Tag Archive for: slavery

Islamic State: ‘As for virgins, there is nothing wrong with marrying them and owning them’

Where did the Islamic State (ISIS) get this idea? Surely they’re misunderstanding Islam, right? Wrong.

The Qur’an teaches that Infidel women can be lawfully taken for sexual use (cf. its allowance for a man to take “captives of the right hand,” 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30).

“Anti-Islamic State (ISIS) Outlet Publishes ISIS Internal Document Discussing Measures Taken To Deal With ‘Female Slaves’ Who Suffer From AIDS In Group’s Mozambique Province – Pro-ISIS Outlet Asserts Authenticity Of Document,” MEMRI, August 17, 2023:

The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.

On August 16, 2023, the anti-ISIS channel on the Al-Qaeda-operated Rocket.Chat server, “The Channel To Expose The Worshippers Of Al-Baghdadi And Al-Hashemi,” published what it claimed to be an internal circular issued by the Al-Karrar Office, which is part of the Islamic State (ISIS) General Directorate of Provinces.[1]

The document, which dates to January 9, 2022, was acknowledged by a pro-ISIS Telegram outlet and indicates that ISIS fighters in Mozambique are contracting AIDS from their wives and slaves.

From Al-Karrar Office To Mozambique Governor

Addressing the Wali (“Governor”) of the Islamic State Mozambique Province, the Arabic document features responses from ISIS leadership to religious questions sent by the wali and were originally sent to ISIS leadership in non-Arabic language. It reads: “To: the honorable Sheikh Al-Fadil, Wali of the State of Mozambique, may Allah Almighty protect him….

AIDS Prevalence Among ISIS Members

Another page of the circular indicates that some ISIS fighters in Mozambique and their wives have contracted the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS/HIV). The document further indicates the group in Mozambique is enslaving women and give them away to fighters as a reward.

Discussing the measures taken by the Mozambique Province to deal with AIDS cases among its fighters and residents within the territory it controls, the document reads: “We conducted [medical] tests on people and found out that some have AIDS. The [ISIS] court decided that if AIDS is found in one of the spouses, then it must be found in the other. So, the court decided to separate the spouses for a period of three months before taking the test again. If the [new] test gives a positive result for one of the spouses, the marriage then is invalidated. [However] the woman should still observe the three-month waiting period [that follows divorce according to Islamic laws]. After that she can remarry someone else who has contracted the disease.”

The wali pointed out in his question that the above ruling has not yet been put into implementation and that he is waiting for a reply from the ISIS leadership.

Discussing slaves suffering from AIDS, he said: “Likewise, we are waiting for the [medical] tests for female slaves, therefore we have not divided them up among the brothers yet.”

Everyone Should Take AIDS Tests

In its response, the ISIS leadership explained: “It seems, and Allah knows best, that this disease has come to you through the women you enslave, so it is necessary to examine them before dividing them up among the brothers. [The tests] should also apply to immigrant brothers, sisters if you are able to do so, and the division of slaves should be delayed until you are completely sure that they are free of these diseases.”

“Slaves With AIDS Should Be Offered For Ransom Or Killed If They Refuse To Become Muslims”

The response further explains that the enslaved women should be asked to convert to Islam, and if they refuse “they should be killed.”

“Those who convert to Islam and are confirmed free of the disease can be given [to ISIS members].”

It also said that female slaves who contracted AIDS and agreed to convert to Islam can be let free in return for a ransom.

As for female slaves who have the disease, who refuse to convert to Islam, and no ransom is paid for them, the directive from the ISIS leadership said that “they should be killed.”

It noted non-virgin women should all take tests before they are given away as slaves to ISIS members.

“As for virgins, their matter is different, and there is nothing wrong with marrying them and owning them,” it said.

The final page of the document shows the seal of General Directorate of Provinces Al-Karrar office….

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

What Barack Obama Doesn’t Know About Islam, Slavery and Black Africans

Barack Obama clearly had no idea, when he made his Cairo speech, of how Muslim Arabs regarded black Africans; I doubt if he has learned more about it since. The Arabs regarded the black Africans with contempt. In the Hadith of al-Bukhari, we find the remarkable statement that “Anyone who says that the Prophet is black should be killed.” Elsewhere in the Hadith, Muhammad says “’Whoever wants to see Satan let him take a look at Nabtal b. al-Harith!’ He was a sturdy black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks.”

In the same vein, the Prophet sent Khalid bin al-Walid in Ramadan 8 A.H., to a spot called Nakhlah, “‎where there was a goddess called Al-‘Uzza venerated by the Quraish and Kinanah . . . On ‎his return, the Prophet asked him if he had seen anything there, to which Khalid gave a ‎negative answer . . . He went back again and there he saw a black woman, naked with torn ‎hair. Khalid struck her with his sword into two parts. He returned and narrated the story ‎to the Prophet, who then confirmed the fulfillment of the task.”‎

Sa’d bin Zaid Al-Ashhali, another follower of Muhammad, was sent in the same month and on the same mission to Al-‎Mushallal to destroy an idol, Manat, respected by both the Al-Aws and Al-Khazraj tribes. Here ‎also a black woman, naked with messy hair appeared, wailing and beating on her chest. ‎Sa’d immediately killed her.

Clearly Muhammad was not at all bothered by these two unprovoked murders by his followers of “black women.” He greeted the news from one of the killers as being part of the “fulfillment of his task” – the task assigned to him by Muhammad.

There are three hadith in Al-Bukhari where Muslims are told to obey a ruler, even if he were a black man, as here: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘You should listen to and obey, your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin.’” (Ibn Musa al-Yahsubi, Qadi ‘Iyad, p.375).

And there is this from the celebrated historian Al-Tabari: “Noah prayed that the hair of Ham’s descendants [Africans] would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his [Ham’s] descendants met Shem’s, the latter would enslave them.” (Al-Tabari, Vol. 2, p. 21, p. 21)

Why was it so terrible for the Prophet to be called “black”? Because for the Arabs, blacks were unquestionably inferior. Such misidentification, according to Ahmad ibn Abi Sulayman, was an insult to the Prophet, and deserved death. And blacks, as descendants of Ham, were fit only to be slaves (Shem’s descendants “would enslave them”).

Many of the most famous Arab writers and Islamic scholars were unambiguously “racists” in the full meaning of that word.

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was, among other things, an Islamic jurist, Islamic lawyer, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, and hafiz (one who has memorized the entire Qur’an). He is one of the most important figures in Islamic history. Here are two disparaging remarks, among so many that he makes about black Africans in his Muqaddimah:

“Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.”

Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.

Ibn Sina or Avicenna (980-1037), was another celebrated figure in Islamic history: a Hafiz, an Islamic psychologist, scholar, and theologian and, by our lights, a racist: “[Blacks are] people who are by their very nature slaves.”

Ibn Qutaybah (828-889), was a renowned Islamic scholar from Kufa, Iraq, who claimed that “[Blacks] are ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country.”

Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (1201-1274), was a Shia Muslim Scholar and Grand Ayatollah:

“If (all types of men) are taken, from the first, and one placed after another, like the Negro from Zanzibar, in the Southern-most countries, the Negro does not differ from an animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth – In no other peculiarity or property – except for what God wished. Many have seen that the ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro, and more intelligent.

“[The Zanj (African) differ from animals only in that] their two hands are lifted above the ground,… Many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanj.

Al-Muqaddasi (945/946-1000) was a medieval Muslim geographer:

Of the neighbors of the Bujja, Al-Muqaddasi had heard that “there is no marriage among them; the child does not know his father, and they eat people — but God knows best. As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence.” (Kitab al-Bad’ wah-tarikh, vol.4)

“Al-Masudi (896-956), was a Muslim historian and geographer, known as the “Herodotus of the Arabs”:

“Galen says that merriment dominates the black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence.” (Al-Masudi, Muruj al-dhahab)

Ibn al-Faqih was a Muslim historian and geographer:

“A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq … do not come out with something between blonde, buff and blanched coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Somali, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two.” (from his Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan, 903 AD)

These are just a tiny sample of the hair-raising racist remarks made by noted figures in Islamic history.

