Come ye, my followers and hear the sermon for today.

The internet is not a place. It is not a location, nor is it an idea. The internet is something that we all sit with and work with. The internet inspires and tempts. The internet is full of all that we need use, and all that keeps us down. It is a beautiful yet wicked thing. The internet lives in all of us, and passes through all our lives.

In short, The internet is God.

But like the life and world of God, the internet comes with it’s pitfalls of equality and pornography. These are the temptations of evil. The internet is the epic struggle of good against bad in it’s most bruttish and brutal terms. Will you spend your time online for the betterment of man, or will you do nothing but read the slow drool of the retarded devil and his distractions.

Age Demographics of total US Military Casualties in Iraq

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I’m the travel editor here, well because I get around. And I like sex tourism, a volatile combo in anyone’s book. I’m currently en route from home, somewhere in New England, to my summer estate in the Rocky Mountains, and last night hunkered down in friendly Columbus, Ohio.

I know a little bit about Columbus from Ohio State’s massive amount of airtime during final athletic events showing off cheesy college commercials depicting black men in lab coats instead of football trousers or basketball shorts. Did anyone really figure they wore anything OTHER than lab coats and three piece suits?

Actually the good citizens of Columbus are well informed on this issue, and others surrounding the delicate matters of Race Relations in their fair town. Last night we rolled into the hotel, and were in bed watching Conan when we heard a loud crash from outside in the parking lot and our car alarm went nuts. After figuring out that the noise had come from our car, and inspecting the scene, I ascertained that there had been an attempted break-in on my vehicle, most likely to get grab the large quantity of Apple branded merch in the back. No iPhone.. yet, but a Cinema Display and a Powerbook were in abundance. (Note to self: Bring crap inside or at least put under a blanket.

We’ve had a hectic month at PBH with lots of visitors from far and wide. We want to encourage everyone to subscribe and interact with PBH, which you can do either by email or by subscribing to our RSS feed. Got a question, comment, or general feedback about the site? Leave a comment or send an email to PBH.

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Over at Publius Pundit, they ask the question Is TV Political Analysis Biased? After a lengthy introduction on how the Sunday morning news options are controlled by Democratic operatives, you get to select whether the left or the right control THE MEDIA with the poll results being pretty obvious. Personally, I’m kind of peeved Jew Zionist Zombies Propagandists weren’t included in the choices, but that’s what you get from a ‘biased’ website.

Over at C&L, they have a video created by Blue Gal and a few others deriding how terrible Glenn Beck is. Trust me, I know, but it’s worth reiterating: Glenn Beck is an ignorant asshole.

Others worth checking out:

I was reading a thread at Marginal Revolution on the most overrated novel which devolved into the typical Joyce discussion of his unreadability versus his brilliance. I will not claim to be the forefront of Joyce detractors, but I have become tired of every debate constructed by Joyce supporters who mistake inaccessibility as intellectuality and complexity. For every overeducated Joyce defender, for every literary conversation ruined by the zealotry of Joycians, and for the orthodoxy of rigid literary aesthetics I say, Jihad on James Joyce! May his various prose remain unread while the seagulls flock to Dan Brown island!

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The Article: One of the better articles I’ve read in a while, Johann Hari describes taking the National Review Cruise in Titanic at the New Republic (and via Liberal Avenger).

The Text: I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. “Is he your only child?” I ask. “Yes,” she answers. “Do you have a child back in England?” she asks me. No, I say. Her face darkens. “You’d better start,” she says. “The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they’ll have the whole of Europe.”

I am getting used to such moments, when holiday geniality bleeds into–well, I’m not sure exactly what. I am traveling on a bright-white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, and 500 readers of National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been “an amazing success.” Global warming is not happening. Europe is becoming a new Caliphate. And I have nowhere to run.

“I am very, very impressed with Regent University, when I consider that it was founded just a short while ago. The number of graduates that you have and the amount of influence that you have is really, really terrific.”

