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May 15, 2014

Are “Killer Robots” in Our Future?

By Selwyn Duke

“‘Killer robots’ to be debated at UN,” reads the headline. For the anti-UN folks, no, this doesn’t mean that UN officials, becoming overly abrasive during argumentation, could spark a reaction that would move us a step further away from world government. Killer robots don’t currently exist, but whether they should be developed and the implications of such technology are the subjects of a debate at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), taking place Tuesday through Thursday this week.

The term “killer robots” may conjure up images of the virtually indestructible killing machine in the film Terminator, and that is more or less what’s at issue. No, these robots wouldn’t be covered with imitation human flesh (at least not the early versions) or travel through time, but they would be lethal autonomous weapons systems that would choose targets in accordance with their programming. And, as with nuclear bombs, machine guns, and aircraft, they would be, as Brookings Institution warfare futurist Peter W. Singer put it, a battlefield “game changer.”

And these weapons systems aren’t as far off as some may think. As the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus wrote last year:

Read the rest here.
May 14, 2014

Insurance Costs Cause Cancellation of Violent Anti-Christian Arab Festival

By Selwyn Duke

The Middle Ages had Charles the Hammer — and America has her lawyers. A large Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan, has once again been cancelled because of high insurance costs resulting from attacks on Christians during the event. Writes the Detroit Free Press’ Niraj Warikoo:

The Arab International Festival in Dearborn has been canceled for the second year in a row, raising questions about the future of the three-day gathering in June that had become an annual tradition.

The festival was canceled last year when the city and festival organizers, the American Arab Chamber of Commerce [AACC], faced higher liability insurance costs because of growing tensions with some Christian missionaries that had resulted in arrests, accusations of harassment and lawsuits.

The festival, held over Father’s Day weekend and used as a fundraiser for the AACC, has been plagued by anti-Christian activity. The first well-publicized incident occurred in 2010 when David Wood, and ex-Muslims Negeen Mayel, Nabeel Qureshi, and Paul Rezkalla, of a Christian group called Acts 17 were arrested after sharing the Gospel. In the video found here, Qureshi is seen being taken into police custody after simply engaging Muslim youth in peaceful dialogue.

Read the rest here.
May 14, 2014

The Happy Executioner Who Filmed Her Own Abortion

By Selwyn Duke

Women who have abortions usually want to put the experience behind them, tucking the memory away in the recesses of their minds. But not Emily Letts. Instead, the 25-year-old former actress filmed her surgical abortion — and then posted the video on the Internet. She says she wanted to present “a positive abortion story.”

Letts, now an abortion counselor at Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey, wrote in Cosmopolitan recently that she was “breathing and humming through” the abortion as if she was “giving birth.” She explained, “To me, this was as birth-like as it could be.” Immediately after the abortion she can be heard exclaiming, “Yeah, cool.”

Letts’ video has evoked all the expected responses, with support from pro-abortion individuals, people vowing to pray for her conversion, and some nasty e-mails from disgusted viewers. But there have also been unexpected responses — from pro-abortion respondents who consider Letts’ video “creepy.” For example, Neon Nettle’s Marnie Wayne wrote, in a scathing critique, “Here at Neon Nettle, we are certainly pro-choice — but her cavalier attitude and attempt to claim her fifteen minutes had us all astounded…. Emily looks forward to her abortion and enjoys the process as if she were nipping in for a manicure.”

Read the rest here.
May 14, 2014

How Demagogues Con People

By Selwyn Duke

How do you know you’re being had by a slick politician? Writing in Mein Kampf about how to manipulate people and win power, Adolf Hitler said that since the average person had a very limited memory and a “slowness of understanding,” it was necessary to use only short, catchy slogans and repeat them often. Sound familiar?

Hope and Change!

Forward!

Choice!

Diversity!

Equality!

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May 6, 2014

Will Microchip Implants in Humans Become Mandatory?

And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

— Revelations 13:16-17

So begins an article by writer Mac Slavo about how human-implanted microchips won’t just be popular in the future.

