Notes from My Uncle

Why the Moslem Brotherhood is killing all the Christians in Egypt

2013-08-13T14:34:00.002-07:00

"The situation has gotten so dire that Ibrahim Eissa, a popular Egyptian journalist and TV personality, apparently unable to keep silent over the plight of the Copts, recently said on live TV: “The Christians have suffered in Egypt, over the course of 2 ½ years. Their churches have been burned, their children killed. The Maspero Massacre occurred, where several Copts were slain. Catastrophic fatwas appeared, calling them infidels and inciting against them…. No one has suffered as much as they.

"Today, if any Christian attempts to join a protest, he does so at the risk of defying dozens of fatwas calling for his death and decapitation and the burning of churches, especially in Upper Egypt.”With the ouster of Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s Islamists have finally gotten the pretext they need to cleanse the nation of its Christian minority, the Copt’s—ironically, Egypt’s most native sons.

"The unprecedented hate currently being visited on them is fueled by Islam’s “How Dare You?” phenomenon: As conquered non-Muslims, Christians must live as dhimmis, that is, according to traditional Islamic teaching, barely tolerated “infidels” who must be humble and submissive—to the point that they are not permitted to raise their hands to Muslims even when attacked.Far from assuming their “proper place,” Egypt’s Christians supported the June 30 Revolution against the will and threats of the Brotherhood. Thus, to Egypt’s disenfranchised and bitter Brotherhood and its supporters, Egypt’s Christians, beginning with their pope, are all now free game."

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=6324#more-6324

Here is a nice summary of events starting with Mohammed in 650.

"WAR/HISTORY: A Timeline of Islamic Expansion In The Dark Ages

Let me put down here some facts that are worth returning to from time to time, as arguments over the history of Islam and Islamism are back in the news with today's beheading in London. In debates over the history of tension between Muslims and Christians, the Crusades are often cited, out of their historical context, as the original cause of such clashes, as if both sides were peaceably minding their own business before imperialist Westerners decided to go launch a religious war in Muslim lands.

This is not what actually happened, and indeed it is wrong to suggest that the fragmented feudal states of the West in the Eleventh Century were capable of any such thing as imperialism or colonialism (although, as Victor Davis Hanson has noted, even in the centuries after the fall of Rome, Western civilization retained a superior logistical ability to project force overseas due to the scientific, economic and military legacies of ancient Greece and Rome). Moreover, when Islam first arose, much of what we think of today as Islamic 'territory' around the Black Sea, the Middle East and North Africa was Christian. Islam conquered Christians under Muhammad. The conquest contimued to the present day. That entire Middle East and North Africa was part of the Roman and later Byzantine empires, and was culturally part of the West until it was conquered by Muslim arms.

All that said, it's worth remembering that the Crusades arose in the late Eleventh Century only after four centuries of relentless Islamic efforts to conquer Europe, and the Christians of the Crusading era cannot be evaluated without that crucial context.

COLD
It's somewhat hazy to identify the genesis of the first battle between the Byzantines and Islamic forces, which probably took place around 629 at the Battle of Mu'tah, before Muhammad had even completed the conquest of Mecca; the first sea battle between Muslim and Byzantine forces took place a few years later. The fall of Mecca in 630 solidified Muhammad's control of the western side of the Arabian peninsula, and Muhammad died in 632. A decisive Muslim victory at the Battle of Ajnadayn in 634 spread Muslim control into modern Israel. Between 634 and 689, Muslim forces conquered Christian, Byzantine-held Syria and North Africa.
Starting in the middle of the Seventh Century, when Islam was still mostly united under a single political entity, you begin to see Islamic incursions into Europe (including Constantinople, which was effectively one of the leading European cities at the time) - and from there, the conquests and attempted conquests marched on. If you look on a map over this period, you see an almost continuous line of advance on Europe from all sides but the north - from Spain and France in the west to Italy in the center to Constantinople in the east to the frontiers of Georgia in the Caucasus, with the islands of the Mediterranean on the front lines:
650-54: Muslim conquest of Cyprus.
652: Muslim Invasion of Sicily begins.
674-78: First Muslim Siege of Constantinople, repelled with the invention and deployment of "Greek Fire."

