J's Cafe Nette

Archive for May 29th, 2007

For the video go here.

This traitor, Adam Gadahn, tells us if we don’t leave all Islamic lands, free all Muslims from U.S. prisons and end support for Israel we will see worse than 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq or Virginia Tech.

What a wonderful religion of peace he represents.

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Here is something to think about. 

 Where do you stand? 

 Personally I think it’s a nonstarter.

“God either exists or He doesn’t. Based on the testimony, both general revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scriptures/Bible), it is safe to assume that God does in fact exist. It is abundantly fair to conceive, that there is at least 50% chance that the Christian Creator God does in fact exist. Therefore, since we stand to gain eternity, and thus infinity, the wise and safe choice is to live as though God does exist. If we are right, we gain everything, and lose nothing. If we are wrong, we lose nothing and gain nothing. Therefore, based on simple mathematics, only the fool would choose to live a Godless life.” (Pascal Wager)

What’s the number one fear most people have? The FEAR OF DYING! Okay, but if God doesn’t exist, and we all just drift into nothingness when we take our last breath, what are we so afraid of? Socrates said “If death be but a dreamless sleep, what have mortals to fear?” Obviously there’s something after this life, if there weren’t, then we wouldn’t be so afraid of the possibility of spending eternity in heaven or hell.

Before we can begin to believe that God exist, we must have faith that He does. Don’t get it twisted, any really Christian will tell you that at some point in their Christian walk, they’ve doubted the reasoning behind there belief in God, but consider this, faith that has never doubted is of little value, but doubt and faith are inseparable. Faith requires that you believe in something that you’re not sure is there. Example, if I tell you that if you send me your mailing address, then I’ll send you $1,000 in the mail, and you do indeed send me your address, then you have faith that I’ll keep my word. Yes, there may come a point when you’ll doubt what I said is true, but you still send me your address anyhow because you want the cash just in cause I’m telling you the truth. My analogy may suck, but it’s almost the same with the decision to believe that God exist. It’s better to believe than not to believe. Cause in the event that you don’t believe, and you find out that the “thing” you didn’t believe in truly existed, and then you’ve lost. If you believe and that “thing” doesn’t exist, you’ve lost nothing.

Here

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I couldn’t stop laughing while posting this.

                                                         

Poland’s conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies.

Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children’s show promoted homosexuality.

She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.

Story

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Although this should have been done long ago, I’m proud of you Mr. president.

President Bush on Tuesday ordered U.S. sanctions tightened against Sudan’s government for its refusal to stop the violence in the Darfur region.

In brief remarks, Bush followed through on a threat made six weeks ago to pursue tougher action against a government that he said was complicit in the bombing and rape of innocent civilians.

Bush directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to consult with Britain and other allies on pursuing new U.N. Security Council sanctions against Sudan.

He urged Sudan’s president to let international peacekeepers into Darfur.

Bush imposed unilateral punitive action against 31 companies and four individuals.

Violence has devastated Darfur since 2003.

Fighting by government-backed militias and rebel groups in the Darfur region of western Sudan has killed more than 200,000 people and driven about 2 million from their homes.

Story

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There is no excuse for this. These people should be caught and punished severely.

Vandals burned dozens of small American flags that decorated veterans’ graves for Memorial Day and replaced many of them with hand-drawn swastikas, authorities said Monday.

Forty-six flag standards were found empty and another 33 flags were in charred tatters Sunday in the cemetery, authorities said. Swastikas drawn on paper appeared where 14 of the flags had been.

Members of the American Legion on this island off Washington’s northwest coast replaced the burned flags with new ones Sunday afternoon.

The vandals struck again on Memorial Day after a guard left at dawn, the San Juan County sheriff’s office said. This time, the vandals left 33 of the hand-drawn swastikas.

Story

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When Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was first published in the early 70s I read the book. As a human being it broke my heart, but as an Indian human being it tore my heart to read what happened to the American Indians during the settling of the West.

Over the week-end HBO showed a movie by the title of the book that went into the time leading up to Wounded Knee and when Chief Sitting Bull finally went to a reservation to live so his people would no longer suffer.

