Look Ma, ‘No Hands’ CPR
I read today that the American Heart Association is now recommending that people do “hands only” CPR on heart attack victims. The idea is that at least pumping the heart without worrying about ventilating the lungs is a lot better than doing nothing.
According to a Reuters article:
In recommendations published in its journal Circulation, the group emphasized “hands-only” CPR — a simple procedure that bystanders can perform without worrying about doing the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation part of CPR.
“The thing that’s killing people is inaction,” said Dr. Michael Sayre of Ohio State University, who headed the association’s team that drafted the new recommendations.
Sayre said people not trained in CPR should do two things when they encounter an adult who has suddenly collapsed: first, call emergency services; and second, begin pushing “hard and fast” in the center of the person’s chest.
This is necessary to maintain vital blood flow, according to experts. Chest compressions should continue until emergency medical services responders arrive, Sayre said.
One, or perhaps two of the best things you can do for your community is get certified by the American Red Cross in CPR and First Aid. Both skills are simple to learn and come in handy. While I’ve never used my CPR training, thank the Lord, I’ve had two occasions to apply first aid.
The first was when a guy I was working with shot a nail from a pneumatic nail gun into his wrist. Sounds terrible, but actually wasn’t that bad. I just did as trained, sent someone to call for help, examined the wound and then gently wrapped it for the trip to the hospital.
The Red Cross teaches the three C’s: check, call, care. That is, check on the injured individual, call for help (or send someone to call for help), and then apply whatever care you can. Come to think of it, I think it’s time for me to renew my certifications too.
The second incident was at my gym where an elderly lady took a flying leap off a treadmill. She cut her forehead, which bled pretty heavily, sprained her wrist, hips and collar bone. I was in the locker room when I heard what I thought was hysterical laughing. I looked out of the locker room door and saw the woman laying on the floor crying and a bunch of people standing around.
I put my hand on the wound to staunch the blood flow, sent someone to call 911 and then talked with the lady until she calmed down and I could determine whether she was more seriously hurt. When the paramedics arrived I told them her name and gave a general description of what happened and her condition.
In my indoor cycling class I’ve had people get dizzy and nearly passout, but fortunately no one has actually blacked out on me, let alone have a heart attack. If the time ever comes, I just pray I’ll be able to do what it takes to help.
From the Reuters article:
“We want the general public to know that even if they’ve never been trained, they can help victims of sudden cardiac arrest.”
In the minutes after an adult collapses, hands-only CPR — without mouth-to-mouth rescue efforts — is equivalent to conventional CPR in its life-saving value, Sayre said.
All too often, no one at the scene does anything to help the victim of sudden cardiac arrest — often because there is no one trained in CPR and other people are scared that they will do something to make the victim’s condition worse.
But considering the person’s condition, Sayre said, “You can’t make them any worse.”
Anyway, all that to say, get yourself trained to do CPR and First Aid. Your family, friends and neighbors may one day need you.
Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy
In today’s edition of The American Spectator, Doug Bandow writes about Christian persecution in Muslim lands. He begins with the following:
Last year in Turkey five Islamic extremists bound, tortured, and killed three Christian religious workers.
In Malaysia the nation’s highest court ruled that a Christian convert could not change her official religious affiliation without a ruling of apostasy in Sharia court — punishable by death or prison.
Earlier this year Christian converts in Bangladesh were beaten and expelled by Muslim villagers.
Last year in Sudan demonstrators demanded death for a British teacher — convicted and then deported — for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Mohammed.”
In 2006 the Afghan government, which survives only because of allied military forces, sentenced a Christian convert to death, before allowing him to emigrate for reason of “mental illness.”
In Nigeria last year a Muslim mob murdered 10 Christians, injured scores more, and destroyed nine churches in response to a claim that a Christian student drew a cartoon of Mohammed on the mosque wall at school.
In Iraq in early March the body of kidnapped Chaldean Archbishop Paulus Faraj Rahho was discovered. Up to half of the prewar community of 1.2 or so million Iraqi Christians have fled abroad.
This reminds of Hebrews 11: 32-38:
32, And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35, Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 36, Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37, They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— 38, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
The Mustard Seed in Global Strategy
Interesting column by Spengler on the Asia Times web site about the best strategy for dealing with Islam.
