Do I agree with it? Only if you’re talking about the Maryknoll nuns. Those are some very far-left women, even as they have been killed by death squads in Central America.
Unfortunately, Liberation Theology, injected at the right moment, can be a permanent vaccination against reality.
And so, on to today’s tips…
Bin Laden’s former driver on trial in Gitmo
…Soufan also said Hamdan told him about a conversation he overheard when he was driving bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The two men were looking at a magazine which described the flight routes of the Sept. 11 hijacked planes, Soufan said.
“If they didn’t shoot that fourth plane it would have hit the dome,” Soufan said bin Laden told Zawahiri, according to Hamdan’s account.
“I assumed (‘the dome’ meant) either Congress or the White House,” Soufan said. “Hamdan said he did not know what they mean by the dome.”
That plane didn’t get shot down, despite the claims of bin Laden’s cronies and American truthers. A bunch of US citizens brought down that aircraft in Pennsylvania.
Telling Tales Out of School
Three MPs of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) secretly informed the National Anti-terrorism Coordinator (NCTb) of the contents of Wilders’ anti-Islam film Fitna prior to its publication. Wilders did not know this, Elsevier weekly magazine reports.
On 4 March, NCTb chief Tjibbe Joustra and the National Coordinator of Guarding and Security, Arjen Jonge Vos, had a meeting on Fitna with Wilders and his PVV MPs. At it, the MPs were warned about the consequences of the film for their personal safety, even though Joustra and Jonge Vos at that moment did not know what Fitna would show.
Three PVV MPs were so disquieted by that meeting that they afterwards asked for personal protection. To give their request some clout, they spilled the beans about the contents of Fitna, according to Elsevier.
Elsevier bases its report on a “source close to the top of the security services”. According to the source, the three PVV MPs went to NCTb chief Tjibbe Joustra independently of one another with the message that the contents of Fitna would be explosive.
Buncha weenies, those MPs. Like everyone else, I keep asking “what in the world is wrong with the Dutch?”
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Turkey allows Iraqi oil export restart
In other words, the turkeys are throwing their weight around again.
Our tipster calls this one “the outrage of the day”
Audit finds that Michigan let hundreds of criminals provide child care
Michigan’s oversight of child care providers was so ridden with deficiencies that state regulators licensed hundreds of convicted sex offenders, child abusers and criminals during a three-year period ending in 2006, according to an audit released today by the state auditor general.
The Department of Human Services authorized 1,900 unsuitable day care providers during the period placing 4,600 children at risk, auditors found.
“Daycare” is a disaster, especially for boys. I used to have to “certify” daycare homes for a county social service agency. It was so depressing, I quit.
The Sweet Illusion Of Socialism
The underlying issue of the 2008 election makes this a watershed moment in American history, too important to shrink from full and frank debate or allow emotional appeal to cloak party platform DNA.
In 2004, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said: “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” She could have easily quoted Karl Marx, who said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
[…]
We’ve come far from promises of “a chicken in every pot” to Barack Obama’s June 3 declaration that “the chance to get a college education is the birthright of every American.” When did it become a birthright?
In his 1982 book, “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism,” Michael Novak noted that many who have lived under socialism would find it hard to believe “that other human beings would fall for the same bundle of lies, half-truths and distortions. Sadly, however, illusion is often sweeter to human taste than reality. The last Marxist in the world will probably be an American nun.”
Guns, Foreign Courts, and the Moral Consensus of the International Community
Th[e] [Supreme Court’s] tendency to invoke foreign jurisprudence is becoming more troubling as it becomes clearer that the moral consensus that once united Western nations has almost entirely broken down. A few years ago a pastor I know, as part of his duties as a representative of the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC), took part in an inter-church dialogue with a member of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), a grouping of Reformed congregations in the Netherlands. The GKN sent what they considered to be a moderate pastor to participate in this conversation about moral issues. In the course of the discussion, the GKN moderate asserted that it was more evil to own a gun than to have an abortion.
