Sharia down under

In her article, "Sharia Down Under", Judith Bergman exposes the values of Australia's Muslim representatives and creeping sharia.

She shows that the current and past 'voices' for Islam in Australia have values totally out of kilter with Australian social norms. Rather than building trust they sow division and thereby contribute to the growing anti-Muslim sentiment. Peace loving Australian Muslims need to do get rid of this mob and select better representatives if they are to be accepted by Australian society.

Why did America lose the Vietnam war?

 Oft said to be 20/20, history is a study in hindsight written by the victors. In today's highly polarized world even after 6 decades it is difficult to get an objective analysis of the Vietnam war. The common belief is that it was a war not worth fighting, that America had no business interfering with what was an internal matter for the Vietnamese, that the anti-war movement helped stop an immoral war.

I guess all wars are immoral, but fighting a war against military aggression is morally justifiable.

A recent Prager U video, Why did America fight the Vietnam War?, highlights some inconvenient truths about the war that are well worth noting.

• The war was a result of military aggression by the North supported by communist allies Russia and China
• In the Paris peace accords of 1973 the South and North had reached a settlement to establish two autonomous nations
• Defeat only occurred because America failed to back the South after the North broke its agreement and launched another military offensive.
• The consequences were the deaths and imprisonment of many thousands of South Vietnamese , displacement of hundreds of thousands, and probably led to the subsequent Cambodian genocide

This holds a sobering moral lesson for Americans with wars in Afghanistan and against Isis. The consequences of defeat or withdrawal are significant.

Whites are NOT the most racist people

Contrary to widespread media portrayal Whites are not the most racist, bigoted people in the world. Well it may be a surprise but it seems that objective analysis puts the common perception to a lie.

Here is a short video clip by Ajay Fayza presenting the case. You can also link to it at "Whites NOT the most racist people on Earth"

Again it seems our media are not presenting an accurate picture of Western democracies.
One of the sources for Fayza's comments is The most racist countries in the world. The article includes the following list of the 25 most racist countries.

#	Country	% Who don’t want neighbours of another race	% of people who witnessed racist behaviour
1	India	43.6	64.3
2	Lebanon	36.3	64.4
3	Bahrain	31.1	85.7
4	Libya	54.0	33.5
5	Egypt	N/A	39.7
6	Philippines	30.6	49.1
7	Kuwait	28.1	37.9
8	Palestine	44.0	32.0
9	South Africa	19.6	61.8
10	South Korea	29.6	36.5
11	Malaysia	31.3	34.4
12	Nigeria	21.0	42.5
13	Iraq	27.7	37.8
14	Kyrgyzstan	28.1	35.9
15	Ecuador	34.5	32.0
16	Algeria	19.8	41.0
17	Pakistan	14.5	48.8
18	Yemen	34.0	31.2
19	Hong Kong	18.8	40.4
20	Russia	17.0	38.5
21	Thailand	39.8	19.0
22	Cyprus	26.7	26.1
23	Turkey	33.8	19.1
24	Morocco	13.8	35.6
25	Japan	22.3	29.7

No, your eyes don't deceive you. The only predominantly 'White' country among them is Russia, at number 20.

Whitesplaining White privilege

What is White privilege? 

It seems collective "white Guilt' is widespread in America. The result no doubt of repeated claims by self named 'progressives'. But what is it? In this short video Horowitz tackles the concept of "White privilege" using interviews of the 'man in the street'. 

Condemned by their own words, they stand naked. 

Grapevine goes prime time...

Some months ago I added the "On the Grapevine' page for sharing links to articles and videos that I found interesting. As a dedicated skeptic I tend to be contrarian, always looking for the alternative view, especially when I feel an idea is being pushed too hard. So my selections tend to be this same contrarian approach, although not universally.

There is a lot of very compelling material around. Rather than post these to a separate page, that may or may not be seen, from now on I will simply post them on the main blog.  I think that will make them more readily available.
The " On the Grapevine page" will remain as is, for now.

Also, given my recent interest in Energy technologies I will be launching an "Energy Frontiers" page highlighting new developments in Energy Technology. We live in an exciting era for technological change, and energy breakthroughs will in all probability transform our daily life.