Obama’s 2010 health-care law was a levelling, socialist, collectivist, wealth-redistributing, government-enlarging measure. It was a power-grab, in the name of “compassion” as always –  the pretence by the left that the governing elite has nothing so much at heart as the welfare of the poor. The poor must have free stuff. Everyone must have free stuff so that no one is any different from anyone else – except of course the power-elite (what they called the “nomenclatura” in Soviet Russia).

But stuff does not come free. If some are getting something without paying for it, someone else is giving to them – involuntarily, in the collectivist state. “Free” means the state pays. The state gets its money from – well, from the people actually. The socialist, collectivist, redistributing state robs Peter to give free stuff to Pauline.

Among the free stuff Pauline must have is health-care. Obama’s health-care law requires contraception and sterilization to be included in all health insurance policies. There must be “free” contraceptives available to all women. They must be able to copulate without fear of conceiving. To have a baby is a “punishment” according to Obama. If conception accidentally happens, they must be able to have a “free” abortion. Copulating is good but conceiving is bad. Babies are bad for women’s health. And, besides, having a baby or an abortion is much more expensive than contraception.

Of course if every man and woman paid for their own health care just as they pay (or as most of them still do in America) for their food and shelter and clothing, the budgeting choices would concern nobody else. But freedom for the individual to make his and her own choices is precisely what the all-controlling, levelling, collectivist state is ideologically against. To prevent such freedom was the real reason why “Obamacare” was enacted.

To achieve their aim, Obama and cronies must ignore the Constitution. In any case it’s an outdated document, they say. As is stated in the official organ of the Dark Side, the New York Times:

The Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect … entitlement to food, education and health care.

By “the rest of the world” is meant places like Greece which recognize – to their financial embarrassment – that there’ s an entitlement to health care and everything. That’s the nub of the Obama collectivist ideology. All are entitled to have it, so some must pay for everyone to have it. Even if it brings the country to economic ruin.

However, those who pay must not be allowed to buy it for themselves. What selfishness! Private purchase is forbidden.

A Wall Street Journal editorial reports this and comments:

The HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] rule prohibits out-of-pocket costs for birth control, simply because Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s regulators believe no woman should have to pay anything for it. To take a larger example: The Obama Administration’s legal defense of the mandate to buy insurance or else pay a penalty is that the mere fact of being alive gives the government the right to regulate all Americans at every point in their lives

But there was a small difficulty, a minor nuisance. Some religions do not think of reproduction as a punishment and actually forbid contraception and abortion. They don’t see the question as one of health as the state pretends it is, but of morals. So the administration will allow an exception. Churches that object to birth control and abortion need not offer cover for them to their employees, and the employees may claim these “free” services directly from the insurers.

Of course they cannot and will not be free.

This is from PowerLine:

First, there is no possible constitutional basis on which the federal government can order insurance companies to provide specified services for free. Second, the idea that the cost of contraception and abortion services will be borne by insurance companies is absurd. Obviously, insurance companies will quote premiums based on the total cost of the coverage in the proposed policy. If the policy includes contraception and abortion, those costs will be included in the premium, regardless of whether those particular services are designated as “free” to the employee and/or the employer. It is the employee, of course, who ultimately bears the cost.

We’ll all ultimately bear the cost, which is our freedom.

Freedom itself, not health or religious doctrine, is the vital issue.

Religion has always been a principal cause – perhaps the principal cause – of Manmade Human Suffering.

Christians of all stripes practiced religious intolerance for hundreds of years. At present, however, Christians are the victims of it. They are being persecuted and killed in large numbers, mostly by Communists and Muslims.

In an article in this month’s issue of Commentary magazine, The Worldwide Attack on Christians, David Aikman writes:

A Pew Forum study in 2011 estimated that Christians are persecuted, either by government or hostile social forces, in an incredible 131 of the world’s 193 countries, and they constitute 70 percent of the world’s population. The World Evangelical Alliance believes that 200 million Christians are being singled out for persecution at any one time. At a 2011 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference in Lithuania on the topic of Christian persecution, one delegate estimated that approximately 105,000 Christians lose their lives every year for their faith — a figure that translates into approximately one Christian killed every five minutes.