Obama would no doubt be quite startled to learn about how the learned men of Islam viewed black Africans.

And now that we have seen how absurd Obama’s claims about Islam’s “religious tolerance” and “racial equality” turn out to be, let’s look next at his list of the supposed “achievements” of Islamic civilization.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Recovering a more perfect union: A rebuke of the 1619 Project

A new book describes the importance of memory, history, and national identity in saving America from desolation.


One of the worst sins of the present — not just ours but any present — is its tendency to condescend toward the past, which is much easier to do when one doesn’t trouble to know the full context of that past or try to grasp the nature of its challenges as they presented themselves at the time.
— Wilfred M. McClay, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story

Jay Leno used to do a regular schtick, Jaywalking, in which he would interview random persons on the street, often young ones, and ask them questions about American history, such as: “Who did America fight in the Revolutionary War?” “How many branches of the U.S. government are there?” “What year was the War of 1812?” Invariably, they could not answer the question, standing mute with Leno’s impertinent microphone pointed at their gaping mouths, or they gave a ridiculous answer.

As deflating as these performances were, it turns out that the state of American education is even worse than Leno documented. Not only does ignorance characterise so much of the citizenry, but Americans are now also imbibing, i.e., being taught, pernicious lies or partial truths about the founding and history of the United States from a tendentious, ideological, and solidly left-wing perspective.

Twisted narrative

This sorry state of affairs is documented in excruciating detail in Timothy S. Goeglein’s enlightening, depressing, and, ultimately, hopeful new book, Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story.

The distortion of history now routinely fed to elementary and high school students, as well as those attending hopelessly “woke” universities and colleges, has produced many young people who are “cynical, entitled, and aggrieved.” Continues Goeglein:

Rather than being thankful, they are indignant. Rather than proud, they feel ashamed. Rather than feeling free, they feel oppressed. Rather than wanting to fix America’s faults, they want to burn America down. Rather than asking what they can do for their country, they demand to know what their country can do for them — and the answer is increasingly to “cease to exist.”

We have created “a citizenry divorced both intellectually and emotionally from its heritage.” Further, “[w]hen we disassociate history — and memory — from facts, we are lost,” writes Goeglein, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, a former Senate staffer, and, presently, vice-president of external and government relations for Focus on the Family.

Our predicament is exemplified by the absurd, anti-historical 1619 Project of the New York Times, an initiative repudiated by many respectedliberal historians. It is being taught in roughly 4,500 schools nationwide.

In a feat of historical and moral inversion, it maintains that the American Revolution was designed primarily to protect the institution of slavery from being destroyed by the British Empire.

Such a one-sided view of history will alienate Americans from one another, given the dissolution of a common identity and love of country, and disregards those who struggled to make the Declaration of Independence a reality in spite of its obvious flaws, such as slavery.

On the matter of slavery, always a leading complaint against America’s founding, the Washington Post’s George Will has rightly observed that the founders’ Constitution “gave slavery no national validation. It left slavery solely a creature of state laws and therefore susceptible to the process that, in fact, occurred — the process of being regionally confined and put on a path to ultimate extinction. Secession was the South’s desperate response when it recognized this impending outcome that the Constitution had facilitated.”

So, it comes as no surprise that, as “a 2020 Pew Research study found a month before the presidential election, roughly eight in ten registered voters in both camps said their political disagreements with others were about core American values, with roughly nine in ten — liberal and conservative — worried [that] a victory by the other would lead to ‘lasting harm’ to the United States” [emphasis added]. We are now in a situation in which tribe is pitted against tribe, race against race, rich against poor, red against blue states.

We have succumbed to the “termites of self-loathing,” to use a term coined by Ben Stein. There is hardly a historic personage — Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, St Junípero Serra — who is not vilified, “cancelled,” and banished into outer darkness by woke activists and educators. One should be grateful that at least Frederick Douglass and Dr Martin Luther King Jr are spared such treatment, given their devotion to American ideals in the Declaration of Independence, classical literature, and Scripture. They are just ignored.

Dearth of patriotism

Recently, a friend whose daughter attended one of the tonier prep schools in Washington, DC, related that his conversations with her on US and Western history were disappointing. She, and her friends, showed no “piety” toward her country or heritage.

It was an interesting word choice and recalled my own school days studying Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem written between 29 and 19 BC. It tells the story of the Trojan Aeneas, who fled the destruction of his city, travelled to Italy, and would later become the ancestor of the Romans.

I remember my Jesuit instructor lauding “pius Aeneas,” “pious” being the most used adjective throughout the poem. In following the will of the gods — he even left the captivating Dido in Carthage — Aeneas demonstrated pietas, a virtue in the eyes of Virgil and my teacher, in his devotion to family, country, and mission. Such piety is no longer encouraged in our educational institutions, or so it would seem.

Major culprit

What brought America to this sorry state? In the beginning there was the “Original Zinn” — Howard Zinn, that is, a Boston University professor of political science and “the godfather of the radical attack on America’s history”, as Goeglein outlines in a pivotal chapter of Toward a More Perfect Union.

Zinn’s “epic screed,” A People’s History of the United States (1980), and his supplemental book for high schoolers, A Young People’s History of the United States (2007), have had an unparalleled impact on social studies teachers. The historian refram[ed]” and “reimagin[ed]” facts to fit a Marxist critique of the US and a Western civilisation marred, claimed Zinn, “by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money.” For Zinn, “standards of historical analysis are merely ‘technical problems’ to be dismissed.”

“You wanna read a real history book?” Matt Damon’s titular character, Will, asks Robin Williams’ Dr Sean Maguire in the movie Good Will Hunting (1997). “Read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll f***ing knock you on your ass.” Indeed, it does. It also boggles the mind.

Zinn claims that the nation “has been taken over by men [the founders] who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties.” Again, in service to ideology, Zinn does not believe in objective history as documented by Mary Grabar, PhD, a refugee of communist Yugoslavia, on whom Goeglein draws heavily.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the main author of the 1619 Project, backtracked after respected historians critiqued her work. She claimed that the project was not about history but about “memory.” This is not historically grounded memory, but memory saturated with ideology and politics. This is pure Zinn in methodology. Hence, noted historians such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Eugene Genovese, and Michael Kammen — hardly a crowd of right-wingers — criticised Zinn as a “polemicist, not a historian.”

“His ultimate goal is not a historical one but a political one,” writes Goeglein. “[H]e wanted to depict the United States as an illegitimate enterprise, one demanding a revolution.”

Pushback

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, today, only 18 percent of colleges require that students take a US history or government class to graduate. Maybe that is a blessing, given what passes for “history” in today’s woke environment. Ultimately, however, this is devastating to national unity.

Goeglein describes survey after survey that all indicate Americans’ ignorance of their rights under law and history. When the Constitution is taught, it is derided as being not radical enough in terms of the outcomes desired by left-of-centre teachers and advocates.

Toward A More Perfect Union does not specify a political agenda for reform, although it does note efforts made by some governors to reign in educational bureaucracies on, say, critical race theory. It does make a plea for parents to make a concerted effort to teach and counsel their children on the history of the nation and to pay close attention to what their schools are teaching.

It points to excellent resources available with which parents can educate themselves and their children on the complete story of American exceptionalism, not excluding the darker chapters. Parents who can afford the cost should look for alternatives to public schools that sacrifice true learning for the sake of ideology. “Classical” schools, home schooling, and parochial schools — all of which boomed during the COVID lockdowns — are possible options.

Parents who cannot afford private schools or who have special-needs children “must be extra vigilant and expect to receive the full wrath of Leftist activists if they stand up and demand that civics be taught while also standing against the indoctrination their children are receiving.” Specifically, they need to insist on the rights to inspect curricula, to opt out of the teaching of certain subjects, and to insist that controversial issues be discussed impartially. No easy tasks these.

