It's not a Draft.

We're just kidnapping people and forcing them to enlist

This is really sickening, and should be a swift wake up call to those who are still in denial.
posted by Manchild at 11:00 AM

Israeli Govt. report reveals land grabs ARE illegal

But carries on with them anyway.

The scale of Israel's illegal land grab in the occupied territories was disclosed yesterday when the government's own investigation found at least £9 million of taxpayers' money was recently used for illegal Jewish outposts.

While domestic and international attention is focused on Israel's plan to withdraw all its settlements in Gaza, the report suggests a clear push by the Israeli government to stake out more land in the West Bank.

This policy received tacit support from the United States last year when President George W Bush said Israel could rightfully claim any territory where there was an existing Jewish community centre even if set up illegally.

Campaigners against Jewish settlements pointed out that while the investigation reported several months ago that a systemic abuse of the legal process took place in the government, no individuals have been prosecuted yet.

All Israeli building on land occupied in the 1967 war is regarded by Britain and the European Union as illegal under international law.

Israel has always denied that the settlements breach international law but now the government's own report, prepared by a respected lawyer, Talia Sasson, found that scores of outposts broke Israel's domestic laws.

According to her report, which used figures accurate up to June of last year, £9 million was channelled illegally by the housing ministry to Jewish communities setting up illegal settlements during the premiership of the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and his Likud party predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the late 1990s.

It is likely that the actual figure for illegal government funding is much higher because the settlements would have received money from the defence ministry and other agencies, although Mrs Sasson was unable to trace those sums.

According to the report, 82 illegal outposts received funding from the housing ministry. At least 15 of the outposts were built on land that was wholly owned by Palestinians and 39 on land that was partly Palestinian property and partly state-owned.

While there are a total of about 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza, all of whom are due to be evacuated later this summer, in the West Bank the numbers of settlers are significantly higher.

There are about 180,000 Jewish settlers in communities built to the east of Jerusalem on land occupied in 1967 and a further 240,000 in more than 200 settlements and outposts dotted across the West Bank.
posted by Manchild at 3:00 PM

What do they mean 'Threat to Peace'?

Well, how about this for example?

Israeli outposts shell surrounding Southern Lebanese territories while Israeli warplanes continue to violate Lebanon's sovereign air space.

NABATIEH: Violence erupted in the South on Tuesday, with several Israeli warplanes once more violating Lebanese airspace and Shebaa coming under fire from both tank and heavy artillery. An Israeli Mirkava tank in the Roueisat al-Alam outpost fired three 122-millimeter mortar shells at Sadana hill, located in northeast Shebaa and Kfar Shuba in the late morning.

The attack was preceded by artillery fire from the Ramta and Sahaqa outposts in the occupied Shebaa Farms toward the surrounding valleys and prairies.

Security sources in Marjayoun said the Israeli military had also increased activities between the Shebaa Farms and Syrian Golan Heights.

Meanwhile, Army Command announced six Israeli warplanes and two reconnaissance jets had violated Lebanese airspace over Nabatieh, Marjayoun, Arqoub and Khiam earlier in the morning. The jets returned to their base nearly two hours after having been reported to have crossed into Lebanese territory.

Four Israeli warplanes also violated Lebanese airspace Tuesday drawing anti-aircraft fire from the army.

Israeli soldiers fired three mortar rounds across the border in retaliation, with no reported casualties.

The Israeli jets broke the sound barrier as they swooped low over the southern port city of Tyre in the latest in a catalogue of violations that have drawn UN criticism.

Another two Israeli warplanes were spotted in the early afternoon coming from the sea off the coast of the northern city of Batroun, said an army statement. The jets hovered above the city before leaving some 15 minutes later.

The latest flyovers came amid Hizbullah celebrations after the resistance's landslide victory in parliamentary elections in the South.

Hizbullah leaders hailed the victory as a popular rebuff to American and French-led pressure for the disarmament of all militia on Lebanese soil.

The resistance has said it plans to continue its fight against Israel until the Jewish state relinquishes the disputed Shebaa Farms, a small plot of land seized from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war but now claimed by Lebanon with Damascus' blessing.

But Hizbullah's foreign relations chief Ali Darmush told a Paris news conference Monday the party would "not hand over its weapons even if Israel withdraws from the Shebaa Farms."

He cited the continued threat from Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace as the main reason for Hizbullah's rejection of calls to disarm.

In a statement addressed to United Press International, Darmush said: "France can play a positive role in Lebanese domestic affairs by encouraging officials to unite and proceed to true national reconciliation that protects Lebanon facing Zionist ambitions. Without the resistance Lebanon would return to the pre-liberation phase, meaning to before the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in the summer of 2000."

During a press scrum following the statement, a reporter from the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot had attempted to pose a question to Darmush regarding prisoner swaps between Hizbullah and Israel, but was snubbed by the Hizbullah official.

The slight prompted the Israeli Press Association to release a statement criticizing Darmush's behavior as "xenophobic and racial," and expressed its disappointment that other journalists had not joined their Israeli colleague in walking out of the conference.
posted by Manchild at 11:00 AM

Rules of engagement? Pft! We're Israel. We make our own rules.

In Israel, the weekends revelations are causing massive commentary.

Haaretz Editorial

It is impossible to ignore the article published in Maariv over the weekend, which stated that on the night between February 19 and 20, 2002, Israel Defense Forces soldiers, acting under explicit orders, carried out untargeted killings in which 15 Palestinian policemen were shot to death at three checkpoints.

In the article, by Chen Cottes-Bar and Omri Asenheim, soldiers related that the nighttime operation was hastily planned in response to the killing of six soldiers earlier that evening at the Ein Ariq checkpoint. Soldiers from the combat engineering and paratrooper corps were gathered together at 11 P.M. and given a short briefing by their commanders. The targets were marked in black ink on pieces of cardboard, and the soldiers were told to go out that very night to checkpoints manned by Palestinian Authority policemen, to lie in ambush for the policemen and kill any who came by.

This is an order that seems, prima facie, to be illegal, and according to members of the Breaking the Silence group, it was not the only one of its kind. And it was issued not in a state of war between two countries, each with an army, but in a complex situation of belligerent occupation.

The event described in the article is particularly grave because it did not involve a violation of orders, but rather the execution of explicit orders. It did not arise from the confusion of battle, or from any fighting at all; rather, it was a liquidation operation weighed and approved at every command level. The lesson that IDF soldiers could derive from it is that the rules of engagement they were taught were meant solely for the drawer.

To discover the truth of this assessment, it is necessary to investigate the facts. But that is a difficult task, because the chief of staff at that time was Shaul Mofaz, who is now defense minister. It is not reasonable to expect the defense minister to order an investigation into something for which he himself was responsible, and may even have initiated or approved. For this, we need an inquiry committee headed by a judge.

The IDF Spokesman's laconic response, which confirmed the facts of the article, creates the impression that orders of this type could be given today as well, and certainly if the current calm does not last. Granted, the IDF did not define the operation as vengeance, but rather as "a policy [of acting] against PA [security] services involved in terror." But the circumstances, as described by the soldiers, recall the reprisal operations that were the glory of the elite Unit 101, which previously seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.

In 1991, Colonel Yehuda Meir was convicted of sending a group of soldiers to break the arms and legs of Palestinians who had been rounded up in the villages of Hawara and Beita. Even though these Palestinians were selected from lists drawn up by the Shin Bet security service, rather than randomly, as they were in the present case, the court ruled that the order to abuse people who did not constitute any threat was blatantly illegal.

During the second intifada, the army has put very few soldiers and officers on trial, and it seems as if all restraints have been removed. Moshe Ya'alon's decision of half a year ago, to set up a task force to investigate the IDF's norms of combat, still exists solely on paper. The regrettable and frightening conclusion that IDF soldiers are liable to draw from this is that everything is permissible.
posted by Manchild at 6:00 PM

Israelis stunned by TV indictment from within

When a Jewish person states the facts, can you still call him an anti-semite?

A documentary series by a respected newsreader delivers a damning assault on the settler movement.

A new documentary series stunned Israeli television viewers this week, not only by its unprecedented and searing indictment of Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories, but also because of its unexpected source.

Often described as Israel's Walter Cronkite, 72-year-old Haim Yavin has fronted state television's evening news bulletins since 1968, cultivating a neutral image that put him, for most Israelis, at the symbolic heart of the national consensus.

All that changed on Tuesday with the broadcast of the first of five episodes of Land of the Settlers, the result of two-and-a-half years spent wandering the West Bank and Gaza with a miniature video camera.

Yavin's study of ultra right-wing Jewish settlers, the Israeli soldiers who guard them, the native Palestinians whose lives they dominate and the small number of Israeli rights activists, lawyers and journalists campaigning against them, has caused him to be denounced as representing the far left of Israeli sensibility.

"I cannot really do anything to relieve this misery, other than to document it, so that neither I nor those like me will be able to say that we saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing," he says in the film. "I did not move left. The country moved right."

The documentary dwells on the machinery of occupation - the roadblocks, fences, walls, settler roads and curfews - set up to support and defend the settlements.

In Hebron, where the army has helped a few hundred fundamentalist settlers seize the heart of a Palestinian city, a soldier tells Yavin that settlers are inciting him to shoot and kill Palestinian children.

A leader of the Hebron settlers tells him that Palestinians should be told to leave the country immediately or be bombed from the air.

He films graffiti on a wall, "Arabs to the crematoriums".

A Russian-born Israeli border policeman assures Yavin that "I am only following orders". Another soldier confides: "We have set up a slave camp here. We are committing crimes here."

