Perpetua of Carthage

Mock the Vote: Why did Jon Stewart include Ysaf Islam?

2010-11-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Yusaf Islam, the man previously know as Cat Stevens, played Peace Train at Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity". Doesn't Stewart realize that for devout Muslims the only real peace is submission to Allah, so when Yusaf Islam sings Peace Train it may mean the conversion of all to Islam? Maybe Stewart believes Yusaf Islam was merely making a bad joke when he said he would been interested in going to see Salman Rushdie beaten by a mob:

I guess it must be funny to a certain kind of person ... future suicide bombers, maybe?

Hat Tip John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Scotland: Criticizing Public Gay Sex Now a Hate Crime

2010-10-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

Police in Scotland have been ordered to stop any verbal taunting directed at people engaging in public sex.

An extraordinary new Hate Crime Guidance Manual has been handed to officers telling them to arrest anyone suspected of committing a hate crime against those engaged in ‘dogging’.

Although it notes that outdoor sex can have an ‘impact on the quality of life of people using these locations for leisure pursuits’ - for example dog walkers and tourists - the rights of those cottaging, cruising or dogging must be taken into account by officers.
It states that even though ‘outdoor sex is unlawful’, people who take part in it still have rights which protect them from becoming victims of hate crime.

The manual, issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers of Scotland last week, states that people who take part in open-air sex are ‘more susceptible to hate crime’ and can suffer ‘post traumatic stress and depression’ if they are abused, Police Review revealed.

Read it all in the Daily Mail.

Hat Tip Nicky Goomba

"One Nation" Rally Trashes the Mall

2010-10-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

"One Nation" sounds very public spirited. But their actions prove they do not take responsibility for their own behavior. We can judge a group by the trash they leave behind. People who are truly public spirited clean up their own trash. And if someone makes a mistake and litters, than those who follow will pick it up.

I noticed recyclable cans and lots of recyclable paper. These are not people who care about the environment.

These are freeloaders.

And guess what? These are people from organizations that want to "spread the wealth". Hmmm.

GZ Mosque Design Has Visitors Walking on Stars of David

2010-10-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

The developers of the Ground Zero Mosque have released three architects images of the planned building. The design seems to be using the Star of David, a widely recognized symbol to represent the Jewish people and central element in the Israeli flag, as a design element. Notice how people will be walking on the Star of David. Click on the third image to get a close up.

I think this is a sign of disrespect. Would Muslims be comfortable walking on symbols of their own religion?

And now for a little rap music

2010-09-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

US Soldier Tells Al Jazeera TV of US Army Hate Campaign Against Islam

2010-09-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised that military personnel have the right to do this. But even if they do, isn't what he told Al Jazeera here going to contribute to creating a climate of hate toward the USA in the Muslim world? Even if he had the right, why didn't the US Secretary of State, etc try to dissuade him against doing this, as they did the Quran burning in Florida?

He even claimed the opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque was opposing his right to build it. This is deliberately directed towards the Muslim world since the medium is Al Jazeera TV and the message is inflammatory. Imam Rauf said that the Ground Zero Mosque is potentially a bigger issue in the Muslim world than the Danish cartoons, and that Muslim people could explode with anger. (Rauf's language was avoidant, "anger could explode in the Muslim world", but we know that means Muslims could explode with anger.) Now we see this US soldier deliberately stoking that anger.

The Al Jazeera moderator pointed out to Klawonn that there is a mosque at the Pentagon and that the U.S. military presents itself as open to minorities and those who "suffer" in American society. Klawonn responded that his training in the U.S. Army was "propaganda against Islam."
"I think there’s a pretty big misconception of the reality of what’s going on in the military and what the mainstream media says," said Klawonn. "The reality is that there is a sense of Islamophobia and there is a big misunderstanding of the Islamic faith and that contributes to people’s negative notions coming into the military. Also the training we get and the information we are subject to constitutes propaganda against Islam.
"Unfortunately we are going through this right now,” said Klawonn. “I think this speaks volumes about us as a society right now. I mean, as an American citizen and a service member I see the opposition of American citizens to my right to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero as a big slap in my face as a service member."

More at CNS News

Hat Tip: The Two Malcontents

Another Successful Fatwa -- Molly Norris Disappeared

2010-09-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

The cartoonist from Seattle who created and published a cartoon poster suggesting an Everyone Draw Mohammed Day , Molly Norris, has disappeared herself so no one else can. Remember she retracted the idea after receiving death threats? Now she has changed her name and no longer exists as her previous identity on the advice of the FBI. The Seattle Weekly announced it like this:

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, "going ghost": moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program--except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.

Sounds to me like she and those top security specialists at the FBI are Islamophobic.

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

Why Americans have grown more suspicious of American Muslims

2010-09-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

I want to show some of what we have been presented since the previous anniversary of 9/11 in terms of American Muslims who turn out to be secret terrorists:

September 2009 -- just days after the anniversary of 9/11 Najibullah Zazi a resident of Colorado was arrested along with two of his high school classmates from Queens, his father, his uncle, and an imam from Queens, New York, on charges related to a plan to detonate backpack bombs on the New York subway system, similar tothe July 2005 London Subway Bombing.

September 2009 --- Michael Finton, a US citizen who had converted to Islam was arrested for the attempted bombing of the Federal Building in Springfield Illinois. He thought he was working with Al Qaeda, but his accomplice was an FBI agent. At the same time the FBI also arrested Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, an illegal immigrant from Jordan who attempted to kill as many people as he could with what he thought was a car bomb in the basement of the 60 story building Fountain Place in downtown Dallas. ABC News reports FBI Stings Are Chilling Evidence of Homegrown Terror

November 2009 NY Times A Terror Suspect With Feet in East and West, about David Headley, an American citizen with an American mother and a Pakistani father who was involved in the gruesome and sadistic Islamic terrorist Mumbai Massacre.

November 2009 -- Nidal Malik Hasan, American born of Palestinian descent, a US Army Major, who committed 13 murders and attempted 32 more in the Ft. Hood Massacre. See the presentation he made on The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the US Military.

December 2009 --- 5 young men, Umer Farooq, Ramy Zamzam, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Waqar Khan and Aman Hassan Yasir, all US citizens from the suburbs of Washington DC, are arrested for traveling to Pakistan to join the Taliban and al Qaeda to fight American troops in Afghanistan.

December 2009 --- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a Nigerian man who had studied engineering and finance in London and headed the student Islamic Society there attempted to blow up an airplane flying to Detroit on Christmas Day. The Sunday Times Online article Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: one boy’s journey to jihad details how he went to Yemen and met up with the American Anwar al-Awliki and Al-Qaeda where he is believed to have received the bomb materials and training.

January 2010 NY Times Magazine article exploring how an American became The Jihadist Next Door. Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki a man raised in Alabama with a white Christian (Southern Baptist) mother and a father who immigrated from Syria who now leads a group of Islamic fighters in Somalia supporting the destruction of Sufi shrines and the imposition of brutal Islamic law.

March 2010 --- An American citizen who had worked at five different nuclear power plants in the US, Sharif Mobley, is arrested in Yemen with ten other suspected Al Qaeda members.

March 2010 --- We learned that an American woman from the Philadelphia suburbs, Colleen LaRose had been arrested the previous fall as a terrorist recruiter and had been involved in a scheme to kill the Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks. The New York Times quoted the the United States attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, Michael L. Levy, that "the case illustrated how terrorists were looking for American recruits who could blend in." Another American woman who had been recruited by LaRose was also arrested, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Colorado.

May 2010 NY Times article titled Imam’s Path From Condemning Terror to Preaching Jihad exploring how a man born and educated in America, Anwar Al-Awliki went from being presented by the MSM as a moderate Muslim to revealing himself to be a radical jihadist. Al_Awliki's preaching was an inspiration to both the Ft Hood Shooter and the Christmas Day Bomber.

May 2010 -- Faisal Shazad, an American citizen born in Pakistan was trained and financed by the Pakistani Taliban in his attempt to Bomb Times Square in New York. Politicians and the media initially suggested: 1) the bombing was not Islamic terrorism and 2) it was a one person job.

Fear of Islam is not a Phobia

2010-09-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

Last night on TV I saw Imam Rauf tell us that if he has to move his planned mosque, there will be an explosion of violence in the Muslim countries. Does that mean Imam Rauf is Islamophobic, expressing a pathological fear of Muslims? Or is he a person particularly knowledgable about Islam and Muslims whose characterization of their expected behavior is reasonable?

And today I see that the US State Department has issued a travel advisory over fears of violent Muslim reactions to the planned burning of some Qurans by a small church in Florida:

The Department of State is issuing this Travel Alert to caution U.S. citizens of the potential for anti-U.S. demonstrations in many countries in response to stated plans by a church in Florida to burn Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Demonstrations, some violent, have already taken place in several countries, including Afghanistan and Indonesia, in response to media reports of the church's plans. The potential for further protests and demonstrations, some of which may turn violent, remains high. We urge you to pay attention to local reaction to the situation, and to avoid areas where demonstrations may take place. This Travel Alert expires on September 30, 2010.

So, is the US State Department Islamophobic, expressing a pathological fear of Muslims? ? Or is the US State Dept. particularly knowledgable about Islam and Muslims and this anticipation of their expected behavior is reasonable?

If Americans are frightened of Muslims, I am thinking maybe it is due to actual world events and anticipated world events as expressed by Imam Rauf and the US State Dept.

In support of the US State Dept travel advisory, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan says that if the Pastor in Florida burns Qurans, it will be received as "a declaration of war":

Claiming that burning the Koran is a part of freedom of expression is ridiculous and does not make any sense," the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, said in a statement.

"Insulting religions and holy books is a crime that provokes people. It is a declaration of war against them," it added.

I'm not supporting the idea of burning Qurans. But I do think it is a free speech issue. I wish he wouldn't do it. But the blame for any violence that results must be placed on those who react violently to a symbolic act.

This is comparable to the way women in the USA had to deal with arguments about rape. The fact that a woman dressed in a sexy way used to be used against her in rape trials in the USA. But now, in the USA, we accept that the man is responsible for his own actions. Hmmm, of course in many Muslim countries, women are still held responsible for the actions of the men. Women have to wear burkas so the men won't be aroused.

It sure seems like Muslim men have not been taught to separate their feelings from their behavior and that they are responsible for their own actions. They blame others for provoking them to violence and they blame others for provoking them sexually. It makes sense to me to be afraid of people who don't take responsibility for their own actions.

thinking about IQ and Islam

2010-09-08T16:31:00.001-07:00

I've been wondering about people who would commit murder over cartoons or a book burning. I've been thinking that the people we are dealing with are unable to think in categories and make necessary distinctions. I remembered that there was an article in the Economist last month on infectious diseases and their possible effect on children's intellectual development. The study used IQ data from 184 countries. It occurred to me to look at the average IQ's for some of the countries provided in the study. I've selected out some and grouped them.

98 United States
99 Canada

108 Singapore
105 China
106 South Korea
105 Japan

98 France
99 Germany
100 Netherlands
101 Switzerland
102 Italy
98 Spain
97 Russia

95 Israel

90 Turkey

82 Lebanon
82 Egypt
83 Syria
83 Libya
84 Pakistan
87 Iraq
84 Iran
84 Afghanistan
86 Kuwait
84 Saudi Arabia
84 United Arab Emirates
85 Yemen
84 Morocco
84 Jordan

Moderate Islam? 75% of Muslims Want Sharia Law

2010-09-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

There is a great article posted at Big Peace today exploring the op/ed in last Saturday's Wall street Journal Islam is Not Islamism. The must see chart in the article is this one from a 2007 study of Muslim opinion by researchers at the University of Maryland

Looking through the study, I found on page 16 that 20% or less of the Muslims in the four countries polled had a negative opinion of Bin Laden.

What US soldiers see in Afghanistan -- rampant sexual abuse of boys.

2010-09-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article his Sunday by Joel Brinkley on the study by social scientist AnnaMaria Cardinalli on man-boy love in Afghanistan. The military commissioned this study because soldiers were disturbed to see Afghan men trying to "touch and fondle" boys.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.

"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.

Cardinelli's study explains that this is the culture, but she is not a cultural relativist:

"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."

The article says the source of the problem is Islamic law, because men are forbidden to see women and told that women are unclean:

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

and

Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"

Understanding Islam: What "Bridge Building" Means

2010-08-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

When Imam Rauf says the goal of the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero is meant to build bridges, we may naively assume he means inter faith dialogue. But he has stated to Arabic speaking audiences that he disdains interfaith dialogue. As reported at Former Muslims United, in an article titled “I do not believe in religious dialogue” Rauf wrote:

And regarding religious dialogue Abdul-Rauf stated “this phrase is
inaccurate. Religious dialogue as customary understood is a set of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing. Religions do not dialogue and dialogue is not present in the attitudes of the followers regardless of being Muslim or Christian. The image of Muslims in the West is complex which needs to be remedied.”

On May 25th Rauf wrote an op/ed in the New York Daily News that included this:

My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists. We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric. Our purpose is to interweave America's Muslim population into the mainstream society.

So to English speaking Americans he says he wants to "interweave America's Muslim population into the mainstream society", but to Arabic speakers he claims he "does not believe in religious dialogue". Is there a contradiction going on here?

Well, Rauf's father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood andFrank Gaffney at Big Peace provides this quote to help us understand what the Muslim Brotherhood means by the phrase "bridge building".:

For example, Team Obama fails to recognize that when Rauf talks about “bridge-building,” he means it the same way as did Seyyid Qutb, one the Brotherhood’s most important ideologues. In his seminal book, Milestones, Qutb makes clear that this term does not translate into a quest for interfaith and cross-cultural harmony. Rather, it is meant to achieve the infidels’ submission: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah (unbelievers – the land of gross ignorance and disbelief) is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

This attitude makes sense when we accept that Muslims view Islam as the last and superior prophesy, and that conversion from Islam is viewed so unfavorably that it is punished by death.

