These mugs, showing Obama dressed in Arafat’s signature headgear, are on sale in Gaza.

On May 19, 2011, President Obama made a speech that condemned Israel to extinction by declaring its borders should be more or less the 1948 armistice lines, within which Israel was highly vulnerable. These he called the “1967 lines” – meaning the lines as on June 4, 1967, just before Israel was attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel defended itself, won by hard fighting, and established more defensible “borders”. Its offers of negotiation were refused by the Arab aggressors. For Israel to go back to the 1948 lines could be suicidal.

Obama demanded nothing from the Palestinians: no recognition of Israel’s right to exist; no stopping of rocket attacks, suicide bombing, or their constant and  intense propaganda of hate and genocide.

He sided with the Palestinians. In their eyes, he has inherited the mantle – or rather, the keffiyeh of Arafat, famously shaped as the “State of Palestine” he hoped to see on the map.

Socialist economics don’t work. The welfare states of Europe are falling into ruin one after another. Greece, Ireland, Portugal have become beggar-nations.

Now Spain.

Soeren Kern writes at PajamasMedia:

Throngs of Spanish youth have gathered in more than 150 cities across Spain to protest skyrocketing unemployment, cutbacks to social welfare benefits, and rampant corruption among Spain’s political elite. …

The Spanish protesters have been inspired [perhaps] by the pro-democracy movements in the Arab world, and are using social media networks to coordinate the demonstrations. …

The largest protests have been in Madrid … Protests are under way in other major Spanish cities, including Barcelona, Bilbao, Granada, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Valencia, Vigo, and Zaragoza. The protestors have vowed to remain mobilized at least through the May 22 elections …

Up until now, anti-government protests in Spain have been relatively few and far between, partly because of the strong ties that labor unions have with the ruling Socialists. But Spain’s nascent youth democracy movement is a spontaneous grassroots groundswell that is not left versus right but rather young versus old. The youth movement is highly inclusive and its members — who represent all of Spain’s socio-economic classes — have expressed disgust with both the governing Socialists and the main opposition conservative Popular Party. …

Corruption in Spain is endemic and politicians from both major parties have been implicated in scandals in all of Spain’s 48 provinces. …

Spain’s ailing economy too is a symptom of much broader problem, including the inability of the social welfare economic model to create jobs, as well as a highly paternalistic labor market that benefits an older generation seeking to preserve the status quo. Although Spain’s economic crisis has affected workers in all age groups, youth unemployment is more than double the overall jobless rate of 21.2 percent, the highest in the industrialized world. Around half of Spain’s youth are unemployed and the other half that is working often does so under highly exploitative employment conditions. …

Opinion polls forecast devastating losses for the Socialists. … Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced on April 2 that he would not stand for a third term in general elections scheduled for March 2012. …

But all major parties in Europe now are socialist, no matter what they call themselves, and an Opposition coming into power is unlikely to make any difference.

Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the conservative Popular Party, stands to make huge gains in the elections … But after eight years in the opposition and after many months on the campaign trail, he has yet to say how he plans to reverse Spain’s economic fortunes if he finally becomes prime minister …

And Richard Fernandez reports and comments, also at PajamasMedia:

When Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero took power seven years ago, he and his Socialist Workers Party set out to perfect the welfare state in Spain. The goal was to equal— or even surpass — lavish social protections that have long been the rule in Spain’s Western European neighbors.

True to his Socialist principles and riding an economic boom, Zapatero raised the minimum wage and extended health insurance to cover everything from sniffles to sex-changes. He made scholarships available for all. Young adults got rent subsidies called “emancipation” money. Mothers got $3,500 for the birth of a child, toddlers attended free nurseries and the elderly won stipends to finance nursing care. … [But his] main concern in his second term has become hacking away at government spending to preserve Spain’s credit rating. The icon of socialism just concluded a pact with labor unions and business leaders to freeze pensions, push back the retirement age from 65 to 67, trim union bargaining rights, cut civil servants’ pay by 5 percent — including his own — and suspend the childbirth bonus. The alternative, he warned, was bankruptcy. …

Now Zapatero is facing a revolt from his angry left, from the millions of socialist believers and youth — many of whom are unemployed — who were promised something for nothing and now feel betrayed.

