A Reminder About the Moral Difference Between the Christian and Muslim Worlds at This Time

From Townhall.com (Aug. 16, 2022):

About 30 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued his fatwa calling for Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie, the Indian author was finally attacked and nearly killed.

Stabbed 10 times by a young Muslim living in America, Rushdie is in a hospital, where his prognosis as of this writing is partial paralysis and the loss of an eye.

What was Rushdie's "crime"? He "insulted" Islam.

Tens of millions of Muslims believe that if a person insults Islam, Muhammad or the Quran, he should be killed. Any Muslim who does kill a person deemed to have insulted Islam goes straight to heaven when he or she dies.

The most famous case of Muslims murdering people charged with insulting Islam occurred in 2015, when two French Muslims entered the Paris editorial offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and murdered 12 people and wounded 11 others. Charlie Hebdo had printed cartoon images of Muhammad, which most Muslims consider forbidden even to non-Muslims.

That same week, Muslims also entered a kosher supermarket in Paris and murdered four Jews. For many Muslims, Jews don't have to do anything to insult Islam; their mere existence is an insult to Islam.

It is instructive to compare Christian reactions to insults to Christianity with Muslim reactions to what they perceive as insults to Islam.

If Christians reacted to insults to Christianity the way Muslims react to insults to Islam, there would be daily murders in America and elsewhere. Christianity is constantly insulted in America and elsewhere in the West, and Christians are regularly murdered by Muslims in the Middle East and Africa.

Perhaps the famous example of the former is the "artwork" by Andres Serrano titled "Piss Christ," which features a crucifix in a jar of urine.

Imagine how many people radical Muslims would kill if a Quran or an image of Muhammad submerged in a jar of urine were displayed in museums around America. It would never happen because museums would never put their staff or their visitors in that kind of danger. Museum staff and visitors to museums that featured this work would be killed.

Why doesn't that argue for the moral superiority of most Christians relative to most Muslims at this time in history? After all, some scholars argue that Muslims and Muslim civilization were morally superior to Christians and Christian civilization at various times during the Middle Ages. Whether or not that is accurate, no one charges the scholars who make that argument with an anti-Christian phobia or with harboring anti-Christian bigotry. Yet, anyone who would argue that contemporary Christian civilization is on a more elevated level than Muslim civilization -- while of course acknowledging that this does not apply to all Muslims or to all Christians -- would be attacked as an "Islamophobe," lose his reputation and quite possibly lose his job and career.

This inability to judge the West -- which was created by Christians and has, with all its many flaws, been rooted in Judeo-Christian morality -- as morally more elevated than the Muslim world goes to the heart of the crisis facing the West: the Left's desire to destroy it. Western elites in academia, media, politics and the business world -- in short, everywhere -- are moral fools.

They claim to be unable to make moral distinctions between the two civilizations -- because of Western slavery and treatment of native populations, for example. Yet, they either do not know or simply ignore Muslims' far worse history of slavery and wiping out native populations. And they know but choose to ignore the fact that the worldwide antislavery movement began in the West and was founded by Christians. It did not begin in the Muslim world, which had no such widespread movement.

The Left has the same morally bankrupt view regarding Israel and its Muslim enemies. On the Left, Israel, with its robust freedoms that extend to its large Muslim minority, is not morally superior to its unfree, terror-honoring Muslim neighbors (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Hamas).

It is true that it was only one Muslim who stabbed Salman Rushdie. But it is millions of Muslims who believe anyone who "insults" Islam should die. It was also one Muslim who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh for "insulting" Islam's take on women. And it was a lot more than one Muslim member of the Islamic State who slit the throats and beheaded countless infidels -- that is, non-Muslims.

Author Taslima Nasrin fled her native Bangladesh, fearing for her life, after a court said she had hurt Muslims' religious feelings with her novel "Lajja" ("Shame"). Unlike virtually every Western author and leader, her reaction to the attack on Rushdie noted that the would-be murderer was Muslim: "I just learned that Salman Rushdie was attacked in New York. I am really shocked… If he is attacked, anyone who is critical of Islam can be attacked."

Exactly. [source]

The African Slave Trade Wouldn’t Have Been Possible without African Elites

From Mises.org (Aug. 26, 2022):

There is a revival in the study of the transatlantic slave trade. Several studies pinpoint the slave trade as the genesis of defects in African societies. Continuing in the intellectual tradition of Walter Rodney, these later works posit that the transatlantic slave trade underdeveloped Africa. However, there is no verdict on the transatlantic slave trade’s effects because scholars are still divided over its consequences.

