At least human activities aren’t a significant contributor. Take the quiz and then read the answers. Thanks for posting that Jeff.
Category Archives: Freedom
Quote of the day–Abigail Adams
Power, whether vested in the many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, “Give, give!”
Abigail Adams
Revolutionary War patriot and wife of John Adams
[This is why we have the enumerated powers of the Constitution.
This is supposed to limit the powers of both the many and the
few. Sadly, these days the Constitution is almost entirely
ignored and the powers claimed by government have far exceeded the
limits imposed by that tattered document.–Joe]
Orwell must have written their playbook
I just stumbled (with the help of Joel Rosenberg) onto something very interesting. The bigoted “Gun Guys” (and their Orwellian named Freedom State Alliance umbrella organization) I mention far too frequently are supported by a $650,000 grant (over 18 months) from the Joyce Foundation. This grant money is to Mark Karlin & Associates:
To support the continued efforts of its Freedom States Alliance, a
project to promote financial self-sufficiency and effective media,
public, and policy-maker education efforts among gun violence
prevention groups, especially those in Illinois and Wisconsin.
I have often wondered how, with such small memberships,
these anti-gun groups can afford to do what they do. Now we
know. I wish I could get $400K/year to run some pro-gun websites
and blog about gun rights.
To further emphasis their Orwellian nature read the Freedom States Alliance news release:
“But the energy we’re seeing from communities that are
rising up against the gun lobby is amazing. Yes it will take time
to take back our country held hostage by gun violence, but if it’s one
thing Americans are good at, it’s fighting for our freedom. We’re here
to declare our freedom from gun violence and our Internet strategy is
going to carry that message like never before.”
“Fighting for freedom” by attempting to ban guns. You can’t get much more Orwellian than that.
Mineta leaves
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta just resigned. Now if they would just get rid of the rest of the Mineta minions. These anti-gun bigots made it extremely difficult for airline pilots to carry firearms and in general have no clue about airplane or even security in general. As Michelle Malkin says, “Finally.”
More Muslim extremists arrested
It’s not that I have any great love for the repressive, socialist pit of Chicago but I am glad they arrested these threats to humanity before they blew up the Sears tower:
MIAMI — Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago’s Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.
As part of the raids related to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami’s Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a “military boot camp.”
The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.
Miami U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said in a statement that the investigation was an ongoing operation and that more details would be released Friday.
…
The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. “They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard.”
She talked to one of the men about a month ago: “They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah.”
Just last Friday I talking to someone that grew up in Lebanan and he used the same phrase in regards to the Muslim extremists, “brainwashed”.
Protecting civilians from armed violence
It’s already against the law to commit violent acts against innocent civilians. More laws and/or treaties won’t help. Allowing civilians to defend themselves is the only effective way for civilians to be protected. Just the opposite of what the U.N. bigots are trying to accomplish:
Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) are pushing for a treaty to “protect civilians from armed violence.”
Those three groups — which have formed a coalition called the Control Arms Campaign — say their goal is to reduce arms proliferation and misuse — “and to convince governments to introduce global principles to regulate the transfers of weapons.” They are urging the United Nations to impose a “binding arms trade treaty.”
These guys want guns to remain in the hands of the governments. And governments were the biggest perpetrators of violence against innocents in the last century and I expect they will be in this century too. The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right. It can only be infringed, not granted or denied.
Alan Gottlieb, of course, gets in right (in the same article):
Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the ‘great arsenal of democracy’ that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.
…
We have done much for the U.N., and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself.
China is on the right track
Refuse to be a victim. That’s something our TSA apparently doesn’t understand. China is teaching their flight attendants to do some serious ass kicking. I think I’d add an on-board pig to start the clean up before the plane reached it’s destination though. Allowing the passengers to be armed is also high on my list. What we have now is just a joke.
Quote of the day–Robert Whelan
The right to private property is the Englishman’s right to his castle. This looks to me like the point where Labour has overstepped the mark into behaving more like a dictatorship than a democratic government.
I think anybody whose property is seized under this law should go straight to court to see if a judge thinks it should stand.
Robert Whelan
Representative of Civitas
From Homes of the dead to be seized by the state
June 17, 2006, Daily Mail
[Perhaps Mr. Whelan is using English understatement because in my viewpoint the English politicians started behaving like a dictatorship when they started putting restrictions on firearms. And when they seize the property of the dead, remove the contents, and rent it out for their own gain it’s way past the point of “seeing a judge things it should stand”. It’s time to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. But the people are just now realizing they waited too long to do that. HT to Ry for pointing this out.–Joe]
This is what we are dealing with
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — The American military said today that it had found the remains of what appears to be the two American soldiers captured by insurgents last week in an ambush south of the capital, and a senior Iraqi military official said the two men had been “brutally tortured.”
