Hey Boon, you need to read this

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/arti...hp?storyid=3494

Great, isn't it ? 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Off-topic, Dude...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What is the topic, oh Thread Master?

Hey Boon, you need to read this

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/arti...hp?storyid=3494

Great, isn't it ? 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Off-topic, Dude...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What is the topic, oh Thread Master?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How about we start a new thread: Jaw Dropper Of The Day - how the right gets crazier

Hey Boon, you need to read this

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/arti...hp?storyid=3494

Great, isn't it ? 

Off-topic, Dude...

What is the topic, oh Thread Master?

How about we start a new thread: Jaw Dropper Of The Day - how the right gets crazier

Let's use the same thread for both?

Fair enough...

"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've exhausted all the alternatives."

- Winston Churchill

"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've exhausted all the alternatives."

- Winston Churchill

   

And his mother was an American.

"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've exhausted all the alternatives."

- Winston Churchill

   

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And his mother was an American.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's why he new what the yanks were like.

"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've exhausted all the alternatives."

- Winston Churchill

   

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And his mother was an American.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's why he new what the yanks were like.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm afraid we are on very dangerous ground if the quality of points made is going to be related to the point maker's pedigree.

We'll be asking for sanity tests from posters next.

And that would never do.

Here's an interesting note on Biotechnology from Reason

Hungry for Biotechnology

How Europe starves the world's poor

Ronald Bailey

The European Union and fellow traveling anti-biotech activists may well succeed in bottling up the next wave of genetically improved crops that aim directly at helping poor farmers in the developing world. How? Anti-biotech European regulations are spooking the governments of poor countries into preventing their farmers from growing the new genetically enhanced crops. And that’s a shame, because researchers in laboratories and plant breeding stations around the world are endowing new biotech crop varieties with traits like disease resistance and improved nutritional value.

Read it all - short-sighted or what?

A bit belated, but I just found this interesting website called "Stars & Stripes." Here's an excerpt regarding patriotism, Ms. Sheehan, and criticism of the President:

It’s OK to criticize Bush

On Aug. 22, Stripes printed “Pro-Bush camp counters ‘peace mom,” (article, The Associated Press, European print edition; “Patriotic camp springs up to counter peace mom’s anti-war demonstration,” Mideast print edition), about about the “patriotic” camp intended to counter Cindy Sheehan.

The headline was the same as on the AP feed, with the description of the pro-war camp as “patriotic,” perhaps to indicate Sheehan is “unpatriotic.”

In 1918, during World War I, former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote an excellent editorial. In it, he addresses questioning the president during wartime. He said: “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

Whether you agree or disagree with his policies, you must never be afraid to question him; it’s patriotic. It’s essential in a free country that the citizenry be willing to question and criticize the president.

Saying “we should always stand by the president” is unpatriotic. If decisions must be made on which “camp” is patriotic, listen to Roosevelt.

Senior Airman John Nixdorf

Sather Air Base, Iraq

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?sectio...5&article=31435

I presume no one is going to suggest that Mr. Nixdorf is misinformed, or that his viewpoint is "distorted" or "unpatriotic" or "giving succor to the enemy."

"Steven"

Here's an interesting note on Biotechnology from Reason

Hungry for Biotechnology

How Europe starves the world's poor

Ronald Bailey

The European Union and fellow traveling anti-biotech activists may well succeed in bottling up the next wave of genetically improved crops that aim directly at helping poor farmers in the developing world. How? Anti-biotech European regulations are spooking the governments of poor countries into preventing their farmers from growing the new genetically enhanced crops. And that’s a shame, because researchers in laboratories and plant breeding stations around the world are endowing new biotech crop varieties with traits like disease resistance and improved nutritional value.

Read it all - short-sighted or what?

I actually agree it is somewhat short-sighted. But given your 'patriotic' leanings I am doubtful you would agree if GWB was behind it.

Regardless of the EU's perhaps overly paranoid attitude in these matters, the larger issue is one of patents, and whether it is beneficial for mankind in the long run that corporations are allowed to take control over scientific achievements and solutions.

I am convinced it does more harm than is beneficial. Important discoveries such as these should not be confined to commercial interests only, but shared among everyone - THAT would be beneficial to the people in poor countries. Corporations develop crops that can only be sown once, so farmers have to keep buying new seeds. This is hardly good in the long run, is it?

The risk of important information being withheld is clearly highlighted within the pharmaceutical industry, where medical advances are held back in the fields where they are not profitable, e.g. the development of new antibiotics (goodwill is only so important at the end of the day, and from a manager's perspective can rarely match real profit in the eyes of stakeholders) and where ineffective or dangerous drugs are released on the market because of incomplete testing or, what is worse, selective reporting of test results, and not recalled until the damage is already done.