Rudy Giuliani to Pat Robertson at Robertson’s barely accredited, non-competitive, tier 4, “college”.

Via Bill in Exile.

TinyRevolution says it best:

Here’s Mark Twain:

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

And here’s George Orwell:

Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time.

Some stats that should make you throw up in your mouth:

This may have been the weirdest pamphlet I’ve been handed in Farragut Square (Washington DC for you out of towners):

How this guy remains a pillar of the supposed ‘Moral Majority’ is beyond me, so I present to you the finest moments of Pat Robertson:

“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.” – Pat on The 700 Club on his idea of foreign policy re: Venezuela’s president

“We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God’s eye and said we’re going to legislate you out of the schools. We’re going to take your commandments from off the courthouse steps in various states. We’re not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We’re not going to let the Bible be read, no prayer in our schools. We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government. And then we say, “Why does this happen?” Well, why it’s happening is that God Almighty is lifting his protection from us.”- Explaining on his 700 Club cable TV program why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had occurred two days earlier

In case you haven’t seen it, the new internet rage (apart from LOLCatz) is PassiveAggressiveNotes.com. It features some of the greatest pics on the internetz and acts as the new Web 2.0 outlet for disgruntled roomates and coworkers, including the following:

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While renovating my friend’s newly purchased house i found a hidden copy of an 1805 hardback origionally printed in 1795. The name of the book is The Spirit of Despotism, written by Vicesimus Knox. The book was written in 1795 when Britain was leading the Coalition of monarchies in a war against the French Revolution, this is Knox’s warning that war against a foreign enemy helps create despotic government at home.

It may actually have been handed to me by God himself or it may have been some other sort of destiny. The book is of the utmost relevance in light of the current shifting political dynamics of our governmental structure as well as the controversial civil rights infringements in the news today relating to the war in Iraq.The book is fragile but intact including handwritten names and prices of several purchasers, as well as a printed list of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Deleware suscribers of the book organized by counties. The list of names includes the name Robert Drummond of Monmouth County; this is the name of my grandfather & father, he resided in the neighboring county to the one my father grew up in, and is likely my ancestor.

The Article: The Cheney Doctrine by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post.

The Text: Let’s admit it: We in the media haven’t had this much fun with Vice President Cheney since he shot a man in the face and neglected, for a while, to tell the boss. And let’s admit: Like that episode, this one doesn’t matter much on its own.

So the vice president’s office wouldn’t report how many documents it had classified, and it wouldn’t let an obscure division of the National Archives look at its security procedures. In bureaucratese, OVP blocked ISOO from conducting an on-site review under Section 5.2 (b)(4) of Executive Order 12958, as amended.

Of all the vice president’s excesses, this one barely registers on the Cheney Scale. Its seismic impact, rather, stems from the combination of so many Cheneyesque attributes: mania for secrecy, resistance to oversight, willingness to twist the law and assertion of unreviewable power.

Go to this stupid link.

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

From Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

The Article: Number of Americans who believe Saddam-9/11 tie rises to 41 percent by Josh Catone in Raw Story.

The Text: A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed “gaps” in America’s knowledge of history and current events.

Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?”

That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004.

Further, a majority of people couldn’t identify Saudia Arabia as the country of origin of most of the 9/11 hijackers, even given the question in multiple choice format. 20% answered Iraq, while 14% believed the hijackers came from Iran.

Prague, Czech Republic:

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The artist of the day is Justice [ myspace ] [ wikipedia ].

They are known for their remixes, and for continuing the French electronic-dance tradition in the footsteps of Daft Punk, who have the same manager.

D.A.N.C.E. (single off their newest album):

Ut oh, someone’s cracked the class code! In case you were blind to the segregated world around you, it’s finally been analyzed: Facebook is for white suburban kids and MySpace is for dirty brown urban youths. I wonder if we can parade them through the streets like in Iran?

