More On Silver

Brother Dick contacted me with some questions about my previous post on silver, and I quickly realized that I was remiss by not mentioning several important points, so I'll include them here as an addendum to the post.

Since the value of original silver coins (those coins once used as currency) is so much greater than the face value of the coin, they are no longer used as currency. Their value is in their content. Similarly, newer silver coins are simply bullion stamped in coin form. They might as well be bars. Just like gold Krugerrands, American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, etc. their value is determined by the amount of silver content with no real face value per se.

You can still acquire pre-1964 silver coins, in the form of "bags" of coins. For instance, a bag of 90% silver coins with a $1,000 face value which represents 715 ounces of pure silver goes for about $7,750 (about $10.85 per ounce of silver). It's an interesting play.

Some silver coins have numismatic value and if there's a real crunch in the supply of silver, they might be melted down for the silver content.

Numismatic coins are graded to classify their condition. The grading of the coin is then factored into the quantity of coins minted in that year. The result is a value placed on the coin. These coins are encased in a clear plastic case that protects them and displays information about the grade of the coin.

This brings up an interesting question I've had for a long time regarding gold and silver numismatic coins. If many of them are sold and get melted down to meet demand, I would suspect that those coins that remain would absolutely skyrocket in value as they would then be that much more rare.

Regarding shares in mining companies it's important to note that they carry inherent risks. Mining disasters, unfriendly governments deciding to nationalize the mines, increased energy costs cutting into profits all of which are hazards that are reflected in the value of a share of stock. These issues explain why shares offer leverage to the price of the metal. Nothing is safer than the metal "in hand" and that's why I believe that the first order of business is to acquire a stash of the metal. It doesn't pay interest or dividends but it's safe. Then one can venture into the world of shares of mining companies.

A silver Electronically Traded Fund (ETF) has just been given approval to go into operation. For them to open their doors for business they will have to acquire somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 million ounces of silver. They operate by selling shares which are backed by the silver they have. As more people buy shares, the ETF has to acquire more silver to back the new shares. This impacts supply of the metal. All of this creates less supply in the open market because the ETF is taking the metal off the table.

Lastly, the price of both silver and gold is largely set according to the futures market. This has enabled the paper markets to significantly influence the price of the metals. In other words, by manipulating the futures market, the price of the metals have been suppressed. One has to realize that those who benefit from a program of fiat currency must maintain an environment of confidence in the fiat currency and part of doing so is to maintain low prices of the assets (the barometer) that historically indicate inflation and devaluation of the fiat dollars. That metal's prices, and commodities in general, have been in a bull market for several years now and this indicates that they are losing control. As more and more people (governments and individuals alike) begin to question the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. dollars, they will transition into the ultimate form of money. Eventually the laws of supply and demand come into play as they will not be conned and that is what has been happening over the last 5 years.

Any major political event would destabilize the whole game and prices would increase dramatically, otherwise it will just be a relatively slow grind upwards as more and more individuals (and governments) flee to the metal. Personally, I suspect investors in precious metals will benefit from either scenario.

Annex Mexico

Michelle Malkin has links and updates on the Latino Reconquista sweeping across America. These protests seem to be about more than just enabling immigrants to make a living in the U.S. Demands that we not enforce the law on immigration are tantamount to demanding that we eliminate the border with Mexico and essentially allow the American southwest to return to its early 19th century status as a Mexican territory.

Once millions of Mexicans have established themselves as citizens it will not be long before they control state legislatures in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California. Once they do, those states, or at least some of them, will become de facto territories of the state of Mexico. Our government leaders, both Republican and Democrat, have failed to control our border and now we are confronted with an enormous problem not unlike what Europe is faced with by their immigrant Muslim population.

We have two suggestions. The first is that we immediately begin construction of a barrier along the entire length of the southern border to keep illegals out, and then proceed to deport any illegal Mexicans caught breaking American laws or who don't have a job. The barrier is an essential first step. Without it anything else we do to prevent the cultural transformation of our country will be like bailing water on the Titanic.

The second suggestion is that if we choose not to follow the first suggestion, then, since so many Mexicans wish to be Americans, and since so many politicians believe we can do nothing to stem the flow of immigrants across our border, and since an open border is equivalent to no border at all, we should annex the entire country of Mexico and make it the fifty-first state. This wouldn't make everybody happy, of course, but it would make the economic burden of illegal immigration easier to bear. All Mexicans would be instant citizens and eligible for all the benefits to which citizens are entitled, including welfare, social security and minimum wage.

