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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Steve Milloy: The Cost of Eco-Imperialism

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What is the difference between Eco-Imperialism and Eco-Vandalism?  Nothing!

In 2010 the Center for Responsive Politics reported that in the past 20 years corporate oil interests had spent a combined $250 million dollars on political activism. Environmentalists were, as was intended, outraged that the philistine big oil interest was buying and bullying its way into a political advantage. 

Over a series of recent posts, I’ve been looking at the energy revolution that is changing the look of the 21st centuries. Some countries are losers, but the US in particular stands to make big gains at home and in its foreign policy.

Couple of pieces from Miranda Devine on the havoc being wrought by misanthropists flying the “green” flag

I want to preface this column by saying that I am very concerned about climate change. The rapid growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide shows no sign of abating, and I have concerns over what this will ultimately mean for the climate.

Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania received a standing ovation and enthusiastic chants of “USA!” on the House floor this week for his passionate attack on regulatory red tape. Rep. Kelly passionately argued that excessive, unnecessary regulations must be removed in order to get Americans back to work.

The key message of today’s environmentalists is: Accept our worldview, submit to our solutions – or else. This is, let us be blunt, a death threat. It is the voice of an extortionist.    Though Governor Chris Gregoire three years ago declared that Washington would treat greenhouse-gas emissions as dangerous pollutants, the state is now fighting attempts to force it to reduce emissions from oil refineries.
“Dangerous pollutants” sheesh!

Britain now has two energy policies, and one is being run out of the Treasury by the Chancellor, George Osborne, Greenpeace alleged today.

No, Juniper doesn’t just want to change your values, he wants total control over your life.

A Canadian Senate report has warned the industry it must improve its environmental performance

Coal export critics ramped up pressure on Gov. John Kitzhaber today to delay any Oregon projects until a comprehensive “health impact assessment” is completed.

Judicial panel upholds a ruling that environmental groups have no legal authority to challenge the 2005 deals, which the judges found did not threaten the delta smelt.

Australia is providing a case study in the self-destructive politics of green ideology, when believers of the religion of global warming gain political leverage.

Policies governing the European Union’s drive towards a low- carbon economy should not lose sight of the need to retain the bloc’s industrial base, Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said in a newspaper column on Monday.    

THERE’S a term biologists and economists use these days — ecosystem services — which refers to the many ways nature supports the human endeavor. Forests filter the water we drink, for example, and birds and bees pollinate crops, both of which have substantial economic as well as biological value.

Actually “nature” never does anything to “provide services” – that’s an artificial human construct. We exploit bees doing what they do for our advantage but that does not mean “nature” is “providing” any sort of service at all. We are simply good at exploiting that which we find around us and/or altering it to better suit ourselves. It is extremely foolish to anthropomorphize the unimproved environment and pretend it is “serving us”. What you see is what you get – exploit it or improve it because it is a dangerous and hostile environment in its unimproved state.

The EU’s proposals for new efficiency standards will have to be accepted by member states and the European parliament

The United States should shift away from setting standards that require new vehicles, electronics and household appliances to consume less energy because those rules rely on a “paternalistic” assumption that buyers can’t decide how to save themselves money, a prominent economist from the Brookings Institution and a Vanderbilt University professor of law, economics and management say in a new paper.

Really? I thought the mealy-mouthed empty nonsense a great improvement over previous efforts. Definite progress.

Scientists to march through Ottawa in white lab coats in protest at cuts to research and environmental damage

The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) provides a statement on the senselessness of renewable energy in Germany and features a video by skeptic EU Parliamentarian Herbert Reul (Germany).

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Logical Fallacy of the Week, Week 37: Fallacy of Quoting Out of Context

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The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Arguments based on this fallacy typically take two forms. As a straw man argument, which is frequently found in politics, it involves quoting an opponent out of context in order to misrepresent their position (typically to make it seem more simplistic or extreme) in order to make it easier to refute. As an appeal to authority, it involves quoting an authority on the subject out of context, in order to misrepresent that authority as supporting some position.
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Monday, July 30, 2012

There is No "Book of Fair"!