At this, the CRC representative was only able to respond that their discussion was effectively over…As any rhetorician knows, argument can only proceed where there is some basic level of agreement, and the ethical opinion expressed by the GKN pastor was so far removed from the sensibilities of the CRC that there was effectively no point of contact for continuing dialogue.
While this is a relatively minor anecdote, it serves well to illustrate the conflicting moral values placed on issues of life by the mainstream culture in Europe and the United States…
…If part of what characterizes a civilization is a consensus on moral issues, then the idea of a unified Western civilization encompassing Europe and the United States is an illusion. A consensus that diverges on such fundamental questions of the right to life and responsibilities of self-defense is simply no consensus at all.
It's amazing how we still keep trying to talk to one another, though. Hope springs eternal...
3 comments:
Conservative Swede: The model countries are the ones that will fall first.
All right. Without meaning to be too harsh, out of your huge flurry of comments in this thread, this is one of the first to throw some weight. So, in other words:
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make models?
That sure would explain a lot about the high fashion industry.
But seriously, aren't you pressing the case for how: "No good deed goes unpunished"?
So, how is it that the model of modern democracy, America, has yet to fail? Or, in your dystopic conjuration, is it already doomed?
Speaking of dystopic conjurations; While traveling on business in Taiwan I met some followers of Falun Gong. Much as with most Taiwanese people I encountered, they were some of the nicest folks I have ever met in all of my extensive travels.
One serious question:
Is Falun Gong a threat to free, democratic societies and governments, or merely a challenge to repressive regimes like communist China?
I'm not at all surprised at how China's Mandarins wet their drawers over Falun Gong's ability to summon forth huge crowds of peaceful protesters. Few other things could strike terror in the atrophied hearts of China's putative leadership.
I've heard less favorable portrayals of Falun Gong at other sites and wonder exactly what it is that drives your own low esteem for this group in the current discussion. Care to respond?
Oh bloody Hell, the foregoing was intended for the Sweden and Denmark thread. Carry on.
The story about the three PVV MP's is probably untrue or at least greatly exaggerated.
The latest news is that the NCTb denies the whole account as "lariekoek" which roughly translates as "bullocks" or for our american readers "bullshit".
Now, the NCTb has a vested interest in bringing Wilders down, so them denying the whole thing is probably a good indication that its a hoax aimed to divide the PVV.
Also the dutch MSM are pretty quiet about it, and because they also would very much like to bring Wilders down, its also an indication that the story is rather dodgy.
What most probably happended from what i gather, is that the NCTb scared the living daylights out of the PVV MP's telling them that Fitna would put them onder a "very great risc".
Funnily enough they didnt offer any protection which is rather odd. For a protecting-agency to evaluate that MP's are at "a very great risc" and then not to offer any protection to the MP's, which in essence is one of their jobs, might even be called more then a little odd.
So, probably after talking to their wife and kids, 3 of them decided to see the NCTb and ask them for personal protection (which they again did not receive). I cant see anything wrong with that.
In order to boost their request, they told the NCTb anything they thought the NCTb wanted to hear. A bit like a prisoner who is willing to confess to anything as long as the torture stops. Again, I dont see anything wrong with that.
Note that what the PVV MP's supposedly told the NCTb, was NOT in the movie.
They said the movie SHOWED the tulbanbom exploding, showed the destruction of the prophet, showed the tearing up of the koran and finally showed it burning in a fire.
None of these things were actually showed in Fitna. The exploding bom and the tearing of the koran are at best implied, but not shown. The destruction of the prophet is ofcourse a logical effect of a bom exploding on his head, but thats just common sense. It wasnt shown and it wasnt even implied. And ofcourse the burning of the koran is a totally bogus claim.
Also note that the message as such of Fitna is completely different from the one suggested by the 3 MP's.
Showing the prophet head explode by a bom and subsequently perishing, showing the koran being teared up and burnt, is an outright declaration of war!
Whereas the message in Fitna actually was the rather civilized message to muslims to be more critical of their own religion if they want to "get along".
So, just like in the parlementary Fitna-debate we had here in the netherlands, something smells fishy.....and it aint fish.
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