Coronavirus, New World Order, Archbishop Vigano SOS

By Enza Ferreri

This article was published here: Coronavirus, New World Order, Archbishop Vigano SOS



I tend to accept restrictions if they are justifiably motivated by serious health dangers.

I must admit, though, that an episode raised my alarm about the motivations of our political leaders when in Lombardy, in Italy, police tried to interrupt a Mass which was attended by 15 people in a large church where they could keep safe distancing, in addition to wearing face masks and gloves. One of them, explained the priest later in an interview, was a parishioner who had just buried his mother, without funeral due to the lockdown, and brought a few more unexpected people.

Compare that with a situation which arose a few days later, 25 April, that in Italy is called "Liberation Day" (Festa della liberazione) and celebrates the fall of fascism. In various parts of Italy marches, rallies and meetings were held which didn't respect the lockdown regulations. Nevertheless authorities on the whole turned a blind eye.

A clear example of double standard, which shows that probably health concerns are not as important for those who govern us as political and ideological considerations, not to mention questions of who has more power.

This is effectively expressed by the phrase: "Just wave a red flag, and everything becomes possible". Or, before the law some are more equal than others.

The New World Order

The New World Order is one of those concepts that the mainstream media consider a paranoid fruit of overactive imagination, particularly coming from the Right end of the political spectrum.

However, that the notion of a new global order has been developed and held by influential people over the last decades is amply documented. This is an idea that tries to undermine not only nation but also family, traditional ties, religion, moral values.

I’m choosing to reproduce here only a handful of quotations from sources that Leftists and so-called progressives, who are always hunting for “conspiracy theorists”, trust, but there would be many more.

Dr George Brock Chisholm, who served as the first Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), a United Nations agency, from 1948 to 1953, according to Wikipedia ‘developed his strong view that children should be raised in an "as intellectually free environment" as possible, independent of the prejudices and biases (political, moral and religious) of their parents’.

I remind you that collective education of children in society is an old communist idea going back at least to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, espoused by the latter in 1884 in the book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Of Chisholm, who was a Canadian, the Canadian Encyclopedia also says that he “had attacked traditional morality and religious teachings for instilling guilt, fear and prejudice in children. In his view, these teachings produced immature adults incapable of free, rational thought and ultimately bound for war.”

And Edric Lescouflair writes about him in the Harvard Square Library in these terms: ‘Characteristically, Chisholm brought his message to a world audience by stating, “The world was sick, and the ills from which it was suffering were mainly due to the perversion of man, his inability to live at peace with himself. The microbe was no longer the main enemy; science was sufficiently advanced to be able to cope with it admirably. If it were not for such barriers as superstition, ignorance, religious intolerance, misery and poverty.”’ This is also in Wikiquotes.

Chisholm’s claim that the microbe was no longer man’s main enemy because science was able to cope with it admirably rings particularly risible, if not tragically sinister, in these times when a microbe, in the guise of a coronavirus, is keeping the human world under confinement and holding world economy to ransom.

Then we have US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott writing in Time magazine on 20 July 1992 in an article headlined America Abroad: The Birth of the Global Nation: “I'll bet that within the next hundred years… nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century -- "citizen of the world" -- will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st.” You can also read it here.

And don’t let’s forget popular and celebrity culture, which in the modern world has got to the position of having an enormous impact, especially on young and vulnerable minds.

John Lennon expressed the mentality of our age by thinking he had surpassed God (remember his “We are more popular than Jesus Christ”?), and he translated the New World Order idea into a pop song format with Imagine : “Imagine there’s no countries.” And added the encouraging “It isn't hard to do”. It’s certainly easier now than then, thanks partly to people like him.

It goes on: “Nothin' to kill or die for. And no religion, too. Imagine all the people livin' life in peace. Yoo, hoo, oo-oo. It’s easy if you try”. Now that we are moving in his recommended direction, it doesn’t look like the paradise on earth that Lennon had imagined it to be, despite all his self-alleged God-like qualities, does it?

An Appeal

All of the above is my way of introducing an Appeal by the Italian Arc Mgr. Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States 2011 to 2016.

The document was published on 7 May and has been undersigned by almost 1,000, including Robert Francis Kennedy Jr, many Cardinals, Bishops and prelates, doctors, researchers and scientists, academics, intellectuals, associations, lawyers, authors and journalists.

It is open to be undersigned to everyone who agrees with its content.

Below is an extract from the Appeal:

We have reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements. The imposition of these illiberal measures is a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.

We also believe that in some situations the containment measures that were adopted, including the closure of shops and businesses, have precipitated a crisis that has brought down entire sectors of the economy. This encourages interference by foreign powers and has serious social and political repercussions...

We ask the scientific community to be vigilant, so that cures for Covid-19 are offered in honesty for the common good. Every effort must be made to ensure that shady business interests do not influence the choices made by government leaders and international bodies. It is unreasonable to penalize those remedies that have proved to be effective, and are often inexpensive, just because one wishes to give priority to treatments or vaccines that are not as good, but which guarantee pharmaceutical companies far greater profits, and exacerbate public health expenditures. Let us also remember, as Pastors, that for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted foetuses.

We also ask government leaders to ensure that forms of control over people, whether through tracking systems or any other form of location-finding, are rigorously avoided. The fight against Covid-19, however serious, must not be the pretext for supporting the hidden intentions of supranational bodies that have very strong commercial and political interests in this plan. In particular, citizens must be given the opportunity to refuse these restrictions on personal freedom, without any penalty whatsoever being imposed on those who do not wish to use vaccines, contact tracking or any other similar tool. Let us also consider the blatant contradiction of those who pursue policies of drastic population control and at the same time present themselves as the savior of humanity, without any political or social legitimacy. Finally, the political responsibility of those who represent the people can in no way be left to “experts” who can indeed claim a kind of immunity from prosecution, which is disturbing to say the least.

We strongly urge those in the media to commit themselves to providing accurate information and not penalizing dissent by resorting to forms of censorship, as is happening widely on social media, in the press and on television. Providing accurate information requires that room be given to voices that are not aligned with a single way of thinking. This allows citizens to consciously assess the facts, without being heavily influenced by partisan interventions. A democratic and honest debate is the best antidote to the risk of imposing subtle forms of dictatorship, presumably worse than those our society has seen rise and fall in the recent past.

Finally, as Pastors responsible for the flock of Christ, let us remember that the Church firmly asserts her autonomy to govern, worship, and teach. This autonomy and freedom are an innate right that Our Lord Jesus Christ has given her for the pursuit of her proper ends. For this reason, as Pastors we firmly assert the right to decide autonomously on the celebration of Mass and the Sacraments, just as we claim absolute autonomy in matters falling within our immediate jurisdiction, such as liturgical norms and ways of administering Communion and the Sacraments. The State has no right to interfere, for any reason whatsoever, in the sovereignty of the Church. Ecclesiastical authorities have never refused to collaborate with the State, but such collaboration does not authorize civil authorities to impose any sort of ban or restriction on public worship or the exercise of priestly ministry...