By Rich Kozlovich

I came across a great article today by John Elder entitled, New protein could rival antibiotics. He writes:

“AUSTRALIAN scientists have made a breakthrough in finding a powerful alternative to antibiotics - at a time when the World Health Organisation is predicting a bleak future in which bug-killing drugs are so ineffective that ''a child's scratched knee or a strep throat could kill again''.  The threat of the world returning to a pre-antibiotic era has been fretted about for at least a decade because of microbes becoming increasingly resistant to drugs.  But Monash University researchers, in collaboration with Rockefeller University and the University of Maryland, have published a paper revealing the structure and workings of PlyC - a flying saucer-shaped protein that kills bacteria that cause infections from sore throats to pneumonia and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome.   PlyC is a viral protein, known as a bacteriophage lysin, that specifically infects and kills bacteria. James Whisstock, Ashley Buckle and Sheena McGowan from the School of Biomedical Sciences have spent the past six years deciphering PlyC's atomic structure - a crucial step in developing the protein into a drug therapy.”

I predict that if this actually becomes a workable solution that is marketable; the “Anti’s” will start wailing that “you can’t patent proteins!” This is the same claim that they make about genes; ‘you can’t patent genes’’!  Products that have been patented to increase food production and to save lives in medicine costing billions to produce. Do they really expect people to spend that kind of money and not have an assured return?

Let’s take a look at their actions on genetically modified foods.  Alan Caruba wrote an article entitled, Genetically Modified Foods: Ending Famine Forever

Throughout Europe, the effort is on to ban the import of GM foods. Here in the United States, legislation requiring that GM products be labeled has been introduced in Congress. Some major corporations have already caved into the Greenpeace demands that they not purchase GM crops in the manufacture of their food products. In Lansing, Michigan, a visiting associate professor had her office set on fire by radical environmentalists on New Year's Eve because she is engaged in research to increase food production and making food more nutritious.

Do you see a pattern here? The only people that want to insure that Famine remains one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the Greens.”

I have thought a great deal about this over the years and I have concluded that the reason they do this isn’t because of unfairness issues. That is an intellectual and emotional distraction from the real issue.  I believe they present these arguments to confuse the minds of the uninformed to create an issue between ‘big business’ and their unfair treatment of the ‘little guy’ in order to prevent good things for humanity.  I know on the surface this seems strange, but look back as see their views on many advances that have made mankind safer from diseases.  They believe that the only way to save the Earth is for humanity to cease to exist.  Here are some quotes from another article by Alan entitled, Genocidal Green Quotes.

“We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!” – Steward Brand, writing in the Earth Catalog.

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” - Dave Forman, founder of Earth First

“I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” - John Davis, editor of the Earth First Journal

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing….This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.” - An editorial in The Economist.

Although I will agree that it seems right that no company can patent anything they didn’t invent, especially since genes and proteins are naturally occurring.  The reality is that if there is no patent protection there will be no product.  If there is no product there will no solution to the problems they are spending billion to solve, albeit for profit.  But that isn’t a bad thing, and it isn’t necessarily greed, it is ‘enlightened self interest’, the greatest force for advancement and innovation in the world.   And I don’t particularly care how much money the people who work on these thing make. 

A couple of years ago I attended a world premiere of a film dealing with DDT and had the opportunity to talk to a number of people involved in the prevention of malaria from other areas of the world.  The conversation turned to antibiotics and medical drugs in general and their costs.  I said that I understood their concerns, but if there is no profit there would be no drugs.  I also said I understood that the poorer nations would have trouble providing their citizens these drugs because of the cost.  However, I pointed out that eventually these products would go out of patent and become part of the public domain and they would then be available much more cheaply. 

Is it "fair" that some would continue to suffer because of costs? No! 

But would it be fair if all humanity suffered unendingly because the products were never produced? 

Let’s get this.  Fair cannot be defined and there is no divinely inspired “Book of Fair” to define it for us.  The end result is that as fallible human beings we are often left with picking the answer that is seemingly the most fair to the most people....and it will be done for profit or it won't happen.  

