'Muslim-Free' Zones

Andy Hallinan, of the Florida Gun Supply in Inverness, Florida, declares his store to be a "Muslim-free zone" in a video posted to YouTube on July 18, 2015. 

Huffington Post

The number of gun stores and shooting ranges declaring themselves "Muslim-free zones" appears to have accelerated since last month's shooting deaths of five U.S. service members in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

At least four U.S. gun shops have posted signs banning Muslims since the July 16 attacks, which authorities said were committed by a 24-year-old Chattanooga Muslim with a history of drug abuse and mental health problems. He was shot to death by law enforcement.

Just this week, a gun store in Oklahoma was reported to have posted a sign in its window banning Muslims.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the businesses for possible civil rights violations.

"These bigoted declarations are no different than 'whites only' signs posted in businesses during a period of our nation's history that we had hoped was over," Ibrahim Hooper, Council on American-Islamic Relations's national communications director, said in a press release.

Intercepting Terrorists Before They Strike

Harlem Suarez

Live Leak

“We will destroy America and divide it into two. We will raise our black (ISIS) flag on top of your White House and any president on duty,” says Harlem Suarez, 23, most likely a recent convert to Islam.
A Florida man described by the FBI as an Islamic State sympathizer who hoped to mount attacks on U.S. soil was charged Tuesday with plotting to detonate a nail-filled backpack bomb on a Florida beach.A criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday charges 23-year-old Harlem Suarez of Key West with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the U.S. Authorities say Suarez came to the FBI’s attention through his Facebook posts praising the Islamic State group and containing extremist rhetoric.

In April, Suarez allegedly posted, “Be a warrior, learn how to cut your enemies head and then burn down the body learn how to be the new future of the world Caliphate” – a reference the Islamic State goal of building a regional fundamentalist entity.The FBI says he later added a request “from any brother. How to make a bomb send me a video or something, what do I need to make it.” Suarez made his first court appearance Tuesday in Miami and was being held without bail. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

Former NRA President Charlton Heston to Get US Post Office Stamp

The Daily Caller
The United States Postal Service has announced that former NRA President Charlton Heston will be honored with his own stamp. The stamp is part of their “Legends of Hollywood” series, and while the specific issue date has not yet been determined, it will be issued sometime in 2014.

Heston was a five term president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003. He was a tireless advocate for Second Amendment rights and will always be remembered by the NRA faithful for his “cold, dead hands” speech delivered at the 2000 NRA Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Reality Check!

The Atlantic came up with a piece titled Owning Guns Doesn't Preserve Freedom which basically backs up what I have been saying about personal guns protecting freedom being rubbish. After all, the Iraquis had loads of guns. And heavily-armed Yemen (54.8) and Saudi Arabia (35.0) remain among the most repressive countries in the world (Yes, Orlon, I know this stuff is hard for you to understand, but that never stops you from making idiotic comments).

 The article points out that:

A quick scan through the list continues the point. Chile (10.7) comes in with the same arms rate as Venezuela, but the nations present starkly divergent civil freedoms. Russia (8.9) is slightly more armed than Ireland (8.6). The Netherlands (3.9) is on par, as far as weapons go, with oppressive Turkmenistan (3.8). Israel and Georgia see the same arms rate as Iran and Belarus and yet exist on opposite ends of Freedom House's rank.

The best quote:

"This relationship between gun rates and [democracy] isn't based upon social science - it's based upon philosophy," said Aaron Karp, a political science professor at Old Dominion University and one of the Small Arms Survey's senior consultants. "Part of the reason why people who are advocates of individual gun rights tend to be opposed to social science is that they're not comfortable with it." 

And while you are reading that article, check out the related Great Gun Gobbledygook: The Paradox of Second Amendment Hardliners:

In the current debate over gun control, the pro-gun lobby has an ace card up its sleeve: We need weapons to prevent government tyranny, they say. These self-styled champions of liberty see guns as the ultimate insurance policy to protect the Constitution. The problem is that most of those making this argument also strongly support a massive U.S. military -- exactly the behemoth we must be armed against. It's the great gun gobbledygook.

The irony isn't lost on me that the Second Amendment was supposed to protect against a large, standing military. On the other hand, the historically ignorant can be led. BAAHHHHH!BAAHHHHH!BAAHHHHH!BAAHHHHH!BAAHHHHH!

What Does Freedom Mean in the United States

"Life just be dat way, I guess"

"Got to, dis America, man."

Jimi Hendrix - Freedom

Plainfield NJ Shooting

 NJ.com reports:

For the second time in 24 hours, gun shots rang out in Plainfield’s violence-plagued West End section with the same tragic outcome: a young man was dead.

Although the two shootings appear to be unrelated, they both occurred in broad daylight and left local residents frustrated as Plainfield’s homicide rate continues to spike.

One of the big pro-gun arguments is that what we read in the news is misleading, that these are just rare anecdotes and don't properly represent the reality. But, I'm afraid in Plainfield, just like in Austin, Texas, the reality is pretty grim.

[Keith] Hathaway’s death is the seventh homicide in Plainfield this year, far outpacing the two homicides that took place in Union County’s second-largest city in 2009.

What's your opinion? Are we having a bad year for gun violence? It sure seems like it. Of course, it's entirely possible that when the year-end statistics come out, they'll be some way to explain it all away. What do you think?

Please leave a comment.

Part 12 / 19 of the Freedom Movie

Thanks to Il Principe. If you watch it to the end, you'll hear one of the funniest lines: "Watch for the dots."

Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

On the great site called Opinione, Il Principe has written a piece on freedom, which follows nicely on the Richie Havens video I posted yesterday.

As mankind has progressed over the centuries and into the 21st century, the meaning of freedom is viewed differently by people around the world and is measured in various ways. Should freedom be measured by economic, free speech, the type of government, or the level of civil rights its citizens enjoy? It is interesting to note that the only category that America is number one is the level of defense spending and gun violence.

Most of the time when an American politician talks about freedom in a speech, they are usually talking about a quantitive measure of freedom rather than a qualitative measure of freedom.

Yet, as the Grand Prince points out, even popular rankings like the number of millionaires and other measurements of quantitative freedom, America is behind the rising powers of Asia. The United States "does not even rank as the leading country in a World Bank report on doing business, which is ironic considering how much pride most Americans take in being a country with a capitalistic based economy."

Americans do not see the correlation between the half trillion defense budgets of the US government and an Empire of Bases around the world, which allow other countries to invest more in their social welfare programs, to being a factor in why their own citizens have less domestic services available like health care for the poor and less fortunate. The military industrial complex or just simply put the Pentagon’s budget, is like the 800-pound gorilla in the room no one wants to discuss. It used to be a 300-pound gorilla but just as the average American has gotten more obese, so has our old friend the gorilla.

What's your opinion? Does the Prince have a point here about defense spending? Has our country gone too far with the business of policing the world? Is it often just a smoke screen for the oil business and other private interests?

If these suggestions are true, how could those responsible possibly get away with such a thing. Here's how.

Part of the reason why most Americans do not see the correlation between the lack of health care and the huge military defense budgets and all is related expenditures is due to the low ranking of the American press. In the latest Reporters without Borders analysis of press freedoms around the world, America is considered the 41st best in the world for press freedom. Countries like Taiwan, South Africa, and Ghana have better press freedoms and a better variety of news sources than America does.

What do you think about that indictment? Wouldn't the O'Rielly and Beck nonsense which is countered by folks like Keith Olbermann indicate there is great freedom in the American press? Or are they all just examples of a big charade designed to keep people from seeing what's really going on? What's your opinion?

Please leave a comment.

What is Freedom?

Different people have different ideas of what freedom is. What's your opinion?

Happiness and Freedom

One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All

Alonzo Fyfe writes very eloquently on his blog Atheist Ethicist about an issue that I haven't followed very closely. Over the last couple years I've seen it in the news, I've received countless unsolicited e-mails from the conservative religious folks, but I could never get too worked up about it. The point seems to be, according to some, the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase "In God We Trust" on the money, are a problem.

The Pledge says that supporting a nation under God is as important – as American – as supporting a nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. In doing so, it equates atheism with rebellion, tyranny, and injustice. The national motto simply says, "If you don't trust in God, you are not one of us."

In his statement Alonzo makes reference to fanatical comments made by President Bush about the kind of Supreme Court Judges he'd appoint, only ones who believe in God, and he mentions some extremist comments made at a Veteran's Day ceremony attended by his dad, a disabled vet.

But isn't taking issue with these traditional words equally extremist? Isn't saying that teaching children the Pledge of Allegiance encourages bigotry a bit of an exaggeration? When the religious right makes statements like only God-believing Americans are real Americans, shouldn't we just ignore them? Is it really necessary to remove these words? I don't think so. What about you?

Another idea that comes to me is perhaps we don't need to put a microscope on each and ever word in our traditional American writings. When "Liberty and Justice for all" was coined, we probably still had slavery and denied women the vote. Now, all of a sudden, we have to get so literal with the God phrases?

What's your opinion on this?

Terrorist Watch List

CNN reports that the Terrorist Watch List is a lot shorter than previously believed. We discussed the famous list before here and here. The suggestion that a million names are on the list seemed ridiculous, but then again we are talking about the government.

Michael Chertoff revealed for the first time that 2,500 people are on the "no fly" list and only about 10 percent of those are U.S. citizens. Individuals on this list are barred from boarding aircraft because intelligence indicates they pose a threat to aviation.

Fewer than 16,000 people are designated "selectees," he said, and most are not Americans. These people represent a less specific security threat and receive extra scrutiny, but are allowed to fly.

At the risk of sounding cynical, I'd say the list was closer to the American Civil Liberties estimate just a week or two ago. Then in anticipation of this press release, it was chopped down. They probably removed the ones who shouldn't have been on it in the first place, the ones placed there for purely harassment purposes.

It has been pointed out that many thousands more have names or dates of birth similar to those on the lists. These people are wrongly delayed at airports or actually denied access.

But what I wonder is, what kind of threat do these people really pose? According to the stats there are about 250 Americans who CANNOT fly. If they're so dangerous why aren't they already in Guantanamo?

My opinion? The Department of Homeland Security is run by the same kind of feckless idiots that have run the IRS for decades. These are bureaucrats of the worst kind, who, at every level of the hierarchy strive to spend their allotted budgets and justify spending more next year with, in most cases, little or no regard for the quality of their output.

What do you think?

Banned Books Week

The American Library Association celebrates the last week of September each year as Banned Books Week.


BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.


By glancing at the list of the most frequently challenged books of 2007, it seems that some don't agree. Crooks and Liars has a post which includes a video about the controversy in 2006 in which a Texas school attempted to ban Fahrenheit 451. Now how's that for irony?

What's your opinion? How far do we go with the old First Amendment? Is there nothing that should be banned?