WARM
711-18: Muslim Conquest of Spain, which would not be reconquered completely by the Christians until 1492.
717-18: Second Muslim Siege of Constantinople.
719: Muslim invasion of France begins, establishing Muslim control of the Septimania region of southwestern France.
732: Battle of Poitiers (Tours); Charles Martel halts Muslim northward march into central France.
736: Muslim Conquest of Georgia, where the Emirate of Tbilisi would hold sway until 1122.
820: Muslim Conquest of Crete, which would be held until 961.
827: Muslim Conquest of Syracuse in Sicily.
846: The Muslim Sack of Rome by troops landing at the port of Ostia, including the sack of St. Peter's Basilica while Pope Leo III and the helpless Roman garrison retreated behind the city walls.
847: Muslim Conquest of Bari in southern Italy; the Muslim presence on the Italian peninsula proper lasted 25 years. In 915, at the Battle of Garigliano, Pope John X personally led an army against Islamic forces in southern Italy
863: In a rare break from the pattern of this era, the Byzantines go back on offensive, with mixed results over the next 200-300 years of warfare.
902: Muslim Conquest of all Sicily. In 965, an independent Emirate of Sicily would be established lasting until 1091.

COLD TO 1200. THEN WARM
1048-1308: The Byzantine-Seljuk Wars, yet another continuation of the mutual, longstanding efforts by the Byzantines and their Islamic neighbors to conquer each other's territory. In 1071, the Battle of Manzikert would prove the first of a series of decisive engagements (followed by the 1176 Battle of Myriokephalon) that gradually wrested Asia Minor from the Byzantines, converting it from a Christian land to a Muslim one and isolating the remaining Byzantine presence to the immediate surroundings of their historic capital of Constantinople.

And, of course, Islamic efforts against Europe and the West would continue well after the Crusades, from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the naval incursions finally stopped at Lepanto in 1571 to the epic Seige of Vienna in 1683 (which in turn was followed by another century of bloody wars between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs).

As has often been noted, the early history of Muhammad as a military leader and Islam as the driving force of conquest is quite different from the early history of Christianity as the persecuted faith founded by a non-violent martyr, and these differing foundations have presented different challenges for Christian and Muslim thinkers dealing with questions of war, peace, and the defense of self and others. That said, none of this is intended to demonize Muslims as uniquely violent in the Dark Ages. Aggressive wars of conquest were the rule throughout the world in those centuries, and have become only fitfully less so into our own age.

But the Crusades did not originate in a vacuum; they were launched in a world where the Roman Empire, the guardian of Western Civilization, had fallen to outside invaders 600 years earlier and European Christians had been on the defensive ever since. The Europe that would stand astride the non-Western world into the middle of the Twentieth Century was still distant in the future. The fearful and divided Christian principalities of 1095 had grown up in a world where Islam, not Christianity, had been the engine of imperial expansion for long before living memory.

Virtually nobody in the West and/or what passes for Christendom today argues that violence can or should be justified on the basis of things that happened a thousand years ago. The insistence of Islamist propagandists on revisiting such ancient history for present-day propaganda purposes should be resisted - but it should also be subjected to the corrective of accurate history. And that history is one in which Muslims carried the sword to Europe for centuries before Christian armies took the Crusade to them."

sorce: baseball crank may 22, 2013

New Security System

2010-10-11T12:35:00.001-07:00

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/10/india-hires-security-monkeys-for-commonwealth-games/

Warren Buffet on Gold

2010-10-11T12:34:00.001-07:00

“Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

Why GM IPO is vastly overpriced at $1/share

2010-10-06T07:03:00.001-07:00

"Workers lived a lot longer than they were expected to. Those factors mean that the ratio between retirees and workforce became extremely lopsided; at the moment, GM has a little over 50,000 hourly employees--and about a half a million retirees.
That left the pension badly underfunded...Meanwhile, soaring health care costs were making the health care benefits even more of a problem than the pensions."