…The civil duties to which citizens are bound imply the State’s recognition of their rights.

We are all called to assess the current situation in a way consistent with the teaching of the Gospel. This means taking a stand: either with Christ or against Christ. Let us not be intimidated or frightened by those who would have us believe that we are a minority: Good is much more widespread and powerful than the world would have us believe.

Italy: Racism Fear Stops Coronavirus Vital Quarantine

By Enza Ferreri

This article was published in Italy Travel Ideas

Italy has been one of the world's most affected countries for the number of infections caused by the novel coronavirus.

Walter Ricciardi, Italy's representative at the World Health Organization and Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, very clearly stated: "We [Italy] pay the consequences of not having immediately quarantined people who landed from China. We banned direct flights, a decision that has no scientific basis, and which did not allow us to trace the arrivals, because people were able to stop over and arrive from other places."

Professor Ricciardi was referring to the possibility left open to travellers of, for example, taking a flight from Beijing to Dubai, changing tickets and then heading to Rome or Milan.

Another authority on the subject, famous virologist Roberto Burioni, as early as 7 February was writing:

"The virus in China might be out of control, but it is not here yet. The only chance we have for not letting it in is only, and I repeat only, the quarantine of those who return. All, without distinction. It is not racism, but a simple and elementary measure of self-protection, which costs a little discomfort to the people who are isolated and provides us with infinite security, while avoiding hateful and unnecessary discrimination."

Dr Burioni later declared in an interview to Il Corriere della Sera:

Oh, I know, they called me an alarmist, even a fascist leghista [supporter of the centre-right Lega party], because from the beginning I claimed that isolating people from China was the only effective way to avoid the spread of the virus. I stress: people, not Chinese.

As you may have already noticed, the political climate in Italy has over time become excessively, paranoidly fixated against any supposed "fascism" or "racism", even when there is none, to the point of neglecting basic considerations of, as in this case, health and self-preservation.

Something similar happened in many other Western countries: see the example of the street distribution in Canada of bottles of hand sanitiser bearing the message 'Stop the Spread', referring not to Coronavirus but to xenophobia and intolerance. However, such attitudes of "the stigma is worse than the virus" in Italy have had more devastating consequences, due to the actions of the current government, which has been described as "the most unfit in the history of the Italian Republic".

On 31 January, the day after two Chinese tourists who had arrived from Wuhan to Milan Malpensa Airport were discovered as Italy's first two cases of the virus, the leader of the Lega party himself, Matteo Salvini, wrote on Twitter:

"Let me understand … The first two cases of Coronavirus in Italy apparently have quietly landed at Malpensa on 23 January and, without any control, travelled for days across half of Italy, until checking into a hotel in the centre of Rome.

"Is this how the government protects the health and safety of Italians? The Lega for days has been calling for quarantines, checks, blocks and information, but for Leftist politicians and journalists we were 'speculators' and jackals. Let us pray to God that there will be no disaster, but whoever has done wrong must pay."

He also tweeted: “Check every single entry. By sea, by air, by land. While other countries took immediate action, in Italy there was the impression that someone has been wasting time. And you can't play with the health of citizens."

Salvini's words, like Dr Burioni's, were welcomed by insults as well as totally ignored by the government.

Instead, a much more reasonable response came from a Chinese in self-isolation, married and mother-of-three Xia Weihong, 48: the Lega is right, she said to the Libero newspaper.

Italy's Centre-Left government was busy in fighting not an all-too-real virus but an imaginary risk of anti-Chinese racism, as if the highly-justified fear of contagion had been a symptom of dangerous xenophobia.

So we saw the President of the Republic Mattarella visiting a Rome's school attended by Chinese children to show his solidarity; initiatives like "embrace a Chinese" launched by Florence mayor Nardella; politicians and media people eating spring rolls in Chinese restaurants.

Except that, when a few cases of the virus were found in some parts of northern Italy, none of these personages went to embrace inhabitants of the Italian affected area.

Other posts on the subject will follow.



SOURCES
La Stampa
Medical Facts of Dr Roberto Burioni
Il Corriere della Sera
Malpensa 24
Matteo Salvini tweets
Libero
Canadian Hand Sanitiser

Debunking Debunkers: Global Disinformation Index (GDI)

A useful exercise is to debunk the debunkers. I've done it before with the UK's fact-checker Full Fact .

It's particularly important in this coronavirus climate of frantic "fact-checking" and "information-correcting".

An article recently published on the website of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) is about a physicist, Danny Rogers, who has co-founded and is Chief Technical Officer of the Global Disinformation Index, with the noble purpose of saving the internet from lies, errors, fake news and what have you.

The first disinformation service he should perform is against some of his own claims during the interview, for example: "QAnon has led to people’s deaths."

This is a wide and sweeping generalisation with no basis in reality. If it refers, as the only tenuous link, to the murder of alleged mob boss Frank Cali by Anthony Comello in March 2019, it is highly flimsy.

Apparently on the advice of his lawyer Robert Gottlieb, Comello pleaded not guilty, since Gottlieb is trying to defend his client as not guilty due to mental defect.

According to documents obtained by the New York Times, Comello wanted to perform a citizen’s arrest on Cali to help Trump, as he believed the Gambino crime family's presumed boss was part of the deep state and that he "was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself" to place Cali under citizen's arrest. When Cali didn’t comply, the documents say, Comello killed him out of fear that Cali would kill him.

What is unclear, among many things, is why Comello thought Cali belonged to the deep state.

The connection of this murder with QAnon, what Leftists call a "conspiracy theory" that Trump and his presidency have been under attack by the deep state, is at the very least dubious.

On the same grounds we could blame any political movement, in most cases with better reason, of "leading to people’s deaths". Many examples come to mind, for instance the 14 June 2017 shooting At Alexandria, Virginia, Congressional Republican Baseball Practice which only for the presence of a security detail by a miracle didn't kill anyone but could have been a massacre,

James T. Hodgkinson opened fire on GOP lawmakers and staffers with a rifle as they prepared for the annual summer baseball game between Republicans and Democrats, wounding several people.

Hodgkinson’s social media profile revealed he was a Left-wing Bernie Sanders supporter who believed President Trump was a “traitor.” In one Facebook post of 3 months before Hodgkinson wrote: “It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

The AAAS article goes on to say:

GDI’s [the above-mentioned Global Disinformation Index] system analyzes content and context flags which can help assess any domain’s risk of disinformation. It rates the disinformation risk for websites based upon variables that include overall credibility, whether they push sensationalism, whether they contain hate speech, and whether the company embraces sound policies regarding content.

