Read the commentary, roll the clock back thirty years, and ask yourself how many Brits do you think would have believed it could happen in Great Britain today? What was unthinkable in Great Britain thirty years ago is reality today. This is “cultural jihad” at work.
"Lord Ahmed is a repugnant individual. Not only in appearance, but in association, character and morality. [H]e has threatened jihad on the House of Lords if their lordships should fail to meet his demands..." [emphasis added] Cranmer
Twenty years ago who would have believed that today Harvard would create “women only” gym hours to meet the demands of Muslims. Or a state legislature would allow an imam to open its session with a prayer that calls on “victory over those who disbelieve.” Or the Fairfax County (Virginia) police department dropping an anti-terrorism training program after complaints from Muslim police officers – one of whom was engaging in the various types of subversion the training program was intended to prevent.
For the British Parliament to abandon its right to free speech by knuckling under to the intimidation tactics by Lord Ahmed will only invite more – and bolder – tactics. To think that we in America can follow the path Great Britain has trod and not end up dealing with the same intimidation tactics is the worst form of wishful thinking.
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KY brand of sexual lubricant already has TV ads that tout a creme for him and a creme for her which, when used together, does something "special" for each of them.
What kind of messages are we sending to our children when online and TV ads bearing these types of headlines are available at all hours for the kids to see?
Online, the headline "Dreaming of a Bigger Penis?" comes with a good looking young man lying on his bed, looking up at you. It does not have the addition of "Little Boy."
But you and I know the elementary boys will be giggling about it and showing it to each other. Middle and junior high school girls will be giggling about "penises" at the their lockers, while looking at their favorite boys' crotches trying to figure out which one's have the biggest. Some of those girls will find out, if they have not already. The boys will be laughing about penis size in the locker rooms and pointing at each other's dicks in the shower to prove they themselves don't need any "pills," and inadvertently shaming the innocent, closeted gay boys who get a hard-on, while bravely encouraging the straight boys to jerk it and prove they are men before emerging from the showers.
Creation of a web "dotsex" just for sex ads and porn is not against the first amendment or free speech; it is against the mulitculturist left [see article below] who want freedom of the press, even when the press is read by minors. You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater? Certainly; and just as certainly this is not a case of that; but there is an audience for everything, and for everything there is a audience that should not be involved. It is why we make age-related laws about so many subjects, from movies to alcohol, from video games to driver's licenses, to which crimes can cause teens to be tried as adults.
We adults in civilization ought not be able to titillate the horny teens who already have their pants full of throbbing meat, wondering where to put it. They are not being taught not to put it anywhere, because statistics prove that abstinence programs alone are not as effective as mixed education where the proper use of condoms and safer sex are also taught.
Chastity rings are a cool thing, and I hope they work for those teens who want them to work. But 8 year olds who innocently surf the web and find these ads on their favorite general information pages don't need to be thinking about their penises--or anyone else's. If this continues, we will eventually see "clitoral stimulus pills" advertised. KY brand of sexual lubricant already has TV ads that tout a creme for him and a creme for her which, when used together, does something "special" for each of them.
Can you imagine what the boys in the locker rooms will do that with that information? A social society does not need to publicly discuss penises in general, not in front of our toddlers and teens.
...because the brain is specifically an animal organ, a determinist would think that his thoughts are actions caused by specific psychical or physical conditions.
Determinism is the doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law. As doctrine, it allows only for mechanical causation of all things that have existence, once existed, or will exist. It was contained as a theory in the atomism of Democritus of Abdera, “who reflected upon the impenetrability, translation and impact of matter.” [Dict. Of Phil; Runes; 1942]
In human history it is the doctrine that “all the facts in the physical universe are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes.” [ibid]
In psychology it is the doctrine that the will is not free but is “determined by psychical or physical conditions.” [ibid]
I find it surprising that psychology, the science that combines epistemology with metaphysics as causes of human action, would conclude that free thought is not free, but rather is ruled by the same laws as those that rule gravity and vacuums and animal organs. Of course, it is only deterministic psychology that comes to this conclusion.
The field of psychology itself is so fragmented on the subject of free will vs. determinism that we rarely read about them.
“Incompatibilists maintain that our conceptions of free will and moral responsibility are at odds with determinism. Compatibilists deny this and insist that our notions of free will and moral responsibility are consistent with determinism. [ ] Libertarians maintain that we do have indeterminist free will (e.g. Kane 1996, O’Connor 1995, Campbell 1957). Eliminativists about free will maintain that free will doesn’t exist. [ ] However, many free will eliminativists maintain that even if determinism is false, we still lack the kind of indeterminist choice that is required by the folk notion (e.g. Pereboom 2001, Sommers 2005, Strawson 1986). On this view, our notion of free choice is incompatible with the facts, regardless of whether determinism is true or false.” Shaun Nichols; Department of Philosophy; University of Arizona How can psychology contribute to the free will debate?
