Saturday, November 27, 2004

National Treasure Cool movie

Some of my thoughts:

#1) No actual masonic ritual was harmed in the making of this film. While that's good and all ;-) something could have been slipped under there for personal amusementory factor
#2)The treasure finders fee-Largely unessecary, and i'd guess a extra feel good ad on
#3) The Decleration of independence wasn't signed on July 4th.. and iirc the decleration on display wasn't the original
#4)The archivist chick was an ultra hottie
#5) John Voight ends up having two kids who are treasure hunters.. he really needs to work on his parenting skills.

the audience cheered the following phrase "Don't Panic"

so m0re good movies are coming.. as is the pain of "the pacifier"

National Treasure is a nice action film, that i could take 8 years old kids to

this better not delay civ IV

Struggling publisher Infogrames nets $22.3 million by selling its

powerhouse strategy franchise to an as-yet-unidentified company.

In Paris this morning, Infogrames, owner of Atari and publisher of the
top-selling RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and just-released Sid Meier's
Pirates!, released the earnings report for the first half of its 2005
financial year, which ended September 30.

However, tucked into the report was a bombshell: the company has sold
off the rights to Civilization, one of the most successful and
critically acclaimed strategy series of all time. Although Activision
briefly held the license in 1999, releasing the widely derided
Civilization: Call to Power, Infogrames subsidiary Atari had been
publishing the series--and its numerous expansion packs--since 1996's
Civilization II, and it had announced that Civilzation IV was in
development last year.
.....
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/11/24/news_6113971.html


=====

Go Vote

Blackfive, the paratrooper of love, is working on setting up a grassroots effort across the blogsphere to get Pat Tillman elected SI sportsman of the year folks, lets show the kiddies what being a sports hero really means go vote

When rednecks go wrong

No Religious-Themed Decorations Allowed At Old Court House
By S. L. FRISBIE, IV, Publisher

There will be no religious-themed Christmas decorations at the old Polk
County court house this year.

Not Christian.

Not Jewish.

Not Muslim.

Not Wiccan.

Not Snake-Worshipers.

The newly-reconstituted county commission, with two new members taking
part in their first meeting, responded with silence when Commissioner
Randy Wilkinson moved to allow "a holiday display" in which "we can
recognize faiths."

In October, Wilkinson proposed a Christmas display in which symbols of
Christianity, Judaism and Islam would be included. That brought a sharp
rejoinder from then-Commissioner Don Gifford, who objected to display of
Muslim symbols.

"When people blow up our buildings, I'm not putting those symbols up
there," Gifford said at the commission's Oct. 6 meeting.

Rather than decide the question at that meeting, commissioners chose to
wait until the Nov. 16 meeting, at which Commissioners Sam Johnson and
Bob English were sworn in, taking the places of Neil Combee and Gifford.

At Tuesday's meeting, Abdurrahim Al-Khatib of Winter Haven, a chaplain
at the Polk Correctional Institution, said he was disturbed by Gifford's
remarks.

"I'm not a terrorist; I did not blow up a building," he said.

"If we allow one display," Commission Chm. Jack Myers suggested, the
county would have to allow "everything from witchcraft to
snake-worshippers." He said the county should not allow any decorations
with a religious theme.

"People should celebrate in their own way with their family and
friends," he added.

Wilkinson then offered his motion to allow a multi-faith display. After
a few seconds of silence, Myers ruled it dead for lack of a second.

(Haptanghaiti: Song 2.1 = Yasna 36.1)

Around You, within this fire enclosure,
First of all, we walk,
Wise Lord, again and again,
Through the Most Incremental Mentality.
Reverence to it, which You appoint for reverence.
(Haptanghaiti: Song 2.1 = Yasna 36.1)

Friday, November 26, 2004

it came from the email box

Brethren,

I just received a call from my DDGM who told me that he was in receipt of a Petition for the Degrees from his daughter's boyfriend who decided to make the move after seeing "National Treasure"...

Larry Thompson
Master
Blackmer Lodge No. 127
Mount Gilead, NC

what is he thinking?

RIP vin diesel's career

Sweet Christmas

With the Holidays approaching, and Christo- phobia running wild I thing I want to take some time and establish why I am not a Jesus person, and my problem with a number of Christians I have actually talked to about this. I am going to be dismissive about the Christian coalition and their ilk as a matter of political reality, and I will be attacking folks who are paranoid about them.

Most of these folks who are paranoid about it, have some deep seated issue with the church, or their parents. My mom and her mothers restrictive following of the church of Christ ( people who kicked pat boone out for gawd sakes). And anyone who has been in neopagan/ wiccan circles know these people all to well… but for me to say “these people hate republicans, because they have parent issues” my credibility is suspect unless I lay out my full Monty on Christianity myself.

The problems I have are theological, and not problems I intend to bore you with nitpicks from the bible. If I see people replying then I will toss out the verses at you but I am arguing here more on the presentation here. The problem is an issue of salvation really for me.

The problem I have with the theology is a logical conflict. Jesus is the son of ( and Is) the Abrahamic deity. If Jesus and his theology conflict with that earlier theology, then Either the Jewish story is untrue ( and by extension Jesus is untrue because the Jewish story is required for Jesus to work) or Jesus himself is untrue.

Under the Hebrew’s system Non Jews were as beloved as Jews to their creator, but the Jews were assigned a special task in his grand design. Hashem laid out 7 rules for the gentile and 650+ for the Jew that was to last for an eternity. But if faith in Christ (the John Gospel doctrine) is the key to salvation then we gots our self a problem that needs to get fixed.

Now, modern Christianity could be playing a fast one here but if that’s a case then modern Christianity is basing its faith on a shakedown. But my own studies have shown me little down that Christianity sells a “sole salvation” theology. But, the problems are more then just how one gets to the best afterlife possible. Cause when god made the rules for the Gentiles (the lines of NOAH) and the Jews (Abraham, and later all the multitudes at Sinai) he laid those out to everyone. With Jesus… Jesus didn’t make it clear to everyone (as with the prior to examples) “I am the lord thy god”. So in addition to the inconsistent performance from the man who is deity to the Christians, we have god changing the rules ( but only telling a small group) that he said were eternal. (yes I know Jesus said I came not to end the law but to fulfill it, so let me ask you a question. If you were to fulfill the law of speed limits, would that mean no one has to worry about the speeding tickets? The laws are ya know, the rules. One person can’t just come down and say “screw it I’m changing the rules). So if he could change the rules as Christians are want to proclaim, and if he is without time ( as the Christians also teach) then god lied about his laws being eternal.

But I know what your thinking “mistranslation” but by that same token we then have to say “So, your telling me the Hebrews were right until they disagree with you…. That’s a little bit convenient don’t you think?” We then get into the fact of how Jewish prophecy works. If under Jewish prophecy a person was supposed to do X, if they fail to do 100% of X then the prophecy was not met in any way shape or form. There is no do over (i.e. the second coming). Jesus not only failed to do the job of the Messiah (I don’t see any world peace and utopia do you?) he also was not of a messianic lineage.

So, the founding salvation theology was unnecessary, Jesus wasn’t the heroic role he was and is claimed by his backers (if you go with the Jewish side of the story) so what does that leave us with? A guy whom wasn’t the messiah preaching a lot of stuff some of which is good and some of which is bad.

I find moral guidance from things like Yoda but I don’t prostrate myself to him… for worship Jesus needed to work a bit harder to get it done, and he just didn’t.

Why the Holidays Suck:

Ya know, the thing I hate most about holidays is sharing them with family. And by family I don’t mean; your brothers, your sisters, or your parents. No by family I mean the people who are connected to you by much weaker ties; cousins, aunts and uncles, and people who are like family but are not an actual blood relation. These people are what make the holidays a little more horrid. They aren’t relatives that your required to be nice to, nor are they people you would normally choose to hang around with.

This thanksgiving it was my mother’s friend Randy who took me to that special place. While Randy is a good enough guy to whom I have received a variety of medicinal cares from ( and will be receiving some acupuncture this weekend I think.. or from his new mentor/guru Dr. Lee). Randy has two things that ReALLY annoy me.

#1) The Chris Rock Principle: “Have some new $h! * happen to you. Randy tells several stories, like what happened when a bunch of Samoan heathens solidly duped the Mormon Church into taking them into Utah. Fun story, I find it amusing... but lets tell another one.

And

#2) He is a moonbat. I mean he is a few nuts shy of being a granola man, by the events of chance he didn’t end up being a surfer or a ski head, randy is one of those people who is totally out there. He has embraced this whole “wisdom of the east yet strangely hippie lifestyle” and he has of course embraced the entire volume of whack job hippie conspiracy lingo. I at one time would engage him in it, but on holidays I find such a task kinda wrong.

