Part-Time Dilletante

Quarantine Planning: Necessary commodities

2006-01-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

List of things we should purchase or have on hand prior to the outbreak of a disaster or bird flu outbreak. Again, such an outbreak may last up to a year, so think "quantity."

Toilet paper (may even become a tradable commodity if things get really bad up here.)
Feminine products
Cash (phone lines may be down and credit cards wouldn't work)
Gasoline (keep vehicle tanks full, and fill up gas cans if an outbreak occurs)
Oil
Clothing (especially for growing children)

Shoes, boots, jackets in next size up from the kid's current sizes.
Probably should have extra pair of boots for each adult too

Cigarettes? Or just tobacco & papers? Or both? Or just figure on quitting?
Batteries & radio (internet may not be available)
Ammunition & Arrow heads
Kerosene lanterns & lamp oil or kerosene

Shampoo, detergent, dish soap, and lots of lysol disinfectant
medical gloves
medical masks

Quarantine Planning: Medicine

2006-01-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

We ARE talking about a flu pandemic, so of course we should stock up on cold/flu remedies. Especially since even the government's plans state that we'll probably be left to fend for ourselves. Don't want to wait to get these until the point that store shelves are empty.

Should check with everyone to see what prescriptions they need, and try to get as much as possible of them.

Check the status of the first aid kit, and maybe beef it up with some heavier duty items such as splints, large trauma gauze, etc.

Other stuff: Pain pills, aspirin, Rid, prep h, milk of magnesia, toothache gel, hydrogen peroxide, cough medicine,

Quarantine Planning: Water

2005-12-31T19:00:00.000-08:00

Water should be available for us given that the power should be operable except during extreme/prolonged outbreaks of the bird flu, and that we can use the generator for short periods to run the well, and that the creek is nearby. Nevertheless, upon indications of an outbreak we should fill up the two water tanks we have and place one by the horses and one near the main house. At the least, these could be used to flush toilets, while water from the creek could be boiled for use.

Quarantine Planning: Food

2005-12-31T18:10:00.000-08:00

This section requires more thought than the shelter section.

ON THE PLUS SIDE:

We have a large pantry already fairly full (enough for 2 months?)
We have 2 freezers of food, including nearly a whole cow.
Deer are plentiful
Blackberries grow free and wild, and we may have fruit trees soon
6 chickens
3 cows
Plenty of room for garden
Cooking can be done on wood stove

ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE:

We'll probably need more than 2 months of food
Power for the freezers can only be depended upon during low severity outbreaks
No roosters, and we haven't seen any eggs
Garden is not deer proof
Needing to butcher the cows assumes we haven't power for freezers. Which means that if we do butcher one, we still need to preserve it somehow, or waste the majority of it.
No oven if we have no power

NEEDED:

6 months or more supply of hay for horses & cows

Dog & cat food

Chicken coop, with rooster, for egg collection & chicken replenishment

Greenhouse, for year round veggies

Deer proof fence around garden

More fruit trees (with deer proof enclosures)

Purchase veggie seeds

Corn, Tomatoes, lettuce, squash, beans, peas, watermellon, cantelope,

Stock up pantry

Dried beans
Rice
Sugar
Salt
Cooking Oil
Canned veggies
Canned hams, tuna, & other meat
Flour & yeast for bread? (No oven possibly, but could we do flatbread or tortillas? - Note that yeast doesn't last forever. Perhaps we should begin sourdough starter)
Fruit juices

Quarantine Planning: Shelter

2005-12-31T15:52:00.000-08:00

We have shelter, so this is the easiest section. The only real consideration is how to continue receiving enough income to make mortgage payments while discontinuing any contact with others outside of our property. Fortunately, more than half of our income comes from the internet. So timing becomes important. We'll have to stop doing construction work when its obvious that an outbreak of bird flu has occurred, but can continue internet sales so long as that is up and running. Unfortunately, this still means trips to the post office. Precautions would have to be taken for this (gloves, masks, disinfectant of parcels/mail/checks received, etc.)

If it gets to the point that the internet is down, or business is so affected that no one is purchasing insurance any longer, then we can probably stop worrying about making the mortgage payment. If things are that bad, then millions will have stopped paying by that point. We're unlikely to be thrown out of the house immediately, and could likely expect some sort of governmental relief in the long run.

We'll simply become squatters.

Heat

No difference from normal, since our primary heat even now is a wood stove, even if we lose power & services (except for Mom's office, which is heated by a propane heater).

Needed:

Unleaded fuel for chain saws.
Oil for fuel mixture in chain saws
Bar Oil (though we currently have over 2 gallons)
Extra chain saw blades
Blade files
Axe

Cooling

Last year we did without our swamp cooler, even though we went through a record heat spell. Though Mom had an air conditioner going in her office. Other than the office, I guess we could do it again. Not much choice, since this would requrie power. But at our location & elevation, we don't need to take drastic measures.

Needed:

Nothing

Planning: Bird Flu

2005-12-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

Avoiding the flu

Improve health and immune system now
Get flu shots
Purchase Tamiflu
If possible outbreak occurs:
Disinfect phones, doorknobs, lightswitches, refridgerator handles, bathrooms
Limit contact with others
Consider wearing gloves, masks

If definite outbreak occurs:

Disinfect even UPS packages received before opening
Discontinue contact with others (quarantine ourselves)
Quarantine may have to last up to 18 months

Quarantine Planning

Major factors to consider:

Shelter
Food
Water
Medicine
Security
Power
Necessary commodities (Clothing [especially for growing kids], toilet paper, tampons, ammunition, etc)
Desirable commodities (beer)
Tradable commodities (liquor, toilet paper, more?)
Income
Communication

Bird Flu Disaster Background Material

2005-12-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on surviving a long term disaster. I'm not talking about losing power for 3 days, or suffering the effects of a major earthquake for a week or two, but trying to live for 12 to 18 months during an outbreak of the bird flu.

Up to this point I've pooh-poohed the hype on this flu, since only a handful of people have actually died, and since its not even known yet if it can or will mutate to the point where it can be transmitted from human to human (though recent reports indicate that there may have been at least one case where this occurred). Yet, given the likely severity, all encompassing range, and devasting speed with which the disease would strike, I believe its important to begin thinking and planning about how to keep my family alive.

State & Federal Government Assistance? (From the US Dept of Health & Human Services Strategic Plan for a Flu Pandemic
"If efforts to contain isolated outbreaks within the U.S. were unsuccessful and influenza spread quickly to affect many more communities either simultaneously or in quick succession—the hallmark of a pandemic—response assets at all levels of government and the private sector would be taxed severely. Communities would need to direct all their influenza response assets to their own needs and would have little to spare for the needs of others. Moreover, as the number of affected communities grows, their collective need would spread the response assets of states and the federal government ever thinner. In the extreme, until a vaccine against the pandemic virus would become available in sufficient quantity to have a significant impact on protecting public health [ME - Likely to take 3 to 6 months to produce, and longer to distribute], thousands of communities could be countering influenza simultaneously with little or no assistance from adjacent communities, the state, or the federal government. Preparedness planning for pandemic influenza response must take this prospect into account."

In other words, "Don't expect any help from the government."

Speed and Scope: (from: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/05/051206001434.cz1ycjxs.html )
"the epidemic will turn into a pandemic in just several weeks, spreading first in Asia before reaching Europe and the American continent 50 days later.
At the end of week six, Americans will see 722,000 pandemic cases in the United States, by week nine -- 37.4 million, by week 12 -- 90.8 million, and by the end of week 16, 92.2 million cases"

From the US Dept of Health & Human Services Strategic Plan for a Flu Pandemic
"The 1957 pandemic, during an era with much less globalization, spread to the U.S. within 4-5 months of its detection in China, and the 1968 pandemic spread to the U.S. from Hong Kong within 2-3 months. As was amply demonstrated by the SARS outbreak, modern travel patterns may significantly reduce the time needed for pandemic influenza viruses to spread globally to a few months or even weeks. "

A word on how long the flu might last: (From http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2148243/i/comingpandemicrevised.pdf)
"A feature of influenza pandemics not well appreciated generally is that they occur in waves.

The 1918 Spanish flu (H1N1) was associated with three waves while the 1958 Asian flu (H2N2) and 1968 Hong Kong flu (H3N2) pandemics have two distinct waves each. The reason for this wave behavior is not known but some have speculated that it is due to a change in the season of the year. The timing of a wave may also be related to a genetic change or mutation in the new strain of influenza virus. In past pandemics, the time between two waves was 3 to 9 months. A point to keep in mind about pandemic waves is that the second wave can be much more severe than the first or third wave of the series. During the 1918 pandemic, the deadly second wave was responsible for > 90% of the deaths for the entire pandemic.

[See this map/movie for an illustration of how fast that second wave spread througout the USA]

While the typical flu season predictably occurs from November through March, during pandemics, flu can vary from this script. The first wave of the 1918 flu occurred in the spring of that year ending in March. That flu was very severe by usual standards but the second wave beginning 6 months later in September was the most fatal. The third wave occurred during the following winter/spring and was the mildest of all. It is of note that pandemics end simply because all or most susceptible persons within the population have contracted the infection and have either died or developed immunity. "

Tamiflu (From: http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2148243/i/comingpandemicrevised.pdf )
"Over the course of the pandemic, predictions are that 25% to 50% of the population will become sick. There is an anti-viral antibiotic tablet, Tamiflu®, oseltamivir, manufactured by Roche Pharmaceuticals that is effective against Avian Influenza H5N1. The World Health Organization has recommended that every country establish a stockpile of enough drugs to treat 20% of its citizens in preparation for a possible Avian Influenza pandemic. Most of the developed nations have begun to do so.

The wholesale cost of Tamiflu is about $25 for a 5-day treatment course (10 tablets), a price that places it out of reach for the less developed nations to establish a Tamiflu stockpile. Manufacturing capacity for Tamiflu is also limited and manufacture of this Roche product takes place almost entirely in Europe. Most of the G8 countries have already placed their orders with Roche and governmental demand has been so great that this product was unavailable for a while in the spring of 2005 but as of June 2005, some Tamiflu has begun to trickle back into the retail chain but supplies remain tight.

Tamiflu works best if it is taken early in the course of the disease symptoms (within the first 48 hours of the illness). It might be useful even if started later but this is not established. I plan to administer it to very sick patients no matter how long they have had symptoms as long as there is hope they can survive.

It is also possible to prevent the flu by taking Tamiflu tablets at or immediately after exposure to the flu. While this strategy works, it requires the continuous use of the one tablet daily until the pandemic is past.

Under conditions of severe shortage of Tamiflu that we are likely to face during a pandemic, using the drug in this way is unwise. The strategy I plan to follow is to wait until flu symptoms are present before beginning Tamiflu treatment.

The recommended does is one tablet twice daily for 5 days. A worrisome US National Institute of Health study published in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of Infectious Disease reported that mice experimentally infected with the H5N1 avian flu strain required 10 days of Tamiflu treatment to prevent relapse and death instead of the currently recommended 5 day course of treatment. If this proves true for the pandemic virus it means that treatment for 10 instead of 5 days with Tamiflu would be needed which is a problem since the current stock of this drug would go only half as far thought initially.

Since half the population who contract influenza have no or only few symptoms of the disease, even if you don’t take Tamiflu in the preventive regimen you still have a 50% chance of not getting sick. By reserving the drug for those who become ill with flu, you will be able to effectively treat a much larger number of patients than if the drug is used in its preventive mode.

One recent development reported in May 2005 is the detection of some strains of H5N1 avian influenza that have crossed over from birds to humans in South East Asia that are developing resistance to Tamiflu.

While this is a disturbing observation, it does not mean that when pandemic flu arrives here it will be totally resistant to Tamiflu treatment. This is unlikely to be the case. It is likely however that some strains of the virus will carry this resistance factor meaning that some patients infected by those strains will not respond as well to Tamiflu treatment as expected. "

Early Warning

Your Small Mind Just Can't Comprehend It

2005-01-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Why did the movie Alexander flop? Oliver Stone says its because of 'raging fundamentalism' which caused folks to stay away from the film -- or even to read the reviews, because "the media was using the words: 'Alex is Gay.'

Additionally, the rubes in red America are too stupid to get it anyway, according to Stone. Its simply "too complex for 'conventional minds'. "

Thanks for your service, Matt.

2004-12-24T04:33:00.000-08:00

Opportunities to help someone out during Christmas time often seem to pop up unexpectedly in ways that don't seem to happen during the rest of the year.

This year a young Navy kid crossed my path, and it was my good fortune to be able to assist him.

This started about three weeks ago when my boss informed me that I must go to our main office in Philly during the week of Christmas. I wasn't thrilled to hear this, considering the likelihood of inclement weather and/or heavy holiday travel which might make for difficulties getting back home in time for Christmas. Sure enough, a blanket of 'Tooley fog' had settled into the basin that makes up most of the interior of California. Locals know this fog can last for weeks. The Saturday before I was to leave, my Sister flew into the Fresno airport around 10 PM. The pilot landed the plane on instruments, in a fog so thick that spontaneous applause broke out among the passengers when they could finally see the runway lights and the wheels touched down. The pilot came onto the intercom as they taxied to the gates and remarked wryly that, "there's not very many planes on the ground here."

In fact, her plane was one of only a few that risked landing that evening, so that as I stood in line at 6 AM the next morning to catch my flight a murmur began near the front and moved to the rear that flights were being cancelled. Sure enough, the board showed the first two flights (mine included) as cancelled, and cell phones began popping out all around. There was a family of travelers in front of me, and at about this point a clean cut young man carrying two cowboy hats in one hand, pulling a large suitcase with the other, and wearing a green duffel bag nearly as big as him on his back, walked up and strained to read the board. "The flights are cancelled?" he asked me. "I'm supposed to be in Missoura today." I figured he was probably reporting for duty, since he looked like he was about 17 - 18 tops - and he confirmed that he was in the Navy. I (misunderstood) him to say that he had orders to be back that evening.

Another young person, a young lady wearing a hikers backpack, also arrived, and it didn't take her long to determine to her poorly disguised disappointment that this handsome cowboy was engaged. By this point the line had come to a standstill, as each traveler now spent up to 20 minutes at each window trying to find alternatives. More cell phones appeared, some polite conversations broke out, and one older woman standing in line alone began loudly complaining to no one in particular, "Its always something!" I broke out "For Whom the Bell Tolls," which I'd found the day before while unpacking my library from our recent move to our new house, and couldn't believe that I'd never read it, since I've always wanted to. I'd figured it might help me to escape the tedium of the flight, but now it helped me escape the gridlock in line. Yet, something about these two young folks drew me, and I kept one ear open and occasionally joined into their conversation about his rodeo experiences, his previous tours on the aircraft carrier he was assigned to, and her seasonal job in Yosemite National Park. Nice kids, both of 'em.

Well, we'd nearly reached the front of the line when my reading was interrupted by people groaning around me.

All flights had been cancelled, people were saying, though the board continued to show just the first two.

No planes would leave for the next two days, floated back among some. There just weren't enough planes currently at the airport, and no incoming planes because of the fog.

Personally, this wasn't particularly bad news for me, and I began working out a phone mail message in my head that I'd leave to my boss explaining why I couldn't make the meeting. Yet I could see the worry in the young woman's face, who was trying to get to Dallas to see her folks, while the Navy kid heaved his duffel bag to the ground and hitched up his sharply creased blue jeans by pulling on the big rodeo buckle on his western belt and wondered aloud what it could mean that no flights would leave for days. So, I finally got my cell out and called the airlines to see about alternatives. The three of us discussed driving times to nearby airports, though neither of them had cars. If I had to go, both or either might as well go with me, I offered. After about a ten minute hold, I was able to find that I could take a flight from Burbank (about a three hour drive) and also that there was a flight there to Dallas. I offered to drive the young woman, but right at that point we'd reached the ticket windows and she found a flight on another airline. I thanked the young Navy kid, and remarked that it was his good luck that the Navy's orders had been cancelled by a higher authority, at which point he explained that he wasn't returning to base, but trying to go home on leave to see his family - - for the first time in two years.