They insist on getting “something for nothing”. They want “free “ health care, fat pensions from an early retirement age, rent subsidies, childbirth bonuses, scholarships for all – and full employment. But where will the money come from? To whom can any Spanish government turn? To Germany? Germans feel they’ve given more than enough to failed Eurostates (that shoud never have been allowed to join the Eurozone in the first place). To the International Monetary Fund (an agency that redistributes wealth on a global scale)?

Greece had hopes of getting a hand-out from the IMF. Its erstwhile head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was sympathetic to its importuning. But he is being held under house arrest in New York, charged with sexual assault, and has lost his powerful position, so the Greek government may hold out its trembling hands for alms in vain.

But even had their champion been at liberty to promote a second bailout, there was no guarantee that Greece would not default eventually and descend into social unrest. …

In Athens, home to almost half of Greece’s 11 million-strong population, the signs of austerity – and poverty – are everywhere: in the homeless and hungry who forage through municipal rubbish bins late at night; in the cash-strapped pensioners who pick up rejects at the street markets that sell fruit and vegetables; in the shops now boarded and closed and in the thousands of ordinary Greeks who can no longer afford to take family outings or regularly eat meat.

There were economists who could have told the European politicians that their socialist policies would bankrupt them. Could have and did. But government after government would not heed the warnings. Now they are learning the hard way, to their shock and distress, that what has been proved unworkable in theory doesn’t work in practice.

Is there any point in hoping that the American Left is taking note?

Zapatero’s problems are a preview of the fate which awaits a left-wing politician who promises to lower the level of the oceans and winds up raising the price of gas.

We have become sadly used to reading about Muslim men killing their daughters, sisters and wives to restore or preserve the “honor” of their family.

We have posted stories of Muslim girls being buried alive by their fathers, brothers, uncles, tribal elders. (See our posts, In the name of Allah the Merciful, February 4, 2010; Imagine, February 6, 2010; The atrocity that is Islam, September 10, 2010.)* In some cases, their mothers and sisters plead vainly for their lives.

Now we hear of  two Muslim mothers helping each other kill their daughters because they married men of their own choice in defiance of family disapproval and the convention of their “culture”.

Phyllis Chesler writes at Front Page:

Two Muslim mothers, both widows, both living in Uttar Pradesh in India, helped each other murder their grown daughters, Zahida, 19, and Husna, 26, for having committed the crime of marrying Hindu men.

They held their daughters down and slowly strangled them to death. The poor dead darlings actually believed they were entitled to marry non-Muslim men and for “love,” and that ultimately their mothers and Muslim community would accept them back. This is typical of many honor killing victims. While these two young women knew enough to contact the police for help — and the police actually got their mothers to sign an agreement that they would not “harm” their children — it was only a deceptive piece of paper. But the daughters’ longing for reconciliation and naive hopefulness was their undoing. Their mothers agreed not to hurt them and sweet-talked them into returning; once the girls were home, they became prey for the kill.

But life without a family network is unthinkable for someone whose identity is not individual but rather located in a collectivity. Progress and “modernity” may be coming to India, but slowly, very slowly.

Neither mother, Khatun or Subrato, has expressed the slightest remorse. Both feel justified because their daughters brought shame to their families. According to the police, Khatun said: “We killed them because they brought shame to our community. How could they elope with Hindus? They deserved to die. We have no remorse.”

This is cold-hearted, barbaric, almost unbelievable. But such Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and woman-on-woman crimes are typical in many parts of the world. …

We expect women, mothers especially, to be able to defy social custom for the sake of saving their children. The reality is just the opposite. The slightest transgression, especially by women, will upset huge networks and topple all social stability. No one will marry someone from a “shamed” family; that family will be forever ostracized, impoverished, and may also die out genetically. Mothers, fathers, relatives are loyal to their tribal social customs rather than to any one individual, even if that individual is their own child. The system itself demands and allows for such barbarism—but the sacrifice of the individual is seen as in the service of the greater tribal and caste based social structure or “civilization.”

