Pre and Post Nationalism--Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Daniel Greenfiled of Sultan Knish makes some excellent points in discussing the similarities between Islam and the Left:

The Muslim immigrant does not trade one national identity for another. What he does is bring along his local ethnic identity and his global religious identity, and unpacks them both in Sydney or London where he is a member of an ethnic community and a religious community. On top of that he may be an Australian, but he is an Australian in the same way that Sunnis and Shiites are Iraqis or Syrians. All that means is that he will pay taxes, fill out forms and curse the local government officials for being incompetent blockheads, instead of the ones back home. And when his religious identity is at odds with his national obligations, he will do exactly what Sunnis in Syria or Shiites in Iraq have done. He will choose religious identity over national identity.

This concept should not be a particularly foreign one to Gillard. It is likely that she feels a similar identification with fellow progressives in Europe and America, that Hassan feels for his fellow Muslims. Like Islam, progressive politics provides a shared transnational identity based on common goals for an ordered world ruled by an ideal system. Gillard may even feel a greater identification with European Socialists than with more conservative Australians.

As Greenfield notes, it comes down to pre-nationalism and post-nationalism resulting in the same conclusion:

Gillard subscribes to a post-national identity, and Hassan to a pre-national identity. This is only a technical difference that matters as much as the location of the endpoint of a circle, but in the practical sense they are members of dramatically different identity groups with their own incompatible forms of multiculturalism.

The left's post-national identity is based on a secular political multiculturalism. Islam's post-national identity is based on a religious theocratic multiculturalism. The left has heresies that it prosecutes as hate crimes and Islam has heresies that it prosecutes as blasphemy. Gillard would understand, though condemn, a riot based on some offense to gay rights or aboriginal rights, as an offense against her brand of multiculturalism. The Mohammed riots may be more understandable to her as an offense against Muslim multiculturalism.

And therein lies the dilemma.  In a post-nationalist world, Progressives expect to be ruled by laws that are no longer tied to any nation or tradition because we've 'outgrown' all of that.  Unfortunately, they face the reality of a culture that could care les about their laws as God has already given all the laws necessary.

The left destroyed Western national identity and brought back the holy war, but due to Christian and Jewish secularism and Muslim immigration, instead of Catholics and Protestants fighting each other in Paris and London, it's Muslims rioting in the streets and demanding an Islamic theocracy to rule them. And why not? If rule no longer derives from the people or the nation, but panels of judges and rooms of bureaucrats, then the Islamic version is as legitimate as the Socialist version.

Exactly.  And that is the crux of the problem facing the rest of the world--how do you coexist with a culture and religion that has no interest in coexisting with yours?  "Behead those who insult Islam" is not an encouraging sign that the holder of that view is interested in dialogue.

Read the whole article here. 

Future Middle East Trends

The author known as 'Spengler' writes in the Asia Times that the Middle East will eventually end up in regional warfare.  His contention is that we might as well get it over with.

If a contrarian thought might be permitted, consider the possibility that all-out regional war is the optimal outcome for American interests. An Israeli strike on Iran that achieved even limited success - a two-year delay in Iran's nuclear weapons development - would arrest America's precipitous decline as a superpower.

Absent an Israeli strike, America faces:

A nuclear-armed Iran;

Iraq's continued drift towards alliance with Iran;

An overtly hostile regime in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood government will lean on jihadist elements to divert attention from the country's economic collapse;

An Egyptian war with Libya for oil and with Sudan for water;

A radical Sunni regime controlling most of Syria, facing off an Iran-allied Alawistan ensconced in the coastal mountains;

A de facto or de jure Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the Kingdom of Jordan;

A campaign of subversion against the Saudi monarchy by Iran through Shi'ites in Eastern Province and by the Muslim Brotherhood internally;

A weakened and perhaps imploding Turkey struggling with its Kurdish population and the emergence of Syrian Kurds as a wild card;

A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan; and

Radicalized Islamic regimes in Libya and Tunisia.

Not a pretty picture, is it?  Given the recent death of an American Ambassador in Libya due to terrorist action (and not due to some stupid Youtube video), we are facing a very grim future.  But we may not be in the worst position directly: take Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the biggest loser in the emerging Middle East configuration, and Russia is the biggest winner. Europe and Japan have concluded that America has abandoned its long-standing commitment to the security of energy supplies in the Persian Gulf by throwing the Saudi monarchy under the bus, and have quietly shifted their energy planning towards Russia. Little of this line of thinking will appear in the news media, but the reorientation towards Moscow is underway nonetheless. 

It seems to me that our current foreign policy trajectory is somewhat problematic.  Whoever wins in November is going to inherit quite a mess.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Instapundit

 

Important Reading To Do

For those of you planning to vote in our upcoming Presidential election in November, there is some studying you need to undertake in order to have the requisite understanding to make an informed choice.

 

Doug Ross has an enlightening post at his blog regarding the current and potential policies of the Obama Administration.  One place where Obama's cultural outlook is on display is in California, where supporters are about to have Proposition 31 passed.  Prop 31 will rape the suburbs to support the cities.  The book cited below has more detailed explanations for what this policy will entail.

 

Spreading the Wealth



 

As the author, Stanley Kurtz, noted in his article in National Review Online: 

California’s Proposition 31 is the project of a collection of “good government” groups, in particular, California Forward. California Forward says its goal is “fundamental change.” They’re right about that. The change they have in mind, unfortunately, is creating a collection of de facto regional super-governments designed to undercut the political and economic independence of California’s suburbs. The goal is to redistribute suburban tax money to California’s failing cities. Instead of taking on the mismanagement that is breaking California’s cities, Prop. 31 lets failing cities bail themselves out by raiding the pocketbooks of California’s suburbanites. In the process, Prop. 31 will kill off the system of local government at the root of American liberty.

How does Prop. 31 work? It allows local governments to join together to form “Strategic Action Plans.” Supposedly, this pooling of local municipal services into a kind of de facto collective regional super-government would be voluntary. In fact, Prop. 31 deploys powerful incentives to effectively force the creation of these regional super-governments.  

