Sen. Rand Paul introduces a Resolution in the Senate to attach conditions to the aid given by the US to Pakistan, Egypt and Libya. He makes a good case against  giving foreign aid in general, and states plainly that he would like to stop it, but stresses that he is only asking for it to be restricted. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he reminds the Senate, is asking for aid to be increased to Egypt where the US embassy has been attacked and the US flag burnt. Libyans killed the US ambassador, but their country continues to get US aid. In Pakistan the doctor who helped the US intelligence services discover the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden has been imprisoned for life, and Sen. Paul wants aid to be withheld until this innocent man is released. He points out that China, to which America is heavily  in debt, continues to receive development aid from American taxpayers. China gets $27 million a year in “economic development assistance”, and $71 million goes to Russia. But  for all the aid Americans give, they get nothing back; not even the protection of their embassies. He describes how Arab and African dictators spend vast sums of US taxpayers’ aid money on luxuries and grand living for themselves and their wives while their peoples remain in abject poverty.

The video is an hour long, and Sen. Paul is not a very good speaker, but he is worth listening to because he makes a compelling case. We don’t agree with him on every point he raises, but we too are against giving foreign aid. And we certainly agree that if it is to be given to badly governed states, it should buy something for the donor –  at the very least, protection for US embassies and diplomats.

Sen. Paul says he knows that all but ten or perhaps twenty Senators will vote against his Resolution. (In fact they voted 81-10 against it.) But the people they represent, he tells them, voters in every state in the Union, are overwhelmingly on his side.

(Video via Creeping Sahria)

The greatness of the West resulted from the Socratean wisdom that all ideas must be questioned. (Though it endured a thousand dark years when the Catholic Church forbade and punished all such questioning.) Critical examination is the wellspring of science. Our superiority in science and technology – and economic and military might – came about precisely because we doubted, questioned, examined, and experimented.

Islam is backward because it does not permit criticism. It does not allow any questioning of its beliefs. It punishes doubt and dissent.

If we give up criticism at the behest of our implacable enemy, we will be abandoning the mainstay of our might and poisoning our civilization at its root. If we silence our objections to Islam, we allow Muslims to claim that it is the Truth.

Nothing is more important for our survival than freedom of thought. Thought is argument. Argument is progress. We cannot accept any restriction on our expression of ideas. None. Ever.

We should do everything we can to make this absolutely clear to those who believe in an unquestionable orthodoxy like Communism or Islam.

Islam cannot be allowed to claim immunity from criticism on the grounds that it is a religion. Religion is anti-reason, and of all ideas those of religion are the least defensible.

The sacredness in which some hold a belief cannot preserve it from doubt. Reason knows no blasphemy. If Islam appalls us, we must be free to say so in whatever terms we choose. If Muslims take offense, let them try winning us to their beliefs by arguing with us and not by killing us. Violence is no argument. Murder persuades nobody. It might compel obedience, but never intellectual conviction.

Let us express our offense at being assailed by blunt ignorance, and at being ordered by foolish politicians to hold our tongues. If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton cannot understand that Islam must be criticized, may – considering its doctrine and practice – be denigrated, they must not be left in a position to pay our mortal enemy the ransom of our freedom.

Jillian Becker  September 23, 2012

They can kill us, but we mustn’t hurt their feelings?

If only it were true that their feelings were hurt by little movies and cartoons! We’d have the perfect weapons. It isn’t true of course. The movies and cartoons are mere pretexts to express their hate.  They hate us because we are different from them ; we are “the other”. That, they claim (following the lead of the abominable Professor Edward Said), is the way we see them, looking down on them. They learnt from the Communists to accuse America of being “imperialist” – as if imperialism wasn’t their history and ambition.

Well, we are different, actually. Very. And they profoundly envy our civilizational achievements. Which is to say, our superiority.  That is why they want to kill us.

If we candidly declare our superiority, they call us “racist”, but they are not a race. They are peoples who share a set of absurd ideas. We have good reason to look down on them. Consider the savagery of their sharia law. Their oppression of women. Their intolerance of homosexuals. Their arrogant insistence that they have a monopoly of the Truth – by which they mean the vicious nonsense that they believe an angel dictated to their murderous prophet.

They pretend it is this movie or that cartoon that offends them, while really they are offended by their own backwardness. Still, they will hunt down and murder a cartoonist here, a movie-maker there. Because they want to kill us. 

What should we do about it? Not refrain from making mocking movies, but make more of them. Thousands more.

That’s also Daniel Greenfield‘s idea: thousands of people should “make an anti-Mohammed movie”.