She is right to put the word civilization in quotation marks in that context. She is also right to point out that,  as a feature of Islamic custom, woman-on-woman cruelty goes on in “many parts of the world”, which is to say that Muslim “culture” often has its baleful effect even in countries where Muslims are a minority. “Honor killings” are carried out by Muslims in Western Europe and the United States. Religion is often the ingredient that keeps a culture primitive and cruel. In the case of Khartun and Sobrato, they objected fiercely to the husbands because they were Hindus.

India is a democracy, and rapidly becoming an economic power in the world. The British brought ideas of individual freedom and justice to the sub-continent and put an end to its cultural tradition of “suttee” – the burning alive of a wife on her husband’s funeral pyre. And the process of “modernization” is continuing – meaning that it is continuing to develop into a Western-type law and order state. But democracy and law take time to eradicate ancient traditions and change cultures.

In India .. mothers-in-law routinely assist their sons in burning their daughters-in-law to death. This is known as a “dowry killing” because it is done so that a new bride can bring another dowry into the impoverished and/or greedy family. There is actually a special wing in a prison in New Delhi for such mothers-in-law. … Both women and men steal children in India and sell them to be adopted abroad or, more frequently, to be groomed into sexual slavery either at home or abroad.

The exploitation of children as prostitutes is common in India, and not only as prostitutes. We have written about a child whipped with razor-blades by her beggar-father to arouse pity and solicit alms (see our post, Condemned to dream and bleed, December 23, 2010).

Governments may make laws, and courts may rule, against such practices. Perpetrators may even be punished. But in its struggle with custom, law can take ages to succeed.

The truth, however offensive to liberal opinion, is that most of the world’s cultures are barbarically cruel. And the cruelty is often inseparable from religion. Life for millions of human beings in our time is still essentially tribal, which is to say collective, and haunted by superstition. A vale of tears. Thousands of well-meaning young Peace Corps enthusiasts going to “help” in Africa can change nothing. Whole American armies mis-used to build schools and clinics in Afghanistan can change nothing. Technology alone – the life-improving products of the First World – may, in time, effect a real transformation.

Only the First World, the Western Pan-European culture, its values and system, is worthy as a whole of respect; and if the respectable is to be searched for the best that humankind has achieved, it is the Anglo-Saxon that deserves the laurel wreath. Yes, the birthplace of it, Britain, is in steep decline; and yes, it is  flawed with religion and threatened presently by socialist collectivism in America, the multi-ethnic land of its supreme success. But it is the highest peak of civilization, the Shining City on the Hill.

* See also this story from Pakistan (hat tip George).

The Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, is to address a joint session of Congress next week. Congress is sympathetic to Israel. President Obama is not. He is to address the Arab world before the world hears what Netanyahu has to say.

Caroline Glick anticipates what will be said and done:

Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more. …

The Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.

The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas and its partners in Fatah.

Obama seems to be still in pursuit of a “two-state solution” negotiated between Israel and — some Palestinian representatives. Up until recently Israel’s negotiating opposite was supposed to be Abu Abbas, powerless head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which sort of governs the West Bank. Hamas, governing Gaza, was ostensibly not supported by the US or any Western Power because it was designated a terrorist organization. Abu Abbas also represents a terrorist organization – Fatah – but that is politely overlooked. In fact, Hamas’s terrorism is overlooked in practice: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directs lots of lovely lolly its way – to use for “humanitarian” purposes of course, not terrorism! (Did no one ever tell her that money is fungible?)

Now the PA and Hamas – which have a record of killing each other’s personnel – have cozied up together in a partnership to declare a Palestinian state later this year. Will Obama and his people – such as Hillary Clinton, and Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – pretend that Hamas is suddenly respectable enough to deal with?

Sarah Honig, a Jerusalem Post writer always worth reading, sees as self-deluding those Israelis who still think a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict is possible.

Unflaggingly they peddle tattered, intrinsically disorienting delirium. Incredibly they never seem to tire of pulling the wool over their own and our eyes. They present themselves as possessors of singular insight, as harbingers of a greater truth and as wise beyond our plebeian grasp.