Sighing, and mentally erasing my planned explanatory phone mail to the boss, I booked the new flight out of Burbank after we determined that he could also catch a flight there.

So, we hopped in my dirty Taurus, and over the next three hours I had the pleasure of getting to know Matt. Finding someone who, for being only 19 years old, really had his head on his shoulders. He'd joined the Navy at 17, while all his friends around him said he should take a year after High School to goof off, because "right now they're working at Macdonalds, and I'm on my way to a career, with 36 college units already completed." He'd already weighed the options and calculated that he'd remain in the Navy for the next 20 years, and planned to retire at 37 with nearly two million in savings. This factored in the differing pay amounts for his upcoming tour in the Gulf, and other areas around the world, as well as the increased pay and costs of being married - - which he planned to do without his parent's knowledge this upcoming week, I came to find out. So - Okay, he might not have his head on straight on this one issue, yet I'd seen my 18 year old daughter do exactly the same thing the day before she shipped out for her tour in the Army in Korea. You know, that's a lot of upheaval and uncertainty in a life at that age.

I'm proud of this fine serviceman, and its my joy and profit to have been able to help him get home to his family and fiance. May they have a very merry Christmas.

Osama - another whining leftie (Chrenkoff)

2004-12-17T14:49:00.000-08:00

From http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/

Osama's pre-American election tape already sounded like a promo for "Fahrenheit 9/11", with its carefully scripted list of MoveOn-esque grievances. Now, in his latest production aimed at the House of Saud, bin Laden is moving one step further along the path of the great ideological - or at least rhetorical - convergence between the angry left and the angry Islamofascism:

"The speaker on the tape accused the regime of 'injustices against the people'. The Saudi Royal Family had misspent public money while 'millions of people are suffering from poverty and deprivation', he said."

And thus Osama becomes yet another billionaire complaining about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, a sort of George Soros with a Closed Society Institute, and a Peter Lewis, who instead of insuring cars blows them up.

...And not that bin Laden is actually sincere, either. If you look at the Islamofascist utopia like the Taliban-era Afghanistan, one thing that strikes you is that, well, "millions of people were suffering from poverty and deprivation", and genuinely so, not the Saudi sort of poverty. In fact, in Osama's restored Caliphate, poverty and ignorance are both equally treated as virtues and are thus assiduously cultivated in place of such evil infidel concepts like growth or self-realization.

Still, it's funny (in a horrible sort of way) to watch bin Laden promote economic disadvantage as a grievance against what he considers a corrupt Muslim regime. For Osama, version 2005, poverty is the root cause of terrorism. For the rest of us, we know it's Osama.

N. Korea: "This means War"

2004-12-15T13:58:00.000-08:00

N. Korea warns Japan against sanctions - (United Press International)

"North Korea has warned Japan any sanctions against it would be regarded as a declaration of war and an "effective physical response" would result. "

14 Executed Bodies in Mosul

2004-12-14T16:12:00.000-08:00

Daily Times - Site Edition

Deadliest day in Falluja

2004-12-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq After the deadliest day for U-S forces in Iraq since yesterday -- commanders are making it clear that the work in Fallujah (fuh-LOO'-juh) isn't yet coming to an end.

Today, another Marine lost his life in the area around Fallujah, making this the deadliest day since three Marines lost their life yesterday. And Marines continue to confront insurgents in the city as well.

Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert with the First Marine Expeditionary Force says troops have found tunnel networks and spider holes, very much like the one in which Saddam Hussein was found one year ago today.

Light of the World was Dark in 1979

2004-12-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

Since 1923, the National Christmas Tree on the White House lawn has been lit every year except one. In 1979, (during Jimmy Carter's presidency) to honor the U.S. hostages being held in Iran, only the top ornament of the tree was lit.

Carter broke with long tradition. These lights were lit even in 1963, though the tree lighting ceremony was delayed until Dec. 22, after the 30-day mourning period for the slain President John F. Kennedy.

Support the Troops - - Really

2004-12-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

Here's two ideas of ways you can help support the troops. I'm sure there are many more. Add on to this and create a whole list of ideas, if you wish.

IDEA ONE:
__________________________________________________________
(Idea from the Hugh Hewitt blog at http://www.hughhewitt.com/ )
Part of an email from a Naval Officer:

"Yellow ribbons tied around trees and red, white and blue stickers on the backs SUVs saying "Support our Troops" are things that make civilians feel good but do nothing for the men and women actually in uniform.

So please consider the following:
The number ONE request at Walter Reed hospital is phone cards. The government doesn't pay long distance phone charges and these wounded soldiers are rationing their calls home.
Many will be there throughout the holidays.
Really support our troops --Send phone cards of any amount to:
Medical Family Assistance Center Walter Reed Medical Center 6900 Georgia Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20307-5001 They say they need an "endless" supply of these -- any amount even $5 is greatly appreciated.

IDEA TWO:
_________________________________________________________

Visit Books for Soldiers at http://www.booksforsoldiers.com/

There you'll find requests for everything from baby wipes (apparently come in quite handy dealing with the dirt and dust in Iraq and Afghanistan) and other toilettries, to new or used DVD's, to used books, from individual soldiers and/or squads. In most cases they give their addresses, so you can ship them directly.

This is a great website - - I mentioned my daughter Stephany on there once, and had probably 5 people send her letters of encouragement, and some books and magazines.

Presidential Hanukkah Party

2004-12-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

This Thursday President Bush is to host the first ever Hanukka party in the White House.

Red Nation

2004-11-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

Democrats may speak of a divided nation. And they may talk of 'red states.' Yet a review of where donations were made by zip code clearly shows much more Republican support within each red state than the final red state /blue state electoral map.

Even in California, the Democrats must have cause for alarm. For, the red 'zip code zones' outweighed the blue by a narrow margin. When you look at it closer, its no surprise that in San Francisco the giving was widely Democratic, with just a smattering of Republican donators. However, Los Angeles shows plenty of red. Its only in the Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Hollywood corridor that the Democrats managed to overwhelm the giving and turn the city as a whole to blue. Even so, you'll notice that there's no 'deep' blue anywhere in California.

Granted, this is the amount of donations, which is probably not the best indicator of actual voting. Still, it does give one another perspective on the matter.

Map of Donations by Zip Code - from Fundrace.org

General Thanksgiving

2004-11-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"
NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.
(signed) G. Washington

Regarding Falluja

2004-11-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry, but because of what happened to CB at "MyWar" I will not post a link to this site, or identify him any more than to say that he's a Marine in Iraq. But what he has to say'll give you a better picture of Falluja than everything else you've seen in the MSM combined:

Before the invasion of Falluja:
If there is another city in the world that contains more terrorists, I would be surprised. From the last two years, I just don't see a way that we can succeed in Iraq without reducing this threat. The cost of continuing on without taking decisive action is too high to dwell on.

The enemy inside the town have come to fight and kill Americans. Nothing will sate their bloodlust and hatred other than to kill everyone of us or at least die trying. It is hard to fathom as a Westerner as rational thought would dictate that we will only be here for a relatively short blip in their history and while we are here, billions of dollars in investments will pour in and opportunity that is beyond comprehension will open up for anyone willing to work. This is not Kansas and this enemy does not think like that.

If we build a school or clinic, they destroy it. They would rather deny medical care or education for the children of the citizens who live nearby than to have any symbol of the West in general and America specifically among them. It is hard to comprehend. Frankly, we are done trying.

For eight months, we have been on our chain. The enemy has fooled itself misinterpreting our humanity and restraint for lack of will and courage. For eight months, we have watched Marines, Soldiers and Sailors maimed and killed by invisible cowards hiding behind some wall or in a canal as he detonates another IED. For eight months, we have been witness to suicidal sociopaths driving vehicles laden with explosives into crowds of Iraqis and into our own convoys.
During the invasion:
Just came out of the city and I honestly do not know where to start. I am afraid that whatever I send you will not do sufficient honor to the men who fought and took Fallujah.
There is an image burned into my brain that I hope I never forget. We came up behind 3/5 one day as the lead squads were working down the Byzantine streets of the Jolan area. An assault team of two Marines ran out from behind cover and put a rocket into a wall of an enemy strongpoint. Before the smoke cleared the squad behind them was up and moving through the hole and clearing the house. Just down the block another squad was doing the same thing. The house was cleared quickly and the Marines were running down the street to the next contact. Even in the midst of that mayhem, it was an awesome site.

The fighting has been incredibly close inside the city. The enemy is willing to die and is literally waiting until they see the whites of the eyes of the Marines before they open up. Just two days ago, as a firefight raged in close quarters, one of the interpreters yelled for the enemy in the house to surrender. The enemy yelled back that it was better to die and go to heaven than to surrender to infidels. This exchange is a graphic window into the world that the Marines and Soldiers have been fighting in these last 10 days.

I could go on and on about how the city was taken but one of the most amazing aspects to the fighting was that we saw virtually no civilians during the battle. Only after the fighting had passed did a few come out of their homes. They were provided food and water and most were evacuated out of the city. At least 90-95% of the people were gone from the city when we attacked.

I will end with a couple of stories of individual heroism that you may not have heard yet. I was told about both of these incidents shortly after they occurred. No doubt some of the facts will change slightly but I am confident that the meat is correct.
The first is a Marine from 3/5. His name is Corporal ------ [Deleted - NAS]. As the Marines cleared and apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door. As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out. The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man's leg. He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway. Corporal ------ tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover. As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway. Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety. The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl ------ threw another in. He immediately entered the room following the second explosion. He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine. You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled. Marines usually let them "cook off" for a second or two before tossing them in. Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds.

The second example comes from 3/1. Cpl XXXXX [Deleted - NAS] is a squad leader. He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them. As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm. Cpl XXXXX told the doctor that he had actually been shot "a couple of days ago" and had given himself self aide on the wound. When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting. There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines.

It is incredibly humbling to walk among such men. They fought as hard as any Marines in history and deserve to be remembered as such. The enemy they fought burrowed into houses and fired through mouse holes cut in walls, lured them into houses rigged with explosives and detonated the houses on pursuing Marines, and actually hid behind surrender flags only to engage the Marines with small arms fire once they perceived that the Marines had let their guard down. I know of several instances where near dead enemy rolled grenades out on Marines who were preparing to render them aid. It was a fight to the finish in every sense and the Marines delivered.
I have called the enemy cowards many times in the past because they have never really held their ground and fought but these guys in the city did. We can call them many things but they were not cowards.

My whole life I have read about the greatest generation and sat in wonder at their accomplishments. For the first time, as I watch these Marines and Soldiers, I am eager for the future as this is just the beginning for them. Perhaps the most amazing characteristic of all is that the morale of the men is sky high. They hurt for the wounded and the dead but they are eager to continue to attack. Further, not one of them would be comfortable with being called a hero even though they clearly are.

By now the Marines and Soldiers have killed well over a thousand enemy. These were not peasants or rabble. They were reasonably well trained and entirely fanatical. Most of the enemy we have seen have chest rigs full of ammunition and are well armed are willing to fight to the death. The Marines and Soldiers are eager to close with them and the fighting at the end is inevitably close.

I will write you more the next time I come in about what we have found inside the city. All I can say is that even with everything that I knew and expected from the last nine months, the brutality and fanaticism of the enemy surprised me. The beheadings were even more common place than we thought but so were torture and summary executions. Even though it is an exaggeration, it seems as though every block in the northern part of the city has a torture chamber or execution site. There are hundreds of tons of munitions and tens of thousands of weapons that our Regiment alone has recovered. The Marines and Soldiers of the Regiment have also found over 400 IEDs already wired and ready to detonate. No doubt these numbers will grow in the days ahead.

Scotsman.com News - Opinion - Bushwhacked: How Dubya won America

2004-11-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

Scotsman.com News - Opinion - Bushwhacked: How Dubya won America: "The idea that intelligent voters plumped for Kerry and were defeated by the overweight, god-fearing, fag-hating rubes of middle America is easy to grasp but it�s an inadequate explanation for Kerry�s failure. Exit polls showed, for example, that Bush won the support of 44% of voters who had embarked on at least some post-graduate study. Clever people can vote Republican too. "

2004-11-03T22:11:00.000-08:00

In the spotlight - and bringing us more pics? - for four more years !

Left's vs right's view of the world

2004-11-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

Just two comments about election night:

______________________________________________

I love watching the MSM on election nights when republicans win. They get so serious and depressed. (Did you hear Chris Mathews asking Reagan about being depressed, and each replied it was depressing?). They have completely different reactions when democrats win. On those occasions they're enervated and joyous. This was my first clue, many many years ago, as to their bias.

______________________________________________

The left views the world much differently. During Reagan's answer to the question on being depressed, he stated that with the repulicans in charge things like the environment, and stem cell research, would suffer. He went on to say that this is because republicans are more interested in faith than science. I wish I had recorded it, because without his exact words its hard to explain the distain in his tone and words. Its obviously his viewpoint that to be a liberal is to a member of an elite crowd: the intellectual crowd; the crowd who believes in facts, and science.

He's wrong. Republicans are interested in the truth. Such as, the environment today is much better than 20 to 30 years ago, and in many respects even better than 300 years ago in some areas. We're also interested in using science morally. So when it turns out that adult stem cells are providing more than adequate research material, then there seems no reason to move into the grey area of embryonic stem cells.

Another way that the left views the world differently from the right was also pointed out last night, on Dan Rather's election eve coverage. An analyst was up at the boards after Fox had called Ohio for Bush but before CBS would (I don't have the analyst's name - another program I didn't record). He gave a good analysis of Ohio, stating that more jobs had been lost there (approximately 200,000) than in nearly any other state. And he noted that the most jobs had been lost in Harris county. Then he pointed out that Gore lost the state in 2000 by just 165,000 votes, so if everyone who lost their job voted for Kerry the state would flip blue. However, he noted, something was wrong. Because Harris county had flipped red. There must be something else at work, he said. Moving to another screen, he showed a spreadsheet of exit poll data which pointed out that 24% of the people had been motivated to vote republican not by the economy, but for good morals (recall that this is one of the states with a gay marriage item on the ballot). I can't say that the analyst was incredulous, but he definately seemed a little puzzled about these circumstances.

Because, you see, the left's worldview is that it is economics which drive behavior. If people were not poor, there would be less crime. Palestinians would stop blowing themselves up in Israel. There are "two Americas." The rich deserve to be taxed more.

This is a Marxist worldview. Not only does it often contradict itself (after all, the biggest villans in their minds are those evil, and extremely wealthy CEO's), but is also not born out by facts. For instance, why do business travellers steal hotel towels? It may seem like a little thing, but if the only reason for crime is lack of money, then how do you explain this? Why don't people in India blow themselves up? They're much more oppressed and poor than Palestinians? And perhaps most confusing to them, why does the religious poor vote republican?

The right has a different worldview. They believe that people make choices to act rightly or wrongly, irregardless of their economic situation. That simply throwing money at a situation (education, for example) will not solve every problem (and facts show this to be the case in education). Further, religion gives one a peace beyond this world, and teaches one not to envy, but be grateful for what you have. It teaches that being good is better than being rich, or even successful - - though there's nothing wrong with being both good and successful!

__________________________

PS: Did you hear Rather's explanation why they didn't call Ohio after other networks had? "We want to abide by our long standing principles, uh, we'd rather be last than wrong." Hehe. He actually said it more than once!

Thank God !

2004-11-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

I refrain from using that phrase, even though I am a strong believer in Jesus Christ. However, the election of George Bush is fairly important.

:)

Home on the strip - The Battalion - Opinion

2004-10-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

Home on the strip - The Battalion - Opinion: "By Will Llyod

Last week, Hezbollah announced the release of a new computer game in which players attempt to detonate hand grenades in Israeli towns and assassinate Israeli leaders. The game's box reads: 'Be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy in the game of force and victory.' Enemies like these, whose ruthless hatred horrifies every civilized person, have threatened Israel since its inception. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, and America's most loyal ally in that region, is only about 5 percent the size of California, and is surrounded by hostile dictatorships. Since 1948, Israeli leaders have sought military and diplomacy as means to survive in a region that does not welcome their existence. Unfortunately, their latest attempt at peace by withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank will only exacerbate tensions and debilitate Israel's defensive capability. "

We report bad news - - even if we have to make it up

2004-10-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

"NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.

