That’s what Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist said. When he realised that a people ditching religion would not become moral, logical, atheist rationalists, but would more likely be parasitised by other powerful beliefs. And if that was millenarian Marxism that would not be good. If it was radical Islam it would not be good. If both Marx and Muhammad, even worse.
And so, this famous atheist, who’d mocked every aspect of Christianity in books and stages around the world, who’d published the best-selling The God Delusion”, came to this realisation. That Christianity had created the very society the treasures. Its culture, artworks, free speech, turn the other cheek, the Golden Rule.
Separately I called myself a “Christian Atheist”, many years ago. If I’m an atheist, I’d rather be so in a Christian society than, say, an Islamic one. The only other society that comes close is a Confucian one. As in China and the rest of East Asia. When China is not being communist.
Or Buddhist too. I guess. Like Thailand. But not Burma.
Elon Musk says something the same as Dawkins.
Here he is in 2024:
Elon Musk: I'm a big believer in the principles of Christianity.
“While I'm not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise and that there's tremendous wisdom in Turn the other cheek.
For a while, when I was young, I thought that's really a weak thing to do.
With respect to bullies at school, I think you shouldn't turn the other cheek. You should punch them on the nose and then thereafter make peace with them. They need to stop bullying you, and a punch in the nose will stop that.
This notion of forgiveness is important. I think it's essential because if you don't forgive, then an eye for an eye makes everyone blind. If you're going to seek vengeance, you have this never-ending cycle of vengeance.
So, I'm actually a big believer in the principles of Christianity. I think they're very good.”
There were five slave trades. You were taught about only one.
One. The Atlantic. Twelve million Africans shipped to the Americas. Britain banned it in 1807, then hunted it for sixty years.
Two. The Barbary trade. A million Europeans taken to North Africa. Britain bombarded Algiers in 1816.
Three. The Saharan trade. A thousand years of caravans north across the desert. Britain had its northern end banned. Tripoli, 1857.
Four. The East African trade. Twenty thousand people a year through one customs house. Britain forced the market shut. 5 June 1873.
Five. The Ottoman trade. Raiders sold Eastern Europeans south for three hundred years. Britain made the Sultan ban it in 1854.
It cost sixty years and two thousand sailors. Nobody else fought all five.
It isn't over. Mauritania only made it a crime in 2007. Fifty million people are in slavery today.
Someone has to remember who started the fight.
Galileo Russel explains. I only just now found out about him.
I like Russel because he explains his passion for Tesla and SpaceX very clearly and logically. A passion I share. So I don’t have to explain it…. all over again. In the face of vicious vitriol directed at Elon from the Left.
I have written before (Links at bottom) about Sam Harris analysing Islamic terrorism, making the correct point that it’s in the doctrines of Islam: the Koran, the Hadith and the Sirah. That grievances such as the Palestinian question play a part, but that even without a single grievance against America or the West, Islam would still attack the West.
I’m posting today because influential bloggers like Joe Rogan and Glenn Greenwald claim the problems we have with Islam are because of American “meddling”. If you accept that, then it is not a long step to “it’s all America’s fault” and then to the likes of a Hasan Piker and “America deserved 911”.
America may well be meddler-in-chief. But had it never meddled at all, Islam would still have attacked the West.
Look at the Muslim pirates on the Barbary coast in the 18th century attacking vessels of the newly-created United States. When Thomas Jefferson asked “why”, the Muslims answered “because Allah and our messenger Muhammad tell us we must”. “We must attack you until you convert to Islam”. This is well-documented and undisputed.
If America ceased all “meddling” right now, Islam would still attack. Very likely with even more determination, given what it would perceive to be weakness.
In short: Whatever the grievances or lack of grievances, Islam would attack us anyway. Attacks aim at one of three outcomes:
Convert to Islam
Pay the non-Muslim dhimmi tax, the Jizya
Death to the infidel who refuses either of these options
This has been made clear by Islamic scholars throughout the ages. It was made crystal clear by ISIS in its magazine Dabiq, and especially in its essay “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You" which is what Sam referenced in one of his podcasts (see bottom).