In more good news, Elizabeth Edwards said (in public!) ‘I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage’ along with the best comment on the situation on Pandagon:

On MSNBC.com, the headline read “Elizabeth Edwards strays on gay marriage,” as if she were cheating on her husband by having a different opinion. Or as if she were a dog.

My newest addition to Urban Dictionary:

The Sarah Jessica Parker Effect – When an obviously unattractive or disfigured celebrity is heralded by quotidian females as the pinnacle of beauty much to the bemusement of heterosexual males.

Jim: Man, I just had a terrible blind date set up by your girlfriend. She claimed that she was hot, but when I sat down, all I saw was an anorexic harpy with a botched nose job.

Johnny: You’re a victim of the Sarah Jessica Parker effect.

The Article: Martyrs or Traitors in this weeks Economist.

The Text: Arab world has long been criss-crossed by feuds and rivalries. But if there is one point on which Arabs have agreed for more than half a century it is the justice of the Palestinian cause. Much as they may have loathed him in private, all Arab leaders had to show public respect for Yasser Arafat, the emblematic freedom fighter (and terrorist) who as leader of the Fatah movement personified the Palestinian struggle from the 1960s until his death three years ago.

That is why the scenes from Gaza have shocked Arabs far beyond Palestine. Arafat’s portrait was torn off office walls and smashed under the boots of the Islamist fighters of Hamas. The Palestinian flag was hauled down and

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Your Pope is here.

I Pope Ron Paul am stepping forward to take the reins of leadership out of the hands of the ignorant. I will bless you and keep you safe from the scary minds of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Go forth my minions and tell the world of my coming!

As your Pope, I have decrees. Hear them.

1. I have excommunicated the Washington Monument. Good government doesn’t need monuments or Washington
2. Bring me your gold. In the future, gold is the only money, and its value will be regulated by a giant robot brain.
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Civilised man was nearly always able to become master of his environment temporarily. His chief troubles came from his delusions that his temporary mastership was permanent. He thought of himself as “master of the world,” while failing to understand fully the laws of nature.

Man, whether civilised or savage, is a child of nature — he is not the master of nature. He must conform his actions to certain natural laws if he is to maintain his dominance over his environment. When he tries to circumvent the laws of nature, he usually destroys the natural environment that sustains him. And when his environment deteriorates rapidly, his civilisation declines.

Topsoil and Civilization

This is the third installment of our weekly column entitled Ask a Shiite. Our resident Shiite and United Arab Emirates citizen will be fielding questions of a philosophical, physical, and political nature in regards to Shiite Islamic belief and Middle East perception. Interested in asking a question? Send an email to alec.

Question: Can you talk about sex and society in the United Arab Emirates and in Islamic culture in general? What is temporary marriage and how does it function in Islamic law and faith? Is there premarital sex and can you talk about the relationship between sex and religion for Muslims?

Answer: Temporary Marriage is a practice allowed for Muslims when they need to engage with someone from the opposite sex for multiple reasons but for a fixed amount of time and a less ‘connected’ relation.

Come on Ron Paul and your Klan of support; lets go.

On sites such as digg and reddit there is an overwhelming amount of support for Ron Paul that equates to nothing more than a small branch of loud mouth aggressive braggarts that are pushing a libertarian further than he deserves to go. Mr. Paul’s supporters are pushing to drown out any criticism of his campaign. His supporters have waged an online campaign of omission to keep contradictory data out of common use thus implying that Ron Paul is a better candidate than he really is. No matter what rationale is used to point out the flaws of Ron Paul someone always comes back with a justification. If you criticize his position in online polls as false, his fund raising in New Hampshire is brought up. But if you then use fund raising on a national level as your benchmark you’re criticized for turning politics into an exclusionary money race. For Ron Paul supporters there is no acceptable way to bring counterpoints to his campaign. Any attempt to show his campaign as unelectable elicits a petulant howl from all the politico crybabies that want their darling boy to win. This is nothing short of an act of propaganda. Internet trolls spam websites to drown out everything except when Ron Paul belts out another clever sound bite. There is no excuse for a campaign that quietly accepts such behavior from it’s supporters, Ron Paul accepts the actions of an internet gang to protect his image online. By not actively opposing this behavior he supports it.

