All is quiet around these parts, besides the abundant hits I've been getting from people looking up information about the caricature fiasco going on in the Middle East these days. Of course, it wouldn't be the Middle East if someone wasn't complaining about something , would it? Anyways, I've been busy working on a new project, something I just found some focus on today. I'll be able to show it off to the general public within the next couple days, once I actually have something up on the site worth mentioning elsewhere.

I'll still be working on PrezKennedy.org a lot, but I'd like to get something else going now that I've made this site a success (in my eyes anyways). I just feel as though it's time I branched out a little bit and work on something something new. Writing about world news and crazy stuff going on around us is pretty exciting, but some days I just don't feel like doing it... so this will be what I'll work on when I don't feel like writing about President Bush's latest faux pas against our civil rights, Dick Cheney's latest gunshot victim, or the latest outrage coming from the Muslim world.

I know, it's quite a shocker for me to be working on something else with all of that going on, but I think this new idea will interesting to try out.

Many prominent Muslims seem like they're unable to handle jokes made at their religion's expense... like somehow, they expect it to be sacred to the rest of the world, even if we aren't practicing it. Basically the opposite of how they treat other religions in their own countries. It's a little ridiculous when a newspaper posts some caricatures done of the Muslim world, and then they have to hire security guards to protect the building from would-be Muslim terrorists, murderers and the like just because of a few pictures from artists that are exercising their right to free speech in Denmark. Sure, Christians get worked up over things like this, but I don't recall them ever threatening to blow up a newspaper or threatening to kill its reporters/artists in at least... the past three-hundred years or so.

"Danish Imam Raed Hlayhel was the first to react. 'This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims,' he fumed. 'Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world. We demand an apology!'" The only apology I'd give him is "Sorry that you feel that way." Next we have five-thousand or so Muslims marching in the streets of Denmark protesting the caricatures, and then we have Muslim leaders from non-democratic countries like Egypt trying to get in the frey, for some reason believing that they'll have the power to influence a nation that is 85% Lutheran. Last but not least, the most respected authority in the Sunni Muslim world, Mohammad Sayed Tantawi, Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, declared that the cartoons had "trespassed all limits of objective criticism into insults and contempt of the religious beliefs of more than one billion Muslims around the world, including thousands in Denmark. Al-Azhar intends to protest these anti-Prophet cartoons with the UN’s concerned committees and human rights groups around the world." Yeah, all that for a picture that looks like the on the right.

I honestly believe the people who do this want to take over the world and smite anyone who disagrees with their beliefs. We're all taught to tolerate people who are different in a democratic society, otherwise it won't work. On the other hand, it seems like most of the Muslim world is built on intolerance, and then they throw a hissy-fit when they get pushed around. Sure, they aren't all bad, but it doesn't seem like the good ones are doing much, if anything to keep the bad ones in check. And the bad ones, well, they're assaulting our freedoms from two angles, politics and terrorism.

I'd just like to be the one to say to the "most respected authority in the Sunni Muslim world" and any other Muslims offended when someone in another part of the world uses their freedom of speech, get the hell over yourselves. Thanks.

If you'd like to read some more on this check out "Thou Shalt Not Draw" posted on FrontPageMag.com.

Edit: It seems as though some gunmen in the Palestinian territories surrounded the EU Commission in Gaza. You pretty much know the deal: they make threats, wave the guns around, look like idiots... then catch the bus home to get ready for work. It's also a little ironic that pictures of a Muslim guy with a bomb for a turban, has got Muslims up in arms threatening violence, the very thing the picture is symbolizing! It seems these caricatures have really got them all stirred up, and it's getting worse. Now Muslims in Pakistan are chanting "Death to Denmark", "Death to Germany", "Death to France", etc. I just have to wonder, do these people do anything but protest and complain? Do they have a day job, or do they get alloted 180 days each year for protesting against the Western infidels?

As for insulting a billion-plus Muslims, at least the western world doesn't do it their way... stifle, jail, or execute people of different religions. So, we have the Muslims complaining about pictures (while in the background they're jailing Christians and others, making them pay extra taxes, or killing them) or we have the Western way, drawing pictures making fun of their religion. Really, which is worse?