It actually tells the story through the eyes of one Sioux man, whose Indian name was changed to Charles Eastman.

You can read the Captain’s review here and, along with the Captain, I urge you to watch this movie while it is running if you have HBO .

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The US and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq met for four hours yesterday in the Green Zone, talking about ways to make Iraq safer.

The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze yesterday with a four-hour meeting on Iraqi security. The American envoy said there was broad policy agreement but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi said in an interview that the two sides would meet again in less than a month. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Washington would decide only after the Iraqi government issued an invitation.

“We don’t have a formal invitation to respond to just yet, so it doesn’t make sense to respond to what we don’t have,” Mr. Crocker told reporters after the meeting.

Don’t get your hopes up because Iran dismisses US charges they have armed insurgents to fight against the US and Iraqi people in Iraq.

The American envoy called the meeting “businesslike” and said at “the level of policy and principle, the Iranian position as articulated by the Iranian ambassador was very close to our own.”

However, he said: “What we would obviously like to see and the Iraqis would clearly like to see is an action by Iran on the ground to bring what it’s actually doing in line with its stated policy.”

Speaking later at a press conference in the Iranian Embassy, Mr. Kazemi said: “We don’t take the American accusations seriously.”

Mr. Crocker declined to detail what Mr. Kazemi had said in the session, but the Iranian diplomat formerly a top official in the elite Revolutionary Guards Quds Force said he had offered to train and equip the Iraqi army and police to create “a new military and security structure” for Iraq.

Mr. Kazemi said U.S. efforts to rebuild those forces were inadequate to handle the chaos in Iraq, for which he said Washington bore sole responsibility. He said he also had offered to provide what assistance Iran could in rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which he said had been “demolished by the American invaders.”

The icebreaking session, according to both sides, did not veer into other difficult issues that encumber the U.S.-Iranian relationship primarily Iran’s nuclear program and the more than a quarter-century history of diplomatic estrangement.

But the issues at hand portend a bruising set of talks should the two sides have follow-up meetings.

I imagine this meeting and immediate future meetings, if they are held, will show both sides carefully circling the other to see if they can get a read on the situation.

I’m not so sure having Iran train the military and police would be in the best interests of anyone, since they are suspected of training the Shiite death squads and inflitrating the current Iraqi military and police forces.

According to the report President al-Maliki spoke briefly to the two ambassadors:

He told both sides that Iraqis wanted a stable country free of foreign forces and regional interference. Iraq should not be turned into a base for terrorist groups, he said, adding that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were only there to help rebuild the army, police and infrastructure.

The United States had no plans to stage a strike against Iran from Iraq, he said.

This is at least a first step. Perhaps it would be better if a predominantly Sunni country, say Egypt, were to try to help the two sides broker a peace agreement.

It’s going to take Shiites and Sunnis of good faith to broker any kind of peace agreement in Iraq.

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People in Venezuela are rioting because Dictator President Hugo Chavez has taken the last free television station with nationwide coverage off the air and replaced it with State television.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan police fired tear gas and plastic bullets Monday into a crowd of thousands protesting a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a television station critical of his leftist government off the air.

Police fired toward the crowd of up to 5,000 protesters from a raised highway, and protesters fled amid clouds of tear gas. They later regrouped in Caracas’ Plaza Brion chanting “freedom!” Some tossed rocks and bottles at police, prompting authorities to scatter demonstrators by firing more gas.

It was the largest of several protests that broke out across Caracas hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight Sunday and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV’s broadcast license, accusing it of “subversive” activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him.

At least three protesters and one police officer were injured in skirmishes. Some protesters were seen in television footage hurling spent tear gas canisters back at police.

Office workers poured out of buildings to join student protesters, while organizers called for the demonstration to remain peaceful. RCTV talk show host Miguel Angel Rodriguez led the crowd in chants of, “They will not silence us!”

I guess people will put up with some repression as long as you don’t take away their favorite television programs.

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China’s former drug regulator has been sentenced to death for taking bribes and allowing substandard medicines to be approved, causing the deaths of at least 10 people and the contamination of pet foods and toothpaste whose ingredients or products have been exported by China.