That podcast is now behind a paywall, so below is Google’s summary. President George W. Bush was correct when he said, straight after 911, “they hate us for our Freedoms”. They do:
In July 2016, the Islamic State published an article titled "Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You"in the15th issue of its English-language propaganda magazine,Dabiq.[1,2]
Disbelief (Kuffar): Hatred stems fundamentally from the West's rejection of the oneness of Allah (Tawhid) and the denial of the prophethood of Muhammad. [1, 2]
Secularism and Liberalism: Rejection of societies where man-made laws, secular governance, and personal freedoms permit things that Islamic State doctrine deems prohibited by God. [1, 2]
Atheism: Opposition to atheistic and agnostic worldviews. [1]
Transgressions Against Islam: Accusations that Western societies mock, insult, or defame Islam, the Quran, and the Prophet. [1, 2]
Military Operations: Attacks and airstrikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition and its allies against Islamic State territories. [1, 2]
Territorial Incursions: The physical occupation and presence of Western or non-Muslim forces in lands perceived as belonging to Muslims. [1, 2]
The Core Argument
The article stresses that political or military grievances (such as ending airstrikes or withdrawing troops) are secondary. It asserts that animosity and conflict would persist strictly over theological differences “until you embrace Islam” or submit to its authority. [1, 2, 3]
You can read more about the group's media strategy and propaganda context via the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism or examine the structural breakdown of the text through academic analyses hosted on DiVA-portal. [1, 2]
Biographer Walter Isaacson talks to his subject, Elon Musk, curated by Steven Mark Ryan.
When money becomes irrelevant, the means of exchange will be something like Energy.
There will be a crisis of life, meaning and purpose, when AI becomes Super Intelligence.
AI needs to be both Curious and Maximally Truth Seeking.
Steven says Isaacson's book “Elon Musk” is out of date. True. But still the best book out there on Elon. I’ve read it and often refer to it. It’s a page turner. Time and again that Elon has been hours from catastrophe.
Rich Lowry quotes “What Happened?” by Bernard Lewis. Lewis being a famous scholar of the Middle East and all matters Islam.
I’ve read a similar analysis of how Islam crashed from being intellectually curious to being close-minded: “The Closing of the Muslim Mind” by Robert R. Reilly.
The Muslim Brotherhood are mentioned by Robert Kennedy Jnr. But the mind-closing started centuries before their founding in the early 20th century.
I value Black conservative voices because it takes brains and guts to go against the long history of very strong support of the Democratic Party, by African Americans. The peer pressure, the family pressure is very strong to stay on the paddock.
Their views are strong and well held. I find them refreshing.
Besides Chinese state media and political commentators, nationalist bloggers also paint the French developments as part of a broader decline of Europe.
Many of them, however, do not focus on economic troubles, but instead emphasize cultural issues across Europe, particularly in relation to the baizuo, immigration, and the European refugee crisis.
The term báizuǒ (白左), literally meaning “white left,” has been widely used on Chinese social media over the past decade (mainly since the 2015 European refugee crisis) to refer to Western liberals portrayed as overly politically correct, idealistic, and naively sympathetic toward immigrants.
In these kinds of discussions, European troubles are explained as a consequence of leftist policies and immigration, with typical comments appearing on various platforms being comparable to this one by a military blogger with over 170k followers on Weibo with the handle 浪涛万里铸星河 (The waves forge a river of stars):
“Europe really is in complete chaos! The unrest in France hasn’t even ended, and now Belgium is kicking off, spreading further to Spain, and now Italy has joined in too. These European baizuo politicians must be completely out of their minds. They’ve brought in so many Middle Eastern and African immigrants whose cultures are incompatible with their own (..) that scenes of vandalism, looting, and arson will simply become the new normal in Europe.
************
Me: There’s a lot more about Chinese reactions to the French rioting at Manya Koetse’s Substack.
