Islam's universalist dogma. Over 1 million dead and wounded since 9-11-2001 – this is nothing new.

There are many curious aspects to Islamic ideology. The most profound is the quest for universalist power or control. From its earliest days as an imperialist ideology Islam has always sought to conquer and control other peoples and cultures. This dogma of universal power emanates from Mohammed through the early Caliphs, to the Ottoman empire, to the theology of Khomenei, al-Banna [who started the Muslim Brotherhood], Bin Laden, Turabi [Sudan's dictator] and hundreds of Imams in Western Europe and North America. Such fascistic overtures to world domination are based on Islamic doctrine and have 1400 years of precedents. They did not arise lately, or by accident.

While not a monolithic movement, this core part of Islam's ideology – its will to power and rule -- is its prime motivating factor. From 7th century moon cult loving Bedouin tribes soiled in savagery and uncivilised life, Islam has spread to all parts of the world and thanks to immigration, coversion and historical rewriting continues to vy with Catholocism as the fastest growing global faith. Islam of course has nothing in common with Christianity.

One is the universalist dogma of early Islam – 'to conquer the world and make men submit to Allah', the pagan Arabian moon cult – to paraphrase the last words of Mohammed. This was the intent of various Muslim groups from the Arabs of the 7th century; to the Turks in the early era of Ottoman conquest; even to the converted Muslim hordes of the Mongol irruption. Muslims have a long history of believing that they will rule the world.

A second curious aspect of Islam is its endless bloody intra-familial civil war, in which various factions fight over national and regional empires and power – using religion as a disguise. These factions quote various fundamentalist ideas, grievances, 'national disgraces' or embitterments while invoking the glory days of the 'Caliphate' to justify their lunge for power. As with any imperial project Islam's internal divisions are over who should control resources, power and society in any given political-social space. These rivalries have nothing to do with quaint Western ideas of freedom, individuality, due process or rights.

This internal civil war is a battle over Islam's soul and vision and how 'dogmatic' Islam should be. Iraq is an example. The US military reports that attacks are now back to 2004 levels and that violence is subsiding. This is obviously good news. The bad news is that there are still 300 attacks per week. This is rather incredible. You have Muslims killing Muslims most of them innocents, in 40 odd attacks per day. The motivations of the attacks are not hard to fathom.

In Islam's universalist tradition Muslim states can never be tainted with alliances, contact, or dependency upon 'crusader' states. Modern Islamic theology running through Al Banna, Qutb, Maududi, Khomenei, Bin Laden and various fundamentalist-Wahhabi styled Muslim extremists, demands a pure implementation of the original Islam, the one carried by the victorious armies of Mohammed and his successors in the first 40 years of Islamic imperialism.

The fact that Mohammed and his successors engaged in rape, slave trading, torture, racism, drinking, unlimited sex and endless acts of an unholy nature escape these fundamentalists. For the modern Islamist or Muslim extremist the scope, scale and rapidity of Arab imperialism is proof enough of 'Allahs' blessing and of early Islam's divine grace. If Muslims become pure again, than the power of Allah will inspire and propel them to the establishment of a new Caliphate.

The last Caliphate died with the Ottomans dismantled in 1923 as the Turks gave up their empire and installed in its place a Turkish nationalist state. The mild Westernisation of Turkey has always inflamed fundamentalist Muslims who view the weak, tottering and fascistic Ottoman empire, in which millions died and millions more were enslaved, as an apogee of Muslim imperialism. The Ottoman empire was only kept alive by the geo-political aspirations of European powers, who could and should have taken back Istanbul which they could have done at any moment they desired.

From Turkey to Iraq to the Atlantic sea, the Ottomans at one time constituted the largest Muslim empire in history outside that of the converted Mongols. And like the Mongol empire it was a pre-modern, poor, agrarian and backwards society – premised however on Sharia law. Sadly for Muslim fundamentalists the Ottoman empire was of course nothing more than crass Turkish imperialism which used Islam as a convenient tool. The Turks were enthusiastic Muslims – but still Turkish. The Ottomans simply used Islam as an ideological means to conquer, subdue and pacify. Every empire needs an ideology.

In fact the Turks had great disdain for many of the Arab peoples within their empire, viewing the Arabs as untrustworthy, lazy and stupid. They also had little time for other non-Turks within their empire as the massacres of Jews, Christians, Armenians and Berbers so amply demonstrate. As with the early Arabs, the leadership of this 'Muslim' empire was the ethnicity who enjoyed power, the rest of the empire simply obeyed.

This is the curious feature then of Islam. Muslims have always traded, allied or been dependent in some way on the infidel nations. All Muslim empires have had trade, military and political dalliances with non-Muslim Western states. Even today many Arab and Muslim states are close dependencies of the US. Egypt, the house of Saud, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco and now a free and liberated Iraq are important parts of the US global system. The US does not control these states of course, but it does have leverage. Islam has never been pure as its fundamentalists claim.

This then might be Islam's salvation. Muslim fundamentalists rage on about Islam's golden age which never existed; or its early epoch of purity and power funded by Allah – a simplicisme which also never existed. They scream that any contact with the infidel powers must bring destruction and that regimes such as Iraq's parliamentary democracy or Mubarak's authoritian Egyptian state, must be destroyed since they depend on the crusaders. Any sentient person, who can walk upright knows these claims to be preposterous but they carry great weight in the Muslim world. They have after all, 1400 years of history behind them.

Islamic jihad and will to power transcends Sunni, Shiite, national, regional, ethnic, linguistic and tribal rivalry. Muslims have always fought each other over the sources of power and wealth. They fight today in Iraq and elsewhere in an epic battle between those who want a new Caliphate ruling the Muslim world [Bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran] which is able to destroy the West; and those Muslim nationalists who want a modern nation state and who are not interested in a transational empire knowing that such empires have little to do with Islam and more to do with the domination of one Muslim tribe over another [see the Ottoman empire as an example].

We in the West should be thankful that Islam is again, perenially plunged into a civil war. But we would be naive to dismiss its universal appeal. If the forces of jihad can win in Iraq, Lebanon [which was a Christian state until the Muslims destroyed it]; North Africa, Egypt and elsewhere, a loose confederation of Islamic extremism is certain. Historically Islam is probably the greatest imperial project in history. and this primitive appeal to destroying the 'infidel' explains in part the puzzling popular support for fascist organisations such as Hamas and Hizbollah.

Islam's ideological masterpiece of control – the Koran – excites entire populations to jihad, domination and the eradication of the kaffir. Islam's desire for universalism is a potent force and one that will not die until the ideology is modernised and updated. And that is something only Muslims can do. It is doubtful however that most Muslims have any intention or desire to change the underlying ideology of universal will to power embedded in the Koran, the Sharia or the Hadiths.

This is what makes Islam so dangerous and what makes conflict so inevitable. Islam is simply and utterly incompatible with modernity. Until Muslims decide to modernise their 12th century codified text and force their ideology to conform to the modern world, conflict between two opposing cultures - one modern, one pre modern - is of course inevitable and necessary. Failed ideologies which reject outside influences and change are only defeated by military might. This is in fact the main lesson of the 20th century.

The myth of Islamic tolerance. Read the history of the Ottomans as one example.

It is a hoary post-modern, ridiculous myth, which permeates the media and modern sensibility. Islamic empires are now fashionably depicted as tolerant temples of multi-cultural peace and love. What a nonsense. The modern history of the Ottoman empire, not to mention the history of any Muslim empire, state, or kleptocracy reveals the opposite to be true.

The Ottoman empire was a Turkish imperialist enterprise. It had little regard for 'others'. Like most Turkish tribes from the central Asian steppes the Ottomans had converted to Islam during the 10th to 11th centuries. Migrating and holding part of modern Turkey not far from Constantinople the Ottomans turned a small principality into a world-relevant empire. But it was a Turkish enterprise and had little to do with multi-cult love and understanding.

The Turks and Ottomans were assaulted first by the Mongols in the 13th century and then by Tamerlane a hybrid Turk and Mongol during the 14th. The Mongols had converted to Islam during the 14th century and came close to wiping out the Turkish and Arab states and empires. The Ottomans thrust near the Christian Byzantine border survived and turned their strong defensive position into a springboard to empire.

Defeating the Byzantines near Constantinople [yes note to post moderns Istanbul was once Christian], the Ottomans spread across the Bosporus into Europe and surrounded the remaining heartland of the second Roman empire. By 1453 the Turks had the Christian city and the most prosperous urban and trading area in the world surrounded. Depleted of troops, people, money and time the most important Christian enclave outside of Rome was taken by the Turks in an orgy of blood, death, executions, rape and destruction. The city streets ran knee deep in blood.

The destruction of the Byzantine empire would be but a harbinger of the methods and attitudes of the Muslim Turkish empire.

Within 80 years the Ottoman empire had expanded to its greatest expanse. In 1529 the Turks were hammering on the gates of Vienna after subduing the Balkans, Greece, parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Levant [or Israel, erroneously and stupidly called Palestine by the multi-cults]. Even at its apogee the Ottoman empire was a contradiction and internally rotten. As quickly as they rose the Ottomans were poised to fall.

