A non-entity called “Palestine” has been admitted as a member of UNESCO.

The US promptly stopped funding the UN agency, as it was bound to do by law. But with what degree of reluctance in the minds of Obama and his foreign affairs appointees?

Claudia Rosett, always the best commentator on the nefarious goings-on of the UN and its agencies, wrote this at Canada Free Press:

If the U.S. has one big lever right now within the many organizations of the United Nations system, it is the threat to cut the money with which U.S. taxpayers pay the biggest share of the U.N.’s bills. Yet despite a U.S. threat to cut funding, the assembly of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted Monday to grant full membership to the Palestinian Authority. What happened?

The answer may be that the U.N. has little reason to take U.S. threats seriously. That might sound odd, since UNESCO’s decision to seat the Palestinians has indeed choked off U.S. funding for the Paris-based organization. At least for now.

Under U.S. law, the U.S. must deny funding to any part of the U.N. system that grants membership to the Palestinians — at least until they achieve viable statehood by way of negotiating in good faith with Israel. On Monday, following the UNESCO vote, a State Department spokeswoman confirmed that a $60 million U.S. payment for UNESCO, planned for this month, will not be made. Overall, U.S. dues account for 22% of UNESCO’s budget, plus the U.S. throws in millions in voluntary contributions on top. A U.S. cutoff should mean that UNESCO will lose about $80 million per year.

But while money talks, so do U.S. diplomats. For the U.S., the UNESCO vote was a debacle, with the assembled states voting 107 to 14 in favor of admitting the Palestinians, and 52 states abstaining. That would have been the moment for the U.S. ambassador to read UNESCO’s assembly the riot act and announce that the U.S. was pulling out, as it did in 1984, under President Ronald Reagan; returning only in 2003, under President George W. Bush.

Instead, the U.S. diplomatic message to UNESCO has been one of apology, regrets and fawning statements of support for a U.N. body that has just slapped the U.S. in the chops. U.S officials have even been hinting that they are looking for some kind of workaround, to get the money flowing again. …

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland described UNESCO’s admission of “Palestine” as “regrettable” and premature.” But she went on to say the U.S. “will maintain its membership and commitment to UNESCO.” Most telling, she added that the administration would “consult with Congress to ensure that U.S. interests and influence are preserved.”

Why might the administration now wish to consult with Congress? Congress appropriates the money that the U.S. gives to the U.N., and Congress has the power, should it choose, to change the laws now cutting off funds for UNESCO, and for any other U.N. organizations the Palestinians might now seek to join.

In Paris, America’s ambassador to UNESCO, David Killion, had even sweeter words for UNESCO. … Sounding more like an envoy of UNESCO than of the U.S., Killion …  came close to issuing an outright apology: “We sincerely regret that the strenuous and well-intentioned efforts of many delegations to avoid this result fell short.” [And he]  concluded by hinting that UNESCO might not suffer quite as much as expected: “We pledge to continue our efforts to find ways to support and strengthen the important work of this vital organization.”

As for the “strenuous efforts” of the U.S. administration to head off UNESCO’s admission of the Palestinians, American moves in the run up to the Oct. 31 vote included topping up UNESCO’s coffers. On Oct. 18, with the vote already looming, and the Palestinians fielding a clear majority at the impending assembly, the U.S. tipped $1.77 million in voluntary, extra-budgetary funding into UNESCO’s till. …

And, as UNESCO’s delegates prepared on Monday to cast their votes, U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter addressed the assembly. She did not bother to mention that Palestinian TV, schools and summer camps still indoctrinate Palestinian children in hatred of Israel, nor did she note that the Palestinian Authority’s logo shows a map on which Israel has been obliterated. She was there to tell the delegates that … “This General Conference is an opportunity for us to renew our commitment, because the world needs a strong UNESCO.”

Does it? A truth that seems lost on the current U.S. administration is that UNESCO’s assembly of member states, with its jubilant nose-thumbing vote against American policy and interests, is no anomaly. It is a pretty accurate reflection of the General Assembly of the United Nations, which is substantially mirrored in voting and governing bodies throughout the U.N. system. …

Right now the U.S. is also shelling out more than $400 million for a $1.9 billion renovation of the U.N.’s headquarters in Manhattan, kitting out U.N. delegates and staff with state of the art equipment and comforts. All this translates into a lavish entitlement system, in which U.N. member states, and the U.N. organizations they largely control, are accustomed to using one hand to poke America in the eye, while holding out the other hand for more U.S. tax dollars.

