Wolf Pangloss's Fish Taco Stand

"But, reverend father," said Candide, "there is horrible evil in this world."

"What signifies it," said the Dervish, "whether there be evil or good? When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?"

"What, then, must we do?" said Pangloss.

"Hold your tongue," answered the Dervish.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Edge City, Titan

31 March 2008

LiveLeak, Fitna, and the Base

This is an open letter to LiveLeak.

In these days of the globalized Jihad everyone must choose their allies, their customers, their base with care. Choices not made still have consequences.

A few days ago, Fitna hit the Internet. LiveLeak, which hosted it, became the target of threats and rage. About 12 hours after posting the movie, LiveLeak took it down.

This is quite ironic because LiveLeak, hosted in both the UK and USA, has long been one of the most reliable places to find jihad terrorist propaganda videos. For the past couple of years, YouTube and LiveLeak have hosted hundreds, thousands of terrorist propaganda videos featuring such horrors as Juba's sniper attacks on American and British soldiers, IED and VBIED explosions, torture murders of captives, etc. YouTube initially resisted requests to take the videos down, but eventually began to comply. On the other hand, when requested by American and British citizens to remove the terrorist propaganda movies, LiveLeak always used free speech as a defense for letting the movies stay.

For several years, against the opprobrium of patriots from the English speaking countries, LiveLeak stood firm in its stand for the free speech rights of those who were profoundly opposed to free speech for those who were not as them. Its reputation grew among the terrorists and the terrorists' fans, both from idolaters of Jihad and those with a nihilist, post-modern, Gramscian hatred of ordinary British and American culture. LiveLeak's developed these haters of Britain, America, Christianity, Jews, and capitalism into its base.

So when Geert Wilders came along with his well-publicized project to face Islam with the idolatry of Jihad within it, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for LiveLeak to poke a stick in the eye of a new target. LiveLeak exists to stir things up like this. But this time it backfired. LiveLeak was threatened, not with scorn and indignation, but with bloodcurdling threats of violence against employer, employees, and their families. The threats were believable because the evidence that violent Muslims would carry them out was in color on LiveLeak's very own site. Worse yet, the base of haters that LiveLeak had built up with great care was the heart of the revolt against it. Now LiveLeak felt the hatred and threat of violence that it had gleefully helped its own base aim at others for years.

It spooked LiveLeak. The company threw in its cards. It banished Fitna with the cynical excuse that the price of free speech was too great.

Now it was apparent to everyone what LiveLeak was. Its ethical stance was revealed as a rotting corpse. LiveLeak turned out to be a cowardly organization that cheered on murderers against its employees, their neighbors, and the countries in which they lived. Were any LiveLeak employees killed in the 7/7 bombings? Were the brothers of any LiveLeak employees killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan? Perhaps not, but they very well could have been. But when LiveLeak itself faced a few threats it quickly gave up and censored one, carefully chosen video that it hosted.

A few days later, LiveLeak restored Fitna. But it does not help LiveLeak, which now stands exposed as a cowardly, rabble-rousing, self-loathing organization without even the courage of its convictions. LiveLeak's way forward will either be to self-destruct, or to take sides. Will it recruit its base from the peoples of the countries that nurtured it, that provided the environment in which the technology that allows it to exist was developed, countries that send brave young, all-too-young, men to dangerous places to protect LiveLeak from morally retrograde murderers and slave-takers, or will it recruit its base among those who would overthrow free speech, democracy, women's and gay rights, scientific discovery, secular law, who would reinstate slavery and impose the burka, honor killings, second class citizenship, and clitorodectomies on women? That is the choice before it. The result of no choice will be a slow death of nihilism and irrelevance.

LiveLeak, it is time to choose. This is the moment that will make or break you. Take your stand or slowly wither away.

§



30 March 2008

Fitna

Geert Wilders was able to get Liveleak to release Fitna today, on a Friday. But about 12 hours after it was released, due to the British media irresponsibly publishing details about the owners of and workers at Liveleak the company was scared into taking Fitna down. The video is mild stuff, by the standards of the Jihadist snuff films that are available on Liveleak every day (that Liveleak will not take down no matter how many people complain about their hosting propaganda for murderers in a death cult). Yet let the complaints turn into death threats and Liveleak folds.

The prospect of imminent death does tend to focus the mind.

This is the message of Fitna, underlined by the pre-emptive, instant rage. The movie's message, heard directly from the mouths of Moslem imams and sheikhs, is that the idolaters of Jihad intend to murder and kill all the non-Moslems they can, then to impose humiliating taxes and oppressions on everyone left until all other religions fall away and only Islam is left. That this would reverse two thousand years of history and lead to world-wide economic collapse, increased desertification everywhere, and world-wide famine and plagues does not concern the idolaters of Jihad.

