International Day to Combat Islamophobia

United Nations designated March as “International Day to Combat Islamophobia"  

On March 15, 2019, an armed Australian man, Brenton Tarrant, entered two mosques in New Zealand and opened fire on their Muslim worshippers; 51 were killed and 40 injured.

Well...What about the fatal 'mostly peaceful' Muslim attacks on Christian churches:

• Sri Lanka (Apr. 21, 2018): Easter Sunday, Muslim terrorists bombed three churches and three hotels; 359 people were killed and more than 500 injured.
• Nigeria (Apr. 20, 2014): Easter Sunday, Islamic terrorists torched a packed church; 150 were killed.
• Pakistan (Mar. 27, 2016): Following Easter Sunday church services, Islamic terrorists bombed a park where Christians had congregated; more than 70 Christians — mostly women and children — were killed. “There was human flesh on the walls of our house,” recalled a witness.
• Iraq (Oct. 31, 2011): Islamic terrorists stormed a church in Baghdad during worship and opened fire indiscriminately before detonating their suicide vests. Nearly 60 Christians — including women, children, and even babies — were killed (graphic pictures of aftermath here).
• Nigeria (Apr. 8, 2012): Easter Sunday, explosives planted by Muslims detonated near two packed churches; more than 50 were killed and unknown numbers injured.
• Nigeria (June 5, 2022): Pentecost Sunday, Muslims attack and open fire on a packed church; more than 50 killed, dozens injured.
• Egypt (Apr. 9, 2017): Palm Sunday, Muslims bombed two packed churches; at least 45 were killed, more than 100 injured.
• Nigeria (Dec. 25, 2011): During Christmas Day services, Muslim terrorists shot up and bombed three churches; 37 were killed and nearly 57 injured.
• Egypt (Dec. 11, 2016): An Islamic suicide bombing of two churches left 29 people killed and 47 injured (graphic images of aftermath  here).
• Nigeria: (Apr. 20, 2012): Muslims slaughtered 20 Christians inside their church during Sunday worship.
• Democratic Republic of Congo (Jan. 15, 2023): Muslims bombed a church during a Sunday baptismal ceremony. At least 14 Christians were blown to pieces — the Islamic State, which claimed the attack, said 20 — and 63 were seriously wounded.
• Indonesia (May 13, 2018): Muslims bombed three churches; 13 were killed and dozens injured.
• Egypt (Jan. 1, 2011): Muslim terrorists bombed an Alexandrian church during New Year’s Eve mass; at least 21 Christians were killed. According to eyewitnesses, “body parts were strewn all over the street outside” and “were brought inside the church after some Muslims started stepping on them and chanting Jihadi chants,” including “Allahu Akbar!”
• Philippines (Jan. 27, 2019): Muslim terrorists bombed a cathedral; at least 20 were killed, and more than 100 injured.
• Indonesia (Dec. 24, 2000): During Christmas Eve services, Muslim terrorists bombed several churches; 18 were killed and over 100 injured.
• Pakistan (Mar. 15, 2015): Muslim suicide bombers killed at least 14 Christians in attacks on two churches.
• Germany (Dec. 19, 2016): Near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, a Muslim man drove a truck into a Christmas market; 13 were killed and 55 injured.
• Egypt (Dec. 29, 2017): Muslim gunmen shot up a church in Cairo; nine were killed.
• Egypt (Jan. 6, 2010): Following Christmas Eve mass (according to the Orthodox calendar), Muslims shot six Christians dead as they exited their church.
• Russia (Feb. 18, 2018): A Muslim man carrying a knife and a double-barreled shotgun entered a church and opened fire; five people — all women — were killed, and at least five injured.
• France (July 26, 2016): Muslims entered a church and slit the throat of the officiating priest, 84-year-old Fr. Jacques Hamel, and took four nuns hostage until French authorities shot the terrorists dead.

"The above list is hardly comprehensive. In Nigeria alone, where one Christian is slaughtered every two hours, Muslims have destroyed or torched some 20,000 churches and Christian schools. How many undocumented souls perished in those largely unreported terror attacks?

Nor does the above list of fatal Muslim attacks on churches include any of the many that were botched, for example, an attack on an Indonesian church during Palm Sunday service (2021), where only the suicide bombers — a Muslim man and his pregnant wife — died.