While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC"

This is not news, according to the MSM, which continues to tout the allegations that the material came up missing after the invasion - - despite reporters on the scene the day after!

CNN.com - Report: Explosives could not be found when U.S. troops arrived - Oct 26, 2004: "Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the 101st Airborne arrived the next day and could not find the material.

At the Pentagon, officials said that the site had been repeatedly searched but the high explosives the IAEA described were never found.The Pentagon said the Al Qaqaa facility was a 'level 2' priority on a list of 500 sites to be searched and secured. U.S. officials say it was visited dozens of times by U.S. troops in the months following the invasion, and -- after searching 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings -- they never came upon the stockpile."

The claim that the explosives were missing after the war is made up - - yet you will find it displayed prominently all over the MSM.

WMD's

2004-10-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

"[T]he aim of the strikes was 'to degrade Saddam's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction, and to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors'"

The above quote is from President Clinton, in the Dec 28,1998 U.S. World and News Report, about operation Desert Fox - - the missles he shot off during the vote on his impeachment.

Why have blogs gained so much power?

2004-10-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

Diana West, in an op-ed piece for the Washington Times, entitled 'The Media for Kerry,' points out that the MSM has failed to ask:

Why he missed 3/4 of his public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings
About the $900 million contract his cousin's company was awarded in Vietnam after Kerry pushed to normalize relations
How he parlayed with the enemy while an American Officer
Christmas in Cambodia "seared, seared" in memory but not in the MSM's questions
His record shows he was on "the wrong side of history, favoring appeasement and disarmament" - have his views changed?
His place of honor in a Vietnamese war museum dedicated to American defeat
Does the anti-war movement bear any moral responsiblity for the mass brutality that N. Vietnam inflicted on the people of the south after the fall?
Does he still consider the Reagan years as a "moral blackness?"

West concludes, "We don't know because no one in the MSM has asked him. This glaring failure makes a mockery of the media. It leaves us gasping for facts. It also explains the volcanic eruption of alternative sources of campaign information like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the newsies of the blogosphere, and a slew of independent ads and documentaries, including 'Stolen Honor.' Such activity has injected vital blasts of oxygen into otherwise stilted coverage. "

I agree that the MSM itself is responsible for creating the vacuum that allowed the blogosphere to 'erupt.' In fact, though I'd heard of blogs for at least a year or so before first searching them out, it wasn't until I got fed up with the laziness or downright bias of any MSM to report anything but doom and gloom about our efforts and brave soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that I began looking for something different. In turn, it seems the MSM has gone completely off the deep end in reaction to this new medium, and they get weirder all the time, as evidenced by the above article, Rathergate, the accelerating slide to the left by the Associated Press, etc.

Re-enact Kerry's Silver Star Mission

2004-10-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

KumaWar is a new single player or online computer wargame that has gained some opprobrium as being "too realistic." It uses actual (raw) film footage as part of the game. Now, they've added a mission from 1969 in Vietnam - the mission in which John Kerry earned his Silver Medal. So, you can re-enact that mission yourself!

They also begin each mission with a news type introduction. You can view this without downloading the game, here . This also includes a cameo from Thomas Forrest, of the Swift Boat Sailors Association (not the same as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth), as well as footage from the time period and a few shots of the game.

Check it out!

Capitalist Liberal

2004-10-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

I received the following email from my Son:

I'm too captialist really to be cut out for being a register Liberal. I've been listening to a lot of those Left wing Liberal bleeding hearts and most of them just get on my nerves. They way they just kind of mope around going "Oh we have to help these poor people and give them money, and those people, and those misunderstood murders that killed our soldiers, and loosen immigration laws". Like you said "Feel Good" Politics, rather annoying. Is it possible to be a Capitalistic Liberal?

And my reply may have been too rambling. Ya think?

Well, its possible to be an independent, which is probably what you're describing.

Also libertarian, which I would consider myself except for a few strange positions they hold. Libertarians believe that the constitution should stand just the way it is, and shouldn't be interpreted any way a judge wants to. I agree with that. They also believe that government should completely and absolutely stay out of peoples lives and business. Government is suppost to defend us, and that's about all. I agree with that for the most part. But they take it to real extremes, like heroin should be legalized, and let people deal with the problems that would cause themselves - its not the government's business. Unfortunately, people coming to work, or even just driving to work, on heroin is a disaster waiting to happen, so I can't join this party. I stick with republican, which also say that government should stay out of our lives - though they don't always do what they say in this matter.

Also, libertarians really have no chance of winning any election at this point in time. So its sort of a wasted vote.

IMO Democrats are the party of 'feelings.'

It feels bad that people are poor. It feels bad that people are shot with guns. It feels bad that people die in war. So we should stop doing all these things. They don't stop to think a second time about what will happen next. ie: give everyone welfare, then they have no incentive to work, become lazy, become dependent on the government, remain poor forever, and the country suffers. Take away guns and only the criminals have them. Never go to war, then if a really bad country will not be deterred by negotiations, then what? That would be like saying lets get rid of the police. Then if someone is going around murdering, just pretend it isn't happening and don't do anything. That's what France wants to do. Sometimes war is the moral thing to do, the right thing to do, in order to have peace. Just like sometimes it is necessary for the police to shoot a bad guy in order to stop him from killing more.

As much as I wish there were more viable alternatives than just democrat or republican, at least the republicans are the party of 'thinking' instead of just feeling. IMO that's why there aren't any real democrat talk radio shows; because that medium requires debate, argument, ideas, and thinking. You can only spout liberal slogans for a couple of days, and then the radio show just starts to repeat the same slogans over and over. And you have to shut down anyone who starts to give good arguments as a caller.

So liberal talk radio doesn't work.

But liberal T.V and Newspapers do work - and they dominate. Why? Because you can have a sound bite slogan, and then move on to the next story. You can pretend to have debate, but stack the panel with 3 democrats and one republican, and only allow four minutes for the whole story. In newspapers, you write your 'news' with a slant, and of course there's no way for anyone to comment except in letters to the editor, but you control which of those letters get printed.... See how they work it!
Thats why the media hate Fox news so much. Because its the only one that goes against their domination. So they call it biased. When in fact, they are biased, and they hate that Fox is breaking their hold. Not to mention that Fox zoomed up in viewership, because Americans are not nearly as stupid as the main media believes, and they recognized their bias, and their choice quickly became this upstart Fox against the giants of ABC, See-BS, CNN etc.

I didn't start out to write this much; I just got on a roll, I guess... :)

Military Poll Favors Bush

2004-10-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

Under the heading of "not likely to be reported in the MSM" - or at least not in any prominent way - the National Annenberg Election Survey polled 655 military service members (or their familiy members) between 9/22 and 10/5 and found some interesting results:

"94% of the military sample said they intended to vote in the presidential election, compared to 85% of the civilian population" [A seperate poll of 2,436 adults from the general population was polled nationally from September 27 through October 3 and used for comparison with this military poll.]

"A variety of measures showed that they preferred Bush to John Kerry. 69% had a favorable opinion of Bush and 23% an unfavorable opinion. But only 29% had a favorable opinion of Kerry, while 54% were unfavorable."

"When asked whom they would trust more to handle the responsibility of commander-in-chief, 69% of the military sample preferred Bush to 24% for Kerry. The civilian group also preferred Bush, but by only a 50 to 41 percent majority.
When asked if the country was “going in the right direction” or was “seriously off on the wrong track,” 64% of the military sample said “right track” and 31% said “wrong direction.” In the general population a majority said “wrong track”; 55% took that view compared to 37 percent who said “right direction.”

"On particular traits, the military sample gave Bush an advantage on caring, leadership, sharing their values, knowledge, consistency and optimism. They did consider Bush more stubborn.

On personal traits, the military sample gave Bush the advantage on several points where the general public sees Kerry better. 59% of the military respondents said the term “cares about people like me” fit Bush better, while 30% said Kerry. In the general public, 46% preferred Kerry and 39% Bush.

Another consistent Kerry advantage in the general public, being considered “knowledgeable,” also went to Bush among the military. 50% said the term fit Bush better, while 33% said Kerry. In the general public, 45% preferred Kerry while 38% chose Bush."

"[Only] 18% of the military sample said Kerry had a clear Iraq plan, while 72% said he did not have one. In the general public, 34% said Kerry had a plan and 54% said he did not"

"When it came to the war in Iraq, 64% of the military sample said the situation had been worth going to war over, while 32% said it had not. Of those who served in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby, a smaller share, only 55%, said the war had been worth it; 40% said it had not. In the general population, 45% said the war had been worth it and 51% said it had not."

"Two members of Bush’s cabinet also drew positive balances from the military sample. (Thegeneral population was not asked about them.) 53% said they had a favorable opinion of Donald H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, while 24% said they had an unfavorable view.
But the strongest rating of all went to Colin Powell, secretary of state. 80% of the military sample had a favorable opinion of him. Only 7% had an unfavorable view."

Note that the survey included more Republicans than Democrats. However, even among each of these groups the support was higher than for the respective groups in the civilian population. Details on these breakouts are available on the link above.

2004-10-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

No comment is even required here

Down home on the farm

2004-10-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a letter written to my friend Dave, who can't contribute to this blog because he's a high falutin writer for a magazine and has to watch what he might say online (LOL - just giving you a hard time, Dave). It may not interest you, but is here only as part of my journal:

Well I've been busy myself - - hard to believe you wrote to me going on a month ago.

During that time I've been to Philadelphia for a week, assisted my general contractor Brother-in-law in nearly completing construction on another house on our property (well, a studio apartment with 1 1/2 bath & walk in closet), trimmed a bunch of trees back for fire protection and esthetics, set up a wireless network so that we can all work at home more seamlessly, got laid a few times (probably more info than you need to know - - uh, with my wife only, by the way), completed my second compost pile, watched as our youngest horse was broken in, planted a test run of lettuce and peas, caught a tarantula with my 4 yr old, as well as hid some polished rocks around for him to find (he has developed a keen interest in rocks for some reason, so I bought these during my flight to Philly) etc...

Speaking of kids; you've never had any, correct? I know its not for everyone, but at the same time I do recommend it, as it causes one to grow in ways that I think are impossible otherwise. The same is true with marriage. In fact, I like to listen to Dennis Prager on AM 870 between 9 and noon, who makes the case that marriage civilizes boys to become men. I don't know if that's as true as the children issue, though marriage does force you to learn to compromise, and provides heaps of humility! I do know that I've found having a child at this age much easier than at 22. Part of that may be a stable marriage, and knowing from prior experience that stages are just that, and will pass, but the other part is that I'm not as self-absorbed, and much more intrigued by the steps of development, the curiosity, the wonder, the joy...

Stephany is now 19, and in the Army. She's stationed in Korea, where she's having a hard time being so far from home in a male environment, and doing much less than the promises made by her recruiter. She is also married. Hmmm... question to self: any significance to my mentioning that fourth in line? She notified me at 6:00 PM the day before leaving for Korea that she was getting married -- at 9:00 PM. My choice if I wanted to attend the ceremony to be held 1 1/2 hours away. And it should be mentioned that her fiancé - now husband - was multilaterally disliked (nay - despised) on my side of the family as well as among my ex-wife's family. Oh well, I haven't lost a daughter, as the saying goes.

Chris (yes - the Hemingway namesake) is now 18 and studying to be a computer game graphics designer. He's really excelling at this, I note with a tremendous sigh of relief. Just between me and you, I had questions as to his biological father (never had DNA tests, and never will, but my wife's escapades during this time of coming home after sunrise lead to our divorce) and to her probable cocaine usage during pregnancy. He was a difficult child for many. Not so much for me. I always saw him as super-super smart, and figured that would end up in him being able to handle anything that came his way. But as early as 2nd grade he had already been suspended from school; contemplated suicide some time after that (don't remember exactly when, but prior to the teenage years, which is too young); struggled in every grade getting along with teachers and making friends; and much more. And yet, sort of like all of us in the Hill Street Nerds (do you remember that? Do I have it correct?), he never had to study to learn his work, loved to read, taught himself to type with all ten fingers after just an hour or so of me showing him where the home keys are and how your fingers move to the other keys - to the point where he types almost as fast as he thinks at this point - and now he's the focal point of a cliche of good kids, much like his namesake, and he's at the top of his class at this computer graphics, and will probably get scholarships, and desires to study in Japan!

Ah well, I had no idea I was going to ramble like this. It went in a completely different direction than from where I planned. So I guess I'd better quit at this point, especially considering that you may have zero interest in any of this.

Oh, to answer your question - yes, there is a local tavern, which was probably first built when the gold rush was starting to reminisce about the good old days. Its wooden floor creaks and groans, and there's a stuffed bear in one corner. At quitten' time, half the folks wear dirty jeans and straw hats colored somewhere between white and fading yellowish-brown sweat. And while there isn't a place to hitch a horse, my brother and brother-in-law have asked and received permission to put one up, figuring they can't get a DUI returning at 2AM on horseback - not to mention that the horses will probably have a better sense of direction!

Babies found in Iraqi mass grave

2004-10-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

Women and children's bodies bulldozed into a mass grave after being shot in the head. Some of the toddlers still clutching toys, some of the women still holding their dead babies.

You might think that this would be front page news everywhere, but I would be surprised if you had even heard of it. It isn't reported, and we might have a clue as to why when we read that the work of uncovering the mass graves located in many places in Iraq is "slow, as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans, [Mr. Kehoe] said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death."

Further evidence that in the European mind the world would be better off with Saddam still in power - - even in the evidence of (or in denial of the evidence of) mass graves.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Babies found in Iraqi mass grave

Terrorism Unveiled

2004-09-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kat at the Middle Ground for uncovering a great blog from a young American studying in Jordan. I instantly knew I'd like this site, as her picture shows her shooting a rifle. That and the fact that she has a good mind, skill with words, and pieces definitely worth reading. Especially check out her posts on the paradoxes around Jordan (ie: women in burqa's shopping at the mall for designer jeans) and articles on how tribalism affects their society. She points out that "there are three systems of laws here: sharia'ah, civil and tribal...", and goes on to say that while the civil law (the courts) are the law of the land, the police actually use tribal law in their ordinary dealings. Further, "when they have Parliamentary elections, most often the tribal leader and the tribe collectively picks a representative. It's very contraire here to act as an individual outside of a collective identity." - -Probably a prelude to what one can expect in a democratic Iraq.

But what clinched it for me to add her to my favorites was one line in her story about her arrival trip and the flight through Paris: Terrorism Unveiled: "One small thing though---I noticed as we landed in Paris...there were at least 3 nearby French jets very close to the plane, like fighter jets. France has an air force? What for?"

Enemy Encouraged (by Kerry) to Kill Americans and Iraqis?

2004-09-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

The Vietnam war was slightly before my time. But I hear veterans say that Kerry's testimony was used by the enemy against the POW's, and may have been used to encourage the enemy. Apparently there is a portion of a museum deovted to him in N. Korea.

Fast forward to today, and Iraq:

Kerry states that he will remove our forces from Iraq in a year if he's elected. No matter how you feel about our war, our President, or Kerry, you must realize that the terrorists know that if Kerry wins the election, they win. They only have to wait for a year, and then they can destroy Iraq, claim victory, recruit more members, and expand their war of terrorism throughout the world.

So since the enemy knows that they win if Kerry wins, they also know that they must go all out to ensure that he wins. How? Kill as many Americans and Iraqis between now and the election as possible. Send all possible resources (human resources to them = people who blow themselves and others to smitherenes). For the enemy knows, or at least they think, that America can not keep up its resolve in the face of mounting losses (they have good reason to think this - - look at Vietnam, Bosnia, Mogadishu, etc.)

So - indirectly, and probably without meaning to, but without a doubt - Kerry has encouraged the enemy to kill American soldiers.

Are they crazy?

