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America the Last

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Why is it the America has to be the last country to adopt modern practices sometimes? As per my earlier arguments, we have a long way to go until we are a truly great country. A long, long long way. Aside from the violence, blood for oil, persecution of minorities, state-sanctioned murders, terrible treatment of the poor and rejection of freedom, America is also very far behind when it comes to currency.

A US federal appeals court upheld a ruling that having all dollar notes the same size and texture was unacceptable.

The judges voted two to one to reject the government’s claim that changing note sizes would be too expensive. “A large majority of other currency systems have accommodated the visually impaired, and the secretary does not explain why US currency should be any different,” Judge Judith Rogers wrote in the court’s opinion.

Good, we’re moving along then. Every foreign country I have ever been to; China, Mongolia, Vietnam, France, Spain, England etc… have different sized currency, for as long as I can remember. Why are we always the last to adopt modern practices?

Baby steps.

-Enjoy.

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Posted in Business, Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

Murderers set free

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Police should be held accountable for their actions. They cannot be above the law, for enforcing laws that you don’t abide by yourself is hypocritical. Sean Bell was gunned down last year by three police officers who took oaths to serve and protect. Instead, they took human life. Mr. Bell was unarmed, and so were his friends in his car. The three officers opened fire on the car killing Bell and injuring his two friends. One officer emptied his clip, loaded a new clip, and emptied that one as well.

NEW YORK (AP) — Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

The American justice system is such that those who have enough money and/or popularity are less punishable. These three officers had a government organization and racism on their side. Three young black men at a seedy stripper club in Queens don’t seem to posses enough credibility to be considered equal in the eyes of the law. The police are always right. When they fired over 40 shots into an African emigrant pulling out his wallet to show police his I.D. in 1999, their actions were considered justifiable. Today, police brutatlity was deemed justified once more. The reason? The victims couldn’t defend themselves properly. Not in a court of law. Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper got away with murder today. How many people are the NYPD allowed to kill before justice is served? How much power can they wield? How many lives and families can they ruin? If you believe in hell, then we know where these people go.

With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again, as the supervisor sought cover.

The truth emerged when the smoke cleared: There was no weapon inside Bell’s blood-splattered car.

At least they lost their jobs and their acceptance in their community… I hope they don’t get to keep their pension.

Perhaps their conscious will catch up with them one day.

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Posted in Law | 6 Comments »

On the path to glory

Friday, December 14th, 2007

America is good, but it is not great. With the exception of Canada and a few European countries, America remains one of the more free places in the world. Progressive movements and civil liberties bring us closer to glory, they bring us closer to being a great country.

The more liberal a country becomes, the closer to freedom it gets. Even conservatives get their way. The wonderful thing about the progressive liberal ideology is that it doesn’t RESTRICT things like the right-wing conservative ideology, it simply opens doors. In a liberal country, one can be conservative. In a conservative country, one cannot be liberal. Liberals find that there is nothing more important that the ability to share one’s opinion and to make choices for one’s self. The conservative are not so much for this.

One of the things America suffers from is mass stupidity. People are generally very poorly educated here, and as a result don’t ever learn to question things. The reason I am writing this is about one of those things.

The death penalty remains one of those stupid things. We are the only non-developing nation that still adheres to this barbaric ritual. I have written about his before, and provided the evidence that leads us to the conclusion that the death penalty has no benefit on society. It is not economically beneficial, it does not deter crime, and it doesn’t fit any moral standards that we set up elsewhere. Especially with the religious who would rather save the potential life of a group of cells than save a man dying of ALS.

But we are on the path to glory.

New Jersey has become the first US state to formally abolish the death penalty. The Democrat-controlled state assembly in Trenton voted 44-36 to scrap capital punishment, and replace it with life in prison without hope of parole. The speaker of the House, Democrat Joseph Roberts Jnr, said it was time for a change:”Today, I believe, sends a signal to all of America. We are telling states you can indeed repeal the death penalty.”