The Turkish Muslim empire was typical of all Muslim empires – Arab, Mongol, Sudanese, or Indian. All Muslim empires suffered from similar problems. The core or ruling elite, was always challenged by the peripheral areas. The imperialist language – Arabic or in the case of the Ottomans Turkish – was never enough to solidify a vast empire into one coherent unit.

The Ottomans like the Arabs before them were imperialists – Jews, Christians, Persians, Arabs or Berbers were simply people to be conquered, subdued and forced to submit. Islam was a convenient ideology of occupation and the will to universal world rule a compelling impulse to empire extension. As with the Arabs the Ottoman Turks were also grasping, ravenous, murderous, and ill-tempered imperialists. Islam's holy writ that the subjugated must submit and give up their rights and humanity was not an empty promise.

After the Turks were pushed out from Vienna in 1529 the Turkish imperial venture, in the name of Islam, started to show remarkable weakness. Corruption, bribery, an effeminized and pleasure loving elite, military backwardness, and a rash of discontented popular uprisings marked Ottoman rule from the mid 16th century to its demise in 1918. For over 370 years, Tsar Nicholas' 'sick man of Europe' was held up and protected by European powers. In one of history's great ironies, it was the British, the French and at times the Russians who held the Ottoman empire together. It is a bizarre and queer spectacle which still reverberates today.

The idea that the Ottomans erected a multi-cult paradise of communal love and respect is of course insane. The Turks were conquerers controlling the eastern Mediterranean basin and huge swathes of central and eastern Europe. As with the Muslim Arab occupations the Turks displayed ferocity and rapacity on a huge scale. Slavery, rape, tribute, destruction of local culture and massive Turkish immigration into the 'new' lands followed Ottoman expansion. Turkish power was spread by blood and war, not by hugs and kisses.

Some simple examples suffice. From 1820 until 1920 subject peoples in the Balkans, Greece, Eastern Europe and Egypt were in a state of almost perpetual rebellion. Greece alone during its 10 year war for independence lost between 1820 and 1830 almost 100.000 killed, wounded and sold into slavery. Similar episodes occurred throughout the Ottoman empire. The backward, anti-industiral, impoverished and largely agricultural Turkish enterprise was little more than an imperialist, autocratic and very corrupt oriental adventure.

The apogee of Turkish ruthlessness and genocide occurred of course with the Armenians. Incited by the ideas of nationalism and inflamed by the examples of Greece and eastern Europe, the Armenians who were Christianity's oldest national grouping, started to agitate for independence around 1870. War, incidents of terrorism and open conflict finally resulted in the Turkish massacre of 250.000 Armenian Christians in the east of Turkey in 1896. This blunted but did not end the Armenian effort for an independent Christian state.

With the advent of World War I and the Ottoman entrance into the war on the side of Germany to try and expand its Islamic empire in Europe and beyond, the Armenians openly allied themselves with the Russians. The Turkish response was genocidal. Armenians were first disarmed and then deported en masse to desert camps in Syria. The old, sick, young and useless were generally shot on sight. Deported columns of Armenians were harassed by Muslims, raped, beaten and eventually starved to death or killed by the Turks. Almost 1.5 million non Muslim Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks during World War One – a crime still denied by the Turkish state.

No one knows how many non Muslims, and non-Turks the Turkish Ottomans murdered in their conquests from 1300 until 1918. The 1453 sack of Constantinople annihilated the city under a river of blood. Literally millions were sold by Turks in slave markets over their 500 reign of Oriental terror. Millions more were killed in reprisals, civil war and genocide. Christians, Jews, Greeks, and non-Turks were under constant pressure and authoritarian rule for centuries. The Turkish elite ruled and the rest of their vast emporium obeyed. A multi-cult paradise? Hardly.

The Turkish Muslim empire was a backwards, anti-modern and oriental relic of a disaster. If the Ottomans had been the genteel, intelligent multi-cults of revisionist historical lore, than their empire would not have been so rotted, corrupt and impoverished. It was perversely only the geo-political concerns and competition of the 'great powers' of Europe which allowed the Ottomans to survive past 1700. At any time during the past 300 years the British, Russians or even the Americans could have taken back Constantinople – a worthwhile objective which was unfortunately never pursued.

Millions of whites died, and millions more were enslaved by the Turks and their Muslim caliphate. Sex slaves, soldiers, mine workers, and forced laborers – all white – were taken by the Muslims into the Turkish heartlands for the benefit of the Islamic empire. Yet no one cries or remembers the jihad against modernity perpetrated by the Turkish Muslims. For many the Ottoman Turks represent tolerance and sophistication. In reality they represented oppression, hatred, blood and genocide.

Islam's imperial nature. Mohammed, 632 A.D.: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no God but Allah.'

For the relativists, the chattering spitting marxist and the eco-lover, Islam is just another 'religion' giving comfort to those in need. There is nothing inherently violent, supremacist or racist in Islamic doctrine according to this point of view. Islam is really kind and nice and most Muslims are peaceful. This is the public view of George Bush, the US political leadership class, and of course the Useless Nations and the EUnuchs in EUropia. A more truthful and compelling view maintains that Islam is naturally expansionist and is in fact the most successful imperialist ideology in history.

The expansionist concept of Islam is of course politically incorrect. Portraying Islam as anything other than a wondrous spiritual exercise is sure to get the author sued, harassed by Human Rights Councils and vilified by mainstream socialists and relativists. But covering up reality with abstractions and lies does not make the truth, nor reality, disappear. Arab and Islamic imperialism is without question one of the most decisive factors in human history. And one that is almost never discussed.

Scorn and historical opprobrium is heaped upon white 'imperialists' and colonialists and the supposed destruction they wrought whilst raping the world, wondrous ancient and far superior pagan-neolithic civilisations; and enslaving blacks, yellows and browns. Reality was of course a lot different and far more positive. Would the world be better off today if North American 'Indians' were still in control of America? Only a constrained narrow and deranged mind would think so.

There is plenty of good along with the bad with so-called white imperialism. Romans, Greeks, British, French and Russians brought many goods, ideas, spiritual innovations, and technologies to improve the lives and worldviews, not to mention the wealth, of their subjects. One reason why 'white' Rome was able to dominate the mediterranean world for 700 years was that society, the economy and the standard of living markedly improved.

Moralists will highlight that Christianity as an imperial project is stained with blood, corruption and misuse of 'native' cultures. In some cases this is true. But Christianity also brought ideas about humanism, the worth of individuals, equality, justice and the power of mental awareness to the world. Christian thought is imbued with principles of zen meditation, rights, freedom and the division of church from state, not to mention the golden rule. These catalysts of civilisation are entirely positive and it was the Christians who opposed slavery [La Casas in the 16th century defended American Indian rights to land ownership and equality]; slave trading; the misuse of women and children; and vices which lead to societal breakdown such as excessive drinking, sex, violence and a lack of education.

It is hard to make the case that Christian imperialism was an odious epoch.

Compare the rights and programs of Christianity with that of Islam. Islamic imperialism carried no higher good than the enrichment of the founders of Islam – Bedouin pagan Arabs. Mohammed was a warrior and a political leader and a far different figure than Christ. For Mohammed church and state were under his command, and he answered only to Ali-ilah or Allah, the Meccan moon cult deity. For Mohammed and his followers whatever advanced Islam was allowed. Whatever got in the way of Islamic imperialism was to be crushed.

This is how Islamic Jew and Christian hatred started. Mohammed tried to win over the rich Jewish tribes who resided in Arabia during the 7th century AD and who controlled rich trade routes and caravans. When the Jews and Christians rejected Mohammed the massacres of these 'kaffirs' began. One famous Jewish tribe – the Khaibars – were annihilated by Mohammed and his men giving rise the Muslim name of the famous pass in Afghanistan [the Khyber pass] as a reminder of what happens to those who disobey Islamic demands. Another Jewish group the Quraiza were similarly liquidated with women and children sold into slavery or sex concubinage and all 700 men and boys beheaded and their bodies kicked into a trench which they had dug.

Islamic universalism and the melding of church and state into one entity was codified by Mohammed in the Meccan Constitution – the formal document of Muslim ideology. By uniting Arab tribes into one loose federation obeying the Arabian male moon cult or Allah, Mohammed had one serious problem to overcome. How to stop intra-tribal raiding and thieving and the usual Bedouin practice of stealing? The answer lay in expansion and imperialism.

Mohammed the warrior said it best himself, 'the survival of my community rests on the hoofs of its horses and the points of its lances; as long as they keep from tilling the fields; once they begin to do that they will become as other men.' Pagan Arabs were largely nomadic and not prone to the creation of civilisation along Judeo-Christian lines, nor were most much interested in urbanisation and the effeminisation which settled culture entails. These primitive peoples were thereby hard to control and prone to violence. By amalgamting the Arab tribes into one federation Mohammed had created a powerful force but what was he to do with it?

The Arabs of Mohammed's era lived near the spice trade routes which linked Yemen to Israel and they bordered two larger and far wealthier civilisations- the Sassanids or Persians to the east and the Byzantines to the north and north west. Under Mohammed's control the Arabs began to raid and dominate the north-south trade caravans and appropriate all non-Muslim money and property within the Arabian peninsula. Jews and Christians were especially loathsome targets being recently condemned by Mohammed as savages and idolators.

