Well, I'm at work. Fairly bored, since Tennessee Ernie Ford is playing, and the Lawrence Welk show is on next, and that show is an hour long. Not much to do, have most of the records finish (2 more to go plus the PBS/NPR Newsbreak, I believe?)
So, I haven't been posting a lot on the site...or in my livejournal, but I have been posting a bit more on the livejournal...don't ask me why.
We got a new, bigger high def. monitor at work for the WNIN digital loop of PBS HD and the digital relay of the regular analog programming on channel 9. With the bigger monitor, it's clear how nice the HD signal looks...the colors are all bright, and everything looks much more crisp- like everything is easier to see and focus on, if that makes any sense. I still have no desire to spend large amounts of money (if I had large amounts of money) on an HD set...tho, theoretically, your regular TV set you have now should be obsolete in 2005 when the all digital rollover takes place (I think the deadline is 2005?) Not that that's going to be the case, because HD isn't catching on like they thought it would. I mean, people aren't sitting at home thinking- gosh, I wish my digital cable looked just a tad bit better, and I'm willing to spend thousands of dollars on a new TV, upgrade my cable box, pay for the HD programming, etc. just to get that small increase in picture quality. It's nice picture and sound, but I don't think that's what consumers want all that badly...more channels, more choices, DVR capabilties from more cable companies, interactive TV- that's what I think people want...more network ala carte packages geared toward certain niches...stuff like that.
That was completely exciting for most people, I know, but it's interesting to me. I actually subscribe to a few digital tv magazines aimed at people in the industry...not that I understand half of the stuff, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I never went to the movies the other day like I was going to. I wanna see Broken Lizard's Club Dread and The Passion of the Christ possibly...not so sure if I'll see the second one, but I know I want to catch the first one. There are a few other movies coming out that I want to see...I need to make a list. Dawn of the Dead looks good- tho I can't remember if I have actually seen the original. I'm sure I have, but it's been so long...
The lady that works tomorrow morning just called and asked if I could come in at 1pm instead of 2:30...I said yes, because that's the kind of nice guy I am.
Alright, well I guess I'm off. I need to get something to drink before I die of thirst, and umm, maybe I can start reading this book that I've had in my bag for weeks and never really read any of.
THE COURAGE OF MUSLIM MODERATES
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 22, 2004
It is a sad irony that the world's freest Muslims -- those who live in liberty in the West -- are so unwilling to publicly condemn the world's worst Muslims -- the militant Islamist fascists who believe in violent jihad, intolerant theocracy, subjugated women, and hatred of Jews and Americans.
If anyone should be raising their voices against the totalitarians and terrorists who promote such evil in the name of Islam, it is the millions of moderate Muslims who have the good fortune to live in America, Canada, and Europe. The image of Islam in the West would be greatly enhanced if more of them would speak out against the bigotry and brutality of the militants and forcefully advocate democracy and pluralism in the Middle East. But the vast majority are reluctant to do so. Some say nothing out of a misplaced sense of loyalty; others are afraid of being ostracized if they rock the communal boat.
All the more reason, then, to applaud those outspoken moderate Muslims who *do* lift their voices against the hatred and violence of the extremists.
I have devoted several columns to the importance of supporting and listening to these moderates. They are key allies in the war against terrorism, and anything that raises their profile or extends their influence helps to reduce the power of the Islamists. In a column that appeared nearly two years ago, I quoted Irshad Manji, a Canadian TV personality who had recently published an essay titled "A Muslim plea for introspection."
That essay has now grown into a best-selling book, "The Trouble With Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith," and Manji, who calls herself a "Muslim refusenik," has received a good deal of well-deserved publicity. She has also received hate mail, vitriolic insults, and death threats serious enough to require her to have a bodyguard. Muslims who insist on talking bluntly about contemporary Islam and its failings don't have it easy. That is another reason there are so few of them.
"We've got to end Islam's totalitarianism, particularly the gross human-rights violations against women and religious minorities," Manji writes. She is appalled by "the continuing scourge of slavery in countries ruled by Islamic regimes" and by "the Jew-bashing that so many Muslims persistently engage in." Islam desperately needs to undergo a reformation, much as Christianity did, she argues, and it is Muslims in the West who should be spearheading it. Why? "Because it is here that we already enjoy the precious freedom to think, express, challenge, and be challenged, all without fear of state reprisal."