But despite their differences, opposing camps in the literature adopt a lopsided stance by fixating on the implications of the slave trade instead of discussing Africans’ agency. Researchers tend to explore how the slave trade altered African societies rather than showing that European traders became embedded in Africa’s complex sociopolitical networks.

Africans were building empires and chiefdoms long before interactions with Europeans, so when Europeans arrived in Africa, they quickly recognized that their fortunes were linked to the benevolence of African elites. Without complying with local regulations, European traders could not engage in business. Frequently, it is taught that Europeans constructed forts in Africa, but it is rarely noted that such forts could not have been built absent the African elites’ permission.

In the Galinhas empire, the Vai adage “Sunda ma gara, ke a sunda-fa,” which means “A stranger has no power but his landlords,” describes foreign traders’ relationships with African rulers. Africans were unwilling to tolerate squatters, so Europeans had to pay for their quarters.

In West Africa, for example, the Akwamu collected rents from European forts and employed a customs officer to oversee trade flow. This excerpt from a report compiled by a Danish official captures the authority of African rulers: “The King of Akwamu charges customs duties here on all goods which pass along the river and to ensure that these are paid, he has employed an official to take care of his interest.”

Not only did Africans extract financial benefits by charging Europeans for building forts on African soil, but they also retained property rights to the land. In some cases, Africans invited Europeans to their trading centers. Renting space to Europeans became so lucrative that on the Gold Coast, African elites permitted one European group per trading town. Further, the intense rivalry between Europeans elevated Africans’ position and allowed them to benefit from lower prices and a wider array of goods.

The transatlantic slave trade was a harrowing event, but it was a business nonetheless and can be analyzed using economic tools. The trade’s victims were disproportionately African, but this should not conceal the fact that for many Africans, the slave trade was a legitimate venture connected to preexisting trading arrangements. In his new book, Slave Traders by Invitation: West Africa’s Slave Coast in the Precolonial Era, Finn Fuglestad avers that the slave trade was sustained by Africans who beckoned Europeans to trade.

Africans even formalized trading relations with Europeans by participating in treaties that governed the purchase of slaves. Moreover, according to the fifteenth-century reports of Portuguese official Diego Gomez, some monarchs were so inclined to their pursue economic interests that they demonstrated an “overwhelming willingness” to offer natives as slaves. Collaborating with Africans was crucial to the success of the slave trade and European trading centers like Liverpool.

According to David Richardson, Africans were instrumental in establishing the networking and institutional arrangements that enabled British slaving to thrive. “Without African agency and support, British slaving could not have reached the scale that it did,” he writes.

Other than downplaying African agency, historians usually argue that the transatlantic trade undermined African economies. But this assumption is a failure to understand economic utility. If imported items satisfied Africans’ demands, then we cannot argue that imports made them worse off.

Africans had the upper hand in trade negotiations and often determined the quality and prices of the products they obtained from Europeans. Before deciding to import copper, for instance, Daniel Cunha explains that Africans would check “the quality of copper by evaluating its material properties of redness, luminosity, and sound, which served to embed it into ritual and mythological systems.”

Due to African traders’ high standards, goods were in fact frequently rejected without even an explanation. Neither is there compelling evidence to indicate that imports impeded local production. Notwithstanding imports, the iron industry flourished in Cameroon and Bassar as late as the nineteenth century. Pieter Emmer in a classic article completely shatters the myth that the transatlantic slave trade had a substantial impact on African economies:

The value of the European imports into West Africa could not have been more than 5 percent of the value of Africa’s internal production and that is assuming that the Africans pro­duced no more than their subsistence…. In sum, there is no evi­dence to show that between 1500 and 1800 either quan­ti­tatively or qualitat­ively the Atlantic trade in goods could have made much of a differ­ence to the economy of West Africa.

Indeed, the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade evokes feelings of hostility; however, emotionalism should not deter us from studying the topic with an objective eye. For centuries, slavery was considered legitimate commerce; hence, Africans, like their peers, sanctioned it and were willing to participate in the sale of their people to advance economic and political agendas. Whitewashing Africa’s involvement in the transatlantic trade only succeeds in infantilizing black people. [source]

In other words, the powers-that-be sanctioned the slave trade—“trade” is the opportune word here because the slaves weren’t stolen—they were traded.

At least 5 whistleblowers come forward against Biden family

From Breitbart.com (May 15, 2023):

The whistleblowers are in addition to the multitude of witnesses that Republican members of Congress have interviewed behind closed doors.

The whistleblowers range from an IRS agent to an Obama administration stenographer, encompassing alleged corruption in Ukraine and Mexico, along with the FBI and DOJ.