Which reminds of another quote from Imam Rauf's NY Daily News op/ed:

Freedom of religion is something we hold dear. It is the core of what America is all about, and it is what people worldwide respect about our country. The Koran itself says compulsion in religion is wrong.

But Rauf refuses to sign Former Muslims United's Freedom Pledge:

I renounce, repudiate and oppose any physical intimidation, or worldly and corporal punishment, of apostates from Islam, in whatever way that punishment may be determined or carried out by myself or any other Muslim including the family of the apostate, community, Mosque leaders, Shariah court or judge, and Muslim government or regime.

Courage and the Ground Zero Mosque Debate

2010-08-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

I I have been thinking that it takes no courage to advocate for the Ground Zero Mosque. No one is going to violently attack the politicians and media celebs who support the building. But there may be a real danger of violent attack against those who are exercising their constitutional 1st Amendment right of free speech to oppose the mosque. Have the mainstream media and so many politicians taken up the Muslim Brotherhood talking points and sought to silence this debate because that is the safe thing to do in the short run?

It is the elephant in the living room. No one is talking about it. But the symbolism of Ground Zero to me is that we are vulnerable to attack by people who hate us. The attack on the World Trade Towers was the midpoint of a more than twenty year era of fear of radical Islam.

I pulled out Christopher Hitchens piece about the twenty year anniversary of the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Hitchens says the violent threats have done there job and there is now a pervasive climate of self-censorship in the media. We know these are not just threats, the violence is real, as we saw in the Danish cartoon controversy. And he says that we use the "guise of good manners and multiculturalism" to hide that we are actually caving in to the threat of violence and failing to support the true moderate Muslims.

Sometimes this fear—and this blackmail—comes dressed up in the guise of good manners and multiculturalism. One must not wound the religious feelings of others, many of whom are poor immigrants in our own societies. To this I would respond by pointing to a book published in 1994. It is entitled For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Among its contributors is almost every writer worthy of the name in the Arab and Muslim world, ranging from the Syrian poet Adonis to the Syrian-Kurdish author Salim Barakat, to the late national bard of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Darwish, to the celebrated Turkish writers Murat Belge and Orhan Pamuk. Especially impressive and courageous was the list of 127 Iranian writers, artists, and intellectuals who, from the prison house that is the Islamic Republic, signed their names to a letter which said: “We underline the intolerable character of the decree of death that the Fatwah is, and we insist on the fact that aesthetic criteria are the only proper ones for judging works of art.… To the extent that the systematic denial of the rights of man in Iran is tolerated, this can only further encourage the export outside the Islamic Republic of its terroristic methods which destroy freedom.” In other words, the situation is the exact reverse of what the condescending multiculturalists say it is. To indulge the idea of religious censorship by the threat of violence is to insult and undermine precisely those in the Muslim world who are its intellectual cream, and who want to testify for their own liberty—and for ours. It is also to make the patronizing assumption that the leaders of mobs and the inciters of goons are the authentic representatives of Muslim opinion. What could be more “offensive” than that?

Andrew McCarthy has a piece in National Review Online today that discusses the difference between the fake moderate Muslims supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas versus the true moderate Muslims that are threatened by the the Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas who will use violence to impose their will.

It doesn't take courage to kowtow to those who threaten violence. It does take courage to speak up against them. McCarthy says Imam Rauf and the Ground Zero Mosque are on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Why doesn't the MSM research this it? Or do they know but are to afraid to say?

Is Rauf a moderate Muslim when it comes to Sharia Law?

2010-08-20T12:26:00.000-07:00

Imam Feisal Rauf, the Muslim leader planning to build an Islamic cultural center with mosque two blocks from the site of the destruction of the World Trade Center by Islamic militants, also heads the Shariah Index Project, an ongoing evaluate the Sharia compliance of the nations. Rauf has said to US audiences that the USA is a Sharia compliant state.

And another muslim was recently quoted in the New York Times saying that Sharia is compatible with the US Constitution:

Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, lamented that people were listening to what she called “total disinformation” on Islam.

She said her group was stunned when what began as one person raising zoning questions about the new mosque evolved into mass protests with marchers waving signs about Shariah.

“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There’s no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn’t be living here.”

When I read that, I wondered if this was a Muslim "Talking Point" now and how the reporter could print it without asking some basic questions about obvious conflicts between the U.S. Constitution and Sharia Law.

Let's look at Rauf's presentation of Sharia Law at a meeting of the Shariah Index Project in Malaysia to see how the two are irreconcilable. As the reporter summarized Rauf's presentation:

The pillars of Shariah are based on five – some say six sacrosanct rights and principles. Breaching any of them is considered a major sin that requires punishment.

The most important is the protection and furthering of life.

Then there is the protection of religion – which includes all three Abrahamic faiths and, through most of Islamic history, other religions as well. It was this principle that the Muslim world evoked during the controversy over cartoons lampooning the Prophet that were published in a Danish newspaper. The same principle prohibits Muslims from satirising elements of any religion.

In the video, Rauf said that Sharia provides the "right to freedom of religion". That's not the same as "protection of religion". It is in direct conflict with the US Constitution's 1st Amendment protect of speech and of the press. We have seen how Muslims have silenced free speech in our own country through threats of violence as the country has begun to self-censor.

Another pillar is the protection of dignity and honour, which can be used as a basis for punishing slander, which recently became a crime in the UAE under the country’s new media law. The same principle is behind UAE cases where drivers have been prosecuted for making rude gestures at other road users, who took it as an insult to their dignity. Similarly, a woman can sue a man, even a stranger, for a lewd or inappropriate comment that “undermines her honour”.

What he doesn't say is how this is used to punish those who are raped and seeking help. If the rape charge cannot be proved, then the one making the accusation is punished for slander. And it is very hard to prove rape when the Quran requires four witnesses. Here is an example I posted a while ago about a student in Saudi Arabia who said his school principal raped him.

Protection of lineage, another pillar of Shariah, is the basis for criminalising adultery and, as was decided by muftis in Dubai last year, for banning IVF.

And remember, the Quran provides for the death penalty for adultery.

Protection of the mind or intellect includes the protection of sobriety, the basis for prohibiting Muslims from drinking alcohol or using any mind-altering substance, except under a doctor’s orders.

The final pillar of Shariah is the protection of property, an element that many scholars say contributed to the economic growth of early Muslim states.

Rauf says in the video that Sharia is the "fulfillment of five fundamental rights: "the right to life, the right to freedom of religion, the right to family, the right to property and the right to mental well being." But as the punishments from the Quran are applied in Sharia Law:

The right to freedom of religion means the death penalty for criticism of religion.
The right to family means the death penalty for adultery.
(I'm not seeing the right to life in this.)
The right to property means cutting off the hands of thieves.
The right to mental wellbeing means lashing those who drink alcohol.

What is a moderate Muslim when it comes to Sharia Law? Isn't Rauf just talking up a good game for us when he knows the Quran requires these punishments? It reminds me of the story of the Muslim man who convinced a Jewish alcoholic to convert to Islam.

And what good is the US Constitution's 8th Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment when this is the usual punishment and Allah is merciful? (So if you are going to be lashed for drinking alcohol and even question the punishment as cruel, are you insulting religion and insulting Allah, so now you get the death penalty?)

8% of US Babies Born to Illegal Immigrants

2010-08-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has a front page article on the new report from the Pew Hispanic Center on the children of illegal immigrants:

One in 12 babies born in the U.S. in 2008 were offspring of illegal immigrants, according to a new study, an estimate that could inflame the debate over birthright citizenship.

Undocumented immigrants make up slightly more than 4% of the U.S. adult population. However, their babies represented twice that share, or 8%, of all births on U.S. soil in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center's report.

This is a large number and will certainly figure into the public discussion of the 14th Amendment and "anchor babies". The report does note that over 80% of the mothers had been in the US over a year. So, that makes about 20% of the 8% first time "anchor babies". I calculate that as over 1% of US births in 2008 were clearly "anchor baby" phenomena.

I noticed the Wall Street Journal article and the Pew report, Unauthorized Immigrants and Their US-Born Children, assume the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the US and that a revision to the constitution is necessary to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens. But I thought that was an open question since the 14th Amendment includes the language "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

Should judge have recused himself in Prop 8 case?

2010-08-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting argument presented in today's San Francisco Chronicle that the federal judge, Vaughn Walker, should have recused himself in the the Prop 8 (California same-sex marriage) case. John C. Eastman, a law professor and former dean of Chapman University School of Law argues that the fact that Walker is gay is not reason enough for him to recuse himself, However, it has been reported that Walker is in a same-sex relationship and that would put Walker in the position of materially benefiting from his own ruling. Eastman concludes:

If the relationship does not create such a conflict, it nevertheless creates the circumstance "in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned." That ground for disqualification can be waived by the parties, but the judge must "disclose on the record the basis of the disqualification" and then only continue after the parties have agreed in writing to his continued involvement. No such disclosure and agreement occurred in this case.

Judge Walker's failure to disqualify himself or at least to disclose his potentially disqualifying relationship to the parties requires that the opinion in the case be vacated and a new trial conducted before a different judge. In Liljeberg vs. Health Services Acquisition Corp., the Supreme Court held that the original judgment had to be set aside even when the disqualifying relationship only became known to the parties 10 months after the judgment entered in the case had been upheld on appeal. Where an objective observer would have questioned the judge's impartiality, recusal is required, and the appropriate remedy is to annul the judgment because of the risk of injustice to the parties and of undermining the public's confidence in the judicial process.

The Huffington Post has listed two other cases in which Walker ruled against religious objections to the promotion of gay sexual behavior:

In 1999, he rejected arguments from the parents of a San Leandro boy who claimed their religious rights were violated by pro-gay comments their son's teacher had made in the classroom.

In the other case, he dismissed a free speech claim by two Oakland city employees whose managers had confiscated a bulletin board flier for a religious group that promoted "natural family, marriage and family values." The city had "significant interests in restricting discriminatory speech about homosexuals," Walker wrote in his 2005 ruling.

Matthew J. Franck on the Prop 8 Ruling

2010-08-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

I think Matthew J. Franck has a helpful analysis of Judge Walker's legal reasoning in the California same-sex marriage case. He explains how Walker took the movement towards the equality of the sexes in marriage to mean that gender no longer mattered:

By the same token, says Judge Walker, the doctrine of coverture, in the common law, in which a wife's legal identity was subsumed by that of her husband as the superior partner in the marriage-that too has been abandoned by a more modern understanding of the sexes as equal partners. Thus, concludes the judge, there has been a "movement of marriage away from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from state-mandated gender roles." And this has not been an essential change in the "core" of the marriage institution, but merely a shedding of an extraneous characteristic, thanks to "an evolution in the understanding of gender."

And now watch carefully, for here the fallacious reasoning enters the equation. When "the genders" are no longer "seen as having distinct roles," it is revealed that at marriage's "core" there is ample space for same-sex couples too. Since "gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage," indeed since it never really did, "plaintiffs' relationships are consistent with the core of the history, tradition and practice of marriage in the United States." There, you see? There is something eminently conservative about the admission of same-sex couples to the marital bond. What could we have been thinking, denying them this right for all these centuries?

Judge Walker seems to have committed the fallacy of composition-taking something true of a part and concluding that it is also true of the whole of which it is a part. If it is true that "gender" no longer matters as it once did in the relation of husband and wife, he reasons, therefore it no longer matters whether the relation is one of husband and wife; it may as well be a relation of husband and husband or of wife and wife, since we now know that marriage is not, at its "core," a "gendered institution." But restated in this way, it is quite plain that the judge's conclusion doesn't follow from his premises. To say that the status of men and women in marriage is one of equal partners is not to say that men and women are the same, such that it does not matter what sex their partners are. The equalization of status is not the obliteration of difference, as much as Judge Walker would like to pretend it is.

Read it all here.

The problem with relying on speech writers and teleprompters

2010-08-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Whoever wrote the speech for the White House Correspondents Dinner knew who Snooki was.

Is the problem relying on speech writers and teleprompters or is trying to go with out them on The View?

San Francisco Chronicle propaganda article on Oscar Grant case

2010-07-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Today in the San Francisco Chronicle there was an article on the front page of the local news section about some protests regarding the Oscar Grant killing. The protesters who claim Oscar Grant was murdered were claiming to be imitating Grant's position when he was shot, lying face down with their hands behind their backs. The reporter, Demian Bulwa, accepted that this was in fact how Grant was positioned, stating in the article:

they lay in the street mimicking Grant's position when he was shot - prone with his hands behind his back.

And one of the two featured photos was captioned:

Counterprotesters lie in the street with their hands behind their backs to illustrate the unarmed Grant's position when Mehserle shot him.

The problem with this is that the BART officer, Mehserle, testified Grant did not have both hands available to be handcuffed and that is why he decided to Tase Grant:

But when attempting to arrest Grant, the former officer testified that it turned into a brief struggle for the man’s hands.

“His hands were underneath him,” he said. “I wasn’t paying attention to his left hand, I was trying to get his right hand.”

Mehserle said he saw Grant’s right hand reach into his pocket.

“It made me question what his intentions were…I knew the right front pocket was a place where people kept–,” Mehserle then paused.

“Guns.”

It was at this point the former officer said he decided to Tase Grant.

The attorney prosecuting the case (who wanted Mehserle charged with murder), Stein, also says that Grant didn't have his hand available to be handcuffed and explained why in this San Francisco Chronicle article (by the same reporter Demian Bulwa):

Stein said that before Mehserle fired his single shot, the prone Grant had tried to get his right hand behind his back to be handcuffed. However, the prosecutor said, officers had pinned him against the outstretched left leg of a friend, Carlos Reyes, who was also detained.