With UNESCO membership a done deal, the Palestinians are shopping for other U.N. organizations to join. A UNESCO seat confers automatic access to a number of other U.N.-affiliated organizations, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva and the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna. Palestinian officials have also been floating mentions of applying to the World Health Oragnization (WHO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Bank and beyond. …

The UN must be destroyed.

We have shown pictures of the mass slaughter of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria. (See Christians slaughtered by Muslims in Nigeria, October 17, 2011; Acts of religion in Nigeria revisited, October 16, 2011; Christians murdered by Muslims, March 9, 2010.)

One picture (see Acts of religion, November 6, 2010) was questioned as a true illustration of these massacres, but the rest are authenticated. The wrong ascription of one picture is not misleading. The massacres, including the burning to death of Christian victims, were committed and continue to be committed.

Massacres and assassinations are carried out systematically by the Muslim terrorist organization, Boko Haram, which has links to “al-Qaeda in the Maghreb” and  to al-Shabab, the terrorist group of Somalia.

Arnold Ahlert casts light on Boko Haram:

In Nigeria, a radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram carried out a series of terrorist attacks killing more than 100 people in the states of Borno and Yobe on Friday [Nov. 4, 2011]. Yobe’s capital city of Damaturu bore the brunt of the damage when a car bomb exploded outside a military office and barracks, killing several security agents. The terrorist assault continued through the night when rampaging gunmen blew up a bank, and attacked at least three police stations, and five churches, leaving behind nothing but rubble, officials said. Gunmen also raided the nearby village of Potiskum, leaving at least two people dead there, according to witnesses. A Boko Haram spokesman calling himself Abul-Qaqa promised more of the same. “We will continue attacking federal government formations until security forces stop their excesses on our members and vulnerable civilians,” he warned.

Boko Haram, which translates from the local Hausa language into “Western education is sacrilege” in English, wants to impose Sharia law over the entire oil-rich nation of 160 million people, despite the fact the country is evenly divided into a largely Muslim north and a largely Christian south. The sect completely rejects the notion of Western-inspired democracy, which they contend has corrupted government officials. …

[One faction of] Boko Haram … rejects any compromise. Its spiritual leader, imam Abubakar Shekau, heard speaking in a scratchy recording obtained by the AP, insists that holy war is the only way to bring about change. “Whomever we kill, we kill because Allah says we should kill …”

This [latest] attack, coupled with one in August on a United Nations compound in Abuja, which killed 24 and wounded 116, indicates the group’s continued potency, despite a 2009 crackdown. In July of that year, a riot and a military response left 700 people dead. …

About a year ago, Boko Haram … began a campaign of assassinations carried out by motorcycle-riding gunmen toting Kalashnikov rifles hidden under their traditional robes. The mayhem has resulted in at least 361 deaths this year alone …  In response, motorcycles have been banned from the street in Maiduguri, but the killing continues. Government officials, police officers, soldiers in the region, and clerics who speak out against Boko Haram are routinely targeted. …

For the most part, terrorism in Nigeria has remained under the radar despite the fact that the country has been victimized by more attacks in the last two years than any country in the world except Somalia–and despite the fact that the fruits of that terrorist-inspired unrest have already been exported to the United States: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear aboard a Northwest Airlines flight in December of 2009, [is] Nigerian.

An isolated incident? Maybe not. Attacks with large bombs may indicate that Boko Haram is receiving training from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Furthermore in August, Gen. Carter F. Ham, head of the United States Africa Command, contended that both groups were attempting to establish a “loose partnership” with Shabab, the Somali-based terror group responsible for the bombings at the World Cup soccer matches in Uganda last year where more than 70 people were killed. Ham characterized the development as one that “would be the most dangerous thing to happen not only to the Africans, but to us as well.”  …

Presumably he means to the US military in Africa. The most dangerous thing that could happen to the US – and the world – would be a nuclear-armed Iran.

