the attrition she saw firsthand at Johnson Space Center and how understaffed divisions struggled to maintain . . .

Hour Three

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block A: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 1 of 8)

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 2 of 8)

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 3 of 8)

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block D: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 4 of 8)

Hour Four

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 5 of 8)

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block B: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 6 of 8)

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 7 of 8)

Friday  15 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman  (part 8 of 8)

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