Category Archives: Opinion

Special Treat For The Anti-Defamation League: How to Build a Mosque

by Editor

Since the Anti-Defamation League has just decided to support the mission of bigots opposed to the building an Islamic center in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site in New York City, I thought I’d offer them a special presentation on the building of a mosque.

Another suggestion for all bigots like those who work at the Anti-Defamation League would be to schedule a field trip to a local mosque to see just how well-treated one is upon entering a mosque.  If you have never been inside a mosque I would recommend going.  What you imagine goes on inside a mosque is most certainly not what goes on inside a mosque.  Give it a try sometime.  Get to know the people inside the building and when you start to feel really bad about the way you have behaved, just chalk it up to your own uneducated imagination.

Here’s an article about the raging anti-Muslim attitudes spreading across the U.S. and Europe.

Click here for the other 6 parts of the video

Anti-Defamation League Joins Anti-Mosque Bigots in Hatred

by Editor | 3 Comments

Anti-Defamation League - Fighting Anti-Semitism, Bigotry and Extremism - Yeah, unless you're a Muslim.

The Anti-Defamation League, an organization that ostensibly stands up for religious freedom and tolerance in the United States has shocked and disgusted many people, including me, by announcing their opposition to the construction of a mosque in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site.

In the vicinity! We’re not talking about on top of Ground Zero. We’re talking about nearby, somewhere in the general neighborhood in New York City.

The Anti-Defamation League appears, as a result of this bizarre proclamation, to be an organized group of bigots pretending to support tolerance.

Muslims have every right to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site.  There’s nothing inappropriate or wrong about it.  In fact, I think it shows a concerted effort to be a thriving part of the New York community.  It’s healthy to build this mosque.  It’s a better decision than building the ever-stalled ‘Freedom Tower’ which never gets an inch off the ground.  Why not rename it ‘Freedom Hole.’  These people who have been protesting, including some of the relatives of 9/11 victims, are nothing more than the worst form of bigot.  They couch their hatred in ‘protecting the emotional well-being of families and victims.’  By their logic we should cordon off every site of a plane crash and forbid construction by people who are of the same religious beliefs as the pilots.  We should ascertain the religion of every person who commits a murder and prevent people of that religion from ever constructing churches near the murder sites.  Insane.  Hateful.  Nonsense.

Muslims are not terrorists.  Muslims are simply people who worship in a particular way.  Associating Muslims with terrorism is bigotry by definition.  I think someone should build a mosque on top of the Anti-Defamation League.

Here is what the Anti-Defamation League says:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

So don’t build your mosque because it’ll make a bunch of backwoods idiot bigots feel bad.  Wow!  I’m just blown away.  You know, I never give money to organized bigots.  But I’ll certainly contribute to the mosque-building fund if there is one.

This insidious and creeping connection of Islam to terrorism is becoming very dangerous.  It’s getting worse quickly.  It’s spreading all over the U.S. and Europe.  If the Anti-Defamation League feels that is can say something like this then we are in very bad shape indeed.

The Mona Lisa Curse: Do High Prices Ruin the Art World?

by Editor | 1 Comment

This is a 12-part film on YouTube called The Mona Lisa Curse by art critic Robert Hughes. The film is fascinating for its overview of the art scene in New York since the 1960s. Hughes, the art critic for Time Magazine, goes on an extended diatribe against the fast-paced and overpriced world of art collectors and auctions that he says have debased recent art. He hates Damien Hirst because, according to him, the work does not merit the inflated prices. He hates Andy Warhol and thinks he was stupid and stole ideas from Robert Rauschenberg.  He thinks wealthy collectors have become simple investors without a thought in their heads about why the art is important.

But I think Mr. Hughes is a giant bore.  He walks around with a comical scowl on his block-like face.  He lumbers into a collector’s home to question him about why he would want to own 800 Andy Warhol pieces.  The collector gives him decent and somewhat thoughtful answers that are soundly rejected by the ogre in the room because he thinks Warhol was ‘one of the stupidest people he ever met in his life.’  Why?  ‘Because he had nothing to say.’

Nothing to say.  First of all, if you are waiting for someone to say something, you are going to waste half of your life doing so.  Warhol never said a damn thing that I can recall reading anywhere except that when asked why another artist was so good he said that it was because he made good lunches.  But Mr. Hughes is looking for something else.  Warhol had nothing to say.  In fact, I met him at a bookstore in Manhattan once and he just said, ‘Hi.’  It fit the occasion quite nicely in fact.  There’s your answer, Mr. Hughes.  The quietest voice in the museum must be Andy Warhol’s.