It is worth remembering that Americans knew very little about al Qaeda and Afghanistan prior to 9/11, and those who did were loath to believe such a relatively “insignificant” development could blossom into a force capable of carrying out the worst domestic attack in the history of the nation.

Empires have traditionally secured the conquest of provinces by taking “hostages” from the families of the upper classes to be raised in their culture and taught to admire the empire holding them captive. The Model UN extends this into the United States where the “hostages” go on living with their families, while being taught to betray their country and serve a global empire instead. 

Daniel Greenfield writes about this at Front Page:

Imagine your child’s school teaching him how wonderful dictatorships are by having him and his friends model their very own group of dictatorships as part of their education. Like so many other Orwellian nightmares in the American educational system, this one is very real and takes place through the Model UN program.

The Model UN program teaches American students that global government is better than national government and that the corrupt kleptocracy on Turtle Bay is the ideal state of mankind. Finally it trains them to put American presidents on trial for violating United Nations laws.

Twenty-two Model UN events are scheduled to take place in November alone and many more are set to follow month after month throughout the school year as the advocates of global government exploit the school system to indoctrinate a new generation in their roles as servants of the conclave of totalitarian regimes.

The Model UN program teaches students to act out roles as representatives of different UN nations, but its real goal is to teach them to reject American exceptionalism in favor of multilateralism by convincing them that countries vary in interests, not in character, and that the People’s Republic of China and Saudi Arabia are no different than the United States in their legitimacy or their form of government.

The great lie that the United Nations was built on is that the voices of all nations are equally valid, regardless if they are banana republics, brutal Islamic theocracies, Communist tyrannies or nations with free and open elections that offer human rights to all. The United Nations is a democracy, but it is a democracy of dictatorships.

A “democracy”  in that each country gets one  vote in the General Assembly regardless of how much clout it has in the real world. But the people are not voting through representatives in the case of the Islamic, communist, and other assorted tyrannies.

The vast majority of the world’s population lives in the thrall of tyrannies and the Model UN program models the farce that this great collective of the oppressed is legitimately represented by the lackeys of tyrants who speak in their name under the United Nations flag. There are 26 full democracies [out of 193 member states] to 55 authoritarian regimes [many more actually – JB] with the latter outnumbering the former in population three to one. The average UN representative is not representing a people or a nation, he is there as the personal representative of an Assad, a Kim Jong Il or a Khaddafi.

The democracy of dictatorships is why global multilateralism does not work and can never work, but the Model UN program helps embed the lie that it can and should into the growing minds of the leaders of tomorrow.

“You may be playing a role, but you are also preparing for life,” UN Secretary General Ki Ban Moon said in an address to the students of a Los Angeles classroom, “You are acting as global citizens.”

Global citizenship under the auspices of the United Nations is incompatible with American citizenship. It violates the United States Oath of Allegiance which states, “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty” and it sets aside the national sovereignty of the United States and its open system of government in favor of a closed global system ruled by foreign princes and potentates. …

Leading the program in the United States is one of the country’s former presidents.  

The most widespread UN Model program is conducted through the Global Classrooms program of the United Nations Association of the United States of America. The UNA-USA’s National Council is chaired by none other than former president, Jimmy Carter, who did more than any previous leader to undermine America’s national sovereignty.

Though in that effort he has subsequently been surpassed by Barack Obama.

The UNA-USA’s agenda includes AMICC or the American Coalition for the International Criminal Court, whose goal is to push through American ratification of the Rome Statute which would place the United States under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court [ICC] and would preempt the Constitution.

To that end Model UN’s also teach students to act out roles in the International Criminal Court bringing world leaders to trial. One of the world leaders who will be brought to trial at the Hilton Model UN is George W. Bush. At the MUNCH 2012 Model UN ICC, President Harry Truman will be brought to trial by American students answering to a panel of foreign judges. …

Islamic indoctrination also plays a role at Model UN’s. The Pangea Model UN conference has students model the UN Human Rights Council, which is notoriously staffed by Islamic tyrannies …

The lead topic of the Pangea Model UN Human Rights Council is, “Combating Defamation of Religions”. The associated text blames the United States for discriminating against Muslims, warns that a ban on criticizing Islam is necessary to protect human rights and states that such a law is entirely feasible while providing protections for freedom of speech.

