Even Crime Writers Do Their Bit for Atheism and Multiculturalism

It isn't just the whole education establishment from kindergarten to PhD studies, the mainstrean media industry in its entirety, Hollywood, and the various scientists, journalists and assorted others who, acting as pseudophilosophers, write books on how God doesn't exist. These are only the big players in the campaign to persuade the general public that atheism and anti-Christianity are the way forward, the "right side of history".

Then there are those minor or intermediate opinion-makers, a group of whom comprises writers from the second, third or fourth rank down, myriads of them. Like, for example, the author of a book I read during my just-finished holidays. I wanted fiction, something escapist to get a bit away from reality and I borrowed from a local library Find Me a Villain by Margaret Yorke.

As the title suggests, it's a crime novel. It's a genre I love. But this story was mediocre, and its author didn't shine as brilliant or clever, with original ideas.

Possibly she just wanted to appear intelligent (I'm guessing here), and these day, she thought, that means Godless.

For whatever reason, anyway, her main characters - due to no requirement of plot or character construction, but purely arbitrarily, or maybe just to represent them as women of their (our) times - make a handful of inconsequential comments to the effect that God doesn't exist and, even if he did, he would have given up on us a long time ago. Which is just as well since, as one of them says, it would be creepy to have someone watching you all the time.

Perhaps Yorke had read atheist authors, or maybe she imitated another, more famous, writer of whodunits like herself, Ruth Rendell, who has created a world - or maybe has just tried to reflect the one she sees and frequents - with plenty of Muslims (her settings are mostly in London) but hardly ever a Christian in sight. Maybe because her native English characters are "not religious people".

Rendell's multicultural London and politically correct writing have tired me and, although her stories are sometimes good, I've stopped reading her.

True, she simply represents today's reality of her city, but I don't want to be reminded of our Islamisation when I engage in the game of discovering the culprit of a fictional murder, especially by someone totally unaware and uncritical of our progressive enslavement.

Novelists like Rendell, Yorke and numerous others influence the way their readers view issues, possibly in a subtle manner. They contribute to the general attitude that takes for granted mass immigration, Muslim invasion and the disappearance of Christianity.

They hammer another, inconspicuous nail in the coffin of Jesus and His message.

A further example of people who influence and form public opinion in a secondary and probably indirect way are "celebrities". And, since we are talking about atheism, the rock world has had (and still has) a huge and deleterious impact, particularly on the young.

The role of rock music in the development of the Leftist ethos has not been sufficiently explored.

But this is another story, to be told another time.

Same-sex Adoption: Not as Harmless as Portrayed

Published on American Thinker

By Enza Ferreri


You may often see articles in the media claiming that "research has shown" that children of same-sex couples are thriving, in fact are physically and psychologically doing just as well as, or even better than, children of couples who are - let me use this currently underused word - normal.

Are these works reliable?

In July such a study, carried out in Australia, was much trumpeted by that pillar of "progressive" thinking, The Washington Post, under the headline "Children of same-sex couples are happier and healthier than peers, research shows".

Researcher Simon Crouch and his team at the University of Melbourne surveyed 315 homosexual parents with a total of 500 children across Australia.

Crouch writes:

We found that children from same-sex families scored, on average, 6% better on two key measures, general health and family cohesion, even when controlling for a number sociodemographic factors such as parent education and household income. But on most health measures, including emotional behaviour and physical functioning, there was no difference when compared with children from the general population.

So far so good. Unfortunately, there is a drawback:

In spite of doing well, many children did experience stigma, which was linked to lower scores on a number of scales...

Interestingly, there is growing evidence to suggest that the structure of same-sex parent families, particularly in relation to work and home duties, plays an important part in how well families get along. Same-sex parents, for instance, are more likely to share child care and work responsibilities more equitably than heterosexual-parent families. [Emphasis added]

In short, when children perform well it's due to same-sex parenting. When they perform not so well, it's due to stigma against same-sex parenting. A win-win situation for homosexual agitators.

But this apparent bias in the interpretation of the results is not the only, or even the main, problem with this study.

The method used in the Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families (ACHESS) is the biggest obstacle to taking its outcome seriously.

Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, research associate at its Population Research Center, and a senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture, has analysed the ACHESS's methodology both when an interim report appeared in 2012 and now, after the completion of the research.

He is concerned by this part of the study's methodology section:

The convenience sample was recruited using online and traditional recruitment techniques, accessing same-sex attracted parents through news media, community events and community groups. Three hundred and ninety eligible parents contacted the researchers…

And by the sampling approach of the interim report:

Initial recruitment will . . . include advertisements and media releases in gay and lesbian press, flyers at gay and lesbian social and support groups, and investigator attendance at gay and lesbian community events . . . Primarily recruitment will be through emails posted on gay and lesbian community email lists aimed at same-sex parenting. This will include, but not be limited to, Gay Dads Australia and the Rainbow Families Council of Victoria.

This is not a random sample, but a self-selected sample. Randomisation is one the most crucial parts of scientific research. The sample here is not representative of average same-sex households with children:

To compare the results from such an unusual sample with that of a population-based sample of everyone else [which is random] is just suspect science. And I may be putting that too mildly.

The ACHESS admits to employing "snowball recruitment techniques", where existing study subjects recruit future subjects from among their acquaintances.

The study includes a disproportionate number of children born in new ways: 80% of those with female parent(s) were born through home insemination or assisted reproductive technology (ART), and 82% of those with male parent(s) were born via surrogacy. How common ART and surrogacy are today in the average same-sex household remains unknown.

Most families who can afford the espense of ART and surrogacy are likely to belong to the homosexual socio-economic elite, the only kind of people this study's sample was likely to be comprising. And, also significantly when compared to a random sample of all other families, there were few unplanned pregnancies among the ACHESS parents.

In addition, "this non-random sample reflects those who actively pursued participating in the study, personal and political motivations included"; those who selected themselves for the study knew in advance its intentions, subject and political significance (so much for "blinding", another requirement of research methodology); and - wait for this - the actual children were not asked to report about themselves, only their parents reported about them, with all the obvious high risks involved in trusting parents self-reporting on their parental skills as shown by their children's outcome - also known as risks of “social desirability bias,” the tendency to portray oneself as better than one actually is -, without an attempt to independently verify the facts.

Taking into account all these circumstances, professor Regnerus declared himself surprised that the differences (3%-6%) between the ACHESS parents and the rest of the population were so small.

Which confirms once more that trusting the mainstream media on the complex and regrettably fashionable subject of homosexual marriage and its corollary, adoption, is not a good idea.