Views in China range widely. Much more than many westerners imagine. It’s lively discussion.
The bit above caught my attention because of the “Bai Zuo”, the “White Lefties”, who are the type we know well: liberal, western, white, often women, “naively sympathetic”. In other words, Woke.
You’ll know from this blog that I agree with the person above who goes by the handle “The waves forge a river of stars”.
The overwhelming problem is not students upset at class sizes or school lunches, but the poisonous alliance of Left and Islam. What the French call “Islamo-gauchisme”. What I call The Marx-Muhammad Alliance. By “incompatible cultures”, s/he refers to is Islam.
Incompatible cultures is what the west is not just “allowing” in, but encouraging. That’s Insanity.
Featured above: loud Democrat voices vowing to "go after Musk". Including one Karen Swisher, a rather famous tech industry journo-cum-critic. And her partner in The Bulwark podcast Scott Galloway. They of the bitter, down-turned mouths.
Swisher fell out with Elon Musk back in 2022, when his Starlink had already been provided to Ukraine, to be used in civilian defense against attacks by Russia.
He was having discussions with DoD because his company, SpaceX was bearing the full cost of providing this "free" service, and he said they could not continue to do so, as a private company, burning up nearly $1 million a day.
At the time Swisher was on his side. She suggested on her podcast that the DoD do a deal with him. Which, by the way, they did. Poland and America are now the major funders of the Starlink service that helps Ukraine protect its civilians.
For some reason that I can't find out, Elon got very annoyed by her intervention, via her comments on her blog. She was puzzled. "I was on his side", she said at the time.
Nevertheless Musk sent her an email to her calling her an "asshole" -- in the subject line!
There was a bit of chatter at the time, by her and by the Department of Defence, that "Elon gonna Elon". i.e. be quirky, inconsistent, unpredictable…not doing things by the DoD book...
Which reminds me of the time he called a guy a "paedophile" during the drama of saving the Thailand soccer team boys stranded in a flooded cave system. Why he called him a paedo I never figured out, and he had to settle it in court. Kinda crazy.
Maybe that brouhaha with Swisher in 2022 was along the same lines. Elon being Elon. As geniuses are wont to do. Whatever, if you call someone an "asshole" be prepared for them not to like you. And maybe even to go after you. Especially if they be petty minded.
But the main part of Swisher hating on Musk came because he went pro-Trump in 2023. Suddenly it's like:
She says he "should be in jail". Why? Because "his companies were under investigation". And “there are questions”.
"Under investigation"? WTF? "No-one is above the law!" we’ll hear the Dems shouting; once again.
But... but...
100% of Fortune 500 companies in America have ongoing litigation cases against them.
In most cases they have multiple or even hundreds of cases ongoing at any one time. That's why they all have teams on "in-house" lawyers, which is what my dear wife used to do. America is a hyper-litigious society. It's not the tiniest bit of surprise that all the top public companies in America, and that's all of Musk's, are targets of all sorts of legal actions.
If you look into the legal cases she's talking about, some of them are already finished, done and dusted. Some are dodgy.
Like the case of the "mistreatment of monkeys" during clinical trials of brain implants at Musk's Neuralink Company. This, as it happens, was self-reported, was investigated (under the Biden administration!) and found for Neuralink.
SpaceX is saving NASA hundreds of billions in launch costs, according to NASA itself and said during Biden’s administration. It’s not the case of “plundering our tax dollars”… it’s the exact opposite. SpaceX is saving public money.
In short, having legal cases against major companies in the United States is simply par-for-the-course. It's the cost of doing business. Cases are heard and adjudicated, sometimes for the plaintiff sometimes for the defendant. To assume that the cases against Musk would mean "he should be in jail", is tortured, twisted and nothing but wild wishful thinking by Swisher. While to accuse SpaceX when it’s actually saving taxpayer money is perverted. It’s lying. It's disgusting. IMO.
