All the Propaganda That's Fit to Print

The Iran warmongering that gets reported uncritically in the MSM just boggles my mind. This bit on the BBC site makes me want to tear my hair(what's left of it) out, see here;
US wants fresh Iran talks on Iraq

It is painfully obvious to me, and I imagine everyone else that has been screaming about how the US lied and cajoled the US and Britain into invading Iraq, that the same BS tactics are being used again to insinuate that a country is 'cruisin for a bruisin' because of their evil threat to the US, (and of course, world freedom and democracy and Christianity). But the recent spate of 'intelligence reports', or just 'reports' of Iran backing, or promoting, or sheltering militants and sending them and weapons into Iraq for use against the good old boy freedom fighters from the U.S. of A. have been glaringly bereft of any sort of corroboration from sources outside of the U.S. military. Today, we get a supposedly tangible source of such intel. Well, what a surprise!:

Early in July, the US military in Iraq accused Iran of orchestrating an attack that killed five US soldiers and of using Lebanese militants to train insurgents.
The information came from a top Hezbollah fighter recently captured in southern Iraq, an army spokesman said.
Brig-Gen Kevin Bergner said the suspect admitted working with the Quds Force, linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Read between the lines. They tortured a confession out of someone! That they even have such a 'someone' in detention, let alone that he confessed - well you just have to take the military's word on that, but if they do, you can be sure he didn't spill his guts (figuratively) out of a sense of gratitude for 5 star treatment while being a guest at Abu Ghraib, or a sudden burst of a guilty conscious for that matter. More likely, he was threatened with having his guts spilled before, and if, he decided to sing, then I imagine he was just taking requests (saying whatever he thought the interrogators wanted to hear).

But the whole report just stinks of blatantly dishonest insinuations, for instance(emphasis mine):

Iran's foreign minister said his country would respond positively to talks if requested by the US.
The two sides held a ground-breaking meeting in Baghdad in May - the first since they severed ties in 1979.
But the violence in Iraq has continued unabated since then - despite the sending of nearly 30,000 extra US troops there.

SO FUCKING WHAT!?!! The fucking violence in Iraq has fuck-all to do with Iran, and the troop surge (and the original occupation) has nothing to do with Iran interference in the fucking first place! FFS!

But here you have the BBC blindly spouting spun propaganda in a yet further dishonest and leading manner.

Mascot for Hamas TV Show Is a Mouse No More

Hamas television, which was criticized for a Mickey Mouse-like character named Farfur who spouted anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish nostrums at children, has replaced the mouse with a bee named Nahoul, who says he is Farfur’s cousin.

Farfur was beaten to death by an Israeli who wanted his land on the previous episode of the children’s show “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.”

Nahoul, the bee, says: “I want to continue on the path of Farfur, the path of ‘Islam is the solution.’ The path of heroism, the path of martyrdom, the path of jihad warriors.”

Shee-it! Why are these Old Testament based religions so selfish and ruthless in their indoctrination of little children? They see kids as just more tools to use in their holy task of doing god's/allah's/yahweh's work.

"The Old Testament is the history of the Hebrew People, and it is the point of commonality where Christianity, Judaism, and Islam intersect. The Koran, and the Hebrew scriptures also use the Old-Testament of the Christian bible.
The commonality is the Yahweh/Allah monotheistic God and the historical link with the ancient Hebrew nation."
Interpreting The Old Testament

It's the same god!!! For all of them!!! What The mother of Mary Fuck??? - "Allah, of course, is the same God Jews and Christians worship. Islam is not only a Western, monotheistic religion rather than an Oriental, pantheistic religion, but explicitly bases itself on the historical revelation of the God of the Jews, tracing itself to Ishmael, Isaac's brother, to whom God also promised special blessings according to Genesis. Isaac and Ishmael, Jews and Muslims, have been engaged in sibling rivalry ever since."
Comparing Christianity & Islam

And there is 'Jesus Camp'

The children are all so eager to please, and this element of the film is the most difficult for me. If the adults decided to hand out the special Kool-Aid at this camp, the children would all unquestionably partake. With arms in the air, they are 'instructed' on how to let the spirit take over their bodies and speak in tongues. The children imitate. Many of them cry. Some fall to the ground and shake on the floor in what looks like an epileptic seizure. More cry. I wanted to cry with them, or more accurately for them. This all looked very unhealthy, I could only imagine what it was doing to them psychologically. I had the striking thought that this was all completely unforgivable. These adults, no matter their intentions, were performing horrific acts of mental child abuse.
Then comes the guilt, and mountains of it. "A lot of you say you're Christians, but how many of you are leading two separate lives?" Pastor Becky lays it on thick over the PA. She leads the children on through ideas of what they might be sinfully doing at school with their friends, and how they should be ashamed of themselves for it. I considered vomiting into my drink cup. She asks the children to gather around her and reach out their hands if they wish to be cleansed of these newly uncovered sins. Their cleansing source: A 20 oz. bottle of Nestlé-brand water poured over their grouped hands. Talk about product placement! There is of course more crying. There is more of me yelling at the screen, and more of my friend elbowing me in embarrassment.