A Pew Research study showed how disconnected the media are from public opinion on this topic. In the news media, stories sympathetic to same-sex marriage in the 2-month period covered outnumbered those unsympathetic to it by a margin of more than 5-to-1: the former constitued 47% of all treatment of the subject, the latter 9%. For Huffington Post the gap was much higher, almost as high as that found in LGBT outlets.

In public opinion, by contrast, the percentage of respondents in favour of legalisation of homosexual marriage was 51%, while against 42%.

This media bias is consistent with the their highly critical coverage of the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), a work overseen by professor Mark Regnerus in which he examines nearly 3,000 adult children from 8 different family structures and evaluates them within 40 social and emotional categories.

The NFSS, he describes,

elected to talk to the children after they had grown up, to skip the parents entirely to ensure a more independent assessment, not to broadcast our key research questions in the title or initial screener questionnaire, and to locate participants randomly in a large population-based sample. If you’ve been paying attention, however, you’ll know that my NFSS studies—which mapped 248 respondents who told us their mother or father had been in a same-sex relationship—came to rather different conclusions than the ACHESS study has.

In his study, published in Social Science Research in 2012, Regnerus writes:

[T]he empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go. While it is certainly accurate to affirm that sexual orientation or parental sexual behavior need have nothing to do with the ability to be a good, effective parent, the data evaluated herein using population-based estimates drawn from a large, nationally-representative sample of young Americans suggest that it may affect the reality of family experiences among a significant number.

The NFSS's results showed that children who remain with their intact biological families were better educated, were in greater mental and physical health, reported overall higher levels of happiness, displayed less drug use and less criminal behaviour.

The greatest negative outcomes were found among children of lesbian mothers, contrary to faulty studies popularised by the media. The NFSS found negative outcomes for lesbians' adult children in 25 of 40 categories, including far higher rates of sexual assault (23% of lesbians' children were touched sexually by a parent or adult, compared to 2% raised by normal married parents), higher levels of depression, worse physical health, more marijuana use and greater unemployment (69% of lesbians' children were on welfare, compared to 17% of those with normal married parents).

Regnerus’ research disproved an often-cited 2005 brief by the American Psychological Association (APA) that concluded: "Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents." This sentence has now been removed from the APA' website.

And the confidence behind that assertion will be invalidated again and again, as more research unearths the problems associated with homosexual parenting and/or adoption.

One such investigation is that by associate professor at Louisiana State University Loren Marks, published in Social Science Research.

His work reviews the 59 published studies cited by the APA to support its above-quoted claim.

Marks found them wanting in various areas, including lack of homogeneous sampling, absence of comparison groups, presence of contradictory data and paucity of long-term outcome data. The scope of the children’s outcomes studied was too limited: they focused on "gender roles" and "sexual identities", while neglecting to examine the children’s education outcomes, employment, risk of substance abuse, criminal behavior or suicide.

The conclusion is that strong assertions, including those made by the APA, were not empirically warranted.

This debunking is particularly significant, in view of the fact that the APA-endorsed studies have been used in attempts to influence legal decisions in European and American courts, with claims like "no objective scientific evidence exists to justify different treatment of same sex couples who wish to adopt", "all reputable scientific studies have shown that the children of lesbian and gay parents are no more likely to suffer from emotional or other problems than the children of heterosexual parents.", and "a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual.".

There's still work to do, but we are on the right track.

Demography Is Not Destiny: the Internet Will Change the Outcome of Our Struggle for Freedom

[T]he advent of alternative media has reduced the Non-Fox Media’s ability to stir up urban riots. Today, it’s possible to get information that never would have seen the light of day in the 1980s.

What Ann Coulter says here (the first sentence refers to the Ferguson riots in the USA but the second is general), about the alternative media telling a truth that in the 1980s would have never seen the light of day because the old media were the only sources available, is true.

We keep making gloomy, nay catastrophic, predictions based on demographics (I suspect that some of us actually want the future to be as bad as they depict it). But that presumes the clause of coeteris paribus, or all other things being equal. New, unforeseen or - as in this case of the new media and internet use - simply not-considered-in-the-calculus-by-which-we-arrived-at-the-prediction developments may lead to different results.

People have been passive so far, but for many decades they've just been feed mainstream-media fairy tales.

Only recently have the internet new media started providing an alternative, disclosing facts that previously no widely-accessible source ever let people even suspect, explaining and exposing, informing and educating, expanding the range of opinions, releasing from the cage ideas that had remained until that moment taboo, giving expression to censored opinions, immensely widening the scope of what could be known, understood, debated, said and thought.

This digital cultural revolution no doubt will have consequences.

Once people will be less constrained by the blinkers created by the likes of the BBC and The New York Times, things may appear a bit clearer to them.

We probably still have to see the effects of that.

Add the social media, the internet forums and the comments section at the end of articles, which encourage people - albeit in a rough-and-ready sort of way - to form and articulate opinions, and something new may come out of all this.

Incidentally and interestingly, what socialists and communists have falsely believed they could forcefully impose with bloody revolutions and/or gigantic social engineering programs has instead been achieved by free capitalist enterprise and ingenuity. The internet has made highly affordable to everyone who wants it - at least in the developed countries - a first-class education with easy access to world libraries, academic journals, historic accounts, scientific reports. The best writers, the most skilled journalists, the most analytical thinkers, the most entertaining columnists and commentators.

Egalitarianism Is Not What Leftist Politicians Make You Think

"Egalitarianism" sounds so good, progressive, enlightened and compassionate. And above all, of course, caring.

But in reality the opposite of all those adjectives is closer to the truth of egalitarianism. For the only way to make all the individuals of a society equal is to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator.

Recently it was the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Three years later, in 1917, the Russian Revolution took place.

This should remind us that in the past almost 100 years during which attempts at equalisation were repeatedly made, everybody - except the "equalisers", those ordering and doing the equalising - became equally poor, hungry, wretched, oppressed and slave. And these were the lucky ones who hadn't been killed in the process.

There is no way to equalise at the top or in the middle. It's only possible to equalise at the bottom.

The egalitarians of today, who obviously have not (or appear to have not) learnt the lesson of history, are either naive to the point of stupidity or know exactly the consequences of what they are promoting and don't find them morally reprehensible enough to desist.

Either way, they shouldn't be given power or heed.

Like the Biblical wolf in sheep's clothing, they appear like the contrary of what they are. Choosing a charitable-sounding label for yourself is in this case the verbal equivalent of dressing yourself up. Declaiming on social justice is a rhetorical mask hiding a dangerous predator's face.

Destroying an economy makes everybody in a society equally suffer. If this is the price of equality, only the fools or the evil may want it.