Meanwhile, the U.S. could nationalize the Mexican oil, mineral, and tourist industries, which are cash cows whose riches are currently being siphoned to a wealthy few oligarchs, and use the profits and taxes from those revenue sources to help pay the cost of absorbing millions of new citizens into the United States. If we're going to allow Mexico to overwhelm the U.S. with its tide of humanity yearning to be free, we at least ought to make them pay for it.

Some Mexicans would object, no doubt, at being forced to become American citizens, and some may even resist, but maybe not. It's worth a try. Seriously. After all, either Mexico becomes American or the American southwest, within a decade or two, becomes Mexican.

Ending Poverty

Charles Murray, as is his custom, has come up with an intriguing idea that is bound to be controversial. He proposes giving every person in the U.S. a grant of $10,000 every year. The advantages, he thinks, far outweigh the disadvantages.

Unlike the proposal floated by George McGovern, who campaigned for the presidency in 1972 on the promise of giving every American $1000, Murray's proposal is not exactly a giveaway. He outlines his argument at Opinion Journal. It's worth a close reading.

Taking Down the Mookster

Bill Roggio is reporting that U.S. forces are teaming with Iraqi units against Muqtada "Mookie" al-Sadr's Mahdi army. In the early fighting approximately twenty of the Mookie's thugs have been killed. We have been wondering how long this boil would be allowed to fester before it was cut out of the Iraqi body politic. We hope that this operation is a signal that the Mookster's days are numbered.

Update: Some of Mookie's allies are painting the raid as a war crime. Roggio has more on the story here and here.

In Defense of CPT

Byron is a dear friend of mine, but we see things very differently when it comes to matters of national security and the use of military force. My recent criticisms of the Christian Peacemaker Teams' alleged refusal to assist the coalition forces with information that might help locate and rescue other kidnap victims has led him to rise to their defense. His complete e-mail is on the Feedback page. If you're interested in following the discussion I encourage you to read his e-mail first and then return to this post where I try to answer some of his criticisms and concerns.

I had argued yesterday that to refuse to help the coalition find other kidnap victims is not significantly different than refusing to give local police information one might have on an abduction of someone in the states.

Byron argues that this is a bad analogy. His words are indented in what follows:

It seems evident to me that as caring Christian people, they surely would cooperate with legitimate authorities doing bone fide rescue work and to suggest otherwise is really odd.

But why think they would? CPT refuses to cooperate with the legitimate authorities in Iraq, not just the coalition, but also the Iraqi authorities established through a duly elected government. If they won't cooperate with them why think they'd cooperate with local police? CPT might cooperate with American police, of course, but if so, they'd be inconsistent.

Furthermore, why suggest that what coalition forces are doing in hunting for kidnap victims is not "bona fide rescue work"? In what sense are they not genuine attempts to rescue those who've been abducted by terrorist killers?

If CPT wishes to argue that they are justified in not cooperating with U.S. forces to find kidnap victims because those forces are illegitimate, then we might ask them if they would refuse to cooperate with Saddam's regime if a similar occasion had arisen. Saddam's regime was elected by the people, and since it was, in CPT's eyes, an illegitimate act for the U.S. to overthrow him, it follows that CPT believes that the Baathists constituted a legitimate government. If so, CPT should have no scruple against cooperating with Saddam to help find an innocent crime victim, even though they personally detested Saddam himself. Their logic would lead them to cooperating with Saddam but not cooperating with the coalition or the current Iraqi authorities. That seems pretty odd, too, I think.

[T]hey are .... protesting the occupation of U.S. forces that they believe are putting local civilians in harm's way.

The threat to civilians in Iraq comes from the insurgents and foreign Islamists who have deliberately killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis. I don't think one would find very many Iraqis who see the U.S. as a significant threat to their safety. On the other hand, one would find many Iraqis who would say that, although they don't like having American troops on their soil, neither do they want them to leave just yet.

They are there to protect their Iraqi friends from the U.S. military who has bombed their homes, factories, schools and hospitals.

I know of no evidence either that U.S. forces bombed schools and hospitals or that the CPT teams have prevented a single military action beyond the rescue of innocent abductees. Is there any evidence that CPT in Iraq has saved anyone, except the insurgents, from harm?

