god i love this place.
but i have to say with choggie gone a bit of color just bleached out.
this is some tired ass bullshit.
this site when it first came out had a plethora of different people,ideas,emotions.
i mean talk about DIVERSE..i was mesmerized by this place...and choggie was a huge reason.
now look at it...
feels like twilight..the burnished sun fading over a bland landscape.
you think choggie is the reason so many left?
christ on a fucking stick...
are you serious? is that a serious statement?
ok..
try this.
go to posts two years ago.go ahead..i'll wait.
now..
go check the current top videos on this site.
see anything? notice anything?
it is becoming one big ball of sameness.
as if a giant vanilla cookie cutter was punching out the exact same material.
those people didnt leave because of choggie!
they left because this place started looking like a cheap version of the stepford wives.
they left because of the very thing we are talking about on this very post.
stupid and inane drama based on the most fragile and flimsy of all reasons:
"someone called me a name"
/facepalm...somebody just shoot me in the face.

because here is the cold hard truth kids.
this place was once a vibrant mecca for the most unique,obscure,challenging and original sites to visit.
populated by interesting people with interesting ideas and to watch the disagreements fly put a smile on my face that lasted for HOURS.
now it is slowly becoming an exercise in banality..
un-interesting and un-original.
so clap your hands together for that kids!
you just succeeded in killing originality!
the drama is even boring!
and that my friends..is the fucking cold hard truth..and you helped usher it in.

i dont have a problem with anyone here.
i understand dag had an agreement and had to do what he had to do.
i am not harboring a secret hatred for BT.
and i really should not have to even to explain this considering this is the internet and my feelings dont really matter in this situation but good-fucking-lord if i didnt people would start assuming i am out for revenge or gonna rampage or some other stupid shit.
that is...retarded.

choggie was banned per dag and his agreement...period.
choggie will..i assume..live another day and not commit ritual suicide.
but dont blame the ills of this site on the chogster.
look to your own behaviour before you blame another.

now THAT my friends..is what they call in the business A RANT.
please dont forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses..i'll be here all week!

Diagnosing Benny Morris
The Mind of a European Settler
by Gabriel Ash


Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949 is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Ha'aretz. The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil � The native is declared insensitive to ethics � the enemy of values. � He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it � the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from The Wretched of the Earth). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an Arabian Palestine, he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Ha'aretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book Righteous Victims, Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to�Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. � At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state�[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. � Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two�" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Ha'aretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and clich�s. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a small band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, we have in addition the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Ha'aretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. There is hardly anything he says that hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to have nothing to do with the Middle East.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Related Articles:

* The Education of Benny the Barbarian by Ahmed Amr
* Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion by Adi Ophir

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is a regular contributor to Yellow Times.org, where this article first appeared (www.yellowtimes.org). Gabriel encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org

Wow, for some reason I read that as "Usher feet: goat"

A bad guy who is totally exposed wielding 2 energy whips for weapons seems like a pretty stupid villain. A thug with a 9mm would be more dangerous.

Also, Tony Stark is a total douche for hoarding his technology. I mean here we have a way for producing infinite clean energy, which would be the biggest breakthrough since man discovered fire. It would win every Nobel prize there is, including literature, because of how awesome it is. It would end our dependence on chemical fuels, provide unlimited freshwater, stop deforestation, end hunger, enable new means of space exploration, usher in a new generation of portable consumer electronics, etc.... and all Stark wants to do is fly around playing vigilante sheriff. What a jackass.

(this is meant to be satirical)

>> ^choggie:
Oh man, that's great..Will VS let you embed a double-slap?


Nope

In reply to this comment by Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
if you are unwilling or unable to see the moral courage this woman has by standing up and doing what she felt was righteous

The bank is conducting itself legally. What you object to is that BoA offers credit to people who are 'risky' borrowers. You call it 'predatory'. Hmmm - what other entity does exactly the same thing...? What organization has been telling banks to lend money to people who "can't afford it"? Whose policy is it to "spend our way out of debt"?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9CF8SIO0&show_article=1
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30388.html

My position is that it is stupid policy to lend money to people who are risky borrowers. It is unsustainable, foolish, and destructive at the business level AND the government level. But it is not IMMORAL. This womans 'stand' has nothing to do with morality. It a disagreement on how a company should conduct business.

When you disagree with how a company does business - you quit. You don't stick around violating the terms of your employment and doing stuff that will get you fired. You stand up straight, quit the job, and leave with your head high. She didn't. She slunk around, kept taking paychecks, disobeyed orders, bucked policy, and at finally got thrown out the door kicking and screaming like a baby. Then to cap it off she's got the cheek to make a whiny video about how unfair it was. Bullcrap. She got exactly what she deserved.

Now - I wholeheartedly agree with her opinion that money should not be lent to people who can't afford it. She and I are sympatico there. But she's saying it's 'wrong' and I'm saying it is merely 'stupid'.