Reviewing the first episode in the mass daily Yedioth Ahronoth, journalist Raanan Shaked wrote: "Every caring Israeli, every humane Israeli, should get up next Saturday, go to the settlement nearest to his place of residence and drag its inhabitants, kicking and screaming, across the road to the side of sanity."

The documentary has been less warmly received by right-wing Israelis and by the fundamentalist settler movement, which this week accused Yavin of anti-Semitism and hate speech.

The religious Zionists of the settler movement believe that God covenanted the Jews with an exclusive right and religious duty to inhabit all the territories between the Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq.

Denouncing Yavin in the pro-settler newspaper Hatzofe, Hagai Huberman wrote: "Of course there is no such thing as the holiness of the Land of Israel for him. He has never heard of this term."

Secular Israeli governments of both the left and right have encouraged, funded and armed settlers to move into the occupied territories, arguing that it is Jewish destiny to control them and that they are vital to Israel's security.

But tensions between the 250,000 settlers and Israel's secular majority have escalated sharply in recent months. This followed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to reverse his lifelong support of settlements and withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four isolated settlements in the West Bank.

Faced with a storm of condemnation and calls for his dismissal, Yavin's defenders say that he sought to balance his series by including coverage of atrocities committed by Palestinians. His superiors said that he has done nothing to breach his contract. In fact, the program is not being broadcast on his own channel, which declined to show it, but on a smaller commercial channel, Telad.

Cynical commentators noted this week that Telad is about to lose its broadcast franchise and may feel it has nothing to lose by presenting such provocative fare to audiences who generally show little interest in what happens in the West Bank and Gaza.
posted by Manchild at 9:00 AM

Jerusalem orders Palestinian homes to be razed

1000 homes to be destroyed. But don't worry. They're not 'real' people. Only Arabs.

Jerusalem's city council has ordered one of the largest mass demolitions in the city's recent history, with plans to raze the homes of about 1,000 Palestinians in a neighbourhood claimed by Jewish settlers.

The council says about 90 buildings served with demolition orders were built illegally over the last three decades on a site of religious and archaeological value just outside the Old City walls, and that they are being destroyed to restore the area as a national park.

But Israeli human rights campaigners say the real intent is to forcibly remove Palestinians from an area, Silwan, that is an important link in the government's plan to encircle Arab East Jerusalem with Jewish settlements.

Meir Margalit, a former city councillor leading opposition to the demolitions, said: "It will undermine a solution to the conflict, because the government is trying to make it impossible for East Jerusalem to be the Palestinian capital."

The targeted houses make up the Al Bustan neighbourhood in Silwan, in an area the city council calls King's Valley because it was the site of King David's city.

The demolitions were ordered by the city engineer, Uri Shetrit, in a letter last November but were kept under wraps until dozens of demolition orders went out in recent weeks.

"This hill and its surrounding neighbourhood dates from 5,000 years ago," the letter says. "These remains have an international and national value and they give the city its status as one of the most valuable cities in the world."

But the opposition leader on the council, Alalu Jose, said there was almost nothing left of King David's city: "I confronted Shetrit after he sent out the letter ordering the demolitions and said, 'This has nothing to do with archaeology or parks, it's all about politics.'"

A controversial settler organisation, Elad, partially funded by the government, has already taken over more than 40 buildings in the area.

Mr Margalit said: "There is a much bigger plan here, aimed at ensuring Israeli control of all of Jerusalem even after there is a Palestinian state."

He acknowledged that many of the affected houses were built illegally, but says that was because of a council policy not to issue construction permits to Palestinians. The mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, has declined to comment publicly on the demolitions.

Among those served with a demolition order is Mo hammed Badran, who says he was born in 1961 in the house the council now wants to raze.

Mr Badran has papers from the British mandate era in the 20s that appear to show his grandfather owned the land where the house now stands.

"I have been taxed on this house since the day they introduced it to East Jerusalem in 1973," he said. "If the house was illegal, why did they take the tax?"
posted by Manchild at 8:00 AM

Sometimes you gotta laugh

Alannis, take note if you ever want to rewrite 'Ironic'

Looks like Rumsfeld should take this standup comedian routine on the road. How's this for an opening joke?

"Rumsfeld rebuked China at a regional security conference in Singapore, saying it was pouring huge resources into its military and buying large amounts of sophisticated weapons despite facing no threat from any other country."

You couldn't possibly make that shit up if you tried.

Rummy, bear in mind that the US spends more on its military than the next 20 highest spending countries COMBINED. Soon, you'll be spending more than the rest of the WORLD combined. Now read this: (written years ago by Robert Anton Smith).

What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one? What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbours that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him?

What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children? What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned him? And he took another child who obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors?

What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes? What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even in the suburbs?

Such a man would clearly be a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies."

No prizes for guessing who we're talking about. And it ain't China, you dumbfuck.
posted by Manchild at 9:00 AM

Disperse!

Rocks verus stun grenades. Does Vegas take odds on this?

IDF disperses riot with sound technology

Military officials say new weapon uses voice frequencies; troops use weapon for first time during violent anti-West Bank separation barrier rally

The IDF unveiled Friday a new crowd-dispersal tactic, emitting painful bursts of sound at a special frequency to help break up a violent Palestinian demonstration, military officials and witnesses said.

IDF officials confirmed soldiers used a new non-lethal tactic in the West Bank village of Bilin, where hundreds of demonstrators rallied against Israel's separation barrier.

The officials said the weapon uses voice frequencies to disperse crowds. Israel developed the technology over the past four years, but had never used it in a live situation before Friday, they said.

An Associated Press photographer said a military vehicle arrived toward the end of the demonstration, which lasted several hours and became violent at times.

Clubs and stun grenades also used

Located about 500 meters (a quarter mile) from the demonstration, the vehicle emitted several bursts of sounds, about one minute in length each time. Although the sound was not loud, it caused people to cover their ears and grab their heads in discomfort.

About 400 people, including Palestinians and foreign and Israeli activists, participated in the demonstration, marching toward a site where Israel is building its West Bank separation fence.

The crowd was prevented from reaching the site, and began rioting and throwing rocks at soldiers, the army said.

In addition to the sound machine, soldiers used other means to disperse the crowd, including clubs and stun grenades.

Israel has completed about one-third of the planned 425mile (680-kilometer) barrier, which it says is necessary to keep out suicide bombers from the West Bank.

Palestinians point out that the barrier is a thinly veiled land grab because it encroaches into the West Bank in some areas.
posted by Manchild at 8:00 AM

Israeli soldiers confess: We killed police for revenge

Killing cops and unarmed men. Way to go, Israel.

Two Israeli soldiers have come forward to describe how they took part in what they say was an officially ordered "revenge" operation to kill Palestinian police officers among them several unarmed men.

In graphic testimony, one soldier has confessed that he "really enjoyed" a chase in which he shot an unarmed Palestinian in the head who was trying to escape during a series of reprisal raids ordered the day after the killing of six Israeli soldiers in an ambush by militant gunmen three years ago.

In what may be the first inside account of such an operation, the soldiers from two reconnaissance units say they were among troops ordered by their commanders to "liquidate" the police officers at a series of Palestinian West Bank checkpoints even though they were given no evidence they had been involved in the killing of the Israelis.

The raids were among a series of ground and air attacks which, in all, killed 15 Palestinians ­ 12 of them policemen­ in and around Nablus and Ramallah 24 hours after the six Israeli soldiers were killed at a military post in the village of Ein Arik, west of Ramallah, at the height of the intifada.

One soldier, who took part in the attack on a Palestinian post at Deir es Sudan said they had lain in wait after finding the position empty when they arrived in the middle of the night.

"The idea was simply to kill them all. Whenever they arrived, we would kill them, regardless whether [they were]armed or not. If they were Palestinian policemen, they were to be shot. The order was given and our six opened fire."

The soldier, from the Yael Reconnaissance Troop, said that their [naval] squad commander had told them: "We are going to kill six Palestinian policemen somewhere, revenging our six they took down". He added: "On my question 'what did they do?' the answer was there was a suspicion that the terrorist who killed our six came through that [Palestinian] checkpoint. Suspicion, but no concrete evidence. But I was told: 'it doesn't matter; they took six of ours, and we are going to take six of theirs.'"

The soldier said that, after hitting and wounding two of the Palestinians as they tried to run away, the soldiers continued to fire, as one ran into a corrugated metal shed and another into a cemetery. After they sprayed the shed with bullets, a gas cylinder in it caught fire. "We had a killed policeman, another one in this burning inferno, and a third one, escaping. We ran after him into a graveyard ... stood on the surrounding wall and shot at him. We killed him too."

The soldier said that no fire had been returned by the Palestinians and added: "Later we understood, that not one of them ... was armed." He added that he had inspected the "completely smashed" body of the man in the graveyard after shooting at it to "confirm the kill" and that it was of "a guy in his mid-50s or 60s, very old."

The accounts were originally given to the "Breaking the Silence" group of young former soldiers which is critical of methods used by the army in the occupied territories.

One of the group's spokesmen, Avichai Sharon, a former member of the crack Golani Brigade, claimed the operations on 20 February 2002 were ordered "from high"­ including the Ministry of Defence­ and added: "In my eyes, this is a very harsh example of crossing the moral and human boundaries."

He said it indicated that "we are not a defence force any more but a tribe which avenges in blood. As an Israeli, I fear this."

He said the soldiers, whose testimony appears in today's Maariv, had not been named "for legal reasons". Maariv quotes an army spokesman insisting the policemen were "contaminated by terror".

