harmonicminer » 2010

Jun 13 2010

I was just kidding, man… lighten up

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 8:10 pm

Dominican University evacuated Wednesday after bomb threat

The River Forest Police Department has charged Saudi Arabian foreign exchange student Mohamed Mahdey S. Al Shria, 20, with disorderly conduct. Al Shria has been released on bond.

Police said that Al Shria was arrested yesterday at his host home on the 1200 block of Ashland in River Forest, and soon after they determined there was no credible threat to the school.

Dominican University evacuated its Priory campus about 2:30 p.m. yesterday after a student enrolled in a program renting space from the university allegedly threatened to blow up the school. The student had allegedly received a bad grade in a class.

OK. From now on, I’m giving all A’s.

River Forest police immediately identified and quickly arrested a Saudi Arabian foreign exchange student legally living in River Forest, who was enrolled in an English education program, ELS, that rents space on the campus.

Between 75 and 100 people were evacuated from the Priory campus at Harlem and Division, including four preschool classes from Dominican’s Goedert Center, ELS students and staff, as well as a handful of religious, and university faculty and staff, according to Dominican spokeswoman Kristin Peterson.

The Goedert Center’s students were moved across the street to Grace Lutheran School soon after the threat, and the center’s staff called students’ parents and asked them to pick up their students as soon as possible.

Police searched the school’s campus, as well as the student’s host house, but did not find any bombs or bomb-making materials. Because the suspect was not a native English speaker, police called the FBI for help translating Arabic.

I wonder if there is a general tendency for people from that part of the world to make bomb threats as an expression of more or less random discontent.

You know. Americans jokingly say they’re going to shoot each other, but Saudis say they’re going to blow you up.

I suppose that’s unfair. Although no more so than the caricatures that pass for observation of Americans in the middle eastern media.

Comments (1)

Jun 12 2010

Obama not so cool anymore?

Category: left,Obama,politics,society — harmonicminer @ 8:00 am

Obama loses the Left: suddenly, it’s cool to bash Barack

Well, at least he’s still got Sir Paul McCartney. At the White House last week, the 67-year-old crooner was gushing in much the same manner as his own groupies did at Shea Stadium in 1965. “I’m a big fan, he’s a great guy,” McCartney told American critics of President Barack Obama. “So lay off him, he’s doing great.”

Later, McCartney serenaded the First Lady with a rendition of Michelle and, receiving a prize from the Library of Congress, took a cheap shot at President George W Bush that was as unfunny as it was unoriginal. “After the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.” Bush. Doesn’t read books. Stupid. Geddit?

Imagine. A universe without puerile pop stars who think their ability to turn a tune translates into insight into the great game.

The problem for the President is that even if the former Beatle does speak for billions, the overwhelming majority of those are overseas. Polls show that around 10 per cent of those who voted for Obama in 2008 now disapprove of his performance and the heavy turnout of young people and black voters among the 69 million who back him will not be repeated again.

McCartney’s banalities were an example of a transatlantic dissonance that is all too apparent these days. Whereas Europe is stuck in November 2008 and still hopelessly in love with Obama, Americans have got over the historic symbolism of it all and are now moving on as they live with the reality.

That reality has now begun to dawn on some of Obama’s natural constituency – Hollywood and the Left. The “no drama Obama” demeanour that served him so well on the campaign trail is now becoming a liability.

This coincides exactly with my earlier point.

Obama takes action precisely where and when he shouldn’t, and does little or nothing when he should.

And the USA is catching on, even if the rest of the world’s left hasn’t, yet. Of course, they are perfectly happy for Obama to do anything that weakens the USA, and to avoid doing anything that will help it… it is an article of faith for them. But perhaps at least some of the USA’s homegrown left aren’t quite so lemming-like.

November 2010 is coming.

Comments (0)

Jun 11 2010

Britain R.I.P.? Part four

Category: guns,justice,liberty — harmonicminer @ 8:00 am

The previous post in this series is here.

