Say Anything Blog

Gang, I know there is a bit of, lets just say antipathy, for the French in some quarters. Not at all unjustified, though a tad harsh. So allow me to hip y’all to a righteous frenchy Frenchman, The Dissedent Frogman.

His blog was a bit under the weather for awhile, but he is back in the scrum and smackin’ Islamo-Facist and Euro-Socialist heads with gleeful abandon.

So, don’t be a putz! Go check him out. And don’t be shy, let him know what you think. He’s a big boy, he can take the heat.

I seem to remember someone from the Democrat Party saying some such as that.

Don’t y’all?

This paragraph puts the issue in the light, so to speak.

“First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown,” he continued. “And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Go read the whole article.

And here is the NPR piece. Compare&contrast Friday, here at sayanything. Enjoy!

H/T to FOXNews and NPR, oh, and bloglines.

UPDATE; This just hit one of my news feeds.
This, "It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies.", will get him eviscerated by the left and environazis.

In our rounds to family burial plots in the region I have made it a habit to find the old, seemingly forgotten veterans markers. In doing so we have found headstones dating back to the Revolutionary War, mostly left untended.

Such as

The first two are Civil War veterans, and the stones are no longer legible. We ask people we meet each year if they know anything of them, so far no one does. My mother in law has visited the church that maintains the cemetery and they have no records farther back than 1880.

Several years ago we cleared out around them, they are well into the treeline, and found the bronze flag stands. That first year I put flags there, a VFW post in Mercer County replaced them each year since.

This one

is one of my wifes favorites. He died in 1868, so I believe he had to have been an 1812 or Mexican War vet. There is part of a unit designation on the bottom, my son suggested etching over it with a piece of paper to read it so we will be heading back today.

This one has no marker left, apparently it was a piece of sandstone, now just a lump the bronze placard is stood in.

I encourage as many people as I can to start finding the old graves, the ones sinking into obscurity as the forest and time over takes them. At the least to remember they did live, even if the names are lost.

That is what we are supposed to do on this day.

Rather interesting couple of articles about the same event. And still a ringing silence from our media on this movement.

New rally for Turkish secularism

The crowds in Samsun were smaller than in other protests
Tens of thousands of Turks have massed in the city of Samsun in the latest demonstration in support of secularism.
The crowds waved national flags and chanted slogans opposing any change to Turkey’s secular political model.

The protest in Samsun, a port on the Black Sea, followed huge rallies in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

Turkey’s ruling, Islamist-rooted AK Party has called early elections to end a political stand-off sparked by its nomination of a presidential candidate.

The election, now due to be held on 22 July, was brought forward from November.

Demonstrators say the AK Party has an Islamist agenda to undermine the secular nature of the Turkish republic.

‘No coups’

Police estimated that about 50,000 people attended the rally, Reuters news agency reported.

Last weekend about one million people filled the seafront in the port of Izmir.

Many of those in Samsun carried pictures of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and the key icon of state secularism.

Samsun was the place where Ataturk launched the country’s war of independence against ruling powers after the end of World War I.

Organiser Turkan Saylan told the crowds that they were in Samsun “to cry out loud that we are against Shariat [Islamic law]”.

“And we are against military coups,” she added, referring to a threat by the country’s military to intervene in favour of the secular system

Presidency problem

The leaders of two of Turkey’s main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Democratic Left Party (DSP), shared a platform at the Samsun rally.

The two parties have joined forces in an effort to counter the AK Party in the forthcoming elections.

The current crisis was sparked by the AK Party’s attempts to nominate Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to the presidency.

Opposition parties claimed the installation of a man with an Islamist political past would undermine secularism, and blocked attempts to confirm him in the Turkish parliament.

The government eventually withdrew Mr Gul’s nomination and called early elections.

Despite the mass rallies across Turkey, correspondents and opinion polls indicate that the AK Party still remains the country’s most popular.

Turks rally for secularism




Thousands carried the Turkish flag
creating a sea of red [AFP]

Tens of thousands of Turks have rallied in the northern city of Samsun in the latest of a series of weekly pro-secular demonstrations against the government ahead of elections.

