Obama, Totalitarianism, Food and more...

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Swine Flu Creates National Emergency of a Different Sort

President Hopes Children Will Wash Hands.

What to expect if Tony Blair is made president of Europe.

What the Treasury Department is not telling Americans about the national debt

Missing a rather important part of the picture

Food is not a private matter!

The well worn path from socialized health to totalitarianism

Forced to be free

Health Care as a Tool For Social Engineering

Ebenezer Scrooge and global warming.

New Report on the EU's Diplomatic Service

Social engineering and the dark side of the American Left

Why Obama needs crisis

Obama's Religious Zeal

The temptation of caring totalitarianism

The old American tradition of redistribution

Totalitarianism in nationalized health

A Good Month For Big Brother - A Bad Month For Liberty

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Now that October '09 is finished, I find myself reflecting on the remarkable loss of liberty that occurred between the 1 and the 31. I didn't think so many liberties could be lost for the British people in only one month. Consider that the following are just some of the stories that might be brought forth to illustrate this (taken from Big Brother Britain which I maintain and update daily).


Policing of Opinion Has No Place In Our Country

Britain passes Big Brother landmark: More than one in 10 people now on DNA database

Councils get ‘Al Capone’ power to seize assets over minor offences

ID card plan 'needs 28m people to sign up to cover costs'

Brussels 'Home Office' plot to snoop on all of Europe

'Bedroom snooping' by 2011 census

Innocent protesters' details collected for police databases

Police compiling database of 'domestic extremist' protesters

Secret court seizes £3.2bn from elderly

Brussels is 'Plotting a Spy State"

Want to help the neighbours with the rubbish? It's illegal

Teacher 'bullied' by council for leaving bag of waste paper next to full recycling bin

Social workers remove new-born baby from obese mother

Spying on Communities Contravenes Cherished British Freedom

DNA database now holds profiles of 5.6m Britons (but crimes solved using it falls by a fifth)

Armed police to permanently patrol Britain's streets

Liberty warns of new secret inquests threat

Big Brother Britain: £380 a MINUTE spent on tracking your every click online

Hundreds of council workers duped into answering Health and Safety questions on eating biscuits

Trafigura: 'Never again should a newspaper be barred from reporting Parliament'

MEPs call for compulsory 'EU lessons' in schools

Terror Act used on climate activist

A David for this surveillance Goliath?

Equality database sought by government

£1,000 fine for putting any food scraps in the dustbin

Council Snoops Have Power to Issue £300 Fines

Big Brother culture attacked by country's top barrister

Authoritarian? China’s not a patch on Britain

Amateur photographer is quizzed by police (for taking snap of the sunset)

English children abroad to be included on government database

Couple fail to win return of obese children

The United States of Europe Will Come


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Halloween, Ugliness and Beauty

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Why I am Against Halloween

God's Grandeur

God's Glory

Technology, Boredom and King Kong

The Objectivity of Beauty Part I

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 2

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 3

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 4

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 5

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 6

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 7

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 8

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 9

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 10

The Objectivity of Beauty Part 11

Click here to read my political column in the Spokane Libertarian Examiner

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What to expec of Tony Blair is made President of Europe

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This morning the Guardian reported that this evening's summit in Brussels will likely be the first occasion in which the subject of Tony Blair's candidacy to be Europe's first president is broached.
In response, I have written the following article for Signs of the Times blog:

"What to expect if Blair is made President of Europe"

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Click here to read my political column in the Spokane Libertarian Examiner
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"no safety issues for a long time"

Artificial life 'could be created within five years' according to THIS article in the Telegraph. It is not surprising that this has raised safety concerns, given all of the books and films that play off of the Frankenstein motif, where the scientist creates life that then becomes a threat to the human race.

In response to the safety concerns, the Telegraph article reports that scientists are assuring us that “there would be no safety issues for a long time.” This is because any initial organisms would be very primitive and need large-scale life support systems to be sustained.

“No safety issues for a long time”? What is that supposed to mean?

Swine Flu and National Emergency

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Today I posted an article on Salvo's Signs of the Times blog titled, "Swine Flu creates 'national emergency' of a different sort" looking at some of the political problems inherent in the concept of emergency.
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Edmund Burke on the American Problem

The English statesmen, Edmund Burke, couldn’t have entered politics at a more critical time in history. As a member of Parliament during one of Europe’s most tumultuous periods (1765-1794), his career spanned both the French and the American revolutions. It is interesting that while he vigorously opposed the former, he was sympathetic with the grievances of the American colonies, saying

"Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it...Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it...Do not burthen them with taxes...But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question...If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body of men will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side...tell me, what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their property and industry by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in granting them. When they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery; that it is legal slavery, will be no compensation either to his feelings or to his understandings.

...the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen...They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are Protestants...a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it...My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation,—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you."

Miscellany

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Too Busy

I came across this quote by John Ortberg which I will pass on:

“For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so busy and distracted and rushed that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.”