The informative article is let down by an absurd conclusion:

However much it helps those being persecuted is a matter of debate. But, still, we can pray.

What sort of a god have they invented who needs to be asked to protect his suffering faithful before he’ll take any notice of what’s happening to them and do something about it? And how many centuries of his failing to live up to his reputation for infinite goodness will it take to convince them that he isn’t going to do what they ask anyway?

But to return to the human persecution of Christians: suddenly it’s become a topic in the mass media, or at least in Newsweek.

Nina Shea reports in the National Review:

Best-selling author, film director, women’s-rights advocate, former Dutch parliamentarian, Islamist death-threat survivor, refugee from a Somalian forced marriage, and a fierce champion of individual freedoms — that of others as well as her own — Ayaan Hirsi Ali has demonstrated her courage once more. In the cover story she penned for the current issue of Newsweek, entitled The War on Christians, … Hirsi Ali gives a tour d’horizon of the most politically incorrect subject of all human-rights reporting: the ongoing religious persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. … She criticizes the media for giving short shrift to this development, favoring instead the [totally false – JB] narrative that Muslims are the victims of religious persecution by the West. …

She asserts: “The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity — and ultimately of all religious minorities — in the Islamic world is at stake.”

Nothing less. And nothing more.

We deplore religious persecution. We deplore religion.

We don’t say religion has never been good for anyone, but we do say it has done incalculable harm.

We don’t imagine that wars and persecutions would never happen again if religion were to vanish from the earth. But we profoundly wish it would. By as much as human suffering would be reduced by its going, happiness would be increased.

President Reagan declares: “We do not believe that life is so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.”

Melanie Phillips writes:

A new book, Die Kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun], written by Prof Dr Fritz Vahrenholt and geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, has caused a sensation even in advance of its official publication yesterday. For Prof. Vahrenholt, a renewable energy expert, was one of the fathers of the modern German green movement and believed everything preached by the IPCC. But … he is now a far sadder and wiser man:

Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

In his book he explains how he dug into the IPCC climate report and was horrified by what he had found. Then add the 10 years of stagnant temperatures, failed predictions, Climategate e-mails, and discussions he had with dozens of other skeptical elite scientists. That was more than enough. … “I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”’

She concludes:

How could so many apparently sane and sensible people have departed so comprehensively from reason over the anthropogenic global warming scam and to have placed such blind faith in renewable energy sources? Several immediate reasons come to mind – indeed, I have enumerated them on many occasions – such as the brainwashing grip of environmental ideology, the western retreat from reason and truth, the manipulation of grant-funding, the intimidation of rigorous scientists, and the fact that so many [scientists] have sloppily endorsed AGW theory without bothering to look at how the IPCC actually reached its bogus conclusions.

But the deeper question still remains. What is it in the psyche of the western mind that has caused so many people not only to be seduced by a set of obvious myths and fallacies over AGW theory but to be utterly resistant to every scrap of evidence … that showed they were totally out to lunch?

(The same question could be asked of people who believe in God or gods.)

John Hinderaker at PowerLine quotes Melanie Phillips and comments:

One by one, the more honest of the scientists who fell for the anthropogenic global warming hoax are confessing their error. …

I would add, with respect to the IPCC reports, that they are not only sloppy but contradictory. If someone tells you he agrees with the IPCC report, you should ask him, Which one?

And this is also from PowerLine, by Steven Hayward:

As John [Hinderaker] noted here Tuesday, and I have noted several times over the last few weeks, the climate campaign is suffering body blows on an almost daily basis. The latest is the report, based on new and more comprehensive satellite data, that the ice melt in the Himalayas has been nil — zip, zilch, nada — over the last ten years.

Here’s how the left-wing [AGW-promoting] Guardian newspaper in Britain reports it:

“The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.” …

It’s fun watching these guys fall on their face in real time. The whole circus is falling apart much faster than I expected. I can tell you that around Washington the whole climate change angle is slowly being dropped from conversation … It’s almost like talking with normal people again.

Post Script: Go here to read about the work of  the  Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who holds that the central factor regulating Earth’s climate is the the intensity of solar radiation.

