UK Taxis Showing Support for Caliphate?

There is a rumour that taxi drivers in the UK are putting black ribbons on their aerials or bonnets to show support for jihad and the new caliphate.

I haven't found any online news media source for this. The original source I found is the Bournemouth English Defence League.

The advice, if you see these taxis, is to take photos and number plates and report them to the local council. Vlad Tepes also suggests asking the drivers why the ribbon is there.

It may seem trivial, but small things can have a much more profound effect than it may appear at first sight. We should take a lesson from the "zero tolerance" policy enacted by Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York, who was in office from 1994 to 2001.

In an effort to eradicate crime from the city, his policy consisted in responding to any infraction, however insignificant. Graffiti and broken windows were among the things not to be tolerated any longer, as doing so was giving the offenders the wrong signal - a weak reaction from the authorities - and therefore encouraging them to go on to more serious offences.

"Zero tolerance" was highly effective. The reduction in crime in delinquency-ridden New York City during the 1990s was astonishing: “one of the most remarkable stories in the history of urban crime,” according to University of California law professor Franklin Zimring.

H/t to Vlad Tepes

Ethiopian Man Does What We Should Do: Expose Foreign Aid

It's not just the comic - but in reality tragic - waste of public money from both the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Legal Aid system.

It's also the umpteenth confirmation that the money given to Third World countries as foreign aid helps local tyrants to better oppress their people. And it's one of those very people now who is saying it not only in words but also in actions, so convinced he is of it as to be prepared to sue Britain. "Ethiopian farmer gets legal aid... To sue us for sending aid to Ethiopia: Case that will be funded by taxpayers branded as 'ridiculous' by MPs":

Ethiopian man launches taxpayer funded legal action against British Government despite never having set foot in the country.

Farmer claims ministers are funding a one-party state in his homeland that has helped regime inflict 'brutal treatment' on thousands.

Taxpayers will pay for both the farmer's lawyers and a defence team from the Department for International Development.

Legal action has been branded as farcical, bizarre and ridiculous by MPs angry he was able to lodge court documents before law change...

The 33-year-old Ethiopian – granted anonymity to protect his family – says ministers are funding a one-party state in his country that has breached his human rights. He says foreign aid helped the regime inflict ‘brutal treatment’ on thousands of farmers driven from their land, against the International Development Act 2002.

Taxpayers will pay for both the farmer’s lawyers and a defence team from the Department for International Development, in a case that could cost tens of thousands of pounds. This is in addition to the £1.3billion Britain has sent to Ethiopia since 2010...

Papers lodged earlier this year state he had to leave his family and flee to a refugee camp in Kenya after being beaten and tortured trying to protect his land. The UK has contributed to a £510million Protection of Basic Services fund which has allegedly ‘contributed’ to the programme of displacing the farmers.

O [the farmer] is not personally seeking compensation, but wants the Government to change its aid policies and stop bankrolling brutal regimes. If he succeeds, ministers could be forced to review donations to other nations accused of atrocities, such as Pakistan and Rwanda.

Stopping bankrolling Pakistan would be an excellent idea, as I have written before in this blog, and indeed even better would be to isolate Pakistan as it was done with South Africa.

What is particularly ironic in this story is that it was the drought and famine crisis in the country in question, Ethiopia, that in the '80s inspired Bob Geldof and other pop singers to launch Band Aid, so that Ethiopia became the symbol of these misguided efforts to help the Third World.

Punishment Is Good for You

Leftists - namely the socio-communist end of the totalitarian bloc, the other being the Nazi-fascist - keep telling us how terrible, inhumane and even ineffective prisons are.

The truth, as usual, is the opposite of what they say.

Not only prisons maintain offenders in the impossibility to offend while the sentence lasts and, if there is a high probability of punishment (which, alas, is not the case in Britain now), the criminals' knowledge of arrest and imprisonment acts as a deterrent, making jails the most effective way to reduce crime, so they are good for the innocent. They are also good for the guilty, the criminals themselves.