2004-09-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

I think the American liberals have gone crazy. Beyond just the rhetoric of calling this administration Nazi's, there are those who truly seem to have it in their head that America 2004 is only a step away from Germany 1938. For example, these comments come from people who live in the same America you and I do - the greatest country in the world - at a forum at the "Democratic Underground:"

"Even under the best possible circumstances, i.e., Kerry wins, we get a Democratic controlled Congress and Supreme Court, etc., etc., unless I'm lucky enough to get into a hospice, I can only look foward to an extremely painful death, whether I'm beaten to death by fascists or just not given sufficient painkillers when I become terminally ill.

What I worry about is that I have a daughter who is pregnant. She was given up for adoption at birth, 41 years ago, and I don't really know her, but she tracked me down and contacted me a few months ago. She and her lesbian partner are very well-to-do. The partner is the daughter of Holocaust survivers, and they are both liberal feminists. If Kerry wins, I assume my grandchild has a chance at a very good life. If not, I think their money insulates them so well from reality that they won't leave. From Holocaust to Holocaust in 3 generations? Mind-boggling, but entirely possible."

Lest you think that is a lone voice:

"what is really getting to me is the same thing I've seen throughout this whole mess, including the primary campaign -- very little concern at all for those who will die first...... the very poor folk. Where is *any* mention of them at all?

There's a lot of concern about gay folk, and being rounded up. So, they are included in the "together". But, where is any concern about those who will almost certainly be offed first, because it is so easy to do. Anyone at all who will speak out for poor folk? I don't hear ANYTHING."

Or another person: (I had to leave in the last paragraph, with all the adjectives - - it was just too funny!)

"What defense do we have if Bush is elected? If the congress is so selfishly complacent seeking to preserve themself and their careers rather than the Constitution ,if the judiciary is also collabarative and is virtually unassailable by the people or held accountable by the people, and the military is under the control of Bush, what else it there to do but flee because for sure there will be tyranny, given the record of the past four years. We do not have missiles, planes or tanks or helicopters, guns or even a slingshot with which to revolt against this overwhelming , but evil, tyrannical power should Bush be elected.

I will not lend my name to continuous slaughter of innocent human beings for mere profit and power of the little prick of a priveledged ignorant and stupid incompetant twit, his Stepford, air head, also a twit, botoxed, chain smoking, manufactured wife, and vacant minded, law breaking, bordello dressing, spoiled, slutty and silly dumb daughters."

While I think they're crazy, while I think they're wrong, I don't think they're evil. Which, I think, is a major difference between conservatives and liberals. To a liberal, conservatives don't just have a different viewpoint, they're bad people, evil people. For example, this is what they think of half of the population of the U.S.:

"True, some cons just plain hate us. They understand our beliefs, they understand that we have the right to speak our minds, they understand that we actually care about others besides ourselves. But they hate us anyway because they're ugly, hateful, greedy, selfish people."

Here's another person:

"They DO not want to give up power, from the lowly easily manipulated storm-trooper brown-shirt on free-republic and the unthinking ditto-head Rush clone to the master PR mind control machine of Rove and the right-wing propaganda masters, to the imperialistic neo-conservatives, to the christian evangelical extremists."

And a different person:

"But then there is the other face of conservativism. And I think it's really sad in this day and age. It's people who are ignorant, scared, stubborn and sheltered. They don't understand what liberalism really is, and if told they are afraid of the truth. They are afraid of anyone different, they are afraid of having to make decisions without their pastors, Bibles, politicians, or friends telling them what they should think. If they have to think for themselves they have panic attacks. They believe anything they're told by the "right" people and reject anything they're told by the "wrong" people. Their cultural and social prejudices are so ingrained in them that it's impossible for them to see the truth. But mostly they're afraid. Afraid of change, afraid of progress, afraid of going to hell, afraid of being ridiculed, afraid of losing what is familiar, afraid of disappointing their loved ones, afraid to admit they might be wrong, afraid to admit the person who raised them might be wrong... the list goes on.

It makes me very sad to see people who cannot evolve and use their brains. Was worse is that these people might just bring down the whole human race with their ignorance."

You see, conservatives are actually a lower life form; one that hasn't evolved yet. And its conservatives who are afraid, not those who are planning to leave America because they fear that at any moment they'll hear the sound of boots in the street and a knock at the door to put them in a "Gay Internment Camp" or worse!

This is what happens when you disagree with an extreme lefty. Instead of rational debate, about 60% of the time you will be called names, branded as bad or evil, and even - as in this last post - dehuminized.

Are American Muslims Different?

2004-09-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

Why not say it bluntly? Islam is an aggressive, violent political ideology:
See author Zev Chafets list of American Muslim leaders who face charges of being or supporting terrorism, which he summarizes as:

"It may be that Islam in its true form is as gentle as a lamb. But in the real world, it is an aggressive, violent political ideology. It may also be that a majority of U.S. Muslims object to the jihad being waged against infidel Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists, agnostics and democrats of all denominations. But if so, they are keeping it to themselves. "

King Darius

2004-09-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Just in case you're interested, it was King Darius who sentenced Daniel to the den of lions.

I had to find that out because my four year old son asked. When my wife read him the story from his 'First Bible,' he noted that it only said, "The King." He wanted to know the king's name. OK.... Whatever!

So now you know, and so does he.

I only post this because I'm proud of him for questioning the details, and wanting to explore deeper than his 'First Bible' went.

Video Inside Seized School

2004-09-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the video taken by the terrorists inside the school in Russia. Note that many of the women and children you see are now dead.

Newsday.com - Inside Seized School

Others Continue to Lie and Excuse

2004-09-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

It is so easy to blame the Jews, no matter what the situation is.... For example:

Columnist Ghassan Makhal wrote in the Qatari daily Al-Sharq: "Who stands behind the hostage-taking operation? The Russian government blamed the Chechens but to this day it has not divulged a single name of anyone involved in the operation - this despite the fact that it holds, by its own admission, the bodies of over thirty people. Chechen President and rebel Aslan Maskhadov also said that the Chechens have nothing to do with the operation…

"It is likely that the downing of the planes in Moscow [sic] and the operation against the school in Beslan were part of the struggle that the Putin government is waging against the [Russian] mafia, which has ties to Israel. Therefore it is possible that the Russian Foreign Minister is in Israel in order to negotiate and reach an agreement, or at least to obtain a promise from Sharon that he will mediate [between the government] and this mafia."

Muslims Speak Out

2004-09-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

Finally Muslims begin to speak out. And not just to condemn a single act, but all terrorism. And without finding some way to justify the act, or excuse the act. For example:

MEMRI: Latest News: "Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, [and I believe he is now the head of one of the Iraqi television stations - NAS], wrote in the daily under the title 'The Painful Truth is that All of the Terrorists are Muslims:'

' Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists but, regrettably, the majority of the terrorists in the world are Muslims.

The kidnappers of the students in Ossetia are Muslims. The kidnappers and killers of the Nepalese workers and cooks are also Muslims. Those who rape and murder in Darfour are Muslims, and their victims are Muslims as well. Those who blew up the residential complexes in Riyadh and Al-Khobar are Muslims. Those who kidnapped the two French journalists are Muslims. The two [women] who blew up the two planes [over Russia] a week ago are Muslims. Bin Laden is a Muslim and Al-Houthi [the head of a terrorist group in Yemen] is a Muslim. The majority of those who carried out suicide operations against buses, schools, houses, and buildings around the world in the last ten years are also Muslims.

'What a terrible record.
Does this not say something about us, about our society and our culture? If we put all of these pictures together in one day, we will see that these pictures are difficult, embarrassing, and humiliating for us. However, instead of avoiding them and justifying them it is incumbent upon us first of all to recognize their authenticity rather than to compose eloquent articles and speeches proclaiming our innocence'

'Islam has suffered an injustice at the hands of the new Muslims! We will only be able to clear our reputation once we have admitted the clear and shameful fact that most of the terrorist acts in the world today are carried out by Muslims. We have to realize that we cannot correct the condition of our youth who carry out these disgraceful operations until we have treated the minds of our sheikhs who have turned themselves into pulpit revolutionaries who send the children of others to fight while they send their own children to European schools."

You can find additional condemnation at the Memri link at the beginning of this post.

Why no Christian suicide bombers? and other thoughts on Islamic terror

2004-09-06T09:55:00.001-07:00

Dennis Prager often states that his goal is clarity. That he doesn't mind disagreeement, as long as there is clear thinking on both sides. I believe he is one of the deepest thinkers we have today. Below are some of his thoughts on Islamic Terror.

Before I get to that, I was looking for some specific quotes which I thought were particularly well worded. I couldn't find them, so let me say them in my less eloquent way.

A religion must be judged by the actions of its adherents. America does have violence and murder occurring. But it usually has nothing to do with religion; instead haveing to do with gangs, robberies, jealousy, etc. When there is disagreement, as in the case of gays, rhetoric flies on both sides, but violence is rare - and organized programs of violence such as the systematic terrorism occuring from Islamic terrorists has not and likely will never occur in America. For the unusual cases that thugs do attack gays, rarely is it ever Christians per se - and never is it organized Christianity that promotes or condones such violence. Christian leaders and lay people overwhelmingly condemned and abhored the shooting of abortion doctors when that occurred in America years ago. If they had not, one could rightly judge Christianity itself as evil.

Islam may have been hi-jacked by a few who take verses from the Koran out of context and use them for evil deeds. Yet, there are no massive protests of Muslims marching in the streets to condemn this. In fact, there is little or no condemnation for terror overall from Muslim leaders anywhere in the world, other than occaisional condemnation for a specific act (such as condemnation for the taking of the French hostages).

So one must judge the entire religion based on what it does, and what its people do. It is pointless and meaningless to judge it from its source - the Koran - when mobs of Palestinians celebrate in the streets chanting in the name of God "Allu Akbar" upon learning that homicide bombers were successful in blasting more Israeli children into tiny pieces.

I would not want anyone's baby or child to be targeted for murder the way those Russian children were targeted.

Or the way that Israeli children are targeted.

Or the way Iraqi people are targeted by the mortars and bomb-filled cars that are placed and designed with the purpose of killing and hurting innocent people.

Or the way teenagers in Bali were targeted.

Or the way all age groups were targeted in 9/11.

Or the way all age groups were targeted in the train bombings in Spain.

Or the way Sudaneese are being targeted.

These actions are all being perpetrated by Islamic terrorists. And nowhere are Muslims protesting except a few clerics who have now stood up to say it is wrong to target Iraqi's, or the French. And generally, they only do so out of half of their mouth. Because in the next sentence they will talk about how oppressed or desparate the terrorists are.

Wanting to murder babies is wrong. Its not that difficult or complicated to understand that and condemn it!

One thing you should know before reading Prager's comments: he is Jewish. I say this only because he is also very pro-Christian, to the point that one might assume that he is a Christian. This makes what he has to say even more powerful.

From Dennis Prager: Why no Christian suicide bombers? and other thoughts on Islamic terror: "Just as the German nation, fairly or not, has had to grapple with the moral legacy of Nazism, and the name of Christianity still suffers (unfairly) because of medieval persecutions of non-Christians, so, too, Islam, Arabs and Palestinians will have to struggle for generations to shed their identification with murdering innocents.

While it is Americans, Israelis and other targets of terror who most suffer individually from Palestinian and other Muslim terror, those with the most to lose are Palestinians, Arabs and Islam.

About 25 percent of Palestinians are Christian, yet if there are any Palestinian Christian suicide bombers, I am unaware of them. Now why is that? Don't Muslim and leftist apologists incessantly tell us that the reason for Palestinian terror is "Israeli occupation and oppression"? Why, then, are there no Palestinian Christian terrorists? Are Christian Palestinians less occupied?

The answer is obvious. There is Palestinian terror for the same reasons there is Muslim terror elsewhere. A significant part of the Muslim world wishes to destroy those non-Muslims -- Americans, Israelis, Filipinos, Nigerians, Sudanese blacks -- who prevent Islam from violently attaining power."

From Majority of Muslims are Peaceful... So What?
Germany was a threat to civilization because Nazis and their ideology took over German society while the majority of Germans (the "good Germans") either supported Nazi ideals or did nothing. Russia was a threat to civilization because Communists took over the country, and the great majority of Russians either supported Papa Stalin or did nothing. Some Islamic societies are today becoming a threat to civilization because Islamic totalitarians and terrorists are taking over those societies while a majority of Muslims either support their ideals or do nothing.

That is why it is meaningless at best and dishonest at worst to deny the threat to civilization coming from various Muslim countries by noting that most Muslims are not violent. Only a handful of Saudis terrorized America on 9-11-01, but a large majority of Saudis support Osama bin Laden. Few Palestinians strap bombs onto their children's bodies, but the majority of them support such evil and none others publicly morally condemn it.

At this moment, the dominant strain of Islamic thought is totalitarian, meaning that wherever possible, a government should be Islamic and govern according to a strict interpretation of the Sharia (Muslim religious law). Furthermore, when necessary and when possible, the Islamists believe these religious laws should be imposed violently -- as in Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In addition, the dominant ideological trend in much of Islamic society is hate-filled. What is said daily about Jews in Middle Eastern mosques rivals what the Nazis said about Jews.

Thus, what is most frightening is not that there are Muslim terrorists, but by how little criticism of Islamic terror emanates from normative Islamic groups. While some Muslim groups have condemned individual acts of Islamic terror such as 9-11, not one significant Muslim group in the world, including here in free America, has condemned Islamic terror generally.

Let me slip in a piece from someone other than Prager here... This is from Mark Steyn: No Other Word for it but Slaughter:

The reality is that the IRA and ETA and the ANC and any number of secessionist and nationalist movements all the way back to the American revolutionaries could have seized schoolhouses and shot all the children.
But they didn't.

Because, if they had, there would have been widespread revulsion within the perpetrators' own communities

From When Silence Isn't Golden

Whatever our religion, we who are religious need to acknowledge that religion does not guarantee goodness. The sobering truth is that it is quite possible to believe in God, in Allah, in Christ and do great evil. A major 18th century rabbi, the Gaon of Vilna ("genius of Vilnius"), compared the Torah, the book he believed was dictated by God, to rain. Just as rain, he explained, produces both beautiful flowers and poisonous weeds, so, too, religion can produce both beautiful and poisonous human beings.

All of us who believe that God-based religion is indispensable to moral progress need to condemn religion-based evil as vigorously as possible. In fact, we need to condemn it even more strongly than we condemn secular-based evil such as communism and Nazism. From a religious perspective, religious evil is the worst form of evil. While secular and religious evil do equal damage to their victims, religious evil is more destructive because it does immense damage to the only things we believe can solve the problem of evil — God-based morality and moral religion.

The damage Muslim terrorists and their supporters are doing to the name of God and to religion is immense. Speaking personally, the fact that millions of people believe that God rewards those who massacre innocent men, women and children — with 72 virgins in heaven, no less — almost makes me want to hide my being religious (even though not Muslim) from the world.

UPDATE 9-7-04Well, Prager must have been thinking along the same lines that I was. Today he wrote an article entitled "They shoot children, don't they?" in which he says,

It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren't -- even among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren't -- and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in 1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren't -- despite the destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with China.

Yes, some people do shoot children, and good people have a right to ask why.

I Served with John Kerry

2004-09-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

A common argument against the Swift Boat Veterans is that none of them served with Kerry. (See note at the end of this post about that) These men have something to say about serving with Kerry, and the media does not like it.

Now another man who served with Kerry in a different role - Senator - is speaking up about Kerry's service, and again the media doesn't like it.

Democrat Senator Zell Miller stood up on the floor of the Republican convention and stated, "my family is more important than my party. There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush."

In a fiesty, fiery, deeply passionate speech reminiscent of the orations we learned in school of the likes of John Adams, Miller asked, "What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?" As to his service alongside Kerry in the Senate, Miller said, "no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry."

