How Close Abortion and Infanticide Can Be

The video above shows a CNN report on Obama's opposition, in 2001 when he was an Illinois state Senator, to the Illinois state's Born Alive Infants Protection Act, a bill to give legal protection to live babies surviving abortions, so that they would not be thrown away and left to die.

Obama voted against Born Alive and was the only senator to speak against it on the senate floor for 2 consecutive years.

The federal version of Born Alive was approved unanimously 98-0 by the US Senate. It passed overwhelmingly, approved from left to right, in the US House of Representatives. President Bush signed it into law on August 5, 2002.

As chairman of the Illionois Senate Health & Human Services Committee, Obama stopped a bill with identical wording of the federal law from being introduced in Illinois in 2003.

The reason Obama had given for voting against the Illinois state's Born Alive Infant Protection Act was that this bill was different from the similar federal law that was passed, in that it was open to being interpreted as making all abortions illegal and did not protect Roe v. Wade.

The video report shows a debate on the issue between Democrat James Carville and conservative Bill Bennett.

As you can easily see in the video, only Bennett has a valid argument: the federal law and the Illinois bill are identical, so this is not about Roe v. Wade, this is not about abortion. It looks like one of Obama's many falsities.

Carville has no arguments at all, valid or not. All he does is using ad hominem attacks against Santorum, thinking that his socialist peers will find him funny, and against the nurse who supported the bill.

Imagine for a moment if this happened in a court of law: Bennett's statement would have been accepted, Carville's would have been rejected as argumentative.

It's easy to see why the best brains belong to the right end of the political spectrum. Since socialism of various shapes and forms is the current dominant ideological orthodoxy of the West, it takes more intellect - as well as guts - to challenge it than to go along with it.

Obama Was Born and Raised a Muslim

If anyone in the USA, for some extraordinary reason, is still in doubt about whom to choose for President, I recommend two things. The first is an empiricist approach: you have tried one candidate and he failed, you haven't tried the other. In experimental science it would be reasonable to choose the not-yet-tried possibility.

The second thing is, if you haven't already done so, to read "Obama's Muslim Childhood" by Daniel Pipes.

The discovery that Obama has been wearing for over 30 years a ring with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada, “There is no god except Allah”, will make sense to you if you read it, because you'll realize how important Islam has been in the President's life. WND's Jerome R. Corsi, who has written several books on Obama, explains:

The Shahada is the first of the Five Pillars of Islam, expressing the two fundamental beliefs that make a person a Muslim: There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s prophet.

Sincere recitation of the Shahada is the sole requirement for becoming a Muslim, as it expresses a person’s rejection of all other gods.

Egyptian-born Islamic scholar Mark A. Gabriel, Ph.D., examined photographs of Obama’s ring at WND’s request and concluded that the first half of the Shahada is inscribed on it.

“There can be no doubt that someone wearing the inscription ‘There is no god except Allah’ has a very close connection to Islamic beliefs, the Islamic religion and Islamic society to which this statement is so strongly attached,” Gabriel told WND.

Let's go back to Pipes' long and very well-researched article. After observing that the incumbent accuses his rival Romney of hiding some of his biographical details, it says: "A focus on openness and honesty are likely to hurt Obama far more than Romney. Obama remains the mystery candidate with an autobiography full of gaps and even fabrications".

A list of Obama's clashes with the truth and inaccuracies about himself - like "He lied about never having been a member and candidate of the 1990s Chicago socialist New Party", or his claim that he was born in Kenya - follows, before Pipes gets to the main topic of his essay, which is Obama and his campaign's lies about Obama's Muslim childhood.

The President, repeatedly although in a contradictory fashion, has denied having ever been a Muslim.

Pipes, through a painstaking fact-finding work, shows that Obama was born and raised as a Muslim, and while in Indonesia he went to Koranic classes "studying 'how to pray and how to read the Koran,' but also actually praying in the Friday communal service right on the school grounds", attended the local mosque, wore sarongs, garments that in Indonesian culture only Muslims wear, and took part in advanced Islamic religious lessons which included the difficult task of reciting the Koran in Arabic. None of this was inevitable, because in Indonesia ""Muslim students were taught by a Muslim teacher, and Christian students were taught by a Christian teacher".

In summary, the record points to Obama having been born a Muslim to a non-practicing Muslim father and having lived for four years in a fully Muslim milieu under the auspices of his Muslim Indonesian stepfather. For these reasons, those who knew Obama in Indonesia considered him a Muslim.

"My Muslim Faith"

In addition, several statements by Obama in recent years point to his Muslim childhood.

(1) Robert Gibbs, campaign communications director for Obama's first presidential race, asserted in Jan. 2007: "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago." But he backtracked in Mar. 2007, asserting that "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." By focusing on the practice as a child, the campaign is raising a non-issue for Muslims (like Jews) do not consider practice central to religious identity. Gibbs added, according to a paraphrase by Watson, that "as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center." Clearly, "the neighborhood's Islamic center" is a euphemism for "mosque"; spending time there again points to Obama's being a Muslim.

Particularly crucial is the section of the article concerning how Obama interacts with - I was temped to say "fellow" - Muslims, acting as if they were indeed his coreligionists. He acts and tells them things that a Christian, as he says he is, would never do and say, like talking about Jesus as a dead prophet.