The Artlcle: Rich, Black, and Flunking by Susan Goldsmith in the East Bay Express.

The Text: The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of 3.45. Other indicators were equally dismal. It made no sense.

When these depressing statistics were published in a high school newspaper in mid-1997, black parents were troubled by the news and upset that the newspaper had exposed the problem in such a public way. Seeking guidance, one parent called a prominent authority on minority academic achievement.

It’s time to face the facts. Liberal democrats could and should wield more influence and power than they are willing to admit. Democrats swept the 2006 elections, and as a voting bloc liberals are better educated and wealthier than most demographics. However there hasn’t been a sweeping change to enlightened benevolence. The voting body ushered in their representatives and sat back content to let someone else do the work. American politics are now officially a spectator sport. The American electorate is willing to let someone else handle their problems.

So they voted Democrat (the other rich white party). Voters still chose career politicians, and still chose to embrace a two party system of passive representation. Honestly what do people expect to have happen? An end to the war? An modern American golden age?

Please.

This is the first installment of Fatwa Friday. After successes on declaring jihad on numerous subjects — Natasha Mitra, American society — we decided to make this a weekly affair. From now on, we will be calling out everyone left and right. Prepare to be jihaded.

As much I hate to do this, I have to call the first Fatwa Friday jihad on myself. A couple of nights ago, I was working out at the gym. There’s a flat screen television in the middle which members of the gym can watch, and at the particular time it happened to be on TBS during a two-hour block of Everybody Loves Raymond. So I’m thinking “great, I have to watch this while I sculpt my body into a Greek God”, because I’m not going to step on the toes of the 50 year old pumping 5 pound weights who’s watching this. Sadly enough, something truly pathetic happened.

The Article: The American Left’s Silly Victim Complex by Matt Taibbi in AdBusters.

The Text: The biggest problem with modern American liberalism may be the word itself. There’s just something about the word, liberal, something about the way it sounds – it just hits the ear wrong. If it were an animal it would be something squirming and hairless, something that burrows maybe, with no eyes and too many legs. No child would bring home a wounded liberal and ask to keep it as a pet. More likely he would step on it, or maybe tie it to a bottle-rocket and shoot it over the railroad tracks.

The word has a chilling effect even on the people who basically agree with most of what it stands for. I myself cringe, involuntarily as it were, every time someone calls me a liberal in public. And I’m not the only one. When I called around for this article about the problems of American liberalism to various colleagues who inhabit the same world that I do – iconoclastic columnists and journalists who’ve had bylines in places like The Nation – they almost universally recoiled in horror from the topic, not wanting to be explicitly linked in public with the idea of the American left.

There’s a new post-hipster, post-modern fashion craze sweeping across our Christian land, and we here at Prose Before Hos are proud to present an exposé on the latest inster fashion trends.

At a House Party:

I added my thoughts to a thread at Tiny Revolution on recent foreign realist op-eds in the WaPo and NYtimes:

As someone who works on this issue full time, I’ll throw in my two cents. There is a certain irony in the fact that the new foreign ‘realism’ play of the day is about disengaging from the Abbas-centric, West Bank only plan the West is undergoing, while the typical Palestinian & Arab voice are distinctly against both groups. And I’m not speaking in uncertain terms of our view of political disconnect (apathy and laying around stoned, shooting the breeze about political hegemony continued by certain social groups), but serious anger at both Fatah and Hamas. At Fatah for being a bunch of worthless old fucks who turning a Palestine-first movement into a kleptocracy, and Hamas for hijacking Palestinian nationalism and turning into a serious derka-derka jihad idiocracy. That latter view was shared by the cosmopolitan Jerusalemites in the 90’s and has spread to most middle-class Palestinians and Arabs since. Common man resentment has also really surfaced against Hamas for making things worse (if possible) in the Palestinian territories by turning some vendetta killings into a geographical political coup. If you don’t believe me, there are oodles of articles and videos for your viewing pleasure of recent mass protests in Gaza City and Ramallah against the unity government. My favorite video coincidentally to come out of all of this was a Gaza resident chasing an automatic-rifle touting Hamas militant down a street with his shoe.