At any rate, based on the above list, Muslims have massacred well over 1,000 Christians who were otherwise peacefully worshipping in their churches."

From Raymond Ibraham: ‘Combat Islamophobia Day’ Exposes UN’s Rank Hypocrisy - Coptic Solidarity

What about a Combat Christianphobia day?

Top 50 places for Christian persecution | World Watch List | Open Doors US

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

. L. Mencken,

City Journal’s Stu Smith wrote an excellent piece about the recently updated DSA platform. It’s as extreme as one would suspect of a group that still believes that true socialism has yet to be tried.

Smith wrote that its radicalism “gives a glimpse into how the equivalent of the DSA’s board of directors—some of whom have appeared to moderate—actually think about politics.”

They explicitly want to overthrow the Constitution to create what they call “real democracy.”

This isn’t the old “free and fair regular elections” democracy that most Americans have grown fond of, it’s more of the “two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner” type democracy that the Founders fretted about.

To summarize, the platform called for replacement of “the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” the abolition of prisons, the Department of War, the Electoral College, and amnesty for all illegal aliens.

The Democratic Socialists of America Just Adopted a Radical New Platform

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

Jonathan Swift

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

H. G. Wells

In light of the recent wave of Democratic Socialists, the Green Movement, and Islamization in the United States, (Red Pill, Green Pill, Black Pill), It is worth examining reason, rational thought, and education. It appears that Critical Thought is lost and has been replaced by Critical Theory. The essence of critical theory is to create victims and perpetrators.

e.g. 

Critical disability theory  

Critical legal studies

Immigration studies

Critical finance studies

Critical management studies

Critical international relations theory

Critical race theory

Critical pedagogy

Critical consciousness

Critical university studies

Critical psychology

Critical criminology

Critical animal studies

Critical social work

Critical ethnography

Critical data studies

Critical environmental justice

"Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion."

Jonathan Swift

I pledge allegiance

"should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute."

1892 Version "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

1923 Version "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

1954 Version "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

...the pledge was part of a push for “Americanization.” Bellamy was one of many Protestant Americans of northern European heritage who believed that new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, many of them Catholic, were harmful to the “American” way of life, and that they needed to assimilate.

Why Eisenhower Added 'Under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance | HISTORY

As nations become corrupt and vicious

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Benjamin Franklin

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

Augustine of Hippo

I made a comment to someone after reading how Christianity saved civilization.  I had just finished reading the book (How Christianity Saved Civilization... And Must Do So Again: Mike Aquilina, James L. Papandrea). The immediate response was, in a sarcastic, dismissive tone, "how many people died in the Crusades?".

That started a journey into the Crusades, Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and history.  

Nothing is as it seems.

For those that know me, I don't take things at face value.  Take any news story and even if I agree based on my knowledge, I examine it closely. I look at different points of view.  We, as a whole, have lost the ability to execute critical thinking. Think critically, question assumptions and beliefs,take away the propaganda, look for the truth, and maybe wipe away the education of a Second Grader (or worse) and start on the path to wisdom.

In case you want to know - Estimated to be 1 to 1.5 million casualties and deaths.  Of course, it is way more complicated.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Mark Twain

When a man stops believing in God

`Every day watching or reading the news, especially during this political season...My brain keeps repeating:

When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.

GK Chesterton

More here: When Man Ceases to Worship God

Hi!

Quotefish was retired & bobbing around (for awhile).  Now that I have the time available and I'm back on land. Tied up at the dock, Maybe, I can post now and again.  

We'll see....

Endless lockdown

8 weeks in lockdown.  Some sanity from Illinois Judge McHaney’s recent ruling:

Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred: I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy. Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family-owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.

A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will. We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will. If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will. Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.
These are just a few of examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense.

The defendant in this case orders you to stay home and pronounces that, if you leave the state, you are putting people in danger, but his family members traveled to Florida and Wisconsin because he deems such travel essential. One initial rationale why the rules don’t apply to him is that his family farm had animals that needed [to be] fed. Try selling that argument to farmers who have had to slaughter their herds because of disruption in the supply chain.
When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees. Illinois citizens are not being governed, they are being ruled. The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled. The last time a monarch tried to rule Americans, a shot was fired that was heard around the world. That day led to the birth of a nation consensually governed based upon a document which ensures that on this day in this, [or] any American courtroom tyrannical despotism will always lose and liberty, freedom and the Constitution will always win.