When addressing Muslim audiences, Obama uses specifically Muslim phrases that recall his Muslim identity. He addressed audiences both in Cairo (in June 2009) and Jakarta (in Nov. 2010) with "as-salaamu alaykum," a greeting that he, who went to Koran class, knows is reserved for one Muslim addressing another.

Obama, in addition, has an exaggerated sense of the importance of Islam and Muslims, to the point that he hugely "overestimates both the number and the role of Muslims in the United States," which "smacks of an Islamist mentality".

So it's not surprising that

Muslims cannot shake the sense that, under his proclaimed Christian identity, Obama truly is one of them.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister of Turkey, has referred to Hussein as a "Muslim" name. Muslim discussions of Obama sometimes mention his middle name as a code, with no further comment needed. A conversation in Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. "He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim," observed a grocer. "He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian," replied a customer. No, said the grocer, "He can't be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein." The name is proof positive.

The American Muslim writer Asma Gull Hasan wrote in "My Muslim President Obama":

I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel … that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama. … since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice. "Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is."

Obama's middle name Hussein is again considered one of the reasons.

In conclusion, available evidence suggests that Obama was born and raised a Muslim and retained a Muslim identity until his late 20s. Child to a line of Muslim males, given a Muslim name, registered as a Muslim in two Indonesian schools, he read Koran in religion class, still recites the Islamic declaration of faith, and speaks to Muslim audiences like a fellow believer. Between his non-practicing Muslim father, his Muslim stepfather, and his four years of living in a Muslim milieu, he was both seen by others and saw himself as a Muslim.

This is not to say that he was a practicing Muslim or that he remains a Muslim today, much less an Islamist, nor that his Muslim background significantly influences his political outlook (which, in fact, is typical of an American leftist). Nor is there a problem about his converting from Islam to Christianity. The issue is Obama's having specifically and repeatedly lied about his Muslim identity. More than any other single deception, Obama's treatment of his own religious background exposes his moral failings.

Questions about Obama's Truthfulness

Yet, these failings remain largely unknown to the American electorate. Consider the contrast of his case and that of James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces. Both Frey and Obama wrote inaccurate memoirs that Oprah Winfrey endorsed and rose to #1 on the non-fiction bestseller list. When Frey's literary deceptions about his own drug taking and criminality became apparent, Winfrey tore viciously into him, a library reclassified his book as fiction, and the publisher offered a refund to customers who felt deceived.

In contrast, Obama's falsehoods are blithely excused; Arnold Rampersad, professor of English at Stanford University who teaches autobiography, admiringly called Dreams "so full of clever tricks—inventions for literary effect—that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is supposed to come our realization of truth." Gerald Early, professor of English literature and African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, goes further: "It really doesn't matter if he made up stuff. … I don't think it much matters whether Barack Obama has told the absolute truth in Dreams From My Father. What's important is how he wanted to construct his life."

How odd that a lowlife's story about his sordid activities inspires high moral standards while the U.S. president's autobiography gets a pass. Tricky Dick, move over for Bogus Barry.

Obama has a disproportionate desire to appeal to, as well as appease as we saw in the case of the Muhammed film, Muslims. The head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Charles F. Bolden, Jr., explained that Obama "wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." Which incidentally is not even remotely as great as Obama seems to believe. But that's for another post.

It's up to Americans to decide if they want to re-elect a President who lies in matters of personal identity, especially religion, which has obvious, major ethical implications. In comparison, as Pipes points out, Romney's "prior tax returns, the date he stopped working for Bain Capital, and the non-public records from his service heading the Salt Lake City Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts" are of little importance.

And it's up to Americans to decide if they want to re-elect a President who has Muslim background and sympathies, in a world where the West's need to distance itself from the Islamic world, to reaffirm its values of democratic freedoms against a Muslim world that tries ever more aggressively to impose its Sharia's blasphemy laws on it, to recognize with dispassionate eyes potential enemies emerging from the "Arab Spring", and to deal with a nuclearizing Iran, increases by the day.

There is a saying: "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic". I was brought up a Catholic and I know that, although I consider myself now an atheist Christian, as Oriana Fallaci described herself, so, not believing in God, I am not a Catholic any more, family upbringing and childhood impressions remain with you all your life. I suspect the same applies to Obama, and all the above rich and detailed information confirms it.

If I were American, I know what I would do.

Stephanie Cutter: "Benghazi Only an Issue Because of Romney & Ryan"

From RedState "Obama Campaign Official Stephanie Cutter: Benghazi Terrorist Attack ‘Only an Issue because of Romney and Ryan’":

STEPHANIE CUTTER: In terms of the politicization of this — you know, we are here at a debate, and I hope we get to talk about the debate — but the entire reason this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It’s a big part of their stump speech. And it’s reckless and irresponsible what they’re doing.

BROOKE BALDWIN: But, Stephanie, this is national security. As we witnessed this revolution last year, we covered it–

CUTTER: It is absolutely national security–

BALDWIN: –it is absolutely pertinent. People in the American public absolutely have a right to get answers.

Geller's Anti-Jihad Ad Makes Headlines

Courageous USA counter-jihadist activist Pamela Geller, Executive Director of the of American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has brought anti-jihad to national and international media attention, with her ad in New York subway.

The poster, which is a response to anti-Israel ads previously displayed there, has been repeatedly vandalized since its first day, Monday.

