Nobody's Business

Why Christianity Is Not Scary, and Islam Is

Over at Reason, the discussion of Geert Wilders' movie took an interesting turn when a commenter named Paul brought up this notorious T-shirt. While I'm no fan of Christianity, the cult of Christ is relatively harmless these days. The following choice boils down the difference between Christianity and Islam pretty well.

I spent some time thinking about it. Really thinking about it. Then, I imagined a scenario. Two T-shirts — pretend you have to wear one of them, publicly. One says "Jesus is a cunt", the other says "Muhammed is a cunt". Which one do you wear?

I think Paul's meaning is, "Which one do you wear without fear of violent repercussions?" And that, alas, is a no-brainer.

Cameras and Cheerleaders Don't Mix

Guy videotapes a public performance by a cheerleading squad, is arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. Discuss.

Complication 1: Cops say he tried to "conceal" the camera. Why would he? And do we take the cops' word for it to begin with? It sounds sinister but may not mean anything. More information needed. Complication 2: We also don't know what, if anything, was on the rest of the tape. What we do know is that the guy's name and his career are destroyed, and so far, no one seems to understand why.

Previous decency-flouting cheerleading bandit here. Texas legislature banning "suggestive" cheerleading moves here.

[hat tip: reader Steve Murphy]

Opium Crops Destroyed, Child Brides Multiply

I'm going to assume that drug czar John P. Walters does not deliberately attempt to let little girls get fucked by pedophiles. Nonetheless, that's what Mr. Walters' policies are accomplishing in Afghanistan. The man seems to have a certain lack of empathy for other people's children, as I've argued before — especially if those children are living in third-world countries whose denizens Mr. Walters will never have to face, let alone answer to.

Here's what Mr. Walters does in order to — accidentally, mind you — promote child rape. He and his fellow federal drug warriors are urging the authorities in Afghanistan to destroy poppy fields. That means they are in effect encouraging drug traffickers and loan sharks to swoop in and legally take the affected farmers' prepubescent daughters as their fuck toys. Newsweek explains:

Khalida's father [Sayed Shah] has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. ...

The family's heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family's little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah's entire two and a half acres of poppies. ... Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead, the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It's my fate," the child says.

Khalida is said to be nine years old.

Ponder that. Nine. Years. Old.

As she is sexually assaulted god knows how many times over the next five or ten or twenty years, she can perhaps take solace from the fact that John P. Walters, for one, believes that collateral damage like widespread child rape among Afghanis is a small price to pay to stop Americans from getting high.

Where's the Government to Protect Me...

...from other people's cell-phone waves?

I demand that the state attorneys general collectively sue Big Cell Phone for at least half a trillion dollars (adjusted for inflation) in what's sure to be a landmark case. And that, to combat second-hand phone radiation, bars and restaurants immediately ban all mobile phone use. And of course, cell phone taxes must go up and up until all users drop their dangerous, anti-social habit.

After all:

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation. The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

Fitna Update, and a Request to Other Bloggers

The anti-Quran movie Fitna is under attack, and digital copies are being yanked left and right. You can help defeat the censorship.

Red Tape Defeats Scotch Tape

Don't you feel safer knowing that prosecutors have made the evil members of America's sticky-tape conglomerate pay for a case of terrible lawlessness?

3M Co. has agreed to pay almost $700,000 to settle a Fresno County case that alleged the company sold undersize adhesive tapes.

Fresno County prosecutors made their case stick by showing that 3M's Scotch and Tartan brand adhesive and packaging tapes were 6 percent narrower than advertised. "They knew what the width was, and they seemed to want to exaggerate it," said Alan Yengoyan, the Fresno County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case.

Six percent short of the stated number. If we prosecuted  all government bureaucrats and legislators who are at least six percent off in what they delivered, we'd be clogging the courts for the next 25 years. No matter:

Under the settlement announced Thursday, 3M agreed to change its labels. It also will pay Fresno County $600,000 in civil penalties and an additional $75,000 into a state trust fund to benefit county and state weights and measures offices. The company also will pay $18,000 to the state Department of Measurement and Standards, which investigated the case.