Before Mohammed died in 632 he sent raiding parties against both empires and finding them feeble ordered his successors to spread Islam by the sword by dismantling these two tottering and over-extended states. Thus was born the Arab explosion onto the world scene and the carrying of Islam by force, war, and the extraction of tribute to lands from India to Spain. For Mohammed and his immediate successors jihad was a duty to Allah to bring his message to all people's on earth and to subject them to the chosen tribe – the Arabs – in the name of universal destiny.

And so Islamic imperialism began. The history of Islamic expansionism is of course complex. Through forced and voluntarily conversion various groups such as the Turks, Persians, Sudanese, Indians, Afghanis, Mongols, Berbers and Maghrebis have established Islamic empires of various sizes, duration and power. There is no monolithic version of Islamic empire, much as there is no monolithic implementation of Islamic ideology. Even within the Sunni [the practice] group or the Shias [the faction of Ali]; there are many different interpretations as to what Islam means.

One might argue that Islamic imperialism was really a pre-modern event and that one cannot form linkages between Islam's rise and spread, and the modern world today. This is certainly open to debate. Many of us would argue that Islam, the Koran the Hadiths, the sayings and practices [Sunna] of Mohammed are directly responsible and are concretely linked to an expansionist version of Islam which is real, dangerous and anti-civilsational. Given the historical rise of Islam and its continuing expansion this seems a far more reliable opinion based on fact, than dismissing Islam as a misunderstood 'faith'. Islam in its scriptures, its practices and its history is a universalist ideology.

Arab and Islamic imperialism is unfortunately a rarely discussed topic. It is just assumed in today's dumbed-down world that Muslims and Arabs have always existed in the areas of the globe where we now find them resident. This is of course preposterous. Egypt in the 7th century was Greek, Christian, Jewish and Berber and its Hamitic people were not in anyway Arabic. Iraq before the Arab-Muslim conquest had huge populations of Jews, Greeks, Christians and Persians – and very few Arabs. From Spain to Indonesia the same lesson applies.

Historically Islam was spread by force, by tributary status, by conversions to avoid taxation and by political power. It is still a potent force and one which does give rise to a clash of cultures. To ignore this fact is dangerous and to make excuses for it criminal. Islam is not monolithic nor are all Muslims brain-washed cult members. But Islam is an ideology which does nto respect civilisation and has little in common with Christian and Western civilisation. A cursory reading of Islamic imperialist history makes that rather obvious.

Government invoices should be sent quarterly. One way to limit Leviathan.

Globalisation was suppose to constrain government – instead it has increased it powers. Governments have now created 'clients' not citizens. Each little group, income level, union, vested interest, failing business, angry citizen, minority and cry-baby organisation demands public money as a 'right'. Program spending is out of control and only getting wilder. We need some transparency to halt the tide of government.

One way to educate citizens about the ineffectiveness of government is by having quarterly invoices sent to each taxpayer. This would immediately increase transparency and responsibility. On this government invoice will be your estimated income; what you paid in tax by area; and what you consumed by area. Suddenly all the 'black' holes of government spending would have some light shed on them. You might be amazed for instance to discover that you paid $4000 for 'free' health care this quarter and consumed exactly zero resources. Wouldn't that stimulate a reaction ?

An example could be the following:

Invoice from your 3 levels of Government
Sent by: The office of Government Accountability
To: Mr. Slave Knave

Estimated Taxable Income for Quarter 1, Year 1984: $15.000

Paid to government through:
-Payroll taxes: $6.000
-Sales taxes: $2.000
-Gas and Eco taxes: $1.000
-Income tax: $4.000
-Health tax: $1.000
-Other 'Fees': $1.000

Your tax money was spent in the following main categories [this includes all levels of government]:

-State/Provincial Socialised Health Care: $2.000
-Regional and local transport services: $1.000
-Regional and local education services: $1.000
-Pensions: $1.000
-Welfare: $1.000
-Corporate Subsidies: $500
-Agricultural Subsidies: $500
-Police, Fire and Safety: $1.000
-Poverty and income transfers: $1.500
-Environmental management: $1.000
-Debt reduction [national and state]: $1.500
-Interest payments on debt: $1.000
-Military: $500
-General Government services [other]: $1.500

Total: $15.000

You could then assess usage by identifying those services such as welfare, subsidies, education and health care, which were consumed by each individual. You might find out for instance that you gave caring, compassionate government $2.000 for health care but consumed nothing. This might change your ideas about the 'free' nature of such a service and start a search for reasonable alternatives including private care, a parallel public-private partnership or a system where costs are contained while better and price competitive access is ensured.

You might also get annoyed at the amount of money being sent out of your bank account to fund poverty and pension programs when you know that your own meager pension will barely keep you out of poverty. Why are you funding other people when you are struggling yourself?

Detailed government produced invoices would quickly disabuse people that unionized big brother is their friend.

In the private sector, and real world, when you work for someone you must send them an invoice. The invoice has to detail what you did, for how long and the costs in labor and material. The payor or client has to agree. If they do, you get paid. If they don't you sort out the problem and reach an agreement which is fair. Government is apparently working for taxpayers is it not?

In reality governments work for themselves. They can do what they like. They can change laws, raise taxes, call massive spending 'moral', and socialised whole sectors of the economy like health care to 'protect' people because they love and care for their citizens. But there are costs to government interventionism and the costs are rarely calculated down to the individual level by category. In fact there are perhaps only 2 or 3 private institutes which try to identify what each tax payer, in each income level, in each region or state, pays government for government funded and controlled services.

This is astonishing.

For most people about 50% of their income is consumed by government. Yet these so-called 'citizens' have no idea what their benevolent government did with such a sum. What part of it went to subsidized agriculture, corporate welfare, health care, transportation, debt reduction, public libraries, new sidewalks, union pay cheques, or that wonderful anti-Western museum of human rights that no one visits? No one has a clue.

The same holds true of course for corporate and business taxes including income, payroll, regulation 'fees' and value added taxes. As a business do you know where your tax money goes to? You certainly know where your expense money goes to – your wages, your marketing budget, your rent and overheads and your capital spending. Why not with taxes? Taxes are a huge cost input for businesses yet all we hear from the chattering marxists and TV 'experts' is that business must pay its fair [ie higher] share. It is pathetic.

Government publishes of course high level overviews of where tax money is allocated, with a certain % of all taxes going to interest, debt reduction, welfare programs, the military and other areas of concern, but this is just a simple reckoning of meta-level obligations. While useful this overview is severely limited and goes largely unnoticed by the general tax paying public. It also does not include local and state tax payments. How many people know what local government spends their money on? How many citizens have read one single federal report on where government spends tax money by area?

Companies and people will only react to government when the transfers become personal and include all levels of government. It would be far better for a business or an individual to receive a detailed invoice identifying taxes paid, and services provided. Taxes are after all a large cost. If you pay taxes you expect services including transport, protection, energy, utilities, waste removal, and security. You probably don't desire to pay for higher union costs, vanity projects, corruption, agro-subsidies, corporate welfare or massive pensions and ineffective health care.

Taxpayers should be demanding an invoice from their governments in order to assess where money goes and what projects and programs are being pushed by a unionized elite. The costs to do this would not be that expensive and could easily be funded by other unnecessary program spending cuts.

But we know that government is largely a bloated, inefficient and unruly mess.

Since governments don't have the skills, or incentives to provide such an invoice, the private sector should do so. It is not that difficult to merge local, state or nationally available statistics to calculate average payments based on after tax information on what each individual spends by category both local and national. A private sector invoice, generated to show each household, business and taxpayer what they paid versus what they consumed would create a revolution in attitudes towards government.

It would be a great business idea and most people would happily pay a few dollars to receive such a notice in their mailbox outlining where exactly their hard earned tax money has gone.

As time wore on the invoice could become more and more detailed and include such esoteric but never reported on tax programs such as government support for gay and lesbian organisations, regional programs of choice or institutions designed to crush free speech such as Human Rights Councils. People would then be confronted by the way in which governments manipulate money, the media and push their own programs using tax payer dollars. The link would be obvious for all to see.

Until there is transparency at the individual level government will continue to grow. It has to become personal. Otherwise there is no stopping the state. Who after all is going to argue that a 25 cent user fee on all peanut butter sold in retail outlets, allocated to save the polar bears and protect the 9 toed lungless frog from extinction is not a noble and moral ideal?

More taxes, sur-taxes, fees, 'investments', and 'temporary measures' simply get lost in the avalanche of program spending and a complicated tax code. Until people start to view government as THEIR client and demand an invoice for services rendered to THEM, the madness will never stop. Personalise government. Such an idea seems to work rather well in the real world.

Swaggering Islam, Cowering West.

This picture depicts 'Palestinians' [otherwise known as Arabs], recently celebrating the death of 8 innocent Jewish seminary students in Jerusalem. Of course the world yawns. Imagine the outrage if Jews or Americans did the same, slaughtered 8 Arab students at a cafe in New York, then danced and partied all night. Such is the swaggering poverty of Arab and Muslim culture. Such is the cowardice of a cowering, chattering West populated by liberal elitist fembots, too frightened to call a cat, a cat and too inclined to appeasement and cowardice in the face of a 1400 year Muslim jihad.