So often people demand perfection, but perfection is a beautiful fantasy!  In the real world the best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfection.  And this is it!

Please view this page on Bacteriophage therapy.   

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Observations From the Back Row

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society -
Hillary Clinton as first lady.

I hope I don't have to explain the irony of that! RK

On an otherwise pleasant morning, ACSH staffers’ blood began to boil after reading the latest anti-chemical screed in the Huffington Post, which included such fear-mongering claims as this: “Ninety-nine percent of pregnant American women carry multiple manmade chemicals in their bodies, sharing that concoction through the umbilical cord.”   The latest assault on chemicals preceded yesterday’s Environment and Public Works Committee's vote on the Safe Chemicals Act, which if passed, would replace the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976. First introduced in 2005 by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), the Safe Chemicals Act would require that manufacturers must first prove a chemical is safe before it’s approved for use. As the law currently stands, the EPA must demonstrate that a chemical already in use poses substantial health risks before it can be phased out…… As  ACSH;s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan aptly points out, “such legislation has no basis in reality, as anti-chemical hysteria is largely a psychological problem rooted in paranoia and politics, not science. Simply stated, the Safe Chemical Act would protect us from risks that don’t exist.”


In yesterday’s Dispatch, we considered the potential harms of the Safe Chemicals Act. If passed, it would replace the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976 and would require that manufacturers must first prove a chemical is safe before it’s approved for use.  Our discussion of this type of regulation led one of our readers to contrast it to our previous coverage of the dietary supplement industry. Here’s what Steve Curtis of Nellson Nutraceutical, LLC had to say:


Fearing tainted meat, China's women's volleyball team has stuck to a strict vegetarian diet for the last three weeks, which the team's coach is now blaming for his athletes' abysmal performance.  The Chinese team lost four of five matches at a world tournament that ended Sunday in Ningbo, China, falling to the United States, Brazil, Turkey and Thailand. While Brazil and the US are powerhouses in women's volleyball, Turkey and Thailand didn't even qualify for the 2008 Olympics, where China won bronze.  “They have showed significant decline in their strength and fitness” coach Yu Juemin said of his squad after Sunday's defeat to the US. “We are wary of meat tainted by lean-meat powder, and we didn't eat any during the game period,” Yu told the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

By Jennifer Marohasy
THERE is no doubt that many people are susceptible to the repetition of a single message. No matter how stupid the message, if enough people say it often enough, a large percentage of those who hear it will begin to believe it. That’s the basis of advertising and also propaganda: it’s how you make ideas fashionable, even scientific ideas. But just because an idea is fashionable doesn’t make it right and just because an idea is right, well it doesn’t mean it represents the truth  Fashion is in fact the lowest form of ideology and I have little regard for fashionable ideas – even fashionable scientific ideas. I also have little regard for what many claim to be good and wholesome ideas. My interest is in the facts, the evidence – the truth particularly as it pertains to the natural world.

By Katherine Timpf

When most people talk about President Obama's influence on America, they mention reforming health care, repealing "don't ask, don't tell" or ending the war in Iraq.  But a nearly unknown executive order could have a greater impact on the future of America than all of those things combined, potentially giving the federal government power to control every project in the country.  The obscure memorandum of understanding, based on a long-forgotten executive order signed by President Clinton in 1994, marries the issues of environmentalism and social justice. The federal government can use the laws from one to control the other.  Seventeen federal agencies signed the Aug. 4, 2011, memorandum — a clear indication of its widespread implications. By signing it, “Each Federal agency agrees to the framework, procedures, and responsibilities” of integrating environmental justice into all of its “programs, policies, and activities.”

Something called the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) enjoys de facto authority over government green building standards. Many would be surprised, however, to learn that it is not a government agency.

Rather, the USGBC is a non-profit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that sets the standards for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. For those unfamiliar, LEED is the dominant certification program used for measuring building sustainability and energy efficiency.

Technically, LEED is a voluntary program. But because a reported 400 U.S. cities and localities, 39 states and virtually the entire federal government currently require builders to meet LEED standards, USGBC effectively operates as a taxpayer-subsidized monopoly – one whose standards increasingly seem driven by ideology and influence rather than sound science and economic common sense.