But because the brain is specifically an animal organ, I suppose it not hard to see why a determinist would think that his thoughts are nothing but actions (or reactions) caused by specific elements of existence acting directly on his brain. This would give him the concept that all the reactions of his brain of which his brain can be conscious are reactions fully caused by those specific elements. He might even be led to believe that he is fully caused by all the things of which he is not aware.
Perhaps the python that swallowed the man in Africa had an effect on the full causation of some other man's employer, since his employer was there at the time the python ate the man. But since the employee himself was not there, he is only indirectly caused by the knowledge that pythons do eat men, that his employer was witness to such an event, and that he himself could be eaten by a gator if he visits Florida and gets too close to a pond in which a gator is hiding.
The man who was eaten by the python, unbeknownst to the employee, was going to invest a large sum of money into the employer's company. Since he was, instead, eaten before he could invest, the employee remained working for a small company he wished was larger—which it would have become—so that he could get paid more, so that he could buy a new car, so that he could take a vacation across the country. The employee is “fully caused” by the python's action, “caused” to work for a small company, “caused” into wishing for more pay, “caused” into desiring a car he does not have in order to see the Grand Canyon. The python caused all that by eating the man in the jungle of Africa before he could invest his money with the employee's employer.
No, it is not hard to see why a determinist would be “caused” to conclude these things.
But if free will begins with the freedom to think or not to think, to find a solution to something or to evade that solution, then free will exists. Call it by any name you wish, but a man who decides to evade reality “just because,” or “because he is tired of living,” or “because he is tired of being the one who must always find the solution,” or because, like John Galt, he has an ego which refuses to be destroyed by all the things that would otherwise “cause” him to be destroyed if he did not make the free choice to stop evading the truth and let the world go to hell—such actions by men prove that they can overcome all those things which determinsts say “full causes” them.
The truth is, men can choose. What they have before them to choose from may be fully determined by circumstances, but whenever there is more than the choice to “do or die,” so to speak, free will exists.
Even in a “do or die” situation, a man is free to die—if he so chooses.
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Man is not a deterministic puppet dangling on the strings of the butterfly effect.
Yesterday I wrote that physicalism is the doctrine “calling into question the notion that we need appeal to anything beyond or above the brain and body – an immaterial soul, for instance – to explain behavior and experience, whether normal or abnormal.”
It is not my authorship that gives physicalism its definition. It came from the newsletter of the Center for Naturalism, which has physicalism as its metaphysical basis.
Physicalism differs with naturalistic metaphysicalism in at least one specific concept. Physicalism holds that nothing is greater than the sum of its parts. When it comes to humans, physicalism, (also called scientific naturalism, or SN), the Center specifically states: “Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world...”
This is the butterfly effect. There is no reason to discount or deny this butterfly effect. While a butterfly that flaps its wings in China may actually cause a tornado in Kansas is beside the point. The point is that whatever the truth of anything is, for example whether or not the bufferly effect is real or not, that truth is the proof of existence.
SN holds that because we are connected to the rest of the world through existence, we are “fully caused creatures.” For the adherents of SN, this means every minute detail of existence is part of us and, therefore, we cannot claim to be “self-made” creatures.
Such SN believes the idea of being “self-made” is pretty egotistical.
“Our bodies and minds are shaped in their entirety by conditions that precede us and surround us,” states the Center's website. [emphasis added]
Physicalism discounts and denies any metaphysical significance to the idea that men's minds are capable of creating themselves from these preceding conditions. In other words, unlike our ability to make bricks from clay, then mortaring them together into a desired shape such a house, our brains are incapable of taking these preceding conditions and making bricks if that if what we desire to make, rather than accepting whatever it is that the preceding conditions have determined our minds will make of those conditions.
That is one reason that physicalism and scientific naturalism define themselves as deterministic. [Wikipedia]
Determinism is“The doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law [ ] and thus allow[s] only for mechanical causation,” i.e., the butterfly effect. [Dictionary of Philosophy; Runes; 1942]
The one law of the universe that determinism, physicalism, SN, and other doctrines fail to take into account is the law that man's mind is free to think or not. This is a position of egoism, not of egotism, and is part of the law of man's mind.
If man's mind is free to think when it wants to think, then the act of thinking denotes something willful. Willful thinking determines which “preceding conditions of the butterfly effect” that have been placed squarely in our paths by mechanical causation will be acted upon.
SN would have us believe that even though we are free to pick and choose, in most instances, which preceding effects we will think about, nevertheless we did not create those butterflys, and therefore we cannot call ourselves “self-made,” but must apply the metaphysical conclusion that we are, instead, “fully caused creatures” of deterministic nature.
The truth is, if men are free to pick and choose which facts of existence they act on, they are free not to act on the most important conditions that will determine their life-and-death situations.