The eyes of all future generations are upon you

Greta Thunberg

From Jim Rickards:

Climate Change Alarmists Show Real Agenda

Before we turn to this article, let’s state a few things for the record. Climate change is a real phenomenon. I lived for 10 years on Long Island Sound. It has a rocky coast because it used to be a glacier, frozen solid from Orient Point to New York City. It melted. That’s climate change. The problem is that this happened 20,000 years ago and took thousands of years to play out. And that’s the point. Climate change is real, but it’s slow, complex and unpredictable. What about today? Here are some facts: CO2 levels are rising, but there’s no evidence that CO2 causes warming. The evidence points the other way, that warming causes CO2 to be released from permafrost and the oceans. Sea levels are rising, but the pace is about seven inches in 100 years. That minimal rise will not inundate the New York subways or drown island nations. The rise that is occurring will likely be reversed due to feedback loops long before any seven-inch increase. By the way, sea levels have risen 400 feet since the last ice age and people adapted just fine. Remember Al Gore’s polar bear extinction scare? He hopes you don’t because the evidence is that polar bear populations are thriving. Slight actual global warming stopped in the late 1990s. (Recent claims of “record temperatures” are rounded from hundredths of degrees and are within the margin of error; satellite imaging tells a cooling story in contrast to land-based thermometers placed by ideological “scientists” on the U.N. payroll.) If that’s the case, what are the climate alarmists up to? Their hidden agenda is given away by the article. Propagandist Greta Thunberg writes, “The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice and of political will. Colonial, racist and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all.” There you have it. So-called “climate change” is really about a progressive, socialist ideology using climate as a way to gain international support for the agenda. Unfortunately, investors cannot simply ignore this con job, because the activists are coming after energy companies, transportation companies and the entire free-market system. Climate activists may be frauds, but their agenda threatens your portfolio to the core. It’s time to push back, call them out and, above all, diversify.

Enough is Enough

CBS Pittsburgh

The network news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelations

Al Gore outsold by Roy Spencer

Inconvenient Deception

1972 Eclipse of the sun

Since the 2017 eclipse is such a big deal, let’s look back shall we?

There is no science in this world like physics. Nothing comes close to the precision with which physics enables you to understand the world around you. It's the laws of physics that allow us to say exactly what time the sun is going to rise. What time the eclipse is going to begin. What time the eclipse is going to end.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Trump Bingo

Counsels of an old and affectionate friend

“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion…

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.”

George Washington

Politicians who know nothing of how hard it is to be an entrepreneur

From SovereignMan.com

May 23, 2017

Santiago, Chile
This morning I read a stinging open letter written by a small business owner in the Land of the Free named Don Chernoff.
Chernoff imports and sells luggage, and he pulled no punches in voicing his disgust for the phony support and failed policies that constantly make his life more difficult.
I’ve edited his letter for length below; the full version is available here.
----
You all love to talk about how much you support small business; the reality is the opposite. The economy is changing rapidly and is vastly different than just a few years ago. Many of the factory jobs in this country have gone and will not return.
Computer technology and automation will soon eliminate thousands more jobs (think truck drivers, taxi drivers, office workers, etc…).
Because there will be fewer middle-class jobs, many people who never considered working for themselves will be forced to become sole proprietors or open a small business. It is therefore critically important that you make it easier for these people to do so.
Right now instead of creating incentives for people to start their own small business, you create nothing but hurdles, allow me to give some examples.
Excessive health care costs

I work for myself and have to pay my own medical expenses. Before the “affordable care act” I was paying about $200 per month for a high deductible policy. It was far from perfect but it got so much worse under the “Affordable” care act.
I now pay over $400 a month, my deductible went from $5,000 to over $6,000 and my out of pocket costs for care have skyrocketed.
At this rate, I will go broke soon, and I am healthier than average. I don’t know how any normal working family or small businessman can possibly afford these rates without going bankrupt.
Income Tax Filing

