#3
Likely those Native Mexicans were practising Islam in what is now New Pennsylvania before teh British discovered then conquored the New World and spirited away all the garlic.
It was painted by the owner of the property, shop owner Sergio Redegalli who also, apparently, has a ban-the-burqa bumper sticker.
Locals have complained and council officials have visited the owner to talk to him about removing but have said in a statement that legally their hands are tied. There's a pretty simple freedom of speech issue at play here: should it be painted over?
Redegalli told the local newspaper, The Inner West Courier: "This mural has come from frustration that political correctness has gone so far you can't say anything about Muslims without getting in trouble," he said.
"This is a stance on rights for ourselves, we can say something peacefully without having violence."
He finished the mural this week and it has been vandalised twice while in progress.
Clearly, Redegalli knows what he's getting himself into. In a box beside the mural are printed copies of an article from the New York Times by an Egyptian feminist who supports banning the burqa.
Also taped to the wall is an A4 page containing the Australian Human Rights Commission's definition of racial hatred.
In a statement to The Punch, the local authority, Marrickville Council, said that while it had no legal right under graffiti laws to remove the mural, it was "continuing to pursue other means of having the image/symbol removed."
The local mayor, Sam Iskandar, said: "I strongly condemn this action which goes against the values which the Marrickville community has believed in and practiced for generations. I believe this is an isolated incident which is not supported by the broader Marrickville community."
#2
Either everybody's feelings can be hurt or nobody's can. If it's everybody, then the mural is OK and should remain. If it's nobody, then, hey, ANY outward indication of muzzlamizm hurts my feelings, and therefore is verboten. Simple and easy to understand...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/23/2010 9:02 Comments ||
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#3
I though free speech ended where the nutbags' feelings start...
#4
He should have said he painted the sign in support of the oppressed women of Islam and their suffrage. He should have said this was a woman's rights issue and the Burqa was a human rights issue!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/23/2010 10:46 Comments ||
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#5
Yup. Use the same font and size on the bottom of the red ring: "Support Womens' Rights!"
Then see what the PC types do.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/23/2010 11:11 Comments ||
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#4
Debka gets a salt girl graphic and Pravda doesn't?
Adding graphics is advanced moderating, Ebbang Uluque6305. I don't know how to do that, f'r instance. Besides, it's under Opinion, not one of the news headings.
#7
I read an interesting bit the other day which explained that hyperinflation is not just inflation writ large, but an entirely different phenomenon.
Inflation is typically thought of as production prices rising, followed by consumer prices rising. As such it can be caused by reduced supply, increased demand, or a reduction in the relative value of the currency.
Hyperinflation is when there are no longer safe virtual investments, such as stocks, bonds or futures. When there is a disruption in the markets, this results in a sudden flight to *physical* commodities, not just commodities on paper.
This sends shock waves through the consumer chain, because it interferes with the normal route from producer to consumer, which is "push" oriented, that is, producers only producing enough for the market.
Say a coffee producer has a normal market for 100 tons of coffee beans. So he delivers about 100 tons, which end up for sale on the retail shelves.
But then there is a hyperinflation flight to commodities, with investors taking physical possession of 80 of those tons, because they can pay more than the retailer who would normally sell them.
Overnight, there is only 1/5th of the coffee available for sale. The price of coffee skyrockets.
And not just coffee, but all other commodities, and all at the same time. Coffee that was $10/lb is now $50/lb. With big jumps in sugar, dairy, grains and flour, meat and oils, vegetables, and processed foods.
As well as oil and gas, metals, then just about everything else.
#8
Ludwig von Mises was an economist who survived the German hyperinflation and then the Nazis. He thought the USA was immune to hyperinflation: the great inflation and the Nazi scourge both derived from the mentalities and the doctrines that long dominated German public opinion. The State, which the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle had already proclaimed as god, was supposed to be able to achieve anything. The omnipotent State was credited with the magic power of unlimited spending without any burden on the citizenry. Money, said the German monetary cranks, is a creature of the State; there is no harm in issuing infinite quantities of paper currency.
Fortunately, such superstitions are strange to the healthy common sense of America.