Swisher is so consumed by hatred of Musk, going back to his (I think unnecessary) insult of her in 2022, to his having the temerity to have his own political views, that she ignores all the good he has done for America. If she and her ilk got their way, and he was imprisoned, this would harm America, for the sake of their own bitterness, envy and resentment.
She -- and all the others featured in the video above -- are part of the "we don't like him, so we'll put him behind bars" crowd. The Stalinist-Beria clique: the "You bring me the man ... I'll find you the crime" gang.
Musk says: "Fuck them all". I agree.
Whether it's wise to say it out loud, probably not. But Elon gonna Elon. One reason he's a Trillionaire and I'm not.
Mark Carney’s moves to become an “Associate” of the EU seems…
“… like being shackled to a corpse”. GeneralLudendorff speaking of Germany’s alliance with a failing Austria-Hungary in WW1.
British PM Andy Burnham wants “a conversation” on rejoining the EU. This… this moribund near-corpse. You seen Germany lately? France? Spain? With this you want to shackle?
In one simple sentence: he was senior in the Siad Barre Somalian regime that murdered, raped and looted hundreds of thousands of his tribal enemies.
As such, he was ineligible to be accepted as a refugee to America. As such, his Congresswoman daughter Ilhan Omar should, at the very least be ineligible to sit in Congress. Even aside all the other dodgy stuff, the money laundering and fraud she’s plausibly tied to.
These are not some “far-right fever dreams”. The quotations in the article come from the likes of Human Rights Watch and Yale University’s Genocide Watch Project. They are, in short, what the Left always call “authoritative and credible sources”.
Major 40-year study of China’s basic research system released, with International Review Committee co-chaired by RoRI’s James Wilsdon and Ludo Waltman.
TheChina Fundamental Research Report (2026)was officially launched at the China National Convention Center in Beijing today. Commissioned by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to mark its 40th anniversary, the landmark study offers the first open, system-level, and data-driven account of how China has organised, funded, and evaluated its fundamental research landscape over the past four decades.
Attending the launch in Beijing, RoRI’s James Wilsdon, who co-chaired the International Review Committee of the report, shared his main reflections in a new RoRI Substack post. He notes that the report marks the moment “China kept a long promise” through 40 years of continuous funding and heavy backing for early-career researchers, while praising its unprecedented openness about gaps in international collaboration and missing data.
Disclaimer: I haven't (yet) read the report; I’m posting it here for the record and in the belief that Roger would not direct us to something that turns out to be nonsense. Where is fundamental research being done in the world? Answer: mainly America. But also China does one heck of a lot. We need to know about it.
ADDED:
Scale. China’s government already funds R&D on a scale comparable to or larger than the US government, with budgets growing every year. China has already assumed a role in R&D comparable to that of the US. [Link]
Countering the reactionary absurdities of Tucker Carlson & Co. that Hitler was the Good Guy, that Churchill was the Bad Guy and that England should have capitulated early on to Nazi Germany.
PARIS — To accommodate modern French sensibilities, the NFL has announced that their first ever game to take place in Paris will include special endzone messaging by having "Allahu Akbar" painted onto the field.
While not unusual for the NFL to paint social justice-oriented political messages into the endzone, such as "Inspire Change," "End Racism," and "Vote," this will be their first overtly religious message. The upcoming game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints will be the first time the NFL has played a game Paris, so they wanted the message to be more suitable for the occasion.
"We really want to make a good impression on our hosts," said NFL spokesperson Roger Manning. "They go nuts for anything about Allah over there, so we think this will be met with a very positive reception. Also, we don't want to get bombed by terrorists."
Security questions have been raised about holding an NFL game in Paris while the city is on fire, but officials have assured the NFL that the protests are just about student affordability concerns and nothing else.
A survey of Parisians indicated that 83% of respondents believe the NFL's "Allahu Akbar" message will be a unifying, uplifting statement that will remind France what being French is all about.
At publishing time, the NFL was installing minarets atop the stadium to accommodate the Adhan, or the Muslim call to prayer, during the very French halftime show.
