Late Night Laugh: Charades
June 18, 2008
Pots, Psychics, Boobs And Mom
June 18, 2008
A St. Louis man claims that he was injured last year after being glued to a toilet seat in a Home Depot and is suing the retail giant for negligence. Haywood Rosales, 31, charges that during an August 2007 visit to a Home Depot in Florissant, Missouri he used a store bathroom and came into contact with a toilet seat “covered with adhesive,” according to his Circuit Court lawsuit. Rosales’s lawyers told TSG that their client did not notice the adhesive before sitting down and that he used his cell phone to alert his wife, with whom he was shopping, after realizing “he was glued to the toilet seat.”
Colleen Leduc already had a lot going against her. The Barrie woman was holding down a job while struggling to raise her autistic 11-year-old daughter. She couldn’t afford to give the child the intensive therapy she needed, and was forced to send her to a public school in the area.
So she was completely unprepared for what happened to her and the youngster, an almost unbelievable tale of red tape involving a strange claim from a teaching assistant, a bizarre decision by a school board, a visit from the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) and most improbably of all, the incorrect pronouncements of a psychic.
Anthony Gower-Smith says his bosses did not show him how to use the 6ft ladder safely, although he admits using others for at least 30 years without mishap.
Mr Gower-Smith, 73, fell while removing a card display and staples from a wall in the gym at Awbridge Primary School near Romsey, Hampshire, in January 2004.
He fractured his skull, broke a cheekbone, split a kidney and spent time in the intensive care unit in nearby Southampton General Hospital, Winchester County Court heard.
A woman seen frequently in Ashland riding topless on her bicycle says she plans to be in Ashland’s Fourth of July parade free and independent of all clothing but a hemp G-string. The Chamber of Commerce says that’s contrary to the rules for the family celebration. She says she’ll sue if she can’t parade as she wishes.
Jen Moss has been known as “The Naked Lady” since she moved to Ashland in May from Ojai, Calif., drawn by the town’s nudity laws. They specify only that people must cover their genitalia in a city park or the downtown commercial district, which means Moss need not cover her breasts.
The police in California, she says, harassed her when she rode her bicycle wearing a G-string and pasties.
Moss applied for an entry for the parade, which draws thousands each year.
Life can really, really suck and another reason to hate mom:
Larry Roach hates pay day.
He knows it means one thing. $1,250 in alimony for something he calls disgusting and unnatural.
His ex-wife’s sex change.
“It goes for paying medication for steroids, testosterone, maintaining a beard, mustache and a penis,” said Roach.
After 18 years of marriage and a divorce, Larry’s wife, Julia, became Julio. It was a slow transition, but one that is very real when you look at the petite woman who is now a bearded man.
“Once upon a time, I was sleeping with that person. You know, kissing, making love with that person. Yeah, it grosses me out!”
Larry met Julia on a blind date arranged by his mother’s friend. The date went so well, that Julia asked him out again. Three months later, the two were married, with a honeymoon in the Bahamas.
Abdel Wahid Al-Nur in the Wall Street Journal:
Why We Won’t Talk To Sudan’s Islamo-Fascists
The international community is horrified by the situation in Darfur. While the massacres of black Africans have been documented and their perpetrators — government troops and their Arab militia — identified, the political causes are less known.
One theory popular in the Western media is that the conflict is the result of ethnic or economic rivalries that are too complex and too entrenched to solve. There lies perhaps Khartoum’s greatest misinformation success: Making the world believe that the situation is so confused that there is no cohesive opposition, and therefore no solution to the crisis.
Part of the blame for this misconception has to go to our party, the Sudan Liberation Movement. We haven’t done enough to explain the situation to the international public, simply because we decided to rely only on ourselves.
We founded the SLM in 1992 in response to the violence perpetrated by the Arab-Islamist dictatorship of Gen. Omar al-Bashir. His National Islamic Front had seized power three years earlier in a military coup and immediately engaged in a brutal jihad against the African population in South Sudan, in the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains regions.
With men and women from all of Sudan’s ethnic and religious groups, the SLM peacefully worked against the regime to bring about a democratic, secular government that guarantees equal rights for all citizens.