He writes at Front Page:

When South Park’s depiction of Mohammed was censored due to Muslim threats, professional cartoonists and ordinary people responded with “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The situation is much graver now than it was two years ago when there was general support for the idea of being able to depict Mohammed and few attacks on those responsible.

The man behind the Mohammed movie has been threatened with prison and has become the subject of a media witch-hunt whose sole purpose appears to be disclosing his personal information to his killers. The private and public arms of the Obama administration, its Department of Justice and its media spin corps, are acting to intimidate and punish anyone who dares offend the international Islamist theocracy.

The issue is not the merit of the Mohammed movie or the character of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Free speech is not about the merits of the speaker, but about maintaining freedom of speech for everyone. The Mohammed movie has become an opportunity for Islamists and domestic appeasers to implement a de facto blasphemy law dealing with Islam in the United States.

Nakoula is being transformed into a cautionary tale and that tale has no place in a free country. It is a fossil of the Muslim world where uppity Christians and Jews are punished for having the temerity to stand up to their Muslim masters. Once the informal punishment of Nakoula has been accepted, then it’s only a matter of time until the informal arrangement becomes formalized into law. …

Intimidating everyone who draws a Mohammed cartoon stops working when tens of thousands of people are drawing them.Turning one man into an example of what happens when you make a Mohammed movie stops working when there are thousands of Mohammed movies being made. …

It’s something that you can do on your own or with a few friends. … Short films can be as little as 5-10 minutes. Even shorter projects can be only 30 seconds. What matters is not the running time, but the impact, and that comes with the subject matter. Imagine a version of this video that tackles Mohammed instead of Jesus and you can see the possibilities:

Making an online video does not require expensive equipment. You probably already have the basic requirements in your phone, camera and laptop. All you really need is something that can record video. Your PC or Mac computer already comes with basic video editing software and if it doesn’t, YouTube has a built in video editor that you can use for simple operations.A Mohammed movie does not have to be a historical epic. It can be anything. Depicting Mohammed in any way, even if it’s putting a turban on your cat, is already a form of defiance. Imagine Mohammed in the present day or in the age of the dinosaurs. Imagine him trying to order ice cream. It doesn’t really matter. Creativity is part of what makes such a project interesting. The Mohammed cartoons were just as much about crossing boundaries as about being original, funny or theological. Many of them were really bad, but they succeeded just by existing. …

The movie does not have to follow any shape or form beyond the one that you want to give it. All it has to do is exist. …

Broadcasting your movie is as easy as uploading it to YouTube or LiveLeak. …

It has never been easier to tackle a project like this, but in cultural and legal terms, these may also be the last few years when the window is open wide enough for it to be possible. …

Freedom is not passive. It does not abide waiting around for you to use it. Like all things in this world, it must struggle to survive. Our freedom to think as we wish, speak as we wish and believe as we wish is under siege. The best weapon that the besiegers have at their disposal is our compliance. They can intimidate individuals, but they cannot intimidate the rest of us unless we choose to be intimidated.

The Internet has given us all the tools that we need to fight back. All we have to do is use them.

*

Why do American politicians and military top brass insist that Their religion be respected?

Because American politicians and military top brass have religion. They too believe in solemn nonsense.

It is religion itself, religion as such, which is the cause of the strife, the fear, the expense of blood and treasure, all that makes for the worst in human relations. 

No irrational belief deserves respect. All must be subjected to critical examination. All deserve scorn.

YouTube has been praised for refusing to remove the video, titled “Innocence of Muslims”, which has been blamed for the latest explosion of Islamic rage against America, and even for the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

Well, now YouTube has removed it.

The reason they give:

This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy against spam, scams, and commercially deceptive content.

Sorry about that.

But it’s more than likely that they have given in to pressure from the Obama administration.

Were they threatened by Muslims? Or only by the government? If so, with what?

Now we are all under threat.

Goodbye, First Amendment? Goodbye, Freedom?

Openly giving to charity is a display of moral vanity, whether intended to be or not.

It can be argued that charity is always and only self-indulgence, done to make the giver feel good rather than to do good. Moral auto-eroticism. After all, it’s hard ever to be certain that a gift is well-bestowed.

Better to indulge in it privately, secretly – one might even say furtively, since it cannot altogether escape being something of a vice.

It has been discovered that Mitt Romney does it secretly.

This is from the Telegraph, by Tim Stanley:

For months now the Democrats have been hounding Romney, demanding that he release his most recent tax returns. Mitt refused, fuelling suspicions that he had something to hide. Turns out he did. The Romney camp finally released his tax returns on Friday afternoon and they reveal that rather than paying less that he had to, he’s actually been paying more. The cat’s out of the bag: Mitt Romney is a good citizen.