“In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man. If only there were more and more wealth, everything else, it is thought, would fall into place. Money is considered to be all-powerful; if it could not actually buy non-material values, such as justice, harmony, beauty, or even health, it could circumvent the need for them or compensate for their loss. The development of production and the acquisition of wealth have thus become the highest goals of the modern world in relation to which all other goals, no matter how much lip-service may still be paid to them, have come to take second place. The highest goals require no justification; all secondary goals have finally to justify themselves in terms of the service their attainment renders to the attainment of the highest.”

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

The Article: Whither Palestine? by Daoud Kuttab in the American Prospect.

The Text: Since 1967, and before, the aspirations of Palestinians to liberty and independence have repeatedly hit one snag after another. There is plenty of room to place the blame on Palestinians themselves, Arabs, and the international community. Palestinians have failed to measure accurately their own powers in comparison to the Israelis. The Arab states gave plenty of lip service to the Palestinian cause and the international community spent more on weapons to the region rather than efforts to encourage all sides to a peaceful resolution.

But while Palestinians and others could have done more to try to enable their own independence, the biggest single power that actually was causing the continuation of the occupation was Israel. As an occupying power with military control over the land, Israel has given lip service to peace but in reality hesitated in ending its illegal occupation. Despite their legal and political spin, this Israeli refusal to leave the occupied territories was in direct contravention to what the preamble to the Security Council Resolution 242 termed the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”

This isn’t in my usual style to write a serious rant where my ‘truthiness’ isn’t slathered with a thick layer of disdain and sarcasm. But here goes:

I am really fed up with the idea that if you discuss the origins of 9/11, you are somehow a coward, not a patriot, not an American, a terrorist sympathizer, or somewhere else between bottom feeding scum and social pariah who thinks too much for one’s own good. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Ron Paul Phenomena and I didn’t watch the majority of the Republican debate. In fact, I only was able to watch the part of the debate with the most significance — where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani exchange words over the origins of (Watch the exchange and read a more extensive briefing of the exchange at the Nation).

Now, the basis of the argument that occurred is the following: Ron Paul had

From Salon: Now comes a paper by two European economists arguing that globalization is also responsible for astonishing price drops for hard drugs over the past two decades… At first glance, the laws of supply and demand seem to be seriously out of whack. Since 1990, trends in the worldwide supply and demand for cocaine and heroin have been more or less flat, but prices have dropped 50 to 80 percent. In “Globalization and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs,” Claudia Costa Storti and Paul de Grauwe explain: The “intermediation margin” — the difference between producer prices and retail prices, has collapsed. The cost of getting the product from Afghanistan or Colombia to New York or London has plunged.

And you can thank the awesome efficiency of global markets for that:

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Four years of hot XXX American Occupation, and those damn brown people still can’t get it right! Oh jeez louise:

Iraq has emerged as the world’s second most unstable country, behind Sudan, more than four years after President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.

The 2007 Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military indicators. Iraq ranked fourth last year.

Yesterday was not a good day for Rudy Giuliani. Apart from being exposed as part vampire, A report says he was kicked off the Iraq Study Group for poor attendance and his South Carolina finance chair was caught with a pound of cocaine. Now, call me crazy, but when I’m on a coke binge, the last thing I want to do is be around a bunch of uptight white fucks talking about Iraq. Actually, when I’m on a coke binge, I like to be in the darkness of a strip club backroom with the majority of my torso exposed and a pair of sunglasses put on sideways. But that’s just me.

Anyway, to those who says socialism doesn’t work:

I am sick and tired of reading ignorant people who’ve never read anything Marx or Engels wrote (except possibly the Communist Manifesto) baselessly claim that ’socialism doesn’t work’.

