Category: Current Affairs

All right, allow me one more indulgence and then I will keep quite for a while. I am a pacifist. I am also pragmatic and take responsibility for my actions. I subscribe to the Kurtzian view of war. If you are going to fight a war, fight it to win. War is an act of barbarism. Thus, to have rules such as the Geneva conventions govern the conduct of fighting and treatment of combatants, to me, seems ridiculous. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now argued for the right to drop the bomb on the Chinese and the Vietnamese. He understood the horror…

Okay, so Yassin is dead. Another so-called religious leader espousing humanist values of tolerance, peace, and the brotherhood of man is gone. I, for one, will not grieve for him. He chose violence as a solution and he died by the very actions of the words he preached. What I will grieve for is the end of any hope for stability and peace in Palestine and Israel. Lets call this what it is, the assassination of one terrorist by another. Israel is complicity in the formation of Hamas to further its own aims by creating instability and a power struggle…

I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and he had the most succinct commentary about why a constitutional amendment banning gay-marriage is a flawed proposition. They only other time we’ve had an amendment dealing with individual morality was prohibition. We all know how well that one went. What would we do without independent news outlets?

What a headline! This whole A-Rod trade has got Boston in an uproar, so I thought I’d give them a win over New York (namely me as the officially designated representative of the state.) I was working on a post about inclusion in the state, one which will probably still appear in some form, when today’s Boston Globe ran this op-ed about the French and the Bay Staters.

From the Associated Press Cairo, Egypt – Even before its first broadcast, a satellite television station financed by the U.S. government and directed at Arab viewers is drawing fire in the Middle East as an American attempt to destroy Islamic values and brainwash the young. Al-Hurra, or The Free One, is to start broadcasting Saturday. President Bush has promised the news station, which will build up to 24-hour programming within a month, will “cut through the hateful propaganda that fills the airwaves in the Muslim world.” It already has landed a one-on-one interview with Bush. White House Press Secretary Scott…

Pop quiz: What country meets the following criteria? Women are told how to dress Christians cannot profess their faith Jews cannot practice their religion You gut instinct may be to think of some state with a repressive interpretation of Islam; perhaps Afghanistan under the Taliban; perhaps Saudia Arabia. If I told you that they had declared weapons of mass destruction – and not that non-conventional stuff dressed up – but real nuclear weapons. Your first thought might be, incorrectly as we know now, of Iraq.

The pilgrims came with honour and reverence, thanking God for His compassion and mercy, having escaped the toil and trial of the Hijaz and saved from the painful punishment of hell. They came to Mecca from ‘Arafat proclaiming “Labbayka! Here I am, at your service, O Lord!” They had performed all the rites of the pilgrimage and were now returning home, safe and healthy.

1. Invade Afghanistan (unintended bonus) 2. Invade Iraq 3. Invade Syria 4. Invade Iran 5. Blockade N. Korea until it surrenders The world according to Richard Perle.