The Mustard Seed in Global Strategy
By SpenglerA self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter’s. Allam’s renunciation of Islam as a religion of violence and his embrace of Christianity denotes the point at which the so-called global “war on terror” becomes a divergence of two irreconcilable modes of life: the Western way of faith supported by reason, against the Muslim world of fatalism and submission.
September 2006 address at Regensburg was “undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert”. Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more threatening: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains. Before Benedict’s election, I summarized his position as “I have a mustard seed and I’m not afraid to use it.” Now the mustard seed has earned pride of place in global affairs.
Magdi Allam tells us that he has found the true God and forsaken an Islam that he regards as inherently violent. Magdi Allam has a powerful voice as deputy editor of Italy’s newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera, and a bestselling author. For years he was the exemplar of “moderate Islam” in Europe, and now he has decided that Islam cannot be “moderate”.
Since September 2001, the would-be wizards of Western strategy have tried to conjure an “Islamic reformation”, or a “moderate Islam”, or “Islamic democracy”. None of this matters now, for as Magdi Allam tells us, the matter on the agenda is not to persuade Muslims to act like liberal Westerners, but instead to convince them to cease to be Muslims. The use of the world “revolution” is Magdi Allam’s:
His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.
There is no deference to mutual respect and multi-culturalism. Magdi Allam forsook Islam because he considers it to be “inherently evil”. As he wrote to his editor at the Corriere della Sera:
My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy …
I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a “moderate Islam”, assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive [emphasis added].
Far more important than denouncing the evils of Islam, though, is Magdi Allam’s embrace of what he calls the God of faith and reason:
The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ has reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness of a tendency where hate and intolerance in before the “other”, condemning it uncritically as an “enemy”, and ascending to love and respect for one’s “neighbor”, who is always and in any case a person; thus my mind has been released from the obscurantism of an ideology which legitimates lying and dissimulation, the violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission and tyranny – permitting me to adhere to the authentic religion of Truth, of Life, and freedom. Upon my first Easter as a Christian I have not only discovered Jesus, but I have discovered for the first time the true and only God, which is the God of Faith and Reason …
Magdi Allam presents an existential threat to Muslim life, whereas other prominent dissidents, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offer only an annoyance. Much as I admire Hirsi Ali, she will persuade few Muslims to reconsider their religion. She came to the world’s attention in 2004 after a Muslim terrorist murdered Theo van Gogh, with whom she had produced a brief film protesting the treatment of women under Islam. As an outspoken critic of Islam, Hirsi Ali has lived under constant threat, and I have deplored the failure of Western governments to accord her adequate protection.
Yet the spiritual emptiness of a libertine and cynic like Theo van Gogh can only repel Muslims. Muslims suffer from a stultifying spiritual emptiness, depicted most poignantly by the Syrian Arab poet Adonis. Muslim traditional society cannot withstand the depredations of globalized culture, and radical Islam arises from a despairing nostalgia for the disappearing past. Why would Muslims trade the spiritual vacuum of Islam for the spiritual sewer of Dutch hedonism? The souls of Muslims are in agony. The blandishments of the decadent West offer them nothing but shame and deracination. Magdi Allam agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love.Only a few months ago it seemed fanciful to hail Benedict XVI as the leader of the West. I wrote late last year:
The West is not fighting individual criminals, as the left insists; it is not fighting a Soviet-style state, as the Iraqi disaster makes clear; nor is it fighting a political movement. It is fighting a religion, specifically a religion that arose in enraged reaction to the West. None of the political leaders of the West, and few of the West’s opinion leaders, comprehends this. We are left with the anomaly that the only effective leader of the West is a man wholly averse to war, a pope who took his name from the Benedict who interceded for peace during World War I. Benedict XVI, alone among the leaders of the Christian world, challenges Islam as a religion, as he did in his September 2006 Regensburg address.
One does not fight a religion with guns (at least not only with guns) but with love, although sometimes it is sadly necessary to love one’s enemies only after they are dead. The Church has lacked both the will to evangelize Muslims as well as the missionaries to undertake the task. Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, has thought about the conversion of the Muslims for years, as I reported just before his election in 2005. Where will the Pope find the sandals on the ground in this new religious war? From the ranks of the Muslims themselves, evidently. Magdi Allam is just one convert, but he has a big voice. If the Church fights for the safety of converts, they will emerge from the nooks and crannies of Muslim communities in Europe.