But as I hear him spout off his nuttery I wonder if his being a foster kid, then later adopted by a Mormon family lead by a prominent Mormon out in Utah/child molester out in Utah might have had something to do with it. The fact he later ended up with his mother who was only slightly more stable could be another thing. He married this part Persian and part French woman who leaves him with her kids every six weeks while she spends a few weeks in Paris. Randy drifts to nursing jobs in other parts of the country and lives out in the woods on his “vacation”. His poor kids in addition to enduring this have also had to spend a year in France, where upon their return they had to suck up a lot of remediation (but remember folks the French have a better school system then we do.. right)

I hear him talk about how horrible the French Soviet Socialist Republic was, then hear him advocate socialism which he will admit doesn’t work

I spent a decent click of time avoiding his attempts to use the Meme of “The religious right is taking over the country” and how “religious extremists are trying to take over” and other things the moonbat worldview fears here, but tolerates everywhere else. I could have attacked this point in a mean way, or in a nice way but I choose to let him foam in his moonbattery while I ate turkey and the stuffing.


Thursday, November 25, 2004

What i am thankful for

#1) they haven't fired me for being less then a 100% ( or 75%) employee at work
#2) that school is going well
#3) that my life in general is ticking along as i plan it

Song 12:3 (Yasna 47:3)

Of this mind You are THE promoting
Which to him the joy-bringing world fashioned.
Then for him for the settlement You gave peace, serenity
Because he, O Mazda, consulted good mind.

(literal)

Translated Text:

You are the promoter of this mentality
which created the joy-bringing world for him,
and have granted peace and serenity for his settlement,
because, Wise One, he had consulted good mind.
(Song 12:3)

the Turkey day of splat

first a pie did a suicide dive to the kitchen floor, then later when i went to pack my leftover carepackage for work i got the full force of the gravy with a side of Sweet potatoe on my feet

yarg~!

Turkey Day progress note

Stuffing Experiment..>Completed
Oven Preheating experiment....> Completed
Giblit gravy starting....> started
Sticking the bird in the oven.....> completed

kinda biased, but fun





You Are a "Don't Tread On Me" Libertarian



You distrust the government, are fiercely independent, and don't belong in either party.

Religion and politics should never mix, in your opinion... and you feel opressed by both.

You don't want the government to cramp your self made style. Or anyone else's for that matter.

You're proud to say that you're pro-choice on absolutely everything!




mmmmmmmmmm Stuffing





You Are the Stuffing




You're complicated and complex, yet all your pieces fit together.
People miss you if you're gone - but they're not sure why.




and Stuffing is my favorite food to

Changing of faith, and thankfullness to society

I discovered the other day that I am not a constitutional absolutist, though I am still absolute in my feeling that we should try to stand to our constitution and abide by its highest standards…. I realize that we cannot take these principles as absolutes. I was listening to the Savage Nation, as I am often known to do on my way home from school and listening to a man say that you can say and promote anything from the pulpit. That we cannot judge right or wrong; the call to kill women and children, calling people of other faith’s the decedents of pigs and monkeys, and calling to war with their societies. I realized I do not believe that those things are right, or even protected under our constitution.

When the same men who fund terrorists, and a “civil rights group” protesting the “terrorist” stereotype also are the ones who fund the mosque we find ourselves with a 5th (typed on my IBM selectric) column, or an enemy within. The State needs to exist for all that happy capitalism we all enjoy, as well as the sense of the freedom of the individual and the sense of self-actualization that makes it all work. Now am I saying we need censors in the church, monitoring it for its danger to the state. No, no I don’t, but I do think when people try to use their freedom of religion to try to destroy the social harmony of the state (Murder, bombings, acts of terrorism, etc.) Then I think the state has not only the right, but also the duty, to bring down the full right of its fury and vengeance upon the people doing it.

But the barbarians using our state’s love of faith to destroy our very social fabric are not the only problems we have that have brought me to this realization. The nutty school out in the nutty state of “Kalifornia” (as it’s “President” would say) has also taken the first amendment to far into the land of utter stupidity. The Declaration of Independence is a unique historical document (preceded only by like minded documents in the Dutch republic, and in Scotland which was the model for the declaration). As the US Declaration of Independence became the model for the Declaration of the rights of man in France, and many other societies down the road it has a great historical impact that is important. Just as we cannot declare the writings of Bill Shakespeare unconstitutional neither can we declare the US Declaration of independence unconstitutional in a context of a class on American history. And even the issues of god in it are against the social mores as interpreted by some, that sense of conflict becomes even more valid fodder for our school children.

Queen Elizabeth I forbade the topic of Politics and Religion from our theater, and while she had a valid political reason for it at the time the ethic that has now extended into every society sewn with a seed from her has a big flaw. People hate that which they do not understand. This has been the case going back into time before we have recorded history. So for politics and religion to go outside the realm of hate it must go into the realm of knowledge. And the first step to get it there is people must accept, not tolerate, but accept the fact that people will disagree with them. That not only will people disagree with them on these fundamental ideas, but also they can disagree with them and still be good people that they very often like. When a society cannot talk about such things that are fundamental to the human condition as politics and faith we loose our ability to be a single community and become divided. “Fear leads to hate, hatred leads to suffering, suffering leads to the dark side” as yoda would say.

Faith and spirit are things I understand, but religion itself is a thing that is often an anathema to me. Religion is a thing built by men, a thing that is often as a bride is to her husband. While the western world has divorced its governance from its religion, religion as events have shown us (the Episcopal Church anointing a gay bishop, the Presbyterian Church denouncing Israel, the Christian Coalition, etc.) Religion finds other ways to husband itself with the political events of our times. It is in this sense the words of Marx about “Opiate of the masses” ring most true. The Crusades were never a war for religion in a Macro sense. They had no such urge when a friendlier Islamic overlord allowed Christian pilgrims to travel, and little such urges existed after that point. There were the economic needs of the trade routes, the 4th and 5th sons who did not have sufficient stock of heiresses to supply them. But for any great and important political undertaking a good narrative was necessary and vital.

Because of these political realities the holy books of the holy faiths by and large (with no exceptions in the cases of the major religions of the day) created religious justifications for all manner of human barbarity. They created all manner of justification for things that ensured positive public health in their day, but they have fewer relevancies today. Most reasonable people have recognized these facts for what they are and lived a modern life. People at a level almost unseen to their own minds accept this fact “religion is a product of men, not the perfection of god.” While religion often tries to get it right and be a flawed temple, shining and seeming as if it was forged from a single stone by no hand less then the grand architect himself, reasonable people accept that’s not how its going to work out.

The quest for the spirit is if you accept the Christian imagery like those Shepard’s who saw the star in the sky who followed it to the manger in Bethlehem. Like Zarathusa spithuman and Moses alone in the wilderness being called to by god. Like Muhammad receiving the words of the Angel Jibril. That is the nature of the Divine calling man to worship, but man is not a solitary creature and man craves communion. And so instead of following that star or talking to that burning bush we see men going to houses of wood and stone and joining with others in the flawed vessel of religion.

We need as people a sense that not only is there a divine master plan; we also need the certainty that it is the truth. Joining with others, their words buttressing our own gives us that sense of security we crave. Walking in the footsteps of giant men such as Moses and the apostles, and the saints, and the prophets, and the martyrs allows us to walk comfortably along a sure and certain path. We crave the purity, but we hunger for the security. For some of us our quest for truth makes us uncomfortable in those campfires of others, it did me for the longest time. While I cannot say Jesus is lord while in and amongst the Christians, I can honor the spirit of hope in the Easter rituals at their churches, when I am drug to them. And as I feel the warmth of community I often wonder if the sacrifice of the purity of my soul would be worth it for the comforts of their tents in the wilderness. I however cannot do so; I must follow my star, I must listen to my burning bush, I must be attentive to the angel at my ear, for it is who I am. I have no desire to build a temple to what I follow, because I know as a matter of faith from inner reflection and struggle that is not what the divine wants for himself, but what he understands we as people need.

I who am most an outsider however find that people cannot talk about flaws in their religion because their faith is an absolute nay is the foundation of their sense of the divine. If we were to find a crypt that would have the body of a Hebrew born some two thousand years ago who was their god, Christianity would endure it. But yet people cannot accept the flaws in their faith as bugs in the system, but they can accept it in their computer system. Just as a perfect OS is impossible so to is a perfect faith.

Some Jewish voices would say that Christ was not the messiah because even the New Testament shows he failed to meet even the most basic of requirements. To many Christian friends, words of such evidence cannot be spoken. The more polite ones will listen and allow the conversation to drop. While the body of Christ cannot kill the Christian faith, a flaw in the body of the bible would kill it to many Christians. They would feel all that they value and gain from it would be untrue, would be a lie, and worse.

Even those who do not fear that the non-Christian is excised from the Bar of heaven fears this upon their very soul, and makes such talk taboo. This we must break from our minds and our hearts. Just because you hear words that differ, even disagree with your own that does not make your heart false. But to my mind, if your faith falls to a few words to a few flaws crafted by the hand of man, then to my mind it was never really true.