Jesus Camp Bush Insanity

Christian Missionaries

There is much discussion on the blogs and other sites I frequent, as well as Main Stream media, that focuses on the effects of religion on society. The usual discourse centers on morality with the more vocal proponents of Christianity (read fundies, neo-con wingnuts, and the like!) asserting that without religion dogma to teach right from wrong, society would be basically amoral.
On the other hand, some of us atheists point out the cruelties and wars perpetrated in the name of God, and sometimes we note a correlation between faith and lack of critical reasoning skills.
Something very important I think we often overlook is the damage to and eradication of cultures caused by missionary work. I remember reading, in the '70s, that anthropologists hate Christian missionaries because they wipe out cultures before they have a chance to observe them, and more importantly, often leave 'primitive' peoples unable to integrate into western society and therefore spiritually and financially destitute.
So I Googled:

In the past, the damage done by missionaries were shared equally between the Protestant and Catholic churches. Today, most of the damage is done by fundamentalist, pentacostal and evangelical protestant sects, mostly from the US, Canada and Europe. Numbering about 80,000 strong [1] these fundamentalist missionaries spread like locusts throughout the world. Their destruction of native cultures, and in some cases actually causing the deaths of these natives, can only be described as a modern cultural and genocidal holocaust. more

Kona Kava Blog:

Even though the Christian Missionaries tried to eradicate the use of this ancient and sacred plant,...

The horses mouth:

...
For the Church of this period the purpose of evangelisation was clear. The purpose was to bring people into the Church, to get conversions to the faith. Outside the Church, it was seen that there was no, or at least little chance of salvation. The alternative was to leave people in their sins, and eventually, to torment in hell. Given this situation, evangelisation was not merely a nice thing to do, it was an overwhelming moral imperative. (Hill, 1992) Perhaps this helps one understand the zeal of the early missionaries and their “convert at all costs” attitude. It might also resonate with some when reflecting on dominant themes and motives in their own experience of school religious education or parish missions.
...

Shorter fundamentalists: "I don't care that you have existed for hundreds of perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of years in harmony and contentment, that your way of life gives you meaning, you are a sinner and I will save you, no matter how devastating it is to your way of life."

Keeping tabs

I am just basically keeping tabs on comments I make to hysterically wingnutted blogs to see if they publish my comments. This may evolve into sort of an experiment, or research, into just how biased, or unbiased, these blogs are esp. when contrasted to some of their claims: 1 - about their own fairness, or 2 - about their claims of unfairness against others (ie, being censored). It would be nice to have some sort of a track record to fall back on.
I already had one 'no show' in the comments two days ago at the site I posted about previously( Post-Darwinist), and today I just made this comment after reading about a post at SDA here at Canadian
Cynic

I gotta wonder what this picture has to do with the data collected and used for climate research. I also wonder wether Norcalblogs knows for sure those are the sensors, what data they are collecting (presumably temp recordings), and how relevant those data sets are to the overall work at NOAA, and finally, just who uses that data? They are only a small part of this consensus , and while it is interesting if any of the data, or groups compiling it, is suspect, we really only have a couple of photographs, labelled with image editing software, from an unknown, possibly unbalanced, 'claimed' observer.

Lots of questions, of relevance, and credibility, but don't let that stop you all from sprinting to your preformed conclusions!

Ta-ta.

In any event, I am also taking screenshots of my replies, just for the hell of it and for corroberation, if I ever decide to question my integrity (I am assuming you are the only one to ever read this anyways, mikmik, and BTW, hows the typing practice coming along - did you find a good excuse to practice keyboarding yet?).

Ya never now, now I have a legacy, and perhaps the start of a Magnus Opus, or at least a ticket to some free psych medication. Ta-ta ha ha .. ha cough kAFF! .. choke gaaack... help.... gasp, someone get me some water... barf...ack...

Hey, you got earn those stripes first, sparky!

Post-Darwinist : This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing "intelligent design" controversy. Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

I suppose being obsolete before you start wouldn't get you to reconsider, would it?

