I Credit the Internet News Accumulators With This Success Against the Reids/BLM Land Grab (However Temporary).

I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, Harry Reid and Son saw their intimate connection with the BLM's czar-toady who was following orders to secure the land for the big cash from the Chinese, they made the call and the whole thing just went away. Poof. Like magic. It's also possible that combining that with the arrival of armed American citizens in the form of a constitutional militia helped them realize the error of their ways, and cause them to repent. Nah. I think some of those armed feds are probably itching to pull a trigger and be the Man. The whole affair is disgusting.

Is Harry Reid Behind the War On Cliven Bundy?

Will this be the first test of federal bureaucrat armies against US Citizens? And is it due to the greed of Reid and the Chinese? The plot becomes very thick, and it seems that war is in the air as Cliven Bundy is being divested of his property. Not without due process of course, but what is the market value of due process these days, under a totally corrupt federal bureaucracy?

To proliferate the information regarding Reid, the original infowars report, including BLM solar system information is posted here:

The Bureau of Land Management, whose director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser, has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wants Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family has worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations.

Deleted from BLM.gov but reposted for posterity by the Free Republic, the BLM document entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, more specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.”

“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.

Another BLM report entitled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone” (BLM Technical Note 444) reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by BLM.

“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”

Back in 2012, the New American reported that Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid, was the chief representative for a Chinese energy firm planning to build a $5-billion solar plant on public land in Laughlin, Nevada.

And journalist Marcus Stern with Reuters also reported that Sen. Reid was heavily involved in the deal as well.

“[Reid] and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert,” he wrote. “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada.”

“His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”

Although these reports are in plain view, the mainstream media has so far ignored this link.

The BLM’s official reason for encircling the Bundy family with sniper teams and helicopters was to protect the endangered desert tortoise, which the agency has previously been killing in mass due to “budget constraints.”

“A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67 year-old rancher; they want his land,” journalist Dana Loesch wrote. “The tortoise wasn’t of concern when [U.S. Senator] Harry Reid worked with BLM to literally change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore.”

“Reid is accused of using the new BLM chief as a puppet to control Nevada land (already over 84% of which is owned by the federal government) and pay back special interests,” she added. “BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development. Clearly these developments have vastly affected a tortoise habitat more than a century-old, quasi-homesteading grazing area.”

“If only Cliven Bundy were a big Reid donor.”

Update: The Drudge Report, the #1 news aggregate site in the world, has now picked up this story. Unfortunately for the BLM, the documents they wanted to delete are now exposed for the world to see.

Update #2: ENN Energy Group describes itself as a “privately-owned clean energy distributor in China.” However, as the People’s Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party, all large companies in China, one way or the other, are either controlled or are heavily influenced by the Chinese government.

Documents: Cattle Tresspass Impacts & History of Cattle Trespass – Deleted documents saved by several members of the Free Republic

Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zon

For graphics and videos, go to infowars.

Fear Mongering With AGW

Crying wolf always inures, even when the absence of the wolf is said to be caused by the wolf.

Global Warming Scare Tactics

I remember back in the '70's the doom-screamers were on about California falling off into the ocean, at least the cities involved with the fault lines they built on. During a business trip to So. CA a waitress told us with seriousness that she had had a dream and that she knew that the biggun would come on a Tues. "Which Tuesday?" we asked. "I don't know", she responded with furrowed brows.

A Headline I Never Expected To See

In Medical First, Scientists Implant Lab-Grown Vaginas in Humans

I had no idea that this was needed.

Through A Blog Darkly Responds, Again

Over at Through A blog Darkly, one of them, I don’t know which, attempts to correct what I said:

"It's true atheism contains no moral theory but it does not follow that atheists as individuals have no moral theory. This may surprise the author but atheists are actually human beings born into a family and a community and who inherit cultural histories, languages and traditions. We are not empty dehumanized vessels but taught by our parents, friends and teachers; we are not defined purely by atheism."

This is a naïve explanation, at best. If an atheist is born into an atheist environment, then he will either adhere to the nearly random principles of his parents, or he will not. And these principles are not fixed moralities, are they? They are, on the basis of atheism, merely “cultural histories, languages and traditions”, a description which fits anything, whatsoever. There is no Atheist Morality. And that is what I said:

“... First, atheism tells us at least two things; (a) under atheism, there is no moral theory whatsoever attached to this basis for worldviews, so the morality void is definite until backfilled with something agreeable to the atheist;”

His protest must be against something other than what I said, because he has agreed with what I said.