When Western politicians such as Geert Wilders of Holland, or writers such as Mark Steyn of Canada, quote Muslim sources to illustrate their views about Islamic intolerance they are labeled as 'right wing populists'. This label which runs akin to that of Globaloney Warming denier; Holocaust denier; fascist or neo-Nazi; is a cheap substitute for debate and reason.

As the vituperative Ann Coulter long ago pointed out, the elitist socialists and marxists who run society find it far easier to label than to engage in understanding substance. Debate and inquiry is not the goal of the feminized Western elite – social compliance and control is and screaming that anyone who opposes your view is a latter day Hitler is an emotionally satisfying yet disturbingly adolescent means to no end.

And so it goes with Islam. The Muslims have been in a watershed explosion of violence for 40 years since they lost the 1967 war with the Jews. Unable to muster coherence or power militarily, the Muslim and Arab forces turned to terror, cultural marxism, and using the institutions of the West against Western states. This two pronged attack is the only likely way that Islam can subvert the West. Terror to cow the feminized politicians and citizenry, married to educational, media and political subversion from within, sustained by massive immigration.

It is not a secret that 40 or more million Muslims now live in Europe. At least 10 to 15 million reside in North America – legally. Governments will never reveal the truth about the extent of Islamic populations in the West much as they lie about illegal immigration numbers in the US, understating them by a factor of 3. Muslims are soon to reach a political level of prominence which will only add momemtum to their precense in universities, the media and mainstream thinking. It is not for nothing that Muslim lobby groups are now targeting to bring a Koran into every North American home.

The extent of Muslim and Arab swagger is startling. Muslims and Arabs can kill at will, demonize Jews and Christians and engage in endless chatter about dominating the world, and yet we hoi-polloi are to believe the Muslim ideology is just another faith and that there are reasonable reasons for their 1400 year old jihad of conquering hate and blood. Strange logic that.

The Muslim leadership of Islamo-fascist ideals has more in common with the bold arrogance of Nazis than with the peace loving sects of Christians. It matters not if a Sufi, a Shia, or a Sunni is responsible for the advocation of domination, Islamic purity, kaffir or slave subjugation, or the eradication of democratic and successful Israel. Mentally ill and twisted fallacies are used by any and all Muslims to justify a litany of terror, hate, war and blood. Lies boldy told with swaggering confidence have been typical choices of those ideologies of fatalism and universalism which foretell their dominance of manking. After all if you are destined to win, why be afraid?

The swaggering arrogance of Muslim Islamo-fascism is legion and illustrated by the deeply held and profoundly stupid beliefs of the Western elite, their media friends and many in academia [remember go to university but miss your education]:

Islam means 'peace'
The root word of Islam is “al-Silm,” which means “submission” or “surrender.” The word Allah is not God in the Christian sense but denotes ali-ilah or the moon cult god, itself a paganism premised on submission. Islam in effect means submit yourself to the Mecca male moon spirit.

Islam supports freedom
Muslims create dhimmis or non-Muslims who are ruled as second class and highly taxed citizens. Islam has been history's great ideological slave trader still trading slaves in open markets today. Its misogynistic character and demotion of women to the status of a dog is of course incontestable. Full bed sheets and face coverings are worn to denote women as property and chattel – not to liberate them.

Islam is not violent
In the name of Allah or the Mecca moon cult, Islam has been involved in 11.091 Islamic attacks since 9-11 killing or wounding a million people worldwide. Imagine if Christians were involved in a fraction of such carnage.
See Islam's death toll here for details.

Islam is roughly similar to Christianity
The two have nothing in common. The bible is a collection of analogies and rules, whilst the Koran is an impossible to understand set of gibberish about ritualisation and prostration. The mores of Christianity, its teachings, its purpose and its modern relevance has nothing in common with a set of ideas frozen in the 12th century and determined through Sharia Law to be the end of man's intellectual and social development.

Mohammed was a great man of peace:
Mad Moh was the precursor to Hitler. He led 85 odd campaigns and murdered thousands of people some with his own hands. Slave trading, salacious sex, stealing, profiteering and killing off Jews and Christians were some of his main hobbies. Before his death he instructed his generals to conquer the world.

Islam is not imperialistic
Muslims sprang out of Arabia in the 7th century and have spread Islam across the world. In so doing they have killed 300 million people and probably wounded a similar number. Even the Communists have only succeeded in killing half that number.

Arabs 'own' Israel
Jews have lived in Israel for 3.000 years and David's kingdom circa 1000 B.C was the most powerful state in the region. The Jewish second temple built by Herod 600 years before the Arab-Muslim invasions was the largest structure ever built until recent times using more stone than the Great pyramid at Giza.

Jews took Israel
Starting in the 1880s the Jews began to migrate to Israel and buy land and land titles. In the 1917 British census the Jews were the majority population in what the British called the Jewish mandate. The whole point of the 1917 declaration was to give the Jews a homeland in areas in which they were already the majority. For the record Israel was a wasteland until the Jews developed a modern country and the 300.000 or so resident Arabs had done nothing to develop it.

What about Palestine ? [sniff sniff]
The Palestinian 'people' is a 1960s myth inspired by the Egyptian fascist and terrorist Arafat the world's ugliest ever Islamic murderer so beloved and coveted by an adoring and quite munificent West. He was Bill Clinton's best handshake partner. Arafat stole hundreds of millions of dollars whilst murdering over 100.000 Christians in Lebanon and thousands of Jews. [But oh okay, those are just Jews and Christians slaughtered for the Arab-Muslim 'cause' – thanks for explaining that.]

No one will read or hear about the above or countless other categories of Arab-Muslim disinformation. At least not in the West in mainstream schools or media. Any criticism of a politically sensitive group is to be radically discouraged. Hence in the West, Human Rights Councils prosecute those who criticise the Arab moon cult, even when they only quote back what is fact, or what Muslims themselves say about dominating the world, killing Jews, or wiping out the USA. Muslims themselves are a protected species, akin to the cuddly polar bears or lovely seals.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel [the Mirror] editorialised that the West is a relativist coward in confronting the insaner elements of Islamic violence and outrage, preferring to horsewhip those who criticism Islam, to those Muslims who engage in acts of violence and terror:

Der Spiegel ed.
“And now the "right-wing populist" Wilders is being sacrificed on the altar of appeasement policy. He is no cineaste, and his film [Fitna which criticises the Koran and links passages of it to Islamic violence and hate] is certainly no masterpiece. It is, however, a brute challenge to us to at least recognize reality.”

This cowardice is only part of the problem. As Steyn and others point out, Islam is confident and Western culture is not. Rotted through with self-doubt, out of control left wing politics and social commentary, and broken by an un-education system of ignorance, propaganda and relativity, the West is cowering. It will take real courage and leadership for that to change, but so far the number who want to discuss the truth are few and far between.

In the meantime the rest can enjoy hating the Jews and the Americans and embracing Islam. Maybe one day they will become mature adults. Or perhaps they will just enjoy being good little dhimmis.

The real importance and meaning of Christianity. Mental and spiritual therapy and healing.

If you go to church you are probably labeled, [by the intolerant who pose as the defenders of 'tolerance'], as something little better than a reptile. For the 'tolerant' the Christian church is nothing better than a cult, a fantasy, a power trip, a mass of hypocrites, or a latter day narrow-minded set of medieval [if not primeval] dogma unrelated to the 'rights'; attitudes and self-absorption of the '1960s inspired, me-now' generation.

Nietzschean inanity proliferates in a gross mis-representation of the mental and spiritual therapy which is at the heart of what the Christian church as to offer. For those who feel that the church has nothing to offer remember that your hero Nietzsche, the clinical patient who cited, 'God is dead', was insane and died penniless.

The church in its best and simplest form has much to offer. It is not the supernaturality, the debate about Christ [did he really exist?]; or the endless discussions about church intolerance, bigotry and misdeeds. What institution, culture, race, tribe or civilisation has not committed acts which contravene moral law? The church's importance does not lie in memorisation of scripture, dogmatic interpretation of the same, or an intolerance towards anyone who is not sufficiently fanatical. Its relevance has nothing to do with ritual, submission, or believing that every word in the Bible, written over 1500 years by humans, was somehow inspired by 'God'.

The importance of the Christian church lies in its very real application in the modern world. The Bible is basically a story of ethics, a set of examples; and a history of the the Jews and early Christians – who were themselves of course a Jewish sect. God is used as fountainhead of inspiration to put the human being in its proper place. You are neither a beast nor a deity. You are somewhere in between. God as a concept exists everywhere. It exists in you, in your family, your loved ones, in nature and in the human subconscious. God is simply a representation of what 'goodness' should aspire to. It is not a discernible, human, thing, or object in the sky.

Real Christian sects have a realistic understanding of what the Old and New testaments are trying to tell us. These books are basically conservative documents which give some guidelines and rules to engage in a profitable, mentally aware and emotionally satisfying life. Every successful modern Western state in history has had to apply some aspects of Christian thought to society's development – whether or not it is called 'Christian' is immaterial – but clearly without the rules and ideas of the Bible the modern Western world would not exist.

Take these elements from the Old Testament as an example. You don't need to be a fire-breathing, Bible-thumping, Jimmy Swaggart styled charlatan stealing people's money, to recognise the enormous value in these ideas:

Exodus 21-12: Capital Punishment
'Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death.'