Italians Are Getting Tired of Muslim Invasion

A small but significant story comes from Italy.

Adel Smith, born in Alexandria, Egypt, son of an Italian father and Egyptian mother and living in Ofena, a little town in the central Italian region of Abruzzi, has just died at 54 from a serious illness.

The reason why he is remembered is his constant attacks against Christianity, which this Muslim man probably believed to be an easy target in the current secularist climate.

In 2003, his intolerance for Christian objects in public buildings prompted him to request the removal of all Christian symbols, including crosses, from the primary school in Ofena attended by his children, request granted by L'Aquila Court judge Mario Montanaro.

In 2005, Smith succeded in his request to have even Christmas plays and Nativity scenes banned from the same school.

But eventually he met his comeuppance in 2006, when he was sentenced to 8 months in jail for contempt for religion for his gesture of 3 years before: at the height of his anti-Christian delirium, he had hurled a crucifix out of the window of the hospital where his mother was a patient.

There is only so much that Italians can take.

I found this story on the Facebook page of the aptly-named group "Italians are not racist, they're just tired of this invasion".

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.

Islamic Hatred and Persecution of Christians Is Imported into European Refugee Centres

Christians persecuted by Muslims in Islamic countries who think they are escaping their fate by fleeing discover that the same treatment awaits them in Europe, which after all has simply imported Islam's barbarism by opening its doors to large numbers of Muslims.

The German daily newspaper Die Welt reports on the terrible exclusion and violence suffered by Christian refugees at the hands of Muslims in Germany's asylum centres.

Germany is the second country in the world, after the US, for number of asylum applications received, with 13% of them last year, and the first in Europe, with 23.2% last year.

The report starts with some figures:

In Iraq, there are currently 30,000 Christians fleeing. But these are only those who are currently in the main news. Worldwide suffering estimate by humanitarian organisation Open Doors is around 100 million Christians under persecution. The organisation World Watch List 2014 has particularly strict Islamic countries - such as Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - among the ten states with the worst persecution of Christians.

An example of the discrimination suffered in German reception centres for refugees is what happened to Leyla S, an Iranian whose Christian faith compelled her to flee to Germany about three years ago with her husband and daughter.

The woman related to Die Welt her experience in the reception centre in Hessen, where about 20 of the approximately 100 other refugees cursed the family from the beginning again and again as “infidels” and “dirty dogs” and banned Leyla from the two kitchens.

"For two years", she says, "we always had to cook in our room. Once I tried to go in the communal kitchen, but the Muslim refugees from Afghanistan housed in the centre immediately chased us away, claiming that our presence rendered the food impure.

"Why then are these people coming to Germany, home to millions of Christians, who for them are unclean, although not their money?"

Die Welt also exposes the wall of silence of the authorities. In the refugee camps of Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, those responsible say that there are no cases of discrimination, while in reality they happen under the roofs of the refugee camps. The incidents take place in silence, hidden from the police.

Max Klingberg of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), an organisation that for 14 years has been working with refugees, explains that attacks against Christians are far from isolatd cases and that all Christians and Christian converts arriving in Germany are victims of harassment, threats, pressure.

And psychological violence sometimes leads to physical violence. In the case of an Iranian Christian convert, a woman, Muslim men urinated on her clothes and other personal effects to humiliate her.

The situation is so bad that in Bavaria, in order to stop the violence, separate accommodation for different religious groups of refugees has been requested.

Since the moment of his arrival at the reception centre Ramin, an Afghan refugee who converted to Christianity, has been threatened by three Muslim countrymen with whom he shared the room. He recounts: "They said that I belonged to the Dar al-Harb [house of war, as Islam calls all the part of the world which is non-Muslim] and not the Dar al-Islam [house of Islam]." For the three Afghan Muslims, Ramin deserved death as an infidel and apostate.

The man tells of various attacks, including one that led very close to his death: "We were in the room when my three roommates beat me in the kidneys with the remote. When I managed to wriggle out, one of them went into the kitchen and took a knife. I then attempted to flee in another room, but another had blocked the door with his foot. At that moment I was shaking, I turned to Jesus asking Him to save me. Then one of the men pointed the knife to my chest, saying that it would be impossible for me to stay alive for much longer. Fortunately, the other two reminded the man that he had to suspend for the time being his revenge, since he had yet to complete his application for political asylum."

In line with the constant denial of Muslim supremacism and Islamic persecution of Christians, authorities more often than not don't deal with these cases of hatred. An Iranian 19-year-old Christian tried to escape his Mohammedan tormentors by asking for a transfer to another city. The local council refused the application on the grounds that the dispute had nothing to do with religion but was purely personal.

Peter Ulrich, director of a free school for asylum seekers managed by the Evangelical Free Church, says that Christians are much closer to European culture and far better capable of integration than Muslims. No surprise here.

"In my work as a teacher of German language" he adds, "I have observed that many refugees from Syria, Iraq and Iran seek asylum precisely because of religious persecution. They are disappointed and irritated by how often their problem is not taken seriously by the authorities of our country, from which they instead expect understanding and support."

The solution is pretty simple not just for Germany but for all of Europe: give asylum to Christians, deny it to Muslims.

What's the Alternative to the Left's Program?

Published on American Thinker

By Enza Ferreri


I was reading the blog of Daniel Greenfield, undoubtedly a great writer and an acute analyst of what is wrong in today's world.

But, the more I was reading, the more I felt a sense of dissatisfaction, as you may have when drinking doesn't quench your thirst but paradoxically increases it.

Then I discovered what it was. There was something missing: a conclusion.

We - the counterjihadists, the "Islamophobes", the conservatives, the "Right wing" - have many excellent thinkers and commentators (of whom Greenfield is an example) who are good in the pars destruens, the critical, negative part, of our arguments; but not enough who develop a pars construens, the constructive part that builds the positive alternative to what we are criticising.

This dearth of a firm propositive aspect in our positions is common to all Western countries.

The reason, I dare say, is simple. There is among us a widespread fear or unease in proposing a kind of society espousing ideas and values (some of which from the past) that have been ruthlessly, thoroughly mauled and massacred by the Left.

We are, probably without realising, the first victims of Leftist indoctrination. We may reject those ideas rationally, but deep down, emotionally, we have doubts. The Left’s are the views we grew up with, they permeated our culture, were ideologically dominant when we were teenagers and young adults. Our favourite bands endorsed them and were selling them with their records and their lives: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

At university, both professors and students were full of them; who thought differently was a pariah.

The most fashionable authors were Marxists of various kinds, from Freudian Marxists to the Frankfurt School.

It would be totally unrealistic to think that an individual can go through all that brainwashing, peer pressure and gentle persuasion by his pop idols without taking with him a persistent scar, a lifelong influence on his mind.