[T]hey think that the occupying forces are enforcing an unjust occupation and are to be opposed.

To be sure, they think this, but why, exactly, is the occupation unjust? What about it makes it unjust? I can understand (though I disagree) why they might think the war was unjust, but it doesn't follow that because the war was unjust that therefore the occupation is. What would be unjust would be for the U.S. to say we shouldn't have invaded in the first place, so we're getting out, and the Iraqi people are on their own. If that's what CPT wants the United States to do then they want us to execute what would perhaps be the greatest betrayal and act of treachery in modern history.

That they won't give information (if in fact that is even true, as you yourself wonder near the end of your piece) to people that they do not trust, who have been known to kill the wrong bad guys in other similar situations, is not at all--not at all!---the same situation as your hypothetical.

Have the police in this country not been known to make mistakes and shoot the wrong people? If Byron thinks it's not at all the same as the hypothetical I present, he and I will just have to disagree on that, but I'd like to see the CPT folks explain the nuances of the difference to the family of Jill Carroll and others who are being held against their will and whose lives are suspended in the balance.

And, by the way, as you know, they have thanked their rescuers, and done so formally and publicly. Since you know that, I wonder why you run this old piece without any correction to his inaccurate accusation?

The American branch of CPT has issued a bland blanket statement thanking any who were involved in the rescue. Neither the Canadian nor the British branch has done so, apparently, even though the rescued victims were Canadian and British. The article cited at the link above points this out.

Let's Talk Silver

Yeah, I know. You're thinking what's this guy who always talks about the benefits of gold up to? Well, consider the following and then decide for yourself.

Prior to 1964 our coinage used to be 90% silver. After that it was 40% silver. Today it's 0%. Our government has removed all of the true value of our coinage and today it has no intrinsic value.

Like gold, there are several ways to take a position in silver such as bullion or shares of companies that mine silver. Two companies worth mentioning are Silver Standard Resources Inc. (SSRI) and Coeur D'Alene Mining (CDE).

Silver is considered to be "the poor man's gold" since it's much less expensive and it tends to track the gold price. Both metals hit their low in 1999 and since then both have been steadily increasing in value.

The main reason I share my interest in silver is because of the principle of diversification. One's investment portfolio should be diversified for reasons of safety. Prudence dictates not to put all of one's eggs into one basket. While I'm on the topic of diversification, I'll also mention stocks of companies involved in energy and energy services but that's a topic for another post.

Demand for silver has been exceeding the supply for sixteenth consecutive years. This consistent supply deficit is a characteristic unique to silver and one that reinforces my belief in increasing silver prices over time. Ask yourself why our government doesn't issue silver dollars today. The answer is because they would be worth $10.75.

Whether one considers gold, silver, or energy they all have a common denominator. They each represent real assets and with the state of the world as it is today, real assets are going to continue to increase in value significantly.

Playground Squabble

Here's some time-wasting radio repartee between Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Alec Baldwin. Lots of name-calling, insults, and virtually zero light shed on anything that matters. If you're a WWF fan or are into mud wrestling you'll love this. Otherwise, you'll wonder why any of these guys get paid what they do.

Alec Baldwin is a contemptible human being, of course, and no one expects any better from him. He's the Hollywood actor who declared that Henry Hyde should be stoned to death along with his entire family. Hannity and Levin, however, should know better. They have a great platform for advancing the culture, raising the general level of discourse, and promoting ideas, but all they do is act toward anyone who dissents from their point of view like eight year olds in a playground altercation. All three of them sound on the transcript like they have the maturity of pre-pubescent boys squabbling over who gets to play with the toys.

Hannity refuses on his show to let callers who disagree with him talk - for that matter he barely lets callers who agree with him talk - he constantly interrupts and talks over them so that the listener is deprived of forming his own judgment of the merit of the caller's arguments. His idea of a rebuttal is to call someone who disgrees a "big liberal," as if that settles anything. It's as if the qualification for voicing, and being given a chance to defend, an opinion on Hannity's show is whether the opinion is one of which Hannity approves. It's as sad as it is disgusting.