They won’t let go of the grand delusion that underlies their self-professed wisdom and purported truth. Their two-state delusion was certainly sweet – simplistically and seductively so. It claimed that all conflicts can be amicably and fairly settled by just dividing up whatever is contested. It touted idealistic goodwill and seemed compellingly rational. But it was from the start delusionary.

By all empirical yardsticks, that delusion has finally and undeniably crumbled into grimy dust. The illusion of a reasonable accommodation with genocidal foes – which without fail anyhow failed the test of coolheaded analysis – ignobly disintegrated when Ramallah’s Fatah and Gaza’s Hamas banded back together, at least pro forma, for the sake of expediency.

Whatever their motives and whatever the long-range plans of the old-new partners, their joint venture should persuade even the most diehard of our peaceniks that the time has come to finally wise up and lose the illusion.

The prevalent illusion thus far was that we face two dissimilar Palestinian entities – negotiation- espousing Ramallah and Gaza, whose unaltered goal is Israel’s annihilation. Now that the pair has retied the knot, their deception has been exposed. That should mean that the illusion has been shattered irrefutably once and for all.

In reality the only distinction between the two always was tactical. Ramallah excels at propaganda warfare, while Gaza fires rockets. Ramallah is funded by the Quartet, while Gaza is underpinned by Damascus and Tehran. Both wish to obliterate Israel, but Ramallah is more cunning and Gaza more candidly confrontational.

Neither Ramallah nor Gaza was ever a reliable or viable peace partner. Only our indomitable wishful thinking and obsessive illusion kept conjuring up interlocutors on whom we could unload slices of homeland, directly atop the soft underbelly of our densest population centers.

Gaza’s Hamas thumbs its nose at us and glorifies the IslamoNazism of infamous Second World War-criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini, who from his Berlin residence avidly abetted Hitler’s Final Solution, recruited Muslims to the SS and actively foiled the rescue even of several thousand Jewish children.

Conversely, in his Moscow Friendship University PhD treatise, Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas attempted to dwarf the Holocaust’s proportions drastically, while simultaneously accusing Zionists of colluding in Holocaust perpetration – i.e., it didn’t happen, but Israel is guilty. This history-warping dissertation is compulsory study material in his fiefdom’s schools.

Abbas’s Fatahland is nothing but a more outwardly decorous version of Hamastan. All the rest is desperate illusion. …

Most members of the dysfunctional family of nations indeed advocate the two-state solution, but we alone are delusional. All the others are stimulated by cynical vested interests, which impair our self-preservation prospects. In other words, other states don’t push us into the two-state abyss for our own good. Quite the contrary.

In our post, Now is the time for Israel to define its borders, March 10, 2011, we did not say where we think the borders should be drawn, only that Israel should define them before the Hamas-Fatah terrorists who dictate Palestinian policy try declaring a Palestinian state as they say they will.

We see plainly enough, however, that no negotiated two-state solution is possible, because Palestinian leaders do not and never have wanted it. They rejected every offer of a Palestinian state in the past because it would mean co-existing with Israel, and the present leaders have no intention of establishing a Palestinian state that would co-exist with Israel in the future.

Their solution is one state: Palestine.

The Israeli solution ought to be one state: Israel – from the Golan to the Red, from the Jordan to the Med.

Israel would continue to have Arab Israeli citizens. The Palestinians who do not want to live in Israel should be welcomed into the Palestinian state that already exists, and has existed longer than Israel: Jordan.

Jordan was given illegally to the Arabs (as the Emirate of Transjordan); cut out of mandated territory reserved, by legally binding instruments, for the Jews. But since it exists, it should be recognized as the Palestinian state that it is. The British foisted Hashemite rulers on to its mostly Palestinian Arab population, to “reward” the Hashemites for feebly supporting Britain in the First World War, having been prodded every inch of the short way by that notorious charlatan – and abiding hero to the British Foreign Office –  T.E. Lawrence. There are Palestinian voices calling for the Palestinian majority in Jordan to overthrow the dictatorial monarchy and establish a democratic republic. A Republic of Palestine in Jordan would be home to all Palestinian refugees. It might have normal diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, and even allow some Jews to live in it.