Determinism and physicalism cannot accertain why one person chooses to remain in the path of a hurricane while everyone else leaves. Perhaps that person knowingly stays for all the reasons which even to him or herself are the wrong ones. Does a meteorolical storm chaser chase tornadoes only for the science? Can it not be that some choose to overcome the fear of tornadoes by chasing them, as one might hope to overcome the fear of spiders by holding a tarantula? Could it be that some storm chasers have a death wish? Could it be that some are facinated by the very fact of existence itself and wish to understand the mechanical laws of nature?
It is the law of the nature of Man himself that he needs to “appeal” to something beyond physicalism. It is this law of the nature of man that give proof to the fact of existence that Man is not deterministic and is not a puppet on the strings of butterflys.
To suggest that somehow the mind is independent of the organ that gives it its existence is nonsense.
In the January-February newsletter from the Center for Naturalism, the case is made for the rise of physicalism, the doctrine"calling into question the notion that we need appeal to anything beyond or above the brain and body – an immaterial soul, for instance – to explain behavior and experience, whether normal or abnormal. [ ]
"This isn’t to say that physicalist explanations are anywhere near complete," the newsletter goes on, "nor does it conclusively disprove the existence of the soul or some other immaterial aspect of ourselves – nothing could do that. But it is to say that as physicalism makes headway, the dualist hypothesis that the mind is categorically independent of the brain in some respect has less and less going for it."
Inherent in scientific naturalism, that form of naturalism that seems to be prevalent in today's moral marketplace, is the idea that others somehow believe the mind is independent of the brain.
I wish to set something straight here and now: the mind is a process of the brain, just as digestion is a process of the bowels. Without the bowels there would be no ability to digest. Without the brain there would be no ability to have a mind.
No one disputes the scientific idea that neurons firing in the brain, that chemicals and electricity must be active in the brain, that synapses must be created, and that other processes must be in effect for the mind to work properly, or to work at all.
To suggest that somehow the mind is independent of the organ that gives it its existence is nonsense. But when scientism suggests that the organ and its functions were "once considered categorically immaterial mental phenomena [but] are now shown to have a material basis in the nervous system," a straw man is being set up.
Scientific naturalism loves that straw man. They use it against the immaterialism of the soul.
The sum of the parts is greater than the parts alone. Ink, paper, and glue alone do not make a postage stamp. But the idea that when properly put together those things are not an immaterial metaphysical phenomena is wrong.
A postage stamp, or anything else that is metaphysical and therefore greater than the sum of its parts, is definitively immaterial. The material is the ink, paper, and glue. The immaterial is the "idea" that when properly put together those things can create a postage stamp. Ideas are immaterial.
Yet no one disputes that a postage stamp is made of material. Objectively, however, a "stamp" is immaterial when it is considered to be the idea of an object made legal only by the production and acceptance of its existence by the proper authority.
No such stamp ever has to be produced. A stamp not produced yet definable is metaphysical, not physical. What is metaphysical is immaterial.
The mind is the metaphysical description of the events of the brain which, when analyzed, are greater than the sum of the physical parts that make it.
The "idea" of a light bulb, for instance, or of that postage stamp, is greater than the forces which create the synapse. It takes the metaphysical mind to put concepts together in the proper order in order to make sense of existence, to create stamps and light bulbs and space shuttles. It isn't the physical workings of the brain that do that. It is the mental workings of the mind, which of course do not and cannot exist without the brain, any more than sight can exist without the eyes.
But the recognition that what the eyes see is a tree or a bird or a newborn human being is greater than the sight unrecognized.
The "notion that we need appeal to anything beyond or above the brain and body" is not the straw man scientific naturalism makes it out to be.
Instead, it is a notion that metaphysical naturalism takes for granted, because metaphysical existence is properly a matter of the mind, not of the brain.
NEW YORK – Hush Money Paid to Prevent "Outing" the Minister
Truth Wins Out (TWO) today called on Colorado officials to investigate New Life Church, after the Associated Press revealed that New Life paid money to keep a male volunteer from publicly disclosing a romantic affair with the church’s former minister Ted Haggard.
“Until conservative churches stop shaming gay people and learn to accept them, we will see more tawdry scandals,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “These calamities are a direct result of the closet.” TWO
Such calamities are indeed the direct result of closets where they don't belong, unnatural in their metaphysical being, unethical in their use of the public trust in our places of worship.
The Future of Gold
On September 17, the Treasury announced the creation of the "Supplementary Financing Account" in the Federal Reserve. This is a capital reserve in the Fed financed by the Treasury selling new debt, but its excess capital is "trapped" and does not immediately reach currency in circulation. As of January 2, $259 billion is in this cash pool and $365 billion counting the Treasury's "General Account." The capital itself is money borrowed by the public, so its immediate net effect is deflationary.
With an insolvent public and no foreign demand for Treasuries, the Federal Reserve will monetize debt to finance its continued bailouts and economic stimulus. This is purely created capital pumped right into the system. This is not anything new for the Fed — for the past two decades, it has kept interest rates artificially low and created massive artificial wealth in the form of malinvestment and debt financing.