The Pope also has in reserve the European youth movement “Communione e Liberazione”, which he has nurtured for decades. Forty-thousand members turned out in 2005 when the then Cardinal Ratzinger addressed a memorial service in Milan for the movement’s founder. European Christianity may be reduced to a few coals glowing in the ashes, but it is not dead, only marginalized. If the Catholic youth of Europe are offered a great task – to evangelize the Muslims whose restlessness threatens to push Europe into social chaos – many of them may heed the call.
As I wrote in 2005, “Now that everyone is talking about Europe’s demographic death, it is time to point out that there exists a way out: convert European Muslims to Christianity.” Today’s Europeans stem from the melting-pot of the barbarian invasions that replaced the vanishing population of the Roman Empire. The genius of the Catholic Church was to absorb them. If Benedict XVI can convert this new wave of invaders from North Africa and the Middle East, history will place him on a par with his great namesake, the founder of the monastic order the bears his name.
As Magdi Allam enjoins his new Church:
For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those “fortuitous events” that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on September 3, 2003, was entitled “The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts”. It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves.
What the outcome will be of the evangelization of Muslims lies beyond all speculation: that is a matter of every soul’s relationship to God. But the global agenda has changed, not through the machinations of statesmen or the word-mincing of public intellectuals, but through the soul of a single man. Benedict’s Regensburg challenge to Islam now demarcates the encounter between the West and the Muslim world, and nothing will be the same.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Winston Churchill on Islam
Before becoming Prime Minister of England and leading that nation through its “darkest hour” in World War II, Winston Churchill spent many years warning his countrymen of the threat building in Germany.
Curiously, Churchill also had something to say about Islam. In his book 1899 book “The River War,” he wrote the following:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science – the science against which it had vainly struggled – the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
I’m reading the e-book version of “The River War,” which is available from The Project Gutenberg.
RIP Staff Sgt Matt Maupin
The worst news any parent can receive is that his child has died. Army officials notified Keith and Carolyn Maupin Sunday that their son, Staff Sgt Matt Maupin, died in captivity in Iraq. He had been missing for four years. Here’s the story from the Cincinnati Enquirer.
As the father of a young man in the Army and soon on his way to Iraq, my heart breaks for the Maupins.
The Suicide of the West
Below a British man recounts his arrest and imprisonment for writing “hate speech” against the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. He doesn’t provide the details of exactly what the charges are that landed him in jail, only that he made some kind of “mistake” with his words.
The post on his Lionheart blog is a chilling reminder of what we in the West are up against.
Standing waiting to go through to the custody suite before being placed in the cell, so that I could be arrested, read my legal rights and stripped of my possessions and anything else I could hang myself with, I stood there thinking, look at the sacrifice I have made to write about the most serious threat to our way of life in 50 years, I was being arrested for it with the possibility of going to prison for my actions, for standing up for myself, for others and for my Christian belief.
I had my life threatened by Moslems, they are pumping their heroin and crack cocaine into my community, killing and destroying my friends, they are actively at War with British society from where I live, and here I am being arrested for a few words on a computer screen – There is something wrong there don’t you think?
I thought to myself about every other person who is standing up and speaking out against Islam and its Jihad against us, our society and way of life and thought; what sacrifice would others make?
What kind of sacrifice are we willing to make? What kind of sacrifice will we be forced to make? Will our inaction, silence, acquiescence allow an aggressive, brutal and savage enemy of Western civilization to triumph?
Either those of us who write and speak about Islam and Jihad are wrong or we are right, there is no middle ground, and if you care anything about the future society you want to live in and bring children and grandchildren up in, you have a responsibility to find out – You are reading this for a reason!
Moslems will tell you everything I am saying is rubbish that I am a scaremonger, Islamaphobe, racist or a hate filled person, this is because they are allowed to lie to the infidel (non-Moslem), they force their critics back and seek to silence them with these labels. Their religion teaches them that it is ok to lie to lead the kuffar into a false sense of security as they follow and carry out their duty of Jihad – This is called Taqqia and is a teaching of Mohamed
Come on, how can any peaceful religion teach that it is ok to lie to someone in their pursuit to dominate the person by all means necessary?
As Lionheart points out, every day in the U.K. and even here in the U.S. a war is being waged against the West, against democracy, against Judeo-Christian civilization. On our side are those who value tolerance above all, who believe negotiation and accommodation are the reasonable and right posture before a belligerant aggressor. Our enemy, and indeed Islam is the enemy of the West, knows no compromise nor negotiation, uses our rules and laws against us, to manipulate us into granting them special status from which they can continue their quest for dominance.
