Islam and terror

I've returned from Scotland, with a pile to do at work and my home ADSL modem has packed up, and my girlfriend's laptop has as well, so I am restricted to dialup at home on my laptop.

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I will write later about Scotland, Britain and many other things on my mind (such as the UK's mindless obsession with being control freaks, how friendlier the Scots are), but for now I wanted to post a link to an ARI Op-Ed about Islam and terrorism, given I was on holiday for 9/11.

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The real reason behind the terrorist threat that besets the USA, UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Egypt et al, is the promotion of Islam and a refusal by the West to openly and proudly assert the values of the Enlightenment of reason, freedom and individual rights.

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As Edwin A. Locke and Alex Epstein state:

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if we are to identify the fundamental cause of the terrorists' actions, we mustunderstand at least two fundamental premises of the religion they kill for.

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First, Islam, like all religions, rejects reason as a means of gaining knowledge and guiding action; it holds that all important truths aregrasped by faith in supernatural beings and sacred texts. The Koran explicitly states that knowledge comes from revelation, not thinking.(Christianity in pure form entails a similar rejection of reason, but it has been heavily diluted and secularized since the Renaissance.) Islam advocates the subordination of every sphere of life to religiousdogma, including the legal system, politics, economics, and family life; the word "Islam" means literally: submission. The individual is not supposed to think independently but to selflessly subordinate himself to the dictates of his religion and its theocratic representatives.

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We have seen this before in the West--it was called the Dark Ages.

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Second, as with any religion that seeks converts, a derivative tenet of Islam is that it should be imposed by force (you cannot convince someone of the non-rational).

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That is it - they continue in stating that many Muslims reject fanaticism and are law-abiding and peaceful people but this is because "they have accepted some Westernvalues, including respect for reason, a belief in individual rights,and the need for a separation between church and state. It is only to the extent that they depart from their religion--and from a society that imposes it--that they achieve prosperity, freedom, and peace."

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Literal Islam, like literal Christianity (that is taking what is in the Koran and the Bible as being "truth" and "morality") is evil - it results in government and people that engage in evil practices. Take the battle in Pakistan to reform the rape laws that currently require FOUR witnesses to observe a rape before a women can even charge a man of rape, otherwise she faces a charge of adultery - for which SHE will be punished - so a woman gets punished for being a rape victim by the state! You have to wonder how feminist the feminist leftist moral equivocators in the West really are?

Away for two weeks

My parents are visiting and we are off to tour Scotland.

So I wont be saying very much till I am back.

Joyless pricks of the week award

UK media regulation body OFTA Censoring Tom and Jerry episodes where they smoke.

Let's wrap children in cotton wool - that's the philosophy of the safety nazis. The same safety nazis who were probably horrified last night when on a Channel 4 documentary about kids at school, there was a funny segment where 3 little kids were jokingly holding their arms way apart saying "my dad's willy is this big" competing like fishermen. No it wasn't notorious, it was just kids being silly - but we know what people would have taken them away from their families and arrested the parents by now - "to protect them". The teacher sensibly said "we know when it is just kids enjoying toilet humour and when a child shows some serious signs of abuse - they are quite different".

Nats/Greens rates review will do next to nothing

Stuff reports that the Nats and the Greens have agreed to a parliamentary inquiry into council rates. Well who knows what that will mean. Given the Greens voted for the Local Government Act 2002, which gave all local authorities wide ranging powers to engage in whatever activity they wished (following “community consultation” which usually means they ask and almost nobody but nutters with spare time respond), I don’t have much confidence that they are on the same wavelength.
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The Greens believe local government should do more, should spend more, should regulate more, which is hardly conducive to rates being capped. Secondly, Metiria Turei has already stated the two key issues that matter to the Greens on local government funding:
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1.Rates remission for Maori land (which is fair enough when values increase and rates increase without any commensurate increase in services, if you can collect rates at all. The multiple ownership of Maori land, poorly defined, means some local authorities find it virtually impossible to collect rates on some land. If rates are not paid, the land is unsaleable anyway and putting a charge on the land (which is what happens to other land) is meaningless to the council. The key should be paying for services, and Maori land should not be treated differently).

