Posted by: Steve ||
06/24/2004 9:52:26 AM ||
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OK I'm not a lady. I just had to relay the mushroom induced fear as a 17 year old rookie - Upon visiting 'The Trench' I was struck by the sight of a bloated carcass of a labrador dog floating on its back in a sea of shit. Truly horrendous.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/24/2004 10:07 Comments ||
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#2
Well the baggie thing would be handy... as for the funnel thingy, I was once on a trans-Pacific flight on a P-3 Orion, and they told me if I used anything except the flight urinal, I would have to clean it, so I used a tall paper cup, and just emptied it in. These look like equally creative solutions.
#3
Still have to find a private place to use one of these. Or at least I would; maybe if the "ladies" at the show get crocked enough, they wouldn't. (Yecch)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 11:52 Comments ||
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#4
Upon visiting 'The Trench' I was struck by the sight of a bloated carcass of a labrador dog floating on its back in a sea of shit. Truly horrendous
That poor dog! How did it end up in there!?
Posted by: Charles ||
06/24/2004 13:46 Comments ||
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Sgt Mom -
Try the head on a C-141...at night...in rough weather. It's under the flight deck, and one wall is the side of the nose gear bay. Ain't heated either.
And the @#$%^! seat is made of stainless steel.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/24/2004 14:11 Comments ||
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Mike K., B-52 has two, a urinal downstairs by the door going back into the wheel wells, bomb bay, etc. and an alleged toilet (a box with a seat) behind the EW seat. That one requires the use of a plastic bag, something not always explained to new crewmembers. Not pleasant when things begin to thaw after landing.
EFLhattip to WND
HOUSTON (AP) - A streaker who delayed the second-half kickoff at the Super Bowl was fined $1,000 Tuesday but avoided any jail time. Mark Roberts, 39, of Liverpool, England, was fined by the same six-woman jury that found him guilty Monday of misdemeanor trespassing. That carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and up to a $2,000 fine. Jurors deliberated for about an hour before deciding on the sentence, courts coordinator Rachel Ferrel said. "The whole reason I did it was to entertain people, America," Roberts said Monday. "If making people laugh is a criminal offense, I should be sentenced to prison for life." Many male strippers routinely make large tips from female audiences. My guess - Max is not particulary talented.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 12:52:11 AM ||
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Throwing himself on the mercy of the court, he explained it was really, really cold that day.
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2004 9:56 Comments ||
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he explained it was really, really cold that day.
I guess that explains why it was "reduced" to a misdemeanor. If it had been in Green Bay, you would have had to throw it out for "lack of evidence".
Posted by: Steve ||
06/24/2004 11:04 Comments ||
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#3
If he had given a demo in court the jury,after close examination of evidence,might have found him not guilty.
Posted by: Stephen ||
06/24/2004 12:57 Comments ||
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#4
They had a picture of this jerk in the Houston Chronicle the other day. They didn't show him on TV during the actual event. He was nekkid except for a small deflated football taped over his naughty bits, and he had the URL of a casino spray-painted across his chest.
Bryant C. Mitchell, Arab News
After the disaster of Sept. 11, the common man in the Western world awoke from his spiritual slumber and was told that they needed to find the answer to what they were told was a fundamentally important rhetorical question: Why do they hate us? As a result, a frantic search began to find out any and all information they could about Islam and the Muslims. The underlying premise in the framing of this question is that âtheyâ â Muslims â possess some innate abhorrence for things Western and thereby modern. The Western religious scholars long ignored by their slumbering populace rushed to the forefront to provide an array of answers. They included, but were not limited to the following:
⢠Islam is an inherently anti-modern religion;
It's a religion where "innovation" is a sin, punishable by death...
⢠Islam is a demonic religion as was its founder;
I don't subscribe to the description as "demonic," though I believe some here do. "Barbaric" or "savage" more usually spring to mind. Being captured by Muslims is something like being captured by Hurons or Powhattans was 300 or 400 years ago...
⢠Islam is an inherently violent religion based on the conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.
Pretty hard to argue with that one, isn't it?
Letâs examine the facts.
I thought we just did? Y'mean there's more? Are they paying you by the word?
Here is what some prominent American opinion-makers and leaders have said about Islam:
âWe should invade (Muslim) countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.â
â Columnist Ann Coulter, National Review Online, Sept. 13, 2001.
I remember when she said that. It was the day after the 9-11 attacks, and she was writing about Barbara Olson. Here's what else she had to say:
"Barbara Olson kept her cool. In the hysteria and terror of hijackers herding passengers to the rear of the plane, she retrieved her cell phone and called her husband, Ted, the solicitor general of the United States. She informed him that he had better call the FBI â the plane had been hijacked. According to reports, Barbara was still on the phone with Ted when her plane plunged in a fiery explosion directly into the Pentagon. Barbara risked having her neck slit to warn the country of a terrorist attack. She was a patriot to the very end."
You disagree with that, Clem?
âJust turn (the sheriff) loose and have him arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line.â
â Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security and Senate candidate, to Georgia law officers, November 2001.
Of course, he didn't hold that position when he said that. He wasn't elected until a year later.
âIslam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith where God sent his Son to die for you.â
â Attorney General John Ashcroft, interview on Cal Thomas radio, November 2001.
Seems to be a true statement, doesn't it?
â(Islam) is a very evil and wicked religion; wicked, violent and not of the same God (as Christianity).â
â Rev. Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, November 2001.
Graham, I believe, subsequently apologized for that statement. Islam's God commands an entirely different behavior from his adherents â it'd be pretty hard to mistake him for the Christian or Jewish God.
âIslam is Evil, Christ is King.â
â Allegedly written in marker by law enforcement agents on a Muslim prayer calendar in the home of a Muslim being investigated by police in Dearborn, Michigan, July 2002.
An alleged scrawl by an apparent nutcase. Kinda pales next to
"I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment;
I am against America even if the stone liquefies
My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse.
She is the root of all evils, and wickedness on earth. Who else implanted the tyrants in our land, who else nurtured oppression? Oh Muslim Ummah donât take the Jews and Christians as allies."
Got anything else?
âWho put our oil under their sand?â
â A banner of the Orange County Peace Coalition (OCPC), a broad-based group of diverse individuals and organizations. OCPC is a multiethnic, multireligious, multipolitical organization composed of over 20 volunteer groups united for peace. They indicate they have come together because national leaders are propelling the United States into a war that will destabilize the world and threaten our civil liberties.
The statement could be taken several different ways: literally, or mockingly â of the government. I suspect it was the latter, since it was a "Peace Coalition."
âWe are going to correct a mistake that God made?â
â Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a senior intelligence chief who made church speeches casting the fight against terrorism in religious terms. The three-star general is deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
That's a remark he made in his private capacity as a religious figure. I agree with him in my private capacity. In my public capacity I'm a computer programmer and I keep my opinions to myself unless asked, and then usually answer non-committally. If somebody gives me money to give a lecture, I'd probably probably expound my observations on the similarties between the Learned Elders of Islam and the Council of Boskone.
What the above passages clearly demonstrate is that a more pertinent question to ask is why do we hate them. Whatâs going on here? Whatâs going on isnât rocket science. Simply put, Muslims do not inherently hate the so-called âWest or modernityâ. What they dislike, some more adamantly than others, isnât the quest, but the questâs baggage.
They want to get there without driving, huh? That's kinda the lazy way to do things, isn't it?
Now I will briefly examine two important articles of this baggage to get a sense of the source of the difference in perspective. They are:
Western economic philosophy is based on the basic that the ends justify the means. As a result, the pursuit of economic gain should not be constrained by moral or religious ideology. Islam, on the other hand, prohibits businesses that promote the sale of intoxicants, pork products, art that depict human images, gambling, interest, pornography, and prostitution, all of which are legal in one form or another in Western societies.
Most non-Muslims have no prohibitions against guzzling the occasional intoxicant, chomping bacon and eggs, ham sandwiches, and Carolina barbecue (which is considered a tasty after-dinner treat in Texas). Porn, like booze and pigmeat, is considered a matter of personal taste. All of those fall into the category of doing what you damned well please, and all of those are things that no one's forced to indulge in (with the occasional exception of porn in the email, which can usually be dealt with by rudimentary spam filtering.) Nobody's forced to get drunk, eat chorizo, or watch the Hottest Sluts on the Netâ¢. Prostitution is something that's been on the decline in the West for the past 50 years, a combination of sexual freedom and the whores pricing themselves out of the market. The while, Iran and Pakistan continue to indulge in the practice and the Soddies when they travel manage to keep battalions of hookers in business.
Western democracy is based on the premise that all laws are subject to change and reinterpretation. For example, the US Constitution is viewed as a living document that is subject to change by expression of two-thirds of the Will of the People. In contrast, an Islamic constitution is based on the Qurâanic law that canât be changed given its origin. As result, the Western political system is reactive in nature.
And the Islamic system is stagnant, by definition.
Laws [are] instituted first and questioned regarding their constitutionality after the fact. In Islamic tradition, every effort is made to ensure that laws passed through the Qurâanic screen before they are put into effect. Finally, many of the purported freedoms that the West so zealously wants imparted to Muslims are not freedoms at all, they are forms of enslavement. Fortunately for the Muslims this basic knowledge has been infused deep within the moral genetic code. Unfortunately for the West, its most recent invasion into the Muslim market-space is reactivating that code with some very predictable consequences given the force and viciousness of the incursion.
He's confusing cultural norms with religion, I'd say...
â Bryant C. Mitchell who converted to Islam at the age of 35 teaches management and entrepreneurship courses at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
If the Saudis had any intention of eliminating terrorism, the first thing they would do is to stop printing articles that justify it.
These are the headlines in todayâs edition:
"Half-Baked Cakes Not Worth Eating
Dr. Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed, Arab News
Messrs Bush and Cheney can keep insisting that Saddamâs Iraq had âconnectionsâ to Al-Qaeda in the face of all evidence to the contrary. It is their right if they have no problem with twisting facts to suit political ends. Now they are telling us that Saddam had âcontactsâ with the terror group. Fine. But, pray tell, who in the world did not have âcontactsâ with Al-Qaeda at one time or another?"
"Donât Call Them Terrorists: What We See in Iraq Is Continuation of a European Struggle
Karma Nabulsi, The Guardian
OXFORD, 24 June 2004 â The United States and Britain claim to be handing sovereignty to Iraq next week. In fact, the occupying power cannot legally transfer sovereignty on June 30 for one simple reason: It does not possess it. Sovereignty is vested in the Iraqi people, and always has been: Before Saddam Hussein, after him, under the martial law of the American Proconsul Paul Bremer today."
"Bush and Cheney Moving Dissonance to New Heights
Joel Cooper, Newsday
PRINCETON, 24 June 2004 â George W. Bush and Dick Cheney seem to be men who do not change their minds easily."
"Freed Saudi Describes the Horror That Is Abu Ghraib
Obaid Al-Suhaimi, Asharq Al-Awsat
JEDDAH, 24 June 2004 â A Saudi just freed from Iraqâs infamous Abu Ghraib prison said he had seen prisoners tortured and others die from lack of medical treatment or from shelling of the facility."
