With all of this being said... do the Muslims have the right to build a mosque in that space near Ground Zero in New York? Yes, they do. Should they? No. Probably not.
At the very least, they're either totally obtuse and completely insensitive to the fact that to build a symbol of the very religion that caused such destruction and pain to the US in general and New York in particular would be pouring salt in an already festering wound; or they simply do not give a flying fuck what Americans think or feel.
I don't know if this is truly the case, but it looks like they want to erect a monument in honour of the guys that were piloting the airplanes that day. It looks like they're using our own laws and freedoms as a tool to rub our faces in it.
If the Muslim people want to truly change the opinion of the American people regarding who they are and what they stand for, this group would graciously back off, and agree to build it further away from Ground Zero. Or build a museum instead, with educational displays and invite Americans to learn about their culture and offer opportunities for the city of New York to participate in the planning and content of the building and the displays therein.
Can we do anything about it? Yes - we can protest - intelligently -- and voice our concern about the wisdom of such a building in that area. We can try to appeal to their sense of humanity and ask them, in the name of peace, to please see why we have such a problem with this. But the moment we raise a hand in violence or deface or vandalize -- well, at the very least, some indignant and righteous American will be arrested for a hate crime. At the worst, all it will do is perpetuate the hate and add to the already significant body count that has already resulted and continues to climb due to the events of September 11, 2001.
Invaders
Human beings are interesting.
We’ve spent the better portion of our existence on this planet invading other people’s space and then coming up with all matter of justifications for it.
An example, take the Romans – they managed to expand their empire to unbelievable proportions by invading areas outside of their realm, attacking the indigenous people who lived there and either killing or enslaving anyone that refused to join them or tried to defend themselves. The end result, other than the expansion of the Roman Empire, was quite brutal; a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Jump ahead a few centuries – and we will find the Christians. They decided, through their own mysterious and meaningless studies of the aboriginal people living throughout the far reaches of the European continent, that they were superior in all ways, and it was their responsibility to enlighten everyone – everyone – to their way of worship. The way they brought this about was to label anyone that didn’t subscribe to their point of view a heretic, who would then be systematically tortured in unspeakable ways until they either relented or died. This jihad (although they called it “The Inquisition”) resulted in a very similar situation as the Roman excursions — a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Then some ambitious explorer discovered this huge new body of land on the other side of that ocean to the West. He, excited to share this new discovery, went back to Europe and told everyone how beautiful it was and how seemingly endless its resources. This set off a whole new slew of invasions and disputes… far more elaborate because the little European countries couldn’t agree who would be in charge of this new land and fought viciously amongst themselves in an effort to gain control. Meanwhile, in the new land, large groups of settlers and explorers shoved the natives out of their homelands, brought new germs with them that decimated entire populations, and attacked villages. The end result was a fairly significant body count…
Yeah.
In the end, the new world was conquered, bloodily, and the native people were relegated to small encampments in largely inhospitable areas such as North Dakota and the deserts of Nevada, where many of them still live to this day in veritable poverty.
Then some ambitious inventor came up with something called the internal combustion engine. It relied on this gooey black stuff that bubbled under the surface of the earth’s crust to burn as fuel. As this new invention caught on and became de rigueur, the leaders of the first and second-world countries remembered that a whole lot of this black stuff was available for the taking over there in those third-world countries. An invasion was organized and deployed.
The invaders brought drills and guns and war machines, because one thing history has taught us is that the people living in countries being invaded have this annoying habit of being very put out by the people coming to invade them. But there was this black stuff, see, and the industrial nations wanted it at any cost and intended to fetch it, like it or not, never mind that the incumbent citizens had deemed the land to be holy and something to be revered.
The invaders also brought the narrow-minded belief that anyone that didn’t agree with their way of life and idea of democracy was inferior, so while they drilled for oil in the sand, they staged their own version of the Inquisition – hiring the subdued native people who would be hired to work at unliveable wages; and raping, pillaging or killing the ones that raised a ruckus at having an army of people drilling in their consecrated land.
They left behind a ravaged hole of sand and ruined ancient mosques and temples — as well as a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence…
The people left behind were seriously pissed off, and also suffered a lack of important funding for education or rebuilding, resulting in an entire generation of angry, ignorant, desperate people with a really big chip on their shoulder.
Unbeknownst to all, under the guise of political cooperation, the leaders of both the invading countries and the invaded countries all struck deals for huge sums of money so that the black stuff in the ground would still flow freely across international boundaries.