Who would have thought New Jersey would be a leader on the path to glory. The day when every state has abolished the death penalty is the day we achieve a higher rank amongst the great nations of this world. Our goal should not be the most powerful nation, or the most frightening, or the most influential, but to be the most free and the most happy. This can only occur from riding ourselves of laws or tenets that are based upon ideas without evidence, and if we can rid ourselves of blatant contradiction of morality and racism.

Thirteen other American states refuse to enforce the death penalty, but New Jersey is the first to ban it since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

I’m not going to explain again what the problems are with the death penalty, you may read my older posts on the subject for more information, evidence, and logical reasoning. To this day, no one has been able to challenge the arguments I put forth in those posts. To simply put it, once you look at the evidence and consider the morality behind it, the death penalty has no place in a modern society. It sticks out like a sore thumb. We have the ability to decode massive amounts of data from machines floating in space, but we can’t get rid of a ritual that is older than human history itself?

Enjoy.

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Posted in Law | 5 Comments »

Ignorance with Wings Part 4 ::embryonic stem cells::

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Embryonic stem cells:

ES cells are pluripotent. This means they are able to differentiate into all derivatives of the three primary germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm. These include each of the more than 220 cell types in the adult body. Pluripotency distinguishes ES cells from multipotent progenitor cells found in the adult; these only form a limited number of cell types.

I’m sure you know what this means. ES cells have a wondrous potential to treat or even cure some very debilitating, paralyzing, or fatal diseases and conditions. At this moment, there are millions of men, women and children who are alive and breathing that suffer from one of a number of these diseases. Their lives are torturous, painful, and barely worth living. It seems rather ridiculous then that we don’t fund or expand our research with embryonic stem cells. It fact, it is extremely ridiculous.

The uncritical religious, who’s decisions and beliefs require faith (a principle that has no evidence to back it up) to exist, do everything they can to stop embryonic stem cell research. Why, you ask? The reason is surprisingly absurd.

The religious think that life begins at some point before the embryo, and that destroying an embryo for the stem cells is killing a life. These very same people will turn around and fully support the death penalty keep in mind! For some reason, they are obsessed with controlling people and their choices, and therefor wish to remain on the side of the argument that lacks reason and evidence.

Let us consider some facts, shall we?

1) Embryos consist of 50 to 150 cells IN TOTAL. They are nothing but a collection of microscopic cells that you could count with your eye. At this stage, the embryo is known as a blastocyte, which forms 4 to 5 days after fertilization. In fact, some scientists don’t consider a blastocyte and embryo. You have to understand that there is NO human qualities in a blastocyte. It is literally a simple collection of cells that can be counted by the human eye. 2) Embryos abort naturally ALL THE TIME. In fact, more than half of all embryos die naturally. Embryo destruction is actually the norm, rather than the exception. So that puts an enormous hole in the religious or faith-based idea that embryos are lives that should not be knowingly killed. 220 million embryos die a year naturally, that is more than any other cause of death that we know of. Keep in mind that; Cancer, in all its forms, kills 7.6 million people per year, In six years, the Second World War killed around 60 million people…

We don’t defend an embryo’s right to free speech, because it cannot speak, in fact, it cannot do anything. It has no neurological system, no consciousness, no thoughts, no mind, no brain… no nothing. Yet some would ascribe more rights to it than a black man on death row. This is the ultimate contradiction of the religious right in the United States. Infuriatingly stupid, isn’t it?

There are certain moral questions that are common, that test one’s true morals. For example, consider the train that is flying out of control at break neck speeds. If it continues on its current track, it will fly off of a cliff a la Back to the Future Part III and kill everyone on board; men, women, children… embryos. But you are standing at a switch on the track, and you can switch the track to safely divert the train away from the cliff, however, there is a man tied to the diverted track. If you flip the switch, you kill the one man tied to the track but save the hundreds of passengers on board.