The idolaters, the Jihadists, the Assassins, the new Barbary Pirates, worship not God but the Devil. They venture out under the black pirate flag of Jihad to terrorize the world. They prove the existence of Hell, because the extent of their Evil demands eternal punishment and there must be a place in which they will suffer.

If you haven't been able to see the movie you haven't missed too much. You have seen the tragic theater around it that proves its point. If you'd like to see it anyway, try Jawa, Hot Air, Pat Dollard, or Jihad Watch. Or search on Bit Torrent for "fitna". I'm sure it will show up every once in a while, be taken down, and then pop up again.

§




Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

28 March 2008

200+ Billion Barrels of Oil underneath North Dakota

According to Next Energy News, maybe as many as 500 Billion Barrels of Oil are sitting in the Bakken Formation underneath North Dakota. Even if the deposit is only 200 Billion Barrels it is still the biggest known deposit in the world. If it is 500 Billion, it gives the US the largest deposits in the world by a big margin.

§


Technorati Tags: , , ,

27 March 2008

A Billion Cheers for Father Zakaria Botros

I am a great fan and supporter of ex-Muslims. In order for there to be ever greater numbers of ex-Muslims someone must reveal to Muslims the truth about Islam and Christianity that has been deliberately obscured by the ulema. Raymond Ibrahim writes about Father Zakaria Botros (alternate spelling, Boutros), who is doing what needs to be done.
Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.


Boutros speaks to Muslims on satellite and Internet television stations in Arabic. The reader may recall a few months back an embarrassing breastfeeding appeared in the media.
Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

For that alone I salute Father Botros. Can you think without laughing about the situation of a man being breastfed by a woman in order for him to become less sexually attracted to her? I cannot.

In related news, Magdi Allam, who converted from Islam to Catholicism this week on Easter Sunday, and was baptized on television by Pope Benedict XVI, writes about it in Italian on FreeCopts.com. English translation (by freecopts.com) follows.
To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.

On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason.


Read the rest!

Nonie Darwish wrote about a threat against Father Botros' life back in February 2006. Some background in the comments here. CWN also profiles Father Botros. YOUvideos has disabled a video by Father Botros. Islameyat is mining the same vein as Father Botros. Father Zakaria Botros has a website here (Arabic)

So let us all cheer a billion times, once for just about every Muslim in the world who isn't already a secret Christian, for Father Zakaria Botros and all those who help him do the work he does.

§



Technorati Tags: , , , ,

26 March 2008

What's the problem?

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the United States mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them.

The error is particularly disturbing, officials said, because of its indirect link to nuclear weaponry and because of the sensitivity of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which China regularly denounces as provocative. The Defense Department said an investigation of the incident is under way.


OK, call me dense, but what's the problem with sending fuses to Taiwan? Is the US at war with Taiwan? Is Taiwan an enemy of America, or one of America's most valued and established trading partners? Is Taiwan threatening to attack its neighbors, or is it constantly being threatened by a huge neighbor that would like nothing more than to crush Taiwan under its boot?

What's at risk? Olympic gold metals? Medals even?

§





Technorati Tags: ,

24 March 2008

Obey Obama

obey-ma.jpgOBEY-MA for short. A satire of an awfully fascist looking poster. From here and before it from here.

h/t: third world county

§


Technorati tags: ,

Eau Governeur! Oh Governor!

A little old, I know. But still an absolutely hilarious photoshop from the NY Daily News.

eau-governeur.jpg

§


Trackposted to third world county, Right Truth, DragonLady's World, The World According to Carl, Miss Beth's Victory Dance, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao's Blog, InvestorBlogger, Leaning Straight Up, , Stageleft, and Adeline and Hazel, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

23 March 2008

Obama, Wright, and now Emil Jones

Obama's shady Chicago connections are coming out of the woodwork like a swarm of termites. The latest one to appear on the scene is Emil Jones, Jr. Rick Moran writes:
Jones helped Obama prior to his run for the US senate by assigning high profile legislation to the candidate thus filling out his fairly pathetic record as a state senator. Most of Obama's "accomplshments" in Springfield were the result of Jones allowing Obama a prominent role in getting legislation through the senate - legislation that in many cases had been introduced and championed over the years by other lawmakers.

Again, no one is accusing Obama of doing anything illegal. But as the evidence grows that he is just another politician and someone whose mentors are anything but paragons of virtue and probity, whatever otherworldly sheen that surrounded him begins to fall off and we can see him for what he truly is; a shrewd, politically gifted, far left politician.