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/10/new-gm-same-old-union/64088/

New Ice Age?

2010-10-05T13:45:00.001-07:00

I expect it to last 200 years and start in next 50 years
http://rt.com/prime-time/2010-10-04/coldest-winter-emergency-measures.html

Cuba Fires 500,000 workers

2010-10-05T12:55:00.001-07:00

When everybody works for the state then there is no one left to pay taxes needed to pay government salaries. Russia and China used to support Cuba and the Cuban government sold cigars. Then Chavez supported Cuba. Now he has no more money.

Now the plan is to fire 500,000 government workers who have orders to get a job. Because all jobs are government jobs they have been ordered (on pain of death) to start private businesses that will hire lots of people, pay lots of taxes and save the Revolution. Excessive profits will be frowned upon. This is a trial run for Obama's recovery plan.

Viva Obama!

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.649318c517e989a6cb277015a7fa72dd.1301&show_article=1

clash of cultures and cultural values

2010-10-05T12:42:00.001-07:00

On the one hand liberals criticize Bush's foreign policy for forcing American culture on people in foreign countries. On the other hand, they are stunned that foreign people do not share American values.

Liberals are so busy doing whatever they do and so busy congratulating themselves that they never try to learn anything about the culture of the people whom they are trying to exploit.
c
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world/asia/25kite.html?_r=1

Here's a Great Theory that Explains US Economic History 1932 to Present

2010-10-05T11:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/247822/great-u-turn-james-c-bennett?page=1

How to Fix Education

2010-10-05T10:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1191

In Vino Aurum

2010-09-28T07:45:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/09/16/so-you-want-to-start-a-wine-collection/

Obama Job Creation

2010-09-15T14:21:00.001-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/dining/08crackdown.html?_r=3

Putting gourmet restaurants out of business

Why Journalists Are Liberals

2010-09-15T14:20:00.001-07:00

A journalism major writes:

"Gender and sexuality studies classes ostensibly teach you to analyze the world with a critical lens, focusing on how one’s gender or sexuality impacts their life. Some classes deal with theoretical issues; others focus on literature, history or religion.

"But I could have benefited from more politics, history and literature classes—to learn more about the world in general, rather than one tiny little sliver of the world. There’s a difference between what I thought was “cool” to learn about at the time and what has actually proved useful in life. The lowbrow-yet-stylish topics we discussed — whether or not Eminem is sexist and racist, for example — will be out of date 10 years from now. I probably could have learned a lot about sex work and labor abuse by reading magazine and newspaper articles on the subjects. But learning more about colonialism? Globalization? The World Wars? Important books? Religion? Supreme Court decisions? That knowledge would have provided such a better foundation for me as a writer than what I think I received from gender studies classes."

http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-confessions-of-a-regretful-gender-studies-student/

If all you've learned is how to make the world a better place for women, gays and lesbians, then everything you write as a reporter is from that point of view. There are no stories about entrepreneurs taught in these schools (except Mary Kay?) because entrepreneurs are usually straight men.

Last light bulb factory in US closed - EPA sent jobs overseas

2010-09-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

Invented at GE, the CFL requires that each bulb be hand blown in order to twist the glass tube into a spiral. A Chinese entrepreneur named Yan had workers in China sit beside furnaces and bend the glass by hand. Even with the low-wages there, the first attempts were very expensive, clunky and flickered when turned on, he said. But no one could improve the process.

The business prospered and Yan's factories in China employed as many as 14,000 - not so far off from the 40,000 glass blowers that Hammer had once imagined would be necessary. With new automation techniques, Yan is seeking to cut the number of his employees in China, where wages are rising, to 5,000 by year's end.

Today, about a quarter of the lights sold in the United States are CFLs, according to NEMA, an industry association. Of those, Yan says, he manufactures more than half. Someday soon,

Yan says, he hopes to build a U.S. factory, though he so far has been unable to secure $12.5 million in government funding for the project.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/07/AR2010090706933.html

Why has nobody been fired for bad reporting on Katrina?