Obama and Domestic Business

The following video shows how Obama's policies will penalize domestic businesses.


Obama Worship

As I have noted the phenomenon of Obama worship HERE and HERE, I can't let this video of school children reciting praises to our president pass unnoticed. Also see THIS clip of children singing for health care reform.

Gnostics in the Closet

I've finished reading Against the Protestant Gnostics by Philip Lee. It is a must-read for all Protestants, especially the last chapter on his solutions to the endemic Gnosticism within the Protestant project. (Lee is a Protestant himself).

The European Problem

My favorite lawmaker, Daniel Hannan, puts the whole European problem in a nut shell in the following video:

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Also see THIS article on the Great EU deception.

The National Debt

Those who have not already read my article on the national debt, should click HERE. Somebody shared with me THIS link to the national debt clock. I don't know where they get their information from, but if its accurate all I can say is it is scary to watch America going bankrupt before my very eyes.

Britain Doesn't Have to be the Worst Place to Live

Britain is the worst place to live in Europe, according to a new survey. Richard Littlejohn (what a great name!) suggests why in THIS article. As someone who spent ten years in England and watched it change before my eyes into what it is today, I can concur with much of Littlejohn's observations.

God save the queen! God save us all!

Taking Gender Confusion to a new Level

I recently stumbled upon THIS bizarre story. I have written before about gender confusion but this takes it to a new level. What would the headlines have said if “he” was successful in his attempted pregnancy (something that is conceivable since "he" was once a woman)? "First man to ever give birth?"

Musical Resource

I just came across THIS wonderful musical resource.

Presumed Guilty

Building on what I shared the other day regarding the shift in European law away from innocent until proven guilty, THIS article by Henry Porter is a must read. He shows that the structure of British jurisprudence is changing, with citizens no longer innocent until proven guilty. A new category, that of presumed guilt, is emerging with disastrous implications. In 2007 I warned of the changes that were occuring to English common law.

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Ruth Gledhill questions the Equality Directive

Ruth Gledhill, the Religion Correspondent for The Times , raised the following concerns on her blog about the EU's new Equality Directive.

The Roman Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland along with most other Christian groups are upset about the new European anti-discrimination directive. 'Homosexual groups campaigning for same sex marriage may declare themselves offended by the presentation of the Catholic Church’s moral teaching on homosexual acts; Catholics may declare themselves offended by a ‘Gay Pride’ march; an atheist may be offended by religious pictures in art gallery; a Muslim may be offended by any picture representing the human form,' warn the Catholic bishops. 'It is not clear whether ‘goods and services’ would apply to the activities of a Catholic priest, if, as recently occurred, he were to refuse to take a booking for a Church Hall from a group of witches.'

Will an Anglican or a remarried divorcee be able to sue a Catholic priest who denies them communion? Will women be able to demand access to Mount Athos? Where will this leave men-only clubs such as the Garrick? Will the Church of England and Roman Catholic churches lose their exemptions under present equality laws and be forced, in the case of the former, to consecrate women bishops and in the case of the latter, to ordain both women priests and bishops? Will women priests presiding at Blackburn be able to prosecute the Dean and Chapter for discrimination and making them feel 'tainted'?

See Law Professor Warns of "cultural genocide" under new EU Directive

Law Professor Warns of "cultural genocide" under new EU Directive

THIS interview with William Wagner shows some of the issues that Christians in Europe are facing under an increasingly totalitarian EU.

Professor Wagner, who serves with Christian Concern for Our Nation, warns that if this proposal is not adequately addressed, it “has the potential to create a cultural genocide.”

The Directive is part of a series of measures aiming to promote equality and combat discrimination among organizations and individuals across EU Member States in the areas of disability, age, religion and belief and sexual orientation. The Directive is worded in such a way that many Christian activities could fall foul of the law if someone believes equal treatment has not been received.

It has the “horrendous potential to completely eliminate the Christian worldview from any professional activity that involves providing a service,” said Professor Wagner.

During the above interview, Dr. Wagner points out that the Directive entails a de facto reversal of an ancient Anglo-Saxon law principle known as the assumption of innocence. According to this principle, a person is innocent until proven guilty. The Directive defines harassment as something which is perceived by a person to have caused offence or to create an offensive environment.

Wagner commented that, "It’s your job in court, if you’re accusing someone of something, to produce evidence and actually prove your case. Discrimination law has taken a different route. Again, almost in a Darwinistic, evolutionary way, they have said we need to evolve the legal principles to do something different in discrimination cases. What they have done is they say once someone accuses you of harassment or of offending them, then the burden of proof no longer is on your accuser, but the burden of proof now shifts to you, the accused, to prove that this person actually wasn’t offended. Now there are some great lawyers out there in the United Kingdom and the European Union, but I don’t know of any that can win a case like this. How do you prove the negative? And after you inevitably lose a case like this, how do you appeal? You can’t. And I think the lawyers who wrote these provisions know this."