Says Pamela Geller about this vandalism:

In a rational society, it would be looked down upon, but more importantly, the defacement is a metaphor for this entire conversation. Hundreds and hundreds of anti-Israel posters ran all over the country. Not one was defaced. One anti-jihad poster goes up, and it's defaced within an hour, while its creator faces defamation, smears and libel. Islamic supremacists and leftist thugs criminally defaced these ads within an hour. This is a physical manifestation of the entire conversation, or lack thereof. Anyone who speaks about jihad and sharia is attacked, defamed, destroyed -- just like these ads. This is exactly what’s happening in the media regarding jihad coverage in general. Anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-sharia hate is all over the airwaves, but anyone who dares to speak the truth about Islam and jihad in the media is immediately smeared and defamed. You can't have this conversation in the media, any more than I can present these pro-Israel ads, and receive any semblance of fair treatment.

Ahmadinejad Meets Black Racist Farrakhan

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with the Nation of Islam Minister and black supremacist Louis Farrakhan.

Ahmadinejad is in New York this week for the 67th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. A photo on an English translation of Ahmadinejad’s personal website shows Farrakhan sitting at the same table as the Iranian President, smiling in front of an Iranian flag, during a meeting of Ahmadinejad with the "leaders of Abrahamic religions".

Farrakhan is anti-white, anti-American, anti-Semitic. Calling him "racist" is one of the rare occasions when the term is rightly used. What better partner for an Islamic leader of Ahmadinejad's ilk, with the destruction of the West as common objective?

To make things even clearer, last night the Iranian President had "a hush-hush meal with Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party Tuesday at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street", the New York Post reported.

It's hard to tell who is worse of the two men. Just to give an idea of Farrakhan's Weltanschauung, he said that in 1985 he was abducted by aliens from outer space:

Farrakhan also recounted what he claimed was a UFO abduction in which Elijah Muhammad warned him of a coming war. Farrakhan explained how after the 1985 event, then-President Ronald Reagan announced that Americans were to have no dealings with Libya and Gadhafi. It was at that point, he said Tuesday, that he understood this was the war to which his UFO experience alluded.

“I wondered then: Was Moammar Gadhafi the man and the war I was told about? While I was in Ghana it crystallized to me that it was Moammar Gadhafi and Libya. This was in 1986,” he said adding that he immediately took a Russian plane to Libya to warn Gadhafi of “America’s plans.”

“I told them my experience,” he said, “and I told them that America was going to bomb their airport, communications, their water project etc.”

According to Farrakhan, an American bomb strike on Libya shortly after his visit there confirmed his belief in his UFO prophecy.

“[Ghaddafi’s] life was spared and I knew then that God had made a brother for me and made me a brother for him and that is how our relationship began.”

Farrakhan also believes that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a Zionist conspiracy.

To complete the unholy anti-Western alliance, Ahmadinejad is also supposed to meet Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalist protestors, according to the Iranian regime’s official FARS News Agency.

Freedom of Speech Replaced by Sharia

Blogger Diana West has a very good article, "Trading the First Amendment for Sharia":

This is no media flap. This is war. Islam is attempting to dominate the West by attacking the basis of the West – freedom of speech. Our leaders won’t tell us that because too many of them have already surrendered. They deplore the violence against our people and our sovereign territory, yes, but their priority is not to defend free speech but to see that Islamic speech codes are enforced. They have already decided to discard liberty for Shariah. The U.S. government and the Islamic bloc known as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) couldn’t be more in sync on this vital issue.

How to get around the First Amendment? Through “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last year. She was speaking about the so-called Istanbul Process, the international effort she and the OIC are spearheading to see Islamic anti-”blasphemy” laws enforced around the world.

Since last week, the Obama administration has made not one but two attempts to persuade YouTube to remove “Innocence of Muslims,” the Islamic riot-button du jour. The administration has denounced and practically jumped up and down on the video clip as “the cause” of Islamic rampaging. (To its credit, YouTube owner Google so far has refused.)

Amid the rioting, President Obama called on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan for political support. Erdogan obliged by condemning violence against U.S. personnel in Libya, but he identified the video as “provocation” – indeed, all the more reason for blasphemy laws. When free speech “is in the form of a provocation,” Erdogan said, “there should be international legal regulations against attacks … on religion.” There should be domestic laws, too, he said, continuing: “Freedom of thought and belief ends where the freedom of thought and belief of others starts.”

A video in no way limits the freedom of thought and belief of anybody. This is another example of the tortuous logic of the Muslim world which, not incidentally, has never been able to reconcile Islam with Aristotle, the founder of formal logic.

That’s not how it works in the West. But such Shariah norms are what all of Islam – not just a “tiny band of extremists” – is pressing on us. A survey of the week’s news in the Islamic world reveals that whether terror kingpins (Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Indonesia’s convicted Abu Bakar Bashir) or Islamic scholar (Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb), whether smashing U.S. Embassy windows in Yemen or meeting in the offices of the Arab League, whether Pakistani lawyers or Hamas fighters, whether under U.S. sanctions (Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) or an Obama ally (Turkey’s Erdogan), the Islamic world is speaking in one voice. Criticism of Islam must be outlawed, and violators punished.

And more audaciously than ever. Just this week, an Iranian group increased the bounty on Salman Rushdie’s fatwa’ed head to 2.5 million euros for “insulting” Islam 23 years ago in his novel “The Satanic Verses.” The influential Union of Islamic Scholars, headed by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual adviser Yusuf al-Qaradawi, demanded that Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, linking Islam and violence. Egyptian cleric Ahmad Fouad Ashoush issued a fatwa (death sentence) against the cast and crew of “Innocence of Muslims.” The Pakistani government declared a national holiday for anti-U.S. protests. And the Egyptian government, still begging for U.S. cash, not only sentenced an Egyptian Christian to six years in jail this week for “insulting the prophet” (and Egypt’s president and a lawyer), it also issued arrest warrants for six U.S.-based Egyptians who made the “offending” film and pastor Terry Jones for promoting it.