Discrimination against Muslims in the US is of course a lie. Of the real discrimination against non-Muslims in the Islamic countries, not a word is said.

To believe that a ban on criticizing anything can be compatible with free speech is to throw all sense and logic to the winds.

Pangea is not taking place in Brussels or New York – it’s happening in North Carolina. Just as MUNCH 2012 is. That is the power of the Model UN which reaches deep into the heart of the country to train ambitious and talented students to sell out their own country and serve the conglomerate of tyrannies and their associated bureaucracy of the blue flag. ,,,

The Global Classrooms project and the Model UN are vehicles for promoting a global government run by the Organization of the Islamic Conference [recently name-changed to the Organization of Islamic Co-operation, and it has an Obama representative in it] and the People’s Republic of China, and no entity that teaches students to betray their allegiance to their country has any place in the American classroom.

The UN must be destroyed.

Swiss Member of Parliament Oskar Freysinger, of the Swiss People’s Party, speaks out loud and clear against Islam and its jihad. The occasion was the launching of a new party in Germany called DIE FREIHEIT (Freedom). Is Europe at last rising against its Muslim invaders?

From an article by Mano Singham in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

There is a new war between science and religion, rising from the ashes of the old one, which ended with the defeat of the anti-evolution forces in the 2005 “intelligent design” trial.

That was Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District. Eleven parents of students in Dover, York County, Pa. sued over the school board requirement that  intelligent design should be taught in ninth-grade science classes along with evolution. They lost. US District Judge John Jones ruled (inter alia):

We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents. To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

Mano Singham continues:

The new war concerns questions that are more profound than whether or not to teach evolution. Unlike the old science-religion war, this battle is going to be fought not in the courts but in the arena of public opinion. The new war pits those who argue that science and “moderate” forms of religion are compatible worldviews against those who think they are not.

The former group, known as accommodationists, seeks to carve out areas of knowledge that are off-limits to science, arguing that certain fundamental features of the world — such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the origin of the universe — allow for God to act in ways that cannot be detected using the methods of science. Some accommodationists, including Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, suggest that there are deeply mysterious, spiritual domains of human experience, such as morality, mind, and consciousness, for which only religion can provide deep insights.

Prestigious organizations like the National Academy of Sciences have come down squarely on the side of the accommodationists.

What? The National Academy of Sciences … ? Pause here for that to sink in.

Then on we go:

On March 25, the NAS let the John Templeton Foundation use its venue to announce that the biologist (and accommodationist) Francisco Ayala had been awarded its Templeton Prize, with the NAS president himself, Ralph Cicerone, having nominated him. The foundation has in recent years awarded its prize to scientists and philosophers who are accommodationists, though it used to give it to more overtly religious figures, like Mother Teresa and Billy Graham. Critics are disturbed at the NAS’s so closely identifying itself with the accommodationist position. As the physicist Sean Carroll said, “Templeton has a fairly overt agenda that some scientists are comfortable with, but very many are not. In my opinion, for a prestigious scientific organization to work with them sends the wrong message.”

In a 2008 publication titled Science, Evolution, and Creationism, the NAS stated: “Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. … Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist. … Many religious beliefs involve entities or ideas that currently are not within the domain of science. Thus, it would be false to assume that all religious beliefs can be challenged by scientific findings.”

Those of us who disagree — sometimes called “new atheists” — point out that historically, the scope of science has always expanded, steadily replacing supernatural explanations with scientific ones. Science will continue this inexorable march, making it highly likely that the accommodationists’ strategy will fail. After all, there is no evidence that consciousness and mind arise from anything other than the workings of the physical brain, and so those phenomena are well within the scope of scientific investigation. What’s more, because the powerful appeal of religion comes precisely from its claims that the deity intervenes in the physical world, in response to prayers and such, religious claims, too, fall well within the domain of science. The only deity that science can say nothing about is a deity who does nothing at all.

In support of its position, the National Academy of Sciences makes a spurious argument: “Newspaper and television stories sometimes make it seem as though evolution and religion are incompatible, but that is not true. Many scientists and theologians have written about how one can accept both faith and the validity of biological evolution. Many past and current scientists who have made major contributions to our understanding of the world have been devoutly religious. … Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies have increased their awe and understanding of a creator. The study of science need not lessen or compromise faith.”