Describing another attack on the same day at the Beit Ha Mitachayim checkpoint on the eastern edge of Nablus ­ in which fire was returned by Palestinian police ­the other soldier, from the Tzanchanim Paratroop Reconnaissance Unit, said that the order to shoot at Palestinians had given by the unit commander and the brigade commander, a Brigadier Cochavi, had been present at the time.

He said the policemen were ones who normally would have been warned by Israeli liaison officers about any military operations due to take place in their area.
posted by Manchild at 5:00 AM

Israel ignores Bush's 'urging'. Grabs more land.

They probably knew Bush was only speaking for the cameras anyway

Israel announced plans today to build 22 more homes in its largest West Bank settlement. This comes a mere week after Bush urged the Jewish state to stop expanding Jewish enclaves on occupied land.

The Israel Lands Administration, a government agency, published a tender inviting bids for the purchase of 22 plots for the construction of single-family homes in the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem.

The Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now criticised the new building plan in Maale Adumim, a sprawling suburban settlement of 30,000 people.

"The Israeli government continues not to fulfil its obligations under the road map, namely to completely freeze settlement activity," a Peace Now spokesperson said.

"Sharon is asking the Palestinians to carry out their part of the road map," he said, referring to a crackdown on armed militant groups. "If we want to see progress, both sides should (carry out their commitments)."
posted by Manchild at 10:30 PM

A real step forward

But I'm curious... if these people have no blood on their hands, what were they in jail for? White collar crime?

Israel releasing 400 Palestinian prisoners

Israel began the release of about 400 Palestinian prisoners Thursday -- the second phase of the prisoner releases promised under a cease-fire agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, agreed in February at Sharm el-Sheikh summit, in Egypt. (About 500 were freed on February 21).

Sharon has said the 900 prisoners gaining freedom are all "without blood on their hands."

Last week, Abbas met in Washington with President Bush, who pledged $50 million in direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. The meeting constituted the first White House talks in five years between U.S. and Palestinian leaders.

Bush said the aid is meant "to help ensure that the Gaza disengagement is a success." Israel plans to withdraw from that region this summer.

The money will be used for new housing and infrastructure projects in Gaza, "where poverty and unemployment are very high," Bush said.

It's the first direct aid the United States has given to the Palestinian Authority. Previous donations have gone through non-governmental organizations.

Abbas thanked Bush for his support and said Israeli-Palestinian violence was at its "lowest level in four years."
posted by Manchild at 12:00 PM

Let's Begin:

Israel to destroy 88 Arab homes to make room for park

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: The Jerusalem municipality wants to demolish 88 homes in an Arab neighbourhood of the city to make room for an archaeological park, according to Israeli government documents and attorneys representing the homeowners. If the courts approve the municipality’s request, (and it looks likely that they will) it will be one of the largest demolitions since Israel captured traditionally Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and would cause an uproar among Palestinians who claim that part of the city as a future capital of a Palestinian State.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Tuesday warned of grave damage to delicate peace efforts. "I urge the Israeli government not to do this demolition, and to give peace a chance," he said. The 88 homes are located in east Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhood of Silwan, just outside the walled Old City, an area steeped in biblical history.

The municipality wants to enlarge a small archaeological site beside the homes and turn the area into a national park, the Haaretz newspaper quoted Uri Shetrit, the Jerusalem city engineer, as saying. The park would connect several Jewish settlement enclaves in Silwan to the nearby City of David, an area of excavations dating to the biblical King David.
posted by Manchild at 6:30 PM

Challenge

Alright 'Buzzkill', I'll do it

I generally try to stay out of the whole Israel/Palestinian thing. It's an explosive issue, more so than any other issue I can think of (and that includes abortion, the invasion of Iraq, the causes of 9/11, and Dubya himself).

But in a recent series of conversations with one of my online sparring partners, we hit one of those frequent impasses which never fails to leave me agog. Namely I was putting forward the position that his knowledge of the situation came from overwhelmingly biased and one-sided sources. ie. The American media. Whereas Buzz insisted that American media was fair, and Europe was just riddled with anti-semitism.

I pointed out that studies had shown the one-sidedness of American media, that Israeli deaths were 9.9 times more likely to be reported than Palestinian ones, etc.. Buzz countered by saying that 59% of Europeans thought Israel was the biggest threat to world peace. And I pointed out that if Americas news were more balanced in its coverage, then that statistic might not be a shock, and might even be reflected in the US.

Studies and reports can be ignored or denied (see Cheneys denial of Amnesty International's report on Gitmo, for example) So I was challenged to do one month of comparitive reporting on the Israeli situation. I'll copy here reports of everything that I see in the media, and Buzz can check off what ever appears in the US, and what doesn't. And at the end of the month, we'll tally up the scores. Buzz, you might want to get yourself a blog just for the month at least, so you can plag tag-a-long.

Lastly, anyone who even attempts to suggest that I am anti-semitic will be mocked until my fingers bruise.
posted by Manchild at 8:00 AM

Religion and Schooling and Soldiering in the Faith

What do you make of this?

Here's a quote for you. I'd be interested in what people take from it, especially as it pertains to the current left/right divide.


Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith. From our point of view as representatives of the state, we need believing people. A dark cloud called terrorism threatens us. We have need of soldiers, believing solders. Believing solders are the most valuable ones. They give their all. Therefore we will maintain the confessional schools in order to train believing people through the schools, but this depends upon having truly believing teachers, not by chance Liberals or Humanists or Atheists who do not stand fully by their religious faith, as teachers.

I've heard quite a few people speak out against secular schooling, and I know the opinion that morals cannot exist (or are meaningless) without religious faith or fear to back them up, is a popular one in right wing circles.
So is it really a huge leap to this sort of thinking? Would this be acceptable to a largish portion of the US citizenry?
posted by Manchild at 1:00 PM

Tit for Tat

Two wrongs don't make a right-winger happy

Found this rather amusing, since it's tangentially connected to my area of the business world.

White House to file case over Airbus

The thing is, that it is widely known, on both sides of the Atlantic, that the US and the E.U. illegally subsidise their respective airlines. What's more, not only is it KNOWN to be true, it can be proved as well.

What is not really spoken about are the reasons behind it. The E.U. did not seriously start breaking the law until they discovered that the NSA was passing insider information (obtained through Echelon) which allowed Boeing to underbid Airbus for a contract with Saudi Arabia worth 8 Billion. That's a lot of money, and to say it irked off the EU slightly, is what we call an understatement.

Of course, Echelon was only used because the US suspected (correctly) the EU often resorted to bribery in securing its business contracts. The fact that such bribes are considered routine (if unmentionable) in most EU countries, cuts no sway with their US counterparts.

The fact is that the size of ones bribe (or extra-contractual payment) is simply considered a measure of how serious you are about acquiring the contract. The EU perspective would simply have been "We wanted it more" and that if the US wanted it more, they would have offered more (of a bribe, that is).

I doubt it will get to the WTO (they'll probably settle) but I personally will find it hilarious, if this gets into a real mud-slinging match over who was the bigger law breaker, and who had the most justification. There's certainly enough mud to go around.
posted by Manchild at 8:30 AM

Well it's not like we're tattooing them

Because that would be wrong

A U.S. Marine writes an identification number on the forehead of an Iraqi man detained during a search in Haditha, 220 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Wednesday, May 25, 2005.

posted by Manchild at 3:30 PM

Tell us the one about how there won't be a draft.

That always makes me laugh.

For the full story go here.

There is a serious crisis looming for the US military recruiters. It's already been reported that they are extending tours of duty, calling up people who have already done their tours, and changing the requirements (such as increasing the allowable age.)

It has also been reported that the Select Service boards received increased funding and have begun collecting lists of people who fall within certain age limits and possess "desired" skill sets.

It has also been reported (to varying degrees) that the Iraqi occupation is not going so well, and that troops keep, em, what's the euphemism this month? undergoing an involuntarily cessation of bodily functions.

And then there's the upcoming invasion of Iran (which was scheduled to begin in June, but may have a late kick-off since Tony Blair might have been grounded by the British Public. They don't like him playing with that retarded bully kid from across the road.)

Those brown skinned towel wearing heathens won't butcher and rape themselves, you know.

So one enterprising young lad, David McSwane, decided to see how far would the army recruiters go, to meet their ever more unrealistic quotas.

The story is fascinating, and you can read about it at the link above.
But the salient points are these:
1) How desperate are the recruiters?
Pretty fucking desperate.

2) If they are taking drug addled dropouts into the army, can we expect more idiotic behaviour like flushing Qur'an's and torture?
Hell yes.

3) The army says it is conducting a full investigation. Will anything come of this?
Hell no.

4) When you've gotten all the brave signed up, and the desperate signed up, and you're working your way through signing up the stupid and the gullible... who's next?
Possibly the criminals. Then Mr. Joe Average.

McSwane is a high school journalist. Too bad that this standard of journalism will never find a place of honour in the right wing controlled media of Bushworld USA.
posted by Manchild at 4:30 PM

We think you're stupid

The sheer contempt from those not living in reality

There have been many blatant lies from the current US Administration, but this one seems to just reek with unadulturated contempt for those living in reality.

I mean, to me, this ranks right up there with "We have always been at war with EurAsia". They know that the limp wristed mainstream media won't call them on their bullshit, so they just get more and more ridiculous as time goes on.

The latest crock of shit? "This war came to us, not the other way around."

Rice clearly has nothing but contempt for the ability of the average soldier to reason his way to a more realistic conclusion.
posted by Manchild at 10:20 PM

My new favourite quote

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54
posted by Manchild at 2:30 PM

ChickenGeorgeVII does it again

I just find his stuff hilarious

I think Aint it cool news has declined in quality a lot in the last year or so, despite it's recent facial upgrade. But one thing keeps me popping back in from time to time... Talkbacker Chicken George.