Another courageous Muslim moderate is Ahmed al-Rahim, who co-founded the American Islamic Congress following the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. It is an explicit purpose of AIC to stop being silent "in the face of Muslim extremism" and to "actively censure hate speech made in the name of Islam." Al-Rahim, an instructor of Arabic language and literature at Harvard, urges Muslims to undertake the self-criticism that is a hallmark of maturity, and he pulls no punches in decrying the radicalism of many American Muslim groups.
In a recent address to the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, he noted that anti-American "hate speech and incitement" has too often been "promoted by many American Muslim organizations -- in public speeches at conferences, at mosques, at rallies outside the White House. And for too long, Muslim American organizations and leaders have been allowed to get away with it. This hate speech against America, against Christians, against Hindus, against Jews . . . has somehow been accommodated, not denounced," Al-Rahim said. "I believe it is a priority for the American Muslim community to hold its leadership accountable for what they say and what they fail to condemn."
It isn't always easy to distinguish between militant Islamism and genuine Islamic moderation. Some Muslim leaders and institutions claim to believe in pluralism and oppose intolerance, yet attack those who expose extremism as bigots and "Islamophobes." Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum says that often the only way to tell the real moderates from the fakes is by asking questions -- not vague queries ("Do you condemn terrorism?"), but specific, hard-to-duck ones. Such as:
* Do you condone or condemn the Palestinians, Chechens, and Kashmiris who give up their lives to kill enemy civilians?
* Will you condemn -- by name -- such terrorist groups as Abu Sayyaf, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Al Qaeda?
* Should Muslim women have equal rights with men?
* Should non-Muslims enjoy the same civil rights as Muslims?
* Do you accept the legitimacy of a non-Muslim government, such as that of the United States, and will you pledge allegiance to that government?
* Do you agree or disagree that institutions accused of funding terrorism should be closed?
* Who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks?
Ultimately, only Muslims can decide whether Islam's future lies with the militants or with the moderates. But those of us who are not Muslim can help the cause of reform and moderation by promoting and encouraging the moderates, and by repudiating the extremists they are brave enough to challenge.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Take Action: Stop Environmental Terrorists
America’s extreme environmental activists are becoming more and more brazen. One green group, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage with arsonist attacks and violent vandalism. These militant environmentalists are using the same tactics of fear and violence that better-known terrorist groups us to intimidate America. The SUV Owners of America (SUVOA) and members of Congress need your support to stop eco-terrorists.
Across the country in 2003, the ELF left a path of destruction in its wake - from small towns in Pennsylvania to wealthy areas in California. And they aren’t just out to get SUVs. Some of their assaults include:
Bombing car dealerships from coast to coast
Setting homes on fire in San Diego and Indiana
Vandalizing farms across the country
Spray-painting SUVs with phrases like "Fat, Lazy American"
Vandalizing a Wal-Mart south of Indianapolis
Blowing up a ski resort in Colorado
Setting off homemade bombs at biotech and cosmetics companies
Click here to ask Congress to stop environmental terrorism!
Thankfully, some of our elected leaders want to stop these domestic terrorists. Representative Chris Chocola, R-Ind., introduced the Stop Terrorism of Property Act after the ELF blew up nearly a half-dozen SUVs that were produced in Rep. Chocola’s district. Rep. Chocola’s bill seeks to punish any form of eco-terrorism and anyone who "intentionally damages the property of another with the intent to influence the public with regard to conduct the offender considers harmful to the environment."
Your help is needed to make the bill become law. Act now to protect your freedoms. SUVOA is a non-profit consumer organization with more than 20,000 supporters.
Click here for a recent Washington Times article on eco-terrorism against SUVs.
JOHN KERRY'S SHIFTING STANDS
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Thursday, February 12, 2004
In the 2004 presidential field, there is a candidate for nearly every point of view.
His name is John Kerry.
Equivocating politicians are sometimes accused of trying to be "all things to all people," but few have taken the practice of expedience and shifty opportunism to Kerry's level. Massachusetts residents have known this about their junior senator for a long time. Now the rest of the country is going to find out.