Jones tried to unify black Chicago behind Obama a year ago, in Feb 2007. Lynn Sweet writes:
ASHINGTON -- Seeking to solidify African-American backing for Barack Obama's presidential bid, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. told black Democrats meeting here last week they don't "owe" anyone, alluding to, but not mentioning by name, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama, said Jones, "is our son."

In a Monday telephone interview, Jones, Obama's political godfather, told me, "How long do we have to owe before we have an opportunity to support our son?


W. Thomas Payne writes about Emil Jones in Associated Content:
A porky job was handed out to Lorrie Rickman Jones PhD back in March 2007. Ms Jones is a psychologist with a standing practice. There's no reason to believe she isn't qualified to do the job as a psychologist.

However, getting your hands on how much her practice may have received over the years from government contracts is like pulling teeth from a grizzly bear. I wonder if this information could even be obtained with a Freedom of Information Act request to the Governor, without a costly legal battle.

And what do you know, by some act of fate, Ms. Jones is coincidentally the wife of Senate President Emil Jones!

Also see the Times (UK) Online.

§



Technorati Tags: , ,

Minneapolis-St. Paul Radicals plan to have tasers just in time for Republican National Convention

In its own words:
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL - The RNC Welcoming Committee (RNC-WC), an anarchist and anti-authoritarian organizing body based in the Twin Cities, announced today that it has ordered tasers for each of its members and friends. The announcement comes on the heels of last month’s St. Paul City Council approval of a St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) request for 234 tasers. Due to a unique corporate-anarchist confidentiality agreement, the exact number of tasers or documentable evidence of this new order will not be disclosed.

Both the SPPD and RNC-WC taser orders are scheduled to arrive before the September 1 so-called Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul.

Of course they claim the timing is coincidental. Wink wink. Right... To add to the winking, jocular tone of the press announcement, the RNC-WC adds:
Once the RNC-WC order is finalized, the St. Paul Police Department will no longer have a monopoly on the weapons that have been implicated in hundreds of deaths nationwide, including the killing of a Fridley man by Minnesota State Troopers in January.

The Welcoming Committee has no plans to purchase machine guns, rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, concussion grenades, batons, water cannons or helicopters, all of which will be at the disposal of local police and federal agents in September.

Aren't violent anarchists tres amusing?

h/t: Pat Dollard

§


Technorati Tags: , , , ,

26% of teen girls have a sexually transmitted disease: digging into the numbers

Lindsey Tanner of the AP reports
  • The study size is 838 teenage American girls, an analysis of girls aged 14-19 from a 2003-4 government health survey
  • Projected population of teenage girls in the USA is 12.3 million, with 3.2 million infected
  • Teens in the study were tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and genital herpes. These are the 4 most common sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
  • They were not tested for more dangerous STDs: gonorrhea (the clap), syphilis (pox), hepatitis B, or HIV/AIDS. They didn't test for pubic lice (crabs) or mononucleosis either.
  • 26% of girls in the study have a STD
  • 18% have HPV
  • 4% have chlamydia
  • 2.5% have trichomoniasis
  • 2% have genital herpes
  • About half the girls in the study acknowledged having sex
  • Some girls define sex as coitus only, not oral-genital activity, much like Bill Clinton
  • Among girls who admit having sex, 40% have a STD
  • Nearly 50% of black girls had at least one STD
  • About 20% of white and girls of Mexican descent had at least one STD


The startling statistic for black girls (50% infected) shows a population in peril. Something is very, very wrong in their world. I suspect it is the destruction of the black family and the popularity of gang-bangers, drugs and thugs in youth culture. Gramsci and the sixties hippies have a lot to answer for.

The incompleteness of the report also raises questions. What is the prevalence of gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS? These are dangerous diseases, far more dangerous than trichomoniasis or genital herpes, and they were not addressed at all.
  • According to Wikipedia, between 3 and 18% of sexually active girls have gonorrhea, and 0-3% have syphilis. If we use a 50% rate of sexual activity for teenage girls, as they have self-reported in the CDC study, this works out to an additional 1.5%-9% with gonorrhea, and 0-1.5% with syphilis, for a total infection rate of 27%-36%.
  • According to AVERT, 3% (1,434) of HIV infections in the USA were among teens up to age 19. This works out to an infection rate under 0.02%, or 1/50th of 1%.
Thus we discover that the actual, overall infection rate could very well pass 1 in 3 teenage girls. More and better research needs to be done to determine the actual infection rates.

§


Technorati Tags: , , ,

22 March 2008

A strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments

Back in November 2007, Ed Katz responded to an AP report that concludes that "there is a strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments."
  • Children living in homes with unrelated adults (these children are "50 times more likely to die inflicted injuries as children living with biological parents"); and
  • Single parent homes or children living with stepfamiles (these children "have a higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents").