But 10 years of violent persecution left us no other option than to create a military wing — the Sudan Liberation Army. We concentrated our resistance operations in Darfur, where isolated, armed groups had tried since the 1980s to protect African populations against raids by government troops and Arab militia, armed by Khartoum and Tripoli. Deprived of all external support, the SLA seized its weapons from the enemy. Our initial operations were so successful that when faced with this groundswell of freedom, Khartoum panicked and intensified its scorched-earth policy.
Over 400,000 civilians, including women and children, have been slaughtered, raped or robbed. Millions of people were chased from their land to make space for Arab settlers. By using Arab militias, the Janjaweeds, to perpetrate most of the massacres, Khartoum hoped to be able to avoid international condemnation. It was a rather transparent ploy to misrepresent the conflict as some sort of civil war beyond the regime’s control.
After years of fighting this war alone, I decided last year to come to Europe to bring the plight of Darfur to the attention of the international community, to plead for the protection of our civilian population, and to seek support. Even though many in the West are now beginning to sympathize with our struggle, I have been criticized for refusing to resume peace talks with Khartoum.
Some members of the international community apparently believe that it is possible to negotiate while being bombed. They hope our surrender will appease Khartoum and solve Sudan’s problems. But at least a dozen negotiations have taken place since 2004 without any results. We’ve signed several cease-fire agreements, only to see them violated by Khartoum.
More than anyone else, we want peace in Sudan. Nonetheless, we refuse to abandon our ideals of justice, freedom and equal rights for all. Some Western “realists” believe rather cynically that the “stability” Khartoum could bring about by force is preferable to our continued fight for freedom. What these people are really saying is that democracy is a Western prerogative and that we Sudanese should feel grateful for merely being allowed to live.
We beg to differ. Before any negotiations can commence, we need security. The first stage must be to disarm the Janjaweeds, stop the massacres and rapes of civilians, and repel the settlers. Furthermore, we need a clear United Nations mandate for the combined U.N.-African Union peacekeeping operation, whose deployment has been repeatedly postponed.
Similarly, we resist international pressure to participate in the 2009 elections. These elections were planned under the terms of a peace agreement Khartoum signed in 2005 with our friends of the South’s Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army. The vote is supposed to lead to a referendum in 2011 on self-determination for the South.
I’m afraid these elections are nothing but a charade designed to confuse the international community. How can we believe that these elections will be free and fair? How can those displaced people possibly cast a democratic vote when they still linger in refugee camps and have to fear the Janajaweed? Who will be allowed to run for office?
Let’s not forget that this Islamist regime came to power in a military coup after a disastrous election defeat. Given the horrendous crimes it has committed, Khartoum knows it would lose any free contest at the ballot box. It would therefore never allow fair elections. Despite all its goodwill, the international community is incapable of guaranteeing anything even resembling free elections in Sudan. We will not lend legitimacy to these sham elections.
It is inconceivable that the racist, Islamo-fascist regime in Khartoum can reform itself. It must disappear. Did the world ever attempt to “reform” the Nazi regime?
We must prevail to preserve the unity of Sudan. In a truly democratic and secular Sudan, neither the South, nor Darfur, nor any other region would be tempted to secede. We must prevail to eliminate the presence of terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda and Hamas, which are guests of the regime in Khartoum. We must prevail to stabilize the region and spread democracy.
We must prevail to help Sudan return to its natural, legitimate geopolitical place — which is the African continent and not the Arab or Muslim world. At the same time, we must forge new alliances, no longer based upon race or religion, but upon shared values of freedom and democracy. This is why we opened a representative office in Israel last February.
We know we can prevail over a regime which, despite its appearances, is weak. We are well-organized and increasingly popular throughout the country. With the help of those who share our values and cherish freedom, victory is within reach.
Mr. al-Nur is chairman of the the Sudan Liberation Movement.