The extreme nature of British gun bans has still not protected the people from the occasional mass murderer with a gun. In fact, even in the USA, they only tend to happen where virtually everyone is known to be disarmed by law, like in schools, government offices, universities, post offices and military bases [go figure, but they’re disarmed]. When was the last time you heard of a mass murder at a gun show? Or a gun range? Of course, in Britain, everyone is disarmed all the time everywhere, by law… so mass murder can happen anywhere at all. According to Peter Hitchens, Perhaps these deadly rampages aren’t so ‘inexplicable’ after all:

Yet another gun massacre is followed by yet another typhoon of psychobabble,
sentiment and bogus declarations that â€˜this must never happen again’, when everyone knows that it will.

It’s difficult to argue for tighter gun laws, since they’re already so tight, though I’m sure the authorities will think of something suitably irrelevant and futile, as they did after Hungerford and Dunblane.

They are determined to make sure nobody in this country is armed, apart from criminals and terrorists, the invariable effect of â€˜tough’ gun laws that trouble only the law-abiding and have no impact on illegally held weapons at all.

The truth is that until 1920, Britain’s gun laws were so relaxed they made Texas look effeminate, but we had virtually no gun crime. That only really began to increase here after we abolished hanging.

But that truth doesn’t fit the Leftist dogma which has everyone, including the Tories, the media and the police, in its grip, so the facts will be ignored.

What can we learn from the Cumberland murders? Well, first of all that the police are no use to anyone once a crime has been committed. They never were and they never will be, except if they can do first aid.

It’s such a pity they’ve forgotten their job is to prevent crime rather than hold verbose Press conferences afterwards and festoon the countryside with silly scene-of-crime tape copied from American TV shows.

It’s possible an old-fashioned village constable, on the spot, might have done something to halt Derrick Bird, or have realised something bad was going to happen before it did.

It’s certain that the modern fire-brigade approach to policing with its sirens, helicopters, computers and flash cars was no use.

This is another area where the “mother country” of the USA has simply lost its mind. Hitchens goes on to conjecture that anti-depressant drugs are at the heart of some of these mass murders.

Maybe.

The next post in this series is here.

Comments (2)

Jun 10 2010

Genocide of Black Babies

Category: abortion — harmonicminer @ 8:27 am

As Christians, we are called to Value Life and All of God’s Children. Here are some observations from Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union. I wonder which major Christian university will be featuring her as a “diversity” speaker in the near future?

Today in America, we all would like to believe racism no longer exists, but that is just not the case.That fact is most evident to me every night when I turn on the evening news and hear the stories, night after night after night, about beautiful 2-year-old or 5-year-old little white girls either missing or brutally murdered. My heart breaks and aches for them and their families, beautiful children! Yet I know little black girls have disappeared or died the same horrible, tragic deaths, and the media silence regarding them is deafening!

In America, we subconsciously devalue black babies. We are tricked into thinking a black child has less value than a child of another race.

Though U.S. law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in various contexts, including employment, education and housing, black babies are still openly targeted and discriminated against.

Where’s the proof? It’s right in front of our faces. In recent YouTube videos there were several instances where Planned Parenthood representatives were willing to accept racist donations, even to the point of being “excited” at the possibility of taking money specifically earmarked to kill a black baby.

Planned Parenthood’s eager acceptance of these donations reflect the racist and eugenic principles of its founder, Margaret Sanger. This business mainly profits from the large number of abortions it provides, 37 percent of those abortions are performed on black women. Black America needs to face reality. We need to understand what this business is really all about.

Many pro-life people refer to abortion as genocide. You may agree or disagree. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group defined by the exterminators as undesirable. It could be a racial, religious group, cultural, ethnic, or some other distinct group.

Most people find it easy to understand what genocide is as it relates to the Holocaust. To justify that genocide, Adolf Hitler and his followers did their very best to make whole races of people appear less than human. The targeted groups were deemed “undesirables” and “subhumans,” which made it easier for Hitler to carry out the killing of millions of people.