Now, since the article is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the "debunking" website with a high-sounding name it analyses is co-founded and headed by a physicist, we would expect some more precision in its chosen criteria than this. What objective characteristics does "overall credibility" entail?

And, even more importantly, how do you define "hate speech"? What does this concept mean? What role can it have in a science-led effort of exposing disinformation?

It's an impossible task to give "hate speech" a role in refuting falsehoods, for many reasons. First of all, hate is a sentiment, an emotion, a passion. As such, it's in the realm of the subjective, not the objective. What you consider hate another may consider simply justice, or telling the truth. There's no objective yardstick for definition, let alone measurement.

Furthermore, "hate" has been overused ad nauseam by the political and cultural Left to stigmatise, place beyond the pale and therefore silence (or at least the Left hopes) its adversaries.

So, this other "fact-checking" enterprise on the face of it seems to be, like so many of the same kind, Leftist propaganda masquerading as a quest for the truth.



PHOTO CREDIT
Pixabay

Labour's Immigration Plan Is Unravelling

This article is by our guest writer Cassandra.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you notice the shift in British 'Left-wing' orthodoxy? You might have missed it if you weren't paying attention since our 'progressive' overlords changed tact without acknowledging what they had tried to do, and what they had in fact succeeded in doing, to British society since circa 1997.

It is now apparently acceptable to criticise the open-door policy to immigration that this country has had over the last decade and more. A policy which, for the most part, it still has today. Even the leadership of the Labour party has come out of the 'bigot' closet to admit that perhaps, just maybe, the level of immigration into Britain has been a tad high. They've even gone as far as to admit responsibility for the dramatic demographic changes that many cities have undergone and, what's more, to reluctantly admit that the 'pace' of immigration has been a little too fast for some people's liking.

What the intelligentsia more broadly (not just the Labour party and their clique) has not admitted responsibility for, however, is its attempt to indoctrinate and cower people into allowing it to continue its grand project unopposed by condemning those who opposed it as 'racists', 'bigots', 'xenophobes' etc. What project is that, you ask? Why, the project, as revealed by Labour speech-writer Andrew Neather, of opening up 'the UK to mass immigration' thereby transforming the make-up of British society in order to 'rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date'. Opposition to that project was quelled through the dogma that opposing it automatically made one a 'racist', a 'bigot' and a 'xenophobe' – all very bad things. So bad, in fact, that there was nothing worse than to be labelled as such.

That dogma was not something that the party attempted to impose by itself. Its law-making power and control of the education system was not enough. The media were roped in to help to impose a fog of fear and silence upon society. Comedians were used to poke fun at anyone who dared to step out of line.

These tools worked together so effectively that average people came to police themselves. They came to learn, by indoctrination, what the right things to think and say about immigration were. Moreover, they imbibed all the buzz words ('racist', 'bigot' etc.) to be used against those who did not conform in order to pressure them into conforming. It didn't matter that, if pressed, most of the people using those words couldn't actually provide a clear and precise definition of their meaning, as long as they understood when to apply them - i.e. when somebody is critical of immigration -, and understood that, in applying them, they proved to themselves and their overlords that they belonged to the 'right' group. They learnt from our 'progressive' rulers that language is a weapon to be used with extreme prejudice against the enemy in order to inoculate yourself from the very same treatment that you yourself give others - thereby perpetuating the system.

So what happened? Why the change? What made the 'progressives' who sought to bully an entire society into conforming to their ideology abandon their dogma to such an extent that they now talk in the same vein as the very 'racists' and 'bigots' they once condemned?

Part of the truth is that their success, such as it has been, has been a superficial one. It was never really more than skin-deep. Of course they succeeded in creating an atmosphere wherein people felt that they had to keep their true feelings about immigration unvoiced, but they did not succeed in actually forcing people to abandon those views. There remained a silent majority who was waiting for its opportunity to express its true feelings, and that opportunity came in the form of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

That party refused to be cowered although it was demonised (and continues to be demonised) for criticising immigration. Seeing this, the silent majority used UKIP to express its own views through the ballot box, so that the party came to speak for that silent majority. The people came to see the demonisation of themselves and their views in the demonisation of the party, and reacted accordingly by supporting it.

It is the success that UKIP has had most notably during the 2014 European elections, and more recently at the Clacton by-election, that has caused the Labour Party to begin to scurry around trying to find some way to show that it 'understands people's feelings' about immigration. It has made Labour aware not only of the failure of its grand project, but also the flimsiness of the tools with which it, and the intelligentsia that it represents, used (and continue to use) to impose its orthodoxy upon British society.

What happens when the threat of being condemned as a 'racist' and a 'bigot' is no longer an effective means of scaring people into conformity and into voting the way that you want them to? What happens when pillorying them as uncouth and absurd no longer works to turn them into passive, malleable group-thinkers? What happens is that our 'liberal' rulers get an inkling into their own weakness. They are floating in dinghy upon a sea of opinion that is diametrically opposed to their own. They are trying to keep the waves from swallowing them up, and they realise that their only weapon is flimsy. Their only weapon is words.

What happens when 'sexist' and 'homophobe' no longer calm the waves? What happens when 'islamophobe' falls on deaf ears? You may soon find out, comrades!

The Fate of the West

Published on FrontPage Magazine

By Enza Ferreri



Either the West Will Become Christian Again or It Will Become Muslim


It's all very simple. We can't fight Islam in the West without fighting the enablers of Islam in the West, namely the Leftists.

And, since the Left has many different and separate aspects, we have to fight against each one of them. Secularism, environmentalism, global warming alarmism, homosexualism, militant feminism, sexual relativism, multiculturalism, anti-Christianity, Islamophilia, post-nationalism, internationalism are just as important targets to attack as Marxist economics, the expropriation of the capitalist class (or, in its modern reincarnation, high taxation and welfare state, aka redistribution of wealth), and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Neglecting any of these fronts is like fighting a war leaving a battleground to the enemy, like fighting on the Western front and leaving totally undefended the Eastern one.

Secularism and atheism are certainly the first lines of important wars.

A secularist West will always lose to Islam, because it will have enough compassion, tolerance and self-restraint from violence that are the remnants of its Christian heritage, but it will have lost the ideals, the passion and certainty of fighting for a just cause that were once part of Christianity and have disappeared with its erosion.

Two quotes here serve as epigrams. Robert Spencer wrote in his great work Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't: “People who are ashamed of their own culture will not defend it.” And Dennis Prager said during one of his radio broadcasts: “Only good religion can counter bad religion.”

