one other tie-in I meant to include -- in re Hitchens and Kissinger, further to "When Hitchens Gets Furious", the 4th-last YouTube in the post to which this is a reply -- (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83625371 and preceding and following
'Dr. Zhivago': Classic Book That Was Almost Never Published
by Petra Couvée Posted: 06/23/2014 9:31 am EDT Updated: 06/23/2014 9:59 am EDT
Andrei Zvyagintsev's movie "Leviathan" will likely be banned in Russia under a new blasphemy law that comes into effect July 1. The highly praised, ambitious arthouse film was awarded best screenplay and nominated for the Palme d'Or at the recent 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Variety called the auteur's film "cause for celebration ... his most accessible and naturalistic film, using everyday characters to test how well modern-day Russia is maintaining the social contract with its citizens."
There is a fair amount of gutter language -- expletives and epithets -- all of them authentic, just as the stunning and provocative scenes of rural Russia are genuine. However the Russian Federation's Minister of Culture, Andrei Medinsky, suggested to the filmmaker that he clean up his dialogue in compliance with the coming law. As the film community expected, Zvyagintsev, who is used to making movies in a climate of relative freedom, refused.
There has been a crackdown on artistic freedom in Russia, and the blasphemy laws are at least in part a response to the Pussy Riot action, arrest and trial in 2012. The feminist punk group performed about 40 seconds of their anti-Putin "prayer" song at the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the center of Orthodoxy, highly charged with symbols of the new Russia. Before one activist could get her guitar out of the case, the protest performance was shut down. Two members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned in penal colonies for two years.
Russian authorities and artists have engaged in a long and at times terrifying love-hate relationship. Ironically, the machinery of coercion and censorship assisted in making works of arts into classics, and their makers into larger-than-life heroes. This new controversy will certainly draw new audiences to Zvyagintsev's work. In Russia, censorship has frequently guaranteed ultimate success.
The epic novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak is among Russia's most famous forbidden books. The passionate life of the doctor-poet Yuri Zhivago, Pasternak's alter-ego, is set against the background of the turbulent events of the 20th century. In the novel, Zhivago leaves behind a collection of poetry, which forms the novel's last chapter and serves as his artistic legacy and life credo.
Pasternak finished his novel in 1955 with the hope he could publish it following Stalin's death in 1953. But his editors rejected it unanimously, and when Pasternak decided to give his manuscript to a Westerner in the spring of 1956, the authorities panicked.
The publication in the West of the uncensored manuscript, and the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Pasternak against the will of the Soviet authorities in 1958, triggered one of the great cultural storms of the Cold War. Amid the chaos, the CIA had the novel printed in Russian (produced undercover in the Netherlands) only to smuggle it back into the Soviet Union.
And it was a lot more than swearing that doomed Doctor Zhivago's Soviet publication. Its apolitical stance was regarded as blasphemy in a society where all literature was a critical instrument of mass propaganda. The novel's religiosity was "an anachronism from a reactionary renegade" in a communist society striving towards atheism. But the true heresy was the book's philosophy of individual expression over collectivism and uniformity.
Pasternak recoiled from the groupthink of many of his fellow writers. "Don't yell at me," he said to his peers at one public meeting, where he was heckled for asserting that writers should not be given orders. "But if you must yell, at least don't do it in unison."
Pasternak felt no need to tailor his art to the political demands of the state; to sacrifice his novel, he believed, would be a sin against his own genius."
Doctor Zhivago was catapulted into the canon of modern fiction, helped in no small part by the Soviet ban and the 1965 David Lean film of the same name. These days, the novel has its devotees and its detractors, but it is safe to say that the story of the truth-seeker Yuri Zhivago was more enthusiastically read in Soviet Russia, in its forbidden form, than now.
Pasternak succeeded in writing a novel of timeless ideas: "Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness, whether it's faith in Solovyov, or Kant, or Marx. Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all of those who don't love it sufficiently."
Doctor Zhivago is a plea for artistic integrity, freedom of the individual and respect for the dissident view--all hot buttons that shock and alienate censors everywhere. Today, Russia finds itself stifled by a new tightening grip of conservative laws inspired by the Russian Orthodox Church. The ministry of culture has announced it will continue to sponsor films, but only those that support the state and traditional "family values." Doctor Zhivago is a great remedy against the fear of being different, and the idea that we will fit into a single mold.
Unaccompanied children sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas. CREDIT: Eric Gay/ AP
By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee July 11, 2014 at 3:00 pm Updated: July 11, 2014 at 10:19 pm
During a speech on the House floor Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) compared the surge of unaccompanied migrant children to soldiers invading France during World War II. Criticizing President Obama’s request for Congress to provide $3.7 billion in emergency funds to process the deportation proceedings of more than 52,000 children [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/07/02/3453051/push-factors-el-salvador-honduras-and-guatemala/ ], mostly fleeing violence in Central America, Gohmert asked Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) to “use whatever means” like troops, ships of war, or taxes to “stop the invasion.”
“Even with $3.7 billion that’s requested, there’s no way for what’s being called for is going to stop the invasion that’s occurring,” Gohmert said. “That’s why I’m hoping that my governor will utilize Article 1, Section 10, that allows a state that is being invaded — in our case more than twice as many just in recent months, more than twice as many than invaded France on D-Day with a doubling of that coming en route, on their way here now under Article 1, Section 10, the state of Texas would appear to have the right, not only to use whatever means, whether it’s troops, even using ships of war, even exacting a tax on interstate commerce that wouldn’t normally be allowed to have or utilize, they’d be entitled in order to pay to stop the invasion.”
Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution provides that “[n]o state shall, without the consent of Congress, . . . engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” The fact that this provision contemplates a state making “war,” however, strongly suggests that the framers were thinking about military invasions when they drafted it — not that they were concerned about an “invasion” of children.
Gohmert also suggested that the state of Texas should send National Guard to the border to secure the border, citing the time that President Woodrow Wilson sent General Pershing into Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa who had killed Americans. “I’m not advocating an invasion into Mexico,” he added. “I’m advocating strongly we stop the invasion into the United States.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) talked to Tucker Carlson on Fox and Friends. He weighed in on the heated immigration debate and accentuated the need for border security.
Disease Threat From Immigrant Children Wildly Overstated
The Central American kids arriving in Texas are likely to be better-vaccinated than children in Texas.
by Rachel Pearson Published on Thursday, July 10, 2014, at 12:02 CST
With thousands of children from Central America arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, an old plague is once again sweeping the country—the fear of the diseased immigrant.
Fox News commentator Cal Thomas asks, for example, if “the unaccompanied minors pouring over the border…have brought with them proof of vaccination?” Thomas accuses the border-crossers of harboring vaccine-preventable diseases such as “mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria.”
Before demonizing undocumented children, we should look at the facts: The vast majority of Central Americans are vaccinated against all these diseases. Governments concerned about health, and good parents investing in their kids, have made Central American kids better-vaccinated than Texan kids. We fear them not because they are actually sick, but because of powerful anti-immigration narratives that link foreigners to disease.
Consider, for example, Guatemala. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Guatemalan kids are more likely than Texans to be immunized for most infectious diseases. Guatemala has universal health care. Vaccines are 100 percent funded by the government.
By comparison, one in six kids in Texas is uninsured, and even insured families often must pay for vaccination. That means that many Texas kids fall behind on vaccinations, or miss them altogether when their family can’t afford a doctor’s visit. Other families refuse vaccination.
Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a Fox News commentator and former director of the ultra-conservative political group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, writes in the McAllen Monitor that measles is among the “diseases the United States had controlled or virtually eradicated” that are “carried across the border by this tsunami of illegals.”
Fact check: UNICEF reports that 93 percent of kids in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are vaccinated against measles. That’s better than American kids (92 percent).
Furthermore, it’s absurd to claim that the U.S. has eradicated measles while Central America has not. In fact, measles outbreaks have resurged [ http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html ] in some American cities. By contrast, according to the World Health Organization, neither Guatemala nor Honduras has had a reported case of measles since 1990.
Slate physician-writer (and Fox News contributor) Marc Siegel writes that unaccompanied minors “are a likely source” of the mosquito-borne dengue fever spreading to Texas. Siegel ignores two key public health points: First, legal immigrants and travelers are a much larger group than undocumented folks, and just as likely to carry dengue. (I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve never been screened for dengue fever at the Texas-Mexico border.) Second, mosquitoes can fly.
Interestingly, Siegel is the author of three books—Swine Flu: The New Pandemic, Bird Flu: Everything you Need to Know about the Next Pandemic and False Alarm: Profiting from the Epidemic of Fear. That last title must be a memoir.
The narrative that foreigners bring disease has long been used to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment. In the early 1900s, the immigrant cook Mary Mallon—better known as Typhoid Mary—was imprisoned for life for infecting her wealthy patrons with Salmonella typhii.
In his book The Cholera Years, historian Charles Rosenberg describes how Irish immigrants to New York in the 1830s suffered disproportionately from cholera because they lived in poor and crowded neighborhoods. Instead of working to help them, the medical profession blamed the disease on immigrants being “exceedingly dirty.” Irish people were refused medical care, and many “wandered starved and half naked across the Canadian border.”
When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, the Latino men who came to work rebuilding the city were accused of spreading infectious diseases such as chlamydia and HIV.
The targeting of vulnerable outsiders whenever disease breaks out is even older than this country. Historian Barbara Tuchman has described how outbreaks of plague in Europe would lead to pogroms. The lynchings of Jews, she writes “began in 1348 on the heels of the first plague deaths.” When we blame immigrants for infectious disease, we participate in a nasty—and deadly—old tradition.
Some diseases do flourish because of unsanitary conditions in the immigrant detention centers. For example, Fox News reports that the Border Patrol union is complaining that an agent “already has contracted the mite-borne skin infection” scabies. Like lice, scabies is annoying but eminently treatable. It spreads anywhere people are in close quarters: summer camps, homeless shelters, college dorms.
While outbreaks of scabies are a decent indicator that conditions in the detention centers are unsanitary, scabies is not the kind of disease that should dictate immigration policy. To get rid of it, you treat the kid and wash his or her bedding.
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the diseases most calculated to frighten Texans. On the right-wing blog Breitbart Texas, Vliet claims that immigrants with TB “are putting others’ lives at risk,” and that multi-drug-resistant TB is the “most common form” of TB in Latin America.
The latter is simply false: Fewer than 1 percent of TB cases in the Americas are multi-drug-resistant, according to the WHO. Most of those cases are still treatable. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), no cases of the more difficult extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) were reported here in 2012.
More than 90 percent of Central Americans are vaccinated against TB, according to the WHO. The vaccine, called the BCG, is imperfect. It’s used in countries where TB is still common, but some cases will break through the vaccine’s coverage.
Americans are not routinely vaccinated. According to the state health department, the 1,233 cases of TB that occurred in Texas [ http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/idcu/disease/tb/statistics/ ] in 2012 were mostly along the border and in prisons. The disease has stayed crouched in those centers of poverty because it flourishes where people live in close quarters and suffer from diseases like alcoholism and HIV, which knock down their immune defenses. Eradicate poverty, and TB fades away.
