דניאל היה פה

To all those who have labeled Israel and her government as a group of people who attack civilian aid-workers, I have this to say to you: FUCK OFF!
The video below shows IDF soldiers boarding the largest ship of the flotilla that were attempting to run a naval embargo to the Gaza Strip. The moment the soldiers landed to ensure the embargo is enforced, they were attacked by these so called ‘unarmed civilians’. The soldiers fearing for their life acted in self defense when they opened fire on the mob.

I am a great fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The show airs every Monday to Thursday at 11:00 and is a satirical news show that is widely acclaimed. Over the course of the shows runtime, it has become increasingly political and has often ridiculed many deserving politicians both republican and democrat. One person of note who he has ridiculed and has deserved it more than anybody is Glenn Beck.

Glenn is a libertarian (a libertarian believes in maximum personal liberty and a minimal government presence), conservative and recently an anti-progressive. Many of his views have drawn criticism from people from all ends of the political spectrum as a result of these views. However much of the attention drawn towards him is a result of his conspiracy theories. These include Barack Obama not being born in the US, democrats are communist socialists that are destroying America and the term ‘social justice’ is actually a code word for the promotion of socialism with America. Many have called him a fear-monger for his blatant criticisms of the government. This includes claiming that the health care reform that was recently passed is going to ‘destroy America’ with death panels, socialism/communism and will bankrupt the US; ignoring that the US is already virtually bankrupt with over 12 trillion dollars of dept.

This is why Jon Stewart’s show on March 18 was a victory against Glenn Beck. Half of the episode was devoted to borrowing the format for Glenn Beck’s TV show called ‘Glenn Beck’ from Fox Network. What filled the format was pure comedy, using Glenn’s rhetoric and fear-mongering tactics Jon Stewart made an amazing representation of Glenn that portrayed him as a fool (idiot also works). He talked about the dangerous future America faces that embracing Progressivism holds. While both TV personalities did this, Glenn Beck was serious about the threat. Jon Stewart was joking and making fun of the anti-progressivism movement by pointing out problems the movement had. They include that progressivism was the driving factor behind the suffrage movement, the civil rights movements and minimum wage.

Jon Stewart is truly the king of comedy and the fear of politicians and the media.

http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart—march-18-2010/

This is a speech  I wrote for a speaking contest, enjoy:

I would like you to try to imagine the following situation.

A man named Frank Mugisha is living in Uganda, every day he is subjected to insults, slurs and ridicule that all stem from one unimportant reason. He is homosexual. Frank is afraid to go out into public for fear of attack from his fellow countrymen. He can only go out with other homosexuals so that they can help defend each other. And now his situation has begun to rapidly deteriorate; a new bill has been proposed by the Ugandan government that criminalizes being a homosexual. If you are convicted of being homosexual, you will be sentenced to jail for life. If you know a homosexual but do not report him 24 hours after the bill is passed, you will be sent to jail. If you participate in homosexual activities multiple times, you may be sentenced to death. If you are homosexual and have HIV you may be sentenced to death. If you are convicted of ‘aggravated homosexuality’ you will be sentenced to death.

Frank Mugisha is under imminent threat of imprisonment and possibly death, with him an estimated 500 000 homosexual Ugandans face the same prospect. They will be left with two impossible choices: never go outside again and live the rest of their lives behind bars, or, leave everything they hold valuable in their life and flee their houses and country in which they lived their entire lives. Both these options are horrific and this situation must not come to pass.

Hello, my name is Daniel Kahn and I would like to speak about the anti-homosexual bill introduced on September 25 last year in Uganda. The bill will violate international human rights laws and lead to human rights violations on an unprecedented scale in Uganda. The bill states that, in addition to the clauses I mentioned earlier, there is the confidentiality clause that basically removes the hope of homosexual people receiving the rights to a fair trial. This clause also implies that, in addition to homosexuals being convicted, political dissidents and activists that disagree with the government can be accused of being a homosexual and be ‘conveniently’ convicted to jail for the rest of their life.

Uganda has a population of 31 million people. Of those 31 million people, an estimated 1.6% of the population, or 500 000 are homosexual. This would mean that the Ugandan government would imprison nearly 1 in every 50 people in Uganda.