Then somebody got greedy. The deals were broken on one side or the other, and the leaders of the invaded countries decided they didn’t want the invaders to continue plundering what was left of their country and told them to get out. The invaders refused. So the leaders then appealed to the generation of seriously pissed off and undereducated people that were trying to eke out some kind of pathetic existence in the middle of drilled out sand and got them all riled up. Told them how evil and treacherous these invaders were, and that their home country was full of people who were even more evil and greedy and godless. The leaders got them so agitated that they organized a little group of very angry people and sent them over to invade.
The end result was a widely publicised, fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next years due to famine (the economy tanked), pestilence (the very dust in the air was toxic), and the ongoing retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind…
We’ve spent the better portion of our existence on this planet invading other people’s space and then coming up with all matter of justifications for it.
An example, take the Romans – they managed to expand their empire to unbelievable proportions by invading areas outside of their realm, attacking the indigenous people who lived there and either killing or enslaving anyone that refused to join them or tried to defend themselves. The end result, other than the expansion of the Roman Empire, was quite brutal; a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Jump ahead a few centuries – and we will find the Christians. They decided, through their own mysterious and meaningless studies of the aboriginal people living throughout the far reaches of the European continent, that they were superior in all ways, and it was their responsibility to enlighten everyone – everyone – to their way of worship. The way they brought this about was to label anyone that didn’t subscribe to their point of view a heretic, who would then be systematically tortured in unspeakable ways until they either relented or died. This jihad (although they called it “The Inquisition”) resulted in a very similar situation as the Roman excursions — a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Then some ambitious explorer discovered this huge new body of land on the other side of that ocean to the West. He, excited to share this new discovery, went back to Europe and told everyone how beautiful it was and how seemingly endless its resources. This set off a whole new slew of invasions and disputes… far more elaborate because the little European countries couldn’t agree who would be in charge of this new land and fought viciously amongst themselves in an effort to gain control. Meanwhile, in the new land, large groups of settlers and explorers shoved the natives out of their homelands, brought new germs with them that decimated entire populations, and attacked villages. The end result was a fairly significant body count…
Yeah.
In the end, the new world was conquered, bloodily, and the native people were relegated to small encampments in largely inhospitable areas such as North Dakota and the deserts of Nevada, where many of them still live to this day in veritable poverty.
Then some ambitious inventor came up with something called the internal combustion engine. It relied on this gooey black stuff that bubbled under the surface of the earth’s crust to burn as fuel. As this new invention caught on and became de rigueur, the leaders of the first and second-world countries remembered that a whole lot of this black stuff was available for the taking over there in those third-world countries. An invasion was organized and deployed.
The invaders brought drills and guns and war machines, because one thing history has taught us is that the people living in countries being invaded have this annoying habit of being very put out by the people coming to invade them. But there was this black stuff, see, and the industrial nations wanted it at any cost and intended to fetch it, like it or not, never mind that the incumbent citizens had deemed the land to be holy and something to be revered.
The invaders also brought the narrow-minded belief that anyone that didn’t agree with their way of life and idea of democracy was inferior, so while they drilled for oil in the sand, they staged their own version of the Inquisition – hiring the subdued native people who would be hired to work at unliveable wages; and raping, pillaging or killing the ones that raised a ruckus at having an army of people drilling in their consecrated land.
They left behind a ravaged hole of sand and ruined ancient mosques and temples — as well as a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence…
The people left behind were seriously pissed off, and also suffered a lack of important funding for education or rebuilding, resulting in an entire generation of angry, ignorant, desperate people with a really big chip on their shoulder.
Unbeknownst to all, under the guise of political cooperation, the leaders of both the invading countries and the invaded countries all struck deals for huge sums of money so that the black stuff in the ground would still flow freely across international boundaries.
Then somebody got greedy. The deals were broken on one side or the other, and the leaders of the invaded countries decided they didn’t want the invaders to continue plundering what was left of their country and told them to get out. The invaders refused. So the leaders then appealed to the generation of seriously pissed off and undereducated people that were trying to eke out some kind of pathetic existence in the middle of drilled out sand and got them all riled up. Told them how evil and treacherous these invaders were, and that their home country was full of people who were even more evil and greedy and godless. The leaders got them so agitated that they organized a little group of very angry people and sent them over to invade.
The end result was a widely publicised, fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next years due to famine (the economy tanked), pestilence (the very dust in the air was toxic), and the ongoing retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind…
Product review: Dryer Balls!
I made a terrible mistake this week. I went and bought dryer sheets from my local dollar discount store. Only 99¢, I figured dryer sheets were an innocuous enough item that it was no big deal. I washed my bedding and tossed them in the dryer with the cheap dryer sheets. BIG mistake.