Common sense in the USA has become a scarce commodity lately.
#9
Inflation (or hyperinflation) can come about because money is devalued. Too much money is printed to pay down the debt and it is worth less and less and less.
The most urgent political task, now and into the indefinite future, is to articulate such home truths, in direct defiance of the "progressive" Zeitgeist. That, more than anything else, is what Reagan and Thatcher accomplished in their day: setting their faces against the Statist breeze. Lord knows, they accomplished little at the practical level. But for a glimmering moment, they helped us remember that a nation is her people and not her government.
They knew that bureaucracy is an evil; but accepted it as a necessary evil, susceptible to reform and occasional "downsizing." We need to take one step farther, and grasp that it is an unnecessary evil -- that any human activity which requires a cumbersome bureaucracy is itself morally dubious; that anything which reduces the human being to a "unit" for bureaucratic purposes is in its nature inhuman.
Moreover, to invoke Wilberforce here, the evil is suffered not only by the slave. It is also suffered by the master. The power that bureaucracy confers on the individual bureaucrat -- the control it gives him over other people's lives -- is morally even more destructive of him than of the subjects of his ministrations. Of course, there are good, well-meaning people working in the bureaucracies; but there were also good, well-meaning slaveholders.
I emphasize the problem of articulation, over time, because the work of dismantling "nanny" is, of necessity, the work of more than one generation. It took more than a century to get from Bismarck's innovations in 19th-century Prussia to the bankrupt "welfare state" of today; and I cannot imagine it will take less time to undo this tragic error.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/23/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
My blog has been in an informal hiatus as I have pursued research leads in the areas of Christian spiritual renewal. I have met with much success, but only if one disposes of many invalid preconceptions, unwarranted emphases, and unarticulated assumptions. One hobbling concept that I am just beginning to address is that of unlimited submission: leaders in the church teach unquestioning and almost blind submission to themselves on the part of church memebers, and use passages from Romans to teach a similar submission to the governing authority, regardless of the fact that Paul lived under an empire and we under a democratic republic. The result of this one-sided teaching is that we are transforming the government of a democratic republic into Caesar, just as it transforms those who should be shepherds over the flock of God into little Caesars. I have found liberal Christians using these passages to tell conservative Christians not to protest ever rising taxes, now that Obama is president and democrats control congress.
What is either missed, or deliberately ignored, is the concept of "command responsibility", which is the symmetric complement of "submission": in every passage where Paul teaches submission in the family or the workplace given to one side is an equal command to the relevant authority to take due good care of those submitting to them. When anyone in the Old Testament or the New is accused of unbelief, or lack of faith, it is lack of faith in God's Command Responsibility: it is a refusal to believe that God takes seriously His responsibility to take good care of those who submit to Him. Even a cursory review of Old Testament history attests to the displeasure of a God who is insulted when it is covertly implied, or stated openly, that He does not take care of those who obey him.
Here's the kicker: the Declaration of Independence is the first statement of the fact that submission to authority has limits, that those limits are crossed when the authority does not fulfill its command responsibilities, and that submission can be properly terminated under those conditions. It declared that the British Crown had violated those responsibilities, documented persistent violation of those responsibilites, and declared that the obligation to submit to the British Crown was therefore abrogated. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, recognized no such countervailing responsibility and thus opposed the American Revolution, calling on American Methodists to remain loyalists. The call was ignored by a large majority of Methodists.
Similar calls that Christians should submit to a corrupt and oppressive government should be similarly ignored. It was never the intention of God that any man submit to a ruler such as Kim Jong Il who recognizes no obligation whatsoever to those under him, because God is not like Allah, who does not recognize any responsibilities whatsoever to whoever worships him.
This concept is still being hashed out, and this is probably the first public articulation of it, so cut me some slack while I work out the details.
#2
Intriguing commentary Ptah, but that's why I always come here. I will leave you with following local address for continued studies on the topic of submission:
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW
Washington, DC 20024
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
It was painted by the owner of the property, shop owner Sergio Redegalli who also, apparently, has a ban-the-burqa bumper sticker.