This bill is a problem because it removes the rights that homosexual people are guaranteed under various agreements that Uganda signed including, the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), the African Charter and the CERD (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination). The bill will remove all freedoms that homosexual people have within society.

However there is a way out of this situation. The countries of the world must unite and boycott aid to Uganda. They must pressure the Ugandan government to back off the bill, and they must cut aid to Uganda and pressure NGOs to cut their aid. This boycott of international aid will send a powerful message to the government that the world will not stand for this treaty. This boycott will be especially powerful as international aid accounts for roughly 40% of Uganda’s budget.

The good news is that many countries across the globe are responding to the bill’s introduction by threatening and pulling their aid to Uganda. Sweden has already withdrawn their 50 million dollars of aid; the Canadian prime minister has voiced his opposition to Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni. The prime minister of United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, has expressed his opposition towards the bill and many other world leaders have announced their opposition to the bill as well.

The pressure appears to be working as the bill has already been softened. As of December last year, Ugandan ethics and integrity minister announced that the death penalty would be dropped from the bill. And the president of Uganda has distanced himself from the bill and suggested that the bill be softened.

These acts against the bill have been remarkable steps towards defeating the bill, but more must be done. The bill is expected to pass in March (this month) and it must fail to pass through parliament. Only then will humans rights groups like Amnesty International and Humans Rights Watch succeed in taking another step towards the elimination of homophobia worldwide.

I would like to summarize that action must be taken against the bill, because if we do not stop it, there can be huge and unpredictable ramifications. I would like to end with part of a poem by Pastor Martin Miemoller:

Then they came for the Catholics,

And I didn’t speak up because I was a protestant,

Then they came for the homosexuals,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a homosexual,

Then they came for me,

And by that time there was no one left to speak for me.

I hate annoying people! Did you know that annoying people are the single-most important cause of stress? Thats right, if we eliminate annoying people then there will be that much less stress in the world. In addition if we eliminate all anoying people there will be no annoying people left on the planet. We will have evolved beyond them and rise to conquer the galaxy. However there is one problem with this, if all the annoying people are gone something will have to fill their social niche. Annoying people will most likely be replaced by younger siblings. To solve this problem I propose the elimination of all younger siblings (talking to you Micheal, YOU ARE ON MY HITLIST!). Thats right, in order to proclaim our ascendancy promised by god we must unite and kill all younger siblings and annoying people. We will rise up against the aliens whose coming was predicted by Star-trek, by Star Wars and by Mars Attacks! We will crush all resistance and proclaim a pan-galactic empire that will last ten thousand years. Hail non annoying people and older siblings!

(Please note that none of the views expressed are those of the author. This was an attempt by the author to try his hand at rabble-rousing and looking like and idiot)

please…

Recently, I opened an account on Conservapedia and I commented on the Barack Obama article. Less than 5 minutes later I was blocked for being an liberal elitist. I thought little of it, as the comment I posted was leaning to the liberal side, but I was surprised that I was banned infinitely. Later I found a new wiki called RationalWiki that was founded by people who thought Conservapedia was appalling and had to be rationally ridiculed. The site told me that some of the editors were given blocking rights and began blocking hundreds of potential editors. One editor even temporarily blocked Great Britain from editing Conservapedia.

I later found a new wiki called Liberalpedia, unlike Conservapedia Liberalpedia was actually meant to be funny and stereotype liberals. This contrasts Conservapedia where they are funny but they mean to be serious by appealing to their target audience of home-schooled kids. I became an editor on Liberalpedia and in the first 1/2 hour I wrote the sites articles on God and Conservapedia and brought the sites total number of articles up to 39. Unfortunately the website is blocked at my school and I can’t update it. So it remains mostly un-updated. However I urge you to visit the site and contribute to it. Liberalpedia offers a unique and comic view on the liberal view on life and should be expanded.

http://liberalpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Liberal-Pedia_Wiki

Many people believe that god is increasingly losing meaning in our life, and that he is an obsolete figure. Whether he is Brahman, Adonia, Jesus, the Buddha or Allah he is becoming unrelavent in our life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Religion_in_the_world.PNG

If you follow this link you will find that people are more likely to find religion relevant in their lives in third world countries .  I believe that this pattern shows that religion is often used a refuge from the hardships people face in poorer conditions.

