April 15

Report: Serial Killers Cleared by Iranian Supreme Court as Victims' Activities Were Un-Islamic FoxNews.com,
 

The Iranian Supreme Court has vacated the murder convictions of a group of serial killers because their victims were engaging in un-Islamic activities, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.

The men were convicted for a series of grisly killings in the southeastern city of Kerman in 2002. The vigilantes were said to believe that Islam condoned the killing of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims, the BBC reports.

At least 18 people were killed on the murder spree, but the men were only tried for five of the deaths. Some of the victims were stoned, others were suffocated, and at least one man was buried alive, according to the vigilantes' confessions. These men told the court that their understanding of the teachings of one Islamic cleric allowed them to kill immoral people if they had ignored two warnings to stop their bad behavior, according to the BBC.

Film Review: The Great Global Warming Swindle

Is a new documentary film produced by Channel 4 in Britain.  The last I heard it has not found an American distributer,  but here is a YouTube link that shows it in its entirety:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

Some of the most reputable scientists, and even the co-founder of Greenpeace, give very strong evidence and arguments against the whole theory behind Global Warming.  Even the fundamental assumption that global warming is caused by the release of man-made carbon dioxide is refuted.

For example, the famous ice-core samples taken from Antarctica show an exact opposite correlation between rises in CO2 and global-warming as the depiction of it by Al Gore and company in "An Convenient Truth" . According to this documentary, rises in levels of carbon dioxide follow the warming of the planet by hundreds of years so that some climatologists think that it is the warming of the planet that causes the rise in carbon dioxide. One of the reasons is that as the seas warm up they release more of it; and the oceans are the largest producers by far of carbon dioxide.

The level of scientists that were interviewed is very high, and their scientific scorn for global warming theory left no doubt where they stood. They did not hesitate or say, well maybe it is true, but offered some very convincing sounding arguments. 

This film is very strong argument against global warming and has the potential to turn the debate toward a more balanced treatment of the subject.

An Iranian Smoking Gun?

The Daily Telegraph reports that more than 100 high powered sniper rifles manufactured by Austrian gun-maker Steyr-Mannlicher have been discovered by American troops in Iraq during raids.  The rifles were part of a shipment of 800 rifles sold to Iran allegedly to combat drug smuggles.   According to a Wall-Street journal article on this same subject, Iran signed guarantees that the rifles would not be resold.  The serial numbers on the discovered cache have not yet been verified against the guns in the sale, but if and when they are, it is "Smoking Gun" proof of Iran's direct involvement in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq.

The rifle is highly accurate and fires bullet that can pierce all body armor from up to a mile.  It can penetrate armored Humvee troop carriers.  American officials have said that 170 British and American troops have been killed by such weapons.

February 15, 2007

Islamo-Fascists Out of Australia!

Australia's Prime Minister and other leading Australian politicians gave a blunt warning to those Muslims who say that they see Australian and Sharia law as equally legitimate.  Quoting Treasurer Peter Costello, the heir apparent to Prime Minister Howard: "If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to other countries which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option."  See the entire article on Snopes.

Joe Kennedy Teams up with Hugo Chavez

Characterizing his actions as "morally righteous", Joseph P. Kennedy II, a former Democratic Congressman, has arranged a deal with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez to supply home heating oil to Mr. Kennedy's Citizens Energy Corporation at a 40% discount.  Citizens, a nonprofit outfit, says it passes on the savings to the poor, helping 400,000 homes in 16 states.  There is interesting commentary in the Wall Street Journal, and an eye opening expose on what happened to one Chavez supporter in Venezuela who dared engage in dialogue with the opposition.

"Helping the poor" has become the modus operandi of power seeking thugs worldwide since before communism took hold in Russia in the 1920's.  It is the only excuse leftists in the U.S. apparently need to support tyrants.

Dutch Lawmakers Living Under Death Threats from Islamists

Dutch lawmakers are hiding in army barracks watching their backs, and worrying about their loved ones.  An article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "An Ordinary Dutch Life" highlights the plight of Geert Wilders whose "...life is in danger because of his criticism of radical, or, as he calls it, "mainstream Islam.  In Mr. Wilder's view, Islam hasn't been "hijacked" by radicals.  Rather, radicalism is embedded in the faith.  'It's a violent religion, an intolerant religion,' he said matter-of-factly in an interview".

Mr. Wilders is not the only victim, the list of people who have received death threats for criticizing some aspect of Islam has grown since the brutal violence visited on Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh two years ago at the hands of a Dutch-Moroccan who shot and stabbed the filmmaker as punishment for a film he was making critical of Islam.  Mr. Wilders claims that "Videos on Islamic Web sites show my picture and name to the sound of what appears to be knives cutting through flesh while a voiceover says I will be beheaded."

The Dutch people are apparently blasé about the whole thing, more worried about "tax breaks, pensions and health care",  then threats to their very lives and freedom.

