Power Line’s Scott Johnson writes:

An attorney friend of mine who desecribes himself as a lifelong student of the Kennedy family has circulated the following email in honor of one anniversary that will pass almost entirely unremarked in the mainstream media:

I thought I would take a moment to bother you all, ladies included, to remind everyone that this is the 40th anniversary of the infamous Chappaquiddick incident in which an inebriated Senator Ted Kennedy marked a reunion of his brother Bobbie’s “Boiler Room” girls by driving one to her death off the Dyke Road bridge.

This manslaughter might have been forgiven if Kennedy hadn’t decided to evade responsibility for the accident and cover it up by failing to report it, trying to co-opt one of his aides to cop to being the driver, and then leaving them to try and fix it for him for over seven hours.

Worse, Mary Jo Kopechne, whose drowned body was found in a position trying to eke out the last molecules of air within the submerged car, was left to drown by the self-involved Senator, who chose not to seek immediate help.

After proceedings by a Kennedy-friendly judicial system in Massachusetts, Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and had his driver’s license suspended. But perhaps the crowning event was Kennedy’s appalling nationally-televised apologia, which I remember viewing on TV, and which still reigns as probably the worst and most self-indulgent political pitch ever… 

Ted Kennedy has styled himself an opponent of wealth and privilege, but his career is a tribute to their power when wielded by a man of the left. The lesson of Chappaquiddick thus remains timely forty years on.

Obama has appointed John Holdren as his ‘Science Czar’. (As we have said before these ‘Czars’ would be more accurately titled ‘Commissars’.)

What may we expect of him?

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;

• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Read more here.

‘Bush derangement syndrome’ was irrational, demonstrating  how the political left is the side of the emotions. Such ‘reasons’ as were given for it – and still are – do not stand up to scrutiny.

Now there are those who accuse rational critics of Obama as manifesting a similar sickness, calling it ‘Obama derangement syndrome’. Some of these are conservatives and Republicans! Even that doughty warrior for freedom, David Horowitz, has made this accusation in Front Page Magazine.   

Well, there is an ‘Obama derangement syndrome’, but it is not in the heads of those who oppose him. We are sure of this because we are among them. True, the degree to which we are outraged and appalled by Obama’s mind-set and policies and the threat he constitutes to America and the world cannot be exaggerated. But we continually explain the very sound reasons why we think of him as we do.

So what is ‘Obama derangement syndrome’? It is the irrational adoration of him.

The mainstream media display it constantly. The editor of Newsweek, Evan Thomas, went so far as to declare recently on MSNBC: ‘Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.’

 And Chris Matthews’s comment on MSNBC on February 13, 2008, will long be remembered: ‘I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people [!] get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.’

Okay then. If Obama is the Second Coming, prepare yourselves, ye worshipers, for the  Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. 

The BBC, once  renowned for its truthful and objective reporting, now a shill for terrorists and lefty despots, legally extorts money from every TV watcher and radio listener in Britain under the age of 75. Although it depends on public money, it ignores all public criticism. Its arrogant self-righteousness is almost as sickening as its sustained propaganda for immoral causes.  

The admirable Charles Moore of The Daily Telegraph wrote this to the BBC operations director of TV licencing: 

Dear Mr Shimeild,

On October 18, 2008, The Russell Brand Show on BBC Radio 2 broadcast a nine-minute sequence in which the presenter, Brand, and his guest, Jonathan Ross [a low, filthy-minded, cruel, altogether disgusting  show-off – JB], left messages on the answering machine of the then 78-year-old actor, Andrew Sachs [a great actor, refugee from Nazi Germany – JB]. In these, Ross shouted that Brand had “****** your granddaughter”. Further obscene and insulting messages broadcast included remarks about Mr Sachs’s granddaughter’s menstruation, and whether Mr Sachs would now kill himself because of the shame. The pair joked, on air, that they would “find out where Andrew Sachs lives, kick his front door in and scream apologies into his bottom”.