Goeglein concludes:

[W]e must rededicate ourselves to the teaching of history — true, verifiable, factual history, with all its glories and tragedies. We need not fear to teach the ugly truths about America alongside the beautiful ones, because America’s founding vision is pure and her ideals are noble. Our failures do not change that.

Toward a More Perfect Union makes a compelling case that the country’s future, as one nation, demands a reclamation of our educational system and a recovery of the authentic teaching of history and constitutional government rightly understood.

This article has been republished from The American Spectator with permission.

AUTHOR

G. Tracy Mehan III

G. Tracy Mehan, III, was Assistant Administrator for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Administration of President George W. Bush. He is an adjunct professor at Scalia Law School,… More by G. Tracy Mehan III

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

No, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich

The historical record of the post-war economy demonstrates slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance. 


In 1847, Karl Marx wrote that

Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry…cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.

As with most of his postulations concerning economics, Marx was proven wrong.

Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, historical data show there was a recession, but after that, post-war economic growth rates rivaled or surpassed the pre-war growth rates, and America continued on its path to becoming the number one political and economic superpower, ultimately superseding Great Britain (see Appendix Figure 1).

The historical record of the post-war economy, one would think, obviously demonstrated slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance, as Marx thought it was. And yet, somehow, even with the benefit of hindsight, there are many academics and media pundits still echoing Marx today.

For instance, in his essay published by The New York Times’ 1619 Project, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond claims the institution of slavery “helped turn a poor, fledgling nation into a financial colossus.”

“The industrial revolution was based on cotton, produced primarily in the slave labor camps of the United States,” Noam Chomsky similarly stated in an interview with the Times. Both claims give the impression that slavery was essential for industrialization and/or American economic hegemony, which is untrue.

The Industrial Revolution paved the way for modern economic development and is widely regarded to have occurred between 1760 and 1830, starting in Great Britain and subsequently spreading to Europe and the US.

As depicted in Figure 1., raw cotton produced by African-American slaves did not become a significant import in the British economy until 1800, decades after the Industrial Revolution had already begun.

Although the British later imported large quantities of American cotton, economic historians Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode note that “the American South was a late-comer to world cotton markets,” and  “US cotton played no role in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution.”

Nor was the revolution sparked by Britain’s involvement with slavery more broadly, as David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman assessed that the contribution of British 18th-century slave systems to industrial growth was “not particularly large.”

There is also the theory that the cotton industry, dependent on slavery, triggered industrialization in the northern United States by facilitating the growth of textile industries. But as demonstrated by Kenneth L. Sokoloff, the Northern manufacturing sector was incredibly dynamic, and productivity growth was broad-based and in no way exclusive to cotton textiles.

Eric Holt has further elaborated, pointing out that

the vast literature on the industrial revolution that economic historians have produced shows that it originated in the creation and adoption of a wide range of technologies, such as the steam engine and coke blast furnace, which were not directly connected to textile trading networks.

The bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset, and they were forced to maintain America’s most exported commodity… the profits from cotton propelled the US into a position as one of the leading economies in the world and made the South its most prosperous region.

This is the argument made by P.R. Lockhart of Vox.

While slavery was an important part of the antebellum economy, claims about its central role in the Industrial Revolution and in America’s rise to power via export-led growth are exaggerated.

Olmstead and Rhode have observed that although cotton exports comprised a tremendous share of total exports prior to the Civil War, they accounted for only around 5 percent of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, an important contribution but not the backbone of American economic development (see Appendix Figure 2).

One can certainly argue that slavery made the slaveholders and those connected to the cotton trade extremely wealthy in the short run, but the long-run impact of slavery on overall American economic development, particularly in the South, is undeniably and unequivocally negative.

As David Meyer of Brown University explains, in the pre-war South, “investments were heavily concentrated in slaves,” resulting in the failure “to build a deep and broad industrial infrastructure,” such as railroads, public education, and a centralized financial system.

Economic historians have repeatedly emphasized that slavery delayed Southern industrialization, giving the North a tremendous advantage in the Civil War.

Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that across the Americas, the more dependent on slavery a nation was in 1750, the poorer it was in 2000 (see Appendix Figure 3.). He found the same relationship in the US. In 2000, states with more slaves in 1860 were poorer than states with fewer slaves and much poorer than the free Northern states (see Appendix Figure 4.)

According to Nunn,

looking either across countries within the Americas, or across states and counties within the U.S., one finds a strong significant negative relationship between past slave use and current income.

Slavery was an important part of the American economy for some time, but the reality is that it was completely unnecessary and stunted economic development, and it made Americans poorer even over 150 years later.

The historical and empirical evidence is in accordance with the conclusion of Olmstead and Rhode—that slavery was

a national tragedy that…inhibited economic growth over the long run and created social and racial divisions that still haunt the nation.

Figure 1. US share of British Cotton Imports over time

Figure 2. Cotton Exports and Gross Domestic Product

Figure 3. Partial correlation plot between the slave population as a share of the total population in 1750 and national income per capita in 2000 of countries of the Americas

Figure 4. Bivariate plot showing the relationship between the slave population as a share of the total population in 1860 and state incomes per capita in 2000

AUTHOR

Corey Iacono

Corey Iacono is a Master of Business graduate student at the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science and a minor in Economics.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FREE V. SLAVE STATES: Masked, Lockdown California’s COVID Rate Is Now TWICE Florida’s

More news you will never hear in then Democrat state run press.

Masked California’s COVID rate is now twice Florida’s

California has mask requirements and a higher vaccination rate than Florida

By Emma Colton Fox News November 9, 2021:

Enriched Literacy Education Mary Cantwell and Brooke Ooten on research revealing children literacy suffering nationwide.

California’s coronavirus rate is double that of Florida, despite mask mandates and recommendations to prevent the spread of the virus.

“You’re paying for your success, which is weird,” Ali H. Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, told the Mercury News when asked why Californians aren’t “reaping more reward for their adherence to health guidance.”

“You succeed in controlling the virus, and now you’re having infections.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom talks during a news conference at Universal Studios in Universal City, California. On Wednesday, he signed a bill into law intended to combat organized retail theft.  (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

FLORIDA HOSPITAL CELEBRATES ZERO COVID PATIENTS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2020

Cases in California are no longer falling, with the rate increasing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s red “high” level of virus transmission stemming from the delta variant, the outlet reported.

But Southern states such as Texas and Florida – where state leaders do not enforce face mask policies or support other strict mandates – are in the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level.

California’s vaccination rate is higher than states such as Texas and Florida, but that still hasn’t stopped the outbreaks. Sixty-two percent of California’s total population is fully vaccinated, while Florida reports 60% and Texas 54%.

FLORIDA COVID CASES, DEATH RATE AMONG LOWEST IN THE COUNTRY

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California leaders put some of the most strict coronavirus measures in place last year, which have continued into 2021.

In the Bay Area, health officials reimposed indoor face mask orders and won’t lift the measures until the area falls below the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level for three weeks or more. So far, most of the Bay Area counties still remain in the orange zone, besides San Francisco, which is in the yellow zone, the outlet reported.

California saw fewer cases of the delta variant over the summer with the state’s higher vaccination rate. Those who were not vaccinated and have recovered from the virus now also have immunity, the outlet reported, and the virus has a more difficult time spreading.

DESANTIS: WE ARE ACTIVELY RECRUITING OUT-OF-STATE POLICE OFFICERS OUT OF JOB DUE TO VACCINE MANDATES

“These regions are now being partly protected by high prior infection rates,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of California-San Francisco. “But these people whose immunity comes from COVID-19 are not very well protected, and their immunity will wane with time.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference before newly appointed state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida, on Sept. 22, 2021.

Wachter added that with low booster shot rates and waning immunity, “the end result is that we’ve plateaued in our improvements, both nationally and in California, and it’s likely we’ll soon see some significant upticks.”