Theodore Dalrymple, who knows a thing or two about the subject, declares that they are the delinquents' own version of the rehab centres of the rich and famous.

Dalrymple, with his decades-long experience as psychiatrist in prisons and hospitals of underclass neighbourhoods, knows what he's talking about, unlike the many socio-communists who've never come even close to the squalid realities they are so fond of pontificating about. He writes:

He was thin and malnourished in the manner I have described. Five feet ten, he weighed just over 100 pounds. He told me what many young men in his situation have told me, that he asked the court not to grant him bail, so that he could recover his health in prison—something that he knew he would never do outside. A few months of incarceration would set him up nicely to indulge in heroin on his release. Prison is the health farm of the slums.

Indeed prisons are not the only punishment which is good for both the punished and everybody else.

Children and teenagers have become a health threat. If you are on a London double-decker bus and a school or another large group of kids get on the bus, you will be subjected to such amount of high-decibel screaming noise that you'll risk becoming deaf.

My neighbour's two toddlers use loud screaming and screeching as their main, nearly only, form of communication.

In addition, their favourite game is to throw all sorts of things, from toys to shoes, from rubbish to clothes, into our garden, which borders theirs.

Kids are kids, of course. But it's the responsibility of parents to educate them, indeed to socialise them, so that they don't grow up as total savages.

Anti-spanking fanatics are just that: fanatics.

Spanking doesn't hurt the child, physically or psychologically, and is an essential tool of communication between adult and child when the latter is still not capable of understanding certain words and concepts:

For most children, claims that spanking teaches aggression seem unfounded. Some studies suggest that aggression is more closely linked to permissiveness, negative criticism, and watching television than spanking, and even more so than even abusive physical punishment.

What do children have to do with prison inmates, you may ask. Not much. We are just talking about the way the mind works.

The whole learning process of animals, including humans, is based on a system of rewards and punishments.

What is worse: to spank a kid or to render the whole population of the world deaf?

Noise is of course not the only problem here. Children who grow up without discipline will become the sort of antisocial adults who throw litter in the street, show no respect for the others, are rude and in not-too-extreme cases become criminals, in short the kind of adults that we see more and more numerous around us. From the same source:

With spanking bans have come increased rates of child abuse, aggressive parenting, and youth violence.

In this, as in many other cases, the Christian teaching is the best:

Today's outbreak of out-of-control children can be directly traced to the failure of parents to discipline their children. Modern advocates of "timeouts" and similar forms of discipline miss the essential point that God intends spanking to underline the cause-and-effect relationship of disobedience and punishment. Swift and firm parental punishment is the necessary means of teaching children that their disobedience will not be allowed, and that they will be brought into obedience, one way or the other.

Of course, the Bible refers to punitive corporal punishment, not to injurious abuse. Parents should learn the method of judicial spanking, never using spanking as a demonstration of anger or wrath. As a judicial act, the spanking should be administered in a serious, private, and sober way by a parent who teaches the child that this punishment is necessary for the specific act of disobedience. Spanking is judicial in the sense that it is not the result of a parental loss of temper, nor of a parent's whim, but of moral necessity.

Of course, parents should inflict sufficient pain to make the point clear, and to make certain that the child fears the punishment. The very act of spanking affirms parental discipline, and humbles the spirit of the child. The pain is real, but temporary. The lesson must be equally real--and far more enduring.

Healthy discipline must emerge from a healthy family life and from the loving relationship between parents and children. Parents tempted to find an easier or less controversial method of discipline must realize that timeouts and grounding are generally more counterproductive and frustrating than anything else.

The attacks on spanking are thinly disguised attacks on parental authority. If current trends continue, Christian parents may find themselves forced between obeying the law of the land or the law of God. Who knew that parenting in the 21st century would require such courage?”