Lastly, the studies found that "girls whose parents divorce are at a significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father."

The studies seem to show that even children in adoptive environments seem to be ok with two parents. The report goes on to tell in painful detail however the brief life stories of little toddlers who were beaten, drowned, thrown across rooms, and buried under cement - all victims of what Plato called "democracy's insatiable desire for what it defines as the good": freedom. In this case, it is our freedom to choose "alternative" family environments and be "affirmed" every step of the way.

Yet more evidence that a functioning marriage is the best environment in which to raise children, which is the obvious purpose of marriage, which is the obvious reason why marriage should take the traditional form, maximized for reproducing the species.

§






Technorati Tags: ,

21 March 2008

The 2nd Amendment is an Individual Right, no doubt about it

The question under consideration is what does it mean? Is the right under question an individual right that cannot be generally voided by the government or is it a corporate right only for members of a militia such as the National Guard?
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. [link]

First we notice there are more commas than Strunk & White would recommend. Obviously, the commas were inserted by someone with a different set of rules for commas, perhaps the writer believed in inserting commas whenever the reader might take a breath. Given that the commas are in weird places, we will have to discount comma placement somewhat when we analyze the text. I make this argument up-front, even though it will not have anything to do with the way I parse the language, because there are those who make a big deal of the commas in the argument. Consider this a prophylactic measure against obsessive comma-parsing.

Then we notice from the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights that they are all amendments that apply to individual rights, not corporate rights.

Then we ask ourselves, why was the amendment written? Let us assume for a moment that the amendment was meant to apply to corporate rights. It only applies to militias: Armed militias. Given that armed militias are bands of armed men established by the government, would there be any doubt that a militia would be allowed by the government to bear arms? Why would the Constitution need to be amended in order to allow members of an armed militia established by the government to bear arms? The government under question would guarantee this right as a matter of course. Even the tyrannies in China and Myanmar allow their militias to be armed. Wouldn't this be a nonsensical amendment, written by idiots, passed by fools, only challenged by the likes of Humpty Dumpty intent on redefining the meaning of an armed militia, or armed, or militia?

Or perhaps the amendment was written by a poor speller with a petty focus, and the amendment guarantees the right of people to bare their arms in short sleeves? I apologize for the joke, but it's almost impossible to stay earnest when surrounded by so much silliness.

We could presume that the founders of the USA were not fools and idiots and petty-minded jokers, and that they wrote this Amendment because it protected a controversial right (to be armed) that was granted to all free men (and women) which future governments might wish to void through legal action? In fact, that is what the government of Washington DC has done with its gun ban. Mr. Heller, who filed the lawsuit challenging the ban, is allowed to carry his gun when he is at work to protect the local nobility in Congress. But he is not allowed to carry it when he is at home with his own non-privileged family. The Washington DC ban is a profoundly anti-democratic law that discriminates against people who don't have all the juice of a standing Senator or Representative.

That's why there can be no doubt whatsoever among the serious minded that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right.

The WSJ lists some things the Supreme Court said in DC v. Heller.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked why the Framers included the word "people" if the Amendment only applied to militias. Justice Antonin Scalia discussed the importance the Framers attached to providing citizens the means to protect against tyrannical government. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the Court's swing vote, informed all in attendance that "In my view, there's a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia either way."

Counterarguments are welcome. Please, give it your best shot!

Heh heh.

§



Technorati Tags: , , ,

Whitey talks back

Patrick Buchanan has a sharply worded retort here to Barack Obama's non-apology concerning his 20 years of supporting Jeremiah Wright's racist anti-white, anti-American hate speech with his presence and acquiescence.
What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

Another thing that must be taken into account is that white America is not homogeneous, like homogenized white milk, but consists of many ethnicities, religions, trends, and ways, who all agree on living and let live so that everyone can do what he or she has to, as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. Plus Property, which was in the original drafts of the Declaration of Independence before TPoH replaced it. America fought a Revolutionary War for these principles, but that wasn't the last time Americans fought for them. Within thirty years of its founding, white America fought a war in Tripoli against the pirate sultans of the Mediterranean coast of Africa in order to free its merchant sailors who had been captured, enslaved, and held for ransom by these tyrants. Around the same time, White America fought a war against Britain over the British habit of kidnapping American merchant sailors and pressing them into the British navy.

Four score years after the Revolutionary War, white America fought a Civil War in order to overthrow the great evil of slavery in America. It was the bloodiest war of brother against brother that had yet been fought in the world at the time. After the Republicans won that war against the Democrats of the south, the Democrats eventually undermined the victory with Jim Crow laws that kept southern Blacks in pseudo-slavery. One hundred years of Jim Crow was finally overthrown for good with Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 civil rights law and the other civil rights laws that followed.