Posted by: Anonymous4617 ||
06/24/2004 7:38:04 AM ||
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Point of note -- what this guy hasn't quite touched on is that we're STILL DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED. The very "permanent law" + "economic protectionist bans" are diametrical to our cultural-legal and economic views, so what whence the argument that it's not about inherent culture?
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
06/24/2004 21:42 Comments ||
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er, Fred, you wouldn't happen to have the link handy for Hottest Sluts on the Net� Saves one-handed googling...
:-)~
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 22:39 Comments ||
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As part of MEMRIâs TV Monitoring Project, Saudi government controlled television channels including TV1, TV2 and satellite channels such as Iqraa TV, are continually monitored.(1) These channels include shows with leading Saudi religious figures, professors, members of the royal family, government leaders and intellectuals. Constant themes within Saudi television shows include: calls for the annihilation of Christians and Jews, rampant anti-Americanism and antisemitism, support for Jihad, incitement against U.S. troops in Iraq, and the coming Islamic conquest of the U.S. Segments from these TV shows can be found at www.memriTV.org. Come and play... everything is a-ok, can you tell me how to get, how to get to Jihad Street?!
AT THE CLOSE of the recent G-8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, sighs of relief could be heard in palaces across the Middle East where unelected leaders wield near-absolute power. The summit had been expected to produce a clarion call for reform in the only part of the world still largely unaffected by changes that have reshaped global politics since the end of the Cold War. Instead, it settled for a string of bland admonitions. Anxious to avoid fresh charges of unilateralism, and responding to demands from French president Jacques Chirac and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, President Bush toned down his call for a democratic revolution in the greater Middle East.
Bad move...
But though the message from Sea Island has disappointed many moderates in the region, the process of change triggered by the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq shows no sign of coming to a close. In liberal circles in Europe and North America, the idea that George W. Bush could inspire any democratic revolution may provoke derision, but in the Middle East, U.S. action in Afghanistan and Iraq is seen as marking the end of an era--the era in which the regionâs politics was dominated by pan-Arabism and Islamism. The Taliban was the epitome of Islamism: No one could claim to be more Islamist than Mullah Muhammad Omar. The Iraqi Baath represented the most radical version of Arab nationalism, inspired by Nazism and communism. If anybody could have created the pan-Arab Utopia, it was Saddam Hussein. The defeat of those two "models" has given democrats in the Muslim world a chance to get their message through to the masses previously captivated by Islamism and pan-Arabism. "The genie will not return to the bottle," says Iraqi scholar Faleh Abdul-Jabbar. "There is a growing feeling in the region that the days of despotic regimes are numbered."
"The thing is, this is open debate that wasnât there three or four months ago," Jordanâs King Abdullah told the Washington Post last week. "Once you open that door, it is very hard to shut it. So countries that are resistant to it are now having to look at the issues of reform." One reason for this optimism is the belief that the Bush administration is determined to shift the United States from being a supporter of the status quo in the Middle East to being a champion of democratic change.
"The United States understands that its security is contingent on change in the Middle East," says Saudi novelist Turki al-Hamad. "The Americans have learned that as long as our societies are not reformed, they cannot be safe." During the past few months the Muslim world has witnessed a series of conferences devoted to reform, change, and democratization. Last monthâs Arab League Summit in Tunis, though it avoided the word democratization, approved a set of changes designed to broaden the base of political decision-making. A couple of weeks before that, the issue had topped the agenda of a major regional conference in Jordan. Similar conferences have been held in Kuala-Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, the Lebanese capital Beirut, Turkeyâs cultural capital Istanbul, and Alexandria in Egypt. All these conferences endorsed the clear message that for Muslim nations democratic reform is the only way out of "a historic quagmire."
To be sure, the debate on whether Islam is compatible with democracy is not over. But many in the region believe that the issue now is the necessity of democracy for Muslims rather than its compatibility with Islam. The fact that almost no one in mainstream Islam regrets the demise of the Taliban and the Iraqi Baath shows that, contrary to claims by some "Islamologists," the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not love despots and are not prepared to fight for them. Some countries in the region--among them Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman--are already moving towards the open-society model, albeit at widely different paces. All have held elections that, though not free and fair by Western standards, could be regarded as acceptable by the standards of the so-called developing world. Other countries--notably Saudi Occupied Arabia and Egypt--have accepted the need for reform but are trying to limit the power that the ruling elites would have to relinquish to make change meaningful. The Saudi dynasty has launched a series of "national dialogue" sessions to assess public opinion on reform. The latest, held in Jeddah last week, focused on womenâs rights and produced 19 demands which, if implemented, could make Saudi women full citizens for the first time. Egypt and Iran are toying with the idea of emulating the so-called Chinese model, combining political repression with economic liberalization. A version of that model is already in place in Tunisia. Still frozen in their despotic ways are Libya, Sudan, and Syria.
Despite a public relations drive to improve his image abroad, Libyaâs dictator, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, continues to preside over one of the regionâs most repressive regimes. In Syria, however, pressure for change is on the rise. Last week a coalition of eight parties called on President Bashar Assad to end the monopoly of its Baath party on political power and accept pluralism "as a principle of national politics." Most regimes in the region are committed to holding elections in one form or another, abandoning the claim that only informal consultation is acceptable in Islam. Perhaps more important, words and phrases that denote democratization are being heard in conversations and read in newspapers: opening, dialogue, participation, consent, pluralism, separation of powers, rule of law, due process, free enterprise, civil society, good governance, human rights, gender equality, accountability, and transparency.
Cynics might suggest that all this is nothing but the tribute that vice pays to virtue. The despots may talk of democracy as a tactic to weather the storm created by the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but they will revert to their traditional methods of rule by violence and bribery. And there is, of course, no guarantee that any elections they hold will not be "fixed" to confirm the power of the rulers. Whether the cynics are right depends largely on what happens in Afghanistan and Iraq in the coming months. The Afghans are scheduled to hold their first-ever free elections in September, followed by the Iraqis, who will go to the polls in January 2005. To be held under international supervision, the Afghan and Iraqi elections could produce the first accurate picture of opinion in two key Muslim countries. As things stand, there is every chance that both elections will be won by moderate conservatives who recognize the importance of power sharing and popular participation in decision-making. Success in the Afghan and Iraqi elections could help bring Muslim politics out of the palaces, army barracks, mosques, and streets, and direct it into new channels such as political parties, parliaments, and law courts. The tepid message from Sea Island, then, is not the end of the story.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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Note the liberals are mute on this act of freedom!
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
06/24/2004 1:00 Comments ||
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#2
Although I am a life-long Indians and Red Sox fan, I hate Castro worse thatn I hate George S.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 2:04 Comments ||
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#3
SH-
I grew up within earshot of Lakefront Stadium, but my dad worked for George S...go figure.
In any event, I think Chief Wahoo will forgive us one very heartfelt cheer for this young man and his family the next time he walks to the mound.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/24/2004 3:16 Comments ||
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#4
SH--I'm with ya--Can't stand the Yanks, but I do love a one-finger-salute-to-Fidel like this.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/24/2004 9:03 Comments ||
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#5
I also grew up in the Cleveland area, and one of my better childhood memories was kicking around the old Lakefront Stadium watching Leon Wagner flail at a curve ball.
I'm real happy for this guy, and I'll be at Comisky next time he's in town just to wish him well from the cheap seats.
SuperHose: let's not get too hasty about letting George S off the hook, 'k?
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/24/2004 10:38 Comments ||
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#6
But why would the Cubans want to leave their communist paradise and come to this horrible country? Ted? John? Thom? Maybe we can begin a swap with the Cubans? Trade a lefty for a freedom seeker? Seems we have a lot of unhappy lefties living in the U.S. why not give them a chance to live in one of the last communist bastions of paradise? I feel sorry that they could not all come over at the same time and I donât want to think what his wife was going through after he defected. I am also sad that I will have to root for the Yankees the next time this guy is pitching! And yest it hasn't made the LLL press yet.
#12
Zpaz, I work on the South Side (large university near the lake) but live on the west side. No tix but plenty of walk-up seats available.
I swore off baseball after the Strike (fxxking Sox and Indians had the best division race in 20 years going and they WALK OUT??!!%$&*#), but it's in my blood, and I'm beginning to glance at the box scores again.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2004 0:04 Comments ||
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#13
.com, that't beautiful. I think Clinton and Kerry would be in a different deck though. Hopefully, Pat is a standing next to St Pete - guarding the gate.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/25/2004 0:27 Comments ||
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#14
If in the same deck, they would have to be dealt from the bottom.
Posted by: Capt America ||
06/25/2004 1:21 Comments ||
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#15
"Pat is a standing next to St Pete"
For those who never marched in circles, that means he's God's Guidon... Prolly a good call, SH.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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Mr. Martin said the 29-year-old man spent the night hidden above the ceiling tile of a washroom.
The next day, he said, Mr. Sandulescu tried to board at least three planes without a boarding pass or ticket. One flight was headed to Frankfurt, Germany, a second to New York and the third to Boston.
Bost on and NY don't seem to get him closer to Romania.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 17:05 Comments ||
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EFL
A rumour that the messiah has been born to a Turkish woman in a maternity ward in western Germany has drawn crowds of Muslims from as far away as the Netherlands...... An anonymous contributor in the chatroom of the portal had asserted that a Turkish mother died while giving birth, then rose from the grave for 41 days to breast-feed Allahâs chosen son and call mankind back to the straight path .... On Saturday and Sunday, 140 persons had requested admission to see the saviour and his mother. Police explained there never was such a patient, but were told: "I know you are lying. I can see it in your eyes."
Hundreds of Muslims flocked to a German hospital where an Internet site said the Messiah was being breast-fed by its resurrected mother, a hospital spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Burkhard Buescher said large groups of women with children were among those who had traveled across Germany and from the nearby Netherlands in the last two weeks asking porters at the Essen university clinic to let them visit the "Messiah." "The story ended up being that there was a woman in the clinic who had given birth to the Messiah and who had died. She was later dug up and was still alive but her whole body was burned -- just her two breasts were unharmed," said Buescher.
Maybe that story makes sense in Arabic...
"Allah ordered the woman to feed the child for 40 days and then die again. This crazy story was seen by people on a Turkish Internet site," he said. On the Internet portal Turkdunya.de, chatterers discussed the story and one contributor claimed to have seen the woman.
... or at least her disembodied boobs...
Hospital guards had told visitors there was no such woman in the maternity clinic, and the number of visitors had dwindled since German media reported the story was an Internet hoax, Buescher said. "But some people just wanted to believe it."
#2
Yes shipman, Americus Prime will lead the Patriobots against the evil Islamicons who are lead be Allahtron.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/24/2004 14:01 Comments ||
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Hold it...WHAT messiah? The Mahdi?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/24/2004 14:09 Comments ||
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"The story ended up being that there was a woman in the clinic who had given birth to the Messiah and who had died. She was later dug up and was still alive but her whole body was burned -- just her two breasts were unharmed . . . Allah ordered the woman to feed the child for 40 days and then die again.
So the woman was completely burned except for her breasts, and Allan ordered her to stay alive and breastfeed the little puke, and everyone thinks that's just a-okay? 40 days of unspeakable torture of a female for the sake of the Moslem "Messiah." Nothing makes more sense than that to me.
