Tag: ISIS

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Opinion The Last Word

Offering a little help with Trump’s test.

CREDIT: Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

I want desperately to help Donald Trump. I think I can be of great service to him, his image, his campaign, and his fight against the immigrants he thinks are trying to get into the United States to blow us up. I was elated when he made his “foreign policy” speech the other day and announced that, if elected president, he would put in place a new ideology “test” that immigrants would have to take before they were allowed into the country — to make sure we don’t let in, for heaven’s sake, any bigots. I levitated. My head spun. My eyes bulged. My heart raced. Actually, my skin crawled, but I ignored that because I really want to help. First, however, I have a few questions for Mr. Trump.

Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

Donald and Melania Trump

1) Is this test going to consist of questions that have to be answered true or false, or will it be multiple choice? And will there be an essay component to it?

2) I assume it will be the same test for immigrants from all countries, but I don’t want to make an ass out of you and me, so can you jot me a quick email to let me know if you need a set of questions for, say, people traveling from Syria that’s different than a set for, say, people traveling from Luxembourg? You just never know these days whom not to trust.

3) Are the questions going to be opinion-based or fact-based? Like, “What do you think about baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie?” as opposed to “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”

4) Will you ask them what they think about Trump Tower? This could get really iffy with the stuck-up French and those smartass, superior Germans, who like that woman president of theirs.

5) Will your wife Melania’s family members from Slovenia have to take the test when they come to visit, or can we just skip over them and let ’em on in to save time? I say, make them take the test just to be sure.

6) The trend now in all communications is to keep things brief. Can we keep the test brief for everyone, or is it going to “be huge”?

7) Does the size of male immigrants’ hands need to be addressed? Is it okay if theirs are bigger than yours? I’m a little doubtful you’ll give them much leeway on this one, given the way things have been going.

8) And speaking of size and hands and such, how are the two of us going to address these giant, naked Donald Trump statues that some damn crazy artists placed in various cities the other day? They may have been immigrants. Probably from Finland or some other punk-ass Scandinavian country. The Washington Post described the likenesses of you by writing, “The eyes scowl, the mouth pouts, and the veiny, almost reptilian skin looks like it was torn off a human-size frog and dipped in bronzer.” You know that’s not what you look like. And whatever terrorist made the statues put a little, tiny, barely visible … well, I’m sure you saw the photos and the headlines and the stories and the YouTube videos showing the statues to billions of people around the world. We need to put some questions in the quiz about this. Something to the effect of, “If we allow you to enter the United States of America, do you have plans to create naked statues of me, President Donald J. Trump, with a tiny penis, and place them in public for the world to see? Please answer true, false, or I’m not really sure at this time.” If they fill in the last option, keep them out of the country. It’s as easy as that.

9) The other big thing to worry about is keeping out people who might decide they like the Clintons. You don’t want to run the risk of that, do you? As you have pointed out, Hillary and Barack Obama founded ISIS, so you can bet plenty of the terrorists they trained are going to try to get in one way or another. You better put a question on the test about that. Something to the effect of, “When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came to the Middle East and founded ISIS, did you get any special training from them about how to blow up Americans or any other good, Christian people? Did Hillary show you how to make a bomb and bring it to the United States? Answer just true or false on this one.”

10) And finally, there’s this question about what is in the immigrant terrorists’ hearts when they try to come into the United States. What is their real ideology? Why do they hate the West so much? I think the best way to address that is the way you described it the other day during your town hall with Sean Hannity, when you, I think, talked about getting them off the internet. You said, “Sean, when you look at what’s going on with the internet and how ISIS is using the internet and what they’re doing and what they’re doing to us and then you have people in our country that say oh, you can’t do that, that’s doing something so bad to us, here we are, people — they want to blow us up. We have to be very careful.” I think you are 100 percent right. I would just put that exact quote on the test, and if they can figure out the answer, don’t dare EVER let them in.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Lightning Strikes

CREDIT: Reuters | Philipe Wojazer

It’s deep in a November night in Memphis, and I’m awakened by rain. It’s coming down hard, sounding like a million pebbles hitting the roof. The gutter I’ve been meaning to clean is overflowing outside the bedroom window. A flash of lightning illuminates the room, and I do what I’ve done since I was a boy: count the seconds ’til the thunder rolls. I get almost to 10 before I hear a distant rumble. Two miles or so. Someone else’s lightning.