And he agrees that atheism tends to drive atheists to the political left:

“It does seem true that atheists lean towards the Left on social issues but we hold diverse views on economic and other political matters. Of course both sides of spectrum have their extremists including these who are religiously motivated. Honestly, reading these posts makes me appreciate how Christians must feel when New Atheists call religion the root of all evil.”

And here’s what I actually said:

“(b) the trend of atheist political progression is overwhelmingly to the political Left, and many migrate to the outer extremes of political Leftism. This is because there also is an overwhelming trend amongst Atheists to consider themselves intellectually superior: elites who can determine morality better than any Other and thus are morally enabled to save the Other, who is classified as Victim unless he is classified as an Oppressor. The atheist elites are thus the natural Messiah class. This was the case in the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, turn of the century Progressives in the west, and the modern progressives of today.”

Atheists, including Progressives, humanists, and general radicals, are not highly populated with people who are not elitist, and therefore the majority are leftist pseudo-revolutionaries who consider the soft destruction of the Other by economics, by ridicule, by legislation by lefist judges, by government attacks on its critics, all of the tactics of soft conquest and control of the “herd”, however illegal, unconstitutional or amoral, to be just fine... unless there is a secret "silent majority" of conservative atheists which can be invoked, empirically. It's doubtful.

And the Tu Quoque pointing to religious extremists, is no excuse; it is a Red Herring to dissuade the reader of the seriousness of atheist consequences. And the subject at hand is atheism and its consequences, not "religion".

Next,

“Elsewhere, I notice Atheism Analyzed has used my post on Epicureanism to discuss the famous problem of evil :”

Then,

“The atheist communist regimes he so deplores justified their slaughter through utilitarian ethics as necessary scarifies for the greater good. So I find it strange he attributes the same utilitarian ethics to his deity. Was Yahweh's numerous genocides for the greater good really any worse than Stalin's atrocities?”

TABD does not in any sense refute the obvious understanding that the second deduction is logically incorrect, and the revised second deduction is logically correct. Instead, he tries out another Tu Quoque.

What he does (I think) do is to claim that if atheism is evil, then what about God, as if the two are on the same footing, existentially and morally. This is another Red Herring, where he attempts either to ignore the horrific morality of the atheists, or possibly legitimize it with a comparison to God purging the world. So if it is OK for God to assert the discipline which he promises, then it must be OK for atheist elitist revolutionary killers to do the same thing, right?

And the utilitarian, consequentialist ethics which the atheists employ and employed certainly support the concept of atheists possessing and deploying anti-moral behaviors based on anti-moral worldviews is an existing feature of atheism, and has been so in a big way which affected hundreds of millions of people.

I don’t think this is actually what he meant, even though it flows smoothly from his premise; I think he was merely looking for a deflection, without even thinking toward any consequences of what he was saying.

But it’s not certain what he means, because he also implies heavily that he, himself, does not deplore the atheist mass murdering regimes, that it is just me who does so.

OK, then.

Proof Positive: Professional Republicans Are Idiots

I might, for the first time in my adult life, sit out a presidential election. The party system allows itself to be rigged... completely into ethical oblivion. The Democrats have their captive voters: unions, Victimhood groups, radicals, etc. I don't think that the Republicans command any such "loyalty", if you can call it that. Especially given this bullshit by Romney's hacks which has turned nomination into a political boss, corrupt deal in smokeless backroom corruption parlors, and removed the voters from the deal.

Republicans are as disgusting as Democrats, just in a different way.,br>
HT: Vox Day

Atheism In The Days Of My Great Grandparents

I stumbled onto this ebook, which I only browsed but found that the atheists were very active back in the 1880's and with much of the same hubris which they now display. It's interesting that only such a small percentage of the population has been convinced by atheists in the last 130 years that materialism is the correct worldview, and that lack of morality is the correct moral theory. Rather than being a rational awakening, as atheists would have us believe, it seems more likely that atheism follows a percentage of the population which is afflicted with disturbed psyches, as is found by Paul Vitz and Lyle Rossiter.

Now Blacks are God, and Whites are Devils

From the NY Post:

Black people are the fathers and mothers of civilization, white men are the devil, the Christian god is nothing more than a ghost and only a small percentage of people understand the world.