1) Chuck Grassley: Whistleblowers Say FBI Has Evidence Joe Biden Involved in Family Business Schemes

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who testified before the House’s new Select Subcommittee on Political Weaponization in 2023, said whistleblower disclosures indicate the FBI has evidence that Joe Biden is aware of the family business schemes, a statement that directly contradicts the president.

Grassley said the whistleblower disclosures “make clear the FBI has within its possession very significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter and James Biden.”

It is unclear why the FBI has not acted on the alleged evidence.

The FBI is in possession of Hunter Biden’s infamous “Laptop from Hell,” which has caused many to dub the Biden family the “Biden Crime Family.”

2) Former Hunter Biden Partner Tony Bobulinski Meeting with Senate Investigators to Turn Over Information

Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter, personally met with Joe and Hunter Biden in 2017 for an hour to discuss “the Bidens’ family business plans” for a Chinese energy deal. That deal appears to have never been finalized. The deal included ten percent “held by H for the big guy,” who Bobulinski said was Joe Biden.

“We discussed the Bidens’ history, the Bidens’ family business plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar at least at a high level,” Bobulinski told reporters in 2020 about the business meeting with Joe Biden.

Bobulinski has handed over intelligence about the deal to former FBI “point man” Timothy Thibault, who reportedly buried the information.

He also has conveyed emails, WhatsApp chats, agreements, documents, and other evidence to a Senate investigation committee.

3) Ex-White House Aide: FBI Ignored Joe Biden’s Role in Ukraine Business Dealings

Former Obama White House stenographer Mike McCormick alleged in 2023 that the FBI has ignored Joe Biden’s role in the family’s foreign influence-peddling “conspiracy” in Ukraine.

McCormick, who told the New York Post he has relevant information implicating Joe Biden in the family’s business affairs in Ukraine, submitted a tip to the FBI in February. McCormick said he never heard back from the FBI — the same law enforcement agency which allegedly “shut down” the investigation into Hunter’s abandoned “Laptop from Hell.”

According to McCormick, Biden’s former national security aide, Sullivan, told reporters on April 21, 2014, on Air Force Two as an anonymous “senior administration official” that the United States intended to help Ukraine’s natural gas industry.

Unknown to the public at the time, Hunter Biden was already a board member of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company. Hunter’s position on the board was not disclosed by the company until May 12, 2014, nearly a month after Sullivan’s statement to reporters.

4) IRS Whistleblower Says Biden Admin Interfering in Hunter Tax Fraud Probe

An IRS whistleblower alleged in 2023 that two Biden administration political appointees within the Justice Department are working to block charges against Hunter Biden for tax violations against recommendations.

In addition, the whistleblower alleges Weiss asked to be named as a special counsel in the probe to provide a degree of separation between the probe and Joe Biden. That request was apparently turned down.

According to the whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, his client wishes to speak with congressional investigators to corroborate his claims of political interference in the probe, which he has reported to the Justice Department’s top watchdog, according to a report.

5) Joe Biden Bribery Allegations Were Flagged to DOJ in 2018

Bribery allegations were brought to the Justice Department by a whistleblower in 2018 against President Joe Biden; but the allegations were ignored, a former federal prosecutor revealed last week. The second allegation of bribery against Joe Biden involves Hunter Biden’s board membership for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, the New York Post reported:

Bud Cummins, a former federal prosecutor, first reported the bribery allegations to then-New York US Attorney Geoff Berman on Oct. 4, 2018, in an email claiming he had evidence that Joe Biden had “exercised influence to protect” his son’s Ukrainian employer “in exchange for payments to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and Joe Biden.”

In the email obtained by John Solomon’s Just The News, Cummins said that Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko wanted to travel to the United States to meet Berman, and could produce two “John Doe” witnesses to corroborate his claims about the Bidens.

Despite Cummins claims, Berman did not respond. [source]

It's like Biden is a mob boss.

Dream-shaping tech from MIT channels suggestions into your dreams

From Live Science.com (Sept. 25, 2020):

MIT scientists have figured out how to manipulate your dreams by combining an app with a sleep-tracking device called Dormio. In their new study, the researchers were able to insert certain topics into a person's dreams, with some pretty bizarre outcomes.

To do so, the researchers at MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces — a group that develops wearable systems and interfaces to enhance cognitive skills — used a technique called targeted dream incubation (TDI).

