NO FLOWERS ON GRAVES (Memorial Day Tribute)

Unfortunately, this post will not be a friendly memorial to our brave men and women that fight and have fought for our freedoms. Instead I have seen hatred from liberals that they continuously claim the conservatives are guilty of.
As for example Memorial Day Thoughts started out by a plea to:

Find a veteran this Memorial Day weekend and say, "thank you for my freedom." Visit a military cemetery and thank G-d someone was willing to die so you and I might live in freedom. And support those, like my friend Daniel Dobson, who for the second time is about to make an installment payment toward the price free people must pay in order that we might continue to enjoy liberty.

But disgressed to showing pictures of freakish deformed children, a picture of Abu Ghraib abuse, and just general name calling.

But what really took the cake for me was the following posting on the Huffington Post:
My niece Sarrah Jessika just graduated from high school, and was asked to do the commencement address. But instead, she decided to read this essay to her classmates. It's about Memorial Day. When I heard it, I thought - WOW. This would fit in perfectly at the Huffington Post.
WHY I DON'T PUT FLOWERS ON SOLDIER'S GRAVES
By Sarrah Jessika

Forgive me if my speech sounds jumbled, but I was planning to talk about coping with my father's inguinal hernia, but then I realized that it was Memorial Day. (pause)

I have noticed that Memorial Day is not a holiday outside the USA. I think this is weird.
Don't you think that's it's kind of arrogant that we continue to celebrate it, even though the rest of the world doesn't? Haiti doesn't do it. Or Darfur. Celebrating Memorial Day while the rest of the world doesn't makes us look like idiots. No wonder they hate us. I would too...

According to the Encyclopedia, Memorial Day is a holiday that honors "the men and women who died in military service for the United States."

Notice how it's not "gay" men or women. (pause, look up)

This is just one reason why I don't honor Memorial Day.

But isn't it right to honor the people who gave their lives so we can enjoy the freedoms we hold so dearly today?

No, it isn't. These people did not give their lives so we can enjoy the freedoms. They fought in wars because they enjoyed killing people. Innocent people. Gay, innocent people. Gay innocent people of color. And their pets as well.

Here is a fact that Condaliar Liceface doesn't tell you: "our" soldiers have callously abandoned hundreds of pets to go "fight for their country." Since 19,000 troops were sent to Iraq in January from a Georgia, animal control officers had to pick up over 300 dogs. Over a third have them have been put to death.

This has become a war directed not at so-called terrorists, but terriers.

I shudder to think about the housecats, hamsters, and sugargliders that have also gone missing. I have a sugarglider. It's a lot like a flying squirrel (but more adorable) and its name comes from the fact that they like to eat sweet sap that drips from wounds in trees.

Wounded trees. (pause) There's another casualty of war. War wounds trees and probably kills them too. But do we have a special day that honors trees that have fallen during a time of war?

I doubt it. Or if we do, we certainly don't get it off from school. And that's wrong too.

I think Memorial Day is only good for one thing: allowing us to ponder the hundreds of millions of innocent civilians that our fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers, great-great grandfathers and great great great grandfathers have maliciously murdered or wounded. Memorial Day is also good for reminding communities that when opening their swimming pools, they should also remove the bloody Band-Aids from the shallow end. It grosses me out.

But not as much as the war grosses me out. And soldiers gross me out the most. Dead soldiers are even grosser. My mother told me we have to go visit a cemetery on Memorial Day. But why should I place flowers on "white" stones that represent killers and torturers who have done nothing but cultivate a mindset that glorifies war and the killing and torturing of people and abandoning their pets? My sister's says there's a National Moment of Remembrance that is supposed to take place, and the US Flag must be flown at half-staff. I think the flag should always be flown at half-staff - not to mark dead soldiers, but to mark the My Lai massacre, which happened in Vietnam. If it is possible to burn a flag at half-staff, I would do that too. I would need to set it on fire first, and then put it up a flagpole, which could be dangerous. I would use a ladder but I don't like heights.

My sister is going to have a picnic down at the local park. I'm not going.
The inmates at Guantanamo Bay don't get ambrosia salad. So why should I? My aunt always brings ambrosia salad. She puts sour cream, fruit chunks, mandarin oranges, pineapple tidbits, cherries and tiny marshmallows into her recipe. She spoons it all over a bed of lettuce leaves. This sounds a lot like Bush's evil foreign policy in Iraq - the fruit being our army, and the lettuce leaves being the innocent citizens of Iraq. The sour cream is basically blood, I think.

That's why I hate ambrosia salad. Almost as much as I hate Memorial Day.

Memorial day began when the Civil War ended. All war is evil but the Civil War was especially evil because it was racist - many blacks, for example, weren't allowed to fight. Women and gays - too. Don't get me wrong: war is evil. But what's eviler is not allowing people to fight in them. I hate war, but I hate people who won't let me fight in them.

A long time ago, ancient Greeks honored their dead by decorating the grave of every soldier with flowers. Ancient Greeks were bad, which is why you don't see them around anymore. As for putting flowers on graves, people still do that today.