Anyways, not having a clue as to relevance but acting like you know what you are talking about does not make a valid viewpoint, and Michael Behe never in his wildest dreams does this pertain:
Asking the mainstream science community to declare that new discoveries in molecular biology and DNA render materialism inadequate
He wants to talk about supposed incongrueties (that he can't support), yet show him that large, staggering incongruencies in Creationism/ID, and that doesn't mean anything, no retractions, no silently admitting he (you all) doesn't have a point. Yeah, 'scientists' are supposed to cave and fold if presented with (faulty) contrary evidence, but IDers have massive logical inconsistencies and don't 'resign'. Why not? You try to hold scientists to some standard you yourself won't adhere to?

“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.”
~ Ferdinand Magellan
Let's start where you are supposed to. Prove your point, then use it as an alternative. That is how rational thought works. You have to prove there is a designer, and it had better be a proper theory, then you have some weight behind your claims. Otherwise, quit already, like, the people Behe admoshises about.
Understand this first.
In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations that is predictive, logical and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections or inclusion in a yet wider theory. Commonly, a large number of more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a general rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory.
That there is a designer doesn't even pass the laugh test, let alone have any way of being scientifically' tested.

Here: The creation account in the Bible is clearly not literally true. All physical evidence points against it. For example, it has light being created after the earth and after water. It has creation happening only about 4000 years ago where the geological record shows it has to be much much older. Since God presumably created all the misleading physical evidence, it would seem He does not want us to believe the Genesis account either. Which evidence is more trustworthy, that penned by man or created directly by God? Surely God did not forget how He actually created the universe, and how celestial dynamics work. Why is it then the Old Testament is so full of error on such matters. If you will recall, it claims the earth is square and flat and that the sun revolves around the earth. Did God have a temporary lapse of memory while composing the Old Testament? Or did human Biblical authors, in their hubris, imagine their works were of divine origin.

Monday, July 09, 2007 12:32:02 PM

And I thought brats running wild in restaurants were annoying...

Read about this at Pharyngula

and made the mistake of watching the video (slideshow with audio, really). Anyways, I was so proud of my comment that I thought I should put it here where I can always find it, yet safe from being seen by others:

I think our time can be better spent doing something about, oh, this for instance: The Child Health Site
With a simple, daily click of the blue "Fund Healthcare for Children" button at The Child Health Site, visitors help children. Visitors pay nothing. The treatments and preventative services described above are paid for by our site sponsors and accomplished through our charitable partners, who currently include Mercy Corps, the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Helen Keller International.

Self righteous indignation is all well and good, but this little frick doesn't seem to be complaining, he looks healthy, and he may grow up to be a country and western star. He may grow up to be an abortion clinic bomber, but he may decide that his parents are slave driving control freaks and rebel, turning to life of drug induced debauchery just to spite his mama.

Or maybe we can get him to recite some bible passages from Ezekiel 23:20, to wit: "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."

LMAO! Or maybe he will get some good material for stand up comedy: (more Zeke)
21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled. [c]
22 "Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will stir up your lovers against you, those you turned away from in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side- 23 the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, handsome young men, all of them governors and commanders, chariot officers and men of high rank, all mounted on horses.
Hey, those were her lovers? I'm sorry, I have a hard (pun) time imagining she turned from handsome men on horses, horses!, wouldn't they remind her of donkies?
24 They will come against you with weapons, [d] chariots and wagons and with a throng of people; they will take up positions against you on every side with large and small shields and with helmets. I will turn you over to them for punishment, and they will punish you according to their standards. 25 I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire.
And if that isn't enough to strike the fear of god into you, Oholibah you incredible slut...
26 They will also strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry.

So that's what inspired the phrase 'adding insult to injury'

This sure ain't the good old U.S of A.!

1. The Assembly asserts the standard setting role of the Council of Europe and is aware of its own responsibility in re-assessing the basis on which our societies are to be built. It recognises science as part of this basis.

2. The advance of scientific knowledge through the process of rational enquiry is thousands of years old. Ancient civilisations around the World made valuable contributions. Modern science started in Europe with the scientific revolution of the 15^th and 16^th centuries. This was followed by the Age of Enlightenment in the 18^th and has continued to the present. New theories were seldom easily accepted by the establishment, as was the case for instance with Lamarck and Darwin’s work on evolution in the 19^th century.

3. However, in recent years we have witnessed attempts to reconcile the biblical account of creation with modern science and outlaw the theory of evolution. “Creationists” pretend that “intelligent design” by a supreme entity is the scientific explanation for the universe.