You can see a full text of his speech here but you really have to see it to get the full, burning passion. You can see the full video at The Daily Record, which also includes the video of Miller's interview with Chris Mathews, who asks about the dumbest question I've ever heard: "Do you really believe John Kerry wants to defend this county with spitballs?" Miller fires back, "That was a metaphor -- do you know what a metaphor is?" During the interview Miller also tells Mathews, "get out of my face! Shut up and give me a chance to answer the questions you ask me instead of just talking over me." And, "I won't let you run over me like you did that young lady a while ago." "I wish I was [there in the studio with you] so I could get in your face!" Mathews finally began to give the Senator the respect one should show a Senator, responding with a meek, "Yes, sir" when Miller asked if Mathews would allow him time to finish his answer."

Perhaps my favorite sound bite from Miller's speech: "I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel."

As for the Swift Boat Vets not serving with Kerry, one of the Vets served for 2 1/2 months under Kerry, which is more time on Kerry's boat than any other person, (certainly more than Rasmussan's 6 days). Some of the other 250 veterans were on boats that travelled together on missions, during which time they were usually only yards from each other, or served as his commanding officers, among other various roles.

Do You Believe in Angels?

2004-09-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

.
Angels are a creature of God. They are not dead people who get their wings when bells ring. And if you profess belief in these spirits, what then do you believe of evil spirits: demons? Ignore them? Pretend they don't exist?

Demons do exist.

And with appologies to my friend Najma, the more that I see like this,

"These were little school children. So innocent and once so full of life. Alot of them lay there on the floor crying out for help, some didn't. Some had mortal wounds and others were in such pain.

According to the reports afterward, the rebels had used some of them for target practice before we came. Other children said the rebels lined them up and took shots at them, seeing who could get the best shot."

the more I believe that the 'God' that many pray to in Islam is no more than a demon who misleads them into believing he is a god (little 'g').

A god who requires child sacrifice.

Whether that is Russian children, Balkan children, American children, Israeli children, Sudaneese children, or Iraqi children does not matter. As long as they are tortured and killed, these demons are satisfied.

I believe demons were in that Russian schoolyard. That demons had been invited into the heads of the terrorists. That demons were laughing as children were murdered.

The above quote is not from the Russian schoolyard. Its from a situation that happened years ago in the Balkans, reported by An American Soldier who stormed that schoolyard where 'militants' were hiding behind and murdering children.

But the situation in Russiawas much the same, and in many respects much worse.

"It was like a sauna in there. They laughed when children began fainting."

"When one of the women pulled her clothes off her legs above the knees, he yelled at her to cover herself, berated her and said that we all had to pray to Allah, because Islam is the truest faith. We all prayed, of course, but to our own Gods."

""Some of the wounded were taken out of the gym and finished off right in the corridor."

"“The terrorists placed numerous mines in the gym, which are stuffed with bolts and screws to make them more injurious. "

"The bandits shot at the kids as they ran from the school gym. They picked them off one by one."

"They shot at our backs as we were running out of the school. I heard the whine of the bullets. One of the girls who was running close to me was wounded.

Two of my friends picked her up and carried her. There were about 50 of us, boys and girls, all senior pupils.

Only the older kids could run away. As for the younger pupils, they just couldn't get out of that hell because the terrorists had blocked all the ways out for them. So they could only stay there and watch us running away."

Where is the condemnation from Muslims around the world?

Settling In

2004-09-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

We're begining to settle in at our new house. I really don't have too much to report on this end - just normal moving stuff about half empty boxes and a garage full from top to bottom and front to back of who knows what. Oh, I guess I could mention that we have a familiy of racoons that comes to my sliding glass door every night hoping to see if the dogs left any food in their dishes (and also had a skunk do the same once) , or that we frequently see deer at dusk when we walk down to feed the horses, and that there's a LOT of work to be done putting up fences, cutting back trees for fire protection, stringing water lines, etc (thankfully no major issues with the house, other than we had one water heater replaced). Our 4 year old son and 9 year old nephew are loving it, my wife also is quite relaxed and happy, I believe, as is the rest of the family (we've also got my mother, brother, and brother in-law living on the 18 acres with us!).

We're still church hopping. More because we can than anything else, I think. I've never stepped foot into any other church since coming to the Lord in my early 30's, so this is a new experience and I actually want to look around a little before doing what I know we will, which is to be regular attenders at one and only one place soon. So far we're leaning to a smaller (maybe 50-60 member) Baptist. The Nazarene church is too far -- My wife might attend it now in good weather, but with any rain - let alone snow - I know she would not dare these winding roads. We also went to a Calvary, which is not as pentecostal as I've heard some of them can be. Good music, and the young lady teaching the 4 year old's group was so good with them I don't have words to describe! But its a little larger, and I'm not sure anyone even knew we were there. (The Baptist church immediately introduced us at the beginning of service, would not let us leave afterward without at least four people coming to talk to us, and today is the second time the Pastor has visited). Both messages from each were Christ centered, though I noticed that the Baptist hymnals sort of leave out sin, holiness, and sanctification. There's one other that's close that we'll go to this weekend, and then I guess we'll have to decide what to do from there.

Other than that we haven't gotten out from the property too much. Since we all work from home, and its a bit of a drive to the nearest village (really the most appropriate term considering its size, I think; though I doubt they refer to themselves that way) and much more to any real city, and because there's just so much to do with the move and a new home, we just haven't been out much.

In Case You Missed it: Birth of a Democracy

2004-09-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Amid all the news of the RNC and the terrorists attacks in Russia (valid news stories, but not the only news):

RADIO FREE EUROPE/ RADIO LIBERTY: "1 September 2004 -- Iraq's new interim National Council met for the first time today amid a volley of mortar fire nearby, but members went ahead and took their oaths of office and elected a Kurdish politician, Fuad Masum, as their president.

Masum supervised August's national conference of delegates that chose the council, which is supposed to monitor Iraq's interim government until popular elections in January. "

Any information on who Masum is?

Have Faith in the Power of Freedom

2004-08-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

Transcript: Giuliani's Speech -- FOXNews.com - You Decide 2004 - :

"Have faith in the power of freedom.

People who live in freedom always prevail over people who live in oppression. That's the story of the Old Testament. That's the story of World War II and the Cold War.

That's the story of the firefighters and police officers and rescue workers who courageously saved thousands of lives on September 11, 2001."

You Must Convert to Islam

2004-08-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

There are those who claim that 9/11 was our fault. That it was our policies which made us get attacked. That because we had troops stationed in Saudia Arabia, or because we broadcast movies and T.V., we were to blame.

Yet, as the recent kidnapping of French journalists reveals, it doesn't take the presence of troops, or even Hollywood, for these fanatics to resort to terror. Currently, radicals are threatening to cut off the heads of two men if France doesn't repeal their school dresscode which prohibits the wearing of scarves by young women, as well as prohibiting skullcaps for Jews and crosses or other religious jewelry by anyone.

Perhaps its going too far to say that the only thing that will satisfy these extreme Islamists is for you and I and your mother, father, sons and daughters to convert to Islam. Then again, that is exactly what Osama bin Laden said on one of the tapes he sent across: that we could avoid further terrorists acts if everyone in America converted.

---------------------------------------------------

The following is from Osama bin Laden, Letter to the American People.
Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.
It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.
If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation."

-----------------------------------------------

Note that since this first came out I've come to understand a few things much better. For instance, where he states, "freedom from associating partners with him," what he means is that you must not believe in the Trinity. That must be rejected. You see, in his mind, that means that God is not one. So you must be "free" to stop believing that.

Oh, by the way, the laws of Sharia must also replace our constitution and laws. This, I guess, is where these other kind, just, merciful, good and righteous fanatics get off kidnapping and possibly decapitating the French journalists for the glory of, and in the name of, Allah.

------------------------------------

And this is from The International Herald Tribune of August 31, 2004:

"Indeed, in an audiotape broadcast by a Dubai-based television channel in February, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Qaeda terrorist network, condemned France for defending the freedom of nudity and depravity and fighting chastity and decency with the headscarf ban, adding that such anti-Muslim acts by the West should be dealt with by tank shells and aircraft missiles."

------------------------------------

There are those who claim that because of the war in Iraq we will have 'stirred up the hornet's nest and will cause them to hate us more. That may be true with some people who would not have before. There are many, many people in Iraq and eslwhere in the ME who are not the radicals described above. But through the tribulations, deaths, and war they may be driven to the same degree of anger. However, for the fanatics, the hatred already existed, and the war really makes little difference in that respect.

Update: 8/31/04 2:30 pm PST
Ali, over at Iraq the Model has an interesting viewpoint on this:

"why are they (the kidnapers) doing that and what will they gain by releasing them? Well, remember what Saddam did just before desert storm when he kept foreign hostages inside his palaces and wouldn’t release them until the USA would promise not to attack him? He made an exception with the Russian workers in Iraq. First he used to visit these families and show gentleness when talking to them and broadcasting it on TV and finally he released them after many demands and visits from famous characters and ex-diplomats from all over the world. This is just the same which is very stupid and sick but still it’s his and his followers’ reality.

These kidnapers don’t care about Hijab and they appreciate the french role and reporters role in general in Iraq, but they believe that such operation and after releasing the hostages would give a message to the west that, “we are peaceful people and we listen to demands made peacefully and to demonstrations even when we don’t agree with you”

I find his theory interesting; perhaps even correct. That they've kidnapped these people and threatened to kill them, yet all the while they had no intention of killing them and are just waiting to show that countries which negotiate with terrorists are good, and will be listened to.

Moments after 9/11

2004-08-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

To those who think women and minorities are not represented in this administration, how do you account for the fact that during the 9/11 crisis, Cheney was in his 'bunker' consulting with 3 women and 2 black-Americans (the two men in standing in the background are security)?

And when you think about it, Condi as National Security Advisor, holds a position which makes her the third most powerful person in America; perhaps the third most powerful person in the entire world.

Photo from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17.html

Did You Ever Feel Like You Were Cheated?

2004-08-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, CB.

I feel like I've been cheated out of a friend, even though we never met, and you probably have no idea who I am.

I feel like I've been cheated out of the chance to say goodbye to that friend, because you saw fit to turn off comments. Even though you were probably right to do so.

What an experience. What an event.

Goodbye.

French Celebrate Liberation through Anti-Semitism

2004-08-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

From The Guardian

'...three days after arsonists set fire to a Jewish community centre in central Paris and scrawled anti-semitic graffiti on walls and furniture..., visiting... Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said it "cannot be" that 60 years after Paris was liberated, "Jews will live under threat here".

France's interior ministry said 160 attacks against Jews or Jewish property had been recorded in the first six months of 2004, compared with 75 in the same period last year. "Surely if the lessons of the past are being celebrated so vigorously, it is in an effort to contain the further spread of contemporary woes," the left-leaning Liberation said in an editorial. '

Answering Islam Interview

2004-08-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

I heard Dennis Prager interview Walid Shoebat today on the radio. Walid is a former PLO member, an avowed terrorist who set off a bomb and beat a Jew with a baseball bat -- before becoming a Christian. Walid is one of the authors of Answering Islam.

He talks of how when he was young and growing up among the Palestinians that their father frequently had as a guest one of the major clerics who was also a Nazi, or who helped the Nazi's, send nearly all of the Jews in Bosnia to their deaths.

He talks of many things, but I found it interesting that he mentions that Muslims believe that "the Jews have taken the Bible out of context," and that they believe it is corrupted. Yet he states that this is not written anywhere in the Koran.

He also talks of the hatred of most of the Islamic world, giving as an example the songs of death and desire to grow up to be suicide bombers presented on children's shows on Arabic T.V, and the songs of death and war in popular Arabic culture (Dennis pointed out that the number one song in Egypt last year was "I hate Israel") and contrasts that with the fact that after he left the area he studied Jewish songs and was not able to find any with the word death or war in them.

He says that the schools and Mosques are filled with Nazi like hatred. And the same in the newsprint, the T.V., the textbooks, novels, etc. It is a culture which glorifies death, (he quotes something like, "we will knock on heaven's door with Jewish skulls," and states that Muslims believe that the end times will not begin until all the Jews are killed) while Christianity glorifies life.

He states that the true "occupation" is the occupation of the young children's minds by this brainwashing. The occupation of these children by Arafat, who calls on Palestinians to 'give me your children,' to die as suicide bombers.

And he said that, like the Islamic cleric who helped the Nazi's and who used to come to his house when he was a small boy, Walid is now trying to do what he did - speak out to newspapers and radio shows - but he is speaking out "to my people to tell them that enough is enough!"

Its well worth listening to, and is available for purchase on Prager's website (I never understood why he charges for archived programs. Its only $12, but with as much passion as he has to 'bring clarity' to the world, one would think he would offer them at cost + shipping and handling).

Update:
I found this in Osama bin Laden, Letter to the American People , which goes to my point that radical Islamism is a culture that is death oriented as opposed to Christianity which is life oriented. Quote from that letter: "The [Islamic] Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life"

Chechen groups and al-Qaeda links?

2004-08-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

With the news of two airliners going down in Russia just hitting the news wires, one must be reminded of the decade old confict between the Russian military and the country of Chechen, the October 2002 seizure in Moscow of a theatre by terrorists, in which about 120 people were killed (most from the gas used by the Russian military), several other homicide bombings through the years by the rebels, thousands of kidnappings, that rebels have attacked the Chechen capital Grozny in the last week, and that there is an election coming in just a few days, on Sunday, in Chechen.

Its also worth reviewing some timelines:

1944 - Stalin deports nearly all of the people from Chechen to Asia, where many die.

1991 U.S.S.R collapses, but tries to keep Chechen.

1994 Yeltsin invades Chechen with the Russian Military. Many human rights attrocities claimed to be commited by Russian troops, and financial support comes from Islamic sources around the world.

1996 Agreement between Chechen and Russia reached which gives semi-independence

1998 Jihad declared against Russia, with the hope that Chechen will become an Islamic republic

1999 Russia again uses its military to invade, and it is thought that 1/2 to 1/3 of the population flees as refugees.

Are there links between Chechen groups and al-Qaeda? (from http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/chechens.html)

Yes. Experts say there are reportedly several ties, including those between
The late Chechen warlord Khattab, a Jordanian-born fighter who was killed in Chechnya in April 2002, and Osama bin Laden. Khattab apparently first met bin Laden while both men were fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, said shortly after September 11, “We have long recognized that Osama bin Laden and other international networks have been fueling the flames in Chechnya, including the involvement of foreign commanders like Khattab.”

Individuals connected to the September 11 attacks and Chechnya. A Moroccan man charged with abetting the hijackers told a German court in October 2002 that the plot’s ringleader, Muhammad Atta, initially planned to join the fight in Chechnya.

Zacarias Moussaoui, whom U.S. authorities have charged with being the “20th hijacker” in the September 11 attacks, was reported by the Wall Street Journal to be formerly “a recruiter for al-Qaeda-backed rebels in Chechnya.”

Chechen militants reportedly fought alongside al-Qaeda and Taliban forces against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in late 2001. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was one of the only governments to recognize Chechen independence.

A Good Day

2004-08-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

My son and daughter several years ago with some tuna we caught on a different trip than that described below. Note for Najma -- my daughter's hair is just pulled back into a tight pony tail because of all of the fish scales from fishing. :)

Insignificant Acts in Time

2004-08-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Its dark.

An unseen wave crashes into the boat and the three of us involuntarily cry out, grasping for the wet railing to keep from being tossed overboard. Junior laughs. All of us re-grip our fishing poles. We're the only fishermen on the deck, as everyone else is sleeping in the bunks below.
I check the condition of my stomach. Having already been sea-sick once, I'm fairly well assured that I'll make the day without further incident, yet since the captain has cut the engines and we're now bobbing in random directions rather than in a steady forward roll, the queasiness in my head and stomach has returned. Scotty looks ill.

Junior voices my thought, "the sun's about to come up."

There's a slight tug on the end of my pole. I realize that the eight inch sardine I'm using for bait is probably swimming rapidly, being chased, perhaps? The pole is pulled strongly downward -- I let out a whoop! Set the hook with a hard upward yank. Rewarded with a corresponding pull from the other end. Pole bent nearly in two. The reel whines, as line strips out into the gray, choppy water. I hold on, unable to do more. Faintly, I hear other activity: running feet, other reels zinging, shouts of "HOOK UP!"