This is not meant to be an easy decision, but no one would call you immoral if you were to flip the switch.

The point is, we have millions of people today who are alive, breathing, have nervous systems, thoughts, dreams, the right to free speech and so on, who suffer and are at risk of death. Trying to save the life of a group of cells over these living breathing human beings is like not switching the track to save the one man tied to the diverted track. In fact, it is much worse. It is as if instead of another man tied to the track, it was a cockroach, and you saved the roach at the expense of everyone on the train.

So how come we don’t consider all 220 million naturally destroyed embryos loss of human life? Because it isn’t loss of human life. You cannot die if you were never born.

If Christians really cared about the lives of children, we’d see a stronger push for decreasing infant mortality in developing worlds. But we don’t see that. We see anti-homosexual bills, sodomy laws, and fighting Islam.

Obviously the potential for life is not the same as life itself, because then every time we wore a condom, every time we used spermacide, every time we went to the sperm bank, every time we masturbated, we would be killing hundreds of millions of people. Does this sound right to you? No. Of course not. An embryo is not a life, a zygote is not a life, a fetus is not a life. Potential life is not life, hence the word “potential”. You don’t put people in jail before they commit the crime.

But MisterE, why not cut the controversy and just stick with adult stem cells? Well, adult stem cells may not have the potential the embryonic stem cells have. We of course need to do more research on this, but science is under the impression at the moment that adult stem cells are unlikely to be nearly as useful as embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are obtained from human embryos. They have the capacity to turn into any cell type in the body. Adult stem cells have been found in some mature human tissues, including the brain and bone marrow. There is a scientific debate over whether their ability to become specialized is limited to their tissue of origin, or whether they can turn into other types of tissue.

Adult stem cells have proven their value to medicine. For example, bone marrow transplants are routinely used to treat some cancers and blood diseases. But it’s unlikely that bone marrow stem cells can replace all of the different types of cells that are damaged by disease. Embryonic stem cells are the only ones that are likely to do that.

You have to understand that science does not recognize most, if any religious tenants as fact. But science is where we get our medicine, our help, our computers and advancements and so on… so its obviously the area of reality that we can be sure is real. We have no scientific definition for a human life, and obviously, it has to start somewhere. Since ethereal ideas such as spirits and life creation by a deity are extremely unlikely, we avoid them as explanations. To define a human life, we can only turn to science for the answer, and if science doesn’t have an answer then there may be no answer.

If you look at it purely from a scientific and natural perspective, we are mammals. We are simply organisms that live on this planet that have evolved some very fancy brains. However, a mammal can only live when separated from its chromosomal donor, physiologically. As long as it is a part of the mother, it cannot survive as its own entity, and perhaps remains simply a part of the mother. A human fetus doesn’t develop a nervous system and a brain-stem until very late in the game, and even then it is uncertain whether or not they can comprehend or understand pain, for they are not yet alive. They are being made, like bread in an oven. The question can then become: “Does life start when consciousness starts”? Again, science does not yet have a theory that tells us the precise moment consciousness begins. It is entirely feasible that someday we may find that moment, for it is becoming increasingly clear that consciousness is merely the result of incomprehensible numbers of neural connections in our brains. Without neural connections like that, are we conscious? Are apes conscious? Are cockroaches conscious?

These are all very interesting questions that science may or may not some day answer (and will adhere to script scientific scrutiny so it can be considered fact, unlike religious tenants that can withstand no scrutiny and have no supporting evidence). In the meantime, we are sure (to a statistically significant degree) that an embryo cannot feel pain, is not a human life, and should not be considered so over the well beings and mortality of those we KNOW to be alive.

Enjoy.

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Posted in Family and Society, Health, Law, Politics, Religion, Science | 1 Comment »

Ignorance with Wings PART 2 ::sex::

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

If you’ve ever had sex, then you know it can be one of the greatest experiences on Earth; better than chocolate, videogames, and even certain episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation (I know… ridiculous). I know since I became sexually active in High School, I’ve had a wonderful time, and I feel that I’ve grown from it (no pun intended).

