Blog of London-based Italian journalist Enza Ferreri on politics, society, religion, environment
Friday, 11 January 2013
Grandma Scares Away Store Robber with a Gun
What happened in a convenience store in Milwaukee confirms the view of those who want the Second Amendment upheld, that guns, yes, can be used to commit crimes but they can also be essential to prevent and stop them.
I'm on the fence on this, I can see the merits of both positions. And I can see that to let the state (and the criminals) be the only ones in possession of weapons requires an enormous amount of trust in that state.
Ernestine Aldana, a 48-year-old grandmother working in the shop, being threatened with a knife by a robber, responded by pulling out a gun and pointing it at him. He got scared and ran away.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Media Double Standard for Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party
The New York Post on Monday reported on an alleged link between Occupy Wall Street and a New York City couple arrested for being found in possession of an array of weapons, a bombmaking explosive, instructions to make bombs and 'The Terrorist Encyclopedia' in their Greenwich Village apartment.
http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN
The couple are Morgan Gliedman, daughter of a prominent doctor, and Harvard graduate and alleged Occupy Wall Street activist Aaron Greene. Sources told the paper that people who know him say he has 'extreme' political views.
Occupy Wal Street has denied the purported association, which the NYPD told The Daily Mail they are still investigating.
http://press.nycga.net/2012/12/31/nypd-media-reports-attempt-to-link-ows-to-crime-again/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255609/Morgan-Gliedman-Aaron-Greene-junkies-terrorists-police-say.html?ITO=socialnet-twitter-mailonline&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=socialnet-twitter-mailonline
The couple's apartment in which the police found weapons and explosives is near the flat where two rich young men accidentally blew themselves up in 1970 while making a bomb for the far-left group Weather Underground.
Bloggers have expressed concern that, in view of the left-wing bias in the mainstream media, this story will not be given the extensive and balanced coverage it deserves.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/01/bomb-arrest-a-test-for-the-media/
The ABC network did not even mention the alleged link of the arrested with Occupy Wall Street, although it had last July wrongly accused a member of the Tea Party of a mass killing, for which it later apologized.
http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2013/01/02/abc-skips-occupy-connection-terror-case-falsely-smeared-tea-partier-
The connection between Greene and OWS is still under investigation, not an entirely unreasonable assumption, given the violent propensities of some of the movement's elements.
The Tea Party, on the other hand, despite media's strenuous efforts, were never found guilty of any violent act.
As Human Events puts it:
'But the founding principles of OWS, the concept of illegal 'occupation' to compel attention to its agenda, inevitably corrupted the enterprise, and attracted people with even more vigorous plans for compelling the attention of the public.
'It's not just a minor stylistic difference that the Tea Party crew was law-abiding and tidy - it goes to the heart of who they are, what they want, and how they regard the rest of the American public. That's why the media's fervent search for Tea Party violence never turned up the kind of story they resolutely ignore when it emanates from their once-beloved, now-forgotten Occupy crew.'
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/12/31/occupy-wall-street-organizer-busted-for-possession-of-mostly-peaceful-bomb-components/
http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN
The couple are Morgan Gliedman, daughter of a prominent doctor, and Harvard graduate and alleged Occupy Wall Street activist Aaron Greene. Sources told the paper that people who know him say he has 'extreme' political views.
Occupy Wal Street has denied the purported association, which the NYPD told The Daily Mail they are still investigating.
http://press.nycga.net/2012/12/31/nypd-media-reports-attempt-to-link-ows-to-crime-again/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255609/Morgan-Gliedman-Aaron-Greene-junkies-terrorists-police-say.html?ITO=socialnet-twitter-mailonline&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=socialnet-twitter-mailonline
The couple's apartment in which the police found weapons and explosives is near the flat where two rich young men accidentally blew themselves up in 1970 while making a bomb for the far-left group Weather Underground.
Bloggers have expressed concern that, in view of the left-wing bias in the mainstream media, this story will not be given the extensive and balanced coverage it deserves.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/01/bomb-arrest-a-test-for-the-media/
The ABC network did not even mention the alleged link of the arrested with Occupy Wall Street, although it had last July wrongly accused a member of the Tea Party of a mass killing, for which it later apologized.
http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2013/01/02/abc-skips-occupy-connection-terror-case-falsely-smeared-tea-partier-
The connection between Greene and OWS is still under investigation, not an entirely unreasonable assumption, given the violent propensities of some of the movement's elements.