To begin with, municipalities that join regional collectives–and only those municipalities–can effectively waive onerous state laws and regulations by creating their own more lax versions of those rules. Next, Prop. 31 channels a portion of state sales tax revenue to municipalities that join regional governing collectives–and only those municipalities. Finally, Prop. 31 authorizes local governments participating in the regional collectives to pool their property-tax receipts.

The result will be the effective redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities, and second-class citizenship for Californians who live in municipalities that refuse to pool their tax money by joining regional collectives.

Think about that attitude, and then you will understand the attempts to push mass transit (like building trains to nowhere) and destroy the automobile with extreme CAFE standards as part of the war on the suburbs and removing the mobility of the populace (i.e., you will live and work and, more important, pay taxes where we want you to).

 

A second book you will find of interest is:

Fool Me Twice

 

If you are considering re-electing the current Administration, then it would behoove you to understand what a second term could entail for America.  The President himself has stated that Global Warming/Climate Change will be one of his primary priorities in the next four years.  Understanding what exactly that means (i.e., the effect on the energy industries, transportation, economic growth, etc.) should be your goal.

 

If you are comfortable with the President's current and future policies, then your choice in November is obvious.  If you are still undecided about who you will vote for, then information is your best friend.

 

 

There is a reason the Democrat Party is not running on their record for the last four years.

 

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

 



Brand X

Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish has penned another insightful article.  This time it's about how the election in 2008 demonstrated that our current electorate was swayed not by issues but by a 'brand:'

Obama did not have an aspirational candidacy, he had an aspirational brand. A brand that people wanted to be a part of, because it made them feel good about themselves. And so we learned that there is indeed something worse than Bread and Circuses. An electorate that votes on that is at least somewhat capable of using self-interest to make judgments, but one that votes for the brand that feels good has abandoned even the vestiges of reason and self-interest. Such people are no longer exercising their power over government, instead they have become customers, buying a product that they have no say in how it gets made or what goes in there. Not because they need it, but because they have been programmed to feel good when buying it.

Read the entire article here. And then ask yourself if the past four years will have been enough of a reality check to keep people from buying Brand X again.

Middle East Governments: Rock-Paper-Scissors

Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish has composed yet another fascinating piece about Middle East culture.  This one is about governmental styles:

Every government is only a few bad months away from losing power, and so every government fears being overthrown by its enemies and implements a regime of secret police and prisons. No sooner do the revolutionaries step out of prison to usher in a new era than the same thugs are rehired to torture enemies of the new regime.

The victors of the Arab Spring know that another few bad months could toss them out of power as easily as the bad months put them into power.  Like every other regime in the Muslim Middle East, their main priority is staying in power by making it impossible for others to do to them what they did to their predecessors.That leads to a cycle of repression, broken by temporary liberalization as alliances with the opposition are explored and then abandoned, because the opposition cannot be trusted not to seize power for themselves.

Everyone in the region is playing rock-paper-scissors all the time, which leads to total regional paranoia and conspiracy theories. Everyone distrusts everyone else by necessity and keeps trying to guess how many fingers their rivals will put out while defending against their own weaknesses by preemptively attacking everyone else.

Military governments persecute ideologues. Ideologues imprison top officers. Tribals seek out military protectors-- and then undermine them by backing their ideological enemies so as to stay in control of the relationship.

That is what happened to us and the Saudis, who, along with the other Gulfies, depend on our protection, but undermine us by supporting terrorism and Islamization to gain the upper hand. Paradoxically, the more that the Saudis need us, the more they undermine us, much as any feral population that is dependent on the charitable welfare of the majority lashes out against that majority to the exact degree that it is dependent on it.

The borders of Muslim nations are artificial and fluid. Their nationalism has no depth no matter how often Socialist ideologues borrow from European nationalism to proclaim the glories of the nation. The Muslim Middle East is not purely nomadic, but it is nomadic enough that large families stretch out across different nations and their tribal allegiances stretch with them. Ethnic groups like the Kurds cross national borders, carrying with them the dream of an ethnostate carved out of the Sunni states that dot the desert.

 Read the whole article here.

Vote Fraud Is Just Something Republicans Made Up

At least that's the charge made by Democrats opposed to voter ID laws.

Obviously, there's no reason to have the same level of identity proof required to buy cigarettes, get on a plane, cash a check, etc., to vote, as there's no such thing as people voting who shouldn't have.  And besides, you're a racist, right wing hate monger if you make voters show proof of identity because it unfairly inhibits minority voting.  (Just think about that statement... its proponents are claiming that minorities are too stupid or incapable of obtaining identification to vote and therefore most be protected from themselves.)

Well, guess again.  According to Byron York of the Washington Examiner, vote fraud gave us the colossal embarrassment that is Senator Al Franken of Minnesota:

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.

Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted -- not just accused, but convicted -- of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. "The numbers aren't greater," the authors say, "because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and 'knowingly' voted unlawfully." The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.

Still, that's a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn't require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.

And that's just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.

The election was particularly important because Franken's victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama's national health care proposal -- the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare.

Voter fraud matters when contests are close. When an election is decided by a huge margin, no one can plausibly claim fraud made the difference. But the Minnesota race was excruciatingly close. And then, in the Obamacare debate, Democrats could not afford to lose even a single vote. So if there were any case that demonstrates that voter fraud both exists and has real consequences, it is Minnesota 2008.

What a shame that the Democrat party must resort to fraud and deceit to win at the ballot box.  Of course, they've been doing it a long, long time. 

Remember this come November when a nation--badly shaken by four years of economic horror inflicted upon the it by the President's (and Congressional Democrat) policies--looks like it is rejecting the 'enlightened' leadership of its political elite.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip:Instapundit

The Science is Settled! What? Really?

Well, not really.  And this time it's not about climate science.  Apparently there has been some debate as to who the first 'native' Americans were.  The prevailing theory had been that the first natives appeared around what is now known as Clovis, New Mexico, around 13,000 years ago.