4. Such an approach has no credibility among the scientific community but has succeeded in raising doubts in less informed minds, including persons with high political responsibilities, mainly in the USA but also in Europe. Some schools are now forced to teach creationism. The middle path of providing equal time for both merely offers a middle way between truth and falsehood.

5. Support for the scientific theory of evolution is almost universal among those with religious beliefs in Europe and nothing in this motion is intended as disrespect for any religion.

6. However, the Assembly is concerned at the possible negative consequences of the promotion of creationism through education and recommends that the Committee of Ministers assess the situation in the Council of Europe member countries and propose adequate counter-measures.

My, what tangled web etc

At Canadian Cynic: "About that "credibility" thing ...", more fun at FC's (no, not Fucking Christian, not FeCes, but Fundamentalist Cuckoo ) expense:

The loudest criticism came from those who complained that the (cool animatronic) dinosaurs are displayed as coexisting with humans. They were supposed to be dead for millions of years before humans existed. If that's true, then who drew all those cave drawings that look like dinosaurs? And why does nearly every culture on earth have artifacts and stories about them? They're even described in the Bible (Job 40:15-23) – beings with "ribs like bars of iron" and a "tail like a cedar" – coexisting with humans. But, of course, we can't believe that book. We'd rather get our "facts" from a racist guy named Darwin who wrote "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" – the real title of his famous book.
Behemoth, singular behemah (Hebrew) [from baham to be dumb, mute] A beast, a nonspeaking living being; used in Job 40:15-23. Scholars are of the opinion that the reference here is to the hippopotamus or the Leviathan. "Behemoth is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him that 'Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the ways of God' " (SD 2:486), and an entity spoken of, however poetically, as the chief of the ways of the divine, can hardly be a physical quadruped of earth.

LMFAO x 2! "racist guy named Darwin"

Hey, did you see the NASCAR race? I told you those southerners are racists!

Credible sources and bullshit.

What Harper Gov’t Accomplished in 16 Months!
FYI: "You've got to be kidding. You link to the Conservative's web site to 'validate' these accomplishments?
I suppose one could link to the Liberal's website and come up with the same amount of stellar accomplishments.
(Joanne (TB) Says:

Good job, Sandy! And what did the Paul Martin Liberals accomplish? Mmmm… -
LMAO! mikmik)

Give your a head a shake, please. I assure you, the list of promises broken is long in itself. Like I like to say, even Ted Bundy did a lot of nice things in his life.
For sure, at the rate provincial PC parties are falling, as well as Harpers approval rating, you better get another source for this 'good news' because it is painfully apparent know one trust these clowns anymore. Okay, not no one, only a shrinking minority."

Portable Apps!

What can I say?

I am writing this from my mp3 player with FireFox portable installed (same function as a mem stick), just plugged into a box at the library.

Looks like I can design and upload websites, or do office work, or edit images - on my own programs - anywhere is a computer that's connected.

Make a recovery Partition

From the annals of "why didn't I think of that?" is this great idea of backing up an image of your operation system to another partition. It is how OEMes like eMachines and Dell package Windows. You know, the pricks that don't provide the original installation CD that you rightfully purchased and instead make you resort to a 'hidden' partition that contains nothing more than a pristine copy of a clean windows installation - with your product key ready to be validated.

In any event, with super huge hard drives these days, it is easy to just do this yourself as a backup. It is all here:
Make a Recovery Partition

By Rick Broida
If you've ever reformatted your hard drive, reinstalled Microsoft Windows, reloaded all your applications, and reset all your settings, you know what a time-consuming and generally heinous process it can be. I've had root canals that were more pleasant—and way less of a hassle. But sometimes, such as after a nasty spyware attack or when Windows has accumulated too much sludge, that kind of radical reconstruction is absolutely necessary. And Vista will only amplify the problem. Before you move to Vista, make sure you back up!

Many PCs come with recovery CDs that will restore your system to factory-new condition, but you can get the job done faster—and add all your favorite programs and system settings to the restoration—by creating a recovery partition. A partition, of course, is a cordoned-off section of your hard drive that gets its own drive letter. All you need is the right software and enough available space to hold your stuff.


The "right software," in this case, is a partition utility and a backup program that can create a compressed "image" of your newly reformatted and reloaded hard drive. We're partial to Symantec's Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 and Norton Ghost 10.0, respectively—they're both PC Magazine Editors' Choices—but you can use any nondestructive partitioning utility and the backup app of your choice, of course. And all you need to do is create a partition that's large enough to hold your stuff; then back up your primary drive to the partition. If and when the time comes to restore, run Ghost and expand the backup image to your primary drive. Presto: You're back in business

You can use Nero to make an image of your OS parition and save it.