The Tea Party, on the other hand, despite media's strenuous efforts, were never found guilty of any violent act.
As Human Events puts it:
'But the founding principles of OWS, the concept of illegal 'occupation' to compel attention to its agenda, inevitably corrupted the enterprise, and attracted people with even more vigorous plans for compelling the attention of the public.
'It's not just a minor stylistic difference that the Tea Party crew was law-abiding and tidy - it goes to the heart of who they are, what they want, and how they regard the rest of the American public. That's why the media's fervent search for Tea Party violence never turned up the kind of story they resolutely ignore when it emanates from their once-beloved, now-forgotten Occupy crew.'
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/12/31/occupy-wall-street-organizer-busted-for-possession-of-mostly-peaceful-bomb-components/
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
From Atheist to Agnostic
I was an atheist for almost my entire life. I could not believe that God existed, so that's how I described myself.
I believed in Christianity as an ethical system, so I would call myself, as the great Oriana Fallaci, a 'Christian atheist', expression which has simarities to 'secular Jew'.
I have recently realized things that cast serious doubts on my previous way of thinking.
The moral validity of Christianity was in no question before and is in no question now. But it is the issue of the existence of God which is not so simple as I mistakenly believed.
Science in itself is too limited to provide evidence to prove or disprove it, as I've always known, although Newton himself, for example, made God part of his theory as absolute time.
But, paradoxically, it is not the content of science, namely what is inside it, that gives us an indication here, but rather its limits, what is outside it.
Science's laws of nature can explain many of its phenomena and have the potential to make us understand even more.
But there are three moments which require an enormous leap of faith in the NON-existence of God to believe that science can ever explain them.
These three moments are: the origin of matter, life and consciousness.
Science can understand pretty well what happens after those key moments, but it cannot explain them.
In successive posts I'll deal with these further, but for the moment I want to report how Melanie Phillips, in her book The Book Turned Upside Down, describes her conversation with Richard Dawkins in 2008 following a public debate between him and John Lennox.
'I asked Dawkins whether he believed that the origin of all matter was most likely to have been an entirely spontaneous event. He agreed that he did think so. I put it to him that he seemed therefore to be arguing that something could be created out of nothing - which surely runs counter to the scientific principles of verifiable evidence that he tells us should govern all our thinking'.
Think about it: people who do not believe in God usually adduce as reason how we have never experienced anything with God's attributes.
But the alternative theory, that matter, ie something, arose from nothing, also describes an event that we have never experienced.
Atheism activists and scientific triumphalists, of whom Dawkins is the most famous, misleadingly portray this conflict about the existence of God as one between the rational believers in evidence-based theories (as they, the atheists, modestly consider themselves) and the irrational, superstition-bound theists.
But the reality is entirely different. The question of whether the universe had a Creator or emerged from nothing is one which can be answered, either way, ONLY with reference to, and belief in, an entity or event of which we have absolutely no experience.
Both our senses and evidence here do not help at all.
It is a work in progress but for the moment, not being able to choose one or the other explanation, I call myself agnostic.
I believed in Christianity as an ethical system, so I would call myself, as the great Oriana Fallaci, a 'Christian atheist', expression which has simarities to 'secular Jew'.
I have recently realized things that cast serious doubts on my previous way of thinking.
The moral validity of Christianity was in no question before and is in no question now. But it is the issue of the existence of God which is not so simple as I mistakenly believed.
Science in itself is too limited to provide evidence to prove or disprove it, as I've always known, although Newton himself, for example, made God part of his theory as absolute time.
But, paradoxically, it is not the content of science, namely what is inside it, that gives us an indication here, but rather its limits, what is outside it.
Science's laws of nature can explain many of its phenomena and have the potential to make us understand even more.
But there are three moments which require an enormous leap of faith in the NON-existence of God to believe that science can ever explain them.
These three moments are: the origin of matter, life and consciousness.
Science can understand pretty well what happens after those key moments, but it cannot explain them.
In successive posts I'll deal with these further, but for the moment I want to report how Melanie Phillips, in her book The Book Turned Upside Down, describes her conversation with Richard Dawkins in 2008 following a public debate between him and John Lennox.