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Via Pandagon, the oddly grown up version of Lebron-bron, Bishop Harry Jackson, is rallying the forces of darkness (and by darkness, I mean literal armies of black Jesus-slaves) to rise up against the hate crime legislation that includes gay-bashing. Because, in his words, why do gays hate religious freedom:

Gay activists around the country are getting nervous that they are about to experience an embarrassing political setback. Instead of amending the hate crimes legislation that protects churches in a substantive way, they are simply crying out in a louder, more threatening manner. Gay advocates are not looking for fairness; they are looking for an upper hand.

…Both gays and blacks should get justice in America, but we cannot allow either group to receive special privileges at the expense of another group of Americans. If the loopholes in this legislation are not closed, Christians and Bible-teaching churches could become victims of a strange brand of reverse discrimination. These actions are tantamount to the gay community saying, “Freedom for me, but bondage for you.” This attitude is just not consistent with America’s ideals.

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From a post on Angry 365 Days a Year about a recently FDA approved fat-blocker (aka weight reducer) super pill that some interesting side effects:

But here’s the most important thing the drug does: it makes you shit oil. Worse, it makes you shit your pants. With oil. This is not the ravings of some fringe conspiracy group, this is what the company tells you itself on its website. Buy our drug if you want to lose weight. Oh, by the way, you’ll end up shitting your pants.

The Article: Muslim face of the US Marines by Matthew Wells in the BBC News documents the views and experience of the only Muslim chaplain in the US Marine Corps.

The Text: Navy Lieutenant Commander Abuhena Saifulislam welcomes everyone with a broad smile and prefers to be called “Chaplain Saif”.

He is the only Muslim chaplain in the elite US Marine Corps, and one of only two in the US Navy overall.

It is a classic immigrant’s tale. He arrived in America from Bangladesh at the end of the 1980s, with a masters degree in business and every intention to serve Wall Street, not his newly adopted country.

Hey assholes,

Friend me on myspace and listen to my music. I finished recording a new song called The Hours.

xoxo
Kit

And it comes from the commentators at ByronCrawford on an article about transexuals:

honey, i’ve worked in the beauty parlor and nail salon business for over 20 years and the most homophobic people i’ve met are these black people from the south and their race hustling homophobic preachers who have illegitimate children many of them halfrican children and these pig shits are the biggest homophobes who scapegoat gays so straight white people have someone to discriminate against other than niggers or halfricans.

halfricans are always bashing gays to make themselves look good to white people and so that white people laugh at gays and not at halfricans.

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The Article: The Turkish Threat to World Peace by Ahmet Altan in the Spiegel. In Turkey, the military and the government are engaged in an all-out struggle for power. The country is deeply divided, and decidedly unstable. Turkish writer Ahmet Altan describes his country’s paradoxes and warns of the potentially dire consequences.

The Text: Turkey is moving toward a great — and possibly final — settling of accounts. But it is not the feared divisions of race or religion which are at play here. The country is crippled by a more fundamental and dangerous divide. The “cultural divide” reigning throughout the Republican years has become very deep indeed.

The future of Turkey is in the balance: Secularists and Islamicists are battling for influence in Asia Minor. Currently in Turkey, there is, on the one hand, a great mass of people who leave their shoes at the door before entering the house; whose women cover their heads; whose men go out in the street in pajamas; whose teenage boys frequent coffeehouses while girls live under a completely repressive rule; people whose homes are lit with cheap florescent bulbs; who enjoy a type of music somewhere between folk and arabesque; who have perhaps never read a book, never danced, never been to a restaurant as husband and wife, never gone to the theater; who have little education and profess strong religious beliefs.