He referred to the TV screens, where footage of the shooting showed Reyes' leg moving a split second before the gunshot, and Grant's right arm coming back at about the same time.

The San Francisco Chronicle is treating as fact something that seems clearly false to me. It is inserting this propaganda in what is presented as a straight news story. Clearly, the judge, having heard the evidence, believed that the decision to Tase was appropriate under the circumstances when he ruled out murder as an option for the jury. And clearly the jury believed that the decision to Tase was appropriate under the circumstances when they convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

Here is the court's compilation of the eyewitness videos from cell phones. You can see from various vantage points and it is clear Grant was resisting being handcuffed.

I wonder if the attorney for the civil suit by Grant's family, Burris, is behind the attempts to create the belief that Grant was not resisting arrest. But why is the San Francisco Chronicle playing along?

California: July Field Poll Wrong on Arizona Law

2010-07-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

The new July Field Poll of California registered voters shows that the majority support the new Arizona law on illegal immigration -- even though the Field Poll question misstates the law. The Field Poll results were that 49% support the law and 44% oppose. Here is how the Field Poll phrased the question:

The state of Arizona recently passed a new law that gives police the right to question anyone who they think may be in the country illegally and ask them to produce documents to verify their legal status. Do you approve or disapprove of Arizona’s new illegal immigration law? Do you feel this way strongly or somewhat?

In fact, the law says police may only investigate immigration status incident to a "lawful stop, detention, or arrest". The police are also not allowed to stop someone based on suspicion about their immigration status. And even after a lawful stop, detention, or arrest" the police may not question someone about immigration status simply based on their race or national origin.

So, I think the Field Poll was asking a false and biased question. But still they found the majority support the law.

Are they Muslim Terrorists motivated by politics or Islamic Terrorists?

2010-07-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Over at the Washington Post at On Religion, there are some posts on whether we should use the phrase Islamic Terrorist. John Esposito has argued that they may be Muslim terrorists, but it is wrong to call them Islamic. He argues that they are really motivated by politics and not religion. So, I'm posting the Times Square Bomber's video where he explains his motivation.

I think Ronald Rychlak got it right:

I don't know how we are going to resolve issues that surround our very different world views, but I am quite certain that restricting what we say - whether that means barring topics from textbooks or rejecting the use of terms like 'Islamic terrorist' and 'jihad' - is not a good start. Let's first be honest in our language and our discussions. That will be hard, but it is the surest way to the truth. If we get to the truth, let's hope that we can also find peace.

Oakland: charge white outside agitators instigating riot

2010-07-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

Like many in the Bay Area, I was worried about a possible riot in Oakland when the verdict came out in the trial of the Bay Area Rapid Transit officer who killed the young African-American Oscar Grant. There had been riots the previous year over this case, and as Zombie documented, some communists and anarchists were seeking to use the verdict to promote a riot.

Well, the verdict came out last Thursday night and we only had a mini-riot. And the really good news is the police caught the white communists and anarchists who were trying to instigate rioting. These were young white people from outside of Oakland who were coming into Oakland to incite the local African-American youths to violence. Matier and Ross are reporting today:

Throw the book: Oakland City Attorney John Russo says he's exploring suing some of the dozens of "outside agitators" who came looking for trouble in downtown Oakland after Thursday's verdict in the Johannes Mehserle trial.

"I want to throw the book at them, and see if we can hold them civilly liable for some of the city's cost," Russo said Friday.

He says he'll talk about the idea first with District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, who must decide whether to file criminal charges against the 78 people arrested Thursday night.

At the very least, Russo said he'd like to get a stay-away order to keep some of the troublemakers from returning to the city.

"People have the complete right to protest," he said. "But that is different than using the tragedy to act out your own personal psychodrama.

"I wouldn't even dignify these clowns with the name 'anarchists,' because that would suggest they actually had a philosophy," Russo said.

"I just can't follow how a bunch of young white people come into a city that is two-thirds people of color and start trashing it because they are supposedly mad about racism," he said. "Why don't they wear swastikas and be skinheads?"

Some of these whites had even painted their faces black:

One group tore through the metal gate protecting a Footlocker shoe store on Broadway near 14th Street, shattered a window and emptied the shelves. Soon there were shoe boxes on the street.

Afterward, the group moved across the street and smashed a window at the Far East National Bank building and rampaged inside. Graffiti was sprayed on the bank wall reading "Riot for Oscar." Up and down Broadway within the police lines, skirmishes broke out between officers and small groups of protesters, some wearing black face paint.

Rioters ran down the street with officers in pursuit, and some were tackled as other protesters tossed debris at the police. The BART stations at 12th and 19th streets were closed down at times to avoid problems, and at one point officers used smoke bombs to disperse crowds.

Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts said the people causing trouble did not seem to be Oakland residents bent on voicing displeasure at the Mehserle verdict. He described them as outsiders "who are almost professional people who go into crowds like this and cause problems."

USA to assist Muslim efforts in UN to criminalize "defamation of religion"

2010-06-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

Rashad Hussain, Obama's special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), told the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Wednesday that the USA will work with the OIC in the United Nations on defamation of religion. This is terrible. The OIC has been pursuing an effort to have the UN ban the defamation of religion.

Hussain has now divulged that the U.S. will support the OIC in the latter’s United Nations effort to criminalize “defamation of religion” – widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights. "The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe," said Hussain. He had previously said, at the above-mentioned April “post-Cairo” conference, that the U.S. would work with the OIC to defend the Muslim head-scarf against prohibitions on its display in schools and governmental offices – a measure common to secular France and now Islamist-ruled, but still legally-secular Turkey, as well as Muslim-majority Tunisia and Kosovo.

I don't think he should be conflating the headscarf issue with the "defamation of religion". A strong argument can be made for allowing headscarves as a freedom of expression issue, just as criticism of religion is an issue of freedom of expression. Prohibiting defamation of religion goes against the USA 1st Amendment protecting free speech.

Just this March, the USA was taking a firm stand against "defamation of religion" legislation in the UN :

Eileen Donahoe, U.S. ambassador to the UN, also slammed the resolution as an "ineffective way to address" concerns about discrimination.

"We cannot agree that prohibiting speech is the way to promote tolerance, because we continue to see the 'defamation of religions' concept used to justify censorship, criminalisation, and in some cases violent assaults and deaths of political, racial, and religious minorities around the world," she said.

"Contrary to the intentions of most member states, governments are likely to abuse the rights of individuals in the name of this resolution, and in the name of the Human Rights Council," added the U.S. envoy.

Sperm donor kids not really all right

2010-06-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

Slate has an article about a new study of 18- to 45-year-olds including 485 who were conceived via sperm donation, 562 adopted as infants, and 563 raised by their biological parents that has found that children conceived by sperm donation are more likely to have problems with the law, substance abuse and mental health:

Regardless of socioeconomic status, donor offspring are twice as likely as those raised by biological parents to report problems with the law before age 25. They are more than twice as likely to report having struggled with substance abuse. And they are about 1.5 times as likely to report depression or other mental health problems.

Here's a link to the whole study report.

Will Mitregate effect Episcopal funding of Anglican Communion Office?

2010-06-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

Is Ruth Gledhill of The Times raising the possibility that the Episcopal Church may soon retaliate financially against the Anglican Communion Office (ACO) for the recent insult to the Presiding Bishop on the occasion of preaching and presiding at Southwerk Cathedral?

In her article in The Times, Gledhill notes:

Significantly, The Episcopal Church funds at least 40 per cent of the budget of the Anglican Communion Office, without which the Anglican Communion and its 38 provinces would be unable to continue as a coherent body.

And in her blog, Gledhill notes regarding the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church meeting in Baltimore:

Apparently the question of the ACO budget is one of the issues on the agenda this week...

The juxtaposition of the Archbishop of Canterbury's lines in the sand with the financial stakes serves to underscore the courage he is now demonstrating. And the difficult position the Secretary General of the ACO, Canon Kenneth Kearon, faces in his meeting with Executive Council.

Germany: Religious Muslim boys more violent, study says

2010-06-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

A study of 45,000 teenagers (14, 15 and 16 year olds) in Germany has found that boys growing up in religious Muslim families are more likely to be violent. The study, conducted by Christian Pfeiffer of the criminal research institute of Lower Saxony, took into account the level of education, standard of living in the families, how religious the teenagers considered themselves, and how integrated they felt in Germany.

Pfeiffer said that even when other social factors were taken into account, there remained a significant correlation between religiosity and readiness to use violence. There were some positive correlations too he said, noting that young religious Muslims were much less likely than their non-Muslim counterparts to drink alcohol – or to steal from shops.

The increased likelihood to use violence was restricted to Muslim boys Pfeiffer said – Muslim girls were just as likely to be violent as non-Muslim girls.

...

The results showed that Muslim boys from immigrant families were more than twice as likely to agree with macho statements than boys from Christian immigrant families. The rate was highest among those considered as very religious, Pfeiffer said. They were also more likely to be using violent computer games and have criminal friends.

TheI selected quotes above from the article gave factual information about the study. Much of what I edited out were the efforts of the researcher to report his results without being labeled a bigot.

Gaza bound Flotilla response to request from Israeli army

2010-06-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

I'd think this was a fraud expect
1) for seeing that video of Helen Thomas last week,
2) this is from the official Israeli Defense Force News desk,
3) a story about it is carried in the Jerusalem Post.

"This is the Israeli Navy, You are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade."

"Shut up. Go back to Auschwitz."

"We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter"

"We're helping Arabs going against the US. Don't forget 9/11 guys."

Douglas County GA Tea Party: Still Clinging to Guns and Religion

2010-06-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

Today is the anniversary of D-day, the day in World War II that the US had the courage to invade Normandy. That was before I was born, and my father, who did fight in WWII was also a native Californian and fought in the Pacific.

In honor of D-Day, I am posting this video of a moment at a Tea party across the country from me in the state of Georgia. Thank you for still clinging to your God and your guns.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Hat Tip to America Daughter

New documentary The Lottery shows Teacher's Union rent mobs

2010-06-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

I really want to see the new documentary The Lottery about charter schools in Harlem. The Wall Street Journal today had an interview with the filmmaker, Madeleine Sackler, Storming the School Barricades by Bari Weiss, that describes how she came to understand that the teacher's union was paying Acorn to create a false sense that parents were against the charter schools:

Her initial aim was simple. "Going into the film I was excited just to tell a story," she says. "A vérité film, a really beautiful, independent story about four families that you wouldn't know otherwise" in the months leading up to the lottery for the Harlem Success Academy.

But on the way to making the film she imagined, she "stumbled on this political mayhem—really like a turf war about the future of public education." Or more accurately, she happened upon a raucous protest outside of a failing public school in which Harlem Success, already filled to capacity, had requested space.

"We drove by that protest," Ms. Sackler recalls. "We were on our way to another interview and we jumped out of the van and started filming." There she discovered that the majority of those protesting the proliferation of charter schools were not even from the neighborhood. They'd come from the Bronx and Queens.

"They all said 'We're not allowed to talk to you. We're just here to support the parents.'" But there were only two parents there, says Ms. Sackler, and both were members of Acorn. And so, "after not a lot of digging," she discovered that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) had paid Acorn, the controversial community organizing group, "half a million dollars for the year." (It cost less to make the film.)

Finding out that the teachers union had hired a rent-a-mob to protest on its behalf was "the turn for us in the process." That story—of self-interested adults trying to deny poor parents choice for their children—provided an answer to Ms. Sackler's fundamental question: "If there are these high-performing schools that are closing the achievement gap, why aren't there more of them?"

Here's the trailer for the film:

But I also want to juxtapose this film with the Chris Christy video I saw over at Nickie Goomba's site.

Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World

2010-06-04T13:38:00.001-07:00

Afghan girls flogged for fleeing forced marriages

2010-06-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

Young girls in Afghanistan (13 and a 14 year old ) being flogged for running away from arranged marriages. They had been married to old men who beat them when they resisted consummating the marriages. However, a police officier in an ajoining province found them and returned them to their village. In Afghanistan, marriage of girls under 16 is against the law and flogging is against the law.

The New York Times reports:

Forced into a so-called marriage exchange, where each girl was given to an elderly man in the other’s family, Khadija and Basgol later complained that their husbands beat them when they tried to resist consummating the unions. Dressed as boys, they escaped and got as far as western Herat Province, where their bus was stopped at a checkpoint and they were arrested.

Although Herat has shelters for battered and runaway women and girls, the police instead contacted the former warlord, Fazil Ahad Khan, whom Human Rights Commission workers describe as the self-appointed commander and morals enforcer in his district in Ghor Province, and returned the girls to his custody.

After a kangaroo trial by Mr. Khan and local religious leaders, according to the commission’s report on the episode, the girls were sentenced to 40 lashes each and flogged on Jan. 12.

Efforts to call this to the attention of the authorities have meet with indifference:

The Human Rights Commission took the videotapes and the results of its investigation to the governor of Ghor Province, Sayed Iqbal Munib, who formed a commission to investigate it but took no action, saying the district was too insecure to send police there. A coalition of civic groups in the province called for his dismissal over the matter.

Nor has Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry replied to demands from the commission to take action in the case, according to the commission’s chairwoman, Sima Samar. A spokesman for the ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Humbolt County: More Bad Trips for LSD Users

2010-05-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

Humbolt County in Northern California is "the heartland of high-grade marijuana farming in California." The county has been ceded to the marijuana growing industry, as one can see in the film Humbolt County. But now I see in the San Franicisco Chronicle that LSD is a problem there.

Police in one Humboldt County town are warning LSD users to beware after responding to a rash of incidents apparently connected to bad acid trips.

