The picture above, drawn by former Muslim Bosch Fawstin, was chosen as the winner of the Draw Mohammed contest held in Garland, Texas on 3 May 2015.
UN Reveals Horrifying Islamist Sex Markets
From Allen West's blog:
Yes, Islamists are terribly offended by pictures of Mohammed, but they don’t seem to have much problem with enslaving, raping and brutalizing women. Nope, that’s just business as usual – at least according to a report prepared by a United Nations official.
As reported by the Daily Mail, “an Islamic State terrorist group forced a sex slave to marry 20 fighters and even made her undergo surgery each time to restore her virginity, a United Nations official said.
The group paraded and traded Syrian and Iraqi girls in ‘slave markets’ before the victims were shipped to other provinces, according to Zainab Bangura, special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, who travelled to five countries and interviewed dozens of women and young girls who had survived brutal sexual abuse.
She said the girls were routinely stripped naked before being categorized and shipped off.
‘ISIL have institutionalized sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives. . . .
I am waiting for all the neo-Stalinist left, including the radical feminists in the U.S., to immediately rush to condemn these atrocities and the Salafi ideology being used to justify them in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
"PAM GELLER IS AN ISLAMAPHOBE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF TWO MUSLIM MEN (who wanted to commit mass murder)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Okay, not the condemnation I was expecting. Actually, for the most part, that has been the response from the left. But to give credit where credit is due, see the next eye-opening entry below:
Salon Author Says It Is Time Progressives Faced The Truth About Islam
After a full throated defense of Pam Geller, and in between a slander of all three monotheistic religions, Jeffrey Taylor at Salon writes:
What is it about Islam that simultaneously both motivates jihadis to kill and so many progressives to exculpate the religion, even when the killers leave no doubt about why they act? The second part of the question is easier to dispense with than the first. Progressives by nature seek common ground and believe people to be mostly rational actors – hence the desire to blame crime on social ills. Unfamiliarity with Islam’s tenets also plays a role, plus, I believe, the frightening future we would seem to be facing as more and more Muslims immigrate to the West, and the world becomes increasingly integrated. Best just to talk of poverty and the like, or a few “bad apples.” But to respond to the question’s first part, we need to put aside our p.c. reading glasses and examine Islam’s basic elements from a rationalist’s perspective. Islam as a faith would not concern progressives, except that some of its adherents choose to act as parts of its dogma ordain, which, to put it mildly, violates the social contract underpinning the lives of the rest of us. . . .
The canonical glorification of death for the sake Islam, or martyrdom, similarly belies those who would argue that the religion’s nature is pacific. . . .
All those who, Ã la Reza Aslan, maintain that Muslims today do not necessarily read the Quran literally have lost the argument before it begins. What counts is that there are those (ISIS, say, and al-Qaida) who do, and they are taking action based on their beliefs. To the contention, “ISIS and al-Qaida don’t represent Islam!” the proper response is, “that’s what you say. They disagree.” No single recognized Muslim clerical body exists to refute them. . . .
Islam’s doctrinaire positions on women are infamous enough to merit no repetition here. Their sum effect is to render women chattel to men, as sex objects and progenitors of offspring, and foster the most misogynistic conditions on the planet: nineteen of twenty of the worst countries for women, according to the World Economic Forum, are Muslim-majority. Some Muslim countries are deemed more progressive than others, but their progressivity varies inversely with the extent to which Islam permeates their legal codes and customary laws – the less, the better. Not liberal at all, that.
The above are the stark doctrinal and practical realities of which no honest progressive could approve, and which form the bases of the religion. Regardless of what the peaceful majority of Muslims are doing, as ISIS’s beguiling ideology spreads, we are likely to face an ever more relentless, determined Islamist assault. We can delude ourselves no longer: violence is an emergent property deriving from Islam’s inherently intolerant precepts and dogma. The rising number of ethnic Europeans mesmerized by Islam who set off to enroll in the ranks of ISIS attests to this; and may prefigure serious disruptions, especially in France, the homeland of a good number of them, once they start returning. There is nothing “phobic” about recognizing this. Recognize it we must, and steel ourselves for what’s to come.