Unfortunately, I wish I could maintain a light-hearted air about sex with this post, but I cannot. For there are atrocities of sex perpetrated by the uncritical and faithfully religious, covering a broad spectrum from condemning pre-martial sex to stoning your daughter because she was raped.

Abrahamic religion has been against sex (and therefor against human life) for its entire history from what we can tell. Influencing generation after generation of lemmings to fear it and abstain from its wonders. Like drugs, a righteous orgasm can be and has been described as a spiritual experience, and it is for that reason that the religious condemn it. How dare you know pleasures greater than accepting Jesus into your heart. Those who control others know that accepting Jesus into your heart amounts to no amount of pleasure when compared to fornicating with two hotties in your college dorm room. They know that if they don’t condemn it forcefully, they will lose converts and lose their control over them. But why? Why do millions of people remain so confused and tortured by their uncritical faith-based lives? Because they know no other.

Let us explore how this is dangerous. Why don’t we start with the tamer side of things. In America, we have a serious lack of critical thinking. Most people here believe in things without evidence, without rationality, and without logic. This is very dangerous for a number of reasons, but when you focus on sex, you can see how dangerous faith really is. You see, faith is simply a word used by those who can’t rationally explain their feelings or judgments. When evidence and logic are absent, one has to either admit they are probably wrong or play the faith card, which gives them the license to believe whatever they want without evidence. When it comes to sex, these people believe that doing it before you are married is somehow bad or harmful. In additional, these very same people believe that certain forms of sex are just plain wrong, i.e. anal sex, oral sex, group sex, etc…

Smarter people ignore such tenants on the grounds that there is no evidence to these claims. Smarter people know that faith is crap in this situation, at least. To date there have been NO studies that suggest that anal sex is bad, wrong, or harmful to anyone. The same holds true for pre-marital sex, oral sex, kinky sex, BDSM, group sex or masturbation. So the question remains, why ban, shun, or insist on denying these pleasures to people who wish to seek them? The answer is that there is no good reason, so one must play the faith card. One will quote from an antiquated text that is poorly translated and contradictory, one will invent some kind of wishy-washy moral rule or law that they insist is omnipresent but is really just a bunch of bullshit, and one will simply invoke the irrational faith-based religion that they subscribe to.

Let me make it clear that I am NOT SAYING THAT every example of the usage or invoking of faith is dangerous or harmful, I’m simply focusing on sex for now.

Let us do what the religious hate most and look at facts: 1)Human beings are sexual 2)The human brain derives enormous amounts of pleasure from sexual contact 3)Sexual attraction is different for every person 4)Marriage is a human-created entity (Apes don’t get married) 5)Without sex, nobody would be here 6)Sex is beneficial to your health, if safe

I can hear the straw-man and red herring arguments blasting from the religious already: “But STDs kill people, and women shouldn’t have sex with more than one man in their life, and teens having sex is bad, and…” yada yada yada.

The reason why teen pregnancy and STDs remain prevalent is because of lack of education regarding sex. We have found that the more educated about sex people are, the lower the incident of abortion and STDs. It makes sense. If you are taught very frankly about sex, about how to have it safely, you will be less likely to spread STDs, more likely to control urges and hormones, and more likely to be safe and careful. This is true with anything in life. The more you know about something, the less mistakes you make!

Therefor, the problems we face are actually CAUSED by the religious who cite them so frequently when arguing against sex. They create the taboo and the abstinence only education, which in turn creates uneducated kids, which in turn creates abortions, teen pregnancies, and the spread of STDs, which in turn pisses off more religious people who in turn create MORE taboo and MORE pushes for abstinence only education.