Arcata police say the problems began last month when officers responded to a home where paramedics found a 31-year-old man who had castrated himself.

I followed this to the source in the Eureka Times-Standard, Arcata Police Report Rash of Bad LSD Trips:

It started on April 18, when officers responded to a residence to help Arcata-Mad River Ambulance personnel with a 31-year-old man who had just castrated himself. Medics and officers couldn't find the man's testicles, according to APD, and he later told police that he'd flushed them down the toilet because they contained “monsters.”

Then, beginning on May 8, the incidents picked up. A 21-year old man took LSD and wandered from his home without adequate clothing or shoes and without saying where he was going. The man wandered in the forest for two days while his family and friends looked for him. He returned two days later, according to police.

The next day, police were called to Mad River Hospital to assist with a combative 19-year-old man reportedly undergoing flashbacks -- two weeks after he took LSD.

And the list goes on.

The police are not sure if the recent incidents are due to bad LSD or an increase in usage because the police have not been able to obtain samples related to the incidents, according to Arcata Police Chief Tom Chapman. He also made some general observations about the drug:

Chapman said people using the drug can become a danger to themselves and others, and that its use can trigger a mental health “break” in someone with underlying mental health issues.

Arcata is Humbolt County's college town, home of Humbolt State University.

Just Completed My Absentee Ballot -- Voted for Poizner

2010-05-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I received a phone call from one of the automated polling companies. At first I thought it was another Robo-Call. But, it wasn't, so I listened. The questions were about my opinions of the Republican Primary candidates for governor and senator. I used to hang up on these automated polls, but this time I listened to the questions and pressed the number on my phone to answer each one. I wasn't completely honest. On Meg Whitman, I chose the number to indicate I had heard about her and had no opinion. In fact, I had formed a negative opinion of her, but I wasn't quite ready to tell that to the machine.

I have been receiving so many robo-calls this past week. And many Meg Whitman mailers. A few weeks ago, I was a lucky recipient of the Meg Mag, a 48 page magazine titled Meg 2010: Building a New California. I was going to vote for her until I received that extravaganza. The state of California is going broke and she is running as a fiscal conservative who will get the state spending under control. Before the Meg Mag I knew she was spending $65 million on her Primary campaign (well, $68 million now, but who's counting?) and I recognized intellectually that she was spending too much.

But when I got the Meg Mag I couldn't stand the cognitive dissonance. I thought of the old saying "the medium is the message". Whatever good was in the content of the Meg mag, the message I got was the profligacy of creating such a campaign mailer. It is the size of a news weekly. And many pages are just photographs, with maybe a caption or a few lines of text. The message I got was: Spendthrift.

I decided to pay attention to Steve Poizner. And I liked what I saw. As Deborah Saunders explains in her piece on the Meg Mag, Whitman can spend, but can she govern?, Poizner has been

a Republican active in politics over the last decade. While Whitman didn't even register as a Republican until 2007, Poizner volunteered in public schools, steeped himself in the charter school movement and ran for office in a decidedly Democratic district. Failing in that race, he went on to win the state insurance commissioner's post, a rare statewide office win for a Republican. Poizner proclaimed, "I'm not a rookie."

The I got another Meg Whitman vanity piece. This is smaller than the Meg Mag, but even worse in terms of its message. The cover is a large photo of Meg Whitman as a young girl with her mother. Her mother looks nice in a Barbara Bush sort of way and Meg is about 12 or so. Then you open the cover and there is a portrait photo of Meg, again at about 12 or so. The text on the accompanying page reads

"My mom, Margaret, was a determined woman and taught me I could accomplish anything. When we were young, she packed my brother, sister, and me into a Ford Econoline van, and we spent three months car-camping throughout the West" California seemed larger than life, a place where anything seemed possible."

I thought, this is ridiculous. This is childish. The point we Californians have learned is that anything is not possible, at least any more. We are going broke! Why are you spending your money sending me this?

So, now I've shared my secret with you all, the negative opinion I've formed of Meg Whitman. And I've marked my ballot. I voted for Poizner because he has shown an interest in the issues facing California for many years now. He is currently serving in state government. And I think he will hold up better against Jerry Brown in the General Election. Brown is frugal and always was. Whitman has proven herself to be a spendthrift. And California needs a frugal governor.

Times Square Bomber: "Cartoons of Beloved Prophet as War Drums"

2010-05-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

CNN has a story that includes a 2006 email from the Times Square Bomber , Faisal Shahzad, that gives some insight into his religious views and hostility to the West and the US in particular. This would seem to put to rest any confusion whether the bombing was motivated by radical Islam.

Within the three page email we find:

It is no doubt that we today Muslim, followers of Islam are attacked and occupied by foreign infidel forces. The crusade has already started against Islam and Muslims with cartoons of our beloved Prophet PBUH as War drums.

We don't yet know why he chose the Times Square location, but this reference to how offensive he finds cartoons of Mohammed leaves open the possibility that he may have been reacting to the recent South Park episode put out by Comedy Central.

Hat Tip Women Against Shariah

Kagen and the Decline of the American WASP

2010-05-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Some facts and ideas from two articles in the Wall Street Journal today are worth considering.

The first article "That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP" directly discusses the absence of Protestants on the Supreme Court.

Of the 111 Supreme Court Justices who have served, 35 have been Episcopalians, making them the largest religious group on the court, according to court historians. The court's first non-Protestant was Catholic Justice Roger Taney, appointed by President Andrew Jackson in 1836.

Whether the court's religious makeup even matters in today's legal world has become a subject of hot debate. Yet by ushering in a Protestant-free court, Ms. Kagan is helping to sweep away some of the last vestiges of a group that ruled American politics, wealth and culture for much of the nation's history.

"The fact that we're going to zero Protestants in the court may not be as significant as the fact that her appointment perfectly reflects the decline of the Establishment, or the WASP Establishment, in America," said David Campbell, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

The article goes on to note that other groups are now wealthier than Protestants:

In old-money enclaves like Palm Beach, Fla., Nantucket, Mass., and Greenwich, Conn., WASPs are being priced out of their waterfront estates and displaced on their nonprofit boards by Jewish, Catholic and other non-Protestant entrepreneurs.

A survey by Pew Research found only 21% of mainline U.S. Protestants had income of $100,000 or more, compared with 46% of Jews and 42% of Hindus.

Then in her column "The Lamest Show on Earth", Peggy Noonan describes what she sees as "the great class marker of the age":

The ones on top now and in the future will be those who start off with the advantage not of great wealth but of the great class marker of the age: two parents who are together and who drive their children toward academic excellence. It isn't "Mom and Dad had millions" anymore as much as "Mom and Dad made me do my homework, gave me emotional guidance, made sure I got to trombone lessons, and drove me to soccer."

I think historically mainline Protestants were providing their children with "two parents who are together and who drive their children toward academic excellence." Mainline Protestant churches used to be places where parents could take their children to be surrounded by others who shares the values of two-parent families who valued education. The sexual morality of the Bible emphasized the two parent family. And the Protestant tradition was based on every family being able to read their own Bible, so literacy was emphasized.

These days, mainline Protestants are more concerned with "social justice" and personal gratification. The parents in the churches can get divorced and still be beloved members of the community because divorce is no longer stigmatized. Episcopal priests now celebrate the move to authenticity when men divorce their wives to live authentically in gay relationships. Morality is now about helping in soup kitchens or organizing a protest for some public issue (health care, immigrant rights, etc.) And the ones who are being short changed are the children of the church.

Arizona: 46% of K-2nd grade school children are "English Language Learners"

2010-05-03T08:20:00.001-07:00

The people of the state of Arizona say they are being overwhelmed by non-English speaking illegal immigrants and their children. Maybe it is true. I found this table in an article in the Wall Street Journal last Friday on education of non-English speaking school children in Arizona:

How much extra does it cost the state per pupil to educate "English Language Learners"?

Here's a news article I found that says the legal formula estimates the extra costs of educating the English Language Learners at 40 million but:

Horne places that cost at a fraction of the amount put together by the Arizona School Administrators at $304 million. Horne explained he arrived at the $40 million after he weeded out extra costs and deleted textbooks and classroom-space expenses because they are not allowed under the formula created to guide spending on ELL instruction.

Much of the $40 million covers the hiring of 1,500 extra teachers, he said.

Why aren't the newspapers talking abut this when they report on the new legislation in Arizona?

Update: I just found a report from the California Legislative Analyst's Office on the 2007-8 budget that says that for California "Nearly 40 percent of the state’s kindergarteners and roughly one-third of the state’s elementary school students are classified as EL."

Was New York Car Bomb Intended for Comedy Central?

2010-05-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Viacom building, the parent company of Comedy Central, is located in New York City on Broadway, taking up the block between 44th and 45th. The car bomb was on the southwest corner of 45th St. and Broadway. Please do check the link and do a maximum close up. You will see that the southwest corner of 45th and Broadway is the corner of the Viacom building.

While the US news media are reporting the location as adjacent to the Lion King theater production, the UK's Telegraph is reporting the Viacom Building could have been the terrorist target:

The location is also adjacent to the Viacom building, fuelling speculation that it might be linked to the company's controversial South Park cartoon which recently depicted Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.

Arne Duncan -- Some pigs are more equal than others

2010-03-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, when the US Education Secretary Arne Duncan was running the Chicago schools, his office kept a secret list of special admissions requests to get students in to the elite public Chicago college prep high schools. Admissions to these schools was supposed to be based on test scores, but Chicago political insiders were hoping a special request from Duncan's office would assist their special kids.

The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan's tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley's office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

Non-connected parents, such as those who sought spots for their special-needs child or who were new to the city, also appear on the log. But the politically connected make up about three-quarters of those making requests in the documents obtained by the Tribune.

And,

Many of the politicians named on Pickens' log acknowledged that they made calls on students' behalf because this is how the system works in Chicago. They weighed in on behalf of relatives, friends and campaign workers.

"…Whenever anybody asked me — whether it was a relative, a distant relative, a next-door neighbor or the guy across the street — I would write letters," said Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., 27th, who has ended the practice. "Sometimes the kids get in; sometimes they don't.

Here's how it worked for fromer Senator Carol Mosely Braun, who lives in Hyde Park in Chicago and now has a private law practice there:

In 2008, former U.S. Sen. Braun sought help for two students, though she said Monday she does not recall placing a call to Duncan's office. Pickens said she called him, seeking help getting a student into Whitney Young Magnet High School, and he asked Principal Joyce Kenner to call the former senator back.

Braun said she called Kenner to inquire after one child's mother told her the student's application had been "lost in a computer glitch." Braun said Kenner told her: "I'll take care of it."

The child got into Whitney Young, despite a below-average admission score. The Tribune is not naming any students involved because they are minors and it is unlikely they knew about efforts being made on their behalf.

"This process is not pure, and everyone knows it," Braun said. "The process is a disaster, and quite frankly, I don't have a problem making a call. If the process were not as convoluted as it is, parents wouldn't be asking for help."

While Duncan says he did not "intercede" for anyone, Duncan does admit he forwarded on the request for special consideration to the principals of the elite schools.

Current top Duncan aide Peter Cunningham also confirmed that Duncan talked to the inspector general, but he insisted by e-mail that Duncan "did not lobby or intercede for anyone.''

"In an effort to be responsive, we would log these calls, get the information and forward it to principals, but it was entirely a principal's discretion to respond to the requests," Cunningham said.

As the New York Times reported on this story:

According to The Chicago Tribune, about three-quarters of those in the log had political connections. The log noted “AD” as the person requesting help for 10 students, and as a co-requester about 40 times, according to The Tribune. Mr. Duncan’s mother and wife also appeared to have requested help for students.

“The fact that his name might be next to some of these names doesn’t mean he was trying to get the kid in a school,” Mr. Cunningham said. “He was only asking after someone said, ‘Hi, Arne, is there any way to get into this school?’ ”

Mr. Cunningham said he did not believe principals would have felt any special pressure because Mr. Duncan was the source of the inquiry. “We were always very clear with them that it was up to the principal to make the decision,” he said.

But the Chicago Sun Times isn't buying that excuse. As they write in today's editorial:

Chicago parents have long suspected that a shadow admissions system gave the elite an alternate way to go after a seat at the city's highly coveted college-prep high schools.
Turns out they were right.

The latest bit of evidence is this week's revelation that former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan's office kept a list of aldermen, businessmen and others in positions of power who called his office to appeal admissions denials at test-based public high schools. The flood of calls suggests these folks knew the regular route wasn't the only route.

It appears that most kids were ultimately rejected, and some regular Chicagoans were on the list too -- looking for a safer school for their kid, for example. Duncan's associates defend the list, saying CPS was just organizing the crush of calls they got and that they demanded no favors for the callers. They simply passed the information to principals, without any recommendation.

But in real life, everyone knows a call from the CEO's office isn't received like any old call.

Seems like a good time for the Obama administration to drum up a lot of media attention to violent rhetoric about the Health Care bill.

Social Justice means not having to respect free speech rights of others

2010-03-25T10:01:00.001-07:00

I was appalled this morning as I was reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle to find that the President of the UC (University of California) Students Association appeared before the UC Regents and defended the Irvine Eleven for shouting down the Israeli Ambassador as he tried to deliver a lecture on the UC Irvine campus.

Calling it an intolerable attack on free speech, Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake told the regents that "a great university depends on the free exchange of ideas. This is non-negotiable."

Yet, one by one the students disagreed.

Victor Sánchez, president of the UC Students Association, called the attempt to silence Oren "a social justice issue."

Here's a video of the disruptions. You might think, "Do I have to watch the whole thing?" Well, no, but it really does go on and on, interruption after interruption.

I was glad to see the reporter, Nanette Asimov, put a social justice issue in quotation marks. Who determines what is a social justice issue and when the social justice issue trumps free speech?