Exodus 21-23: Justice
'You shall not oppress an a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in Egypt.'

Leviticus 19-15: Justice
'You shall not render an unjust judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great'

Psalm 37: 'Do no fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers; for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.'

Ecclisiastes 2: Vanity
'Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind'

Matthew 13-54:
'I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.'

These passages are simple illustrations around the idea of justice, self-absorption and doing what is right. Everyone can learn something by reading these and reflecting on their own lives and actions.

The Bible is the first true document which outlines morality, ethics and the golden rule [do unto others as you would have done to you]. Nothing like it had previously existed – nowhere. Some civilisations had their sagas [Gilgamesh; the Bhagavat], but nowhere was the roadmap to living life in an agricultural epoch, in which great disparity between rich the powerful and the poor and the sick existed, developed. It was the creation of the Jews. From thall shou not steal to Christ's admonition that the kingdom of heaven is inside each person, the Jews and their Christian offspring developed a transformation in spiritual and social awareness.

If you are a female or part of the great mass of 'unwealthy' you have a lot to thank Christianity for.

There are of course many passages and stories which are not that relevant for the average person looking for spiritual guidance, faith based therapy; or an emotional link to something greater than themselves. But there are certainly enough passages to help anyone who needs spiritual therapy. The implementation of Christian thought has a lot in common with the designs of Zen Buddhism – quietness, reflection, self-awareness, self-perspective, and an emotional non-judgemental connection to the rest of the world and nature. Christianity is in part an implementation of Zen inspired meditation.

These transcendental reflections of Christianity make it remarkable. The church in its best and most humanist form [pace Erasmus for example] is concerned with human needs now. So-called Evangelicals started as community help movements. Addictions, marriage problems, moral issues and criminality were alleviated in part by well meaning Christian groups focused on improving people's lives. Most charities survive on Christian donations, and Christians are the mainstays of missions, hospitals and institutions which help the poor, the homeless and the disabled.

Remove the Christians from society and your welfare state would collapse.

Christianity in its best form can teach anyone about the key elements of self-awareness, humility and social duty and charity. This quality of the church is vital in developing a strong community. You don't have to read and memorise every word of the Bible to be a good Christian. You only need to take the important spiritual and practical ideas of the Christian faith, understand and implement them, to be a better person.

That is the power of the church.

Obama – the most dangerous marxist in America.

Christ's message was targeted on a certain market segment and was reflected in his 12 disciples. The poor, the sick, the outcast, and the uneducated agricultural laborer were attracted to his message. The disciples represented Christ's constituency. They were fisherman, country folk, uneducated, relatively poor, and desirous of spiritual and social change. They were anything but elitist. This is true of all leaders – look at who is in their inner circle and who supports them most fervently, to understand who they really. Regard for example who surrounds Hussein Obama who believes there are 57 states, or tired old Hillary Clinton, and ask yourself if these are the people who along with their gangs, should be leading anything more complicated than a high school.

Hussein Obama is a lightweight farce. Driven by media adulation, race baiting, and marxist-populist fantasy Obama is apparently the second coming of the black Jesus. No policy depth, no experience, no details, no intellectual weight is no problem for millions of people. Just buy into the charismatic lie of hope and change, an offering made by many a madman in history ranging from Lenin to Castro, to the dog-loving and very friendly Herr Hitler. Words matter and when the rhetoric is so ridiculous and so thin, it is a good sign that we have a lighter than air messenger.

Obama is transparently diaphonous. If he was any lighter he would ressemble Kate Moss with Kate having the upper hand intellectually. His lightness is in itself a sure signal that something is very wrong with US politics. Pace Clinton style so overwhelms substance, that soon hot models will be running for office proclaiming tearful hopes of world peace and one world, one world! No doubt the media will oblige and clap. But the really sinister thing about Obama and worn, leathered Hillary is who their friends are.

Hussein Obama is surrounded by a coterie of unappealing characters. They reflect his constituency, his support, his appeal and his program of anti-reality. Like Christ's disciples they reveal a lot about the man – more even perhaps than his wafty, preposterous speech making. Around the no-experienced candidate we see the following circling:

-A black power and overtly racist black liberation church, members and pastor. Reverend Wrong or Wright, and his replacement Mr. Hip Hop boy, are just the manifestations of a church entirely and utterly beyond the pale.

-An arrogant bitter and white-hating wife, who went to Princeton on an affirmative action program. This obviously proves that white America is racist.

-Nation of Islam. There are direct linkages between the Kid and Louis Farrakhan the well known Black racist running the Black Muslim Nation of Islam. Farrakhan promotes the quaint idea of eradicating Jewry and white people in the US, and establishing a Black caliphate. Obviously he is a moderate Muslim.

-Corrupt politicians and businessmen in Chicago. Land deals, home deals, financing arrangements and other innuendi are most likely a small fraction of what really goes on in Chicago's corrupt politics. Or do you really believe that a corrupt city, run by a corrupt Democratic party has magically produced an incorruptible and pure Black politician to lead America?

-Unions. Unions seem to resonate with the Kid Dynomite. This leads to protectionism, higher taxes and reduced economic vibrancy. Pandering to the 20-25% of the working population who are union workers always leads to a loss of trade and competitiveness.

-John Edwards and the metrosexual caucus. Hair-boy Edwards and his gang of androngenous Michael Jackson's is a throny crown of doom for the Obama gang. Edwards is a raving mad rich populist who will try to steer Obama even further to the marxist-socialist left in his apparent zeal to end all poverty tomorrow. Edwards is a buffoon and attaching his name to Kid Dynomite is not a great endorsement.

-The greenist cult. Nothing is more absurd than Globaloney Warming or saving the polar bears [with the exception of John Edwards' hair]. Obama and his mates profess a fervent desire to combat 'climate change' – as if the earth's climate has ever been stable. Such ideas lead to economic devastation, higher taxes, more government, and not one single tiny impact on 'climate change'. Mother earth will simply yawn and wonder how humans can be so stupid.

-The elites of San Fran and the Upper West side in Manhatten. Elites with too much money, time and who went to Ivy League schools but missed the educational part, are hardly the type of people who want to entrust the running of reality to. Elites are fond of trends, fads and fetishes. These people hosted parties for the Nazis in the 1930s; burbled madly about the benefits of Soviet Russia; and supported such geniuses as Jimmy Carter, and L. Ron Gore of the Globaloney warming cult. As a class this group might be the most dangerous set in America.

-Hollywood. This is the industry that gave us the dumbing down culture; bad movies; worse actors; and endless soft and hard porn. The hard of thinking entertainment crowd should not be allowed to vote, let alone inject themselves into policy making. Just witness a rant by Sarandon or Baldwin for proof.

Those are the main groups supporting Kid Hussien Obama. Are these the people who should be running America? Contrary to media infatuation Hussein is not a uniter and not popular amongst many demographic groups, income levels or with non-Black minorities. Frumpy Clinton is right. Obama will not win more than a medium minority of the white vote.

Obama's base is largely composed of groups which are anti-thetical to US and world interests; unions, Black power ideologues; elites; greenies; and metrosexuals. Why should these sorts get within 1000 miles of power?

Leaders and their policies, characters and inner selves are depicted by their followers – especially those closest to the leader. You could tell a lot about Christ by his intimate associations. Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher were likewise identifiable by their supporters. If the inexperienced Obama is surrounded by such a cast of questionable supporters why would anyone believe that mature, profound and realistic policy setting will result ?

Obama is a very left-wing marxist politician. His gang of supporters confirms this. He is easily the most dangerous man in America.

Israel at 60 years: a miracle in the desert. Maybe God exists after all.

One of the great miracles of the modern world is the state of Israel founded in May 1948. This small country exports technologies; has turned the desert into a thriving economy and succeeded where Arabs continue to fail. It is a democratic state where civilian law controls the military. It has a per capita GDP of $30.000 and it provides Arabs with a higher standard of living than in any Arab country. Yet for many Israel is a 'problem' and if it went away the Arabs would become wonderful, happy, productive people. Yeah sure.

The Jews all 5.3 million of them surrounded in a sea of 300 million desperate, vengeful, myopic and racist Arabs have not only survived, they have thrived. Israel's per capita GDP is near European levels, and it exports high end technologies, pharmaceuticals, industrial equipment and amazingly enough from a desert state, agriculture. What exactly do the neighbouring Arabs export and produce besides Western discovered and processed oil?

Yet the Jews are to blame for a whole variety of matters, reminding one that anti-semitic racism is alive and well – and not just within the Arab world. This is a moral stain on the entire world community.

The European Union gives well over $1 billion per annum to Israel's enemies and hundreds of millions more to the Arab people renamed in the 1960s as 'Palestinians'. It is an absurd European policy designed to weaken the only democratic state in the Middle East and buy the goodwill of Arabs [oil supply] and Muslims [large domestic populations thereof]. Palestine as an Arab group or area never existed in history. Never. Palestinians including Goliath of biblical fame were part of a Greek descended tribe loosely named as Phoenicians. The Romanisation of Phoenician is Palestine. Palestine has nothing to do with the Arabs. It was invented by Arafat and the PLA in the 1960s to help provide unity to his movement.

