Continuing the cartoon debate...

Here is an excellent letter from "The Trojan" a student newspaper from University of Southern Calif.

The continuing heroic actions of those who are willing to discuss the issue of freedom of speech in this context is indeed courageous. It's sad to realize that there are those who will kill someone just for talking about religion.

"Why my group showed the Danish cartoons"
by Jason Hoskin
"Our purpose of having this event was not the mindless, hurtful ridicule of a particular group of people for its own sake. Rather, it was to criticize a specific set of ideas, which if implemented by its practitioners, are a threat to freedom in the United States and in the Western World."

Click the title of this post to read the whole letter (very strong letter) or copy and paste this:
http://www.dailytrojan.com/media/storage/paper679/news/2006/04/25/Opinions/Why-My.Group.Showed.The.Danish.Cartoons-1875802.shtml?norewrite200605010128&sourcedomain=www.dailytrojan.com

Rebuild the Twin Towers...

Click on the title of this post and sign the petition to rebuild the Twin Towers. I urge everyone who believes in what America stands for to sign this. Email this link to everyone you know.

http://www.twintowersalliance.com/petition/

America deserves it.

Sincerely,
Joe Kane

Teach the children well...

If you ever wonder what the haters of Israel are teaching their children just check this out.


I also found this interesting site called "The Religion of Peace" or TROP.

"Current: Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Egypt yesterday, hurting no one else. (We have no objections).

Current: We finally got back a straight answer from one of our Muslim buddies on the jizya (it only took two weeks). In between invitations to join the Religion of Peace, he nonchalantly mentions:

"about the Jizyah tax, if one refuse to pay and that individual is financially able to contribute ,then he must be slain."

And so, there you have it. If you aren't Muslim and don't pay Muslims money, you are to be killed. What sounds to you like criminal extortion and murder is just another part of Islamic law. (Islam is the Religion of Peace, of course).

So, the next time you hear Muslims say that their religion is "against killing innocent people," you'll have a better idea of what they mean by the word "innocent." Unless you're a Muslim, the minimum requirement to attain "innocence" is that you pay money to a religion that will otherwise sanction your death."

"...just say this is an Iraqi freind..."

A shoebox worth of fortune cookies have about as much value as the secondhand guesswork of armchair generals who continue to spout opinions about the war in Iraq. But at least you can eat the fortune cookies.

Should we be there? Should we pull out now? Is Rumsfeld competent? Did the President lie? Is this another Viet Nam? Did Saddam kill 3,000,000 or only 30,000 of his people? Can he get a fair trial? Blah, blah, blah, until I’m sick in the stomach from listening to them.

Meanwhile, what is happening to the everyday citizen of Iraq? My informed opinion is that times are tough over there… and that’s OK, because at least now they have a chance to improve things. Before they had none. But don’t take my word for it. I got this email today from a friend in Iraq who has suffered the hardships of living in a country torn by dictatorship and war and the tyranny of religious hatred but in spite of it he begs us to stay the course.

Read for yourself what he thinks. This is as it was emailed to me so there are some grammar and typographical problems, but much better than I could ever do in Arabic.

The writer asks that I not identify him for security reasons for himself and his family and that I…

“just say this is an Iraqi friend.”



O.K. dude here is the deal, I'de like to tell hese people that they're so wrong because what's happening is that Iraq was full of terror and the U.S. militar did help us and they're still doing this and it doesn't mean when a group of bad Americans hurt the Iraqi people that the whole Operation Iraqi Freedom is a waste of time and I ansist not to call it a war because that compares it with military war took place before, it was and still a war agianst the devil himself and I say aginst the evil itself to those who don't belive in God and devils and angels Sadam and his regime are the devil and the evil some peopel say that Sadam didn't have any mass destrunction weapons but my erply is this Sadam and his regime were those weapons.