Separating the Wheat From the Tares

Meanwhile, as Mexicans stream across our southern border unimpeded, keen-eyed immigration officials espy an obvious imposter:

When Indonesian Yose Rizal applied for religious asylum in the U.S., explaining that he had been beaten, fired, and threatened with death because of his Christian faith, and that his church had been burned by local Muslims, U.S. immigration lawyers asked him where Jesus had been crucified. "Bethlehem," Rizal answered. What disciples wrote the New Testament, they asked. He did not remember.

"Do you know who denied knowing Jesus after the crucifixion?" the lawyer pressed.

"Like whenever it comes to the details of the Bible stories, I cannot really recall everything in detail because basically what I learned was what's good and what's evil," Rizal answered.

"Sir, are you trying to tell me you don't know the answer to the question I asked you?" the lawyer said.

"I swear, I just learned about this story from the Bible but I don't really remember everything in detail because what I really remember was the teaching of what's good and what's evil, like you may not kill, you may not hurt people, and I just enjoy going to church to listen to the preachers."

"Give him something a little easier," the immigration judge told the government lawyer.

The lawyer went to the Old Testament: "Who was Moses?"

"Moses was born by Miriam," Rizal said, incorrectly identifying Moses' older sister.

"And who prepared the Ten Commandments?"

"Jesus."

"You got that backwards," the lawyer said.

Rizal protested, describing his baptism. "[T]hey have some kind of wording, some kind of words before then, whether we really have the intention of being a Christian, whether we were ready or not and then after that, the preacher spread some holy water and then prayed, we prayed together."

"Do you have any other questions?" the judge finally said. "Because I think I've heard enough."

The government lawyer said that, yes, he had more questions, because Rizal "hasn't testified at all today regarding any of the [events] of persecution."

"Well, if I don't find he's a Christian, I don't even think it's necessary," the judge replied. Indeed in his decision denying Rizal asylum, the immigration judge ruled that the Indonesian "provided no evidence to corroborate his purported identity as a Christian....[He] also failed to persuade the Court of the genuineness of his professed Christian faith based on his inability to demonstrate basic knowledge of Christianity. For example, he identified Jesus as the preparer of the Ten Commandments and he identified Moses as the son of Mary."

Hah! Caught the rogue in a tissue of lies and ignorance. That'll teach a lesson to these ignorant third-world types who think they can fool an immigration judge with all that twaddle about Christianity being a love-affair, a romance with Christ. Everyone knows, especially the judge, that Christianity is really an ecclesiastical motor vehicle code that you have to learn just like a 16 year-old getting ready to take the test for her driver's license. If you know the facts well, then, you're a Christian. If you love Jesus, but don't know who wrote the Ten Commandments then you deserve to be sent back to the Muslim hell from which you came. The Body of Christ needs more such vigilance.

Actually, he identified him as the son of Miriam, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a Tuesday decision. And that's not the only point the appeals court corrected the immigration judge on. The immigration judge "appears to have erroneously viewed Rizal's lack of detailed doctrinal knowledge about Christianity as automatically rendering incredible his claim of religious persecution, without assessing the genuineness of Rizal's asserted Christian self-identification and his claim that others perceived him as a Christian and had persecuted him on that basis," Judge Robert Katzmann wrote for the court.

Doctrinal knowledge isn't a prerequisite for persecution, the court said, so it shouldn't be a prerequisite for asylum. "Both history and common sense make amply clear that people can identify with a certain religion, notwithstanding their lack of detailed knowledge about that religion's doctrinal tenets, and that those same people can be persecuted for their religious affiliation. Such individuals are just as eligible for asylum on religious persecution grounds as are those with more detailed doctrinal knowledge." The appeals court ordered the lower immigration courts to reconsider the asylum case. Rizal's lawyer notes that the Indonesian may be able to stay in the country a lot longer than earlier thought: Over the course of the appeals process, he married an American. An Associated Press story ends with a nice touch: "The pair ... met at church."

A refreshing breeze of common sense blows through the halls of the 2nd Court of Appeals. Thank God. Now if only they could bottle it and send some along to those immigration lawyers and the judge who heard the original case.

Inferiority Complex

Christianity Today has this chilling piece on the Abdul Rahman case. Rahman, you'll remember is the 41 year old Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity:

Almost every western nation is calling for the freedom of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity who faces the death penalty for doing so. At the same time, Afghan clerics are threatening revolt and murder if the Afghan court does not execute him. Is there any way out? Prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari thinks there might be: Rahman, he said, seems crazy. "We think he could be mad," he told the Associated Press. "He is not a normal person. He doesn't talk like a normal person." Freeing Rahman on grounds of insanity would probably mean he would be killed by local Muslims. The Associated Press reports that local imams aren't buying the craziness excuse. Abdull Raoulf, who is a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, agreed. "The government is playing games," said Abdul Raoulf. "The people will not be fooled. Cut off his head! We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left." The Associated Press identified Raoulf as a "moderate."