So, when we slowly - it took a very long, long time - realised that those ideas (that for want of a better word I'll shorthandedly call "Leftist") were simply wrong, that they didn't correspond to reality - didn't "save the phenomena" as an obscure scientist named Sir Isaac Newton, among others, put it - and their acceptance and practical application were destroying both individuals and societies, we found our voice in denouncing them and their manfestations.

What we didn't find in equal measure was the audacity, the resolve to recover and re-propose the beliefs and principles that preceded the Leftist ones, and which the Left with its atheism and political correctness had demolished in our eyes.

No matter how much the world around us - in our surroundings, streets and urban ghettos as well as in faraway lands - was collapsing, there were words like "defending family values" or "sexual morality" or "not all religions are the same/religion can be a force for good" we just couldn't bring ourselves to utter.

We need to reclaim the convictions supplanted by Leftist barbarism. We mustn't be afraid to say that the alternative to Islam is Christianity, the answer to sexual relativism, pansexualism, radical feminism and homosexualism is in the Judaeo-Christian civilisation, and that the West can survive only if it reasserts its identity as Christendom.

This is the constructive, propositive part that at the moment is largely missing from the anti-jihad and conservative public discourse.

It's not enough to correctly identify what's wrong. If we don't have a positive recipe on how to fix it, we'll lose to those who have a proposal, however abysmal.

Vatican Denounces Islamic Caliphate Crimes

The Vatican denounced the crimes of the Islamic Caliphate, with a strongly-worded Declaration by the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.

This is the text of the Declaration on the jihadist violence in Iraq, issued on 12 August 2014, translated from the Italian from the Vatican News website:

The whole world has witnessed in shock what is now called the "restoration of the Caliphate," which had been abolished on 29 October 1923 by Kamal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. That this "restoration" is contested by the the majority of Muslim religious and political institutions has not prevented the "Islamic State" jihadists from committing and continuing to commit unspeakable criminal acts.

This Pontifical Council, all those engaged in interreligious dialogue, followers of all religions, as well as men and women of good will, can only unambiguously denounce and condemn these practices unworthy of man:

• the massacre of people for the sole reason of their religious affiliation;
• the despicable practice of beheading, crucifying and hanging bodies in public places;
• the imposition on Christians and Yezidis of the choice among conversion to Islam, payment of a tax (jizya) or forced exile;
• the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of people, including children, elderly, pregnant women and the sick;
• the abduction of girls and women belonging to the Yezidi and Christian communities as spoils of war (sabaya);
• the imposition of the barbaric practice of infibulation;
• the destruction of Christian and Muslim places of worship and burial places;
• the forced occupation or desecration of churches and monasteries;
• the removal of crucifixes and other Christian religious symbols as well as those of other religious communities;
• the destruction of a priceless Christian religious and cultural heritage;
• appalling violence aimed at terrorising people to force them to surrender or flee.

No cause, and certainly no religion, could justify such barbarity. This constitutes an extremely serious offence against humanity and against God who is its Creator, as Pope Francis has often reminded us.

We cannot forget, however, that Christians and Muslims have been able to live together - although, it's true, with ups and downs - over the centuries, building a culture of coexistence and a civilisation of which they are proud. Moreover, it is on this basis that, in recent years, dialogue between Christians and Muslims has continued and intensified.

The dramatic plight of Christians, Yezidis and other religious and ethnic communities who are minorities in Iraq requires a clear and courageous stance on the part of religious leaders, especially Muslims, of people engaged in interreligious dialogue and of all people of good will. All must be unanimous in condemning unequivocally these crimes and in denouncing the appeal to religion to justify them. What credibility will religions, their followers and their leaders have, otherwise? What credibility could the interreligious dialogue that we have patiently pursued over recent years still have?

Religious leaders are also called to exercise their influence with rulers to end these crimes, to punish those who commit them and to re-establish the rule of law throughout the land, ensuring the return home of those who have been displaced. While recalling the need for an ethical guidance in the management of human societies, these same religious leaders must not fail to stress that the support, funding and arming of terrorism are morally reprehensible.

That said, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue is grateful to all those who have already raised their voices to denounce terrorism, especially that which uses religion to justify it. Let us therefore unite our voices with that of Pope Francis: "May the God of peace stir up in each one of us a genuine desire for dialogue and reconciliation. Violence is never defeated by violence. Violence is defeated by peace!

Islam Is Not the Only Threat to the West

About the photo: Antonio Gramsci, co-founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921, developed the theory of cultural hegemony, according to which the extreme Left has to take power indirectly and in a less visible way, through an ideological and cultural war that it has now de facto won all over the Western world.

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

I've often said that the West is allowing its own Islamisation - which it could easily stop, since it's in a much stronger position than the Muslim world - and that therefore, if we want to be effective in dealing with the Islamic threat, we must first understand and deal with what has brought Western civilisation to its knees long before Islam could use this predicament for its purposes.

We've got to understand what went wrong in the West's seemingly unstoppable march of progress.

We believe that European countries and those descended from them are the most successful in the world, yet they are just ready not just to accept but to welcome with arms wide open their own Islamisation.

If we are in this situation it’s obviously because we have taken a path which is not so successful and conducive to good results as we illusorily thought we had. There’s not much point in all this “progress” if it has the same causes as our predisposition to civilisational suicide.

Sometimes people respond to my assertion that something is rotten in the West by saying things like this message, which I've just received:

I think what you say is true. However, I also think there are more causes to the rise of militant Islamism in the UK and elsewhere in Europe than just the failings of cultural Marxism and Western liberal democracy. Violence, war, slavery and Jihad are built into the very DNA of the Quaran and no iman would argue with that. I have come to the conclusion that Islam itself is not a religion at all. In fact the Quran defines it as a "system of thought" which is a far more accurate description.

It's impossible to say with any remote appearance of logic - and therefore I've never said - that Islam invasion of the West can occur without Islam. If you think about it for a moment, it wouldn't make any sense even as a linguistic construct.

But what I'm saying is that, if we focus only on Islam, we miss the broader picture.

When Rome was invaded and sacked by the barbarians, that had the possibility to happen only because the Roman Empire was already weakened internally, by moral decadence and the loss of the values that had built its strength. The barbarians merely took advantage of that.

Something similar is happening to Western civilisation. If the West were not in such a state of moral and cultural confusion so serious as to resemble a loss of identity, Islam would be too weak a force to even dream of threatening it.