But if Hughes insists on asking some uninspired collector about what made Warhol so good, he is only going to get an answer culled from some brochure.  He needs a real answer.  Here’s mine.  Andy Warhol was great because he tried to destroy meaning.

Hughes’ most scathing remarks are saved for the wheeler dealer art auctioneers and representatives in New York.  They run around selecting high-priced art for their clients and hold bidding wars at places like Sotheby’s and Christie’s.  This pushes art prices up into the stratosphere, making every artist want to earn the big bucks.

So what?  Who cares?

The money people are having much more fun than tiresome old Mr. Hughes.  This guy should live under a bridge.  Who cares if a painter does something that costs $400 one day and $40,000,000 the next?  Where’s the problem?  It’s fun to trade money for art.  The more expensive it is the more well cared for it will be.  If you don’t want to spend large sums on art you don’t have to.  There are plenty of fine artists selling for a few hundred dollars.

I like Mr. Hughes’ film, but I don’t accept his views.

For instance, he despises this huge sculpture by Damien Hirst:

Why?  It’s an astounding statue.  Reminds me of ancient Egypt.  Look at the feet.  And those cut off fingers!  Look at what that face is doing.  It’s a face!  I would jam this thing into my backyard if I could unseat it from its pedestal.

But watch the film all the way through.  It’s very unusual and I have to love Mr. Hughes for making it and for being so willing to be so cranky.  Cranks are always fun.  I say stupid things just to make them mad.

Go here for part 2 and you’ll find the other 10 parts as well.

I Think BP is Faking its Spill Fix

by Editor

Fake. It should be obvious. Any twelve year old child can look at the volcano of oil and tell you that it will never fit inside a narrow pipe. This is just public relations for the sake of the video feed. President Obama should get into a military posture immediately and remove BP from the Gulf. It is time to start arresting BP employees. This is terrorism. The ideas and execution on display from BP make no logical sense and therefore must represent something beyond what we are being made aware of. Obama needs to ask Congress to convene specifically to authorize a takeover of all BP assets and physical property worldwide by the United States. They need to basically declare a state of war against a multi-national corporation. And if they refuse, then Obama needs to move without them. I’m dead serious in my opinion on this. This is one of the worst attacks ever perpetrated against the United States. The reason I call it an attack is because what started as an accident has changed now into an ongoing effort to confuse observers of the situation and mislead them into thinking that BP is trying to stop the leak. What are other BP people doing around the world right now? What is going on in their banks? Where are they moving their money? Obama is missing the big red ball here and he’s never going to recover. I think it would be wise to very quickly and quietly remove all BP personnel from any offshore oil rigs near the U.S. and shut those rigs down asap. NASA engineers need to be pulled into this emergency and the military must provide logistics and hauling support for the effort to shut the gusher down.

The entire southern and eastern coasts of the U.S. are at severe risk and the volume of oil in the Gulf is far beyond what BP or the government have stated.  This company has absolutely no concern whatsoever for what happens to the Gulf waters or the U.S. coasts.  It concerns itself only with limiting financial losses and maximizing oil profits.  Cleanup and stopping the spill are completely irrelevant to this company.  Obama needs to consider what he would do if he wakes up tomorrow and realizes that BP is falsifying the entire operation at the spill site.  What would you do, Mr. President?

Further thoughts: Extreme language and extreme action are required in this very odd situation with the Gulf disaster. I think it is only this kind of extreme, left-field thinking that will somehow break the massive inertia that is apparent in our government’s response to a major world emergency. I continue to hear high government officials, including the President, talk about what the government, military, and BP can’t do. Everyone seems to think that there’s not much that can be done that BP isn’t already doing. This thinking is very dangerous and indicates a total collapse of the nation’s intellect and general technical infrastructure. That is not the way the United States expresses itself. We are seeing what is either an anomaly or an indication of failure on a massive and existential scale. The United States that has existed up until recently would never say that it could not plug a hole 5,000 feet below the sea. Never. It would turn all of its technical, military, industrial, and intellectual resources toward filling that hole immediately. I’ve heard reports that President Obama has an IQ of 160. Really? Really? I’m not sure which test was administered to this guy, but it is quite apparent that somebody got paid a little extra to score it.

This country is bleeding out of its asshole. And our President is modeling business casual slacks on the oil-slicked shores of a destroyed southern coast.