I had previously been moved almost to tears as I read the article in the Wall Street Journal in which we learned that Sergei Brin had been the motivating factor behind Google's refusal to participate in China's effort to silence dissidents.

Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin pushed the Internet giant to take the risky step of abandoning its China-based search engine as that country’s efforts to censor the Web and suppress dissidents smacked of the “totalitarianism” of his youth in the Soviet Union.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Brin, who came to the U.S. from Russia at the age of 6 in 1979, said the compromises to do business in the world’s largest Internet market had become too great. Finally, a cyberattack that the company traced to Chinese hackers, which stole some of Google’s proprietary computer code and attempted to spy on Chinese activists’ emails, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

China has “made great strides against poverty and whatnot,” Mr. Brin said. “But nevertheless, in some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling.”

I am sure that the Chinese officials view their behavior as socially just and the efforts of the dissidents as efforts to undermine the social justice institutionalized by them.

Then I started reading through the blogs I follow and found Greg Griffith at Stand Firm had posted an article on some gay activists in Boston trying to silence an ex-gay meeting in a church.

Tuesday afternoon, April 28, several major homosexual activist figures, including a prominent state employee, led a screaming demonstration to terrorize a downtown Boston church while it was holding a peaceful ex-gay religious training event inside. Using a bullhorn, they illegally trampled through an adjoining Revolutionary War-era cemetery in order to be directly outside the church's windows. Despite numerous apparent violations of the law, the Boston Police talked with them but refused to make any arrests.

Greg directed as to watch the video at "2:10 when activist Chris Mason holds up a bullhorn to a window with its siren at full blast." But the whole video is instructive as to the tactics of this gay group in Massachusetts.

I am connecting these three, what may seem as disparate, events because to me they show the movements towards and against totalitarianism occurring now in our country. I feel angry at the Irvine Eleven for their behavior but even more so at the UC Student Association President for excusing their behavior because he agrees with their cause. I so admire Sergei Brin for getting Google to stand up to the Chinese government for attempting to silence dissent. And I see the behavior of the gays in Boston as coming from the same place as the Irvine Eleven.

They think that since their cause is just, their tactics are acceptable -- Social justice by any means necessary. But if we lose our rights, like free speech, to implement "social justice", their is no guarantee that future leaders will agree with what is social justice. And those future leaders will not have to give those who see an alternative vision of social justice the free speech to articulate it.

This way leads to totalitarianism. And then won't these "useful idiots" with their utopian ideals of "social justice" be the next to go?

Anyway, that's what I was thinking as I read the news today.

Nigeria: 162 People to be Prosecuted for March 7 Massacre

2010-03-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

Reuters is reporting that 162 people face prosecution, of which 41 face the death penalty, for the March 7 massacre of about 500 Christians, mostly women and children, in the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Rasat and Jeji near the city of Jos:

"Forty-one of the suspects are to be charged with terrorism and culpable homicide, which are punishable by death," police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said.

The remaining detainees would be charged with unlawful possession of firearms, rioting and "mischief by fire" for the burning of buildings during the attacks.

Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly triggered unrest in central Nigeria's "Middle Belt" over the past decade.

The "Muslim settlers from the north" are Fulani nomadic cattle herders. Those attacked were Berom.

For more context, see these posts on the 2008 riots in Jos:
Media Reporting on Muslim Violence in Jos
Christian Leaders Believe Jos Riots Were Coordinated and Planned

Evidence "Reefer Madness" was right?

2010-03-17T09:22:00.001-07:00

A study published this month in the Archives of General Psychiatry concludes that "early cannabis use is associated with psychosis-related outcomes in young adults".

Compared with those who had never used cannabis, young adults who had 6 or more years since first use of cannabis (ie, who commenced use when around 15 years or younger) were twice as likely to develop a nonaffective psychosis and were 4 times as likely to have high scores on the PDI.
(Note: PDI refers to the Peters et al Delusions Inventory)

This study used sibling pairs to reduce the likelihood that unmeasured genetic and environmental factors explained the findings, a criticism that had been made of previous studies which also found a link between marijuana use and psuychosis.The seven previous studies finding this effect and referenced by the study are:

1. Andréasson S, Allebeck P, Engstrom A, Rydberg U. Cannabis and schizophrenia: a longitudinal study of Swedish conscripts. Lancet. 1987;2(8574):1483-1486.

2. Zammit S, Allebeck P, Andreasson S, Lundberg I, Lewis G. Self reported cannabis use as a risk factor for schizophrenia in Swedish conscripts of 1969: historical cohort study. BMJ. 2002;325(7374):1199.

3. van Os J, Bak M, Hanssen M, Bijl RV, de Graaf R, Verdoux H. Cannabis use and psychosis: a longitudinal population-based study. Am J Epidemiol. 2002;156(4):319-327.

4. Henquet C, Krabbendam L, Spauwen J, Kaplan C, Lieb R, Wittchen HU, van Os J. Prospective cohort study of cannabis use, predisposition for psychosis, and psychotic symptoms in young people. BMJ. 2005;330(7481):11.

5. Weiser M, Reichenberg A, Rabinowitz J, Kaplan Z, Caspi A, Yasvizky R, Mark M, Knobler HY, Nahon D, Davidson M. Self-reported drug abuse in male adolescents with behavioral disturbances, and follow-up for future schizophrenia. Biol Psychiatry. 2003;54(6):655-660.

6. Arseneault L, Cannon M, Poulton R, Murray R, Caspi A, Moffitt TE. Cannabis use in adolescence and risk for adult psychosis: longitudinal prospective study. BMJ. 2002;325(7374):1212-1213.

7. Fergusson DM, Horwood LJ, Swain-Campbell NR. Cannabis dependence and psychotic symptoms in young people. Psychol Med. 2003;33(1):15-21.

The popular culture seems to have embraced the idea that making an association between marijuana use and psychosis is ludicrous, as exemplified by the ridiculing of the 1930's film Reefer Madness. But now it seems contemporary medical studies confirm that film's eponymous claim.

San Francisco: Assaults on gays may have been Islam inspired

2010-03-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco police have three Muslim men in custody for a string of assaults targeting gay men along a stretch of 16th Street near Guerrero in the Mission district of San Francisco. The district attorney's office says prosecutors have evidence the men, Shafiq Hashemi, Sayed Bassam, and Mohammad Habibzada, may have committed the alleged acts because they believe homosexuality is against their religion. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Associated Press reports on this omit the religion angle, but the local KTVU story has it at the end:

Authorities: New Charges Planned In BB Gun Hate Crime Case
Posted: 11:21 am PST March 12,2010

SAN FRANCISCO -- Three Hayward men accused of targeting a San Francisco man they thought was gay with a BB gun were taken into custody in a courtroom Friday after a vide tape emerged showing 11 more victims, authorities said.

The San Francisco District Attorney's Office has not filed an amended complaint against the men -- Shafiq Hashemi, 21, Sayed Bassam, 21, and Mohammad Habibzada, 24 -- but said there were plans to do so based on evidence from a videotape allegedly found with the men that appears to show 11 additional victims.

All three men were arrested the night of the Feb. 26 incident and appeared in court Friday.

They had been out of custody after posting $50,000 bail last week, but prosecutor Victor Hwang today asked Judge Bruce Chan to raise their bail to $450,000 apiece.

Defense attorneys for the men did not contest the bail hike and the men were handcuffed and led off to jail. Arraignment and plea entry was again postponed until April 8.

Defense attorneys declined to comment about the case to reporters.

In the initial case, a 27-year-old San Francisco man had just come out of a bar at 16th and Guerrero streets in the Mission District at about 10 p.m. when he was shot once in the cheek, police said.

The man, who was not seriously injured, called police and told them he had been shot from a nearby car, which then drove off. While officers were interviewing him outside the bar, the suspect car drove by again and police pulled it over.

Inside they allegedly found the three men with a "rifle-style" BB gun and a video camera, which investigators later discovered had recorded the shooting, according to police.

At the time of the arrest, "The suspects did make a confession, basically stating that they came to San Francisco to target gay people," police spokesman Officer Samson Chan said.

According to district attorney's office spokesman Brian Buckelew, 11 more unnamed male victims were shot at along the same stretch of 16th street that evening. None of the additional victims have come forward to police.

Anyone who may have been a victim is asked to contact the Police Department's hate crimes unit at (415) 553-1133.

Prosecutors have charged all three men with assault with a deadly weapon, negligent discharge of a firearm, hate crimes and attempted mayhem, a charge relating to the possibility of a disabling or disfiguring injury.

According to Buckelew, the men are Muslim and prosecutors have evidence they may have committed the alleged acts because they believe homosexuality is against their religion.

Muslims: Love the People, Hate Their God

2010-03-06T08:45:00.000-08:00

Here are two people with very different backgrounds making what I perceive to be similar points about Islam and the Muslim people.

In the Wall Street Journal today, we have a piece quoting Mosab Hasan Yiusef, the son of a Hamas leader, arguing that:

"At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don't want to admit this is an ideological war."

"The problem is not in Muslims," he continues. "The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to."

Then we have this very brief (55 seconds) in which Geert Wilders explains his concerns with Islam:

Many intellectuals argue that there are many understandings of the Quran and not one Islam. But both these men see the violence in Islam as essential to it, as the way God is portrayed in the Quran.

Bill to eliminate research to cure pedophilia

2010-02-22T10:09:00.000-08:00

There is a new bill being proposed to the California legislature this week, AB2199, to repeal Section 8050 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, which reads:

8050. The State Department of Mental Health, acting through the
superintendent of the Langley Porter Clinic, shall plan, conduct, and
cause to be conducted scientific research into the causes and cures
of sexual deviation, including deviations conducive to sex crimes
against children, and the causes and cures of homosexuality, and into methods of identifying potential sex offenders.

The bill to repeal this was introduced by California Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, but according to the Sacramento Bee, the gay rights group Equality California is the motivating factor behind this move:

Lowenthal's chief of staff, Will Shuck, said the section was brought to Lowenthal's attention by Equality California, the state's largest gay-rights group.

"This section of the code is deplorable," said Geoff Kors, the group's executive director, because it implies both that homosexuality is an illness and that gays are a threat to children.

And their sponsorship of the bill is confirmed on the Equality California website.

But if the language making the link with homosexuality was really the problem, couldn't the section have been revised like this to strike out the part about homosexuality and continue the parts about sex crimes against children?

8050. (my example of a proposed revision) The State Department of Mental Health, acting through the
superintendent of the Langley Porter Clinic, shall plan, conduct, and
cause to be conducted scientific research into the causes and cures
of sexual ~~deviation, including~~ deviations conducive to sex crimes
against children, ~~and the causes and cures of homosexuality,~~ and into methods of identifying potential sex offenders.

That would be simple, right? So I am wondering if Equality Califiornia doesn't want the state to fund research into "the causes and and cures of sexual deviations conducive to sex crimes against children and into methods of identifying potential sexual offenders." Is it possible that gay rights advocates are concerned that such research might lead back to homosexuality? Or is it that the gay rights ideology of sexual expression ultimately does require support of child sexual abusers as well as homosexuals?

Public Knowledge: Fed Judge in Prop 8 Trial is Gay

2010-02-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

The Matier and Ross column in the San Francisco Chronicle today discusses the common knowledge that Vaughn Walker, the judge in the Prop 8 trial, is gay. M&R have quotes from some gay leaders saying that they don't think he will be biased in his decision because of his personal life. But he certainly has made some favorable decisions for plaintiffs that have been overturned by higher courts.

And it is hard to imagine he can fairly issue a ruling that gays lack political power, an important part of the plaintiffs argument, when he, a gay man, is the judge in the case, as well as the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Gay activist Michael Petralis has noted other cases of gay judges ruling on gay marriage cases: Superior Court Judge James L. Warren handled the case of gay marriages performed in San Francisco during 2004 and California Supreme Court Justice Carol Corrigan was one of the six judges in the 6-1 majority ruling last May that upheld Prop 8.

Judge being gay a nonissue during Prop. 8 trial

The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.

Many gay politicians in San Francisco and lawyers who have had dealings with Walker say the 65-year-old jurist, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, has never taken pains to disguise - or advertise - his orientation.

They also don't believe it will influence how he rules on the case he's now hearing - whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure approved by state voters to ban same-sex marriage, unconstitutionally discriminates against gays and lesbians.

"There is nothing about Walker as a judge to indicate that his sexual orientation, other than being an interesting factor, will in any way bias his view," said Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is supporting the lawsuit to overturn Prop. 8.

As evidence, she cites the judge's conservative - albeit libertarian - reputation, and says, "There wasn't anyone who thought (overturning Prop. 8) was a cakewalk given his sexual orientation."

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who has sponsored two bills to authorize same-sex marriage that were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said that as far as he's concerned, Walker's background is a nonissue. "It seems curious to me," he said, that when the state Supreme Court heard a challenge to Prop. 8, the justices' sexual orientation "was never discussed."

Leno added, "I have great respect for Judge Walker, professionally and personally."

Walker has declined to talk about anything involving the Prop. 8 case outside court, and he wouldn't comment to us when we asked about his orientation and whether it was relevant to the lawsuit.

Many San Francisco gays still hold Walker in contempt for a case he took when he was a private attorney, when he represented the U.S. Olympic Committee in a successful bid to keep San Francisco's Gay Olympics from infringing on its name.

"Life is full of irony," the judge replied when we reminded him about that episode.

And did he have any concerns about being characterized as gay?

"No comment."

Shortly after our conversation, we heard from a federal judge who counts himself as a friend and confidant of Walker's. He said he had spoken with Walker and was concerned that "people will come to the conclusion that (Walker) wants to conceal his sexuality."