As a result of public outrage at this broadcast, several people left the BBC. Jonathan Ross, however, was only suspended for three months. It has been reported that Jonathan Ross earns £6 million a year from the BBC. Despite being a corporation mainly funded by the taxpayer, in the form of the licence fee, the BBC refuses to reveal the figure for Ross’s contract, but it has not denied it. If the reported amount is correct, Ross is by far the best-paid person in its history.

The Public Purposes of the BBC are, says its Charter, the “main object” of the BBC’s existence. They state that the corporation must take the lead in “sustaining citizenship and civil society” and “stimulating creativity and cultural excellence”. The Ross/Brand obscene broadcast – and several other broadcasts by Ross – are clearly contrary to the Public Purposes. The fact that Ross remains in post, paid an enormous sum, shows that the BBC has contempt for its own Public Purposes.

Since the BBC is breaking its own Charter, it has forfeited its right to collect a compulsory tax – the licence fee – from everyone who possesses a television. I wrote in public, at the time of the broadcast last autumn, that, in the circumstances, I would not pay my licence fee again. The circumstances have not improved. I hereby inform you, therefore, that I refuse to renew my licence, but I shall continue to keep and watch my television…

The BBC may take Mr Moore to court. We await developments. 

Little Green Footballs makes note of the BNP’s friends in America.

[Introductory note: As we are having a very interesting discussion on our post below, Christianity: an indictment, we thought we would add to the interest by reminding those of our readers who know, and informing those  who don’t, about Zoroastrianism. Certain similarities between  its myths and those of Christianity provide fuel for thought.]

Zarathustra founded a very interesting religion. He really did exist. He was born somewhere in Iran, probably between 1700 and 1500 BCE. Along with some ancient accounts of his life that do not strain credulity too far, a collection of poetic sayings called the Gathas, which are authoritatively ascribed to him, are all that is known.

But the great spin-doctor Legend has filled out his story with a set of anecdotes, not all of them reserved for him alone. Among them are these:

· He was born of a virgin.

· All nature rejoiced at his birth.

· He laughed at the moment he was born.

· For a certain period as a young man he withdrew to live alone on a wild mountain, meditating on righteousness, conversing with angels, growing in knowledge and wisdom, until he was ready to descend and teach a new faith.

· A tempter came to him and tried to bribe him to give up his faith, but Zarathustra scorned him, and the evil one was defeated.

·He experienced a vision of divinity as he emerged from a river in which he had been ritually purified.

· His life was ended by an act of cruel murder.

· Three thousand years after his death, a son procreated by his own seed will be the ultimate Saviour of mankind.

Zarathustra was never held to be a god, only the prophet of the one true God revealed through him. This, his monotheism (as it is called despite some reasons for cavilling, which we shall come to), was a new idea in Iran. The old religion of Iran – that is to say, the Aryan folk-religion – was a polytheistic cult, the same as that of the Aryans of India. (The words ‘Aryan’ and ‘Iranian’ have the same derivation.) Zarathustra’s new religion, which we call Zoroastrianism after the Greeks, who transcribed its founder’s name as Zoroaster, retained some of the old forms of worship. He also preserved but revolutionised some of the old beliefs by – astonishingly perhaps – inverting their moral significance. Thus he declared the former good spirits, the deva, to be evil; and the former evil spirits, the asura, to be good. The Iranian form of the Indian asura was ahura. Zarathustra’s one true God himself bore the title of ahura: he was Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, or the Lord Wisdom.

The existence of good and evil powers, however they were named, was the most important idea that Zarathustra’s new religion took over from the old. But there was also in the old cult a seed of another, related, idea which through Zarathustra’s teaching was to become in time a world-changing religious concept: that humanity has a necessary part to play in the cosmic drama of divine creation.

When the rituals of worship, such as the sacrifice of beasts, were enacted by the devout of the old cult, the belief was that the mortal creature was thus helping to maintain natural order. Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night, set in their rhythmic rightness by divine powers, were reinforced by the actions of men, who were its beneficiaries. By pleasing the gods, they were doing themselves good. Along with the desire for good to befall them, went the fear of evil; fear that without demonstration of human gratitude, without supplication and propitiation, the divinities might withdraw from mankind the benefits of the natural order on which their survival depended. Men needed the gods, and had some power to sway them, but the gods did not need men.