This is no call to disrespect Muslims as people, but we should not hesitate to speak frankly about the aspects of their faith we find problematic. . . .
. . . We must stop traducing reason by branding people “Islamophobes,” and start celebrating our secularism, remembering that only it offers true freedom for the religious and non-religious alike. And we should reaffirm our humanistic values, in our conviction that we have, as Carlyle wrote, “One life – a little gleam of time between two eternities,” and need to make the most of it for ourselves and others while we can. There is nothing else.
This is not a battle we have chosen; the battle has chosen us.
It’s time to fight back, and hard.
Amen. That should be required reading for all the progs in this land, as well as, it would seem, several blowhards on the right. Yes, Congressman King and Bill O'Reilly, I'm talking to you.
Kirsten Powers & How The Left Is Killing Free Speech
Today's left can best be described as neo-Stalinist. They are enemies of freedom of speech and would much prefer to demonize rather than debate. Gone from the left are such American icons as Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But their breed is not completely extinguished. Some exemplars remain, most notably Kirsten Powers, a Fox News contributor as well as a columnist for USA Today and the Daily Beast. She and her new book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, are the subject of very good article by Peter Berkowitz at RCP.
. . . This is not to say that all members of the left today are instinctively intolerant and bent on stifling liberty of thought and discussion. Yet all too rare is the contemporary liberal who is instinctively appalled by the contempt for speech emanating from Democratic Party politicians, the university world and elite media, and who is willing to call his or her comrades to account.
Kirsten Powers is one of these rare liberals. In "The Silencing,” she methodically documents—and exposes the hypocrisy, incoherence, and sheer contempt for evidence and argument that underlie—the delegitimization of dissent that has become the stock in trade of what she characterizes as the "illiberal left." . . .
Kirsten Powers is one of these rare liberals. In "The Silencing,” she methodically documents—and exposes the hypocrisy, incoherence, and sheer contempt for evidence and argument that underlie—the delegitimization of dissent that has become the stock in trade of what she characterizes as the "illiberal left."
Because she is intellectually honest, while I disagree with her more often than not, I always have to make sure that my disagreements are on sound footing and give due consideration to her arguments. She is a voice of reason to be taken seriously by people on both sides of the aisle.
The Regulatory Bureaucracy
Nothing pushes my hot button more than talk of our regulatory agencies and their unconstitutional abuse of power, something I bang the drum about constantly. But beyond that is their practical effect. Powerline explains here:
The regulation of low-cost competitive street retail isn’t limited just to food service where legitimate health concerns come into play; according to a report from the Institute for Justice, 45 of the nation’s 50 largest cities maintain extensive regulation of mobile vending of a wide range of products with no health risks at all (such as handmade clothing), “making it needlessly difficult or even impossible to set up shop in many cities.” Somehow the “disparate impact” these regulatory schemes have on lower-income minorities never reaches the threshold of a civil rights issue.
Bookworm Room, in a brilliant post several years ago that I cannot find at the moment, made the point that the only legitimate use of regulation was to protect us against those dangers that are not open and obvious to a reasonable person. All too often, regulations are misused to protect business from competition or to enforce ideological goals, neither of which is a legitimate use of the regulatory power. Were we ever to apply Ms. Bookworm's rule of thumb, I would imagine we could do away with upward of 75% of the regulations now crushing down upon us.
Malarial Parasites With Woodies
There is an article today at Real Clear Science, "Viagra Could Halt Malaria By 'Stiffening' Infected Cells." Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite that enters the human blood stream through the bite of a mosquito. It then reproduces in vast numbers, causing debilitating, potentially even deadly illness. It is a scourge in many countries, particularly Africa, so this is big news.
If you read into the article though, you'll find that the viagra isn't affecting cells, it's affecting the parasites. It is, in essence, giving them a woody, which, it just so happens, makes it easier for the spleen to trap the parasites, stopping reproduction. There is something just so, so wrong about giving any male the gift of wood, then using said woody to entrap him. But I guess that is human nature, is it not. From humans to parasites apparently, males sporting wood oft are easily led astray.