Robo-Soldiers

The military has now deployed three armed robots to Iraq. These are the first such robots ever designed for actual combat missions. Danger Room has the story and an impressive video of the capabilities of these machines.

RLC

Practicing Their Religion

An Oakland newspaper editor was shot and killed in the street the other day in what was an apparent assassination. Arrests have been made and it turns out the suspects were devotees of the Religion of Peace. Who would have thought?

RLC

Syria Postpones

According to DEBKAFile the Syrians have for some reason postponed the commencement of hostilities against Israel until November:

This piece of intelligence was behind the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's comment Tuesday, July 31: "I think this summer and fall will be less hot than we expected." He was addressing a ceremony ending a course at the National Security College in Jerusalem on expectations from the Syrian front and in the Lebanese Hizballah.

DEBKAfile's military sources report that the latest intelligence update on Syria's intentions reached Jerusalem via Washington in the last few days. It indicated that Syria's political and military leaders had rescheduled the start of hostilities against Israel on the Golan for the second two weeks of November, 2007, postponing their original planning by more than two months.

According to those sources, Syria plans to kick off its offensive with a series of terrorist raids by commando units on civilian villages, military bases and highways, as well as cross-border fire on IDF vehicles and positions guarding the border.

At that stage, the Syrian command will be testing Israel's military responses before mapping out its next moves accordingly.

Israel's military responses should include raids that take out the Syrian government, air force and missile batteries. Then they should commence destroying the Syrian army and intelligence apparatus. Whoever's left in Damascus can then "map out their next moves."

RLC

The Atheist Manifesto

Byron sent along a link to a story by Dinesh D'Souza on one of the hottest selling atheist books in Europe. It's titled The Atheist Manifesto and it's by Michael Onfray.

According to D'Souza, Onfray actually undertakes to do what less intrepid atheist writers usually shrink from doing. Following the German philosopher Friedrich Neitzsche he follows the rejection of God to its logical conclusion, at least in terms of the consequences for morals and human worth.

For Onfray, like Neitzsche, moral values are to be determined by the "overmen," those who are strong and masterful. Think, for example, of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, et al.

Onfray also argues that we must get over the Christian notion that each individual has a right to life. Individuals have no rights except what the overmen give them. Thus, Onfray's atheism would entail that genocidal holocausts of people whose existence is inconvenient for those who wield power would be justifiable.

This is the brave, new world that the new atheism would bequeath us - a bloody Darwinian struggle for survival, an incessant war of every man against every man, a world in which might makes right. It would be a world in which the most ruthless and psychopathic would rule and murder would not only be no crime, it would become morally obligatory.

If more atheists begin to see the logic of their position, and if sufficient political power devolves into their hands, a new dark ages would descend upon mankind, and the whole world would become a vast killing field. Life would be a Hobbesian nightmare: nasty, brutish, and short.

Perhaps this sounds a little overwrought, but ideas have consequences and the major consequence of atheism, as Onfray points out, is that without God there can be no objectively right or wrong conduct and no value to human beings. If sufficient numbers of people ever come to believe this what else could the consequences be?

RLC