Television pictures showed protesters on Sunday brandishing Turkish flags and portraits of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s secularist founder.

One organiser said that between 20,000 and 30,000 people had gathered, boosted by last week’s electoral agreement between centre-left parties against the ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party for the July 22 poll.

Deniz Baykal, head of the main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), and Zeki Sezer, his counterpart in the Democratic Left party (DSP), were due to attend Sunday’s demonstration together.

The choice of Samsun as the venue for the latest protest was symbolic.

It was in the Black Sea port city 88 years ago that Ataturk launched a liberation movement against the British, French, Italian and Greek troops occupying Turkey after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the first world war.

The rallies began last month after the AKP chose Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, as its candidate for president.

The AKP failed to hold a parliamentary vote making Gul president, as a boycott by the opposition meant a quorum could not be attained.

The existing president is Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

Military warning

The turmoil, exacerbated by a warning from the military that it stood ready to defend the secular order, forced Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, to bring legislative elections forward to July 22 from November.

Opinion polls, however, suggest that the AKP is still Turkey’s most popular party.

Despite its Islamist roots, the party has pledged commitment to secularism and carried out reforms that secured the opening of membership talks with the EU and stabilised the economy.

Opponents say the party still harbours Islamist ambitions, pointing at AKP policies such as opposition to a ban on the headscarf in universities and public offices, encouragement of religious schools and a failed attempt to restrict alcohol sales.

Credit to BBC and Al Jazeera.

The world is out there, you just got to go see what is happening in it. And judge for yourself.

60% of Americans support Iraq withdrawal timetable.

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Xinhua)—Six out of 10 Americans support setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released here Wednesday.

Additionally, 78 percent of those interviewed said they don’t believe claims by the Bush Administration that U.S. military presence in Iraq is preventing new terrorist attacks.

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Xinhua)—Six out of 10 Americans support setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released here Wednesday.

Additionally, 78 percent of those interviewed said they don’t believe claims by the Bush Administration that U.S. military presence in Iraq is preventing new terrorist attacks.

Most Americans disapprove of Bush’s Iraq veto: poll

The poll, conducted by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN, surveyed1,028 American adults between last Friday and last Sunday.

Some fairly drastic and far reaching conclusions to draw from only 1,028 people, wouldn’t you say? I have tried to get more information from Opinion Research Corp., but they are rather tight lipped about who and where.

And as I type this I see from recent comments that someone beat me to it. Bastiches!! Oh well. Polls are crap, and this one is so obviously biased it is pathetic.

Still going to harass ORC about their methodology.

Here is a Sunday morning wake up for you.

02 May, 2007
Education Goals and Objectives

by Sam Huntington

Some would argue that it is long past the time for evaluating America’s educational goals and objectives, but now that we are confronted with what could be an affront to the sensibilities of New Yorkers in particular, and those who cherish American values generally – the creation of an Arab Academy in Brooklyn – additional discussion and citizen action is warranted.

Read the whole article here.

And let me add a h/t for Angel.
She is all over this story, and not a bad blog either.

Go. Check’em out.

Don’t you just love when Democrat Party starts eating its own?!?
WASHINGTON — The chairman of a House panel wants to stop hefty bonus payments to senior Veterans Affairs officials until they reduce a severe backlog of veterans waiting for disability benefits.

Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., said Friday he was introducing legislation to place a hold on this year’s bonuses after The Associated Press reported that senior VA officials involved in a budget foul-up which jeopardized veterans’ health care received bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

Ain’t that just classic. No money for doctors, nurses, building maintenance, or disabled veterans. Plenty for non-medical deskjockeys.

This is nothing new. VA has always payed themselves at the expense of veterans.

Read the whole article. I am going to keep trawling, see if this is running anywhere else this low newscycle morning.

Those wacky Iraqis! Trying to run their own country and whatnot.  This ”A dispute between central government and autonomous Kurdistan over control of the oil has delayed its submission.” sounds vaguely like a democratically elected government functioning. We’ll have to wait a year or more to see if it works.

Damned selfish assed people, wanting to govern themselves!

BBC slipped this one by me.