Not so fast:

The ancient people who have long been thought to be the first humans to colonise North America were actually johnny-come-latelies, according to scientists who have comprehesively analysed the ancient fossilised poo of their predecessor Americans.

The new revelations come to us courtesy of Copenhagen university, where some of the investigating boffins are based. The scientists say that their results demonstrate conclusively their somewhat controversial thesis: that the "Clovis" culture dating from around 13,000 years ago - which has long been thought to be the earliest human society in the Americas - was actually preceded by human habitation at the Paisley caves in Oregon.

Which, given that humans most likely crossed into the American continental landmass across the Bering land bridge, makes sense.  What's significant about this story is that it illustrates again how what is considered settled, rock solid science (koff, koff, AGW, koff), is so often proven not to be.

The so-called "Clovis First" theory had until 2008 been accepted as unquestioned truth among archaeologists, who considered that the Clovis people - so called from 13,000 year old archaeological finds near the village of Clovis in New Mexico - were the true native Americans. When the still more ancient 14,000-year-old excrement was found at the Paisley caves, it was pointed out by disgruntled boffins that no stone tools or other evidence of the type seen at Clovis had been found, and that the DNA poo evidence could have been erroneous.

Dr Dennis Jenkins of Copenhagen uni was having none of that, however, and he continued to poke about in the caves. Now he and his team are back, this time packing stone artifacts including "Western stemmed" stone projectiles and new, more comprehensive DNA dating.

In other words, Dr. Jenkins and company really knew their shit.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Instapundit

It's Not All About Melting Glaciers

Which aren't melting, by the way.

It appears that the dreaded 'global warming catastrophe' of increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to other changes besides polar bears dancing on ice floes for National Geographic photographers:

A new study published today in “Nature” by authors from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre and the Goethe University Frankfurt suggests that large parts of Africa’s savannas may well be forests by 2100. The study suggests that fertilization by atmospheric carbon dioxide is forcing increases in tree cover throughout Africa. A switch from savanna to forest occurs once a critical threshold of CO2 concentration is exceeded, yet each site has its own critical threshold. The implication is that each savanna will switch at different points in time, thereby reducing the risk that a synchronous shock to the earth system will emanate from savannas.

Yes, holy hotcakes, Batman, we'll get more trees!!!!  Amazing how the planet is able to adjust to climate change... almost like it's been doing it for billions of years.  And all without the help of global warming scaremongers.

In all seriousness, our magnificent planet flexes and copes with all manner of changes.  CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and the planet has survived.  CO2 represents just 0.04% of atmospheric gases, which is the equivalent of 40 people out of a 100,000 people sports stadium.  According to global warming alarmists, we've added the equivalent of one person to the stadium due to man made activities (which assumes that they are correct in claiming that 280ppm is the correct baseline, but information here demonstrates that even this point is highly questionable).  And yet we're supposed to believe people who lie about, hide, and distort the data, and who have yet to build a climate model that can predict weather that's occurred in the past, much less 100s of years in the future.

Call it what it really is: people who want to tell us how to live and what to do because they're so much more morally superior to us... and smarter than us knuckle dragging conservatives, too--just ask them.  Scientists who politicize their work (e.g., climate scientists) are dragging down those who don't into the realm of used car salesmen.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Guido Fawkes

Liberty

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Garbage In, Policy Out

So how much more damage will be done to the world's economies based on the junk science that passes for climate research?  The Obama EPA is shutting down coal power plants based on their declaration that carbon dioxide (that gas which we exhale and plants require for life and photosynthesis) is a pollutant.  The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being used to force first world economies to subsidize third world dictators because models show that our evil modern societies are driving the planet into a frenzied increase in global temperature.

So just how accurate are those models being used by leftists and eco-nazis (but I repeat myself) to bludgeon the rest of us into returning to the pastoral squalor of the 1600s while subsidizing their global conferences in hardship spots like Rio?  According to Ross McKitrick of the Financial Post:

Just how good are climate models at predicting regional patterns of climate change? I had occasion to survey this literature as part of a recently completed research project on the subject. The simple summary is that, with few exceptions, climate models not only fail to do better than random numbers, in some cases they are actually worse.

 Actually worse than random numbers.  Let me repeat that: Actually worse than random numbers.  Our idiot global policy makers are basing changing our societies and economies on models that perform worse than just flipping a fricking coin to guess about the climate.  Of course, this has been known for some time.

Then in 2008 and 2010, a team of hydrologists at the National Technical University of Athens published a pair of studies comparing long-term (100-year) temperature and precipitation trends in a total of 55 locations around the world to model projections. The models performed quite poorly at the annual level, which was not surprising. What was more surprising was that they also did poorly even when averaged up to the 30-year scale, which is typically assumed to be the level they work best at. They also did no better over larger and larger regional scales. The authors concluded that there is no basis for the claim that climate models are well-suited for long-term predictions over large regions.

 Yes, by golly, the science has been settled, mind you, settled!  All of us troglodyte disbelievers need to be beaten with hammers for asking embarrassing questions.

Read the whole article here.  And then tell the global warming alarmists to keep their damned hands off your wallet and freedom.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades

Che!

Hat tip: Hookers and Booze

To Absent Companions...

The Failure of Modern Education

We are suffering the ill effects of modern education in today's society.  The young are being destroyed by the unionized incompetents who call themselves teachers.  Learning is not important--it's all about feeling good, self esteem, and unstructured actualization leading to creativity.  Well, that's the theory, anyway.

What reality shows, though, is that today's modern educational theory is patent bullshit.  Our children are being set up for failure in life because teachers aren't interested in teaching.  No, that would require actual hard work, students failing and learning from their failures, discovering how to overcome setbacks.  Instead, our children are all taught that everyone is bright, shiny, and equal to everyone else.  It's so much easier to teach songs about how wonderful the President is vice how to reason logically.  Too bad life eventually kicks them in the face, leaving them cursing the buffoons who wasted their childhood's making them feel good about themselves rather than how to think.