Apart from that, the woman he quotes at the end of the article is right:

Starvation is not a matter of food production. There is more than enough food in the world today to go around, it's just not distributed properly.

A bit belated, but I just found this interesting website called "Stars & Stripes."  Here's an excerpt regarding patriotism, Ms. Sheehan, and criticism of the President:

It’s OK to criticize Bush

On Aug. 22, Stripes printed “Pro-Bush camp counters ‘peace mom,” (article, The Associated Press, European print edition; “Patriotic camp springs up to counter peace mom’s anti-war demonstration,” Mideast print edition), about about the “patriotic” camp intended to counter Cindy Sheehan.

The headline was the same as on the AP feed, with the description of the pro-war camp as “patriotic,” perhaps to indicate Sheehan is “unpatriotic.”

In 1918, during World War I, former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote an excellent editorial. In it, he addresses questioning the president during wartime. He said: “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

Whether you agree or disagree with his policies, you must never be afraid to question him; it’s patriotic. It’s essential in a free country that the citizenry be willing to question and criticize the president.

Saying “we should always stand by the president” is unpatriotic. If decisions must be made on which “camp” is patriotic, listen to Roosevelt.

Senior Airman John Nixdorf

Sather Air Base, Iraq

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?sectio...5&article=31435

I presume no one is going to suggest that Mr. Nixdorf is misinformed, or that his viewpoint is "distorted" or "unpatriotic" or "giving succor to the enemy."

"Steven"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Most Americans have forgotten what that means, American that is.

Here's an interesting note on Biotechnology from Reason

Hungry for Biotechnology

How Europe starves the world's poor

Ronald Bailey

The European Union and fellow traveling anti-biotech activists may well succeed in bottling up the next wave of genetically improved crops that aim directly at helping poor farmers in the developing world. How? Anti-biotech European regulations are spooking the governments of poor countries into preventing their farmers from growing the new genetically enhanced crops. And that’s a shame, because researchers in laboratories and plant breeding stations around the world are endowing new biotech crop varieties with traits like disease resistance and improved nutritional value.

Read it all - short-sighted or what?

I actually agree it is somewhat short-sighted. But given your 'patriotic' leanings I am doubtful you would agree if GWB was behind it.

Dubya can't be 'behind' everything, Meadish. There's only 24 hours in the day...

I am not a fan of Bush, but sometimes I find myself defending him if just for the sake of logic.

Everyone says Bush is stupid, yet they also say he is behind everything that goes wrong like he is a criminal master mind. How can that be, he's stupid?

I am not a fan of Bush, but sometimes I find myself defending him if just for the sake of logic.

Everyone says Bush is stupid, yet they also say he is behind everything that goes wrong like he is a criminal master mind. How can that be, he's stupid?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Often the way with those who become powerful because they are rich.

The only thing that separates them from us is their money.

I am not a fan of Bush, but sometimes I find myself defending him if just for the sake of logic.

Everyone says Bush is stupid, yet they also say he is behind everything that goes wrong like he is a criminal master mind. How can that be, he's stupid?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Often the way with those who become powerful because they are rich.

The only thing that separates them from us is their money.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So, I think yuo're saying that because he has money that makes up for his stupidity so he could be behind everything? Did I read you right?

I will agree that it always seems to be a battle between that "haves" and the "have nots". Money is a great divider of the people.

The following story should fall under the heading of The Most Disgusting of the Day:

The European appeasement sickness reaches a new low: Ditch Holocaust day, advisers urge Blair.

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

Link

I am not a fan of Bush, but sometimes I find myself defending him if just for the sake of logic.

Everyone says Bush is stupid, yet they also say he is behind everything that goes wrong like he is a criminal master mind. How can that be, he's stupid?

I did not say he was behind it. I questioned whether Boon Mee would still criticise the same phenomenon if it was the US government and not the EU that did the same thing.

Another jaw dropper

How Bush Blew It

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/site/newsweek/

The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him.

It surely helps to be surrounded by Yes men

and it saves one from being wrong ... ever

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

would the muslims be offended by having a "car bomb,suicide bomb,plane bomb day" to recognise the mass murder of all those of every faith killed by muslim madmen in the name of islam.

the demands of muslims are starting to offend me.

As long as it is compulsory they'll go for it

I am not a fan of Bush, but sometimes I find myself defending him if just for the sake of logic.

Everyone says Bush is stupid, yet they also say he is behind everything that goes wrong like he is a criminal master mind. How can that be, he's stupid?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I did not say he was behind it. I questioned whether Boon Mee would still criticise the same phenomenon if it was the US government and not the EU that did the same thing.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wasn't directing my comment at you. I have just noticed similar lines of thought being used to argue so much and just decided to throw a couple cents in there, that's all.