these people who say these stupid stuff about Iraq and the Operation Iraqi Freedom either don't know what Iraq was under the Former and what is it now -under the regime of Democrcy- or the're those who used to get financial benefits from Sdam regime. dude I'm not writing this to you as an article in a paper I'm writing as a real Iraqi citizen waiting, praying and helping every honest man and honest woman in this world not only inthe states who is trying to help the Iraqi people to get thier country to regime of Democracy. this is the feelings of a poor Iraqi guy trying to get peace and order to his country.

some of these people who describes this war as a bad one are mixing between wrong stips and decissions taken the president Bush and his stuff and the bad effects of the terror in Iraq and this is totally wrong because if the president got some mistakes in his policy or his stratigy these mistakkes won't allow anyone to describe a war for freedom and a war on terror as a waste of time or a war shouldn't happened. I'm telling these things and I'm suffering because I dont have job because of terror, I can't say a lot of things or ideas without hurting anyone degnity because of terror, I can't pray in a lot of mosques because of the terror I got some cousines and freinds got assasinated because of that terror I can't have my rights as a human becuase of terror and and and and and and, what else they want to know. but inspite all of that I'm with "waste of time" as the call because with it I can have a hope in life against the shitty terrorists and there is something else there is no a patriote resistance in Iraq at all there is only aterror and ispite of that president Bush treid to make the Iraqi people to understand him, his stratigy, and his American people but the terrorists or -the national resistance- as they call themselves are still trying to prvent this idea to come to the mentality of the Iraqi fellow saying that the Americans are bad people have killed and thier heads must be cut -WOW- what national resistance is this cutting the heads cutting the toungues cutting the nosses...etc. is not a resistance, it is a teeror. and the Opertaion Iraqi Freedom is the only choice we have.

Cartoons of Muhammad... in Chi-town

The University of Chicago Objectivist Club is pleased to announce
a panel discussion in defense of the freedom of speech. The event is
a response to the world-wide violence sparked by the publication of
cartoons of Muhammad, and to the failure of the American media to
defend freedom of speech against violent attack. The cartoons will
be prominently displayed throughout the event.

When: Tuesday, April 25th, 7pm. Doors open at 6:30

Where: Kent Chemical Laboratory, Room 107, on the University of
Chicago campus. The Kent Chemical Laboratory is at 1020 East
58th Street; Chicago, IL. For maps of campus and the surrounding
area, see maps@uchicago.edu

Panelists: Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights
in Education Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry magazine

Tickets: $2, in the Reynold's Club (5706 South University) between
11am and 2pm on April 20, 21, 24. Remaining tickets will be sold
at the door. Those who find it inconvenient to purchase advance
tickets on campus may email rebkna@uchicago.edu to reserve them.

Il Gatos dos Kanes'

Ah, the lighter side of life... Here are my two little 4-footed feline friends, Cyrano de Bergecat on the right and Agatha Frisky on the left.

The "Numbers" in Iraq...

Thanks to The Intellectual Activist for the tip.

The following is from http://www.myelectionanalysis.com/?p=875
Numbers

81, 76, 50, 49, 43, 25

What are these numbers? This week’s Powerball winners? A safe deposit combo? New numbers to torment those poor b*stards stranded on the island in Lost?

No, they’re the number of troops that have died in hostile actions in Iraq for each of the past six months. That last number represents the lowest level of troop deaths in a year, and second-lowest in two years.

But it must be that the insurgency is turning their assault on Iraqi military and police, who are increasingly taking up the slack, right?

215, 176, 193, 189, 158, 193 (and the three months before that were 304, 282, 233)

Okay, okay, so insurgents aren’t engaging us; they’re turning increasingly to car bombs then, right?

70, 70, 70, 68, 30, 30

Civilians then. They’re just garroting poor civilians.

527, 826, 532, 732, 950, 446 (upper bound, two months before that were 2489 and 1129).

My point here is not that everything is peachy in Iraq. It isn’t. My point isn’t that the insurgency is in its last throes. It isn’t. My point here isn’t even to argue that we’re winning. I’m at best cautiously-pessimistic-to-neutral about how things are going there.