Purchasing-power destruction is much more desirable by the Fed. Its effects are "hidden" to a certain extent, as the public doesn't see any nominal losses and only feels wealth destruction in obscure price inflation. It breeds perceptions of illusionary strength rather than deflation's exaggerated weakness. The typical taxpayer will panic when his or her mutual fund goes down 20% but will probably not react to an expansion of monetary supply unless it reaches 1970s price-inflationary levels.
On December 2, COMEX spot prices for gold were 1.99% higher than December gold futures, which are for December 31 delivery. This is highly unusual and it provides strong evidence for the theory that the Fed is abandoning its support for gold shorts.
The unique nature of gold and precious metals provides its desirability in this Fed operation. Gold has little utility except as a store of value, unlike most commodities (like oil, which is consumed as quickly as it's extracted and refined), so its supply/demand schedule has unusual traits.
My predictions: gold at $2,000/oz by the end of the year and $10,000/oz by 2012 and silver at $30/oz by the end of the year and $130/oz by 2012. Naufal SanaullahLudwig von Mises Institute
Weisberg on Obama's "Vision"
Myrhaf rightly notes that the real meaning of Barack Obama's recent swipe at Rush Limbaugh is to attack the Man with the Golden Microphone as a surrogate for holding pro-capitalist principles.
... I think Obama's statement is about a deeper issue than any single radio personality. Rush Limbaugh is a symbol here for holding principles. Granted, Obama is overestimating the Republicans by implying they might have principles any more, but that is what he is truly attacking in his statement. [emphasis added]
He elaborates more on that last thought: If the Republicans had free market principles, they would be fighting for separation of economy and state. Any compromise they make with Obama on a stimulus bill helps only the side that wants more big government. Freedom is not advanced by any compromise any more than a man's health is advanced if he only takes half a dose of poison instead of a full dose. [emphasis added] gus van horn
For the benefit of all my regular readers, I apologize for getting today's blog out so late. An illness in the family, one that is getting better, prevented the earlier publication. CEC
Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and a Democrat-majority legislature passed “universal” health insurance, gaining budget-busting cost overruns and a state begging breathlessly for $21 billion more federal transfer payments to fund it for three more years.
Last January, governor Schwarzenegger’s expensive and unwieldy proposal for so-called “universal” health care finally gasped its last breath, after a long year of lobbying and coalition-building by the governor’s team. A year later, in 2009, legislators should attempt to learn from two states that have legislated “universal” care.
Hawaii imposed universal health care in 1974 by passing a law compelling employers to provide health insurance and forcing them to pay half the cost of a plan directly. Facing resistance from small businesses, the state has never been able to “close the deal.” As late as 1993, a supportive scholar described Hawaii’s efforts at “universal” coverage as “lodged somewhere in midstream.”
On the other hand, also in 1993, managers in the state’s health department managed to convince themselves that Hawaii had covered 95 percent of its population. As it turns out, in 1974, one in 50 Hawaii residents was uninsured. Today, after more than three decades of mandatory insurance, that number stands at one in 10. Of course, Hawaii is not immune to national trends, but scholars have concluded that the state’s pay-or-play mandate might have reduced the ranks of the uninsured by 5 to 8 percent at best. The plan fails to deliver, but Hawaiian advocates of government-dictated health care just won’t quit.
Last year they rolled out yet another program – “Keiki Care,” compulsory “free” health insurance for children without coverage, who are in families with incomes too high for Medicaid or other state programs. Republican governor Linda Lingle shuttered it in October, barely seven months after its launch, after learning that 85 percent of the kids enrolled had previously been covered by a private, non-profit plan for only $55 per month.
Republican governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts collaborated with a Democrat-majority legislature to pass “universal” health insurance in April 2006. Although he tried to backpedal during the presidential primaries, he cannot avoid the plan’s legacy: budget-busting cost overruns and a state begging breathlessly for $21 billion more federal transfer payments to fund it for three more years.
Notwithstanding a bailout from the federal government, the state has had to raise taxes on businesses – a task the legislature delegated to the bureaucrats who run the program. While hospitals' uncompensated care dropped from $166 million in the first quarter of 2007 down to $98 million in the first quarter of 2008, or $272 million annually, the budget for “universal” health care in Massachusetts is running at $869 million: $3.19 of taxpayers' dollars spent for every dollar of uncompensated care avoided.
Californians can be grateful that governor Schwarzenegger failed to impose a similar regime but those who proposed it are more active than ever. David Zingale, who spearheaded the governor’s initiative, has joined the California Endowment, a foundation with $3 billion in assets, to lobby for health reform in Sacramento. These folks mean business.
The California Endowment spent $10 million in advertising for health “reform” in 2007. But the Endowment is not a charity that has succeeded in raising money through voluntary philanthropic donations. Rather, it is sitting on a pot of gold that the state taxed from Blue Cross of California’s surplus back in 1996, as a cost of getting the state’s permission to convert to a for-profit health plan. And to what end?