Lightning struck France last Friday. Islamist terrorists hit Paris and brutally murdered 129 people. The thunder is still rolling. Politicians and some media pundits are sounding the alarm, demanding action, spreading fear: We can’t have lightning striking here. We need to stop all refugees coming from Syria. We need to put troops on the ground and go after ISIS on their home turf. We need to bomb the shit out of ’em.

I agree with the latter sentiment, if we can do so without blowing up wedding parties and hospitals. But that’s a simplistic and emotional response, one that makes us feel better, but not one that will lead to a permanent peace or eradicate the problem. ISIS isn’t really a country, it’s an ideology of ignorance and hate and death, and it can strike anywhere in the world. Whack-A-Terrorist in one place and another will spring up elsewhere.

We need to remember, too, that lightning also struck in Beirut and on a Russian airliner last week. ISIS is a problem for all countries in the civilized world. Their ideology doesn’t play favorites. Even Iran denounced the attacks. A coordinated effort, using combined intelligence gathering, cooperative military actions, and black ops would be much more effective in preventing future attacks than mere bombing.

But nothing can totally prevent terrorism. A Canadian-bred terrorist without a criminal record could easily drive from Windsor into Detroit. A “tourist” could enter San Francisco on a flight from Indonesia. A “sailor” on a Saudi Arabian oil tanker could jump ship on a loading dock in New Jersey. There is simply no way we can guarantee an absence of evil-doers in this country. No more than we can prevent an insane American from shooting up a movie theater in Colorado or killing nine people in a church in South Carolina. Once a terrorist gets here, getting an assault-style rifle is the least of his worries.

Lightning strikes. Sometimes it kills. But it’s rare. It’s important to keep things in perspective. After 9/11, we were united as a country, but our eventual response was disastrous and misguided and helped create many of the problems we’re facing now. It’s important to not politicize the attacks or try to create hysteria or pander to the base urges of the human animal. In the big scheme of things, more people in America die each year from gun violence (30,000) and/or auto accidents (31,000) than any terrorist could hope to kill. We shouldn’t fear terrorists. We should treat them with contempt and go after them like the international criminals they are.

And for the record, lightning has killed an average of 123 people a year since 1940. We need to remember that and count to 10.

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Editorial Opinion

How Do We Counter Daesh?

When you have declared enemies so fanatic that they will not only risk their lives to deprive you of yours but will pursue such a suicidal end as a glory to be achieved at all costs, how do you arrive at the right sort of disincentives to discourage them? That is rapidly becoming the main theological conundrum of our times, and, as such things go, it is somewhat more compelling than, say, that famous question that medieval scholastics used to ponder: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

And, unfortunately, as last Friday’s tragic events in Paris most recently demonstrated, the question of the suicide bomber (or suicide shooter or what-have-you) is inescapable. How we answer it when it comes around to the U.S. will, as they say, determine our final grade. It goes beyond politics or statecraft or even religion. It is, in the most literal sense, existential.

So what do we do? None of the instant solutions tendered so far have that Bingo ring to them. Not, for example, Donald Trump’s seat-of-the-pants recommendation that we “take the oil,” the previous raw material the minions of Daesh (the latest name for ISIS or ISIL) are selling on the black market to finance their caliphate. And how do we do that? By “bombing the s**t” out of it at its source — pipes, scaffolding, sand and all.” Oh.

Trump is nothing if not versatile, however; his ex post facto remedy for the carnage in France was that the assassins could have been stopped if only their victims had been packing their own heat. Never mind that he borrowed this from Wayne LaPierre, the sage of the NRA, and that its actual point of origin was probably a 1970s episode of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker advocated that airlines start handing out guns for self-defense to all enplaning passengers.

At the other extreme of possible action, there seems to be no practical way to bargain with the jihadists, who would appear to be insisting on absolute surrender on the part of us infidels — a category that, to judge by events, is virtually all-inclusive: Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Buddhist, secular humanist, trash-talking atheists, and even, it would seem, their moderate co-religionists in the Islamic world, who are as likely to be turned into corpses or sex slaves as anybody else, and who in several well-publicized cases have been forced to pay with their heads, despite their conversion to Islam.