#5
Who says Arabs are gullible! No wonder they lap up everything that is preached to them at the mosque! BTW there is NO HOPE for these people unless they can get they shit squared away.
Posted by: Jen ||
06/24/2004 17:03 Comments ||
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#8
Why would anyone think they are dealing with normal people here? I suppose the muslim mama will have a fatwa put out calling for her death for this arab humiliation...
Posted by: jawa ||
06/24/2004 23:50 Comments ||
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Mr. Iftikhar Ahmad the director of London School of Islamics says,
"Islamophobia and Arabophobia has been part of western culture since the Crusades, with Saddam and Osama only the latest in a long line of Arab bogeymen. The real reason for the current spate of Islamophobia is the fact that Islam has been the fastest growing religion in the world and as such poses a threat to the West...."
Ali Sina (ex-muslim and content provider of Faithfreedom.org) says,
"....the real reason for Islamophobia is because many Muslims are active terrorists. They kill people....
Then we have people like you who brazenly deny the real cause of Islamophobia and accuse the terrorized people of paranoia and misunderstanding, hence adding more insults to the injury and give more reasons for people to fear Islam.....What happened to Nazism? Islam will go the same way.... Islam is like a giant edifice built on shallow foundations of lies. No matter how big it may be, it will come down at once. We are not taking it apart brick by brick, like the reformists want to do. That would take another thousand years if ever possible. We are dynamiting its foundation. We are showing Muhammad was a psychopath, a liar and a narcissist. Once that is established, there would be nothing left of Islam.
You can help by being truthful. Do not be an appeaser and do not lie so as to not hurt your Muslim friendsâ feelings..."
Posted by: mhw ||
06/24/2004 8:18:23 AM ||
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Most educated people know the difference between the muslim faith that is simply taken as a religion only and Islamism or Islamist Fascism that is both a faith, a political doctrine, a legal code (sharia) and a military doctrine.
The two are different. Fascist Islamism is on the rise and is radicalising moderate Islam.
Daniel Pipes put it best when he wrote that Fascist Islam is the enemy. Moderate Islam is the answer.
Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan took over America and people viewed their version of Christianity as the sole version. Militant Islamism is the KKK of Islam.
It will be defeated if we name it and fight it, and we need moderate muslim allies to help us. This is an ideological battle not a state on state battle, so we need inside allies who can help shift the culture.
#2
Phobia is not the proper term, as it refers to an irrational fear of something. What we need is something that conveys righteous fury, if not out-n-out hate. What's the modifier for that?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 10:01 Comments ||
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Anon1,
Well I agree we certainly need inside allies. However, as I've pointed out before, the Jihadists, who are only about 1-5% of Islam gain financial and logistics support from another 5-15% and verbal support from another 10-20%.
Also, unlike the KKK analogy, we have a huge percentage of the Islamic population who simply deny that the Jihadists exist and get ticked off if we try to do anything about the Jihadists. Also unlike the KKK analogy, we have another huge percentage that is hates the Jihadists but is to scared to do anything.
In his blog today, http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
says,
"....all we hear after such grisly scenes is... (croak).. (croak).. a maddening silence, and then a few obligatory half-hearted 'This is not the real Islam, you know', 'Noooo, it's really a religion of peace, you don't understand'...."
#5
Daniel Pipes put it best when he wrote that Fascist Islam is the enemy. Moderate Islam is the answer.
True. Still, if the Quran is the word of God and is held as absolute truth and law by Muslims, who will dare change it to make Islam "moderate"? I think a reformation is way past due for the Muslim religion, but anyone who seeks to change its warlike and radical passages is not likely to see tomorrow as changing the Quran would be considered apostasy.
#6
"Also, unlike the KKK analogy, we have a huge percentage of the Islamic population who simply deny that the Jihadists exist and get ticked off if we try to do anything about the Jihadists. Also unlike the KKK analogy, we have another huge percentage that is hates the Jihadists but is to scared to do anything."
The KK analogy is closer than you think. Many Christians in the south refused to admit the existence of the KKK, and many more refused to admit or recognize the KKK's strength or its insidiously evil actions. The KKK was pretty successful in quelling dissent through intimidation. But the analogy is self-limited though because the goals of Islamists are much larger, much more organized, and because of that, incomparably more dangerous.
Posted by: Sam ||
06/24/2004 11:09 Comments ||
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#7
Jules: reformation doesn't need to include changing warlike passages of the Koran.
It's all in the interpretation, and in what you encourage your mullahs to "big up" in their daily rants. They can talk sharia/Islamofascism up or they can talk ROP.
Sam: yep, the KKK never got control of a country let alone most of the world's supply of oil, let alone Nukes (only a matter of time before the Pakis sell some Nukes to an Islamofascist group and/or the Iranians make their own)
#10
Sam: further to this analogy, imagine if the KKK in the USA were attacked by say, Muslim Indonesia.
That may end up radicalising borderline KKKs, pushing them further into that ideology as they see an attack on their culture from a foriegn identity/religion.
But the KKK was most successfully defeated by being marginalised, isolated from the rest of christendom. It was defeated by the moderates.
While we have NO choice but to attack Islamofascism head on (they are killing us on our home soil), we NEED the alliance of moderate muslims to prevent that galvanisation, that temptation to unite borderline cases under the extremist flag.
Islamofascism needs as far as possible to be isolated, quarantined from moderate Islam.
We need to drive a big fat wedge between the two.
And at the same time build bridges to moderate muslim allies, amplify their voices of dissent against the Islamofascist KKK.
They are the key to a lasting victory.
The only lasting victory will be complete cultural overhall as Den Beste has argued well before. The only way you can have cultural overhall is by winning the ideological battle.
For that we need moderates, the same way the KKK couldn't have been defeated from outside.
#11
...reformation doesn't need to include changing warlike passages of the Koran.
True, but that would mean Muslims living by the spirit rather than the letter of the Quran. I haven't heard the names of any mullahs (the Islamic voices of authority) who would fit into this "moderate" category.
If there really are moderate Muslims mullahs/leaders, who are they?
#13
Sam - the analogy between the KKK and the Islamofacists is even closer than most people think, for most don't realize that the KKK went after whites as well as blacks.
My mother told me about an incident before I was born (small Virginia mountains town). The KKK burned a cross on my great-aunt's lawn because my cousin (her daughter) was slutting around. (And, knowing my cousin, she was not slutting with black men.)
Those bastards just wanted to enforce their own "law" and be in control of everyone, including everybody's "morality"; sounds just like our Islamonazis.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 12:04 Comments ||
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#14
"But the KKK was most successfully defeated by being marginalised, isolated from the rest of christendom. It was defeated by the moderates. While we have NO choice but to attack Islamofascism head on (they are killing us on our home soil), we NEED the alliance of moderate muslims to prevent that galvanisation, that temptation to unite borderline cases under the extremist flag."
Moderate Muslims are stealth Muslims. Where are they? Do they have tongues? Can they write? Christian ministers in churches all over America preached loud and clear against the KKK. Yes, the KKK was marginalized - it was marginalized by Christians. Sure there were intimidated Chrsitians in the south who were afraid to speak out, but Christianity wasn't silent about the KKK. There were a few Church leaders who trumpeted the call of the KKK. But the vast majority didn't and neither the leaders nor the people were silent. Not true with the so-called "moderate" Muslims.
Posted by: Sam ||
06/24/2004 12:37 Comments ||
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#16
Phobia is not the proper term, as it refers to an irrational fear of something. What we need is something that conveys righteous fury, if not out-n-out hate. What's the modifier for that?
Detestation? Thank you for beating me to the punch, BH. Revulsion over militant Islam's barbarity has nothing to do with "irrational fear." It has everything to do with simple survival and outright self-defense. If moderate Islam does not pursue internal reformation with much greater vigor, ALL ISLAM will be destroyed, and necessarily so. Islamist terror is a cancer that must be excised from our world. Just as a virulent tumor that does not respond to chemotherapy is then subjected to radiology, so will jihadism find itself confronted with nuclear annihilation. I could not care less about any collateral casualties required to assure that Islamist terrorism is expunged from the face of this entire planet.
#17
I agree with Sam - "Moderate Muslims are stealth Muslims." Z you are right, the moderates need to find themselves, or the future is not bright - or maybe I should say it is very bright, like a bright flash.
#18
Sam - the analogy between the KKK and the Islamofacists is even closer than most people think, for most don't realize that the KKK went after whites as well as blacks.
Catholics, for example.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/24/2004 14:28 Comments ||
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#20
Militant Islam is like the Black Plague. Periodic outbursts have ravaged civilization, but public sanitation and rat poison have marginalized its effect on the West for the last 300 years. The bastards were thrown out of Spain in 1492 and the highwatermark in the East was their defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1653. If it weren't for the infusion of oil money, these guys would still be polishing their scimitars, beheading each other, and no problem to the civilized world. The need for oil brought Westerners into their region, If they make it personal enough, we'll do what they always accuse us of, take the oil and push the Saudis back into the desert from whence they came. Killing women, children, and unarmed men is an Islamic specialty. Killing large numbers of people is a Western specialty - car bombing meet carpet bombing.
#21
Who the hell do the anons (and others) think they're kidding? Moderate Muslims? Who the hell are they? Why are they never protesting in the streets when one of their whack-job "brothers" blows up himself and as many others as possible? Where the hell are they when some new attrocity is committed in the name of their death-cult religion? Why don't their leaders publically, loudly, and repeatedly call for reform of the mosques where the cries for violence against "infidels" originate? Why don't they publically, loudly, and repeatedly DECLINE the acceptance of funds from groups even marginally associated with terror?
Wake up, folks--MODERATE MUSLIMS by their silence and by their association are accessories to the killing that goes on in the name of their religion. They CANNOT be counted on, they DO NOT WISH to be counted on, and in the long run, are every bit as much the enemy as the supposedly "radical" Muslims are.
#22
The difference between the KKK and Islamic Jihad is that the KKK was in a sense, forced to comply with the faith they "professed," and when they couldn't (of course they couldn't) they were "ousted" by the rest of society. The members of Islamic Jihad are complying with the religion they profess.
In other words, the KKK were pretenders using a guise of religion to accomplish their goals. The Jihadis are using their religion, per se, flat out.
Islam = Bad Religion.
Unless the "moderate" Moslems want to start thinking for themselves, and unless they are willing to throw out the Koran, and take up arms, and enforce laws against the Jihadis and their preachers and accomplices (remember--the Jihadis being the "bravest" and "most honorable" of Moslems--i.e. the exemplary heroes), we're in for the long haul.
#23
Sam: I don't what part of the south (if any) you are from but I was born in Selma, Alabama and grew up near there. There was never, in that area, a denial by christians that the KKK didn't exist. People new who they were and they attended the same churches. People were very much afraid of them but no one denied their existance.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/24/2004 15:38 Comments ||
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#24
Calling a sober estimation of a real threat a âphobiaâ is not only silly, it should be recognized for what it is: a tool in the quest for Islamic supremacy. But, then again, we should be a little afraid.
The Islamic Movement won't stop because it's a psychologically-motivated thing for the Islamics. If we don't start crushing this now, without relenting, in a decisive, conclusive manner, most people cannot imagine how it will grow. Trust me--we ain't seen nothin' yet!