The President should be using extreme language and taking extreme actions to get this hole filled instantaneously. He should be reacting in very much the same way he would react if a nuclear bomb had exploded somewhere on American soil. Nothing less will suffice. What is wrong with our President and what is wrong with America?

My Plug Idea #2 for the BP Oil Spill

by Editor | 1 Comment

Another idea for plugging the hole in the Gulf in a relatively short time.

The drawings are of course not done to scale. They are conceptual.

I suspect that BP engineers are totally focused on using the existing blowout prevention machine that is not working as the main part of their fix. Consequently, their thinking is running along the lines of what the machine’s capacities and weaknesses are. This may prevent them from thinking ‘outside the blowout preventer,’ so to speak. There should be some engineers spending their time thinking of the problem as if there were no blowout preventer at all. Just an open pipe in a hole with lots of pressure spewing out hot oil and gas. How would you plug that?

I might plug it with a huge concrete and steel cap weight that had a perforated pipe extending from beneath it. The weight and its extending perforated pipe would be slowly lowered over the gusher hole. The perforated pipe would slide inside the gushing well pipe until the huge cap weight above was sitting on the ocean floor. Then cement could be pumped from the surface down a long pipe which would connect to the giant cap weight and its perforated pipe now sitting inside the well pipe. The cement would push down this pipe extension and out through the perforations to plug up the well pipe.

I wonder if this idea holds any merit at all.  Perhaps the best part of the idea is for engineers to consider options outside of the blowout preventer.

Obama Has Ignored His Basic Responsibility to Protect the United States

by Editor

President Barack Obama has failed to uphold the primary duty of the President of the United States, which is to protect it from physical harm. This president has inexplicably ignored his responsibilities and has turned over a planetary mega-disaster to the foreign oil company that caused the disaster. The total reliance upon a company that has proven itself incapable of planning for problems with underwater oil wells is an abdication of responsibility, a total loss of control and a political nightmare that will effectively end the Obama presidency. If you are a Democrat, as I am, you had better watch the video below. When James Carville, one of the great Democrats and political strategists of the 20th century screams at you this way, with this much anger and this much disbelief, you are a lame-duck president. Doesn’t matter how well you smile. Watch:

Carville is on the money.  Obama should have immediately recognized that this hole in the Gulf is a very bad Chernobyl-level disaster that is going to wipe out the southern coast of the United States and possibly kill most life in the Gulf of Mexico.  He should have set up an emergency command center in Louisiana at which he was present and he should have put the military at the site of the disaster so that they could use cameras and submarines to keep an eye on what British Petroleum was doing at the well head.  There is no reason to believe what BP is telling the U.S. government.  There is no reason to believe that they are actually trying a ‘top-kill’ procedure.  There is no visual evidence of this and the U.S. military would be able to verify or refute the company’s claims.

The BP oil spill is a Chernobyl-level disaster.  It is ongoing and will kill enormous stretches of coastline and turn large portions of the Gulf into dead zones.  It will also kill human beings.  BP is putting people out into poisonous waters without any Hazmat breathing gear.  Those people are starting to get sick already.  The poisons can destroy brain tissue and apparently damage lungs.

Fisherman hired to help clean up are getting sick from chemicals at oil spill:

President Obama has failed to put sufficient resources along the coasts to help with cleanup. Instead, he maneuvers politically by sending 1,200 National Guard troops to help ‘protect’ the border in Arizona when everyone knows that those troops cannot do anything at all but stand around and drink coffee. It is not legal for them to arrest anyone crossing the border and they are not authorized to do so. But they could certainly help down in Louisiana with oil.

Obama has decided to visit the area on Friday. So he can have a look. Why doesn’t he put his head into the thick sloppy goop that will be surrounding his boat. When he comes up he’ll be a well-oiled president machine.

This is a very weak president.  He does not have the ability to move quickly – in real time – during an extended crisis.  It is appalling that he has not been able to overcome his inertia over the course of an entire month of unfolding disaster.  If I were an enemy of the United States, I would be paying very close attention to what is going on here and make my move right about now.  Like North Korea.

What we find out later about this oil spill will make today’s anger seem mild.  Never again will I be misled by a politician who paints himself as a hero to the people.  Never.  We were all so excited about having a woman candidate in the primaries and a black candidate in the presidential election.  But those things really aren’t important enough.  We feel proud for electing the nation’s first black president but look what it got us.  It got us a corporate middle manager who gives billions to Wall Street friends, turns healthcare reform into a windfall for the insurance companies, continues two useless and expensive wars, continues to hold people in prisons without charges, and cannot figure out how to take control during a horrendous man-made disaster.