But we must not delude ourselves that the Western powers are likely to support the idea. Their policy is to propitiate the Arab states and Islam, and the Arabs states and Islam want the obliteration of Israel.

Brave, beautiful, magnificent, Ayaan Hirsi Ali answers a Muslim professor who talks through her hat.

On the anniversary of its establishment, Israel has been attacked on four fronts: Gaza, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Jerusalem.

To the Arabs, it is “Nakba (catastrophe) Day”, which they regularly mark with violence against Israeli targets. Yet Israel was strangely unprepared for the attacks, or at least for the intensity of them. Did the Israeli government not expect that Arab leaders and rulers, threatened with overthrow, might try to divert the anger of their maltreated masses on to Israel?

DebkaFile reports:

The coalition organizing the exceptionally violent events of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) Day Sunday, marking the founding of Israeli in 1948, first tested the water in the morning: An Israeli Arab drove his truck at high speed through a Tel Aviv thoroughfare, slamming into more than a dozen vehicles and running over pedestrians. He had killed one civilian and injured 17 over a 2-kilometer stretch of road before he was overpowered and apprehended.

When Israel’s police chiefs declined to designate the attack an act of terror and insisted it could have been a traffic accident, Damascus, Hizballah and Hamas felt they were safe in letting their master plan go forward: There was no risk of a tough Israeli response. And indeed, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu later admitted that local commanders and police chiefs were directed to deal with all fronts “with maximum restraint while defending Israel’s borders and sovereignty.” …

Because of this directive, Israelis were shocked to discover at 13:30 that hundreds of Syrians, Palestinians and a Hizballah group had crossed the border and hoisted Syrian and Palestinian flags in the main square of the Israel Golan village of Majd al Shams. They had already been there for four hours and no one was stopping them crossing the border back and forth during that time. Throughout the day, only a small squad of soldiers had been left to guard this border because nothing untoward had been expected there.

It was only at 17:00 hours that tanks and reinforcements arrived.

The invaders had every reason to march around the village declaring they had recaptured the territory Syria had lost 44 years ago while attacking Israel.

By then, military spokesmen had got their act together. It was fortunate that we undermanned the Syrian border, they said, otherwise the incident would have ended with hundreds of dead. …

The Syrian interlopers were finally driven back across the border – not by Israeli troops – but by local Druze chiefs. Israel still does not know how many left and if any remained.

It is to be regretted that the IDF did not meet its fundamental duty to defend Israel’s Golan border by bringing up large reinforcements to surround Majdal Shams, seal the Syrian border and shoot trespassers. The Syrians should not have been released but held until Damascus forced the Hamas to free the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit.

Former Shin Bet director Israel Hasson … commented later Sunday that Israel must make it crystal clear to Damascus, Hizballah and Hamas that they will not be allowed to toss their internal problems into the Israeli court or violate Israeli sovereignty. …

Israel will pay a heavy price for its flaccid response and misplaced “maximum restraint.” Syrian President Bashar Assad can be counted on not to miss the chance of sending over to the Golan the Syrian and Palestinian terrorist teams he has held in reserve for more than a year for the right opportunity. That opportunity is clearly now at hand.

The Majd al-Shams invasion followed by violence by masked Palestinians in Jerusalem and a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. It was synchronized with mass incursions from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. This round is not over. It will not be stopped by military restraint.

Are these comparatively small waves, partly caused by Arab unrest washing against Israel’s shores, and will they soon subside?

Or are they the first signs of a political tsunami?

Post Script: According to Ynet News, some of the Palestinians who crossed the Golan border from Syria into Majd al-Shams on the Israeli side, were seeking asylum.