An Iranian reader, Kourosh, tells us that “Iranians don’t care about Mahdi or any of those things. I’m Iranian and I can tell you that most Iranian youth hate Islam and love America/Israel. It’s the Arabs that are the problem. Remember that Iran is a multiethnic country, only 60% of Iran is truly Iranian.”

To illustrate what he says about Iranian youth hating Islam, he sent us video links.

Here’s one of the videos showing an Iranian burning the Koran.

And here we can see tides of men and women surging with ferocious violence, and great courage, in protest against the ruling regime of religious fanatics.

He asks us, “Why do you only show bad things about Iran and Iranians? Why do you dehumanize Iranians? Show something good about Iran.”

With those questions he sent us links to videos (here and here) showing the beauty and grandeur of Iran, both natural and manmade, with glimpses of monuments to its splendid history.

We admire the beauty and the grandeur. And we do not “dehumanize” anyone except those who act inhumanly – and they dehumanize themselves. But our business is to speak out against political evil and the cruelty of religion, and at present we find both in Iran.

It’s encouraging to see that many Iranians want regime change. We wish the US would support the protest movement. Obama’s refusal to do so is disgraceful and dangerous. Regime change in Iran would likely rid the world of the worst threat hanging over it –  nuclear arms in the hands of the mullahs and Ahmadinejad.

We are grateful to Kourosh for the links, and for providing us with an opportunity to explain our views.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas score a victory, with only a US general being fired.

Here in part is the story as told and commented on by Diana West:

One day, William G. “Jerry” Boykin, a highly decorated retired Army general and ordained minister, and a founding member and leader of Delta Force, was scheduled to speak at a West Point prayer breakfast.

We find the thought of a prayer breakfast unpalatable, but that’s straying from the topic.

The next day, following a campaign to stop Boykin’s appearance by what the New York Times describes as “liberal veterans’ groups, civil liberties advocates and Muslim organizations,” Boykin was not scheduled to speak at West Point. “In fulfilling its commitment to the community,” West Point announced, “the U.S. Military Academy will feature another speaker for the event.” …

You can bet your last bullet the replacement speaker will not have identified, studied and himself experienced jihad – in military terms, the enemy threat doctrine – as Lt. Gen. Boykin has. This makes Boykin’s abrupt cancellation an information-war victory for the Muslim Brotherhood something few in Washington or West Point will even notice.

Muslim Brotherhood? Isn’t that in Egypt? How does the Muslim Brotherhood figure into a story about West Point?

Prominent in the stop-Boykin coalition is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), known mainly for sound bite-ready spokesmen who present an Islamic point of view on TV. More important is CAIR’s place in the Muslim Brotherhood constellation of front groups as an entity founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise, the jihad terror group Hamas.

This revelation emerged during the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial in a document authored by the Muslim Brotherhood itself. It attests to the presence in the United States of multiple Muslim Brotherhood front groups, including CAIR, which remains an unindicted co-conspirator in that case. The FBI cut off official contacts with CAIR in 2008.

Such information is documented in “Shariah: The Threat to America,” a book Boykin and I and 17 others, including former CIA director James Woolsey and former Reagan Pentagon official Frank Gaffney, co-authored in 2010. I wouldn’t be surprised if the book played some animating role in the Battle over Boykin at West Point, won by CAIR and celebrated in all the best bastions impregnable to fact. …

Some animus toward Boykin may form in reaction to the evangelical brand of Christianity he expresses on faith and war in churches across the country. Back in 2003, following the publication of snippets of these talks, the Pentagon investigated Boykin’s invocations of “Satan” as the enemy, and his attesting to his faith in the Christian “real God” over his enemy’s “idol.”

So in gagging on the prayer breakfast, we weren’t far off topic after all.

However, the outrage here is not Boykin’s Christianity, but a great US military academy’s capitulation to the impudent demands of a terrorist-founded, terrorist-funding, jihad-promoting Islamic organization.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) objected to the use by the New York City Police Department  (NYPD) of a factual documentary film called The Third Jihad in their counterterrorism training courses. CAIR, which has ties to terrorist organizations, demanded that the NYPD stop using it. The NYPD meekly submitted to CAIR’s demand. 

Here’s a trailer of the film:

A 30-minute version of the full video may be found here.