Major General William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman, said “the remains” of what are believed to be the two Americans were found near a power plant in the vicinity of Yusefiya, about three miles from the site were they had been captured by insurgents.
General Caldwell declined to speak in detail about the physical condition of those who had been found, but he said that the cause of death could not be determined. He said the remains of the men would be sent to the United States for DNA testing to determine definitively their identities. That seemed to suggest that the two Americans had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition.
Maj. Gen. Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim, the chief of operations of the Ministry of Defense, said that he had seen an official report and that he could confirm the two Americans had been “killed in a very brutal way and tortured.”
“There were traces of torture on their bodies, very clear traces,” General Jassim said. “It was a brutal torture. The torture was something unnatural.”
If those are the rules they are playing by then we should play by the same rules. Unless they surrender and/or cooperate with allied forces our treating of their dead, wounded, and captured “with respect” makes us appear weak to them. Our rules of war lower the “cost” for them to be at war with us. The lower the cost for them the longer we will be at war and the more dead of our own we will have to endure. We need to raise the cost. Feed them to the hogs and prevent them from getting their 72 virgins. We need to maximize their cost in every way we can.
This barbaric act will virtually ensure that no more U.S. soldiers will be taken alive or at least conscious. They will fight to the last bullet and last ounce of strength.
Quote of the day–Mujahedeen Shura Council
We announce the good news to our Islamic nation that we executed God’s will and slaughtered the two crusader animals we had in captivity. And God has given our Emir, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the good fortune of carrying out the legitimate court’s command in person.
Mujahedeen Shura Council
A group linked to al Qaeda
CNN June 20, 2006
U.S.: Two missing soldiers found dead
[The Geneva and Hague Conventions do not apply to these Muslim extremists who do not abide by it themselves. We need to start feeding them, dead or alive, to the hogs.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Abbie Hoffman
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
Abbie Hoffman
[I admire his insight, his energy and his ability to accomplish things even though many of his goals were misguided.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier
You just have to be thankful he wasn’t an underwear bomber.
Bruce Schneier
TALES FROM THE CRYPT(OGRAPHER)
Bostons weekly dig
In response to a comment about the TSA requiring the removal of shoes at airport “security” check points because there was one Islamic extremist that tried to blow up a plane with a bomb hidden in his shoe.
[Bruce agrees with me that existing airport “security” is less than worthless. Read the article.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb
The right of citizens to be safe in their homes and communities can never be subject to a popular vote.
It is astonishing that in a city where the leaders preach how open they are to diversity, they encouraged voters to blindly march to the polls last November to practice a blatant, egregious and despicable form of social bigotry against their neighbors and fellow citizens.
Working to deprive others of their property and their right to self-defense just because you don’t like firearms is morally repugnant, and with today’s ruling, the people who pushed Proposition H last fall should feel ashamed of themselves.
Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation
June 13, 2006
Judge Rejects San Francisco’s Handgun Ban
[I’m pleased SAF/CCRKBA is continuing to push the bigotry meme. Also of interest is the city bigots announced today they are going to appeal the decision.–Joe]
Hate crimes
You probably have to be a numbers geek to enjoy this but since this is my blog and I am a numbers geek you get the “benefits”. Clayton Cramer computes how hated you are based on the number of crimes committed against various groups (racial, sexual orientation, and religious belief) as compared to what is to be expected from your representation in the population. So for example, if the group you belong to composes 10% of the U.S. population yet suffers 20% of the hate crimes you are hated more than a group that composes 80% of the population and suffers 40% of the hate crimes.
What group do you think is the most hated? Blacks maybe? They used to get lynched for looking at white women “the wrong way”. Nope, not the most hated anymore.
What about Jews? They were considered the “spawn of the devil”, “controlled the banks”, and “vermin that spread disease.” Nazi Germany was implementing the “Final Solution” just 65 years ago. There still must be a lot of residual hate for them, right? Not all that much in this country anyway. In the Mideast I’m sure it’s tough to top their score.
Maybe it’s the Muslims. It was Muslim extremists that perpetrated 9-11, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Beslan school hostage crisis, and nearly all the casualties of our armed forces in the last few years. Surely they are the most hated. Nope.