Gul has in past done things I heartily approve, and he has made statements against Radical Islamic Terrorists. And yet the people of Turkey are less than enthusiastic about him as President.

A bit of the row,
Mr Gul has steered Turkey’s European Union accession talks as foreign minister and is seen as less confrontational than Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development (AK) party.

“The president must be loyal to secular principles. If I am elected, I will act accordingly,” he said after his nomination for the presidency.

But some analysts say he is closer to his religious roots, and his wife would be the first First Lady to wear a headscarf, a deeply divisive statement in Turkey.

In past he has been a man of his word, even when it cost him politically. Yet this is a conundrum. Without the support of the populace his Presidency can have far reaching and damaging effects.

A sticky wicket, as our brothers across the pond would say.

It is often disheartening to read news articles about Islam and the spread of fundamentalist Islam is an ongoing concern for all humans. And yet there are signs of hope, such as this, and this op-ed. Funny, you have to go to China and Lebanon to find such as this reported.

A couple of tastes,
ANKARA, April 29 (Xinhua)—Rallies supported by 600 non-governmental organizations were held in Turkish capital Ankara and largest city of Istanbul on Sunday to show their support for the country’s secular system.

Carrying Turkish flags, the demonstrators shouted slogans to protect the country’s secularism and principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

And,
There is something impressive about a city - Istanbul - that once ruled much of the heart of the Islamic world struggling today to define that same landscape in political and ideological terms. The events unfolding in Turkey, culminating to date in the pro-secularism demonstration of nearly a million people Sunday, will have much more impact regionally and globally than other similar demonstrations of flag-waving citizens in nearby lands in recent years, including Lebanon., Ukraine and Georgia. This is because Turkey is situated geographically, culturally and ideologically at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and its trajectory is linked with, and impacts on, all three areas.

Amazing what you find when you don’t depend on MSM and pre-digested pap for your news.

Here is an interesting article that will doubtless receive wide attention from our patroons in media.

Here is a bit to tantalize.
It’s hard for people to understand Lee’s legacy unless they understand the political philosophy that he held and that informed him as to why he was fighting,” says Mr. DiLorenzo, a professor of economics at Baltimore’s Loyola College. “Lee was a military man, so he very seldom said anything about politics. But after the war, he did.”
Lee saw the war as “a continuation of the battle between the Hamiltonian consolidationists and the Jeffersonian decentralists,” says Mr. DiLorenzo, referring to the “remarkable correspondence” between Lee and British statesman Lord John Acton in 1866.
In a letter to Acton, Lee referred to the writings of Jefferson and Washington and warned that “the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded.”

Please go read the rest.

This is an example of BBC showing its better qualities.

Once again, privacy rears itself ugly head. This bit shows how subtly mainstream attempting to protect personal data from government/law enforcement and employers.

So what do you do if you want to escape detection from authorities who might not like your work as much as you do?

The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents is pretty technical but it also contains some simple tips, so you can say what you think without having to worry the censors or cyber-police too much.

And to think, Al&Jesse are upset about radio and TV free speech. Wonder where the would come down on this?

You just got to love this crap.

U.N. official ducks query on wasted funds

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 11, 2007

NEW YORK—A U.N. conference opened on a note of discord yesterday when the director of a U.N. division responsible for “good governance” refused to discuss charges leveled at his agency of mismanagement, intimidation of staff and wasted money.
Guido Bertucci, director of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM), was addressing a conference of public administration specialists when one participant asked about an investigation of a $5 million center for public administration in Thessaloniki, Greece.
The United Nations has opened multiple investigations into the project, which Greece claims has turned into a white elephant.

Read the entire thing. And this is not even one of their “bad” scandals.

Proof, yet again, that it is all about the money.

Funds spat threatens Crawford Peace House

By Angela K. Brown
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2007

CRAWFORD, Texas—With charges of money mismanagement, threats of court action and some members leaving, a group that has sponsored war protests in President Bush’s adopted hometown has been anything but peaceful.
The Crawford Peace House recently lost its corporate charter with the state, and a former member who now has rights to the name is threatening legal action because the group continues operating.

Please, go read the whole thing.

Hubris, thy name is Peace Movement.