The film’s director, Wayne Kopping, writes:

In May 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg posited that the individual who packed a Nissan Pathfinder full of explosives and parked it in Times Square, was likely a homegrown American “with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something.”  …

The terrorist turned out to be Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen. And, not surprisingly, Shahzad wasn’t upset about the health care bill. After pleading guilty in court he said, “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim-soldier.” He was upset, as he put it, over “American occupation of Muslim Lands.”

Shortly after the attack, Bloomberg prematurely asserted that there was no evidence suggesting the bomber was part of any recognized terror network. Shahzad later told the court he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to learn bomb-making and other related skills.

Could it be that Bloomberg has underestimated the threat of Islamist terror, or is there another agenda?

The issue has again become relevant in recent days. The New York Times ran a series of articles and editorials blaming the NYPD for using the film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America as part of their counter-terrorism training. …

Following publication of the articles, Mayor Bloomberg stated that NYPD used “terrible judgment” in showing the film, despite admitting that he had never seen it.

We were not aware that the NYPD was using the film, but when we learned of it some months ago, we were pleased that the officers would have an opportunity to learn about the indoctrination taking place in certain segments of Muslim society in America. The film reveals what viewers are unlikely to see on the evening news: What terrorists, radical preachers and Islamists are saying in their own words, in their own mosques and media, to their followers.

The film exposes how radicals employ the dual strategies of “violent Jihad,” along with a “cultural Jihad,” … to gradually expand their influence over Western society.

Now, Mayor Bloomberg, The New York Times and others want to bar law enforcement officers from seeing the film. The question is, why?

We reject, outright, the charge that our film is anti-Muslim or that it casts a shadow over the entire Muslim community. …  The film is narrated by, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim-American, who has dedicated his life to exposing the threat of radical Islam. 

Our critics have failed to mention these points and have chosen not to challenge the film on the merits of its thesis or content.

Perhaps the reason Mayor Bloomberg wants The Third Jihad banned is the same reason he insinuated the Times Square bomber was a health care terrorist — namely, CAIR.

CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) is one of many Muslim interest groups that purport to represent the Islamic community in America, but in reality have well established ties to Hamas and other terror groups.

CAIR was designated by the U.S. Justice Department for its role in terror financing during the nation’s largest-ever trial on the subject. As a result, the FBI has officially severed all ties with the “advocacy organization.”

Outside of its support for terror organizations, CAIR works to quickly and effectively to silence any discussions about radical Islam by playing the racism card and accusing critics of Islamophobia. CAIR’s devices are effective.

CAIR … branded the film “anti-Muslim propaganda” in a press release. This was followed by a CAIR-led protest on the steps of City Hall calling for the resignation of the NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The entire episode could have been a chapter in The Third Jihad. We are now seeing “cultural Jihad” in action. In order to avoid agitating Muslim constituents, Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly are backing away from the film, regardless of its merits.

The net result is that CAIR, a designated Muslim interest group with ties to terror financing, is now telling the NYPD how it should go about fighting terror. If that’s not the ultimate act of subversion, I don’t know what is.

In an article that makes good sense until the very last sentence, Ken Blackwell writes at Townhall:

The recent high-level comings and goings between Jerusalem and Washington remind us of nothing so much as all those “consultations” between top-level officials of two other democratic allies seventy-six years ago. In 1936, everyone wanted to stop the German army coming into the de-militarized Rhineland, but no one was willing to use force to prevent it. Hitler sensed this weak resolve in the Americans and the British. The Americans were still in the throes of isolationism in 1936. Britain wanted to talk about Hitler’s move into the Rhineland, but it did not want to use force, or even allow the threat of force.  Hitler could smell fear.  …

As the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran can sense weak resolve and fear in the US leadership now.

Consider this: Iran has been at war with the U.S. for more than thirty years. When they seized our U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, that was an act of war. When they recruited terrorists to kill 241 U.S. Marines and Navy corpsmen in Beirut in 1983, that, too, was an act of war. 

The Iranians are also at war with Israel. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly said he can foresee a world without the U.S. and Israel. He says Israel should be “wiped off the map,” that the Jewish state is but a “two-bomb country.” What kind of bombs would those be?