2010-09-08T15:29:00.001-07:00

On CNN five years ago today, Paula Zahn spoke about “very discouraging reports out of New Orleans” about “bands of rapists going from block to block, people walking around in feces, dead bodies floating everywhere. And we know that sniper fire continues.”

In her column published September 3, 2005, in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd referred to New Orleans as “a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.”
http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/katrina-and-the-myth-of-superlative-reporting/

Women Outearn Male Counterparts

2010-09-08T15:28:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/01/cities-where-women-outearn-male-counterparts/

In 2008, single, childless women between 22 and 30 were earning more than their male counterparts in most U.S. cities, with incomes that were 8% greater on average, according to an analysis of Census data by Reach Advisors, a consumer research firm in Slingerlands, N.Y.

The trend was first identified several years ago in the country’s biggest cities, but has broadened out to smaller places and across more industries. Beyond major cities such as San Francisco and New York, the income imbalance is pronounced in blue collar hubs and the fast-growing metros that have large immigrant populations

This Always Happens

2010-09-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Trapped Miner Finds Himself in Another Tight Spot After Wife Meets Mistress at Vigil

He should have been frank and earnest from the beginning. With his wife he should have been Frank, with all other women he should have been Earnest.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/02/trapped-miner-tight-spot-rescued-wife-meets-mistress-vigil/

Obama Plan Succeeds in Fighting Illegal Immigration

2010-09-02T09:12:00.001-07:00

The mortgage crisis and ensuing economic slump have slashed jobs in construction, tourism and other sectors that are the mainstay for low-skilled Latin Americans. Immigrants already in the U.S. are struggling, and word of their hardship is dissuading those back home from flocking to the U.S.

"People don't want to come now; they know the economy is bad," said Braulio Gonzalez from Guatemala, who has been scraping by as a day laborer outside Los Angeles.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465742670985642.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5

Obama had to destroy the economy in order to keep out the immigrants. There must have been a better way but I suppose it was above his pay grade.

Does Dressing Up as a Cop, Staging Fake Traffic Stops, Looking for Drugs, and then Keeping the Drugs Violate the Fourth Amendment?

2010-08-30T14:35:00.001-07:00

http://volokh.com/2010/08/26/does-dressing-up-as-a-cop-staging-fake-traffic-stops-looking-for-drugs-and-then-keeping-the-drugs-violate-the-fourth-amendment/

EPA Ban on Lead in Ammunition

2010-08-30T14:33:00.003-07:00

Buy now
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/epa-reviewing-request-ban-led-bullets

http://www.luckygunner.com//

Hyper Inflation

2010-08-30T14:33:00.001-07:00

I still think guns and ammo are the best things to buy as a hedge against inflation because guns and ammo always keep their value. However, after reading this article I would buy a year's supply of canned food and MREs which I would trade for gold and diamonds.

BTW, I missed out on Chile securities in 1973.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-hyperinflation-part-ii-what-it-will-look

Man Dies During Pancake Eating Contest

2010-08-30T14:32:00.001-07:00

http://www.chilloutpoint.com/misc/boris-isayev-died-on-a-pancake-eating-contest.html

The NYC Cab Driver Who Was Stabbed Because He Was Muslim...

2010-08-30T14:30:00.001-07:00

...was stabbed by a Liberal (not by a Tea Partier)

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/19987

How Obama Thinks

2010-08-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

His basic principle:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

His conclusions:
The poor obviously need the money and we must protect their self-esteem. Money given to the poor cannot be labeled anything so crass as “charity."

"Tax cut" sings. If you don’t make enough money to get what you need, the government will give you the difference and call it a “tax cut” because it's your cut of the taxes on those people who make more than they need.

Now everybody is in the middle class, even those who get tax cuts but have never paid an income tax. Even Bill Gates is in the middle class because he may be rich but he has no breeding.