Janice Flamengo in PJ Media writes about the 'unteachables,' the 'generation that cannot learn.'

The unteachable student has been told all her life that she is excellent: gifted, creative, insightful, thoughtful, able to succeed at whatever she tries, full of potential and innate ability. Pedagogical wisdom since at least the time of John Dewey — and in some form all the way back to William Wordsworth’s divinely anointed child “trailing clouds of glory” — has stressed the development of self-esteem and a sense of achievement. Education, as Dewey made clear in such works as The Child and the Curriculum (1902), was not about transferring a cultural inheritance from one generation to the next; it was about students’ self-realization. It involved liberating pupils from that stuffy, often stifling, inheritance into free and unforced learning aided by sympathy and encouragement. The teacher was not so much to teach or judge as to elicit a response, leading the student to discover for herself what she, in a sense, already knew. In the past twenty years, the well-documented phenomenon of grade inflation in humanities subjects — the awarding of high “Bs” and “As” to the vast majority of students — has increased the conviction that everyone is first-rate.

Too bad it doesn't work in the real world, where engineers are expected to know facts and how to calculate stress loads on structures, where scientists are expected to know how to conduct research, where writers are expected to know how to construct a grammatical sentence.  No, life is not the fluffy bunny that is wrapped around children by do-good teachers intent on indoctrination, not education.  Unfortunately, it isn't a new occurrence.

It sounds good. The problem, as traditionalists have argued (but without much success), is that the utopian approach hasn’t worked as intended. Rather than forming cheerful, self-directed learners, the pedagogy of self-esteem has often created disaffected, passive pupils, bored precisely because they were never forced to learn. As Hilda Neatby commented in 1953, the students she was encountering at university were “distinctly blasé” about their coursework. A professor of history, Neatby was driven to investigate progressive education after noting how ill-equipped her students were for the high-level thinking required of them; her So Little For the Mind remains well-worth reading. 

 It's the same mindset that demands that we tax the rich because they don't deserve their wealth, that we should share the wealth like "A's" for everyone.  It's why mindless youth flocked to Obama in 2008--because no one had taught them how to reason or discern between truth and propaganda.  And now they reap the whirlwind that is progressive politics, wondering where all the jobs are that were supposed to be waiting for them after graduation.  Welcome to life, suckers.  Aren't you glad now that you didn't listen to the good teachers who tried to actually make you work and learn?

What must be even worse is the feeling those good teachers have in the pits of their stomachs as they try day after day to swim against the tide of crap, only to see mediocrity rewarded because supporting the NEA is more important than building the future.  These few, these band of brothers and sisters, are the real heroes.  We desperately need more of them and much less of the leftist ideologues who use our schools to indoctrinate our children in how horrible our nation and culture are.

Read the whole article here.

November Matters

Congratulations!  Did you know that the United States was the world champion in petroleum reserves?  According to the Government Accounting Office, the oil shale formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming holds recoverable oil stocks the equivalent of the proven reserves of the rest of the planet combined.  Over three trillion barrels of oil in that one field alone--and it's not the only one in the U.S.  Remember ANWAR?

So in essence we have the natural resources in the U.S. to meet our energy needs for centuries.  One minor detail, though: the Federal Government owns the majority of the land where this oil is located.  And given that our current administration has spent billions of taxpayer money to prop up green energy "success" stories like Solyndra, the Chevy Volt, and the Fisker Karma, what do you think the odds are that we'll tap the energy bonanzas located within our own borders?

Yeah, me neither.  As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit notes, " If I were the Russians and the Saudis, I’d be paying off some Green groups to block development."  Oh, wait.... never mind.

Hat tip: For the full story, go read Powerline

Real Estate Update

Hat tip: The Troglopundit

One Of The Most Important Books You Will Ever Read

Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins

This is one of the most important books of the 21st century.  Robert Spencer conducted a scholarly review of the historical Muhammad--something that scholars have been doing in Christianity and other major religions since the 19th century.  Unfortunately, rather than engendering a much needed Reformation of Islam, this book will most likely result in Spencer's death at the hands of an enraged Muslim.

Why?  Because Spencer calls into question the actual existence of Muhammad, and thus the origin of an entire religion followed by over a billion people on this planet.  As Pamela Geller notes:

Imagine if the entire premise that a comprehensive religious, legal, political, social, cultural, and dietary system was based was completely and utterly false.

Robert Spencer's groundbreaking blockbuster book, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins is a game-changer of incomprehensible proportions. It shatters every conventional and accepted myth on the history of Muhammad and Islam. Is it any wonder that Islamic supremacists want to squash it?

The Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) already succeeded in getting his talk on the book in New York canceled, but it was held last Tuesday in another location, with four times the audience that it was projected to have before CAIR protested. It was a good sign: people are tired of CAIR's attempts to shut down free speech and quash the truth about Islam and enforce the blasphemy laws under Sharia.

They fear Spencer's new book. This is the first popular book to show all the many holes and inconsistencies and contradictions in the standard story of the life of Muhammad, the development of the Qur'an, and the early years of Islam. Did Muhammad Exist? is going to surprise a lot of people, including non-Muslims who assume that there must have been a man named Muhammad who claimed that he was a prophet of Allah, even if they don't accept his claim. But Spencer shows here that even though Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632, and the Arab conquests of the Middle East and North Africa started shortly after that - supposedly inspired by Muhammad and the Qur'an - we don't start hearing about either one, or anything about Islam at all, until much later, in the 690s. No one, not the people the Arabs conquered nor the Arabs themselves, ever mentions Muhammad or the Qur'an, or even calls the conquerors Muslims, for six decades after the conquests began.

Think about that. That would be like the Nazis overrunning Europe in the early days of World War II, but the Poles and French and the Germans themselves never mentioning Nazism or Hitler or the swastika or Jew-hatred. Or the Islamic jihadists destroying the World Trade Center towers and committing almost 20,000 jihad attacks around the world after that, and no one ever saying a word about Islam or jihad -- oh, wait, that is what's happening.