My Plug Idea for the BP Oil Spill

by Editor | 1 Comment

Plug the hole with a big… you know… plug. There are no ideas coming out of the U.S. government or its bosses at British Petroleum, so why not offer some of our own. I’m pretty good at offering lots of dumb ideas while trying to find a single good one. So here’s my latest dumb idea.

To modify my idea in the film slightly, I would guess that instead of dropping the plug from chains, you would set the thing down on short legs at the ocean floor and then, when it was aligned with the hole, blow the legs out from under it to drop it into the hole.

I wonder if there are lots of ideas like this for solving the disaster in the Gulf.  I’d be very curious to see what other people are coming up with.

Update:

After posting my doomsday hole plug idea last night, Scot Monette wrote me a note to point me to this video for his oil spill cleanup product, Petronet.  It’s a biodegradable cellulose fiber made from ground up garbage.  It’s environmentally friendly and it absorbs huge amounts of oil.  When a country gets into a situation where it can only elect intellectual midgets to the highest federal offices (yes, I’m referring to our dimwitted President), you need people like this who are thinking on their feet and use their ingenuity to actually make things that help.  Look at this video and ask yourself why the Coast Guard is not on the phone with Mr. Monette at this very moment:

BP and U.S. are Hiding Something in Gulf

by Editor

That’s a 21-inch pipe blowing oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s 5,000 feet underwater and it’s a doomsday hole. There’s something very strange about the information coming out of the Gulf oil spill. It’s minimal. Some scientists who have technology for precisely measuring the rate of flow from the pipe are being turned away from the spill area by BP and the United States government. BP didn’t even want the video to get released because they didn’t want anyone to know how much oil was leaking. They are still saying that knowing how much oil is coming out is irrelevant. Really? Some experts are trying to warn people that over 75 million gallons of oil have already poured into the Gulf waters. 75 million. That’s almost seven times the Exxon Valdez spill already.

Continue reading …

Obama and FCC Give Full Remote Control of Your TV Hardware to Corporations

by Editor

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Federal Communications Commission have given media corporations the legal power to remotely disable functions and outputs in your television, DVD players, and content receivers. This decision means that when you buy equipment it will have a shut-off and control mechanism built into it allowing Warner Brothers or Disney to flip a switch that will turn off various parts of your equipment so that you cannot do certain things with what you are watching. A lot of equipment currently sitting in American households already has this circuitry built in and now it can be activated by the entertainment companies.  The Obama administration is going after more than television equipment though.  It’s putting this control stuff into computers and operating systems.

This is a new form of fascism.  Corporate fascism.  When the government allows total control of what the population is allowed to do with its own media equipment and content you have in place all the machinery of totalitarian control of expression, both artistic and journalistic.

Smash your TV and throw it over the fence onto the White House lawn.  Better yet, open Obama’s mouth up wide and shove your TV down his throat.  I’ve had just about enough of this corporate-owned jerk in the White House who is more concerned about finding his cigarettes than saving the Gulf of Mexico from an outrageous act of ‘accidental’ terrorism by British Petroleum.  Obama should have a swim in the new Gulf.  The man who vowed to stop all the secret torture and military clown tribunals and needless wars has inflicted more grotesque harm in these areas than his monkey-brained predecessor.  Obama’s teeth drip baby blood.  He’s a human predator drone.  And now he’s disabling our televisions sets.

No media company is going to shut off part of my television, I can tell you that now.  I don’t give a damn what President O says.  He’s done in 2012.  It doesn’t matter who runs against this nitwit in 2012.  I’m voting for them.  I’m too angry to give a crap anymore.  Let’s give Hillary a shot.

See, you don’t need a tea party to be angry about a guy who steals for Wall Street.  You can do it all by yourself.

Arizona State Government Starts Terror Campaign Against Non-Whites

by Editor | 16 Comments

Cancel your trip to the Grand Canyon.  In fact, if you’re in Arizona right now, get the hell out as quickly as you can.  The state of Arizona has passed a measure, signed into law by its governor, Jan Brewer, that requires police to determine the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally.  All immigrants will be required to carry their proof of legal immigration on their person at all times.  This means that a police officer standing on a street corner drinking a cup of coffee can spot a person across the street and decide, based on anything the officer chooses (skin tone, for example) that the person might be an illegal immigrant.  The officer can then walk across the street, say he suspects the person of ‘loitering,’ and demand proof of their legal status in the United States.  If that person cannot produce the paperwork, the officer can arrest them.  The loitering thing is key because the Arizona law supposedly requires that the police be investigating some possible infraction before they can ask for proof of legal immigration.  But a cop can find almost any reason to suspect almost anyone of some minor infraction like ‘loitering.’  I loiter all the time.