Surrounded by fishermen now, I pump the rod. Hand and forearm muscles complain. Lines become tangled. Often my reel spins uselessly, no line gained, then the line actually pulls out away from the boat. No thought of sea-sickness. I see the fish! A large tuna. But, my reel sings again and its gone, deep into the water, pulling me along with it up the rail toward the bow of the boat. I pass Scotty, in his own fight. We shout, "Hey!" Gunna lose this one, I think. I fight. I real. I lose line. I pull. I reel more. There's the tuna again. A deck hand appears next to me. He gaffs the yellowfin tuna and pulls it into the boat.

I blow out my breath. Have I been holding it for twenty minutes?

Scotty's there, his fish flopping next to mine on the slick deck. Dark blood. White deck. We high five, our hands slapping strong and loud in the early sunlight. Laughter. Smiles. Salt water spraying our faces. I feel the rocking of the boat again.

"It doesn't get any better than this!"

"Come on, lets get some more bait in the water."

************************************************************************

The grill hisses loudly as each hamburger patty is put on. The kids laugh and play in the back yard, by the pool. I see Michele and Claudette through the window, talking in the kitchen. Scotty puts the last of the hamburgers onto the barbecue and closes the lid.

"That was great. Are you ready to go out again next weekend?"

***********************************************************************

I put the car into gear. Heading to work. I think about what Pastor has told us, that every moment of our lives is significant. That even the most innocuous act is important. Could it be, then, that praise and glory for God may inhere even in such a simple thing as a fishing trip? If so, how best to bring that out? Scratching my beard, I drive out onto the highway.

**********************************************************************

"Okay, guys," the captain says over the loudspeaker, "pull in your lines. Lets see if we can't find another school of tuna for you."

The engines rumble to life. The boat begins to move. My line is pulled back sharply into the white wake, and I reel in rapidly to keep from tangling with others who are doing the same.

Stowing my pole, I meet with Junior and Scotty near the back rail.

"That was great!" Junior says, providing the words which Scotty would echo at our barbecue the next day. "I thought my pole was going to break, the way it was bent. I couldn't even reel it in, my reel just kept spinning, and no line was coming in!"

Junior has lost his fish. Like Scotty, its his first time deep sea fishing, and he gave just a little too much slack on the downward stroke, which allowed the tuna to either spit out the hook, or cut the line with its sharp teeth. He's still excited. There's a lot more fishing to be done today, and he will end up with his share before its over.

Junior and I originally planned this trip, and it wasn't until the last minute that we decided to call and invite Scott to come with us. I didn't know Scott well at the time, only having seen him in a few church functions and services. But he and his wife volunteered their house for our wedding reception, so I'd been trying to think of a way to show my gratitude. This fishing trip seemed a good way to do it, and Junior agreed, so I called Scotty and invited him. And while the ninety dollars I paid for his ticket isn't even close to repaying for the wedding reception, its a start. Still, although my main motivation was gratitude, you don't ask anyone to go on this kind of a trip if they don't seem like a good guy; you just spend too much time on the drive there and back, and on the boat itself, to be with someone you might not get along with.

The loudspeaker comes back to life, "there's a patch of floating kelp just ahead, guys. Lets check it out. I'll be putting it off to the left, port side. Lets hope there's fish there that want to bite."

We flash smiles, throw out a 'thumbs up,' and race to grab our poles.

**********************************************************************

Being careful not to close the sliding glass door on the paw of one of Scott and Claudette's puppy's I walk into the house.

"Scott was having a bad week," I overhear Claudette telling Michele. "He was complaining that since we moved out here there's no one for him to do things with. That's why when he told me that you called and asked him to go fishing I said, 'GO, YES! Stay as long as you want.' It was perfect! What a good way for the week to end.

************************************************************************

At least a dozen shapes flash through the water below me. One zags toward my bait, and I'm in the thick of it again. A ten minute fight.

Another bait, and seconds later the pole is nearly yanked from my hand. Another long fight.

Grabbing another sardine, I see one of the deck hands heaving to pull a twenty pound tuna over the rail for Junior.

"COLOR!" Comes a shout from the stern (someone is about to land a fish, and needs a gaff). The deck hand charges that direction.

"Stupid skippies, where's the yellowfin?" the captain grumbles as he passes me fighting my third fish of this school. I land another skipjack tuna.

Too many skipjacks on the surface, I place a weight ahead of the next sardine and watch it swim away from the boat as it sinks deep into the water. The sun is well up in the sky now. My line stretches taught. My pole dips fiercely. My reel spins wildly. Another twenty pound Yellowfin!

************************************************************************

The kids finished with their hamburgers, we sit at the dining room table, and Scott places a plate full of perfectly barbecued yellowfin in the center. Claudette puts down a bowl of string beans; Michele has brought potatoes. I feel awkward just sitting here, but don't know how to help.

"We have enough fish to last us for weeks," Claudette laughs happily.

"I'm giving a lot of it away," Scotty says, "there's too much just for us."

"Be sure to give some to Irv, since he lent us the fishing poles.""

The fish looks and tastes excellent.

************************************************************************

Tired, worn out from a full day of sun and from the exertion of fighting fish and the rocking of the boat, I sit on the life raft container on the ship's top deck looking down at junior and Scotty standing shoulder to shoulder at the aft rail. They're among a group of fishermen, all seasoned sailors now, swaying easily with the motion of the boat. While I can't hear their voices above the engines, its obvious from their hand gestures and expressions that they're talking and laughing just as easily.

One of the deck hands is with them, holding a simple scale with a hook on each end. Scotty's fish is already hanging from the hook on the deck hand's left, and there's a line of fishermen bringing their largest fish to compare against it. At stake is the 'jackpot:' a prize of $100.00 for the largest fish. Scotty has already beat three or four others, and I'm happy for him, but I know some mighty big fish were caught today, and chances are that a first time deep sea fisherman will not beat out the practiced pro's I've seen on board. Yet one by one these fishermen walk away with their fish, while Scott's yellowfin remains on the scale. It seems at last that Scotty has won; I see big smiles on his and Junior's faces, and feel a smile cracking the sunburn on my own cheeks. But a great big, barrel-chested fisherman, who has waited for the last, brings forward another yellowfin, which seems longer, if not as wide as Scotty's. Junior and Scott look at each other, their smiles slightly fading. Scott nods his head at this new competitor, and he nods back. All smiles now gone. The deck hand hooks the fish and raises the scale.

The newcomer's fish is heavier.

************************************************************************

"We're going to say grace," Claudett informs Scotty.

"Okay, that's fine." Shrugging. Eyebrows raised inquisitively, as if to say, 'do I really look that starved?'

I chuckle to myself, thinking how much like home this sounds to me, and miss the beginning of the blessing. Focusing my attention, I hear Claudette saying, "Thank you for bringing our men home safe. and thank you for providing this meal. We've had so many bills hit this month that we frankly didn't know how we could afford to go grocery shopping..."

*************************************************************************

I groan with disappointment.

But then, the scale tips the other way.

Now it reads that Scotty's fish is heavier for just a moment, then again sways back to the competitor's fish. It continues to oscillate back and forth, first showing one fish the winner, then the other. I look to the deck hand; its clear it will be his call. He holds them for a moment more, judging their weight against the swaying of the unsteady boat. He puts down the scale, unhooks the newcomer's fish, and slides it across the deck to him. Standing back up, with Scotty's fish still there on the left hook of the scale, I hear his shout above the engines, "Next!"

No one else comes forward.

Junior slaps Scott on the back, and I see, rather than hear, them say in unison, "All right." They look up at me. I'm cheering, and holding both arms high in the sky with joy. The deck hand gives Scotty the jackpot money in a paper envelope stained with fish scales and smudged with blood.

************************************************************************

"Yes," I say to myself. Farmers in pick ups and campers in R.V's pass me, and must be wondering what I'm doing sitting on the hood of my car writing in this notebook.

Where, except in the present, can the eternal be met?
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Back Cabin Deck View

2004-08-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law examines the structure prior to the point that we made an offer on the place. This is the cabin, which is separate from the main house.

Blog Definitions

2004-08-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

Check out Israellycool for some hilarious "Blog-related concepts." Such as:

"Blog Performance Anxiety -
What a blogger experiences when the loading time of their blog is slow. Often occurs when the blogger uses copious amounts of third-party script on their page,the blog's server is slow, or the blogger belongs to the Gravett Empire . Blog performance anxiety is particularly acute when the blogger gets linked by an established blogger, but realizes that most visitors are not patient enough to wait for the page to load."

Also find definitions for Premature Blogulation, Blog Puberty, Blog Nemesis, and Blog Standoff

All the Bad News Fit to Print

2004-08-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

Tired of seeing good reports on the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, water reclamation and electrical facilities in Iraq? Visit AlterNet where their motto is should be "If there's bad news about Bush or Iraq we'll find it -- if not, we'll make it up."

Example, their most recent story they found at the "Environment News Service" complains that new cars are available in Iraq now, instead of the pre-1990 vehicles which were all that were available before. And the angle they use to whine about this? Some free-lance taxi drivers can't afford the new cars, and folks are more likely to catch a ride in the newer ones. This is an 'economic catastrophe,' according to the article, which goes on to suggest that the government buy new cars for those who don't have one.

Man, those Americans are rotten bastards! Imagine them opening trade so that new cars can come in and create such a catastrophe! I suggest that instead of buying new cars for those that don't have them, we confiscate those new ones. That'll serve 'em right; and besides, where do they get off having so much money when others don't?

A journey into the epicenter of the Sadr standoff

2004-08-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Check out reporter Scott Baldauf's report as he journeys into the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf to rescue two other reporters who were inside but couldn't leave because of the fighting occuring outside.

Here's a taste of what you'll read there: "The streets were vacant, the buildings and shops pocked full of shell holes. The streets were covered with shattered glass and fragments of heavy machine gun and mortar rounds. Five of us, packed into the car, said silent prayers."

Finally Home

2004-08-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

It finally feels like we're home in our new house. And the reason? My wife made it so.

Sure, all the boxes and furniture and refridgerators (4 of them! can you believe it?) were moved in. But home it wasn't.

Today, she arranged the furniture, placed the throw rugs, posed the house plants, and voila! The atmosphere is so changed, and these walls now take on our own character. I'm amazed at what my wife provides for our home, and for our children; things that I simply can not do as a man. Its just not in my nature. Its not just the furniture, its her sensitivity, her attention to detail, her ability to be with our little one in all of his moods, and so much more. I say again, I am amazed!

In contrast, my home office is not much more than a bachelor's pad, with half-empty boxes of not-quite-needed-yet stuff, with computer cables, dirty socks, and empty snack food wrappers strewn about. Its functional, but thats about the best that can be said so far. Note that this is NOT the way I normally keep my office, but this is how its been during this move to a new house.

Time... Time... Why have you skipped out on our appointments?

E(liminated)Mail

2004-08-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

It appears that I'm not receiving all of my email. So if you've sent something and I haven't replied (I try to at least reply with a thank you to acknowledge receipt) then you can pretty well guess that I haven't received anything.

This Just In !

2004-08-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

Bush has just recalled that he flew an intercept mission with the Texas Air National Guard to repel Soviet bombers based in Cuba, and states that the event was seared in his memory, seared, because it taught him the necessity of standing up against evil governments such as the one we face today.

NOT.

(Thanks to Hugh Hewitt and Tom Lileks for pointing out how riduculous such a claim would be, and yet what a pass Kerry has had for claiming (and now finally recanting the claim) that he entered Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 -- a claim which he used to further his political career, and on which he says he has based his votes in congress for 30 years.

The Bible and the Koran

2004-08-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

Some discussion on Najma's blog, A Star from Mosul, (a wonderful site, which you should visit) lead me to do some research on exactly how Muslims view the Bible -- both the Old and New Testaments. Is the Bible a book from God, in their view? Can it be referred to? Can it be read by a Muslim?

The following is some of the research I did quickly. And I do mean quickly, as I did this mostly during breaks at work. But I think its at least a start. Note that I made a serious attempt to view sites which were clearly Islamic, and tried to look for impartial sites, and along the way found some that were clearly anti-Islamic. ( I've identified each reference with their biases, so that there are no hidden surprises, and so that you can judge for yourself knowing who did the writing, and if or what their agenda may be.) In other words, I've tried to take material that may not be objective, and use it objectively. Let me give you a sampling:

Muslims believe in the books of the previous prophets including [the Old Testament, which includes] the "Torah" which was sent to Moses, the "Zaboor" (Psalms) which were given to David, [and the New Testament] "Injeel" (Gospel) which was given to Jesus, and the Qur'an which was given to Muhammad. However, Muslims are told that the previous scriptures were tampered with by mankind and the Bible should only be accepted in as far as it is confirmed by the Qur'an. It is to be treated with respect, however any statements which clearly oppose those of the Qur'an are to be rejected as the work of mankind.

The above is from Islam 101, and it should be noted that it is a Muslim site which attempts to argue that the New Testament is less than valid.

Confirmation (sort of) from another Islamic site, IslamicAwakening.com. Note: a little translation is required here, such that:

"Eesaa ibn Maryam" = Jesus son of Mary;
"Tauraah" = Torah;
"Moosa" = Moses;
"Zaboor" = Psalms;
"Daawood" = David.

We know that in the second soorah, al-Baqarah, Allah subhaanahu wa ta`aalaa summarizes the characteristics of those people who will benefit from the Qur'aan. Allah subhaanahu wa ta`aalaa says:

"Alif Laam Meem. Dhaalikal Kitaabu laa rayba feehi hudal-lil muttaqeen." [2:1-2] "This is a book, there is no doubt regarding it, it is a guidance for those people who have taqwaa, those people who fear Allah."

Then Allah describes them and among His descriptions that He mentions about them is that they believe what is revealed to them and what was revealed before them. So they believe in the revelation which came to the Prophet Muhammad sallAllahu `alaihi wa sallam as they believe in the revelation which came before Prophet Muhammad sallAllahu `alaihi wa sallam, being the revelation given to the Prophets, like the Gospel to `Eesaa ibn Maryam, like the Tauraah to the Prophet Moosa `alaihis salaam, like the Zaboor or the Psalms which was given to Daawood `alaihis salaam. And likewise we find in the final verses of soorat al-Baqarah also a description of the matters of belief, where Allah subhaanahu wa ta`aalaa says that the believers and the Messenger, all of them believe in Allah and His Angels and His Scriputres and His Messengers; they make no distinction between them [see 2:285]. Meaning that they do not believe in some of them and disbelieve in others, like the Jews.

Then the following is from a Christian site, which attempts to argue that the Koran is less than valid, at IslamReview.com

The Quran assures more than once, that the Holy Bible (Old Testament and New Testament) was descended by God Himself: "And He sent down the law (of Moses), and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind" [Al Omran 3/3-4]. It describes the Bible also as , i.e. the message, in its statement: "Before thee, also, the messengers we sent were but men, to whom we granted inspiration: if ye realize this not, ask of those who possess the message " [Al Anbeyaa 21/7], and "This is the message of those with me, and message of those before me" [Al Anbeyaa 21/24]. The Quran also admits that God preserves the Bible because it is descended by Him, i.e. His : "We have sent down the message and we will assuredly guard it" [Al Hajar 15/9].

Perhaps an unbiased view can be found at "WordIQ.com" (and the identical text can also be found at WikiPedia.org) which is sort of an encyclopedia, and appears to be impartial and objective (I say "appears" because I've just begun my research in this area, and in my ignorance I could be reading subtle biases without knowing it. I do notice that they continually refer to the area as "Palestine" even during times when I know it was referred to as Judea, or Israel, or "Syria Palestina" by the Romans, who changed its name in the second century from "Syria Judea." I'm no expert on the exact names used on the exact dates, but in order to avoid confusion, I've changed the text somewhat, adding an ellipsis. Read into that what you will. I've included links to the actual pages I used in each case, so you can go there yourself.

From: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Abrahamic_religion
Islam considers that the Jewish God is the same as Allah, and Jesus as a divinely inspired prophet, but not a divinity. Thus both the theology of the Jewish Bible and the teachings of Jesus are accepted as valid in principle, although not in detail.