Fear of disease is motivating people to move against immigrants. In League City, the City Council voted this week to prohibit the housing or processing of undocumented immigrants. The resolution cited the “threat of communicable diseases reported to be prevalent” among immigrants as a justification for the use of police power to protect “citizens” from these children.
And in Murrieta, California, protesters blocked buses carrying migrant children after it was revealed that some of them had been hospitalized for fevers.
Fear turns sick kids into a threat. But the threat of tuberculosis is overblown. The state health department is screening [ http://www.acf.hhs.gov/unaccompanied-children-frequently-asked-questions ] unaccompanied minors for the disease. Some small percentage of them—like a tiny percentage of Texan kids overall—probably have TB. It can be controlled and treated before it spreads.
Even if these unaccompanied minors did pose a huge tuberculosis threat—which they do not—Texas is equipped to deal with it. We have clinics, first-line antibiotics and even a tuberculosis sanitarium to house folks who can’t keep up with the daily antibiotics on their own.
There are legitimate health concerns associated with human migration. But the narrative that immigrants such as these children are particularly diseased has more to do with fear than it does with science.
Rachel Pearson is a sixth-year MD/PhD student at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Institute for the Medical Humanities.
with the conservative publication NewsMax on Monday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) accused President Obama of inviting young immigrants to cross the border alone to recruit future Democratic voters. In footage recorded by Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/louie-gohmert-obama-bringing-central-american-immigrants-vote-illegally-democrats ], when asked by the host Steve Malzberg what Obama could gain from unaccompanied children coming across the border alone, Gohmert responded that the President wanted to bankrupt the country and “turn America blue.”
“In the end, they have said that they want to turn Texas blue, they want to turn America blue,” Gohmert said, claiming that former Rep. Quico Canseco (R-TX) was voted out office because undocumented immigrants in his district were encouraged to vote. “And if you bring in hundreds of thousands or millions of people and give them the ability to vote and tell them — as Quico Canseco said, he had illegals in his district that were told, ‘If you want to keep getting the benefits, you have to vote, and President Obama’s lawyers are not going to allow them to ask for an ID, so go vote or you’re going to lose the benefits you’re getting now.’ That drives people to vote and it will ensure that Republicans don’t ever get elected again.”
that the crisis “was created by this administration, sending out word that we’re not going to enforce the law.” He added that the political end game for the crisis would be for the Obama administration to “create thousands, maybe millions of new voters.” Both Reps. Steve King (R-IA) and Steve Stockman (R-TX) made similar comments to the conservative publication WorldNetDaily [ http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/congressmen-obama-using-cloward-piven-maneuver/ , http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/steve-king-and-steve-stockman-warn-leninist-obama-flooding-border-illegals ] last month, arguing that Obama was using “a Cloward-Piven maneuver” to “flood” the country to the point where we are an open-borders country. Stockman said that it’s “an open secret Obama is trying to flood Texas with illegals to make it into a blue state.”
Gohmert: Our Commander-in-Chief Will Not Secure The Border
Published on Jul 8, 2014 by GohmertTX01
Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) talked to Bill O' Reilly about the current border surge. He commented more on his statement that President Obama is trying to turn Texas blue and also talked about a new bill he has in the works.
He suggested that communists in government, following the teachings of Lenin, have deliberately added on debts in order to destroy the U.S. economy. “Of course they don’t talk about it, I’ll tell you who does talk about it: Vladimir Lenin. One of the ways to destroy the United States? Unsustainable debt. People, you got to wake up, you got to wake up.” This, of course, would make George W. Bush [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/03/11/20209/bush-debt/ ] the biggest Leninist of all.
However, Carson insisted that he was merely just asking the question [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCZlRJwcY3Q (below, as embedded)]: “I don’t know if it is intentional or not, but whether it is intentional or not doesn’t matter, we’ll still be destroyed.”
WorldNetDaily Pundit Claims Obama Will Unleash The Military On Conservatives
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 7/9/2014 10:20 am
Another day, another WorldNetDaily column predicting that President Obama is going to confiscate firearms, impose martial law and imprison conservatives.
Today’s warning [ http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/will-obamas-border-chaos-spark-revolution/ ] comes from Morgan Brittany, who writes that Obama will use the increase in child migrants as a calculated way to incite an anti-Obama revolution, giving the president a justification to introduce “martial law,” start “confiscating our guns and ammo,” create a “totalitarian state” and begin a spate of “military arrests”
Supposedly, the NDAA broadens the scope and power of the federal government to fight the War on Terror, and under this law the military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on U.S. soil. This means it allows the detaining of U.S. citizens domestically without trial if they are considered a threat. The question then becomes: Who is a threat? Is it a member of the tea party? Someone who speaks out against Obamacare or takes issue with the administration’s policies? Someone the NSA has listened to and feels is a problem? We saw what happened with the IRS targeting – can military arrests be far behind? This idea would be considered folly except for the fact that in 2009 there was a DHS report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalism and Recruitment.” It specifically stated that conservatives and the unemployed represent a clear and present danger.
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So when you put the pieces of this puzzle together and you see what is happening on our border, am I crazy to think that this was all a plan that has been put in motion to overwhelm the system and create anger and chaos among the American people? With the influx of illegal children surrendering to the Border Patrol, the officers can no longer protect the border because they are too busy changing diapers and tending to sick kids. They are overwhelmed and cannot feed, house or nurse these thousands of people.
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We all know the truth, that none of these people are going to be returned to their home countries. They will disappear into the shadows as millions before them have, and we the taxpayers will pick up the bill as we always do. This is a giant poke in the eye to an already angry American tiger, and it will only take one spark to blow the whole thing up.