Such conversions were necessary because non-profit health plans were increasingly poorly capitalized as health costs rose, and threatened with insolvency. For-profit conversions simply allow beneficiaries to transfer some of the risk of rising health costs to shareholders.
The California Endowment does conduct some valuable research. Nevertheless, by imposing a special tax on Blue Cross to found this unaccountable organization, California has actually reduced the amount of money available for private health care, and increased the amount of money “invested” in advertising campaigns supporting government-run health care.
That kind of government plan, the evidence from Hawaii and Massachusetts suggests, tends to promise more than it can deliver and introduce more problems than it solves. In 2009, California taxpayers should demand more freedom to purchase the health care that best meets their needs. Making Health Savings Accounts tax deductible would be a good place for legislators to start.
...big government as epitomized by Obama's ideas thinks that causing business to spend and then to lose money is a good policy...
In one of President Obama's first outright, overt attempts to redistribute the wealth from those who have to those who were too lazy over the last 14 months to purchase--with Federal Assistance Rebates--their hdtv converters, he wants to delay the February 17th transition to the new broadcasting frequencies.
Neowin.net reported Obama made it clear that to him, "many Americans are not ready for the switch. The cut off date was scheduled for February 17, 2009 in America, which was to free up airwaves for emergency services.
"'We are extremely pleased the incoming administration is supportive of consumer efforts to ensure that the poor, elderly and rural consumers do not face economic hardship as we move broadcasting to digital transmission," said Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal policy for Consumers Union.'" Neowin.net
Those Kimmelman is speaking of are the have-nots. Redistributing the wealth to them would be in the form of billions of dollars lost from first responders whose frequencies will change to the old TV frequencies and were ready to make the switch; and broadcasting companies who did not budget nor prepare to run two transmitters at the same time. Are advertisers ready to pick up the tab to run their commercials for another four months on not one, but two, frequencies at the same time?
"As it stands now the FCC will not be backing down on its initial plan of February 17th unless Congress passes a judgment delaying the transition. As we get closer to the deadline the fighting will most likely intensify but at the end of the day the broadcasters already have plans in place to remove the old analog technology, the FCC has sold off the spectrum, it has advertised heavily for the transition and should not be delayed because a small minority procrastinated to upgrade their technology."
The billions of dollars already spent, compared to the loss that will be suffered by the procrastinators, is already money ready well spent, spent being the operative word.
In these hard economic times when big government as epitomized by Obama's ideas thinks that causing business to spend and then to lose money is a good policy, we can understand why President Reagan said big government is the problem.
The government had the absolute right to upgrade to the superior frequencies that will be used by TV broadcasters, in order to sell the old frequencies to other services who severly needed new ones.
But after delaying the transition for years because of technology problems, and then setting a date by which time billions of dollars have already been spent, that same government has no right to squander the money of the very capitalists who are going to help pay off the huge debts run up by Presidents Bush and Obama.
NOTE: "I do not want Obama to succeed."
On Wednesday, January 21, Rush Limbaugh explicitly stated about Obama, "I hope he fails."
The day before, in a blog about "lost art of communication" and saying what you mean, I published these words of my own:
"A President is [ ] a looter if he creates debt for future generations, robbing them of their ability to be free of the slavery of that debt. Our children and grandchildren, and probably our great-grandchildren, in other words our posterity, will be born as indendured servants of the IRS, or of whatever government agency is collecting the debt-reduction taxes in the future.
"That indenture may prevent our posterity from their own pursuit of happiness.
"The only people who want to see socialism succeed are
those who don't see [ ] that the fortune of America and its people is not made by redistributing wealth, but rather by its creation."
I am not one of those people who "does not see," and neither is Rush Limbaugh. I don't want our new President to succeed, either.
If he fails, I wrote, perhaps we will then get a President who is rooting for outright capitalism.
Do we need to increase our footprints and warm up globally, to prevent record cold temps from arriving even faster?
Twenty years ago today,
James E. Hansen testified before the Senate Energy Committee — in a room kept intentionally warm by committee staff — that the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests was already perceptibly influencing Earth’s climate.
Climate realists around the world have contended for years that the real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming to redistribute wealth.
On Monday, one of Gore's leading scientific resources, Goddard Institute for Space Studies chief James Hansen, sent a letter to Barack and Michelle Obama specifically urging the president-elect to enact a tax on carbon emissions that would take money from higher-income Americans and distribute the proceeds to the less fortunate. Noel Sheppard (Bio) NewsBusters
The "inconvenient truth" Al Gore wanted us to believe, which some people still believe, in spite of the mounting evidence of record low temps, and in spite of science that says those carbons and other pollutants in the atmosphere are keeping out the sun rather than trapping it inside, must be his worst nightmare: the hell he predicted is not going to burn us after all. It may freeze some of us. We may be in a minor ice age even as you read this.
"Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age," says the website Winningreen. "What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended."
This is a map of the "Ocean thermohaline conveyor system that transports warm, salty waters into the North Atlantic, tempering the climate of Northern Europe. If the conveyor should collapse on its return loop near Greenland and Iceland, Britain's climate could resemble Labrador." The next paragraph shows how that might happen.
"Now that the 1998 El Nino is disappearing off the 10 year scale, things are looking a bit different," says the website Alex Jones' Prison Planet. "Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades." [emphasis added]
Who is to determine which side has the backing of the evidence since it seems to be politically "correct" for the left to claim we are undergoing "global warming", yet other evidence which is not compiled by politically correct scientists says North America is cooling fast enough to put us into the next ice before I die.
If we follow the politics of Al Gore and James Hansen, we risk, if they are wrong, bringing on the next ice age even sooner. This current winter season and the season of '07-'08 set records for low temperatures and snowfall.
What if the act of increasing our carbon footprints staves off the ice age until we can put scientific evidence that is not contradictory to proper use?
China, which has increased its footprint 1000 fold over the last decade has record winters. The U.S. which has reduced slightly its own footprint, has also had record winters, and the average annual temperatures here have been measured as dropping. So do we need to decrease our footprints and warm up globally, or increase our footprints to prevent those record cold temps from coming even faster?
Or, are the choices actually to do the contrary of one of those actions: decrease our footprints and chill down (since the left claims we are warming); or increase our footprints to chill down since the other scientists claim the carbons are keeping the heat out?
"Evidence driven" scientific policies are not made in a vacuum. The policies are specifically metaphysical in nature. And metaphysical policies of the government are political. Whoever wins this "evidence driven" policy debate will probably never know which side is correct.
If we are actually experiencing global warming while at the same time experiencing the onset of the next ice age, everything we do to prevent warming will cause us to freeze that much faster.
When there are Muslims in America who have publicly spoken out against Jihad, why was Ingrid Mattson chosen for this interfaith prayer service?
Today, Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will deliver a prayer at the National Prayer Service, invited by President Obama. It is sufficiently problematic that ISNA, the organization of which Ingrid Mattson is president, was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial (which produced guilty verdicts on 108 counts). Mattson’s words and views beg the question: When there are Muslims in America who have publicly spoken out against Jihad, against shariah law, and against ISNA, why was Ingrid Mattson chosen for this interfaith prayer service?
In her own words:
"[C]onsider the role of American Muslims in the [specific] context of world events following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. I will acknowledge that since Muslim leadership must be responsive to events, this question cannot be answered completely in isolation of specific circumstances. The appropriate response will necessarily depend on the nature of the threat. At the same time, I will stress that any truly appropriate response must be firmly rooted in faith. [ ] People of faith have a certain kind of solidarity with others of their faith community that transcends the basic rights and duties of citizenship."
She did not author this in an article titled "Stopping Our Muslim Extremist Brothers." Instead, it was titled Stopping Oppression: an Islamic Obligation. Guess what "oppression" she meant.
In a reasoned "translation" of Mattson's words: the "role" of American Muslims must be judged in a "context" of events that happened after 9/11; cannot be judged "in isolation of specific circumstances; and must be rooted in faith with other Muslims, a faith that takes no note of the rights and duties of being Americans first. Instead, American Muslims "role" must be in solidarity with others of their "faith community."
Forget that American Jews, Catholics, Coptics, Hindus, atheists, Southern Babtists and others came together in a solidarity that specifically transcended their own congregational communities. Instead, they came together in the brotherhood and spirit that comes with having our rights and citizenship guaranteed.
"The true values of America are those which we decide to embrace as our own [because] the American Constitution, like foundational religious texts, can be read in many different ways."
Again, to translate: Muslims can pick and choose which American values to call "true" and then may decided to embrace only those, because they can read anything into the Constitution they wish.
She is wrong when she says the Constitution can be read in many different ways. There are only two ways: Originalism, and non-Originalism which covers everything the Founding Fathers wrote were not the intentions of that document and does not cover most of the things they wrote were the specific intentions of that document. Justifications for following non-Originalism are usually for the purposes of pragmatism, which obviously would serve the Muslim community as it picked-and-chose only the parts of the law they found served the ideas of Sharia, of Shura, of takaful insurance, or of anything else associated with Islam; but specifically nothing that does not serve Allah.
Mattson denies the existence of terrorist cells in the United States: "There's a prejudgment, a collective judgment of Muslims, and a suspicion that well 'you may appear nice, but we know there are sleeper cells of Americans,' which of course is not true. There aren't any sleeper cells.[emphasis added]
Mattson defends Wahhabism. All unbelievers (i.e. Muslims who do not accept the teachings of 'Abd ul-Wahhab, as well as Christians, &c.) were to be put to death. Immediate entrance into Paradise was promised to his soldiers who fell in battle, and it is said that each soldier was provided with a written order from Wahhab to the gate-keeper of heaven to admit him forthwith.Wahhabi
"This is not a sect. It is the name of a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European protestant reformation." Center for Security Policy (Research Brief)
Forget that shura is cultural practices and sharia is a rigid and merciless practice of Muslim justice.