It will grow because Islamics want ascendancy more than anything else in life. They crave it because they need it--their religion beats them down, Allan beats them down, and their society, and their family structures beat them down. They are itching to be elevated and recognized. They want to be seen as "special," to be rulers of the world, to enjoy prestige and, most of all, to humiliate others and put others underneath them, in every way possible, so they can feel safe from humiliation.
As Islamic individuals, worldwide, get a feeling of âwinningâ in any way whatsoever, in the WOT--of getting out of, or of having hope of getting out of their general status of "humiliation"--it will generate a psychological/emotional power for them on an unprecedented scale--the kind of power that can drive them for years to come.
An old American adage, and the best political advice for this situation, is: "Give 'em an inch, and they'll take a mile." This applies completely.
With every infringement that is not punished summarily, the Islamics' psychological self-perception of strength will grow, and so will their determination. In order to repeat the "good vibe" of such "affirmation," they will escalate the conflict and take more risks. In the risk-taking itself, is a sense of affirmation. Doing something about how they feel is better than doing nothing. Sadly, they will never recognize the true enemy--their religion, their culture--their "norms" of life and belief.
The most terrible thing is that their actions will be intermittently reinforced. Intermittent reinforcement is the strongest reinforcer of behavior, and will produce a conditioned response that is especially resilient to change.
Next, Mr. Iftikhar Ahmad, the director of London School of Islamics, says: "Islamophobia and Arabophobia has been part of western culture since the Crusades."
During the Crusades, the fact is that the West beat the Moslems. This man is trying to diminish whatever is left of that understanding in the West, by linking victories against them there at that time, with a psychological disorder--a "phobia."
Here's how we defeat that false reasoning construct: A "phobia" is a serious mental illness, that is treatable, and usually has it's roots in trauma. (Doubtful any such "phobia" exists at all, much less across the whole of Western society.)
Iftikhar is trying to claim that that West, indeed, has a widespread mental illness--more specifically, that anyone who disagrees with the aims and agendas of Islam has a mental illness. He is borrowing the construct aimed at social change in support of the Islamic Movement, directly from the homosexual/lesbian movement of the United States, which employed the same tactic quite successfully, and which quelled free discussion, critique, and legitimate research. (Now anyone who says anything in contradiction to them is seen as "less" able by society at large (is a "homophobic"--Hitler used the same types of constructs in rallying support against the Jews in Europe.)
By equating disagreement with Islam with a mental disorder, he hopes to drive a wedge between those who wish to crush the Islamic Movement, and those who don't really understand it. He knows that in general, people feel afraid of those who have serious mental disorders--because their weakness poses a "threat" to the healthy members. Nobody want to have a mental disorder--to be considered "defective" by the other members of society. By equating himself and his movement with health and safety, he intends to marginalize those who oppose the movement.
The good news is that if we understand that the more typical mental disorders are not really threatening to us as individuals, his threatening "insult" loses it's power in the face of truth, and becomes a joke.
If we want to stay alive through this, I'd suggest that we start laughing and commence firing.
I'm with Ali Sina. Islam is like a hollow log. Nudge it with your toe, a bunch of termites swarm out and sting you. Kick it hard enough, it collapses into a pile of sawdust.
The happiest day of my life would be to walk down the street in Damascus and see a couple of kids on ten speeds, short sleeve white shirts, black ties, and a backpack full of literature pedaling down the street with a sense of purpose. And I'm not even Mormon!
#26
#15 Shipman - Not willing to give myself away completely; let's just say not too far from the West Virginia border, about an hour from Roanoke.
#18 Robert & #19 Marvin - true. We had only 1 Jewish family in town (that I know of) - they owned the furniture store, and had to go to Roanoke for Temple. There was also a fairly small Catholic Church. Don't know how much grief they got during the KKK days. Thankfully the overt KKK crap was over before I was old enough to know about it (though there was still plenty of the sentiment around, and segregation, too), but I do know it was still going on at least up through WWII and possibly into the early 1950's.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 22:29 Comments ||
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#27
If you have to ask, "where is the outrage?", you are already clueless. There is no outcry because there is no outrage. Fastest growing religion? No, I don't think so, forced conversions, deceit and death threats don't count. Poster is right...name the threat....then destroy it.
Posted by: jawa ||
06/24/2004 23:54 Comments ||
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#28
Ms. Skolaut
Note that I'm named after a (very) small Blue Ridge town. :)
(EFL)
The British Broadcasting Corp. said Thursday it will launch a 24-hour Arabic-language TV news channel to compete with the Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera. Will the Beeb give their correspondents walking-around money to help stage attacks on US forces?
The channel will be broadcast across the Middle East and Europe. Excellent -- now the tendentious self-hating poison of the BBC will be more accessible to budding jihadi recruits in the suburbs of major European cities.
The BBC is hoping to rival Al-Jazeera, which has aired many of Osama bin Ladenâs speeches and has been accused of anti-Western bias. Read that sentence again. One of the best, funniest, most depressing unintentionally insightful sentences Iâve seen in the media for a long time!
The venture follows the recent launch of the U.S. government-funded Al-Hurra TV station, which has been denounced by some Muslim clerics as "propaganda." Note that al-Jazeera and al-Hurra are both accused of bias -- so I guess theyâre the same. Sounds plausible -- a service launched by the most open society on Earth with the most free press is probably no different than a wildly unprofessional propaganda service originating in a region without a shred of objective journalistic values or experience.
#1
I don't view the BBC as helpful in any way. It really would be a service to democracy if parliament would repeal the TV license fee and make these supercilious cretins compete for their living. It must be an Anglo-Saxon guilt complex that makes us fund snobs to look down their long inbred noses at us.
Tales from "you canât make this up"-land: a review of the stage play "The Lonliness of Noam Chomsky." (Hat tip: Damian Penny.)
The performance begins with Chomsky (played with remarkable accuracy and great skill by the Asian-American actress Aya Ogawa) I told you you couldnât make this stuff up!
seated center stage, looking away from the audience at a wall of mirrors. . . . When Chomsky begins talking it is in the incoherent slow, halting, nearly inaudible patterns of moonbat nonsense that are familiar to those who have heard him speak. He discusses the very problem of being filmed and televised, how he is troubled by the focus on him. He says he never watches his televised or filmed appearances as they make him queasy He has that effect on everybody.
and he only focuses on what he could have done better or said differently. Enter "The Media": Judson Kniffen and Alanna Medlock dressed as newscasters, replete with napkins tucked into their collars, as if they had just left the make-up table and sat down behind the newsdesk. A Tom Tomorrow cartoon appears on the monitors as Kniffen and Medlock perform the dialogue from the strip . . . [and then] Medlock pulls out a small two-foot high skeleton and proceeds to hang it from a noose front and center. "Itâs a symbolic representation of . . . uh . . . ummmm . . . you know . . . "
"What the audience wants to do to the writer of this drivel?"
"Ah, yeah. I think. Maybe."
This sets the contradictory tone of incoherence reverence and moonbattery self-mockery that makes The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky such a nauseating compelling performance. . . . This is evident in "The Larissa MacFarquhar New Yorker Devilâs Accountant Dance" "Is that anything like âThe Chicken Dance?â"
in which Kim Garoonâs militant choreography seems to limn the media bias against Chomsky in a New Yorker article, but then gives way to a more honest pointed and haunting moment in which Chomsky is portrayed as an almost-sadistic professor who wonât allow his students to voice their opinions, cutting them down before theyâve even spoken. . . . While this tension between the perceived and the real, between Chomsky as brilliant iconoclast and deluded egomaniac, undergirds the entire performance (The "Christopher Hitchens Silent Genocide Air Quote Dance" was also very clever and well executed) . . . . . . weâll draw the curtains of mercy over this scene while we still have our sanity intact.
Thereâs an expert fisking of this review (and by extension, of the play itself) at the "Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite" blog. Me, Iâd rather go to the Summer Stock Amateur Dinner Theatre production of "Camelot."
Posted by: Mike ||
06/24/2004 1:15:29 PM ||
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#1
I was at the World Bank book store today (don't ask why its nerdy and stupid) and noticed they have one of Chomsky's anti American anti Israel books on a prominent display (away from the technical stuff).
The World Bank book store also sells world bank hats and world bank t shirts, fyi.
#2
"Christopher Hitchens Silent Genocide Air Quote Dance"
Some things are beyond parody. But I still want to learn the steps to this one. I imagine a lot of en-pointe with arms in the air, crooked at about thirty degrees, index and middle fingers bent sarcastically.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
06/24/2004 15:58 Comments ||
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#3
I imagine a lot of en-pointe with arms in the air, crooked at about thirty degrees, index and middle fingers bent sarcastically.
All done deliberately so as not to spill the drink in one's hand. Cigarette in the corner of the mouth is optional(but it does help with the squinting)...
#5
Regardless of the merits of the piece itself, Christopher Hitchens Silent Genocide Air Quote Dance sounds like a title Zappa could have been proud of.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 20:29 ||
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#1
actual link past Drudge's cover, but Drudge is better....heh heh. Leahy's also a major-league asshole
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 20:31 Comments ||
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#2
I love it! Good for VP "Big Time" Cheney!
(And Leahy, that goes double for me!)
Posted by: Jen ||
06/24/2004 20:47 Comments ||
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#3
At last, straight talk to those who need it most. Democratic politicians don't have enough experience in the private sector to even notice that Halliburton's stock price is significantly lower than it was in year 2000 when Cheney was not in office. Of course guys like Kerry and Kennedy have never managed anything, including their campaigns.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/24/2004 21:21 Comments ||
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#4
There goes the John F'in Kerry joke ... but for the target to have been Leahy, I'm more than happy XD
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
06/24/2004 21:38 Comments ||
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#5
ABOUT FRIGGIN TIME! I was wondering if ANYONE in this administration had any cajones. And while we are on the subject FUCK Dachele, Kennedy, Kerry, and DOUBLE FUCK AL GORE! Now I feel better and I bete Cheney does too!
#6
and tCheney's ticker-timer kept him going cool - modern medicine overcomes the treachery and stupidity of Sen. Leahy.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 22:43 Comments ||
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#7
This was deliberate. Cheney doesnt make this kind of mistake.
Gives Bush a reason to let him "decline to run", and a new Veep for the Republican ticket comes around.
Does 2 things:
1) This bubbles a bit, they announce the "Cheney decides not to run" the day that Kerry finally annouces his VP. Then a few days after the Dem convention concludes, they start floating rumors all over the place, killing any boost Kerry gets from the Demo convention. Then all eyes are on the Repub convention for the anouncement of the new VP candidate.
2) Eventually gives Bush the ability to bolster his ticket with Guliani, or Powell, etc, fairly late in the campaign, "tuning" the ticket and only leaving the Dems 2 months to attack the new VP. Drops the Cheney/Haliburton things and the "Puppetmaster" crap too. It bascially takes the crayolas out of the Lib-Loonie kids' crayon box.
Here's one wild possiblity: McCain.
Get him out of the senate seat (better conservative candidate can be put in there to replace him), and puts him "on the team" and conveniently close where they can keep an eye on him.