Is it possible that all of the murders and bombings have occurred because of a belief that apparently originated from a man made attempt to rationalize the tribal conquering of people and territory?  Could this explain why fundamentalist Muslims fly into rages over perceived slights to the Qur'an and Islam--because they fear the result of meaningful investigation into their faith?  

The truth may set them free, but may also result in the death of the rest of us before that happens.

(How similar, then, the reaction of the Left to any investigation of socialism and Marxism--because investigation would lead to uncovering the fascism and totalitarianism underpinning them.  Thus, the Left enforces the political correctness that attempts to keep us from daring to question Islam/global warming/wealth redistribution/ fairness/affirmative action/Occupy whatever/etc. while saying nothing about anti-Semitism, anti-Christian, anti-Caucasian, anti-not Left violence.)

You owe it to yourself and your posterity to read this book.

The Cradle of Islam

Daniel Greenfield brings news of the latest religious proclamation out of Saudi Arabia:

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has ruled that ten year old girls can be married off, because in his words, "Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age." The Mufti, who also recently called for destroying churches in the Arabian Peninsula, is descended from Mohammed Wahhab who gave birth to Wahhabism and his descendants have controlled the Saudi religious establishment, which has given them control of Islam around the world. For all his power and influence, the Mufti is blind and hasn't seen a thing in the last 52 years, an apt metaphor for his entire religion.

Such sensitive souls, the Wahhabis.

The Saudis are not some aberration, they are Islam in its purest and truest form. This is where Islam originated, these are the people whose brutality and cunning spread it across the world, whose clans killed each other, then killed or enslaved minority groups, and then embarked on a wave of conquest that destroyed countless cultures and left behind seeds of hate that linger to this day.

Unlike Egypt or Syria, they were never colonized by European powers and the impact of Ottoman influence was limited. Oil has brought in massive amounts of money, but it has changed very little. There are limousines instead of camels, the slaves have foreign passports, though they are often still slaves, there is still a brisk trade in imported luxury goods, harems for princes and clans staggering under the weight of their indolent progeny.

Religiously, Wahhabism has done its best to recreate the "pure" Islam of its origins. Economically, oil has allowed the Gulf Arabs to prosper without reform or change. And if Mohammed were to ride out of the desert tomorrow, he would have little trouble fitting in, as soon as he developed a taste for Porsches. Anyone who wants to see the world as it was in Mohammed's day can visit Saudi Arabia and see inbred clans, slave labor, veiled women and thugs enforcing the will of Allah on every corner.

Sadly, many in the West remain in a state of rectal-cranial inversion.  They continue to insist that fundamentalist Islam is misunderstood and we must remain tolerant and forgiving. That Islam is represented by the quiet majority who haven't raised arms against us.  That we should make allowances for shari'a and adapt our culture to theirs.

There are two Islams. The real Islam of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and an imaginary Islam that exists only in the mosques of air and card table korans of academics apologists and political pundits who have decided that Islam cannot be bad, because no religion can be bad, not even one which kills and kills, it must just be misunderstood.

Tolerance in only one direction is a recipe for disaster.  We are being forced into a cultural war by those who are determined that their culture will win, and who have no tolerance for infidels, except for those who agree to pay the jizya and accept their chains.  Without an Islamic Reformation, the likelihood of conflict will remain high.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Sultan Knish.

Perspective

  

Hat Tip: The Reaganite Republican  via Doug Ross@Journal

If Only The Government Employed Scientists...

... then maybe they wouldn't do stupid shit like approve pesticides that are causing the great bee die-off.  Oh wait, they do--and they employ some at the EPA.  As usual, the EPA says that there's nothing to see here, just move along.

The pesticides beekeepers are fighting now are different than those of the past, Anderson said. Those were applied at predictable times, making it easy to keep bees out of harm's way.

The pesticides most widely used now are among a class of nicotine-based chemicals called neonicotinoids that are designed to become an intrinsic part of the plant. They were developed in large part because they are much less toxic to humans and other mammals than previous pesticides. But in high doses, they are a neurotoxin to insects.

Since their introduction in the 1990s, they have exploded in popularity among farmers and in products for home gardeners. Today, 90 percent of seed corn is coated with the pesticides before planting, and the chemicals are the active ingredient in hundreds of back-yard products.

The pesticide is sprayed on plants and, when used as a seed coating, it grows into all parts of the plant, including the pollen and the nectar that bees eat.

Remember, the EPA was responsible for banning DDT, which has resulted in tens of millions of needless deaths worldwide from malaria.  I don't know about you, but I'd rather our oh-so-caring, morally superior government environmentalists quit trying to make the world a utopia--because every time they do they screw it up.

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

I'm Shocked, Shocked I Tell You!

 

In yet another blow to global warming, er, climate change alarmist efforts to convince the world that it would be better off without humans, Don Surber of the UK's Daily Mail notes that the data just doesn't seem to be with them... again.

 

So much for an ice-free Arctic. Henry Hudson’s long-ago dream of a Northwest Passage that would link England to the Orient by sea will have to wait another century as Mother Earth gives him the cold shoulder. Again.

From Real Science: “1979 was the peak year for Arctic ice, yet 2012 has more ice around Greenland and Alaska than 1979 did.”

Same date satellite data seems to show that Iceland and everywhere else is iced over this year when they were feeling a little green 33 years ago.

Of course, our moral and intellectual superiors elsewhere in the press keep banging the drums of Man Caused Global Warming.

I sense a trend here.  Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

A Cost We Should Not Bear

Once again Daniel Greenfield knocks one out of the park with his post at Sultan Knish on "The Price of a Koran:"

What does a Koran cost? You can get a full color one for the Kindle for only 99 cents, just don't expect it to feature any pictures of old Mo. If you want to go deluxe, you can get a hardcover edition that runs three different translations side by side for around 40 bucks. But if you want to be more practical about it, the price of a Koran is the lives of six American soldiers.