The Russians as well have long dabbled in anti-semiticism. Since the era of communism the Russians have openly allied themselves with the Arabs in opposition to Jewish and American interests. In the capacious Russian mind of conspiracy theory, the Jews control the US and the Americans and international Jewry are committed to world-wide domination. This line of illogic and and anti-Jew racism has not changed much since 1917.

The UN joins the Russians and the Europeans in their anti-Jew racist hatred. No resolutions have ever been passed at the UN condemning Arab atrocity including the yearly murdering of innocents inside Israel; the eradication of Lebanese christians; Iraq and other Arab states engaged in genocide; wars started by Arab states; or the suppression of women and minorities within Arab nations. No. Only Israel gets singled out for special abuse because it defends itself against unceasing Muslim and Arab aggression. The UN funds Arab refugee camps; rationalises Arab mendacity and brutality and does little to help Israel protect itself. The UN is as usual, part of the problem.

The US, criticised as the main supporter of the Jewish state, actually gives more money to the Arabs than to Israel. The US transfers $1.5 billion in yearly aid to Arab Egypt and a further $300 million or more per annum directly to the Palestinians. It also recycles billions in dollars back to the Arab owners of oil, in oil purchases and usage. By contrast the US gives to Israel a total of $1.2 billion per annum in total aid almost all of it with conditions attached – this is less than 1% of the Israeli economy. It is hard to make the argument that the US is favoring Israel more than the Arabs regarding money support.

The problem with Israel and the Arabs lies almost wholly with the Arabs. Until the Arabs recognise Israel's right to exist; stop their terrorist activities; and commit themselves to modernisation, there will be no peace. Until Arabs value their children's lives more than bombing Jews, there will be no peace. Until Arabs understand that the Jewish state has existed in some form in the Holy Land for 3.000 years, there will be no peace.

Israel deserves to exist. As Israel goes, so goes the West to paraphrase an apt observation from 1967. Israel is a part of the West. It must succeed where the Arabs and Muslims have so brutally failed. It must stand up to Muslim hate and violence. It is the Arabs not the Jews who are the problem. Former Clinton U.S. Delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Jeff Robbins, puts it very well in an article he wrote some time ago:

"It was, of course, the Arab bloc, including the Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the U.N.'s 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side. Instead it invaded the nascent Jewish state rather than coexist with it, spawning the conflict that has so burdened the world for the last 60 years.

We are also not responsible for the Arab world's choice not to create a Palestinian Arab state in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, when it easily could have done so -- before there were any Jewish settlements there to serve as the public object of Arab grievance.

It was not the U.S. whose leaders issued the largely unremembered "Three No's" of the Arab conference in Khartoum in the summer of 1967 -- "no" to peace with Israel, to negotiation with Israel and to recognition of Israel -- after the 1967 war backfired so badly on the Arab world. Nor can the U.S. government under President Clinton be criticized for failing to pursue Yasser Arafat with sufficient solicitude between 1993 and late 2000. The Clinton administration was, after all, the most ardent of suitors of the Palestinian leader -- only to be forced to watch Arafat reject an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and virtually all of the West Bank.

It was the Palestinian leadership, not the U.S., that decided in the fall of 2000 that, rather than accept an independent Palestinian state, its wiser course was to launch a four-year bombing campaign against Israel's civilian population. The result was not merely over 1,100 Israeli civilians killed, but several thousand Palestinians dead, as well as a shattered Palestinian economy and the decision by Israel to begin construction of a security barrier in July 2002.

President Clinton labeled this decision on the Palestinians' part a "tragic mistake." It is certainly inarguable that this particular decision, like others made by the Palestinian leadership over the past six decades, inflicted serious suffering on the Palestinian people. It has also resulted in suffering throughout the region, and instability beyond -- but it was a course of action chosen and implemented by the Palestinians and publicly supported by Arab states, not by the U.S.

When Israel withdrew from all of Gaza in 2005, the Arab world had the opportunity for a fresh start there -- to create a measure of hope for a population whose suffering long predated any Israeli presence. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity, the Hamas-dominated Palestinian leadership opted to begin and then intensify an aggressive missile-launching campaign against Israeli civilian centers.

This choice in turn has led to Hamas's international isolation, and conditions in Gaza have grown steadily worse for Palestinians there. For its part, the Arab world has in essence stood by and permitted this to occur, and has once again remained unwilling to place the actual welfare of Palestinians ahead of its desire to stir opposition to Israel."

About as apt and true a summary from someone who knows, as you are likely to find.

Israel is a miracle. Maybe God exists after all.

We have seen this China before. And it ended in 100 years of revolution.

Before 1842 the Chinese were not interested in Western products. They viewed the West as a collection of inferior barbarians unable to produce quality products, with the small exception of mechanical toys like clocks and water pieces. China was a manufacturing super-power pre 1842. When the West did open up China to European imports after the 'Opium' war of 1839-42, the ancient Chinese state collapsed into a 100 years of revolution and civil war. Could the same happen again? Might China revisit its past ?

China is certainly not as monolithic nor as powerful as the media might imagine. China is made up of regions with different economies, social structures and cultures. In this sense China today is not that different than China was in 1800 or 1840. In 1800 China was the manufacturing capital of the world producing 33% of total world manufacture – juxtaposed against England's 2 %. China had long produced high quality products desired by world markets including silk, porcelain, textiles, perfumes, household goods and refined products based on advanced processing of silver and gold.

China's mining industry in 1800 employed millions. Hundreds of thousands more worked in an advanced banking and financial sector. In agriculture the Chinese used modern techniques such as nutrient building; crop rotations, multi-harvests in one year; and complex irrigation schemes. It was not until the British and Americans discovered and perfected the steam engine that machines would supplant Chinese labor in productivity and quality:

“Asian agriculture [in 1800] was producing harvests twenty times the amount of seed planted, while Europe harvests were only eight or less. The Asians were growing rice, and rice took nutrients from water rather than soil. Asians were not leaving land lie fallow as were the Europeans. And farmers in China were impressing visitors from Europe by their ability to get as many as three harvests a year from the same plot of land.” [http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h35-tek.html]

China probably had 300 million or more people in 1800. To the casual observer it appeared to be a busy, wealthy and unified political entity with a long and cherished historical record. It was however far weaker than its impressive agriculture and industrial output might have suggested.

The English had occupied and controlled most of India by 1839 and had set up hegemony over Burma to protect Indian trade routes. The economic giant of East Asia – China – was a logical destination point for British ambitions and lust for profits. Yet the Chinese being the world's superpower in industrial and agriculture output saw little benefit in engaging in trade with England and India. The Chinese market was closed. It was the Opium War which changed China forever.

There was one product that the Chinese did covet and that was the opiate drug. Millions of Chinese, probably 20 million or so, used opium regularly to escape the harsh reality of peasant life, or the penury of living in a large Chinese city as a lowly day laborer, or to stimulate the bored existence of the wealthy. The entire primitive army, not yet modernised was addicted. Yet the British could only sell opium through a managed trade relationship, one which was price controlled and limited profits:

“The trade relationships were organized into the so called "Canton Trade System", since only the port of Canton was opened for foreign trade. Having reached Canton, the Western merchants could only deal with a group of government appointed merchants called "Gong Hang" ("officially authorized firms") which had a monopoly on the trade with the West. The volume of the trade and the prices as well as the personal activities of Western merchants were also regulated...”
[http://historyliterature.homestead.com/files/extended.html]

Thanks to managed trade English merchants were denied access to the Chinese market and the excessive profits that opium would naturally command. Chinese arrogance and hubris that their Kingdom was the center of the world was about to come crashing down thanks to the addiction by millions of Chinese to opium.

In order to eradicate the drug problem the Chinese state forbade any use of opium. Trade was stopped, opium boxes were opened and destroyed and English merchants forced out of Canton. The English reacted by declaring war and China was doomed. The Opium war was about more than the exportation of an addictive plant, it was about forcing China to submit itself to European dominance.

The war lasted only 3 years and ended in disaster for the Chinese. The British with some European allies, 7.000 miles from their home bases, were able to rather decisively destroy Chinese forces and force the Chinese government into a surrender. The terms of the surrender were to have lasting effects on China. In essence the Chinese were forced to hand over trading privileges, lower tariffs from 65% to 5% on imported products, hand over customs revenue to the English and their allies, and give up territory such as Hong Kong, Macau, and Canton to the Western powers. China was forced to recognise the superiority of the West. It was a grand humiliation.

After the Opium war foreign trade flourished and it caused severed dislocations in China. Inflation rose rapidly as the trade deficit with the West reached unprecedented levels, and the government was unable to maintain a strong currency. Social chaos enveloped regions as the political and economic system of the ruling Manchu dynasty became weak in the face of Western military, economic and political pressure. China's ancient millenia old socio-economic structure was ripped apart. The result would be 100 years of hot and cold revolution.

As poverty and confusion mounted the Chinese began to search for solutions to bring power and glory back to the Middle Kingdom. For the first time in history Chinese intellectuals began to study Western countries and ideas. Imported Western technologies and industries changed the Chinese economy. New and theoretically democratic political systems were discussed in Chinese universities and cafes – all of them based on Western concepts. Modes of Western dress, capitalist ideas, and social mores transformed Chinese society. China was modernizing but it was still China.