But there, if anywhere, lies the clue to success — not in routine denunciations by fanatics on our side of “radical Islam” (by which, they usually mean, Islam of any persuasion) but in coming to closer terms of cooperation with the governments and societies (Jordan, Turkey, the Emirates, to name several) that practice Islam in a way congenial not only to the Koran and the prophet but to the principle of coexistence in a world of diversity.

That’s not a complete answer, we know, and we’re not talking about trying to line up such actual and potential Arab allies on the firing line as “boots on the ground.” That hasn’t worked out too well. But active cooperation of some sort beats hell out of our trying to become Holy Warriors in our own right.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Sect Appeal

The two main sects within Islam are not at all like the various sects within Christianity, or, for that matter, within Judaism. Sunnis hate Shiites and Shiites hate Sunnis. Since the middle 7th century, each side has taught and preached that the other side is practicing a corrupt form of Islam. It is because the other side is practicing corrupted Islam that the true followers (whichever side that is) believe it is their obligation to teach about the denial and the destruction of the other. 

It began with the death of Muhammad in 632. Muhammad failed to declare a successor. That decision caused a divide among his followers. Sunnis believed that the best successor should emerge from among the students of Muhammad. Shiites believed that Muhammad’s mantle of leadership should be passed down through the family. 

Sunni is the larger sect, comprising about 85 percent of Muslims. Shiites comprise the remaining 15 percent. There are other, smaller sects but their numbers worldwide are dwarfed by these two groups. The largest country with a Shiite majority is Iran. Iraq also has a majority of Shiites, about 60 percent. 

Every once in a while, Sunni or Shiite leaders announce their intention to unite the factions in order to confront a common enemy. The pitch always sounds good, but almost always falls flat. The common enemy they most often speak of is the West — specifically Israel and the United States.

If these two Muslim sects were to stop their conflict, the Middle East would be a different place. Not a peaceful place, but a place with differently focused conflict. For instance, much of the tension in Syria is Shiite versus Sunni. The conflict in Yemen is Shiite versus Sunni. And the power struggle engaging Iran and Saudi Arabia is, of course, Shiite versus Sunni. 

And yet, despite the conflict, every Friday over the past few weeks, Shiites and Sunnis in some Iraqi cities have come together in major squares. By the tens of thousands, sometimes even by the hundreds of thousands, they have gathered united, as one voice, in protest over the current divisive situation. The slogans they are shouting and the placards they are raising say, “Sectarianism is dead” and “Stop stealing from us in the name of religion.”

Iraqis are coming together in main squares in Baghdad and Basra to call upon their politicians to stop quarreling and quibbling. The protesters want services — education, water and electricity. For years, their politicians have told the citizens of Iraq that the problem in government is religious sectarianism — Shiites versus Sunnis — and now many young people in Iraq are saying that they aren’t buying it any more. 

Young Sunnis and young Shiites want accountability. More crucially, they want to know why ISIS has succeeded in taking over huge swathes of Iraq. In today’s world, if anything is to unite Sunnis and Shiites, it will be ISIS. To put it succinctly, other than the West, right now, the only thing that Shiites hate more than Sunnis and Sunnis hate more than Shiites is ISIS. The Iraqi people want unity among conventional Muslims to fight and rid Iraq of extremist ISIS. 

Shiite militias are operating under an umbrella called Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), while Sunni tribes are much more loosely aligned in their fight and are against ISIS more independently — tribe by tribe. In the end, through unity of forces, they could possibly be successful and turn their country around. But it is a long shot. 

The fear of ISIS brutality is everywhere in Iraq. While gathering in town squares as a way of protest is empowering, the fear of beheading at the hands of ISIS is still, understandably, a major disincentive to organizing, fighting, and resisting. When 800 ISIS members marched into Mosul in June of last year, 55,000 Iraqi police and soldiers ran away. A city of two million people collapsed into the hands of 800 ISIS members. 