'I asked Dawkins whether he believed that the origin of all matter was most likely to have been an entirely spontaneous event. He agreed that he did think so. I put it to him that he seemed therefore to be arguing that something could be created out of nothing - which surely runs counter to the scientific principles of verifiable evidence that he tells us should govern all our thinking'.
Think about it: people who do not believe in God usually adduce as reason how we have never experienced anything with God's attributes.
But the alternative theory, that matter, ie something, arose from nothing, also describes an event that we have never experienced.
Atheism activists and scientific triumphalists, of whom Dawkins is the most famous, misleadingly portray this conflict about the existence of God as one between the rational believers in evidence-based theories (as they, the atheists, modestly consider themselves) and the irrational, superstition-bound theists.
But the reality is entirely different. The question of whether the universe had a Creator or emerged from nothing is one which can be answered, either way, ONLY with reference to, and belief in, an entity or event of which we have absolutely no experience.
Both our senses and evidence here do not help at all.
It is a work in progress but for the moment, not being able to choose one or the other explanation, I call myself agnostic.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Obama's Fiscal Cliff Is Permanent
America will be on a fiscal cliff no matter what agreements are reached between Democrats and Republicans.
The damage done by the Obama administration to the economy is too deep to be saved by last-minute deals.
Tax increases on the rich have virtually no impact on the reduction of the US national deficit, and are imposed for ideological, not practical, reasons.
The type of measures that could be most effective, reducing public spending, are exactly what Obama does not want to do. He did not pursue that policy in his first term and is unlikely to do it now, after being re-elected.
The Democrats, as they have done many times before (http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51958#When:22:20:54Z), make promises that they will not maintain, in order to deceive Republicans and lead them to make concessions.
Harvard professor and chairman of the Economics Department at Harvard University Greg Mankiw explains why this policy of tax increases on the rich will not solve the debt problem and will only lead to more, never-ending tax hikes:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-neverending-quest-for-more.html?m=1
He also explains why taxing 'the rich', which is already done anyway since one third of their income is taken in tax - despite the media's generous coverage of unenlightening anecdotes about unrepresentative cases of tax avoidance -, cannot mathematically solve the problem of the government's overspending on entitlements. So the choice can only be between drastically reducing the welfare system expenditure or increasing taxes on the middle class (Mankiw obiously does not consider the possibility of robbing the rich of all or most of their money, although Obama and his comrades might):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/business/on-middle-class-tax-rates-too-much-wishful-thinking.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
The current policy is lunacy and Obama has dragged American economy into a vicious, self-perpetuating circle of ever-increasing poverty and on a road to communism not through revolution but by stealth, piecemeal, a bit of redistributive tax hike at a time.
The damage done by the Obama administration to the economy is too deep to be saved by last-minute deals.
Tax increases on the rich have virtually no impact on the reduction of the US national deficit, and are imposed for ideological, not practical, reasons.
The type of measures that could be most effective, reducing public spending, are exactly what Obama does not want to do. He did not pursue that policy in his first term and is unlikely to do it now, after being re-elected.
The Democrats, as they have done many times before (http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51958#When:22:20:54Z), make promises that they will not maintain, in order to deceive Republicans and lead them to make concessions.
Harvard professor and chairman of the Economics Department at Harvard University Greg Mankiw explains why this policy of tax increases on the rich will not solve the debt problem and will only lead to more, never-ending tax hikes:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-neverending-quest-for-more.html?m=1
He also explains why taxing 'the rich', which is already done anyway since one third of their income is taken in tax - despite the media's generous coverage of unenlightening anecdotes about unrepresentative cases of tax avoidance -, cannot mathematically solve the problem of the government's overspending on entitlements. So the choice can only be between drastically reducing the welfare system expenditure or increasing taxes on the middle class (Mankiw obiously does not consider the possibility of robbing the rich of all or most of their money, although Obama and his comrades might):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/business/on-middle-class-tax-rates-too-much-wishful-thinking.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
The current policy is lunacy and Obama has dragged American economy into a vicious, self-perpetuating circle of ever-increasing poverty and on a road to communism not through revolution but by stealth, piecemeal, a bit of redistributive tax hike at a time.
Africa Energy Consumption Growing Fastest in the World
The continent of Africa, home to 15 percent of the globe's population, has the fastest-growing energy consumption in the world.
http://m.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0101/Africa-s-energy-consumption-growing-fastest-in-world
This is part of the explanations of why attempts to reduce carbon emissions are irrational and destructive.