This is, Eugene Volokh notes, one of the most troubling things about calls for the death of Abdul Rahman. They're coming from clerics and ordinary lay people who are considered mainstream and "moderate":

The striking thing about the Abdul Rahman prosecution - in which an Afghanistan court is considering whether to execute Rahman because he converted from Islam to Christianity - is how Establishment the prosecution is. The case is before an official Afghani court. The death sentence is, to my knowlege, authorized by official Afghani law. The New York Times reports that the prosecutor, an Afghan government official, "called Mr. Rahman 'a microbe' who 'should be killed.'" The case is in a country which is close to the West, and is presumably under at least some special influence from Western principles (whether as a matter of conviction or of governmental self-interest).

We're not talking about some rogue terrorist group, or even the government of Iran, which is deliberately and strongly oppositional to the West. We're talking about a country that we're trying to set up as something of a model of democracy and liberty for the Islamic world. And yet the legal system is apparently seriously considering executing someone for nothing more than changing his religion.

This is telling evidence, it seems to me, that there is something very wrong in Islam today, and not just in some lunatic terrorist fringe. Doubtless many, I would hope most, Muslims would not endorse executing converts. But a strand of the religion, and a strand that is not far from the levers of political power in at least some countries, does seem to endorse such a position. This is deeply dangerous, most obviously to residents of countries in which radical Islamism has broad support, but also to residents of Western countries as well.

The incomprehensible (to the Western mind) hostility of Muslims to those who poke fun at their icons or forsake the religion altogether belies a fundamental insecurity in the Muslim consciousness about the validity of their belief system. They sense its inability to persuade the mind and realize it must be spread through fear and intimidation. Like communists during the cold war Muslims know that they have little to offer people so they must resort to the harshest of sanctions to keep the masses from straying across the border.

Compared to the spiritual and cultural riches of Christianity, Muslims subliminally realize, Islam is a religious ghetto. Muslims suffer from a lethal combination of inferiority and persecution complexes which cause the faithful to lash out in hatred at heretics and apostates like Salman Rushdie and Abdul Rahman. Any challenge to the slightest detail of the faith is seen as a dire threat to the entire edifice and must not be tolerated. This is not how people, secure and confident in the basic rightness of their beliefs, act.

Kill, Kill, Kill

The media's favorite Imam, the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is about to tumble from his pedestal. The Ayatollah has sealed his doom with the Western media (and rightly so, we should add). Al-Sistani has issued a fatwa on his web site that demonstrates where enlightened Islam stands today:

In the midst of sectarian violence that threatens to drag Iraq into civil war, the country's influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued a violent death order against gays and lesbians on his Web site, according to London-based LGBT human rights groups OutRage.

Written in Arabic, the fatwa comes from a press conference with the powerful religious cleric, where he was asked about the judgment on sodomy and lesbianism. "Forbidden," Sistani answered, according to OutRage, "Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing."

Considering Sistani's stature and influence within the Iraqi Shiite majority, OutRage member Ali Hili declared the cleric's statements extremely dangerous. "Sistani's murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men," said Hili. "We hold Sistani personally responsible for the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Iraqis. He gives the killers theological sanction and encouragement."

Muslims want to kill Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan because he's a Christian, they want to kill their wives and sisters because they date people of whom poppa doesn't approve, they want to kill gays and lesbians in Iraq because they're gay and lesbian. The Shia want to kill the Sunnis and vice-versa, and they both want to kill the Crusaders. Kill, kill, kill. What a religion. Allah be praised.

What Would Jesus Do?

Imagine you're one of the parents of the young woman journalist who has been kidnapped in Iraq. Every day you pray that she will be found. Your life is paralyzed because you can think of nothing else but her safety. And then you read that Christians who have been recently freed from kidnappers, and who may have information which could lead to the rescue of your daughter, refuse to help the people who are searching for her:

The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages.