So, while Shiite-Sunni unity is the only real chance for success in fighting ISIS, given their ancient hatred for each other, coupled with ISIS intimidation, I don’t see Muslim unity in Iraq’s immediate future.

Micah D. Halpern’s latest book is Thugs: How History’s Most Notorious Despots Transformed the World through Terror, Tyranny, and Mass Murder.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Game of Drones

So the latest season of Game of Thrones ended like most of the other seasons have ended: A seemingly essential character who everyone really liked was hideously murdered. Of course, we won’t know if Jon Snow is really dead until next season. But if he survives getting run through with several broadswords, it will probably have to involve dark magick or be revealed as a dream sequence or some other screenwriting chestnut.

Aside from massive battles, there are really only two types of deaths in Game of Thrones (and in most fiction, truth be told): the really satisfying ones, where a loathsome, evil creep finally gets what’s coming to him, and the “Oh, no, not HER!!” deaths that just tick you off. And since GOT is set in a medieval, pre-gunpowder world, most deaths come via sword, knife, arrow, or spear — not a pleasant way to go, one assumes.

Anyway, all this bloody entertainment got me thinking about how human weaponry has shaped human culture, fictional and nonfictional. We’ve gone from knives and spears and arrows to muzzle-loaders and small cannons to machine guns and bazookas. We “progressed” to fighter planes, bombers, nuclear missiles, and, most recently, to drones and robotic weapons. And, of course, we can’t overlook chemical and biological warfare. Very efficient.

Through history, our art, literature, film, and even music have reflected our weapons: what we use to wage warfare, to enforce the law — and to just generally kill each other off. Movies and books set in the future usually feature some sort of glitzy advanced weaponry — lasers or such — but we’re still just basically shooting at each other with one thing or another.

But increasingly, modern warfare has evolved into a video-game scenario, with “soldiers” in front of computer screens carrying out deadly drone attacks on the other side of the world. For the side sending in the drones (us), this seems like a good deal, a much safer and sanitary version of warfare, with little danger to our combatants. For the people in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East where death comes out of the sky with no warning, it’s not such a good deal.

When we read in the morning paper that a U.S. drone attack has killed yet another al-Qaeda “second in command” or ISIS leader, we can only hope they got it right and killed a murderous creep who deserved it and avoided killing “Oh, no, not HER” innocents. But if we were honest, we’d admit that that real death on the other side of the world affects us less than the fictional death of Jon Snow. We don’t see the rubble, the blood, the body parts; we don’t demand proof that our country has killed righteously. We just hope they did. Then turn to the sports page.

Maybe that’s why ISIS atrocities — the stabbings, the beheadings, the mass killings with old-school weapons — horrify us so. It’s a kind of warfare that seems uncalled for, ancient and medieval, reflective of a brutal, fundamental inhumanity we can’t get our heads around — one that we prefer to restrict to HBO. Hopefully, Game of Drones won’t have a surprise ending.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (January 29, 2015)

CREDIT: Jerry Coli | Dreamstime.com

The president just signed historic accords with India on climate legislation and nuclear trade, before making a pit stop to pay respects to the leaders of America’s gas station, Saudi Arabia.

Mitt Romney is considering a third run for president so the American people can finally get it right.

ISIS is on the move in Syria, and the government of Yemen just collapsed.

Bibi Netanyahu, also known as George W. Bush in wingtips, is campaigning for reelection as Israeli Prime Minister, only in front of the U.S. Congress — without prior knowledge or approval by the White House — as the guest of John Boehner.

In Iowa, Sarah Palin made an incomprehensible speech at Representative Steve King’s “Freedom Summit,” then told The Washington Post that she was “seriously interested,” in running for president.

And a crippling blizzard is headed for the east coast that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned may be “one of the largest snowstorms in the history of this city.” Memphis freaks out over three inches of snow. Try an expected three feet, which would set records from Philadelphia to Boston and affect nearly 30 million people. Take that Al Gore.

Jerry Coli | Dreamstime.com

Tom Brady New England Patriots

But screw all that: The NFL discovered that during their conference championship game, the New England Patriots used under-inflated footballs. I could write four paragraphs of balls jokes, but that’s far too easy. And since this has been the lead news story on every network for a week, I’ve heard every smarmy, double-entendre testicle reference in the history of broadcast news, from Rachel Maddow to Jimmy Fallon. I now know more about Bill Belichick than I ever intended.