I’ve often wondered what lesson the German experience prior to World War II has for us here in the 21st Century. I’m beginning to think it is one of sleeping walking into a long national, or in the modern case, global nightmare. If you read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” or Corrie Ten Boom’s “The Hiding Place“, or even fiction like Herman Wouk’s “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance“ and Leon Uris’ “Mila 18,” a unifying theme emerges in each of those books of how every day people, Germans and Jews, almost whistfully slumbered into perhaps the greatest slaughter and cataclysm in the history of mankind.
Indeed the sense of melacholy is well captured by Woulk who writes about Poland’s national radio playing Chopin nearly nonstop on the eve of the German invastion. It was almost as if, everyone knew what was coming, but no one had the will, or even imagination to stop it. Christopher Browning in his “Ordinary Men” writes about how ordinary guys, fathers, brothers, sons, neighbors were anesthesized into partaking in atrocities that even at the distance of more than half a century take your breath away.
What lesson is there for us? Are we allowing ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, denying the reality that every day confronts us? Even the stories and images that do make it through the filters of a media so fearful of causing offense that it censors itself, even those images paint a picture impossible to ignore. There is nothing untrue or distorted in Geert Wilders censored 15 minute film, just images and words, true and spoken, that portray a reality that we are too fearful to believe.
Believe we must.
Lionheart, if by some happenstance you read my post here, know brother that you are a courageous man and have my full support.
You Can Even Play Tennis With Them
Fifty great things you never knew you could do with tennis balls.
Wonder if this would work foro mosquitos:
4) Keep certain types of gnats or flies away from you when you are outdoors. Just cover a tennis ball in Vaseline and hang it from a tree or bush.
I didn’t know this:
Some words of caution: tennis balls should not be used as dog toys. The felt that covers them can wear down a dog’s teeth. Larger dogs can choke on tennis balls. Ask your veterinarian for advice on alternative toys.
And, I’ve heard you can also use tennis balls to play tennis.
I Cannot Forget…Because I Am Not Allowed to Remember
Very thoughtful post on Ghost of a Flea about the Fitna controversy:
Here again the overt content of the depictions was less important than the fact of violating the taboo against depiction in itself. Here again bleeding hearts misread Muslim outrage at blasphemy as the hurt feelings of a minority suffering from the insensitivity of “racists”. The second, our media’s refusal to show the atrocities the jihadis have carried out against us; this out of fear of upsetting our sheltered sensibilities and for fear of fueling reprisals. Psychologically, morally and spiritually this media practice is an epic fail. I cannot forget the sound of bodies hitting the pavement of Manhattan precisely because I am not allowed to remember it.
Also, stole this link from Ghost: A list of things that offend Muslims from The Amboy Times, a long list at.
The West needs to come to grips with this fact and start standing up for our God-given rights of free speech, free expression and freedom of religion, lest we surrender those rights to a theocratic movement bent on removing our Constitutional freedoms that we hold dear. In this case, our tolerance will lead to intolerance.
The Answer to Islam
“Put no confidence in princes, nor on strength of men depend”
The war against Islam ultimately will not be won by bullets and tanks, but by conversion.
An article from National Review Online on “Islam’s Public Enemy #1.”
Fitna: Watch It While You Can
Here’s the short film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that has the Religion of Perpetual Outrage up in arms.
Hopefully our beloved ISP won’t suspend Knucklehead Ijdit Galoot for posting.
The folks over at Say Anything have the film.
Muslims Denounce Film Criticizing Islam, So What Else Is New?
Looks like another cave in to the dirt bags from the Religion of Perpetual Outrage (ROPO) means that “Fitna,” a 15-minute fill by Dutch politician Geert Wilders got pulled from an Internet hosting site, because the owners were afraid of reprisals against their employees. According to the AP story carried by Breitbart.com the film carries images that Muslims find offensive.
Employing elements and symbols calculated to offend Muslims, it draws on recycled footage of terrorist attacks and anti-Western, anti-Jewish rhetoric meant to alarm the native Dutch.
The film begins with the Danish cartoon image of Muhammad with a fuse in his turban—an image that provoked violent protests in Islamic countries when it was published by European newspapers two years ago.
The same image appears at the end of film, although the fuse is lit and a ticking clock counts down the seconds, then fades into blackness broken by flashes of lightning and thunder.
