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Caught On The Net #2 December 25, 2008

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Caught On The Net , comments closed

1. I’ll start this one off with what seems to be good news: Christmas is an official holiday in Iraq now:

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Christians, a scant minority in this overwhelmingly Muslim country, quietly celebrated Christmas on Thursday with a present from the government, which declared it an official holiday for the first time.

[...]

In his homily on Thursday, Chaldean Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly praised the establishment of Christmas as an official holiday as a step toward easing tensions.

“I thank the government for giving chances to all to serve each other for the general benefit, and I thank it too for making this day an official holiday where we pray to God to make us trust each other as brothers,” he said at the Christmas Mass before several dozen worshippers in the small chapel of a Baghdad monastery.

A senior Shiite cleric, Ammar al-Hakim, attended the Mass flanked by bodyguards in a gesture of cooperation with Christians.

[...]

“We came here to bring a message of love, respect and gratitude to our Christian brothers and to share happiness with them as we have shared sadness with them during the cruel targeting they came under,” al-Hakim said in an interview with al-Furat TV. “We will do our best for equality between people and a good life for all, whatever their religious, sectarian and ethnic background.”

He is the son and heir-apparent of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, Iraq’s biggest mainstream Shiite party.

In a country with strong leanings towards theocracy, I’ll take this as a step in the right direction – albeit with a gigantic grain of salt.

2. Whoever said that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results was not the most exact when it comes to definitions, but he was certainly onto something. I don’t think being stubborn or dogmatic is necessarily a sign of insanity. Sometimes it’s as simple as having an agenda! As expected, the Pope once again today decried selfishness as the cause of the world’s current economic problems:

VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI warned in his Christmas message Thursday that the world was headed toward ruin if selfishness prevails over solidarity during tough economic times for rich and poor nations.

Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Benedict said he was trying to inspire hope in the world.

[...]

“…may the light of Christmas shine forth and encourage all people to do their part in a spirit of authentic solidarity,” Benedict said. “If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart.”

I suppose simple solutions will always be accepted by simple minds. Just like they accept that all of existence was simply willed into being by an undefinable non-entity, so they will accept that their economic problems were caused by the greed and selfishness of a mythical puppy-devouring robber baron on Wall Street. It’s just too much effort to learn some basic laws of economics like supply and demand and the soundness of hard money. But, heeding the advice of Ayn Rand, I will stop further examining this folly.

3. For a people that have been victims of some of the worst racial stereotypes and atrocities in human history, you’d think that racist comments would be the last thing you’d hear out of the mouth of a Jewish rabbi. David Wolpe, a rabbi from Los Angeles, commenting on the recent Madoff Ponzi scheme said “[w]hen a Jew does this, Jews feel ashamed by proxy…”. So he just takes the anti-Semite’s premise and runs with it. If he really believes the fact of someone being Jewish predetermines him to act a  certain way – any way, then he has no reason to complain about anti-Semitism. Regrettably, this rabbi is not alone in his thinking:

…in synagogues and community centers, on blogs and in countless conversations, many Jews are beating their chests — not out of contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but because they say Mr. Madoff has brought shame on their people in addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind Jewish communities.

There’s more:

“The fact that he stole from Jewish charities puts him in a special circle of hell,” Rabbi Visotzky added. “He really undermined the fabric of the Jewish community, because it’s built on trust. There is a wonderful rabbinic saying — often misapplied — that all Jews are sureties for one another, which means, for instance, that if a Jew takes a loan out, in some ways the whole Jewish community guarantees it.”

So much for the Pope’s thinking that individualism and egoism are what’s ruining our world! Almost every breath you smell stinks of sacrifice and tribalism.

Hijacking Greatness December 19, 2008

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Politics , comments closed

Illinois Governor and alleged auctioneer of Obama’s U.S Senate seat, Rod Blagojevich, is not going down like Elliott Spitzer. In his own words: ”I will fight. I will fight. I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong…”. Poor selfless soul that he is, he’s only doing it for the people of Illinois, and he’s doing so with a lot of eloquence! Just today, in the course of a single press conference, he acknowledged the existence of – get this! – the U.S Constitution and asked that he be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and then went on to cite Rudyard Kipling in his defense. I quote, once again:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating

That’s Ayn Rand’s favorite poem, I heard.

Video evidence above:

Speaking of Frauds… December 19, 2008

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Economics , comments closed

The majority of commentators on the news lately seem to disapprove of the Bernard Madoff “ponzi scheme” that just transpired – no thanks to the SEC. So while we all have our minds presently focused on frauds, I’d like to bring to everyone’s attention who doesn’t already notice, that Social Security and fractional-reserve banking are two giant ponzi schemes, which have ben sustained so long only because of the existence of an even bigger fraud: the paper money printing press that so many consider to be wealth.  And my work here is done.