Let us also not kid ourselves. Anti-sodomy laws are in place expressly for the purposes of making homosexuality illegal. Now, we know that NO ONE obeys these laws because they aren’t respectable laws. They are a travesty and direct threat to the very idea of a free country. But we know that Christians use faith to explain away their discomfort with homosexuals. Their uneducated and irrational fears include a fear of conversion by gays (they recruit straights to become gay) and not having children. Aside from the FACT that many straight couples either choose not to or can’t have children, the idea that homosexuality is wrong because they can’t produce children is seriously lacking in any merit. Similarly, the idea that gays recruit others to be gay is even more ridiculous. Intelligent people actually laugh at the less reasoned, under-educated religious who think this.

This is bad, wrong, and has got to stop. When we now turn to the more severe side of things, we see this very same dogmatic approach to sex by the uncritical and the religious and the results are much worse. People are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Small girls are being stoned to death by family, men in Africa are being restricted from access to condoms, women in the middle east are being treated like breeding machines instead of human beings, and teenage girls are having their genitals mutilated. Does ANY of this sound good, beneficial towards society or bettering of humankind? Fuck no!

President Bush cut off funding to any overseas family-planning group that provides INFORMATION on abortion. His actions, according to the New York Times “has effectively stopped condom provision to 16 countries and reduced it in 13 others, including some with the world’s highest rates of AIDS infection.” One third of the U.S. government’s AIDS prevention fund was wasted and squandered on abstinence-only education … as a result millions of people will die. If you have any sensibility in you, any interest in human kind, any kind or caring feelings; this should make you furious. Here we have tenants and claims WITH NO EVIDENCE ruining the world… literally. Christianity continues to kill people, just like Islam does with the promise of 49 virgins in heaven after slaying the non-believers. Go to the website I linked above and see what the effects have been. Maybe, if you supported this before or continue to support this now, after reading FACTS and EVIDENCE, you’ll change your mind. If not, then you need serious help.

In Islam, an adulterous wife or a raped girl are to be punished by death. This is another terrible consequence of the religious fear of sex. Sex has become so shunned and terrible that its a wonder any human beings remain. It doesn’t matter if you are Christian and condemn the act of stoning your 15 year old daughter for being raped, the point is that the same uncritical faith or untested ‘theories’ about reality that include how to treat sex is at play.

In Africa, Christians incorrectly believe that abstinence-only education will work in the prevention of AIDS. Christians prove their inability to regard evidence by ignoring the fact that this increases the prevelance of AIDS. Maybe they know this and they don’t care, maybe they want black men to die of AIDS, I can’t say WITHOUT EVIDENCE.

People will always have sex, no matter what. It is a biological function, a basic human need, and something that is stupid to ignore. For ignoring our sexual urges is ignoring the very thing that makes us human. In general, humans will not abstain from sex, no matter how many nights you stay up thinking about other people’s private lives, so the best and logical thing to do would be to work with the flow, not against it. We improve sexual education, improve condom distribution, increase funding for family planning, abolish abstinence-only education, have all contraception covered on medical insurance (including birth control and the morning after pill), and rid ourselves of irrational faith and belief without evidence.

Enjoy.

Posted in Health, Law, Religion | 11 Comments »

Ignorance with Wings PART 1 ::drugs::

Friday, November 30th, 2007

The time has come to outline the dangers and regression that theology presents to us, has presented to us, and will continue to present to us lest we get wiser.

Part one of this glorious series is about drugs, moreover, substances that are illegal. Marijuana is a leaf that grows naturally from the ground, and has properties that are both spiritual and medicinal. Theology and religion have infested the laws of the United States since the beginning. Some would argue that it is impossible to separate ‘morally right’ from Christianity… but those people would be wrong.