Here's how it works: Say you're in favor of capital punishment for terrorists. Well, so is Kerry. "I am for the death penalty for terrorists because terrorists have declared war on your country," he said in December 2002. "I support killing people who declare war on our country."
But if you're opposed to capital punishment even for terrorists, that's OK -- Kerry is too! Between 1989 and 1993, he voted at least three times to exempt terrorists from the death penalty. In a debate with former Governor William Weld, his opponent in the 1996 Senate race, Kerry scorned the idea of executing terrorists. Anti-death penalty nations would refuse to extradite them to the United States, he said. "Your policy," he told Weld, "would amount to a terrorist protection policy. Mine would put them in jail."
What does Kerry really think? Who knows? He seems to have conveniently switched his stance after Sept. 11, 2001, but he insists that politics had nothing to do with his reversal. Either way, one thing is clear: His willingness to swing both ways fits a longstanding pattern of coming down firmly on both sides of controversial issues.
Take the Patriot Act. Kerry condemns it fiercely as the stuff of a "knock-in-the-night" police state. He vows "to end the era of John Ashcroft" by "replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time."
So does that mean he voted against it in 2001? Au contraire! Kerry voted for the law -- parts of which he originally wrote. On the Senate floor before the vote, he singled out its money-laundering and financial-transfer sections for particular praise, but declared that he was "pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation as a whole."
Bottom line, then: Is Kerry for or against the Patriot Act? Absolutely.
The hottest issue in Kerry's home state at the moment is same-sex marriage. Most Massachusetts citizens only take one position on this scorchingly controversial topic, but Kerry doesn't like to limit himself that way.
So on the one hand, he voted against the federal Defense of Marriage Act, calling the law -- which Congress passed and President Clinton signed -- "fundamentally ugly" and "legislative gay-bashing." On the other hand, he says he's against same-sex marriage and refused to condemn a DOMA-like amendment to the Massachusetts constitution. (At one point last week, in fact, he left open the possibility of endorsing it.) On the *other* other hand, he supports civil unions -- same-sex marriage in all but name. And on yet another other hand, he claims to "have the same position Vice President Dick Cheney has." (Cheney's view is that "different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate.")
Where Kerry will ultimately come down on this issue is anybody's guess. But it's safe to say that wherever *you* come down, he'll be able to claim he was there all along.
Then there's the war. Many observers have remarked on Kerry's dual stand on the military campaign that liberated Iraq -- he voted for it, but vehemently condemns it. In 1991, by contrast, he did the opposite: he voted against using force to roll back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, yet he claims it was an operation he firmly supported. "I believed we should kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait," Kerry told the Washington Post last month. So why did he vote no? Because "we had a very divided nation" and he wanted the first President Bush "to take a couple more months to build the support of the nation."
Or so he says says now. What Kerry actually said in 1991 was that there was a "rush to war" that might lead to "another generation of amputees, paraplegics, burn victims." He blasted the elder Bush for being too "unilateral" -- hmm, that sounds familiar -- and demanded: "Is the liberation of Kuwait so imperative that all those risks are worthwhile at this moment?" Eleven days later he wrote to a constituent that he opposed the war and had wanted to give economic sanctions "more time to work." Nine days after that he wrote to the same constituent and said that he "strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis."
So let's review the bidding: Kerry's position is that he voted against a war he was really for and voted for a war he was really against. But the war he was really for he never said he was for at the time. Except when he was writing to voters to say that he was. And that he wasn't.
Confused? Don't feel bad. Trying to keep up with Kerry's shifting stands can be baffling even to those of us who have followed his career for decades. You'll be hearing a lot more about them before this campaign is over.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
A HYPOCRITICAL MARRIAGE DEBATE
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 15, 2004
The ripe odor of hypocrisy hung over the Massachusetts State House last week. For all the fine words about "democracy in action" and "the people's right to decide," the debate over whether the state constitution should be amended to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman was not born of the legislators' great respect for the voters. It was born of their cowardice and dereliction of duty. It is precisely because they *didn't* respect the voters that Massachusetts now find itself in a churning constitutional crisis.