“Why is it that the Koran is sold everywhere in this country, but if I live by what it says I must do as a pious Muslim, the I’m considered radical?”, says this pious, reasonable, religious, and above all truthful Muslim.
He will willingly, indeed enthusiastically, kill you if you criticise Islam or dare to insult Muhammad. If you’re homosexual he will kill you (but only after a fair trial, mind you). If you leave Islam, if you become an apostate, he will not only kill you, but he will torture you before you die, because, again it’s in the Koran, and apostasy is such a high crime.
This guy, born in the U.K. has the distinction of being flat-out honest about his religion. No Taqiyya here!
Islam: an ideology which is by its settled doctrines and practices: supremacist, homophobic, misogynist, racist, anti free speech. All of which this guy will freely admit, and do so proudly, openly, happily!
Will Shackel is a young man who is making Australia a better place. By founding “Nuclear for Australia”, pushing for Australia to have clean, green, safe nuclear power as a source of critical base load energy.
His latest note to supporters:
Dear Peter,
First, I want to say a massive thank you.
Last month, I asked for your help to fund major independent national polling on nuclear energy. Thanks to your generosity, we now have the results - and they send a clear message to politicians across Australia.
The Australian public is ready to have a serious conversation about nuclear energy.
While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claims that Australians don't support it, our new YouGov polling tells a very different story - including among his own voters:
63% of Australians believe Australia should consider nuclear power - including 48% of Labor voters.
60% believe nuclear will be part of Australia’s future energy mix, up 13 percentage points on last year's polling.
56% support removing restrictions so nuclear energy can be considered
57% lack confidence that current electricity options can meet Australia's growing demand
59% support developing nuclear power to strengthen Australia's energy sovereignty.
Edmund Burke wrote Reflections on a Revolution in France which I asked Grok to summarise:
Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is a foundational conservative critique of the French Revolution.
Written as a letter, it rejects the revolutionaries’ abstract theories of natural rights and pure reason as a basis for remaking society. Burke argues that a sound political order rests on inherited tradition, historical institutions, property, religion, and gradual change rather than sudden rupture. He sees the French upheaval as dangerously destructive of the social fabric—an “unnatural” experiment that tears up the organic bonds of custom and continuity linking past, present, and future generations.
He predicts that the destruction of established authority will lead not to liberty but to chaos, followed by tyranny (a forecast many later judged prescient). Against the radicals’ blank-slate approach, Burke defends “prejudice” (accumulated practical wisdom), the mixed constitution, and the rights of inheritance over abstract equality.
The book became a classic statement of conservatism and a major influence on later critiques of revolutionary ideology.
Burke’s seminal analysis prompted Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on a Revolution in Europe, in 2009, which I read then and have quoted many times since. Like French Riots, we DID warn you, on 22 October.
About these French riots (as with this blog overall) I’ve posted mainly centre to conservative points of view. The reason is that the POV from the Left is well-represented by the mainstream media. MSM is the air we breathe. The BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNOW, abc, ABC Australia, CBC Canada, the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Age…. Well, you get the picture.
So here I’m just giving a little bit of the Other Side’s View.
If you want to make sure you’re covering all views, you could subscribe to Ground News, which specialises in covering all media, Left, Right and Indifferent. I’m not sponsored by them. Or by anyone else.
John O’Sullivan writes “A New French Revolution”. Which I post in full below the fold, courtesy of the National Review.
Of all the things that have been hardest to communicate in my life, this seems the most impossible: that our civilisation is not, by some law of nature, immortal. It has no right or likelihood to continue existing if it insists on committing harakiri. The people who are welcomed onto our airwaves, work in parts of our government and lead some of our political parties include those who would burn down this country in a heart-beat. They would look us in the eyes and kill us. And we know that because they have done it elsewhere.
They don’t do it at the moment because the time is not right. But when they feel it is, they will act. At which point I suppose people will have to decide whether they wish to be spectators at their own funeral pyre or not.
Victor Davis Hanson is a Classics professor at Stanford University and Distinguished Fellow the Hoover Institute. He talks to John Papola.