In another provocative image, a hand turns a page of the Quran as the screen darkens and the sound of tearing paper is heard. A printed text says it is only a telephone book being torn, and adds: “It is not up to me, but to Muslims themselves to tear out the hateful verses from the Quran.”
It cited verses from the Quran interspersed with images of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the 2004 commuter train bombings in Spain, and the slaying later that year of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical for perceived insults to Islam.
The film concludes with a scrolling text saying that the West had defeated the Nazis and communism, and now must defeat an Islam that “wants to dominate, subject and seeks to destroy our Western civilization.”
I’m always amazed how quickly we in the West back down in confrontations like this. Doesn’t sound like any Muslims are contesting the accuracy of the pictures and quotes from the Quran. But merely pointing out that these people, that this ideology is the mortal enemy of the West is enough to get the film banned. Here’s the typical Islamic reaction:
“It is not Islam that should be stopped, it is fear-mongers like Geert Wilders who should be stopped from spreading their hatred,” said Zakaria al-Sheik of the Rassoul Allah Yajmana, a Jordanian group formed to protect the image of Islam.
It is not hateful to speak the truth about this awful religion and the barbarians who practice it, and who kill thousands of innocent people in its name.
The World Council of Churches said the film failed to distinguish extremism from mainstream Islam.
That’s because there is no difference between extreme and mainstream Islam. Where are the “moderate” Muslims taking to the streets to protest the murders, bombings, beheadings and such perpetrated by their “extremists” brethren? There is none.
Every day in lands controlled by Islam, Christians are murdered, jailed, beaten, burned, hanged, beheaded and raped. Everywhere Islam rules there is no freedom of conscience. There is no freedom of religion. There are no churches, synagogues or temples, only Islamic mosques and their hateful religion.
Islam is a cancer, a pestilence on a global scale. We in the West are sitting on our thumbs while these barbarians attack the very bedrock of our culture, the culture that has given the world freedom and prosperity for more than 500 years. We should never back down, never stop calling barbarism barbarism, and never quit shining light on the slaughter perpetrated in the name of Islam.We must always expose this ideology for the lie from hell that it is. I wish there were pictures on television, in magazines and newspapers every day of Islamists murdering people, pictures of them teaching their children to cut the heads off of people or burn them alive, film of those poor people jumping to their deaths prior to the Twin Towers collapse in New York City. We need to see the ugliness and horror that are daily occurrences in Islamic lands.And we should never back down confronting this the biggest threat to civilization in 200 years or more.
‘Cause I’m the tax man, yea, I’m the tax man’ – Beatles
Saw an item on Michelle Malkin’s blog “A music tax to bail out the dying record industry? Hell, no!”
Apparently record companies want Congress to levy a tax on internet usage the proceeds of which would go into a $20 billion a year pool of cash “to pay artists and copyright holders.” Consumers would then have “unfettered access to a database of all known music.”
She quotes Michael Arrington at TechCrunch who calls the proposal a “protection racket,” and then goes on to say, “Forcing Internet users to subsidize music they don’t want and/or object to smacks of the worst kind of cultural Big Nannyism.”
Arrington says the deal is not so much a tax as a “pay us not to sue you” protection racket. Basically, internet service providers would pay record labels a fee and the labels would not go after the ISPs in court for copyright infringement when their customers download music.
”The tax will not, in fact, be mandatory. But that is misleading—it won’t be mandatory for ISPs who provide Internet access to actual users. But, if ISPs join the scheme, it will apply to all of their customers and be added to their bill as a surcharge,” Arrington wrote March 28.
I can see the point about the sliminess of the move by the record companies. But on the other hand, at five bucks a month that’s only $60 a year, and I spend way more than that on music annually. And, I’m sure I’m not that big of a music consumer. Others, especially, young people spends hundreds on music, whether on CDs, Napster, I-Tunes, Amazon.com, etc.
My hard drive has close to 200 gigs of music that I have collected from a variety of sources over the years, including all of the above, but also used book stores, yard sales and the like. And, way before the advent of CDs, I had hundreds of vinyl records. I’ve owned eight-track tapes (remember them?), cassette tapes, a lot of those, and now CDs.
I’ve actually bought the same album in vinyl, eight-track, cassette, CD and digital formats. So it really pisses me off when I hear record labels talking about suing music consumers for copying music. I figure I’ve paid and paid and paid again for the right to use my tunes any damn way I please.