"He has a private life and he doesn't conceal it, but doesn't think it is relevant to his decisions in any case, and he doesn't bring it to bear in any decisions," said the judge, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the Prop. 8 trial.

"Is it newsworthy?" he said of Walker's orientation, and laughed. "Yes."

He said it was hard to ignore the irony that "in the beginning, when (Walker) sought to be a judge, a major obstacle he had to overcome was the perception that he was anti-gay."

In short, the friend said, Walker's background is relevant in the same way people would want to know that a judge hearing a discrimination case involving Latinos was Latino or a Jewish judge was ruling in a case involving the Anti-Defamation League.

Walker, by the way, didn't seek out the Prop. 8 case - it was assigned to him at random.

If the judge decides that Prop. 8 is unconstitutional, supporters of the measure are sure to take it to the federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. Kendell expects that if that happens, the measure's proponents will make an issue of the judge's sexual orientation - at least in the public arena.

Not so, said Andy Pugno, general counsel for the group that sponsored the Prop. 8 campaign.

"We are not going to say anything about that," Pugno said.

He was quick to assert, however, that Prop. 8 backers haven't gotten a fair shake from Walker in court. He cited both the judge's order for the campaign to turn over thousands of pages of internal memos to the other side and Walker's decision to allow the trial to be broadcast - both of which were overturned by higher courts.

"In many ways, the sponsors of Prop. 8 have been put at significant disadvantage throughout the case," Pugno said. "Regardless of the reason for it."

Wolf in sheep's clothing: Liberal media doesn't get it

2010-02-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

The new anti-Tom Campbell ad from Carly Fiorina's campaign is being dissed by the elites. It is very campy, very funny, over the top. But it sort of works. And maybe it works better if you know the Christian cultural reference from the Sermon on the Mount.

For example, Michael Scherer at Time totally misses the meaning of the red eyed creature disguised in the sheep's hide, calling it an "alien robot sheep, or something" Uh, Michael, that's the wolf in sheep's clothing. And Sherer seems to be unaware that it is culturally normative for Christians to think of themselves as sheep when he writes:
"The coolest part of the whole thing is that Fiorina is positing fiscal conservatives as sheep, which is a bit like Barack Obama running a spot that posits liberals as leeches or lizards,". That only makes sense if there is some canonical text that most liberals use that also uses a metaphor in which they are referred to as leeches or lizards.

All I can think is we have a media elite who don't know some of the primary cultural references of the majority of voters.

Matthew 7:15 (New International Version), quoting Jesus:

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."

Also from Paul's speech to the elders in Acts 20:28-30 (New International Version)

28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.[a] Be shepherds of the church of God,[b] which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.

Egypt: Converts to Christianity In Fear for their Lives

2010-01-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

I am glad to see Fox News on the case of this Christian man and his daughter.

This is the same man we read about in May. While the Fox report attributes the court ruling against recognizing his conversion to a "threat to social order", it does not mention the report also said it was against Sharia (Islamic) Law. Also, the story doesn't connect the death threats with Islamic Law, i.e., that in Islamic Law, converting away from Islam ("apostasy") carries the death penalty.

See here Punishment for Apostasy

Execution

In Islamic law (sharia), the consensus view is that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example, due to an imminent danger of being killed. A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi'a scholars.

A minority of medieval Islamic jurists, notably the Hanafi jurist Sarakhsi (d. 1090), Maliki jurist Ibn al-Walid al-Baji (d. 494 AH) and Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), held that apostasy carries no legal punishment.[6] Some contemporary Islamic Shafi`i jurists, such as the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, some Shi'a jurists such as Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, and some jurists, scholars and writers of other Islamic sects, have argued or issued fatwas that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances, but these minority opinions have not found broad acceptance among the majority of Islamic scholars.

Hat Tip Ohio Anglican

How to act like a lady and how NOT to act like a gentleman

2010-01-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

I thought one of the first rules of courtesy was to NOT criticize the behavior of other adults with whom one is interacting. Here we hear Arlen Specter repeatedly criticizing Michelle Bachmann. Actually it is worse than that. He is telling her how to behave: "Act like a lady."

As well as being churlish, he is being sexist. He seems to think it is alright for him to interrupt her, but that she should not interrupt him.

I guess "acting like a lady" means deferring to men.

Here is the opinion of the expert, Miss Manners, Judith Martin, from her book Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior:

On Correcting Others

Can Miss Manners, whose vocation, whose calling, is correcting etiquette transgressions, condemn the practice? Certainly. Miss Manners corrects only upon request. Then she does it from a distance, with no names attached, and no personal relationship, however distant, between the corrector and the correctee. She does not search out errors like a policeman leaping out of a speed trap. When Miss Manners observes people behaving rudely, she behaves politely to them, and then goes home and snickers about them afterward. That is what the well-bred person does.

The only way to enjoy the fun of catching people behaving disgustingly is to have children. One has to keep having them, however, because it is incorrect to correct grown people, even if you have grown them yourself. This is the mistake that many people make when they give helpful criticism to their children-in-law, who arrive on the scene already grown.

Miss Manners is constantly besieged by people who want to know the tactful manner of pointing out their friends' and relatives' inferiorities. These people, their loved ones report to Miss Manners, chew with their mouth open, mispronounce words, talk too loudly, crack their knuckles, spit, belch and hum tunelessly to themselves. They have bad breath and runs in their stockings. They are too fat, dress badly and do their hair all wrong. How can those who love these people dearly, for reasons that are not clear, and who wish to help them, for reasons that unfortunately are clear, politely let them have it?The answer is that they cannot, certainly not politely.

There are times, in certain trusting relationships, when one can say, "Cracking your knuckles drives me up the wall and if you do it one more time I'll scream," or "Have a mint—there's something wrong with your breath," or "What's that thing on your left front tooth?" No reasonable person should take offense at these remarks. Because they are so frank, they do not seem to carry a history of repulsion long predating the offense. Also, they deal with matters that are more or less easily correctable (although Miss Manners knows some determined knuckle-crackers she suspects aren't half trying to stop), and which it is plausible to assume the offenders hadn't noticed.

What is unacceptable is to criticize things a person cannot easily remedy or may not want to. People who you think are too fat either disagree about what too fat is, are trying to do something about it, or are not trying to do something about it. In no case is it helpful for them to know that other people consider them too fat. Even if it be proven that the mistakes of others come from gross ignorance or from maliciousness, it is not the place of anyone except God, their mothers or Miss Manners to bring this to their attention. As dear Erasmus said, "It is part of the highest civility if, while never erring yourself, you ignore the errors of others." Besides, it is a law of nature that he who corrects others will soon do something perfectly awful himself.

Greece: Athens immigrant problem, is this about race or religion?

2010-01-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

I watched this video and the reporter says this is about race. But at the end of the report we see a protest in the street with the men shouting "Allah Akbar!" That indicates a religious issue.

Sheikh Al-Masri describes a Muslim conversion trick

2010-01-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

This is from a sermon by Egyptian cleric Mahmoud Al-Masri, which aired on Al-Nas TV on August 10, 2009. I came across it in the comments to a blog post about Taqiyya at Jihad Watch. The video does seem to confirm the claim that Islam teaches that deception is clever and good if it is deployed in the service of Islam. It ends with Al-Masri saying "This was a nice trick by this good Muslim."

To me, the story was morally repugnant. Even if we eliminate the anti-semitism and the threat of death parts, the basic idea of tricking someone into converting is vile to me. I don't think a Christian would be comfortable with having converted someone under such false pretensions. It goes against my basic understanding of the meaning of Christianity.

I wondered if this was a rogue cleric and if posting this video would be like posting a video of Fred Phelps and using it to make a point about what Christians think. So I was googling trying to find out more about Mahmoud al-Masri and found a comment at Israellycool that says that in this video Al-Masri is reciting a poem by Ali Zayn El Abidin ibn Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abi Taleb, the great grand son of Mohammad. If that is true, then this sort of trickery that is repugnant to Christian morality really is part of Islam.

Berkeley High: More on eliminating the science lab periods

2010-01-06T12:36:00.002-08:00

Well, the San Francisco Chronicle picked up on the story about the Berkeley science labs today, but avoided any discussion of the racial issues. For my previous post on this, see Berkeley High: Close racial achievement gap by cutting science labs classes. In this morning's SF Chron article, the reporter, Jill Tucker, did a good of explaining how the science lab periods work:

While most high school science classes incorporate labs into regular class time, Berkeley High requires most of its students to attend labs before or after school in the so-called zero or seventh periods.

That means showing up at 7:30 a.m. to, say, dissect frogs, or staying until 4:30 p.m. - additional class time that not surprisingly costs additional money.

and

Currently, students in regular or advanced science classes are required to take one lab class before or after school each week. Students in advanced placement courses take two.

And we find out the real problem is lack of attendance by underachievers:

Yet, while the labs typically are mandatory, students see them as extra time outside the school day, [advanced biology teacher Hilary] Rubin said.

On Monday, 14 of the 27 students in Qatami's lab participated. It was the first day back after winter break, but students said their classmates often skip it.

Zero and seventh periods cut into sleep, jobs, homework, sports and family responsibilities, students said. And they were supposed to be optional, not required.

In the previous article in the East Bay Express, we learn that the science labs were perceived to be "largely classes for white students". Now we know that:
1) the science labs are for all students, but,
2) many students do not put in the time and effort to attend the science labs.

So, why is this a racial issue?

Well, there are twice as many labs for the advanced science classes and we can guess that white kids are disproportionately enrolled in advanced science classes by looking at the racial achievement gap at Berkeley High. We see that for the year 2009 the following percents were at or above proficiency
English Language Arts
White 92%
Black 30.8%

Mathematics
White 87.1%
Black 31.3%

Is it also possible that it is disproportionately the white students who put in the time and effort to attend the science labs and it is disproportionately the black students who do not put in the time and effort to attend the labs? The article does have this paragraph:

But some struggling students don't always attend the extra labs - and ultimately fail the class, said advanced biology teacher Hilary Rubin. That wouldn't necessarily happen if the labs were incorporated into the school day.

Notice how the word "struggling" is used to refer to underperforming students, even in a situation where they appear to be slacking, i.e., not even attending the class at all, rather than making effort?

Another article in the SF Chron today discusses the honoring of the work of Frank Bayliss to get minority students to attend the science labs at San Francisco State University. Bayliss apparently raised funds to pay the students to attend the labs.

Maybe we could close the racial achievement gap at Berkeley High if we paid the black students to attend classes?

Berkeley High: Close racial achievement gap by cutting science labs classes

2010-01-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

The East Bay Express has an interesting report on the recent progress of Berkeley High School's "High School Redesign Plan", tasked with the goal of closing the racial achievement gap. One item in the Redesign Plan that won "virtually unanimous" approval by the School Governance Council is to eliminate five science teachers and the labs they teach so that the money can be redirected to the lowest achieving students.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

The item will go before the Berkeley School Board at their upcoming meeting scheduled for January 13th.

This is actually a brilliant way of "closing the racial achievement gap". It is very difficult to raise up the bottom achievers. Eliminating the opportunities for achievement works directly in that the achievement gap no longer can measure the top levels; If there are no science lab classes, then the differential in science achievement has been reduced. This also works indirectly by driving out the top achievers, whose families move them to other high schools. Driving out the high achievers is fine with those who seek to close the racial achievement gap because they believe that those high achievers are from families who can afford to sell their houses and move to different school districts or put their children in private schools.

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker has some interesting comments on the selective racism of this:

The sheer racism of identifying science as something primarily for whites seems not to penetrate the addled minds of those who fancy themselves advocates for black and Latino students. The absence of any consideration of Asian students is also striking. The city of Berkeley has more Asian households (12,641) than black households (10,874) or Latino households (8,466).

Consider that the university which makes its home in Berkeley and dominates both local employment and community's character has a majority undergraduate population of Asian students, thanks to the fact that California voters approved a state law eliminating racial preferences in state institutions. The science majors at the University of California, Berkeley overwhelmingly comprise Asian students. U.C. Berkeley also boasts 21 faculty members who have won Nobel Prizes, primarily in the sciences. The list of laureates includes two Asians and one Latino, all three science winners.

and Lifson also questions how much money should be allocated to raise up underachievers versus funding the willing achievers/ future contirbutors:

Aside from the repulsive racism of this move, the broader issue to be considered is whether society is better-served by cutting down the achievers and investing in the stragglers -- or whether everyone benefits from the achievements of those who apply themselves enough to excel. I have no hesitation in saying that I am in the latter camp. How does it benefit anyone to have an America made up of mediocre minds?

Powerful Christian Witness Causes Hindu Bomber to Repent

2009-12-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

I just read this on Voice of the Martyrs and wanted to share it with others:

KATHMANDU, Nepal, December 30 (CDN) — Disillusioned with Hindu nationalists, the leader of a militant Hindu extremist group told Compass that contact with Christians in prison had led him to repent of bombing a Catholic church here in May 2008.

Ram Prasad Mainali, the 37-year-old chief of the Nepal Defense Army (NDA), was arrested on Sept. 5 for exploding a bomb in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, in the Lalitpur area of Kathmandu on May 23. The explosion killed a teenager and a newly-married woman from India’s Bihar state and injured more than a dozen others.

In Kathmandu’s jail in the Nakkhu area, Mainali told Compass he regretted bombing the church.

“I bombed the church so that I could help re-establish Nepal as a Hindu nation,” he said. “There are Catholic nations, there are Protestant nations and there are also Islamic nations, but there is no Hindu nation. But I was wrong. Creating a religious war cannot solve anything, it will only harm people.”

Mainali, who is married and has two small daughters, added that he wanted members of all religions to be friendly with one other.

Asked how the change in him came about, he said he had been attending a prison fellowship since he was transferred to Nakkhu Jail from Central Jail four months ago.

“I have been reading the Bible also, to know what it says,” he said.