Fitna Is Here — You Be the Judge

Decide for yourself if Geert Wilders' 16-minute movie about Islam was worth all the handwringing and panic and anger of the last few months, and if it could be the spark for a violent Muslim response (so far, restraint has won out).

It's split into two parts, below — the second part overlaps the first by two minutes, so skip ahead if you'd like. By the way, YouTube has a questionable record when it comes to defending free speech — especially, it seems, once Muslims complain of hurty feelings. If YouTube pulls Fitna, and clicking on the images above does not start the film, you should be able to watch it here or here instead.

SATURDAY UPDATE: As I expected, YouTube has removed the film, or at least the first part (why not the second part, Allah knows. Give it time, I guess). LiveLeak has also succumbed to the pressure, saying it pulled Wilders' film after it received "threats of a very serious nature." So I'm linking to Fitna as currently hosted (in its entirety) on Google. It's a copy of the erstwhile LiveLeak feed, as you can tell by the logo in the upper left corner — but make no mistake, LiveLeak itself has indeed been forced to axe the video. We'll see if Google is less easily rattled.

As anyone knows (except jihadi wannabes?), the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. I'm confident that this blog, and thousands of others, will always have a working link to Fitna, despite the veiled and not-so-veiled death threats that are being issued against us.

If you have a pro-freedom-of-speech blog yourself, please consider embedding the Wilders film (ask me how if you don't know). This would be a good time to show that you're no fair-weather friend of the most important principle in our western democracies. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

UH-OH: More movie trouble a-brewing.

TSA Bravely Declares War on Nipple Rings

Federal airport security drone: "Ma'am, you're going to have to remove those nipple piercings. Here's a pair of pliers."

[thanks, Anita!]

'I Hate Pot So Much, I'm Gonna Smoke It Daily'

"Anyone else wanna call bullshit on this article?" Radley Balko asked over at the Agitator.

Why yes, thanks, I believe I will.

The piece in question is the account of a British mom, Nicky Taylor, who went to Amsterdam to find out what it would be like to smoke potent cannabis every day for a month. She did so for the benefit of a BBC documentary (quite the assignment, huh?). But today's Daily Mail already lets everyone know what happened: Turns out that Ms. Taylor didn't like the drug one bit. It made her paranoid and afraid, she recounts.

Hmm. And we're supposed to take away from this...what? As far as I can tell, the experiment only proves that the cannabis Ms. Taylor smoked didn't agree with her. So?

I can't quite grasp the masochism involved in ingesting anything repeatedly that you hated intensely the first one or two times you tried it. What on earth is the point?

Let's say I hate the taste of grappa, plus grappa gives me a headache. Would I be mindless enough to keep drinking it every day for a month — and then make a big media stink about how my taste buds withered and how much my temples throbbed and how awful I felt? Um, no.

Plus, if Ms. Taylor had enjoyed the joints she smoked, I'm fairly positive we wouldn't have read a glowing article about her exhilarating experience. The outcome was predetermined: Taylor went to Amsterdam with the intent of proving that cannabis is 'bad' for you, and that's what she found (surprise!). Her rejection of the drug — as opposed to her endorsement — is the only reason you're reading about it in the Daily Mail, and, I suspect, the only reason the BBC will televise her adventures.

For every Nicky Taylor who abhors the effects of pot on her mind and body, there are dozens of quiet, content cannabis users who've smoked the drug for years and obviously like the effect. So let Ms. Taylor choose her favorite poison (cigarettes? bourbon? chocolate cheesecake?), let everyone else choose theirs, and let's all please just leave each other alone.

To me, the most salient part of the article was this admission:

In the UK, cannabis use has increased 1,000 per cent since the Seventies.

Clearly, that whole War on Drugs thing is really beginning to have an impact.

Pet Cops Issue Indoor-Air-Quality Standards

Sweden just announced new regulations for pet owners. Among the requirements:

The levels of ammonia and carbon dioxide in the air must be kept below 10 parts per million and 3000 parts per million, respectively.

Quick, do a chemical analysis of the air in the living room — the animal welfare inspectors are at the door!