Plus would help with "Independents" and Undecideds, and would take some of the fire out of the "anti-Bush" croud at its edges.
Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, âFahrenheit 9/11,â on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel.
At the same time, a Republican-allied 527 soft-money group is preparing to file a complaint against Mooreâs film with the FEC for violating campaign-finance law. In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FECâs agenda for todayâs meeting, the agencyâs general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election. The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election.
Betcha it's not enforced in this case, though...
The proscription is broadly defined. Section 100.29 of the federal election regulations defines restricted corporate-funded ads as those that identify a candidate by his âname, nickname, photograph or drawingâ or make it âotherwise apparent through an unambiguous reference.â Should the six members of the FEC vote to approve the counselâs opinion, it could put a serious crimp on Mooreâs promotion efforts. The flavor of the movie was encapsulated by a recent review in The Boston Globe as âthe case against George W. Bush, a fat compendium of previously reported crimes, errors, sins, and grievances delivered in the directorâs patented tone of vaudevillian social outrage.â Since the FEC considers the Republican presidential convention scheduled to begin Aug. 30 a national political primary in which Bush is a candidate, Moore and other politically oriented filmmakers could not air any ad mentioning Bush after July 30. That could make advertising for the film after July difficult since it is all about the Bush administration and what Moore regards as its mishandling of the war on terrorism and the decision to invade Iraq.After the convention, ads for political films that mention Bush or any other federal candidate would be subject to the restrictions on all corporate communications within 60 days of the Nov. 2 general election.that âFahrenheit 9/11â violates federal election law, arguing that âMoore has publicly indicated his goal is to impact this election season.â
Bossie had planned to file a complaint with the FEC yesterday but postponed action because his lawyers want to review it at the last minute, said Summer Stitz, a spokeswoman for Bossieâs group.âI donât think much of Michael Moore or his two-hour political advertisement â thatâs all it is,â Bossie said. âHe uses all of these words to make it look like he makes documentaries, but itâs the furthest thing from the truth. Documentaries tend to be fact-based.â
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/24/2004 12:09:20 PM ||
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#1
Hahahahahahaha! Serves the Dems right. Looks like the Incumbant Protection Act just may be coming home to roost.
The ONLY "campaign finance reform" needed is a law that ALL campaign contributions of any kind must be posted on the Internet within 48 hours, and there must be outside audits several times before the election. Period. True transparency.
Politicians - particularly the Dems - will never go for it.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 19:16 Comments ||
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A political group that paid felons to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives with the aim of ousting President Bush in the 2004 election pledged Thursday to weed out any employees convicted of violent or serious offenses. America Coming Together announced a new policy for background checks after The Associated Press reported Wednesday that ACT had used people convicted of burglary, assault and sex offenses to canvass neighborhoods in at least three election swing states -- Missouri, Florida and Ohio. It declined to define what it considers violent or serious offenses under the new policy. Since spring, "our policy has been that weâre not going to employ violent felons," the groupâs Washington-based spokesman Mo Elliethee said Thursday. "Weâre going to conduct this background check to ensure weâre not."
ACT is an independent group not affiliated with the campaign of Democratic candidate John Kerry. Although federal law forbids a campaign to coordinate activities with such groups, veteran Democratic political operatives, many with past ties to Kerry and his advisers, work for ACT. The Kerry campaign said Wednesday it was unaware of ACTâs hiring practices and had nothing to do with them. ACT plans to spend about $100 million on initiatives to get out the vote in hopes of boosting Kerryâs chances. ACT employs about 1,000 canvassers in 17 swing states, paying them $8-$12 an hour to ask residents which issues are important to them and, if they are not registered, sign them up as voters. Employees gather telephone numbers and other personal information -- birth dates, driverâs license numbers or partial Social Security numbers, depending on each stateâs requirements for voter registration.
A review of federal campaign finance and state criminal records by The Associated Press revealed that the names and hometowns of dozens of ACT employees in Missouri, Florida and Ohio matched those of people convicted of crimes such as burglary, forgery, drug dealing, assault and sex offenses. At least seven parolees were still living at Missouri halfway houses when employed by ACT, and four of those later were returned to prison. Elliethee said ACT would fire -- or refuse to hire -- anyone convicted of "violent or other serious offenses." He said the decision to start background checks was made during a Wednesday night meeting of the groupâs senior staff. "We continue to believe people deserve a second chance, and we will continue to offer that chance for people who are re-entering society to participate in our program," he said. "But our policy is to not hire anyone who we deem not to be safe." ACT also targets voters in major metropolitan areas in Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Via Drudge
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Thursday accused President Bush of telling "an artful and important lie" soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to set the stage for war on Iraq. "Beginning very soon after the attacks of 9/11, President Bush made a decision to start mentioning Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath in a cynical mantra designed to fuse them together as one in the publicâs mind," Gore said in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center. To me, a bag of a shit is a bag of shit; one just smells differently from the other one...
Gore, a Democrat who lost his mind to Bush in a White House race ultimately decided by the Supreme Court despite winning the popular vote in 2000, Um, ever hear of the Electoral College? Didnât think so.
cited the recent report by the Sept. 11 commission saying no credible evidence existed of a link between the Iraqi leader and bin Laden. Um, thatâs not the exact wording, Al. Is this a cynical mantra designed to diffuse them from each other in the publicâs mind?
He said Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) continue to argue for a connection between bin Ladenâs al Qaeda network and the deposed Iraqi regime because it supports their push for war in Iraq and justifies "some of the new power theyâve picked up from the Congress and the courts" since the 2001 hijack attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. As a result, President Bush "is now intentionally misleading the American people. Indeed, Bushâs consistent and careful artifice is itself evidence that he knew full well that he was telling an artful and important lie -- visibly circumnavigating the truth over and over again as if he had practiced how to avoid encountering the truth." As Al Gore continues to avoid encountering another truth - YOU LOST THE ELECTION! GET OVER IT!!
In an hour-long address punctuated by polite laughter and applause, Gore also accused the Bush administration of working closely "with a network of ârapid responseâ digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for âundermining support for our troops."â Kind of like what youâre doing now, Al? Jeez, just get it over with and compare Bush to Hitler so we can invoke Godwinâs Law.
#1
Howlin' Al at it again. I'm glad we didn't vote for him here in Tennessee. I do widh I could debate him on this issue, though.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/24/2004 16:38 Comments ||
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#2
Al forgot to take his anti-seetheure medication again, I see.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/24/2004 17:18 Comments ||
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#3
deacon it is really funny that his home state went for bush...is the state gov and legislator dem?
Posted by: Dan ||
06/24/2004 17:19 Comments ||
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#4
Kind of off subject but just barely. I went to a Union meeting today and they announced that the Union was endorsing John Friggin Kerry (big surprise). But what did surprise me is that NOBODY applauded the endorsement, not even a polite golf clap! The Local President was really stunned by the LACK of enthusiasm showed by the rank and file and quickly changed the subject. From the article that Gore did not get a standing âOâ for his effort. I may be just dreaming but could people finally realizing just how serious the situation is and that these people have NOTHING but rhetoric to offer?
#5
cyber sarge - from your lips to the voters' ears!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 18:01 Comments ||
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#6
Dan: Governer Don Sundquist is a Republican. Here in Tennessee the big cities, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga,, and Knoxville, are overwelmingly Democrat but the rural areas are Republican. I think this has to do with the Democrat's penchant for "giveaways" and "entitlements" and the recipients of those programs are mainly located in the cities. There are large populations of welfare recipients in these cities and also Knoxville and Nashville have large universities which tend to be more liberal democrat. I don't have any facts to back this up, this is only from my own observations and talking with people. The rural people tend to be more self sufficient and don't want to be indebted to the government.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/24/2004 18:59 Comments ||
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#7
"Digital Brown Shirts"?
Looks like Al's invention is even turning against him.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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SH,
You should have given us some of the details:
More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."
At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people. . . . Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."
Details of the ceremony -- first reported by Salon.com writer John Gorenfeld -- have prompted several lawmakers to say they were misled or duped by organizers. Their complaints prompted a Moon-affiliated Web site to remove a video of the "Crown of Peace" ceremony two days ago, but other Web sites have preserved details and photos.
Somebody needs to be removed from office. The constitution says we don't do that crown thing.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
06/24/2004 0:23 Comments ||
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#4
I know, let's play pin the tail on the donkey, Democratic donkey, that is.
Posted by: Capt America ||
06/24/2004 2:19 Comments ||
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...What I'm seeing in these articles about this mess is that one reason we're not seeing much is although it was a 'bipartisan' crowd, it was overwhelmingly Donk.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/24/2004 3:17 Comments ||
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Brother, this goes to show how thick Democrats are. Rev. Moon owns the Washington Times, an anti-Democrat newspaper. Duh...what's the point of carrying pillows for a political adversary?
Posted by: rex ||
06/24/2004 3:29 Comments ||
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#7
Napoleon, Moon, Napoleon, Moon... I can never keep them straight!
Posted by: Dar ||
06/24/2004 9:07 Comments ||
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actualy on em hippie blogs ima seeing alot of peples are get pissed off at this. it not going over well with them either.
Fox news reports: The incendiary reverend has conducted mass weddings for his followers, claimed that the Jews started the Holocaust by betraying Jesus Christ and was sentenced to 18 months in jail in the 1980s for tax fraud.
#21
apparently your local black Democratic congressman has the schedule and tix
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 23:12 Comments ||
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Frank - "I thought they were residuals from the Dead concert last nite!"
I wanted to follow-up to see if you had a good time, heh, stupid question, huh? Um, just how many of your selves attended the event? Did you see each other's "trails" or other such visual phenomena? Is this the real secret behind the Lizardoid movement, hmmmm? Lol! :-)
The Senate passed a massive defense spending bill that, at $447 billion, still only covers a fraction of war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan...The bill, which now must be reconciled with a similar House bill passed a month ago, includes a military pay raise, an increase in the size of the Army and billions of dollars for weapons systems.
The measure includes $25 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Bush administration plans to submit a supplemental budget at the start of the next calendar year, after Novemberâs election, that is expected to seek at least an additional $25 billion for the two ongoing military campaigns.
Defying the White House and Pentagon, senators also included a provision to add 20,000 troops to an Army stretched thin by the war in Iraq, the global war on terror and other commitments around the world.
Lawmakers have for months heard complaints from families of service men and women who have served repeated deployments or been forced to remain on duty after their obligation has ended under a Pentagon device called "stop-loss."
The Senate bill would increase the Army by about 4 percent, to 502,400. The House version would add 30,000 Army soldiers and 9,000 Marines over three years.
a) Strange that the WH and the Pentagon would not want to increase troops. Why is that?
b) How will the military manage to attract 39,000 warm bodies to join the military in 3 short years?
Posted by: rex ||
06/24/2004 5:13:28 AM ||
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The Dems want a draft...It's going to backfire on them at election time.
#2
The Pentagon doesn't want to increase the size of the force because it wants the dollars that would go to pay for the extra troops to modernize equipment. The rationale is the same one used to justify BRAC (Base Realignment And Closure), the money saved is needed for new equipment and improved maintenance for what we already have.
#3
a) Strange that the WH and the Pentagon would not want to increase troops. Why is that?