Since Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, claims descent from the monotheist tradition of the biblical patriarch Abraham, it sees itself as an Abrahamic religion. Muslims hold that it is essentially the same belief as that of all the messengers sent by God to mankind, with the Qur'ān (the one definitive text of the Muslim faith) codifying the final revelation of God. [ http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Islam ]

An Abrahamic religion (also referred to as desert monotheism) is a religion derived from the ancient Semitic tradition of Abraham, a great patriarch depicted in the Bible. This group of largely monotheistic religions, which includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, comprises the majority of the world's religious adherents. Muslims refer to adherents of most Abrahamic religions as People of the Book, “the Book” being the Old Testament, which the Muslims reject as corrupt but revere as having had divine origins.[ http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Abrahamic_religion ]

All the Abrahamic religions are derived to some extent from Judaism as practiced in ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah prior to the Babylonian Exile, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Judaism...was renovated and reformed to some extent in the 6th century BC by Ezra and other priests returning... from the exile..

Christianism originated... at the end of the 1st century BC, as a radically reformed sect of Judaism; it spread to ancient Greece and Rome, and from there to most of Europe, Asia, the Americas, and many other parts of the world....

Islam has only one sacred book, the Quran, comprising 114 Chapters (surat). According to the Quran itself, these were revealed by Archangel Gabriel to prophet Muhammad in separate occasions, and preserved as such by his disciples, until they were compiled into a single book (not in chronological order) several decades after his death.

The Quran includes several stories from the Jewish Bible (chiefly in Sura 17, The Children of Israel), and mentions Jesus many times as a divinely inspired prophet. However the detailed precepts of the Tanakh and of the New Testament are not adopted outright; they are replaced by the new commandments given directly by Allah to Muhammad and codified in the Quran. [ http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Abrahamic_religion ]

{Let me interject a note here before continuing from the same source: Also, Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified, and did not die, but that God only worked it out to appear that way. If I understand it correctly (and tell me if I'm wrong) they believe that instead God brought Jesus to Him, alive, and that he still lives today. They also believe that he will return, but will die at some point after that}

Traditional Muslim theology believed in an eternal, uncreated Qur'an. In this it was influenced by Greek philosophy, especially Plato's theories that all ultimate realities and truths had to be eternal and unchanging. Given that Muslim believe that Biblical figures such as Moses and Jesus all preached Islam, this implies that any difference between the Qur'an and the Bible as it now exists must be the result of human corruption of the earlier divine revelations.

However, the doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Qur'an has been disputed by some, including the Mu'tazili and Ismaili sects; and also implicitly or explicitly by various liberal movements within Islam, which believe that different revelations are created by God to meet the needs and circumstances of their communities. This argument is mainly used by liberals opposed to various aspects of traditional Islamic law. However, it would also account for differences between the Bible and Qur'an without resorting to accusations of human corruption of divine texts. [ http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Quran ]

Finally, from other - admittedly brief - research into other sites and forums, it appears that many Muslims only pretend to respect the Bible. Instead, many say that the Bible is not the Bible, but is a "corrupted" version. It is, as stated above, rejected. These will say that if you can find the original Bible, it will agree exactly with the Quran. (Don't bother giving them evidence and facts showing that it is original nearly word for word; facts mean nothing as far as they are concerned.) Until that time, they state, 'this' version is due no respect. Oh -- it should go without saying that when I say "many" I realize that that does not mean "all."
As an example, a more moderate view, yet one which is clearly pro-Islam, and to which I'll give the respect of having the final word on this subject, is found at the website "Islam Answers Back," which succinctly states its agenda on its opening page as, "Everyone wants a fair share of attacking Islam. But who is there to answer for Islam? The fact is that Islam needs no defence. Islam continues to spread in the face of mighty opposition."

Can Muslims Use the Bible in Dawah?
The hadith of Umar is often given as a reason against the use of the Bible in Dawah. However, this use of Umar’s hadith is based on a failure to distinguish between using the Bible for guidance and using the Bible for Dawah. Umar’s hadith teaches that we cannot use the Bible for guidance. That hadith does not prevent us from using the Bible for Dawah.

In brief, the hadith says that Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, came to the prophet, sallallahu alayhi was sallam, with a copy of the Torah saying here is a copy of the book that was revealed to the prophet Moses, peace be upon him. As he began to read it the prophet’s face showed displeasure until Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, alerted Umar to notice this. Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, then promptly closed the scroll and reaffirmed his satisfaction with Allah as Lord, with Islam as religion, and with Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi was sallam, as prophet and messenger. The prophet then remarked that if the prophet Musa were alive today he would have to follow the prophet Muhammad, sallalalhu alayhi was sallam.

That in a nutshell is the gist of the hadith. Obviously, the hadith deals with the question of where to find guidance today. The Bible therefore cannot be used for our guidance. The hadith does not prevent us from making reference to the Bible in the limited manner which I will now describe.

The easiest way to prove a point to a person who believes in the Bible is to make reference to the Bible. This does not mean you believe in the Bible or consider it true in even that portion. It makes no difference whether or not you the caller to Islam believes in the Bible passage you are citing. It is important to believe what you preach, but remember that you are not preaching the Bible. You are simply reminding Christians and Jews that if they had read their Bibles carefully they would have to accept Islam.

I hope the above isn't too disjointed, and gives you some at least a beginning of insight into how a person of Islam might view the Bible. If you have further links or comments, let me know.

CB Carries On!

2004-08-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Whew! After a day of no posts following his note that his BC summoneed him and said that he knew about his blog, and that all posts would have to be reviewed by his Sgt prior to submission, CB IS BACK!

Visit MY WAR - Fear and Loathing in Iraqfor the very best in military blogging.

This New Medium: "The Blogoshpere"

2004-08-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

What an impact this new medium is beginning to have! From the Chicago Sun Times article entitled Truth bound to come out on Kerry's military duty, author John O'sullivan says in regard to John Kerry's "searing, searing" - but apparently false - memory of being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968:

Even if the major media decided to bury this story, they would probably not succeed -- and they know as much. The "blogosphere" -- that voluntary society of unpaid free-lance journalists -- is following the story avidly, correcting errors, producing original documents, sifting through different accounts. Some bloggers are for Kerry, some against, but all are together advancing the story by winnowing truth from falsehood. Unless the bloggers conclusively acquit Kerry before the story migrates outwards, the mainstream media will eventually be forced to devote serious resources to it.

Hey - I thought it was just "Blogsphere." Am I wrong?

The Best of the Military Blogs in Iraq, to Continue?

2004-08-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

CB has been discovered by his commanding officers. This guy, writing "My War - Fear and Loathing in Iraq" is by far the most riviting blogger about the action occurring on the ground that exists. Check out his site at http://cbftw.blogspot.com/ and add your prayers that he will be allowed to continue, and will still want to continue. He does a great service to our Country not only as an Infantryman, but also in that he fills the void the media has left us with in regards to stories of the good we're doing in Iraq; stories of courage, valour, heroism, and sacrifice. He's giving a face to the Army, a person one can relate to.

Creek View at the Campsite

2004-08-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

The campsite is so small you can really only get one group there at a time. Its really only known to locals, since it has no name, and you have to travel 2 miles down a dirt road to get there.

Robbery update

2004-08-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note on what my family calls "the robbery" of the solar yard light from our driveway (though I view less it dramatically, since I sort of figured they might not last long there when I put them up).

Apparently there were a few Sheriff's vehicles on our dirt road, and may have arrested some of the skin heads. I doubt that it had anything to do with our yard lights, or that we'll ever see them again.

Also one of our new neighbors drove up on horseback to give us a list of phone numbers to vets and what have you - very nice - and stated that there have been problems with the campsite by the creek down past our place. She said she always keeps an eye on it and if anyone is there more than three days she calls the Forest Rangers because there's a 14 day stay limit on the place, which begins only at the point the Rangers are aware they're there. She says it helps to keep homeless people from staying there permanently.

I didn't speak to her. My Mother did, and says, "she's a Berkley person, if you know what I mean? She used to teach at Berkley." I thought this was pretty funny coming from my Mom. (Oh, and yes, Mom is one of the 7 family members who all bought into and now live on this 18 acres).

Mystic Chords (2)

2004-08-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

Ah, I've finally found some background on Teresa Heinz-Kerry's curious "mystic chords" phrase in her speech at the DNC. And, I must give her some credit -though I don't believe we're divided into "two Americas" no matter how hard the Democrats continue to try to make us that way, and especially not as divided as we were just prior to the Civil War - for pulling this out and using it.

This is from The Heritage Foundation, under the category of American Founding and History, in an article by Wilfred M. McClay entitled "The Mystic Chords of Memory: Reclaiming American History." The following is only a portion of the whole article:

[In] Lincoln's first inaugural speech [he uses the phrase] "The Mystic Chords of Memory." To understand what sort of appeal Lincoln was making with these words, we need to recall the setting in which the address was given in March of 1861. In the wake of Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860 without the support of a single Southern state, seven states from the Deep South had already left the Union, and the crucial border states were on the verge of doing so as well. The Union that Lincoln so greatly cherished seemed to be dissolving before his eyes. With this inaugural speech, Lincoln began his attempt to counter this disintegration. He made it clear that, so far as he was concerned, the union of states under the Constitution could not be broken, for it was meant to be a perpetual union, rather than being revocable at the whim of a single state or combination of states. The speech takes a variety of turns, offering legal, political, moral, and prudential reasons for its case. Its tone is by turns both conciliatory and stern. But with its final clinching paragraph -- added (it is said) at the suggestion of William Henry Seward -- the speech soars to immortal heights:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

It is a rich, complex, intricately balanced sentence, built around a delicate musical image. The "chords of memory" will eventually be "touched" by our better angels -- one can almost envision them plucking the strings of a harp -- and once those memories have been made vibrant, they will elicit other sympathetic vibrations, the intervals and overtones that energize and "swell the chorus of the Union." These are "mystic" chords, which means that they must come from a divine, mysterious source; and these mystic chords somehow have the power to link "every battlefield and patriot grave" to "every living heart and hearthstone" in the land. When they are sounded, the mystic chords have the power to connect past and present, inner and outer, private and public, household and polity, locality and nationality in a single harmonious whole. During times of confusion and crisis, such as the nation was then facing, it could find composure and direction in recalling the Spirit of '76 and the Founders' heroic sacrifices. Citizens will draw strength and comfort from associating their love of the nation with the same warm devotion that attaches them to their own hearths.

For Lincoln, though, the battlefields and patriot graves deserved our reverence not simply for sentimental reasons, or out of reverence for our ancestors' great sacrifices, but because of the cause for which they sacrificed. It would not have been enough had they merely died for the 19th-century equivalent of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. They died, as Lincoln expressed it in the Gettysburg Address, in order that government of the people, by the people, and for the people "shall not perish from the earth." They died, he asserted, to sustain the possibility of a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

The mystic chords of memory, then, also draw us back to first principles and to an understanding of America as a nation self-consciously founded, at a distinct moment in time, with particular ends in view. From this perspective, the United States is a nation with a uniquely creedal sense of national identity -- a nation, as Chesterton put it, with the soul of a church. In this view, one becomes an American less by descent than by consent.

Thus, Lincoln's oratory offered two different effects of invoking the mystic chords of memory -- first, as reminders of an inherited way of life and, second, as reminders of a set of universal propositions. This duality is at the heart of a longstanding debate about the nature of American institutions, and indeed it now presents itself at the heart of contemporary debates about multiculturalism, immigration, and national identity. Is America a transnational nation, founded upon certain abstract and universalistic principles which it both exemplifies and promotes? Or is it a civilization built upon a series of specifically Western European, and largely British, historical accretions with language, laws, customs, conventions, institutions, and belief systems arising organically out of those particular legacies? Such questions are exceedingly difficult to answer with finality, and the balance between them may remain contested for as long as the United States stays in business as a country. It is hard to imagine either one of the perspectives they represent ever being excluded from our sense of national identity.

Bye, Bye, Bunny Goodbye

2004-08-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

After conferring with my more sensitive half, we decided that we should wait for three year old Joey to wake up before burying the rabbit.

Joey was pretty nonchalant at first, but I think it hit him several hours later. Especially when the feed store was closed so that we couldn't get a replacement. He began quietly crying in his car seat, and told us he wished his rabbit wasn't dead.

We buried him in the only place that has soft enough earth at our new place yet, which will probably become the spot for a built in pool some years from now but...

Joey pet the rabbit a few times before we placed him in a protective wrapping and carried him to the front of the house. During our procession, our friend Libby went through the 'he's in heaven' speech. Joey continued to cry softly until I kneeled and placed the body in the hole, when full tears began to flow. Still on my knees, we asked if he wanted to say a prayer (not so much for the rabbit, who has no soul, but for our sadness). He asked me to at first, which I did, asking Jesus to bring us peace, and to pet the rabbit too! When I finished, Joey surprised me by sitting on my kneeling legs to begin his own prayer. He prayed, "Jesus take care of my rabbit, and Dad help me." I was touched and surprised that he'd know to refer to God in such an intimate way, until he repeated, "Dad, HELP me!" Realizing that he wanted help completing his prayer, we finished together, with him repeating my words, and each closing with "Amen."

Joey handled things a little better for a while, but it was obviously working in his subconscious. For, later that evening as the two of us did construction work (translate this as: played together in the sand down by the garage) he asked me, "do you miss my rabbit?" I told him yes. "Are you sad?" Yes, its very sad, isn't it? "Yeah," he replied, "it makes me sad." I know I'm repeating myself, but he really just needed to hear it just this way several times. In fact, when several mountain ranges had been created in the sand, he asked, "do you know where my rabbit is?" And again, we talked of heaven. He opined that he'd rather have his rabbit here than there. After several sand-eons, during which time the mountains erupted and became volcanic craters, he started over again with, "do you miss my rabbit?"

I'm so glad I found out how to blog, because I know the bittersweet details of this would escape from my memory soon otherwise. So, while it may be boring for you, it is very important to me. I only wish that I'd had this ability when my other two kids were growing up.

2004-08-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

My brother and brother in law walking down our 'driveway.' The right lane heads to the garage, the left to the road.

The New Place

2004-08-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

We moved into the new place in the mountains near Yosemite. We’re enjoying walking down our ¼ mile dirt ‘driveway’ in the early evening to watch for the deer returning from the creek. Though we’re a little concerned, because the mother of one young fawn is missing. There’s been some ‘skin-heads’ on the road nearby, traveling into the US Forest lands next to us. We’ve heard shooting, and one of the solar yard lights we put at the end of our driveway was stolen. We went down to the campground they’d been staying at, but its vacant now. Perhaps they climbed back under the rocks they came from.

Our Shepard, “BJ” has really enjoyed the change. And I enjoy her much more. Whereas before she basically just stayed in our back yard at the old house (when she wasn’t escaping and running throughout the desert), now she comes with me on frequent daily walks. For the most part she’s remained only on the roads, but finally this morning when I went to feed and water the horses she ventured into the forest, chasing after some critter or another.

Our three-year old son has also enjoyed it. Racing along the road on his little bike between the house and to the garage 100 yards or so away, or down to the horses; playing in the dirt – his favorite pastime; or running in the huge (1,200 sq ft) main room of the big house.

Yet this morning I’ve discovered some bad news, which I’m trying to decide how to handle when he wakes up. His rabbit died during the night. My wife’ll also be quite hurt. Just last night she was holding him, like a baby, and came in happily to show us all how “relaxed” he was in that position. Now I know why.

I’m considering burying him before either wakes up. But perhaps my wife would like to say good-bye, and perhaps its time my son learned more of the reality of death. The poor luck we’ve had with gold fish don’t really compare to the rabbit, who we’ve not only had a long time, but which is much more cuddly, and somehow more ‘real.’ However, our two cats are getting along in years, and it may be time to start preparing him. I just haven’t decided yet. Guess I’ll have a cup of coffee and a cigarette and think on it a bit.