An apparent appetite among Arab peoples, especially the young, for cell phones, iPods, lap-top computers, and all that Facebook and Google could do for them – including organizing a revolution – encouraged the hope in the West (we were tempted by it ourselves) that they wanted to enter the 21st century and leave the 7th century, which gave birth to Islam, behind them forever. This was the way the thinking went: If  they understand the political conditions that produce the technological marvels – democracy, freedom, secularism, tolerance, universal literacy and the emancipation of women – they will strive to make them the conditions of their own countries; form parties that stand for them as principles; vote those parties into power; and so transform their backward polities to match the American model. Perhaps in the very long term that might happen, but it is not happening now. The “revolutions” in the North African Muslim states are likely to bring puritan Islamic parties into power. There will be no democracy, no freedom, no secularism, no tolerance, women will remain subjugated and predominantly illliterate. The 7th century is where the revolutionaries feel comfortable. They are still keenly pursuing the old Islamic mission, “kill the infidel”, kill every Christian, every Jew, with even greater passion and ever swelling clamor.

What then of the marvelous electronic gadgets and their apps that come from America? What of Facebook and Google?

Well, they’re using Facebook to organize massive demonstrations at which they’re renewing their commitment to the old barbaric 7th century aims, first and foremost to kill the infidel, every Christian, every Jew.

Barry Rubin writes:

Repeatedly we were told about the alleged absence of anti-Israel rhetoric and signs in Tahrir square during the revolution. I don’t think it was true then. I certainly don’t think it is true now.

So check out the massive anti-Israel demonstrations in Cairo today. …

Supposedly the rally was to protest sectarian violence within Egypt but it turned into one favoring more sectarian violence next door. The main focus became supporting the Hamas-Fatah coalition agreement and calling for Israel’s extinction…

Remember all of those articles and statements about how the revolution was good for Israel if only those silly Israelis woke up and understand reality as understood in Berkeley and the Upper West Side of Manhattan?

Oh, and guess how the demonstration was largely organized. Ready? On Facebook! Hahaha. Those youthful hip twittering moderate young people!

Also notice how this is all happening before elections install a radical, nationalist, anti-Israel, anti-American president and a parliament dominated by revolutionary Islamist anti-American antisemites.

If the 21st century – aka the United States – would seriously engage 7th century Islam with all the intellectual, economic, and military strength it has, the menace could easily be defeated. But the US will not do it. Not now, anyway, because the present US government, shockingly led by Barack Obama, likes Islam and wants to it to triumph. The pretense is that Islam is a force for good. Muslims that are too obviously indefensible – such as Osama bin Laden – can be sacrificed to American public opinion since they’re “not truly representative of Islam”.

So when Obama is replaced by a leader who is pro-America, will the necessary action be taken?

The alarming reply must be “probably not”.

Post Script: On the theme of 7th century barbarians using 21st century technology, see this article titled Taliban Uses Social Media to Usher In a New Era of Jihad.

Our reader and commenter George draws our attention to an article titled “Why do Americans still dislike atheists?”

It is written by an ” an independent researcher in sociology and evolution”, Gregory Paul, and  “a professor of sociology at Pitzer College”, Phil Zuckerman, who wrote a book called  “Society Without God.”

The very idea of Sociology is Leftist. It considers human beings collectively. Sociologists can be assumed to be leftists – exceptions are very rare. So it is not surprising that Paul the researcher in Sociology, and Zuckerman the professor of Sociology, have written an article for the left-biased Washington Post, which demonstrates their collectivist mind-set.

Some of their information, however, is interesting.

Here are extracts:

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry.

No evidence for that “widely considered” is given. But the examples of discrimination against atheists that come next are worth knowing:

They can’t join the Boy Scouts.

You have to believe in the supernatural to be a Boy Scout?

Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations.

What does the word “spiritual” mean? A claim to believe in the supernatural?

Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

The first part of that sentence is not provable or even plausible. The second part is important and points to a disgraceful state of affairs. It means that governing authorities are discriminating against people who hold a particular opinion with regard to religion, in defiance of the Constitution.

Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.

Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.

Then comes a typical sociological passage with sweeping generalizations:

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

Notice the assumption that to be against the death penalty, bothered about “environmental degradation”, and uncritically accepting of the doctrine of “human rights’, is to be “more ethical”.

A series of “facts” come next, no sources given, reflecting more of the writers’ personal prejudices, but likely to be pleasing to at least some atheists:

Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.

The statistics, not given, may be correct, but the authors make no attempt  to show a direct connection between religious views and crime rates.