Let's not forget that, with unrestricted immigration, we opened the doors to the invaders. The perpetrators of 9/11, as an example, received their training in engineering and driving planes in Germany and the US. Without that training, they wouldn't have achieved anything, even after reading the Quran a thousand times. This is just a dramatically emblematic example of what I'm saying.

I'm not saying even for a moment that Islam is not a huge problem, threatening the very existence of our civilisation.

But it's far from being the only problem threatening it.

Even without Islam, the West for a long time has been on a path to destroy itself (witness the two totally unnecessary world wars, that many historians, including Niall Ferguson, call "Western civil wars").

We are conducting this analysis now exactly because we have to find out what went wrong. I anticipate the conclusions of my analysis: abandoning Christianity, losing our moral compass, turning man into God is what went wrong.

What all of us have been taught is different from the truth that we have to re-discover again.

Western civilisation was built on and for many centuries took its nourishment and lifeblood from Christianity. Without it, it will end.

I am personally not a believer, I was an atheist all my adult life until I became agnostic about two years ago. It's not necessary to believe in God to recognise these, which are historical facts. Or to become a follower of Christianity without its theological aspect.

Christianity, like all religions, has a theological and a cultural, ethical and social aspect. We can embrace the latter without embracing the former.

Uncontrolled Immigration and Welfare State

Towards the end of July a would-be illegal immigrant to the UK, a stowaway who had clung underneath a coach for 200 miles from Calais to Norfolk, was killed when the coach's driver accidentally reversed over him.

One cannot help feeling sorry for the poor chap, illegal or not.

This news emerged in conjunction with that of a group of illegal immigrants first caught by the French border police while they were trying to leave Britain and smuggle themselves into France, and then returned to Dover.

Several Facebook users left comments to the effect that, with all the illegal immigrants coming into the UK, they only catch the illegals who are trying to leave. It's entirely understandable to feel that way: the problem is that, when generosity and altruism become excessive and destructive (you can have too much of a good thing, for every human quality we must find the right balance), when we realise and try to counteract the catastrophic consequences of these excesses, we risk being deprived of our spirit of compassion and humanity. This is another thing that the whole immigration disaster risks taking away from us.

In fact, I feel more anger towards the native benefit scroungers - people who could work and choose not to - for whom it's been extremely easy to exploit a welfare system that exists just to be taken advantage of and who have no moral scruples in living off the backs of the hard workers in their society, than I have towards immigrants like this man, who take huge risks with their lives.

Of course the lives of the British people in welfare-dependent families in which nobody has worked for generations are in the end ruined by alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic physical and sexual abuse, broken families, fatherlessness, and crime within and out of the home walls.

Both the welfare state and the uncontrolled immigration that we have and is more akin to invasion create human tragedies: this something they have in common.

Something else they share is that, ideologically, they both derive from the same doctrine: that we must pay our way out of poverty, also known as wealth redistribution, an idea of the Left since time immemorial. The difference is that the welfare state does for the domestic poor what unrestricted immigration does for the international poor. The end result, in both cases, is the devastation of the country's economy and the inability to achieve the allegedly desired result, namely the alleviation of poverty.

Interestingly, “most sensible economists (including Hayek) agree that, as long as inequality exists between national states, you can have either a Welfare State or free movement of people—not both.”

The great economist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences Milton Friedman also said that you cannot have free immigration and welfare at the same time, as it leads to parasitism. (43.40 - 45.40 in the video)

The colonisation that we keep calling "immigration" is similar to a lifeboat: if too many people get on board, it sinks and nobody will be saved. And, if among those people there is a disproportionate number of criminals and terrorists, the lifeboat will become a "deathboat".

Wind Farms' Dirty Secrets

It's not enough that they kill large numbers of birds and bats and that they are eyesores ruining the landscape and seascape.

Wind farms are being investigated in Scotland for their possible harm to human health.

The Scottish government has commissioned a report studying the effects on over 33,500 families living near 10 wind farms North of the Border, just a sample of the 2,300 wind turbines in Scotland. Its results will be known in autumn.

The research was prompted by campaigners who claim that some people living near the wind farms and suffering ill health don't realise that the cause may be infrasound emitted by wind turbines: noise at such a low frequency that it cannot be heard but can be felt.

A local resident is Andrew Vivers,

"an ex-Army captain who has suffered from headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, raised blood pressure and disturbed sleep since Ark Hill wind farm was built near his home in Glamis, Angus."

Medical examinations and tests failed to find the cause of his symptoms.

"Mr Vivers, who served almost 10 years in the military, said the authorities had so far refused to accept the ill effects of infrasound despite it being a 'known military interrogation aid and weapon'.

"He said: 'When white noise was disallowed they went on to infrasound. If it is directed at you, you can feel your brain or your body vibrating. With wind turbines, you don’t realise that is what’s happening to you.'"

In addition, "Mr Vivers said he has also witnessed an 'incredible number' of dead hares on the moors around Ark Hill and believes they may have succumbed to 'internal haemorrhaging and death' as a result of the turbines."

Mr Vivers believes that infrasound low frequency noise monitoring should be mandatory before and after turbine erection.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/497525/An-ill-wind-blows-as-the-surge-of-turbines-stirs-fears-of-silent-danger-to-our-health

Scotland had been involved in the discovery, earlier this year, of environmental damage caused by wind farms:

"Scotland’s environmental watchdog has probed more than 100 incidents involving turbines in just six years, including diesel spills, dirty rivers, blocked drains and excessive noise.

"Alarmingly, they also include the contamination of drinking water and the indiscriminate dumping of waste, with warning notices issued to a handful of energy giants."

http://www.sundaypost.com/news-views/scotland/special-investigation-toxic-wind-turbines-1.282890

It will be interesting to see if environmentalists and celebrities respond to any ruinous effects of one of their pet "renewable energy" projects with the same ardour and vigour with which they've been attacking fracking and fossil fuels.

Judging from their weak reaction to the massacre of birds and bats by wind farms, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Let's Never Become Blind to Burkhas

If a woman in a burkha, looking like a black spectre, walks by in Sheperds Bush or Oxford Street, people ignore her, pretend not to see her, probably try to believe that it's perfectly OK and normal to be dressed like that.

They have been almost thoroughly desensitised, they are like robots, automata who don't recognise the significance of what they see, who don't think.

Some people say to me things like: "I don't know why you're surprised, we see it all the time. It's just a traditional dress. Would you react in the same way if you saw a nun?"

I usually reply that being used to something shouldn't lead to its blind acceptance. If I had lived in Nazi Germany I probably would have got used to seeing arms risen in the Heil Hitler salute, but I would have resisted considering it right.