I have to spend dozens of hours and thousands of dollars for a tax accountant each spring to prepare my taxes because I cannot possibly understand how to do it myself, and I have a master’s degree in engineering.
I also have to remember to pay quarterly estimates, even if my income in not predictable or fluctuates (which it does for most small businesses) or else I get dinged with penalties.
This is a time and cost burden that makes it very hard to run a small business. . . The current tax code is an abomination and should be scrapped.
Excessive import duties
There is a lot of talk lately about a “border adjustment tax” (BAT), a fancy name for an import duty on imported products. I design luggage and I need to contract out the manufacturing to companies that specialize in making luggage. All of these factories just happen to be in Asian countries.
Because of this I am charged almost 18% on my cost of goods for all my imported luggage. Last year these fees came to over $100,000.
The only reason I can see for these fees is government greed.
There is no luggage manufacturing industry in the USA that is being protected. This is another huge burden that makes it difficult to survive in the ultra-competitive luggage business.
Congress and President Obama had a chance remove this burden last summer, and they did what they do best: nothing.
If you do impose a border adjustment tax, will it be on top of the 18% I’m already paying? If so you will put me out of business.
Excessive customs inspection fees for imported products
My company designs luggage that is made in Asia and imported by ship to the USA. It is sold at all Men’s Wearhouse stores and Jos A Bank stores.
A recent shipment was delayed for almost 2 weeks at the port of Los Angeles for extra customs inspections.
The container was first x-rayed, and since that apparently wasn’t good enough, it was then opened and inspected by hand.
There was nothing in the container but the same luggage I’ve been importing for 15 years. I was then charged over $2,000 for this “privilege,” in addition to the 18% import duty I already pay.
This is not the first time I’ve had to pay for extra inspections that were unnecessary.
I understand the need for security but I’m a known importer of the same products for almost 15 years, and this is a terrible cost burden for my small company.
Excessive Social Security burden
Many years ago when I quit a perfectly good job to start my own small business, I was shocked to learn that I had to pay both my share and what had been my employer’s share of Social Security.
If you wanted to create the perfect disincentive to discourage people from taking the leap to start a small business or become self-employed, it would have been difficult to invent a better one.
Capital Gains taxes
So you’ve busted your butt for 20 or 30 years running a small business or sole proprietorship, now you’d like to retire and enjoy life.
Between state, federal and local taxes you’ve probably paid 50% or more of your income in taxes, but that’s not enough for politicians.
If you’ve been lucky enough to have created a business you can sell, now you’ll get to enjoy paying another tax on the capital gain from the sale.
It’s just another penalty imposed on hard-working folks by politicians who don’t think we are paying “our fair share.”
The word “entrepreneur” is endlessly tossed around by politicians who know nothing of how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. You all love to say you encourage entrepreneurship, but the reality is you stand in the way.
Most small businesses either fail or stay small because it is really hard to grow a business, and because of all the burdens you put on us.
Quit your job and try it yourself if you don’t believe me.

Until tomorrow,

Simon Black

Founder, SovereignMan.com

Road Map on How to Think

Ritholtz’s post on the Sherlock Holmes approach to thinking was applied to business but, it applies to almost everything. See the web link for the graphic.

1. Know Human Nature
2. Learning Never Stops
3. Reason Backward
4. Cultivate Multidisciplinary Thinking
5. Don’t Make the World Fit Your Tools

http://ritholtz.com/2017/04/five-big-ideas-sherlock-holmes/

Perfect! Simpsons & SJW

Well, why are you talking to them? They’re nuts…

From an interview with Kim Iskyan, Publisher, Stansberry Churchouse Research

Me: The thing is, a lot of what you read in the media goes through a sort of prism. How do you learn how to sort through it?

Jim Rogers: I'm trying to teach my children – they're still very young – to get information from five or six different sources, preferably contrasting sources, left-wing, right-wing, call them what you will, from different countries and then you figure out what's really happening. If you read the Communists and the Fascists and the Nazis and the Capitalists or the religious, if you read them all, you get all sorts of different views but it'll help you figure out what really happened.

Sometimes, I get interviewed by different kinds of people. A few will say, "Well, why are you talking to them? They're nuts, they're crooks, they're blah, blah," whatever they have to be. And I try to say, "No, no, first of all, the one problem in the world right now is we don't talk to each other. We should be talking to everybody, no matter what you think of them. And second, that's how you get your message out. If you talk to them, they have to listen to you no matter how nuts they are. And also, you can help possibly change the world."
So talk to everybody, read everybody. The weirder the better.