No one better exemplifies the Legislature's unctuousness than Brian Lees, the Senate Republican leader. He was one of the early speakers when the joint session convened as a constitutional convention and he struck a pose of democratic piety. "It is important to bring to the voters the issue of same-sex marriage and traditional marriage," declared Citizen Lees. "All we are asking [is that] we give the people a chance to vote and be heard."
Odd, then, that when Lees had the chance to do just that less than two years ago, he chose instead to stomp the people's right "to vote and be heard" into the mud.
Let's rewind the tape:
It is July 2002. The Legislature has before it a proposed amendment to the state constitution, properly drafted in language approved by the attorney general, enshrining the traditional definition of marriage: one man, one woman. The amendment is supported by the certified signatures of more than 130,000 registered voters on official petitions -- far more than the number needed to qualify for legislative action.
The lawmakers know the rules. Under Article 48 of the Massachusetts Constitution, they are required -- not authorized, *required* -- to vote on the proposed amendment. If 25 percent of the 200-member Legislature votes yes in two consecutive legislative terms, the amendment goes to the voters in November. In other words, legislators cannot kill an amendment proposed by citizen initiative unless more than 150 of them -- 75 percent -- vote no.
But the amendment's opponents don't have 150 votes. So they decide to kill the amendment through an underhanded maneuver. After the presiding officer, Senate President Thomas Birmingham, opens the joint session, he immediately recognizes Brian Lees, the Senate minority leader. Lees moves to adjourn the constitutional convention. Birmingham puts the motion to a vote. They need only a simple majority to end the joint session and they easily get that -- the vote is 137-53. The convention is aborted, the marriage amendment is dead, and the lawmakers who killed it are treated as heroes for robbing the voters of the "chance to vote and be heard" that Lees now pretends to revere.
Had Lees and Birmingham obeyed the Constitution in 2002 instead of flouting it, the marriage amendment would likely be on the state ballot this fall. Massachusetts voters would be in the midst of a spirited debate on its merits. They would no doubt be divided on the issue, but it would be universally understood that *they* were the ones to make the decision. The Supreme Judicial Court, knowing that a vote of the people was imminent, would never have presumed to rule as it did in Goodridge, the same-sex marriage case. Instead of unilaterally redefining marriage, the SJC would have deferred to the voters and the political process.
Which is what it should have done in any case. The point cannot be stated strongly enough: The court had no business imposing on Massachusetts something as aberrant and unprecedented as same-sex marriage. In a democratic republic, radical legal change can only come from the political branches -- the Legislature and the governor. A court that presumes to overturn the settled definition of something as fundamental as marriage is a court that is drastically out of control, and badly needs to be brought back to earth.
Massachusetts is one of only three states (the others are New Hampshire and Rhode Island) whose judges are not appointed for fixed terms. It is one of only a dozen states that give voters no role at all in the selection or retention of judges. The intention was to ensure the judicial branch's independence, but as the Goodridge decision makes plain, the state's high court has gone beyond independence into recklessness. Lifetime or near-lifetime tenure for judges is a mistake. So is the total lack of judicial accountability to the electorate. It is time -- it is past time -- to correct those mistakes. The SJC needs to be forcefully reminded that in a government of the people, it does not reign supreme.
The first priorities, though, are to constitutionally secure the definition of marriage and to prevent the chaos that would erupt if town clerks begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, when the SJC's six-month stay of its ruling expires. Contrary to the mythology of the gay and lesbian lobby, this is not about civil rights or ending "discrimination." It is about making sure that something as timeless as the meaning of marriage cannot be changed without the people's consent.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Andre Baugher is cool. I never thought he was cool until Hack came along...now, I see him in movies and stuff (some movie today that I watched 5 minutes of), and I always think- he's one cool guy. I wanna be a bad ass like Andre Baugher. He plays great cop characters if you ask me.
I so need a suit...and a job where I can wear a slick suit and a long cool looking trench coat. Yes, I have said this very same thing before...
I checked out the peanuts valentine special on DVD from the library...it has 3 different valentine specials on it. I also checked out Nicktoons Halloween, because I love the Hey Arnold! Halloween episode and the Fairly Odd Parents Halloween episode is pretty cool too...and, of course, the Rocket Power episodes on the disc are two of the best Rocket Powers ever.