Ah, but this is what the left and this administration wants. It is classic Cloward-Piven. Overwhelm the system, anger the populace, create chaos, and then, martial law takes over. Through his executive orders, the president gave himself the authority to use the military as he sees fit. We saw just a taste of it after the Boston Marathon bombing when there was a huge over-reaction by closing down the city, storming homes and property and keeping people prisoners in their own homes. That was just a test to see how compliant people would become.
If Obama gets his way and the system collapses through illegal immigration or financial means, if he succeeds in confiscating our guns and ammo so that no one but the government has them, then we the people will be at their mercy, and the sad thing is that many people will welcome their control. At that point the American people will be helpless against a totalitarian state, and they will have succeeded in the full transformation of this country.
Larry Klayman Claims 'Liberal Jews' Are Just Like Adolf Hitler
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 7/9/2014 11:35 am
Larry Klayman marked Independence Day with a column railing against liberal American Jews, calling them “self-hating” and anti-Semitic. Klayman was upset that “the Obama regime and other Western leaders were quick to blame Israeli settlers on the West Bank” for burning an Arab teenager alive, which he claims is proof that President Obama and John Kerry are anti-Semites who are out to destroy Israel. (Three of the six suspects, all Jewish, have reportedly confessed [ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4538864,00.html ] to the murder.)
Klayman went on to scold “liberal Jews” who “lose no opportunity to distance themselves from their Judeo-Christian heritage in the style of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky and indeed the evil Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself,” adding that “these types of Jews, some of whom are present in the Obama White House to give Obama cover for his anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli acts and practices, are among the greatest enemies of the Jewish people.”
In recent months, Israel and the world have witnessed the consequences of this retreat. Hamas had now ascended to a unity government with the Palestinian Authority and is more powerful than ever, extending its reach from Gaza into the West Bank. And, just in the last few weeks, this power has become more apparent as Hamas, in a brazen act of provocation, kidnapped and executed three Jewish Israel teenagers in this West Bank. Just days after their bodies were found, a Palestinian boy was found dead, his body bad burned and left in a forest in Jerusalem. Although the cause of this death is unknown at this time and under investigation, the Obama regime and other Western leaders were quick to blame Israeli settlers on the West Bank and thus Israel for the killing. True to form, Obama's equally anti-Semitic secretary of state, John Kerry, took the lead in gleefully blaming Jews for the killing of the Palestinian boy, while expressing only pro forma if not feigned grief for the dead Jewish teenagers.
While this type of anti-Semitic behavior is predictable from Obama and his secretary of state, what is more frightening is the reaction of many liberal Jews themselves. These Jews, indeed self-hating ones, lose no opportunity to distance themselves from their Judeo-Christian heritage in the style of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky and indeed the evil Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself, who many historians have concluded had Jewish roots on his father's side of the family. These types of Jews, some of whom are present in the Obama White House to give Obama cover for his anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli acts and practices, are among the greatest enemies of the Jewish people.
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If we do not step in to protect Israel from its enemies, both internal as in the case of the leftist Jewish likes of Roger Cohen, and external, as in the case of the Obama, Kerry, Hamas and its Palestinian/Muslim brethren who are dedicated to its destruction, then we will have forsaken the roots of our own American revolution, which the Founding Fathers wagered on their proud Judeo-Christian heritage and spirituality – all of which, as Franklin and Jefferson recognized, have their foundation in the promised land of Moses.
In today’s “Secure Freedom Minute,” Gaffney says the Obama administration should declare that such countries “are not eligible for our foreign aid” until the immigrant “invasion” ends.
Barack Obama visits Texas today, but not its border areas. He’s not interested in evidence that his policies have encouraged an ongoing invasion by tens of thousands of illegal child and other aliens. The President just wants Congress to give him nearly $4 billion to “manage” the resulting crisis. Unfortunately, he would spend much of it in ways that will encourage more such invaders to come here. For example, lots of this emergency funding would go to provide housing, food, transportation and lawyers for the illegal aliens. These would be inducements for further invasion. Congress should just say “No” to such spending and ensure that the countries enabling the invasion – namely, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico – are not eligible for our foreign aid until they stop it, and repatriate the invaders.
Columnist Phil Elmore is upset at criticism directed towards Kendall Jones, a Texas teenager whose Facebook account was terminated after she posted photos of animals she killed on a safari. A Facebook spokesman said the company removes "reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse" and noted that the website has rules prohibiting "graphic images."
But according to Elmore, the incident proves that conservatives are becoming "second-class citizens" in cyberspace. He writes that liberals "persecute" others by making inflammatory comments about conservatives and even alleges that liberals used the Internet to try "to burn down Hobby Lobby."
"We see it in the comments portions of countless websites online, where conservatives are shouted down for their dissent. Where do we witness these acts of bigotry? Online. Where does liberal hate of conservatives propagate? Online."
While complaining that he is being persecuted by an "online culture of liberal hate," he insists liberals are mentally and emotionally "weak" because they complain too often and have "hysterical overreactions."
Like those motion-sensor toy dogs that bark when you walk past a toy aisle, every liberal on the Internet simply starts bleating, “Raaaaacist! Raaaaacist! Sexist! Raaaaaacist!” whenever a conservative draws near. The libs don’t even hear themselves talk anymore. They merely speak, hurling unfounded accusations into the ether, trusting complicit entertainment media and Internet gossip sites to carry their water. Just as certain animal-rights activists once proclaimed that a pig was a boy was a dog was a roach, or however it went, to the lefties, every conservative is a racist is a misogynist is a rapist.
