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Monday, November 05, 2007
From The Shallow End Of The Time Toilet
Your Curmudgeon, who must, sadly, rent cranium space from that Fran person, accumulated a number of interesting citations last week while unable to write about them. Herewith, a survey.
1. From Jack Lacton's Ker-plunk! blog:
"an increasing trend of argument amongst educated and academic sources [is] that liberal democracy is unsuited to deal with the demands of global warming and social response, and that other systems of governance should be handed power to deal with this!"
You don't need to be terribly swift to grasp the implications of that statement. Many on the Right have already said that the "global warming / climate change" hysteria is entirely artificial, designed specifically for the pursuit of an unprecedented degree of coercive control over individuals and national economies. It's refreshing to see someone on the Left side of the spectrum admit it as plainly as this.
2. From those lovable guys at Daily Kos:
"While it appears from more than one point of view that the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are situations from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves, from the mountains of Pakistan comes a very simple solution: convert to Islam.Before we reject this out of hand, lets seriously consider it for a moment: Osama Bin Laden promised the wars would be over if Americans convert to Islam.
This may sound like a lot to ask from the most religious country in the industrialized world. But of all the Christians in America today who profess to be religious, how many of us are seriously devout?
How many of us are really just religious lightweights, happy to simply go to church every Sunday, attend church socials, knock back a drink or two every Christmas and not worry ourselves about the deeper implications of our faith?
Given the way most of us pay any real attention to the tenets of our faith, life really wouldn’t be that different if we were to exchange one faith for another. The prayers would be different, but we would recite them just as mindlessly as we do today. The sermons would in all likelihood be exactly the same, and we’d continue to snore through them.
Sure, there are a few people here and there who take religion seriously, but they are in such a small minority that their protests can be easily ignored.
All in all, converting to Islam would be a small price to pay for an end to the killing and maiming of our sons and daughters, not to mention the billions of dollars we could put to better use than fighting this perpetual war.
So let’s do away with our religious pretences, adopt Islam as our new faith, add a few extra holidays to our calendar, and get down to the real business at hand: pumping oil."
It's just barely possible, given where this appeared, that it was meant tongue-in-cheek. But given the Kossacks' demonstrated hostility toward American Christians, your Curmudgeon inclines toward the opposite view. Those folks simply have too long a record of aligning themselves with anyone who means this country harm -- and Islam, the sole major religion that still preaches theocracy and works to bring it about, means this country more harm than mere words can capture.
Got any homosexuals over there, Kossacks? Any Jews? Any women who like to work or drive? Any women who want abortions?
3. A Report From Hibernia Girl:
There was a debate hosted by Dublin University's Philosophical Society yesterday evening (missed it, unfortunately):Can Islam and western liberal societies co-exist?Countries like France have banned traditional Muslim garb in schools, tension grows between the secularists and the Islamists in Turkey and calls for Jihad and destruction of the western ideals that we cherish ring louder. Anjem Choudary the man who has called for the assassination of the pope and has called Ireland a legitimate target for terrorist attack will make his case for incompatibility. Last time he visited the Phil Willie O’Dea the Minister for Defence threatened to have him arrested and deported. He’ll be backed up by a cadre of his fellow Jihad supporters including Omar Bakri Muhammed who has been banned from Britain for life for glorifying terror, terrorism experts have said that every al-Qaeda operative arrested in Europe has come into contact with him at one time or another. They’ll be opposed by Sheikh Hussein Halawa Imam of the Islamic Cultural Centre, Shaheed Satardien of the supreme muslin council of Ireland, Dr. Ali al-Saleh of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland, Conor Lenihan Minister for integration and controversial Islamic British Rapper Abdul Karim-Talib. [link]
What a motley sounding crew!