The burkha is a symbol, just like a nun's habit is a symbol. But the former symbolises a doctrine - Islam - that brings out the very worst in people, while the latter symbolises a doctrine - Christianity - that, by making them altruistic and considerate, brings out the best in people.

Ebola and Immigration, a Deadly Combination



The Ebola virus epidemic reminds us that global travel and international communications are not always a good thing.

Furthermore, since epidemics of this kind often originate in the same Third World countries that routinely send us thousands of people - call this phenomenon "immigration" or more appropriately "invasion" -, the infectious diseases emigrate to richer nations with their carriers.

Last year, for example, a report by the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tuberculosis, Drug-resistant tuberculosis: old disease—new threat, said:

The majority of UK cases are likely as a result from the reactivation of latent TB infection in people who were born in high incidence areas outside the UK.

While cases of tuberculosis, especially drug-resistant, are increasing in the world and - according to The Lancet - "the worldwide number of new cases (more than 9 million) is higher than at any other time in history" largely thanks to the spread of HIV, in developed countries like the UK immigration is the first culprit of the rise in incidence.

The above-mentioned study by the All-Party Parliamentary Group reported that TB rates increased in only three of the 21 countries under investigation: the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden. In all of them, about three quarters of cases were foreign-born. The UK had the third highest number of foreign nationals overall, but the highest number from a country with a very high TB incidence.

In the USA, last month Fox News disclosed that tuberculosis had spread and become a dangerous issue at both its southern border and the refugee centres housing thousands of illegal immigrants:

Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University's Langone Medical Center and a Fox News A Team medical contributor, said tuberculosis appears to be spreading through several counties in southern Texas. He told me that some counties are reporting twice the usual average number of cases.

"Some of the tuberculosis that comes from Central America is drug resistant," he told me. "It's not easier to spread but it is harder to treat. I'm concerned about that."

And while TB is not that easy to spread, he warned that all those children living in close quarters could be a ticking time bomb.

"It is a disease that needs to be carefully monitored and screened for -- something that is not possible under the current circumstances," Siegel said.

An earlier article had given a similar warning.

In the video above this article, a map of the United States showing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantine stations is compared with another map of the country showing the places to which the illegal immigrants have been sent. They are almost completely identical.

It's not conclusive evidence, of course, but it provides a good working hypothesis to research on.

Now, the Ebola virus is spreading in West Africa. Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are among the most afflicted countries of what the World Health Organisation has called the worst outbreak of Ebola virus in history, with 932 deaths so far.

To put that into context, in the biggest previous outbreak of the disease 224 died out of 425 cases, and all previous outbreaks resulted in just 2,300 deaths. This epidemic, increasing since January, concerns the deadliest form of the Ebola virus, Zaire ebolavirus.

This means that one third of all the fatalities caused by Ebola since it was recognised as a disease 40 years ago have taken place in the current outbreak. And the number is increasing.

Some nations try to confine the population, but the countries in that region, as nearly all African states, have porous borders with large uncontrolled tracts - which explains why Boko Haram terrorists can cross the border with Cameroon, where they have created several bases, and return home for new attacks. After Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the first case of death due to Ebola was identified in Nigeria, a country located 2,000 km from the epicentre of the epidemic.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Ebola virus disease causes high fever, diarrhea, bleeding, vomiting, chills, muscle aches, headache, joint pain, damage to the nervous system and other symptoms. The disease is transmitted through contact with the bodily fluid of an infected person directly or indirectly - e.g. by touching needles which have come into contact with infected bodily fluid.

The CDC has moved its operations to Level 1, with increased deployment of staff and resources. This is the first time the agency has invoked its highest level alert since 2009, then over a lethal influenza epidemic.

Christian doctors and missionaries treating Ebola patients for Christian charities - not many atheist charities involved in such task, as Dawkins' "rationality" doesn't seem to work in these cases - have died. But then we know that many of today's medical facilities were originally founded by Christians who acted out of a humanitarian impulse inspired by Jesus Christ.

In the UK, according to a union leader, border, customs and immigration staff feel unprepared to deal with people coming to the country with possible cases of the Ebola virus.

If you think that the USA is off the hook due to the provenance of its immigrants from Mexico and Central America, think again:

What’s more alarming, however, are reports confirmed by the National Border Patrol Council, or NBPC, and United Nations that some of the detainees apprehended attempting to enter the U.S. illegally are from Africa – where the Ebola outbreak is thriving...

In 2012, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime released a report confirming, “Central Americans are not the only ones being smuggled through Mexico to the United States. Irregular migrants from the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia), as well as South Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, India), China, and other African and Asian states are being smuggled through Central America.”

“Border Patrol agents in our sector have in the past apprehended aliens from Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Israel and from many other nations,” Spratte continued. “People think this is just about Mexico and Central America, but it isn’t. People from all over the world are trying to sneak into the United States.

What is happening in Africa due to the Ebola is terrible. But what is there to gain from importing the virus to our countries?

Muslim Iraqis Protest against Christian Persecution

Two anchorwomen in the Middle East have protested against the persecution of Christians in their countries on TV while reading the news.

The Muslim journalist Dalia AlAqidi, who works for the Iraqi TV network Sumaria, wore a cross around her neck on air and launched a verbal attack from the TV against "Islamist fascism", in support of Christians in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

AlAqidi made this gesture not only because of the disappearance from Mosul - which since June is in the hands of jihadists - of a Christian community that numbered in the thousands of faithful, but also for "the good of the whole country." She believes the exodus of Christians to be bad for everyone: "Christians are part of the indigenous people of this land and we cannot go on without them."

Dalia defended wearing the Cross, which is forbidden in Mosul, and has shrugged off threats already aimed at her. Writing on her Facebook page, she said she already received calls from Saudi Arabia.

AlAqidi says that this is not a "religious initiative but an uprising against anyone trying to obliterate civilisation...If I do not speak and others remain silent, then, as the saying goes, 'He who is silent about justice is a mute devil.'"

Other - very few - Muslim Iraqis have taken risks by defending the Christians from persecution by the Islamic State. Still others have been killed for not pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

The Islamic State jihadists, after having settled in Mosul and declared the caliphate, have started a systematic persecution of Christians, which culminated in their expulsion from their homes.

While the large majority of Muslims and Muslim leaders - like the grand imam of Al Azhar mosque in Egypt - have remained silent, a small group of Muslims have protested, paying with their lives.

Sixteen of them, the news of whose killing was released about a month after the capture of Mosul by the Islamic state, were killed according to the UN on 12-14 June. Among them are the imam of Mosul’s Great Nurridin Mosque, Muhammad al-Mansuri, and that of the mosque of the Prophet Jonah, Abdel-Salam Muhammad.

