ISIS Radical Religionists loot (as in rob, steal, thieve) and impose harsh Sharia law.
The document added that Isis wish to destroy all shrines and graves, in reference to Shia shrines in towns such as Samarra where fighting is continuing.
"For those asking who are you? We are soldiers of Islam and took on our responsiblity to bring back glory of the Islamic Caliphate.
"Money we took from [the] Safavid government is now public. Only Imam of Muslims can spend it. Anyone who steals [will have their] hands cut," the document translation read.
Stealing is apparently in the mind of the lunatic religionists. They would cut the hands off some poor soul who steals a loaf of bread or a goat, but they themselves loot a bank. Lunacy like this makes the idea of radioactive glowing sand in all areas polluted with these crazies seem like an ever better idea. Better check with the mideast expert Dick Cheney on this first however.
*** Stay tuned, the day is yet young and the mail truck broke down, so mail is late in the boondocks today--- Doug Wiken
Native American apologists want the Chamberlain School system to include a Native honor song in the graduation ceremony. This is a kind of special pleading for special privilege that has nothing whatsover to do with equality or even existing inequality. The Chamberlain school system would be better off eliminating all music than in responding positively to demands for Native American songs, Latvian Songs, French songs, Swedish songs, German songs, Polish songs, Russian songs, and the nearly endless list of ethnic and cultural groups which this can be an open doorway for all kinds of groups to plead for special privilege.
That said, several discussions on this issue at Madville Times have generally failed to show a single real hard- fact factor in Plains Native American culture which warrants special consideration in modern society and institutions. But, after being attacked as a mindless racist bigot on this (see Roger Cornelius comment here for an example) I started digging a bit. You may find the links below interesting. They do actually indicate contributions to modern society borrowed or adapted by our culture. These include ideas of federalism apparently originated by the Iroquois and influencing Benjamin Franklin's support of a federated system. Also included is a site which somewhat relates modern science with ancient observational "science" of Native Americans. Mostly however, any real facts suggest similarity in cultures rather than unique special values warranting special recognition.
Read and enjoy the above they are interesting; but very little in them to suggest any unique useful cultural practices of Native Americans of the plains which relate to modern life in any new ways or even in old ways socially useful in the modern world which warrant special pleading.
My perspective on the Music Madness is that it serves no useful purpose other than to inflate the egos and businesses of ethnic superiority specialists who don't really give a whit about the Native American children in schools, but benefit from stirring up controversy. The other spin-off reality of these special pleadings is that real examples of discrimination and inequality lose their validity as well. And, the special pleading gives Native American students or any other group of special pleaders one more lame excuse for failure.
When the corporate press or independent blog press gives support to special pleading supported only by generalized irrelevancy, it makes other people look at actual issues as just more of the same special pleading rather than a real issue of discrimination or inequality.
This area has had examples of the very worst kinds of discrimination. A hungry Native American sent to SD Prison for stealing a can of Vienna Weiners for example. A lawyer here convinced that the primary quality used in determining police force of old was finding a persuasive liar.
I am reasonably certain that both Native Americans and Whites have been stuck in prison because of poor investigative work coupled with tunnel vision of prosecutors and police who just "know" who is guilty whatever the evidence to the contrary. We should all be concerned about wrong procedures which lead to innocent people ending up in prison. SDPB-Radio today interviewed a researcher presenting ways to reduce poor investigation and wrongful conviction. All of us of whatever race should be concerned about "being smart on crime rather than simply tough on crime"...that a phrase from the researcher.
These are still real problems that require real work and they will not be solved by High Schools presenting "Honor songs" or other forms of religious or near religious music at graduations and in fact that may exacerbate problems. Inflating the egos of special pleaders is not a solution to problems.
*** Stay tuned and check for reality instead of mythology--- Doug Wiken
Weather: Temperatures go from very warm to very cold, precipitation from deluge to drought, gale winds to dead calm, etc. These kinds of relatively rapid changes in local daily weather may be a symptom of long-term global climate change. Today in Winner, SD we started the morning with frost on car windshields, then the sun was bright for a few hours. Ice and snow melting, water in road ditches and creeks. Earlier this evening it drizzled. Right now the wind is blowing 20mph and temperature is 44F. Dew point is 35F.
