STRANGELAND.NET

Lenin once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” And in an age of instant media, a lie can be told a million times before anybody knows the wiser. And just such a lie was told yesterday. The National Post, a Canadian Newspaper, reported that Iran passed a law last week which would require religious minorities to wear armbands to identify their religious affiliation, specifically Jews would wear yellow, Christians red, and Zoroastrians blue.

The uproar over this was swift and vitriolic, as comparisons to Nazi Germany were made in news papers and TV news casts across the West. By early afternoon governments started to get involved. Canada’s Prime Minister Howard got joined the fray comparing the Iranians to Nazis, and the US State Department publicly echoed the Nazi comparison as well.

Now… here’s the truth of the matter. It was all manufactured by Amir Taheri, an Iranian ex-patriot commentator who makes a living by writing negative propaganda about Iran. The actual law he is talking about has not been passed, includes no mention of requiring markings based on religious affiliation, and is really only targeted to keep Iranian women from wearing revealing Western clothing in public. But the condemnations that Mr. Taheri has triggered against Iran around the world will be heard by more people than the quiet retractions which are being buried by an embarrassed media on page 10. So the Nazi label will persist and the casus belli for invading Iran will grow… all because of one man’s powerful lie and a complacent media.

code_archaeologist Uncategorized

So currently out of the wonderful town of Loganville, Georgia (in Gwinnett County–one of the suburbs of Atlanta), you have the age old dual cry sounding from a mother of three elementary school children. What are those cries, you ask? Protect my kids because I’m too stubborn to do it myself and Force my beliefs on everyone else.

For those who are going ‘huh’ at the moment, let me explain. There is a mother in Loganville, Georgia, (Laura Mallory) who is convinced that the Harry Potter books promote witchcraft. Because she has an apparent need to enforce her morality on all the other children in the Gwinnett County School system instead of simply telling her kids not to read the books, she is asking that the Potter books be removed from the shelves of school libraries in the country. From news reports (off of WSB in Atlanta), the School Board is meeting tonight to make a decision on this.

I truly have a hard time understanding people like this. Part of it may be due to my staunch belief that so long as what I’m doing doesn’t hurt anyone else, then no one else has any sort of right to tell me not to do it. So the mindset of ‘I don’t want this around, so no one should be able to get it’ is rather alien to me. Not completely, mind you, as I was raised in the Bible Belt, but it alternately leaves me shaking me head and staring confusedly at people spouting nonsense of this nature.

Yes, there is talk of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter books. I have yet to see anything in the books that is proselytizing those two things in the book. In fact, it pretty much points out that you have to be born a wizard or a witch. You can’t make yourself one after the fact and you can’t do anything about being one once it makes itself known. (You know, there’s a whole level of interpretation I could put here, but I’ll just keep it to myself for now.)

Laura Mallory seems to believe that she has the ability to force her beliefs on the other children within the Gwinnett County School System. Apparently it’s easier to demand something of this nature from the School Board than it is to tell her kids they can’t read the books.

I really just don’t understand people sometimes.

For those wanting more information on this, you can go read here: http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=32&url_subchannel_id=&url_article_id=14074&change_well_id=2.
Or, alternately, you can do a search on Google for +”Harry Potter” +”Gwinnett County” +Loganville

stranger Uncategorized

So I’ve been disappointingly quiet of late. I suppose I just haven’t been able to rouse up a blistering rage about anything to spew forth here for the enjoyment or frustration of the three readers we have (it might be more, but they’re probably just bots in disguise). This morning driving into work, however, I heard something on WPTF that made me want to throw things at my radio (as opposed to my fellow commuters, which is the norm).

The State of North Carolina currently has a $2,000,000,000 (yes, that’s two billion) surplus. Now, common sense to me says that if you’ve taken money from people to fund something and end up not needing it all, you give back the money to the people from whom you took it. Unfortunately, the legislature of the Old North State doesn’t exactly follow that same logic. The report on the radio this morning noted that one of the main goals of the short summer session was to decide what to do with that surplus.

The simple fact that they even feel the need to consider what to do with the money flabbergasts me. At the absolute worst, they should sock the money away in an interest bearing account and save it for a rainy day to cover a future shortfall. In a perfect world, they’d give that money back to the citizens of North Carolina in proportion with the amount of money they shelled out to reach that two billion dollar figure. After all, they could do something gracious like, just maybe, reducing the gas tax in the state. Right now North Carolina has one of the highest gasoline taxes in the United States, to the point that trucking companies tell their drivers to avoid filling up in the state if at all possible.

But doing something of that nature (or otherwise lowering taxes) is completely anathema to the Democratic majority in the North Carolina legislature. Instead they opt to try and find other ways to spend the money for programs that will keep them elected and spending money that doesn’t belong to them. Of course, many of the voters aren’t much help on this as they’re too busy standing there with their hands out going ‘hey, I want my cut!’ Unfortunately their viewpoint of ‘my cut’ tends to involve their ’share’ along with the shares of about a dozen of their neighbors.

I’d say the voters this Fall need to send a message to these idiots in the NC Legislature that behavior of this nature is unconscionable and will not be tolerated. My cynicism knows no bounds, however, when it comes to the ability (or even desire) of my fellow voters to do this. Instead many of them will simply vote for the person promising them the biggest cut of their neighbors’ money and the legislature will continue on as it has in many years. I suppose there is always hope that the Speaker of the House will get indicted like rumor keeps saying may be happening, but I have a hard time believing it.

Instead I’ll sit here and fume because the first thought of the legislature is how to spend a surplus rather than how to save it or return it to the people from whom they took it. Fiscal responsibility is dead in 99% of the politicians in this country and it is simply a matter of how they can use the money from tax revenues to keep themselves in office.

stranger Uncategorized