‘A society that turns a blind eye to terror at home or abroad will soon find their streets overrun with beasts’
June 18, 2008
Americans aren’t isolated from Eurabia. From Der Speigel:
The alienation and isolation of Europe’s substantial Muslim minority does not just present a potentially explosive problem for the continent, a United States State Department official said on Wednesday. Europe’s inability to integrate its immigrant population also represents a threat to US security, he warned. US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Daniel Fried told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington that high unemployment among Muslims in European countries combined with widespread discrimination and integration problems have created fertile ground for Muslim extremism.
An Opinion Journal piece by Efraim Karsh notes,
“Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it,” declared Khaled Mash’al, the leader of Hamas, fresh from the Islamist group’s sweeping victory in the Palestinian elections:
This is because our nation is progressing and is victorious. . . . By Allah, you will be defeated. . . . Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good.
Among Islamic radicals, such gloating about the prowess and imminent triumph of their “nation” is as commonplace as recitals of the long and bitter catalog of grievances related to the loss of historical Muslim dominion.
..historical claims are in turn frequently dismissed by Westerners as delusional, a species of mere self-aggrandizement or propaganda. But the Islamists are perfectly serious, and know what they are doing. Their rhetoric has a millennial warrant, both in doctrine and in fact, and taps into a deep undercurrent that has characterized the political culture of Islam from the beginning. Though tempered and qualified in different places and at different times, the Islamic longing for unfettered suzerainty has never disappeared, and has resurfaced in our own day with a vengeance. It goes by the name of empire.
“I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’ ” With these farewell words, the prophet Muhammad summed up the international vision of the faith he brought to the world. As a universal religion, Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or subject communities. In order to achieve this goal, it is incumbent on all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising “struggle in the path of Allah,” or jihad. As the 14th-century historian and philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”
Who’s Islam is it, any way?
Every nation has a soul- or lacks one. During the American Gilded Age, John D Rockefeller monopolized the oil business and steamrollered every one of his competitors as if their very existence was an affront and as if they had no right to exist. Rockefeller’s corporate plunder remains an iconic example of corruption.
Dr Sanity, in The Hallow Men Of The Left, notes that poisoned and cancerous ideologies aren’t necessarily in far away places.
These leftist jihadis are ultimately far more dangerous than their Islamic counterparts. It is true that the latter can intermittently cause unparalleled death and destruction through their acts of terror; but the former are also engaged in a holy war of ideas and seek to impose their own anti-human, anti-freedom and soul-destroying ideology which, in the long term slowly but surely eats away at everything Western civilization has stood for; while in the short term creates and nurtures the perfect environment where terrorists can wreak their havoc and death with impunity…
Observing the left’s bizarre behavior and unparalleled animosity toward America and Israel; their appeasement of tyrants and dictators around the world; and their persistent efforts to stand reality on its head, you might actually be inclined to conclude that they strongly desire the West’s defeat at the hands of the Islamic barbarians…
In What is Man, Mark Twain (the old man) engages in a dialogue with a young thinker. “The human being is merely a machine and nothing more.” The old man makes those remarks in answer as to why people follow along and never question, never stray.
Radical Islam is a machine. No rational, thinking person can accept the ideologies of radical Islam and and no thinking person could come to the defense of of those ideologies. There cannot be any other conclusion. That there are those who defend or apologize for the beastly behavior of radical Islamists or radical Islamist-type ideologies, serves only to highlight their ‘brokeness.’ Broken and dysfunctional societies and cultures cannot produce anything but broken and dysfunctional ideologues.
When nations that are that are led by or are under the influence of tyrants or dictators, attempt to justify those actions, we can rightly assume that justification is false. Tyrants and dictators do not make moral choices, because moral choices can only lead to the demise of the tyranny.
Anyone that comes to the defense of tyrannical regimes and their leaders, have themselves made a conscious choice to defend and stand by what is immoral.
Prior to spiritual revelation, it was understood that murder was wrong. Why? Because without order, society implodes. The moral laws that are shared by all mankind are the result of shared experiences. The understanding that murder was wrong was not the result of God, Allah or Buddha saying murder was wrong. Man did not need God to tell him murder was wrong. Man needed God to tell him life was good and not without meaning.