I'm ordering the limited edition 8 disc Freaks and Geeks DVD box set Monday. It ships out April 12. I love that show, and they have tons of extras on the special set (8 discs, the regular store version has 5, I believe.) Plus, it comes in a cool yearbook looking box.
I have to work Sunday 2:30pm- 10:30, then Monday 7:30am- 4:30pm. That always sucks. I'll live tho.
I want to see the movie Broken Lizard's Club Dread...the same guys who did the movie Super Troopers, and I just forgot their other movie...which I liked as well (it was set in college with all the same cast and stuff.) I also want to see The Passion of the Christ (odd that it's THE Christ...sounds somewhat weird to me.) I'll probably see them both in the next couple weeks when they come out.
I also want to buy a new computer for about $700...which I will have to save for, and I don't know if it's best to get one made custom at a local shop or get a dell or gateway or something. I want a flat screen monitor tho and a tv tuner card, a dvd burner, and a big hard drive. Yes, for $700 or under...we'll see.
Kaleah is gonna be sad, 'cause there are no Smurfs DVD's. Poor kid. :)
I'm off.
American Culture Exposed
By: Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com
Thursday, Feb 05, 2004
Paris Hilton and I hung together at the Super Bowl. Well, that may be overstating things a bit. Twice I happened to find myself standing next to her at parties, but the woman had no idea who your humble correspondent was. Instead, her vacant look clearly signaled to the world the essence of her philosophical outlook: "Here I am."
The Super Bowl and Miss Hilton were perfect companions, as both are glitzy, hyper and well financed. And the event itself accurately portrays what is good and what is bad about America. The actual game was magnificent; hard working athletes performed heroically on both teams, and the competition was breathtaking. American society was built by hard work, competition and self-reliance. All of that was reflected on the field.
But the excesses of the Super Bowl got just as much attention as its champions. Janet Jackson's sleazy half-time performance symbolizes the debasement that has befallen American culture. But far from being outraged, I'm glad Ms. Jackson and the Timberlake kid did what they did. Now there is nowhere for the purveyors of crude to hide.
Let's walk through this. As a regular guy, I have no problem with Janet Jackson's chest. Quite the contrary! If the diva were to offer me a private look, I'd charter a plane. However, Ms. Jackson's half time exposition was inappropriate and disrespectful. If she is capable of one lucid moment, she had to know that millions of families were watching the performance, and her sexual writhing and breast baring would offend many of them.
But like Madonna and Miss Spears, Janet simply did not care. She makes a ton of money acting lasciviously, and blank you if you don't like it.
I got a great kick out of MTV and the NFL honchos being shocked, just shocked, that something crude happened on stage. MTV produced the program, and for years, that outfit has reveled in debauchery. It should be named DTV. I mean, come on! What did the moguls expect would happen when Kid Rock, Nelly and the rest took the stage? In the world of rock and hip-hop, anything goes--the more provocative, the better.
Perhaps now Americans will face the facts. Our popular culture has collapsed. For every Beyonce who shows a bit of class, there are dozens of performers who can't write lyrics about whores, glocks and drugs fast enough. The sex and violence available on the net, CD's and DVD's is numbing. Children are exposed to a constant media barrage of degenerate behavior, and if they want a break, commercial television now offers them a variety of "reality" programs where they can watch people eat bugs and demean women.
Of course, the rich and powerful in this country couldn't care less about all this. Howard Dean, for example, doesn't know what all the fuss is about vis-ŕ-vis Ms. Jackson. You won't be hearing much about the debasement of our culture in the upcoming presidential race because, more than likely, the candidates will be contributing to it with slanderous personal attacks on each other.
Here's why all this matters: Children who admire crude performers are likely to incorporate some of their attitudes into their own lives. Already you see millions of young Americans covered with tattoos, unable to speak proper English, unwilling to read a book or a newspaper. How do you think these people are going to compete in our hypercompetitive economic marketplace? The answer is that millions of them will be unable to compete, and will be doomed to a low wage existence. IBM will not hire you if you have a tattoo on your neck. And P. Diddy won't help you either.
So maybe this Super Bowl half time controversy will finally wake some people up. American culture has collapsed and big corporations are responsible. However, they, Janet Jackson and the MTV executives are laughing all the way to the bank... a bank millions of young Americans may never even need if they continue to buy into this garbage.