Prior studies have shown that during a rare dream state known lucid dreaming, in which a sleeper is aware that a dream is taking place, dreamers can use that awareness to consciously shape aspects of their dreams. TDI takes advantage of an early sleep stage, known as hypnagogia, to achieve a similar result (though not quite "controlling" dreams outright), researchers told Live Science.

During hypnagogia — a semi-lucid dream state that occurs during the onset of sleep — TDI introduced "targeted information" to a sleeper, "enabling direct incorporation of this information into dream content," the scientists wrote in a new study, published in the August issue of the journal Consciousness and Cognition. They conducted dream experiments by performing "serial awakenings" during daytime napping sessions in 25 participants.

Subjects first recorded audio prompts in an app, such as, "remember to think of a tree" and "remember to observe your thoughts," and then prepared for sleep, according to the study.

A hand-worn sleep tracker monitored the subject's heart rate, electrical changes on the skin surface, and the amount their fingers were bent or relaxed, to detect when a sleeper entered hypnagogia and was therefore "open to influence from outside audio cues," said lead study author Adam Haar Horowitz, a doctoral candidate in MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group. The Dormio sleep tracker communicated with the app, "which delivers audio at the correct times, and records audio of dream reports" when the subject is awake, Haar Horowitz told Live Science in an email.

Just as a subject drifted off to sleep and entered hypnagogia, Dormio would coordinate with the app to wake them up with the pre-recorded prompts. This cycle repeated several times, with the sleeper also recording a brief "dream journal" entry into the app when they were awakened.

"Simply put, people tell us whether the prompts appear in their dream," Haar Horowitz said. "Often, they are transformed — a 'tree' prompt becomes a tree-shaped car — but direct incorporation is easily identified."

The scientists found that 67% of the subjects' dream reports mentioned dreams that incorporated a tree. "I was following the roots with someone and the roots were transporting me to different locations," one participant recalled. Another mentioned "a tree from my childhood, from my backyard. It never asked for anything." The same subject, in later awakenings, described "trees splitting into infinite pieces" and "a shaman, sitting under the tree with me, he tells me to go to South America."

"Dream reports increased in bizarreness and immersion with each awakening," but the scientists did not develop a universal rating system for the bizarreness of the dreams, the study authors reported. [read more]

Sci-fi to sci-fact. The benefits and drawbacks of the tech from Grok:

MIT's TDI/Dormio tech offers exciting opportunities for creativity boosts, therapy, and self-understanding by bridging waking intention with dreaming. However, it comes with ethical pitfalls around autonomy, privacy, and unintended psychological effects. As dream engineering advances, balancing benefits with safeguards (as the MIT team has discussed in their ethics work) will be crucial. More independent, long-term studies are needed before widespread adoption.

IED near Alabama reservoir detonated after officials warn of 'unprecedented' critical infrastructure threat

From Fox News.com (May 15):

A grenade-type improvised explosive device was discovered and detonated in an Alabama reservoir that serves as the sole drinking water source for roughly 350,000 people, officials said Thursday.

Divers surveying the Converse Reservoir Dam for routine maintenance discovered the bomb, which the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System (MAWSS) described as a "grenade-type IED," and immediately alerted the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO), according to authorities.

The device was secured and detonated by a multi-agency team of operators including personnel from the FBI Bomb Squad, Mobile Police Department Explosive Ordnance Detail, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's Bomb Squad, MCSO and the Daphne Search and Rescue Team, according to MAWSS.

MAWSS Director Bud McCrory called the IED discovery "an unprecedented threat" to the area's drinking water, adding "we are fortunate that this device was discovered before it could cause serious damage to our water supply or harm to individuals."

The Converse Reservoir is the sole source of drinking water for the Mobile area's 350,000 residents, according to MAWSS.

"We are grateful for the professionalism and competency of our law enforcement partners – as well as the quick thinking of our contractors and divers – in identifying this device and safely destroying it," McCrory said.

MAWSS said it is working with law enforcement agencies to investigate how the bomb got in the reservoir and how long it had been there. The agency will also work with law enforcement to increase security around the dam.

The Converse Reservoir and its dam are federally designated critical infrastructure. The dam is classified as a high hazard potential, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The high hazard designation means a structural failure would "probably cause loss of human life," according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Fox News Digital contacted MAWSS, MCSO and the FBI for additional comment. [source]

Glad the divers found the IED in time. 

Treasury Sanctions Iran Shipping, Banking Networks

From Newsmax.com (May 19):

The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Tuesday targeting businesses, vessels, and financial networks accused of helping Iran move billions of dollars through oil sales, foreign currency exchanges and covert shipping operations despite existing U.S. sanctions.