Zarathustra endowed mankind with far more power and grandeur. He saw man as the indispensable partner of God in the work of creation. Humanity has an essential role in the realization of the divine scheme – nothing less than saving creation from the destructive power of evil by defeating it utterly and so bringing about the perfection of God’s ultimate ends.

It was perhaps the greatest, certainly one of the most far-reaching of religious ideas: that humanity has a necessary part to play in the cosmic drama of divine creation. It is the very idea of human beings having a purpose in the divine order of the universe. Every one of us has this purpose, set for us by Providence in the Great Scheme of All Things. It is a moral mission. By knowing what is good and acting on that knowledge, we human beings can save God’s universe from destruction by the evil powers. [It is an idea ascribed to Abraham and his progeny too. Abraham predated Zoroaster by – possibly – half a millennium.]

But that very statement gives rise immediately and unavoidably to a confounding question: if the Wise Lord is the one God and sole Source of this world, whence came these evil powers?

It is here that doubt may arise as to whether the word monotheism is strictly applicable to the Zoroastrian religion. For the answer to the question is: from Ahura Mazda’s twin brother, Angra Manya.

The names of the twain evolved into Ormazd and Ahriman. Zoroastrianism itself was to change through the centuries, as all religions do. Later generations brought it nearer to monotheism by recognising a Source beyond and above Ormazd and Ahriman, and the name of the Source, or First Principle, is Zrvana Akarana, Boundless Time. But even so, whether Ormazd and Ahriman were two matching creative Spirits, one Good and one Evil; or the creator God of this world and mankind opposed by a jealous, rebellious, inferior Spirit seems never to have been settled within the faith itself. (Nor within themselves by Judaism or Christianity.)

Zarathustra taught that Ormazd is Life, Light, Truth, Purity. All good comes from him, all order; the laws of nature and the ethical laws by which mankind should live. Ahriman is his antagonist, from whom comes all evil; he is Death, Darkness,Falsehood, Filth. The war between them is the history of the world. Their battlefield is the human soul. And it is for conquest of the human soul that the war is waged. At the end of time, with our human help if we keep our hands clean and our hearts pure by doing and thinking only the good, Ormazd will defeat Ahriman, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. His Kingdom will come. Darkness will be banished and the sun will shine forever.

Zarathustra believed that the end of time was near. He felt that he had been sent into the world by Ormazd to teach humanity its mission of redemption just before the final battle. He hoped and believed that he and all who followed him would live to witness the victory of the Good and the dawning of the Kingdom.

But the Prophet died with that hope unrealised. Time went on, and still the end of days seemed far off. So new prophecy foretold a future Saviour. Three helpers to salvation would be born, a thousand years apart, and the third would be the Saviour himself. All of them would be the sons of Zarathustra. Their mothers would be virgins, each of whom in her time would bathe in a lake in which the Prophet had deposited his sperm for the purpose of procreating a son. After the third and last son, Shayosh, is born and fulfils his earthly mission, the Kingdom will come. Then will Ormazd vanquish Ahriman and evil be destroyed forever. The dead shall be raised and there will be a Last Judgement.

Every soul will have been judged once before, when the life of the person it belonged to ended in death. Zoroastrianism has a Heaven and Hell (and a Purgatory too, introduced at some later, uncertain stage). When death releases an individual soul it goes to its reward or punishment. Its journey takes it to the Bridge of Judgement where it is met by a personal spirit-conductor to guide it to its destination. The spirit who meets a good soul is beautiful and guides it to Heaven, where it will know only joy in the company of angels and archangels, feasting and singing with them. The spirit who meets a sinful soul is hideous and guides it to the dark underworld ruled by Ahriman, where it will undergo relentless torment. At the first sight of the spirit on the bridge, each human soul instantly knows its fate, for it recognizes the one who has come to meet it: it’s own True Self, made beautiful or ugly by the thoughts, words and deeds of its life.