“California has done very well over the past few months, but we still have too many unvaccinated people,” he added. “People are spending more time inside and being more active, and masking is going down.”

Florida, meanwhile, hit another new benchmark last week. The first hospital in the state to treat a COVID patient last year, Doctor’s Hospital, announced that for the first time since the pandemic, it has no virus patients in its care.

“This is great news! For two weeks and counting, Florida has had the lowest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the entire country – with no mandates, vaccine passports, or lockdowns. Overall, COVID hospitalizations have been declining for more than 70 days straight, and we’re at an all time low in terms of the number of COVID patients hospitalized statewide,” Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told Fox News on Monday when asked for comment about Doctor’s Hospital in Sarasota.

“Gov. DeSantis is proud of Florida’s success with launching monoclonal antibody treatment sites throughout the state, which made a huge impact on lowering hospitalizations and saving lives. Early treatment – getting the monoclonal antibodies as soon as possible after testing positive or experiencing symptoms – cuts the risk of hospitalization by 70% or more,” Pushaw added.

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Florida Has LOWEST COVID Case Rate in United States

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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VIDEO: Facts About SLÁVERY They Don’t Teach You at School

For a deeper look into the real history of slavery, read ‘Black Rednecks and White Liberals‘ by Thomas Sowell.

©All rights reserved.

INDEPENDENCE DAY TRUTH: Equal People Are Not Free and Free People Are Not Equal

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the “I have a dream” speech in Washington, D.C.


Today we are hearing about equality, equity, along with the big lies of “Wokeism.” These words are Marxist false flags that force, via government mandate, the elevation of one group over another group for political purposes.

MAKING PEOPLE EQUAL

The goal of Marxism is to make everyone equal as humans, as workers and as a people. The problem is when this is put into practice the individual is replaced by the state. As the powers of the government increase the freedoms of the individual shrink or disappear completely.

History tells us repeatedly that as government grows the individual shrinks. Just look at the former Soviet Union to understand what is now happening in America.

QUESTION:  Will Independence Day 2021 go down in history as the day we the people lost our freedom?

In The Revolution Betrayed Leon Trotsky wrote:

The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. Exactly how many Bolsheviks have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since 1923, when the era of Bonapartism opened, we shall find out when we go through the archives of Stalin’s political police. How many of them remain in the underground will become known when the shipwreck of the bureaucracy begins.

The people are replaced by government bureaucrats. The laws change from defending individual liberties to taking away the individual and replace the people with crushing state mandates, take the Covid pandemic as a recent example.

Covid shifted power from the individual to that state overnight. The pandemic was used by bureaucrats to take away individual freedom to assemble and replaced it with lockdowns and social distancing.

Covid took away the rights of business to remain open and prosper. It took away individual livelihoods and replace it with government hand outs.

Rev. William J. H. Boetcker spoke of the “Seven National Crimes.”

  • I don’t think.
  • I don’t know.
  • I don’t care.
  • I am too busy.
  • I live well enough alone.
  • I have no time to read and find out.
  • I am not interested.

These seven crimes are the fundamental laws of Wokeism writ large. When we stop thinking, understanding, caring and find ourselves alone, bored and uninformed then our freedom is lost!

A FREE PEOPLE ARE NOT EQUAL

In a truly free society people are never equal. They are different and do things differently throughout their lives. From birth people are influenced by both nature and nurture. No two people are exactly the same when born. The same is true about people who have different life experiences. Even biological twins do not have the same life experiences.

It is fundamental that society understand that it must create opportunities that encourage and use these natural inequalities for the good of all.

The following sentiments were created by the Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, who lectured around the United States about industrial relations at the turn of the twentieth century. They are all the truth.

  • You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
  • You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
  • You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
  • You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
  • You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
  • You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
  • You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
  • You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
  • You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
  • You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

There are those who are hell bent on tearing down big men, weakening the strong, destroying the rich, inciting class hatred and taking away man’s initiative and independence.

The founding fathers understood this and that is why they wrote the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.

CONCLUSION

QUESTION: How many American patriots have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since the 2020 election?

As we Americans approach Independence Day 2021, let us reflect on our freedoms and defend our liberties. If we fail to do so then American, as we have known it, will cease to exist as One Nation Under God and become one nation under big government.

Is this what we want for our children and grandchildren?

I think not.

Have a blessed July 4th.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED TWEET:

VIDEO: Georgetown Professor — Islamic Slavery is Freedom?

“Slavery cannot be intrinsically evil in Islamic law,” Georgetown University professor Jonathan Brown stated during a July 20, 2020 webinar. This disturbing assessment came during a 2019-2020 series of presentations on his 2019 bookSlavery & Islam, whose theses have hardly improved upon this Muslim convert’s past scandalous comments on slavery.

On February 7, 2017, Brown had caused furor while presenting a paper on slavery and Islam at the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Thereby he noted the traditional Islamic doctrine expressed in Quran 33:21 that Islam’s prophet Muhammad is an “excellent pattern” of behavior. Therefore this example sanctified the slavery practiced by him and his companions, including sex slavery, a doctrine that had justified slavery throughout Islamic history.

Once public, such views completely negated Brown’s disclaimer at the presentation’s beginning. “I always make some hyperbolic statement that really makes sense in the context,” he noted, such that he would face accusations of “calling for slavery.” Given such concern over criticism, he expelled this author from the presentation before it started.

Brown’s elaboration of his views during his subsequent book tour has been hardly more reassuring, for slavery is “simply a fact of life in the Quran” and perhaps even “part of the DNA of Islam.” “Every area of Islamic law is permeated by slavery,” something that “sharia, without exception until the 20th-century, validated.” Muslim scholars have even speculated about a “time when the laws of slavery will actually be needed again,” such as in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like world, he has noted.

For centuries, “Muslims were neck-deep in the trade of slaves,” Brown has observed. As others have estimated, this trade included 17 million black Africans, more than the 12 million taken to the Western Hemisphere in the transatlantic slave trade. As the Ghanaian historian John Azumah has noted, while the transatlantic trade enslaved mostly men for labor, Muslim slavers favored seizing women for use as sex slave concubines.

In this regard, Brown has unsettlingly reprised his 2017 comments on sex slavery. Thus any norm that sex be consensual “is fairly unusual in world history.” This corresponds to Islamic doctrine’s proprietary understanding of female sexuality, which, he has noted, denies any recognition of rape in marriage.

Slavery in Islam is faith-based, Brown has explained. Under sharia the “only way that someone can lose their freedom is if they are a non-Muslim who lives outside the Muslim state and is then captured by Muslims.” Slavery therefore “is a reduction in legal status that is caused by unbelief,” whose “vestigial effect” can remain even for an enslaved convert to Islam or a child born into slavery.

Yet Brown has argued that Islam is “obsessed with emancipation.” Islamic doctrine’s numerous biases towards freeing slaves, such as a means to expiate sin, means that Islam “does not have an equal in any religious or philosophical tradition” from the premodern world. “The Quran and Sunna are unprecedently adamant about emancipation.”

However this emancipation should not help a slave return to unbelief in Islam. “Freedom is not the most important thing in Islamic law,” Brown has noted, although Muslim scholars have historically argued that “slavery is intrinsically harmful.” Rather, true freedom comes from submission to Islam, an “emancipatory force.” Seventh-century Arab Muslim conquerors, for example, before subjugating the Persians, announced that they would be free only as “slaves of God alone.”

Correspondingly, Brown has described Islamic civilization as a “vacuum cleaner, just sucking in people.” Muslim scholars have historically advocated enslavement of non-Muslims as a means of introducing them to Islam. Then “Muslims are always manumitting slaves, which means they need new slaves,” in an “emancipation turbine.”

Brown has correctly described how Christians led the revolutionary movement against a once universal acceptance of slavery to create the “abolitionist consensus that is held worldwide today.” “Muslims talking about the issue of slavery and abolition of slavery doesn’t happen until they encounter essentially Western abolitionism,” a development true of the Westerners themselves. In his assessment, Christians had in the process to “desacralize scripture” in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament with its numerous references to forms of servitude.