This is what a world without the First Amendment looks like. In the eyes of the Obama White House, however, the First Amendment is just an obstacle to synchronicity with the Islamic world. They are right, of course. That makes it our lifeline to liberty.

Muslim Radicals with Friends in High Places

Babar Ahmad, Abu Hamza and three other major terrorism suspects will be extradited from the UK to the US in the next few weeks (from the BBC).

The European Court of Human Rights has given its final approval for the extradition.

Notice that the BBC site, in his photo's caption, tries to portray Babar Ahmad as a victim, saying that he has been held in UK custody without trial for nearly eight years, although the reason for that has in fact been appeals and other delaying actions by his lawyers and supporters. One of them is fellow Muslim and politician Sadiq Khan, Former Deputy Leader of the Labour Group, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice.

Born in England of Pakistani parents, Babar Ahmad is lifelong friend from childhood as well as constituent of Sadiq Khan, who is also the MP for Tooting, South London.

Ahmad is accused of having run a major English-language pro-jihad website, Azzam, which played a crucial role in recruiting Muslims in the West to fight for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan; money laundering through the website; plotting with US nationals; receiving classified US Naval plans; "conspiracy to provide material to support terrorists, namely the Taliban and the Chechen Mujahideen; providing material to support terrorists; and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country" (from Islam versus Europe).

Since the indictment, Khan has refused to sever his ties with his jihad-supporting friend. Indeed, Khan has shamelessly used his position as Shadow Justice Minister to help Ahmad in any way that he can, demanding that he be tried in Britain rather than extradited to the US, even though the terrorist recruitment website Ahmad is alleged to have assisted was operating out of the US.

Right to Bear Arms and Secular State

Europeans don't generally understand that many things that Americans do have the purpose of protecting the individual from the state, whereas the inhabitants of the Old Continent think that they are done for different reasons.

Two of the most illustrative and important cases of this misunderstanding are the right to bear arms and the secular state.

Europeans usually think that the US Constitution's right to bear arms has to do with individual protection from criminality and violence from other individuals. In reality, its main goal is to protect the citizen from the power of the state.

Without this constitutionally-enshrined right only the state, through the armed forces and the police, would be be authorized to have the use of arms, and this is a huge source of power and control.

It's reminiscent of the origin of the expression 'crossing the Rubicon'. The Rubicon is a river in Northern Italy which is sufficiently distant from Rome to have been elected by the ancient Roman Republic as the safe boundary, the defining line which nobody could cross with an army. The Romans knew only too well that weapons are a great source of power.

You must have an enormous trust in a government to allow it to be the only entity to be permitted to carry arms.

In my second example, Europeans in their majority believe that the secular state serves the purpose to protect the state from the power of the Church, whereas the opposite is true: the separation between Church and state has the role of protecting the Church from the power of the state.

US Democrats Exposed in Favour of Banning Corporate Profits

Watch this video because it's worth it. It shows how communist at heart (and a bit naive to say the least) US Democrats are, in common with their leftist brothers all over the world.

2012 Republican National Convention Second Day

Last night I watched on BBC Parliament the coverage of the US Republican Party's National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

For the first time I saw Paul Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, give a speech. I had heard that he was good (someone even said he was better than Mitt Romney), and indeed he was good.

I also liked many other speakers I saw, especially Fox News' Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, who tore Obama to pieces; Steven Cohen, a small-business owner who spoke on behalf of small businesses oppressed by this administration's taxes and regulations - and the fact that he got government contracts for his company (who he said are only a “minute, fractional” portion of his business) is irrelevant to his arguments; and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who rightly confronted the left's tendency to denigrate Romney for being a wealthy man, when in fact that shows the entrepreneurial, courage, and leadership qualities of this self-made man who, unlike Obama, has created lots of jobs.

"And yes, he made money," Portman said. "He made it the old fashioned way. He earned it.

"Then you have Barack Obama, who has never started a business – never even worked in business."

Which one, he asked, "knows how to turn this economy around?"

Portman said Obama lacks leadership, blamed him for the Senate's failure to pass a budget, and for the millions of US citizens out of work "or the millions more who have given up looking."

I hope the Romney-Ryan ticket wins, opinion polls or not. I can't imagine how any American might want to re-elect Obama, unless s/he is a sado-masochist bent on the destruction of self and others.

Consenting Adults, Homosexuality, Incest, Polygamy, Bestiality: Defining Acceptable Sexuality

I don't normally watch The Jeremy Kyle Show, a sort of TV programme on the British underclass and its troubles, although it can be interesting at times.

Last night I watched it. There was a homosexual couple of two men, said to love each other very much. One had been adopted as a child, so he didn't know who his family were. The couple discovered that they were in fact half brothers. This revelation caused them much grief and an emotional state which was repeatedly described as "devastation".

Now I am genuinely asking this question.

What is the moral difference between incest and homosexuality? Not many years ago homosexuality was considered reproachable, now it isn't but incest is, in a few years' time, if current visible trends continue, incest will no longer be.

Let's start from the beginning. Initially, there was a prevailing position condemning homosexuality both morally and criminally.