For evidence of that, look no further than LEED v4, the USGBC’s proposed fourth generation changes to its green building standards……The era of the taxpayer-supported USGBC monopoly must end.

A quarterly magazine called Skeptic published a cover story a few weeks back by Donald Prothero titled “How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human-Caused.” That struck us here at The Heartland Institute as rather strange.  Our work for years has been skeptical of the idea that human activity is causing catastrophic climate change, which is the conventional wisdom of the mainstream media. And we have two immense volumes of peer-reviewed literature and the videos of many conferences to prove it.  So if the very name of your magazine is Skeptic, shouldn’t readers expect you to carefully examine the spoon-fed doctrines of the likes of Al Gore, Michael Mann, the UN’s IPCC, etc., and be … well … skeptical of “doctrine” — especially in light of the Climategate scandal? Alas, no.

At a London fundraiser last night, Mitt Romney said,
 “The EPA has an important responsibility, and that is to keep clean and make more clean our air and our water. I happen to think that the decision by the Supreme Court and by the administration to have the EPA also regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide was beyond the intent of the original legislation. My view is that the EPA, if it keeps to its mission and does not use its power to foster or further an anti-carbon energy agenda, would be a more effective department…” [Emphasis added] [h/t Politico, for the quote]
 
While Romney is spot on about the overreach of Massachusetts v. EPA, it’s also true that U.S. air is clean and safe. No one is being harmed by ambient air quality anywhere in the U.S.
 
In light of recent comments by NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen – stating that climate change is a moral imperative on par with slavery – climate change is, once again, front and center. Immediately, environmental alarmists and reactionary extremists on both sides of the political spectrum started pointing fingers and raising voices.  While the climate debate certainly has merit and must be studied (scientifically, not politically, of course), climate change is not the crux of this overarching environmental issue. The real issue is can government actually provide the solution?
Answering this question requires only a brief look at government’s track record of fixing problems and protecting things.

·         A Broken History of Environmental Protection
·         Protecting infinity and Beyond
·         Do Viable Market Alternatives Exist?
·         Markets Always Win

The perpetually growing state is synonymous with endlessly eroding freedom and, every year, government shovels more and more responsibility into its bloated craw. At the same time, it fails the most basic obligations. Fortunately, politicians and bureaucrats, convinced they know all the answers, are consistently proven wrong by the laws of economics. As F.A. Hayek eloquently states in The Fatal Conceit, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." Or protect.


Another green company backed by an Obama bundler just bit the dust. After announcing earlier this year that the company would lay off 200 of its 300 employees, solar manufacturer Amonix Inc. closed its operation in North Las Vegas leaving taxpayers in the red by $20 million.

“Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc. opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas,” reports the Las Vegas Sun, a liberal paper, last January, “the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce. Flextronics Industrial, the Singapore solar panel manufacturer that partnered with Amonix to staff the new $18 million, 214,000-square-foot plant, laid off about 200 of its 300-plus employees Tuesday.” 

My Take - I guess it was Romney’s fault that all those jobs ended up in Singapore?  No?  Okay, then who sent them there?  Clearly it must have been Romney’s fault those workers lost their jobs there and here?  No?  Okay….then whose fault was it? Most importantly…who decided to “invest” in this company?  Surely it must have been Romney!  No?  Well then who in the world could have been so stupid as to spend that kind of money on a plan that was so stupid that it failed in seven months? Oh…this was a government investment called a subsidy promoted by…..Oh Nooooo….say it ain’t so Joe…..it just couldn’t have been ‘The One’! Could it?  Of course not…. after all his wide business experience as a community organizer how could he have made such a mistake?  RK