Marijuana is illegal, and in fact, in some states a felony. It would be nice to think that the reason the federal government keeps pot growers in jail for their entire lives is for the greater good, to save people from harm or danger. But the fact that cigarettes and alcohol are legal proves that that isn’t so. To date, marijuana has been known to cause zero deaths, while alcohol has NO approved medicinal use, has an easily achievable lethal dose, causes thousands of automobile related deaths alone, and can cause massive liver and heart failures. Alcohol is responsible for 100,000 deaths a year, and cigarettes are responsible for even more. In fact, it is more dangerous to drive a car, fly in an airplane, or be a park ranger than it is to use marijuana.

So why the law? Because it is a sin. Believe it or not, religious people stay awake at night concerning themselves with what you do in your own home. Its about sin! We punish sinners. There are simply certain forms of pleasures that Americans are not allowed to pursue because less than intelligent people believe them to be sinful. You see, God is all knowing and all seeing, so your privacy is just a false sense of security. The religious believe this, so they don’t feel that you deserve to be responsible for yourself. It is sheer madness! Anti-sodomy laws, anti-oral sex laws… all still valid in many states.

It doesn’t matter what logical science says about these things. Pre-marital sex has no known negative effect on humans or societies, yet some wish to concern themselves with the ’sin’ of others. Often, the harder you push, the more someone will push you back, its a basic law of Newtonian physics. The more you tell kids that sex is wrong unless ordained by a flying omnipotent being, the more they’ll want to do it, the more they will do it, and the more unwanted pregnancies due to improper education there will be. But that is for another part to this series.

More people are imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses in the United States than are incarcerated, for any reason, in all of Western Europe (which has a larger population than the U.S.). We spend $20 billion dollars a year on this. (ONDCP Drug Data Summary March 2003). Does this seem worth it? Aren’t there Islamic extremists planning our demise because of our heathen religious beliefs? None of this makes sense really. But that is theology: non-sensible, illogical, emotional thinking. The real problem is pleasure. We all know that Christians don’t get along with pleasure very well. The fact that these drugs cause more pleasure per gram of drug than say alcohol or cigarettes is why they remain illegal. As Sam Harris put it in his book The End of Faith, “When one looks at our drug laws-indeed, at our vice laws altogether-the only organizing principle that appears to make sense of them is that anything which might radically eclipse prayer or procreative sexuality as a source of pleasure has been outlawed. In particular, any drug…to which spiritual or religious significant has been ascribed by its users has been prohibited. Concerns about the health of our citizens, or about their productivity, are red herrings in this debate, as the legality of alcohol and cigarettes attests”.

Enjoy.

Posted in Law | 2 Comments »

NYPD Violence, I saw it happen

Monday, August 14th, 2006

Remember my post about the NYPD, and how I wonder about the integrity of these officers? Well, this weekend I was getting off the subway at a stop in Brooklyn to find about 8 police officers standing around. The were forming a semi circle around this young black male who was up against the bars at the entrance to the subway. His friends were standing around behind the cops. I have no idea what was going on so I am not going to presume anything, I just want to tell you what I saw.

Someone made the decision to arrest the young kid, so one large officer grabbed his arm and pretty violently turned him around and slammed him against the bars. To me, it seemed that this kid was being calm when the police officer did this. Once he was against the bars, the kid started to struggle and resist, obviously trying to free himself I suppose. A second large officer joined in and the two police slammed the kid down onto the hard concrete floor so hard that I cringed. There was a loud popping sound that just didn’t sound good at all. The kid on the ground starting coughing and joking, and eventually vomited from his injuries. This disturbed me.

Ever since I can remember I hated seeing violence in real life. It always disturbed me on very deep levels.

The incident I saw wasn’t police brutality per se, but it was unusually violent. That kid could have been seriously injured and I’m not sure the cops care. These NYPD just don’t strike me as poised, well trained, professional individuals. They are more like a gang, recruited off the streets and given a gun. Does anyone have any insight into this? Why are there so many cops in New York, do they just scoop them off the street? Why don’t they instill confidence in you like officers from other cities or counties? Is it the way they walk? Talk? Stare and whistle at girls?

I went to the NYPD website and looked up some of the restrictions and what not for being a cop in NYC.