This was, I believe, wrong, and so started believing many people.

The idea that homosexual orientation and behaviour were not per se unethical began to prevail, leading to a liberal attitude towards them.

So far, so good. What happened next was not so good, though.

Homosexuality, in the common usage, refers to two things: the inclination or orientation of sexual attraction for people of the same sex and the behaviour that acts on that inclination.

There has been a leap from decriminalising homosexuality and considering it as a legitimate and acceptable behaviour to assuming that same-sex sexuality is not a problem, in any sense of the word: and this is a big leap.

The new concept that established itself in public opinion about sex was that everything was morally acceptable among consenting adults.

But is this simple formula really standing even a superficial scrutiny?

For instance, what about incest? If the people "committing" it (and the very fact that we can still use this verb which we couldn't use in reference to homosexuality shows the double standard) are consenting adults, what then? Is it considered OK?

An obvious objection to putting the two on the same level could concern the biological problem of the increased genetical handicaps of the offspring from two close blood relatives. This, though, is easily surmountable by assuming that a) the incestuous couple is homosexual (as in our TV show case), or b) the incestuous couple is infertile for several reasons (the woman is past menopause, or the individual(s) involved are sterile through natural or induced causes).

In that case there is nothing to object to incest, if we accept that all sex between consenting adults is right. And if we do object to incest but not homosexuality, why then? There is here a glaring contradiction, which shows how confused and inconsistent our ideas about sexual morality are.

In fact, incest will in all likelihood become acceptable probably quite soon:

Most European countries have laws against incest between lineal ancestors/descendants, and between full siblings. However, in most countries these laws are no longer enforced if the incest takes place between consenting adults.

... UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has questioned the rationale behind laws prohibiting incest, at least as they apply to sex between adults.[Emphahsis added]

In Argentina and Brazil, similarly, incest between individuals above the age of consent is permitted.

In Italy, a new law implicitly recognizes incest by recognizing children of incestuous relationships.

Once upon a time, there was a witch hunt mentality against homosexuals, now there is a witch hunt attitude against so-called "homophobes", i.e. people who disagree with the current orthodoxy and received wisdom on homosexuality. Nothing has changed ethically in this 360-degree reversal in public opinion, except the victims.

The question is: if homosexuality is accepted not simply in the sense of society's and state's non-interference with somebody's personal choices but also in the sense of suspending any judgement, moral, psychological, psychiatric and medical, about homosexuality and its consequences, that means much more than liberalism and tolerance. That means dangerous limitation to freedoms of thought and speech, fundamental human rights.

If we then move to same-sex marriage, moreover, this is no longer just a personal choice: it's a choice that concerns all society, because marriage is a social institution, as well a Christian sacrament, and is central to society, so what happens to it concerns us all and will have consequences for us all, not just homosexuals.

This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one: is anyone capable of offering rational (I underline "rational") reasons why homosexual marriage should be allowed and not marriage of an incestuous couple, marriage of a threesome, or marriage between a man or woman and his/her pet or any other animal, or indeed any other form of marriage, if desired by the relevant parties?

If anybody has such reasons founded on rationality and logic, I'd be interested to hear them.

Anti-Halal-Meat Campaigns on Facebook

There is a new flurry of activity of mostly British anti-halal-meat campaigns on Facebook. I have liked, joined, friended, subscribed to all I found, signed petitions, encouraged them and posted on their walls.

I invite you to do the same if you like them. Here they are.

SAY NO TO HALAL MEAT

Say NO to Halal slaughter in Skegness - it collects signatures for a petition to the East Lindsey District Council (E.L.D.C.) to stop a new halal slaughterhouse from opening in in Skegness, Lincolnshire, England. The page started less than a month ago, on 27 July, and they have already collected 566 signatures; 434 are still needed.

E.L.D.C.: Stop the Halal slaughter house opening in Skegness - this is the petition page where to sign.

Say No To Skegness Halal Slaughter House!

Boycott Halal - liked by almost 7,000 people. It's the Facebook page of the website Boycott Halal, with the tagline "It's wrong for so many reasons", which is also the collaboration of Infidels United (United we stand in defense of freedom), Boycott Halal Cause, BOYCOTT HALAL in USA, Canada, NZ & Australia.

SAY NO to Halal MEAT at Toby Carvery - targets this restaurant chain.

Say No To Halal !

Say no to halal this is my country and thats not the way we do it

I'll update this list as new campaigns and groups are formed.

Honour Killings Are Much More than Domestic Violence

In light of the recent guilty verdict for the parents of Shafilea Ahmed in the UK, the Warrington, Cheshire, teenager murdered by her mother and father in an "honour killing", it is interesting to look at the results of an extensive analysis of more than fifty reported honour killings, entitled "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?".

The study by Phyllis Chesler, professor of psychology and women's studies at the City University of New York, appeared in 2009 in The Middle East Quarterly, a peer-reviewed publication, and begins:

When a husband murders a wife or daughter in the United States and Canada, too often law enforcement chalks the matter up to domestic violence. Murder is murder; religion is irrelevant. Honor killings are, however, distinct from wife battering and child abuse. Analysis of more than fifty reported honor killings shows they differ significantly from more common domestic violence.[1] The frequent argument made by Muslim advocacy organizations that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam and that it is discriminatory to differentiate between honor killings and domestic violence is wrong.