Jewish rabbis and scholars would beg to differ with Brown, for as McGill University Professor David Aberbach has written, “Judaism is intrinsically an abolitionist religion.” “In Jewish belief, every human life matters.” Contrary to superficial readings, Rabbi Dov Linzer has noted, the “Torah only accepts slavery as a deeply entrenched societal institution.”

The late Jewish sage Rabbi Jonathan Sacks delved into this deeper understanding of the Torah’s position of slavery. God’s intends “slavery is to be abolished, but it is a fundamental principle of God’s relationship with us that he does not force us to change faster than we are able to do so of our own free will.” Nonetheless, in the “Torah’s value system the exercise of power by one person over another, without their consent, is a fundamental assault against human dignity.”

This analysis requires that non-Jews such as Brown properly understand Jewish scripture. “Jews have always read the Torah through a rabbinic interpretive lens and not simply on the plain meaning of its words,” the website My Jewish Learning has observed. Thus Jews cannot “read every mitzvah as an ideal” that allows for no further development, Linzer has cautioned.

Accordingly, in various stipulations the “Torah indeed sees slavery as a problematic phenomenon,” Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of Jerusalem’s Western Wall and holy sites has noted. “Although it sanctions the institution of slavery, biblical law begins the process toward abolition,” University of Waterloo Professor James A. Diamond has observed. “Rules limiting slavery challenged the way society was built and prompted Jews to question an institution perhaps so natural it was invisible,” Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner has confirmed.

The Torah’s restrictive regulation of slavery indeed manifested a Jewish “light to the Gentiles” in the ancient slave-holding world. As the Chabad-Lubavitch organization has noted:

At a time when Romans had literally thousands of slaves per citizen, even the wealthiest Jews held very modest numbers of servants. And those servants, the Talmud tells us, were treated better by their masters than foreign kings would treat their own subjects.

Particularly the Bible’s Exodus narrative of Jews escaping bondage in Egypt imprints upon Jewish consciousness emancipation’s value. Diamond has noted that the Passover “commemorates the exodus, anchoring the relationship between God and Israel as Liberator and slave.” As Sacks commented, “Jews were the people commanded never to forget the bitter taste of slavery so that they would never take freedom for granted.”

Tellingly, Brown has noted that Islamic tradition rejects the Torah’s narrative of a gracious God emancipating Jews in ancient Egypt and equates them with Muhammad’s early Muslim followers in pagan Mecca. “The Muslims in Mecca are like the Jews in Egypt, but they are not slaves, they are oppressed.” Thus the Israelite exodus “is not a story of emancipation, it’s a story of victory over oppression,” symbolizing Islam’s triumph.

The contrast between beliefs held by Muslims such as Brown and the Judeo-Christian tradition clearly indicates why Muslims have struggled to reject slavery. Confronted with this moral evil, Muslim reformers have argued that slavery is an artifact of jihadist doctrines inapplicable in modernity, or that rulers have discretionary power to prohibit human bondage. Nonetheless, Brown has recalled that jihadists going to Muslims’ defense during Bosnia’s 1990s sectarian carnage had asked Saudi clerics about taking slaves, only to hear warnings that this would create bad publicity.

These Islamic realities reflect Brown’s moral relativism. Although the Ottoman Empire’s slave trade “was undeniably brutal,” he has argued that slavery and other often onerous labor relations such as indentured servitude have widely varied across human history. Following therefore his dubious claim that slavery is not really objectively definable, any slavery-induced “disgust is a cultural construct” and “just custom; it’s just urf.” By analogy, he has noted that China’s brutal dog meat trade horrifies many non-Chinese, although increasing domestic opposition to dog meat consumption undermines his cultural relativism arguments.

Despite grappling with slavery’s moral problems for Islam’s legitimacy, Brown has failed to find a solution. In recent years Islamic State jihadists in their mercifully brief caliphate have “really caused a crisis for young Muslims” by piously invoking Islamic canons to justify the enslavement of Mesopotamia’s non-Muslims. But as the foregoing analysis has proven, he is wrong to claim in Islam’s tu quoque defense that slavery’s abolition “is not indigenous to any religion or any philosophy.”

Contrary to traditional Islamic understandings of an aloof, arbitrary Allah, the biblical God’s natural law ultimately revealed slavery’s injustice to Jews, Christians, and the wider world. Church historian John B. Carpenter has noted as much in the relationship of America’s famed escaped slave and 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglas to the Jew Jesus Christ:

Christianity’s commitment to freedom was so pronounced that Frederick Douglass, who decried the hypocrisy of slave-holding religion vividly, did not convert to Islam and become “Frederick X,” but professed, “I love the religion of our blessed Savior.”

While Brown’s exculpation for slavery in Islamic doctrine is unconvincing, he has nonetheless provided valuable insight into this previously “taboo subject.” As Azumah has written, a “critical approach is reserved for the Christian past but forbidden for the Muslim past.” However inadvertently and awkwardly, Brown has helped uncover Islam’s dark slavery legacy.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column and video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Let’s Talk About Racism In America Featuring Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and More

The Freedom Forum posted the below comments and video on YouTube.

This is the conversation about racism in America that the Mainstream Is hiding from you. Honest moments from interviews featuring people like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Lil Wayne, Larry Elder, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, and others give their take on racism in America right now.

WATCH:

©All rights reserved.

Son of a Slave

Some folks know me as a retired lawyer, having been very involved in my community.

Other folks may know me for my conversions of unwanted heritage buildings into affordable rental housing for modest income working people, in various cities – which was actual “social justice” work, rather than the “virtue-signalling” with other people’s money which seems to so prevalent today..

A somewhat larger group of folks in Canada and the United States and elsewhere may know me as the author of four books concerning ideologies, political culture and values. They may also know me as founding president of Mantua Books, Canada’s sole conservative values publishing house.

With all the talk these days about “systemic racism” and the current ideologies of cultural and moral relativism, and the effect on our schools and universities of “critical race theory” and doctrines such as “privilege” and “intersectionality, and the increasing hostility to freedom of speech, I think that I have something to add to the current debate and protests, with their general hostility to western values.

My ancestors many years ago originated in the Middle East and then were exiled by the Romans, living for some years in southern Europe before being exiled again and ending up in Eastern Europe. In the Holocaust, my father’s parents and then 8-year old little sister were murdered in the gas chambers. My father was 19 years old in 1939 and like many other Jews of his age was made into a slave labourer working in the industrial zone of Auschwitz concentration camp. Unlike American slaves who were purchased and then cared for with enough food to protect the slave-owner’s investment, the Nazis did not feed their slaves but for a daily piece of bread and weak turnip soup. Eventually, if the slave got too weak to work, he or she would be sent to the gas chambers and would be replaced by some poor soul arriving to Auschwitz in cattle cars before the Nazis would decide which would die immediately and which seemed strong enough for slavery.

In the modern world, we have many different ways of looking at our identities.

White people are marching against racism towards Blacks and Blacks are forming alliances with Islamists who, strangely enough, were the group that sold blacks from Africa into slavery (and some in Africa still do, including the Islamist Toureg, so admired by Volkswagen that it named an SUV after them.)

Our fundamental freedoms and sense of personal responsibility are daily under attack. I think I have a good concept of my identity – hardworking Jewish Canadian lawyer and social justice real estate developer and intellectually and morally conservative author and publisher, proud father and grandfather, etc. But in these times, for me, one thing trumps all:

I am the son of a slave.

The Black slavery in America ended not long after Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves and America went through a Civil War over this emancipation that resulted in a huge death toll. That was way back in the mid-1800s. After that came Reconstruction, which had only partial success and more lately in the 20th century, the Civil Rights Movement. Today, American Blacks take their places in every field of endeavour and are found in “elite” universities, the best law schools, the best medical schools and senior levels of government. But we are told that white people are racists and we have white privilege. Allegations of privilege have become a way to slander those who, like me, study hard, work hard, take responsibility and try to make the world a better place.