U.S. policy makers are desperate, it seems, to dissuade Israel from striking Iran. Gen. Martin Dempsey has been to Israel carrying that warning. Sec. Leon Panetta publicly worries that Israel may be planning a “surprise attack.” In Britain, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg frets that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons installation would be “potentially destabilizing.” 

What, one wonders, does Mr Clegg understand by the word “stable”, if what is happening in the Islamic world seems to him to be stability? And Iran’s threat must be seen as part – the most dangerous part – of the jihad that Islam is waging with ever greater ferocity and determination against the West.

Looking at the chaos, violence, oppression, and tumult throughout the region today, where exactly does the Right Honorable Mr. Clegg see the stability that might become “destabilized”?

As worrisome as an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities might be, Iran with a nuclear weapon is infinitely more dangerous. …

Israel reminds us that when a nation’s very survival is on the line, that nation will do whatever it must do to meet its sworn enemy. Israel followed the advice of American and British administrations. They urged [Israel] to evacuate Southern Lebanon. Now Hezbollah, supplied by Iran, rules there. Israel withdrew from Gaza. Now, Hamas, another Iranian cat’s paw, holds sway there. The Israelis — prodded by Bill Clinton and the illusory Oslo accords — let Yasser Arafat’s unreformed Palestinian terrorists have “authority” in the West Bank.

Today, surrounded by mortal enemies, with their backs to the wall, Israelis are told to take more “risks for peace” by a US. administration that is outraged by the sight of too many Jews in Jerusalem.

If we wait until the Iranians have sunk their nuclear weapons deep into hardened bunkers it will be too late. The Obama administration will not act in time. Later will be too late.

Israel: Don’t wait; hit the Iranian nuclear facilities now. The world will thank you for it.

The world will thank Israel?

If so, the sun will be blotted out by trillions of flying pigs.

How can it benefit Israel to give Alawites asylum when the Assad government falls?

Apparently the Israeli government is preparing to do so.

Will a victorious Sunni majority in Syria hunt down the Alawites in revenge for the dictatorial Assad rule? Some Israelis seem to think so.

But why does Israel want to protect them? And would its hospitality extend to the vicious mass-murderer Bashar Assad himself? No, he would surely not flee to Israel. The very idea boggles the imagination.

How would Israel cope with thousands of hostile Alawites within its borders, even if only for a few months or years?

This is from the Cyprus Mail:

Israel is making preparations to house refugees from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect should his government fall, Israel’s military chief told a parliamentary committee today.

“On the day that the regime falls, it is expected to result in a blow to the Alawite sect. We are preparing to take in Alawite refugees on the Golan Heights,” a committee spokesman quoted Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz as saying.

Assad has faced 10 months of popular revolt in which more than 5,000 people have been killed, according to United Nations figures. Israeli officials have said they do not expect his government to last more than a few months.

In a speech today, Assad again blamed the unrest on a foreign conspiracy against Syria.

His “foreign conspiracy” accusation includes Israel, of course. Israel and the US.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said last week that Assad “is weakening” and will fall this year.

“In my opinion … he won’t see the end of the year. I don’t think he will even see the middle of this year. It doesn’t matter if it will take six weeks or 12 weeks, he will be toppled and disappear,” Barak said.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel rarely censured the Assad government for its domestic crackdowns and has said little about the crisis that erupted last March. …

But in May last year, Israel accused Syria of orchestrating deadly confrontations on the ceasefire line between the two countries as a distraction from Assad’s bloody crackdown. …  Israeli sources note that Assad has not tried since then to turn the Golan into a “second front” in a bid to externalize his crisis.

Although Israel and Syria are technically at war, and Syria is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war of Israel’s foundation, the Golan Heights had long been quiet. …

Barak said Syrian weapons could be transferred to the militant Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, “something we view with great gravity. Syria is believed to possess chemical weapons.”

Assad, who is a willing cat’s paw for Iran, would transfer them to Hezbollah and probably has done so. It’s far less likely that a Sunni government in Syria would arm a militant Shia organization.

The elements of the story don’t add up. It is not Jewish lore, law, or pose to forgive enemies, and in this instance it would obviously be a very short-sighted, unjust, and dangerous thing to do.