In societies and cultures where murder and terror run rampant, there is a desperate, deliberate attempt to upend the truth that murder and terror are wrong. All kinds of reasons and justifications are given, none of which address the evildoers, but in the end, a culture and society that tolerates, apologizes for and turns a blind eye to terror will only find their streets overrun with beasts.
The Islamists are redefining faith to fit their political agenda. They could have redefined their faith by encouraging the coreligionists to exceed and excel, to ‘play beyond their abilities’ and to reach for every bit of potential that was stolen from them by dysfunctional tyrants and butchers. Instead, they buried their brethren in steaming dung hate, racism and bigotry. As a result, generations to come will be exposed to hopelessness, and failure.
It is not hard to understand that whatever deity we choose for ourselves, does not benefit from the order we establish for ourselves- we do. Our struggle with God is about ourselves and our relationship with God. Our relationship with God is intimate, about ourselves and our own place in the cosmos. Our relationship with God is not subordinate to our own political and religious ideologies.
Those murderers and terrorists who wish to upend that truth do not speak for God, though that is what they say, in their own hubris. Those machines who blindly follow a perverted ideology do not believe in God. For whatever reason, they are afraid of the struggle that defines faith.
Our relationship with God and our struggle with faith, is made tolerable by the words of poets, and not by self serving messages of hate, bigotry and racism delivered from the pulpits. The psalms, the prayers and the liturgy are meant only serve to reinforce the intimacy of our relationship with God. If the prayers and liturgy are used to serve broken political and religious ideologies and as a pretense for hate and violence, the culture and society are broken.
Machines know no intimacy- and no amount of pretending can change that.
Parts of this post were previously published.
The Middle East Tango
June 18, 2008
A few things to think about:
Suppose we or the Israelis launched an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. In response, Iran blows up Iraqi oil distribution facilities and ports as well as distribution facilities and ports in other Gulf countries. No attacks on civilian or military targets, just economic ones. The price of oil skyrockets. The Iranians do not attack US troops or facilities directly. They do not attack Israel- they just place the blame for the global military and economic turmoil on Israel and the Jews. That tactic has been successfully utilized before.
Suppose the Iranians encourage Hezbollah to engage the Israelis this summer, so as to keep Israel’s military focused north of their border as opposed to east. Hezbollah is rearmed and in desperate need of another ‘victory.’ Their popularity has declined in recent months, especially after they blackmailed the Lebanese government into submission. No one says it out loud, but Lebanon is now a Shia colony and outpost fpr Iran.
Suppose current Syrian peace overtures are also designed in part to keep Israel’s attention focused on their own neighborhood and away from Iran. Even as Israel is considering returning the Shebaa Farms to Syria (the land is recognized by the UN as being an integral part of Syria), it bears remembering that Syria is Iran’s most important proxy in the region. That marriage is one of convenience. The ruling and powerful Assad clan are Alawites, neither Shia or Sunni. Their loyalties are up for sale to the highest bidder. What kind of deal will we or the Israelis have to make to wrench Syria away from the Iranian sphere of influence?
What do we do (if anything) about Syria’s WMD programs? According to the Center of Non Proliferation Studies, Syria has the largest ‘Largest and most advanced CW (chemical weapons) capability in the Middle East’ with ‘CW stockpile in hundreds of tons’ and ‘hundreds of tons of agents produced annually.’ Syria is not a signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Are Iran and Syria equal threats to Israel and the US?
Suppose the ‘negotiations’ between Israel and Hamas are also designed to keep Israel focused on matters close to home. Suppose Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus based leader of Hamas is actually working in concert with the Syrians and Iranians to keep the Israeli and Americans off balance.
Suppose the ‘negotiations’ with both Hezbollah and Hamas and the near ‘done deals,’ agreements and promises of prisoner swaps for the release of Israeli soldier/hostages are nothing more than a well worn mirage, also designed to keep Israel and America off balance. What incentives do Hamas and Hezbollah have to release the hostages, their only real bargaining chip?
Everyday, the orchestra is rearranged and the music starts anew.
Welcome to our world.