That butcher's bill doesn't count the soldiers who burned the Korans, who despite following procedure will be penalized on orders of the White House which thinks that punishing American soldiers will somehow satisfy the Koran fueled bloodlust of men who aren't satisfied with their corpses.

The nature of the marketplace of human affairs is that a thing is worth what we will pay for it. Once upon a time Americans decided to pay any price for freedom. The price was high, but they got what they paid for... at least for a season or two. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were works of freedom written in blood. They made a free nation possible because that nation was willing to pay the price for them.

Muslims are equally willing to pay the price in blood for slavery, their own slavery and ours, for a book of slavery, written by an owner and abuser of slaves, who created a religion of slaves, where the optimal position was to stand on as many people as possible while reaching for heaven.

The men who fought to make us free placed value on their lives. The men who fight to enslave us place little value on their own. Whatever material pleasures they enjoy in this life, little girls, hashish and wealth, will be vastly improved upon in the afterlife. And they buy their way into that afterlife by killing us, as they have been doing for over a thousand years.

Each of their murders imposes their religion on us. They impose their notion of what is important and what isn't important. Twenty years ago no one would have cared a fig for a burned Koran or a cartoon of Mo. Today either one earns you an accusation of endangering the lives of American soldiers and inciting violence. Dress up as Zombie Mohammed and Judge Mark Martin will tell you that in a Muslim country you would get the death penalty. That's not the way it works here. Yet.

Greenfield raises a very key point.  We are changing our own behavior because of the threat of violence held over us by the culture of Islam.  Not through reasoned dialog between adults, or the result of inner soul searching by one who seeks a deeper meaning in spirituality, but through the murder of our own citizens.  What makes this even more difficult to take is the lack of disapproval by the silent majority of Islam regarding the killing of those who do not believe as they do.  If only we saw one tenth of the rage exhibited by those railing against Rush Limbaugh for his ill chosen words demonstrated by 'moderate Muslims' against the killing of our military... but sadly we won't.

Read the whole post here.

He's Here

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

Gone Too Soon

Andrew Breitbart, the "Happy Warrior," passed away suddenly last night.  It is a great loss for America.  Breitbart showed the world that true journalism was still alive, and his refusal to allow the media elite to dictate how Americans received their information was an inspiration to us all.  He was fearless, tackling subjects that the mainstream media refused to cover.  He will be sorely missed, but his work will live on in Big Government,  Big Hollywood, Big Journalism, and Big Peace.

Rest in peace, Andrew.

Is Saudi Arabia In Greater Danger Than Israel?

Mark Langfan writes in israelnationalnews.com that the that the Saudis may be in greater danger than Israel from Iran:

Obama has his own Domino Doctrine for the Muslim world. As a consequence of this doctrine, Obama’s Iranian Nuclear policy can be summed up as “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” and Saudi Arabia is in even more danger than Israel.

Langfan bases his argument on a series of past statements by President Obama and U.S. foreign policy actions since the beginning of his Administration.  His conclusion is not pretty:

The Egyptian “Pillar” of US strategic interests is now yesterday’s dust.  The vaunted Saudi “Pillar” of US Middle East policy since World War I is now a prime US target for destruction. Israel is live bait. Obama’s true foreign policy objective seems to be nothing less than the full nuclear weaponization of Iran. Anything else is a smoke-screen for Obama to look like he’s doing something, but in reality he is doing nothing to stop Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In conclusion, Obama is actively "democratically" toppling all U.S. Middle East allies, and soon a nuclear-armed Iran will control 70% of the World's Oil Reserves, charging $500 a barrel for oil.

It's an intriguing logic trail that he lays out for the reader--go read the whole article to find out why.

Hat tip: Doug Ross@ Journal

The First Law

Sultan Knish has written yet another hard hitting article about the West's reaction to Islamic rage:

The first law of human affairs is force. Before all other laws, the ballot box and appeals to reason is that primal law that enforces submission through violence. Islam is a religion built on that first law, forcing everyone to choose whether they will be the oppressors or the oppressed, whether they will be a Muslim or a Dhimmi.

The organizing force of Islam can be seen in urban gangs which react in much the same way to being 'disrespected'. When your religion is little more than an entitlement to be a thug, to elevate your way of life over that of everyone else, violent outrage over even the most minute sign of disrespect is to be expected. And when your beliefs are little more than an excuse to hate, rioting over a slight is the  sacrament of your faith.

Islam did not expand through the persuasiveness of its illiterate child abusing founder, at least not beyond the initial persuasion that allowed him to gather bandit troops to raid, murder and enslave the multicultural peoples of the desert until there was nothing left but Muslims and their slaves. It expanded by force and it has gone on expanding by force. Faced with advanced civilizations, it has reacted with the violent petulant fury that is its spiritual heritage.

The first law is the only true law of Islam. That is the law being practiced by the Afghan rioters and murderers outraged over the burnings of already defaced Korans, as their counterparts have gone on similar rampages over cartoons of Mohammed, the Satanic Verses, Facebook postings and anything else which triggered their rage. This violence has the same goal of all Islamic terror, to maintain the privileged status of Muslims and enforce the submission of non-Muslims.

Harsh words, indeed, but the deaths of U.S. military members this past week underscore the difficulty of engaging with a culture that still remains wedded to uncivilized behaviors of the distant past.  If one had taken the 'first law' into account, it would have been intuitively obvious that U.S. apologies would lead to more deaths of our military.  In our initial reaction to 9/11, we demonstrated that we were the 'strong horse' and were willing to kill those who killed our citizens and allies. This resulted in the Taliban being driven from Afghanistan and Muammar Quadaffi voluntarily giving up his WMD programs.  Our constant apologies and drive to be perfect in warfare with no collateral damage or casualties have changed Islamic perception of our image to that of the 'weak horse.'  By constantly gifting Islamic rage with victim status, we continue to reinforce the behavior and further put off the day when Islam matures and reaches the 21st century.

In short, the murder of our military should have resulted in the immediate destruction of every known Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan and Pakistan--with no apologies.