What follows is, we think, true. Though again no evidence is shown, and we don’t look for “scores” on “measures”, we obviously consider superstition to be unintelligent.

As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions … They value freedom of thought.

Yes. But those prejudices pop out again:

They are … less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric.

Leftists call patriots “nationalistic” as a pejorative. They have asserted that atheists are intelligent, yet cannot conceive of intelligent people being patriots.

Then they say that being atheist could be a symptom of mental illness, and not believing in the supernatural makes for unhappiness – though this connection is “complex” and some empirical evidence casts doubt on it.

While many studies show that secular Americans don’t fare as well as the religious when it comes to certain indicators of mental health or subjective well-being, new scholarship is showing that the relationships among atheism, theism, and mental health and well-being are complex. After all, Denmark, which is among the least religious countries in the history of the world, consistently rates as the happiest of nations. And studies of apostates — people who were religious but later rejected their religion — report feeling happier, better and liberated in their post-religious lives.

We like that, and would appreciate a link to those “studies” (even if they are written in pompous Sociologese).

The rest is a stew of diverse ingredients: suicide rates among atheists higher but not certainly so. And “on numerous respected measures of societal success — rates of poverty, teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, drug use and crime, as well as economics — high levels of secularity are consistently correlated with positive outcomes in first-world nations. None of the secular advanced democracies suffers from the combined social ills seen here in Christian America.”

To translate what they’re saying: poverty, AIDS, etcetera in America are at least partly the result of religion. Some religions can cause poverty – notably Catholicism by forbidding birth control. But for the rest, causal connections need to be traced.

The next claim, if true, is good news:

Atheism is enjoying rapid growth. … Younger generations’ tolerance for the endless disputes of religion is waning fast. Surveys designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism have found that as many as 60 million Americans — a fifth of the population — are not believers.

How bleak and sad life is for the religious, especially for Muslims, and most miserably for their women and children.

Osama bin Laden was a rich man. Phyllis Chesler tells how he kept his wives and children in want, hunger, discomfort, and deliberate joylessness.

While he still lived in Saudi Arabia, before he had to flee to Sudan and thereafter to Afghanistan, [Osama bin Laden] condemned his wives and children to lives of physical, medical, and psychological hardship. …

He insisted on an increasingly spartan existence as a matter of ideology …

Here is what Omar bin Laden has written about his life with his father Osama:

“There were absurd rules regarding our conduct. ..  We were told that we must not become excited at any situation. We should be serious about everything. We were not allowed to tell jokes. We were ordered not to express joy over anything. He did say that he would allow us to smile so long as we did not laugh. If we were to lose control of our emotions and bark a laugh, we must be careful not to expose our eyeteeth. I have been in situations where my father actually counted the exposed teeth, reprimanding his sons on the number their merriment had revealed.”

According to Omar, his father … “caned” him and his brothers “for the slightest infraction.” Osama… deprived his sons of their much needed asthma medication … He force marched them without water for hours and in the desert. In addition, he allowed his sons to be brutalized by sadistic teachers. He refused to give his sons “pocket money” for “school snacks.” He told them, Omar writes:

“‘No. You need to suffer. Hunger pangs will not hurt you.’ … Our father appeared to relish seeing us suffer, reminding us that it was good for us to know what it felt like to be hungry or thirsty, to do without while others had plenty. Why? He said that we would end up being the stronger. Those with plenty would grow up weak men, unable to defend themselves.” …

Omar and his brothers all learned that they would have to endure paternal cruelty and humiliation and that their tender and sympathetic mothers would not and could not intercede on their behalf. Osama bin Laden’s wives, especially Najwa, Omar’s mother, are portrayed as … submissive, uncomplaining, very religious, quite passive. Najwa gave up her desire to decorate her home, which was, essentially, her prison. … She never uttered a single complaint—not even when she was deprived of most conveniences and normal amenities. Omar writes:

“Although we lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is one of the hottest and most humid cities in a country that is known for its hot climate, my father would not allow my mother to turn on the air-conditioning that the contractor had built into the apartment building. Neither would he allow her to use the refrigerator that was standing in the kitchen. My father announced, ‘Islamic beliefs are corrupted by modernization.’”