BEIJING (AP) – China’s former top drug regulator was sentenced to death Tuesday in an unusually harsh punishment for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.
Seeking to address broadening concerns over food, the government also announced plans for its first recall system for unsafe products.

The developments are among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international alarm over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods—from pet food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with industrial chemicals to tainted antibiotics.

Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court convicted Zheng Xiaoyu of taking bribes in cash and gifts worth more than $832,000 while he was director of the State Food and Drug Administration, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Those bribes allowed eight companies to get around drug approval standards, it said.

Zheng’s acts “greatly undermined … the efficiency of China’s drug monitoring and supervision, endangered public life and health and had a very negative social impact,” Xinhua said, citing the court.

The punishment was appropriate given the “huge amount of bribes involved and the great damage inflicted on the country and the public,” Xinhua said.

In one instance, an antibiotic approved by Zheng’s agency killed at least 10 patients last year before it was taken off the market.

Under Chinese law, a death sentence meted out by an intermediate court automatically will be reviewed by a higher court and ultimately has to be approved by the state supreme court.

The sentence was unusually heavy even for China, which is believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined—and likely indicates the leadership’s determination to deal with the recent scares involving unsafe food and drugs.

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I just read this short story on CNN.com and it has touched me in a very personal way.

Amid the sounds of mortar and machine-gun fire, a father and son both serving in Iraq were reunited in Baghdad after spending more than a decade apart.

Army Master Sgt. William McGraw and his son, Pfc. Logan McGraw, 21, met last week at Baghdad’s Camp Victory in a two-day reunion arranged by the military, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

“Logan, I am your father,” were William McGraw’s first words.

The two last saw each other when Logan McGraw was 8 years old. They met only once before that, more than seven years earlier as his parents were getting divorced. As a child, he moved around with his mother, a Kentucky-based sergeant.

“I have a chance to finally know my son. I’m excited about starting over again,” said William McGraw, 45. “But reality sets in; we know this is a war zone and there are soldiers missing and people dying.”

In Baghdad, they embraced and bantered about sports and family life, including the younger McGraw’s 2-year-old son Douyniall.

“It took a little bit longer than I hoped for,” Logan McGraw said of the reunion. “But at the end, it came down to having a relationship later down the road and finally being able to communicate with each other.”

Logan McGraw’s unit was set to return to Taji, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Baghdad. He was deployed in April. William McGraw had been in Iraq for 24 months and was scheduled to redeploy to Atlanta this week.

I have a similar story and that’s why this touches me so deeply. I pray Logan stays alive and gets out of Iraq in order to get to know the father he has never had the chance to know until now.

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Cindy Sheehan, the mother whose son Casey’s death in Iraq caused her to be a peace activist, has given up her public fight against the war. See here and here.

She says her son’s death was in vain, she has lost her marriage, her health and her savings for her cause and now she is being criticized by some on the far left for criticizing Democrats for the same actions for which she criticized Republicans.

In a lot of ways I feel Cindy Sheehan was a victim of her own making. No, she didn’t cause the death of her son, which is what she says brought her to the public eye, but she allowed others to benefit their cause by her own grief.

Now that she has forsaken the Democratic party she has been called unsavory names at Democratic Underground, a site that is so far to the left it’s ready to drop off the face of the earth, but it was a place that praised her and glorified her before she turned against the democrats.

“I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a ‘tool’ of the Democratic Party.” Sheehan wrote. “However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. “

She has been quite a celebrity for the far left for the past two years, but is now giving it all up, including selling Camp Casey in Crawford, TX, to go back home to her other children and try to patch up relationships that have been strained due to her so-called “fame”.

Maybe now she can actually take the time to grieve over the loss of her son in a way that will be cathartic for her, and she will be able to re-start her relationship with her other children whose needs have come second to the anti-war movement for the past two years.

As as conservative Republican who believes her son will have died in vain only if we leave without bringing about a peace that is elusive at best, I feel no ill feelings toward her. I wish her Godspeed and the peace she so desperately seeks for herself.

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