The Caliphate Means Constant War on Us on a Scale Not Yet Seen

While the British government is making its own citizens pay for the jihadis allowed to return to the UK from Syria and Iraq, both in terms of money – through the £1.1 billion cash injection for defence announced today, £800 million of which will fund an extra investment in intelligence and surveillance to deal with the threat of terrorism – and in terms of intrusion and greater state power – through emergency laws to monitor phone and internet records “to stop terrorists" –, people hear of the establishment of a caliphate in the Middle East without the media – with few exceptions – providing any explanation of its real significance.

In Islam, only a caliphate has the authority to declare offensive war on infidel countries. That's why Osama bin Laden was so keen on it and called for Muslims to "establish the righteous caliphate of our ummah", after Abdulhamid II’s Ottoman caliphate was abolished by the Turkish Republic of Kemal Ataturk in his secularisation (short-lived) attempts in 1924.

And that's why jihadis always explain their acts of terrorism in terms of defensive war, as a response to the infidel's armies occupying Muslim lands, for example.

Egyptian-American scholar of Islam and Middle East history Raymond Ibrahim over 3 years ago explained the caliphate concept and predicted the re-establishment of a caliphate. If, as in science, accurate predictions confirm the validity of the theory from which they derive, we must take his words very seriously:

The very existence of a caliphate would usher a state of constant hostility: Both historically and doctrinally, the caliphate is obligated to wage jihad, at least annually, to bring the “disbelieving” world under Islamic dominion and enforce sharia law. Most of what is today called the “Muslim world”-from Morocco to Pakistan-was conquered, bit by bit, by a caliphate begun in Arabia in 632.

A caliphate represents a permanent, ideological enemy, not a temporal enemy that can be bought or pacified through diplomacy or concessions — economic or otherwise. Short of agreeing either to convert to Islam or live as second-class citizens, or “dhimmis” – who, among other indignities, must practice their religions quietly; pay a higher tax [jizyah]; give way to Muslims on the street; wear clothing that distinguishes them from Muslims, the start of the yellow star of David required for the Jews by the Nazis during World War II; have their testimony be worth half of a Muslim’s; and never retaliate against Muslim abuses-the jihad continues.

A caliphate is precisely what Islamists around the world are feverishly seeking to establish – before people realize what it represents and try to prevent it. Without active, preemptive measures, it is only a matter of time before they succeed.

Another US expert on Islam, Robert Spencer, has recently written:

And now it [the caliphate] is here, although it is by no means clear, of course, that The Islamic State will be viable or long-lasting. If it is, however, the world could soon be engulfed in a much larger conflict with Islamic jihadists even than it has been since 9/11. For in Islamic law, only the caliph is authorized – and indeed, has the responsibility – to declare offensive jihad against non-Muslim states. In his absence, all jihad must be defensive only, which is why Islamic jihadists retail laundry lists of grievances when explaining and justifying their actions: without these grievances and a caliph, they have to cast all their actions as responses to Infidel atrocities. With a caliph, however, that obligation will be gone. And the bloodshed in that event could make the world situation since 9/11, with its 20,000 jihad attacks worldwide, seem like a harmless bit of “interfaith dialogue.

Offensive jihad to force all the world to submit to Islamic law is a duty for the ummah (the worldwide Muslim community), and no amount of media whitewashing can change that. The source to consult is not The New York Times but the Quran:

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (9:29)

Leninist Scotland Can Go Its Own way

Watching last night's Question Time, which was in Scotland and devoted half of its time to the question of Scottish independence - it was also the last QT before the September referendum -, confirmed and strengthened my opinion that England would be far better off without Scotland.

We are used to seeing on that BBC panel show constant displays of the worst that British Marxism-Leninism has to offer, but last night's programme really took the biscuit.

The discussion consisted in a non-stop talk of equality and increasing gap between social classes. A chap in the audience, with his face contorted by hatred, expressed the view that it's disgusting that rich people exist. No doubt, if he had half a chance, he would make sure that none are left, by robbing them blind if not by bloodier means.

Such unadulterated class hatred and communism will guarantee the economic collapse of an independent Scotland, as the history of all attempts to run a socialist economy will attest.

