Monthly Archives: November 2002

The Ms. Crunchy Granola Pants Contest

My entry:

I pick up a package of Green Giant frozen peas and hope that America will become a jolly green giant and appease the terrorists who are forced to lash out against American hegemony.

The source of this insanity can be found here. Thanks to Rachel for the link.

You can read the original article by Jane Yoder Short that inspired this contest. Please note the paragraph that may represent the dumbest thing a leftist has ever said. Ever:

“I pick up a package sanitary pads and some hope for a new cycle of peace. Life has its cycles and we seem stuck in a violent whirlwind. Can we hope for a new season of reconciliation?”

Like Rachel I will probably add more later.

Iranians Stand Up

Hard-liners in Iran are facing increasing pressure. I’m just afraid that the reform movement will eventually face a Tiananmen Square style crackdown. You know the government/religious leaders will not go down without a fight. They will go down though. It may take the presence of a liberated and democratic Iraq (coming soon) to create even more pressure but it will happen – eventually.

The vast majority of Iranians don’t appreciate or deserve the government they have. It’s up to them to demonstrate that to the world though. More than a few will have to die to make that point. Freedom has a price.

If any of you know of a way for those of us outside of Iran to help the reform movement there please contact me. I’m sure countless Americans would support the cause.

Here’s the scoop on today’s events:

“Hundreds of Iranian hard-liners clashed with pro-reform students at a demonstration on Monday, the first serious outbreak of violence in 10 days of university protests against a dissident’s death sentence.

The student rallies and strikes in support of history lecturer Hashem Aghajari, condemned to hang for blasphemy, have raised political tension at a crucial stage in the power struggle between Iran’s reformists and hard-liners.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday ordered a review of Aghajari’s case in an apparent effort to defuse the row. Analysts said Khamenei’s intervention revealed how concerned the leadership had been about the student protests.

Some student leaders responded to Khamenei’s move by ordering an end to the protests. But others upped their demands to include an apology from Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi.

“We will continue to protest till Shahroudi officially apologizes and there is a guarantee no one will be jailed because of what they say,” student leader Saeed Razavi Faqih told Reuters.

It was not clear which call the student rank-and-file would heed, but at least one more rally was scheduled for Tuesday.

Witnesses said fighting broke out when a group of around 300 Islamic vigilantes entered a hall at a Tehran university, the center of a demonstration by some 3,000 reformist students.

Earlier, riot police sealed the area and parked buses around the campus to obscure the view from outside.

Students later emerged, some with blood on their faces, triumphantly punching the air and chanting “referendum, referendum” in a call for a national vote on the political future of the Islamic Republic.”

Read more.

Turning Bunkers into Subterranean Glass Bowls

“Congress last week authorized the three nuclear-weapons labs to create preliminary designs for a weapon known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, designed for underground targets. The project involves strengthening existing hydrogen bombs, rather than creating new designs. Livermore weapons designers say they don’t expect the project to require nuclear tests.”

Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator….sweeeet. I like Fissionable Uranium Crafted Kaboom Exploding Device better though.

Read more.

What Anarchists Think About Your Kids

I’m not going to comment on this article. There’s a very disturbing undercurrent at play in Su Negrin’s article that frankly I don’t want to discuss on this site. Let’s just say Pee Wee Herman and Jeffery Jones would be proud.

Here’s one gem for you though:

Kids are beginning to realize the nature and workings of ageist politics. They’re discarding adult-defined self-images. They’re becoming not quite as manageable. Kids’ and Youth Liberation is connecting with black, gay, women’s and other liberation movements and in this way adult consciousness about ageism is also being raised. Adult consciousness of ageist politics indicates the necessity to unbecome adults. The “most revolutionary” thing for politically aware adults to do is to leave kids alone.

But most important to the process of Youth Liberation is the kids’ awareness and recapture of their own capabilities and self-esteem.

Ageism and sexism are both aspects of the same system – patriarchy. Kids and women have been privatized and oppressed together, in the family, by husbands/fathers. Within the family, the mother is only the agent of patriarchal oppression. But she is an ageist oppressor in her own right too. In struggling out of the family, mothers will still be responsible for their small children/ small children will still be dependent on their mothers. Kids’ and Women’s Liberation are intimately connected. Women need to be liberated from the burden of responsibility for kids. And kids need to escape the suffocation of omnipresent motherhood. There is solidarity but there’s also conflict between Kids’ and Women’s Liberation.

Go ahead and read that article and tell me these people aren’t the enemy. You can find more of this trash at Anarchist Parenting. There’s enough rant fuel there to keep bloggers busy for weeks. There’s lots of juicy topics discussed in the articles. Sexism, ageism, about 500 other -isms, patriarchy, revolution, children, and abortion.

Right now I’m not sure what to say about someone who would say in support of abortion “I don’t think a single woman with kids is in a good position to be fighting the state”. That’s the kind of quality thinking you can find all over that site.

I hope some of you dig into this site and expose it to the light of reason.

Thanks to Blogs of War Commando Michele for the link.

Another Victory for WWII Vets

Thanks to all of you who swiftly spoke up and buried Janice Hahn in complaints. Tora! Tora! Tora! will be shown as planned. It’s hard to tell who was really at fault in this story but the important thing is the American people stood up and demanded change.

“I’m very pleased, the show will go on,” said Joe Janesic, a director at the Fort MacArthur Military Museum in San Pedro and an organizer of the Dec. 7 event. “The public has spoken: We as Americans have the right to determine what is appropriate for us to see.”

First they said the projector was old, that it could ruin the film, event organizers said. Then they said the day was booked — first by a screening of “Boys Town,” with a special appearance by actor Mickey Rooney, then by Gladys Knight and the Pips, then by a private party held by Mayor James Hahn, the San Pedro councilwoman’s brother. Aides to the mayor denied he had any involvement in the controversy.

Finally, organizers say city officials told them the event was barred because it would be offensive to Japanese-Americans.

“They’ve been telling so many lies they can’t even keep track,” said Meza, an NBC broadcast engineer. “They’re covering their —. They’ve got so much flak on this that they were forced into (backing down).”

“I am very upset,” said Councilwoman Hahn, who now says veterans were mistreated by officials from the Warner Grande. “We found it wasn’t booked.

“This group, in my opinion, was treated unfairly by a city employee of a city facility … I think there needs to be some disciplinary action, to send a message to all city employees: We cannot treat different groups differently.”