His latest rant can be found under the story that Joss Whedon will be helming the new Wonder Woman movie.

I know three things by ChickenGeorgeVII 2005-03-17 02:13:47

one....wonder woman beter have BOOBS, TITTEES, TA-TAS, FUNBAGS, SACKS OF MILK, MOUNDS OF JOY, HEAPS OF FLESH, SCOOPS OF SOFT FUFFY SKIN, A CHEST, A RACK, A SET, A PAIR, TWO BUTTONS ON TOP OF A COUPLE OF MELONS, MAUMFLAUMBAS, AND HIGH QUANITYIES OF SOFT SERVE DAIRY.....two...SHE BETTER HAVE AN ASS.....and three...I BETTER HAVE THE NEED TO BOP THE BISHOP ON MANY TURNS IN THAT DARKENED THEATER....so fight all you want....just give me the chick i can objectify...And thus, halfway down the bottle! - - - George, The 7th Chicken!!!!
posted by Manchild at 2:30 PM

Another step in the wrong direction

These are the warning signs... Pay attention

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that at least 20 federal agencies have made and distributed pre-packaged, ready-to-serve television news segments to promote President Bush's policies and initiatives. Congress' Government Accountability Office determined that these "video news releases" were illegal "covert propaganda" and told federal agencies to stop.

Last Friday, the White House ordered all agencies to disregard Congress' directive.

The Bush administration is using hundreds of millions of the public's tax dollars to manipulate public opinion.

I really wish Americans would pay more attention to what is going on. Or one day soon they'll wake up in a Fascist country and wonder "How the hell did that happen?"
posted by Manchild at 12:30 PM

I wanted to like it

Really I did

I saw the pilot episode of the new Doctor Who during the week.

I've been a fan of Dr. Who since the mid 70's. Some of my earliest English reading material was Dr. Who related. When it was good, the show was very very good. But when it was bad, it was AWFUL.

The BBC, never one to pay good money for things like, oh, special fx or acting classes, churned out some truly awful muck sometimes. Those who wrote some real gems of episodes rose above the paltry limitations of the BBC medium. They wrote for love of the material, love of the characters, or love of the craft of writing. It was no surprise really that once those writers moved on, and were not replaced, that the show was on the road to crapness and cancellation.

This led to a period, much like Trek is heading to now, where the only new Doctor Who was being written by fans. Virgin Publishing took to printing the "New Adventures", and for a while at least, some proper SF writers took the Doctor and his TARDIS to strange worlds never imagined by any sane BBC F/X budget analyst.

Some of the better fan writers got their break writing novels under the Virgin agreement. Paul Cornell, Kate Orman and others, showed how it was possible (if you had real talent) to cross the barrier from fan-writing to published writing.

When the Dr. Who movie aired some years ago, the sticky hands of corporate ignorance were clearly in evidence on the script. Demanding broader accessibility to an unproven American market, the money-men lobbied for "changes". The Doctor would be half-human. His companion would be a love interest. There would be "smooches". And the list went on.

The American market wasn't interested. Neither were the fans, truthfully, though there will always be diehard fans who support a franchise regardless of quality.

The new series, when the rumours began, seemed too good to be true. The series was in the hands of a FAN. Someone who "got it". Someone who knew one of the largest most vocal subsets of Whovian fandom was not just the geek, but the male-gay geek. The Doctors asexual nature, and his studious ignorance of heaving companions buxoms allowed this segment to project their teenage fantasies onto this male heroic figure.

So Russell T Davies, the guy who developed and wrote Queer as Folk, a self confessed fan, was going to take the series back to the BBC. And make it RIGHT. Make it with the love and attention that a FAN should have for his beloved show. And some of Britain's finest writers signed on to write for it too. People like the funny and talented (and gay) Mark Gatiss from the League of Gentlemen.

Truly, this was going to be GOOD. This was going to be WHO as it was meant to be.

Casting Christopher Eccleston was an enormous coup. He's an excellent actor, who gave the new show instant credibility.

Casting Billie Piper was, seemingly, an enourmous mistake. The teen-pop-queen had even less acting credibility than her ginger husband.

I'll say now, Billie was better than I could have hoped for. In acting terms, she fell right into the role, and I thought she was great. Bravo Billie.

No. The problem, crazy as it might sound, was in the writing.

How could that be? We know Russel can write. We know he's a fan. What's the problem?

The problem is, this was a super-fannish script. Too full of in-references for the long term fans, too full of unanswered questions mixed with bad exposition for the new viewers.

You never get a sense for who or what the Doctor is. Instead, we get more running around than an episode of 24, replete with loads of "We're running out of time" and "There's no time". Truly, the writers of the Southpark movie said it best when they pointed out that you don't have to have anything actually happen, if you just keep the characters looking like they're under pressure, running against the clock.

The writer treated the Doctor with kids gloves. This looked like a synopsis of a larger story, condensed unmercifully into 45 minutes. And the pace and music cranked artificially high to give a semblance of "action" when really, very little happens, there's very little action, and the plot is rice-paper thin.

As a first time viewer, I would feel absolutely NO inclination to watch the next episode. As a fan, I will watch it. Because yeah, I'm one of those... "Any WHO is better than no WHO" fans. Maybe the writing will be better next time. And the editing less choppy. And maybe the incidental music won't be so gratingly loud and intrusive and CONSTANT. Maybe.

WHO knows?
posted by Manchild at 12:00 PM

Something to think about

When the end hoves into view

You know how it is, when a deadline approaches and you're trying to get everything on your "To Do" list out of the way? I've been feeling like that a lot, lately.

One of the things I really wanted to do was take some severely powerful psilocybin mushrooms, in an attempt to touch the numinous in life. Since I am frequently in Amsterdam, I recently took the plunge and lived to tell the tale. It was a resounding success, and I wanted to describe it here.

First, I think it's worth pointing out that I don't do drugs as a rule. I gave up smoking almost 18 years ago. And although at least 3 of my friends do cocaine on a semi-regular basis, I have never indulged.

So when I made the decision to take the mushrooms, I researched the living hell out of the topic first, to make sure I understood the risks and dangers etc... It's frankly amazing how much bullshit information is out there concerning such a relatively safe pastime. I had envisioned myself booking a room on the ground floor of a hotel for my "trip" in case I tried to "fly" out the window or something. Utter nonsense, of course, as my research pointed out.

So feeling much less tense about the whole thing, and with a copy of some super chill-out mind-expanding CD's in my bag, I flew to the 'dam for a trip of a different sort.

I'm putting it here, because I felt it was important to do so. It's hard to describe. I know, looking at the words on the page that they seem drab and two-dimensional. Lifeless. But when I think about the concepts, and the images they represented... my memories... I can't explain the feeling that there is something TO them. That I was on the verge of some real insight. Some new understanding. I doubt this is it, because it has an air of familiarity to it, even though I don't remember ever seeing something like his before, with the possible exception of the StarMaker by Olaf Stapleton. Anyway, here goes nothing.

I can't honestly remember the order or sequence in how thoughts came to me. Instead, I want to try to describe what I "learned" and what it represented to me.

In thinking about Blogging, I realised that many blogs are simply people passing on stories or jokes which they have seen on other blogs or in the news media, or something like that. And that there might be a trend towards those sorts of blogs, which pass along stories/jokes and which are then picked up and passed along. Evolution applies... important stories are passed on, unimportant ones are dropped. Most bloggers contribute very little "new" to this flow of information. They simply pass along what they weigh as important, and trim what is not.

This is very similar (but on a vastly different scale) to how the neurons in your brain work. A signal arrives and is passed on to the next neuron, and on to the next. Sometimes dying off, sometimes changing, and sometimes firing across different branches. Most of the neurons act as transfer points, only rarely adding some new impetus. And from this, thoughts and memories arise.

Before consciousness forms, before memories can be stored, the links between the neurons are weak, but are strengthened through repeated or continuous use. Eventually consciousness "emerges" but the individual cells do not know this.

There is something instinctive in man, when it comes to communication. Before email and instant messengers, people faxed each other those stupid chain letters, or jokes of the day on a Friday. Go back further, and we had the tendency to gossip. Juicy gossip (or the things we thought were important) survived and was passed along.

There is a certain amount of unthinking action in all of this. Just as when new technology becomes available, man grabs at it, almost instinctively. We are self-organising around forms of communication, and we network. Socially network.

DNA is made of 4 nucleotides, in countless variations. The cells in your brain do not "know" you exist.

And I wonder if we are simply self-organising "cells" or even "nucleotide" analogies for some global life form. Some form of life beyond our capacity to imagine. The internet and the speed of the connections it gives us between people/nodes are like a brain. Information is passed on, stored, retrieved, and destroyed. And the links get stronger or weaker, according to our own needs which even we do not fully understand.

But maybe even that global consciousness is not the end.

Like a cell, dividing, we are driven to go out to places like Mars and beyond, taking our networks with us, and establishing links and ties between them.

Maybe we are not the neurons or the cells in the final product. Maybe we are the nucleotides, and the planet-brains are the like the nucleus/brain in a cell. And the final life - form is some unimaginably larger entity.

The universe is clustered on so many levels; galaxies are just the next step beyond.

And if the galaxies could be linked, before the stars die out and entropy consumes everything in a freezing isotropic homogeneity, is our entire universe nothing but a cosmic egg, from which the ultimate life form will emerge?

You have trillions of cells in your body. Many die every day. Even the valuable brain cells, the ones that "matter" in your grey matter, die. And we treat their deaths lightly for the most part, sometimes even killing them in vast quantities with alcohol.