To the liberals, “racism” is any expression of opinion with which they disagree. “Misogyny” is any criticism of any opinion held or expressed by a woman (or by men hating themselves on behalf of women). “Rape” is any action that makes a woman uncomfortable for any reason, from any distance, in any context. Liberals have, in fact, managed to render almost every crime imaginable completely meaningless by commingling real acts of violence and bigotry with the benign behavior they wish to redefine as social offense.
Never was this more obvious than in the case of Facebook’s treatment of Kendall Jones, a pretty blond Texas cheerleader who posted to the social media site her pictures of a sport-hunting trip to Africa. The pictures went viral, sparking outrage among hate-filled liberals, who have threatened the young woman with death and called her every vile name on the planet. The outrage traveled, as it always does, online, through various boards and social media venues. It was on Twitter that one porn star used profanity to refer to Ms. Jones, calling her “disgusting.” She was, as progressives always are, greeted with a chorus of assent.
On Facebook, even though her photos do not violate the site’s terms of service, the harassment Ms. Jones has endured culminated in the removal of one or more of her pictures. Her only crime was doing something with which liberals disagree – something that is legal and arguably far less offensive than, say, the plaintive pictures of mutilated animals passed around Facebook in the name of “animal rights.”
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Search Twitter and Facebook and look at the comments yourself. Yes, these sites are all private property, and their owners are free to impose whatever unfair policies and practices they choose. But if we permit this online culture of liberal hate to spread without calling to account those perpetrating it, we participate in unmaking Internet freedom. We help promote a cultural double standard against which no conservative ever gets treated fairly or objectively.
We saw it when liberals said they wanted to burn down Hobby Lobby because the Supreme Court actually held narrowly in favor of religious freedom (in the context of socialized medicine’s abortion-pill mandate). We saw it when Costco pulled copies of Dinesh D’Souza’s conservative- and liberty-themed book, “America: Imagine a World Without Her,” from shelves – with little, then lame explanation and despite strong sales. We see it in the comments portions of countless websites online, where conservatives are shouted down for their dissent. Where do we witness these acts of bigotry? Online.
Where does liberal hate of conservatives propagate? Online. Liberals are weak. They are mentally weak in that they cannot articulate their political positions without lies and deceit. They are emotionally weak in that they are fragile, easily offended and in need of “trigger warnings” for those opinions they simply cannot abide. They are intolerant and hysterical in their overreactions to even the slightest misperceived affront. But never forget that even weaklings can be very dangerous in large numbers. This is the means through which liberals accomplish their intimidation of all those who do not share their opinions: they use the power of the mob, in the form of popular culture or as embodied by our co-opted Democrat government.
Liberals want to make the Internet a Democrat-friendly utopia in which conservatives and libertarians are second-class citizens. If we allow their double standard to take root, they will marginalize us and persecute us. But that persecution has already begun. It happens every day online.
Bryan Fischer: 'Our Southern Border Is There By God's Design'
Submitted by Miranda Blue on Thursday, 7/10/2014 10:53 am
In response to the influx of Central American children fleeing to the southern border of the U.S., the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is repeating his belief that all national borders were determined by God [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-gays-ought-be-ashamed-national-borders-were-set-god ] and therefore anybody who crosses them without permission is directly offending the Creator.
In a column for BarbWire today [ http://barbwire.com/2014/07/10/bible-borders/ ], Fischer writes, "What we learn from the Bible is that borders are God’s idea, and that such borders are to be respected. They are not to be crossed without permission.”
As a result, he writes, “[o]ur southern border is there by God’s design” and those who “regard it as something not worth respecting and defending” are insulting God.
He gives himself an out by adding an exception to biblical national borders in the case of “a just war.”
What we learn from the Bible is that borders are God’s idea, and that such borders are to be respected. They are not to be crossed without permission.
Crossing a border without permission is like breaking in the back door of a house to help yourself to goodies instead of being invited in by the host through the front door. You might get to eat either way, in the same house and from the same cupboard, but in one case you would be doing something respectful and civil and in the other doing something that rightly should land you in jail.
The Scriptures make it clear that national sovereignty, including clearly defined borders, is God’s idea. In Acts 17:26, we read, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place…” (Emphasis mine throughout.)
Two things, we are told, are under God’s sovereign control: how long a nation lasts, and where its borders are. The verb translated “having determined” is the Greek verb “horizo,” from which we get the word “horizon.” It means “to mark out, to define.” So God has marked out and defined the borders of each country.
Our southern border is there by God’s design. To disregard it, to treat it as if were not there, to regard it as something not worth respecting and defending, is an insult to the God who put it there for our benefit.
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The lesson? Each nation’s sovereignty is marked by its boundary, and each nation has the moral right to decide who will be given permission to enter its sovereign territory. Moses recognized this, and so should we. The only exception is under circumstances of a just war.
Bottom line: borders are biblical, and are there by God’s sovereign design. And they are to be respected by everyone.
Rep. Steve King called upon the governors of the states along the southern border to call out their national guard units and seal the border because otherwise America will be overrun with billions of undocumented immigrants by the time President Obama leaves office.
Saying that since Obama has the resources necessary to close the border but is refusing to do so, King therefore urged border governors to call up their National Guard units and do it themselves because soon "it won't be any longer a question of whether we can deport eleven million people; it will be tens of millions more and the question will be how many billion people can we let into the United States?"
"And I say that term 'billion,' I didn't just pull it out of the air," King made clear [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j-2uVTyeOk (next below, as embedded)], "there's seven billion people on the planet and over half of them would like to be in America":
William Gheen Warns China Will 'Pull An Abraham Lincoln,' Recruit Undocumented Immigrants To Attack US From Within
Submitted by Miranda Blue on Thursday, 7/10/2014 1:50 pm
In an interview [ http://www.vcyamerica.org/blog/2014/07/08/illegal-immigration-border-battle-intensifies , http://67.36.84.226/crosstalk2/ct140708.mp3 ] with Jim Schneider of VCY America on Tuesday, anti-immigrant activist William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC claimed that in the event of a U.S.- China war over the Taiwan Strait, China will recruit undocumented immigrants to fight the U.S. from within and will then give them American land, a move he compared to Abraham Lincoln giving land to former slaves after recruiting blacks to fight in the Civil War.