But the fact that some scientists are religious is not evidence of the compatibility of science and religion. …  Jerry Coyne, a professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, notes, “True, there are religious scientists and Darwinian churchgoers. But this does not mean that faith and science are compatible, except in the trivial sense that both attitudes can be simultaneously embraced by a single human mind.”

Accommodationists are alarmed that their position has been challenged by a recent flurry of best-selling books, widely read articles, and blogs. In Britain an open letter expressing this concern was signed by two Church of England bishops; a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain; a member of the Evangelical Alliance; Professor Lord Winston, a fertility pioneer; Professor Sir Martin Evans, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; and others. The letter said, “We respectfully ask those contemporary Darwinians who seem intent on using Darwin’s theory as a vehicle for promoting an anti-theistic agenda to desist from doing so as they are, albeit unintentionally, turning people away from the theory.” …

What people? Why?

Accommodationists frequently brand us new atheists as “extreme,” “uncivil,” “rude,” and responsible for setting a “bad tone.” However, those accusations are rarely accompanied by concrete examples of such impolite speech. Behind the charges seems to lie the assumption that it is rude to even question religious beliefs or to challenge the point of view of the accommodationists. Apparently the polite thing to do is keep quiet. …

Why have organizations like the National Academy of Sciences sided with the accommodationists even though there is no imperative to take a position? After all, it would be perfectly acceptable to simply advocate for good science and stay out of this particular fray.

One has to suspect that tactical considerations are at play here. The majority of Americans subscribe to some form of faith tradition. Some scientists may fear that if science is viewed as antithetical to religion, then even moderate believers may turn away from science and join the fundamentalists.

But political considerations should not be used to silence honest critical inquiry. Richard Dawkins has challenged the accommodationist strategy, calling it “a cowardly cop–out. I think it’s an attempt to woo the sophisticated theological lobby and to get them into our camp and put the creationists into another camp. It’s good politics. But it’s intellectually disreputable.”

Evolution, and science in general, will ultimately flourish or die on its scientific merits, not because of any political strategy. Good science is an invaluable tool in humanity’s progress and survival, and it cannot be ignored or suppressed for long. The public may turn against this or that theory in the short run but will eventually have to accept evolution, just as it had to accept the Copernican heliocentric system.

It is strange that the phrase “respect for religion” has come to mean that religious beliefs should be exempt from the close scrutiny that other beliefs are subjected to. Such an attitude infantilizes religious believers, suggesting that their views cannot be defended and can be preserved only by silencing those who disagree. …

We think religious belief is childish. And we recall that for long ages the religious defended their beliefs by forcibly silencing those who disagreed, and we suspect that many would do it again if they could. (They do in Islamic states.)

But see how far the religious have had to retreat as science demolishes dogma after dogma. We do not hear their advocates talking nearly as much or as loudly as they used to of the seven days of creation, of a virgin giving birth to God in Bethlehem, of God dictating commandments. (Okay – of the Angel Gabriel dictating the Koran we still hear too much.) Mano Singham informs us that they’re not even insisting on “intelligent design” as much as they did. Backs to the wall, they’re only begging us to concede  that, because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and continuing conjecture about the Big Bang (for example), we “must allow for God to act in ways that cannot be detected” by science. And if we don’t, we’re being rude. “Be nice to us”, they’re implying, “let us nurse our fantasies. If you don’t, you’re just a lot of rationalist bullies.”

Let them put their thumbs in their mouths and sulk. We’re winning!

Again, Pat Condell boldly tells the truth about Palestinians and their supporters, including the intensely racist governments of Norway and Sweden:

Muslim women are passed – often while they are still children – by their fathers to their husbands, whose religion teaches them: “Your wives are a tilth unto you; so go to your tilth when or how you will.”(Koran 2.223)

The wives are exploited in every way imaginable. Their lives could not be more wretched. And on top of it all – the bride’s family has to pay her exploiters and tormentors to subject her to unending misery.  

The husbands not only  get slaves, they also get money to enslave them. If they don’t think they’re paid enough, they burn the wife.

This report,  which tells a common story, comes from yesterday’s issue of the Pakistani paper the Tribune:

Seventeen-year-old Fauzia, a resident of 72 NP, was taken to Shaikh Zayed Hospital where doctors described her condition as critical. They said she had suffered severe burns on more than 60 per cent of her body and that she was unlikely to survive.