Why? Because the whole survives. The individual cell does not matter. Another will take its place and take up the job of passing on signals to the next node down the line, and occasionally, adding a new note of its own to the symphony.

And that is why it is okay for a man to die. If we have done the task that was ours to do well, why should we fear death? The brain cell may have some deeply primitive awareness, but it is nothing we would recognise as intelligence or life. And if it could, for a second, understand what it is a part of... it might realise that you could not call such an existance "living".

Man has so many things in the world to occupy his mind and interact with... he can spend no time in quiet contemplation of the trillions of individual cells that made up his being, or the nucleotides that make his existence possible, or all the cells (now long dead) that gave him a start in the womb. That first cell (Earth) that first divided, and sent him on his way.

In the cosmic scheme of things, we as individuals are meaningless. But we have a job to do. To bring forth something greater than ourselves. And when our time has come, to fade into oblivion with no complaints and no regrets.

Link. Listen. Speak.

It might be possible to learn something about the global end result of our community building. Let us take a look at the two most well known polar opposites, socialism and capitalism.

On the one hand, socialism/communism call it what you will, believes that everyone should be treated equally. The "we are all equals" philosophy. What does that lead to? A uniform grey mush. A man-sized stem cell. Not what one would call a viable life form.

And capitalism, look at this: There, we push man made ethics aside for a moment, and say "there will always be people at the bottom, and people at the top. There is a form and structure to society and everyone has his place. The few, rich and powerful on top, the many, poor and oppressed underneath."

There is something to this, the structure that is so necessary when we see what "total equality" would lead to. But unfortunately, rampant capitalism involves small segments of society taking resources/power/information and consolidating them into small groups, for personal gain at the expense of the whole. Like the saying goes, a capitalist is a man who would sell you the rope with which you will hang him. And like the environmental damage caused by oil companies and big-business, profits and power are prioritised by those who hold controlling interests in companies to grow into malignant transnationals.

I use the word malignant, so that you will make the association. Rampant capitalism is a literal cancer on the global whole. The so called "immortal" persons, (i.e. corporations) are cancer cells. And ultimately the global entity will die (be stillborn) even if the tumor survives and continues to divide.

To be fully adaptable, a fully realised life form, there must be structure, and hence inequality. But it cannot be based on capitalism. Some new paradigm is needed, and the cancer must be excised or we risk premature termination of this great experiment called "Life".

Find what your place is in the grand scheme of things, and fulfill your purpose. And then die peacefully. That is all that is required of you.

And if you are wondering what is your place, then look at the developing global body around you. What is it trying to tell you? Does a rising temperature mean it is sick? Going from chills to fevers... not a good sign. We need T-cells, the entities defence mechanism. We need more anti-bodies.
posted by Manchild at 5:30 PM

Just a quick point

The person who made this decision needs to go to jail. And the sooner Wacko Jacko dies, the better for the world.
posted by Manchild at 5:00 PM

So the Pope weighs in

I had to kind of figure the Pope would be conservative on some issues. He's in his 80's. So he's not going to change his tack on things like contraception, abortion, women priests and the like. He's not a modernist by any means. And that's fine, I suppose, in and of itself. If the County Club called Catholicism wants to set some weird rules for its members, more power to 'em.

But it's kind of disappointing to see that in a world where true evil (invasions, wars, torture and killing of innocent people) exists, that the thing he must single out as "evil" is when two people want their lifelong love and commitment to each other to be recognised by the law. Oh, and they have the same type of genitals.
posted by Manchild at 11:45 PM

I'm glad I don't know Paris

Hilton, that is

I value my privacy quite a lot. How much more would a celebrity? Well, that blonde dumbfuck Paris Hilton has had the contents of her cell phone splashed all over the web, it seems. Whether it's photos of her making out with a chick, memo reminders to get "birth control kill pills" or the numbers of her celebrity pals and female fuck buddies... All have been exposed to the eyes of John Q. Nobody.

Sure, there's a certain titilation at learning the cell phone numbers of such hotties as Christina Aguilera, Shannon Elizabeth, Leelee Sobieski, Ashlee Simpson or Lindsey Lohan... but it's not like you can call them up, have them answer, and ask them out on a date, for fucks sake.

I don't know why hundreds of people would call Ron Pearlman, for example. To tell him he's a great actor and you loved his movies? Yeah. That'll make his day.
posted by Manchild at 7:00 PM

We are all of us living in the gutter

But some of us are looking at the stars

Not any more you're not.

No headlong rush back to the Dark Ages would be complete without dismantling the Hubble Telescope.

So that's that cleared up then. And in words of Dubya "What's next?"


posted by Manchild at 1:45 PM

No such thing as a stupid question?

We got one

Taken from The Guardian's report on the Kansas educational crisis.


John James, who warned that the teaching of evolution led to nihilism, and to the gates of Auschwitz. "Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?" he asked.

Yeah, I think we have all established that the reason Hitler targetted the Jews was because he was a staunch evolutionist. Idiot.

But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. "I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?" he thundered.

Now there's a stupid question if ever there was one. Man doesn't come from monkeys. And no one says man comes from monkeys. Except for creationists who love a good straw man argument.

Stupidity reigns in Kansas, and soon they will have a Flood.
posted by Manchild at 11:30 AM

The price of the budget

Cut $1.1 Billion from the Food Stamps program.

Meanwhile, children in "low to middle" income housing starve to death.


posted by Manchild at 11:20 AM

Garden State

Finally saw it.

First thing, major props to Zach as this is a very accomplished movie for a first time writer/director. And starring in it as well. That's more than was done in Lost in Translation, of which this movie reminded me.

I think it takes some balls to be able to say to a studio that you want to write and direct and star in a feature, when you're basically a little known tv actor. Oh, and Natalie Portman is to be your girlfriend. :) I mean, seriously, Natalie plays the sort of adorable young thing that I think every man could easily fall in love with in 4 days.

Despite the age difference thing, I felt the movie spoke to me as well. I could identify, and not always in a pleasant way, with what was going on. Not just in terms of moving away from home or recently going home and attending the funeral of a parent or anything like that. But in the sense that the death of a parent wakes you up to the world in a way that nothing quite like it before does.

And truthfully, I've always been a sort of emotionally numb person. The death of my father didn't devastate me the way I thought it would. I feel very much in the head, and not in the heart. Which has of course, screwed up more than one relationship.

And that was why the ending rang true then false and then suddenly true again.

True, because I remember having that conversation with a girl in my past. Telling her how I was basically too fucked up to give her or anyone what she wanted/needed. Not telling her that I knew she had been telling her friends that she had decided I was the guy she was going to marry. Needing the space to sort my life out, but ultimately just moving to yet another country and staying pretty much as fucked up as I've ever been.

Seeing Large insist that he'll call, and he'll be back, I was like Sam saying "No you won't, dude." I understood where he was coming from. And because it is still a regret of mine, I wanted him to stay, sure. But he gets on the stairs and leaves.

Then suddenly, he's back, and I'm going "What the fuck? Didn't expect that. But okay." It did kind of strike me as a tacked-on semi happy ending.

Until the camera pull back.

And then, I think, it's pretty clear, that this isn't happening. It's his imagination. It's what he will think about when he thinks "What if" over the coming years of his life. The room is too suspiciously empty for me to think otherwise.
Too many weird things about it, such as they are in baggage reclaim (before you get to customs/excise) yet Sam is there. (Surely only incoming travellers can get to there?) And they kind of set up that Large does have a vivid imagination. The start of the movie is in his head. It's just that it's so negative. The end of the movie is capped by another "in his head" piece. This one, sweetly positive. But ultimately just as destructive.

I don't know if it's just me, or if anyone else got something like that from the ending. But that's what I took from it.

And Ingrid where ever you are, I'm just as messed up today as I was then, but damn, I should have stayed.
posted by Manchild at 8:15 AM

Right versus Left

Sanity versus insanity

Here is an excellent article, which for me sums up beautifully the nature of the 2 dimensional dichotomy that so much of American media falls into.

Basically, the point that the article makes is that the right-wing can get away with saying just about anything in criticising the left. Calls of traitor, demands for people to be fired, punched in the face, or even rounded up, tortured and shot are met without criticism.

One website (run by an antiBush republican) wrote that dictators historically seduce their population into greater and greater atrocities until they reach a point where they dare not look at themselves, and become the dictator's most fanatical supporters.

Those people who supported the war and torture cannot ever allow themselves to doubt that they are in the purest of right. It has become an article of religious faith that the enemy is always totally wrong. Any suggestion that the war was unjustified, that torture was used on the innocent, or that US foreign policy is the penultimate cause of global unrest can never be allowed to even enter the minds of the fanatical Bush supporters, for to question the war is to question themselves.

And they dare not look too closely at themselves because they know what they will see, a person who supported the unprovoked invasion of a foreign nation, a person who supported the use of torture on innocent people, a person who supports dictators.

Ward Churchill's original article is a mirror held up for right-wing Americans to see themselves in. But like the vampires of legend, they fear mirrors, and will seek to smash them.

Anyway, the comments above aren't mine, but I agree with the general thrust of it. And since I've made a point of reading/responding to some of KMan's right-wing articles, I'm hoping he'll give me his view on this one.
posted by Manchild at 8:00 AM

Historic Ruling

Let's see how long it lasts

I have to admit, I was both suprised and thrilled when I saw this story. But mostly surprised.

By law, gays must be allowed to marry in New York

It turns out that state protections of the rights of the individual are often stronger than federal ones.

Still, this ruling comes from the New York State Supreme Court which is actually the lowest court in the state.