In Canada, some blacks are descended from those who arrived in Canada through the “underground railway’. with a small number arriving here after the American revolution or after the War of 1812. Today, most of our Blacks are descended from black slaves in the Caribbean who moved to Canada and England in search of better economic opportunities. Accordingly, most of our Blacks immigrated to Canada willingly and therein lies a big difference with the Blacks in America. And yet copycat protests with Black Lives Matter are numerous.

In Canada, therefore, those concerned about social justice, should focus more on injustices done to our Indigenous People who were here first. The tragedy of the Residential Schools is one that has been tempered with reparations and apologies – but too many northern Indigenous peoples live in dire conditions and too many in large cities carry with them problems of addiction and self-worth.

Most Americans and Canadians know all of this, but the Black Lives Matter protests seem not so much about history as about current conditions in black poor neighbourhoods, in schools and prisons – and overall we see a culture in crisis. Some 73% of Black babies born in the U.S. are born to single mothers with no father to complete the family. George Floyd had fathered 5 children in Houston before he ran away for a “fresh start” in Minneapolis. Most black victims of crime are the victims other blacks. To me, the focus on police misconduct hides the real purpose of the protests and violent looting, which is to use the Black issues as a screen for the attempts to gain more power and so to destroy America as a constitutional republic and replace it with a communist or Islamist or globalist society.

The Left and the Islamists both share the tactic of trying to erase History. The Islamists say there was no Holocaust, no Jews were indigenous to Israel, and all facts prior to 1967 must be erased. The Left wants everything cancelled, taken down or renamed if it doesn’t meet its view of identity politics, taking offence, or safe spaces. As reported in Newsweek on June 20, 2020, the great-grandson of the most recent woman to appear on boxes and bottles of Aunt Jemima products is angry that the virtue-signalling company making the product, Quaker Oats, is rebranding the product because some black people say it reminds them of slavery although this brand was established well after the end of slavery.

The great-grandson, Larnell Evans Sr., says that his great grandmother became the brand’s representative and public relations person and toured the country for some 20 years, making pancakes at events. This great-grandson, a Marine Corps vet says: “This woman served all those people, and it was after slavery. She worked as Aunt Jemima. That was her job… How do you think I feel as a black man sitting here telling you about my family history they’re trying to erase?”

I know how he feels. Prior to 1967, when I was 16 and trying to find out the information that my Dad preferred not to talk about – the death camps, the slavery, the genocidal anti-Semitism, the murder of one million Jewish children by a supposedly western culture in Germany, I could not find any books or other publicly shared information. The main book about the war era then was Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and that was mainly a military and diplomatic history. When I got to university, I discovered that a few years prior the first comprehensive book in English, Raul Hillberg’s The Destruction of European Jewry had been published. Soon books such as The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 by Lucy S. Davidowicz and many others began to appear in time for my curiosity.

Survivors were not encouraged to talk about what had happened and otherwise good people in Canada and the United States perhaps felt too uncomfortable discussing the issues. My father did not talk about what happened to him, his family and friends until the late ‘80s after being hospitalized with depression. American Jews who lionized FDR did not want to hear about his role in denying Jews refuge in America and thus allowing them to be murdered.

And so I, the son of a slave, know how Mr. Evans feels when History is a casualty of politics and culture.

America, or Canada for that matter, are not evil nations. That is why many people around the world want to move here, and not so many want to leave. To me, what is going on is mostly about power, The Leftist-Islamist-Globalist alliance has taken power in school curricula, in the Universities, and now sense the opportunity to use the George Floyd tragedy as a way to take political power, if not on the national level, then on the state and local level. The concept of defunding police is not so much a serious policy but a scare tactic, a domestic terrorism. When criminals take over the streets, just as supposed “protesters” and their violent, looting, colleagues have done, the resulting chaos will be useful for the Left as it creates the perfect conditions for a revolution to implement economic, political and cultural Marxism.

It all seems quite clear to me, maybe because I am the son of a slave.

Slavery was abolished by Congress in January of 1865 and ratified in December of 1865. Thus abolition constitutes the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

It is clear to me that poor black people are being played by both Blacks and Whites in the Left, who use them, like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and now BLM do, to empower themselves, their political organizations and their leftist and Islamist allies. The racist anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan is tolerated by those who should know better.

Even the big tech corporations pour money into a loosely run, inadequately vetted organization like BLM for the usual virtue signalling, that helps the signaller more than the folks on the ground, living in gang-run Black ghettos. Soon, if the Democrats win the next election we shall likely see more “autonomous zones” where there is no law, no freedom, and the police are banned.

Just like during the Holocaust, no one wants to talk about some really important matters – poor Blacks are mostly killed or injured by other poor and culturally challenged Blacks, not by Whites. There is a pandemic in black neighbourhoods; drugs, guns and gangs rule, and then the Democrats come around every four years pretending to be their friends and work for their benefit.

We have spoken above of the real cultural crisis among poor and even middle-class Blacks, which is a crisis of morality. In the age of cultural relativism, we are not allowed to discuss issues like this.

It is 155 years since the end of slavery in America. It is time to stop using slavery as an excuse for immorality and crime. It is time, after all the affirmative action, all the NGO sponsored programs, and after all the Black successes in overcoming historical racism to acknowledge that our culture is sympathetic to Blacks, in our entertainment, sports, music and affirmative action programs even if certain individuals are not. It is time for the universities and media to tell the truth about America and so help to strengthen positive values and moral cultures.

I know that a culture can be changed in one generation. I worry about how fast the Leftists, the Islamists and the Globalists and the extremist professors are succeeding in changing our culture of freedom and justice and personal responsibility- because we see historically that the first wave of those seeking totalitarianism and/or Communism are often killed by the more radical power-seekers that follow. I know that a culture based on Justice and Liberty, personal responsibility and morality, is best for all ethnicities and races, and that anyone with a history of slavery in his or her family should understand this better than anyone else. And I want to contribute to a respectful dialogue about the violence and left-wing flight from freedom.

Because I am the son of a slave.

©All rights reserved.

Why Isn’t Black Lives Matter Protesting the Slavery That Still Exists Today?

My latest in PJ Media:

It is, or ought to be, clear to everyone by now that Black Lives Matter is not a genuine movement for racial justice and a more equitable society, but a Marxist organization using real, exaggerated, and imagined racial injustice to try to destroy the United States. Anyone who is still in doubt about this should consider the fact that some blacks are still enslaved today, and Black Lives Matter never has and never will say a word about it, because that organization doesn’t really care about black lives.

If they did actually care about the lives of black people, Black Lives Matter would today be drawing international attention to statements made recently by the Mauritanian anti-slavery activist Maryam Bint Al-Sheikh of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA). According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Maryam Bint Al-Sheikh stated in a June 18 interview: “Unfortunately, there is still slavery in Mauritania. More than 20% of people in Mauritania suffer from slavery – a situation where a person owns another person and does whatever he wants with him at any given moment. This situation exists here in Mauritania, unfortunately.”

Al-Sheikh further explained that slaves are often even “bequeathed from father to son. A person can own a slave and when that person dies, his children inherit the slave, who is later bequeathed to the grandchildren. This thing exists in Mauritania, unfortunately.” Even worse, “anyone who speaks out is considered a criminal whose natural place in in jail. Until not so long ago, [whoever spoke up] would have been killed.”

As an anti-slavery activist, Al-Sheikh has experienced this herself: “I was arrested and tortured multiple times. I was tortured both mentally and physically. The last time I was arrested, I had a 1.5-year-old baby. They separated us by force. And they weaned him. The Mauritanian state weaned my baby – a 1.5-year-old baby. He was weaned. And they prevented me from seeing him, and they wouldn’t let my husband or relatives visit me.”