I am not a fan of Bush, but sometimes I find myself defending him if just for the sake of logic.

Everyone says Bush is stupid, yet they also say he is behind everything that goes wrong like he is a criminal master mind. How can that be, he's stupid?

I did not say he was behind it. I questioned whether Boon Mee would still criticise the same phenomenon if it was the US government and not the EU that did the same thing.

Of course I would condem that same phenomenon, Meadish.

As I condem the attitude of those folks that want to turn the 9/11 Memorial in NYC into a shrine for the Arabs who created this whole mess we're in.

^When you post stuff like this, could you provide relevant links? It's rather inflammatory for you to say things like this without some sort of substantial underlying evidence. I'm not personally aware at the moment of any significant group of people wanting to rework the theme of the 9/11 memorial.

"Steven"

^When you post stuff like this, could you provide relevant links?  It's rather inflammatory for you to say things like this without some sort of substantial underlying evidence.  I'm not personally aware at the moment of any significant group of people wanting to rework the theme of the 9/11 memorial.

"Steven"

I'll get some up post-haste.

This story is big news over here - might not be on the radar screen in LOS yet.

FLIGHT 93 MEMORIALIZED WITH RED CRESCENT

It now looks as if both of the planned memorials for 9/11 (the International Freedom Center in Manhattan and the “Crescent of Embrace” in Pennsylvania) will be monumental insults: Design for Flight 93 memorial chosen.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The heroic struggle by airline passengers who thwarted a terror attack on the nation’s capital on Sept. 11, 2001, will be commemorated in a 2,000-acre memorial site that includes a chapel with metallic wind chimes.

The “Crescent of Embrace” memorial, created by a team of designers led by Paul Murdoch Architects of Los Angeles, was chosen Wednesday by the Flight 93 Advisory Commission. The aim of the one-year competition was to honor the 40 passengers and crew who died after their plane was hijacked and crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania.

And to honor the passengers and crew, these architects have chosen to create a memorial based on the religious symbol of the hijackers.

UPDATE: For those who are trying to argue that this design is a pure coincidence, please note the following from the Pennsylvania Post-Gazette, revealing that the jury members knew in advance that this issue might come up, and recommended changing the name to avoid controversy: Flight 93 memorial decried as Islam symbol.

The jurors recognized there could be some backlash because of the crescent. That’s why, in their recommendations, they wrote: “Consider the interpretation and impact of words within the context of this event. The crescent should be referred to as ‘the circle or arc,’ or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography.

When I find the rest on the Memorial in NYC I'll post 'em too.

Link

Link

Degraded Art for September 11

Images of President Bush threatened with a pistol and self-refuting “artistic” complaints about the “death of civil liberties”—now featured just in time for September 11, near Ground Zero in Manhattan.

An art exhibit that trashes the U.S. flag - and portrays images of terror on the streets of New York - is about to open near Ground Zero to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11.

The show ridicules the war on terror, depicts the death of civil liberties - and features the image of a cocked pistol pointed at the head of President Bush in a work entitled, “Patriot Act.”

While it’s privately funded, “A Knock on the Door” has been organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which receives money from New York City and state taxpayers and the Port Authority.

The cultural council, which promotes the art scene downtown, says the show, pegged to Sept. 11, is intended to “raise public awareness of the current retreat of our most basic rights.”

It will debut Sept. 8 in two locations, the South Street Seaport Museum’s Melville Gallery, 8 blocks from Ground Zero, and Cooper Union’s Great Hall Gallery. Both institutions get government aid.

“This is a slap in the face to anyone who holds Sept. 11 to be a sacred day,” said Edie Lutnick, executive director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, whose brother Gary, 36, died in Tower 1. “I’m not saying the families oppose culture, or that controversial art can’t be displayed. But why do it on that day? Where’s the common sense?”

Adds Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles, 51, was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, “These images will inflict needless pain to promote the careers of narcissists on a day when we should reflect on heartbreak and altruism.”

Tom Healy, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council president, counters, “We’re not trying to be offensive to anyone, and we’re not out to make political statements. This is meant to be an investigation into issues of security and patriotism in the post-9/11 environment.” ...

Among artworks on display:

Chicago artist Al Brandtner’s “Patriot Act” features 42 mock postage stamps with Bush’s image - and a 9-mm. handgun leveled at his head. When exhibited in Chicago in April, Secret Service agents photographed it and launched a probe of the artist.

“It was a show of intimidation,” Brandtner told the Daily News yesterday. “The work was done tongue and cheek. The idea was for people who didn’t like George Bush to look at it and laugh.”

Also hanging at the Seaport will be his “Flag: Study in White No. 1,” an upside-down and whitewashed U.S. flag. “The colors have been washed out,” he said. “It shows the eroding of civil liberties in America.”