When there are Muslims in America who have publicly spoken out against Jihad, against shariah law, and against ISNA, why was Ingrid Mattson chosen for this interfaith prayer service?
Obama's good-will may be in his lack of pretension, and of political posturing, but what is it that people mean when they say they want him to succeed?
There is a lost art to communication. It seems to be in the area of saying what you mean.
As as example, I will paraphrase a conversation between Bill O'Reily and Glen Beck, on O'Reily's program "The O'Reily Factor".
O'Reily said he thought Obama was a good guy, but wasn't sure if he wanted Obama's policies to succeed. If Obama fails, his socialistic policies will be out in four years, and someone with better--hopefully free market--ideas would be elected.
Beck, looking a bit puzzed as to how to respond, said he wanted to see Obama succeed. Beck himself is a nice guy, who like Obama, basically wants to see an end to "left" and "right" political bickering, and thinks all politicians are capable of being up to no good, or even "scoundrels" if the opportunity arises.
O'Reily, taken aback by conservative Beck's wish for Obama's success, asked how Beck could wish to see the liberal/collectivist policies of our incoming President actually work. If they work, we would see more of them.
O'Reily meant, "How could Beck wish to see socialism flourish and be successful?" O'Reily himself has said he has no ill will toward Obama the man, who to all appearances seems to be much more psychologically honest than any politician we have seen in decades, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, but even he was decades ago.
Beck replied that he didn't wish to see the President fail, because it meant America would not rise from its financial mess; but you could by looking at his expression that he was still lost for the right thing to say under the circumstance. He was struggling to explain how a conservative pundit, himself, actually want BIGGER government to succeed? Beck's reply, again paraphrased, was that he wished no ill toward any one trying to succeed at an honest job, and wanted to see America succeed.
The communication gap here was that while Beck was talking about the job of the Presidency itself being an honest one, he could not gather his thoughts quick enough to say that a looter in an honest job is still a looter. It wasn't the socialism Beck wanted to succeed; it was only the idealism of a strong, good, morally honest America that he wanted to see again.
But that is what he failed to say on "The O'Reily Factor." Instead, in a wishy-washy way he said he wanted whatever Obama wanted because if Obama failed, America failed.
A certified public accountant, obviously someone with an honest profession, is a looter if he makes off with his clients' money.
A President is still a looter if he creates debt for future generations, robbing them of their ability to be free of the slavery of that debt. Our children and grandchildren, and probably our great-grandchildren, in other words our posterity, will be born as indendured servants of the IRS, or whatever government agency is collecting the debt-reduction taxes in the future.
That indenture may prevent our posterity from their own pursuit of happiness.
A President who today takes from you to give to me or my children what what we do not have, is a looter. A President who removes the roadblocks preventing me from becoming wealthier on my own, and acquiring on my own and for my children what you have is doing an honest job in his administrative capacity.
Beck really doesn't want socialism to succeed. The only people who want to see it succeed are those who think that dishonest people operating in a capitalist environment will be stopped in a socialist environment.
The only people who want to see socialism succeed are those who don't see what our first millionaire, Ben Franklin, saw; who don't see what men and women like Carly Fiorina, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Oprah, and two thousand seven hundred forty new millionaires per day (in the year 2000) see--that the fortune of America and its people is not made by redistributing wealth, but rather by its creation.
What Bill O'Reily really meant to say--but didn't--was that he wants the U.S. to succeed but not because of Obama's policies. What Glen Beck really meant to say was that he wanted Obama to succeed--in spite of his policies--for the sake of America.
Those are the things that I want for our nation, too. This really is a new era dawning, because it seems we have a President who, despite his own very leftist political leanings and beliefs, has the ability to unite Americans--for the moment at least--under his umbrella of good-will, lack of pretension, and lack of political posturing.
It still remains to be seen just what kind of leader Mr. Obama will be. A week before in innauguration he already muscled Congress into giving him the out-standing $35b, by threatening a veto he knew could not be overturned.
We have already seen him sidestep the issue of his alleged-Marxism, which began with his now-famous remark made to the now-famous Joe the Plumber (who is no longer a plumber, but a "reporter of the people" for Pajamas Media).
If actions speak louder than words, Paul understands the art of saying what you mean.
But if is true about actions, President Obama will have the loudest voice in the world, and he will say through his collectivist actions precisely what he means.
I want his personal integrity to succeed; I want his charm and his ability to unite this nation, to succeed; I want to watch his family succeed growing into their new position as First Family; I want the "feel-good" metaphysics of Mr. Obama to succeed.