What about homosexuals? The Pink Pistols haven’t really caught on enough to prevent gay bashing, right? I’m not sure about the effect of the Pink Pistols on hate crimes against gays but homosexuals only come in at number two.
The most hated group is not identified by religion or sexual orientation. This group is identified by “race” (the definition of “race” is a topic for another time) and I’m a member. Read the Clayton’s post for details. This runs counter to the Seattle School Districts definition of racist however.
Update: I fixed the example in the first paragraph. I was in a hurry and made a major error in my haste which defeated my attempt at clarification.
Quote of the day–Tony Blair
In Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda has taken a stand.
They know that if progress and democracy take root in those two previously failed and terrorized states, then their values of violence and hatred against those who disagree with them will in turn be uprooted.
That’s why they fight and why they will continue to fight very hard.
For three years, al Qaeda have sought to murder innocent people, promote sectarian killing and wreck the democratic process in Iraq.
This terrorism is a global movement. Their attack in Iraq has only ever been part of a wider attack that they have carried into conflicts and countries the world over.
Indeed, there is barely a major nation in the world that has not felt the outreach of their evil.
Defeat them in Iraq and we will defeat them everywhere.
We need to do so armed, of course, with weapons, but also with one simple idea — that where people want to live in freedom and be governed by democracy, they should be able to do so and the world should stand united behind them.
In Iraq today, that idea has shown its worth.
Tony Blair
Prime Minister of Britain
June 8, 2006
Blair: Blow to al Qaeda everywhere
CNN
Culture under attack
In the U.S. we have a gun culture—NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, GOA, KABA, JPFO, USPSA, bloggers, and even Boomershoot and I are a small part of it. And even though all the these organizations and people only advocate legal activities we still get blamed for the illegal use of guns. Our culture is under attack by bigots with mental problems who can’t answer Just One Question.
But have you wondered what the bigots would say if our gun culture was abolished? Would they then be happy and stop their whining about freedom? In England nearly all guns are banned yet they still have violent crime. So what do the like-minded bigots say there? No big surprise–it’s the knife culture:
…he was appalled at Britain’s knife culture.
Kamondo Mulumbu said: “Knives are out of control. Most young people are walking around with them.”
These bigots are people that cannot tolerate freedom. They demand their freedoms be taken from them and others. They yearn for a utopia that cannot exist and paradoxically the perceived path to an Elysium Field is the path to a hell on earth. You can chose to fight them now on the gun issue or you can attempt to fight them later when even knives have been abolished. Adapt Churchill’s quote to the situation as necessary. It’s not just gun or knife culture that is under attack, it’s the culture of freedom.
Quote of the day–Martin Luther
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but — more frequently than not — struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
Martin Luther
[The benefits of socialism, communism, and gun control are faiths as well. Factual data and reason are hated by most, no matter how well intentioned, promoters of those belief systems.–Joe]
A good sign
Some moderate Muslims in Canada are asking for help in preventing their youth from becoming extremists. This is a good sign:
OTTAWA—Canada’s Muslim community is asking for high-level political assistance, including the help of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to weed out extremists who are preying on young people.
“We’re not here to say we don’t have an issue. Of course we have an issue, but we can’t deal with it ourselves,” social worker Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, told a news conference yesterday.
“We are part of the Canadian society and so we demand that the Canadian society come forward and help us to root out this.”
All the alternatives to a large majority of Muslims helping to end the violence of the extremists are very unpleasant.
Quote of the day–Abu Abdel-Rahman al-Iraqi
We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme.
Abu Abdel-Rahman al-Iraqi
Identified as the deputy “emir” or leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
June 6, 2006
Quad Cities Times–Spiritual adviser led to al-Zarqawi
[Note the goal, that the word of his God to be supreme and hence the end of human rights as we know them. It also sounds to me like a example for When Prophecy Fails.–Joe]
Now feed him to the hogs
Fortunately the two 500 pound bombs didn’t reduce him to his molecular components:
In fact he lived for a few minutes after the bombs blew the house into rubble. In his last minutes he had the opportunity to see the faces those who he should have worshiped–those who brought the fist of god down upon his head:
The house, and all inside it, was wiped out. However, Jordanian sources last night said Zarqawi did not die instantly. Though mortally wounded, he was alive when Iraqi and US troops arrived on the scene. His brutal reign ended 10 minutes after the bombs fell. Ten others died with him, among them a chief aide and two women.
There is video showing the bombs being dropped but the video I really want to see publicized is that of his remains being excreted from the ass of a pig.