My only point is that, at the very least, people who complain that good news coming out of Iraq gets shuttered by the press aren’t crazy. I’m a regular denizen of the right-leaning blogosphere (though I spend about half my daily routine with left-leaning sites), and I was unequivicolly shocked when I saw this. Completely the opposite of what I’d expected. My non-scientific sample of three friends, all of whom are considerably more bullish about the prospects in Iraq than I am, revealed three people similarly surprised by these numbers. I’m guessing if I polled people on this site regarding the direction those numbers were going, and people didn’t answer strategically (eg figure I was up to something from the question words), no one would predict any of those numbers were on a downward trend, or were even flat.

Again, my point isn’t that we’re winning. My only point is that if the data you’ve received left you completely surprised by these numbers, what does that really say about the completeness of the data you’ve received?

Complete post by clicking on the title above... or paste this into your browser:http://www.myelectionanalysis.com/?p=875

Dying for Islam - whether you want to or not...

I think this story speaks for itself...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm

Thanks to Paul Saunders who wrote a letter to a radio talk show host, who read the letter on the air April 6. Saunders says the host and his guest added several other Islamic atrocities like the murdering of daughters who date non-Muslims.

Paul thanks Peter Schwartz for his remarks at NYU that inspired this letter:

"I think that the discussion about whether Islam is an evil,
anti-life religion should have ended on March 15, 2002. On that
date in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the Islamic religious police, the
mutaween, physically prevented the rescue of fifteen young
schoolgirls from a building that was on fire. Why? Because the
schoolgirls were not wearing the clothing mandated by Islam --
headscarves and abayas, the long black robes that cover their
bodies.

The story is at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm

This unforgivable, deliberate, mass murder of fifteen young
schoolgirls was NOT an aberration from the teachings of Islam, it
was, in fact, the religiously correct action dictated by the religion of
Islam. I can think of few acts that could more thoroughly condemn
a religion as evil and unworthy of existence in the modern world.

It would be the grossest injustice to the destroyed lives of those
fifteen schoolgirls, if members of the modern world granted even
the slightest respect to this barbaric, death-worshipping religion.
Islam is, at its core, a religion of war and murder with no respect
for human life."

Bright side of enlightenment

Here's an interesting mention of Ayn Rand... Thanks to Betsy Speicher's Cybernet for the tip...

From "The Independent"

Sir,

In today's world there are those who were born Muslims but deserted their faith on receiving "enlightenment" from the West with its technology and science and writers like Ayn Rand and by ignoring those of the West like Ron Hubbard. One cause of their being repelled is that religion is generally thrust aggressively into our life as just refraining from sin. The many positive joyous sides are driven into the background with the unceasing nagging about desisting from this and that as it is told that rituals count, they are compulsory. In all this tsunami of going by the rules it is overlooked that serving ailing humanity is also part of religion. (Full letter by clicking on the title of this post.)

Parvez Feroze

Jamal Khan Road, Chittagong

Defending free speech continues... APRIL 11-UNVEILING THE DANISH CARTOONS

From B E T S Y $ P E I C H E R ' S C y b e r N e t


There will be a campus panel discussion in the AYN RAND INSTITUTE's
Campaign for Free Speech at the University of Southern California.

Who : YARON BROOK, president of the Ayn Rand Institute
Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum.
What : (1) A display of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting
Mohammed.
(2) A panel discussion and Q&A on the meaning of the worldwide
reaction to the cartoons.
Where: University of Southern California, Davidson Conference Center,
Embassy Room
When : April 11, 2006, at 8PM - 10:30PM, Doors open at 7:30
Information:

(Note: The Muslim Student Union will have a counter-event at 6:30
.)

"Fen"der bending "wick"ed smash-up

Well, before I panic you with the news that Steve Schub of the Fenwicks- the mightiest yiddish-ska-funk-rock band in the entire galaxy - was nearly killed in a horrific car crash I might as well give you the good news...from the mouth of the Schubie Shake himself...