We seriously need to look at this issue and come up with a quick solution. The statue of liberty has been closed for over 2 years...and now the national park service is saying that parts of the statue may never open again. A horrible movie by the Parks Service. We cannot allow terrorists to change our lives in such drastic ways...and we certainly cannot allow them to keep us out of a symbol of American freedom and liberties like this.
I agree with Bloomberg and others- we MUST open the statue of liberty, and not just parts of it. All of it must be accessible to Americans.
------------------------------------
from a newsmax.com story:
It sounds like the latest thriller from Hollywood: terrorists taking over the Statue of Liberty. But in a way this has already happened.
If, like us, you've wanted for decades to climb to the crown of the nation's most beloved monument and take in the view of New York Harbor, tough luck. The statue has been closed since 9/11 and might never reopen.
The National Park Service says it will probably reopen the pedestal this year but might never again allow access to the crown because of "security and safety issues" it won't define, USA Today noted.
"Keep the people out and you will turn the statue into an international symbol of craven fear," the New York Daily News fumed. The landmark will have been "ceded to al-Qaeda."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that as long as the statue remained closed, "in some sense, the terrorists have already won." This phrase is often overused, but this time it's being used correctly.
Concerned? Contact the NPS, the White House and your congressman and senators.
Why we can go into Iraq and not North Korea...I will never know. Personally, I believe the U.S. should build a coalition to take out all of the brutal, murdering leaders like Kim Jong Il- and I mean ALL of them. It would free hundreds of millions of people from torture, imprisonment, slavery, and murder, and it would eliminate many of the threats to the US and our allies.
--------------------------------------------
AN AUSCHWITZ IN KOREA
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Sunday, February 8, 2004
Two words -- "never again" -- sum up the most important lesson that civilized men and women were supposed to have learned from the 20th century. It is forbidden to keep silent, forbidden to look the other way, when tyrants embark on genocide and slaughter -- if Auschwitz and Kolyma and the Cambodian killing fields taught us nothing else, they taught us that.
Or so, at any rate, we like to tell ourselves. As Samantha Power discovered upon returning to the United States after two years as a war correspondent in Bosnia, the lesson of "never again" is invoked far more often than it is applied.
"Everywhere I went," Power recalled in a speech at Swarthmore College in 2002, "I heard 'never again.' Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' had been a smash hit. The Holocaust Museum had opened on the Mall in Washington. College seminars were taught on the 'lessons' of the singular crime of the 20th century. But why, I wondered, had nobody applied those lessons to the atrocities of the 1990s: the systematic murder of 200,000 Bosnian civilians in Europe between 1992 and 1995 and the extermination of some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi in 1994.
"Did 'never again' simply mean 'never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe between 1939 and 1945?' "
Power went on to write A Problem From Hell, her Pulitzer Prize-winning account of America's failure to intervene in the genocides of the 20th century. The book was hugely and deservedly praised. It made clear, as no previous book ever had, just how much Americans knew about some of the most horrific massacres of the last century even as they were happening, and how little we did to stop them -- or even, in most cases, condemn them.
Which brings us to North Korea.
It is not exactly news that the communist regime of Kim Jong Il has sent millions of North Koreans to early graves. Estimates back in 1998 were that as many as 800,000 people were dying in North Korea each year from starvation and malnutrition caused by Kim's ruthless and irrational policies. World Vision, a Christian relief organization, calculated that 1 million to 2 million North Koreans had been killed by "a full-scale famine" largely of Pyongyang's creation.
Nor is it breaking news that North Korea operates a vicious prison gulag -- "not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century," as NBC News reported more than a year ago. Some 200,000 men, women, and children are held in these slave-labor camps; hundreds of thousands of others have perished in them over the years. Some of the camps are so hellish that 20 percent or more of their prisoners die from torture and abuse each year. The dead can be of any age: North Korea's longstanding policy is to imprison not only those accused of such "crimes" as practicing Christianity or complaining about North Korean life, but their entire families, grandparents and grandchildren included.
And of course it is widely known that Kim is openly pursuing nuclear weapons, has fired missiles capable of reaching Japan, and controls one of the largest military forces on earth.