Developmentally stunted

Something just came to when I read about the rumor the US admin was going to finally institued carbon emission restrictions, but they would wait until after Nov 2006 elections so as not to embarass GOP incumbents.
The trolls and wingnuts that neverendingly make excuses for failed policies, lies, and hypocrit freeper and fundie ideaology never change their attitudes, or reasoning, not metter how obvious reality contradicts them. They are like infants laying in dirty diapers, whining and howling, but so underdeveloped as to not be able to change.

LMAO! Developmental retarded, unable to do anything besides 'lieing' in their own shit!


No matter how much damning evidence comes out proving them wrong, they can't grow up to save their asses

A quick look at the GParted live CD

I am getting reado to burn my Windows Vista download to DVD (3.59 GIGAbytes!) and install it. Naturally I want to dool boot with WinXP Pro, and perhaps any Linux distros I am running at the moment. So I research.
I see on LifeHacker
that

Next I started up the install and found that Vista will only install itself on a primary partition. If you choose the C: drive where XP is already installed? Vista asks if it can rename your Windows folder "Windows.old." Uh, no thank you Vista. To get dual-booting to work, you have to create another primary partition where Vista can live alongside XP in peace and happiness.

Free partitioning utilities (like the one on the XP setup disk) delete all the data on the disk when they create new partitions. That's not very convenient. Norton's commercial product called PartitionMagic, which you can purchase at Amazon for $43 (after rebate), however, can create a new partition out of free space on your C: drive without killing the rest of the files. That's what you want. UPDATE: Astute reader Barron says that the GParted Live CD also works and it's free. Thanks Barron!

Download of the Day: GParted live CD
In the past we recommended repartitioning your hard drive with a Linux live CD, but if all you want is partitioning, the GParted live CD is the way to go. If you've never burned an ISO before, check out the free ISO Recorder tool mentioned earlier today.

Looks good: A quick look at the GParted live CD

Continuing saga of sick fuck propaganda

At Huffington Post:
Al Qaeda Releases 9/11 Anniversary Video: "You Gave Us Every Legitimacy And Every Opportunity To Continue Fighting You"...


Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to intensify their resistance against the U.S. and warned of new terror strikes in a video aired by CNN early Monday on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Zawahri said the Persian Gulf and Israel would be al-Qaida's next targets.



The film was the latest in a flurry of al-Qaida videos released ahead of the anniversary. But unlike the others, it appeared to be new with references to Israel's bombardment of Lebanon this summer and the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

You are only as good as your last performance.
Perhaps the point was made, successful beyond all wildest fantasy, and further acts inside the U.S. would just be trivial and redundant?

People can only be held hostage by fear so much. Maybe an adequate level has been reached?

I mean, can the reaction by the US: violating constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of its citizens,
violating internationally guaranteed rights of others,
and more importantly, abject humiliation in most of the rest of the worlds eyes at BushCo's pathetic behaviors and transparent lying.

US neo-con, WHIG, GOP, christian fundamentalists, etc., have been exposed as impotent and laughable.

Once you've said "Gotcha, motherfuckers" to some motherfucker you've humiliated, well, now what?

Bankrupt your ass by getting you to waste your bank account tossing multi-million dollar buckshot around like confetti?

No, a significantly bigger payoff could not be had, the humiliation and fear more complete, by random attacks.

You trolls so sure that the 'terrists' can't perform when the time comes? (LOL, impotence, perform, comes)

I mean, I'm not in the least convinced this is what's going on, but there is no reliable way to tell otherwise, is there?

Just an experiment with Blogger

An attempt to access a remote javascript for a colapsable link list:

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Download: IESpell

This is a most handy browser add-on, but it only works with Internet Explorer based browsers. It's called "IESpell", and yes, it is a spell checker.

Very easy to use, just highlight a section of text, right click on it, and select "Check spelling."

It is necessary for people that post to political blogs to spell everything correctly or else trolls will get badly injured and start crying.

Here is the link: http://www.iespell.com/

Take that, WHIG!

I suppose there are reactions to hypocrits that claim to be a "uniter, not a divider" and then call everyone that doesn't agree with you a traitor or a fscist.
story at yahoonews

It's that time of year again soon

Halloween!

The time of year that I can look myself, in public, without someone trying to run me over.

I am mikmik. No one cares, perhaps

Gonna try to find something original to post, or at the very least, useful