Arizona, by enacting such a law, has aligned itself with similar laws in Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, and the post-slavery American South which used ‘vagrancy’ laws to arrest black people who could not prove that they were employed.  Apparently, the majority of residents in Arizona approve of the new law.  By definition, Arizona becomes Bigot Land.  One of the most important protections offered by a free democracy is the protection against unreasonable search and seizure.  No police officer anywhere in the United States can simply demand that a person produce papers proving their legal status.  But they can in Arizona as soon as this law goes into effect sometime in the next few months.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu says:

I am saddened today at the prospect of a young Hispanic immigrant in Arizona going to the grocery store and forgetting to bring her passport and immigration documents with her. I cannot be dispassionate about the fact that the very act of her being in the grocery store will soon be a crime in the state she lives in. Or that, should a policeman hear her accent and form a “reasonable suspicion” that she is an illegal immigrant, she can — and will — be taken into custody until someone sorts it out, while her children are at home waiting for their dinner.

Continue reading …

Bertrand Russell on the Foolishness of Religious Belief

by Editor

British philosopher Bertrand Russell on why it is foolish to ‘believe’ in something that is totally unverifiable.  I think I would have really liked this guy.  I agree with him completely.  One should simply ‘suspend judgment’ on something as unverifiable as the existence of god.  There is so much religious dogma that the world would be so much better off without.  Many people over the years wrongly interpreted this web site with its book and candle logo as having something to do with religious belief.  It has been my profound pleasure to disappoint them.  The book and candle logo actually represent the intellect expressed through creativity, along with a nice light to read by.

My view on all religions that purport to represent the word of god is quite simple:  No god has ever spoken a single word to any human being on the planet throughout all of history.  If a god had spoken, it would not have done so in a subtle or confusing manner.  A giant mouth would have appeared above Mount Everest and it would have spoken very clearly and would have left no room for any doubts whatsoever.  That should be self-evident to anyone who is not mentally deficient.

Via Dangerous Minds

WikiLeak Video Appears to Show U.S. Military Killing Without Cause

by Editor

Extremely graphic video that shows killing:

WikiLeaks, an organization that releases whistle-blower information, has released a 2007 video that appears to be part of a U.S. military cover-up. It shows U.S. Apache helicopter gunship crews shooting a group of men on a sidewalk that included two Reuters journalists. They also kill innocent people who arrive to help the wounded, seriously injuring two small children in the process. We can hear the helicopter gun crews begging for clearance to fire on people who are simply talking on a street corner. After killing most of them, they then beg for permission to kill a man who stops his van to render assistance to a victim (one of the journalists, in fact) who is crawling on the sidewalk.  Even if the soldiers thought the van was in fact trying to rescue wounded insurgents, so what?  Since when and under what rules of war are medical personnel or rescuers fired upon and killed for helping the wounded?  That’s a war crime.

I cannot see anything on this video that would give any sane and rational person the slightest motive for firing a weapon.  It is clear and simple murder.

After seeing this video, I think it would have been perfectly justifiable for anyone, including an American, to have taken these helicopters down.  This makes one wonder just how many attacks against American troops might actually be perfectly justifiable self-defense.  The idea that money I’ve earned actually goes into the pockets of murderous military personnel like this crew is hard to accept.  What’s really frightening is how widespread these bad soldiers must be in our military.  After all, these gunship crews are supposed to be the cream of the crop.  These soldiers should not want to live with what they did.

I think everyone should show this video on every web site in the U.S.  And we should find the men in these helicopters and on the radios and charge them with murder.  If this is how we are fighting our wars, I want no part of it.

