Whether for an individual, a nation or a people, there is no right more fundamental than the right of self-defense. We need to be able to defend ourselves in order to be able to excercise any other rights. Wikipedia defines self-defense as "Self-defense refers to actions taken by a person to defend onself, one's property or one's home." Now we get to the part where I can only offer SARCASM. Hamas exercised its' "right" to defend itself by murdering 9 people and injuring almost 50 ot...
Well, the cartoon war just won't go away. "An Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed." It is not as if anyone should be surprised. At the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, there were close to 100,000 Jews living in that country. Today, less than 30,000 remain. The rema...
A Danish newspaper printed a series of cartoons, caricatures if you will, of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed that have sparked a controversy with world wide ramifications. The cartoons have since been republished in a variety of newspapers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain and have sparked demonstrations and riots across the Muslim world. In France the front page of the France-Soir tabloid carried the headline "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God" and reprinted the cartoons. (The manag...
...We have to. We pick and choose our battles, looking for the greatest good. We negotiate with terrorists in the attempt to persuade them not to be terrorists any more. Turn their submachine guns into plowshares and all that. One of my favorite bloggers (and high on my list of favorite people) is BakerStreet. If you don't read him, well all I can say it that you should. Gentleman and a scholar and all that. I have linked to his blog, in fact. But this doesn't imply agreement in all ...
Ray Nagin does it once again. At a rally on Martin Luther King Day, the mayor of New Orleans said "I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be." Which part of that is most offensive? The "chocolate" part or the Mayor's conceit that he knows God's will? You have to hand it to Mayor Nagin. That's not the stupidest remark that he made.....
Some time ago, I wrote in an article on JoeUser that peace would not be possible in the Middle East until both Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon were gone. As I explained at that tiome it was not because of who they WERE so much as what the symbolized to the other side. Despite Ariel Sharon's efforts to cede land to the Palestinians and his recent formation of the Kadima party in Israel, I do not think that he would ever be recognized as viable negotiator for peace by the Arab world. He will alw...
I do need to preface this with something a bit personal. My brother-in-law died today. His name was Robert Grosse and he was a bright, articulate and well-spoken man. He suffered a stroke, underwent brain surgery and died soon thereafter. So forgive me if I am in a somber mood. Anyone who knows me, in Real Life (such as it is) or through the blogging or skinning communities that I am proud to belong to, knows my sense of humor. I also like to think of myself as warm, sensitive and caring. ...
Andre Norton is dead at the age of 93. For those of us that grew up with her books, she will be sorely missed. I first read an Andre Norton book....well, I don't want to say how long ago. I think the first one that I read was "The Beast Master." Don't judge the book by the terrible movie of the same name. Later, I became a big fan of the "Witch World" series. I can't begin to count how many wonderful hours of enjoyment I found with her books. When Ms. Norton began to write, Sci-Fi was n...
Oh, this is just TOO good! A spelling mistake in the Congressional record, picked up by Al Jazeera and other media, heightened international tensions this week. The error led to the mistaken belief that the US had conducted atomic tests in the Sudan more than 40 years ago and was blamed for causing cancer in that troubled country. The errant quote went as follows: "The Sudan test displaced 12 million tons of earth and dug a crater 320 feet deep in (SIC) over 1,000 feet in diameter," ...
We're doing it again. We keep on trying to save the world. And, of course, the world is predictably dissatisfied with the way that we go about it. View the blog posts from around the world. Count the number of people that people that post that America has no business in Iraq. Compare that to the number that point out (or even know) that Iraq was a British colony from 1918 (the end of the Ottoman Empire after WWI) until 1932. See http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/1918.html Sure, Iraq wa...
Al Queda should hate us. They have every reason to. For we are going to destroy their way of life. Bin Laden should hate us. For he sees the inevitabilty of defeat. Everything that he holds dear is going to fall and be forgotten, except as a historical footnote. And he knows that he can only delay it but never defeat it. All the little tin dictators in the Middle East should hate us. For we will render them as irrelevant as the dinosaur and just as extinct. The winds of change are bl...
With apologies to the group War: "CEO s, huh! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing!" If you are looking for good reality-based entertainment, you need look no further than some of the trials of CEO s currently in progress. Then ask yourselves, why were these guys ever paid so much? First of all, what is a CEO? CEO stands for Chief Economic Officer. He (or she in some cases, but not many) is the person in charge of the overall economic positioning of a company. You can usually...
This is not officially confirmed, but has been reported in a number of places. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is believed to have been captured in a raid east of Baghdad. Al-Zarqawi was recently dubbed as Bib Laden's senior deputy and "as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq." Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth, is one of the senior terrorists in the Middle East. On Sunday, his group released a video tape of five Iraqi security men being brutally executed. The five were lined up with their hands tied behind t...
America has committed $350 million in aid to the survivors of the tsunami in Asia, becoming the second largest financial donor. (Japan, bless it's generosity, has committed $500 million in aid.) The US has also committed our ships, planes, helicopters and a 1000-bed hospital ship, the the USNS Mercy, to the efforts to help the victims of the devastation. President Bush has also enlisted the aid of former Presidents Bush and Clinton to help with fund-raising. What makes these efforts partic...
I'm a little late this year, but let me wish Happy Hanukkah to all. Although best known as a Jewish holiday, Hanukkah is a celebration of the triumph of freedom over oppression, a theme that we can all relate to. If you are not familiar with the story of Hanukkah, I have posted a link to my JoeUser blog which explains the history behind the holiday. At this time of year, I encourage everyone to reflect on their freedom to follow their own traditions and how hard won that freedom is and...