Neda

I can't get over the video that has now gone around the world of a young Iranian woman murdered by the guns of Iran's oppressive regime. If you haven't seen it, watch it now:



If you don't want to watch someone dying, watch it. If you think that her death has no bearing on your life, watch it. If you want to go on living your life, oblivious to the cost other people are paying for freedom, a cost, I might add, that your ancestors were willing to pay so you could sit in your comfortable home, surrounded by your loved ones, watch it. Watch the video, and witness Neda's death. You and I and everyone else, complacent in our comfortable lives, have no idea what it is like to put yourself on the line for values and rights we take for granted. Watch the video and bow your head in honor of Neda's sacrifice. Watch the video and witness someone who paid the ultimate price for her love of freedom. Watch the video and feel shame at your easy life. Watch the video, and look at Neda's eyes. She knows she is dying, and from that fleeting bastion, she hands the torch of freedom to you. Watch her eyes. WATCH HER EYES AS SHE DIES.

Now ask yourself: Would you be willing to hazard your life for freedom? If not, why not? What else better are you going to do with your life?

Riot! The unbeatable high!

On Sunday, a major metropolitan area was locked down. Excited civilians chanted, yelled, burned and fought with police. The sticky-sweet odor of tear gas drifted on the summer breeze, mingling with the choking odor of smoke from scattered bonfires in the streets of the city. Innocent people nervously scurried away from the chanting crowds, fearful for their safety should the threat of violence in the air flash into the real thing. Nervous cops lined their barricades, and out of control crowds worked themselves up into a fevered mass of white hot emotion. Riot was in the air.


Believe it or not, this scene was repeated in not one but two cities yesterday. In Tehran the issue was fair and free elections. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected in a sweeping landslide, opposition leaders claim that the vote was rigged. While I'm certainly not naive enough to believe that any of the candidates would have substantially changed Iran's basic intransigence in international affairs (the real "power behind the throne" is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and he's dedicated to a nuclear Iran and the destruction of Israel), I am encouraged that the citizens of Iran are willing to go to the mat for their perceived right to vote in a fair election. From such tiny acorns, great forests of freedom can eventually grow. Iran has, in it's people, it's history and it's resources, the ability to be a first world nation. The only thing keeping it from that status is the unfortunate policies of it's ruling council.

In Los Angeles, people rioted because the Lakers won the NBA title.

Tehran:

Photo credit: Tehran Live

Los Angeles:

Photo credit: L.A. Times

I've never been ashamed of my country compared to Iran before. It's an odd feeling.

From an email

How the media refers to politicians:

If you have spent time in Washington:

Conservative…you are part of the problem.
Liberal…you have experience.

If you don’t have time in Washington:

Conservative….you have no experience.
Liberal….you represent change.

If you have wealth:

Conservative …you are greedy and a cheat who had advantages in life.
Liberal…you are successful and your life story is an inspiration.

If you don’t have wealth:

Conservative…you are low class.
Liberal…you are disadvantaged.

If you went to college:

Conservative…your academic pedigree is scrutinized.
Liberal….your degree speaks for itself.

If you didn’t go to college:

Conservative…you are un-educated.
Liberal…you are an artist/activist.

If you own a business:

Conservative…you are a profiteer.
Liberal…you provide jobs to the community.

If you are working class:

Conservative….you’re just a (insert job title or trade).
Liberal…you are a proletariat who finds strength in numbers.

If you believe in the wisdom of the constitution:

Conservative…you are narrow minded.
Liberal…you are a civil libertarian.

If you believe in individual freedoms:

Conservative….you have made peace with inequality.
Liberal….you are for choice.

If you take to the streets to voice your opinions:

Conservative…you are a thug.
Liberal…you are a demonstrator.

If you are religious:

Conservative….you are a fundamentalist.
Liberal…you are spiritual.

If you are serving in the military:

Conservative…you are a mindless killer.
Liberal…you wear the uniform of your country.

If you are popular:

Conservative….you have blind sheep followers.
Liberal…you are leading a movement.

If you are attractive:

Conservative…you are shallow and empty.
Liberal…you are stunning and a trend setter.

If you are un-attractive:

Conservative…you are just ugly.
Liberal…you are too intellectual to be concerned with your appearance.

If you enjoy an outdoors lifestyle:

Conservative…you are a hick.
Liberal…you are earthy.

Abortion

The murder of Dr. George Tiller by Scott Roeder this past week has brought this contentious issue to the forefront of public debate. Let me start out by saying unequivocally that Roeder, assuming he is found guilty of the crime by a jury of his peers, should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. In that the murder was by all accounts premeditated, I would support his execution for the crime, no question. There is never ANY excuse or justification for what he did. In a society of laws, there can be no other verdict, nor would I support any.