I guess I’m as big a football fan as the next jerk, only I’m not emotionally invested in the outcome. I enjoy watching pro football because it’s a brutish and violent game played by mutants. If you asked me my favorite team, I guess it would be the Packers, because the citizen/stockholders of Green Bay actually own the team. If you ask me my least favorite team, it would be those with the loud-mouth owners who give high-fives in their luxury boxes while actually believing that what they say has any bearing on the game. Also, those owners that mix their personal, partisan politics with sport.

The NFL is just a billionaire’s playground where team owners play their own, exclusive version of fantasy football. It’s become an industry that has grown like kudzu around what was once a game. Since pro football is the American substitute for gladiatorial war, it has become the perfect vessel for carpet-bombing advertisements, and nothing does it better than the Super Bowl. Can I use that word without sending somebody a check?

Billions of dollars will be spent in and around the Super Bowl on product placement, branding, Hollywood-produced ads, entertainment galas, including the world’s biggest halftime show, and particularly sports betting. Only the outcome is pertinent. The game is secondary to the commerce. With record amounts of cash spent on commercials, the Super Bowl serves as the quasi-Black Friday for awards season.

The game will be played in Glendale, Arizona, at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Of course, the University of Phoenix is a for-profit, online, kollege of knowledge with no actual campus, and thus has no football team to play in its stadium. Like good corporate citizens, they merely bought the naming rights and changed it from what was Cardinals Stadium. So, the Super Bowl played in the University of Phoenix Stadium is like a scam within a scam. Everybody gets paid. Except for the entertainers. The Wall Street Journal reported that the NFL approached Rihanna, Coldplay, and Katy Perry to play the halftime show, but asked the musicians to “contribute a portion of their post-Super Bowl tour income to the league,” or alternately, “make some other financial contribution,” in exchange for the halftime gig. Perry is this year’s special attraction. I sure hope she’s not paying those greedy bastards to play.

In summary, the Patriots are cheaters owned by Robert Kraft of Kraft Foods, whose net worth is around $4 billion, and who has a son who worked for Bain Capital in the ’80s. They have a coach with a shady reputation and a quarterback who’s married to a Brazilian supermodel, makes $40 million a year in salary and endorsements, is said to have a near-genius IQ, and “did not alter the ball in any way,” even though he admitted he preferred them slightly deflated in a previous interview. When asked if he was a cheater, Brady said, “I don’t believe so.”

They play the Seattle Seahawks, owned by low-key Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, who also owns the NBA Trailblazers. According to SeatGeek, the average ticket price is going for $3,262. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the monster snowstorm headed for Boston caused widespread power outages on Super Sunday? I hope by then they will have finally stopped talking about “Deflategate.” The only thing I have to add to that conversation is that Tom Brady’s balls aren’t as big as he thought. The Santa Ana winds are doing biblical-like, wildfire damage in California, and there’s a measles outbreak in Disneyland. And I’ll take the Seahawks and the points.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Je Suis Nigeria

Last week’s horrific attacks by Islamist radicals in France galvanized the world. Within hours of the murders of 12 people at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, “Je Suis Charlie” became a worldwide meme. I received calls and emails suggesting that the Flyer should post images of Charlie Hebdo covers in solidarity with our fellow journalists.

Charlie Hebdo covers are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic; some are just sophomoric and lewd. Though no one should have died for printing them, I felt no need to republish them. Nor would I have republished images from a Westboro Baptist Church publication, if some of their members had been murdered by political opponents.

Just because you support someone’s right to say something doesn’t mean you have to repeat their message.

France’s police and military responded admirably to the attacks, quickly tracking down and killing those responsible. In the following week, millions of French citizens, including thousands of Muslims, marched and rallied against Islamist terrorism.

As France worked through its 9/11-like moment, mourning its dead and rekindling a sense of national unity and pride, we in the U.S. were back to divisive politics as usual. Critics railed against the Obama administration for not sending either the president himself or a high-ranking official to the march in Paris. Administration officials admitted that they made a mistake in not doing so.