Yet greater is the peril in ideas of politics, greater is the intransigence of people over ideas that stand on less then the divine standard of certainty. Some people argue, and posses data that says that cutting taxes grows the economy. Other people have other data and say it destroys it. But politics is not about codifying the certain, but about codifying the will of a society. The will of god is an unknown thing that we grope nakedly in the dark for but the will of man can by a variety of methods and methodologies become easily known to us. Yet we find ourselves fighting even more vehemently over a matter more uncertain.
Just as with religion there are issues of a theology that must be tackled. I believe in a limited and constitutionally constructed government, as the best way to ensure a lack of tyranny and allow people the freedom to grow as their talent permits. People all over this country (and the world) hold a rather different view on the fundamental nature of government. I also accept that some times the government has to go outside the box of the constitution to ensure the system remains in place. I know that when the reservation is left, it is hard to return the government to it. But that does not in any way diminish the need to do so from time to time. Amongst those who believe in a limited government this idea is even disagreed with. Those who think as I do when laws come to the public forum, and candidates run we make our case for the direction of our democracy we want to go within that framework. Others with wildly differing views may join us or oppose us, and in the end one side holds the collective will of the people and a choice is made.
I do not hold these people are malicious for their views, I only hold tactics (such as fraudulent registration, intimidation, etc) as a sign of malice in their political views. Those who try to cheat and impugn the system of our democracy, just as those who use the pulpit to tear it down must be faced with our scorn and contempt as a people. Those who claim the candidate is illegitimate if they can find any small iota of a flaw in the process are demagogues of the first order. If in the case of the Ukraine there is evidence of massive fraud, then by all means we shall march to the barricades, but if in the case such as Washington state a close election is recounted all more recounts will do is serve to make the system less comforting, less stable, and will serve to benefit no one but the demagogue who launches this fight. In 2000 we saw in Florida Fraud, this fraud was not monopolized by any one side; in counts and recounts things were tweaked, massive double voters, military ballots thrown out, minority party ballots being thrown out illegally, and many other problems. But the rules of the system were followed, and despite the flaws under the rules a candidate won. The courts tried to nullify the rules under a most dangerous precedent and both the precedent and the rules were affirmed in an unpleasant manner. Had the sins of old, with dogs and hoses and arrests occurred we might have something but that was not how things ended up going down.
The Ballot box and the Pulpit are fundamental to what we are as Americans, and are fundamental to the first amendment of our constitution. But for both things to be fundamental we need a society. So in this sense I comfort myself with my growing away further from the constitutionalism and libertarianism of my youth as my ideas are entering more and more the mainstream of American political thought.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

a moment of zen

When Moses conversed with God, he asked, "Lord, where shall I seek You?"

God answered, "Among the brokenhearted."

Moses continued, "But, Lord, no heart could be more despairing than mine."

And God replied, "Then I am where you are."


-Abu’l-Fayd al-Misri, “The Kashf al-Mahjub”

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Haptanghaiti: Song 1.6 = Yasna 35.6

The more a man or a woman
Knows the truth, the more it is good.
He/she should zealously practice it
And preach it to others,
So that they practice it accordingly.
(Haptanghaiti: Song 1.6 = Yasna 35.6)

A good idea on Slate.....~!

*The New 'New Property':* In /Slate/'s just concluded welfare dialogue , there was one obvious solution to the dilemma of hard-working single mothers who don't make more than $18,000 a year: Give them training so they can earn more. I had assumed, without really knowing, that individual job training "accounts" must be part of President Bush's high-concept "ownership society." They certainly/ should /be. The government spends billions on job training, after all. Some programs work. Some don't. Why not trust the workers themselves to figure out which ones will actually get them higher-paying jobs--as long as they know that if they waste their training money it's gone, just as if they'd spent their own funds? ....

Is that what Bush has in mind, though? The /NYT/'s David Brooks certainly advertised job training as part of the Ownership Society in a column last December , and the Department of Labor is billing "reemployment accounts" for the workers who /lose/ their jobs as an O.S. initiative . But President Bush's speech announcing his big job training initiative last spring talked mainly about *funneling money to governors and community colleges--i.e. government*--not to the workers themselves. And while Bush's GOP convention acceptance speech two months ago mentioned both "training" and the "ownership society" within a few sentences of each other, Bush was unclear on the connection. All this suggests to me that the community colleges, governors, and existing training providers are effectively resisting giving control of job training funds to the individual workers--after all, the workers might decide to spend the money elsewhere. ...


this is the kind of big government idea i like... especially when we can phase out some big government to do it.

And lets hope this exposes the crooks in the P.A

It is up to the French and Palestinian authorities to contact (Mrs Arafat) on this issue, which they have not done so far, so that a dignified solution can be worked out calmly which respects the law and history," the lawyers added.

Should the records be handed over to a third party without Suha Arafat's consent, hospital authorities would have to bear the consequences, they warned.

"Under the law there is no eligible party other than Mrs Arafat as the surviving wife of President Arafat and the legal representative of her only child Zahwa."


Lets see if the french courts can kick up some transperency

Frenchies apperently shooting at innocent civilians

Footage here

Warning takes a long time to load

Warning II: this footage jumps around alot but if its on LGF thats something i will put on his rep if he is wrong....

I think the scene shows a disregard they would never let the US soldiers get away with

SOme one wrote about why i am no longer in the Libertarian party

Questions of foreign policy have always been difficult for those of us who espouse a philosophy of limited government domestically, and they have only grown more difficult, though at the same time more critical, since September 11, 2001.



Unfortunately, instead of reassessing their minimalist instincts when it comes to intervention abroad, many in the institutional centers of the libertarian movement -- principally at the Cato Institute and, to a lesser extent, at Reason magazine -- have remained mired in a pre-9/11 mindset.



Well this is it in a nutshell, i remember alot of people talking about how we deserved it... about how we caused it. Allot of folks opposed standing up to the terrorists....

and i just said "Screw you guys, i'm goin home"

though i hadn't exactlly been a republican before.. but you get the idea

More inexplicable stupidity

By Aaron Klein
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Israel has been grooming convicted killer Marwan Barghouti to become the next Palestinian Authority leader, holding a series of clandestine meetings with him, incarcerated Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who media reports claim may be part of a prisoner exchange involving Barghouti, told WorldNetDaily.

Israeli officials said last week they may release several jailed Palestinians as a "goodwill gesture" toward the future PA leadership. There have been a few reports that Barghouti, who was recently sentenced in Israel to five life terms for planning gun ambushes and a suicide bombing, may be considered for release, but Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is said to have rejected the idea. Reports list Barghouti as the widely favored candidate for PA president.


Not only does Pollard ( according to this article) reject that... i seriously have to wonder what the guy who started the Al-Asqa Mayters can do other then his track record of killing lots and lots of jews

Strange Charges from seamingly credible people

Paris - Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo said on Saturday he believed reports were true that French troops had decapitated local demonstrators during anti-French riots in the West African state this month.


Isn't it great how a legitimately elected President is now a "Leader"

"I wasn't in the hospitals myself but everyone who went there said so: you may take it that the evidence provided by several people is true," he responded online from Abidjan to a website discussion in Paris.

Asked by AFP, French army information services in Paris would say only: "We have no comment to make on this kind of statement."

Cardinal Bernard Agre, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abidjan, first made the decapitation charge, saying November 11 on Radio Vatican: "I have just come from the hospitals. It's unbearable, these young people decapitated by the French army."


So if this is true we need to send in peace keepers to protect from the peace keepers

I was in Model UN during my Sophmore year in high school and we were told tales of French peace keepers working as mercenaries for the Muslims by a UN aid worker who was talking to us

maybe this is whats happening here

Car shopping for my mom today

Mom and I are going to be shopping for a car for her today.. in the land of Norte Port... hit by Hurricane Charley so i can see what it looks like on my drive today which will be cool.

But, i really don't go there alot so i think i may not get a good sense of how much damage has ben fixed

National Treasure-Next weekend I'll review

And you will get.. a Freemasony styled review to

George W Bush fightclub

The first rule of George W Bush fight club is you do not talk about fight club

"Chilean security tried to stop the president's Secret Service from accompanying him," said White House deputy press secretary Claire Buchan. "He told them they were with him and the issue was resolved."

good deal George

thaks to Drudge for this link

buggy

My Ecosystem Details

Haptanghaiti: Song 1.5 = Yasna 35.5

Power be to the good most-powerful.
This is what we offer,
We announce, we invoke
For the Wise Lord, and Best Righteousness
(Haptanghaiti: Song 1.5 = Yasna 35.5)

Saturday, November 20, 2004

My Madness has a method

am i like some talk radio host only without the audio... or the audience

yeah, thats blogging in a nut shell. These are some strange alien form of free rants, free rants that aren't designed ( most of the time) to convince.

Cause the things that get my blood warmed up and warm my desires to get out the hot metal are the things in our society that are dumb and will continue to happen because of the nature of people out there to not be actors in their own lives when it comes to politics.

and when it comes to culture


heck, when it comes to their whole life

The John Kerry in 08 campaign begins

John Kerry realized Senators Make laws... amazing

Yeah and oh John, having people endorsing something that they haven't seen.. thats a clearly intelligent idea

take a moment to sign bellow

It'd be a great help

Don't you hate it

When Spammers try to claim they are from Paypall.. and don't even use a Paypal website in their link


could they at least try to make it possible for me to be defrauded

But thankfully John Kerry may kill his 2008 chances

So.. he has to prove that everything John O'neil said was a lie

even the things that he later admited to on the campaign trail

good call Kitty Litter land

God Bless Tee Shirt Hell.com

"Screw Hippies"

P-Diddy is a moron anyway

Remember they don't want us there

"A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night. "I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months," he said, trembling."


but the London press ( as Iraqpundit points out) gets what the Old York times misses

Anyway, the Times of London has given us a reality check, a glimpse of Fallujah under the rule of these cunning and resolute heroes: "Mutilated bodies dumped on Fallujah's bombed out streets today painted a harrowing picture of eight months of rebel rule." The paper notes that Islamist thugs warned "women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets."