Yet “he himself had fast cars, fast planes … weaponry too.”

Although he has every reason to hate his father, Omar bin Laden is complaining that the cruel old man did not receive justice.

What would be justice for a man who has killed thousands of people? He has only two eyes to give for thousands of eyes, only one mouthful of teeth for thousands of teeth. He cannot be made to choose between death by fire or leaping from a height, or to choke in smoke, or to crash to the ground in a plane, thousands of times over.

Besides, justice has no place in war. War happens when law and all civil norms have broken down. Osama bin Laden made war on the United States, so American warriors hunted him down and shot him dead. He deserved worse.

Christians teach their children lies and force them to lie (see our post immediately below, A loathsome Jesus). They make them afraid of everlasting “hell”. That’s bad enough. But what Islam does to its children is worse.

Frank Crimi writes about thousands of child suicide bombers being trained in Afghanistan:

Despite the Taliban’s denial that it uses children as human explosives, its spring offensive began with a suicide bombing by a 12-year-old boy. The attack is just one more sign that the militant group and its terrorist allies are increasing their efforts to recruit, train and utilize child suicide bombers. …

It was one of two such suicide attacks carried out by child bombers in eastern Afghanistan over the past several weeks, attacks that killed over 15 people. Soon after those assaults, Afghan authorities showed off five captured would-be suicide bombers –all under the age of 13 — trained by Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan.

As one Afghan intelligence official said, “They have been told that infidels are in Afghanistan … and they have been encouraged to go for Jihad.” In a disturbing twist, one of the captured bombers thought he would survive the attack when he was told by his instructors that “the (infidels) will be killed and you will live.” …

The Taliban denied using children as human explosives …[But that] contradicts its past claims to have trained anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand juveniles as suicide bombers. In fact, the Afghan government places the figure of trained child suicide terrorists closer to 5,000. …

Most suicide bombers are under the age of 18… The recruitment and training of these children is not only extensive and well organized, but growing.

To that end, suicide training factories have sprouted up all over the Afghan-Pakistan border, with most located in the Pakistani province of Waziristan. There, it’s been estimated that the Fedayeen-e-Islam have trained over 1,000 suicide bombers at three facilities. More disturbingly, many suicide training centers have been designated into junior and senior camps.

The Pakistani army found one such junior camp, equipped with computers, video equipment and literature, where children as young as age 10, according to one army officer, “knew about the planting of explosives, making and wearing and detonating suicide jackets.”

The increased demand for child bombers comes as the Taliban have focused its efforts on attacking an expanding list of civilian targets, sites which include schools, mosques, markets, government offices and other public places.

In Saudi Arabia, where women are stoned to death as punishment for being the victims of rape, girls as young as 5 are sold to “wealthy men” as sex slaves. Read about it here.

It’s common practice among Muslims to use children as shields in war – and then wail to the UN, the New York Times, the Guardian, and all their other reliable sympathizers when the children are hurt or killed, accusing American, or Israeli, or NATO  forces, of deliberately targeting them.

At the same time they themselves, without a trace of conscience, deliberately murder the children of “infidels” in the cruelest ways they can devise.

In Thailand, Muslims beheaded a 9 year old boy. (There is a “graphic” video of this atrocity, but it has been removed from the linked site, and we cannot find it anywhere else.)

In Nigeria Muslims have been throwing children on fires, and cutting them up.

This report is full of sentimental Christian nonsense about the dead being saved by Jesus and meeting again never to be parted, but we think it gives a true – and certainly a believable – account of what Muslims did to a 13 year old girl, the daughter of a Christian pastor:

Muslim extremists … attacked Kurum village, in the Bogoro local government area of Nigeria’s Bauchi state …  in a rampage that began Wednesday (May 4) at midnight. [James Musa] Rike, pastor of a Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) congregation in Kurum, .. heard the cries of his 13-year-old daughter, Sum James Rike …“I rushed to my daughter, only to discover that she … was cut with a machete on her stomach, and her intestines were all around her,” he said.

Graphic enough without pictures.