“Once again, with China, the Pentagon has reports from war colleges saying, ‘We’ve got large groups of people’ — and they won’t say who they are, but they’re talking about the 20-plus million illegal immigrants — they’re like, ‘We’ve got large groups of people that might not be fond of the Constitution that could be called upon by a foreign power in case of conflict,” Gheen said.
“What they’re talking about is, let’s say that the United States and China end up having to go to war tomorrow over the Taiwan Strait. Well, all the sudden, China pulls an Abraham Lincoln on us and says, ‘Hey, illegals, we’ll give you the whole place, just punch America in the gut for us.’ And America won’t be able to sustain our fleet. America can be taken out by a sneak attack from within.”
Gheen shared this theory at the end of a long rant in response to Schneider asking him if ISIS is trying to exploit the refugee crisis on the southern border to sneak terrorist sleeper cells into the United States.
Gheen replied that terrorist cells were already in the country in the form of Muslim-Americans colluding with Mexican drug cartels to send “precious and strategic metals” to China and get “everybody’s kids and grandkids” “hooked on cocaine and methamphetamine" and then snort their inheritances "all right up their nose and out of the country into Mexico and the on to Saudi Arabia."
“All of that destruction, the deconstruction of the United States, the planned demolition of the United States is all taking place, it’s a plan,” he said. “If you’re a terrorist, you really wouldn’t want to do anything to mess that up. If you’re a sleeper cell, you don’t want to go blow up the town hall and get the locals all upset because right now you’re bringing in more and more of your people and taking over whole communities and neighborhoods and building a mosque on every block.”
Earlier in the interview, Gheen claimed that President Obama is “sponsoring and facilitating” an immigrant “invasion” so “what he sees as evil Whitey can’t ever do anything to come back from it.”
The president, he added “may have our full destruction in mind.”
"Illegal immigration is the antithesis of Christianity,” says William Gheen, Raleigh, N.C.-based president of Americans For Legal Immigration. “It’s a gross mischaracterization of Christianity to apply it to tolerating the mass lawlessness, death and damages involved in illegal immigration.”
…
When asked about those children crossing the border in search of refuge from gang-related violence and death, Americans for Legal Immigration president Gheen said immigrant children are coached by money-hungry smugglers who give them “cheat sheets” with fabricated stories of woe, crafted to ensure their amnesty. “There’s no mass slaughter of children in any of the host countries,” Gheen said. “There’s no documentation of any mass slaughter...The children are reciting lines. This is being orchestrated.”
He said that immigrants’ rights groups are anti-Christian because “they don’t like laws, they don’t like borders”: “They like to equate Christians with Nazis and Klansmen and all sorts of stuff like that because Christians try to show any type of restraint on behavior. And they don’t want any restraint on any behaviors, whether it’s criminal or not. They don’t like laws, they don’t like borders. It’s anything goes, people do whatever they want.”
In one webcast posted on July 4, Santilli [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X6LauSgH6w (nelow, as embedded)] approached a number of local police officers demanded that they bring him the county sheriff. He also told them that he had called 911 but that that strategy had also failed to summon the sheriff. (Many militia groups maintain [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_(organization) (and then click on the "Posse Comitatus (organization)" in the "Did you mean: Posse Comitatus (organization)" line on the page that comes up)] that the sheriff is the only legitimate law enforcement officer).
Santilli told one Murrieta police officer that he was “here for a peaceful protest” but that by failing to put him in contact with the sheriff “what you guys are creating is a violent one.”
“Are you guys domestic terrorists now?” he yelled after the officer walked away. “You guys are terrorizing the public.”
“They’re going to deliver a bus here with a bunch of anarchists and create a volatile situation on the 4th of July. That’s an incitement,” he yelled.
At one point, Santilli got his hands on a bullhorn and earned a cheer from the crowd when he told the officers, “You want to send a bus to us right in front of the media so Obama can publicly display what happens to people who stop busses with infected immigrants. Obama wants to send a message and you’re helping to facilitate it.”
According to Keyes, impeaching Obama would be the first step toward restoring God’s blessing on America by showing that we are repenting for the country’s sin of electing Obama, who defeated Keyes [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Illinois,_2004 ] in the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race.
“Do this as a prayer to the Creator God whose authority over justice those principles acknowledge,” he writes today in WorldNetDaily [ http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/mobilizing-for-impeachment-good-faith-is-the-only-hope/ ]. “Do this so that once again our nation may deserve to enjoy the blessings of that God-endowed liberty which has been, and by our faithfulness may yet continue to be, our common hope; our common life; our common good.”
THE COMMENT:
Hello, Dr. Keyes. Even if the House were to impeach … you’d never get the Senate to convict. … What’s the point when the corruption extends into both parties and into both houses? Perhaps the following should be our main goal; we as a people MUST return to a loving relationship with God … we as a people MUST return to virtue. Is this not far more important than “the impeachment field – ripe for the harvest”?
MY REPLY:
In everything I write and everything I do my aim is to encourage people of faith to act like it when it comes to their vocation as citizens. This is why I have constantly emphasized that our first order of business as American citizens is to remember and apply the principles on which our nation is founded, starting with the self-evident truth that we “are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
However, achieving this goal cannot be a matter of lip-service to faith. From the first, Christ preached repentance. If we talk about the need to return to God and yet refuse to turn to Him, even in the hour of our greatest need, we are not repentant. Indeed, we act like an obese person who talks about losing weight but who will not turn away from overeating and idleness and back to the standard of healthy living in order to do so.