Read the whole article here.

What Happens When You Actually Apply Science to "Global Warming, er, We Mean Climate Change"

Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently testified before the United Kingdom's House of Commons on the subject of climate change.  As Dr. Lindzen stated:

Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

Dr. Lindzen goes on to talk about specific problems with the 'science' being relied upon by "Global Warming, er, We Mean Climate Change" alarmists:

Some current problems with science:

1. Questionable data. (Climategate and involvement of all three centers tracking global average temperature anomaly.) This is a complicated ethical issue for several reasons. Small temperature changes are not abnormal and even claimed changes are consistent with low climate sensitivity. However, the public has been mislead to believe that whether it is warming or cooling – no matter how little – is of vital importance. Tilting the record slightly is thus of little consequence to the science but of great importance to the public perception.

2. More sophisticated data is being analyzed with the aim of supporting rather than testing models (validation rather than testing). That certainly has been my experience during service with both the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment Program. It is also evident in the recent scandal concerning Himalayan glaciers.

3. Sensitivity is a crucial issue. This refers to how much warming one expects from a given change in CO2 (usually a doubling). It cannot be determined by assuming that one knows the cause of change. If the cause is not what one assumes, it yields infinite sensitivity. This problem infects most attempts to infer climate sensitivity from paleoclimate data.

4. Models cannot be tested by comparing models with models. Attribution cannot be based on the ability or lack thereof of faulty models to simulate a small portion of the record. Models are simply not basic physics.

All the above and more are, nonetheless, central to the IPCC reports that supposedly are ‘authoritative’ and have been endorsed by National Academies and numerous professional societies.

Dang! So does this mean we have to give up our new 'religion' of "Global Warming, er, we mean Climate Change?"

Given that this has become a quasi-religious issue, it is hard to tell. However, my personal hope is that we will return to normative science, and try to understand how the climate actually behaves. Our present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2 levels, for example, clearly limits real understanding; so does the replacement of theory by model simulation. In point of fact, there has been progress along these lines and none of it demonstrates a prominent role for CO2. It has been possible to account for the cycle of ice ages simply with orbital variations (as was thought to be the case before global warming mania); tests of sensitivity independent of the assumption that warming is due to CO2 (a circular assumption) show sensitivities lower than models show; the resolution of the early faint sun paradox which could not be resolved by greenhouse gases, is readily resolved by clouds acting as negative feedbacks.

So, how does Dr. Lindzen sum up the impending catastrophe of "Global Warming, er, We Mean Climate Change" rushing down upon us like the 'Sweet Meteor of Death:'

Discussion of other progress in science can also be discussed if there is any interest. Our recent work on the early faint sun may prove particularly important. 2.5 billion years ago, when the sun was 20% less bright (compared to the 2% change in the radiative budget associated with doubling CO2), evidence suggests that the oceans were unfrozen and the temperature was not very different from today’s. No greenhouse gas solution has worked, but a negative cloud feedback does.

You now have some idea of why I think that there won’t be much warming due to CO2, and without significant global warming, it is impossible to tie catastrophes to such warming. Even with significant warming it would have been extremely difficult to make this connection.

Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating.

In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.

Thwack! That's going to leave a mark. Be sure to read all of Dr. Lindzen's testimony to see the supporting data and graphics. It will leave you with no doubt that the good doctor knows what he's talking about--and that we and our governments are being forced to change our laws and societies, and pay billions (and eventually trillions) of dollars/pounds/euros by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about (but remember, they are morally superior to the rest of us because they care so much more about the planet than we do).  Remember that the next time your Chevy Volt catches fire.

Hat tip: The telegraph.co.uk via Dinocrat

Toxic Islam

Amil Imani writes in the American Thinker about the need for Islam to get away from "toxic Islam:"

Detoxification is the physiological or psychological removal of toxic substances from a living organism. "Toxic Islam" is a type of dependence inducing "potion." In the same way that, let us say, alcohol is. Millions and perhaps billions of people imbibe alcohol. A great majority of these consumers qualify as moderate and social drinkers. Drinking alcohol may do them some psychological good but may also inflict some health problems and a monetary price. Yet, a vast number of human beings find enough "comfort" to put up with the monetary, health, relationships, and other costs of their drinking.

A certain number of these people are the heavy drinkers who are severely dependent and reliant on the drug. And there are those who are infrequent drinkers. They may have some wine at Christmas or on their birthday. And finally, there are those who are teetotalers. They never touch the stuff. So, you have what statisticians call a "bell curve" -- people distribute themselves along the drinking dimension as a bell-shaped function. Some are on one extreme, some on the other, with the great majority between the two extremes.

The same bell curve applies to Muslims. Islam is habit-forming. Just like alcohol. How strongly habit forming? It depends on the person and his circumstances. Is Islam "beneficial" to the person? For some it is. For others, toxic Islam is life itself, just like booze for the skid-row alcoholic.

 Read the whole article here.  I pray that Amil and his fellow Iranians succeed--for all of our sakes.

Setting Down The Legal (Sharia) Precedents For Destroying Israel

Andrew Bostom over at National Review Online has written a very chilling article on how Iran is setting the stage for destroying Israel:

Reza Khalili (pseudonym), a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has reported the latest restatement of the Iranian Shiite theocracy’s Jew-annihilationist jihadism:

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

As Andrew points out in his article, the Iranians have engaged in Jew hatred for hundreds of years.

The Persianophilic scholar E. G. Browne wrote those words in the 1920s about the entire pre-Pahlavi period of Shiite theocratic rule, from the ascension of the first Safavid shah, Ismail I, at the outset of the 16th century through Reza Shah Pahlavi’s installation in 1925, at the end of the Qajar dynasty. These Shiite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews in particular, but also of Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, as the cornerstone of relations toward non-Muslims. The impact of this najis conception was already apparent to European visitors to Persia during the reign of Ismail I. The Portuguese traveler Tome Pires observed (between 1512 and 1515) that “Sheikh Ismail . . . never spares the life of any Jew,” while another European travelogue notes “the great hatred [Ismail I] bears against the Jews.”