When President Obama goes off prompter, he usually tells truth … at least the “truth” as he sees it. Obama’s quote above not only reminds me of Karl Marx, the father of socialism and communism, moreover, his arrogant, anti-business, anti-capitalism screed reminds me of the words of Thomas Jefferson who wisely said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Perhaps that’s why so many Marxists and socialists professors and liberal teachers are rewriting and revising history today, because they don’t want the voting public to be knowledgeable about the truth of history, politics and economics. Why? Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, supposedly said: “Truth is the enemy of the State.” ……..  Pick any grand, utopian, liberal, humanist, progressive, or socialist policy over the past 112 years – Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” Woodrow Wilson’s “Statolatry” (state worship), FDR’s “New Deal” and welfare-state policies of the 1930s and ’40s, Truman’s “Fair Deal,” LBJ’s “Great Society,” Nixon’s EPA, Carter’s Department of Education, Clinton’s failed attempt at universal health care, or President Obama’s neo-socialist, Keynesian policies contained in Obamacare today. In other words, these progressive presidents followed Mussolini’s famous fascist slogan of 1923 – Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State…… Western Marxists like Obama exploit the trappings natural to democracy to contrive getting elected and then mercilessly exploit the reins of political power…. institute a torrent of radical reforms, regulations and legislation, thus propelling society inevitably into a welfare state, socialism and, if feasible, toward communism.

A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to collect and use rainwater.
Gary Harrington of Eagle Point, Ore., says he plans to appeal his conviction in Jackson County (Ore.) Circuit Court on nine misdemeanor charges under a 1925 law for having what state water managers called “three illegal reservoirs” on his property – and for filling the reservoirs with rainwater and snow runoff.  “The government is bullying,” Harrington told CNSNews.com in an interview Thursday.  “They’ve just gotten to be big bullies and if you just lay over and die and give up, that just makes them bigger bullies. So, we as Americans, we need to stand on our constitutional rights, on our rights as citizens and hang tough. This is a good country, we’ll prevail,” he said.

One of my pet peeves is the conservative who lectures us on the “limits” of markets and looks with a self-satisfied and condescending shake of the head upon the stupid rubes he must endure who persist in supporting the market all the same. Why, haven’t these dopes read Wilhelm Roepke, whose views are to be considered definitive?  In this unfortunate post, we get the usual laments about what “capitalism” has done to the public. If only banking had stayed local we wouldn’t have had all these problems, etc.  Absent as always from these critiques is any discussion of the Federal Reserve, the elephant in the living room, which is a friend neither of localism nor the free market. Likewise absent is any acknowledgment that to call the banking system of today a “free market” is at best an expression of one’s sense of humor. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the current system is rather far from the Misesian ideal; it includes:

What the Federal Reserve System can do and what it will do are two different things.
The Federal Reserve System can monetize anything. It can create digital money and buy any asset it chooses to buy. There are no legal restrictions on what it is allowed to monetize. If it were to do this, and it continued to do this, the dollar would fall to zero value. This would produce hyperinflation. The result would be the destruction of all dollar-based creditors. Debtors could pay off their loans with the sale of an egg or a pack of cigarettes. This is what farmers did in 1923 in Germany and Austria.
The economists who advise the Federal Reserve System know this. The bankers who run the banks that own the shares of the 12 regional FED banks know this. Bernanke knows this. The day will come when the decision-makers on the Federal Open Market Committee will have to fish or cut bait. They will have to decide: mass inflation (20%) or hyperinflation (QEx). They will have to decide: recession or hyperinflation.

Today, FarmEcon LLC released RFS, Fuel and Food Prices, and the Need for Statutory Flexibility, a study of ethanol’s impact on food and fuel prices. FarmEcon prepared the study for the American Meat Institute, California Dairies Inc., Milk Producers Council, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council, and National Turkey Federation.  The study argues that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), commonly known as the ethanol mandate, is detrimental to both non-ethanol industry corn users and food and fuel consumers. The program should therefore be reformed. The RFS has “destabilized corn and ethanol prices by offering an almost risk-free demand volume guaranty to the corn-based ethanol industry.” Consequently, food producers who use corn as a feedstock “have been forced to bear a disproportionate share of market and price risk” when corn yields fall and prices rise. This has become painfully obvious in recent weeks as drought conditions in the Midwest depress yields and push corn prices to record highs.