Some people claim that there won't be a religious revival in Europe because we are past believing in God. That this is not true can be seen by the high - and increasing – number of Westerners who convert to Islam. Many of them give as a reason for their conversion the need for absolutes, boundaries and well-defined status.

A journalist writing for The Spectator on this subject explained why she is Catholic:

But above all, I like the moral certainties. I don’t mind the dogma one bit. I would rather dogma and impossible ideals than confusion and compromise. In that sense, I do identify with those who choose Islam over the way of no faith, or a seemingly uncertain faith, like the woolly old C of E.

William Kilpatrick, in Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West – a book I thoroughly recommend reading -, writes:

Brian Young's friends said he was troubled by the decadence of Western society. David Courtrailler's lawyer said, “For David, Islam ordered his life.” These are the sorts of reasons ordinary converts to Islam give. A common refrain from converts is that Islam provides a complete plan for life in contrast to the ruleless and clueless life offered by secular society. As Mary Fallot, a young French convert, explains, “Islam demands a closeness to God. Islam is simpler, more rigorous, and it's easier because it is explicit. I was looking for a framework; man needs rules and behavior to follow. Christianity did not give me the same reference points.” If you look at the convert testimonials on Muslim websites, they echo this refrain: Islam brings “peace”, “order”, “discipline”, and a way of life that Christianity and other religions fail to offer.

Human beings will never be past the need for believing in something bigger than themselves, because that need is part of the human mind.

Today the Christian religion is being replaced by the worship of the Goddess earth, New Age beliefs, the cult of celebrities (not coincidentally sometimes called "idols"), a blind faith in science, in chance as the creator and motor of the universe and in the absence of God.

And, last but not least, by Islam, which is increasingly filling the vacuum left by Christianity.

It is not surprising that Western people who feel a spiritual need may embrace Islam more easily than Christianity, when the latter has been the butt of constant attacks, denigrations and ridicule for a very long time, increasing since the 1960s, while the former is continually - albeit seriously mistakenly - praised as a religion of peace, tolerance and great wisdom.

Christian clergy is often criticized, sometimes rightly and sometimes not. But we tend to forget that clergymen are human beings, with all their imperfections. They too have been subjected to many decades of Leftist indoctrination and brainwashing. Even they, by the mere fact of living in this society, have been influenced by its insanity.

This applies to admitting homosexuals to priesthood and letting them work with young boys in the misguided hope of helping them overcome their pathology, as well as to displaying an extreme naivety towards Islam and its supremacist, violent nature.

We can expect guidance from our leaders, yes, but rather than castigating them we should make the first steps.

A clear direction was given by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy.

As early as 30 September 2000, before 9/11, when very few in the West even thought of worrying about Islam, he delivered a very forward-looking speech, which included this premonition:

In an interview ten years ago, I was asked with great candor and with enviable optimism: “Are You among those who believe that Europe will either be Christian or cease to exist?”. I think my answer then may well serve to conclude my speech today.

I think – I said – that either Europe will become Christian again or it will become Muslim. What I see without future is the “culture of nothing”, of freedom without limits and without content, of skepticism boasted as intellectual achievement, which seems to be the attitude largely dominant among European peoples, all more or less rich of means and poor of truths. This “culture of nothingness” (sustained by hedonism and libertarian insatiability) will not be able to withstand the ideological onslaught of Islam, which will not be missing: only the rediscovery of the Christian event as the only salvation for man – and therefore only a strong resurrection of the ancient soul of Europe – will offer a different outcome to this inevitable confrontation.

Unfortunately, neither “secularists” nor “Catholics” seem to have so far realized the tragedy that is looming. “Secularists”, opposing the Church in every way, do not realize that they are fighting against the strongest inspiration and the most effective defense of Western civilization and its values of rationality and freedom: they might realize it too late.

An effect of the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been the strong decrease in birth rates, that are now below the population replacement level (for the indigenous, as the replacing – and then some - is done by Muslims). Why have babies when you feel that you don’t have anything valuable to pass on to them?

I remember a time when my friends and contemporaries of child-bearing age - but childless - were saying to me things to the effect that there was no point – indeed it was a crime to engage - in bringing people into this terrible world. This is the talk of faithless despair, no hope in this or another world, lack of belief.

Militant atheists à la Richard Dawkins have not really given enough thought to the long-term consequences of their ideas, which we are beginning to see.

And of which we are reminded whenever, for example, we read in the news of doctors and missionaries who die of Ebola while assisting affected patients for Christian charities. Not many atheist charities are involved in that work.

USA White Cop versus Black Thug Is Always Guilty until Proven Innocent

A lot of racism exists in the United States, but not what you think: it's anti-white racism among a great number of blacks, and among Leftist media and politicians of every colour.

What on 9 August happened in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, where black delinquent Michael Brown was shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson, is like a rerun of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case of 2012. What the Left, the media and the race industry - the people that author Tammy Bruce calls "Misery Merchants", as they have made a career out of perpetuating in blacks a never-ending sense of victimhood and desire for retribution - say is the opposite of the truth. They portray the black man involved in either case as totally innocent, whereas he is guilty. They claim that the non-black, respectively, neighborhood watch volunteer or policeman is guilty of murder, whereas he is not.

But blacks in the US, a bit like Muslims in the UK, are more equal than others.

The media have constantly described Brown as a “gentle giant” and an “unarmed black teen.”

The two photos are stills from a surveillance video of a store, Ferguson Market and Liquors, where 18-year-old Michael Brown, who is 6-foot-4 and 292 pounds, shortly before being shot stole a handful of cigars. The photo at the top of the article shows him pushing a store clerk about half his bulk, and the one just above grabbing him by the collar. He then lets him go but comes back to threaten him.

See with what casual indifference Leftist The New York Times reports this:

The sequence of events provided by law enforcement officials places Mr. Brown and [accomplice] Mr. Johnson at Ferguson Market and Liquors, a store several blocks away on West Florissant Ave., at about 11:50 a.m. After leaving the store with the cigarillos, the two walked north on West Florissant, a busy commercial thoroughfare, toward Canfield Drive, a clerk reported to the police.

Those who had already decided on the verdict of guilt of the officer and therefore didn't want confusing new evidence to make things more difficult for their case tried to stop the store's video from being made public. In that camp are the Democrat Governor of Missouri Jay Nixon; "Misery Merchant", anti-racist careerist Al Sharpton, the perpetrator of the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax in which, due to lack of real white-on-black rape cases, one was staged; and US (black) Attorney General Eric Holder, who, as Matthew Vadum in FrontPage Magazine puts it, "has single-mindedly focused on converting the Department of Justice into a racial grievance incubator".

The excuse, sorry reason given was that the video is irrelevant, since the fatal shooting occurred in another circumstance.