Here are the stats. In 2011, the Romneys paid roughly $1.9 million in tax out of a $13.7 million income; their effective tax rate was 14.1 per cent. On top of that, they donated over $4 million to charity – as astonishing30 per cent of their income. Here’s the kicker: the Romneys limited the charity tax deductions that they were entitled to, which pushed up their effective rate. They voluntarily paid more in tax than they had to. A cynic might say that anyone sitting on $13.7 million can afford to be generous, but the point is that all the innuendoes about tax avoidance were likely groundless. The Romneys will be waiting for an apology from Harry Reid.

Skeptics that we are, we doubt he’ll get it.

I’ll say one thing for these bloodsucking, poor-hating, conservative Republicans – they’re very generous with their money. Mitt Romney gave more than twice as much of his adjusted gross income to charity than President Obama did, although – to be fair – plunging book sales mean that the Obamas have less to give away. Joe Biden donated only 1.5 per cent of his salary in 2011.

If the tax returns prove that the Romneys are nice people, why did they take so long to release them? … One is simply that Romney’s campaign screwed up. … Perhaps on this matter, as on so much else, Mitt simply got bad advice. One of the great ironies of 2012 is that the candidate running on his organisational experience has proven dreadful at running an organisation.

But another explanation goes to the nature of Mitt Romney the man. Romney doesn’t like talking about himself or his charitable works, so it’s possible that his sense of modesty and privacy got the better of him.

The point is illustrated by a fascinating story about Romney that dates back to 1994.

That year, in the middle of his failed Massachusetts senate race, Romney went on a tour of a veterans’ hospital. The director, Ken Smith, told Mitt that the hospital was having trouble providing milk for all its patients. Romney said, “Well Ken, maybe you can teach the vets to milk cows.” It was another “47 per cent” moment and the press went wild. Romney sheepishly called Smith to apologise, and Smith put the phone down convinced that he was dealing with another phoney.

The next day, the milkman turned up with all the milk that the hospital could possibly need at half the usual price. He said he wasn’t allowed to give the name of the donor. The milkman made the same delivery at the same price the next day, the day after that, and so on. It was only two years later, on the day of his retirement, that the milkman finally told Smith that it was Mitt Romney who had donated the milk.

He should not be blamed too harshly. He did his best to hush it up.

And for whatever reason charity is given, it is hugely to be preferred over government redistribution.

Pat Condell, at his splendid best, tells Islam in perfectly chosen words of contempt exactly what it needs to be told.

(Hat-tip to our reader and commenter Frank)

An apt symbol – a Muslim protestor wearing a blindfold.

A blindfolded Muslim protestor in Kashmir shouts anti-American slogans

See here and here and here many more pictures of raging Muslim mobs, urged by media men and politicians to protest against a YouTube video mocking their mythical prophet Muhammad.

It’s very unlikely that many – or even any –  of the protestors have seen the video, as it is banned in most of the Islamic countries where the riots have been incited.

They’re all clearly enjoying themselves immensely.

They direct their burning hatred particularly at Barack Obama (a fine irony, as he really loves Islam); an American pastor, Terry Jones (who had nothing at all to do with the making of the video but once announced that he planned to burn a copy of the Koran); Israel (of course); and the Egyptian-American Copt who did make the film and is now being harried by the FBI in the land of the free.

We find this article so interesting we quote it almost in its entirety.

Titled Evolutionary Innovation Caught In The Act, it is by Hristio Boytchev at the Washington Post.

Scientists following the evolution of a single strain of bacteria reported that it underwent several steps of mutation, surprising in its complexity, to acquire the ability to use a new food source.

The findings … are the result of an experiment started 25 years ago by Richard Lenski of Michigan State University.

“When I started that project, I thought I would find one or two mutations and be done with it,” said Zachary Blount, a member of Lenski’s lab. “But instead, there may be dozens of mutations working together.”

“Creationists sometimes argue that even two mutations for one trait is too much complexity, yet here we see that evolution manages that with ease,” he said.

To study evolution in real time, Lenski followed the descendents of a single E. coli bacterium, a bug that normally populates our intestines. Bacteria have short life spans and in this experiment went through more than six generations a day.

Every day for 25 years — over 50,000 bacterial lifetimes — members of Lenski’s lab transferred the E. coli into a new flask with sugar solution. Every 500 generations, a part of the population was stowed in a freezer, creating a fossil record that can be brought back to life.

One day in 2003, the scientists observed something peculiar: A flask was much more densely populated than usual. At first the scientists suspected contamination. But then they found that after 30,000 generations, the bacteria had discovered how to use a different chemical as a food source. Citrate, the chemical in question, is given to the bacteria to help them absorb minerals and cannot normally be digested in the presence of oxygen.