... A 2008 Massachusetts-based study found that "although immigrants make up an estimated 14 percent of the state's population, [they, nevertheless,] accounted for 26 percent of the 180 domestic violence deaths from 1997-2006." [Emphasis added]

The report shows very clearly different patterns in honour killings and domestic violence, including the facts that in the former whole families participate to restore the honour of the family, that "unlike most Western domestic violence, honor killings are carefully planned", that "In some cases, taxi drivers, neighbors, and mosque members prevent the targeted woman from fleeing, report her whereabouts to her family, and subsequently conspire to thwart police investigations.[19] Very old relatives or minors may be chosen to conduct the murder in order to limit jail time if caught. Seldom is domestic violence celebrated, even by its perpetrators. In the West, wife batterers are ostracized. Here, there is an important difference in honor crimes. Muslims who commit or assist in the commission of honor killings view these killings as heroic and even view the murder as the fulfillment of a religious obligation. A Turkish study of prisoners found no social stigma attached to honor murderers."

In addition, "In both North America and Europe, family members conducted honor killings with excessive violence—repeatedly stabbing, raping, setting aflame, and bludgeoning—in more than half the cases. Only in serial-killing-type scenarios are Western women targeted with similar violence; in these cases, the perpetrators are seldom family members, and their victims are often strangers."

And 99% of perpetrators of the honour killings studied in the research were Muslim, while rest were Sikh.

It concludes:

While the sample size is small, this study suggests that honor killing is accelerating in North America and may correlate with the numbers of first generation immigrants. The problem is diverse but originates with immigration from majority Muslim countries and regions—the Palestinian territories, the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, majority Muslim countries in the Balkans, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Afghanistan. Pakistanis accounts for the plurality. The common denominator in each case is not culture but religion.

At at the trial of Shafilea Ahmed's parents, the judge Mr Justice Roderick Evans, giving them a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in prison, told them: "Your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than the love of your child."

This may sound totally implausible, even incredible to Western ears, but can be better understood when one knows about the individual and community psychology prevailing among Muslims and how it differs from the Western one, as well explained in Jihad Watch by Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist with professional experience in the Copenhagen youth prison Sønderbro and acute observer of Muslim behaviour in Denmark:

Secondly, most Muslims are not allowed to integrate. There is an exceedingly strong social control in the Muslim society. Everybody is keeping an eye on everybody, and if someone does not follow the cultural or religious code they are met with criticism and risk severe consequences, such as being banned from their community or even from their own family. In the worst cases – and there are many of those – Muslim women in particular live under a constant death threat that deprives them of basic human rights, such as the freedom to choose one’s own sexual partners, clothing style, friends, religion and lifestyle. Most of my Muslim clients saw their religious and cultural background as the height of civilization and morality – leaving it would be seen as a kind of cultural and religious apostasy and degradation by their kinsmen. And there are not needed many killings, kidnappings, beatings and other honourable kinds of behaviour before the rest do as they are expected to.

... Many of those Muslims who actually manage to go all the way live under constant threats from the traditional Muslim community that see the integrated Muslims' lifestyle as apostasy, punishable by the strict Sharia laws. These social and psychological hindrances have convinced me that Muslim integration will never happen to the necessary extent. It will happen in some places to a certain extent, but the vast majority will not overcome the psychological, intellectual, cultural, religious and social challenges. [Emphasis added]

Landmark Case: US Government Argues that Islam is Political

Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs, reports about the developments of a landmark case in which she is involved, and which could have momentous consequences for the counterjihad movement not just in the States but everywhere.

What began as a clear first amendment issue has exploded into a landmark case regarding the status of Islam as a political entity. Today the Detroit Transit Authority (SMART), a government entity, argued before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that our "Leaving Islam" ad was political because Islam is political. At least two of the three judges seemed to go along.

If the Court rules against us, it will be ruling that Islam is political and that Sharia is a political program -- something that other government agencies have strenuously denied. If that happens, will Islam and Sharia deserve the protection of a religion?

The case was argued today before 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Raymond Kethledge, John Marshall Rogers and Algenon L. Marbley. Chris Hildebrand, the lawyer for Detroit SMART, began by referring to and based his whole argument on our recent victory over the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority in another First Amendment case about a completely different ad (a pro-Israel ad). Hildebrand argued that the Judge in that case, Paul Engelmayer, had said that that ad was political, and thus that the MTA had to accept it in accord with their guidelines. Hildebrand asserted that our "Leaving Islam?" bus ad, which Detroit SMART rejected, was also political, and thus was rightly rejected by SMART, which (in contrast to the MTA) does not take political ads. His client, said Hildebrand, does not reject ads because they're provocative (as he claimed that ours was), or controversial, but because they're political, and SMART does not and will not take political positions.

Judge Rogers then told him that he had gotten SMART into a "blurry area" to be making a distinction between the political and religious. Hildebrand countered that while the ad may be anti-Islam, anti-Muslim, and anti-Sharia (actually it was designed wholly and solely to offer help to people whose lives were threatened), it was also political. Judge Marbley then pointed out that an imam, who would issue a fatwa (referring to the part of our ad that asked, "Is your family threatening you? Is there a fatwa on your head?") was not an elected official.