As it stands now, if I want to use music I bought on a CD on my I-Pod I have to rip the music from the CD into I-Tunes and then load it on the I-Pod. On those rare and stupid occasions when I’ve made the mistake of buying songs from I-Tunes, I can’t just move the music from my I-Pod to my computer to use with some other program, because Apple encodes the file making it impossible to use in other formats.
When I buy music from Napster and want to put it on my I-Pod, I have to first burn a CD, then rip the CD to my hard drive and import the music into I-Tunes for uploading to the I-Pod. The entire process is absolutely ridiculous.
So now comes the record industry wanting to charge $5 a month for the right to do anything I like with music files? Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Yea, I’d pay the fee, be glad to in fact, if it meant I could get songs in a format that was usable on any device or with any software program I wanted.
Vaya con Dios
The Washington Post this morning featured a front page sob story on the cruel impact on the “vibrant Latino subculture” of Prince William County, Va.’s new crackdown on illegal immigration: In N.Va., a Latino Community Unravels (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/26/AR2008032603333.html).
A vibrant Latino subculture built in Prince William County over more than a decade is starting to come undone in a matter of months.
With Latinos fleeing the combined effects of the construction downturn, the mortgage crisis and new local laws aimed at catching illegal immigrants, Latino shops are on the brink of bankruptcy, church groups are hemorrhaging members, neighborhoods are dotted with for-sale signs, and once-busy strip malls have been transformed into ghost towns.
County officials who have campaigned for months to drive out illegal immigrants say they would be unhappy to see businesses suffer or legal immigrants forced out in the process.
“But I believe the benefits will far outweigh the drawbacks,” said Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Board of County Supervisors and a leading advocate of the new policy allowing police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other violations. “And there will continue to be . . . a thriving Latino community in the county into the future.”
As a former home remodeling contractor, I’d like to see the WaPo do a story on the impact illegal immigration has on the blue collar trades. My partner and I were often underbid by a crew of Hispanics charging next to nothing to build a deck, install a fence, do drywall work, etc. One project we lost was bid about $200 above the cost of materials. The contractor evidently planned to pay his crew about $25/day to dig post holes and install a wood fence around the small backyard of a Haymarket, Va., town home.
I’ve talked to painters, drywall finishers and other tradesmen over the years who have moved onto other occupations because, unlike their competitors, they don’t live in rental properties with 25 other guys and can’t afford to work for a few dollars a day.
You might argue that those guys are just losing in a free market because they can’t compete. But really, if you’re competing against someone who doesn’t bother with a business license, contractor license, liability insurance, and all the other overhead that local government imposes on legitimate businesses, then we’re really not talking about fair market competition.
And, there’s also the issue of skill levels, quality of the craftsmanship, customer service and all that stuff that helps distinquish higher end contractors from Jose Blow who knows just enough to barely complete the job. We were underbid once on a paint job by a crew of illegals hired by the homeowner. We were brought back in at a later date to do some other work, and witnessed the bargain paint job. What a joke.
Year of calamities:
Later in the article, they talk to an illegal who’s had a bad year.
It was the latest blow in a year of calamities: In April, the interest rate on Mauricio’s ill-advised mortgage suddenly spiked, more than doubling his monthly payments. In May, he lost his job as a house painter. In June, he had to sell his van. In July, his third child was born, and with no insurance, he started skipping mortgage payments to cover the hospital bills. In October, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In November, he sent his wife and two U.S.-born children to El Salvador.
December brought the worst setback yet: Mauricio bounced a $460 check he had sent the Department of Homeland Security to renew his temporary legal status, transforming him from legal to illegal immigrant.
In January, he received notice to vacate his house. Two weeks ago, the water was cut off. A week ago, his Virginia driver’s license expired, and without legal status, he can no longer renew it.
I sympathize with the guy, but jeez, how many other non-Hispanic folks can tell similar tales? I broke my heel back in September, was off work for about two months and racked up $20,000 in doctors/hospital bills. I don’t have health insurance. Because I wasn’t working, I wasn’t making any money and my mortgage, second mortgage, car payment, electric bill, phone bill, you name it, are all way behind.
In my neighborhood there are dozens of houses either in foreclosure or simply for sale. The “vibrant Latino community” is not the only one experiencing hardship lately. But somehow, I guess WaPo expects extra tears from the rest of us, because a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here anyway are having a hard time.
Boo fucking hoo.