Religion will become even less relevant as modern technology improves in these third world countries. You notice that technology is what makes a first world country a first world country and lack of technology makes a third world country a third world country. As technology continues to improve in third world countries and become more accessible, many of the reasons that people turn to religion for will cease to exist. For example better health care will cure many disease and stop people from believing that they happened because god is angry at them.

However some people believe that science is a religion in itself, and what is actually happening is that many religious believers are being ‘converted’ to the faith of science. Yes, just like most major religions science has a set of rules (scientific method) that must be followed and a set of laws (law of conservation of mass) that must be believed in. In addition believers in science have been given their own name: atheists.

Is this a decline in religious belief? or simply the rise of a new and powerful religion? you must decide one of these sides, religion or science (unless you are agnostic).

For more information: http://benmuse.typepad.com/ben_muse/2008/01/wealth-and-reli.html

Conservapedia was set up in 2006 by conservative Andy Shlafly. The website is meant to broadcast the conservative opinions on life, the universe and everything; except, that the universe is 6000 years old and life and everything was created by. I am not saying that I disagree with these views, I believe in god and believe he had a role in creation. What I disagree with conservapedia on, is what articles they allow published on their website. The article on Barack Obama states that he is a Muslim terrorist that wants to turn the United States into a socialist, communist/Marxist aand fascist country, mainly through health reform and a term they coined called ‘spreading the wealth’. This is all in addition to questioning his American citizenship, calling him a racist and that he is an elitist (whatever that means).

Another article on Conservapedia states that many cases of breast cancer are caused by women choosing to undergo abortion, while another mentions that part of the cause of homosexuality is sexual abuse at an early age.

While I beleive in freedom of speech, I don’t believe in the propagation of lies like the ones mentioned above. I believe that Conservapedia should be forced to retract any material on the website that is purposefully untruthful and is slanderous towards honorable people.

<insert concluding sentence, in case of there is not one please feel free  add your own conclusion as a comment>

http://conservapedia.com/Main_Page

if i could post five posts on this website…

I would make them a minimum of 200 words; unless I could not think of 200 words to write,

I would only write about stuff that I wanted people to know about; unless I forgot that I did not want to tell people that I keep a slave in my brother’s room,

I would never share personal information with other people; except that my name is Daniel Kahn, I live in Toronto, I have a dog, a cat and a brother and that I did {excerpt deleted} to {excerpt deleted},

I would use appropriate language; unless I felt like taking a proverbial shit,

I would always make sure I use information that is true; Wikipedia doesn’t count,

I would always cite the information I put on the blog; it would appear that I have not cited any of the information on the blog, yet,

I would always treat people the way I would like to be treated; unless your name is <insert your brother here>,

I would think before I post a blog entry…what was I talking about?,

If I followed these simple guidelines then I can consider myself a master blogger and never have to post on here again (or at least until the winter break is over).

This winter is my second year as a hockey referee for the Avenue Road Hockey Association. I have enjoyed my experiences as a referee and I have found the pay for the job to be wonderful. The league I work for pays my checks on time and tries their best to accommodate our needs (which they do very well). However I have one problem with being a referee; its the referee training program. In order to sign up for a referee training clinic or a re-certification program, you must find the website (which took me an hour to find), then find the program that’s applicable for you and sign up for it (this is easier to do than the former if not slightly confusing).

At this point I thought that my problem was solved and I just have to wait a month and then attend the meetings. I was never more wrong. Due to a bar-mitzvah my parents forgot to tell me about when I was signing up for the clinic, I was unable to attend the last meeting where I would be getting my certificate for the 09/10 winter, instead I would have to switch into a different clinic for the last meeting. At the time I figured it would be an easy assignment, I would have to send an email or two and then wait for a confirmation. However, what actually happened was I ended up emailing 3 people and calling another for a) permission to switch meetings and b) where the meeting was taking place since the website didn’t tell you were it was.

When the day came for the last meeting and I arrived there the only one person was there. She was there to tell everyone who came for the meeting that it was cancelled  and that they would email us when there would be a new date for the meeting.

They never emailed…