Because of the money it takes to recruit, train and provide pay/benefits for a new soldier and their dependents (figure at least 2X that for an officer). It will take about 1-2 years to get them into the field and at least another year for them to be begin to be effective. This isn't even covering SpecOps, language, or intel specialists.
Meanwhile, money has to be found for equipment and facilities maintenance, research, new and replacement equipment, fuel, cost of operations, training, medical costs, paying for existing procurement programs and bases that Congress is loathe to give up on....
#4
I participated in the stand up of the last active division brought on line in the mid to late 80's, that being the 10th. It took two years of planning, building, training and organizing before we could field our first battalion task force in a worldwide deployment. You want to fill body bags, yep, you can do that in 90 days. You want effective soldiers in a cohesive unit that matches today efficient Army, then it'll take two years to build a new organization that can be sustained and supplied.
Posted by: Don ||
06/24/2004 23:21 Comments ||
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passed 97-0, as usual, Kerry was not there to vote, too busy out scouring money to do the job he was elected to do.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 23:31 Comments ||
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EFL
Some of Broward Countyâs top cops soon will hold court on expensive leather couches, gazing out windows framed in wood shutters and taking breaks in private bathrooms decorated in marble and glass. Itâs all part of a $1.82 million expansion and makeover of Broward Sheriffâs Office administration offices that features oak wainscoting, private baths, mini-kitchens, marble and granite countertops and windowsills. Itâs all being paid for, perfectly legally, with federal tax dollars from a program that is directed at helping state and local governments shoulder the costs of housing illegal immigrants in their jails. -snip- Next time make sure that your sherrif is a legal resident. Otherwise his office furniture could get pretty expensive for the rest of us.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 12:47:44 AM ||
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Soooooooooo glad I moved from Ft Lauderdale. Of course, now I am in the DC area.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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Ng! Pittsburg is a town in Kansas! The city in western Pennsylvania is called Pittsburgh. This isn't Arabic, the "h" isn't an optional spelling!
Next thing you know, they'll be pronouncing "North Versailles" as if it were an estate in France or something...
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
06/24/2004 8:36 Comments ||
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Pittsburgh was officially "Pittsburg" for a few years back around 1910, but that didn't last too long. You can see "Pittsburg" on a few old docs, maps, and even buildings, like inside the dome of the old PRR Union Station which now houses office space and apartments.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/24/2004 9:11 Comments ||
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Btw, link ain't working.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/24/2004 9:11 Comments ||
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Mitch - Versailles, Ohio is pronounced just as it's spelled. Russia, a town not far down the road is "Rooshie". Don't get me started on Louisville or Lima. If you're up for the challange give Tuscarawas a try. Two bucks says you break a lip ;)
#5
Doc: There's a lot of that going around. I live up the valley from Lemont, a little artist-colony town which I always was pronounced the French way: "le Mont". I'm told, on the contrary, that you can tell who's a local by whether or not they pronounce it properly, as "Leemont". There's a town to the west of here called "Doo Boise", and you'd damn well better not call it "Du Bwa" like the French would have it.
This is what you get when you use a lot of high-tone French place-names in a state settled primarily by the Scotch-Irish, Germans, and Poles.
Dar: Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911 holds that "Pittsburgh" is the official charter & seal spelling, but that the US Geographic Board insisted on using the variant spelling, and it was "in more general use". Oh! Hey! Here it is - the US Geographic Board tried to strip the "h" from all "-burgh" placenames in 1890, but Pittsburghers generally ignored the Board, and officially insisted on "Pittsburgh" in 1911.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
06/24/2004 15:50 Comments ||
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Pittsburg also in No Cal, east of San Fran
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2004 16:09 Comments ||
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Mitch, sorry about the spelling error. Being from Akron, I was taught to spell Pittsburgh with an "sh." Go Turkey Joe. :-)
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 17:10 Comments ||
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Facing broad opposition increased by the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal, the United States yesterday dropped its attempt to renew a U.N. exemption shielding American forces from international prosecution for war crimes. The U.S. move raised concern that Washington might carry out its threat to shut down or stop participating in U.N.-authorized peacekeeping operations. Richard Boucher, a spokesman for the State Department, told reporters that every request would be examined "in terms of voting for a peacekeeping mission" and providing Americans to participate. A key factor will be "what the risk might be of prosecution by a court to which we're not party," he said.
"Kosovo? Nope, can't help there. Kids are on vacation that month, nope, nope, too busy. Liberia? Gee, sorry, gotta return books to the library, sorry."
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/24/2004 12:37:26 AM ||
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The 1/3 of the peacekeeping tab the US picks up? Nope sorry. Gotta use it to defend our own borders.
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2004 1:49 Comments ||
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At the risk of having things thrown at me, this is what I believe the Leadership was thinking:
1. Thanks to the Six Morons at Abu Ghraib, the resolution had zero chance of passing.
2. There was also the same chance of us actually handing over anybody charged - after all, before that bloated bureaucratic bungle got its head out and actually charged somebody, we'd have them out of there and in our own jail.
3. The chances of anyone actually being charged before the ICC is +/-.000000001 %. After all, they just got around to filing their first charges....against somebody they don't have and are unlikely to ever get. The ICC is no more than an exercise in political masturbation so the EU can claim they are morally superior to us.
4. The Donks can scream all they want about us 'defying' the world...they ain't going to commit political suicide either by handing someone over.
5. ..And last - if they somehow got their hands on a US serviceman and tried him, that would do more to end the UN than all the scandals combined.
I really think this was a no harm-no foul.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/24/2004 3:26 Comments ||
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..One other thing - in a Bush second term, start looking for the Administration to request Congressional approval for peacekeeping ops, be it money, logistical support, or men. Gonna be a lot tougher to do when you have to put your name on it, Congressman...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/24/2004 3:29 Comments ||
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You have more confidence in Bush to stand up to the UN to protect GI's rights than I do. The very fact that the US did not kick that jackass Kofi Annan out of Manhattan 3 years ago tells me that Bush is more of a Kumbaya guy than any of you want to admit. It kills me to hear Bush crowing about sending AIDS $ to Vietnam [ say what?] on the very same day that the jackals at the UN are yipping at the heels of our underpaid brave boys in uniform. His behavior today is disappointing to say the least. If I were in the military, I would submit my resignation immediately. Let's see how far the WH will go in democracizing the peace loving Muslim nations around the world if it has to rely on Kofi and the boys to do the grunt woork. George Bush, pay attention to who your friends are and treat them well. Who cares if the Vietnamese are dying of AIDS? It's their promiscuous life style that causes AIDS, it's not our problem.
Posted by: rex ||
06/24/2004 3:44 Comments ||
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#5
I'm with Ed on the idea that the US will wisely remove itself from UN Peacekeeping missions. This is not to say that the US won't be sending troops here or there, hither and thro, but it will be under a US Mandate, with total US command. The only way our troops should go anywhere.
I will however disagree with Mike on Abu Ghraib. It was bad stuff and it extends far beyond the six soldiers so far charged. It was behavior unworthy of American Soldiers, and the people most dismayed by these revelations were the under appreciated troops in the field. They now had another problem, as if they already didn't have too many already. (I'm sorry, but Abu Ghraib is something we will probably never agree on. It has nothing to do with the press, and in the end, this will cause the death of more US soldiers. It was worse than stupid, it was unforgivable. Bush should of gathered the entire 507th (?) MP Company on the lawn of the White House and disbanded the unit forever, and then on nationwide TV shamed the perps publicly and had them marched off to the brig for trial).
In which case there is no need for an ICC. My only concern is the well being of US troops. I am much more fearful of Bush and the ICC than Kerry, (Kerry knows he would be toast), but Bush, like Nixon going to China, could acquiesce and get away with it.
Again, I must disagree with Mike. I think that the ICC for show would love to charge, even if they couldn't try, US soldiers. However, I am not anti-UN in general...but there must be clear and straight talk.
Regarding the ICC, the US needs to say...Never, Never, Never...and then withold all US funding to the UN. Very simple. Very clean. With apologizes, of course.
#6
I will however disagree with Mike on Abu Ghraib. It was bad stuff and it extends far beyond the six soldiers so far charged. It was behavior unworthy of American Soldiers, and the people most dismayed by these revelations were the under appreciated troops in the field. They now had another problem, as if they already didn't have too many already. (I'm sorry, but Abu Ghraib is something we will probably never agree on. It has nothing to do with the press, and in the end, this will cause the death of more US soldiers. It was worse than stupid, it was unforgivable. Bush should of gathered the entire 507th (?) MP Company on the lawn of the White House and disbanded the unit forever, and then on nationwide TV shamed the perps publicly and had them marched off to the brig for trial).
Let me get this straight: we have been at war with folks who think nothing of launching suicide attacks on anyone and everyone, soldier or not, but you think Abu Ghraib will hand our enemies all the execuse they need to... kill people?
Sounds silly, doesn't it?
Abu Ghraib was far simpler an event than it is being made out to be. I have enunciated the simple facts on this board and elsewhere repeatedly. Tear away all the hand wringing and all the recriminations, that is all that it left.
You said It was bad stuff and it extends far beyond the six soldiers so far charged. It was behavior unworthy of American Soldiers, and the people most dismayed by these revelations were the under appreciated troops in the field.
So you would punished the other 120 in the MP company or so soldiers because of the six who were out of control?
Let us admit that those who did break rules are being appropriately dealt with. Abu Ghraib is handled. Once word of it got out, the entire matter was handled quickly, efficaciously and in a military manner. We can ask no more than that in a war zone.
The only reason any military unit is punitively disbanded in a time of war is because command of the unit lost their unit flag, or for cowardice. The MP company doesn't meet this standard.
And I disagree that Abu Ghraib was a stain on anyone. Only six soldiers participated in this for God's sakes. The only thing Abu Ghraib has done so far is to show our own press' loyalties lie: and it isn't with the troops.
#7
The chances of anyone actually being charged before the ICC is +/-.000000001 %.
What planet you linin' on? Or did you divide wrong?
I'd estimate the odds of having at least one US soldier (probably a field-grade officer) charged with "war crimes" at the ICC at around 100%, within 2 years. The odds of having the lucky winner grabbed off the streets of Brussels: 50%.
#8
mojo - I'd estimate the odds of having at least one US soldier (probably a field-grade officer) charged with "war crimes" at the ICC at around 100%, within 2 years.
Remember : one Euro neo-Commie in Belgium tried to charge GWB with a war crime.
It had better be a verified Mai-Lai type incident that the soldier was involved in, because if it isn't . . .
It's gonna take the entire NY police force to guard UN HQ 'cause there's enough folks within commute distance to storm the place with thousands - - its gonna get ugly.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - The International Criminal Court is launching an investigation of war crimes committed during conflicts in Congo - the court's first formal case since its creation two years ago, the chief prosecutor said Wednesday.
Excellent -- this'll keep them out of our hair for years!
The court, which has been monitoring events in Congo for nearly a year, would investigate accusations of atrocities among warring tribes and insurgents from neighboring Rwanda, including allegations of summary executions, cannibalism and torture. Rwanda and Congo fought a 1998-2002 war in Congo that embroiled the armies of at least four other African nations, split Africa's third-largest nation, and killed an estimated 3.3 million people, most through famine and disease. In April, Congo became the second country to give jurisdiction to the court to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on its territory. The first was Uganda, but no formal investigation has begun there.
