A MUSLIM SPEAKS OUT

"The controversy regarding the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed completely misses the point. Of course, the cartoons are offensive to Muslims, but newspaper cartoons do not warrant the burning of buildings and the killing of innocent people. The cartoons did not cause the disease of hate that we are seeing in the Muslim world on our television screens at night - they are only a symptom of a far greater disease.

I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt and in the Gaza Strip... In school in Gaza, I learned hate, vengeance and retaliation. Peace was never an option, as it was considered a sign of defeat and weakness. At school we sang songs with verses calling Jews "dogs" (in Arab culture, dogs are considered unclean). Palestinian television extols terrorists, and textbooks still deny the existence of Israel...

Is it any surprise that after decades of indoctrination in a culture of hate, that people actually do hate? Arab society has created a system of relying on fear of a common enemy. It's a system that has brought them much-needed unity, cohesion and compliance in a region ravaged by tribal feuds, instability, violence, and selfish corruption. So Arab leaders blame Jews and Christians rather than provide good schools, roads, hospitals, housing, jobs, or hope to their people".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Unwelcome truths: "In 1998, a kindly grandmother living in New Jersey wrote a book about child-rearing that created quite a stir. In "The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do," Judith Rich Harris had the temerity to suggest that the most important influences on children were not their parents but genes and peers. This was heresy, and critics immediately attacked the book in reviews with titles such as "Parents Don't Count!" Nonetheless, Mrs. Harris had made a very convincing argument, and she stuck to her guns. Now, with "No Two Alike" (W.W. Norton & Company, 352 pages, $26.95), she has expanded her thesis.... Here is how she describes the situation: The developmentalists found that the children's behavior was correlated with the parents' behavior and attributed the correlation to the effects of the home environment. Though they realized that heredity might account for some of the correlation, they never considered the possibility that heredity might account for all of it. But that is exactly how it turned out. Once the effects of genetic similarities were estimated and skimmed off, the correlation declined to zero. The putative effects of the home environment disappeared.. This was not welcome news for developmental psychologists, and they responded with vitriolic attacks.

Good one: "In 1983, a study of Fascism (Fashizmut) was published in Bulgaria, under the imprint of the People's Youth Publishing House of the Central Committee of the Democratic Youth Union. Its author, Zhelyu Zhelev, did a thoroughly laudable job of anatomizing his subject. In his section on "The Structure of the Fascist State" he adumbrated the whole "Fascist" totalitarian phenomenon, covering in chapter after chapter the importance of indoctrinating "the masses", the need to keep out foreign influences, the role of farcical elections and a powerless "parliament", the necessity of fanaticism, the view that Western "academic freedom" was false. Above all there was the single party and that party's control of the state, of mass organization, of all opinion, of literature and the arts, of the police, of the courts. Before it was suppressed for its hyper-correct analysis of the problem, Fashizmut had become a minor classic among Bulgarian and even Russian dissidents, with some free spirits visiting the Party bookstore and enquiring for copies of Zhelev's Kommunismut".

Conservative Episcopalians split off: "St. Luke's congregation voted to separate from the larger Episcopal Church USA and its Los Angeles diocese because of what St. Luke's Pastor Ronald Jackson said were major theological differences, including the role of Jesus Christ as a path to salvation and the church's ordination of gay clergy.... "The bottom line is that St. Luke's is no longer under the authority of Bishop Bruno or the Diocese of Los Angeles," Jackson said. "The church with authority over us is the [greater Anglican Church] through Archbishop Henry Orombi of the Anglican Province of Uganda and Bishop Evans Kisekka of the Diocese of Luweero, so Bishop Bruno is trying to exercise authority in somebody else's jurisdiction and this move has no effect on us." Jackson said Orombi and Kisekka are aware of the situation and are supportive of St. Luke's move. "So we will continue to preside during worship services, offer pastoral care and continue our outreach ministries, just as we have always done," Jackson said, adding that 91% of his church voted in favor of separating from the Episcopal Church USA and realigning with the Anglican Communion under the jurisdiction of the Ugandan diocese. St. Luke's is the fourth parish to break away from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in the past two years."

How Leftist victim ideology has hurt blacks: "However, today there is more de facto segregation than there was in my childhood with segregation laws. While I knew, played with and picked cotton with children from strong, intact, caring black families in the South as I was growing up, my grandchildren get very tired of listening to black classmates complain about their situation while refusing to work, study, try to get along with others, or behave themselves. Today millions of black youth refuse to even GO to school and millions of black men are in prison. They see themselves as "victims" of "white oppression." They aren't. They are victims of the oppression of black leaders that teach behavior and attitudes guaranteed to cause them to fail. To succeed they need to follow the example of the successful people among them -such as Booker T. Washington, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Thomas Sowell to mention a few.

People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says: "In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended." "Scalia does have a philosophy, it's called originalism," he said. "That's what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do," he told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this U.S. island territory. According to his judicial philosophy, he said, there can be no room for personal, political or religious beliefs. Scalia criticized those who believe in what he called the "living Constitution." "That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break." "But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia said. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

Deceptive polls about abortion: "But the Los Angeles Times framed its poll question more in line with what the Court's rulings really mean: "Generally speaking, are you in favor of the Supreme Court decision which permits a woman to get an abortion from a doctor at any time, or are you opposed to that?" The result: Only 43 percent of respondents were in favor. "It was the lowest level of support recorded because the rest of the polls misinterpret Roe and Doe. They view Roe v. Wade as a decision that legalized abortion but restricted the procedure, not one that made virtually all abortions legal," writes Stricherz. In fact, the overwhelming majority of respondents in Gallup polls disapprove of abortion when a woman and her partner simply do not want another child or when a pregnancy would interfere with a woman's career".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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