We can imagine. We're quite certain it has also infuriated the families of other kidnap victims. We can't understand why the CPT people think it is somehow Christian to refuse to divulge information that would help rescue other victims. If a child had been kidnapped in their home town and they had information that could lead to the child's rescue but which might entail the use of force, would they refuse to tell the police what they know? Evidently so. It's hard to imagine Jesus approving of such smug self-righteousness which, like that of the Pharisees, elevates a rigid dogma over compassion for human beings.

The account in the Telegraph has some interesting information about the rescue, including this:

Neither the men nor the Canadian group that sent them to Iraq have thanked the people who saved them in any of their public statements.

Although the CPTs has welcomed the men's release, it has not thanked the rescuers in any of its statements. It blamed the kidnapping on the presence of foreign troops in the country, which was "responsible for so much pain and suffering in Iraq today". When told how angry the coalition was feeling, Claire Evans, a spokesman for the CPTs in America, said: "We are extremely grateful to everybody who had a role leading to the men's release."

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the defence staff, told Channel 4 News: "I am slightly saddened that there does not seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives." Asked if he meant that Mr Kember had not said thank you, he said: "I hope he has and I have missed it."

It emerged that about 50 soldiers, led by the SAS, including men from 1 Bn the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines, as well as American and Canadian special forces, entered the kidnap building at dawn. A deal had been struck with a man detained the previous night who was one of the leaders of the kidnappers. He was allowed a telephone call to warn his henchmen to leave the kidnap house. When the troops moved in and found the prisoners alive, they also let him go as promised.

Perhaps CPT has in fact cooperated in the search for other victims to the extent that they are able, but their assistance just hasn't been made public. We hope so. If, on the other hand, CPT thinks they are reflecting Christ to the world by refusing to help they're deluding themselves and giving Christianity as big a black eye as Pat Robertson ever has.

A Blessing to the World

Science and Theology News has this item about a new book by Baylor Prof Rodney Stark:

It's one of history's most important questions: Why did Europe and North America embrace democracy and thrive economically while nations elsewhere suffered oppression and stagnation?

According to leading U.S. sociologist Rodney Stark, many scholars purposely overlook the obvious answer: It was the spread of Christianity that made possible political and economic freedoms, modern science and resulting Western advancement.

Such is the Baylor University professor's contention in The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success, one of the more provocative of recent books whose vigorous prose reflects the author's one-time employment as a newspaper reporter.

Although Western intellectuals downplay theology, Stark said he sees Christian beliefs as the key. He said the basis for the West's rise was "an extraordinary faith in reason'' resulting from Christianity, which "alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth.'' Faith in humanity's reasoning capacity, in turn, stimulated scientific theory-making, democratic theory and individual freedoms. Capitalism applied this to economics, producing an explosion of wealth, he said.

Stark rejects the century-old scenario of Max Weber that Protestantism under-girded capitalism. He said that the main elements were invented by Catholic monks and lay Italians centuries before the Reformation.

But Stark ignores the impact of the Jews' biblical view of the world that was later adopted by Christians. He also impugns Islam, arguing that a major segment of Muslim thought "condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah's freedom to act. Thus, Islam did not fully embrace the notion that the universe ran along on fundamental principles laid down by God at the creation.''

It seems to be a consensus view among scholars that the ancient Christian convictions that the world is a created entity, that it was brought into being by a rational God, and that man is to be a steward of the earth, led to the beliefs that it is not blasphemous to study the world, that the world is not capricious and will thus reveal its secrets to rational inquiry, and that it is here for our use. These ideas in turn led to the development of Western science, technology, and progress in improving the quality of human life.

Christianity has not been without its shortcomings, of course, but on balance it has been a wonderful blessing to humanity.

This Land is Your Land

Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets all across the country yesterday to demand, essentially, that the United States abolish its border with Mexico so that anyone who wants to come into this country can do so. The logical outcome of an open border, of course, is a massive population shift of Mexicans into the U.S. with all the demands on public services that that entails.

Congress is considering bills that would make it a felony to be illegally in the United States, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border. The proposals have angered many Hispanics who believe it is their God-given right to live wherever they want.

We're curious as to why the sponsors of the bill wish to limit the fence to a mere third of the border. Run it the whole way, for heaven's sake. Good fences make good neighbors, we've been told.