What the researchers found was that a gene, normally responsible for letting citrate into the cell only in the absence of oxygen, had moved to a new location in the bacterium’s DNA. There it was controlled by a different switch, enabling citrate to enter even when oxygen was present. But this was only the second of three steps …  An additional set of mutations were necessary in the beginning; the final step was multiplying the gene inside the DNA to make the bacteria much more efficient in their absorption of citrate.

The scientists conclude that these three stages may be universal evolutionary principles.

“Even evolutionary changes that seem to be very sudden and dramatic may typically require a series of multiple steps drawn out over much longer periods of time than meets the eye,” Lenski said.

Creationists could see evolution happening if they had any desire at all to know the truth. But they prefer to believe a lie.

Reuters reports:

A French magazine ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday by portraying him naked in cartoons, threatening to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a film depiction of him as a lecherous fool.

A video film made by a Californian Coptic Christian which mocks  Muhammad and which the Obama administration is absurdly blaming for the Islamic world going up in flames and al-Qaeda murdering a US ambassador in Libya.

The drawings in satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of U.S. and other Western embassies, the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Riot police were deployed to protect the magazine’s Paris offices after it hit the news stands with a cover showing an Orthodox Jew pushing the turbaned figure of Mohammad in a wheelchair.

On the inside pages, several caricatures of the Prophet showed him naked. One, entitled “Mohammad: a star is born”, depicted a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.

The French government … had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons …

“We have the impression that it’s officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists,” said editor Stephane Charbonnier, who drew the front-page cartoon.

“It shows the climate – everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want – to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave,” he told Reuters.

We like what Charlie Hebdo have done (though we don’t think the cartoons are great). We applaud their courage. But  – only a “small handful of extremists”? Are most of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world serenely tolerant of criticism?

One cartoon, in reference to the scandal over a French magazine’s decision to publish topless photos of the wife of Britain’s Prince William, showed a topless, bearded character with the caption: “Riots in Arab countries after photos of Mrs. Mohammad are published.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticized the magazine’s move as a provocation.

So much for the Liberté part of the French national motto, Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

“We saw what happened last week in Libya and in other countries such as Afghanistan,” Fabius told a regular government news conference. “We have to call on all to behave responsibly.”

Except Muslims. They can behave as irresponsibly as they like. Because the French government is afraid of them.

Charlie Hebdo has a long reputation for being provocative. Its Paris offices were firebombed last November after it published a mocking caricature of Mohammad, and Charbonnier has been under police guard ever since. …

The French Muslim Council, the main body representing Muslims in France, accused Charlie Hebdo of firing up anti-Muslim sentiment at a sensitive time.

“The CFCM is profoundly worried by this irresponsible act, which in such a fraught climate risks further exacerbating tensions and sparking damaging reactions,” it said.

It is the expression of opinion that must be stopped, you see, not the “damaging reactions”.

Well, that may not be entirely fair:

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the authorities had rejected a request to hold a march against the Mohammad film in Paris.

We wait to see what will happen to the Charlie Hebdo offices, and to Stephane Charbonnier. We hope for his safety. But the savage war of Islam against the rest of us will go on until the West uses all its weapons, of law, argument, wealth, political and military power, and mockery to crush the murderous Muslim hordes storming out of the Dark Ages.

(Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon via Creeping Sharia, where you can see the rest of them – here.)

Environmentalists, collectivists, communists, barbarians, lunatics – it doesn’t matter which of those words you use to designate them, they are all synonymous in this case – really are taking over control of the world.

Here is the Wildlife Project map showing their plans for the future of America:

We have taken the map and the following quotations from Dr Ileana Johnson Paugh, who writes authoritatively at Canada Free Press:

The map was produced by Dr. Michael Coffman, editor of Discerning the Times Digest and NewsBytes and CEO of Sovereignty International, to stop the ratification of the international treaty on Convention on Biological Diversity one hour before the scheduled cloture and ratification vote.

Which, however, it failed to do.

The mandate of the Convention of Biological Diversity draws buffer zones, core reserves and corridors to protect biodiversity. Areas in green will allow housing. Areas in yellow will be buffer zones, highly regulated with no homes and possible hiking. Red areas will be core reserves and corridors off-limits to human access and human habitation. …

After numerous United Nations conferences around the globe spanning decades and a concerted effort by third world governments led by individuals like Maurice Strong and Gro Harlem Brundtland … the UN Agenda 21 became reality at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

This conference produced three documents: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (an international treaty), the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (an international treaty), and UN Agenda 21 (not a treaty but a “soft law”).