The writings and career of Mohammad Baqer al-Majlisi elucidate the imposition of Islamic law (Sharia) on non-Muslims in Shiite Iran. Al-Majlisi (d. 1699) was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shiite theocracy in Persia. For six years at the end of the 17th century, he functioned as the de facto ruler of Iran, making him the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shia ethos among ordinary persons. In his Persian treatise “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews,” Al-Majlisi describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under sharia, first and foremost the blood-ransom jizya, or poll-tax, based on Koran 9:29.

 Read the whole article.  It does not bode well for the West. We are too used to thinking that our "hearts and minds" information operations campaigns will change centuries of cultural behavior (see LTC Daniel Davis' article in Armed Forces Journal regarding his recent observations in Afghanistan--and, having done so, ensured that he will never be promoted to COL Davis).

The Generational Wars

John J. Xenakis has a thought provoking article in bigpeace.com regarding inter-generational conflicts.

Throughout my lifetime, one historical question I’ve heard raised over and over again involved the Nazi Holocaust: How was it possible that ordinary Germans participated in the genocide of millions of perfect nice, loyal German citizens, simply because they were Jewish? One might attribute the attitude of Adolf Hitler himself to some kind of psychosis, but how is it conceivable that ordinary Germans apparently had no “moral compass,” and willingly proceeded in this genocide? More broadly, why is it that Jews in particular have been persecuted in many countries throughout history? Generational Dynamics theory provides a proposed explanation for all of these questions.

From the point of view of generational theory, there is a catastrophe in progress in the current time that is equivalent to the Holocaust: The financial crisis, caused by “financial engineers” in banks and other institutions around the world that purposely created highly complex but fraudulent synthetic securities, and then paid off peers at ratings agencies to give them AAA ratings. How could so many ordinary professionals, including lawyers, accountants and regulators, consistently abandon their professional ethics to create such a massive fraud that’s destroyed so many lives, with the worst yet to come?

The Holocaust is a uniquely violent event in human history, and no Gen-Xers have killed Boomers in the financial crisis. But the two events share the same kind of underlying generational behavior, differing only in degree.

His portrayal of Generation X versus Baby Boomers is very interesting and on its face explains a lot about what is happening today.

Read the whole article.

Hat tip: BigPeace.com

It Always Pays To Dig Deeper

President Obama's decision to kill the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada was not only a blow to our economy and energy independence, there are significant secondary effects:

North Dakota oil drillers increasingly will rely on trains to move barrels of crude to market after the Obama administration's decision to reject plans for a pipeline that would run from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, state and industry officials say.

And what train system is used to move crude from North Dakota?  Why, that would be Burlington Northern Santa Fe.  And who owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe?  Why, that would be Berkshire Hathaway, of which BNSF is now a subsidiary.  And who owns Berkshire Hathaway? Why, that would be Warren Buffett, President Obama's financial adviser and Democrat Party supporter. 

So, not only does President Obama make his environmental voter base happy, he also does a huge financial favor for one of his supporters.  I believe that's called Crony Capitalism.  (And, even better, the President's latest re-election commercial claims that he has increased our energy independence. Wonder if that's a reference to the failed Chevy Volt...)

Amazing how these things work, eh?

Hat tip: Instapundit

Three Fundamental Mistakes In Dealing With Islam

Sultan Knish has a great article (same title as above) on our mistakes in dealing with Islam:

We made three fundamental mistakes in our dealings with Islam. First, we assumed that the only politically acceptable answer was also the right answer. This is the most common mistake that politicians make.

 Second, we established a construct of a moderate and extreme Islam that reflected how we saw it from the outside. This construct had no theological relationship to any actual belief or movement within Islam. Had we made the division into modern and fundamentalist, we would at least have been using words that meant something. Instead we used moderate and extreme in a military sense to mean hostile and friendly or neutral. But as a Vietnam era president and military command should have known, in a guerrilla war not everyone who isn't shooting at you is friendly or even neutral.

Our construct was black and white with few shades of gray. But the Muslim world is all shades of gray. The absolute choice we wanted them to make, "you're either with us or with the terrorists", was foreign to their culture and their way of life. Multiple layers of contradictory relationships and alliances are the norm in the region. You expect to betray and be betrayed, much as you expect to cheat and be cheated while bartering for a carpet at the souk. In a region where coalitions of Fascists, Communists and Islamists are doable, contradictions don't exist, all alliances are expedient and built on an expected betrayal. The rise of Islam itself was built on broken peace treaties. So it is no wonder then that in response to Bush's call, they chose both us and the terrorists. Appeasing America and the Islamists at the same time was their version of the politically safe middle ground, the path of least resistance and the only acceptable option.

And the more we prattled about the peacefulness of Islam, the more we looked like we could be easily appeased with a few gestures. And so it was the Islamists who were more threatening, who got the benefit of of their appeasement. We had asked Muslim countries for an alliance with no mixed allegiances, in a region where only kin could ask or count on such an arrangement. And we are not their kin, neither by blood and certainly not by religion. While we insisted that all people were the same, this was a statement of our belief, not theirs. And they did not believe that we believed it either.

Rather than learning what the Muslim world was, we had already decided what we wanted it to be. But our perspective was a foreign one. They might pander to it, but they would never dictate their own beliefs by it. We might talk of a moderate or extreme Islam, but that is our idea, not theirs. There is more than one form of Islam, they are not defined by their extremism or moderation. Nor by their approach toward violence. No more than we are.

Muslim theology is violent, because violence has always been a tool of its expansion. When we ask Muslims to disassociate themselves from violence, we are really asking them to disassociate themselves from Islam. And this they will not do. They will contextually condemn some acts of terror, depending on the identity of the perpetrators and the targets, and the impact of the acts on the nation and ideology of the Muslim or Muslims in question. But they will dub other acts of terrorist as valid resistance. The differences are not moral, but contextual.

 Read the whole article here.