'cause Carla del Ponte was too busy to come by.
The announcement did not say when prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo would send investigators to the central African nation. "It is potentially a huge milestone in attempting to end the impunity that has been so rampant in the Congo for so long," said Richard Dicker, head of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. One challenge for the court will be providing security for investigators and potential witnesses.
Send in the mighty Uruguayans!
Moreno-Ocampo said investigations would focus on the northeastern Ituri region, where the worst atrocities have been reported, worsened by struggles to control the region's mineral wealth. In 2003, a French-led force went to the area after reports of massacres. In a written assessment last year, Moreno-Ocampo pointed to "summary executions, systematic torture, unlawful arrests and detention of individuals." Crimes targeting women were common, and children as young as 7 were forced to fight.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/24/2004 12:33:01 AM ||
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The court, which has been monitoring events in Congo for nearly a year, would investigate accusations of atrocities among warring tribes and insurgents from neighboring Rwanda, including allegations of summary executions, cannibalism and torture.
So what are these ICC dumbasses going to do, serve Congolese tribe members with a summons??
EFL from RFE/RL. Me thinks he wasted his breath. I expect that he neither convinced his Italian audience nor will he gain coverage in the Reuters or theAP for his message. Maybe he was just hoping for a spot on Hannity and Colmes.
DISSIDENT IRANIAN CLERIC DEPLORES RULING SYSTEM
Ayatollah Hussein Ali-Montazeri-Najafabadi offered a harsh criticism of Iranâs theocratic system in an interview that appeared in the 22 June issue of Italyâs "Liberal Risk." Vilayat-i Faqih (Guardianship of the Supreme Jurisconsult), he said, "respects neither Islamic law nor grassroots wisdom." Montazeri said that according to the Prophet Muhammadâs sayings, the clergy rules over kings and kings rule over the people, but the current Iranian regime has cancelled this. Moreover, the Marja-yi Taqlid (source of emulation) no longer exists. "The current regime views all those who obey in a positive light. Anyone who does not obey is relegated to the sidelines of society." Montazeri said that the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, let other religious authorities answer questions, but this situation no longer holds true. Montazeri added, "The Iranian parliament does not represent the will of the people today." He said the Iranian people want Islam, but not the type that is being forced on them. BS
...AND SAYS RELATIONS WITH U.S. SHOULD BE NORMALIZED
Montazeri spoke about Iran-U.S. relations in his interview with "Liberal Risk." "Relations with the United States should return to normal, on condition that the United States does not threaten to colonize us." He noted that young Iranians want good relations with the United States. Montazeri added that the 1979-81 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was a mistake and said that the current Iranian government must provide compensation.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 4:08:50 AM ||
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"..on condition that the United States does not threaten to colonize us."
And just what does this guy mean by "colonize"?
The fact that this guy is even saying this sort of thing indicates that he's still in some sort of dream state. (no doubt inspired by his Iranian peers)
#2
The United States of America has NEVER colonized anyone. All we have ever asked for is a place to bury our dead, who lost their lives defending freedom in whatever country. Who else, besides Americans, have ever been so generous??
Posted by: Halfass Pete ||
06/24/2004 16:23 Comments ||
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Excellent! Good to see our public school system isn't producing all leftie-thinking robots (yet)! Keep it up, Bryan!
Posted by: Dar ||
06/24/2004 11:30 Comments ||
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#4
As with the other thread..you just can't say enough about these kids. Their actions may carry consequences but they are not deterred from following their conscience and it is often done with class and humor. A big tip o the hat to Protest Warrior for their support of this young man.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
06/24/2004 13:17 Comments ||
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This is a very good read. Nice to see some of our younger men challange the leftest establishment. And he did answered their yells and threats with calm and reason.
This also shows the typical leftish response to challenge - name calling (including 'racist' and 'redneck' - a racist term in itself) and threats of violence. Odd how the left can call you things like 'nazi' and 'racist' and 'warmonger' while employing itself, nazi and racist tactics, and threats of violence.
#6
I didn't read a "like" or "ya know" in the whole piece. This kid knows how to express his ideas in a logical, well-organized, and articulate manner.
Good for you, kiddo! You are speeding away from the pack of mediocity at lightning speed.
EFL from RFE/RL Thousands of homeless children are living on the streets of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. They are begging, stealing, selling, or using drugs, rooting through garbage for food, and sleeping on the pavement. Some of them have been living this way for just days, but others have been on the street for more than a year since leaving state-run orphanages after the collapse of the regime. RFE/RL correspondent Valentinas Mite is in Baghdad and reports the problem is causing mounting concern among new Iraqi NGOs. -snip- who is there to help? will it be the UN, the French, or the WWP?
Asmaa Rasheed, a Sunni Arab, is a program manager for the Kurdistan Save the Children Fund (KSC), an NGO that has been operating in northern Iraq since 1991. The organization opened a Baghdad branch a year ago, just after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It opened a shelter for street children in the Iraqi capital in November. -snip-The KSC, a Muslim charity that probably doesnât funnel cash to AQ or Hezzbolah.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 3:55:13 AM ||
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That's how it's supposed to work.
Shhhh - don't tell the Western NGOs; they'll do everything they can to screw it up. Wouldn't want an NGO doing the right thing and showing up the rest.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 11:53 Comments ||
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One such article is "The Life Cycle of Crime Guns: A Description Based on Guns Recovered From Young People in California," in the June 2004 issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The authors grasp for relevance by comparing crime guns to bioterrorist weapons like anthrax. For years medical researchers have tried to push the notion that guns are germs to be eradicated. This model is cute for propaganda purposes â kill the germs, ban the guns: eliminate health risks. But reputable scientists always dismissed this view as a political tactic with no scientific basis. The message of this article was its title, apparently intended to associate the words "crime guns" with "young people" in the minds of readers.
Another slam at kids and guns appeared in the April 2004 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. "Gun Threats Against and Self-Defense Gun Use by California Adolescents" studied gun use among a group of Californians aged 12 to 17. Only 4 percent of them reported ever having been threatened with a gun. The earthshaking scientific contribution this article makes is that these 4 percent were boys who tended to threaten others and whose parents didnât know where they were after school. Did we need a yearlong Harvard study to tell us that? And what about the 96 percent who never had been threatened with a gun? Can we learn anything from good kids who stay out of trouble? The authors apparently think not.
The title of a February 2004 article from the same journal amazingly asks if gun possession and teenage conduct disorder (P.C.-speak for juvenile delinquency) are a "highly combustible combination." Itâs a safe bet that law-enforcement agencies havenât rushed to put this article on their required reading lists.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 1:09:03 AM ||
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Personally, I think that any debate about gun control should include the statistic that bladed weapons *kill* FOUR TIMES as many people in the US as do guns.
So then, what exactly is the opposition to guns? Is it they make a loud noise; or is it that they are effective equalizers?
And that is the gist of the argument: are they opposed to guns because they want to deny the common man the ability to resist the powerful and the violent?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 00:54 ||
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Heard this on BBC's hourly news (carried by my local classical station - ugh) a couple of days ago. They mentioned that vaccinations had been stopped in northern Nigeria over "concerns about the safety of the vaccine." Period. No mention of the moonbat mullahs behind it. Zip. Zero. Nada.
#2
PBMcL: And this surprised you? It's not called the Baghdad Broadcasting Company for nothing.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. If people get polio, it's Allah's will. Just ask the mullahs/imams/whatever. Just remember, everything is Allah's will.
Except non-moslem Western success. And Jewish success/existence. And moslem (especially Arab) failures. But other than that, everything is Allah's will.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2004 22:18 Comments ||
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Diggs at 4 Mile Creek takes a look at the kind of blinkered Arabist foreign service mentality that produces drivel like Imperial Hubris. If youâre not already reading 4 Mile Creek on a daily basis, shame on you.
New Day, New Book, Same Old Bull
Some anonymous CIA official writes a book claiming that the President has fought two "half-wars" and has played into the hands of the enemy. Iâd like to see what Mullah Mohammad Omar (former spiritual leader of the Taliban, now cave dweller) or Usama Bin Laden (former leader of al Queda, now a pile of bleached bones) or Saddam Hussein (former dictator of Iraq, later a sub-level septic tank dweller, now a POW) or even al Sadr (former spiritual leader, now completely disgraced leader of a beaten group of thugs) would have to say about that.
In fact, what Iâd really like to see prior to reading his book is two things. One, this guyâs curriculum vitae credentials. All ivory tower academia, Iâll bet. Or academia and State Department. Prior to my first assignment in the middle east, I was sent to some military finishing school at Wright-Patterson AFB to learn how not to insult my arab friends (didnât take, by the way). Some of our instructors were university professors who had traveled extensively in the middle east. But only among other university professors. So of course they knew squat. One female professor told us about how lucky and empowered the women are under islam. She said "I feel very safe as a woman in Saudi Arabia." To which one of the military students shouted out, "Yeah, but you have an exit visa!" Chuckles all around, except the professor of course. Another professor tried to explain to us, all military students, how Israel had been the aggressor in all the later wars they had fought, because of the fact that Israel had moved first with offensive operations. We all pshawed, and shook our heads in disbelief. That kind of idea may go over well with the coeds he taught regularly, but for a miltary officer who understands tactics, itâs ridiculous. A country the size of Israel cannot allow other nations to build up superior forces on itâs borders and then wait for them to attack. Their very survival depended on one of two things. Either peace, which the arabs would not give them, or taking the fight to the enemy. Israel had to attack first, or they would have lost in a day or two. But this professor wanted us to believe the arab side of the story; that Israel was the aggressor because they had attacked first, ignoring the fact that the buildup of forces on Israelâs border was a sign of aggression and done by the arabs first. I lost all hope that any professor or state department official (and now some CIA officials) could ever understand the arabs if all they ever contacted were their arab counterparts in the professions.
Second thing Iâd like to see of this guyâs (or girlâs) before I read his book is his written, or orally stated, positions on the middle east prior to 9-11. There are professional apologists in both the CIA and State Department whose whole governmental career has been designed around never taking a firm stand. That way, they can never be wrong. They are useless, but if being useful was a requirement to work for the US government, then D.C. would quickly become a ghost town. This guy is probably retiring, and is willing to cash in on his current position to rake in a bit of cash from the rabid Bushaters who will buy this book, as they did Clarkeâs book, just in the hope that thereâs a new reason to hate Bush more. Itâs easy to take a strong position on the way out, eh Clarke? (Well maybe not that easy, he ended up looking like a moron.) What is a lot harder to do, is to take a strong position when your job is on the line. Iâd be willing to bet the firmest stand this guy has ever taken in his life is this book. Written anonymously.
Why not, no one has forced him to take a stand before, why take one now?
As anyone in contract law will tell you, if you ainât willing to sign your name to it, itâs worthless.
Posted by: Zhang Fei ||
06/24/2004 5:16:10 AM ||
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#1
They did a piece on this guys book on ABC news last night. He'd already been removed from the anti-terrorism section before he wrote the book, guess he was a little bitter.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/24/2004 8:56 Comments ||
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#2
I think Diggs at 4 Mile Creek missed the point during his classes. He and his pals are completely right about Islam, but the point of the classes was "to learn how not to insult my arab friends" and the arab friends believe the professors bullshit version of events. Reality is not a requirement for the Arabic worldview.