It folks, is a reason that should have been a more superior justification then the bogus WMD case

Casting 08 Part II-Let the circular firing Squad commence

the Democratic Party has to recover from 2000.. and they have to recover from it in the next 2 years. However that in my mind being unlikely here is my cast of people going for the democratic nomination

Hillary "Cuomo in 1992" Clinton:

Hillary hasn't done a thing in her political life on her own. When her name has been on the line she has been overly cautious and conservative in how she plays the political game. I think Hillary is going to play a waiting game, to tease the base that only she can come and save them... the problem is i think that will be exactlly the wrong thing to do. I think she will lose unless she comes out first and swinging hard. but i don't think she will.... i think she has been a smoke filled room kinda gal and when it comes to being the "face" of the Operation she simply will blow it.

Al "I won two times ago" Gore:

Al has gotten the Moonbats to like him, and so long as the Prince of Moonbats Howard Dean doesn't run Al will be their guy i think. Then once he has his sheeple in place he will magickally transform again into Al Gore 1988..... which didn't work good in 1988

John " I was in Vietnam" Kerry:

Heck, whats 4 million votes right? So John in a Stevensonian Like move started his campaign for 2008 by conceeding the race in 2004.... i don't think the Modern Democratic party can accept that kinda "Loser made good" story. Now... had John lost came back and done something with his life other then Run for President... i think we might have something here.

John " Whiplash" Edwards:

I wonder.. just how many more times can we hear about two Americas... or will John get a new campaign speech. Hopefully if John Edwards tries this he will have a guy sit him down and tell him what he did wrong... but John can you name the last failed VP canidate to become President? that would be FDR.. and he was New York governor before that.

the Governor's taking back the party posse:

I think much as the GOP in the lead-up to 2000 had a big class of Governor's that were making their name and a new way of doing buisness known to get the GOP back into gear we may see that in the Democratic party.

so i'll tick off the Class.... and We'll figure out who will be in it running for President later ( maybe more then one)

"Fast Eddie" Rendell from Pennsylvania
Bill "thank god people are still stealing from Los Alamos after i left" Richardson
and Mark "soon to be Unemployed" Warner

two men from Red states who are very popular, one from a growing demographic group, and one from a fulcrum swing state. these three will either be Kingmakers or King

Russ Feingold

the Party has gone Left, and Russ may try to argue "an Honest Progressive will win while a dishonest one will lose".. Russ may have a point

and the two stealthy 800 pound gorilla's to Hillary's blatant 800 pound gorilla

Howard Dean:

He can overcome the scream in 4 years... or he may decided to help get the party back with some W's and let some one else drop the ball in 2008. We'll know in Febuary which option he picks.

Evan Bayh:

Boring, Midwestern, Moderate, and popular in one of the most republican states in the Nation.

So.. can a Clintonesque canidate beat a Clinton... stranger things have happened

Casting the gop primary in 2008

In the Role of "John Mccain 2000: Chuck Hagel.

the media loved John McCain ( and were his largest contributors), but he didn't have the kinda support he needed to run in 2000. Come 2008 that role will be filled by Chuck Hagel. as Chuck will be the "sensible" republican who tried to stop the madening rush to war.

In the Role of "Moonbeam" Brown 1992: John McCain

Jerry Brown was the Proto-Deaniac. but he wasn't going to win in 1992, his ideas were in advance of the base. the "To Old" and "to ahead of his time" role in 2008 will be played Masterfully by John McCain.

Bill "Heir Apperent" Frist:

Assuming the GOP events are as they are currently set, Dr. Frist is the inside man for being the offical administration legacy. Even his appointment in an almost parlimentary manner shows him to be a creature of George W. Bush

In the Role of John Edwards 2004: George Allen

He's hugely popular with the base, a solid southerner, and has religous-right credentials to help keep down anyone else. and as a former governor he has the administrative experience to highlight his senate time. I think he and frist will tussle, and we may see Senator Allen do alot better then the Heir apparent, but in the end he'll fall by the wayside.

"The Dark Horses" Condi Rice and Collin Powell

In another age the Secretary of State's office was a great jumping off point into the whitehouse..... this is not that age however. If a possible Cheney departure in 06 or 07 occurs this could allow either to fill in the "Heir" role for the president in a much more clean manner. Now we have rumors of Rice going to California to fight for a potential open senate seat ( less likely) and rumors of Powell V Clinton for the New York senate seat ( also less likely) but either's entry into the field would be a dark horse race. But with the change of American political Pardigm's maybe the Secretary of States office isn't a bad launching pad.

All things Moderately : Pataki and Owens

Governor Owens has had rumors of sexual indescresions hitting the table.. this may cancel out his chances (*unless the religous right is divided) george pataki is an east coast liberal in the republican party. For either man to win the fight has to be contensious and splitting many consituantcys along fault lines. this is not normal for the GOP, nor is it normal for regular gop politics.. but anything is possible.

Mitt "Sorry about Gay Marriage" Romney: a few things are on the table here, does he run for a second term in 06 ( or try to unseat ted). either of these options makes it harder for him to run for the whitehouse in 08. In a state that isn't solidly republican he'd have to much in the way of resources to spend. His chances are slim.. but he'll probably stay in till New Hampshire then back whomever is the winner.

The Religous firebringer: Lindsey Graham

Yes he is a religous conservative, but he will probably have some fight over that corner of the vote. and he hasn't really distinguished himself a great deal in the Senate. So he has 2 years to start getting attention to himself. Frankly he is less well known among the religous conservatives then George Allen.... a man with far less bonifides with them.



"The Nemisis" Rudy Guilianai:

This Canidacy will only take off if Hillary does as well as her billing is giving her. The Man Hillary is afraid to face, or the "2006" rematch paring will set the stage for this billing. But if Rudy wins the Senate seat in 2006 ( or the state house) this simply won't happen.

Bob Ehrlich-the giant killa-

He beat the Kennedy family machine, when it frankly didn't seem possible. If he wins re-election he can forge a moderate yet conservative case more on the "compassionate conservative" Line






Well.. I loose one degree of tinhatitude

Curse you history Channel

I was watching a special on the JFK Assasination and on the MLK Jr. Assasination and i have come up with a new life standard

Does the Preponderance of Evidence suggest current historical facts: yes

Is their a reasonable case for doubt: Yes

Does a reasonable alternative exist: No

In both assasination events the setting presented in the offical facts are difficult to buy into ( Everyone i know who used the Italian p.o.s rifle oswald used couldn't believe shots that rapid were possible.. james earl ray's circus like balancing)

at best these conflicts with the facts make a good challenge to the facts but do not present an alternative theory.

I do not belive the offical history of either event... but i know accept that i don't have a more likely theory

Alrighty i send my name into Wizbang's Blogger awards

Yeah, i am a rookie Blogger who sought to abuse the system's weak point that i could nominate myself....

Yeah I am so great i need to tell people ~!

So you know.. if you read my blog and ya know.. want to nominate me go here

And since i put my name in to the blog awards i shall now seek to put in refrences to porn, blowing stuff up, and whatever it takes to get ahead

lets hear it for intellectual integrity


Let the Hillary countdown continue

Breaking News from NewsMax.com

Hillary Friends: Presidential Bid Has Started

If Thursday's opening of Bill Clinton's presidential library had the feel of a campaign event, that's because that's just what it was. [Story continues below...]

So says Dick Morris, who writes in the New York Post this week, "Yesterday's events in Little Rock had less to do with a library retrospective of the Bill Clinton years than a campaign launch for the prospective presidency of Hillary Clinton."

Why, after all, says Morris, is Hillary doing the bulk of the interviews - when it's Bill's library?

"It's his library. But it's her candidacy," he explains. "So she did all the softball TV interviews, not him - reminding voters of her availability for 2008 while seeming to talk about the nineties."

Having Mrs. Clinton's presidntial bid kick off in the heartland is a smart move, Morris said.

The Little Rock locale "relaunches Hillary as a red state kind of girl. Needing to live down her recent New York pedigree, Mrs. Clinton gets to renew her identification with Arkansas so she can avoid being labeled a bicoastal liberal."

Another advantage: The Clintons can use the library to cover campaign expenses until they're ready to make a formal announcement.

"Hillary now has all the staffing she needs for a White House run," Morris says. "Funded with donations from Democratic Clinton allies, the library is really a support network for Hillary's candidacy."

Raising money for the library instead of a political campaign has another advantage. Notes Morris:

"Give money directly to a president, and it's a bribe. Contribute to a campaign, a party or a 527 Committee, and the use of the cash is severely restricted by law."

But donations to a presidential library can be used in any way the Library Board allows.

Ponder the possibilities:

Denise Rich, Vera Wang, James Levin and other longtime Clinton donors are known to have ponied up as much as a million dollars apiece. But that doesn't come close to covering the Clinton campaign-library's $165 million price tag.