In order to stem social upheaval the Chinese tried to end the 'Opium' war treaties and get out from under the power of the Europeans. In 1856, Chinese treaty infractions led to the 'Second Opium War'. In 1860, additional new treaties gave the foreigners even more power. Forty years later further humiliation came in 1900, when foreign powers entered China to put down the 'Boxer' rebellion and demanded that the Chinese pay huge fees to induce them to leave. China had become in effect, a direct European colony.

Inevitably China's old imperial structure collapsed in 1911. New competitors moved in as China transitioned from an empire to a republic. American and Japanese companies began to replace the British in the China trade. It was only during World War II with the Japanese occupying most of China that the US and England finally revoked past treaties and obligations. This was done essentially to keep China as an ally in the fight against Japan. But by that time the latent power of Communism was soon to replace the dying republic.

Today the situation is in some ways similar. Western globalisation and its attendant wealth and superiority has forced open China's economy. Japanese and American firms dominate the re-export trade. Fully 50% or more of exported manufacture is for US, European or Japanese intra-company transfers or exports controlled by Western firms. China runs a huge trade deficit in services, consulting and finance with the West. And like post 1842, China is undergoing a tremendous change in society, mores, orientation, and culture. In some ways China is becoming a state dominated by Western interests.

Could China again dissolve into internal chaos for 100 years as it did post 1842 ? The last experiment ended up with the fascist totalitarianism of communism – a cataclysm which butchered 60 million people and retarded China's development by 3 generations. Now perversely it is the Communists who are opening up to Western economy and cultural influences. Could they follow the old Manchu dynasty and the first republic?

Nobody knows. But one thing is certain. When economies are opened up and trade is created, domestic culture, society and power structures will change. It is not a question of when China will experience a new revolution. It is a matter of time before we find out what social structure will replace that of the failed dogma of communism. China's long march to join the modern world continues. It remains to be seen how bloody its future will be.

Irrational expectations. In the real world, there are trade-offs.

As the power of the state continues to grow, basic laws are being ignored. These laws in economics, security, geo-politics and science can be ignored but not avoided. Populists and their media friends can demand everyone else to 'act now' to solve some problem – real or imagined – that part is easy. What is not calculated and what is far more complicated is to account for the costs of all these 'act now' programs designed to immediately solve some pressing issue or another. These irrational expectations can literally destroy the modern world.

These irrationalities abound on all key issues. Vote buying marxists and populists such as Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, or every European politician [except Geert Wilders in Holland] engage in tortured illogical contortions to gain support:

1.Trade: Free Trade means job losses. Ergo we need to protect our industries. Tradeoff: reduced trade leads to reduce incomes, wealth and lower paying jobs.

2.Oil: We must not drill for oil and disturb mother earth. Tradeoff: We need to import more oil [25% in the case of the US] from Arab and Muslim dictatorships giving our enemies oil money.

3.Taxes: We need to raise taxes on the 'rich' and improve social services. Tradeoff: The level of being 'rich keeps going down each year, and if you over tax those who make money they will simply move, or put their capital to use elsewhere which generates economic and job loss.

4.Globaloney Warming: We must save the world now, by destroying industry. Tradeoff: Huge job losses, reduced living standards and higher taxes and no, absolutely no discernible impact on temperature.

5.Free speech: Goverment should manage through Human Rights Councils, any and all 'free speech' to make sure people's feelings are not hurt. Tradeoff: Government is now empowered to censor thinking and freedom is severely limited impacting all aspects of society.

6.Rent controls: Poor people need nice places to live so government needs to build housing. Tradeoff: Ghettoes are built as private develepers exit the market; housing quality is reduced and a welfare culture predominates.

7.Agriculture: Farmers are a national treasure and must be protected. Tradeoff: Subsidies and tariffs are set up to prevent poorer nations from selling their products, resulting in third world poverty and people literally starving to death. Higher domestic consumer prices which hit the poor the hardest also result.

8.Foreign Aid: We must help those third world states in need. Tradeoff: Handing out international welfare largely benefits the elite of the state in question and does little to alleviate the systemic or root causes of their poverty which would include a lack of trading opportunities, social stability, corruption, civil wars, a lack of laws and institutions and an anti-modern culture.

9.Green Belts: Nature must be protected from urban sprawl so we need green zones around urban centers to stop development. Tradeoff: Restricted land usage means higher housing prices, higher costs of living and pressure on public services as well as the reality of longer commutes as more people need to move further away from their jobs in the city as prices and taxes escalate – all of which harms mother nature.

These are just some of the many dozens of irrational expectations we hear each day. For populists and the rich there are no trade-offs. For example we can simply end poverty now! by increasing welfare payments and the minimum wage. In fact we can lift all the bottom income earners into the middle class tomorrow by giving them a cheque for a certain amount of money. This would 'alleviate' poverty but it also has some obvious tradeoffs and consequences. There would be a net wealth reduction in society as you transferred monies from the majority to fund a program for the minority. Increased taxes, debt and governmental expenses to administer the program are some of the many costs involved in using state power to buy votes, push an agenda or help one group to the exclusion of everyone else.

Trade is another irrational expectation. Obama and his union friends seem to believe that if you eradicated trade than all American workers would be job secured, and have glowing and growing pay packets. This is a fallacy. By destroying trade you experience less national wealth accretion, lower incomes, less competition and higher prices. WalMart and improved trade competition now means that the average American family saves $9.000 per annum in consumer costs. This is a huge net income gain.

As the economist Walter Williams commented on trade when asked about Hillary and Obama's anti-business, anti-trade rhetoric: 'According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 1996 and 2006, about 15 million jobs were lost and 17 million created each year. That’s an annual net creation of 2 million jobs. Roughly 3 percent of the jobs lost were a result of foreign competition. Most were lost because of technology, domestic competition and changes in consumer tastes.

Some of the gain in jobs is a result of “insourcing.” Foreign companies, such as Nissan, Honda, Nokia and Novartis, set up plants, hire American workers and pay them wages higher than the national average. According to Dartmouth College professor Matthew Slaughter, “insourced” jobs paid a salary 32 percent higher than the average U.S. salary. So here’s my question to anti-traders: If “outsourcing” is harmful to the U.S., it must also be harmful to European countries and Japan; would you advise them to take their jobs back home?' [http://tinyurl.com/62o6s6 ]

Williams then poses the key question. About 10 million US jobs are directly insourced. Should Honda close its plants and take its many thousands or workers and their suppliers back home? Aren't the benefits of trade obvious to see given the past 50 years of reduced tariffs, and higher living standards? Or were the 1930s of high protectionism, high taxes, governmental interference and reduced trade and ergo a depression, the good old days?

For the populists and marxists real-world considerations are not important. There are no trade-offs for elitists like Obama or Clinton. There are highly paid, Ivy educated lawyers and will always find work. They also live in an abstract world where ideas matter more than reality.

The rest of us are not so lucky and don't have the resources or education to rely on abstraction in lieu of reality. When oil, the environment, China-bashing, subsidies, agriculture and a myriad of other issues are discussed, a tradeoff analysis is rarely attached. We should destroy industry; stop trade; save mother earth; import more oil; immediately switch to corn juice for our cars; eradicate poverty; neuter the military; have more social programs; socialise all health, pensions and higher education; and crush business through more regulation – now! Such ideas are abstractions all right. Abstractions of a severe mental disorder.

In reality the more distortions you have, the worse off we all are. And government is the largest force for distortion in our lives.

Christian left rising in America. The myth of the vast 'right' wing church.

The media and educational elite portrays the rather absurd image that all Christians are fundamentalist conservatives or in their lexicon – knuckle dragging neo-cons. In reality the 'socialist' tendencies of both church and church-goer are well known. Far from being a bastion of conservative-republican goose-stepping war mongers, a clear majority of Christians are actually quite 'left wing'; socialist or avowedly anti-conservative. The church is not an ally of the 'right'.

In the most religious country in the West, the United States, the division between socialists and non-socialists is even. According to a Pew poll, 54% of white, mainline Protestants and 50% of Catholics voted Republican in the 2004 presidential elections. Keep in mind that voting Republican and being conservative are not identical, with many Republicans little different than the more left-wing and Marxist Democrats. In any event the trend over the past 20 years is clear – the power of the 'left' in church is growing.

Many prominent conservatives and republicans are of course church-goers. But so are many high profile socialists and marxists including Hussein Obama [and his racist preacher[; Nancy Pelosi, many Euro-politicians and populist statists such as the Prime Minister of Canada. This says nothing of the very communal and socialist ideas put forward by the Vatican church; the Protestant coalition of churches; or various Church sees in Europe such as the Bishopric of Canterbury. Such ideals include abasing Western culture in deference to Islam, supporting illegal immigration, anti-war vitriol, and disavowing captialism.

Church membership then is hardly exclusionary to ideology. In fact the rise of left wing forces in the church is a singular and powerful trend which has accelerated in the past 15 years.

It is a noticeable fact that the religious 'left' to use the term, has close associations with movements and groups who promote socialism. The church is very cooperative with unions and other groups who constantly cite massive poverty as a crime [the real poverty rate is about 5-8%]. This has resulted in christian groups being very active in helping unions, politicians and extremist organisations aiding workers against employers; fighting for worker 'rights'; and defending the rights of illegals to remain, work and receive public benefits. Such activism transcends Christian thinking but it also obviously impacts the ability of companies to do business, by raising their costs, reducing their profits and limiting their ability to improve wage and work conditions.