Bielefeldt, a professor of human rights and human rights politics at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg in Germany, said the purpose of such executions was to silence critics of extreme movements. Those who oppose the movement, he said, “don’t dare to say this publicly because it can be a matter of life and death.”

The executions apparently have had an effect. A resident of Mosul who once worked at the Great Nurridin Mosque told McClatchy on Saturday that the Islamic State is now dictating the content of Friday sermons in Mosul. The resident cannot be identified for security reasons.

More recently Mahmoud Al ‘Asali, a Muslim law professor who lectures on pedagogy at the University of Mosul, was killed after speaking out against the persecution of Christians, against the looting and burning of Mosul Christians' properties and possessions.

He refused to keep silent about the violence agaist Mosul’s Christians who are forced to choose between converting to the Muslim faith, paying the jizyah (the Islamic tax for non-Muslims) or fleeing...

Professor Ali ‘Asali knew what he was risking: everyone in Mosul knows that in Raqqa - the Syrian city which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized last year – there are many human rights activists who have paid for their opposition to ISIS’ acts of intolerance with their own lives. But Al ‘Asali was nevertheless unable to stand by in silence.

Christians in Mosul have been given the ultimatum: convert to Islam, pay the jizyah or be put to death. Those who decide to flee are not allowed to take anything with them, except the clothes they are wearing. Christians who are not healthy enough to flee Mosul must renounce their faith for Islam "just to stay alive".

The jizyah tax for non-Muslims - that all Christians have to pay if they want to stay alive and remain or return to Mosul - is 450 dollars per month, "which is an impossible sum for anyone living in Northern Iraq to pay".

It's unspeakable that the West ignores the Christian genocide in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

The jihadists of the Islamic state - reminiscent of Nazi methods - mark Christian homes in Mosul with the Arabic letter "N" which stands for the word "Nasrani", meaning "Christian" in Arabic.

Some Muslims have launched the “I am Iraqi, I am Christian” campaign in solidarity with Christians and in response to the letter "N" written on the walls of Christian homes. A group of them turned up outside the Chaldean Church of St. George in Baghdad with a banner displaying that slogan, and posted a picture on Facebook.

Joining this initiative and inspired by her Iraqi colleague Dalia AlAqidi, Dima Sadeq, of the Lebanese TV network LBCI, appeared on television wearing a t-shirt printed with the Arabic letter "ن" (corresponding to the "N" - pronounced Noon - of the word "Nasrani", Christian) used to mark the Christian homes. Before beginning to read the newscast, Sadeq said: "From Mosul to Beirut, we are all Christians."

Subsequently, the LBCI has turned its logo into Lb ن and launched the hashtag # Lb ن to kick off a campaign that has persuaded thousands of Twitter and Facebook users to replace their profile images and avatars with a picture of a yellow “ن” in a black background, the "brand" of Iraqi Christians. "The darkest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis" Dalia AlAqidi said, paraphrasing Dante Alighieri. "We will not allow", Sadeq echoed, "the walls to become the place on which letters of exile are drawn."

Not Much Hope but Lots of Hate

I don't know if you'ever heard of the extreme Left group Hope not Hate (HnH).

I hadn't, until I joined the party Liberty GB. Because all the activity of this group consists of is attacking political organisations that have different opinions from them.

The choice of its name is particularly unfortunate, especially the "Not Hate" bit, as hate for the holders of non-socialist views is what motivates the group and its only raison d'etre.

Not being an avid reader of its website, only yesterday I chanced to see a blog post in it, written before the last European Elections, in which the three Liberty GB candidates - Paul Weston, Jack Buckby and I - are scrutinised.

But don't expect analysis, or even comment, on ideas and political positions.

Hope not Hate doesn't waste time and the little mental energy it must have on such trivia as the ideolological foundations for a party manifesto policy or the arguments supporting a political stance.

In the old electoral-campaign polarisation of issues versus personalities, this far-Left group has no hesitation in siding with the latter.

Ad hominem attacks is what it's specialised in, indeed not just in this post but in all the others in its website that I read.

The most paradoxical, if we were to take Hope not Hate seriously - choice that I don't recommend - and therefore consider it as a suitable object for a logical assessment of self-contradictions, thing I read was the part about me, since I am, as HnH nicely put it, a "Johnny Foreigner".

Here this group that prides itself for its anti-bigotry and open-mindedness showed itself - inadvertently, but then intellect is not its strong point - for what it is: exactly the opposite.

Here is what it says:

"This one is a woman and she is from Italy. Before you can throw accusations of bunga-bunga at the party, Enza Ferreri, the woman in question, has a name not too dissimilar to that of a flash sports car that rich people drive and she also has a degree in philosophy from an Italian University.

"Like Jack and Paul, it appears she is also very posh. She claims she used to write for the Italian magazine L'Espresso which is probably some kind of industry magazine for coffee lovers."

See how many national stereotypes and prejudices you can cram into a few sentences if you put your mind to it?

The "bunga bunga" reference is particularly telling, since only Italians are mindlessly and sweepingly associated with the sexcapades of their politicians, in this case former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

As Italian journalist and friend Alessandra Nucci said, Americans are not all painted with the same brush as Oval Office adulterer Bill Clinton.

So here you have it as clear as daylight: the self-proclaimed anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-xenophobic group par excellence is revealing its hidden bigotry, thus showing to be motivated not so much by pure and philanthropic ideals but by hatred for conservatives, as the entire focus and activity of the group - merely negative, attacking something or rather someone - also amply demonstrates.

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/a-bit-of-racist-posh-and-spice-3586

Top Economist: Immigration Hurts Us All

Top Left-wing Cambridge economist finally admits that immigration hurts all of us.

Cambridge University is traditionally strong in economics subjects. Now Professor Robert Rowthorn, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Cambridge University and a longstanding adviser to Whitehall departments, said that, while the economic advantages of immigration are "unlikely to be very large", the disadvantages - from building on the green belt to overcrowding in cities - are great and will be felt by the UK population for generations to come.

For many years the totally-unrestricted immigration policies, first championed and introduced by Tony Blair's New Labour government, have been peddled to the public with claims of the major economic benefits that they would bring to a native population that was either too old to work or, if young, too lazy to do so.

The counterevidence to these claims was clear for everyone to see, and became even more obvious over the years.

More recently, we've witnessed quasi-desperate attempts by the government, the BBC and assorted Leftist media and academics to produce and divulge studies that allegedly empirically confirmed the benefits of immigration for British economy.

Some of these studies used faulty methods of research, and they were exposed for this, for example by the think tank Migration Watch UK.