Hildebrand then dropped the bomb that has extraordinary implications for the debate about anti-Sharia laws and the status of Islam in the United States: he said that yes, imams have a religious function, but they also "control Sharia law," and Sharia is political. Marbley said that that might be so in Iran, but not in Detroit, where they had a purely religious function. Hildebrand then dug in even deeper, saying that imams in Dearborn deal with Sharia on both a religious and political basis. When Marbley then asked him how our ad was different from one that SMART accepted from an atheist group, calling on people to become atheists, Hildebrand said that it differed because Islam is not only religious, but also a "political series of laws." Marbley then pointed out that the same thing could be said about the Catholic Church, since the Vatican was a political entity, and that could be used to rule out advertising from Catholic groups. Hildebrand then argued that our ad was both religious and political, and that the reference to a fatwa made it primarily political and not religious -- which would only be true if Sharia itself is primarily political and not religious.

Judge Kethledge seemed to go along with this argument, telling our own lawyer, Robert Muise (who ably argued for our side), that Sharia is "arguably" political as well as religious. Judge Rogers then outrageously compared our ad to an ad repeating a vile and disgusting blood libel against the Jews as part of Jewish law (which it most certainly is not, but the death penalty for apostasy most certainly is part of the sharia) -- showing the truth of his and Marbley's admission that they knew next to nothing about Islam (or Jewish law). Clearly they were unaware of Islam's death penalty for apostasy. If they did, they would never have said that our public service ad constituted "scorn and ridicule."

Kethledge clearly had his mind made up already, getting testy with Muise and helping Hildebrand with his case, inviting him when he returned to the stand to explain why our ad -- designed to save lives -- constituted "scorn and ridicule" of Muslims and thus was also disallowed on those grounds according to SMART's guidelines. This entangled SMART in a self-contradiction: Hildebrand said that they didn't disallow our ad because it was "controversial" but also that our ad constituted "scorn and ridicule" -- but none of the judges seemed to notice and certainly no one challenged Hildebrand on this. Hildebrand did not, and could not, explain why our ad constituted scorn and ridicule, and instead simply kept asserting that it did. He did not argue his case persuasively, but with Kethledge and also Rogers so clearly on his side, he had a clear advantage.

If SMART wins, however, the implications for the status of Islam and Sharia as political will be enormous. Incalculable. SMART may end up winning the battle for Sharia in the U.S., but losing the war. [Emphasis added]

Increasing Attacks on Christianity in Europe

I'm afraid that Raymond Ibrahim might in the not-so-distant future have more work to do when compiling his monthly statistics of persecution of Christians.

European countries may have to be added to his list.

Persecution of Christians in Europe takes mainly two forms. The first is the age-old type that we already know from what happens in Asia and Africa as Muslim (mostly illegal) immigrants spread across the globe.

The second is the brand-new, "liberal" kind, deriving from European elites' efforts to marginalize Christianity in its own historical home.

I'll focus in this post on a few examples of the increasing number of physical attacks on churches, Christian festivals, other symbols of Christianity and even Christian people throughout Europe. It must be noted that destroying crosses is a well-documented Islam's tradition.

In a cemetery in Pausa, Saxony, Germany, a 2-meter-tall statue of Jesus Christ was beheaded and the head smashed to pieces. Pastor Frank Pierel reported that such attacks take place rather frequently in his area.

In Strunjan, Slovenia, the "artist" Dean Verzel and others set fire to a votive cross erected by local seamen in the year 1600, replicating the gesture he had performed 10 years before in 2002 and for which he had been acquitted. Repeating an often-heard justification for all sorts of anti-Christian garbage, "it's nothing against Christianity", he said, "it's a 'work of art'".

In the cemetery of Canohès, France, four Christian graves were vandalized and covered with anti-Christian slogans.

In Bologna, Italy, a Moroccan student approached the faithful attending the procession of Corpus Domini and shouted "You're all a flock of sheep, you'll go to hell!" He was charged with offending people and a religious faith.

In Clouzeaux, France, the Church of the Bon Pasteur was set fire to in broad daylight. The fire was lit in three different places and caused immense damage. The altar was totally destroyed, electrical wires pulled out of the wall, crucifixes, pews, chairs, panels, chandeliers toppled and broken, holy water fonts, extremely precious vestments, and many other religious objects completely ruined. Apparently it was three local children, aged 14, 13 and 12, who caused damage of 50,000-70,000 euros.

Still in France, three men entered the Church of Cruseilles on Holy Saturday and set fire to leaflets, prayer and hymn books. The cloth covering an altar was also burned and the main altar damaged.

More cemetery vandalism in France, in Sussargues, where graves were covered with anti-Christian writings and crucifixes were turned upside down, and church vandalism in Paris.

In Duisburg, Germany, churches were attacked over the New Year with stones, firecrackers, rockets, causing tens of thousands of euros' worth of damage. The congregants said that this was not the first time.

The main server of the Catholic Church in France was hijacked by a Muslim Algerian hacker who took control of a total of 475 French websites, many Catholic, the content of which he replaced with the message "No God But Allah and Mohammed is Messenger Of Allah".

This tops it all. In Nimes, France, people who had attended a Catholic festival were leaving in cars and buses when young Arab-Muslims from the neighboring estate started to throw stones at their vehicles coming from the sanctuary. The event organisers were forced to arrange a diversion to a different route to protect the occupants of the vehicles from the savage attacks, which continued.

In Nice, France, the traditional, annual Catholic procession for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, celebrated throughout the Catholic world on August 15 but by the parish of Our Lady of the Assumption in Nice on August 14 evening, is now under police protection. During the last procession the entire route, 400 meters long, was lined by police. Who the faithful need protection from can be guessed when we know that Nice has a large Muslim population, who has been holding its prayers every Friday for years, illegally occupying public streets with impunity.