That is evil. All you are doing is lining the pockets of corporations who make millions off people who are lining their pockets. I am referring specifically to Dole Foods, who I know for a fact has not honored its pledge to negotiate with the independent flower unions in Columbia. Because of this, many work-related health problems will go untreated, which include: headaches, nausea, impaired vision, conjunctivitis, congenital malformations, and respiratory and neurological problems.

I am not talking about the flower workers. I am talking about the insects. As you know, growing flowers requires the use of pesticides, which kill insects - which is genocide, at least from the perspective of the insects. Sadly, insects are incapable of forming unions against this fundamentally racist act. Because of this, millions of innocent insects suffer nausea and impaired vision. And so they end up jobless, and almost always homeless.

The next time you see an insect on the street, you will know why.

So I urge all of you not to buy flowers and put them on the graves of dead soldiers. In fact, I urge you not to buy flowers ever again.

(except you, Bobby Hafner: for the prom I want Champagne Moment Floribunda roses. They were awarded Rose of The Year 2006, and they have these champagne colored blooms displayed on shiny green foliage. If you expect to get anywhere near second base, bring two dozen. )

Thank you everyone, and feel free to circulate my speech among the internet!

Not only was this done by a highschool graduate but that "adults" felt it was good enough to be presented as a speech to the graduating class but then was printed on the internet at such a prominent blog as the Huffington Post.

I think it speaks for itself and does not need any more comment by myself. But I do have a question: "What has happened to our education system as well as the liberals?"

False Story on Iran? Part Two

By way of Andrew Sullivan/Taheri Responds:

PRESS RELEASE: AMIR TAHERI ADDRESSES QUERIES ABOUT DRESS CODE STORY
by Amir Taheri
Benador Associates
May 22, 2006

Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun.
As far as my article is concerned I stand by it.
The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation.
Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation,
including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of
Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. ( In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908).
I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my
sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004.
I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.

Interestingly, the Islamic Republic authorities refuse to issue an
official statement categorically rejecting the concept of dhimmitude and the need for marking out religious minorities.
I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development.
Iranian author and journalist Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.

The above was from title link. So not much to say but wanted to save as much information on this no matter what happens.

Links:
Informed Comment/Another Fraud on Iran: No Legislation on Dress of Religious Minorities
Newspaper apologizes for anti-Iran report
Column One: Hitler is still dead

Latest Hitler: how lies become news. (false story about Iran in the media, again)

Note to readers: I plan on spending more time on my other blog Rutherfordian-Economics and that was one reason for such little blogging here for the last month.

This post was orginally meant for Thom Hartman's Board as a piece on Irans drift toward fascism and taking on the traits of Nazi Regime. But since it turns out to be a hoax, I kind of wanted to save it for a case study. And with the speed of information on the internet both bloggers on the left and right have have fallen into the trap of bad information. It will always be a matter of what is done when questions arise. So instead of being as Dan Rather that tried to say the documents were questionable but the general facts are wrong, bloggers need to admit that the information is false and move on to explore the general issues that surround it.

The post started out withIran eyes badges for Jews.

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.
...
"The world should not ignore this," said Rabbi Hier. "The world ignored Hitler for many years -- he was dismissed as a demagogue, they said he'd never come to power -- and we were all wrong."

Mr. Farber said Canada and other nations should take action to isolate Mr. Ahmadinejad in light of the new law, which he called "chilling," and his previous string of anti-Semitic statements.

"There are some very frightening parallels here," he said. "It's time to start considering how we're going to deal with this person."

As I have said before, I could care less what Mahmood believes or thinks, but I do care about what he does and his word has indicated what direction he wants to go. (Note: It looks like they took the content off the internet, the page comes back blank.)

But David Frum thinks this is Unfair to Iran:

But wait a minute - it is unjust to accuse the mullahs of getting the idea of badges for Jews from the Nazis. The truth is: the Nazis got the idea from the mullahs!

The first world leader to require Jews to wear distinctive badges (a yellow belt and a yellow conical "dunce" cap) was Haroun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph, who ruled in Baghdad in the era of Charlemagne, the late 700s and early 800s.

Haroun's idea was later copied by the popes, but long after it vanished from the Christian world it endured in Islamic countries. Even in our own time, one of the final acts of the Taliban in Afghanistan was to attempt to enforce a distinctive badge on that country's Hindu minority.

Everything old is new again, I suppose.

But it does remind that when groups like CAIR propose that "Islamophobia" explains the bad press Muslim regimes receive in the West - and call for the US government to act against this supposed menace - well, it may be time to ask (as one of Islam's great prophets put it),

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

I wonder which one of Islam's great prophets it was. And lastly:
Say Anything/Iran:Badges for Jews

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he wants to "wipe Israel off the map", rants and babbles like Hitler, denies the Holocaust, and now this?

How big does the writing on the wall have to be, folks?

Links:
ThomHartman's Board/Latest Hitler: how lies become news. (false story about Iran in the media, again)
Breaking: Ahmadinejad to send a Letter to the Pope
Iran May Make Non-Moslems Wear Badges