The action targets more than 50 companies, individuals and vessels that Treasury said helped Iran access the international financial system and move money tied to oil, petrochemical and other commercial transactions.

"Iran's shadow banking system facilitates the illicit transfer of funding for terrorist purposes," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

"As Treasury systematically dismantles Tehran's shadow banking system and shadow fleet under Economic Fury, financial institutions must be alert to how the regime manipulates the international financial system to wreak havoc," he added.

Treasury said Iranian exchange houses and front companies use networks across multiple countries to process foreign currency transactions, move money for sanctioned Iranian banks and disguise the origin of Iranian oil and petrochemical exports.

Treasury accused some companies of managing cross-border money laundering operations, while others allegedly arranged payments tied to Iran’s petroleum, metals, manufacturing and automobile industries.

Treasury also targeted vessels accused of transporting Iranian oil, liquefied petroleum gas, petrochemicals and fuel products through shipping networks operating under multiple national flags.

The sanctions campaign aims to reduce revenue available to Iran’s government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"Treasury is aggressively advancing Economic Fury and has disrupted billions in projected oil revenue, taken actions that have led to the freezing of nearly half a billion dollars in regime-linked cryptocurrency, and cracked down on Tehran's shadow banking networks," the department said.

The Trump administration warned foreign companies and financial institutions that they could also face penalties if they help facilitate Iranian commerce or sanctions evasion.

The latest action follows other recent Treasury enforcement efforts tied to Iran sanctions.

One case announced Monday involved a settlement with a company tied to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani after Treasury accused it of arranging liquefied petroleum gas imports that allegedly originated in Iran.

Treasury said the imports were routed through a Dubai-based supplier claiming the gas came from Oman and Iraq, but investigators concluded warning signs should have alerted the company to the fuel’s Iranian origin.

The company agreed to pay $275 million and adopt additional compliance measures to settle potential sanctions violations. [source]

Good! It would be better if the IRGC's bank accounts were frozen, but a still pretty good tactics to put pressure on them.

5 Christian evangelists traveling to plant new church thrown off boat and drowned in Uganda

From Christian Post.com (Sept. 9, 2022):

NAIROBI, Kenya — Muslim extremists killed five Christian workers by throwing them off a boat into central Uganda’s Lake Kyoga, sources said.

The evangelists from End Time Word Ministry church were traveling on Aug. 10 from Nakasongola District to Apac District on a commercial transport boat with plans to plant a church in the Aduku area, a Christian survivor of the attack told Morning Star News.

The survivor, Amos Kyakulaga, a deacon at a church in Namutumba who was acting as a guide, said the five evangelists began proclaiming Christ to a group of 10 Muslims in Islamic attire aboard the boat.

“On our way, Tonny Ankunda started preaching to the people on the boat, which resulted in a huge argument between Muslims and the missionaries concerning the Sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Kyakulaga told Morning Star News.

He said one of the Muslims, identified only as Bashir, began threatening the Christians, saying, “If you continue insisting that Jesus is the Son of God, then Allah will kill all of you.”

Citing Scripture, the evangelists continued affirming the sonship of Christ and, according to Kyakulaga, Bashir told them, “We are giving you one last minute to stop your blasphemy and to convert by confessing the shahada (Islamic creed), or else your lives are at risk.”

When the five evangelists refused to renounce Christ, the Muslims seized them and pushed them off the boat one by one, Kyakulaga said. While the lake is only 4 to 5.7 meters deep, they were 200 meters from shore, and all five Christians drowned.

The 10 Muslims aboard were in agreement that the Christians should be killed, and neither they nor the boat’s pilot did anything to intervene, Kyakulaga said.

The Muslims asked him if he was one of the missionaries, sparing him when he said he was not part of the church-planting team, he said. When the boat docked, he took a motorcycle to the church in Aduku that had invited them, where an elder obtained help from local officials and a fishing group to find and remove the bodies from the lake.

Morning Star News has obtained photos of the bodies of the five victims: Ankunda, 44; Peter Agaba, 28; Juliet Ashaba, 39; Johnson Karungi, 27; and Julius Lweere, 52.

Police have contacted officials in Nakasongola District and leaders of the sending church of the Christians, a church source in Aduku said.

Along with Bashir, two other suspects were identified as Jamil Budde and Juma of Nakasongola.

The attack was the latest of many instances of persecution of Christians in Uganda that Morning Star News has documented.

Uganda’s constitution and other laws provide for religious freedom, including the right to propagate one’s faith and convert from one faith to another. Muslims make up no more than 12% of Uganda’s population, with high concentrations in eastern areas of the country. [source]

Pure evil.