Police …  had registered a case against Zeeshan Ahmed, Fauzia’s husband, and his brother Imran Ahmed.

Fauzia’s parents said she had been complaining about her in-laws’ behaviour ever since she got married to Zeeshan a year ago. They said her in-laws were not satisfied with the dowry and insisted that she ask her parents for more. They said her in-laws also beat her up a couple of times.

On Tuesday, they said, a neighbour called them and informed them that Fauzia had been burnt…. He had heard a woman crying for help and rushed to the house next door along with his other family members.

He said they found Fauzia rolling on the floor trying to put out the flames. “We poured several buckets of water and later took her to the hospital,” he said. He said there was no one else in the house and suggested that her in-laws had fled.

Fauzia’s brother Sajid Ali said he and his father were both daily-wage workers and that they could not afford to purchase more items for her dowry. He said both he and his father made between Rs400 and Rs500 a day which was just enough to provide two meals to their family.

Our special source, who speaks on condition of anonymity in order to avoid being tortured to death, tells us that the voice of Allah Muhammad replied to that outburst, sneering down from Paradise: “Excuses, excuses! You should have made do with one meal a day and paid the men more to use your daughter and sister how they will. Now reimburse them the cost of the fuel and matches, or else!”

We quote from a column by Walter Williams at Townhall, which can be read in full here.

I believe that there’s little prospect for Arabs ever being free and that Western encouragement and hopes for democracy are doomed to failure and disappointment. Most nations in the Middle East do not share the philosophical foundations of the West. It’s not likely liberty-oriented values will ever emerge in cultures that have disdain for the rule of law and private property rights and that sanction barbaric practices such as the stoning of women for adultery, the severing of hands or beheading as a form of punishment, and imprisonment for criticizing or speaking ill of the government.

What should the West do about the gross violations of human rights so prevalent in North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere? My short answer is to mind our own business. The only case in which we should interfere with Middle Eastern affairs is when our national defense or economic interests are directly threatened. That is, for example, if Iran were to meddle with Middle Eastern oil shipments or if we discovered good evidence of its building nuclear weapons, then we should militarily intervene. What they want to do to one another is none of our business.

We agree with him. Certainly the West should not be so culturally insensitive as to interfere with the Arabs’ colorful customs, such as oppressing and mutilating women, stoning adulterers, hanging homosexuals, amputating the limbs of thieves, routinely torturing prisoners, keeping and trafficking slaves, using children as living bombs and training them to saw people’s heads off.

But we shouldn’t hesitate to act when our national defense or economic interests are under threat. If an Arab tyrant blows up an American plane in flight, he should be punished. Arab states that train terrorists pose a threat to every nation, with the US top of their wish list, so they should be promptly discouraged by fleets of well-aimed drones. And as the West needs the oil that lies under Arab feet, the despots must not be allowed to price it at extortionist levels. (To prevent that, the oil fields of the Middle East should have been taken under American control decades ago.) The best policy would be to keep them in constant fear that America might strike them without warning at any moment. Only an occasional salutary demonstration of American wrath would be necessary. Bring back that old Shock-and-Awe. Judiciously but zealously inflicted, it could obviate the need for long and costly wars.

And the UN must be destroyed.

This article by Leo Igwe is from the secularist paper, the Daily Times of Nigeria:

There are concerns that the Arab Spring could be hijacked by parties with islamic agenda, and politicians who want to impose sharia law on the states.

There are clear indications that politicians in the region are campaigning and mobilising on the basis of Islam. They are playing the islamic religious political card to gain power. They have mistaken the secular wind of  Arab Spring to an Islamic revolution. Many parties and politicians are seeking to win votes by promising to implement sharia law and enthrone islamic theocracy in furtherance of ‘the revolution’.

For instance, many secularists, feminists and human rights campaigners were shocked by the pronouncements of the leader of the National Transitional Council in Libya, Mustapha Abdul Jalil. Shortly after the death of Col Gaddaffi, Jalil declared that sharia would be the basic source of the laws in ‘Free Libya’. That all laws that were not consistent with the teachings of Islam would be repealed. He voided the law against polygamy and lifted restrictions imposed by the Gaddaffi regime on the number of women that men could marry.