The Saudis kicked in somewhere between a million and $20 million, according to columnist Robert Novak.

Who else might have opened their wallets? James Riady? Charlie Trie? Chinese military intelligence?

The Clintons aren't saying, because, as Morris notes, they don't have to.

Please Note:

Remember folks.. John Kerry wanted to do this.

Another positive about the US election outcome

The agreement that France, Germany and Britain reached with Iran this week signals that the diplomatic option of dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program no longer exists. To understand why this is the case, we must look into the agreement and understand what is motivating the various parties to accede to its conditions.

The agreement stipulates that the European-3 will provide Iran with light water reactor fuel, enhanced trade relations and more nuclear reactors. In exchange, the Iranians agree that for the duration of the negotiations toward implementing the agreement – including a European push for Iranian ascension to the World Trade Organization – it will not develop centrifuges and will not enrich uranium. At the same time, the Europeans accepted Iran's claim that it has the legal right to complete the entire nuclear fuel cycle – meaning, it has the legal right to enrich uranium. Strangely, in a separate Iranian agreement with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, the Iranians announced that they would cease enriching uranium effective Monday, November 22, rather than immediately. This apparently annoyed the Europeans, but it wasn't a deal breaker.

The Weekly Standard this week explained that light water reactor fuel of the type that the Europeans have agreed to give Iran can be used to produce bomb material within nine weeks. Since the IAEA inspectors only visit Iran every three months, it would be a simple matter to divert enough light water fuel to produce a bomb between inspections. And so, the agreement itself holds the promise of direct European assistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program.

more things.. from the email box

[unitedinterfaithministers] Spiritual EMail Entering Arena Of Spam

Los Angeles Times (USA), Nov. 20, 2004
http://www.latimes.com
By Chris Gaither, Times Staff Writer

Sometimes that junk e-mail in your computer inbox isn't trying to sell you something — it's trying to save your soul.

Get ready for spiritual spam. An e-mail security company Friday reported an uptick in evangelical missives crusading across the Internet.

While religious spam makes up less than 2% of the billions of junk e-mail messages sent each day, its numbers have grown in recent weeks, according to MessageLabs, a New York-based anti-spam company.

"With the recent right-wing swing in elections, maybe they're trying to ride that wave," said Paul Wood, the firm's chief analyst.

Some messages are little more than daily Bible quotes, sometimes in Latin. Others exhort readers to convert or "foolish will be their destruction."

"Eternity is a really long time," says one such message. "If you or someone close to you has not accepted God please do so."

But not all are Gospel truth.

The messages, mostly aimed at Christians, are sometimes ruses for collecting e-mail addresses to flood with pitches for herbal supplements and other goods hawked online.

The senders enlist many tricks used by traditional spammers, such as falsifying reply addresses and routing the messages through unprotected computers. Clicking on links promising free Bibles may do nothing more than confirm a valid e-mail address.

Legitimate or not, Scripture-quoting spam can be no less irksome than the commercial kind.

For Mike Skallas, being stuck on an evangelical mailing list felt like purgatory. For nearly four months, the 29-year-old Chicago computer consultant got messages that were, he said, "very in-your-face. You know, sinners, hell and brimstone."

And attempts to have himself removed from the list failed.

Before he finally succeeded in blocking the e-mails, he said, the spammers' message was clear: "This is our dogma and our philosophy, and it's going to be in your inbox every Friday."

the concept of royalty slowly being redeemed

Harry a 'guinea pig'

He said officers' training academy Sandhurst was "very attractive" and younger brother Prince Harry was "going as a guinea pig first to see what happens".

If he serves, he said he would not expect to be "kept back for being precious".

"It's the most humiliating thing and it would be something I'd find very awkward to live with, being told I couldn't go out there when these guys have got to go out there."


good for you William

it came from the email box

[Crisis-in-Israel] What Arab and Leftist Liars are doing in the USA: Somerville, Mass Aldermen discuss Divesting from Israel
From: Lou
To:
Subject: What Arab and Leftist Liars are doing in the USA:
Somerville, Massachusetts Board of Aldermen discuss divesting from Israel bonds and companies which trade with Israel, Thomas Wallace of the ISM
Tension and apprehension filled the air in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts on the night of Monday November 8, 2004. The Somerville Board of Aldermen held a public meeting to consider a non-binding resolution to divest from Israel bonds and from companies who profit from the human rights abuses carried out by Israel against Palestinian people. If it passes, it will be the first such resolution in the world to be passed by a city. The Presbyterian Church and the National Lawyers Guild have already voted to divest and The Anglican Church is considering it.

Companies targeted include Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin Corporation. Caterpillar has been the target of numerous boycott campaigns since American Rachel Corrie was killed by a D-9 bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier. She was trying to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist from demolition at the time. Caterpillar's D-9 is used by Israel to destroy homes (sometimes with people still inside). It is also used to destroy land, uproot olive trees and build the so-called separation barrier/apartheid wall. When complete, the wall may appropriate up to 45% of the occupied West Bank, including much of its most arable land and water resources.

For the past 18 months, the Somerville Divestment Project (SPD) has been educating residents of Somerville, Massachusetts about the 37-year long Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem. SDP members have knocked on doors, stood outside mass transit stations, hosted film nights, and had individual meetings with many Aldermen in their homes. Through the process, they collected almost 1,200 signatures in support of the Socially Responsible Investment resolution.

Their hard work paid off last week when, on Tuesday, November 2, eight of eleven Aldermen cosponsored the resolution to divest. Though it almost passed, the resolution was sent to the Legislative committee for further discussion. Thus the hearing for Monday, Nov. 8 was set and the Aldermen invited the Israeli Consul General and representatives of the companies whose stock would be sold to present their case.

Hundreds filled the chamber Monday night as tension mounted. Supporters of the resolution held small signs that read "Somerville for Human Rights". There was extra security at city hall and absolutely no backpacks were allowed into the building. The Israeli Consulate arrived with a police detail for body guards.

The hearing began with a display of power by opponents of the resolution that was clearly designed to intimidate the Aldermen. The Israeli Consul General, the Mayor of Somerville and State Rep. Tim Twomey expressed their opposition before the actual hearing began. Following this display there was one hour for each side to present speakers at 2 minutes each.

Supporters of the resolution, excited by the possibilities raised by such a hearing, were cautiously optimistic about the prospects of success. Opponents were incensed that such a hearing was taking place at all, that the Aldermen would even consider divesting from Israel, and that it almost passed the week before.

The Israeli Consul General, Meir Shlomo, began by saying that he was "insulted" by this resolution. "Israel is a country that was based and founded on social justice and respect for human rights". He touted Israel's sterling record on civil liberties, which he boasted, extended to gay people. On several occasions he noted its freedom of the press. He talked about the Israeli Supreme Court, freedom of speech, and reiterated Israel's claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East. He did not talk about occupation, collective punishment, house demolition, land confiscation, settlement expansion or targeted assassinations, except to reassure the crowd that Israel has no Capitol punishment, even for the worst terrorists.

As far as I could ascertain, his case against the resolution was that Israel was being singled out unfairly. Others would assert that it was anti-Israel.

Next up was Somerville Mayor, Joseph A. Curtatone, who had not participated in any of the previous meetings on divestment and who had declined opportunities to meet with Somerville residents and members of SDP to discuss the resolution. Mayor Curtatone concluded that the issue was "too complex", that it "went back centuries" and that the aldermen should reject the resolution. With emotions already high, those opposing the resolution seemed exhilarated by the mayor's guarantee that he would veto the resolution if it passed. The mayor then left before hearing from supporters of the resolution.

As Somerville residents spoke one after the other Monday night, they made clear that they do not want their money used to oppress and violate the human rights of others. Neither do they want to support companies that profit from those violations.

State Representative Tim Twomey called for a more constructive resolution that endorses the roadmap. But he made no suggestion as to what the City of Somerville could do to push the roadmap forward. Ariel Sharon's senior advisor Dov Weissglass recently put to rest any notion that Israel had any intention of implementing the roadmap or creating a Palestinian State, which the roadmap calls for.

The aldermen have wrangled with these types of issues before when they passed resolutions against Burma, the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq However, never had they encountered such support for human rights violations. As one opponent of the resolution put it, "according to Donald Rumsfeld, the United States has determined that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to its war on terror, why should Israel be obliged to abide by them?"

More opposition to the resolution came from local labor leaders and from leaders of Brit Tzedek and Meretz USA. They claimed that the resolution would "demonize" Israel and once again we heard that Israel was being singled out unfairly. Steve Grossman, the local head of the Anti Defamation League (ADL) and former head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which is currently under investigation for passing American top secret material to Israel, claimed that the resolution was anti-Semitic. Others went so far as to call for an investigation of SDP members.

Marty Federman, a Jewish educator and former board member and chair of the Social Action Committee of Congregation B'nai Brith in Somerville, pointed out that tactics including accusations of anti-semitism and personal attacks are commonly used against anyone who dares to speak out against policies of the Israeli government. He strongly supported the resolution based on its merits.