On the other hand, I also firmly believe that the man he killed was one of the most evil men in America today, and we as a country are better off without him in it.

Abortion is the one issue that I have changed my opinion on the most in the last twenty years. About twenty years ago, there was a referendum on the ballot here in Maryland to ensure that abortion would remain legal in the state even if Roe were to be overturned. I went out and lobbied in support of that resolution, even volunteering to hand out literature at a polling place in Towson. I was young, passionate, and completely wrong in my beliefs. I thought that anyone should be able to have an abortion, on demand, for any reason or for no reason at all. What was all the fuss about, I reasoned, we were only talking about a small collection of cells, it's not like it was an actual person or anything, and if I'm completely honest, I'll admit that I wanted abortion available to my sexual partners should the unanticipated happen and they turned up pregnant. I wasn't anywhere near ready to be a parent, but I sure liked to screw, abortion seemed like a tailor made, no harm, no foul, get-out-of-jail-free card if the unthinkable happened. At the time a baby was just another hazard of sex, much like herpes or the clap or the worry that she would have second thoughts the next day and not want to sleep with me anymore.

Yea, I was a selfish idiot.

So what has changed since then? A couple of things. Number one, I grew up a bit and realized that what was convenient for me was not the end all be all of existence. Number two, as part of my personal maturation process, I came to understand that other people were as important as myself and that babies were, surprise, actual people. Number three I married a wonderful woman who was, at the time I met her, a single mother. SHE hadn't chosen the easy way out when she got pregnant with our son (I adopted him several years ago), even though my son's biological father had tricked her into getting pregnant (he poked a pin through the end of the condom he was using), for what reason I'll never know because he didn't even contest the adoption. Number four, my wife and I had a second son and he has become the apple of my eye, nurturing his life and growth is the absolute best thing is my life, and number five I have come to realize that personal responsibility is the one true bedrock that is absolutely required for someone to be a complete person. All of these things combined have changed my personal opinion of abortion from "It's always the woman's choice, and should be forever and ever amen" to "weakly pro choice but anti abortion".

The problem with abortion is that it is all too often used as a dodge to avoid responsibility for one's own actions. Sex is fun, almost everyone likes it, and I have no problem with that. Sometimes sex results in pregnancy. Such is life. If one engages in the fun of sex, one should be prepared to accept the consequences of that act if a pregnancy results. Drinking is fun, but if one drinks and drives and kills an innocent bystander, then one has to live with the consequences of that, why is sex any different? All too often abortion is used, as I saw it for myself lo those many years ago, as a get-out-of-jail-free card, as a way to avoid taking responsibility for one's actions.

Abortion is a choice. I think in almost all cases it is a bad choice, an easy choice, and I really think we would be better served as a society if we could honestly call it what it is: killing an unborn human. The aborted fetus is a nascent human life, and as such it has value. Pre-viability it's value is subordinate to that of it's mother, which is why I do not have a problem if an abortion is performed because the mother's life is in danger, or because the fetus has been determined to be malformed or otherwise defective, but baring that, abortion needs to be called what it is: the termination of a viable human being. Calling abortion anything else is just dishonest, if you're aborting a viable fetus, you are killing what will be in the fullness of time a baby. I might not like it, I will speak out against it, but I do recognize that a fetus is potential life inside a woman, just as I realize that it has to be subordinate to her existing life. Just be honest about what exactly abortion is.

POST viability, however, all that changes, and that is why I think Dr. (what a pathetic joke of a title that is) Tiller was an evil, evil man. Dr. Tiller made a living, a very good living, he was a millionaire many times over, killing viable humans for the convenience of the mother. This is inexcusable. Once a fetus is capable of life outside the womb, it becomes an entirely different category of being. It becomes a person. Consider the procedure: Dr. Tiller pierces the baby's brain, killing it. The mother then expels the dead baby from her body. If that baby was located just one foot over, outside the mother's body, what he did would be unconscionable. Because this completely viable, living human being happens to be inside a woman's body, we say it's OK. It is quite simply, sick. I don't like abortion, in fact I hate it, but I still recognize that it is not my place to dictate to others what they can and can't do, and as long as the fetus is not viable apart from it's mother, it remains her choice whether to nurture it or to kill it. Once it becomes independently viable, however, all bets are off. After that it is entitled to the protections of personhood, including the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, just like the rest of us. Somehow I don't think that being murdered and burned as medical waste meets the standards of that basic human right.

It's scary when Pravda is making points that the mainstream media in the US won't touch

From Pravda:

"

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker."