I do not want his socialism to succeed, and I sincerely hope that in some way, an idea of capitalism begins to creep into his policies. We've had "creeping socialism" for so long that we are now unable to stop it from steam-rolling over us.
...we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered.
chose this week to release a report that has some surprisingly kind words for Israel's foes in the Gaza Strip: "HAMAS' political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainize the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group," writes Sherifa Zuhur, a research professor at the War College's Strategic Studies Institute. "Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party-Fatah-cannot deliver the security Israel requires. . . . The underlying strategies of Israel and HAMAS appear mutually exclusive . . . . Yet each side is still capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace."
Among her timely if impolitic recommendations: "Israel and the United States need to abandon their policies of non-negotiation and non-communication with HAMAS." Thomas E. RicksPermalink
So, according to Zuhur, the Hamas organization that is
caught on video brainwashing children to hate Israel and kill Jews,
training children to be terrorists, and
using children as human shields,
is not really so bad, but has been “misunderstood” because of reporting that “villianizes” the organization.
We know there are many people throughout the government who share our concerns about political correctness run amok. But when the Army War College publishes a report with absurd claims like Zuhur’s, it should be eminently clear to us that the voices of political correctness are overpowering the voices of sanity and reason. One action you can take today, if you haven’t already done so, is to sign our petition calling for a UN investigation of Hamas. ACT for America www.actforamerica.org
A second post last week, “Fiasco at the Army War College: The Sequel,” records an exchange between Ricks and defense expert and author Mark Perry. Assessing the academic state of affairs at the War College, Perry informed Ricks:
"It’s worse than you think. They have curtailed the curriculum so that their students are not exposed to radical Islam. Akin to denying students access to Marx during the Cold War. This is hardly the first complaint that the military has failed to investigate and assess the strategic writings related to radical Islam and Islamic war doctrine."
William Gawthrop, former head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the Defense Department’s Counterintelligence Field Activity, says in a military intelligence journal article that:
As late as early 2006, the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered. (”The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law,” The Vanguard: Journal of the Military Intelligence Corps Association, 11:4 [Fall 2006], p. 10) [emphasis added]
One effort to remedy this strategic deficiency identified by Gawthrop was undertaken by Joint Chiefs of Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin, who published his finding in his master’s thesis at the National Defense Intelligence University, “To Our Great Detriment”: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad.
In his thesis, Coughlin examines texts from multiple schools of Islamic jurisprudence to evaluate the respective traditions on jihad and their contemporary use by Islamic terrorists, concluding that failing to investigate these sources has left our military “disarmed in the war of ideas.” Coughlin’s thesis had barely seen the light of day before he was sacked from his position with the Joint Chiefs, having running afoul of another Pentagon official, Hesham Islam, a top-ranked Muslim advisor to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who took issue with Coughlin’s academic analysis.
Another vocal critic identifying this wide gap in our military’s strategic studies is Army LTC Joseph Myers. He has recently voiced his concerns in an interview with Congressional Quarterly and in a review article published in the Army War College journal Parameters, where he argues that understanding the Islamic doctrine of war is a basic necessity for our military leadership:
To understand war, one has to study its philosophy, the grammar and logic of your opponent. Only then are you approaching strategic comprehension. To understand the war against Islamist terrorism one must begin to understand the Islamic way of war, its philosophy and doctrine, the meanings of jihad in Islam — and one needs to understand that those meanings are highly varied and utilitarian depending on the source.
In an assessment published last May, Myers adds that the failure to study the strategy of jihadists leaves our own military strategy aimless and increases our long-term vulnerability to further terrorist attacks: National security strategy is policy and policy implies a theory — a theory for action. To date we have no concrete theory of action because we have no fully articulated global threat model. We are seven years into a global war with armed combat and many dead and wounded, and yet still lack a common analytic paradigm to describe and model the enemy. It is a stunning failure to propel the country to war without a fully elaborated threat model that clarifies and specifies the enemy and makes clear our true objectives.
The lack of a threat model and a theory for action explains our schizophrenia, our failures, and homeland security shortcomings. Understanding the enemy — “the threat,” his threat doctrine and the authoritative statements, sources, and philosophy undergirding that doctrine — is a primary duty. That is the first step in developing a threat model. It is the vital step in the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield process, to template enemy doctrine by laying it over the terrain: the physical, human, and cultural terrain to understand its manifestations in reality. These are the first relevant questions to be answered for U.S. national security analysis. This intellectual and strategic groundwork for the “long war” against Islamic terrorism will never be accomplished as long as our senior service schools and military academies continue to neglect this vital area of strategic study.
Regardless of what one might think about the relation between Islamic theology and jihadist justifications for terror, it is a fact that they believe they are operating in accordance with Islamic tradition. Islamic war doctrine ought to be studied on that basis alone. "Strategic Collapse at the Army War College"; Patrick Poole; January 14, 2009 http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/