It will most likely be fought all the way to the highest court (the Court of Appeals) and I'm not optimistic about its chances for survival. But for a brief shining moment, New York looks a little more civilised.

The challenges to laws banning whites and non-whites from marriage demonstrate that the fundamental right to marry the person of one's choice may not be denied based on longstanding and deeply held traditional beliefs about appropriate marital partners.

I have never understood the argument that allowing gay people to marry somehow damages a straight-homophobic couple's marriage. I mean, marriage is not an exclusive club where members get together and hang out (and we'll have none of "those" people in our club thank-you-very-much). It's a commitment between two people who love each other. And no one is asking any churches to recognise it, or to proclaim it's not a sin or something. If churches want to base their laws on bits of a 2000 year old text, let them.

So if 2 gay people can get married, I don't see why anyone should be upset. There's little enough love and commitment in the world as it is. But if 2 gay people are forbidden to marry, then I get upset. Because with the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

posted by Manchild at 3:30 PM

Since Holz was curious, I'm doing the quiz but sticking to English. (Even Celine Dion didn't make my list.)

1. Song that sounds like happy feels:

Song 2, by Blur

2. Earliest memory:

My mother singing a song at the kitchen sink "I'm nobody's child" which I hated hearing because it made her cry, even if I didn't understand the lyrics or know anything about the song. (Still don't.)

3. Last CD you bought:

Can't remember. Don't generally buy them. Possibly the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, though technically I bought Kylie's greatest hits for someone at Christmas.

4. Reminds you of school:

The Boomtown Rats "I don't like Mondays". Because work is not so bad, even on a Monday morning, when you're the CEO. But school was a nightmare, especially on Mondays.

5. Total music files on your PC:

Which PC? I've got a quite pathethic 5 at work. I recently backedup by music from home onto two DVDs, but it was approximately 1500 music files.

6. Song for listening to repeatedly when depressed:

Anything by Nick Cave, or the Radiohead track which closes off "Romeo and Juliet" or the track "Wonderful life" by Black. And recently "Dad" by K's Choice, for obvious reasons.

7. Song that sounds British, but isn't:

Anything by U2.

8. Song you love, band you hate:

Road to Hell, by Chris Rea

9. A favorite song from the past that took ages to track down:

Honey by Bobby Goldsborough or Summer (the First Time) by Bobby Goldsborogh.

10. Bought the album for one good song:

The Alan Parsons Project "Old and Wise"

11. Worst Song to Get Stuck in your Head:

Kenny McCormick and Mr. Hanky sing "The most offensive Christmas song ever". It's impossible for me not to laugh like a loon when that song is playing in my head.

12. Best song to dump a beer on someone's head to, then storm out of the bar?:

Talk about a silly question. Even if I dumped a beer on someone instead of drinking it (like, if it was Bud or Heineken or carlsberg or Harp or some other muck) there's no way you could just storm out of the bar. Tossing the drink is going to get you in a fight, period.

13. Who should do this next?:

KMan. Because I don't know enough about Christian rock.
posted by Manchild at 7:00 PM

Bush is basically a Mr. Potato Head with Dick's hand up his arse, working the controls. Now you can too.

Build yourself a better Bush. (No, not some porn spam pussy excercise...)
posted by Manchild at 2:30 PM

The best of television

The episodes that spoilers should never have touched.

Babylon 5 : "Z'ha'Dum"
American Gothic : "Requiem"
Star Trek DS9: "Duet"
Star Trek TNG: "The Inner Light"
Galactica : "Kobol's Last Gleaming"

And the winner is... BattleStar Galactica.
posted by Manchild at 1:00 AM

Fixed Rate Mortgages

The only way to go

One of the great things about newspapers like the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, is that they are not read by the majority of people. And they know this. So they tend not to couch their stories in the way that a more mainstream paper might have to.

The onrushing collapse of the American dollar and the American economy are spoken about quite frankly, even if it is treated as mere "speculation" at this point.

In any case, mortgage holders in America should start reading Forbes.com and their ilk, to find out when those interest rates are going to go into double digits.

The doom of the dollar:
http://www.forbes.com/economy/2005/01/10/cx_da_0110doomdollar.html

China owns one third of the U.S. Current Account debt.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bd52ee06-6dad-11d9-ae0d-00000e2511c8.html
posted by Manchild at 9:53 PM

Friggin Missionaries

Remember this the next time some church wants you to give them some cash for the poor and needy

Most of the 200 people are homeless or displaced, battling to rebuild lives and locating lost family members besides facing risks of epidemic,disease and trauma.

Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.



This is just another form of conversion by the sword. These people make me want to puke.
posted by Manchild at 3:15 PM

Wooly thinking

Very comfortable when worn close to the skin

I hate liberalism. And I hate 'X'. Therefore 'X' is liberalism.

Does anyone think that's valid reasoning?

If you're going to bitch about "liberalism", don't you think you should know what it actually IS, instead of shoving everything you don't like into one big pile, and throwing the lable "liberal" at it?

According to the dictionary : Liberalism : A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority. An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.

posted by Manchild at 1:00 PM

How to legally avoid being drafted

Yeah yeah, we know the draft isn't really coming...

Despite the Stop-Loss programs, the increased funding for the Selective Service, the "open ended" review of the ongoing situation, the Universal National Service Act of 2003, etc... we all know there won't be a Draft. But since "Be Prepared" is good advice in all situations, I thought I'd post this little missive.

The 13th Amendment (designed to prevent slavery by calling it involuntary servitude) applies to the Draft. The military gets around this by getting draftees to volunteer as a matter of course.

If and when you receive a "draft notice" it will tell you to report on a certain date to a certain place to receive physical and mental tests.

You will then be told to report for "induction" into the military and to appear at a certain military base for that purpose on a date specified.

By law, you must appear there or a warrant will be issued for your arrest.

When you report, you will have another brief physical then be told to "line up on the yellow line" (Typically painted on the floor)

A Recruiting Officer (not identified as such) will then tell all those "joining the army" (or whatever) to take one step forward.

If you do this, you will be classed as having volunteered.

This is done so that no one can legally claim they violated the 13th Amendment.

When the officer says "RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND AND SWEAR ALLEGIANCE" almost everyone does, thinking it must be required. And after all, they've been trained like seals to repeat such pledges of allegiance since their earliest school days.

"I, (name) do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America and will defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic, and will obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over me, so help me God."

Now those who "voluntarily" stepped forward have also taken the Oath voluntarily.

What you must do, to avoid the Draft, is NOT step forward. And do NOT take the oath of Allegiance. The recruiter will probably say something like this: Wwhat's the matter with you, don't you know what' step forward' means?"

You should respond with something like "Sure I do, but I am NOT volunteering to serve in the military."

All of those who did volunteer will now be excused from the room and you will be cajoled with persuasive arguments at first then you may be called names and insulted, possibly even assaulted by one or more military people present there as
witnesses. Eventually the tormentors might give up and have you arrested on some charge.

One thing to say at this point is what the cops are coached to say on the witness stand: "Am I ordered?"

If the recruiter says No, then obviously you're OK. If the recruiter says Yes, then "By what authority do you, a military officer, order me, a civilian?" If the recruiter says anything else, repeat the question until you get Yes or No.

If the recruiter says "I order you by the authority of the United States Government" then "Which clause of the Constitution gives you, a military officer, to order me, a civilian?"

Another thing to say is: "Am I free to go?" If the recruiter says Yes, then obviously leave. If the recruiter says No, then "Am I under arrest? Am I your prisoner? Am I kidnapped? If I'm not free, then what am I?" and again, keep repeating the question.

Another thing to say is: "I want an attorney."

Another thing to say is, of course, nothing at all. I think I would go with "Am I free to go?" because if you get to Yes, then you can leave and he would look bad ordering an arrest. If you ask the question three times and don't get a yes or no, then "Well I must be free to go, because I asked you three times and you won't tell me I'm not." Then I would slowly turn around and leave, and if he keeps trying to interact I would just keep repeating the question.

This advice allegedly comes from D. R. Graham (Retired military officer)

Here's an excerpt from a book, referring to the original legal precedent.

The Army induction officer instructed the draftees to "take one step forward" as their names were called, and said that step would signify their induction into the Army. When reluctant Willie's name was called, he answered present, but did not step forward. After the ceremony, he went home instead of to camp. When the MP's came for him, he went to court for a writ of habeas corpus to retain his freedom. "The officer himself," Willie argued, "said the step forward is what would make me a soldier. As I didn't take the step, I'm still a civilian and the Army has no claim on me."

Counsel for the Army replied, "The Army isn't being run by childish games. Willie and a hundred others appeared to be inducted, and he was inducted before the whole group as any fool there could plainly see."

Willie retained his civilian status. The court ruled that the draft law required some definite ceremony to transform a civilian into a soldier. As the Army decided to have one step forward constitute the ceremony, and Willie didn't take the step, he wasn't a soldier. -- U.S. Court of Appeals, 1954
posted by Manchild at 10:45 PM

The hidden price of Religious Aid

Say "Praise God" and I'll give you a Happy Meal

You know, I was already pissed off at the attitudes that some religious people expressed. Namely that the Tsunami was God's way of letting those non-christian brown-skinned people know he was pissed off at them. But this goes above and beyond.

Dozens of religious groups have moved in to Aceh, ostensibly looking to help tsunami victims - but also to convert them.

The arrival of Western Christian groups with records of aggressive preaching risks confrontation with local Muslim leaders which could jeopardise the provision of aid to the 600,000 local people made homeless by the disaster. The death toll in Aceh stands at around 110,000 and is expected to rise.