Link

Now it IS Pravda. Propaganda from the get go. However, there are some real nuggets of truth in the article that the media here refuses to even examine. How are we as citizens supposed to protect ourselves against the excesses of congress and the blatantly unconstitutional actions of the executive branch if the fourth estate refuses to even inform us of them? Fortunately we live in the information age, and there are a myriad of non-traditional news sources and bloggs out there that bring these things to light, but how many people actually read them? Despite the many voices crying in the wilderness, I am afraid that the majority of the American people cluelessly go about their lives, ignorant of the details of what is really going on, told everything's fine by the evening news and the NY Times. If the last six months haven't stirred mainstream America out of it's complacency, what is it going to take?

On that note, here's a blast from the past, a commercial that in retrospect is screamingly funny- so screamingly funny that it takes a moment to realize that you're actually shrieking with horror. Warning, lock your irony meters in a lead lined box before viewing, if exposed to this ad, they WILL explode and kill you.

1984? GTFO!

As we get close to Memorial Day

Here is a post I made on a message board in May of 2000. It's a little outdated in that it doesn't reflect the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is true and honest, and yes, this year I will do the same thing. I walk amongst the graves every year, and remember, and every year I have the same feelings. Millions of people cavalierly toss about their opinions about politics and foreign policy and government. Very few of them stop to realize the real world costs of the freedoms we enjoy. War is nasty, brutal and unforgiving. The innocent and the guilty alike are consumed by it's fury. It is not by any stretch of the imagination "nice", but sometimes, as bad as war is, it is necessary and preferable to the alternative. When we as a society take our lives as they are for granted, we shame those who bought us our freedoms with their lives.

My Memorial Day

I sit here at my computer on the night before Memorial Day, and ponder what my day will be like. I intend to take a little trip, you see, and like any intelligent being, I am planning it in advance. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be overcast and rainy, but rather than dampen the mood, I imagine it will enhance it. It is altogether fitting that the weather reflect the somber yet joyful emotions required for my trip. I plan on visiting my local cemetery.

I see myself strolling through the even graves, row upon row. I shall consider all the lives represented by the seemingly endless markers, and I imagine I will be drawn to one or more adorned with the flag of the United States. As I peer down upon the hallowed resting place of a man or woman who gave a portion, or perhaps, all, of their life in service of this country I will remember. I will remember how lucky I am to be well fed while so many in this world go to bed hungry. I will remember the privilege I enjoy of living among others with the freedom to live, be happy and prosper. I will remember that there are places where a group of government thugs could tear me from my home and family to imprison or kill me, with nothing more than a whim or the whispered suggestion of wrong thinking to condemn me. Most of all I will remember that the liberties that I so blissfully take for granted were paid for at a terrible price.

At some point during my stroll, I will probably fall to my knees and silently pray to a God whose form I am not sure of, asking that the fallen never be forgotten and entreating him for the strength within myself to make sure their sacrifices were not in vain.

I will commend the courage of the 4,435 who died standing up to the most powerful empire in the world, saying 'Enough! All men are created equal!"

I will regret the passing of those 2,260 who, in the War of 1812, gave their lives in a war which was fairly pointless, but none the less validated the United States as a power to rival those in Europe.

I will cherish the memory of 13,283 who followed the lead of a heroic few Texans and stood off an invading Mexican army.

I will weep bitter tears as I consider that 558,052 American men, women and children paid the ultimate price while fighting each other, and the result is a union that would never again be questioned. These people died in the cause of unity, and the nation they fought to save has gone on to lead the world.

I will consider what it must have been like for the 2,446 who died fighting a minor European power in 1898. Historically, the Spanish American War may be trivial, but they answered the call all the same.

I will give endless thanks that I did not have to experience the absolute horror of trench warfare in Europe, while honoring the 116,708 who were killed doing nothing less than standing against the Kaiser's crack troops, fresh from the Eastern front, expecting to roll the Allies into the channel. WWI could easily have been a German victory without them.

I will stand in awe of the willingness displayed by 407,316 ordinary men and women who left their homes and paid the ultimate price to ensure that fascism did not engulf the world and lead to the darkest time in history. The everyman of WWII is an amazing concept, yet that is how it has been throughout history. Just plain folks doing their duty.

I will reflect on how 33,651 Americans passed the torch of freedom from their failing hands to a little country called South Korea, proving that they may look different and speak what to us is a very strange language, but they are no less deserving of freedom than we.

I will ponder the plight of the Vietnam veteran, along with his 58,163 comrades who did not come home. How must it have been, to go to an unknown place, to fight and die for a people who often didn't want them there. How terrible to come home to a population who scorned them, whoes only answer to the anguished plea, " I answered the call, I did my duty" was all to often a turned back?

I will rejoice that only 293 Americans were called to sacrifice themselves in 1991, but remember that thousands of opposing troops, people who do not have our freedom to set the course their government takes, died as well.

I will remember that the cost has been great, but celebrate that the results have been greater. As I raise my eyes again, and peer at the carved stone remembering only one such life, I will whisper from the depth of my soul the two words that are completely inadequate, and yet are all that I have to offer.





"THANK YOU"