Talk-show commandos revved their engines, and the airwaves were quickly filled with recriminations and attacks on the president. Overnight, the focus in U.S. political circles turned from fighting terrorism and supporting free speech to lobbing dung at each other.

It’s all so stupid and petty and predictable and tiresome.

Four days before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram roared into a Nigerian village and massacred 2,000 men, women, and children.

Two thousand.

They chased their helpless victims through the bush on motorcycles; they hunted people down in their houses; they slaughtered so many innocents that bodies are still scattered on the ground as you read this, 12 days later.

No one noticed.

Oh, there were a few perfunctory articles. But there were no rallies protesting the unspeakable evil that had been done in the name of Allah. World leaders did not journey to Abuja to show solidarity with a country that had been hit with one of the worst terrorist attacks since 9/11. No pundits or talk-show politicos raged at the president for not showing proper support for a country that is being destroyed by Islamist terrorists.

“Je Suis Nigeria”? Not happening.

We don’t have time to worry about every terrorist attack, after all. Besides, we’re too busy attacking ourselves.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (November 6, 2014)

CREDIT: Arindam Banerjee | Dreamstime.com

Arindam Banerjee | Dreamstime.com

Nik Wallenda

I wish that man would stop walking on that high wire. That Nik Wallenda guy who just this past Sunday walked between two 50-story Chicago skyscrapers not once, but twice, the second time blindfolded. That stuff gives me horrible nightmares. And next, he told NBC, “I’m working on recreating my great-grandfather’s greatest walk, which was over Tallulah Gorge, Georgia — 600 feet high, 1,000 feet long. He did two headstands on the wire. I’ve never done a headstand on the wire in public, and I’m training for that. I want to recreate that walk.”

The guy does this with no net, so logic would have it that if he falls, he would fall 50 stories and splatter all over whatever surface is underneath him. I can’t even watch two seconds of the clip without coming very close to throwing up and my legs turning ice cold and cramping.

Why do people want to do things like this? And why must every television commercial for prescription medication feature someone standing on the tiny peak of a very tall mountain — like climbing up into the clouds on a mountain is going to cure erectile dysfunction or high blood pressure. I think it would do the exact opposite to me.

I just don’t get it. Just like I don’t get the new measure that was on Mississippi’s ballot during the election this week: the Mississippi Right to Hunt and Fish Amendment. I love the way that is worded, but I really don’t understand why they are having to vote on that. I can’t hunt or fish because a) I would never be able to shoot an animal, even for food and b) the last time I went fishing the only thing I caught was a little baby trout, and I still haven’t reconciled the guilt from having ruined the little fellow’s day by ripping his mouth up with a hook. There he was minding his own business and trying to be a good young trout and swimming the beautiful river with the sun shining on it and bam! Hook in the mouth. I definitely wouldn’t want someone to do that to me.

But the vote… This is what I read about it that piqued my interest: Specifically, the language of the ballot initiative declares “hunting, fishing, and the harvesting of wildlife, including by the use of traditional methods, is a constitutional right, subject only to such regulations and restrictions that promote wildlife conservation and management as the Legislature may prescribe by general law.”

This is so far up the chain of importance that it has to be a “constitutional right?” I think I must be missing something. Don’t you just go get a license and some guns and some minnows and fishing rods and go out and do it? So what happens if it is voted down? Not that it will be, but if it is, does that mean Mississippians will no longer have the constitutional right to hunt and fish? Will hunting and fishing in Mississippi be outlawed? Uh, Bass Pro Shop moving into the Pyramid, what say you about this? Even the national spokespersons for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the National Humane Society say this is unnecessary and that it’s just political jockeying and a waste of voters’ time.

The article did go on to offer information on more legitimate election concerns including that you have to have a proper photo I.D. to vote. But it didn’t mention whether a hunting or fishing license would suffice.

There are so many things in the world that baffle me. People walking on high wires 50 stories in the air, people having to vote on whether it’s a constitutional right to hunt and fish in Mississippi. My real concern here is whether it is legal to hunt in restaurants and bars as long as you’re not drinking. Wait, I think that’s a Tennessee law. Oh, well.