The link below may be helpful. A neighbor found it while searching for weather information. A little bit of real serendipity for once. It has more information than I have been able to digest yet however.
Some of the retrograde anti-science South Dakota Republican legislators and editorial page editors won't find this while they search for weather on astrology sites.
*** Stay tuned even if our local weather is confounding us --- Doug Wiken
In the News: ABC on Sunday morning was shuffling through the past years big news stories. One they mentioned was the bravery of Malala Yousafzai. She is the Pakastani teenager shot in the head by the Taliban. With a combination of powerful western medicine of the kind the Taliban views as a form of sin, and a powerful will to live and recover, Malala has become, according to ABC, a powerful spokesperson and founder of an organization pushing education for girls and women around the world. She has turned bitter lemons into sweet lemonade and deserves applause and appreciation.
Opinion:The old men and the rabid young jihadists pawing through ancient documents to interpret them as justifying killing and maiming innocents and "others" should instead be looking to Malala Yousafzai for guidance. Malala should be considered a prophet. She has the potential to return the Islamic world to the modern reality and rational relevance. Islamic scholars of a thousand or so years ago were on the forefront of investigative thinking and theorizing. A program run on SDPB-TV was titled something like "One God..Three Religions--Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. A scholar of the Koran says that the Taliban and others are a radical fringe of the religion and are distorting the religion for political purposes and profit to themselves. A British theologian noted that ALL religions should come with the same kind of warnings on tobacco. Religions can be hazardous to your mental health and physical well being or existence. Those who claim to wear a god on their sleeves and use that to justify political policies are trying to present themselves as unerrant messengers of their god or gods and since religions demand unthinking faith feality separated from reality, the combination is very dangerous.
Local Weather: The new year weather seems a bit like "new boss same as the old boss". The "trace" of predicted snow for this area turned into a few inches. Fluffy and "dry" so a broom will clean 3 inches of it without much effort. Weather gadget shows currrent Winner, SD temperature is 7F degrees. Wind is 1mph and apparently chill factor is same as actual. Relative Humidity around 76%.
** Stay tuned even if comparing your own weather with our local weather isproducing intense schadenfreude -- Doug Wiken
Not everything we hear is deadly serious. Some things are just enough surprise to cheerup the day. The following was passed on to me a few days ago.
A priest in a small town was retiring after many years service . There was a celebration and
the most prominent politician from the town was expected to make a few
comments. He was, however, late because of botched plane connections.
Good father O'Malley decided he could offer a few comments and memories while
they waited for the prime speaker. The priest recalled that he started off his
first day in the community with somebody in the confession box telling him
that he had multiple affairs. He admitted to being a serial adulterer with several illegitimate children. He admitted to cheating his
business associates and customers, etc. etc. The priest said that on that first day, he thought he was really in for problems in the community, but
with that first exception, he now thought he was blessed to be in such a
community filled with so many good souls.
After Father O'Malley said a few more nice words and a half dozen or so grateful parishioners stood up to say a few good things, the politician finally arrived. He
started his speech with an apology for being late, and then noted, "I am
really glad to be here with all of you to honor our long-serving wonderful good Father. I am
also very proud to say that I was the very first parishioner Father O'Malley heard confess here."
Some days are better than others for politicians of all stripes.
Might as well start off with the humor. I got an American Scientist magazine this morning. The lone cartoon I found was amusing even if puns make one groan in acute agony. Two hippopotumus, hippopotomi?, are swimming. One says, "I displace more water than you do." Title of the cartoon is "Hippothesis"...page 429 Nov-Dec 2013.
In the same issue under "Marginalia" is an article titled "Why is human childbirth so Painful". I am sure no expert of pains of females. My wife recently had a hip replacement. She said she felt a lot better after the surgery, and the previous hip pain was the worst pain she had ever had. I asked if it was worse than childbirth. She said it was much worse. I will take her word for both measures.
For many years, the more or less prevailing hypothesis for the childbirth pain has been the assumed conflict between wider hips making running more difficult and childbirth less painful. Evolution favoring the speedier and narrower hips. Now, the idea that wider hips make for slower running has been pretty much discredited by actual research. Another paradigm or hypothesis involves the large brain size of human babies. There are also problems with this however requiring more space for explanation than warranted here.