Obama Signs Healthcare Bill – Big Fu*king Deal

by Editor

I’m for health care reform because I’m about as liberal as one can get. I would never in a million elections consider voting for a Republican candidate for any office whatsoever.  But I also have a nasty habit of biting off the political hand that feeds me and then spitting it back.  I’ve seen the rock-bottom brutal racism and stupidity of the healthcare reform opponents and the Tea Party protesters who look to me exactly like Ku Klux Klan members.  I think they need white hoods to go along with all their racial epithets and homophobic remarks.  The fact is that the United States desperately needs some kind of health reform to reign in the murderous insurance companies and protect all people, not just those who make lots of money and can afford absurdly priced, flimsy medical coverage.  Now that I’ve said that, I will also say that this country also needs a vice president who does not say ‘it’s a big fu*king deal’ on television in front of the world with his arms around the President.  His remark is shameful and not in slightest bit funny.  It put his president in an uncomfortable position during an important and historical moment.  Obama should have asked him to kindly leave the room.  Biden is a liability and needs to be dropped from the ticket in 2012.  He will be.  Watch.  All Republican campaign commercials will now feature Joe Biden saying ‘Big Fu*king Deal.’

As for the health reform law, I think it is obviously unconstitutional.  There.  I’ve said it.  I will be rejected by most of my friends now, but it’s the simple unavoidable truth.  The law’s central requirement that all Americans buy health insurance from private companies is ludicrous and will be quickly rejected by the United States Supreme Court.  Already, fourteen states have filed a lawsuit declaring the law an infringement of states’ rights.  They are correct.  Taxing Americans in order to cover them through a public policy is one thing.  But forcing them to give money to insurance companies that routinely murder people by withdrawing medicine from them is an entirely different matter.  I think Democrats are in a frenzy of forced celebration over a victory they know is somewhat temporary.  A conservative Supreme Court is going to dismantle this thing in a hurry.  The federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce does not give it the power to force people to engage in that commerce in the first place.  If I don’t want to buy something, I don’t have to buy it.  Certainly, we are all obligated to buy car insurance if we drive.  But we choose to drive.  We are free to not drive and not buy car insurance.  But the health reform law forces Americans to pay corporations… for being alive at all.

Obama did not have the courage to push a public insurance option through.  He made a deal with Murder Incorporated and he is going to pay a very steep price for this mistake.  A reform bill without public insurance coverage should have simply forced the insurance companies into strict codes of behavior.  It should not have forced every single U.S. citizen to hand cash over to these horrendous people.  No way.  It’s actually pretty shocking to see this happening during a Democratic administration.  The plan is actually this: to have Internal Revenue Service agents investigate people who don’t buy insurance and to levy penalties upon them.  That’s like a government penalty for not buying your tires at Sears.

It is not necessary to argue about the reform bill anymore.  It is law now.  But I can predict that no law requiring private medical insurance coverage is going to be on the books in two years’ time.

London Police Lose Free Speech Encounter

by Editor

The Love Police in the U.K. went to the Tower of London with their cameras and a megaphone to utilize their right to free speech. The guards at the Tower objected and called the London police. What you see in the video is the leader of the Love Police group speaking very intelligently and effectively to the lead police inspector about what the law actually says and what his rights are under that law. He successfully argues for his right to refuse to identify himself or to be searched under the Anti-Terrorism Law in the United Kingdom. What is so interesting about this video is the clear and overwhelming evidence that the police in London do not at all understand the laws they are enforcing or even which laws they are enforcing. They have clearly met more than their match in this instance and are in fact at serious risk of getting their department into liability troubles. The same problems with police are encountered here in the United States. There is the same lack of education and training in police ranks and the same willingness to try to remove basic rights from citizens.

Continue reading …

Kindles and Little Bookstores

by Editor | 4 Comments

I don’t understand much about the book business.  But I do know what makes a person want to go and be somewhere.  I read a good blog post at The Devil’s Accountant about the troubles small bookstores have with the existing book business and the emerging business of ebook publishing.  Small bookstores have to purchase books at wholesale for too much money and can’t make enough profit when they sell at retail.  That’s true.  But most movie theaters can’t make much money selling tickets either.  They sell candy and sodas at big markups to make good money.  In fact, there’s no such thing as the ‘movie business.’  There’s only a candy selling business that uses movies to bring you up to the candy counter.

An important point I’d also like to make about independent and small bookstores is that most of them really suck.  Seriously.  Most small bookstores are just a modest room full of books on poorly built shelves.  Dead boring.  Nothing puts me to sleep faster than a crappy independent bookstore.  Good riddance to them.  Most independent bookstores can’t hold a candle to any Barnes & Noble or a Borders.  Don’t open a bookstore if all you want to do is sell books.  You’re an idiot if you do.  And I won’t give you my money.  I’ll give it to Amazon.  They are not boring.  They are smart and interesting.  I enjoy watching them slaughter dull little bookshop owners every single day.  It’s a fascinating and wonderful bloodbath.  These booksellers are being eaten by lions and their screams are rare amusement.

Continue reading …