The Jacobins are the violent revolutionaries of the far Left. They did the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, from 1793 to 1795. Their motto: “we must suppress the counter-revolutionaries”. How? The guillotine!
Today’s Democratic Party doesn’t shy away from being associated with fanatical mass-murdering Jacobins. They publish Jacobin, a monthly magazine well-regarded on the Left. Imagine publishing Adolf, and its being well-regarded on the Right.
The Democrats of today are not those of Bill Clinton’s day. Nor even of BarackObama’s. They’ve shifted far to the Left. As they are consumed, digested, soon-to-be excreted by the Democratic Socialists of America. Which I warned about in 2018.
Colin Wright did a cartoon in 2021 about this sharp leftward shift, which went viral. You stay the same, but politics around you shift leftwards, and you end up being seen as “Right wing”, or “Far-Right”, or even “fascist”:
Indeed we warned European governments much earlier than I realised:
The problems that France has been creating for itself were foreseeable, and indeed foreseen. As long ago as March 1959, de Gaulle is reported to have warned, “The Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. Do you think that the French can absorb ten million Muslims who will tomorrow be twenty million and after tomorrow forty?”The Anti-French Revolt in FranceRich Lowry.
I’m reminded of “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe”, by Christopher Caldwell, which I read when it came out on 2009, and have quoted numerous times since.
A key thing he noted was that the descendants of immigrants to Europe from Islamic countries were far more radical and less integrated than their parents and grandparents. This is in contrast to all other immigrant waves, where those born in the host country integrated into its values and customs.
And so, also, in Europe and the UK: waves of migration absorbed and contributing to their host countries, with their children hewing to their new nation.
All, that is, until the immigrations from Islamic countries.
A weird thing happened with these migrants. The children of the original migrants -- instead of working on the base set for them by their parents -- began to bend to more fundamentalist Islam than their parents.
And we know where that leads. "Lone wolf" attacks; calls for Sharia. Despising of their own nation.
He shows -- in careful argument with scrupulous references -- how the descendants on Pakistanis in the UK or Turks in Germany, have turned against their parents and their countries, in favour of the Islamic Ummah, the great would-be caliphate of Islam.
Caldwell quotes Hilaire Belloc, the great writer, orator, poet, sailor, satirist, man of letters, soldier and political activist, and leftist Catholic academic.
Writing in 1936, in "The Great Heresies", Belloc is quoted in Caldwell (p 112):
"... It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than thousand years its greatest opponent."
JensenHuang is founder, major owner, brains behind the world’s most valuable company, NVIDIA.
Here he is in Berlin, explaining stuff. Most of which I don’t understand. But the 10% I do, helps. So do David Carbutt’s graphics.
By the way, both of us here in this household have found AI increases our productivity. If that’s the case for two random, non-technical people here in Hong Kong, imagine that multiplied over the world. In global industries. Of course productivity is going to increase. Probably sharply.
Me, I’m also disappointed by some, even much, of what Trump done and said in his second term. Some is incompetent (early-halting kinetic attacks on Iran). Some is surely bad judgment (dopey tweets). Some is flat-out stupid (commenting on legal cases). Then there’s the on-another-level Truth-blast at Bill Maher…
BUT… I’m still working on the “lesser-of-two-evils” policy.
I still judge the Democrats to be the greater danger. Their current Far-left, Islam-appeasing form, heading only further to the leftist fringes, to me seems a much greater threat to America and the West than do the Republicans. Even with its quirky president. If I’m American I’m voting GOP in the Midterms.
Consider the present critiques of Trump from the Right. Whenever did the Dems do something similar? When they were in power, when did they criticise their president? Even as Biden lost his marbles? Answer: Never. Nor do they do so now, faced with the existential threat of Marx & Muhammad within the party. Consuming them like parasites.
TL;DR: If you want an Islamo-Communist America, vote Democrat. Too extreme? I’m fear mongering? Just look how Left and Islam-ophilic we’ve come…