However, I find it interesting that you agree with her sentiment that such practices are 'wrong' at a moral level. So - tell me - will you follow her example and condemn the current administration's practice of 'aggressively marketing' debt spending to people who can't afford it? After all, according to your moral code such actions are 'evil'. Will you support evil, or will you condemn and abandon it?


i never used the term evil.that is subjective.
and no,i do not agree with our governments massive borrowing practices.sadly we lack leadership in that arena.no administration has had the balls to do whats right.reagan ushered in the new financial economy while abandoning our industrial industry and no admin since has done it right.clinton balanced the budget..sure..but it took him raping SS and medicare to do it.

it angers me that average citizens are expected to be held accountable(which is right) yet our government can keep passing the buck.

as for the young lady.i see a woman who wrangled with a moral dilemma and used her supposed power to help those in trouble by breaking company policy.
i would have done the same.
you would not.
but in the end we both would have been out of a job.
our disagreement is one of semantics but at the heart i feel we agree.

Joseph Jennings, the creator of Chanticleer, used to work with my choir, so I got the opportunity to usher at one of their concerts. We sat on the balcony by ourselves, where the acoustics were best. When they sang this piece, I cried through the entire second half of it. I have never been so moved by music. The live experience is, of course, MUCH more powerful. One of the tenors in this performance isn't blending as well as he might, and the group takes a long breath near the end that detracts from the climax. If you really want to hear it at it's best (live performances excluded), listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVBsNUXg_YM

The sound quality isn't great, but it's still achingly beautiful.

News ticker stories (stolen from Reddit)...

- Black & Decker named official torture device of the 'hostel' series.
- New fertility drug promises to help couples realize dream of having TLC show.
- Media watchdogs criticize Calvin Klein's 'Penetration' cologne.
- Report: Wikipedia ushering in golden age of Holocaust revisionism.
- Haagen-Dazs released new line of ice creams for barren women.
- White house reluctantly accepts Collect Call from Indonesia.
- IRS rebrands itself 'The S' to appeal to younger demographic.
- Happening Now: Cottage cheese ruined by mental image of grandmother eating cottage cheese.
- Jonathan Taylor Thomas re-released from Disney Vault.

The Moon was a good, understated Sci-Fi that does what Sci-Fi does best: examine social/psychological issues by using imaginary scenarios. I can't stand how Sci-Fi has been co-opted by brainless Hollywood movie execs who think Sci-Fi should equal big budget action movies that require you to check your brain at the door. Movies like The Moon are a return to form and with the advent of cheaper special effects I can't wait for more filmmakers to usher in a new era of Sci-fi.

I always thought the movie was about redemption. At least for Samael L. Jackson's character.

I just laughed through that whole movie. The part in which the usher almost kicked me out, was the car scene with bruce willis stopped at a light intersection.

I predict that by 2012 95% of all internet traffic will be some form of media about cats, in normal and LOL form.

This phenomena will be what brings down the internet, ultimately bringing humanity to its knees and ushering in the end of the world that the Mayans predicted millenia ago.

When I think of fun loving great places to visit or live.....well just read and see what I mean.......................(the Koran is not a simple history. It is the way all true Muslims must live.
What Islam Isn't
By Dr. Peter Hammond
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, April 21, 2008
The following is adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat:

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called 'religious rights.'

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to 'the reasonable' Muslim demands for their 'religious rights,' they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris --car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam - Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%
(Where's your next vacation to?)

this guy reminds me of MLK from The Boondocks" Return of the King episode:

Martin Luther King:
Is this it?
This is what I got all those ass-whoopings for?
I had a dream once.
It was a dream that little black boys and little black girls would drink from the river of prosperity, freed from the thirst of oppression.
But lo and behold, some four decades later, what have I found but a bunch of trifling, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers?
And I know some of you don't want to hear me say that word.
It's the ugliest word in the English language, but that's what I see now: niggers.
And you don't want to be a nigger, 'cause niggers are living contradictions!
Niggers are full of unfulfilled ambitions!
Niggers wax and wane, niggers love to complain!
Niggers love to hear themselves talk but hate to explain!
Niggers love being another man's judge and jury!
Niggers procrastinate until it's time to worry!
Niggers love to be late, niggers hate to hurry!
Black Entertainment Television is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life!
Usher, "Michael Jackson" is *not* a genre of music!
And now I'd like to talk about "Soul Plane".
I've seen what's around the corner, I've seen what's over the horizon, and I promise you, you niggers won't have nothing to celebrate.
And no, I won't get there with you.
I'm going to Canada.

From the Alaskan Gov's website:

Selected Accomplishments of the Palin Administration

General

Transferred more control of public issues to the local level Natural Resources
Created the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to oversee responsible development
Held the line for Alaskans on Point Thomson that encouraged drilling
Restructured the state’s oil taxes to create a clear and equitable valuation formula for our oil and gas
Initiated and implemented the largest energy project in the world through the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act
Removed government from the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands

Ethics

Ushered in ethics reform
Cleaned up previously accepted unethical actions affecting development

Fiscal Notes

Slowed the rate of government growth
Worked with the Legislature to place billions of dollars in savings
Vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital budget line items
Reduced Alaska’s dependence on federal earmarks by nearly 85%
Eliminated state-funded personal luxuries like the jet, the chef, and junkets
Refused a pay raise, along with the Lieutenant Governor

Education

Provided unprecedented support for education initiatives Public Safety
Filled long-vacant public safety positions over the last year

Corrections

Broke ground on the new state prison

Fish and Game

Maintained biologically-sound wildlife management for abundance Environment
Established first sub-Cabinet on climate change

Legal

State’s rights protected in two recent victories handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court

Why the fuss, it's just another very late term abortion.

An usher at a Lutheran church, lol.