 

Are there any education requirements to be appointed as a NYC Police Officer?

Yes, on or before the date of hire, a candidate must have successfully completed:

  • 60 college credits with a 2.0 G.P.A. from an accredited college or university

    • OR

  • 2 years of full-time active military service in the United States Armed Forces with an honorable discharge and have a high school diploma or it’s equivalent.
  •  

This is from the frequently asked questions by the way. I don’t think doing well academically has anything to do with how smart you are or how well you treat fellow human beings. It does, however, show how good at procedural obligations you are, how responsible you are, maybe how reliable you are… 2.0 is a pretty low G.P.A. You could get all Cs in college and still be eligible. I don’t know, there are plenty of brilliant people who would make terrible cops.

The New York Alliance against Sexual Assault did a research project on the NYPD and found that %17 of all victims had a negative experience with an officer. That isn’t so bad. And from what I understand is that Rudolph cleaned up NYC a lot, and that it used to be a lot more dangerous than it is now. He did this by recruiting more police officers? My concern is that in doing so, he lowered the standards. Sure reported crime rates are down, but I feel like professionalism is down as well. Again, cops should NOT be whistling at girls, its really low brow, not exactly their motto. Now I’m not going to get into the obvious issues like the killing of Diallo by police in 1999, because that is just the nature of having a huge group of people with guns with too much authority. I don’t know.

-Enjoy.

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Posted in Law | 3 Comments »

Good landlords

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Sorry I didn’t post anything yesterday, I was busier than Jesus Christ during his formative years. Most importantly, I signed a lease to a new apartment, for the first time without a guarantor.

In an usual fashion, the landlord had everyone who was signing a lease for September 1st meet at his office, to have a discussion. He talked about how he bought these buildings in less than excellent neighborhoods, and was putting professionals in them and fixing the buildings. He also said that his policy is honesty, which I smirked at at first. But then, he went right on to discuss all the problems the relevant buildings were facing. He said there was nothing that bad with mine, except that people were throwing trash out their window and he’s working to get rid of them. But I felt bad for these three girls who were moving into a building that, and I quote the landlord "Is full of drugs". He said there is a major drug problem in the building and he’s working to get rid of it.

Honesty. I liked it, he wasn’t bullshitting anyone, and he was very friendly. Another thing I should mention, and is the reason I’m bringing this up, is that the landlord was Jewish (he wore a Yarmulke). For some reason, and maybe its wrong that I felt this way, him being Jewish made me feel like I could trust him. Maybe its because I’m a jew, maybe not, but I can’t decide if that was a feeling I shouldn’t have had.

It some ways, its discrimination, but positive discrimination. Like… positive racism. If I were to say that black people are just better at something than everyone else, its a racist remark, but its a positive one. Doesn’t mean its right or okay. Lots of people think that Jews are naturally better with money, not that they are deficient in any other area, but that they just have natural inclinations to be better at it. This is a racist comment… but its a positive one.

So I’m not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, its drawing attention to a perceived difference based on race, on the other, its complimenting a race rather than putting it down. Help me, what do you think?

Enjoy.

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Posted in Law | 2 Comments »

Another instance where life doesn’t equal life

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006

Everyday I become more convinced the America is the bad guy in this world… the big bully breaking laws left and right, leaving a wake of destruction in its path. And we don’t treat people in our country fair either. For instance, some people are put to death for murdering, and others are sentenced to 40 years.

 

(Raleigh, NC-AP) August 8, 2006 – A former CIA contractor accused of beating an Afghan prisoner was aggressive and "full of rage."

That’s according to testimony Tuesday in the federal trial of former CIA contractor David Passaro. He’s been charged with four counts of assault for allegedly beating Abdul Wali, who later died.

If convicted, the 40-year-old from Lillington faces up to 40 years in prison.