Perhaps a better explanation now is that it is a matter of "supply and demand" or a matter of how large or fully developed a baby brain can the mother afford to grow. This suggests that labor occurs when the mother can no longer continue to supply the baby's nutritional and metabolic demands. As Peter Ellison of Harvard notes, "Birth occurs when the fetus starts to starve."
As to why the evolved process isn't better, evolutionary adaption is not usually a matter of perfection, but more a matter of "just good enough". There is also another thought on this. Childbirth in ancient times may not have been as painful, but better nutrition for mothers has increased baby brain size.
The hippothesis cartoon is on the same page as the childbirth story conclusion.. Find one and you will find the other.
And for the final bit of this and that, I just read on Bill Moyer's website that the January 3, 2014 "Moyers and Company" will be the last of that program on PBS. I and many others believe this will be a great loss. Moyers and company brought much information and many ideas to viewers that we were unlikely to find elsewhere. He also is not bashful about pointing out the calculated lies of the rightwing corporate obstructionists.
*** Stay tuned and catch all the remaining Moyers & Co programs before they are gone--- Doug Wiken
The TEA party Republicans are full of themselves. They represent themselves. They have no respect or tolerance of ideas that don't fit their mythology. They are too much like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt insisting on a religious state only..
The TEA party Republicans may not want a religious state, but they are pushing for the economic mythology equivalent and with the same kind of our way or no way obstructionism. The transparent double-talk of these jerks is infuriating. They obstruct, obstruct, and obstruct in ways demonstrating no willingness to cooperate or really negotiate, and then whine like little babies because President Obama is not imprassed with their spoiled brat tantrums.
Whatever these knuckleheads say in general terms about the terribleness of "Obamacare", there is precious little specific information from them. It is hard not to believe that they oppose "Obamacare" for the worst possible reasons of the kind that are destructive of democracy and shared powers of government.
These clowns should be sent howling to the political wilderness for the next 40 years, but the US Supreme Court has given them Citizens United and a ton of money from the rich to keep spreading their nonsense. The mainstream press seems too scared of offending their advertizeres by presenting coverage balanced in logic on Obamacare and government shut down rather than on "balance" giving equal time for the most inane lunniest obstructionis nonsense.
*** Stay tuned, you can probably get along without the feds for a few days-- Doug Wiken
President Obama tonight did not deliver a belicose bombs away speech. He did deliver a mostly reasonable indication that for some time at least, the US will cooperate with Russia to get poison gas under international control in Syria.
Obama did claim that radio or phone messages or some kind of communications indicated that Al-Assad's troops were told to put on gas masks and to prepare for gas warfare. No details of course proving this in Obama's short speech. Obama noted the videos of the children and adults dying painfully from the gas attack. Unfortunately, my guess is these videos do not show who actually did the gasing and as evidence are thus mostly irrelevant as a basis for dropping US bombs on a country as a learning experience so they won't use gas weapons again.
The analysis I heard tonight of the speech was pretty predictable with no stunning revelations or comments. Two things did drop out of the coverage however. On the TV coverage a US senator said that his speech was nearly completely different from early briefings last week with those briefings strongly suggesting an imment attack. The other interesting remark I heard was on SDPB-Radio when a diplomat or former inspector for other gas weapons elsewhere when asked if there would be problems in Syria noted that the only likely problems would be in the case of gas weapons in areas controlled by rebels.
This suggests that Al-Assads claims to Rose that his troops had been gassed by rebels may actually be true. This could also mean that the gassing was actually done by rebels or to use Al-Assad's term, "the terrorists" in hopes of getting western powers to attack the regime.
Whatever is the case, the case for a "teaching" attack seems even less clear after that.
But, in short, I hope the Russians are serious and the international community can work out actual elimination of poison gas in the Middle East. It may be that the Russians realized they and Al-Assad could reap a public relations bonanza from this, but if gas was again used by anybody in Syria, the Russians would also be blamed. This may be a win-win for the Russians. But, better the Russians win the public relations war than the US enters an actual war for undefined reasons and never-ending excuses for mission creep.