Hearing these people talk, you would have thought that they've never seen a history book, never heard of Stalin, Mao, Fidel Castro and what they did to their countries.

The discussion sounded surreal. There was no public debt - mostly created by their favourite party, Labour -, money was found on trees or fell from the sky like a Biblical manna and it was endless, always there to prevent food banks and maintain people happy and free to pursuit their favourite activity, doing nothing, and choose their preferred lifestyle, idleness.

When the subject became public health, more scorn was poured on Westminster and England - where cuts and food banks reigned supreme - for not spending enough money on the NHS, which in England was practically being taken to pieces.

Not in Scotland, oh no. There, more and more funding will be made available to the NHS. Where the money will come from nobody even thought of asking, it's such a non-compassionate question.

By the way, "compassion" was the most frequently uttered word of the night.

In this context, it wouldn't surprise me - but it would rather be totally consistent with the whole picture - what one of the panelists highlighted: that the SNP has devoted only one page out of the 650 of its manifesto to the subject of economic policy. The panelist in question was Alan Savage - not coincidentally a businessman -, the only sensible person participating in the debate, who was totally isolated the whole evening and at times mocked.

I don't know where the prevailing Scottish acidic and vitriolic political views - also evident in the voting patterns of that land - come from, but they have all the appearance of inevitably leading, if the vote to the referendum is Yes, to the establishment of the Soviet Republic of Scotland.

The prospect of a Yes vote looks increasingly likely, as the gap between the groups of people declaring themselves for a Yes or No vote in opinion polls narrows. The latest survey, carried out today by Survation, gives this result: Yes - 41%; No - 46%; Don't know - 13%.

In early January of this year the corresponding figures were: Yes - 28-29%; No - 42%; Undecided - 29-30%.

Let's hope Scotland goes its own way and take all its poisonous Leninism with it.

I end quoting from a piece in The Spectator, whose title, "Vote yes, Scots – and set the English free", sums up my feelings:

When we weigh such considerations, we start to realise some of the practical benefits to England of Scotland voting yes. Mr Salmond claims Scotland is self-supporting. This is true in the same way that grown-up children who live with their parents are self-supporting. The higher per capita spending that flows north of the border would stay in the English Treasury. Just think what the English (and Welsh, and Northern Irish) could do with it. Scotland has a culture of welfarism: England is seeking to rid itself of one. Separation means one nation no longer has to accommodate these damaging differences. The area north of Leeds and Manchester that Mr Miliband has this week complained is economically underperforming could become home to businesses fleeing what may well have to become a penal taxation regime in Scotland. Indeed, Mr Osborne should stand by to grant special tax status to Carlisle and Newcastle to make them the Cayman Islands of the north. [Emphases added]

Hobby Lobby: A Lesson from America

Not many people in Britain have followed the Hobby Lobby case, named after the American company that won an important battle for religious freedom against the bullying of the totalitarians - in this episode feminazis and supporters of state intervention in personal affairs.

In this area the United States seems more progressive in the true, not socialist, sense, and less prepared to submit to cultural Marxism's oppressive demands.

Hobby Lobby is a company owned by Christians. At issue was whether, according to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, "closely held companies like Hobby Lobby could be forced by the government to provide abortifacient coverage to its employees, in defiance of its owners’ deeply held religious beliefs".

"In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby and other closely held companies do not have to provide contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the religious beliefs of the companies’ owners."

Non-profit companies already enjoy this dispensation, and now the government must provide religious accommodations to “closely-held” for-profit companies too. “Closely-held” means for example, as in this case, owned and controlled by members of a single family, as opposed to impersonal, publicly-held corporations.

One of the main reasons the Obama administration’s arguments failed to convince five justices is that the federal government did not necessarily need to mandate employer-provided contraceptive coverage in order to ensure access to contraceptive coverage. For example, rather than mandating employer coverage, the government could have easily established its own program to provide or pay for contraceptive coverage.

