The Rational Mind

‘We know that Mr. Bush has committed himself to the mafia … to assassinate me,” the Cuban president said, using the term commonly employed here to describe anti-Castro Cuban Americans.
Castro’s comments came at the end of a 5 ½ hour speech that began Thursday night and continued into early Friday at the closing of a conference bringing together activists across the region who oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
”I can die a natural death or I can die a planned death,” Castro said. “It really doesn’t matter to me how I die, but I will surely die fighting.”

Continue reading Castro accuses Bush of plotting to kill him

Here’s one cause you won’t ever see the pinkos take up: Lebanon: The Real
‘Occupied Territory’

Chinese dissidents say that despite the government’s best efforts to stop them, they are successfully using the internet to spread their messages ever more widely through the world’s most populous country.
But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media.

Any idea which corporations are involved?
Btw, I wrote an essay on Chinese censorship for a POLS class when I was an undergrad. Here is the conclusion:

Whether immediate efforts to prevent coordination among dissidents are successful, China’s attempts at censorship are bound to fail in the long run. Because the Internet’s value as a commercial and research tool are bound to grow, and are closely intertwined with alternative uses, the costs of preventing access to any particular material is bound to become prohibitively expensive, especially with the rapid and exponential growth of Internet users in China. Meanwhile, the best strategy democratic nations can follow is to make China’s censorship policy as costly as possible by sponsoring the development of circumvention technologies.

(Edit: “democratic nations” refers to private initiative by citizens of free countries – not another government program.)

Hot anime chicks molded in plastic! Call me weird, but these models rock!

I’ve often wondered how socialists can possibly explain away the actual track record of socialist regimes in countries like the USSR, Cuba, and China. Now I know: they were actually capitalist countries all along!
Continue reading Commie Economics

MINA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — The cleric who delivered the sermon Friday at the annual hajj pilgrimage had a simple request: God grant victory to Muslims fighting around the world.

The prayer by Sheik Saleh al-Taleb to 500,000 people in Mecca’s Grand Mosque and nearby streets came as the hajj neared its climax.

“Oh God, give victory to the mujahedeen (holy warriors) everywhere,” al-Taleb said. “Give them victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies, and make this country and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists.”

Get this: according to the leftists, even one civilian death was unacceptable when our troops went after Saddam. However, when it comes to the “anti-occupation resistance,” innocent deaths are perfectly fine, says a prominent leftist pundit:

Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq’s anti-occupation resistance?
“Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.”

(I am just going to ignore the fact that he’s rooting for the collapse of any chance for democracy and American soldier’s and Iraqi civilians deaths — to leftists, destroying Bush’s popularity is paramount.)
(From RightWingNews)

With a proposed annual budget of $756 billion, the Department of Deficit Obliteration will study ways to eliminate the gap between federal revenues and expenditures without any real cuts in spending that might cause discomfort for potential voters.

Apparently, it was all about the grease:

Claims that dozens of politicians, including some from prominent anti-war countries such as France, had taken bribes to support Saddam Hussein are to be investigated by the Iraqi authorities. The US-backed Iraqi Governing Council decided to check after an independent Baghdad newspaper, al-Mada, published a list which it said was based on oil ministry documents.

Not funny. I am also one of the top results for the Paris Hilton video, photos of women’s privates, and Arabic peep shows. I have never mentioned any of these topics on my blog (before now that is), but after various unsavory characters spammed my referrer list, search engines associated my websites with these sundry websites. Fortunately, the referrer list works both ways – I’m now one of the top capitalists on the web.