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Sunday, July 29, 2012

Welcome to the Religion of Peace

By Rich Kozlovich

This is a group of links from Frontpagemag.com dealing with what actually goes on in the world of Islam.  I am starting out with an article that is almost a month old dealing with the Raid on Entebbe.  I do so for a number of reasons.  It is, to my amazement, slightly remembered or unremembered by most of the people I talk to. It is also a clarifying historical event that should be remembered all the more because all the world is facing the same kind of terrorism.  Finally, the reason I absolutely know that this important event is either unremembered, unknown or vaguely remembered is because I use it in my rationale about the pest control industry. 

I know some may find that strange, but Israel and the pest control industry have a great deal in common.  We are surrounded by enemies who would destroy us and work at it 24/7.  We have also been infiltrated by their allies, apologists, and appeasers.  Pest Control is the Israel of industry.  So, how do I use this historical account to defend our industry? After the raid was over and the details of how it was done was publicized it became known that the Israelis received help from the country of South Africa, which was still under white rule.  One reporter asked a prominent Israeli….I remember it as Golda Meir, although that may not be correct….how they could accept help from that racist government.  She answered; we are not like the United States.  We don’t have so many friends that we can pick and choose.  I always felt that was profound, and an important lesson for the leaders of our industry. 



It took Israeli commandos minutes to conduct one of the greatest and most daring rescue missions in modern history, in Entebbe, Uganda, on July 4, 1976.
During those brief fateful moments, good triumphed over evil; the innocent were saved and the terrorists who threatened them were routed.  It was 11:30 pm Saturday night, June 27, 1976. The seventh night that over 100 Israelis, non-Israeli Jews, and the twelve-member Air France crew were held in the Entebbe airport since PFLP (Popular Front Liberation Palestine) terrorists and two West German supporters, hijacked the jet, Air France flight 139, while on the ground during a stopover in Athens as it was bound from Tel Aviv to Paris. The Ugandan regime under Idi Amin Dada supported the terrorists and gave them cover…… On that day which also happened to be the American bicentennial, forces that threatened freedom were routed by courage and daring. In the UN General Assembly, some praised the mission, others condemned and criticized. No matter. All words aside, heroic actions spoke on that triumphant day.

Thirty six years later, as the threat of terrorism continues to loom large, the rescue at Entebbe stands as a model of victory and of how it is achieved.


Recently, an Egyptian Candid Camera prank type TV show turned very ugly and violent when the guest, an Egyptian actor, was told he was on Israeli TV. The prank was done on several guests with similar reactions: extreme violence and hate speech against Jews who were described as the most cursed by Allah in Islam. I personally was not surprised by the video clip, but a lot of American friends of mine were shocked by the responses they witnessed on camera. Many books have been written about why Muslims hate Jews but I decided to write my own explanation, which I detailed in chapter four of my most recent book “The Devil We Don’t Know.”


The Pakistani Taliban has banned UN health workers from administering polio vaccine to almost 250,000 children living in South and North Waziristan, the Taliban-controlled region along the Afghan-Pakistan border.  Despite the near eradication of polio worldwide — having been reduced from over 350,000 cases in 1988 to less than 700 in 2011 — Pakistan remains one of three countries, where the disease still remains endemic.  Yet, when the government of Pakistan recently launched a national three-day polio vaccination campaign targeting 34 million Pakistani children, its efforts to reach a quarter million children living in South and North Waziristan were rebuffed by the Taliban.   According to Taliban leaders, the UN vaccinators from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF were really not health workers on a mission to protect vulnerable children from the dreaded viral disease, but rather US spies trying to locate new Taliban targets for American drone strikes.


Over in Toronto, a Muslim cleric with the unwieldy name of Al-Hashim Kamena Atangana had a great idea. Al-Hashim’s idea was for Toronto to pass laws forcing women to wear burkas. “Cover up or get raped,” was the implied message. Toronto only has an estimated 5.5 percent Muslim population so the Toronto Taliban probably won’t be getting their way until they have higher double digit numbers, but they can wait. Meanwhile in Egypt where the population is 90 percent Muslim and the other 10 percent are running for their lives, a new TV channel represents a brave new frontier in Islamic feminism. Maria TV features women giving lifestyle and makeup tips while wearing full niqab, which covers their faces and leaves only their eyes exposed. According to some Saudi clerics who think that women are only allowed to leave one eye exposed, this makes them either a bold feminist experiment or shameless strumpets.