Like the the employees of non-profit companies that hold religious beliefs, the employees of for-profit companies with similar religious objections will still have access to insurance coverage without cost sharing for FDA-approved contraceptives; Hobby Lobby's objections concerned only abortifacient drugs, namely substances that induce abortion.

This is a very reasonable, well-though-out decision.

The way many (anything but) "liberals" reacted showed very clearly how the average IQ of Lefties is so much lower than that of conservatives and Right-wingers, very likely because it requires brains to oppose the dominant ideological orthodoxy, whereas any idiot can just unthinkingly follow the easy, lazy, non-intellectual path of going along with it.

A criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision from our politically-correct geniuses was that it denies women access to birth control, as if not being able to force someone to pay for something were the same as not having access to that something. In fact, bosses, by paying their employees a salary, enable them to pay for whatever they wish to buy.

Another "argument" was that the court ruling discriminated against women. In reality, the opposite is true, as "the only contraception-related discrimination baked into law by Obamacare was against men. After all, male contraception like condoms or vasectomies was never covered by the law".

The scream "It's not about abortion, but birth control!" showed the inability of some people to understand the difference between substances that prevent conception and substances that intervene after conception and destroy a fertilized egg. This case concerned only 4 types of contraception that can result in the destruction of a fertilized egg, while Hobby Lobby paid for 16 different types of non-abortive contraceptive coverage for its employees.

Some "pro-choice" brainboxes compared a human embryo to a fingernail: let's hope they don't choose medicine as their career.

"If you're going to argue human life doesn't begin at conception, the burden is on you to create human life in its absence" tweeted in reply Sean Davis of The Federalist.

But those contorted views do not represent the majority.

A Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely US voters found that they approve of the Supreme Court’s decision by a 10-point margin. 49% of them agreed that business owners should have the option of exempting themselves from ObamaCare’s HHS contraceptive mandate if it violates their religious beliefs. Only 39% opposed the Hobby Lobby court ruling, while 12% were undecided.

In addition, the poll found that 58 percent of voters say a company’s level of contraceptive coverage is not an important part of their decision to work there, compared to 38 percent who say it is at least somewhat important to their decision of where to work.

While 43 percent of voters think businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without copayment or other charges, 47 percent say companies should not be required to comply with the contraception mandate.

The same poll found that 48 percent of voters believe the government is a threat to Americans’ religious rights, while only 30 percent of voters believe the government protects those rights.

Intrusive Emergency Laws "To Stop ISIS Terrorists"

Predictably, having so many terrorists in our midst - in addition to the danger - will have the consequence of more intrusion in our personal lives and more state power. From The Telegraph, "Emergency laws to monitor phone and internet records 'to stop terrorists'":

Emergency laws will be brought in next week to force phone and internet companies to hold records of customers’ calls, texts and visits to websites.

The fast-track measures are necessary to defend national security against the terrorist threat from Iraq and Syria, David Cameron said.

The consequences of not acting are “grave”, the Prime Minister said.

The measures are a response to a ruling by the European Court of Justice which struck down regulations that enabled communications companies from retaining data for police use for a year.

Internet and phone companies will soon start deleting it – a move that will have “serious consequences” for police and counter-terror investigations, Downing Street said.

The emergency laws will also create a “clearer legal framework”, at the demand of companies, for when police and intelligence agencies want to intercept terrorist and criminal communications.

The need for new laws is “urgent”, Downing Street said. There is cross-party agreement.

“It is the first duty of government to protect our national security and to act quickly when that security is compromised,” David Cameron said.

Except that the only really effective security measure, not letting these would-be terrorists back into the country, is what this government is not prepared to enact.

“As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, now is not the time to be scaling back on our ability to keep our people safe. The ability to access information about communications and intercept the communications of dangerous individuals is essential to fight the threat from criminals and terrorists targeting the UK.

“No government introduces fast track legislation lightly. But the consequences of not acting are grave.

“I want to be very clear that we are not introducing new powers or capabilities – that is not for this Parliament. This is about restoring two vital measures ensuring that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies maintain the right tools to keep us all safe.”