Today, the abortion industry would have all of us believe that unborn children are less than human. They make sure to only refer to these children as fetuses or embryos. They use these words to dehumanize the child. Planned Parenthood views the killing of innocent preborn babies, especially those who are black, in a very similar way. Most abortionists and abortion providers insist the child in the womb is not yet fully human. They want women and girls who walk through an abortionist’s doors to believe the child they are killing is not yet a child, as Hitler believed, it was “easier” to kill that which was not fully human.

Abortion hurts women and inflicts a horrendous and brutal death on the children. If we were talking about animals all of Hollywood and the rest of the nation would demand an immediate halt to the killing. But we’re not talking about defenseless animals here, only defenseless children.

Today, for every black baby born, another black baby is killed by abortion. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion chain. It has planted its clinics strategically in our urban and minority neighborhoods. This is no accident!

The Alan Guttmacher Institute and with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that a huge majority (experts estimate more than 75 percent) of abortion clinics are located in minority neighborhoods.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. It raked in $1 billion last year, including more than $350 million in taxpayer funds. That’s right. Tax dollars, in part, fund an organization that gets excited about taking donations earmarked to abort black babies.

Last year, thousands of Americans lost their homes due to foreclosed loans. Many homes could have been saved with $350 million. Many of our schools, especially inner city schools, are in shambles; $350 million could have paid for more teachers, and computers and other school supplies.

We have men, women, children, and entire families living on the street. I’ve seen them, you’ve seen them, fellow Americans, destitute and homeless. And $350 million could have provided many of them housing and shelter.

Taxpayer dollars spent to support the racist agenda of Planned Parenthood could have been spent in various other ways to support and protect people in need, the homeless, elderly and unborn. Why are we forced to give our tax dollars to a racist organization that was founded to limit the numbers of Negroes in America?

For too long, our black leaders have walked with blinders on, we have ignored the screams and tears of our children being ripped from the womb. We have been guilty of looking the other way while our children were targeted for death.

But we are coming together and we realize abortion will not go away until we bring this travesty out into the light and act to protect the very lives being disregarded. The hateful agenda of Planned Parenthood must be stopped, and we as a society must not sit by and allow children to be killed.

Those of us who serve God acknowledge we are all made in his image. For us, blessed is the fruit of the womb. If God says children are a reward, a gift and our heritage, then we must uphold that all children are greatly valuable and desirable, indeed.

Comments (1)

Jun 09 2010

Why Turkey, NATO member, is siding with Iran against Israel

Category: Islam,Israel,jihad,national security — harmonicminer @ 8:19 am

Fareed Sakaria thinks he knows why Turkey is siding against Israel in the Gaza blockade. You guessed it: it’s Bush’s fault.

On the other hand, people who actually understand a bit more about the facts on the ground in Turkey see that the shift in Turkish foreign policy is a matter of demographics, as pointed out by Mark Steyn in Israel, Turkey, and the End of Stability

Foreign policy “realists,” back in the saddle since the Texan cowboy left town, are extremely fond of the concept of “stability”: America needs a stable Middle East, so we should learn to live with Mubarak and the mullahs and the House of Saud, etc. You can see the appeal of “stability” to your big-time geopolitical analyst: You don’t have to update your Rolodex too often, never mind rethink your assumptions. “Stability” is a fancy term to upgrade inertia and complacency into strategy. No wonder the fetishization of stability is one of the most stable features of foreign-policy analysis.

Unfortunately, back in what passes for the real world, there is no stability. History is always on the march, and, if it’s not moving in your direction, it’s generally moving in the other fellow’s. Take this “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla. Much of what went on, the dissembling of the Palestinian propagandists, the hysteria of the U.N. and the Euro-ninnies, was just business as usual. But what was most striking was the behavior of the Turks. In the wake of the Israeli raid, Ankara promised to provide Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza. This would be, in effect, an act of war, more to the point, an act of war by a NATO member against the State of Israel.

Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe.

Yet it happened. Erdogan said those words to Shimon Peres at Davos last year and then flounced off stage. Day by day what was formerly the Zionist entity’s staunchest pal talks more and more like just another cookie-cutter death-to-the-Great-Satan stan-of-the-month.

As the think-tankers like to say: “Who lost Turkey?” In a nutshell: Kemal Ataturk. Since he founded post-Ottoman Turkey in his own image nearly nine decades ago, the population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey, i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey, has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey, i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities.

As is often the case, Mark Steyn makes an elegant argument from demographics that the days of a western looking Turkey are probably over. We should have known when Turkey would not allow us to stage troops into Iraq in 2003. But it is now clear that Turkey is rapidly become just another Islamist state, and the demographic forces at work seem likely to continue its motion in that direction.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think Fareed Zakaria is ignorant of the demographic changes in Turkey. He surely knows. Your speculations are as good as mine about why he doesn’t find that knowledge worthy of mention in his conjectures about what has led to changes in the Turkish political situation.

Click the link above and read Steyn’s article.

Comments (0)

Jun 08 2010

The repeated Bambi scene: “Don’t fly!”

Category: media,Obama,society — harmonicminer @ 8:19 am

You know the scene from the movie Bambi. The evil hunters are shooting up the entire forest, apparently possessed of limitless ammo, shooting at everything that moves, or makes a sound, or just shooting. (Forget the fact that anyone who has ever hunted knows that hunters often spend days without firing a shot, and that one thing hunters never do is take random shots. They go out looking for a specific thing, normally shoot only at one kind of animal, and then only if there is a likely hit potential.)

So the young bird is sitting in the bushes, hiding, as the hunters are blazing away. The older, more experienced bird keeps saying urgently, “Don’t fly! Don’t fly!” But the young bird is just too rattled, and can’t bear the tension of waiting in the relative safety of the bushes, and flies anyway… to the predictable end.

This has become a cliche in movies. I’ve been in theaters where the audience actually tries to convince the people on screen not to open the door.

But, just lately, I’ve noticed something else. It seems to be the blonde chick who can’t hold still and wait for the danger to pass. The example that came to mind today is the 2005 movie (not even quite a grade B) Komodo vs. Cobra, about giant lizards and snakes on a tropical island, the result of (stereotypically) careless military experimentation. The komodo can’t see people if they don’t move. So everyone is holding still, but it’s the blonde chick who just can’t hold still, and alerts the dragon to their presence.

At least she was the one who got eaten, as the others ran. There is some small justice in the movies, sometimes.

I have the impression that the Obama administration is in the role of the blonde chick regarding everything from the economy and the Gulf oil spill to health care and foreign policy, especially regarding threats to Israel, and threats from Iran, Russia and China, not to mention North Korea.

There are times when the Obama administration really should just hold still, let events take their course, and accept that there are realities in the world that it can’t undo and can hardly affect, except for the worse. But it just can’t seem to hold still and wait for the predators to pass.

It’s risible. The feds take action on health care (which will be about as useful as yelling “run” when you’re trying to hide from a tyranosaurus that’s 10 feet away). They pass a “stimulus” bill that stimulates nothing but our national debt, and they “bail out” various banks and GM, about like giving a blood transfusion to a gunshot victim without sewing up the wound, all without dealing with the incoming gunfire.

Obama basically gave away our missile defense system for Europe, that would have provided at least some shield against a nuclear Iran, all because it just couldn’t seem to resist the urge to do something specific to “improve” our relations with Russia, to “reset” our Russian diplomacy.

The Obama administration just can’t resist the urge to take action when it will do no good, and probably do harm.