[[[Another note of September 11,2013: Below is a link to comments related to global warming as a factor in perhaps initiating the unrest in Syria and other areas:
Americans are rightly a bit suspicious of Obama's pleading for war on Syria. All of us no matter what political orientation have reason to be very suspicious and locked into wanting real proof and independent verification. LBJ produced a fraudulent reason for war in Vietnam with the Tonken Bay resolution. Reagan invaded Granada of all places for little or no reason. One of the Bushes took us into Panama. And then there was Junior Bush taking us into war in Iraq after putting Colin Powell in front of the world with fraudulent irrelevant "evidence". And we now have continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which seem to have accomplished only making Americans hated by more people in more parts of the world.
Our military boondoggles and the incredible military waste and deficits going with them make a good case for modern isolationism. Military spending is doubly bad for the economy. It takes money out of the economy to produce goods we cannot purchase thus increasing inflation and preventing better options. It can be hazardous to our social, political, scientific, technological, physical and economic health.
Perhaps we will at some time be shown there are a dozen smoking guns that can remove all doubt about the wisdom of Obama's militarism, but it also seems that Bashar al-Assad held his own in an hour long interview by Charlie Rose. Rose seemed to me to edge into the area of being just plain obnoxious in presenting assertions as proven facts, but al-Assad stayed cool and also on script.
In any case, the treaties on use of poison gas are an international responsibility to enforce. This is not something the US is obligated to or should act on unilaterally and be justified only on general humanitarian ground and specious argument and evidence.
Perhaps all Islamic countries are so enmeshed in religious lunacy that completely senseless behavior can be explained even if counterproductive; but, it does not seem rational for the Bashar al-Assad regime to use of chemical weapons. Any use of chemical warfare seems rationally as being only counter productive to the goals of the regime. On the other hand, it seems entirely rational that rebels or terrorists opposing Basha al-Assad might use such weapons to discredit the regime and gain support from other powers which might otherwise find them as repulsive, retrograde, backward murderous fanatics. .But, the whole middle east seems at least partly insane to me and the last thing we might be able to actually expect from the region is rationality from any side of any issue there. Assertions by any side there should be viewed with our deep and continuing suspicion. We also might want to consider the arguments of climate scientists that global warming generates the droughts and poverty driven unrest that leads to rebellion and government incompetence in handling legitimate complaints aggravates the problem and adds fire to the rebels or terrorists..
Before the US spends one more dime on dumping weaponry into desert sand, we should be aggressively pursuing development of conservation, wind, solar, and hydropower and development of Thorium nuclear power systems. Couple wind and solar energy with devices such as reverse energy cells to produce conventional fuels without adding more carbon to our atmosphere and environment. The goal should be complete independence of the US from fossil fuels in any Islamic country on any continent at any time for any reason...
Pull all of our embassies out of every Islamic country and completely sever economic and social connections with all of them. They only take our money and then hate us as it is and more futile wars with us on any side of one or another religious sects will only make deeper and more dangerous the hate of all of them in every retrograde sect.
Our entry into previous mideast wars and in other backward areas have produced few positive benefits to the US National or Domestic interest and in fact generated almost nothing but negative consequences for us. It is time we realized that every time an Islamicist kills another Islamicist, the US benefits indirectly. It is not in our interest to stop the killing and it is also not in our interest to engage in the killing ourselves and it is certainly not in our interest to lose more American lives in pursuit of placating religious fantasy.
The new reality must be that we have nothing to gain by dealing with those separated from reality by religious insanity.
*** Stay tuned, but do your own research on alternate energy and do your part for pushing the US to a sensible US international policy by more rational domestic policy -- Doug Wiken
The US Army psychologist who decided he should shoot up a bunch of his army comrades to somehow do something for Islamic Terrorists has been sentenced to death.
Feed this dog to hungry feral pigs. Hungry hogs are not big on martyrdom on behalf of religious fanatic terrorists.
I am not a fan of death penalties, but there seems to be litle or no reason to doubt this one. On the other hand any justification for any death penalty may justify murder by government when it is totally incorrect and inappropriate. That is the puzzlement.
*** Stay tuned for less contradictory posts--- Doug Wiken
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