These are just some of the ­beliefs behind the bling — the gaudy Five Percent Nation ­medallions worn by Jay Z and Carmelo Anthony.

Last week, all eyes at the Barclays Center weren’t on Jay Z’s better half, Beyoncé — but on the coaster-size golden pendant swinging from the rapper’s neck as the couple sat courtside. Asked once if the group’s symbol — an eight-pointed star with the number 7 in the middle — held any meaning for him, the rapper shrugged, “A little bit.”

So what exactly do Five Percenters believe?

“The rationale is that the black man is God and created the universe, and is physically stronger and intellectually stronger and more righteous naturally,” says Michael Muhammad Knight, an author of two books on the radical group. “Whiteness is weak and wicked and inferior — basically just an errant child who needs to be corrected.”

The group was founded in 1964 in Harlem by Clarence Smith, who later changed his name to Allah, a former student of Malcolm X who disagreed with the Nation of Islam over the nature of God.

Smith rejected the notion of a supernatural deity and instead believed that all black men had God in them and that black women were “earths” who took on a complementary yet subordinate role to their gods.

The idea is empowering, Knight says.

“Anytime someone is saying you have to accept your conditions of oppression and slavery and pray to an unseen god — that kind of god is just being used to keep people down and to keep people from looking to themselves as a solution to their problems,” he notes. “If there is a problem, no one will fix it for you, except yourself.”

Five Percenters don’t consider themselves Muslim, but their name comes from the Nation of Islam’s belief that 5 percent of humanity are “poor righteous teachers” who exist to enlighten the masses about the truth of existence.

Members will sometimes refer to themselves as “scientists” to drive home the search for truth. And they face a tall task, because under their belief system, 10 percent of the world’s population controls the other 85 percent by spreading the belief in a “mystery God.”

To show followers the way, members must learn the Supreme Mathematics and Supreme Alphabet — powerful tools to decipher the meaning of the universe. In both, each letter and number represents a concept: for example, 1 is knowledge, 2 is wisdom, while A is Allah and B is be, or born. The number 7 on Jay Z’s pendant stands for God.

Caucasians, meanwhile, don’t enjoy an exalted status in the narrative of the Five Percenters.

“The first lesson I learned from the Five Percent was simple: F–k white people. Seriously. White people are devils,” Knight, 36, who is white and converted to ­Islam as a teenager, once wrote.

He insisted the movement has been welcoming and that he views the controversial sentiment as a statement about power rather than biology.
[Emphasis added]

Just another atheist self-elevation form which emerged from the atheist Void combined with black racism.

The Next Ruby Ridge? The EPA/BLM's Desert Tortoise Salvation Squad is Armed To The Teeth.

Got any ideas about saving your land from the US Federal Government and their Victim Class? Better have a bigger army than they do. It's not any wonder any more about the use to which all those bureaucrats will put their billions of rounds of ammo ordered in the past year or so. Those arms and ammo will be directed at citizens who run afoul of the designated Victimhood group. In this case, the designated Victim is the desert tortoise, which apparently lives on the cattle ranch run by Cliven Bundy in Nevada.

Bundy has been divested of his family's lease on 600,000 acres which he claims has been in his family for generations, well before the Feds moved in and claimed it. The Feds are now rounding up his cattle.

The Feds set up a small "First Amendment Area", where protests may be held, and nowhere else. The First Amendment is banished from even the state highways, as Bundy's relative found out when they stopped on a state highway and filmed the cattle in the distance being confiscated by the Feds.

Then 11 BLM vehicles with 22 BLM agents arrived and surrounded the malefactor. Four snipers on a hill trained their weapons on the videographer, and put a German Shepherd on him also. Then they ordered his father who was trying to reach his son, the videographer, off the phone, or he would be arrested.

"Vowing to take a stand for, “your liberty and freedom,” Bundy says he is prepared to be killed as authorities surround a 600,000 acre section of public land as a result of Bundy violating a 1993 Bureau of Land Management ruling which changed grazing rights in order to protect the endangered desert tortoise.

"'With all these rangers and all this force that is out here, they are only after one man right now. They are after Cliven Bundy. Whether they want to incarcerate me or whether they want to shoot me in the back, they are after me. But that is not all that is at stake here. Your liberty and freedom is at stake,' Bundy said.