So don't tell American whites that they haven't done their share. They have fought. They have bled. No whites now living have profited from slavery. Few now alive profited from Jim Crow. Most whites now living have been discriminated against in education, housing, and employment because of the color of their skin. Whites are not griping about it. But if whites did gripe, it would be legitimate.

§


Technorati Tags: , ,

19 March 2008

House Democratic Caucus discusses death penalty for converts who leave the Democratic Party

Washington, DC, 19 March - In its first session since the Saint Patrick’s Day holiday, the House Democratic Caucus is expected to discuss a law that will condemn to death anyone who decides to leave the left wing of the Democratic Party and take up another viewpoint.

Under the proposed law, anyone who is born to Democrat parents, or who registers as Democrat for two elections in a row, and decides to convert to a more conservative political party will face the death penalty.

Currently, converts, known as neo-cons for their newly discovered conservatism, particularly those who have decided to leave the Democratic Party for the Republican Party, are thrown off George Soros' payroll, shunned by the jet set, dis-invited from all the big hooker parties at Elliot Spitzer's place in the Hamptons, and blacklisted from jobs in Hollywood, and in the entertainment industry, which includes failing newspapers such as the New York and Los Angeles Times and television news on failing stations such as NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, CBS, PBS, and the incredibly boring radio network NPR.

The new legislation, which has caused concern in Washington DC and elsewhere, was proposed mainly because of fears of proselytizing activities by conservative activists, particularly through the use of blogs such as Michelle Malkin's eponymous blog, Townhall.com, Jihad Watch, Ace of Spades HQ, the Weekly Standard, Blog Row at National Review Online, and an obscure pro-military site with a name that is so cool it would seem unrealistic in a science fiction movie.

There has also been concern over the fact that many young Democrats have abandoned the party because they are tired of the dominance of leftover Marxist class and race warfare in the Democratic Party, to the detriment of intellectual engagement with ideas that matter, such as the imminent collapse of the welfare state and what to do about it.

The legislation, which bears the curious name of the Fairness Doctrine v.2, will also impose the death penalty for hosts of conservative radio talk shows, whose shows and ill-gotten wealth will be transferred to NPR for more episodes of An American Life about lesbian drum circles in a renovated crack house in Seattle formerly owned by the late Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, who luckily died of a heroin overdose before he could become a neo-con himself.

h/t: Adnkronos International.

§


Technorati Tags: , ,

Saudi 4th Grader marries 5th Grade cousin

Kids and cousins. Everyone should oppose consanguineous marriage. Banning first-cousin-marriage would be a good first step.

§



Technorati Tags: , , ,

Vatican talking with Saudis about churches in Arabia

Unbelievable.

No, I mean really unbelievable. There is some kind of trickery going on here. The Saudis will never allow Christian churches on their territory!

§





Technorati Tags: , ,

How can the USA discourage Jihad terrorism?

Other than by giving in and holding a mass conversion to Islam, which isn't happening because most Americans don't want to become monotheistic pagans, how can America cause a reduction in Jihad terrorism against Americans, and hopefully a reduction in Jihad terrorism overall?

If we follow the usual formula for determining the number of extremists, capable of unusual levels of violence, within any society, we come up with about one percent. The Hells Angels and other motorcycle gangs have long called themselves one percenters because they agree with this number. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. One percent of that is 12 million. So without any special training or propaganda in the Muslim world there would be 12 million Jihad terrorists ready to launch themselves against anyone who pops his head up. These are the hardest of the hardcore. But there are more than just hardcore bad-guys involved.

In addition to these hardened criminals, the madrassas and masjids of Pakistan are churning out thousands of newly trained Jihadists every month to go to war in Afghanistan and India against infidels, and a certain number of American and European traitors prepared to unleash Jihad terror against their home countries. Would kindness slow them down as effectively as killing them would slow their deployment and the recruitment of replacements?

The 2007 Pew world-wide poll taken among Muslims reveal that between 20% and 30% of Muslims have a lot of confidence that Bin Laden is doing the right thing. These numbers have gone down from over 50% five years ago. Is that an increase or decrease in support for Jihad terrorism? That works out to 240-360 million Muslims who contribute either money or sons or both in support of Jihad terrorism. That's a lot of Jihad terrorism supporters worldwide, and a big problem! But it's less than 600+ million, like it used to be!

Who says that the battle of Iraq is increasing the number of terrorists?

Are you sure?

This post was inspired by the comments in the responses to this post at Winds of Change.