There are lots of people who have more money than they need and they have an obligation to give all the excess to people who need it.

But high class people like John Kerry and Charlie Rangel have so much class that they only pay as much tax as they feel is proper because they have lots of needs middle class people don’t have.

Why Taxes Destroy

2010-05-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a 2 page theory about how taxes policies cause governments to rise and fall.
It was written in the 1300s by an Arab historian who developed a general theory about why some Bedouins could settle at a water hole; and within a generation there would be a prosperous city where they first camped. And within four generations all that remained would be some ruins covered by sand.

Detroit is a modern day example.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ibn Khaldun The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Bollingen Series (General))

Chapter III, part 36: Taxation and the reason for low and high (tax revenues).

It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

The reason for this is that when the dynasty follows the ways (sunan) of the religion, it imposes only such taxes as are stipulated by the religious law, such as charity taxes, the land tax, and the poll tax. They mean small assessments, because, as everyone knows, the charity tax on property is low. The same applies to the charity tax on grain and cattle, and also to the poll tax, the land tax, and all other taxes required by the religious law. They have fixed limits that cannot be overstepped.

When the dynasty follows the ways of group feeling and (political) superiority, it necessarily has at first a desert attitude, as has been mentioned before. The desert attitude requires kindness, reverence, humility, respect for the property of other people, and disinclination to appropriate it, except in rare instances. Therefore, the individual imposts and assessments, which together constitute the tax revenue, are low. When tax assessments and imposts upon the subjects are low, the latter have the energy and desire to do things. Business enterprises grow and increase, because the low taxes bring satisfaction. When business enterprises grow, the number of individual imposts and assessments mounts. In consequence, the tax revenue, which is the sum total of (the individual assessments), increases.

When the dynasty continues in power and their rulers follow each other in succession, they become sophisticated. The Bedouin attitude and simplicity lose their significance, and the Bedouin qualities of moderation and restraint disappear.

Royal authority with its tyranny, and sedentary culture that stimulates sophistication, make their appearance. The people of the dynasty then acquire qualities of character related to cleverness. Their customs and needs become more varied because of the prosperity and luxury in which they are immersed. As a result, the individual imposts and assessments upon the subjects, agribusiness laborers, farmers, and all the other taxpayers, increase. Every individual impost and assessment is greatly increased, in order to obtain a higher tax revenue. Customs duties are placed upon articles of commerce and (levied) at the city gates, as we shall mention later on. Then, gradual increases in the amount of the assessments succeed each other regularly, in correspondence with the gradual increase in the luxury customs and many needs of the dynasty and the spending required in connection with them.

Eventually, the taxes will weigh heavily upon the subjects and overburden them. Heavy taxes become an obligation and tradition, because the increases took place gradually, and no one knows specifically who increased them or levied them. They lie upon the subjects like an obligation and tradition.

The assessments increase beyond the limits of equity. The result is that the interest of the subjects in business enterprises disappears, since when they compare expenditures and taxes with their income and gain and see the little profit they make, they lose all hope. Therefore, many of them refrain from all business activity. The result is that the total tax revenue goes down, as (the number of) the individual assessments goes down.

Often, when the decrease is noticed, the amounts of individual imposts are increased. This is considered a means of compensating for the decrease. Finally, individual imposts and assessments reach their limit. It would be of no avail to increase them further. The costs of all business enterprise are now too high, the taxes are too heavy, and the profits anticipated fail to materialize. Thus, the total revenue continues to decrease, while the amounts of individual imposts and assessments continue to increase, because it is believed that such an increase will compensate (for the drop in revenue) in the end. Finally, the city state is destroyed, because the incentive for business activity is gone. It is the dynasty that suffers from the situation, because it (is the dynasty that) profits from business activity.

If (the reader) understands this, he will realize that the strongest incentive for business activity is to lower as much as possible the amounts of individual imposts levied upon persons capable of undertaking business enterprises. In this manner, such persons will be psychologically disposed to undertake them, because they can be confident of making a profit from them.