If you’re going to have a barberic death penalty system, try and make it fair. Why do 4 times as many black people get executed, and why do some who murder get off with a 40 year term. I know… probably because he beat and killed an Afghan man. As Bush likes to indirectly remind us, Afghani people are inferior to Americans, and their lives aren’t worth as much.

These stories all fall under the category of screwed up things our military does to other people. Atrocities.
We got to stop this government sanctioned violence, this secret war… who knows what other kinds of acts of human destruction occurs that we don’t know about. I am 100% sure the U.S. military still uses torture and other means of interrogation, along with murder. Its so disturbing.

Whatever… we’re in the one step backwards period right now… waiting for the next 2 steps forward.

 


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Posted in Law | 2 Comments »

Who teaches you to be gay? UPDATED MORE!

Friday, August 4th, 2006

Its been a while since we’ve had a discussion about homosexuality, so I thought I’d bring it up. I was having a conversation with one of my best friends who happens to be a homosexual about a lot of what is said on this website and I have the following things to say.

First of all, homosexuality is in no way, and never was, a choice. I’m sorry, but if you think it is, then you’re just plain stupid. Screw trying to be 100% objective or whatever… homosexuality is NOT a choice, just the same as being an idiot isn’t a choice. Never once was it ever considered a choice by anybody with any modicum of intelligence.

There is no proof nor evidence that it is a choice. Take my friend for example. His mom isn’t gay, his brother isn’t gay, his friends weren’t gay, none of his teachers were gay, in fact, he had never met a gay individual until highschool, long after he knew he was gay. So please, explain how being gay was taught to him. Then, explain this: My math teacher was gay, my science teacher was gay, half my high school teachers were gay, 30 percent of the people I knew were gay! But am I gay? No, I screw women! So explain to me why I didn’t ‘learn’ to be gay.

I told my friend about some of your (WISers) thoughts on homosexuality. The suggestion that he chose to be gay was so ridiculous to him that he nearly vomited. "Why" he said "would anybody CHOSE to be gay? Why would I chose to be discriminated against, made fun of constantly, be shunned by society and marginalized everyday by EVERYONE?"

I didn’t have an answer for him. And neither do you. Homosexuality is a sexual orientation, not a lifestyle or a choice. One cannot become ungay… and its ridiculously stupid to think that its possible. For you religious types, obviously god created gay people, so why hate them so much? Why think that what they do is a sin? If you think that, then you think that god’s work is a sin, and that in itself is a sin. So you are sinning when you say that homosexuals are sinful.

If you want to still discriminate against them, fine, but it is your duty to acknowledge the fact that you are doing so based on how these people were born, not on their character, and therefor, you are a bigot. The world would be so much better if you cowards could just admit that. You don’t have to say you are wrong, just admit that you don’t like somebody because of the way they were born, and that they are different from you. That way, we can work on it. But if you carry around this false and incredibly stupid idea that gay people chose to be gay, then you’re not going to get anywhere, and you will be laughed at and disrespected by your peers.

Enjoy.

———————- updated

I didn’t want to reference any one in particular because I didn’t want to single anybody out, because I was kind of insulting with the "incredibly stupid" comments. But I’ll find some and add them.

———————– second update
Terp, you are right, there is a grey area, but I think that grey area is only grey because of the societal standards. What I mean is, I think people are either gay, not gay, or both (meaning bisexual). People who experiment and never do it again are probably both, but because of soceital pressures they felt the need to have sex with only the opposite sex… in fact, they may even be gay, but again the pressure quelled it… because no one tolerates them. I knew a guy who was gay as a day in may, but went out with girls for a while because he was so afraid of what his parents would think. The reason why you and I never have a sexual urge is because we were born straight. It is a sliding scale, which includes bisexuality… the point is is that you are born with it, and it is not something you choose. People have problems with homosexuality because they think that gays chose to be that way, and that is what I am referring to mostly. There’s no choice regarding your innate sexual orientation.

Jacki… all I gotta say is Amen!

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