They’ll be mandatory.

Moreover, if his vision of tomorrow is correct, hardly anyone will have to be dragged kicking and screaming by jack-booted storm troopers (or robots?) into that Brave New World; rather, most people will willingly be chipped as we slouch toward Oceania.

In fact, the movement is already in progress.

Read the rest here.
May 6, 2014

The Liberal Media’s Donald Sterling Race-baiting

By Selwyn Duke

Never let a racial crisis go to waste is, I suppose, the credo of the Machiavellian mainstream media. Since the release of the Don Sterling audio, liberals haven’t missed a chance to play the race card for all its worth. One of the worst offenders is a New York Daily News columnist named Harry Siegel, who — in a piece of pablum bearing a picture of NBA owners portrayed as Klansmen — bemoans the lack of Diversity™ in league ownership and management. Unfortunately for Siegy, his points, which start with the Klan hoods, only get worse from there.

A man with a conscience (malformed though it is), Siegel laments that the NBA is “a league where three-quarters of the players are black, but fewer than half the coaches and not even a fifth of the league office staff are black, as of October, 2013, and every majority team owner except Michael Jordan is white.” But there’s an easy remedy.

Institute a quota ensuring that whites, and other races, get proportionate representation among NBA players.

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May 2, 2014

So What if Cliven Bundy is a “Racist”?

By Selwyn Duke

For the record, I don’t believe Cliven Bundy is a “racist.”

For the record, I don’t even care.

Such indifference to that damnable failing, that thing we all know is the worst thing one can be, must make me a damnable man. But I am flexible. I just want equality. I’m perfectly willing to demonize “racists,” provided we give other sinners equal time.

I just want to hear, for example, “Forget the facts of the matter! The man is lustful!” or “Don’t listen to that miscreant. He’s guilty of sloth!” Or let’s say a fellow posits an opinion on, oh, taxation. Our very intellectual response could be, “Hey, didn’t I hear you talkin’ to your girlfriend about how you scarfed down four cheeseburgers at the barbecue and binged on ice cream in your easy chair? Look, everyone, he’s a glutton!”

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May 1, 2014

Hate Speech: U.K. Political Leader Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill

By Selwyn Duke

A 2009 poll found that more than a third of British teenagers couldn’t identify some of Winston Churchill’s most famous words. Now it turns out that this deficit just might save them from jail.

In a shocking application of hate-speech law, Paul Weston (shown), co-founder and leader of the Liberty GB party and candidate for member of the European Parliament, was arrested on Saturday and now faces a possible two years in prison. His crime?

He quoted one of the 20th century’s most famous Englishmen, that WWII hero Churchill.

Read the rest here.
April 30, 2014

The New York Times Discovers the Rule of Law

By Selwyn Duke

Leave it to The Gay Lady to be a day late and a few brain cells short. The New York Times recently published an article by some journalism-school retread about the Cliven Bundy situation, a piece containing all the usual talking points about how the “racist” rancher’s reasoning is really risible. Rinse, wash and repeat. What interests me right now are not the facts of the case, however, but one particular line in the Times commentary.

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April 28, 2014

Secularists Are Denying Schooling to Christians

By Selwyn Duke

Imagine you apply for a college program, only to be denied entry because you believe in God. And the kicker is how school administrators knew about your faith.

They asked.

This is precisely what happened to Brandon Jenkins when he applied for the Radiation Therapy Program at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Maryland. And now he’s suing in federal court for religious discrimination. Writes OneNewsNow.com:

Not long after Jenkins initially applied to CCBC's program as a very strong candidate, he was told by a faculty member that the "field [of radiation therapy] is not the place for religion."

But why — especially after scoring the maximum amount of points possible during his observation and meeting all the standards?

Jenkins later found that his response to a question asked by college officials during the interview process was the culprit. When asked, "What is the most important thing to you?" the Christian candidate simply replied: "My God."

Read the rest here.