Here's some snippets from a report on the debate in The Irish Examiner:
...Anjem Choudary, a British-born self-styled cleric who has been investigated numerous times by the British police for his extremist pronouncements, repeated his assertion to a gathering in Trinity College, Dublin, last night that followers of Islam could not accept secular authority.Mr Choudary said democratic, liberal states were plagued by rape, paedophilia, pornography, bestiality, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide. “When you push the boundaries of freedom and liberalism, that is the result. That is how people practice their freedom. We do not want that imported into our community.”
Well, we do not want your 'values' imported into OUR community, Mr. Choudary -- thank you very much!
Lebanon-based Mr Mohammed, who lost his asylum status in Britain after saying the British people brought the London bombings on themselves, said Islam was a complete way of life that could not yield to any other way. “Islam is a complete system of living, the Sharia system. Islam has political beliefs — it cannot co-exist with another political belief.”He added: “There will be strife. It could be political, it could be ideological, it could be military struggle.” [link]
At least some of the Muslim students at the uni had the sense to distance themselves from these anti-Westerners -- and Dr Ali Al-Saleh even spoke some truth pointing out that: [H]e and the opposing speakers were able to speak openly in a way which would be denied them throughout much of their spiritual homeland.
At least Choudary and Mohammed are candid about their intentions toward the rest of us.
There are twenty-two Islamic states in the world. In most of those states, shari'a really is the law of the land. If living under shari'a is so important to Choudary, Mohammed, and their admirers, why are they in the British Isles? Could it be that Islamic governance produces impoverished hellholes ruled by constipated octogenarian clerics, where only political insiders have a life worth living or any freedom of action?
4. Naughty Of You Jews To Fight Back!
Israeli energy sanctions against the Hamas-run Gaza Strip punish an entire population and are unacceptable, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said.The EU also voiced concern after Israel began reducing petrol and diesel supplies in response to militant rocket attacks on its territory.
Hamas seized control of the Strip in June from its Palestinian rivals Fatah.
Israel's attorney-general is seeking a halt to electricity cuts pending an assessment of their likely impact.
Gaza relies on Israel for almost all its fuel and petrol, and more than half of its electricity.
Israel says fuel cuts of up to 15% are a non-violent way of increasing pressure on Hamas.
It insists there will be enough power for hospitals and that supplies will continue to Gaza's sole power station.
In a statement read out by a spokesperson, Mr Ban urged Palestinian militants to end indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, which he condemned.
But he also stated his belief that the "punitive measures taken by Israel... harm the well-being of the entire population of the Gaza Strip".
The cuts would, he said, "deepen the humanitarian distress" of Gaza's 1.4m residents.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU commissioner for external relations, said on a visit to Jerusalem she was "very concerned" about the Israeli move though she understood Israel's "distress" over rocket attacks.
"I think collective punishment is never a solution," she said.
The Palestinians literally raised HAMAS to power. They put money and weapons in its hands. They show no sign of regret for having done so. They fiercely resist all suggestions that they should root out the terrorists and murderers among them if they want to be accepted among civilized peoples. Firing rockets into Israeli towns; trying to sneak suicide bombers into Israel; kidnapping Israeli soldiers...it's all "legitimate resistance to occupation." But let the Israelis do the least thing to impede the murderers and kidnappers, or to give less bloody-minded Palestinians an incentive to eject them, and suddenly we're talking about "collective punishment:" always, always, ALWAYS WRONG!
But isn't HAMAS's campaign against Israel "collective punishment" for the 1948 and 1967 wars that established the status quo? Worse, most of those Israelis are long dead!
Such lovely people.
Keith at A Western Heart commented thus:
In response to hundreds of rocket attacks against civilian targets, Israel reduces fuel supplies by 15% and there's an immediate wave of condemnation!Would ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH show such enormous restraint? Collective punishment is apparently unacceptable -- unless of course it's those evil Jews who are being collectively punished.
Personally, I'd bring collective punishment to a whole new level if a child of mine were to be harmed by these primitive bastards...and there wouldn't be a Palestinian left alive.
Well said.