Moving

2004-07-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

I'm closing up shop as we move to our new home. Hope to have the computers hooked back up there in a few days.

Mystic Chords of National Memory?

2004-07-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

From Teresa Heinz-Kerry's speech at the Democratic Convention:

"Today, the better angels of our nature are just waiting to be summoned. We only require a leader who is willing to call on them, a leader willing to draw again on the mystic chords of our national memory and remind us of all that we, as a people, everyday leaders, can do; of all that we as a nation stand for and of all the immense possibility that still lies ahead. I think I've found just the guy. I'm married to him," she said.

Whaaat? "the better angels of our nature?" We're going to summon them - like one would in a role playing game? Or, we'll be "channeling" in the oval office? Hmmm.... This troubles me deeply.

The Ones We Left Behind

2004-07-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

I guess with my wife on my mind after having just written about her, just below this post, this hit me deeply. Its from "Trav" over at A Sailors Journey:

The Ones We Left Behind
You know it's funny. A lot of people say "thank you for serving your country", some tell us how proud they are of us, or maybe simple just buy us a beer. Speaking for myself I really appreciate this. However, everytime this happens I can't help but think of my wife. She truely is the one who makes the sacrifice. Think about it. She has to pack me up and send me off to a far away land. She has to explain why Dad can't be at the last game of the season. She has to manage the budget, lets face it no one gets rich being in the military. She has to put on a big smile when people ask "Isn't hard being away from your husband for so long." Then my wfie has to say something cute like, "Oh, it just comes with the terriotory." Whell shit ya it's hard. They're not theere when the house shifts and she wonders if anything is down stairs at 3 am. When the door doesn't shut all the way and she comes home late at night by herself, and sees that it's open. How about when she can't go to sleep because there's to much room in the bed. Don't get me wrong, this ain't no pleasure cruise. I think some times my wife is the one that needs the credit. She is the one making a house a home. I am so happy and greatful that my wife is strong enough to be able to do all that. Thanks honey. I love you.

The Other Kids

2004-07-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

My wife and I've been married 10 years. During that time she had a child that wasn't mine. And I'm nearly certain it will happen again soon.

But its okay; because, it also wasn't her child - and if there's another in the future, that one won't be hers either.

I get a real kick out of telling this true story to people face to face, because the reactions are so interesting. Some people just continue on in the conversation with faces of stone. "Uhm, hmm. " They'll say, then quickly continue, "Oh, would you mind passing the salt? I really need to cut down on my salt intake. When I was at the doctors last week..."

Others will just look at me. If I don't elaborate, some will move on to something else, while others will throw up their hands as if to say, "What? Explain that, will you?" There are those who immediately go there, asking for an explanation. And a few get it right off the bat, asking, "Oh, you're wife's a surrogate Mother?"

(For my young friend Najma who visits here often and may not be familiar with this English word, a 'surrogate Mother' is a woman who gets pregnant with a child that is not her own, and when the baby is born the actual parents take the child. The way we did it, the child was not related in any way to my wife. For example, when you bake a cake, you mix all of the ingredients together outside of the oven, and then you place it in the oven to cook. When its done, you remove it from the oven. But the oven is not the mother of the cake, and is not related to the cake. That's similar to what the doctors do with these other people's baby, which they put into my wife's womb when its still microscopic -so small you can't see it with your eyes - where it "cooks" until it is ready to be born.)

When we get to the point that its explained that she's a surrogate, the usual reactions are:

That's so great. It takes a special person (angel is often used here) to do that
I don't think I could do that; I don't think I could give up the child
Aren't you afraid you, or especially your wife, would get too attached to give it up?
Aren't the real parents afraid you'll be too attached to give it up?
My sister did that for someone
What happens if there's, like, 8 babies in there? Do you keep them or abort them?
Why does she want to do that?
Do you get to see the baby at birth, or later on as it grows?

In my opinion, my wife is special - but then I'm partial to her anyway! And she says she likes being pregnant. (And for those that sometimes ask, I don't have any real issues with her being pregnant, other than... well, maybe the last few weeks, you know what I mean?) And while we've been doing this for many years, we've met lots and lots of other surrogates. But I think all of them, my wife included, would not describe themselves as particularly special. They just want to help. To give a life. We didn't know when we first explored this that women actually got paid for this (though we thought it pretty cool when we found that they do). What my wife longed for, throughout the entire pregnancy, was the look on the parents face when the baby first appeared, for the friendship that would develop before, and hopefully continue after.

For all of the questions relating to not being able to give up the child, neither her nor I really understand that. We have five children (two each from previous marriages, and one between us). We don't want any more. In fact, since we have some to spare, I'll offer to let you have one of mine. Heck, I'll pay you to take one! (Just kidding, GI chick, if you're reading).

Seriously - she never viewed the child as her own. As she anwers, "when you baby-sit someone's child, do you or they have any thought that you'll try to keep it? This isn't my child, its theirs!" The typical response is, "yea, but after nine months..." Both of us again fall back to our desires, which is that there's just about absolutely nothing we want less than ANOTHER child.

Further, in most cases there is some contact after the birth. How much varies from as little as a letter and a photo around the birthday or Christmas, to frequent visits.

I can understand that the first maternal thought someone might have is that it would be difficult. But I know so many surrogate mothers, who know so many more, who know even more, etc. and I can tell you that it is not an issue with them (though there have been a couple of isolated instances, to be sure - and it is these that make big stories in the media, which further fuels the thought that it must be impossible that someone could actually carry for nine months without attachment).

Its not hard to give someone this precious gift: its joyful.

Still - yes - my wife is special in my eyes.

Left Winging It

2004-07-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

Being new to the blogshpere - so new in fact that I hope I've used the term correctly - I've concentrated so far on blogs related to Iraq and Iraqis. But I have wanted, and am now beginning, to branch out to some left wing sites, in order to see a different perspective. I thought I'd make a few notes about some I've looked at:

TalkLeft: The politics of crime: This site has received a lot of media coverage, being recently noted in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. Part of the reason I visited this site is because I appreciate the honesty of the author, who is quoted in the Washington Post to say,

"I'm committed to seeing Bush out of office in November and want to do what I can to help," says Jeralyn Merritt, a Denver defense lawyer [A defense lawyer who's a liberal? What a surprise! Nas] who writes the TalkLeft blog. "To me the purpose of a convention is solidarity and getting strength from each other and renewed commitment to a joint purpose. I am a cheerleader. I am a partisan. I am an advocate. My goal is to get everyone else stirred up."

I can deal with that. What I hate are the newspapers and T.V. media that try to present themselves as objective but in fact have a leftist driven agenda - to the point that I shudder when reading the Left Angeles Times, because their "news" articles are really op ed pieces in disguise 90% of the time (and I refuse to buy the paper. I read it only if someone leaves it lying with the empty Taco Bell trays on top of the trash can. And considering that I eat out only about once per month, well, obviously I don't have to suffer through the experience too much. Further, since the LAT's website requires giving them personal information, and has more cookies trying to attach to one's hard drive than the Keebler Elves, I must confess that I do not consult this paper. So if you wish to criticize me for not reading viewpoints different than mine, you would be correct in this instance.)

I did view TalkLeft's blog, and it seems to have the same honesty as in the quote above. Other than the annoying habit Jeralyn has of referring to herself in the third person - either because she thinks that makes her seem somehow outside of the issue looking in, perhaps she believes she's speaking for the collective 'we', or because she thinks she's royalty, I don't know - I found in my quick perusal that the writing was civil and well done. Plus, there are extensive links to additional liberal blogs. Definitely a site I'm happy to add to my growing list of favorites.

I plan to view more sites from the other side of the aisle, and make some notes on any I find that are civil (I don't think I'll bother with the hate filled slogan only sites, but who knows), but at the moment my real job is getting in the way. That's so annoying.

BACK AGAIN - HERE'S ANOTHER:

Notes on the Atrocities: I like this article titled "New Media" which asks "What is this new medium [of blogs]? The author then goes on to look at what he sees as the five main elements or characteristics, including: immediacy, interconnectivity, interactivity, individuality, and Advocacy. That "A" at the end sort of ruins the aphorism though. Perhaps the author might agree that Ideology would work there. In any case, its an OK site - truly - but I probably won't bookmark it, mostly because I just found it kind of bland. There's a lot of political issues discussed in a mostly civil manner, but nothing that strikes me as particularly novel other than the surprising notion that he thinks Perlstein writes great articles.

I'm still continuing to look at some of the other sites from the left, but I don't know if I'll update any more here unless something is really outstanding. Just too boring. I will say, I really haven't run across one yet that truly shocked me with hate spewing venom - not that I was hoping for that, please understand; I'd just bybass those as quickly as possible. Oh sure, there's been some that have the usual badmouthing, name calling, and slogans, but they've all been fairly mild compared to what I expected.

The Kat Woman

2004-07-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

If you hate Bush just to hate him, then there are no facts or valid arguments that will make any difference to you.

If you're open minded enough, and willing to read what can sometimes be lengthy posts because of the extensive thought and even more extensive cross linking to the sources researched and quoted, then you'll find that Kat, at "The Middle Ground" is a better wordsmith than 90% of the syndicated print journalists and analysts out there. Considering the recent debacles noted in our intelligence community, she really should be a high ranking intelligence officer rather than just the normal, everyday, American Health Worker that she is.

Not only that, but she has a wit and humor that actually adds understanding to her pieces (unlike so many liberal pieces, where what passes off for wit and humor is really just character assassination, name calling, hate slogans, or just "potty humor" - and hey, if you disagree, point me to something better on the left.)

For example, her recent post, "The Hornets Nest: A Modern Day Parable," is a hilarious, yet perfectly apt analogy debunking the myth that going after terrorists increases the threat of terrorism.

In it, you're thrust into life within your suburban neighborhood which is besieged by a large wasp nest, and in which the UN (the Pest control companies) are too busy debating the issue to come to your rescue; Canada and Mexico (your next door neighbors) are mad because you're thinking of stirring the nest, which might cause the wasps to sting their family; France and Germany (your neighbors across the street) are mad because they're trying to get honey from the wasps, and actually have strong connections with the pest control company; your wife, representing Collin Powell, tries to get some back door support from the pest control company by speaking with their wives; your children, representing various portions of American society, including a side that begins printing protest signs in your home; and various family members or other neighbors representing everyone from Spain to Rumsfeld to Bremer make appearances somewhere in this parable.

Again, its long, but extremely well written.  Funny - yet on target, and informative.  And well worth the read.

Busting Conspiracy Stories - Blood for Oil is a straight analysis piece sans humor, but is also another read that anyone who is willing to face facts should examine.    As opposed to shallow reports and slogans you'll see elsewhere, Kat takes the time to think through the reasons for American and other country's interests and positions, America's options prior to 9/11 and now, and the repercussions of various paths we may choose to take going forward. Again, this is a long piece because of the width of its subject matter, the depth of its analysis, and the extensive links to the sources of her information. But if you're like me, you may just end up copying it to a word doc and saving it to your hard drive to have handy when friends bring up this empty myth and worn out slogan.

Perhaps you might have friends willing to try the truth for a change.

Prayer for Najma

2004-07-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

I have more that I want to say on this, including an explanation as to why its here. But I want to let it ferment in my subconscience for a bit before I add more. In the meantime, would you join me in praying for one particular soul in Iraq?

Dear Lord, please keep this young girl safe. She tells us elsewhere, in the words of a 16 year old, that she uses this name, which is not her own, because she doesn't want to be killed. You know her, and her name.

Please send people her way that will teach and model the truth. And allow her to see that while governments went to war, and while it did result in many deaths, Americans and American soldiers do not wish to be, and are not HER enemy. That many have, and more would still, give their lives for her.

Allow your peace to come to this area. Protect our soldiers who protect her - and work it out that they may leave her country as soon as possible. Bring them home to us.

Moving

2004-07-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

By this time next week (unless the escrow implodes) we should be moving to our new home. Here's a picture from the back deck.

This is just outside of Yosemite, California. Of course, we can hardly wait!

President Theodore Roosevelt said, "There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods... It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man."

USFK Sucks

2004-07-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

I was typing an email in outlook, which included 'USFK' (U.S. Forces in Korea). Before sending, I hit the spell check, and Outlook didn't recognize USFK.

Guess what it gave as its first recommended correct spelling? SUCK. hehe!

Perhaps we can begin to hope

2004-07-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

Today was the first time - that I know of - that an important Muslim cleric (or really, any Muslim cleric) has condemned the beheadings of civilians.

Boston.com / News / World / Firebrand Shiite cleric condemns beheadings in Iraq

Today Muqtada al-Sadr said "''We condemn what some people are doing regarding the beheading of prisoners and it is illegal according to Islamic law. Anybody doing this is a criminal and we will punish him according to Islamic law.''

Al-Sadr, who is well known for the uprising he and his followers and militia started in about March, controls the Imam Ali Mosque, where Mohammed's brother Ali is believed to be entombed. He's a mid-level cleric in the region, claiming his title mostly because his father (who was killed by Sadaam) was a cleric. Al-Sadr doesn't have the full theological education to issue fatwas. A good site for a brief and seemingly objective history on him can be found here, and that site also sheds some fascinating insight into the tribal infighting between some of these clerics over the control of a number of mosques - especially those that can generate a lot of money from pilgrims.

Aside - why is it that whenever I see his full name, the theme from Timon and Pumba runs through my head?

Welcome - First Opening Post

2004-07-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

What is this blog stuff? Many people have probably known of it for years, but I just discovered it in the past several weeks.

I mainly decided to begin my own because I enjoy writing, and because I'm having trouble getting email from my daughter, who's serving in the Army in Korea. So this is sort of 'off the cuff,' on the spurr of the moment. I don't expect any fireworks, or earthquakes, to strike around the world when I click 'publish this post.'

Yet, I'm fascinated by the medium.

I'm already addicted to hearing of the daily life of a sixteen year old Iraqi girl in the blog A Star from Mosul, or the daily grind of a soldier there in My War - Fear and Loathing in Iraq, as well as a triplet of three Iraqi's frequent posts at IRAQ THE MODEL.

The interactivity in the comments sections from readers are another dimension that transcends normal journalism to such an extreme that it makes newspapers seem equivalent to the Pony Express - archaic, cumbersome, and subject to replacement when better methods become available. These comment sections have led me to the profound thinking (I have hated the word profound since High School, but can't escape its use here) of just a normal American health worker, who has such clarity of thought that one would think she is instead - and perhaps should be - a high ranking intelligence official. That would be "The Middle Ground," by Kat - a must read for those who are open minded enough to move past slogans and actually take the time to read and think about hard facts.

I wonder, "How long will this medium exist?" And can only assume that it will be the wave of the future. While it will not replace the T.V. Newscasts, printed word, and mainstream journalism, I have to believe that these mediums must adopt some of its characteristics - i.e. the ability to comment, which some newspaper sites already allow, and the 'on the spot flavor.' However, I also wonder, "How long will it be free?" I don't expect that to continue much more than a year or so. Or at least, even if it does, it may be that no one but the author will be able to access, or find the site unless some monthly amount is paid.

Anyway, I don't exactly have plans yet as to what my content will be. A daily journal would be much too boring ("got up today, brushed my teeth. Decided to shower, unlike the last two days...). And while I would love to put in comments about my kids (I wish I had written down all those comments they make when they're young, like when my son, who at six said something I wouldn't expect from that age, like "but Freeways aren't free, we paid for them with our taxes" or when my other son, now three, who said that he wanted to go to "Bob on a string" - meaning, as we were finally able to determine after five minutes of confusion, that he wanted to go to the Bob the Builder website "ONLINE") for the most part these would only be interesting to me, and not to any wider audience.

So, I'm not sure where this will progress. I have some vague ideas that I'll comment on world events; but I'm not a great thinker. I'm thinking that I'll link to some of the best posts I see in other blogs; but one might as well just visit those other blogs. On the micro level, I do want to post things of interest to my family, my kids, and my daughter; but don't want to be boring.

So I don't know exactly yet where this will go. Therefore, not only because my dream is to be a part time dilletant, but also for the reasons in the last paragraph, I've named the site this way.