§





Technorati Tags: , ,

The Speech Obama Didn't Give

A Jacksonian writes the speech that Obama didn't give, a speech that I agree with him would have broken through the partisan lines in a way that McCain's bipartisanship has never done.
"Thus, I have come to realize by listening to the problems of blacks and whites together that the solutions that have been put in place by the intervening generations have not worked and need to be abolished as they are causing more divisiveness than Unity in Our Nation.

I pledge to you here, today, before all of the members of the American Community that for the rest of my life in public service I will work to end all enforcement of all racial, ethnic or any other quota that divides America. Two Generations is enough and more than enough for us to join together and examine the problems of the poor, black and white, and address them together as one Nation. While I am young in this world, I promise you that I will work unstintingly to confront demagogues and repudiate any who would divide America by race, class, ethnicity, gender or mere skin color.

That has no place in America today.

For all these things that were seen as 'good', in the way of handouts and set-asides, have caused tremendous harm to America and must end, along with a culture that has come to depend on our government for mere cash while it is their bodies and souls that we must come together on saving as good Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and people of all religious faith and background. That is what we are enjoined to do by our Forefathers by that great document created so long ago and yet is as fresh as yesterday.

If elected President I will not enforce any law that divides this Nation in that way and will take any that wish to dispute this to the Supreme Court and I will work hard, with Congress, to end these things forevermore in America so that we are One People striving to perform the perfection of ourselves with our fellow man. I will also have investigated and prosecuted any and all discrimination suits that have founding and that go against the basic civil rights of the citizenry without respect to the race, class, religion, ethnicity or gender of those bringing the suit. Congress can impeach me on this, if they dare, but I will never bow down to those wishing to divide America."

Read the whole thing!

§




Technorati Tags: , , ,

17 March 2008

Dick the Butcher on Democrats

As Seth Finkelstein explains, when Dick the Butcher says in Shakespeare's Henry VI, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," he is making fun of Jack Cade's promises to create an earthly paradise with what Dick imagines to be the most positive first step towards heaven on earth.

Now what would Dick, what should we, make of the fact that the Democratic Party in America hasn't nominated a non-lawyer for the Presidency since 1984? Not only are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lawyers, so are their spouses. So is Edwards, and his wife! Kerry was a lawyer. Even genius and oracle Gore went to law school, though he dropped out.

Can the Democrats be the party of the people when they are actually the party of the ambulance-chasing, divorce promoting, class-action-tort-filing, multi-millionaire trial lawyers?


§





Technorati Tags: ,

'68 Flashbacks

The Recreate 68 organization is an alliance of local to Denver anti-Globalization protestors and "anti-racist," "anti-war," "direct action" types (this means they are neo-communists, the evil shadow to neo-conservatives) who admit they are sick and tired of being pandered to by the Democratic National Committee. They are so over the whole two party system they want to tear down the ramparts and storm the Bastille, behead the King and all that.
We are committed to resisting and overturning a system of violence inflicted daily on people of this country and the world, and against the natural environment, by political and corporate power, in the pursuit of profit. We are resolved that our group will not instigate violence against human beings as a means to end this system of violence and injustice. However, we recognize the right of the people to self-defense and community defense.

10 Mutual Assurances Between Groups And Organizations Planning DNC Related Activities:
  1. To publicly support rights of free speech, the right to organize, and the right to dissent for all.
  2. To maintain solidarity with and respect the guidelines of all permitted activities, recognizing that there are many individuals who seek a safe and peaceful protest.
  3. To support and participate in efforts to assure civil liberties for everyone in Denver, including the right to organize civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action without that organizing being criminalized or disrupted.
  4. To speak out against any pre-emptive arrests, raids on activists spaces, or attacks on independent journalists and other media.
  5. To be conscious of and speak out against police targeting and differential treatment of people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, accent, or appearance.
  6. Not to turn people over to the police, or share information with the police about other groups.
  7. Not to publicly criticize the tactics used by other parts of our movement or cooperate with media efforts to be divisive or portray good protester/bad protester.
  8. To publicly condemn police repression and brutality.
  9. To be conscious that if violence or property destruction does occur, we will do what we can to help prevent it from being blown out of proportion and dominating the media coverage.
  10. To remember that, when all is said and done, our greatest victory will be an activist community with a renewed sense of strength and unity.

How do you like #6 and 7 basically agreeing to non-cooperation with the police in the case of any crimes committed by violent allies of this "non-violent" movement? Seems like malice aforethought to make these preparations. Maybe they claim to be non-violent as a form of camouflage.