Maryam Bint Al-Sheikh’s story is just one of innumerable such accounts. Why does Mauritania continually drag its feet about eradicating slavery, and persecute anti-slavery activists? The dirty little secret here is that it is because slavery is sanctioned in Islam.

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Hate Can Be a Virtue

Progressives talk a lot about the evil of hate. We are told that if we object to Sharia law and jihad, then we are intolerant haters. But what about hating what harms people?

I hate wife-beating, yet the Sharia, Koran and Sunna support it.

I am intolerant of child abuse, including child marriage, but the Sunna and Sharia support it.

I hate the jihadist killings of Christians, Jews, Buddhists and apostates.

I am intolerant of religious leaders, such as the Pope and Dai Lama, who will not condemn the jihadic killing of their groups.

I hate dualistic ethics, which lack integrity.

I am intolerant of face coverings, since it cuts off open communication.

As a society, we have lost the ability to become morally outraged and are incapable of anger about the Islamic harm of innocents. I hate that.

Ненависть может быть добродетелью

Прогрессивные много говорят по поводу зла ненависти. Нам говорят, что если мы возражаем против шариата и джихада, то мы проявляем нетерпимость и ненависть. Однако, что насчет ненависти, которая вредит людям?

Я ненавижу избиение женщин, а шариат, Коран и Сунна его поддерживают.

Я нетерпим к надругательству над детьми, включая детские браки, но Сунна и шариат поддерживают их.

Я ненавижу убийства джихадистами христиан, иудеев, буддистов и вероотступников.

Я нетерпим к религиозным лидерам, таким, как Папа и Далай-лама, которые не осуждают джихадистские убийства своих групп.

Я ненавижу дуалистическую этику, в которой отсутствует целостность.

Я нетерпимо отношусь к закрытию лица, поскольку это исключает открытое общение.

Как общество, мы потеряли способность морального возмущения и неспособны проявить гнев по поводу исламского вреда невинным людям. Я ненавижу это.

RELATED ARTICLE: Orlando nightclub shooting timeline: Three hours of terror unfold

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice.

Islamic State Operating In Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Last weekend I was invited to Fort Walton Beach, Florida to give a presentation on Islamic terrorist events not only throughout the world, but also in the military community of Fort Walton.  It has always been my policy that I will not say anything negative about anyone or any organization unless I have first hand evidence to support my claim.

On 8 Jan 2016, I went to the Islamic Da’wah Center of Fort Walton Beach, 6 Hollywood Blvd SW, Fort Walton Beach, FL 32548.  Keep in mind the term Da’wah means to spread the ideology of Islam.  In essence it is missionary work.  My friends in Fort Walton and the surrounding area are surrounded by ISIS  [Islamic State] members/supporters who are living, working, and spreading the very same ideology as ISIS advocates in Syria and around the world.

ISIS would be proud of the Imam of the Fort Walton Beach mosque.  Worshippers are provided numerous booklets, manuals, brochures, DVD’s and 500 plus page books promoting an Islamic caliphate worldwide and under Shariah law.  The books go into detail about physical Jihad being conducted throughout the world.  The Imam gave me a few pieces of material for me to better understand ‘Pure Islam’.  Much of the material was published in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.  Again, ISIS would feel very comfortable praying in this mosque with an Imam who thinks as they do.

In this short article I will not spend hours and hours explaining why certain pieces of Islamic material are dangerous, but instead I will name some of the people, organizations, and manuals.  I request you research and read for yourselves why the materials are dangerous to you and your families.  Fiqh Us Sunnah, Riyadh Saliheen, Sahih Muslim, Abu Mawdudi, Ali Al Timmimi, Siraj Wahhaj, Zaid Shakir, and of course the national organization of the Muslim Brotherhood operating inside America which is CAIR.  CAIR leaders are Muslim Brotherhood and desire to overthrow the government of America and kill anyone who stands in their way.

I have written extensive articles on the various books mentioned.  Many are on my website.

The manuals at this mosque advocate:

  1. Sedition and treason against America
  2. Killing anyone who they determine to oppose their goals
  3. Child marriages
  4. Slavery
  5. Abuse and rape of girls and women

This is just a sampling. I will be submitting a significant incident report on my findings and it will be posted in the next few days.

I rate this mosque a 9 on a scale of 1 -10, with 10 being the highest threat level.

There is a very high likelihood that someone from this mosque will actually be engaged in physical Jihad against innocent people in the near future. Local authorities must monitor this mosque for activities equivalent to ISIS, shut the mosque down, prosecute the leaders for sedition and treason, and further investigate the members of the mosque.  The IRS approved non profit status must be removed.

Readers of this article are the one’s who can make this happen.  Put the pressure on your elected officials and senior law enforcement to stop ISIS from operating.  Request your Christian and Jewish leaders to put additional pressure on elected officials.

The most disturbing finding during my research at this mosque was that out of the 45 Muslim men attending prayers, at least 10 are active duty U.S. military members, and there were several U.S. government civilians attending.  There are tens of thousands of ISIS operating inside America and 100’s of thousands of their supporters.

If we can’t control their illegal activities how do we expect our government to control tens of thousands of more refugees?  The answer is they can’t.

I respectfully ask for your assistance for me to conduct firsthand research at hundreds of more mosques in America.  The results will be provided to you directly.

EDITORS NOTE: If you desire to help David fund this research please contact him at davegaubatz@gmail.com, or phone 276-229-1056, or donate through PayPal using ID pdgaubatz@yahoo.com . To reach Dave Gaubatz | davegaubatz@gmail.com | http://www.wearenotafraid.blogspot.com
davegaubatz@gmail.com.

Oh What Times We Live In

Throughout the annals of history, these are most certainly times that not only try men’s souls but are also rendering everything that is good to the back of the bus.  It is bad enough that people do wrong.  Human beings have been committing evil deeds ever since Eve was duped by Satan and then convinced Adam (who knew better) to partake in an activity they should not have.  Thus the ongoing war between good and evil was on and the rest is history.

When Arab Islamic Muslims first enslaved Africans hundreds of years before the first European explorers began to purchase African slaves from the Muslims, there was an equal and opposite effort that eventually arose.  The brutality of slavery was eventually seen by millions of British and United States citizens as an evil that had to be extinguished.

When the church and the king of England both became obsessed with power over the people, some British subjects said enough is enough and sought to find land where they could worship the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob in peace and tranquility.  Out of their disdain for the ongoing abuses in the land of the Union Jack was born the Christian based belief in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

There are many including yours truly, who believes that the United States was meant to be the supreme opposite of what has been an ongoing system of survival of the fittest enduring the brutal boot heel of tyrannical governments.  America once stood out, because she was refreshingly different. Her numerous foundational documents ranging from The Articles of Confederation to the Bill of rights paved an inspired path toward greatness.  That path benefited both individuals who sought to engage in the bountiful opportunities availing themselves and the government that built into it’s foundational doctrines the recognition of the God given unalienable rights that come from him.

In more recent times, the late great President Ronald Reagan represented a stunning and invigorating contrast to the malaise of his inept predecessor, President Jimmy Carter.  Reagan refused to appease our republic’s adversaries.  He also fought to roll back the economy stifling regulations that had beaten our economy into submission.

As “We the People” prepare to choose the next leader of the free world, let us take into consideration the importance of picking someone who represents being different.  In other words,  America can no longer thrive as a great nation with leadership that is hell bent on dragging her down a path that not only inhibits economic prosperity, but also places her in mortal danger.  Let us not forget there are many who would like nothing more than to rid the world of the one nation that has been an impediment to global despots who believe that forcing people to live as they say to exist or suffer the consequences.