"Shalom and Aloha from LA to NYC!
-In Happy News, (well, for me anyway): I am still alive. In Sad
News: my '66 Ford Mustang is not. Crushed and totaled in wreck on
Tuesday night. Both myself, and the 19-year old (who flew through her
Stop sign and slammed into me), are alive and well somehow- and that's
most important thing. However, if any of you Fen-heads and/or
'Wick-heads in the LA area happen to know of any kool, semi-reliable
vehicles for sale, please lemme know! (Free foot massage as finder's
fee...)"



That was a close one. :o)

Glad to hear you are doing well Steve!!!

God's Loyal Opposition...Advocatus Diaboli

Just came across this blog called "God's Loyal Opposition" which is written by a student in Bahrain calling himself Advocatus Diaboli. Pretty funny. Here are some exerpts:

The Anti-Muhammed is Islam's version of Christianity's Anti-Christ. By the time they are old enough to hate Denmark and all its Danishes, young Muslims are told the cautionary tale of the Anti-Muhammed, and his non-violent, tolerant ways. In Islamic tradition, the coming of the Anti-Muhammed will be time of great tribulation and struggle, and will even possibly signal the calamitious end of the Islamic world (and a great source of relief to the world's non-Muslims)...

"Oh!" cries Iraqi insurgent and Sunni Muslim Ahmed Mustafa as he loads another 81mm mortar round to fire at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, "Allah save us from the nefarious Anti-Muhammed! His arrival will bring happiness, tolerance, and even peace to the Muslim world. Such a thing cannot be allowed to pass!"

Fear of the coming of the Anti-Muhammed leads invariably to Anti-Muhammed Trials, which are described as "witch hunts" by their detractors and "a good old time" by those that participate in them. Suspected Anti-Muhammeds are rounded up, given a cursory trial by an imam or ulama, and summarily beheaded.

The largest such recorded incidence of an Anti-Muhammed Trial is April 14th, 1957, in which a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon accused a neighboring Palestinian refugee camp of being made entirely of Anti-Muhammeds. Apparently forgetting that the Anti-Muhammed is not a woman or almost certainly isn't a child, over 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children were tried and executed by their peers. The cleric in charge of the trial was recorded as saying "That solves everything! Who wants some wine?", at which point he was summarily beheaded as well.
See the blog and the rest of this entry at "God's Loyal Opposition".

64-year-old can of whoop-ass being restored!

A B25 Mitchell sits in Hangar 79 at Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. The B25 is currently being restored for the new Pacific Aviation Museum set to open later this year. This is the same type of plane used during the Dolittle raid against Japan in 1942.




The hangar itself is beautiful as only the 1930's and '40s style can capture. The art deco style and heavy iron I-beams with huge rivets has held all these years and will now be renovated to house the museum.




Check out the bullet holes in these window panes! These are left over from the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. When you look around this hangar you can get a real sense of what it must have been like back then. Pretty awesome!

All photos by Joe Kane


And this is what the design looks like for Hangar 79

Muslim uses Canada's tax$$$ to sue cartoon publisher

The violation of freedom of speech is going to new lows...

From Andrew Brannan

"A conservative news/commentary magazine called "The Western
Standard" based in Alberta, Canada, is being sued by Imam Syed
Soharwardy for publishing the controversial Danish cartoons.

Visit www.westernstandard.ca for information on this case and how
to donate and help to defend this case. From the Web site, one can
view the imam's complaint and the formal response.

I cannot emphasize how disgusted I feel. The Western Standard is
being sued via the Alberta Human Rights Commission therefore
using tax dollars in such a grossly unjust way. This magazine,
which is a small independent publication, is not compensated for its
losses in the suit--even if it wins. Not only does this case represent
the pernicious forces of censorship--as did the NYU event--it
showcases the use of the coercive power of government in
intimidating and punishing those who dare to exercise free speech."

The current Undercurrent...

The current issue of The Undercurrent has some great material that I recommend reading. In particular, "Death to "Diplomacy" With Iran" and "The Moral Goodness of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima" struck me as being very good.

Hope you enjoy... Click on the title of this post or goto: www.the-undercurrent.com/