The uncompromising violence and murder dealt out by adherents of Islam are chillingly extrapolated in  "The Tehran Calculus" by Charles Krauthammer.  After detailing ,while not minimizing, the military, diplomatic and economic costs of confronting Iran, a government ruled by Islamist theocrats currently in the process of acquiring the means to produce nuclear weapons, Mr. Krauthammer continues:

"These are the costs. There is no denying them. However, equally undeniable is the cost of doing nothing.

In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, non-nuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away."

Faith Appeals to Reason

The following excerpt is from an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Benedict the Brave" on a critique of Islam delivered by pope Benedict:

"In a lecture on "Faith and Reason" at the University of Regensburg in Germany, Benedict XVI cited one of the last emperors of Byzantium, Manuel II Paleologus. Stressing the 14th-century emperor's "startling brusqueness," the pope quoted him as saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

"...The offending quotation was a small part in a chain of argument that led to his main thesis about the close relationship between reason and belief. Without the right balance between the two, the pontiff said, mankind is condemned to the "pathologies and life-threatening diseases associated with religion and reason" -- in short, political and religious fanaticism."

"In Christianity, God is inseparable from reason. "In the beginning was the Word," the pope quotes from the Gospel according to John. "God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word," he explained. "The inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of history of religions, but also from that of world history. . . . This convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe."

"The question raised by the pope is whether this convergence has taken place in Islam as well. He quotes the Lebanese Catholic theologist Theodore Khoury, who said that "for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent, his will is not bound up with any of our categories." If this is true, can there be dialogue at all between Islam and the West? For the pope, the precondition for any meaningful interfaith discussions is a religion tempered by reason: "It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures," he concluded."

"This is not an invitation to the usual feel-good interfaith round-tables. It is a request for dialogue with one condition -- that everyone at the table reject the irrationality of religiously motivated violence. The pope isn't condemning Islam; he is inviting it to join rather than reject the modern world."

Sept 19, 2005

Environmentalism caused Katrina damage.

A Los Angeles Times article reports that efforts to build a massive hurricane barrier in the 60's were halted by a lawsuit brought about by environmentalists.  The article's rather cryptic title  is "Katrina has role in fight over environmental law".   According to the article: "Congress in the mid-1960s approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city from the Gulf of Mexico.  The system included a lengthy levee along the city's eastern flank and giant floodgates that could shut off Lake Pontchartrain if a hurricane was approaching"

All I have to say to all those environmentalists who cry at how we are hurting the environment is "brother you asked for it".  I dearly hope not a few of you lived in New Orleans.
 

December 4, 2004

Kofi Annan Must Go

Senator Norm Coleman's conclusion in his article regarding Kofi Annan is correct. Annan must go, but not because the UN is like any other legitimate organization. It is precisely because unlike the UN, other organizations bring people together of like mind, whether it is to make money based on ideas or brawn or to form a charitable organization to help others. The UN counts among its membership freedom loving countries where (in general) individualism and rights to life, liberty and property are respected, and countries run by dictators where death and destruction are their code of ethics. A famous philosopher of the 20th century once wrote:  In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.  American politicians have been supporting an organization that will never reform because it is morally impossible for good and evil to work side by side. The freedom loving countries will always lose. It is time to allow the UN to self-destruct.

February 22, 2004

Movie Review:  The Passion of The Christ

I recently saw the Diane Sawyer interview with Mel Gibson about his new movie “The Passion of the Christ”.  I do not think I will see the movie primarily because it is un-intellectual - uniquely focusing on the physical aspects of Christ’s ordeal during his crucifixion with apparently no attempt at providing any kind of context or discussion of ideas.  In the interview Gibson states that most people know the events leading up to the crucifixion and his purpose was simply to portray Christ’s “passion” – which Gibson does (judging by excerpts shown during the interview) by covering Christ in blood and showing the crucifixion process in almost luridly graphic detail.

 One aspect of the movie interests me though: the portrayal of a man suffering persecution for his ideas.   Now as I understand Jesus, he was not an intellectual, and contributed nothing new philosophically.  He was a moralist who urged people to follow the ethical principles of the Old Testament i.e. don’t kill, turn the other cheek, love thy neighbor etc.  In my opinion these are not profound ideas, they are unproven arbitrary edicts with no justification offered except “God said so”.  Christ is not the first man to suffer persecution because he opposed the prevailing authorities, and the fact that he became a martyr does not make his teachings correct.  The Italian Mussolini (to give one example) was hanged after World War II, but does this make him a saint or his ideas correct?   Jesus was no Mussolini and his ideas on the surface appear benign.  Yet, Christianity, because of its reliance on faith as the road to truth, gave us that period of history known as “The Dark Ages”.   It was only after Europe rediscovered pagan Greece’s ideas during the renaissance that man was able to lift himself from the darkness of faith to the light of reason and science.