Larry Miller is a former president of Congregation B'nai B'rith, a congregation well represented on both sides. The outpouring highlights the deep divisions created by the issue within the community.

Mr. Miller was embarrassed by accusations of "anti-Semitism" by some of his friends toward people who support divestment. He told them that they should be ashamed of themselves. With that, supporters erupted with applause while Dr. Annique Kaplan, another of the Jewish supporters of the resolution, shouted "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for saying that"!

As supporters of the resolution spoke, the actual issues surrounding it began to focus. First and foremost, the only foreign country that the City of Somerville is invested in is Israel. Thus, Israel had been "singled out" and given "special treatment" long ago. The purpose of this resolution, Liz Monin pointed out, was in fact to end the special treatment and demand that Somerville stop taking sides. She dispelled the claims that the resolution was "one-sided," by quoting from the language of the resolution which she said "seeks to stop taking sides and instead take a stand for human rights for all people".

The atmosphere in the room began to shift as proponents of the resolution and therefore of divestment, spoke eloquently about why they had become involved with the project. We began to hear about human rights violations and the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli army and government. They explained why they support socially responsible investing.

Somerville resident Kevin Qazilbash spoke about the effects of collective punishment on children, and he said that, as a father and a teacher, he could not look his students in the eyes if he was not doing everything he can to work to end the violence against innocent Palestinian civilians. Qazilbash also made the point that he is against the violence perpetrated by both sides of the conflict, as did many people from the other side.

Hilary Rantisi, a Palestinian American now living in Somerville with her American husband, spoke in a very personal way about her family and about her life. She acknowledged that as painful as her story sounded, that she has been privileged. Many more Palestinians have suffered much more than she. Many more continue to suffer. We met 15-year-old Khalil, who is an exchange student presently living outside of Boston. When home in Gaza City he cannot visit family members living just 18 miles away due to roadblocks and curfew. Several of his cousins have been killed over the past year and he was unable to attend their funerals. Just last week, his 16-year-old cousin, Hanin, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper while she played with her little brother inside her house. She died instantly.

Lana Habash, another Palestinian American and Somerville resident spoke of the racism upon which the occupation is based. Last summer she traveled to the West Bank as an International. She relayed her eyewitness account of an Israeli soldier who shot a young Palestinian woman in the stomach and genitals right in front of her. "If this is what they do in front of us, you can only imagine what they are doing when we're not looking," said Habash.

Almost all of the speakers supporting the resolution, both Jewish and gentile alike, had in fact, traveled to the West Bank and witnessed first hand the "horror" of occupation. The only opponent who had been to the Occupied Territories was a former Israeli soldier who claimed that any killings of children or civilians were "mistakes". Meir Schlomo had also acknowledged that "mistakes" are made by democracies but claimed Israel second to none in rectifying them. He did not cite any examples of such rectification.

Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli attorney who had come in support of the resolution, quickly dispelled that myth. He recounted that as a young Israeli soldier he was ordered to commit war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. "My platoon meted out collective punishment on whole Palestinian communities, arrested and detained Palestinians without charge, demolished their homes, shot live ammunition at unarmed civilians, killed women and children, and arbitrarily destroyed crops and property". Leibowitz now refuses to serve in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

As a former Israeli soldier and an Orthodox Jew, Leibowitz felt compelled to emphasize the urgent need for divestment. "The flow of money that facilitates Israeli war crimes and gross human rights violations which have been going on for nearly 40 years in the Occupied Palestinian Territories must be stopped". He, like many others, made the point that "only through divestment will Israel be forced to end the occupation and therefore achieve peace and security for both Israel and Palestine".

During the hearing last week, five of the aldermen thanked the SDP for bringing the plight of the Palestinian people to their attention. They had known little about the issue. Many of the people in the room on Monday had probably never listened to such impassioned and honest descriptions of the West Bank and Gaza, or heard an honest explanation of why divestment is important.

When I got up to speak, I addressed the question of why the aldermen had known so little about the issue. I explained how the media works in the US on this issue, that after 22 years of badgering by CAMERA and now "Honest Reporting" as well, the US media is afraid to report on anything Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza. Just last week, international observers watched as CNN filmed an Israeli soldier shoot a Palestinian child who was throwing rocks. CNN refused to air the footage or even talk about it. I also told the crowd that "because of this experience you no longer have the luxury of ignorance. Now that you know what is being done with your money, you have a responsibility to stop it, to approve the resolution and support responsible investing".

As if to underscore my point on media bias, the Boston Globe ran a story Tuesday, November 9, entitled "Proposal to Divest Israel Funds Sparks Outrage". Roughly 80% of this story was on the opposition to the resolution. The author, Benjamin Geden, does not even appear to have read the resolution.

The vote has been put off until Dec.9 , 2004. No doubt, attempts to influence the Aldermen by both sides of the issue will continue. Regardless of the outcome, people had a real opportunity to hear each other, not a common occurrence on this issue. Nancy Murray of Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights saw this night as a watershed in the struggle for peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis. Let's hope so.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Wallace is the former Media Coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement, and the Executive Director of MidEast Focus, a communications awareness project. Contributions can be made to Somerville Divestment Project, PO Box 441259, Somerville, MA 02144, USA, or visit our website at www.divestmentproject.org and click the 'Contributions' button.

remember.. copetence is not nessecary but sexual harrasment is bad

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The U.N. discovers the cause of anti-Semitism: Jews.

BY ANNE BAYEFSKY
Thursday, November 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
Yesterday the House International Relations Committee revealed that money
from the United Nations Oil for Food program, which was supposed to provide
humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, helped pay the families of
Palestinian suicide bombers. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The U.N. has
a problem with anti-Semitism: It doesn't know what it is.
In order to figure it out, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights and Unesco invited a group of experts to Barcelona last week.
Their mission: to provide the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms
of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou
Diéne, with advice on anti-Semitism as well as "Christianophobia and
Islamophobia."
>From whom did the U.N. get advice? There was Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland's
Fribourg University, who was denied entry to the U.S. in August on the basis
of a law concerning aliens who have used a "position of prominence within
any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity" or are considered a
"public safety risk or a national security threat." But apparently the U.N.
thought it was worth listening to the views on racism of someone who said on
Sept. 25, 2001, that "[Osama] Bin Laden is perhaps a useful straw man, like
Saddam Hussein, whose diabolical representation perhaps serves other
geo-strategic, economic or political designs."
Then there was anti-Semitism expert Esther Benbassa from the Sorbonne. She
wrote in September 2000, "Today, especially in the United States, Jewish
philanthropy is exerted in the name of the perennization of the memory of
the Shoah [Holocaust]. The money flows to create pulpits on anti-Semitism
and the genocide, to finance museums, and research. As if nothing else were
significant or had ever existed."
In her written contribution to the meeting, she artfully refers to "merging
the image of the extermination with the might of Israel against the
Palestinians, the one image reducing the significance of the other, and the
Jew as both victim and executioner." Maybe the U.N. tapped her for her
expertise at encouraging anti-Semitism?
Also in Barcelona were two Israelis who sit on the board of the same
nongovernmental organization, the Alternative Information Center, a
perennial U.N. favorite though it is on the fringes of Israeli society. The
Center's co-chairman Michael Warshawski wrote in a 1996 newsletter: "Ethnic
cleansing is a basic Zionist principle and policy." Fellow board member and
Tel Aviv University professor Yossi Schwartz presented a paper at the
center's workshop this past May "with the support of the Basque Government"
entitled "Anti-Zionism Not Anti-Semitism." Calling for the elimination of
the Jewish state is not new to Mr. Schwartz, who has written--after quoting
from Trotsky's "epoch": "The solution of the working class to the national
question in Israel/Palestine is not one or two or three capitalist states
but a socialist federation of the Middle East."
Some invited Jews canceled their participation in the Barcelona conference,
though some did attend, including another Israeli. They were compelled to
spend their time taking exception to contributions from experts such as
"superimposing the Jewish symbol of the Magen David on the Nazi swastika is
not anti-Semitism."
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
At the end of the meeting a draft report, prepared with the assistance of
U.N. staffers, was shared with participants, who now have a few days to
confirm the outcome. The report will become a U.N. document, and it will be
disseminated around the world. Here are some excerpts from the U.N.'s
contribution to combating anti-Semitsm:
In practice, it is often difficult for an anti-Zionist type of
expression not to be seen as simultaneously anti-Semitic. Nevertheless,
several participants maintain that it is necessary to conserve the
distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, whilst defending the
right to be anti-Zionist without being branded an anti-Semite and also
bearing in mind that most Jews were anti-Zionists before 1935. . . .
The genuine Zionism of many Jews helps to explain the fact that many
people wrongly feel that most Jews lend their unconditional support to
Israeli policies. That is why we have seen attacks on synagogues, arson
attacks on schools, desecration of cemeteries, for reasons that have nothing
to do either with religion, or education, or the peaceful rest of the
deceased, but that have a great deal to do with a political and a
territorial conflict. . . .
In the past, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon was absent from the
Arab-Muslim world. Here, the Arab-Israeli conflict plays an essential role,
but another important element is the perception of the State of Israel as
the "Trojan horse" of the West in the Middle East. Anti-Semitism would
therefore be a particular manifestation of the hatred felt for the West,
partly for financial reasons. . . .
Recommentations:
. . . The leaders of Jewish communities should also act to
distinguish defence of the State of Israel from the fight against
anti-Semitism. . . .
Contextualising the memory of the Holocaust with that of other
genocides and serious events in contemporary history in order to make sure
that at the end of the day everyone can feel the Holocaust as their own
tragedy, both Jews and non-Jews.
In other words, according to the U.N. experts' draft report, discrimination
against individual Jews is bad, while "anti-Zionism"--the denial to the
Jewish people of an equal right to self-determination--is not. Since it is
the perception of unconditional Jewish support for Israel that leads people
to attack a Jewish cemetery, and anti-Semitism was absent from the Muslim
world prior to the Arab-Israeli conflict (the mufti of Jerusalem and his
friend Hitler notwithstanding), the way to defeat anti-Semitism is for Jews
to cut loose defense of the state of Israel. And by the way, anti-Semitism
will diminish if only we stop emphasizing the unique horror of the
Holocaust.
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
It may not be surprising to learn that Mr. Diéne seems to have had pretty
fixed ideas about anti-Semitism before the meeting even began. In his
October 2004 report to the General Assembly, he wrote: "The cycle of extreme
violence triggered by the dynamics of occupation . . . has fuelled profound
ethnic antagonism and hatred. . . . The Palestinian population . . . is . .
. suffering discrimination. Even if Israel has the right to defend itself .
. . a security wall . . . constitutes a jarring symbol of seclusion, erected
by a people . . . marked by the rejection of the ghetto. One . . . effect of
this conflict is its . . . contribution to the rise of . . . anti-Semitism."