To remain in Nice, one of its churches received the dubious honor of being adorned with a huge Algerian flag on the front, covering the words "Saint Peter".

Watch this video translated by Islam versus Europe (IVE) about the many attacks committed against churches and cemeteries all over France in the first half of 2011 but prepare to be upset.

In Milbertshofen, Munich, Germany, a Catholic church has been the object of a continuous aggressive campaign for more than a year, with services disrupted, walls smeared, holy water receptacles filled with urine. Things have been set on fire, and tiles torn down from the roof; consequently it rained inside, with risk of damage to the almost 500-year-old tableau. The culprits are the neighborhood's youths and even children, almost entirely from a migrant background. A local social worker says that the youths are becoming more radical and the attacks are increasingly religiously motivated. (This video was also translated by IVE)

Another video shows St Calogero Church in Agrigento, Sicily, Italy, after Ales Halid, a drunken immigrant from Ghana already known to the police for other crimes, entered the church shouting in Arabic and smashed a small black statue of the saint against a wall. The man was so agitated that it took four police officers to restrain him before arrest. Two officers got injured and Halid also damaged the police car.

"Now we have to understand what drove this man to act in such an ugly manner" the video says, but it inadvertently hints at an answer when it adds that the attack took place "during the festivities dedicated to the Monaco Turco [Turkish Monk, a reference to St Calogero] worshipped by the people of Agrigento, saint who has been acclaimed by Bishop Montenegro as a model of integration among peoples." Maybe Halid did not want "integration", and particularly objected to a Turkish Christian monk called "the black saint".

Notice that none of the Italian media reporting this called the man "Muslim". This is the usual media line, which the president of France's National Council of Muslim Faith for some reason thought in need of being reinforced when last week he asked journalists that, in case of aggressions, the religion of neither victim nor aggressor should be mentioned.

In the cemetery of Belleville-sur-Meuse, France, the bronze statue of Christ carrying the cross was broken and fifteen graves were desecrated.

In Burgos, Spain, the two statues of St Peter and St Lawrence of the 13th-century Gothic church of San Esteban were beheaded. Police were puzzled by this attack against a place of worship, which is also an architecture jewel and an important cultural and historical heritage. The main hypothesis was that it was an act of vandalism because, if it had been a robbery, the thieves would not have damaged the statues. The church's parish priest said this was "the first time" an attack on San Esteban had ever occurred in its 8 centuries of existence.

A few years ago, 57-year-old Canon Michael Ainsworth was beaten up in his own east London churchyard by three Muslim youths who caused him serious injuries. The attacks on vicars or churches were so frequent in that parish with a large Bangladeshi Muslim population that they prompted Melanie Phillips to write: "Indeed, there appear to have been many attacks by Muslims who are clearly intent on turning east London into a no-go area for Christians".

The Telegraph wrote: "A survey of London clergy by National Churchwatch, which provides personal safety advice, found that nearly half said they had been attacked in the previous 12 months. The organisation suggested that vicars should consider taking off their dog collars when they are on their own."

The two facts that France has the lion's share of these less than edifying episodes and that, with 7.5 per cent of its population being Muslim, has the highest percentage of Muslims among Western European countries seem to go hand in hand rather well.

I could go on but you've got the idea of the current trend. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

USA: TSA Backed Illegals Flight Training at Illegal-Owned School

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has approved flight training for 25 illegal foreign nationals at a Boston-area flight school owned by yet another illegal foreigner, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

If I remember correctly (I've checked and I do), that was what preceded and prepared 9/11. Hijacker-pilot and ringleader Mohamed Atta and other attackers had received training to fly planes in America, as well as elsewhere.

Were they illegals? Yes, apparently at least 11 of them had overstayed their authorized period of admission.

And this agency is called Transportation "Security" Administration. Do people ever learn?

From Newsmax:

... Eight of the attendees had entered the United States illegally, while 17 had overstayed their visas, according to a GAO audit, CNSNews.com reports. Six of the illegals obtained pilot’s licenses.

The discovery of the flight school issues began when local police — not federal authorities — stopped the school’s owner on a traffic violation and then were able to determine that he was an illegal alien, according to CNSNews.

The identities of the owner or the students were not disclosed in the GAO report, presented at a congressional hearing Wednesday into security lapses at the nation’s 935 accredited flight schools.

The report also found that some foreigners had completed flight training without a full background check and that some U.S. citizens considered a terrorist threat and banned from flying on passenger airplanes did learn to fly.

U.S. citizens are screened against terrorism databases only after flight training, when they apply for a pilot's license. More than 550 U.S. citizens are on the no-fly list, a database kept by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, according to The Seattle Times…

After the Sept. 11 attacks — when al-Qaida terrorists who had attended flight schools in Florida, Arizona, and Minnesota hijacked and crashed commercial jetliners — security checks were added for people coming to the United States to enroll in flight schools, The Times reported.

But those checks were never extended to U.S. citizens despite growing concerns in recent years about “homegrown” terrorists launching attacks on U.S. soil.

According to the 911 Commission Report, four of the Sept. 11 hijackers who entered the United States with legal visas had overstayed their authorized period of admission, CNSNews reported.

U.S. flight schools are generally less expensive and more rigorous than those in other countries, and often enroll a large number of foreign students each year. About 30 percent of students enrolled in flight classes in the U.S. are foreign nationals, The Times reports.