If you exclude Third World countries from restrictions in their use of fossil fuels, as the Kyoto Protocol does, even by the calculation of those who believe in anthropogenic global warming you have no impact whatsoever on the reduction of warming.
If, on the other hand, you impose those restrictions on developing countries as well, the effect on global warming is minimal, merely delaying it by something like 5 years, while there is no question that you deliver a blow to the world's poorest nations' possibilities of economic development.
http://m.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0101/Africa-s-energy-consumption-growing-fastest-in-world
This is part of the explanations of why attempts to reduce carbon emissions are irrational and destructive.
If you exclude Third World countries from restrictions in their use of fossil fuels, as the Kyoto Protocol does, even by the calculation of those who believe in anthropogenic global warming you have no impact whatsoever on the reduction of warming.
If, on the other hand, you impose those restrictions on developing countries as well, the effect on global warming is minimal, merely delaying it by something like 5 years, while there is no question that you deliver a blow to the world's poorest nations' possibilities of economic development.
Monday, 31 December 2012
Racism and Sexism Exist
Do I believe that racism and sexism exist?
Yes, I do. Here I'll give one clear example of each.
Racism is when a public figure, a high-profile black woman like Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen, explaining the reasons why she chose to bury him in Jamaica rather than the UK, says:
'Then again, I don't think the country [Britain] deserves to have his body there anyway because they took his life'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082024/Stephen-Lawrences-final-resting-place-revealed.html
Who is 'they'? All the British people? This sweeping generalization, this condemnation of a whole country - which accepted and gave a lot to this immigrant family in search of a better life, although all the good things, all the immense benefits that European countries shower on Third World immigrants of their own free will, without any reason in the world to do so except their traditionally Christian generosity, are taken for granted as if they were entitlements, 'rights' - because of what was done by one or very few individuals is racist.
Sexism is when women, as is generally the case in Western countries, are treated more leniently than men for the same offenses by courts.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311004/Judges-ordered-mercy-women-criminals-deciding-sentences.html
http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/116/articles/mansnerus.htm
The most glaring examples of this kind of sexism are those of women acquitted of infanticide and murder for hormonal reasons like post-natal depression and pre-menstrual syndrome, whereas hormonal factors are not commonly used to excuse and justify criminal behaviours in men.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198590/Mother-suffocated-baby-guilty-murder-suffering-postpartum-psychosis.html
http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/jtest28/Double_Standards.html
http://www.oddee.com/item_97028.aspx
http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/158/articles/dershowitz1.htm
Yes, I do. Here I'll give one clear example of each.
Racism is when a public figure, a high-profile black woman like Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen, explaining the reasons why she chose to bury him in Jamaica rather than the UK, says:
'Then again, I don't think the country [Britain] deserves to have his body there anyway because they took his life'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082024/Stephen-Lawrences-final-resting-place-revealed.html
Who is 'they'? All the British people? This sweeping generalization, this condemnation of a whole country - which accepted and gave a lot to this immigrant family in search of a better life, although all the good things, all the immense benefits that European countries shower on Third World immigrants of their own free will, without any reason in the world to do so except their traditionally Christian generosity, are taken for granted as if they were entitlements, 'rights' - because of what was done by one or very few individuals is racist.
Sexism is when women, as is generally the case in Western countries, are treated more leniently than men for the same offenses by courts.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311004/Judges-ordered-mercy-women-criminals-deciding-sentences.html
http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/116/articles/mansnerus.htm
The most glaring examples of this kind of sexism are those of women acquitted of infanticide and murder for hormonal reasons like post-natal depression and pre-menstrual syndrome, whereas hormonal factors are not commonly used to excuse and justify criminal behaviours in men.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198590/Mother-suffocated-baby-guilty-murder-suffering-postpartum-psychosis.html
http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/jtest28/Double_Standards.html
http://www.oddee.com/item_97028.aspx
http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/158/articles/dershowitz1.htm
Saturday, 29 December 2012
US Anti-Gun Democratic Senator Shoots Intruders
A USA Democratic Senator who has long been campaigning for gun control pulled a gun on two people who had broken into his home and shot one.
http://newrepublicoftexas.com/news/anti-gun-senator-shoots-home-intruders/
http://newrepublicoftexas.com/news/anti-gun-senator-shoots-home-intruders/
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