Of the 450 prisoners in the Nakkhu Jail, around 150 attend the Nakkhu Gospel Church inside the prison premises.

Mainali said he began reading the Bible after experiencing the graciousness of prison Christians.

“Although I bombed the church, Christians come to meet me everyday,” he said. “No rightwing Hindu has come to meet me even once.”

There is much more at the Compass Direct website.

I bolded that sentence about how experiencing the graciousness of Christians was the key. I have been thinking I post too much negative material on this blog and the negative focus is not spiritually wholesome for me or a good Christian witness. Posting the negative material has been helpful for me in identifying what I am concerned about. But, starting now and for this coming year, I am going to try to shift the focus of this blog a little.

Hat Tip: Voice of the Martyrs

Israel: Forensic institute did harvest body parts from Palestinians in 1990's

2009-12-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

Well, they harvested body parts without the families' permission from both Israelis and Palestinians. Actual numbers of bodies from different ethnic groups used is not provided in the AP article, so we can't really know how much this was an abuse of Palestinians or a crime of opportunity .

How disappointing:

1) to find out there was truth to the accusations,

2) that Israel did not put this man in jail, and,

3) that this is coming out now because an anthropology professor at UC Berkeley,Nancy Scheper-Hughes, decided to release the interview she conducted in 2000 with the man who was head of the forensics lab at the time, not Israel government motivated.

The AP story:

Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

In the interview, Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. "We'd glue the eyelid shut," he said. "We wouldn't take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids."

Many of the details in the interview first came to light in 2004, when Hiss was dismissed as head of the forensic institute because of irregularities over use of organs there. Israel's attorney general dropped criminal charges against him, and Hiss still works as chief pathologist at the institute. He had no comment on the TV report.

Hiss became director of the institute in 1988. He said in the interview that the practice of harvesting organs without permission began in the "early 1990s." However, he also said that military surgeons removed a thin layer of skin from bodies as early as 1987 to treat burn victims. Hiss said he believed that was done with family consent. The harvesting ended in 2000, he said.

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss' dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report "anti-Semitic."

The academic, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy, which raised diplomatic tensions between Israel and Sweden and prompted Sweden's foreign minister to call off a visit to the Jewish state.

Scheper-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."

While insisting that all organ harvesting was done with permission, Israel's Health Ministry told Channel 2, "The guidelines at that time were not clear." It added, "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."

USA: 1 in 110 children diagnosed on autism spectrum

2009-12-19T09:47:00.000-08:00

A new CDC study of American eight year olds in 2006 found that about 1% had been diagnosed on the Autism spectrum (ranging from full autism to Asberger's disease). The prevalence in boys is 4 to 5 times the prevalence in girls. In Missouri, almost 2% of eight year old boys have been diagnosed on the autism specturm.

TIME magazine's article reporting on the study distinguishes between increases due to increased awareness and diagnoses versus increases due to an underlying increase in the condition.

Previous studies looking at a narrower population of youngsters have suggested that as much as 40% of the rise in autism cases might be explained by broader diagnostic definitions and by heightened awareness of the condition. But that still leaves 60% of the increase unaccounted for. "Most scientists believe there is something more than just awareness and a broadening definition that is responsible for the rise," says Dr. Gary Goldstein, president of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. "We are seeing some fraction of the increase that is probably due to more cases of autism."

TIME goes on to provide to specify some of the possible causes, focussing on the mother:

Since autism is generally diagnosed before age two, most scientists believe the factors that contribute to ASD occur during pregnancy, or in the months immediately following birth. A pregnant mother's advanced age might be one such influence, along with certain behavioral and environmental exposures she or her newborn baby may experience — any combination of which could be interacting with their particular genetic makeup to promote ASD. Isolating the most causative culprits will be a challenge, say autism experts. "There is so much stuff out there, whether it is diet or infection," says Goldstein. "We could make a list but it's got thousands of things on it."

The Wall Street Street Journal cites Catherine Rice, the CDC scientist who is the study's lead author, on the possible environmental factors leading to the increase:

Dr. Rice also said she couldn't rule out an actual increase in the number of autistic children. Research is under way into possible environmental factors, including vaccinations, household products and diet, as well as genetics, for potential causes, she said.

The Wall Street Journal also cites a source for the possibility that the age of the fathers may be a factor :

Philip Levy, president of YAI Network, a New York-based nonprofit that serves people with disabilities, including autism disorders, said the report confirmed that autism is "a continuing national health crisis." He added that some societal factors were helping to increase the risk of diagnosis. "With fathers in particular, there's a stronger correlation that has been made between older fathers and autistic children," Mr. Levy said.

12 year old raped at SF East Bay middle school

2009-12-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a 12 year old girl was raped in the stairwell of Portola Middle School in El Cerrito last Thursday. Classes were in session. The accused boy is 14. There was a witness who went to get authorities.

A new article this morning in the Chronicle by Jill Tucker has a paragraph with some facts on the number of violent incidents and discipline measures taken at Portola Middle School. We learn that last Spring, some students a Portola attacked a music teacher, pelting her with rocks and knocking her to the ground.

Last school year, Portola reported 381 suspensions and two expulsions, including 76 incidents of violence or force - most notably the rock-throwing incident involving several students who attacked a music teacher, hitting her and knocking her to the ground after she refused them entry to a classroom. Yet overall, the school had a lower suspension/expulsion rate than most of the district's other middle schools, according to state Department of Education records.

If several students attacked the music teacher, there should be more than two expulsions for the year. This indicates an unwillingness to exercise appropriate discipline by the school's authorities. (Where is a Safe Schools Czar when we need one?)

Portola Middle School is in a neighborhood of homes that cost around half a million. Here is a Zillow of the neighborhood.

Across the street from Portola is the Middle School of Prospect Sierra School, a private K-8.

Tuition for 2009-2010

Elementary School (K-4): $18,975
Middle School (5-8): $20,950

So, the family pays $500,000 for a home. And for an additional $21,000 a year, they can keep their children separated from the worst elements at their age level.

California does Copenhagen

2009-12-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

California has "hundreds, if not thousands" of politicians, "academic superstars, green-tech gurus, environmentalists and college students" at the climate conference in Copenhagen this week according to this article by Margot Roosevelt in the Los Angeles Times. And in this photograph accompanying the article, we can see not all are in fancy limousines. Some are walking the talk. Or biking the talk, anyway, whatever.

Daniel Sperling, a U.C. Davis professor, bicycles in Copenhagen with his California Air Resources Board colleague Anthony Eggert. (BreAnda Northcutt / For The Times.)

What are they there for?

None of the Californians are involved in the actual negotiations, which are led by diplomats behind closed doors. "Interacting with a delegate is about as likely as a comet colliding with a planet," said Margaret Bruce, director of the Center for Climate Action, a California-based nonprofit.

But that's not the idea. At hundreds of side panels, conferences, receptions and exhibits, everyone who is anyone in the world of carbon control gets a chance to rub shoulders with other players.

"This is Disneyland for policy wonks," said Gary Gero, president of the Los Angeles-based Climate Action Reserve, a nonprofit that designs protocols for greenhouse gas offsets.

Rioting outside home of UC Berkeley chancellor

2009-12-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

On Friday night at 11:15 pm around 70 people, several carrying torches, attacked UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's house while he and his wife were sleeping. They smashed planters, windows and lights and hurled their torches at the house. Birgenau's wife called the police, and when they arrived, most of the crowd dispersed, but some attacked the police.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that eight people were arrested on suspicion of rioting, threatening an education official, attempted burglary, attempted arson of an occupied building, vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer: Zachary Bowin, 21, and Angela Miller, 20, identified as UC Berkeley students and Julia Litmancleper, 20, of San Francisco; John Friesen, 25, of Fullerton (Orange County); Donnell Allen, 41, of San Francisco; David Morse, 41, of Oakland; Laura Thatcher, 21, of Rolling Hills Estates (Los Angeles County); and James Carwil, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y..

The Sacramento Bee article identifies another two of the eight as UC Davis undergraduate art students:

Julia Litman-Cleper of San Francisco and Laura Thatcher of Rolling Hills Estates, listed among those arrested, were identified Sunday as undergraduate students in Davis.

and

In Davis, a programmer at the campus public service radio station KDVS FM 90.3 said Litman-Cleper serves as that station's production director.

So the four youngest are UC students. I wonder who the older men will turn out to be.

Spain: "Nonviolent" Islamic Salafism and Vigilante Sharia Law

2009-12-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

I've added a new label for my blogs posts, Salafism. At the end of the post on the growing number of women wearing headscarves in Egypt, we came to understand that the Salafist goal was Sharia Law.

I didn't post the story of the woman in Spain who had been kidnapped and sentenced to death by a Sharia court for adultery, because I thought it was just a one off horrible peculiar story. But this analysis by Paola Del Vecchio for ANSAmed links the case to others in the region and attributes the behavior to Salafists. So, we may be looking at a trend:

SPAIN: CATALONIA, ISLAMIC MORAL BRIGADES IMPOSE SHARIA LAW**
(
MADRID, DECEMBER 8 - The reported capturing of a Muslim women in Reus (Tarragona) and the issuing of a stoning sentence for adultery by religious fanatics are a gauge of a phenomenon that has already appeared in Holland and France, and which is now taking root in Catalonia: the creation of Islamic "moral brigades" by fundamentalists, who claim the role of judges and police officers imposing a strict observance of Sharia, or Islamic law.

The theatre of the incursions of these Islamic "moral patrols" are the rural towns where the mosques are controlled by Salafists, a fundamentalist sect of Islam, with a substantial presence in the province of Tarragona. These groups are heavily inspired by the Koran and the rigid regulations applied in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

Confirming investigators' worries are several disturbing episodes reported by police. Specifically, on November 14, nine alleged Islamic extremists were arrested, accused of having captured and sentenced a Northern African woman to death after convicting her of adultery. The investigation, still in the preliminary phases, is classified. However, according to reports in the media, the woman was captured and held for three days in an abandoned factory, and then in the home of the group's spiritual leader in Reus, where she was tried before an "Islamic tribunal" made up of seven people, who found her guilty of infidelity and sentenced her to death by stoning. The woman, who was pregnant, managed to escape and call the Catalonian police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, for help, and she is currently under their protection. In the meanwhile, the operation against the fundamentalist cell is ongoing.

Investigators have warned that the phenomenon of these "brigades", which could increase, has not only been found in Tarragona, but also in the provinces of Girona and Segarra, where mosques are controlled by Salafites. Many of the victims do not dare report their persecution, and intimidation continues for them. Investigators have confirmed beatings and segregation by their parents or spouses of women who do not wear veils, and the case of a Moroccan teenager who was beaten because he played football with other non-Muslim children.

It is also important to note that Salafists have been understood to be apolitical and nonviolent. The AP article by Sarah al Deeb on Egyptian women wearing headscarves stated:

Salafi groups are nonpolitical and shun the violent teachings that drove Egypt's Islamic insurgency in the 1990s.

But Wikipedia has this entry about Salafi Jihadis. Notice that this entry actually classifies Al Queda as a Salafi group.

Hat Tip: Women Against Shariah

London: Honor Crimes Up 40% Due to Rising Fundamentalism

2009-12-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

London's Mail Online has an article on the large increase in honor crimes and a source from the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation attributing the problem to the increase in fundamentalism. There has been a 40% figure ncrease comparing 2007-8 to 2008-9. But the increase has continued and the last six months of 2009 (through October) shows a 100% increase!

Police have seen 'honour' crime surge by 40 per cent due to rising fundamentalism, new figures show.
Honour-based violence, including crimes like murder, rape and kidnap has rocketed in London during the past year.
Reported instances of intimidation and attempts at forced marriage have also increased by 60 per cent.
A report into the scale of the problem by Scotland Yard found there were 161 honour-based incidents recorded in 2007-8, of which 93 were criminal offences.
But in 2008/9 the number of incidents had risen to 256, with 132 being criminal offences.
The latest figures indicate that the trend is continuing, with 211 incidents reported in the last six months until October, of which 129 were offences - more than double the number in the same period last year.

And the local women's group has seen a 400% increase:

Police define honour crimes as offences motivated by a desire to protect the honour of a family or community.
Diana Nammi, of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, said the group is now dealing with four times more complaints relating to honour than two years ago.
She said: 'More women are coming forward. They are becoming more aware of their rights in the UK, that there is help available and they feel confident enough to report matters to the police.
'But I also think cases and violence are increasing.
'One reason is the rise in fundamentalism. The problem is increasing in communities around the UK.
'We are seeing a rise not only in honour killings, but also in female genital mutilation and polygamy.'
She added: 'The rise in Sharia courts is another indication of more fundamental beliefs.
'There must be more support from the Government to organisations who are working to combat this problem.'
The Metropolitan Police also records incidents where no offences has been committed, such as complaints by women that they are under pressure to enter into forced marriages.

There are really three reasons for the increase in the police statistics: the rise in fundamentalism, more women coming forward and a new awareness within the police:

Earlier this year, police were issued with new guidance telling them to assume honour crimes have been committed in more circumstances.
Senior officers anticipated that the move would drive up figures as in many cases only limited information is available or a potential victim refuses to help police.
Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, of the Metropolitan Police, said: 'The description of this type of crime is misplaced. There is no honour in these crimes.'
Mr Campbell said the Met had improved its intelligence systems to better identify such crimes.
He said: 'Ten years ago our knowledge was almost absent but we have worked hard and our knowledge has improved substantially.'

Read it all here.

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

Egypt: Growing number of women wearing niqab

2009-12-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

Great work by journalist Sarah El Deeb in her article for the AP on the growing number of women in Egypt wearing niqabs and the Egyptian government's efforts to curtail this. The populace has begun to embrace a conservative form of Islam, Salafism, similar to Saudi Arabia's Wahabism.