"Bundy’s refusal to recognize federal authority over the land under dispute and his failure to pay tens of thousands of dollars in grazing fees stems from his assertion that his family’s history trumps bureaucracy.

“'My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley ever since 1877. All these rights I claim have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and water. I have been here longer. My rights are before the BLM even existed,” Bundy said.

"Accusing feds of seizing Nevada’s sovereignty, Bundy says he has fought the battle legally, through the media, and is now gearing up to fight it physically.

“Armed agents are forming a a military-like staging area to prevent anyone from approaching the area,” writes Mike Paczesny.

Bundy asserts that his case is emblematic of how America has been transformed into a “police state,” labeling the government’s actions “pathetic”.

This will not end well, and could flare up more than the ham fisted Feds, expect... or do they? They seem very well armed, with every bureaucracy having its own army. Maybe they want the war to start on their schedule. Or maybe they're just tone deaf to the national sentiment, and just don't care. The Feds claimed that Bundy caused this via "threats [which] are made that could jeopardize the safety of the American people, the contractors and our personnel". I don't personally recall feeling threatened...

Mr Bundy has created a larger burden to the taxpayers through his statements,” said National Park Service spokeswoman Christie Vanover during a press conference call held Sunday afternoon. “He has said that he will ‘do whatever it takes’ and that his response to the impound will ‘have to be more physical’. When threats are made that could jeopardize the safety of the American people, the contractors and our personnel; we have the responsibility to provide law enforcement to account for their safety. The greater the threats, the more security that is needed to provide public safety and the greater the cost to the American taxpayer. We are hopeful that lawful protests don’t escalate to illegal activity.”

But Ryan Bundy insists that his brother’s behavior along the highway on Sunday afternoon was neither a protest nor had it escalated to illegal activity.

“He was doing nothing but standing there and filming the landscape,” Bundy said. “We were on the state highway, not even off of the right-of-way. Even if they want to call [the area that we were filming] federal land; which it’s not; we weren’t even on it. We were on the road.”

Bundy said that several of his family members had gone out in four different vehicles. They were parked along the north side of the road about 200 yards apart, he said. David Bundy had gotten out of his car to film the cattle grazing on the distant landscape below.

Suddenly a large number of BLM vehicles came down and surrounded the area, Ryan Bundy said.

“I counted, they had 11 vehicles all with at least two agents in each one, maybe more,” he said. “They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area.”

None of the occupants in the four family vehicles were carrying any fire arms, Bundy said.

Over their vehicle loudspeakers, the BLM officers ordered the family to leave the area, Bundy said.

“They said that we had no first amendment rights except for up by the bridge where they had established an area for that,” Bundy said.

The BLM has established two fenced areas near the City of Mesquite, that they have designated as free speech areas for members of the public to express their opinions.

The family began to pull away from the roadside area in accordance with the order from the BLM officers. But Dave Bundy was out of his car at the time and didn’t immediately return to his vehicle, Ryan Bundy said.

“He was filming and talking on the phone, I don’t know to whom,” Ryan Bundy said. “It happened pretty fast. They came down on him hard and had a German Shepherd on him. And then they took him.”

Epicurus Again

Epicurus has again come up in some atheist blogs. The quote is this:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

This is a series of IF/THEN deductions. Let's take them one at a time.

(a) IF [Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able], Then [He is not omnipotent].

This is valid in form, but not sound; the premise is not viable for a deity, if omnipotence is presupposed as necessary. That requires a discussion of the necessity of omnipotence for a deity, and what omnipotence entails. Further, it is made trivial by (b'), below.

(b) IF [He is able, but not willing]; Then [He is malevolent].

This is not sound, because the consequent does not follow necessarily from the premise. If God has a superior reason for allowing the presence of evil, such as allowing His creations to have free will and agency to deal with evil vs. good, then He is not malevolent; He is the opposite of malevolent. Non Sequitur. The valid and sound statement is this:

(b') IF [He is able, but not willing, in order to provide a greater good], THEN [He is justified in not removing evil, AND He is all good, giving superior gifts]

(c) IF [He is both able and willing], Then [whence cometh evil]

If (b') is the case, then (c) is trivial.

(d) IF [He is neither able nor willing], Then [why call him God]

If (b') is the case, then (d) is trivial.

The Epicurus argument contains the fallacy of the consequent not being the necessary conclusion of the premise. The premise entails other possible conclusions than the one given. So the one given is prejudicial, and not necessary.