The "irrelevant" robbery was perpetrated minutes before Darren Wilson, a decorated policeman, came across Brown and Dorian Johnson jaywalking in the middle of the road in Canfield Avenue.

Wilson told them to stop jaywalking, but they ignored him and the officer began to get out of his car. At that point Brown leaned into the police vehicle and began beating Wilson. He tried to grab the policeman's gun, and the two struggled over it.

The Gateway Pundit confirmed

from two local St. Louis sources that police Officer Darren Wilson suffered facial fractures during his confrontation with deceased 18 year-old Michael Brown. Officer Wilson clearly feared for his life during the incident that led to the shooting death of Brown. This was after Michael Brown and his accomplice Dorian Johnson robbed a local Ferguson convenience store.

Local St. Louis sources said Wilson suffered an “orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket.” This comes from a source within the Prosecuting Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police...

The St. Louis County Police told reporters after the shooting that the police officer involved suffered facial injuries. He “was hit” and the “side of his face was swollen.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Christine Byers tweeted: "Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting".

More and more witnesses identify Brown as the aggressor in a vicious attack which inflicted head injuries so severe that officer Wilson may lose an eye. Wilson was clearly in fear for his life when he was assaulted by the oversized thug.

The relevance of the robbery committed shortly before the encounter with the policeman is well explained by Chief Ed Delmore, a former St. Louis Metro Area police chief, in his open letter to Ferguson Police Captain Ronald S. Johnson, who was among those objecting to the release of the Brown robbery video and claimed that it was irrelevant:

Well Captain, this veteran police officer feels the need to respond. What you said is, in common police vernacular—bullshit. The fact that Brown knew he had just committed a robbery before he was stopped by Officer Wilson speaks to Brown’s mindset. And Captain, the mindset of a person being stopped by a police officer means everything, and you know it.

Let’s consider a few examples:
On February 15, 1978 Pensacola Police Officer David Lee conducted a vehicle check. He didn’t know what the sole occupant of the vehicle had recently done, but the occupant did. Who was he? Serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy attempted to disarm Lee. Lee was able to retain his firearm and eventually took Bundy into custody.

On April 19, 1995 Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hangar stopped a vehicle for minor traffic violations. He didn’t know that 90 minutes earlier the traffic violator, Timothy McVeigh, killed 168 people with a truck bomb at the Murrah Federal Building. But McVeigh sure knew it, didn’t he? Fortunately, given his training and experience Hangar was able to take McVeigh into custody for carrying a concealed firearm. It was days later before it was determined that McVeigh was responsible for the bombing.

On May 31, 2003 then-rookie North Carolina police officer, Jeff Postell, arrested a man digging in a trash bin on a grocery store parking lot—an infraction that would rise to about the level of jaywalking. Postell didn’t know that he had just captured Eric Rudolph, the man whom years earlier had killed and injured numerous people with bombs and was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

So now, let’s consider Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson’s stop of Michael Brown. Apparently Wilson didn’t know that Brown had just committed a strong-arm robbery. But Brown did! And that Captain, is huge.

Allegedly, Brown pushed Wilson and attempted to take Wilson’s gun. We’re also being told that Officer Wilson has facial injuries suffered during the attempt by Brown to disarm him. Let’s assume for a moment those alleged acts by Brown actually occurred. Would Brown have responded violently to an officer confronting him about jaywalking? Maybe, but probably not.

Is it more likely that he would attack an officer believing that he was about to be taken into custody for a felony strong-arm robbery? Absolutely.

Officer Wilson survived the encounter with Brown as did Lee, Hangar, and Postell. Michael Brown didn’t survive and it’s too soon to say if Officer Wilson’s use of deadly force was justified and legal. You and I both know that not all officers survive such confrontations. Officers die in incidents like this Captain Johnson, including a couple that I remember from your own organization:

On April 15, 1985 Missouri Trooper Jimmie Linegar was shot and killed by a white supremacist he and his partner stopped at a checkpoint; neither Trooper Linegar nor his partner were aware that the man they had stopped had just been indicted by a federal grand jury for involvement in a neo-Nazi group accused of murder. The suspect immediately exited the vehicle and opened fire on him with an automatic weapon.

Just a month before, Missouri Trooper James M. Froemsdorf was shot and killed—with his own gun—after making a traffic stop. When the Trooper made that stop he didn’t know that the driver was wanted on four warrants out of Texas—But again the suspect knew it.

So Captain Johnson, I guess the mindset and recently committed crimes of the suspects that murdered those Missouri Troopers didn’t mean anything. The stops by the Troopers, as you have said, are entirely different events right?

Bullshit.

Students Tired of Studying Support Palestinians

"British students stand with Gaza against Israel’s assault" is the title of an article on the Stop the War Coalition website.

Today, the student movement issued a statement "in solidarity with the people of Palestine", signed by National Union of Students Officers - representing millions of British students - and over 100 pro-Palestine student leaders.

If all these luminaries concentrated on what they are supposed to do - educating themselves - instead of taking up fashionable causes about which they know next to nothing, maybe they could have learned that the correct spelling of the word for writing and other office materials is "stationery":

The Palestinians’ right to education has been particularly hard hit by the siege. Basic educational equipment including books, paper, computers, stationary and desks are all in limited supply and Israel routinely cuts off Gaza’s electricity supply.

Shame that these students don't even have that excuse for their lack of education.

How the EU and the Left Ruined Italy

This is the second part of the article "The Looting of Italy" by Italian journalist Alessandra Nucci.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How the Looting Works

I will venture to suggest that there must be a blue-print out there on how to manage a country after a revolutionary takeover, such as what has been done to Italy (and to Venezuela? Cuba? China? Russia?)

I would say that basically, after A) overwhelming the system (the Cloward-Piven strategy), the revolutionary leader will aim at B) impoverishing the middle class in order to prevent its every chance of rebelling. This can be done in various ways, which should include: 1) continuous price hikes in utilities, 2) a credit crunch, 3) tax-tax-tax, 4) media influence used to a) scare investors away b) deflect attention from what is really going on and c) create an iron-clad reputation for the revolutionary “good guys”, 5) sale of the nation’s property at bargain prices.

This sequence is coming full circle in Italy.

A. Overwhelming the system. In the years prior to 2011 the hard-working Italian people had been saddled with a bloated bureaucracy and progressively swelling taxes, due to the unquenchable demands imposed on our welfare system by competing leftist and populist parties, goaded on by trade unions with a finger in every pie. I think that the most telling examples of legislation foisted on the people were a law that was passed by another technocratic administration in 1992 (also unelected but at least concerted by the elected political parties) whereby immigrants over 65 were entitled to old-age pensions (whether or not they had paid into the pension funds), and a law of 2007, passed by ex-EU-Commission President Romano Prodi, whereby the old-age pensions were extended to the relatives of immigrants who joined them in Italy. In 2009 the Conservative government managed to limit this provision to relatives who could prove they had at least lived in Italy for ten years, but the burden on Italy’s budget remains enormous and climbing. It is estimated that in 2015 Italy's old-age pensioners coming from outside the EU will cost over €1.5 billion yearly.