Visit globalinfidel.tv. - Friday morning, 4:10 am, Los Angeles, CA:  I am being wired for sound.  There are big hot lights pointed in my eyes, a screen depicting the Los Angeles skyline behind me, and a camera pointed at my face.  In a few minutes I will be addressing a live audience of millions of viewers, about what I believe to be the defining issue of our time, the Islamization of the West.

I have reviewed all of the facts available to me, concerning recent Federal Government lobbying on behalf of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.  I’ve read every news report on the subject I could find.  I have consulted attorneys and experts, and sent over all of my notes to this major news network, to be vetted.  And I have memorized all of the facts and condensed them into a few short sound bytes, in preparation for the moment that I am introduced, any minute now.


In the wake of the incident of the “Allahu akbar”-shouting Olympic torch-snatcher in London, the headline on a July 8 article in the Guardian by a British Muslim journalist named Mehdi Hasan may seem, shall we say, a mite ironic: “We mustn’t allow Muslims in public life to be silenced.” 

The piece was a bid for pity. 

“Have you ever been called an Islamist?” it began.  “How about a jihadist or a terrorist? Extremist, maybe? Welcome to my world…. And on July 16, Rob Berkeley lamented the “vitriolic abuse” Hasan allegedly “receives when he seeks to address issues of anti-Muslim discrimination on the basis that he is homophobic – well he must be, he is a Muslim after all and everyone ‘knows’ Muslims are homophobes.  Presumed guilty, he is asked to prove his liberal credentials before his reasonable arguments are even given a hearing.” 
Disingenuous claptrap.  Anyone who has watched Hasan’s videos knows he’s not just hostile to gays – he thinks all infidels are, as they say, pigs and dogs.


Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.

Not only did the original “underwear bomber” Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri hide explosives in his rectum to assassinate Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef—they met in 2009 after the 22-year-old Asiri “feigned repentance for his jihadi views“—but this “holy-warrior” apparently had fellow jihadists repeatedly sodomize him to “widen” his anus to fit the explosives—and all in accordance with the fatwas of Islamic clerics.  A 2010 Arabic news video that aired on Fadak TV gives the details. Apparently a cleric, one Abu al-Dema al-Qasab, informed al-Asiri and other jihadis of an “innovative and unprecedented way to execute martyrdom operations: place explosive capsules in your anus. However, to undertake this jihadi approach you must agree to be sodomized for a while to widen your anus so it can hold the explosives.”  Others inquired further by asking for formal fatwas. Citing his desire for “martyrdom and the virgins of paradise,” one jihadi (possibly al-Asiri himself) asked another sheikh, “Is it permissible for me to let one of the jihadi brothers sodomize me to widen my anus if the intention is good?”…..


In “Sodomy for the Sake of Islam,” I wrote about Abdullah al-Asiri, the 2009 suicide-bomber who inserted explosives in his rectum, and how news emerged later that he likely relied on a fatwa permitting sodomy to “widen” his anus to accommodate the explosives. (Click here for a graphic picture of the aftermath of this approach.)  It wasn’t long before the infamous “hoax!” charge appeared—this time over at the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian website, Electronic Intifada (henceforth EI). Writing that “The Advocate, an important US-based national gay and lesbian news magazine, has published a homophobic, racist, sectarian and Islamophobic hoax as if it is actual news,” one Benjamin Doherty unequivocally denounces my article, the Advocate’s source, as “pure nonsense,” a “vile Islamophobic hoax,” and a “defamatory joke targeting Muslims.”  Amazingly, despite all this sure language, the fact is, EI does not offer a shred of evidence to counter my article.

by Daniel Greenfield on July 12, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim on July 12, 2012

by Frank Crimi on July 12, 2012

by Robert Spencer on July 11, 2012

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