In Tunisia, where it all started, the country’s main Islamic party has emerged victorious in the Arab Spring’s first elections, taking 90 of 217 seats in the new assembly. There are fears that this party could use its position to roll back the gains the country had made in steering the state away from religion and in protecting the rights of women. The party leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, has pledged that the rights of every Tunisian would be protected by the new authorities.

“We will continue this revolution to realise its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous; in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone,” he was quoted to have recently told party supporters at a press conference.

An emulsion of  incompatibles!

Personally I tried to understand what he meant by the ‘rights of God’. Afterall, God is not a human being. Or the rights of ‘the Prophet’ – obviously referring to Mohammad. And Mohammad died centuries ago. Anyway, that is a clear sign of the enormous influence religion, particularly Islam, wields in the country’s politics. That is a clear sign of the struggles ahead of all lovers of freedom, democracy and human rights in the region in the years ahead.

Also in Egypt, the islamist party is expected to emerge victorious whenever the country holds elections. The party of the influential Islamist group – the Muslim Brotherhood  [calling itself] the Freedom and Justice Party – is the party to beat in the parliamentary elections coming up soon.

Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the spectre of political Islam and its opposition to universal human rights and progressive values is haunting and threatening to undo the Arab Spring.

While we are not at ease  with the concept of “human rights” or “natural rights”, and prefer to say that  people “should be free to …” rather than “have a right to …”, we understand that freedom is what the  secularists of the “Arab Spring” desire. And Islam is freedom’s opposite: an ideology of subjugation and enslavement.

Secularists and human rights campaigners are calling for –

Complete separation of religion from the state;

Abolition of religious laws in the family, civil and criminal codes;

A separation of religion from the educational system;

Freedom of religion and atheism as private beliefs;

Prohibition of sex apartheid and compulsory veiling.

And he ends by saying:

Politicians should strive and uphold the ideals of freedom, secularism, democracy and human rights in contemporary Middle East and North Africa. These are the values people fought and died for. These are the values at the heart of the Arab Spring.

We accept that these are the ideals some people are striving for in the Arab revolutions, and some people have fought and died for. We applaud those brave idealists. We agree that their values should be the values at the heart of the Arab Spring, and the politicians and parties that uphold them should form the post-revolution governments.

But, as the writer observes, Islam is in the ascendancy. The vast and ignorant army of the dead Muhammad is intent on imposing sharia law.

The people of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are more than likely to find themselves even worse off than they were before the revolutions.

The Last Testament: A Memoir by God (with David Javerbaum), Simon and Schuster, New York,  383 pages

God is a happily married divinity. He and his wife, Ruth (yes, she of the Book) have three children, Zach, Jesus, and Kathy.

Zach’s nickname is “the Holy Ghost”, H.G. for short.

Kathy begged for a sojourn on earth to enjoy some martyrdom, so God sent her to be Joan of Arc.

Jesus is “a classic middle child”. His frequent weeping irritates his father (“the kid was a pussy”). When Jesus wanted to be born as a human being, God was strongly against it.

“My son, a person?” I screamed at him.

However, after much cajoling by Ruth (“It might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to our little Jeez. Would you think about it, dear? For me?” ), God “softened somewhat”. He explains to the human reader:

At least insofar as accepting that Jesus was my son; and that as his father it was my duty to support him in whatever career path he chose to follow; even one as patently silly as dying for thy sins.

So for his sake, and Ruth’s, I swallowed my fury; and told him that whatever help he needed, I would provide; and whatever trials and tribulations he would face on his mission, I would help see him through. So that when it was all over, if Jesus’s time on earth ended (as I was sure it would) in some kind of nightmarish ordeal,

At least he could not accuse me of forsaking him, or leaving him hanging.

As we know from a previous Testament, he didn’t keep that promise. By his own account – confirming the information provided in two previous Testaments – he is a mischievous deceiver.

Far worse, he is a sadist. He candidly admits that he likes watching human beings suffer.

For lo, I had destroyed the world in a Flood; I had razed the Tower of Babel; I had leveled Sodom and Gomorrah [not for being gay-friendly cities but for being “the twin hubs of a massive international money-laundering operation”]; all manner of catastrophe had I already visited upon you, in the name of righteousness;

Yet it was only then – after finding myself enthralled by the slow silent agony of one I greatly loved [Abraham as he prepared to sacrifice his son];

I say, it was only then, that I first began to consider the possibility, that there was something seriously wrong with me.