All this preceded Prime Minister Mario Monti [unelected, invited by President Giorgio Napolitano to form a new technocratic government in 2011], who was called in precisely to put a stop to it, lower the debt and put Italy back on course. But what he did was the exact opposite, in other words:

B. Adding taxes upon taxes, wiping out liquidity, scaring investors away, protecting certain privileges and playing the media with expertise. Very creative.

He then proceeded to the bargain sale of the family jewels.

It goes like this.

Italians, who are notoriously very attached to their offspring and grandchildren, were used to judiciously setting aside their savings, usually investing them in real estate. This was highly prized collateral that should have avoided all the pernicious alarmism about the national debt.

But the alarms were contrived (See this video where Monti states that crises are good events). Having set inordinately high property taxes, Monti crippled their prices, thereby reducing at the wave of the magic wand the value of Italy’s financial collateral.

Then Monti announces that Italy is all set to sell off huge amounts of prestigious state-owned real estate.

Funny, the Bank of Italy announced the very same thing more or less at the same time. Which means glutting the housing market with fine property from one moment to the next. The technocrats know that the glut will make the tax-depressed prices collapse even lower, but it will appear as if it were no one’s fault, apart from the usual culprit: the free market. This way they can sell off the family jewels at bargain prices to their foreign friends (the rest of us in Italy not having the liquidity left, as explained above).

This is a tragic déjà vu.

For the modern-day looting of Italy began back in June 1992, with the now notorious, but then super-secretive, meeting on the HMS Britannia, anchored off the shores of Latium, the region of Rome. The British royal family yacht had been lent for the occasion to a group of Anglo-American financiers. Among the guests was today’s President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi.

What did these invisible financiers want from Italy? Well, just as they do today, they wanted to get their hands on Italian banks and telephone and energy companies: the “family jewels”. Their main target is probably ENI [Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, Italian large multinational] – but more about that later.

To go about this they had to speed up the changing of paradigm, making politics subordinate to the economy, and making the economy in turn to hinge on volatile finance.

In 1992, Italy’s IRI (Institute for the Reconstruction of Italy), the world’s largest state-run holding company, began to sell off its assets, at bargain prices, thereby starting the rush that has led to an avalanche of private industries to follow suit and seek a foreign buyer for their “Made in Italy” products in order to escape the combined stranglehold of bureaucracy and taxes. In the intervening 20 years, hundreds, if not thousands, of famous Italian brand names have been sold off to foreign companies.


The Attack in the Press

Reputation is everything, in a globalized market where traders encounter no restrictions to gambling with their own or other people’s money and are therefore in a position to cripple banks, currencies and entire countries. Demolishing investor confidence in a country can cost it millions, in the higher interest rates needed to attract buyers of its bonds. Disparagement by competitors is also a good way to increase investor interest in alternative bonds. In practice, as a piece in the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore put it, “the worse the reputations of Italy and Spain, the lower the interest rates on German bunds”.

Normally ignored in the general press, except to confirm uninformed clichés about things like the mafia and corruption, Italy started being described in the financial press as a basket case, hovering on the verge of disaster due to the size of its public debt, at the beginning of 2011. Despite its (then still) humming industries, mostly healthy banks and debt-free, educated, well-to-do population – conditions that are more than enough to guarantee secure payment of a country’s sovereign bonds - the press portrayed Italy’s condition as being desperate and placed the blame on the shoulders of the nation as a whole.

In actual fact, the situation was only desperate because of an uninformed international press pretending it is informed while choosing its sources only from among the “progressive” liberal press that mirrors their own biases. And the blame should actually be laid where it belongs, for example at the door of the decades-long unreasonable demands and manipulations of domineering communist parties and trade unions with a finger in every pie: a tale of warning that bears out the Cloward-Piven strategy of instigating the downfall of a capitalist society by overwhelming the system with massive demands. It could be a useful read for the U.S. before it finds itself winding up in the same spot.


Some Technical Notes, by Way of Explanation

Up until the single euro currency was invented, Germany was the “sick man of Europe”, mainly due to the fact that Western Germany had absorbed impoverished and backward Eastern Germany (Prussia) in one swallow, sharing with it the strong Deutschmark as its currency, with no adjustment. The Germans are still having to pay a tax for the support of ex-East Germany, but the common currency has enabled them to spread the burden onto all of the other members of the EU as well.

Since the introduction of the euro in 2001 German exports have soared, and every year there has been a surplus in Germany's accounts and a consequential mirror-image deficit in the accounts of the rest of the euro-zone countries.

There are many little details that have favored the image of Germany presented to the world as the most prosperous, honest, solid, upright and reliable country in the EU, or maybe the world. Things like the liabilities from the Kreditanstaltfurwiederaufbau which they don't include in the official accounts, so that they don’t come to bear on the total debt. Or the covert bailout they received when, as revealed by Bloomberg, Germany was allowed to spread its exposure to Greece onto all of the other EU countries. Most outrageous of all: the arms deals foisted on Greece, which in order to gain Germany’s assent to the bailouts was bullied into handing over a sizeable amount of said bailouts back to Germany itself, settling its debts for a purchase of submarines!


So Who Is Bailing Out Whom?

Bailouts are carried out in order to help a country’s creditors as much as the country itself. This is particularly obvious in the case of Greece, which Germany and France cynically compelled to use a considerable part of its bailout money (borrowed from the EU, at interest) to pay off previous purchases of German submarines and French helicopters. Percentage-wise, with respect to its exposure to Greek debt, Italy has contributed more than any other country to Greece’s bailout. But while the Greek government was forced to pay for German submarines (at least one of which doesn’t even stand up straight), as well as for French helicopters, it neatly rescinded its contract for Italian fighter planes, with no penalty attached .

Of the total €340 billion granted to Greece in official loans, only about 15 billion came directly from Germany, which corresponds to only 68.6% of Germany’s exposure in terms of the Greek bonds held by its banks. France, also imperilled by a possible Greek default, has contributed an even smaller proportion: 21% of its exposure. Conversely, Italy which, having relatively few Greek bonds, was one of the countries least at risk, has forked out 214.6% or more than double its exposure. According to some accounts, it was Berlusconi’s attempt to refuse this apportionment, balking at the Italian tradition of meekly accepting unfair conditions, that unleashed German fury against Italy, an account confirmed by ex-Spanish Premier Jose Zapatero who in his memoirs tells of the irritation against Italy's Prime Minister and the Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti at the G-20 meeting in Cannes, in September 2011, a little over a month and a half before their ouster.