Reacting to the attempts of one American group to fly hundreds of local children to a Christian orphanage, Din Syamsuddin, head of the Indonesian Council of Clerics, said any attempt to spread religion under the cover of aid was wrong.

"The Muslim community will not remain quiet. This a clear statement, and it is serious," he said.

Many survivors of the disaster are deeply traumatised by their experience and thus, experts say, vulnerable to religious groups. The disaster has led to a huge increase in religious sentiment.

But it's not just the Christians involved in this sickening display of prosletyzing. Radical Muslim groups started arriving in the province within days. These include the Islamic Defenders' Front, which has attacked bars and shops selling alcohol in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, and Lashkar Mujahideen, which endorses a militant ideology and has alleged links to the killing of Christians.

And you just KNOW the world is fucked up when I find myself on the same side as the gorram Scientologists. They have also established a presence in Banda Aceh but say "We are not here to proselytise. That would be distasteful." - "We hope we are just seen as another relief group."

Mark Kosinski, an American evangelist who arrived in Aceh from Malaysia last week, said: "These people need food but they also need Jesus. God is trying to awaken people and help them realise salvation is in Christ."

Oh fuck off and die, if you love Jesus so much.

And if you think I'm over-reacting, ask yourself, how would you feel if American orphans in some diaster were taken by Muslims because "they needed Allah". I think you'd be pissed off too. Just because you're convinced your religion is right, doesn't necessarily make it fucking so.

posted by Manchild at 10:30 PM

Be prepared

It's hard to argue to facts when they are marshalled before hand

You gotta love this clip.

Now if that had been a Michael Moore video, the right would be screaming that he never used the actual words "Iraq is an imminant threat". But anyone can see that that was clearly his intention.

Rumsfeld just didn't expect them have a citation or two ready to hand. So he was quite prepared to lie through his teeth, thinking he'd never be called on it at the time, and knowing no-one would bother trying to chase it up afterwards.

Sucks to be wrong. Again.
posted by Manchild at 10:20 PM

Let's warn potential readers...

The Bible doesn't meet the requirements for "fact" either.

I suggest the following sticker be placed on all copies the Bible.
In the interests of fairness, you understand.



posted by Manchild at 9:00 AM

It's not all bad news...

Some sanity prevails

A federal judge today ordered the removal of stickers placed in high school biology textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact," saying they were an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

Full story here.

posted by Manchild at 5:00 PM

Rather than bury it in comment...

please clarify the "heart/mind/society" idea.

Well, it's been touched on by both Stan and Kate. In the writings of Plato's Socratic Dialogs with Phaedrus, we read the following : "What is good Phaedrus, and what is not good? And need we anyone to teach us these things?"

They were arguing that there is an innate instinct in man which can tell him what is "good". Abusing a child? Not good. Giving food to a hungry man? Good. But there are plenty of instances in the real world, particularly in dealing with man-made morals and values, where society plays a huge role in telling the individual what is moral.

A lot of "moral" behaviour can be learned by a child with no moral or religious background at all. Why? Because it's what society (and by that I mean those around you) are comfortable with, and expect. And these things differ, from society to society. I'll list some examples of what you might consider moral or immoral behaviour, but which are strongly rooted in what your society deems acceptable.

Public urination? (There are pissoirs in Holland for this precise purpose)
Smoking in restaraunts? (Rapidly becoming a taboo in the States, accepted still in many places)
Smoking marijuana? (Again, not a problem in Amsterdam and other places)
Showing the soles of your feet? (A definite no-no in parts of Asia)
Blowing your nose into a hanky? (Don't do this in public in Japan)
Showing public displays of emotion? (Also a no-no in Japan)
Public nudity? (Go to a nudist beach or nudist colony, to see where people don't have a problem with it.)
Nudity on television? (In many European countries, people are more concerned about exposing kids to violence on tv. A little nudity never hurt anyone)
Women showing their face in public? (There are countries in the Middle East where this is not allowed. And it's not considered a "repression". It's a cultural norm.)

Many things which you think of as immoral, only occupy that part of your mind because someone else taught you that they were immoral. As human beings it's very hard to break the conditioning we receive in our early formative years. But it can be done. And generally is done, by each new generation.

And this is a good thing.

In other words, can what is "wrong" or "sin" change over time?

If so, I think you have to acknowledge the eventual death of morality.

Dear lord, no wonder you're a creationist.
What you are doing here, is taking a trend, out of context, and extrapolating it to an extreme. Creationists do this when they say things like "The sun is slowly decreasing in size. If you follow the trend backwards, a few million years ago Earth could not exist. Therefore the universe is not a few million years old"
This is not a valid argument, for the obvious reason, that you cannot extrapolate a short term trend in such a manner. The sun has not been shrinking at the same rate for all that long.

Yours is also not a valid argument.
What is "wrong" or "sin" can change over time. But you cannot extrapolate from this to the death of morality. Why?
Because it goes BOTH ways.

I know you've said your knowledge of history is pretty poor, so let me reassure you on something. Societies morals go back and forth over periods of time. The swing tends towards more conservatism after periods of war, for example. Modes of dress, for example, become more formal. It's swings and roundabouts. What were the children of the free-love 60's like? They were the ultraconservative yuppies of the greed-is-good 80's. They got 12 years of Reaganomics for that, but that's another story. Swings and roundabouts. I know quite a few people who think the U.S. is in a stage of becoming more conservative at the moment (2 Republican terms, shitstorms over Janet's nipple, etc..)

The fact is, somethings, especially the values we are taught, need to be challenged. And that is how a society evolves. We used to have the guillotine in Europe. We eventually realised (or decided) that this was immoral.

As Stan and Kate also pointed out, if it wasn't for the changing view of what is moral, we would still be living in a slave culture, for example. Would you approve of this? What about mixed marriages? Burning witches at the stake?

So it should be obvious that morals are not absolute. But that is not to say there are NO moral absolutes. Or that there are NONE.

In my opinion, some things will always be wrong. Some things will always be right. But those black and white areas have an awful lot of grey seperating them.
posted by Manchild at 1:45 PM

Compassionate Conservatives in action

Now that's funny
But not for the residents of D.C. I guess.

Not only is this a first time ever, but the money to pay for this sturm-und-drang show is coming from... yes, money that was flagged for Homeland Security projects.

It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.

The region has earmarked federal homeland security funds for such priorities as increasing hospital capacity, equipping firefighters with protective gear and building transit system command centers.

Nah, they don't sound like important projects. Give the money to Bush.


posted by Manchild at 1:00 PM

You have freedom of speech

So long as you don't use it

Not funny.

We all knew about the Republicans idea of "free speech zones" designed to shelter Dubya and the Media from uncomfortable views of public annoyance. But they continue to chip away at the bill of rights, one incident at a time.

posted by Manchild at 10:50 AM

Well allow me to retort...

In response to KMan's post, I bashed out the following response.

For those who subscribe to Judeo-Christian values, right and wrong, good and evil, are derived from God, not from reason alone, nor from the human heart, the state or through majority rule.
And for those who don't, from Greek philosophers to modern scientists, good and evil derive from the heart, the mind, and society around you.

Though most college-educated Westerners never hear the case for the need for God-based morality because of the secular outlook that pervades modern education and the media, the case is both clear and compelling:
The idea that modern media is secular is a bit of stretch but I can let it slide.
If there is no transcendent source of morality (morality is the word I use for the standard of good and evil), "good" and "evil" are subjective opinions, not objective realities.
Correct.

In other words, if there is no God who says, "Do not murder" ("Do not kill" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew which, like English, has two words for homicide), murder is not wrong.
Idiot. Stupid stupid idiot. You're ignoring what you just implied earlier.
I've heard this argument put forward by idiots talking about drugs. Saying things like, if cocaine wasn't illegal, we'd all be driving to work high as kite, etc... That's so idiotic. If you need it explained, I'll explain it for you, but holy crap, is this a losing way to start your argument.
Many people may think it is wrong, but that is their opinion, not objective moral fact. There are no moral "facts" if there is no God; there are only moral opinions.
For those who don't believe in God, good and evil derive from the heart, the mind, and society around you.

Years ago, I debated this issue at Oxford with Jonathan Glover, currently the professor of ethics at King's College, University of London, and one of the leading atheist moralists of our time.
Because he is a man of rare intellectual honesty, he acknowledged that without God, morality is subjective. He is one of the few secularists who do.
Nah, I don't think that's true. It's more likely that in the debate, Prof. Glover admitted this, and you couldn't just pretend he didn't. So you're ascribing the belief as "rare". It really isn't.

This is the reason for the moral relativism -- "What I think is right is right for me, what you think is right is right for you" -- that pervades modern society.
Generalisation and taking a legitimate point to absurd extremes.
The secularization of society is the primary reason vast numbers of people believe, for example, that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter";
No, I don't believe that because I'm secular. I believe it because it's true. :p Or to put it another way, I believe it because that's what I think, feel, and so do the people around me.
why the best educated were not able say that free America was a more moral society than the totalitarian Soviet Union;
The best educated were not able to say this, because they saw the world was not black and white.
why, in short, deep moral confusion afflicted the 20th century and continues in this century.

That is why The New York Times, the voice of secular moral relativism,
I think that's meant to be insulting, but the New York Times is not the voice of s.m.r. by any means. It certainly doesn't represent my views, for example.
was so repulsed by President Ronald Reagan's declaration that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire."
Well, I wasn't repulsed by it. I thought it was stupid and dismissed it. Reagan was feeding a line of propaganda that was at variance with reality. Those who knew this, knew this. Those who didn't, didn't. His comment was meaningless, at least to people like me.