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2.Extent of rates funding for public transport (The Greens think public transport should be subsidised by taxes from road users, which it is by 50% - supposedly to reflect the benefits from reduced congestion of increased public transport use. Shifting this from rate payers is not about funding public transport from users – the main beneficiaries – but motorists – who benefit only at peak times in major congested cities). Turei said in the Greens press release "As things stand, there are communities which have poor or non existent public transport services simply because local government either can't afford the cost, or is unwilling to raise rates to meet the costs involved". No Metiria - it is because there aren't enough people willing to pay the fares necessary to pay for the cost of operating it. If they wont pay for it, and if councillors aren't willing to force ratepayers to pay for it, there is no way in hell taxpayers throughout the country should pay for it.
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If National is going to support preferential treatment for Maori land, and shifting public transport funding to road taxes even more (when local roads are 50% funded from rates), then you might wonder why you’d vote National! The Nat press release talks about costs loaded noto local government, but not about local government growing. The Greens will want rates replaced with some form of income based tax, so that those who consume the same council services as everyone else, pay more. They will also support higher rates for business because businesses are “bad”.
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As I have said before, Rodney Hide’s Rate capping Bill is far from perfect, but it is a start. It puts limits on profligate councils and helps to put a barrier around their growth. It would be nice if the Greens supported it – but as a party committed to the growth of local government, they wont. NZ First apparently is wavering, after previously agreeing with Labour to oppose it. I suspect that Grey Power's condemnation of NZ First policy is focusing the minds of NZ First MPs on their constituency - or what is left of it!
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I would be far more impressed if there was proper debate about the role of local government – National should be talking about reducing it – about at the very least, focusing on local government undertaking what are currently “public goods” (need not be in the longer term), rather than promotion, subsidies and operating businesses. It is the size of local government that is the problem, not how people pay for it.

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Local Government NZ (which represents all councils) President Basil Morrison did not enlighten the debate by saying Rodney's Bill contravened the Local Government Act - forgetting that Parliament is sovereign and can change any legislation it wished. His view that "Rates are a matter to be agreed between communities and their councils, not central government bureaucrats" might be tempered by the fact that clearly communities, through the elected MPs of National, United Future, the Maori Party and ACT at least, are not happy with this process. Did your council get your consent for its rates increase? Did you "agree"? Or does "agree" in Morrison's parlance mean "we're going to do this, what do you think? No? Well we're doing it anyway - because you elected us, so we represent you, now fuckoff and pay your rates you ungrateful sod, you should have voted for someone else".

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Next council elections makes sure you DO vote for someone else.

Gordon Brown might start worrying

The latest Guardian opinion poll (steady on, I didn't BUY it, it's online) in the UK puts the Tories 9% ahead of Labour on 40%, with Labour on 31%, the lowest since the 1987 election (which the Tory’s won). The Socialist Demagogues (Liberal Democrats) are up 5% to 22%. Full details here. It appears that the public is sick of Labour, and is going two ways – either supporting the new age everything to everyone Tory Party of David Cameron or the anti-war on terror, born again old Labour LibDems (which are always the refuge of traditional Labour or Tory voters whose stomachs churn at voting for the “other side”).
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With current electoral boundaries, this would give the Tories a small majority, depending on whether the LibDems gain Labour seats or take away Labour votes in electorates where the Tories are second. Labour’s losses appear to be in the middle classes and the wealth creating south, while it is steadfast in the working class north. The Tories are now ahead for both women and men.
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The likelihood is that if polls continue to track like this, Blair will be gone in months – as Brown will want to try and bolster Labour support. He’ll have a hard task – Cameron has moved the Tories to the centre, he is younger, more vigorous and he isn’t Scottish. People in England are less likely to want to elect a Scotsman as PM, when the people who vote him in wont be affected by many of his policies.

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The times are changing in the UK – on a not too dissimilar parallel to NZ.