5. An Observation.
The price of gasoline in your Curmudgeon's area has hovered at about $3.00 per gallon for most of the year. People complain strenuously about it, but of course, nothing is done. In point of fact, nothing could be done: the typical gas retailer is making about $0.03 on each gallon he sells. He has to pay the wholesalers and the tax authorities, and cover all the overheads of running a gas station, so there's no slack there. That's why most gas stations now have convenience stores as adjuncts; there's more profit potential there.
But is gasoline really more costly than ever before?
In 1964 -- you'll see in a moment why your Curmudgeon picked that year -- gasoline in New York Metro averaged about $0.30 per gallon. Many other things were also cheaper then in dollar terms, of course. For example, a house comparable to the one your Curmudgeon owns, which recently appraised for $400,000, on which he pays $10,000 annually in property taxes, would have cost about $30,000, and would have incurred property taxes of about $450 per year. But of course, many things are available today that were unknown or unavailable then, so direct comparisons between 1964's "standard of living" and that of 2007 are inherently elusive.
But one thing was available then that's also available now. It's a commodity that, in 1964, was about to become progressively less available, by government decree. It was the silver dime.
The 1964 silver dime weighed 0.1 ounce. In 1964, three of them would buy a gallon of gas anywhere in New York. What would they buy today?
Well, according to Kitco, which tracks the prices of precious metals, silver closed on Friday at $14.49 per ounce. Three silver dimes == 0.3 ounces == $4.35 worth of silver. That would buy 1.45 gallons of 2007 gasoline: 45% more than it did in 1964.
Clearly, the real price of gasoline has gone down, not up. The apparent increase in its price is really the deterioration of the dollar, which has been deliberately inflated to pay for the ever-expanding appetite of government.
In 1964, the Treasury was directed to reduce the silver content of a dime from 90% to 40%. In 1969, the Treasury abandoned silver as a coinage metal altogether, and went over to the nickel-copper "sandwich" coins that have prevailed since then; the deliberate inflation of the dollar had made silver too expensive to be used in our fractional denominations. In August of 1971, the Treasury ceased all "redemption" of dollars in gold or silver.
The function of gold and silver as money metals had always been the restraint of inflation. But governments love inflation; it allows them to buy things "on the cheap" with newly created "money," silently siphoning purchasing power from the savings and capital stocks of private persons and organizations. So when the opportunity arises to sever the link between the currency unit and the money metals, a government will always take it.
And from that we get $400,000 "middle-class" houses and $3.00 per gallon gasoline.
Your uncertainty over the adequacy of your retirement savings, Gentle Reader, isn't because you want to live like a Babylonian monarch; it's because you can sense the vitality being drained out of your dollars, just by watching the price movements of ordinary commodities. Gas, ground beef, and garden gnomes don't cost an order of magnitude more than they did in 1964 because they're an order of magnitude harder to make or vend today. But you knew that already, didn't you?
Comments
it’s because you can sense the vitality being drained out of your dollars, just by watching the price movements of ordinary commodities.
Francis, excellent post on a lot of different points. Your last comment here is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. And posted on. The driving down of the economy is also going to be assisted by the panic merchants in the community who are ready to ‘have things taken’ from them, as Hillary Clinton puts it, for the greater good of saving the planet.
If the whole thing implodes and our leaders sign up to that idiotic Kyoto Protocol, we may be looking back at the present remembering at least the days when we could eat a full cooked meal at night.Posted by Aurora on 11/06/2007 at 08:40 AMActually, silver isn’t a good comparison. The price of silver is determined by a number of factors, including it’s use as an industrial chemical. Gold is a much better, more stable inflation hedge, at least in the long run. Both metals also peridoically undergo fairly large deviations from the inflation norm (as gold is right now, but silver is not).
I agree that gas is still relatively cheaply priced, but the case you make here is more coincidental than illuminating.
Posted by on 11/06/2007 at 05:56 PM
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