Repentance is a work of God’s grace, by which His Spirit renews within us the activity of life, much as it did when it mingled with the man of dust in order that he should become a living soul. By this renewal of life God calls us to return to Him, through the way of truth and life that He has prepared and offered us for our salvation. We signify our acceptance of His offer when we walk in this way, not when we talk about the need to do so and then let the deceitful cavils of fear paralyze our goodwill.
…
I urge you to visit the Pledge to Impeach website. I urge you conscientiously to ponder the cogent facts and reasoning you will find there. I urge you to commit yourself to the Pledge to impeach mobilization effort. I urge you thereafter to encourage all the like-minded people you know and can influence to do the same.
Do this as an act of good faith, predicated upon the principles of America’s independence as a nation. Do this as a prayer to the Creator God whose authority over justice those principles acknowledge. Do this so that once again our nation may deserve to enjoy the blessings of that God-endowed liberty which has been, and by our faithfulness may yet continue to be, our common hope; our common life; our common good.
Tom Tancredo: Border Crisis 'Absolutely Part Of' Obama's Plan To 'Transform America'
Submitted by Miranda Blue on Friday, 7/11/2014 2:51 pm
Former Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, said Wednesday that the crisis of Central American refugees at the southern border is “all part of a plan” by President Obama to “fundamentally transform America.”
“This is all part of a plan,” he said. “And you know how this sounds, I know how people immediately go, ‘Oh, there’s a conspiracy theorist out there.’ Now, look. It’s not a conspiracy if he tells the world what he wants. If Obama says on numerous occasions, ‘I intend to fundamentally transform’ and then he begins doing it, it’s not a conspiracy. This is absolutely part of that."
NBC’s Mark Potter, Texas Monthly Magazine senior editor Erica Grieder, and Jim Moore, political strategist, join Joy Reid to discuss the ongoing immigration crisis and Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s stance on the issue.
Military service a path to citizenship ...if you’re 200 years dead
Rachel Maddow July 11, 2014
Ari Melber points out a movement in Congress to grant citizenship to a Revolutionary War hero who died 200 years go, and points out that Congress has failed to move the ENLIST Act to make military service a path to citizenship for actual living people.
on the floor of the House Thursday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) made an unconventional suggestion to atheist Americans. If they want to live in a "free country," Gohmert said, "it might be a good thing to encourage those who believe in God to keep doing so."
Gohmert was lamenting that fact that the "mainstream media" has ignored the "widespread systemic violence" and "persecution" against Christians around the world, when he delivered his message to those who want to continue living in freedom in this country.
"No country has ever fallen while it was truly honoring the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So if you were completely areligious, completely atheistic, but you wanted to have a free country, and you wanted to have it safe and protected, then it would sound like — from historical purposes — that it might be a good thing to encourage those who believe in God to keep doing so. Because when a nation's leaders honor that God, that nation is protected. It's only when it turns away that it falls."
"What he said is insulting. It's really insulting and hurtful," Epstein said. "People who are not religious or believe differently experience prejudice directly because of his statements." He added, "If you want to protect your country, you will encourage freedom of thought and freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. If you want to damage your country, you will encourage uniformity of thought; you will be the thought police."
"Those watching a House Judiary Committee hearing on Tuesday were treated to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) grilling a pastor about Christian beliefs and why certain people "go to Hell."
The hearing was about religious freedom and Rev. Barry Lynn, the executive director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was before the committee.
Gohmert Speaks at Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference
Published on Jun 20, 2014 by GohmertTX01
Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference this year. He opened saying, ''God has a way of preparing us for what's ahead of us." He talked about how the United States of America has been blessed by God and discussed the unsteady situation in Iraq.
Quoting an old friend from back in Texas, Gohmert said that he feels sorry for atheists because regardless of how smart they think they are, they have to admit that they believe "the equation that nobody plus nothing equals everything."
"How embarrassing for an intellectual to have to say 'yeah, I believe that,'" Gohmert said. "Nobody plus nothing equals everything." "Well, you couldn't get everything unless there was something that was the creator of everything," Gohmert wisely concluded, "and that's the Lord we know":
Rep. Louie Gohmert was among the speakers at last night's "Celebrate America" event, the three week long revival effort organized by "holy laughter" pioneer Rodney Howard-Browne, where he proved once and for all that God exists because "you couldn't get everything unless there was something that was the creator of everything."
Clip from the Thursday, July 10th 2014 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
American Atheists president Dave Silverman is a facist and strongly resembles Satin in appearance. His childhood must have been very unhappy for him to become such a hateful person.
Our country was founded by people who believed and trusted in God, thus our currency even says so!
Along with their lack of religion, many delegates shared a legally protected right not to be offended in their home countries, a “privilege” they enthusiastically pledged to abandon.
The declaration relies heavily on Articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a18 ], which together guarantee the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression.
The declaration’s section on the right not to be offended states:
“Respect for people’s freedom of belief does not imply any duty or requirement to respect those beliefs. The expression of opposition to any beliefs, including in the form of satire, ridicule or condemnation in all media and forms is vital to critical discourse and any restraint that is exercised in this expression must be in accordance of article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely to protect the rights and freedoms of others. The best response to the expression of a view we disagree with is to reply to it.Violence and censorship are never legitimate responses. All laws that criminalise language on grounds of ‘blasphemy’ or of offence to beliefs and values impede human freedom and should be abolished.”