North Carolina artist Lisa Charde echoes that theme in “The (un)Patriotic(ic) Act,” in which a straitjacket patterned after the flag portrays the supposed shackles on America’s freedoms.

Baltimore artist Christina Nguyen Hung’s “Experiments in Resistance With Bleach” portrays insidious bacteria in a petri dish eating away at sections of the First Amendment.

New Jersey artist Grace Graupe-Pillard’s “Interventions” takes images from the war in Iraq - car bombings, erupting flames, puddles of blood - and puts them on the streets of Manhattan to portray the “politics of fear” in “our own backyard.”

Terrific stuff, eh?

Link

It seems to me the superstition of the American public is reading way too much into the Flight 93 (not the 9/11) memorial. A semi-circle is a semi-circle. The architects and the jurors have both acknowledged that it was not the point to refer to a Muslim symbol. Big deal. At best a coincidence, hardly a conspiracy or major crisis.

I see nothing in your links to indicate any kind of desecration of the 9/11 (not the Flight 93) memorial itself, and the art exhibit you referred to is privately funded and not a memorial. I suppose you're just trying to be inflammatory.

"Steven"

“It was a show of intimidation,” Brandtner told the Daily News yesterday. “The work was done tongue and cheek. The idea was for people who didn’t like George Bush to look at it and laugh.”

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The right to freedom of speech does not grant immunity or freedom from retribution to the person making the speech.

On September 11, both TNT and CNN Headline News chose to air a sick commercial for a moonbat conspiracy web site, claiming that the World Trade Center was blown up on purpose with controlled detonations

Why would TNT think this was a good day to air this? .

Note: The conspiracy gang involved, reopen911.org is bankrolled by one Jimmy Walter, a trust-fund slacker who inherited a large fortune and is now squandering it on various green causes and lunatic conspiracy theories.

   

It seems to me the superstition of the American public is reading way too much into the Flight 93 (not the 9/11) memorial.  A semi-circle is a semi-circle.  The architects and the jurors have both acknowledged that it was not the point to refer to a Muslim symbol.  Big deal.  At best a coincidence, hardly a conspiracy or major crisis.

I see nothing in your links to indicate any kind of desecration of the 9/11 (not the Flight 93) memorial itself, and the art exhibit you referred to is privately funded and not a memorial.  I suppose you're just trying to be inflammatory.

"Steven"

Not inflammatory at all, Steven. Just reporting the facts as Jack Webb used to say. Here's another example of what we're talking about:

Steyn: Flight 93, Re-Hijacked

On the subject of the outrageously insulting Flight 93 memorial, Mark Steyn says it all: Flight 93, Re-Hijacked

Todd Beamer couldn’t get through to his wife, so the last conversation of his life was with the GTE telephone operator, who stayed on the line with him and overheard his final words: “Are you ready, guys? Let’s roll!” And then a brave group of passengers jumped their hijackers and, at the cost of their own lives, prevented that day’s grim toll rising even higher. At a terrible moment for America, their heroism was the only victory of the day.

Four years on, plans for the Flight 93 National Memorial have now been revealed. The winning design, chosen from 1,011 entries, will be built in that pasture in Pennsylvania where those heroes died. The memorial is called “The Crescent of Embrace”.

That sounds like a fabulous winning entry - in a competition to create a note-perfect parody of effete multicultural responses to terrorism. Indeed, if anything, it’s too perfect a parody: the “embrace” is just the usual huggy-weepy reconciliatory boilerplate, but the “crescent” transforms its generic cultural abasement into something truly spectacular. In the design plans, “The Crescent of Embrace” looks more like the embrace of the Crescent – ie, Islam. After all, what better way to demonstrate your willingness to “embrace” your enemies than by erecting a giant Islamic crescent at the site of the day’s most unambiguous episode of American heroism?

Okay, let’s get all the “of courses” out of the way – of course, the overwhelmingly majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists; of course, we all know “Islam” means “peace” and “jihad” means “healthy-lifestyle lo-carb granola bar”; etc, etc. Nevertheless, the men who hijacked Flight 93 did it in the name of Islam and their last words as they hit the Pennsylvania sod were no doubt “Allahu Akhbar”. One would be unlikely even today to come across an Allied D-Day memorial so misconceived in its spirit of reconciliation as to be called the Swastika of Embrace. Yet Paul Murdoch, the architect, has somehow managed to produce a design whose two most obvious interpretations are a big nothing or a splendid memorial to the hijackers rather than their victims.

The leathery old rocker Neil Young wrote a dark driving anthem called “Let’s Roll” that began with cellphones ringing. Then:

I know I said I love you

I know you know it’s true

I got to put the phone down

And do what we gotta do

One’s standing in the aisle way

Two more at the door

We got to get inside there

Before they kill some more…

Read it all.