Millions of Christians, black Africans and many others have been murdered by Muslim groups like the Islamic Stat for the sport of it, primarily because of the accommodating (or worse) approach of the current United States administration.  One of the things that New Zealand author and orator Trevor Loudon has been doing for quite some time is crisscrossing the United States for a number of years reminding Americans of our nations place of greatness and how much the world (including his nation) of New Zealand depends on this beacon of light republic.  We are at an absolute crossroads.  The time has arrived for us to return America to our God ordained position of greatness and beacon of hope to the world.  Or we can slink away into oblivion on our nation’s current slide toward second tier status, leaving the world including our allies to try and do their best to overcome challenges posed by dedicated Muslims and traditional tyrannical enemies like China and Russia.   While these are certainly the times that try men’s souls that is no reason why we as Americans have to give in or give up, because of the horrific challenges.  I challenge everyone who cares about America to join in the fight for the future generations of this republic.  If we don’t act now, it will soon be too late.  Do you want to have to tell your children and grandchildren that our nation ended up on the ash heap of history because you didn’t want to make waves or stand for the proven principles that made our nation the envy of the world?

Yes these are trying times, but with God’s leadership and help they can become the best of times.  Dear reader, either you shall choose life or we shall choose death.  America’s future is in the balance.

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What Should Libertarians Think about the Civil War? by Phillip Magness

The current national debate over the display and meaning of the Confederate battle flag has reopened a number of longstanding arguments about the meaning of the American Civil War, including within libertarian and classical liberal circles.

Because of its emotional subject matter, lasting political legacies of race and slavery, transformative effects upon American constitutionalism, and sheer magnitude as the most destructive military episode ever to occur on American soil, the Civil War exhibits strong tendencies toward politicization in the modern era.

Unfortunately, bad history often accompanies this politicization, and libertarians are by no means immune from this tendency.

Two common interpretations of the Civil War stand out as particularly problematic:

  1. libertarian support for the Confederacy; and
  2. libertarian support for the Union.

The Problem with Pro-Confederate Libertarianism

The first and perhaps best known “libertarian” approach to the Civil War attempts to find sympathy with the defeated Confederacy because of its resistance to the federal government and northern military authority or its professed cause of free trade and political self-determination.

Some aspects of this position have intuitive appeal that produces sympathy for the Confederate cause: it professes outrage against a Union that is said to have conquered by force, trampled on the rights of states and individuals, unleashed a military invasion, suspended civil liberties, denied government by consent, elevated Lincoln to a “dictator,” and effected a lasting centralization of federal power. In this view, the Union cause and victory is the foundational work for the modern state and all that is anathema to political libertarianism.

This interpretation falters in what it neglects: slavery.

This is no small irony, either, as the anti-slavery cause was arguably the preeminent political occupation of libertarianism’s classical liberal antecedents. A continuum of classical liberal thinkers from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill and J.E. Cairnes forged the main intellectual case against the slave system.

Abolitionism was also always a preeminent political cause of liberalism, extending from 18th-century statesman Charles James Fox to the 19th century’s Richard Cobden in Great Britain and strongly influencing such figures as William Lloyd Garrison, Lysander Spooner, and Frederick Douglass in the United States.

This is no small matter for the libertarian intellectual tradition either, for in sidestepping the slave question’s intimate connection to the Confederacy, pro-Confederate libertarians also inadvertently abandon what is perhaps the single most important and beneficial contribution that classical liberalism has made to the human condition: the abolition of slavery.

This is not to suggest that libertarian defenders of the Confederacy share its historical affinity for chattel slavery or the plantation system. Rather, they are guilty of turning a tin ear to the one unequivocally beneficial outcome of the war in the permanent destruction of American slavery.

The Problem with Libertarian Unionism

A smaller set of libertarians gravitate to a second common interpretation of the Civil War, defined primarily by its consequential outcome.

Unlike the pro-Confederate position, these libertarian defenders of the North are keenly aware of both the centrality of slavery to the conflict as well as the importance of the abolitionist cause to the liberal intellectual tradition. Standing as a direct antithesis to the pro-Confederate arguments, these faute de mieux Unionists recognize the inherent and fundamental contradiction between slavery and human liberty.

Their position embraces the Union victory on a consequentialist acceptance of the resulting emancipation of the slaves, and disavows any conceivable association between libertarian thought and a brutish Southern slavocracy, born of no other motive or purpose but to entrench and expand that pernicious institution — and deserving of nothing short of a violent and warring elimination by any means or justification.

The argument is both morally appealing and marked by its clarity, but it also suffers from its Manichean simplicity and a tendency to read an inevitable “irrepressible conflict” into the hindsight of the Civil War’s destruction.

This view recognizes slavery and celebrates its abolition, but it tends to neglect or even rationalize the war’s uglier features and consequences: a dramatic weakening of the constitutional federalism laid out in 1787, a rapid acceleration of the scope and power of the federal government, a precedent-setting assault on habeas corpus and expansion of presidential war powers that persists to the present day — and the horrendous destruction itself.

Measured by deaths alone, current estimates place the war’s military toll at 750,000 soldiers. Civilian deaths are more difficult to estimate, though the most common number given is 50,000. And perhaps most telling of all, between 60,000 and 200,000 slaves likely perished as a result of disease and displacement caused by the war.

Why a New Interpretation Is Necessary

Where then does this leave the conscientious libertarian in assessing the Civil War’s legacy?

To address the faults of both the pro-Confederate and pro-Union positions, I’ll offer two propositions for libertarians to consider:

  1. One needn’t be for the Union to be against slavery.
  2. One needn’t be for the Confederacy to object to the North’s prosecution of the war.

Stated differently, a morally consistent libertarian view of the war should strive to dissociate itself from the political actors that waged it, while also seeking to recognize its consequences, both positive and negative.

This much may be seen in the faults of the two views described above. Libertarians who embrace the Confederacy are more often than not reasonably aware of both the evils of slavery and the distinction between the abolitionist cause and the Union.

But they neglect the second rule; because of their distaste for the Union’s wartime policies, they stake their claim to a Confederate cause that, whether they admit it or not, thoroughly attached itself to the moral abomination of slavery.

And libertarians who embrace the Union are also usually aware of the objections one might lodge against its indulgences in unrestricted warfare, suspension of civil liberties, centralization of power, or any of the other charges often made against the Union’s wartime cause or its outcome.

But they thoroughly subordinate these objections to the greater moral purpose of emancipation — a focus that obscures all but the most simplistic reading of the war’s other political and constitutional consequences.

In each argument, the problem is not its primary emphasis, but the complexities it obscures or leaves out.

In place of both views, and in recognition of their deficiencies, libertarians might develop a better appreciation for the Civil War’s complexity by turning their analysis to the nature of the ruinous agency of the conflict itself.

War, whether waged to hold human beings in bondage or subjugate a political rebellion, is a consciously coercive action of the political state in its most expansive and direct form. And armed warfare, as both the Union and Confederacy came to discover across four destructive years, is horrifically messy, unpredictable, and destructive of human life and human liberty.

Military goals and political motives also matter, as they define the objectives of the armies and prioritize their execution. Thus, a military maneuver to capture an opposing political capital will take a very different form from one that eschews political objectives and seeks to maximize the liberation of slaves or the protection of civilians.

There may also be small glimpses of just action amongst individual participants in a far more ambiguous conflict. When the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson raised the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black unit composed of escaped slaves, there is little doubt that they were fighting for emancipation, even as larger Union war goals moved far more slowly on this objective.

There is similarly little doubt about the motive of some Southerners who fought for their homes and families as hostile armies marched through their states; even a handful of Confederates — Patrick Cleburne, Duncan Kenner — pressed their government (in vain) to consider emancipation as a means of securing independence.

These graces on the periphery tell us more about the conflict’s moral complexity than anything that may be found in its political objectives. History is not a Manichean struggle between pure good and evil; we are not served by filtering its conflicts through a dualistic moral lens.

Instead of looking for a “side” to champion, we are better served by recognizing that even amid the unbridled horrors of slavery and the devastation of war, there may still be a few who are fighting for something better than their country’s cause.

Phillip Magness

Phil Magness is a policy historian and academic program director at the Institute for Humane Studies.