#3
Air Force sensitivity classes are the stuff of legend. As a young captain in the 70's, I was directed to attend two, the most memorable of which taught sensitivity towards drug users and homosexuals (amongst other oppressed groups). The high point (no pun intended) was when the students (officers and senior NCOs) were directed to sit in a circle around a burning pellet of marijuana so that we would be able to recognize the aroma. The low point came after the mandated indoctrination to homosexualtity and how we, as supervisors, needed to modify the workplace to make it more friendly to such people. It was a touch and go whether or not the senior master sergeants taking the course would die of apoplexy before they lost control and beat the insructor to a pulp. All in all, a serious waste of time and taxpayer money.
#4
Fortunately, this stagnant, Fifth Column CIA is being smacked around by a former CIA operator (or official?), the House Intelligence Committee chairman ...
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
06/24/2004 21:21 Comments ||
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#1
Incredible posting/photos. The commie teacher who hates Jews should be fired first off, and second, investigated by the feds for any real ties to the enemy in case she is making 'donations' to the 'cause'.
I feel sorry for the students in general, but proud of one fine sudent, Mr.Bryan Henderson, who acomplished a great investigative job uncovering the 'teacher' mole.
Keep up the fine work, Bryan!
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
06/24/2004 2:17 Comments ||
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#2
The left wing teacher bears a striking resemblance to the ugly mutt jihadist lawyer, Lynn Stewart. Oops, I'm thinking evil thoughts again...so, no problemo, I will immediately start saying my 5 Hail Mary's penance.
Posted by: rex ||
06/24/2004 2:51 Comments ||
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#3
I think Saul Alinsky would be pleased. From what I have read in Rules for Radicals, I think he died quite frustrated with the incompetence and stupidity of the leftists he was trying to teach to be social organizers. This kid will be making trouble for moronic idealogues for many years to come. They will learn to run and hide as an alternative to evisceration at his hands.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/24/2004 4:31 Comments ||
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#11
Protest Warrior are good folks. The local chapter here will be out in force for a Support The Troops rally on 7/3 in addtion to countering the moonbats that will be protesting right across the street. I'll be helping with a booth where folks can write thank you / support letters to the troops. But the real good news is the number of young people who are getting involved and standing up for themselves. It DOES take courage as particularly with the students they do face reprisal at the hands of the Kool-Aid drinker indoctrinationists.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
06/24/2004 12:34 Comments ||
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#13
I enjoyed this story when I read it yesterday (linked by Vodkapundit). However, the "Debriefed" in the headline makes it sound like some kid got pantsed in the hallway at school.
Posted by: Tibor ||
06/24/2004 13:07 Comments ||
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#14
It took a lot of courage to do what this kid did, and I applaud -no, I GIVE HIM A STANDING OVATION- for holding his ground against those creepy, leftist, anti-Establishment ex-hippie burnouts who become fascists every time someone dares to disagree with their venomous agenda! While many kids allow cynicism to defeat them, this kid recognized that he had the strength to fight opponents whom he correctly sized up as quite vulnerable. Speaking of "sized up", if you go to his website you will see his fat, butch-appearing, ugly, 300 lb, 12-sandwich-eating -I mean, "earthy" teacher pointing her fat finger at him and failing in her attempt to intimidate him. The National Reeducation Association needs to see just how easily their "sisters" can be discredited by someone who isn't even old enough to go to college yet! Could someone have his teacher give me a call? I think I can get her some Jenny Craig coupons at discount!
Posted by: Rob Adcox ||
07/12/2004 21:32 Comments ||
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PARIS (Hollywood Reporter) - When "Fahrenheit 9/11" was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, another documentary about George W. Bush was waiting in the wings in case Michael Mooreâs film wasnât ready in time. "The organizers were keen to include our film in the Official Selection but felt it was politically incorrect to have two anti-Bush documentaries at Cannes," says Jean-Francois Lepetit, whose Flach Film produced "Le Monde Selon Bush" (The World According to Bush).
Directed by seasoned documentary maker William Karel, the 90-minute film could scarcely be more different to Mooreâs Palme dâOr winner. Karelâs style is sober, eschewing humor and stunts in favor of heavyweight interviews.
"Le Monde" is a scathing attack on Bushâs first 1,000 days in power, and chronicles the first familyâs alleged links with the oil and arms industries. Originally made for French public broadcaster France 2, the documentary premiered on television last Friday, but in an unusual move opened theatrically in France on Wednesday. "We wanted to give the film a wider audience," Lepetit explains. I didnât bother to watch, since it is based on books by Laurent which are scathing attacks on Bush, and I knew from the start it was going to be more of an accusation that a documentary
Inspired by journalist-author Eric Laurentâs two books on the Bush administration, "Le Monde" is the fifth film by Karel examining American political power. The Tunisian-born Swiss director insists he "adores" America, but chose to make the film because "itâs a true story stranger than fiction." Spending more than eight months battling "the veil of secrecy" surrounding those in office, Karel managed 26 detailed interviews, with personalities including Secretary of State Colin Powell, neo-conservative Richard Perle, former CIA directors James Woosley and David Kay, writer Norman Mailer, academics and journalists.
"I was amazed how willing some people were to be interviewed, straight after they had left government and were no longer bound by secrecy laws," Karel says. Editing interviews by Bush supporters to make them say what he wants and higlighting the effect by mixing them with Bushaters is the trick. Karel is very good, he made a mockumentary on the Us never having landed on the moon and Stanley Kubrick having filmed the phony landing. It was completely convincing, along with his trademarks interviews by celebrities.
The EUR500,000 ($605,000) film covers many topics, including how the "Christian right Israeli lobby" has influenced U.S. policy in the Middle East and how the Sept. 11 attack gave a "clueless" Bush his raison dâetre -- the "crusade" against terrorism, the "false pretext" under which the second war on Iraq was waged, and the "big lie" linking Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. The film illustrates how George H.W. Bush, first as vice president and then as president from 1988 to 1992, armed and financed Saddam Hussein. The Bush familyâs alleged ties to the Bin Laden clan and Saudi Arabia are also examined. As per Laurentâs books
Karel insists his film is not a French diatribe against America but rather a gathering of eyewitness accounts from Americans who lived through the times. "To think President Richard Nixon was impeached because of three tapes!" Karel exclaims. He hopes the film will be seen in the United States. "None of my films have made it to the U.S., but Iâm hopeful that this one will," he says. It is also being released on DVD, to get a maximum exposure. I do not have a real interest in Bush, except that lotsa people I dispise are amd at him, but Iâm always surprized by the level of hatred he generates. Seems the anti-Bush media machine is in full overmode
Posted by: Anonymous5089 ||
06/24/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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#1
Are they going to do this for every Republican president, or is Bush just the unlucky victim in all of this? Geeez.
Posted by: Rafael ||
06/24/2004 1:06 Comments ||
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#2
All in good time, Rafael.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/24/2004 9:05 Comments ||
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#3
I got this from Rason. It.s pretty interesting
By Alexander Bolton
Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, âFahrenheit 9/11,â on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel.
At the same time, a Republican-allied 527 soft-money group is preparing to file a complaint against Mooreâs film with the FEC for violating campaign-finance law.
In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FECâs agenda for todayâs meeting, the agencyâs general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.
The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election.
The proscription is broadly defined. Section 100.29 of the federal election regulations defines restricted corporate-funded ads as those that identify a candidate by his âname, nickname, photograph or drawingâ or make it âotherwise apparent through an unambiguous reference.â
Should the six members of the FEC vote to approve the counselâs opinion, it could put a serious crimp on Mooreâs promotion efforts. The flavor of the movie was encapsulated by a recent review in The Boston Globe as âthe case against George W. Bush, a fat compendium of previously reported crimes, errors, sins, and grievances delivered in the directorâs patented tone of vaudevillian social outrage.â
The FEC ruling may also affect promotion of a slew of other upcoming political documentaries and films, such as âUncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,â which opens in August, âThe Corporation,â about democratic institutions being subsumed by the corporate agenda, or âSilver City,â a recently finished film by John Sayles that criticizes the Bush administration.
Another film, âThe Hunting of the President,â which investigates whether Bill Clinton was the victim of a vast conspiracy, could be subject to regulations if it mentions Bush or members of Congress in its ads.
Since the FEC considers the Republican presidential convention scheduled to begin Aug. 30 a national political primary in which Bush is a candidate, Moore and other politically oriented filmmakers could not air any ad mentioning Bush after July 30.
That could make advertising for the film after July difficult since it is all about the Bush administration and what Moore regards as its mishandling of the war on terrorism and the decision to invade Iraq.
After the convention, ads for political films that mention Bush or any other federal candidate would be subject to the restrictions on all corporate communications within 60 days of the Nov. 2 general election.
âFahrenheit 9/11â opens nationally tomorrow.
The filmâs distributor, Lions Gate Films, an incorporated organization, would almost certainly pay for its broadcast promotions.
David Bossie, the president of Citizens United, plans to allege that âFahrenheit 9/11â violates federal election law, arguing that âMoore has publicly indicated his goal is to impact this election season.â
Bossie had planned to file a complaint with the FEC yesterday but postponed action because his lawyers want to review it at the last minute, said Summer Stitz, a spokeswoman for Bossieâs group.
âI donât think much of Michael Moore or his two-hour political advertisement â thatâs all it is,â Bossie said. âHe uses all of these words to make it look like he makes documentaries, but itâs the furthest thing from the truth. Documentaries tend to be fact-based.â
Sarah Greenberg, a spokeswoman for Lions Gate Films who is serving as Mooreâs spokeswoman, did not return a call for comment.
The FEC counselâs draft advisory opinion responded to a request for guidance from David Hardy, a documentary film producer with the Bill of Rights Educational Foundation. Hardy asked whether he could air broadcast ads that refer to congressional officeholders who appear in his documentary.
At issue in the FECâs opinion is whether documentary films qualify for a âmedia exemption,â which allows members of the press to discuss political candidates freely in the days before an election.
In its opinion, the general counsel wrote, âIn McConnell vs. FEC ⦠(2003) the [Supreme] Court described the media exemption as ânarrowâ and drew a distinction between âcorporations that are part of the media industryâ as opposed to âother corporations that are not involved in the regular business of imparting news to the public.ââ
âThe radio and television commercials that you describe in your request would be electioneering communications,â the counsel concluded. âThe proposed commercials would refer to at least one presidential candidate. ⦠They would also be publicly distributed because you intend to pay a radio station and perhaps a television station to air or broadcast your commercials. ⦠Finally, they would reach 50,000 people within 30 days of a national nominating convention and or the general election.â
However, one commissioner, Michael Toner, has a different view of what restrictions may be placed on political films.
âI think thereâs evidence that when Congress created the press exemption they intended for it to cover media in all its forms,â said Toner. âIf a documentary produced by an independent company would be subject to restriction or, equally important, if efforts to promote the documentary would be subject to restriction, I think that is very problematic.â
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/24/2004 10:00 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