The politicians on Capitol Hill have been keeping their underlings busy lately. Not with work, but instead, filling Wikipedia up with sanctioned biographies from the Senators and Representatives themselves. Oftentimes these Congressional staffers will simply remove what had been written prior to their interference, and write completely new articles putting a spin on their particular "boss's" perceived image. Of course it doesn't stop there, they also go and smear their opposition on Wikipedia too! No wonder these people get paid the big bucks; they sit around all day writing propaganda for everyone to "consume". Why, they'll even spoon feed it to us too!

I'm not entirely surprised by all of this. When I visited Washington D.C. last year and sat in on the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, they were bickering worse than high-school kids. These days most of the politicians in Washington put more effort into supporting big industry and whatever party they're affiliated with than they do the constituents that voted them into office. And now they're wasting government time trying to polish their image on an open encyclopedia. Do these people not have enough to do at work?

Seriously though, if they want someone dedicated to spinning their story and spamming it all over Wikipedia, they should hire me. I could do it a lot more covertly than they've been doing, and they wouldn't be in the pickle of having the entire Congressional IP address-space banned from editing on Wikipedia with longer lasting solutions on the horizon. Congratulations on that one.

I have to say one thing, I've definitely lost a lot of faith in our government over the past five years. Between President Bush and Congress, it's no wonder we're dealing with the problems we have now. They're too busy wasting their time on stuff that doesn't matter, like Wikipedia!

It's a fairly well known fact that the Palestinian resistance group Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by most Western nations including the United States and the European Union. It's somewhat amusing to see that they've managed to take control of the majority of the Palestinian Authority. The terrorists have officially entered politics! I guess they felt blowing up women and children at cafe's and malls wasn't making enough of a statement to Israel and the world.

Now that they've taken a lead in politics, the outlook for the Palestinian Authority doesn't seem very bright. Since they are a terrorist group, nobody in the western world is going to deal with them, and more importantly, send them financial aid to support their people and their government (and since they're terrorists... their homemade bomb-making and suicide attacks against Israel). Looks like the Palestinians have done a great job of screwing themselves over again. They had great chances of forming their own nation back in 2000, but the terms from Israel just weren't enough for the greedy buggers. They wanted more, so they revolted and have been killing and been killed for the past six years. Now peace is beginning to take hold again after Yassir Arafat died, and they go and elect a bunch of terrorists into office.

There's a reason why these people are consistantly "losers" year after year. It's because they make stupid, idiotic choices that they always end up suffering for later. Then they whine and complain like they're owed something. Since when did the loser of a war get to set the terms of surrender? Not only that, but they're determined to destroy Israel at all costs, but at the same time, they want Israel to cooperate with them! Not everybody in this world is as stupid as you people are, seriously.

Anyways, the Palestinian Authority will certainly be looking for money now. Perhaps they could do some bake sales to raise money... For more on that story, read this article about how the "Hamas victory worsens a financial crisis". Will they ever learn?

Yes, I know... this site was down for awhile and had a password box coming up in order to get into it. I've already taken care of the problem and all should be good again. What happened you ask?

Well, so many people/bots have been surfing the DMOZ section that I decided early on to cache the pages so that it would perform faster. Unfortunately it never deletes the pages it saves, so I basically had the entire DMOZ directory sitting on ibiblio.org, by accident. So this morning I received an e-mail saying the site was temporarily shutdown in order for me to figure out what was wrong with it. At first I thought it was something really serious, but instead it was only the cache for DMOZ getting out of hand. On the order of about three gigabytes! I turned off caching for both sites, and then deleted all the files in the cache. I also learned that the wildcard function is rather limited in memory size for Linux/UNIX boxes, so I found a special command to get rid of lots of files; "find . -name '*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 rm". It gets around the limitation, and within ten minutes, I had freed up those three gigabytes of worthless files so other more worthy endeavours could put that space to use.

Sorry ibiblio! Didn't intend for that to happen.

At least it wasn't as bad as what I thought it was originally... link spammers going nuts on two years worth of hard(ly) work.

So everything is back to normal now, and thanks for visiting my little soapbox on the Internet!