Austin is one of the very few places in Texas where this kind of thing could happen:
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Partygoers apparently hoping to catch a glimpse of nude sunbathers crowded on one side of a floating barge, prompting the ship to capsize and dump all 60 people into Lake Travis.
The NYT has a scare-piece that claims that the United States has started to lose its dominance in critical areas of science and innovation. I think the reality is that the spread of capitalism has spread and accelerated scientific and technological achievement to nations that formerly had neither the freedom nor the money to afford it. Advancements in science and technology are a benefit to everyone, regardless of which country they happen in.
Conservatives say some stupid things every now and then, but it’s leftists who really make me sick.
Regarding the “torture” of Iraqi prisoners: admittedly, it’s unprofessional behavior for a soldier, but where is the media outrage over the bastards who brutally tortured, dismembered, and burned U.S. soldiers and civillians? Whatever happened to photos like this?
The U.S. government concocted a brilliant plan a few years ago: Why not give Internet surfers in China and Iran the ability to bypass their nations’ notoriously restrictive blocks on Web sites?
…
But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords. The list includes “ass” (which inadvertently bans usembassy.state.gov), “breast” (breastcancer.com), “hot” (hotmail.com and hotels.com), “pic” (epic.noaa.gov) and “teen” (teens.drugabuse.gov).
…
That’s the sad irony in the OpenNet Initiative’s findings: A government agency charged with fighting Internet censorship is quietly censoring the Web itself.
Should the US government be involved in circumventing foreign censorship at all? If it is in fact important to our national security, why not just support the many private groups already doing this?
I tuned in to Fox News earlier today to see a John Kerry campaign speech about the “war on terrorism.” After a eulogy for American soldiers (“I speak from experience” the notorious peacenik said) he said that a new policy in the war on terrorism was needed so that “their deaths are not in vain.” This is “a turning point in American foreign policy” he said, “a chance to show the world that we want their respect, not fear” and “a spirit of cooperation, not unilateralism.”
A few hours later, I went the Fox News website to read that Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a former general in Saddam’s National Guard, led Iraqi troops in his old army uniform today as they replaced U.S. Marines in Fallujah. Meanwhile, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has organized a militia in Najaf responsible for many of the 738 American and 1,200 Iraqi deaths. He has found refuge from our soldiers in mosques and “has gone freely back and forth to nearby Kufa every Friday for the noon prayers for the past three weeks.” A cease-fire restrained our troops for weeks, while the “insurgents” continued their attacks.
As I read about what was is happening in Iraq, I reflected on how wonderful it would be if Kerry’s accusations were true – if the goal of the Bush administration was to unilaterally instill fear in our enemies. The sad reality is that the opposite is true – we are “cooperating” with our opponents, holding back our forces, asking the UN for leadership and begging other nations to send in their forces.
Despite Kerry’s campaign promises, our reward has not been their “respect,” but a growing number of brazen fanatics who cheer at the moral weakness of their enemy and do not hesitate to attack our soldiers and the values we hold sacred – the lives of innocent civilians. In the bizzaro world of post 9/11, the leftist’s most scathing vilifications are precisely what we most urgently need, and the conservative’s most sincere justifications are the cause of our failures.
No comment:
Hamas claimed the “stickup men” worked for Israeli intelligence, while Palestinian security forces said the two were ordinary thieves.
Rather than give up his explosives, the bomber detonated them, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel.
Palestinian security officials said the the gunmen were criminals who were involved in a car theft ring that brought stolen vehicles from Israel to Gaza.
Hamas said the bomber was on his way to try to infiltrate into Israel, accompanied by another Hamas member and a guide, when they were stopped by the armed men.
The robbers forced the bomber to lie on the ground and tried to steal the bomb, but the militant detonated it, killing all three. The other Hamas man and the guide escaped.
There have been cases of rival groups stealing each other’s explosives, but no group claimed the two gunmen, and their families did not go to the hospital to take the bodies, indicating that the two were not militants, who are revered in Palestinian society.
A Hamas official said that whatever their intention, the two should be considered agents of Israel.
“Anyone who tries to stop a fighter from doing his work is a collaborator,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity….
One for the humor/irony file: I just came across this review for Brave New World on Amazon.com:
Reviewer: A reader from Elmwood Park, Illinois United States
While cultural pundits try to convince you that some literature is better than ther literature, the truth is that all art is relative to individial tastes. Thus, it doesn’t take any sense to think that a novel like this one is really any better than say, Michael Crichton or Stephen King. Aesthetic standards can’t be grounded.Thus, don’t listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between “serious” works of literature like this one and allegedly “lesser” novels. The distinction is entirely illusory, because no novels are “better” than any others, and the concept of a “great novel” is an intellectual hoax.
I prefer books with red covers. You may say the color of the book’s cover has nothing to do with it being good, but who are you to dictate what criteria I use to evaluate books. This book does NOT have a red cover, so in the trash it goes.
I am offering free blogs/email at freecapitalists.org, objectivismonline.com, or heroicdesigns.com. If you want one, contact me with a subdomain, username, and password.
If you missed Dr. Andrew Bernstein’s talk “Global Capitalism: The Solution to World Oppression and Poverty,” you can find an mp3 recording at Keenan’s site.
Do you like the random quotes you see on my website? Would you like to add my random quote generator to your site? You can do so in a number of ways:
<script language=”Javascript” xsrc=”http://rationalmind.freecapitalists.org/random.php?format=js”></script>
< ?php
include("http://rationalmind.freecapitalists.org/random.php");
?>
If you want to submit your own quotes, you can view the full list and add new quotes. (The quotes will not appear until I approve them.)
If you want to limit the quotes to a specific author, add author=Authors Name to the URL. (To filter by topic, use ?topic=KeyWord ) You can combine this with the format. For example:
http://rationalmind.freecapitalists.org/random.php?author=Ayn Rand&format=js
If you want to view all quotes by a specific author, add ?show_author= to the url like so: http://rationalmind.freecapitalists.org/random.php?author=Ayn Rand