President Herbert Walker Bush signed along with 178 countries but refused to sign the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity because it required transfer of technology without recognition of proprietary rights. However, President Bush said, “It is the sacred principles enshrined in the UN Charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance.” I am sure the American people were very surprised or perhaps totally unaware that a U.S. President would pledge allegiance to a foreign body instead of the U.S. Constitution.

UN Agenda 21 is a “soft law” document, not ratified by Congress. Parts of it have been incorporated into other laws passed because Congressmen do not read the bills they pass or do not understand the full scope of the UN Agenda 21. The 40-chapter document limits the behavior and freedoms of individuals and firms, involving every facet of human life.

UN Agenda 21 makes suggestions and recommendations that are adapted into law at the state and local levels through comprehensive land use plans which are voted on and included by the board of supervisors into local zoning codes. Citizens do not understand its damaging ramifications to their private property, the ability to make a living, to use their land, grow food in their gardens, sell their produce freely, and engage in agriculture.  …

UN Agenda 21 goals include but are not limited to:

• Redistribution of population according to resources

• Government control of land use in order to achieve equitable distribution of resources

• Land use control through zoning and planning

• Government control of “excessive” profits from land use [our quotation marks here]

• Urban and rural land control through public land ownership

• Developing rights must be held by public authorities via “regionalist” authorities

President Bill Clinton facilitated President Herbert Walker Bush’s initial commitment by signing an executive order which created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development to translate UN Agenda 21 into U.S. public policy under the guise of ecosystem management.

One World Governance in the name of protecting the environment, racial justice, and social justice/equity is a communist system that redistributes wealth and promotes universal health care as a human right.

“Racial justice” means affirmative action, and affirmative action means race discrimination. Like “social justice”, it is a euphemism for redistribution of goods, material and abstract, from those who have legally acquired them through their own efforts to those who haven’t. In short, injustice.

Harvey Rubin, the Vice Chair of ICLEI [International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives], proclaimed his vision of a communistic sustainable world in which “Individual rights must take a back seat to the collective.”

You’ve earned your wealth? Give it up. You have some particular skill or talent? Suppress it. You hate being in crowds? Too bad. You want to have a child? Sorry, no. You are old and becoming a drain on the communal resources? Die. You don’t agree with Harvey Rubin? Off with you to a re-education camp.

One World Governance will control:

• Energy production, delivery, distribution, and consumption

• Food growth and production …

• Education control via a curriculum centered on environment and Mother Earth and global citizenship …

• Water through irrigation denial in agriculture, home use, recreation activities; destruction of dams and reservoirs; abolishing hydroelectric generation use of water as a contributor to the now discredited theory that greenhouse gases cause global warming

• Land control through abolishing of private property

• Finances (one world currency to replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency)

• De-population (restructuring the family unit and reducing population to “manageable levels” through sterilization and eugenics)

• No borders/no sovereignty

• No national language and culture (a multi-cultural hodgepodge devoid of a nation’s history, and shameless promotion of global citizenship)

• Mobility restriction to 5 minutes-walk/bike from work, school, shopping

• Longer distance travel through rail use

• Homestead by stacking people in high-rise tenements in order to designate formerly privately owned land for wildlife habitat

The One World Governance of the UN Agenda 21 requires that every societal decision be based on the environmental impact on global land use, global education, and global population control and reduction. They have deemed “not sustainable” most human activities that form our modern civilization: private property, fossil fuels, consumerism, farming, irrigation, commercial agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, farmlands, grazing of livestock, paved roads, golf courses, ski lodges, logging, dams, reservoirs, fences, power lines, suburban living, and the family unit.

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.” (Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s Earth Summit, 1992)

“We must make this place an insecure and inhospitable place for Capitalists and their projects – we must reclaim the roads and plowed lands, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.” (Dave Foreman, Earth First) …

There is never a shortage of new converts – the educational system is deliberately dumbing down our students in order to accept the Sustainable Development goals. “Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.”

The few human beings who will be allowed to live for a short time will be kept in a state of environmentally-friendly ignorance. There will need to be book-burning on a massive scale. There’s nothing worth knowing anyway:

In some states, the curriculum includes “constructivism,” a teaching method by which “students construct [their own] understandings of reality and [realize] that objective reality is not knowable.” …

Math, for instance, beyond simple arithmetic, is completely superflous:

The New World Order teachers recommend Connected Mathematics because “Mathematics is man-made, is arbitrary, and good solutions are arrived at by consensus among those who are considered expert.” With the right consensus of experts, two plus two may not be four but five. …

The point to grasp is that Agenda 21 is being implemented right now.