In a second irruption of '68 nostalgia, the Black Liberation Theology of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ church has risen to a considerable measure of infamy. Barack Obama has been shaken by the recent publicity about the preacher who converted him to Christianity, married him to his wife, and baptized his daughter. Though Sean Hannity had been on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story for over a year, it didn't get going in the media until Obama's church started selling Wright's sermons on DVD. A producer from ABC bought it and it became a story. Note, this is important. This was a collection of Wright's speeches put out by his own church. These were the speeches that his own church agreed were the most important and presumably they were typical. So any claims that Obama didn't know Wright was saying this are disingenuous. These are Wright's greatest hits. It's like being a Chicago Bears fan faced with a Greatest Plays by the Chicago Bears DVD and not recognizing any of the games. Where were you all these years? Apparently not watching football. Either Obama wasn't paying attention in church or he is lying about it. Neither is good for his credibility.



Perhaps this summer's Olympic games will feature American sprinters raising black-gloved hands in protest of American policy, allowing China to make excuses for its totalitarian repression of Tibet and internal groups such as the Falun Gong. I hope not.

And in third place we have the Manson Family. Taking a back seat to none in his Helter Skelter days Manson and his gang of murderers now live in obscurity, some still jailed. But years of jail-house braggadocio have given the authorities enough evidence to search the desert for the decomposed bodies of people who disappeared in the late 60s after being seen at or near the Manson Family compound. The have used advanced technology to identify several possible graves. (h/t: Jammie Wearing Fool)
The machine detects fluorinated hydrocarbon compounds, one of the approximately 400 types of volatile organic compounds emitted by human bodies during decomposition. Focusing on these compounds is important because Vass believes they're formed as the fluoride added to urban drinking water is released after death.

Their presence helps differentiate a human bone from bones from wild animals, explained Vass, who has spent years developing a decomposition odor database using bodies donated to the Oak Ridge lab.

The instrument beeped at regular intervals. As it approached the ground, the beeping accelerated until it was a steady stream of sound.

"That's impressive," said Wise, a senior researcher at Oak Ridge specializing in environmental analytical chemistry. Vass agreed.

Using a thin, 3-foot long probe, Vass tested the soil in the area. It slid into the ground without much effort.

"Undisturbed soil isn't this easy to probe," he said.

"The loose soil area is roughly like this," he said, using the tip of the instrument to draw a long oval on the ground. "It's about three feet deep."

A reminder of what Manson was all about. His intention was to use the murders to ignite a race war of white against black in the USA. He thought that racism was hotter and more violent than it really was back in those days. It's too bad that those who think like him, the "anti-racists" in Recreate '68 and their neocommie friends, haven't yet figured that out. America is not a racist country the same way it was before the civil rights movement finally buried the last shreds of the Democratic Party's Jim Crow laws in the South. And that was 50 years ago. Many Americans have grown up to middle age without being taught racism by their parents and feel bewildered when they are accused of being racist, all because of the color of their skin.

§


Technorati Tags: , , ,

14 March 2008

Drug Warriors

Not anti-drug warriors, but warriors who are blitzed on barbituates, high on hash, strung out on smack, crazed on cocaine. According to Dr. Paul Rexton Kan:
From marijuana, khat, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine to looted pharmaceuticals, irregular fighters have found a ready supply of narcotics to consume for a variety of combat purposes. Such consumption has led to unpredictable fighting, the commission of atrocities, and to the prolongation of internal violence. The presence of intoxicated combatants will continue to be a feature of armed conflict and requires a fuller accounting to adequately prepare policymakers and military planners for future conflicts...

h/t: Small Wars Journal Blog

§




Technorati Tags: , , ,

12 March 2008

David Mamet: the ideological journey of a former "brain-dead liberal"

But for the fact that I am not a famous and wealthy writer-director for stage and screen, who mostly works in iambic-pentameter, David Mamet's story of his ideological awakening could be my own. This is how he describes his initial realization of where his long-established assumptions had been wrong.
I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it?


Read all about it at the Village Voice, David Mamet, Why I am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

§


Technorati Tags: , ,

10 March 2008

McCain's Character

Tigerhawk quotes Robert Kaplan on John McCain:
This prisoner's legs were atrophied and he weighed under 100 pounds. Day helped scrub his face and nurse him back from the brink of death. The fellow American was Navy Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain III of the Panama Canal Zone. As his health improved, McCain's rants against his captors were sometimes as ferocious as Day's. The North Vietnamese tried and failed, through torture, to get McCain to accept a release for their own propaganda purposes: The lieutenant commander was the son of Admiral John McCain Jr., the commander of all American forces in the Pacific. "Character," writes the younger McCain, quoting the 19th century evangelist Dwight Moody, "is what you are in the dark," when nobody's looking and you silently make decisions about how you will act the next day.