Most unfair of all is the fact that, despite being lumped into the “PIIGS” [Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain] group, Italy, which has never received a penny of the 285 billion lent out to the other troubled countries, actually contributed a hefty 55 billion to bail-out Greece, Spain and Portugal. This is:

- money we must borrow at some 6% while getting a 3% interest in return.

- money that contributes to increasing not only the recipient countries’ debt, but also our own debt, for which we are fined by Brussels and reported on as profligate spenders!!


The Press: Conniving or Incompetent?

So which country do you think is being trumpeted by the international press as being the one and only magnanimous and put-upon benefactor of all things European? Italy, which is shouldering a share of the bailout which is wildly disproportionate to its exposure? Of course not. As always these days, when something is being meted out to enhance reputation and/or the economy, Germany is on the receiving end.

Here are some other examples of pernicious press incompetence.

On August 7th 2011 Fox News’s Shepard Smith suddenly came out with "A couple of weeks ago there was a run on the banks in Italy"... which was totally made up. Italy has had to cope with lots of problems but so far never any runs on banks! Who fed Fox News that lie?

When the “humanitarian” bombing of Libya was being carried out and the papers were dwelling on the situation in Northern Africa, The Washington Times wrote that Italy was "the former colonial power in Tunisia". Of course, Tunisia was a French colony, as were Algeria and Morocco. Of all the territories in North Africa, the only one that was a colony of Italy's was Libya, which it accrued in 1911, as the Ottoman Empire was starting to disintegrate, and held only until World War II. With all the North African autocrats suddenly being presented in their worst colors, singling out Italy, the least of the colonial powers, as the colonial power par excellence is particularly unfair.

Whether out of ignorance or interest, The Daily Telegraph wrote in a front-page headline in 2012 that “Spain and Italy are to be bailed out”, while it was Spain that was to be bailed out, with Italy shouldering 20% of the cost.

At the end of June 2012 an opening headline piece in The New York Times informed the public that our unelected, then Prime Minister Mario Monti had been doing wondrous things, and would do even better if it were not for those petulant little nuisances, the political parties, who are reluctant to let him take the tough decisions he would like.

Actually, things are the other way round! Monti enjoyed the unmitigated praise and support of an unprecedented majority of Parliament from both sides of the aisles. He was able to do whatever he pleased and they ratified, very few questions asked.

And unfortunately, what he did amounted to grinding the Italian economy to a halt, ruthlessly imposing punitive taxes on everyone and everything, giving our money away as if it were everyone else’s due, and pretending slow-motion to do something to help companies that were struggling not out of lack of business or readiness to work hard, but for want of liquidity. Not that the state coffers are empty, they’re not. Italy has the wherewithal to settle these overdue accounts, but can’t do it because of treaties such as the European Stability Pact which requires us to keep the money on hand. Businessmen have been committing suicide by the dozens, and one of the reasons was and is that they await payment for services rendered to the state, yet are required nonetheless to cough up income taxes immediately to that same inflexible state.

All this, and more, notwithstanding, The NYT certified that Monti was unquestionably competent and did more in his first six weeks in power than the entire political class had done in the preceding ten years!

In actual fact the Monti government did pitifully little, apart from eliminating some remaining early-retirement loopholes. Now Italians must stay at work (if they have it) until they are 67, while Germans retire earlier and the French only recently raised their retirement age from 60 to 62.



Read the two final parts of the article:

EU-Imposed Immigration Is Destroying Italy's Economy

Euro, Technocrats and Media Role in the Undoing of Italy

HuffPo: Hamas Tactic Is to Require Israel to Cause Civilian Victims

Has the world finally come to its senses?

Even far-left publications recognize that Hamas is the most responsible for what is going on in Gaza or at least open the debate to this view.

After The Guardian, now The Huffington Post has started publishing commentaries defending Israel. Criminal and civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz writes in "Hamas' Tactic: Require Israel to Cause Civilian Casualties" in the HuffPo:

As the rockets continue to fall in Israel and Gaza, it is important to understand Hamas's tactic and how the international community and the media are encouraging it. Hamas's tactic is as simple as it is criminal and brutal. Its leaders know that by repeatedly firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, they will give Israel no choice but to respond. Israel's response will target the rockets and those sending them. In order to maximize their own civilian casualties, and thereby earn the sympathy of the international community and media, Hamas leaders deliberately fire their rockets from densely populated civilian areas. The Hamas fighters hide in underground bunkers but Hamas refuses to provide any shelter for its own civilians, who they use as "human shields." This unlawful tactic puts Israel to a tragic choice: simply allow Hamas rockets to continue to target Israeli cities and towns; or respond to the rockets, with inevitable civilian casualties among the Palestinian "human shields."

Every democracy would choose the latter option if presented with a similar choice. Although Israel goes to great efforts to reduce civilian casualties, the Hamas tactic is designed to maximize them. The international community and the media must understand this and begin to blame Hamas, rather than Israel, for the Palestinian civilians who are killed by Israeli rockets but whose deaths are clearly part of the Hamas tactic.

Every reasonable commentator has agreed with President Obama that Hamas started this battle by firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every reasonable commentator also agrees with President Obama that Israel has the right to defend its citizens. But many commentators fault Israel for causing Palestinian civilian casualties. But what is Israel's option, other than to simply allow rockets to be aimed at its own women and children. As President Obama observed when he went to Sderot as a candidate:

"The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if...somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Israel should continue to make every effort to reduce civilian casualties, both because that is the humane thing to do and because it serves their interests. But so long as Hamas continues to fire rockets from densely populated civilian areas, rather than from the many open areas outside of Gaza City, this cynical tactic--which constitutes a double war crime--will guarantee that some Palestinian women and children will be killed. And the Hamas leadership prepares for this gruesome certainty by arranging for the dead babies to be paraded in front of the international media. In one such case, the Palestinian radicals posted a video of a dead baby who turned out to have been reportedly killed in Syria by the Assad government, and in another case, they displayed the body of a baby who had been killed by a Hamas rocket that misfired, falsely claiming that it had been the victim of an Israeli rocket.

As Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan has said, the Israeli Army does "more to safeguard civilians than any Army in the history of warfare." This includes dropping leaflets, making phone calls and providing other warnings to civilian residents of Gaza City. But Hamas refuses to provide shelter for its civilians, deliberately exposing them to the risks associated with warfare, while it shelters its own fighters in underground bunkers.