Yet the inclination of the church to support left wing causes is not new. The 19th century spawned many social 'good news' movements based on the biblical teaching of poor support. These ideas mutated into marxist-egalitarian demands to equalise incomes; mandate redistribution systems and provide expensive social welfare programs. Complete equality of material outcome was the objective.

These impulses gave rise to similar movements in the 20th century. The Catholic church long supported huge taxes on the wealthy; excessive capital and business regulation; and expropriation of 'unfair' profits. Church membership – and monied support - became increasingly tied to the union movement. As the 20th century wore on, the Protestant and Catholic church became vocal and angry promoters of social justice and social equality. They also actively pushed and developed an anti-war agenda again reflecting their base support amongst unions and fundamentalist christians who believe that war – any war – is immoral.

In fact the unions have long viewed the church as a prime recruiting area. Churches and unions cooperate in producing union-supporting sermons, bulletins, leaflets, and meetings. Church sessions have routinely asked members to donate to unions, support minimum wage legislation or help with union activities in the community. Church groups are very active in supporting 'living wage' levels, or other legislation to help the working class. Many union groups have promoted internships, fellowships, or job training opportunities with various union branches at local churches, trying to entice church members into closer contact.

Even more disturbing is the mere reality that despite a massive decrease in poverty and a rapid rise in wealth, the 'church' is still insisting on failed socialist dogma. The growing power of the religious left is obvious in the church's almost constant description of capitalism, trade, and markets as malicious and evil. Church leadership regularly denigrate WalMart for its non-unionized labor force; or constantly appeal to the malignancy of the 'rich' and their 'exploitation' of the rest. Socialist economic policies lead to higher levels of poverty, and economic stagnation – a fact that the church blithely ignores.

The church is also incredibly active in promoting the green eco-cult agenda and its irrational demand for higher taxes and regulation. Most church sects spending an inordinate amount of time on green propaganda and corporate 'guilt' and responsibility for despoiling mother earth subjecting their membership to relentless eco-marxist propaganda of the most disturbing and sordid variety. The green-marxist agenda would literally wipe out millions of jobs; starve millions to death; and end in economic and social tragedy – for absolutely no purpose.

This then is the reality of the 'church' and the above is one set of reasons why church membership for some sects is plummeting. The church has value and can add a lot to society's development. But its embrace of socialist-marxist ideology; and its attitude that capitalism or conservatism is to blame for the world's woes; or that all wars are bad; is dangerous and neurotic. In any event it is laughable to equate the entire edifice of the 'church' with conservatism. It is akin to equating the eco-cult with rationality.

The 'Poor' – using statistical lies to push the socialist agenda.

Governments and their friends love to publish lies about the 'poor'. Generated from census analysis, the poor are always shown to be growing, in danger of becoming 'poorer'; and that the 'rich' are becoming so much richer in comparison. Given the fact that society is wealthier, incomes across all levels are higher; and that being 'poor' today is a lot different from being 'poor' 50, 100, or 200 years ago, such 'statistics' should be treated with contempt.

Governments and their various agencies distort numbers for their own benefit. This is especially true of 'class' warfare – a major platform for government expansion. If government cannot justify its own existence than it can't keep expanding. Hence the constant need to demonise the 'rich', lie about poverty levels and complain of inequality.

In both Canada and the US independent analysis puts the level of poverty at between 5-8% of the population. This is the percentage of families comprising 4 members, who survive on less than $20.000 per annum in income. This level excludes cash grants; transfers; and net assets that the family might own. Hence a statistical anomaly can occur. I might be very well off but not declare income above $20.000 – ergo I am poor.

But that is not the main problem with government funded 'facts' showing rampant poverty. Government poverty rates are typically 2-4 times higher than actual rates. The contrivance is done on purpose, to convince the lay public that widespread inequity must be resolved by more income redistribution; government programs; and 'compassionate' values. No human wants to see another starve, but the lie that government helps alleviate poverty, or any problem for that matter, is one of the great distortions of history. Governments make poverty worse not better.

Governments create misery by distorting markets, wages and stopping natural processes from occuring. Governments for example create entire regional welfare traps, where regions receive government money or welfare, and never implement the tax, fiscal, social or cultural policies to allow success. Over time these welfare subsidies become a 'value' and a 'right'. All they do is keep the region in economic misery. The same applies to welfare families where 2 or 3 generations fall into the welfare trap; to subsidized firms and entire protected industries. All government is doing through welfare support is destroying wealth and creating clients of the state.

State fabricated lies in the US and Canada routinely cry that 16-25% of the population are poor. Half starved children's images are used to reinforce this government created fantasy. Various statistics, numbers, and studies are shown to confirm this number. But the lie is outrageous. There is no possibility that 1/5 of the population in Canada or the US is poor. The bottom quintile might not be rich, but 2/3 or more of this bottom income earning group, are certainly not poor.

There are facts that such studies casually 'miss' about those income earners in the lowest quintile:

-Over half of those in the lowest income level own large assets such as cars, appliances and homes. In fact in the US half of the poor own their own homes, and in Canada fully 40% have home equity.

-Many of those in this category are part-time workers; seniors or teenagers – namely those not at risk from poverty and in the case of seniors, those whose government assistance is not counted in their total incomes.

-Even outside of seniors, poverty cut-off levels do not take into account cash grants or government transfers which can increase incomes by 1/3 to ½ and they ignore black market transactions which many lower income people participate in [and which accounts for about 30% of GDP].

-25-35% of the population is now paid 'off the payroll' as independent contractors. As small business people they can write off expenses and lower their reported incomes. Many of these people earn more net income in this manner than being on a payroll and showing higher gross incomes, but lower net incomes after all taxes.

-Net assets are excluded. You cannot be poor if you have home, car or asset equity which can be turned into cash.

-Deflationary costs in many goods thanks to trade, Walmart and competitive factors are ignored. The quality, affordability and cost of almost all consumer goods is lower today than 25 years. The exceptions would be in government created messes – gasoline and food prices for example.

-It is a fact that family income is up 20% in the last 15 years, yet this important reality is never reported on by the media. How can poverty increase if in general every year national income is growing? The answer for Marxists and government unionized workers is that the income is being consolidated at the top of the income ladder, but this is untrue. All categories of income earners are growing their net income yearly.

There is no doubt that the 'poor' today are vastly better off than the poor of 1980. If you normalise income for the above and look at total net income, assets and purchasing power the total income of the bottom income earners is increasing by about 1 % per year – or about the same growth as those earning incomes in the top 20%.

Importantly as well, thanks to income and 'class' mobility, the people who are poor today are not the same ones who were poor in 1980. In fact the lower income earners usually move out of the lower income level within 6 years. Most young workers start out with low incomes and work their way up to the middle or high-income group. Incomes peak when people hit middle age and fall again as they approach their early 60s.

But you will never hear such facts and analysis in the school systems or the 'unbiased' media. And perhaps the biggest point of all from government census and income data is never mentioned. Those whose earnings rise the fastest and furthest have one thing in common. They are married, they stay married, and they are constantly employed. Simple but true – but never emphasized by government 'studies'.

There is an entire poverty industry, including unionized goverment workers; agencies; lobby groups and of course politicians who make their living from the 'poor'. They need and demand an increase to their constituency base. In addition to moronically simplistic themes about the environment, children, or 'values' it is a political winner – who will argue against helping the poor? It is however a pity that anyone would believe such lies, when as plain as the nose on your face, society is much better off than 25 years ago – at all income levels.

The sad truth is that those who constantly cite rising poverty levels will implement policies that will hurt those earning lower incomes and decrease the total wealth of society. They will raise taxes, put up trade barriers and try to unionize Walmart forcing up retail prices. These are policies for losers. The so-called poor will be the worst affected by the populist policies of vote-buying charlatans – but the media will never tell us that.

Thomas Sowell and Race. A Black voice not often heard. Blacks are not African-American.

Race trumps all – at least for those willing to use it to divide and conquer, or inflame and impale. As Sowell says, 'Few subjects produce more fallacies than race.' The history of race relations is of course littered with lies, distortions, self-serving fantasies and political manipulation. [One can witness the emptiness and outright nonsense of the Hussein Obama race-baiting campaign for contemporary evidence]. As Sowell relates today we have more inter-marriage between races than ever, yet the cries and screams of race identity are at their fiercest in history. Only a Marxist and a race baiting populist can figure out this contradiction.

Sowell puts the point well, “Racial rates of intermarriage have reduced the biological significance of racial differences, even as its political significance has increased. The intermarriage rate for blacks was just under one percent in 1963 but was 12 percent in 1993.” By 2008 no doubt the rate has risen further to above 15%. Are mixed bloods a certain race? Is Tiger Woods who is mostly Asian really Black? Are blacks with white mothers like Obama authentically 'African-American' and what to make of a Black with little or no connection with Africa born in say England to mixed parentage from Jamaican and white parents? His connection to Africa is minimal but is he an African-Englishman?

African American and other racial terms are meaningless. Black Americans have nothing in common with Africa. Absolutely nothing. It is puerile and sterile identity politics. Should we call white Americans with Van in the last name Dutch-Americans? Or those with icz at the end of their surnam