At the same time, when quick, decisive action is called for, such as on the Gulf oil spill (why, oh why, aren’t they throwing the full resources of the government into building the berms that Governor Jindal wants, skimming and burning, putting up booms, etc.?), Obama dithers, apparently flash-frozen in fear of being seen to do something whose outcome he can’t fully predict… like that ever stopped him before. Of course, even more frightening, maybe he really thinks he can predict the outcome of raising taxes, printing Monopoly money, and taking over national healthcare…. and thinks it will be good.

Holey moley.

And when a quick statement is needed in support of Israel’s right to enforce a blockade on Gaza (which is essentially in a perpetual state of war with Israel, under Hamas), all Obama can muster is a tepid “we’ll have to investigate.” And his gutless response to North Korea’s sinking of a ship belong to one of our allies, South Korea, is not exactly inspiring.

From what I can tell, Obama exercises “statesmanlike restraint” at all the worst times, when he really needs to be doing something. And when it’s time to recognize that natural events must take their course (mismanaged companies need to fail), Obama explodes in a fury of activity.

All this while sensible people are constantly telling him, “Don’t fly! Don’t fly!”

I fear that there are some real predators who are about to see him as fair game. I hope he doesn’t take too many of us with him.

Comments (1)

Jun 07 2010

Egyptians losing citizenship because they marry Israeli women

Category: freedom,Islam,Israel,justice,liberty,middle east — harmonicminer @ 12:28 pm

Egypt restricts marriage to Israelis

Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling on Saturday, that orders the country’s Interior Ministry to strip citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.

The court said that the Interior Ministry should present each marriage case to the Cabinet on an individual basis. The Cabinet will then rule on whether to strip the Egyptian of his citizenship, taking into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew when making its decision to revoke citizenship.

Saturday’s decision, which cannot be appealed, comes more than year after a lower court ruled that the Interior Ministry, which deals with citizenship documents, must implement the 1976 article of the citizenship law. That bill revokes citizenship of Egyptians who married Israelis who have served in the army or embrace Zionism as an ideology. The Interior Ministry appealed that ruling.

The lawyer who brought the original suit to court, Nabih el-Wahsh, celebrated Saturday’s ruling, saying it “is aimed at protecting Egyptian youth and Egypt’s national security.”

The government has not released figures of Egyptians married to Israeli women, but some estimates put the number around 30,000.

Israeli officials said they had no comment on Saturday’s ruling.

Somehow, I doubt that the UN Human Rights commission, the National Organization for Women, and liberal feminists everywhere will be any more forthcoming.

Now, imagine if Israeli women who married Egyptians automatically lost their Israeli citizenship.

Feminists everywhere would be deeply indignant.

As always, essentially ANY insult aimed at Israel is merely business as usual, even though the reverse would suddently become an intolerable outrage.

Comments (0)

Jun 06 2010

Iran may help run the Israeli blockade of Gaza?

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 11:51 am

Iran Revolutionary Guards offer to escort Gaza-bound ships

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday.

“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,” Ali Shirazi, Khamenei’s representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Any intervention by the Iranian military would be considered highly provocative by Israel which accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza.

The Guards, with their own navy, air force and command structure separate from the regular armed forces, are seen as fiercely loyal to the values of the Islamic Republic.

“If the Supreme Leader issues an order for this then the Revolutionary Guard naval forces will do their best to secure the ships,” Shirazi said. “It is Iran’s duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza.”

I suppose Iran sees this as simply protecting its investment. But if there was ever any doubt that the Gaza “humanitarian aid” flotillas have any other purpose than to allow (eventually) for weapons to reach Gaza by sea, this should end it.

Doubtless the United Nations would vote to affirm Iran’s attempt to provide “security” for the “aid” flotillas. Or, at a minimum, perhaps the UN would simply fail to condemn it.

I think this is just talk, however. If Iran were to bring military force into the equation, to try to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza, there would be a lot of bloodshed. I think it would be impossible to pass it off as anything other than unnecessarily provocative. Although I’m sure many at the UN would try.

It is much to be hoped that Iran is bluffing.