This story about prison programs that are clearly (if not explicitly) designed to indoctrinate and convert inmates who - as the headline astutely points out - are a "captive audience" sickens me. If you want to know how Americans
should be reacting to this, just try this simple mental exercise. Read the article and make a few replacements:
- Replace "Christian" with "Muslim."
- Replace "Christianity" with "Islam."
- Replace "Christ" or "Jesus" with "Allah."
Now, tell me how the average American would react to such news. Imagine the outcry against the politicians who are lining up to support the current program if they supported the one in our mental exercise. That reaction (focus on it again) should be exactly the same as the reaction to the actual content of the article. Is it?
Labels: christianity, conservatism, islam, politics, religion, sham
Since I found out about it, I have been duly disgusted by the "
Conservative Punk" website, not because I don't like conservatives, though I tend to reject a lot of what they stand for, and not because I don't like punks, though I can't help but recoil in embarrassment at my own punk rock youth. Rather, the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" conceit is a powerful deterrent, and here is that motif played out as fully as anywhere. I am not a big fan of contradictions, and "conservative punk" sounds more like a bad joke than a real movement. Anyway, there is a funny segment of that site endorsing a
boycott of Chinese goods:
While some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods.
So, basically, it's wrong to punish workers because "the suits" might have politics we don't like, but
it's perfectly fine to punish the Chinese because
their "suits" have politics we don't like. Good call. What was it I was saying about contradictions, earlier?
The punks go on to point out several reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods. Some of them are indeed valid, but the very first one is:
China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?
In effect, aren't you tired of allowing the Chinese to compete with us fairly? Wouldn't you prefer to tip the scale back in our favor? I guess they take the punk D.I.Y. ethic so seriously that they demand we "do it ourselves."
Heir Apparent apparently errs:
I'm a little mystified by
this report that Prince Charles plans to "explain the virtues of Islam" to President Bush. Apparently, he believes that the US has been too confrontational against Islam (as a religion, I take it). Believe me, I have plenty of objections to the Bush administration, and I have often complained about them here. But I do
not think Bush has misrepresented Islam as a religion, and I can think of many occasions where he has made it a point to stress that our enemy is
not Islam or Muslims. Frankly, I think too often our liberal (and honorable) tendency to try not to offend the sensibilities of others leads us to absurd situations where we are paralyzed to speak the truth. One group I particularly admire for taking a hard line against Islamist terrorism are the
Free Muslims. Perhaps if Prince Charles advocated a line more akin to the Free Muslims (which British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now beginning to do) than an unconditional appeal to multiculturalism and acceptance, then Britain might be a less hospitable place for
radical clerics who want to destroy the open governments that allow them to preach in the first place.
Sort of related to terrorism, I guess:
My friend Brandon asked to see the code for the terror alert function, so I thought others might be interested as well. Here it is:
function getTerrorAlert() 'Version 1.1
'*********************************************************************
'Do not modify the variables unless you know what you're doing. *
'(1) intTimeout is fair game, change it to whatever timeout length *
'you like, but don't exceed Server.ScriptTimeout. *
'(2) strErrorResponse is self-explanatory. *
' *
'Version 1.0: Got the alert *
'Version 1.1: Includes a timeout value. *
'Future versions aren't planned unless something is wrong with this. *
' *
'Afshin Darian - http://eighties-night.com/ *
' *
'AS USUAL, THIS IS UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. CHECK MY SITE *
'FOR THE LINK TO THE MOST CURRENT VERSION OF THE LICENSE. *
'*********************************************************************
dim intTimeout : intTimeout = 10 'in seconds
dim strErrorResponse : strErrorResponse = "couldn't contact dhs"
'*********************************************************************
dim strTemp, xml, xmlhttp, timeStart, timeCurrent, LOADED, strURL
strTemp = ""
LOADED = 4 'This is the readyState value when xmlhttp has loaded
strURL = "http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition"
set xmlhttp = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
set xml = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xml.async = false
call xmlhttp.open("GET", strURL, false)
call xmlhttp.send()
timeStart = now
do
timeCurrent = now
intTimeTaken = cint(datediff("s", timeStart, timeCurrent))
if (intTimeTaken > intTimeout) then
strTemp = strErrorResponse
call xmlhttp.abort()
exit do
end if
loop while xmlhttp.readyState <> LOADED
if (xmlhttp.readyState = LOADED) then
call xml.loadxml(xmlhttp.responsetext)
strTemp = xml.selectsinglenode("/THREAT_ADVISORY").getAttribute("CONDITION")
end if
set xmlhttp = nothing
set xml = nothing
getTerrorAlert = strTemp
end function
Labels: coding, conservatism, fud, islam, music, politics, religion, terrorism
Afshin Molavi, who is a fellow at the New American Foundation, contributes an op-ed piece in today's
New York Times, called "
Our Allies in Iran." He makes the case for easing some of our relations with Iran, in order to encourage the democratic-minded middle-class of Iranians, without ceding anything to the hardline regime. I think he's right, but I don't imagine anybody in the Bush administration would be convinced by his argument.
Speaking of the New America Foundation . . .
While I was reading about the New America Foundation, I ran into
this blog entry, by Nathan Newman, which complains about a statement made by the New America Foundation that points out the basic flaw in employer-based healthcare. Newman makes an analogy that should strike you as flawed even if you don't catch the immediate problem:
When Wal-Mart's trucks break down, no one expects the government to pay to repair them. Wal-Mart pays to fix them and the costs are included in the price of the goods they sell.
Yet moderate Democrats apparently think that when workers get sick, companies don't have the responsibility to "repair" their workers.
The problem, of course, is this:
Wal-Mart owns its trucks, but Wal-Mart does not own its employees. So while it is perfectly natural that Wal-Mart should expect nobody to care for its possessions, it simply does not follow that Wal-Mart has to pay for its workers' healthcare.
And while I'm pretending to be a right-winger . . .
(note: this has since been disabled)
In the spirit of civic awareness, I have decided that my page should serve as more than just a waste of time. So, I have changed my theme to indicate the Department of Homeland Security's Terror Advisory level at the time you load the page. If the DHS's website is unavailable, the theme will default to the "baby blue" theme I had before. However, if the DHS site is down, you should probably be more concerned about what happened to the DHS than what color my page will render. Of course, the problem could be on my end, so you might want to (perhaps) check a more reputable news source. In case you need to brush up on what the colors mean, here is the Terror Advisory
reference, or you can just look at the "terror_alert" sidebar on this page. If you want to do something similar, here is the XML file from the DHS site. It is sparse:
www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryConditionLabels: conservatism, fud, iran, politics, terrorism
Ernie was right about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Maybe I do give people the benefit of doubt too frequently. Now a whole bunch of sets on the Suicide Girls site have been censored. Instead, this is what you see:
But [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor [Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin] Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
(Washington Post - "Recruits Sought for Porn Squad")
Every time I hear about groups like the "Family" "Research" Council (yes, "family" and "research" each get the bunny-ear treatment), I think back to the old adage about the enemies of my enemies and the friends of my enemies. And it looks like my enemies consider Alberto Gonzales a friend.
Labels: conservatism, fud, media, sham