One protestor, Malissa Greer, 29, who joined a crowd estimated by police to be at least 10,000 strong, was quoted as saying of the illegals: "They're here for the American Dream, God created all of us. He's not a God of the United States, he's a God of the world," whatever that has to do with anything.

In Georgia, activists said tens of thousands of workers did not show up at their jobs Friday after calls for a work stoppage to protest a bill passed by the Georgia House on Thursday. That bill, which has yet to gain Senate approval, would deny state services to adults living in the U.S. illegally and impose a 5 percent surcharge on wire transfers from illegal immigrants.

Tens of thousands of Georgians apparently believe that illegal Mexicans have a legitimate claim to your wallet. They wouldn't put it that way, of course. They'd say that they're good for the economy because they do work that Americans won't do. That, however, is not the point. If we need them as workers then there should be a way of bringing them into the country in a lawful, orderly fashion.

In the meantime, if they're illegal they should be sent home and prevented from returning. If the administration doesn't soon provide some common sense leadership on this issue then Bush's approval numbers will continue their descent into political purgatory, and he'll deserve it.

More Clever Ads

No Left Turns, having pointed us to the way-cool beer commercial the other day, links us today to a couple of new car ads that are also cleverly done. For the first go here and follow the link. For the second go here.

You'll need your sound on.

You Are What You Eat

Here is scientific confirmation of what everybody already knew to be true:

Playing violent video games changes brain function and desensitizes chronic players to violence, according to a new study led by University of Michigan researchers. The study, to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was conducted by Brad Bushman, a professor of psychology and communications studies and a faculty associate at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research; Bruce Bartholow, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia; and Marc Sestir at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Researchers asked 39 male undergraduates how often they played their five favorite video games, and how violent the games were. The researchers also assessed participants' irritability and aggressiveness, asking them how much they identified with statements such as: "I easily fly off the handle with those who don't listen or understand" and "If somebody hits me, I hit back."

The researchers outfitted participants with electrode caps to obtain EEG data, including the average amplitude of a particular type of brainwave, known as P300, which is believed to be an indicator of how people evaluate a stimulus, such as a photograph.

The researchers found participants who routinely played violent video games responded less to violent images, as measured by diminished P300 brainwaves. This was not true of their response to other, equally negative, nonviolent images.

Just as our body reflects what it is fed, so, too, does the brain. Feed the body fat, and it becomes fat (I know this from personal experience). Feed the brain violence, and it becomes violent, or at least more tolerant of violence. It's nice that science frequently just confirms common sense.

Is Polyamory in Our Future?

William Saletan, writing in Slate, doesn't think much of the argument that legalizing gay marriage will make polyamory (polygamy and group "love") inevitable. He states that human jealousy insures that such unions don't last, do not work, and that there will not be a large constituency for them.

His premises may all be correct, it may be true, for instance, that jealousy is an ineradicable human trait, but his conclusion that it would prevent people from wanting to form marriages between multiple partners simply doesn't follow. Just because certain kinds of unions are inherently unstable doesn't mean that people won't want to try them. It only takes a few people who wish to push the envelope, even if they themselves are not interested in a life-long commitment, to challenge the law. And when they do there will be no logical or legal justification for denying them the right to try to make the unorthodox arrangement work.

Another human trait is that people have a tendency to pull down every stop sign along the highway to total freedom, especially sexual freedom. People can be found who will try to do whatever they think they can do. Once the gender of those entering into marriage is no longer legally relevant there will be no justification for arbitrarily saying that the number of people entering into a marriage is legally relevant. Mr. Saletan is simply naive if he thinks that the human predisposition toward jealousy will insure that the law will not give way to logic.

In A Box

The Federal Reserve and its new chairman Mr. Ben Bernanke are in a box. By this I mean there are opposing issues that prevent them from taking action that will solve their problem.

Consider this report:

This is indicative of a slowing of the economy. In order to stimulate the housing market, the Fed would have to reduce interest rates to make the purchase of new homes more attractive.

The catch is that a reduction in interest rates will make investment in U.S. treasury debt by foreigners less attractive and they will look elsewhere to invest their dollars. If we don't continue to receive the billions of dollars daily from foreigners that finance the U.S. debt, the shortfall will have to be filled by the printing of dollars. This will inevitably lead to more inflation. If foreign investors perceive an inflationary trend in the U.S. they will back off on their investment of U.S. debt. which will fuel a cycle of less investment in the U.S.

