HER MAJ'S XMAS

Queen Elizabeth II has become a member of the YouTube generation. She gave her 2007 Christmas address on YouTube and has her own section on the site. It was a very precise do good onto others lecture with grand music and royal posh all around.

Give 'em 'ell Ma'am! Happy Holidays!

Technorati Tags:Queen Elizabeth II

WRITERS' STRIKE

Please support the writers' strike in Hollywood. One way that you can support the writers' strike is to boycott any scab activity that takes place online. Recently, I found this ad. The spelling errors are not mine:

"Freelance TV Writers - (US-CA-Hollywood - 90078)

Min Education: Bachelors
Job Type: Contract

Everyone knows it is a rough time here in Hollywood with the strike and with the holidays coming up it couldn't have come at a worse time. I was starting to wonder how I would be able to make it an enjoyable Christmas for my twin 12-year old daughters. That is why I decided to come up with an alternative.

I, and some marketing folks, producers, and other interested parties had some private disucssions on how to get some writers back to work while this strike works itself out. I've worked out deals to get scripts written on a couple of CBS shows and I'm working on a deal with Fox. We will be privately and discretely writing scripts for these shows. We will ensure your privacy and confidentiality and are willing to pay top dollar for talented writers. We are currently working on bring other shows into the mix, but the producers want to see if we can make this work for a few shows first before giving us many more.

Together we can make this a happy holiday season for our families, contact if you have any questions.

William Kinkade
Kinkade Creative Solutions"


I've excised the contact information for the company. Why help them?

Help these people instead.
Here is the web page for the Writers' Guild of America.
http://www.wga.org/

Technorati Tags:writers'strike

FREEDOM FROM RELIGION

Would someone please whack presidential candidate Mitt Romney over the head with a large history book? Mr. Romney claims that freedom needs religion to be successful and that religion needs freedom.

Uh, hello? Hasn't Romney heard about the term auto-da-fé? Being a Jew in Inquisition Spain was dangerous. There was no freedom in being, for example, a Protestant in Queen Mary's Catholic England nor for that matter Queen Elizabeth I's supposedly Catholic tolerant leadership where followers of the Pope were under the same suspicion as Huguenots in the former reign. Perhaps Mitt Romney should read Fox's Book of Martyrs, or brush up on the atrocities of St. Bartholomew's Day in sixteenth century France where the rivers were so thick with Protestant corpses that no one could fish, to understand that religion does not confer freedom if you are of a then heretic faith.

Mitt Romny also disregards the thousands of primarily women murdered for alleged witchcraft. The freedom inspiring qualities of religion were not evident in Salem Massachusetts when innocent people, mostly women,were accused and hung for the supposed crime. Those of us touched by the evil of religion, myself with an ancestor hung and burnt for witchcraft, do not forget or forgive how religion is an instrument for ensnaring and destroying innocents.

Perhaps it is too much to expect Romney's followers to be historically literate (or for that matter, simply literate). When Mr. Romney claims that the big FFs, Founding Fathers, were religious, he is not quoting Thomas Jefferson who once wrote to his nephew Peter Carr to "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear". and "Do not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you." None of the Founding Fathers had much love for religion. They were, unlike your average fundamentalist Christian or Republican presidential hopeful, were great in curiosity and scholarly pursuit.

Mitt Romney, or other candidates for the presidency who claim religion as as a necessity for freedom, should take a hint from the intellectual bent of the Founding Fathers and study history.

Technorati Tags: mitt romney

STUFFIE UPDATE

Authorities in Sudan released British private school teacher Gillian Gibbons from jail.

Gillian Gibbons was arrested for naming a class teddy bear 'Muhammad'. A staff member at the school complained to authorities about the alleged idolatry. Sudanese officials pardoned Ms. Gibbons and she was deported.

My question is where were the staff member's priorities? Naming a teddy bear 'Muhammad' is not sacrilegious but somewhat tacky. The Prophet,when he was sixty-three, had a child bride. Aisha bint Abi Bakr was six years of age when Muhammad married her. He consummated the marriage when the girl was nine.

Hello? In the modern world this is called paedophilia. Muhammad played with the child's dolls and whatnot to gain the victim's trust. Naming a teddy bear, or a child, 'Muhammad' is nauseating in view of the Prophet's sexual assault on a very underage girl. Needless to say, the female in question did not have any children of her own. Rape of a young child can damage the internal reproductive organs.

The Sudanese Muslims who condemned Gillian Gibbons for simply having a class mascot should look to some of the vile origins of their own religion for censure.


Technorati Tags:aisha bint abi bakr,child sexual abuse gillian gibbons,child sexual abuse muhammad,