He confesses the “real reason” why he allowed Job “to be so horribly afflicted”.

“It was not to test Job, but to test me.

I wanted to see if I could watch him endure his agonies without experiencing any of that same unnameable thrill I had derived from watching the binding of Isaac … and the countless other atrocities and tragedies that I had over the centuries allowed – or, sometimes, caused – to happen.

Such as the Crusades:

For pure spiritual entertainment, nothing compared to the Crusades …

There is nothing more gratifying than watching tens of thousands of people express their undying love for thee by running through tens of thousands of other people who possess equally undying love for thee with a pike.

(Especially knowing that in the end, the theological problems of two great faiths amounteth not to a hill of beans in thy crazy world.)

He’s also politically correct, and like any lefty he will boast of his compassion without minding that his deeds contradict his words.

How he feels for Goliath!  The giant had to be killed by David  – God guided the killing stone himself  – but the poor guy’s death caused the King of the Universe more than a pang or two. “Never have I felt more sadness about ending a life,” he says, because:

Goliath was a faithful husband; Goliath was a trusted friend; Goliath was a community activist; Goliath worked with troubled youth in inner-city Gaza; Goliath was cofounder of the Philistine Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

He’s no deep thinker. He offers no profound analysis of why he created the universe or the way he’s run it. His tastes are not refined.

“No anecdote or commentary I provide [of the story of Joseph in Egypt] could ever improve upon Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

And when he effects, with difficulty, the conception of Jesus through a “miraculous act of asexual reproduction”, in order to show the world “from the start that he was both Word and flesh; Man and God; a subtle concept we knew would be difficult of comprehension”, he adds: “Indeed, I myself have never really figured it out.”

His Testament is a tell-all book that doesn’t quite tell all. He will not divulge the secrets of the afterlife. He doesn’t offer the least illumination of his “mysterious ways”. In  fact, he couldn’t do that if he wanted to:

I move in mysterious ways; and my reason for doing so is even more mysterious; and the reason for that reason’s mysteriousness is so mysterious, even I forget what it is.

Yet he craves understanding and sympathy (in addition to burnt offerings). After much boasting and gloating and wisecracking, a cri de coeur of existential doubt bursts from him:

For 6,000 years I have tried to be the kind of God people could believe in; but recently I have come to question the very nature of my divinity. …

What is wrong with me, me? …

I feel useless.

I feel like there’s no point in going on.

Maybe humanity would be better off without me …

So I’m turning to me.

I’m putting it all in my hands.

Yea, I made the universe; I made mankind; out of me spools the totality of all that ever was and is and ever will be.

But who am I?

Why am I here?

Do I even exist?

God knows.

I am the Lord everyone’s God, King of the Universe. …

I am he to whom people turn for comfort after being devastated by acts of me.

And I am he in whose name  hundreds of millions of people have given their lives, or taken others’; and they would not do that for just anybody. …

But I am the entity without whose constant presence all of humanity would plummet into reason. …

And I … am … back!!!!

Still he needs to go into rehab, spending “a few months in a secluded fractal of the tenth dimension getting my head together”.

He returns with “a new self-acceptance”, in time for the run-up to Armageddon which he and H.G. and Jesus have definitely scheduled for December 21, 2012 – unless The Last Testament sells well enough to justify “a little wiggle room to leave time for a sequel”.

Unaccountably, he cannot foretell if his book will be a success.

He fears it may cause offense to Muslims, although he treats Muhammad gingerly, feeling “great apprehension concerning the writing of this section”.

I am Allah, the Wise, the All-Powerful, yet these days even I get a little nervous talking about Islam.

He indemnifies his publishers “from any and all outrage, fatwa, or all-out jihad that may result from the contents of the portions of this book pertaining to Islam.”

No doubt the old rogue savors the irony that the most appreciative readers of his Last Testament are likely to be atheists. He might even have written it specially for them.

Jillian Becker    November 1, 2011

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Note to our readers:  The publishers of The Last Testament have let us know that “God could not be more thrilled” with our review.