The Presidential Forum on Faith, Values, and Poverty, also known as the Democratic candidates scratching each others eyes out to appear more religious for that hot evangelical/liberal cross-section of the population (and what cross-section is that, by the way? Probably entirely made up of people who masturbate to Emerson books). Fuck, isn’t this the 21st century? I’m tired of the requirement for national politicians to believe in superheroes from outer space just to appease the illiterate electorate. I expect my leaders to act like leaders, instead of paupers begging for handouts from the Catholic Church:

Quote of the day:

We always find it funny that you can use sex to sell jewelry and cars, but you can’t use sex to sell condoms.

And quote of the day, part 2:

A politically connected lawyer — wearing nothing but glasses, socks and a hands-free headset — masturbated in front of two women at a shopping center, police said.

Coming Anarchy has the latest article by Robert Kaplan called Forgetting the Obvious. It deals with the theme of being able to successfully wage wars in opulant societies that may have lost their will to fight, even in the face of something worthwhile. In his point of view, this is America right now vs the Islamic Jihadist threat. My only problem with this piece is he gets from point A to point B, but there is a lot of inbetween. The Last Two Big Wars have been utter disasters for the United States, and I think the citizenry reflects this. This is not only a case of social stagnation or the misdirection of the moral compass but the fact that recent experience with war has not been positive for America. In fact, each passing day in Iraq reminds me (and others I imagine) of our fantastic end in Vietnam high-tailing it out of there with our tail between our legs.

I served my country for two years. I did not join the military, and I never saw combat; I was part of a domestic program devoted to improving communities one person at a time. I am an AmeriCorps alumnus. Since George W. Bush took office since 2001, he has debilitated the AmeriCorps program, culminating in the slashing of 25 million dollars from AmeriCorps in the 2007 budget.

The AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps is a federal agency that has been in existence since 1993, originally part of the 1000 points of light. It was met with wide bi-partisan support as a program of national service for those that did not follow the military route of service. The program received gushing support during the Clinton administration, and promises of future support from the current president early in his administration, even taking the time for a photo opportunity near Naples Florida.

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After 5 Years In U.S., Terrorist Cell Too Complacent To Carry Out Attack:

Five years after settling in southern California and trying to blend into American society, a six-man terrorist cell connected to the militant Islamist organization Army of Martyrs has reportedly grown too complacent to conduct its suicide mission, an attack on the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Three of the six terrorists spend an afternoon together watching an America’s Next Top Model marathon.

According to cell leader and boat owner Jameel al-Sharif, the potentially devastating operation, which involves breaching the station’s reactor core and triggering a meltdown that could rival the Chernobyl disaster, “can wait.”

Prejudices about the PBH staff aside, I consider myself a feminist. There are a lot of feminist sites to follow, but I’m probably the biggest fan of Feministing (some would say a little too much of a fan). Anyway, a recent article on Feministing dealt with the tender subject of what to call VAGINAS with one of the funnier posts and proceeding comments I’ve seen in a long time that ended up centering on the appropriate ways to refer to male and female genitalia:

I swear, I just saw the most offensive commercial about vaginas ever. I was watching F/X, and all of a sudden a Vagisil ad comes on with a woman’s voice over talking about how much she hates it when she has itching “down there.” (Yes, she actually said “down there.”)

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It was the Spring of 2005 and having just graduated from college, I was doing my first work abroad as an intern with the US State Department. A Romanian journalist was recently beheaded in Iraq, and worse, a US marine had just killed a Romanian pop star by bull-dozing his car while driving drunk. I was on my way to my first day of work and had to take the subway to the embassy. Much to my bemusement, this was the subway car that stopped directly in front of me on the underground platform:

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The Article: The Mad Blogger by Ben Westhoff in the River Front Times about blogger Byron Crawford.

The Text: Kanye West may have become a household name when he lamented, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during the Hurricane Katrina debacle, but he was already one of the most critically feted rappers of all time. His debut album, 2004’s The College Dropout, topped numerous year-end polls and sold nearly three million copies. In an August cover story, Time magazine proclaimed him “the smartest man in pop music.”

All of this has Byron Crawford seething. “[West's] rapping skills are just this side of horrible, maybe half-a-notch above P. Diddy,” he says.