February 14, 2004

Protecting Marine Mammals Takes Priority over Western Civilization

A US District Court in Northern California issued a permanent injunction restricting military operations of a vital submarine-detection system thereby inflicting another obstacle into the US military training in the war against terrorism. The Washington Times (February 9-15, 2004) writes that  according to the President of the Navy League Sheila McNeill,  "vague" language of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), amended last year in the National Defense Authorization Act, has had a "damaging effect" on military training, causing "exercises at night and in shallow waters to be canceled or conducted under unrealistic conditions to ensure that marine mammals were not harassed".

 So what does she write to congress?  "We support the goals of the MMPA and the efforts of environmentalists to ensure that the world's marine mammals continue to flourish".  But to top it off, the Navy has spent $10 million in an independent research program and found that the system could be employed with "minimal risk" to marine mammals.  That's $10 million of taxpayers money. 

 With representatives of the military like that who not only need to defend us against rampaging hoards of foreign barbarians but against our own homegrown barbarians how can we expect the win the war?

 What she should have written in no uncertain terms was that the Navy can only be effective if it can be allowed to train and use vital equipment as it sees fit.  Handcuffing our military right in our own territory is obscene and malicious.  The priority here is human life and the whole of Western Civilization. 

February 4, 2004

U.S. Proposes Interim Iraqi Constitution

In an article detailing U.S. plans for interim Iraqi constitution, The Seattle Times reports that one of the main problem holding up work on the permanent constitution are differences on the method of choosing the delegates to the constitutional convention.  Many Shiites including the most powerful Shiite Mullah in Iraq favor direct elections while the U.S. is pushing for election of delegates through caucuses.  The U.S. argument in favor of caucuses is that Iraq is not secure enough to handle an election.

 Caucuses may help apportion delegates so that the convention does not become a Shiite blowout – since they constitute a majority of the population.

The central issue though is the type of constitution being considered, and it looks to be a “moderate” constitution.  That is, a moderate amount of freedom mixed with a moderate amount of tyranny.  Specifically with regards to separation of church and state the Seattle Times article states:

“The role of Islam is explicitly recognized in the proposed structure, but in a carefully delineated role. While Islam is described as the official state religion, it is regarded in the draft document as ‘a principal source among other sources of legislation,’ and not the only one. The draft also recognizes the freedom of non-Muslims to practice their faiths.”

Anyone thinking about this issue would do well to read the “An Open Letter to the Iraqi People” by C. Bradley Thompson.  Thompson argues passionately for the merits of  individual rights, separation of powers and constitutional supremacy enshrined in the U.S. system of government.  He also goes on to propose an even more radical idea -  separation of economics and politics to protect individual rights in the material area just as the separation of church from state protects individual rights in the spiritual area.  If Iraq adopted Thomson's ideas they very well could have a better government than the U.S.  Wouldn't that be amusing...to say the least.

Venezuelan Referendum on Chavez Nearing

CNN reports the opposition claims to have gathered 3.4 million signatures on a referendum to recall Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez (2.4 million are required).  Chavez is claiming that many of the signatures are forged so there is some doubt whether he will allow the referendum.  Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter is supporting the "transparent" handling of the ballot count. 
Press coverage of this recall has been scant.  Will we see Castro's protégé  dethroned?  Will the U.S. stand up to and fight this potential supporter of terrorism if he sabotages the referendum?  The answer is blowing in the wind and the Venezuelans are being hung out to dry.

August 29, 2003

The Last Person Leaving a Democratic State Please Turn Off the Lights

The August 29th issue of The Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article by Daniel Henninger entitled "Blue-State Pols are Emptying Their Own States".  He presents the fact that between 1995 and 2000  there was a net migration of people out of such Democratic states as California (755,536 left), New York (87,248 left), Illinois (324,616 left), New Jersey (182, 829 left), Pennsylvania (131,296 left), Michigan (91,930 left) and Connecticut (64,610 left).  Where did these people go?  To Republican states such as Florida, Arizona, North and South Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Tennessee and Texas.  Even that bastion of Liberal ideology, the Los Angeles Times "didn't have much trouble identifying the reason" for this massive exodus:  economics.

Look at the numbers.  A person living in Durham, North Carolina with $7,191 in his pocket would have to earn $45,000 in New York City to have the same purchasing power.  Housing is a major nightmare in places like San Francisco where a $500,000 home costs only $180,000 in Florida.  The reason is not only that taxes are higher in California and New York but that local government regulations, and environmentalism's hostility are stifling progress in the building of homes and the creation and sustenance of new businesses.

The people of America are speaking with their moving vans:  they are sick of being soaked by irresponsible government laws, regulations and taxes.  Those states that offer families and businesses the chance to succeed are going to be the winners. Currently those states are in  blue America.