Maybe the time has come when even Leftist academics find it difficult to deny what is before everyone's eyes: that Britain has become a worse place due to immigration.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2712677/How-mass-migration-hurts-No-s-not-Mail-saying-verdict-Left-wing-economist-Cambridge.html

Why Criminals Are Afraid of Classical Music

Published on American Thinker

By Enza Ferreri


Apparently, many young people, especially those with an antisocial disposition, dislike classical music so much that Bach, Beethoven and Mozart can even be played to discourage young hooligans from intimidating, harassing and robbing store customers.

This experiment has been tried and has succeeded over many years in several locations.

The earliest occurrence I could find goes back to the mid 1980s, when Canadian outlets of the 7-Eleven convenience store franchise began to play easy listening and classical music to drive away teenagers who were loitering outside their stores. Following the success of this new way to fight anti-social behaviour, companies from McDonald's to Co-op, transport authorities and countless shopping malls around the world have employed it.

In the UK, the first to adopt this method to cut crime and disorder was the Tyne and Wear Metro system, in England's North East, in 1997, pumping out Haydn and Mozart at its underground stations to deter vandals and loiterers, after the success achieved by the underground system in Montreal, Canada, in the mid 1990s.

The results were so positive that other British transport providers imitated the scheme, including the bus station in Stanley in County Durham and the much bigger London Underground system. The most effective deterrents, according to Transport for London, were anything sung by Pavarotti or written by Mozart.

In Holywood, County Down, in Northern Ireland, the town centre manager Steven Dunlop said that groups of youths as young as 15 caused problems near the post office which opens late at night:

"They climbed onto the roof of one building, were spitting on pensioners, abusing other people and creating an atmosphere which was putting off custom," he told BBC News Online in Belfast.

He was unsuccessful in persuading the council to play classical music to keep away the louts, but

contacted a professor at Queen's University in Belfast who did a PhD on the effects of music on the human mood.

"He found that young people were into tap and hiphop beats - faster beats of music - and they find classical music intolerable," he said.

In January 2005, The Economist was reporting that Co-op, a national chain of grocery stores in the UK, was playing classical music outside its shops whenever youths started hanging around and intimidating customers. It had the desired effect of dispersing the troublemakers.

Despite original scepticism from some who didn't appreciate the power of classical music and education ("I don't believe that such measures will have any long-term positive impact in terms of deterring menacing teenagers, whatever other benefits playing Mozart might bestow on shoppers and Underground travellers. If anything, I have a feeling that it'll probably encourage a few punks to simply use the music as a background score to their misbehavior, a la 'A Clockwork Orange.'"), it's been working, as its constant use seems to indicate.

And not just food stores, but also other types of retailers in the Yorkshire city of Leeds adopted this approach, including travel agencies, opticians and funeral services, still owned by the Co-op, with support from the police, Leeds City Council's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit and local residents.

Hoping to repeat the success obtained in various parts of Britain, Neil Honeywood, security manager of Leeds Co-op's Food Division, said:

"Youngsters gather outside stores because it's light and there's a supply of food and shelter from the rain.

"But they can become noisy and intimidating - and that's when the nuisance starts. But classical music usually moves a group on within minutes. They don't want to listen to that - it's just not cool."

Since then the same method has been employed several times. In 2009, stores in some cities and towns of South Yorkshire, in Northern England, used it with success, as "loss prevention" manager Peter Cooper explained:

"We had an issue with young people hanging around outside the stores which was intimidating for shoppers and staff.

"This problem has been dramatically reduced since we introduced the music. The youngsters are definitely not classical music fans, and tend to disappear as soon as we turn the music on.

It's been working across the pond too.

Whether at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal, La Guardia, Newark International and John F. Kennedy International airports, and Pennsylvania Station; at Portland, Oregon, light-rail stations; in Seattle's parking lots; or in Anchorage, Alaska, Town Square, classical soundtracks have helped to stop or reduce anti-social behaviour and even crimes like fights and drug dealing.

Canadian cities have also been playing classical music, including opera, from speakers in public places, such as subway platforms, to keep people from loitering.

In Australia and New Zealand, same pattern and same success stories. In Queensland, Australia, the classical music played by a local rail company in train stations reduced not only loitering but even vandalism and graffiti.

It worked in a Liverpool housing estate as well, where different types of music were played at different times of the day and, in an area where classical music was played, youngters stopped writing graffiti.

In Germany, a slightly different approach. A minister, who is also a pianist, produced a CD of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in which he played accompanied by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, entitled "Adagio in the Car". The intent was to calm down motorists, thus preventing road rage and road accidents.

The evidence seems plentiful, even though the experiments have not been performed in controlled laboratory conditions. Why, then is classical music such an effective crime and antisociality deterrent?

The simplest explanations, in the time-honoured scientific tradition of Occam's razor, should be considered first.

Teenagers, especially those with uneducated ears like the anti-social types that linger around where they are not wanted, don't like classical music, and in addition they think it's not "cool" to be seen by their peers listening to it.

A simple key factor, according to Leicester University's Adrian North, is unfamiliarity - which even those who are not psychology researchers like North know that in music is related to taste. The targets in these "experiments" were clearly unused to strings and woodwind, but for the more musically literate an atonal barrage may work better. Mr North tormented Leicester students with “computer-game music” in the union bar. It cleared the place.

Still other explanations, leaving aside physiological analyses and neurotransmitters, are in the nature of classical music itself. Much of it conveys a sense of order, symmetry and beauty, that deeply conflicts with the disorder and ugliness that these young hooligans may have in their minds while loitering. It also acts as a calming influence against aggressive and destructive impulses, creating a more peaceful atmosphere.

Giovanni Bietti, musicologist, pianist and artistic consulant of Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, explains:

"Beethoven was profoundly convinced that music could make a great social contribution. He, like Mozart and Haydn, had a rational picture of music, which is why in their compositions the initial contrasts are always resolved through the rules of musical composition, creativity and intelligence. It's clear that these logical and musical processes, which inevitably resolve the conflicts giving order to thoughts, discourage those who do not accept the rules. And it is equally clear that even those who do not know music perceive them, because the subliminal message of these compositions is strong enough to convey this sense of order to anyone."

In conclusion, it's easy to see - at the other end of the spectrum - the link between criminal behaviour and rap, link deriving not just from the rap lyrics but also from the "music" - or rather cacophony - itself.

And, on a larger scale, a society that is enthralled by the vulgarity of Amy Winehouse acoustically and Tracey Emin visually can clearly be seen on an aesthetic and moral downward path from many other different indicators.

There are forms of expression that exalt and bring out the worst of us and others that exalt and bring out the best of us. In many ways, while rap encourages the anti-social in each of us, classical music keeps it at bay.