McCain expanded on this thought another time:
No one of good character leaves behind a wasted life — whether they die in obscurity or renown. "Character," wrote the 19th Century evangelist, Dwight Moody, "is what you are in the dark." Your character is not tested on occasions of public scrutiny or acclaim. It is not tested in moments when the object of your actions is the regard of another. Your character is what you are to yourself, not what you pretend to be to yourself or others. Although human beings often attempt self-delusion, we cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves. It will make itself known to us by means of our conscience despite our most strenuous effort to suppress it.

§



Technorati Tags: , ,

Cycles on cycles to explain the Human-centric Theory of Global Warming

James Lewis compares global warming true believers to those who believed man and the Earth were at the center of the Universe.
When traditional astronomy began to collapse in the years before Copernicus, True Believers reacted by adding lots of little cycles on top of the great cycles of the planetary orbits, to protect their faith. Trouble is, they had to add so many cycles on top of cycles that eventually, the whole system became a laughingstock. Ultimately you could explain anything you wanted -- after the fact.

The Polish astronomer Nicholas Koepernick -- called Copernicus -- pointed out that a sun-centered planetary model could get rid of all those epicycles with elegant simplicity. You only had to assume that the planets are going around the sun, not the earth. Suddenly all those cycle-on-cycle orbits simplified into near-circular ellipses. But he only saw the page proofs of his book De Revolutionibus on his death bed. He didn't want to share the fate of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake, or Galileo Galilei, who was put under house arrest by Pope Urban VIII and forbidden to publish in the last years of his life. Because mobs of True Believers can get pretty nasty before they give up.

He draws a parallel between the ridiculous clockwork complexity of the human-centric theory of the Solar System and the increasingly complex theory of human-centric global warming that causes both unusually warm and unusually cold temperatures, both hurricanes and unusually calm weather, and any change in the climate or weather.

It's quite good.

And then Selwyn Duke writes to agree with the substance of his article but also to correct Lewis on his history. Also quite good.

§


Technorati Tags: , ,

Tyrant Dreams

A Jacksonian rhapsodizes:
Here is the land of dream escaped into the waking world, and each one carries different names but they are the but aspects of a single, deadly dream. That is the dream of controlling one's fellow man so as to make a better world or to stand with a homeland forever, just so long as one does not say 'nay'. Also is the great dream of Empire holding sway and impoverishing the life of humanity yet again as the great dream brooks no opposition and has final power with those that hold it closely.

Within such worlds as these there is also the dream of accommodating the beast of control, giving it more and more and more until there is nothing left to give save life... which had been its aim all along.

Some of these lands come through valor and victory and find themselves in the ashes of dream fulfilled. By chaining will to others they had not foreseen that they would have no will left nor say in their final outcomes as all was taken from them and crushing power ground the meaning of their lives into the ashes of victory.

Read it all!

§




Technorati Tags: ,

07 March 2008

New Pro/Anti Obama Video

When watching will.i.am's newest video documentary of the personality cult around Obama I wonder if this will be seen as a pro-Obama video or an anti-Obama video in the long run. Watch it and see for yourself.



§



Technorati Tags: , , ,

06 March 2008

Obama Man Can! the Video

So-so video but great song!



"He's mesmerizing and he makes manure taste good."

§


Technorati Tags: , , ,

05 March 2008

Distraction

A tinnitus treatment group reminds us what it is like to be distracted.



I do not envy those with ringing in their ears. Nor do I envy those who feel plagued by the failing systems of their bodies, those with ADHD and ADD, obsessive-compulsives or teenage boys, which may be a way of saying the same thing. Teenage boys do not have a violinist on their back; it's a porn movie instead.



Technorati Tags: , ,

03 March 2008

Blogspotting: Stuff White People Like

I probably don't need to tell you about it. But just take a gander at this article about Difficult Breakups.
Prior to engaging in divorce, most white people train for it by engaging in a series of long term relationships that end very poorly. At some point, you will likely encounter a white person who is in the middle of a difficult breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend. [...]

Once breakup proceedings have been initiated, a white person is immediately thrust into the center of attention in their circle of friends. During this time, they are permitted to talk at great lengths about themselves, listen to The Smiths, and get free dinners from friends who think “they shouldn’t be alone right now.”

It is imperative that you do not attempt to kick them out of their misery by saying things like “get over it,” “there are other people out there,” or “I don’t want to read your poem.”

SWPL is a very funny satirical site about yuppies, buppies, professors, artistic types, musicians, urban hipsters and all their ridiculous obsessions. Some other amusing topics include: Coffee; Barack Obama; Bottled Water; Asian Girls; and Multilingual Children.

§

Technorati Tags: , , ,

 

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.

                Matthew 7:15-16