Simply put, Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism. Or, if it weren't for
Israel's annoying insistence on defending itself, on the same terms as would
be applied to any other state faced with five decades of wars and terrorism
aimed at its obliteration, Jews would be better off.
It is interesting to compare the U.N. expert's incisive analysis of the
underlying hatred in Sudan. After noting in the same report that two million
Sudanese have died and four million have been displaced, he muses that
"massacres, allegedly ethnically motivated, are continuing to claim victims
in the Darfur region. . . . The Special Rapporteur therefore proposes to
give greater priority to this region with a view to conducting . . . an
investigation . . . of the ethnic dimension of the conflicts ravaging it."
Another day, another U.N. meeting, another UN report, and another serious
step backward in combating anti-Semitism.
And don't forget, another American taxpayer dollar.
Ms. Bayefsky is an international lawyer and a senior fellow at the Hudson
Institute.

Alexander the Gay part II

More ancient greek differences and similarities


The Ancient Greeks
Were they like us at all?
Victor Davis Hanson
The New Criterion, Vol. 22, No. 9, May 2004
The classical Greeks were really nothing like us-at least that now seems the
prevailing dogma of classical scholars of the last half-century. Perhaps due
to the rise of cultural anthropology or, more recently, to a variety of
postmodern schools of social construction, it is now often accepted that the
lives of Socrates, Euripides, and Pericles were not similar to our own, but
so far different as to be almost unfathomable. Shelley's truism that "We are
all Greeks" has now become, as we say, "inoperative."
M. I. Finley, the great historian of the ancient economy, spent a lifetime
to prove his questionable thesis that the Greeks-who imported grain from
southern Russia, calibrated the cost of the Parthenon to the drachma, and
left us a plethora of mortgage stones, financial inventories, and
complicated estate exchanges-were to be understood as economically
unsophisticated and irrational, more as tribal barterers than calculating
capitalists without much abstract appreciation of interest, supply, demand,
or any of the other practices associated with the complex market. Historians
of gender more recently have sought to show that the Greeks were without
real sexual identity, their sexual mores not understandable through innate
natural proclivities, much less fathomable by analogy to common social
customs across time and space. With whom and how one had sex was instead
"constructed" and thus explicable only through understanding of Foucauldian
power relationships of submission and dominance.
By the same manner, ancient Hellenic childhood is supposedly equally
enigmatic to us. Art historians have pointed out that Greek kids were not
customarily sculpted and painted as real children, but most often portrayed
through convention (or is it due to artistic incapacity?) as veritable
shrunken adults-mature frowns and puzzled expressions slapped on tiny faces.
The proverbially rich Greek language, we are often reminded further, lacks
the variety of English's clearly defined and evolving hierarchy of childhood
nomenclature: "baby," "toddler," "kid," "teenager," "adolescent," "young
adult." The chronological inexactness of Greek's numerous generic terms for
youth-pais, kouros, neanias-is offered as further proof of the great divide
that separates attitudes toward coming of age in both ancient Greece and
modern America.
And yet the sophisticated maritime loans in the Attic orators, or the
scurrilous attacks on promiscuity, sodomy, and effeminate men in
Aristophanes' comedies, or the prevalence of love among married couples in
ancient Athens makes us wonder whether the Greeks really were all that
different from us in their likes, dislikes, prejudices, and habits.
Purportedly locked away in their northern European Victorian studies so far
from the dust and stones of Greece, so ignorant of the new Cambridge
anthropology, were our nineteenth-century classicists all that far off in
thinking that the founders of Western civilization were familiar and
approachable to us precisely because we as Westerners were their spiritual
and intellectual successors? This feeling of a shared and common human
experience is exactly what we receive from a wonderful new exhibition of
classical Greek art depicting children and adolescents through gravestones,
red- and black-figure vases, and terracotta miniature sculptures.
Ponder the title of this fascinating exhibition currently at the Cincinnati
Art Museum, organized by Jenifer Neils of Case Western Reserve University
and John Oakley of the College of William and Mary under the auspices of the
Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the Hood Museum of Art at
Dartmouth College, and the National Endowment for the Humanities: "Coming of
Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past."[1] The
phraseology is derived from Margaret Mead's own famous (and flawed)
anthropological study of adolescent sexuality among Samoan teenagers that
sought to introduce Westerners to an unfathomable alternate universe of
young female ritual among third-world peoples, who were purportedly much
more relaxed about their sexual needs and desires. Thucydides may have
reminded us that human nature is unchanging across time and space, but
contemporary classical schol- ars have countered that ancient Athens would
seem a very bizarre place to us today-witness the current popularity by
classical scholars of quoting the poet Louis MacNeice's famous lines, "And
how one can imagine oneself among them/ I do not know;/ It was all so
unimaginably different/ And all so long ago."
The effect of viewing some 126 displays from American, Canadian, and
European museums is an almost eerier resonance between past and present not
discernible even through close reading of Greek literature. Greek children
in a variety of contexts in the current exhibition are shown playing with
familiar household pets like cats, small birds, and geese. Their toys seem
to have come right out of small-town America of the 1940s-spinning-tops,
hoops and sticks, jointed dolls, even seesaws. Greek moms, we learn, had
their potties and training chairs-and rooms full of assorted cluttered junk
such as mechanical toy rollers, pig-rattles, and wheeled horses. If we think
clay for plastic, the experience is not much different from strolling
through the aisles of Toys-R-Us. One terracotta spherical ink-well is
identical to a Voit soccer-ball-even down to the familiar pattern of
stitched ridges.
We are told that Greece was a male-dominated society where women were often
segregated and relegated to the kitchen and care of the children, while men
fought, conducted business, or ran the government. Perhaps-as, for example,
a group of terracotta sculptures from central Greece shows a young girl
learning to cook from an older woman. But from this exhibition there also
emerges a sense of female confidence and a familiarity between the sexes
unknown even today in much of the world. Carefree young girls play
knucklebones. They carry one another piggyback as punishment for not hitting
a target with stones or balls in the popular game of ephedrismos, and
bare-armed, bare-faced, and bare-ankled they are taught to dance.
On an Attic red-figure cylix or stemmed drinking-cup there is a surprising
scene of two young women who appear to be headed for school. One
nonchalantly carries her writing stylus. Does the vase suggest that females
were more commonly educated than we think, or are the two meant to be a
weird parody by the painter of an everyday male ritual-or again are they
young courtesans who embrace book-learning because it is indispensable to
the seductive arts plied in the male-dominated symposia? In any case,
learning seems ubiquitous from these scenes of everyday life, as both boys
and girls are seen with writing materials. In addition, there are
fascinating examples of papyrus paper and wood tablets from Egypt on which
school children have left to us unfinished and error-plagued rote
assignments-including a particularly poignant example where the young
student confused his alphabet, transposing phi and chi.
There is subtlety in much of Greek ceramic art that strikes an immediate
chord with modern viewers. On a mid-sixth-century Attic black-figure
amphora, for example, four men seem to be watching a young girl on a swing.
But on closer examination something a bit strange seems to be going on. Most
likely we are witnessing the ritual of the Aiora ("swinging"), in which
youth reenacted the myth of Erione, the young teen who committed suicide by
hanging herself in sorrow over the murder of her father Ikarios. Was this
just an annual rite, or sometimes an impromptu expiation conducted to stop
teen-age suicides-a tragedy that may well have transpired in waves of
despair as we sometimes see today among high-school cliques? In any case,
swinging amid friends and mentors in the ancient Greek world seems as wise a
prophylactic to depression and angst as do Prozac and visits to the local
shrink in ours.
In the past two decades-given the understandable hysteria over sexual
predation by clergy and Michael Jackson and his coterie of pre-teen
sleep-overs-American society has turned its attention to a purported
epidemic of sexual molestation. Like Claude Rains in Casablanca we are
shocked to see improper behavior in an age of easily accessible pornography,
a crass popular culture of simulated sex and breast-grabbing on Super Bowl
Sunday, and pre-teen beauty pageants. We are even troubled over the proper
nomenclature of this apparent outbreak of physical relationships between
adults and those under eighteen-sometimes looking to ancient Greece to learn
whether our wayward mentors are pedophiles ("sexually interested in all
children") or pederasts ("dominant pursuers of passive male teens").
It is not that Greeks were prudes. Indeed, as we see from a number of a
variety of red-figure vases, the casualness of male nudity on the racecourse
and in the wrestling ring gives off a definite sexual air. But we also see
young boys with older tutors in both work and play-Hermes with the infant
Arkas, or a near naked youth sitting at the feet of an aged beer-bellied
tutor or paidagogos. The proximity of older relatives with young boys and
girls conveys a naturalness and non-sexual familiarity belied by the lurid
stories of Greek love. Why so? Perhaps it is the active participation of
vigilant parents -ubiquitous in the exhibition-who escorted their children
to school, who were physically proximate to their kids for most of the day,
and who felt that everything from cooking to playing were skills acquired
only through parental instruction in a society where latch-key kids and
day-care centers were unknown.
If we can learn anything from these examples of the grind of everyday life
as portrayed on vases and in stone, the danger of abuse lies not from the
close interaction per se of child and adult, but rather from the absence of
parental involvement, coupled with the abrogation of family responsibility
in favor of the school, church, or baby-sitter. Thus additional Boeotian
terracotta figurines capture a balding old man offering grapes to a young
solitary girl, in a touching scene that suggests love for a
grandchild-similar to a picture from a black-figure Attic vase that portrays
a young boy learning the craft of shoemaking surrounded by the company of
older adults.
Of course, we must avoid stereotypes. Not all parents and children are
either happy-or even alive. The exhibition presents grim examples of marble
grave steles where parents grieve over lost infants-a common occurrence in a
premodern society where perhaps half of all pregnancies were not successful,
and of those that were, one in three infants did not survive childhood.
There is also evidence that the Greeks had no illusions that they all were
always either good spouses or parents. In a particularly chilling red-figure
calyx-krater from Italy, Jason vents his fury at Medea, even as their two
murdered sons (her revenge for his infidelity) lie nearly neglected on a
nearby altar. The parents bicker, while only their nurse and male tutor seem
to mourn the two young bodies nearby.
There is a rich diversity in the show-and Professors Oakley and Neils are to
be congratulated for the selection of vases, metal jewelry, stone and
terracotta sculpture, and wood and paper artifacts that leave us with an
appreciation that Hellenic excellence in art spanned four or five centuries
and was found throughout the Greek-speaking Mediterranean.
A final surprise of the exhibition is that the most moving everyday scenes
and toys seem to be from Boeotia-the ancient equivalent of our own rural
heartland. If we naturally associate sophisticated Greek art only with
Athens and to a lesser extent with Corinth and Italy, we forget that
thousands of other Greeks in the shadows in places like the perennially
maligned Boeotia were just as artistically adept, and perhaps possessed an
eye for the everyday things that matter but are forgotten by their more
heralded urban counterparts. And that seems yet another lesson for us as
well-that there is plenty of art and culture beyond our own triangle of New
York, Washington, and Los Angeles that sees what is important in life in
pretty much the same way as did these rural Greeks.
Victor Davis Hanson is at work on War Like No Other, a military history of
the Peloponnesian War forthcoming from Random House.
Notes
"Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the
Classical Past" opened at the Cincinnati Art Museum on May 1 and remains on
view through August 1. The exhibition was previously on view at the Onassis
Cultural Center, New York, from January 22 to April 15. It will next be seen
at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from September 14 to December 5,
2004.
©2004 Victor Davis Hanson

