Beliefs of Fear

Time for a few assorted news alerts with a commonality: the usefulness of fear!

Czech President and economist Vaclav Klaus today said that his new book "Blue, Not Green Planet" is to highlight the threatening and curtailing of freedom, which Klaus considers the key topic of the present era. The book is subtitled "What has been threatened: climate or freedom?". A good question.

If we follow the Roman advice: Cui Bono?, or the American: Follow the Money!, we arrive at the subsidized global fear industry that has sprung up over the last decades, and at governments that are thus able to firm their grip on people's freedoms by regulating and soft engineering; above all it provides an opportunity - and moreover, a ligitimated excuse - to 'broaden the fiscal base'.

Price tag: a personal contribution of 225 Euros per year will release you of your guilt "and can prevent the earth from warming two degrees by the year 2030", the U.N.'s I.C.P.P. has calculated! Total cost: 1700 billion Euros.

Perhaps it is this what Klaus has in mind. The book isn't available yet on Amazon. When it is, we'll let you know and add it to The Lighthouse Library.

It is astounding how environmentalism - whose animistic Gaia theory, which borders irrational earth-goddess worship - is abusing science to ridicule the skeptics: their taunting 'Flat, Not Round Earth' in this case, is reminiscent of the Darwinism versus creation myth dualism, when the unproven and highly unlikely theory of evolution is called into question.

If you don't buy into the Leftist politically correct epistemologies, you are an medieval ignoramus, that's the idea. Yet nothing is less scientific than elevating theories to sacrosanct dogma, as the medieval Scholastics knew, and some postmodern relativist theorists would be happy to point out!

Surely this must be another one of the Sanity Squad's infamous psychological projections! There's nothing like fear and guilt for a prime mover!

On an entirely other topic, I woke up this morning with the Algerian genocide in mind, which occurred during the nineties of the last century. The 150,000 martyrs to Islamism appear to be all but forgotten. The inhabitants of entire villages had their throats scimitared, after the Algerian government made the mistake of allowing an undemocratic Islamist party (FIS) to participate in democratic elections. When they appeared to be winning, the elections were cancelled in the certainty that democracy would be abolished were the FIS come to power. This sparked a whole series of blood baths that lasted for years.

According to this BBC article the period is characterized as a 'civil war', and apparently the security forces had a hand in it. Not mentioned are the Jihadis of the FIS and other Islamist groups. The reason for this is likely to be found in the BBC's approach towards journalism, by which unequal groups are compensated in proportion to their inequality vis a vis the official government, which in this case means they don't get any attention drawn to their unspeakable sins.

But today Algeria goes to the polls. Let's hope they make it a good one! In the West - especially in Europe - we tend to forget that democracy and freedom aren't free!