Does Sharia Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.?
Friday, January 4, 2008
Will Smith Was Right about Hitler
Will Smith Was Right about Hitler
Jack Engelhard
Sometimes it is not good to be the king.
Will Smith, the world's leading man at the box office, currently starring in I Am Legend, was all over the blogosphere, and not in a good way, after stating that "Hitler set out to do what he thought was good." Gossipmongers have tarred him as being sympathetic to Hitler, which teaches us, and certainly Smith, that fame is both a blessing and a curse.
Let's get to Smith's short but flammable quote, as it appeared in Scotland's Daily Record, before we get added to the list of his defamers: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backward logic, he set out to do what he thought was good."
That's what happens when actors go forth unscripted – but was Smith wrong? No, he was right.Name the tyrants and there they are, doing not evil but "good."
Adolph Hitler intended to blitz and burn every man and woman on this earth for the "good" of Nazism and racial purity, Aryan-style. Ditto Joseph Stalin for the good of communism – and the numbers are still coming in for China's Mao Zedong, Cambodia's Pol Pot and Cuba's Fidel Castro for the millions murdered in the name of the glorious Revolution.
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another advocate for peace in our time. (First, though, kill the Christians and the Jews.)
The assassin of Benazir Bhutto was surely a “Shahid With A Cause.” Bhutto's mourners decided against dignified remembrance (that is so old hat) and instead took to a spree of burning and killing throughout Pakistan as a means to express their love for their fallen leader. (That line from Cool Hand Luke keeps coming back: "Some men you just can't reach.")
Duck, for love like this does make the world go round – even closer to home.
Homegrown malcontents who profess universal love seldom testify at their weekly meetings, "My name is Bob and I'm an America hater." Rather, they proclaim their self-loathing sideways, by injecting subliminal codes such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and waterboarding. Those key words do the selling.
(Memo to self-appointed moralists: We should be better than our enemies? Maybe we should be worse once in a while and then they'd leave us alone.)
Isaiah prophesied against the day when bitter will be called sweet and evil will be called good. Welcome. That day has arrived, and it is global. Orwell (as I've said before) only got the date wrong. The words "peace" and "love" now serve as antonyms. I run and hide when someone is introduced as a "humanitarian." In 1949, Chairman Mao established his "people's democratic dictatorship," a wonderful play upon words, and people.
Yasser Arafat, the founding father of modern up-to-the-minute terrorism, the media darling who inspired a generation of fanatics, was invited to the Clinton White House and awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace AFTER Leon Klinghoffer and the Munich Olympics. Arafat's fingerprints are on virtually everything that goes boom. When he died, the UN ran its flag at half-staff for the world's pioneering suicide bomber Mon Amour. (How useful are those 72 virgins when you're gay?)
Obviously, he must have been a "good man.”
Hitler's lieutenants meeting at the Wannssee Conference, January 20, 1942, were also “good men.” After all, they were only seeking "a final solution to the Jewish question." To their way of thinking, where's the harm in that? In fact, the minutes of that meeting reveal hardly any anti-Semitic outbursts, and the word genocide cannot be found. (Not on my search.)
No, it was all about TRAIN SCHEDULES. They weren't doing evil. They were doing BUSINESS.
Hannah Arendt, on Eichmann, already told us about the "banality of evil." I am sure that this is exactly what Smith had in mind. Smith later clarified himself for being so misrepresented: "Hitler was a vile, heinous killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet."
Consider, then, his original remarks as a forgivable first draft.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
How Supermarket Purchases Violate Your Privacy and Increase the Cost of Insurance
How Supermarket Purchases Violate Your Privacy and Increase the Cost of Insurance
Every Patient's Advocate Thursday, January 03, 2008
Every Patient's Advocate Thursday, January 03, 2008
It’s cold and wintery. Time to hunker down with plenty of comfort food and a toddy or two… and while we’re at the store, let’s pick up a bottle of aspirin, some stomach acid medicine, and maybe even plenty of dog food for the rottweiler…. A swipe of both your store’s loyalty card (gotta get those discounts!) and of course, your debit card to pay for your goods — and home you go to lay in for the weekend, read a good book, and max out on all that junk food and alcohol.
Come Monday, your purchases, aligned with your identity, will be sold to a health insurer, or life insurance company, perhaps an auto insurance group…. and they will have that information to review should you contact them to make an insurance purchase. This, according to the Harvard Review.
Who’s selling the information? Either the supermarket or other store where you used your card, or the company that administers the program for that card. It’s one of their income streams. They make money from you AND whoever they sell information to. For the 50 cents off on that gallon of milk or can of chicken soup, you give away your privacy. How will it affect you? Well — suppose you purchase wine from the supermarket, then drink it at home that night. The next day you drive to work and someone broadsides your car. Later, in court, the defense brings up that fact that YOU purchased alcohol the day before the accident, so perhaps it was your fault? Or maybe you want to purchase life insurance.
The insurance company pulls up your records, finds out you have an affinity for doughnuts (even though you really bought them to take to work every Friday, how do they know you weren’t the one who ate all of them?), you’ve got a problem with acid reflux, plus the fact that you have a large dog (because you buy so much dog food so often) AND they notice that you never buy condoms (will they make a leap to STDs too?) — bottom line — they’d be glad to sell you life insurance, but the price will be higher than it might have been if they weren’t concerned by those unhealthy purchases you make….
What can a patient do to prevent this kind of big-brother approach to insurance? Stop using that loyalty card –at supermarkets, or any other store that issues them. And use cash, too. Gives new meaning to “follow the money” doesn’t it?
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Oil Futures Rise to $100 a Barrel
Commentary
Robert R. Barney
What does this mean? It means that eventually, everything you buy is going to go up in price. Shipping costs are skyrocketing out of site. Some experts claim that a gallon of milk will be $7-8 by spring. Unless our government opens up American oil fields and break up the monopolic oil industry, we are going to see $5.00 gas by summer. Recession will follow. Here is my take. 2008 is an election year so don't be surprised if you see much more government involvement to get the price of crude under control... We will see soon!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
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