Oh.. Wonder why you have such high gas prices

The connection, however, lies in an order issued last year by President Hu Jintao to seek secure oil supplies abroad – preferably ones which could not be stopped by America in case of conflict over Taiwan.


now lets process this with another important line

The West, however, has paid little attention to these developments. For the United States and Europe are far more concerned with the even more sensitive issues of China's relations with "pariah states".

In September, China threatened to veto any move to impose sanctions on Sudan over the atrocities in Darfur. It has invested $3 billion in the African country's oil industry, which supplies it with seven per cent of its needs.

Then, this month, it said that it opposed moves to refer Iran's nuclear stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency to the United Nations Security Council.


when you hear about the lack of support for the Iraq war in the security council, lack of support to stop the genocide in dafur, the lack of international will to stop Iran from having nukes

China needs lots of oil... this means high gas prices
China needs to sell weapons

unstable world when those two things come togther

Shocking things in my email

Syria... helping terrorists? No.... I am shocked

Syrian bank funded insurgency with Saddam's millions

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, November 19, 2004

The United States has concluded that Syria helped finance the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

Officials said the regime of President Bashar Assad used the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria to relay hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq. They said the money has been deployed to finance the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition primarily in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.

The Commercial Bank of Syria held more than $1 billion in Saddam regime accounts on the eve of the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003, officials said. Most of that money stemmed from Iraqi arms and oil smuggling as well as illegal commissions obtained from Iraqi oil sales overseen by the United Nations.

During a hearing by the Senate subcommittee on Nov. 15, Treasury Assistant Secretary Juan Carlos Zarate asserted that Syria has disbursed $600 million to unidentified Iraqis. Zarate, responsible for terrorist financing and financial crimes at Treasury, said a U.S. team was auditing the Commercial Bank of Syria in an attempt to trace the transfer of funds.

"What we found was when we sent our investigators to Damascus, upon review of the documents and review of the transactional data, it became clear that the Syrians had, in fact, paid out the vast bulk of the amount that had existed in that particular account," Zarate said.

Officials said that over the last 18 months Damascus transferred up to $800 million of Saddam's assets to senior aides of the former president, several of whom have been based in Syria. They said much of the money was believed to have been transferred to ex-Iraqi Vice President Izzet Ibrahim Al Douri, identified as the chief financier of the Sunni insurgency.

"We have folks on the front line right now that are sacrificing their lives, that are under fire, and somewhere, somehow, there's money being used to fuel that insurgency," Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the permanent investigations subcommittee of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, said. "And I would just hope that a very strong message is delivered to the Syrians, that we get their cooperation, that we track this down and we figure out what's what."

Officials said Syria has asserted that the money was relayed to Iraqi brokers and traders. They said Treasury was seeking to examine these claims, but said Damascus has failed to cooperate.

"I would have to say poor," Zarate said in his description of Syrian cooperation with Washington.

The United States has identified the Commercial Bank of Syria as a primary money-laundering concern. Officials said the bank, which has come under threat of U.S. sanctions, facilitated illicit activity with Iraq, including the financing of the insurgency war in Iraq.

"This issue has been front and center in terms of the dialogue with the Syrian government," Zarate said. "It's been part of the dialogue at the highest levels. So we are very much concerned, as you are, that the amounts paid out were either not paid out to legitimate claimants or were paid out to people who are attempting to do us harm now."

Officials said Damascus has failed to honor its assurances to the United States regarding Iraq. They said Damascus has also refused to relay any of Saddam's assets to help develop Syria's eastern neighbor.

The Bush administration has been under pressure from Congress to impose additional sanctions on Syria for its failure to halt the flow of weapons, money and fighters to the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Officials said this would comprise a key issue when Congress begins its new session in 2005.

Zarate said Treasury was working with other U.S. government agencies to trace U.S. currency seized in Iraq to determine the flow of funds to the insurgency. He did not elaborate.

"We also have assets within Iraq, and that's why the Department of Defense, our soldiers on the ground, the FBI and others are working so hard to try to find those caches of cash within Iraq," Zarate said. "And then finally you have traditional sources of terrorist funding in the region which are mobilizing for the Iraqi jihad, in essence."

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_11.html

Random thought on my play watching tonight

and why is it that i have a weak spot for women in a bodice...*oh wait i said that outloud crap.... run away*

Meanwhile in Frog town

OXFORD, England - French President Jacques Chirac said Friday that the United Nations (news - web sites) Security Council does not represent today's world and should be expanded to include Germany, Japan and developing nations such as Brazil and India as permanent members.


All nations stangely with Larger economies and Militaries ( with the exception of Japan) then FRANCE

thank you for pointing out why we need to remove your country from the Security council.

but wait folks... he isn't done

Chirac said the decision-making U.N. Security Council "is no longer truly representative of the world as it is today. So it needs to be modernized."

Britain has also backed expansion of the Security Council. Britain, France, China, the United States and Russia are all permanent members.

Chirac suggested the body's membership should rise from 15 permanent and rotating nations to 20 or 25 to reflect how the world had changed since the United Nations was founded in 1945.

"You cannot simply take a snapshot of 1945 and apply it to 2004," Chirac said.


to true

thanks for telling us why we need fire you