Here's another report report that indicates that many existing home owners may already be under water regarding their mortgage and that many individuals are in for some real financial pain.

Given the above, I can only wonder what contribution these people are going to be able to make to the economy in terms of spending. The answer is, most likely, not much. And if that's the case, a recession or worse is likely.

Understanding the current state of affairs, it is easy to see why the Federal Reserve has discontinued publishing the M3 money supply figure as of yesterday. It will make it difficult if not impossible for analysts to determine our true rate of inflation but even so, the results will surely become apparent to the casual observer in short order.

There's no doubt that the money supply is going to go to the moon. I may have been mistaken in my suspicion that the reason for the discontinuance of M3 reporting was specifically because of Iran's intent to establish the oil bourse selling oil for euros but it hardly matters. It appears that several months ago when the Fed announced it would discontinue the report they could see that they would have to flood the economy with dollars (and try to hide the fact) either because of Iran's intentions or because of the news linked above, or for other reasons that we don't know of yet but it hardly matters what the cause is. The fact of the matter is that we are where we are and consequently, it looks like the Fed will be pressured to print enormous amounts of dollars.

Got gold?

Bias? What Bias?

More light is shed on why people are tuning out the MSM:

A top producer at ABC News declared "Bush makes me sick" in an email obtained by the Drudge Report.

John Green, currently executive producer of the weekend edition of Good Morning America, unloaded on the president in an ABC company email obtained by the Drudge Report.

"If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke," Green complained.

The blunt comments by Green, along with other emails obtained by the Drudge Report, further reveal the inner workings of the nation's news outlets.

A friend of Green's at ABC says Green is mortified by the email. "John feels so badly about this email. He is a straight shooter and great producer who is always fair. That said, he deeply regrets the sentiment expressed in the email and the embarrassment it causes ABC News."

We're sure that Mr. Green, his embarrassment notwithstanding, was boffo in network newsrooms around the country for expressing these bold and courageous sentiments about the evil Mr. Bush. He'll probably get a raise.

The Baghdad Documents

ABC News has examined several documents captured in Baghdad after the invasion and finds evidence that:

1. The Russian ambassador who was also implicated in the oil-for-food scam was relaying military information to Saddam about the composition, deployment, and strategy of American forces. He apparently had a source in American Central Command at Doha, Qatar.

2. There was contact between Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and Iraqi officials concerning the possibility of concerted action against American forces in Saudi Arabia in the mid-nineties as well as possible strikes on American soil.

Of course, the Bush administration has maintained this second point all along, if rather irresolutely, and for their pains they've been made sport of by the lefty media and the Democrats. The argument, however, has been swinging back in the administration's favor for some time now, and the set of plausible criticisms of the White House's decision to go to war continues to shrink.

Saint Fidel

In the left's pantheon of saints few rank higher than Fidel Castro. Thus when Delf�n Fern�ndez, a former member of Castro's inner circle, starts telling tales, it's as distressing to the left as unflattering cartoons of the prophet (PBUH) are to Muslims. Here's some of what Fernandez says in the Miami Herald:

"The initial idea of Fidel was good. Batista was an assassin," Fern�ndez said. "What happened was, the course he took with the revolution was wrong. It has dissolved into this unstoppable, insatiable corruption without limits, a vast lie. The people are in misery. Cuba's people have been enslaved as cheap labor for foreign businessmen."

Fidel Castro turns 80 this year, and he has become obsessed with his health, Fern�ndez said. The Castro brothers each have their own clinics and their own doctors in Havana's Council of State Building and in the Cimeq Hospital. Last year, Fidel Castro built a multimillion-dollar clinic a few yards from his front door, on the grounds of his Havana estate, Fern�ndez said he learned from his island contacts.

Fern�ndez said he carried suitcases with cash out of Cuba for the Castro brothers. Fern�ndez's photographs include several of him with the children of Fidel and Ra�l at one of their beachfront estates and with many high-profile Spanish businessmen.

"Cuba has a death sentence against me for high treason."

No wonder. He may as well have called the Pope an adulterer as to point out that Fidel lives like a filthy rich capitalist pig. I wonder how many of the proles languishing in the Havana barrios have their very own multi-million dollar clinic. Apparently, Cuba's revolution simply replaced one borgeoisie class with another. So much for Karl Marx's vision of social equality, in Cuba, or anywhere else, for that matter, where communists have held power.