The first night I felt itchy and thought it was a dry skin thing. By the morning, my skin was covered in a pink rash and felt like I'd been sleeping in mosquitoes. I thought I'd developed bedbugs overnight.
After the second night, my skin was on fire and I was convinced that my next-door neighbours had infested my bedroom with some alien bugform that came through the walls and invaded my bed to torture me. Taking a shower was excruciating.
Finally, after tearing apart my bed and inspecting every inch of the mattress and platform, I figured I either had invisible microscopic multi-legged demons in my bed, or I'd developed an allergy to my bed linens. Then I remembered the dollar-store dryer sheets. I took a fresh one out of the box and rubbed it on my arm. Instant agony.
I went to my local natural products grocer and saw these blue "dryer balls" on the laundry aisle. They were priced at $9.99, and after reading the package and thinking that I'd give ten times that much to never itch like that again, I purchased a pair. They claimed to fluff and soften laundry without chemicals.
They're made of some kind of rubberised plastic and look like giant, blue pollen spores. I took them home and washed my sheets and pillowcases twice, with one extra rinse cycle to get all of the offending chemicals out. Then I tossed everything into the dryer and threw in the Dryer Balls.
The first thing I noticed was the muffled banging noise as the dryer ran through the cycle. Mildly annoying, but not too bad. I had set the timer for 40 minutes instead of the usual 60, because the package claimed that my laundry would dry in less time (therefore saving even more money on energy costs).
At the end of the cycle I discovered that yes, the load of fitted sheet, flat sheet, and four pillowcases was totally dry. They also looked poofier than usual, as if the Dryer Balls had beaten air into the cotton fibres. They were slightly less wrinkled than usual, and I noticed that there was no static, which was kind of a big deal since I live in an extremely dry climate and I usually have very serious static in the laundry if I don't use liquid fabric softener or dryer sheets.
I put the sheets back on the bed, and they were at least as soft as fabric softener would have made them, but without the weird oily film that it can leave. Encouraged, I tried the Dryer Balls with a load of bath towels.
The result was quite dramatic. They came out so fluffy that the stack of folded towels was almost too fat to fit on the linen closet shelf! I also noticed a measurable increase in absorbency and a decrease in lint fuzz - my lint screen in the dryer had caught far more lint than usual, but the towels were left fluffy-soft and almost totally lint-free.
I am very pleased with the performance of the Dryer-Max Dryer Balls and would highly recommend this product, especially to anyone who has skin sensitivity to chemical fabric softening agents.
The first night I felt itchy and thought it was a dry skin thing. By the morning, my skin was covered in a pink rash and felt like I'd been sleeping in mosquitoes. I thought I'd developed bedbugs overnight.
After the second night, my skin was on fire and I was convinced that my next-door neighbours had infested my bedroom with some alien bugform that came through the walls and invaded my bed to torture me. Taking a shower was excruciating.
Finally, after tearing apart my bed and inspecting every inch of the mattress and platform, I figured I either had invisible microscopic multi-legged demons in my bed, or I'd developed an allergy to my bed linens. Then I remembered the dollar-store dryer sheets. I took a fresh one out of the box and rubbed it on my arm. Instant agony.
They're made of some kind of rubberised plastic and look like giant, blue pollen spores. I took them home and washed my sheets and pillowcases twice, with one extra rinse cycle to get all of the offending chemicals out. Then I tossed everything into the dryer and threw in the Dryer Balls.
The first thing I noticed was the muffled banging noise as the dryer ran through the cycle. Mildly annoying, but not too bad. I had set the timer for 40 minutes instead of the usual 60, because the package claimed that my laundry would dry in less time (therefore saving even more money on energy costs).
At the end of the cycle I discovered that yes, the load of fitted sheet, flat sheet, and four pillowcases was totally dry. They also looked poofier than usual, as if the Dryer Balls had beaten air into the cotton fibres. They were slightly less wrinkled than usual, and I noticed that there was no static, which was kind of a big deal since I live in an extremely dry climate and I usually have very serious static in the laundry if I don't use liquid fabric softener or dryer sheets.
I put the sheets back on the bed, and they were at least as soft as fabric softener would have made them, but without the weird oily film that it can leave. Encouraged, I tried the Dryer Balls with a load of bath towels.
The result was quite dramatic. They came out so fluffy that the stack of folded towels was almost too fat to fit on the linen closet shelf! I also noticed a measurable increase in absorbency and a decrease in lint fuzz - my lint screen in the dryer had caught far more lint than usual, but the towels were left fluffy-soft and almost totally lint-free.
I am very pleased with the performance of the Dryer-Max Dryer Balls and would highly recommend this product, especially to anyone who has skin sensitivity to chemical fabric softening agents.
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