The Hamas tactic is also designed to prevent Israel from making peace with the Palestinian Authority. Even Israeli doves are concerned that if Israel ends its occupation of the West Bank, Hamas may take over that territory, as it took over Gaza shortly after Israel ended its occupation of that area. The West Bank is much closer to Israel's major population centers than the Gaza. If Hamas were to fire rockets from the West Bank at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel would then have to respond militarily, as it has in Gaza. Once again, civilians would be killed, thus provoking international outcry against Israel.

What we are seeing in Gaza today is a replay of what happened in 2008 and 2009, when Israel went into Gaza to stop the rocket fire. The result was the Goldstone report which put the blame squarely on Israel. This benighted report--condemned by most thoughtful people, and eventually even critiqued by Goldstone himself--has encouraged Hamas to go back to the tactic that resulted in international condemnation of Israel. This tactic will persist as long as the international community and the media persist in blaming Israel for civilian deaths caused by a deliberate Hamas tactic.

Obama Totalitarian Socialism's Early Signs

I knew that Obama was bad news even before he was elected President.

Four years ago, in 2008, during his first presidential campaign, my blog Of Human and Non-Human Animals was shut down by Blogger.

Not knowing why, I made several searches on Google until I found out that the same thing had recently happened to many other blogs. All these blogs had in common was that they had in any way been critical of Obama.

In a forum I found a very clear and detailed explanation of how the Obama campaign volunteers, many of whom "young, inexperienced, with little knowledge of the Internet" and, I would add, not particularly smart, had gone around the web looking for any minimal sign of dissent with their political star and tried to damage the sites containing these "heresies".

If the site was a Blogger blog, like mine, they flagged it to Blogger.

So I remembered that on this blog of mine, which was all about animal issues - its tagline is "Why giving animals a fair deal is good for humans too" -, I had posted an article entitled Candidates on Animal Rights.

In it I compared the policies of Obama and John McCain on animal issues, and found both of them seriously wanting.

I cannot know for sure, but all the available evidence, including the fact that my blog, like many others which had suffered the same fate, was then reinstated, points to my blog having been shut down for that reason.

This incident to me seemed a shocking display of censorship and curtail of free speech, especially in view of the fact that I hadn't even singled out Obama in my criticism, but had been even-handed with both of the then presidential candidates.

It immediately gave me a sense of bad things to come from Barack Hussein if elected as President of the USA, and this prediction turned out to be accurate.

Incidentally, when it comes to Obama there is always a double standard.

I remember four years ago he was treated by the media as a champion of the animal cause just because he had promised his kids a dog if elected to the White House.

Romney made an excellent joke last night, at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to benefit needy children, when he said:

I've already seen early reports from tonight's dinner. Headline: Obama embraced by Catholics, Romney dines with rich people.

How To Lie to the Infidels

Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan held a rally against CIA drone attacks in Pakistan. Of course, you never hear him complain about what Pakistani Muslims do to the country’s Christians with its infamous blasphemy law.

But that is the thing: whereas the traditionally Christian countries of the West always point the fingers at themselves first and foremost, Muslims hardly ever criticize their own, preferring to find faults with other people. That moral difference is, among many others, due to the gulf between our different roots: Christianity and Islam.

We’ll hear a lot of talk on how drones have the effect of radicalizing young Muslims and similar inanities. All they need to get radicalized and become jihadists is not drones, but a good copy of the Quran and, if they are illiterate, someone to read it to them.

Throughout the last decades there has always been a purported “reason” why Muslims became terrorists, except the real one: their pseudo-religion.

Let’s get a clear insight from the horse’s mouth. In the article I was a fanatic… I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist, former British jihadist Hassan Butt candidly explains the “double-talk” used by Islamists. To us, the enemy, they use the propaganda of Muslim tit for Western tat, retaliation for what we supposedly did to them. But in reality the hostility towards the kuffars (highly derogatory Arabic term for non-Muslims) is eternally founded on Islamic theology and does not require pretexts or excuses.

This auto-biographical article is precious because it is one of the few instances in which Islamists tell the truth to us infidels.

Butt wrote after the London and Glasgow terrorist plots:

I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this “Blair’s bombs” line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4′s Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: “What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.”

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I’d be laughing once again.

And he’d be laughing again now, hearing that CIA drones are the new excuse du jour.

What's Wrong with Innocence of Muslims?

Vile, disgusting, blasphemous, defamatory, crude, boring, undignified: these are a bunch of the derogatory adjectives (generally the same, repeated ad nauseam) used innumerable times to describe the film Innocence of Muslims posted on YouTube.

What is exceedingly hard to find, in all the judgements written and spoken by its detractors, is a discussion of its contents and a reasoned, argued reply to them. In other words, the reasons why this film should be considered vile, disgusting etc.

If there is something that shows how these people, usually leftists and assorted anti-West ideologues, have totally lost not only the intellectual battle but also the intellect is this condemnation of a movie, that in most cases they haven't even seen and know nothing about, only on the basis of the say-so of Muslim mobs and leaders. They are so immersed in their suspended-reality world populated by myths like religion of peace, moderate Muslims and Islamophobia that they don't even recognize the necessity of arguments and reasons (or even reason, in the sense of rationality).

UK Papers Have Few Readers? Tax Internet Users

Leftists love the state, and the bigger it is the better.

The government is there to solve all our problems, they think. So why not use goverment intervention to save from failure UK liberal newspapers whose readership is constantly declining because people got fed up of finding in them the same old Marxist propaganda and anti-Western, pro-Islam, pro-immigration enthusiasm which is now less and less shared by the general population, who now has the free (in every sense) alternative of the internet?

This was the idea of a journalist of - surprise, surprise - The Guardian, the paper's executive investigations editor David Leigh.

His proposal is splendid from a communist viewpoint, and atrocious for everybody else: everyone in the UK with a broadband connection account should be imposed a £2 a month broadband levy, with which to create a fund to be distributed to newspapers in proportion to their UK online readership.

So, as is the usual knee-jerk response of the Left, rather than addressing a problem with a real, concrete solution to it (like, in this case, improving the quality of their rags by better meeting the demands of their potential readership), they want to ask the government to "solve" the problem by pouring more money into it (the "progressives" answer to everything, which achieves nothing except increasing public debt).

And how do you collect this new public money? By raising taxes, of course.

Most British newspapers sales are falling. Last month, The Economist says, the Guardian Media Group "reported an annual loss of around £76m ($121m). Its newspaper unit lost £54m".

Leigh thinks that the solution he proposes is "obvious", but even the online comments to his article clearly show that he is in a tiny minority to believe that although, as is often the case, people like him are probably deluded into thinking that they represent majority views.

And these are also the same "progressives" who keep telling us how they, unlike the nasty Tories who are out of touch with ordinary people, feel our pain in these difficult economic times and know how hard it is for families to get by. And yet they want households to fork out more money just to compensate the financial losses of those papers that people are not prepared to spend money to read.

So for what should they be worth saving?