All of this is hideous enough, and more than sufficient reason for making Kim's ouster -- and his prosecution for crimes against humanity -- an explicit goal of the United States. But now comes something new.
"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter." The speaker is Kwon Hyuk, a former North Korean intelligence agent and a one-time administrator at Camp 22, the country's largest concentration camp. His testimony was heard on a television documentary that aired last week on the BBC. "The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing."
Like other communist officials, Kwon was not bothered by what he saw. "I felt that they throroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault. . . . Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."
Another eyewitness was Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years in a different North Korean camp. She described the use of prisoners as guinea pigs for biochemical weapons.
"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners," she testified. "One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it, but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream. . . . They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were dead."
Gas chambers. Poisoned food. Torture. Families murdered en masse. Staggering death tolls. How much more do we need to know about North Korea's crimes before we act to stop them? How many more victims must be fed into the gas chambers before we cry out "never again!" -- and mean it?
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law,
and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour
of its duration.
- D. H. Lawrence
Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.
- Joseph Campbell
All it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.
If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
- George S. Patton, Jr.
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for
guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a
nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
- Dave Barry
This Love
by Maroon 5
I was so high I did not recognize
The fire burning in her eyes
The chaos that controlled my mind
Whispered goodbye and she got on a plane
Never to return again
But always in my heart
This love has taken its toll on me
She said Goodbye too many times before
And her heart is breaking in front of me
I have no choice cause I won't say goodbye anymore
I tried my best to feed her appetite
Keep her coming every night
So hard to keep her satisfied
Kept playing love like it was just a game
Pretending to feel the same
Then turn around and leave again
This love has taken its toll on me
She said Goodbye too many times before
And her heart is breaking in front of me
I have no choice cause I won't say goodbye anymore
I'll fix these broken things
Repair your broken wings
And make sure everything's alright
My pressure on her hips
Sinking my fingertips
Into every inch of you
Cause I know that's what you want me to do
This love has taken its toll on me
She said Goodbye too many times before
And her heart is breaking in front of me
I have no choice cause I won't say goodbye anymore
I've very little to say right now. Probably a good thing. Nothing is happening in the world to piss me off...or maybe it is, and I just don't realize it or haven't heard the news.
I'm working tomorrow at 7:30 AM...for the lady who was supposed to work then, since her daughter is sick. That kind of sucks, because I don't want to work tomorrow. Not the end of the world tho, I guess.
I just noticed that there are only two entries on the front page here, since I have gone 3 days without posting at all. I posted stuff on my livejournal tho. I find that it's easier to post on the livejournal and be lazy with puncuation and stuff. I don't like to do that here. Call me weird. Plus, I don't want to fill this up with 8 million pointless posts...or something like that.
I said I have nothing to talk about...you now know I wasn't kidding.
As I have said numerous times...this talk of an "occupation" is just absurd. It's not factual, and it only leads to violence. You cannot occupy land that no country or people lay claim to. The land some ATTEMPT to call "Palestine" is land that was not part of any sovereign nation...as an article I recently posted mentioned- there is no "Palestinian" language...no true "Palestinian" culture, no land called Palestine at all.
This is a great article on the history of the conflict with the "palestinians." For those of you who would attack Israel or attempt to make up imaginary history in your heads, this won't matter much- you'll continue to deny the truth until the day you die. But, for those of us that are reasonable people who have no trouble differentiating between good and bad- this piece is quite powerful.
It's a shame that the US and international media refuse to report the truth much of the time, and they constantly distort the facts to portray the palestinians as "victims"- victims they are not. Not today, not ever.
International bodies like the United Nations do the same thing and worse by often condemning the actions of Israel when they use their lawful right to self defense...or by trying to demand that Israel do more for the peace process- when, in truth, they have done all they can, and the palestinian leadership has refused ever offer ever laid on the table.
The many arab nations that have threatened and continue to threaten Israel should finally admit once and for all- peace if not their goal, and it has never been their goal. Their goal is the destruction of the state of Israel and all the Jewish people. The peace process has been stalled for some time, and things aren't likely to change anytime soon. You cannot negotiate peace plans with murderers...which is exactly what the palestinians are.