I’m actually happy about the Mississippi Right to Hunt and Fish Amendment because I’d rather ponder that one than think about the actual people who are running for office — not just in Mississippi but everywhere.

I’ve turned my back on politics because it’s just too much to think about. Half the people running for office or who are in office already shouldn’t even be allowed to have a hunting or fishing license, much less run the government. Why is it that so many people running for office now are just plain nuts? I used to actually like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for his outspokenness and not taking any crap off anyone, but this latest stunt with him telling a protestor to “sit down and shut up” was just obnoxious and ruined his credibility for me.

And the new thing, from what I can gather, is that many of the candidates are using Ebola and ISIS in their platforms to try to scare people into voting for them. They are saying that if they are elected, they will stop both before we all die from one or the other. I say, just take away everyone’s hunting and fishing privileges and we’ll all be fine. Unless someone kills a moose with Ebola, or ISIS converts Americans into fishermen, what’s the big deal? It wouldn’t be as bad as watching that guy walk on that high wire.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (September 25, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Randy Haspel’s “Rant” on ISIS and new military action in the Middle East …

It’s time to have a new war, because the old war is running out. We need this war, because we always have to have a handy war, so the war machine makers can test out their new war machines. Because we need the best war machines. And everyone who doesn’t love the new war? Well, they are just terrorists and anarchists, and maybe even communists. So they need to be watched by Homeland Security. They might even have beards and be Muslims. Look out!

OakTree

Or maybe ISIS needs to be watched because they cut off the heads of innocents, including children, execute all those who do not agree with their religious beliefs, force girls as young as 10 into “marriages” with their fighters, and their leader has threatened to come to the U.S. and do the same to us.

Personally, I am pretty happy we have all those new war machines at a time like this.

ArlingtonPop

About Chris Davis’ webpost, “Commercial Appeal Changes; 17 Laid Off” …

Not good. The lack of serious news coverage hurts everyone. I’m thinking of a PBS documentary on the decline of major newspapers. The title is frightening:

Black and White and Dead All Over.

Mayfield

The internet hasn’t killed print; bad decisions have. I once worked for a print entity that was purchased by AOL. It was supposed to be the dawning of the age of synergy. Guess how well that worked out. 

Really terrible decisions made by people far from the news-gathering and content-creation side of the business, as well as the local markets being served, sunk the company. Now, that big Wall Street-controlled, multi-national internet company for which I worked is unraveling and in a sort of assisted living center for once-thriving businesses. 

Print can still turn a buck and, more importantly, news-gathering companies can survive. They have to. Otherwise, if you think we’re in hot water now, just wait until we further weaken the Fourth Estate.

Rich Banks

The Flyer could take the high road or give the people what they want (like The New York Daily News): “INTRODUCING THE FLESH BURGER! British chef creates burgers that taste like human flesh” or “‘YOU’RE GOING TO KILL OUR BABY!’: NYPD cops toss pregnant woman to ground in Brooklyn and pummel good Samaritan who tried to help.”

crackoamerican

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “The Power of Poverty” …

I don’t know what all you people were complaining about. Wendi’s first column here is spot on. Welcome to the Flyer!

Jeff

About a Frank Murtaugh’s weekly website post, “Three Thoughts on Tiger Football” …

We are MEMPHIS! It is us against the world. Our fans and citizens do not jump on the bandwagon. I’d rather play all games against the five power conferences. The day is coming when the Tigers, Grizzlies, and Redbirds will rule. And that will not happen by playing Austin Peay.

The fans do not want the schedule filled with sorry games. We want Florida, Ole Miss, UCLA, etc. More important, so do the recruits. Remember, fans pay for the programs, and better recruits and players win the games.

Darrell

Actually, I think the Boise State model has proven to be pretty strong. Boise typically steps out of conference against one elite conference foe per year, and that’s it. The rest are small conference.

They made a name for themselves by dominating their conference, winning their other weak non-conference games, and then having that one game a year where they could play up to major competition, and occasionally pull off a win (Georgia, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl).

That sounds like the model Fuente wants to follow, and it’s probably best. That said, even as an Ole Miss fan, I think that Memphis would be better off varying which team they play in that game each year, similar to how Boise State has done it.