The secular world -- especially its left -- fears and rejects the language of good and evil because it smacks of religious values and violates their moral relativism.
He is saying a lot about the secular world, but he knows very little about the secular world. No surprise there. The secular world uses the terms good and evil, just not liberally. And certainly not always on the same targets that the religious right in America would like to use them on. Pre-Emptive War is evil. Spending hundreds of billions on weapons while you have hungry and homeless people in your own country, is evil. Bombing innocent people is evil. What happened on 9/11 was evil. See? Not afraid to use it at all.

It is perhaps the major difference between America and Europe. As a New York Times article on European-American differences noted last year, "Americans are widely regarded as more comfortable with notions of good and evil, right and wrong, than Europeans. . . . " No wonder. America is a Judeo-Christian society; Europe (and the American Democratic Party) is largely secular.
Wrong again, but oh don't get me started on the ignorance of the average republican when it comes to Europe...

In the late 1970s, in a public interview in Los Angeles, I asked one of the leading secular liberal thinkers of the past generation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., if he would say that the United States was a morally superior society to that of the Soviet Union. Even when I repeated the question, and clarified that I readily acknowledged the existence of good individuals in the Soviet Union and bad ones in America, he refused to do so.
Possibly because he knew some history. About atrocities committed by America.

A major reason for the left's loathing of George W. Bush is his use of moral language
Again, wrong. It just goes to show you have no interest in examing why people don't approve of George. His language is actually one of the more amusing things about him. If you want to know why I personally hate George, I'll make a list. You won't find his use of moral language anywhere on it.
-- such as in his widely condemned description of the regimes of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil." These people reject the central Judeo-Christian value of the existence of objective good and evil and our obligation to make such judgments.
You know, I think even the JudeoChristian should object to you making such judgements. Wasn't it some famous Jewish guy who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" ?
Secularism has led to moral confusion, which in turn has led to moral paralysis.
I disagree, but it's too complex to go into here.

If you could not call the Soviet Union an "evil empire" or the Iranian, North Korean and Iraqi regimes an "evil axis," you have rendered the word "evil" useless.
No, you could just disagree with your usage of the term. I don't call the Soviet Union an evil empire, and I just used evil a few moments ago. And it was useful, thanks.

And indeed it is not used in sophisticated secular company -- except in reference to those who do use it (usually religious Christians and Jews).
Again, displaying his righteous ignorance of secular conversation.

Is abortion morally wrong? To the secular world, the answer is "It's between a woman and her physician."
No, I think you'll find that even among atheists that is not a clear cut issue. But then, you'd actually have to talk to some of them to find that out, and clearly that's never going to happen...

There is no clearer expression of moral relativism: Every woman determines whether abortion is moral.
Again, nonsense. Every woman might (and I say might) decide for herself if she is going to have an abortion, but she is still capable of being wracked with guilt because she has decided that it was an immoral thing but that she had no choice under the circumstances. Again, the world is not as simple as you'd like to believe.
On the other hand, to the individual with Judeo-Christian values, it is not between anyone and anyone else. It is between society and God. Even among religious people who differ in their reading of God's will, it is still never merely "between a woman and her physician."

And to those who counter these arguments for God-based morality with the question, "Whose God?" the answer is the God who revealed His moral will in the Old Testament, which Jews and Christians -- and no other people -- regard as divine revelation.

The best-known verse in the Bible is "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). It is a reflection of the secular age in which we live that few people are aware that the verse concludes with the words, "I am God." Though entirely secularized in common parlance, the greatest of the ethical principles comes from God. Otherwise it is just another man-made suggestion, no more compelling than "Cross at the green, not in between."
posted by Manchild at 6:20 PM

Movie Round up

You'd think someone with about 600 DVD's would go to the cinema more often.

Copying Holz's idea (or "stealing" as the RIAA would no doubt have it) I ran down through the list of top 150 US movies of the last year. I saw 21 of them. Sounds like very few, but then, I obviously can't include non-US movies there.

My top 10 for 2004 (from the list)

10. Collateral
I wasn't expecting much from this, but it was a nice surprise of a movie. No main surprises, but well acted, well lit, well directed. And Tom Cruise dies in the end. An all too rare event these days. Saw it twice in the cinema, just to know that it wasn't a fluke.

9. Hellboy
I had not read Hellboy the comic, until word of this movie started to hit the net. Then I searched out some trade paperbacks. What I found was an interesting story, not particularly scary, but with some keen writing and characters. Word was that the movie was going to be true to the source.

I can't really say if it was or not, as I don't know the material that well. But what there was, was a fun fun movie. I liked this in the same "check your brain at the door" way that I liked Independence Day. But this was much better. Don't think about it. Don't try to understand it. Just enjoy it.

8. Spider-Man 2
Some plot holes aside, this was a great sequel for Spidey. Sam Raimi was able to improve on the first by jumping straight into the action. Doc Ock is a much better villain than the Green Goblin though there was a superb cameo at the end by William Defoe. This was a hopping good movie that made me really want to see the third one done ASAP.

7. Fahrenheit 9/11
Every one has an opinion on this movie, even those who haven't seen it.
Unfounded accusations of lies and distortions abounded. I went through the eponymous list of 57 falsehoods or whatever. They were crap. Those who criticised the facts really had not got a leg to stand on. There is one (repeat one) deliberate distortion in the movie that I am aware of, and it is minor, appearing in the middle of a whole host of other facts. It could be snipped out (3 seconds) and the movie would be factually flawless.

6. Super Size Me
Let's just say I was never planning to eat at a McDonalds ever again anyway.
I'm not a fast food or junk food type person. Never have been. The closest thing to it in my semi-regular food intake would be the occasional pizza. And then I prefer to make my own. Or at least have it home made.
This was a real eye-opener though, on just how nasty and bad for you, fast food is.
After this movie, I read "Fast Food Nation" and "Fatland". One was good, the other not so much. Can't remember which was which now, but the one about McDonalds history was the bad one. The one about America in general (including declining PE classes in schools) was the better one.

5. The Chronicles of Riddick
I can't defend this. So I won't. Pitch Black is a brilliant movie, and if you don't think so, you're just wrong. Chronicles had many flaws, but god-damnit, it's Riddick. It's Riddick. And Gwen Raiden as Jack. And Riddick.
Just make the damn trilogy already.

4. Kill Bill Vol. 2
Darryl Hannah needs a career again, in the way that Travolta got his second chance. Uma was amazing. And David "Bill" Caradine is the fucking man. The Superman aside is worth the price of admission.

3. Shrek 2
Everyone's favourite animated comedy. I laughed so hard at this. That five minute section of the movie which has the C.O.P.S. piss-take, is just gut-bustingly funny. Puss-n'-Boots is a character that has enriched the world of animation, just as with Homer Simpson and Eric Cartman and Stewie Griffin. I can't imagine animation without 'em.

2. The Incredibles
Simply Pixars best movie ever. Holly Hunter's accent has never been sexier. The kids were not annoying (so hard for kids). Edna Mode stole every scene she was in. The Wallace Shawn voiced character looked like Rick Moranis (perfect) but Ricks voice would never have worked. Frozone's arguments with his wife made me cry laughing. And the plot... dear lord, the plot, the story. It works. It all works. It's just incredible. This was my Christmas Day movie this year.

1. Shaun of the Dead
If you like Clerks, or Kevin Smith type movies, see this. If you like Bruce Campbell, Ash, and the Evil Dead movies, see this. If you like British comedy (like Black Books, Father Ted and The Office) see this. If you are a fan of SPACED, see this. If you don't know these references, see this.
Only if you dislike all of the above, could you fail to like this movie.
Me, I loved it.

And to show that copying never stops at one, therefore must be called "stealing" and stamped out using the full force of American judicial system... I'm copying the next part from Holz as well.

My top 3 worst movies of the year: (Only 3 because they were really in a league of their own...)

3. The Ladykillers
Now, I generally like the Coen brothers movies. The Big Lebowski and Fargo are my two favourites, but they're generally good and quirky and funny. But this was just awful. Awful in the way that Charlies Angels 2 was awful. It was racist, stupid, patronising, dull, contrived, and just plain sucked. That said, Tom Hanks did his level best with what he had. I normally don't like his choice of material, but this made me remember why he's an ACTOR and commands such a high salary.
2. Team America
I really really wanted to like this movie. I'm such a huge fan of SouthPark and the SouthPark movie is my favourite comedy ever. But this movie wasn't funny.
It seemed almost a given that when I mentioned this to people they assumed I didn't like it because it skewered the left. To which I say, bullcrap. I don't identify myself with "The Left" and the only thing in the movie that made me smile was "Matt ... Damon...".
No, what I hated was that this movie was just not funny. Not. Funny. And that's a crime for a comedy.

"How do you know?"
"Because he sucked my dick outside in the limo"

That's the level of humour we're dealing with here. Idiots who decry Southpark or Kevin Smith movies as being just about "dick and fart jokes" would be absolutely right on the money here.

If you want to make a comedy skewering the left, there's LOADS of material. But none of it wound up in this movie.
1.Alexander
I wanted Harry Knowles to be right about this. He said the critics got it wrong. This was a wonderful movie. That America was too homophobic (see recent election stuff) to take a bisexual hero to heart.

Bollox.

This was the worst movie I had seen in the last 10 years. And I'm including Matrix Revolting in that. Oliver Stone should never make another movie. There's 3 hours of my life I just KNOW I'm going to be regretting on my deathbed. The way Stan felt after The Passion? That's how I feel now.

Fuck you Oliver Stone. I want my money back. Your movie sucked ass.
posted by Manchild at 1:00 PM