These are important words, and I fully agree with the “We respect the believer but not necessarily the content of the belief [ http://freespeechdebate.com/en/principle/p-7/ ]” sentiments expressed.
In his 2009 book Giving Offence, cartoonist Martin Rowson, who spoke at the congress, writes, “In the Babel of conflicting human opinions, the right to be offended is just another tactic to win an argument by compelling your opponent to shut up because what they say is offensive.” Rowson says religion is often cited in the course of this silencing.
In the companion title Taking Offence, Caspar Melville suggests that “the right to offend is part and parcel of our world, but we must choose our targets with care and know why we are doing it.”
Other sections of the declaration I find particularly interesting (they’re all important) state “No one anywhere should ever be forced into or out of a belief” and “Freedom of belief is absolute but the freedom to act on a belief is not.”
Genuine belief, by its very nature, cannot and should not be forcibly applied to or deprived an individual. Governments and societies can’t make people believe something they don’t. They can only force them to pretend, which accomplishes homogeny at the expense of freedom.
Restricting one’s freedom to act on particular beliefs is obvious and necessary to protect the rights of others. If my beliefs tell me to kill you, your right to life should hopefully save the day.
Oxford Declaration on Freedom of Thought and Expression
Isabel Russo and Andrew Copson read the final text of the Oxford Declaration to World Humanist Congress 2014
By iheuadmin+ On 2014-08-12
The delegates at World Humanist Congress assented on 10th August and the IHEU General Assembly approved on 11th August the Oxford Declaration on Freedom of Thought and Expression.
Drafted and amended after contributions from delegates by the Resolutions Committee of the World Humanist Congress, the full and final text of the Oxford Declaration follows below.
The Oxford Declaration on Freedom of Thought and Expression
The 2014 World Humanist Congress, gathered in Oxford, UK, on 8-10 August 2014, adopted the following declaration on freedom of thought and expression:
All around the world and at all times, it is freedom of thought and freedom of expression that have proved the most essential conditions for human flourishing, but every generation must face new threats to these fundamental freedoms. Knowing this, we maintain:
The right to freedom of thought and belief is one and the same right for all. The human right articulated in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and elaborated elsewhere is and should be a single right, indivisible, protecting the dignity and freedom of all people by protecting their right to their personal beliefs, whatever those beliefs, religious or non-religious. As Article 7 of the Declaration says, ‘All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.’
No one anywhere should ever be forced into or out of a belief. Freedom of thought implies the right to develop, hold, examine and manifest our beliefs without coercion, and to express opinions and a worldview whether religious or non-religious, without fear of coercion. It includes the right to change our views or to reject beliefs previously held, or previously ascribed. Pressure to conform to ideologies of the state or to doctrines of religion is a tyranny. Laws that prescribe or criminalise beliefs contravene human dignity and must be abolished. Every citizen of every state has the right to demand the repeal of such laws, and all states should support those, wherever they are, who demand that their social freedoms and personal liberty be upheld.
The right to freedom of expression is global in its scope. The human right articulated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes the right to ‘seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’. No parochial nationalism or state insecurity should prevent the global human community from fulfilling the promise of our new technologies, our mass media, our social media, and our personal access to transnational networks. States should invest adequate resources to allow their citizens’ participation in this global conversation.
There is no right not to be offended, or not to hear contrary opinions. Respect for people’s freedom of belief does not imply any duty or requirement to respect those beliefs. The expression of opposition to any beliefs, including in the form of satire, ridicule or condemnation in all media and forms is vital to critical discourse and any restraint that is exercised in this expression must be in accordance of article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely to protect the rights and freedoms of others. The best response to the expression of a view we disagree with is to reply to it.Violence and censorship are never legitimate responses. All laws that criminalise language on grounds of ‘blasphemy’ or of offence to beliefs and values impede human freedom and should be abolished.
States must not restrict thought and expression merely to protect the government from criticism. States that criminalise criticism of government policies or officials as treasonous or seditious, or as threats to security, are not “strong governments” championing the best interests of the public, but censorious bullies exercising tyranny in their own interests. States should ensure in the law of the land, in their education systems, and in the conduct of their national life generally, that freedom of thought and expression are actively promoted and pursued to the real benefit of every member of society.
Freedom of belief is absolute but the freedom to act on a belief is not. As responsible members of a community we accept that our freedom to act must sometimes be restricted, if and only if our actions would undermine the rights and freedoms of others. Freedom of belief cannot legitimise overriding the principles of non-discrimination and equality before the law. These balances can be hard to strike but with a focus on freedom and human dignity, we believe legislators and judiciaries can strike them in a progressive manner.
We assert the principles of democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and secularism as providing the firmest foundation for the development of open societies where freedom of thought and expression will be protected and promoted.
We commit ourselves in all our work to uphold and promote existing rights to freedom of thought and expression within the international human rights framework and to resist national and international restrictions on the right of individuals to think for themselves freely and to openly express their views without fear.
We urge each of our member organizations and humanists worldwide to uphold these values in their own lives; to promote in their communities greater public understanding of the rights to freedom of thought and freedom of expression for all; to urge their governments to promote these values; and to join with humanists and others globally in defending and advancing them to the benefit of all humanity.
Welcome to the official Monty Python YouTube channel. This is the place to find top quality classic Python videos, as well as some special stuff that you'll only find here such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage from our live shows. All the Pythons including John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones & Graham Chapman can be found here being incredibly silly.
Poor flailing Hannity! .. damn he does in your first one ..
.. the referee in the center of the ring pauses .. 'and the decision .. by TKO!!' (tension builds) 'atheist Dave Silverman!' .. the stadium erupts in cheer!! .. lol ..
lolol .. it's linked 5th down in your link list here