GroveReb84

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (September 18, 2014)

A few months ago, no one outside of the defense establishment had ever heard of ISIS, but now that the president has offered a strategy to combat these barbaric psychopaths, the right-wing geniuses in Congress and every talking blonde-head on Fox News has suddenly become an expert on Middle East foreign policy.

It’s clear that the terrorist organization has become an existential threat to the U.S. Recently, an ISIS leader paraphrased George W. Bush, saying, “You are either with us or we will kill you.” Their savagery has again taken this nation back into a sectarian war, and if that is the case, the reactionary Obama haters need to sit down and shut up. When the criminal Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses, he was at least given the courtesy of bipartisan support before his lies were exposed. No such support for Obama.

An editorial appeared in the New York Times, composed by John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Abbott and Costello of war-mongers. It attempted to goad the president into stronger action, including more American troops on the ground. After Obama’s televised address outlining plans for assembling a coalition to join the fight, a speech, by the way, which could easily have been given by G. Dubya, Graham ran to Fox News Sunday and said, “Our strategy will fail yet again. The president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed here at home.”

The ‘Bama-bashers first took issue with the president for using the term ISIL, instead if ISIS. I was baffled too and had to Google it for myself. So, ISIS means the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Which raises another question: Levant is an antiquated term used mainly by archaeologists, meaning the area currently in conflict, but also including Palestine and Israel. The apocalyptic conspiratorialists went blotto, claiming Obama had a hidden agenda. One end-of-times website said, “When Obama refers to the Islamic State as ISIL, he is sending a message to Muslims all over the Middle East that he personally does not recognize Israel as a sovereign nation, but as territory belonging to the Islamic State… Obama’s ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel.”

Really? Another article credited to the Fox News staff joined the argument over the president’s choice of words. A massive mob of jihadist maniacs are running wild in Iraq and Syria, committing mass killings, public executions, beheadings, and crucifixions, and the conservative crazies over at Fox are arguing over semantics. Meanwhile, Obama has killed more terrorists than sand fleas and crotch rot.

These three gruesome videos of a knife-wielding, British-sounding ISIS terrorist, who will soon be known as “ashes in a keffiyeh,” are meant to goad the West into sending in ground troops as targets. Aside from our Special Forces who, to no one’s surprise, are already there, these savages aren’t worth sacrificing a single soldier for. In this case, Obama’s strategy is correct — use air strikes and drone the hell out of them. Recently, I viewed a video online that was either leaked or classified because it was quickly taken down. It showed the view from a U.S. helicopter warship over a camp of ISIS killers, scurrying like rats in a barn while being targeted and blown to hell by our military. I must admit, it was the most engrossing thing I’ve seen online in a while.

We have the technology to halt the advances of this group of disaffected men without women, but the need for ground troops is the subject of the current Paris Conference. Muslim countries need to combat this threat directly, but the cavalry isn’t coming — not from our dear friends the Saudis, or the Turks, or the United Arab Emirates — the “Coalition of the Threatened.” Our military claims that an army of Shiite Muslims is necessary to fight the Sunni dominated ISIS militia.

Y’all know me. I’m a leftist peace-nic. There hasn’t been a war since Vietnam that I haven’t opposed. But these thrill-killers are a different animal. This is a moral issue. Remember the first Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait and Poppy Bush drew a line in the sand? You could question the motives for the war, but not the conduct of the operation. Under the direction of General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf, a force of 675,000 troops from 28 countries was assembled to fight Hussein’s brutally loyal Republican Guard. After getting their asses kicked out of Kuwait, the Iraqi army retreated in a single-file column, making it easy for U.S. fighter jets to transform them into one long smoking strip of bacon in the desert. I’ve noticed the same single-file progression of ISIS through Iraq. Perhaps the Schwarzkopf strategy can be dusted off one more time and air strikes could be used to create even more lines of crispy critters in the sand. Better still, the CIA could start a blood feud between ISIS and Al Qaeda and let them shoot it out among themselves. There is no negotiating with someone missing their soul. It may come as a surprise, but this pacifist says, “Smoke ’em.” Nothing deters a terrorist quite like death.