In European countries, particularly France, the debate over Islamic dress affects how to integrate Muslim immigrants and balance their rights with the majority population who find the dress an affront to women.

But in Egypt, the dynamic is different. Here, dressing in traditional Muslim garb is at odds with the secular government, which some view as autocratic and corrupt.

The debate underscores the gulf between the more secular elite, which wields economic and political power, and the disenfranchised masses who increasingly find solace in strict Islamic observance.

And women wearing the full body covering, the niqab, is the most visible outward sign.

A decade ago, the niqab was almost never seen in Egypt and it is still a minority fashion. Most women wear a scarf that covers the hair but not the face, often with tight jeans or clinging tops, despite clerics' complaints that formfitting clothes violate the whole point of "Islamic dress."

But today it is normal to see women in niqab, hidden under a veil that covers everything but the eyes, billowing black robes that cloak the body's shape, and often gloves. They are found at universities, teaching in schools, working in government offices and private companies, strolling along the Nile and riding on motorcycles behind their husbands.

The inspiration is Salafism, a movement that models itself on early Islam. Its doctrine is similar to Saudi Arabia's, and many trace its spread to Egyptians returning home from work in the kingdom and to Saudi-backed religious satellite TV stations.

Actually, the Wikipedia article on Salafi traces this more specifically:

Stéphane Lacroix, a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris, also affirmed a distinction between the two: "As opposed to Wahhabism, Salafism refers here to all the hybridations that have taken place since the 1960s between the teachings of Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab and other Islamic schools of thought. Al-Albani’s discourse can therefore be a form of Salafism, while being critical of Wahhabism."[44]

But despite their beginnings "as two distinct movements", the migration of Muslim Brotherhood members from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Saudi King Faisal's "embrace of Salafi pan-Islamism resulted in cross-pollination between ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings on tawhid, shirk and bid‘ah and Salafi interpretations of ahadith (the sayings of Muhammad).[45]

Regardless, it should still be pointed out that the terms "Salafi" and Wahhabi are not necessarily synonymous. Wahhabism has been variously described as a subset of Salafism,[6] a derogatory synonym for Salafism,[37] or a formerly separate current of Islamic thought that appropriated "language and symbolism of Salafism" until the two became "practically indistinguishable" in the 1970s.[46]

Comparison with Islamism

Salafism differs from the earlier contemporary Islamic revival movements of the 1970s and 1980s commonly referred to as Islamism, in that (at least many) Salafis reject not only Western ideologies such as Socialism and Capitalism, but also common Western concepts like economics, constitutions, political parties and revolution.

Salafi Muslims often promote not engaging in Western activities like politics, "even by giving them an Islamic slant."[47] Instead, it is thought that Muslims should stick to traditional activities, particularly Dawah. Salafis promote Sharia (Islamic law) rather than an Islamic political program or state.

(Note: My bolding. Also, I left the footnotes in and you can go to the Wikipedia article to follow up on them if you like.)

We can thus understand the niqab as a statement in favor of Shariah Law over secualr governments. And now returning to the AP article, we can understand that as universities and governments agencies seek to curtail the niqab, and many women defend this practice, the real battle is between secular governmental law and Islamic Shariah Law:

"This is not a security battle. It is a cultural, political battle," said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst who monitors such groups. "There is no cohesion within the state on how to tackle it."

For some women, wearing the Islamic garb is an implicit rebellion against the system. Many are outspoken in defending their beliefs, refuting the notion that Muslim women are oppressed and cloistered.

"I tell a girl who wants to wear the niqab that she has to be ready to fight for it," said al-Assal's mother, Iman el-Shewihi, who veiled herself 15 years ago - the first in her family to do so.

The 45-year-old woman, who is working on her doctorate in Islamic law, says that like her daughter, she has paid a price; She has been denied teaching jobs at her university in Tanta, north of Cairo.

Read it all here.

Do minarets look like missiles?

2009-12-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

Journalists have included an almost obligatory comment regarding this poster to the effect that it has made minarets look like missiles.

But this looks like the minarets in this photo of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul to me.

And look at the minaret in Zurich.

I think the journalist have got it right that the minarets on the poster look like missiles. But they are misattributing the problem to the design of the poster rather than to the designs of actual minarets.

I think the poster design may be making reference to the Islamization of Hagia Sophia cathedral. And that's a legitimate comment to be made.

SF: proposal for sex tents at Folsom Street Fairs

2009-12-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

San Francisco police planned a crack down on the public sex the Folsom Street Fair and the Up Your Alley Street Fair due to complaints filed by citizens and the excellent photo journalism of Zombie, according to an article in the Bay Area Reporter this last April. But after the events, some in the gay community complained about the loss of a venue for public sex and proposed sex tents be provided at future events for those who wish to engage or watch out of the public eye.

In the words of gay activist Michael Petrelis:

I want to reclaim the right to engage in public fellatio, or watch it unimpeded by sex monitors.

I said a tent, that would be clearly marked for oral sex and alcohol-free, should be considered, as a safe space for consenting adults to engage in fellatio on a public street. Of course, some poor suckers, er, lucky volunteers would have to head up a committee to maintain security at the tent, or other structure, if this idea is to become reality, and I'd be the first to kneel down and pray that this happens. Demetri and Bevan will consider the tent idea and it will be revisited at future meetings.

Bevan refers to Bevan Dufty, the city council member for the district that includes the Castro and who intends to run for mayor. The SF Chronicle's Matier and Ross carried an item about this last week, concluding:

Dufty said he wasn't sure if the issue was big enough at this point to recommend any action.

"There are definitely people interested in seeing more public sex," Dufty said, but "right now, I'd just take it under advisement and wait and see what develops."

Spoken like a true candidate.

The good news is that today the San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial against it:

Idea of public sex tents is way out of line

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Public sex tents? Now there's an idea that should have been shot down the second it was announced from the mouth of a member of the "leather community" in response to complaints about public sex at Folsom Street Fair and its smaller sibling fair, Up Your Alley.

Instead, it appears that at least one of our local leaders (Supervisor Bevan Dufty) has agreed to take the matter "under advisement." Since our local leaders are having trouble speaking the obvious, we will: Public sex is not appropriate at Folsom Street Fair or anywhere else. Even in San Francisco.

Public sex isn't just lewd, it's illegal under state law. San Francisco officials and police have historically given the fairs broad leeway to self-police bawdy behavior, but that should have been revoked the moment that citizens complained. Instead, people are giving serious thought to ways to make the streets safe for public sex and unsafe for public decency.

Enough. This is a quality-of-life issue that should have been tackled years ago. Local leaders need to stop clowning around and insist that everyone obey the law.

Why I Parted Ways with the Left

2009-12-01T10:39:00.000-08:00

I was inspired by Charles Johnson at LGF"s Why I Parted Ways with the Right
(see here http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35243_Why_I_Parted_Ways_With_The_Right)
to revise it slightly to show how it could also be applied to the problems on the left:

1. Support for fascists, both in America, Europe and in the Middle East. (How can anyone side with Hamas?)

2. Support for bigotry and racial hatred, as long as it's against whites. (How can anyone think the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation in Philadelphia was OK?)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism ( How can anyone use cultural relativism to defend practices like female genital mutilation or forcing women to wear burkhas?)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (How can anyone continue to defend the bad science coming out of the Climate Change movement?)

5. Support for heterophobic bigotry (When are they going to admit that children do best in their biological two parent family?)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (How can anyone think Holder's idea for the trial of KSM makes any sense? )

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (9/11 Truthers, etc.)

8. A left-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech

9. Anti-Christian bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing extremists, into dismissal of the beliefs of about half the population of the country.

10. Hatred for Republican politicians that goes far beyond simply criticizing their policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories

And much, much more. The American left wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

I'll try to update this with more links.

Hat Tip to Jihad Watch for drawing my attention to this.

"Five Kernels of Corn" and its Claims

2009-11-26T12:54:00.001-08:00

For Thanksgiving I'm posting Five Kernels of Corn. At the bottom I explain two of the claims made at the end: that the Mayflower Pilgrims gave us a legacy of "a government by consent of the governed with just and equal laws" and "a recognition of the necessity for individual ownership and enterprise".

Five Kernels of Corn by Norma Q Hare
(written in 1986 and slightly edited by Mary Mitchell in 2008)
It was a cold, gray day on November 15, 1620. The Mayflower rode at anchor near the shore, while a group of eager men set out in a small boat to explore the desolate, barren land to which they'd come. One of the first things they discovered near the beach was a deserted cornfield where the dry, broken stalks rustled in the sharp wind. Nearby they saw several strange mounds. Upon digging into one, they were amazed to find odd-looking, yellow, red and blue Indian corn. They took some with them to use of seed when they planted their crops in the spring. They couldn't know then how important that corn would prove to be to the colony's future.

They weren't prepared for that first dreadful winter, and there was much sickness. Nearly half the colonists died before spring finally arrived. Of those who survived, about half were children not yet sixteen years old; and only five married women remained.

When spring came, the men and boys planted 20 acres of Indian corn. Six additional acres they planted with the seeds they'd brought from England - wheat, rye, barley and peas - and there were vegetable gardens near the houses.

But to everyone's dismay, the seeds they'd brought failed to produce, being unsuited to the growing conditions in New England. The colonists worried whether they'd have enough food for the winter. Grain crops were necessary for their survival, for they provided the bread and puddings that gave them the energy they needed to work and endure the harsh conditions in which they lived, and the nourishment the children needed for adequate growth.

To supplement their store of grain, they learned, with help from the Indians, to catch the fish, to shoot the fowl and deer, and to harvest the wild fruits and berries that the forest and sea provided. They dried and preserved as much as they could in anticipation of another long winter with little grain.

In late fall, despite their small corn harvest, they felt confident and grateful for what they'd accomplished. They decided to celebrate what they called the Harvest Thanksgiving. They were joined by 90 of their Indian friends who stayed for three days enjoying their hospitality. This was an unexpected drain on their food supplies, but they believed that, by careful management, they would have enough to last until the next year.

The ship Fortune arrived a few days later. The happy Pilgrims expected to welcome members of their families and friends who had been left behind. They also believed the ship would bring food and other provisions they needed. They were distressed to learn, however, that it brought 35 colonists instead. Most of them were young men who brought no tools, bedding, or food, possessing little more than what they wore. There was nothing for the Pilgrims to do but to share their meager clothing, their homes and their precious food with the strangers. They also had to supply food to the sailors of the Fortune for their long voyage back to England.

For the next six months the colonists lived on half rations and every colonist knew daily hunger.As the months passed, every colonist knew daily hunger. During the summer they were thin and weak and staggered as they went about their work. They might have perished had they not been able to obtain some grain from the English fishing village further up the Maine coast.

While the year before had been very bad, the Starving Time came upon the little colony the spring of 1623. Tradition tells us that each person received only five kernels of parched corn a day. Governor Bradford wrote that they had neither bread nor corn for two or three months together, and their entire diet consisted of only fish and water.

To add to their misery, the early summer weather was hot and dry, and the corn began to wither. In desperation they went one day to the top of the hill to pray to God for relief. That night a soft rain began to fall, and the drought was broken. At harvest, every field produced an abundance of corn, with enough for everyone. After nearly three years, the famine was over.

During harvest season each year, it is customary for Mayflower Society members to remember the desperate privation and famine our ancestors endured during the first difficult years. Let these five kernels of corn -- the Indian corn that at first kept them alive and then became the staple upon which they prospered -- be a symbol to remind us of their bold, courageous dream. Let them also remind us of the legacy of our Pilgrim forefathers; the freedom to worship as we choose, a government by consent of the governed with just and equal laws, a recognition of the necessity for individual ownership and enterprise, the willingness and courage to fight for one's beliefs, and an everlasting trust in God.

You may be surprise by the claims at the end that the Mayflower pilgrims left such a wide ranging legacy.

The claim of the bequest of "a government by consent of the governed with just and equal laws" refers to the Mayflower Compact. Before landing at Plymouth rock, the adult male passengers on the Mayflower signed a document bearing these words:

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November [New Style, November 21], in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.

The claim that the Mayflower pilgrims bequested "a recognition of the necessity for individual ownership and enterprise" refers to failure of their early experiment with socialism. Originally, all the land that was cleared and all the structures built were to belong to the community. Everything that was produced was to go into ta common store with each member entitled to one equal share. Seeing that this economic system was a failure, the governor of the colony, William Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family and permitted them to market their own crops and other products. Bradford wrote:

So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. ... This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could, this was thought injustice. … And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them.

For more on the Pilgrims and individual ownership, see American Thinker here.

bear video

2009-11-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

This is worth watching all the way to the end

Saudi Arabia: Sentenced to Death for Witchcraft

2009-11-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

At least four people have been sentenced for witchcraft recently in Saudi Arabia, with two receiving the death penalty. This is part of a campaign to deal with practices which are against Sharia Law which was revealed in the Asharq Alawsat, the leading Arabic International daily, last January. According to that report, the Saudi Arabis Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) was developing a guideline for the police to use in identifying and convicting witches and socerers. The guidelines included:

a definition of magic, witchcraft, divination, fortune-telling and other similar practices, a scientific definition to magical practices, and a model in order to help uncover such practices.

The CPVPV seems to AVE showed particular concern for the spread of witchcraft with advanced technology:

The study also called for regulations to be put in place with regards to the role of telecommunication and Internet service providers to protect the public from communication and television channels that promote magic, while also penalizing those that perpetrate such crimes. It also called for the results of the study to be incorporated into the provision of Islamic Shariaa law, basic law, and criminal law.

The recent death sentence of the Lebanese man, Ali Sabat, who came to Medina for pilgrimage can be understood within this context. Sabat was recognized as the TV personality who, among other things, made predictions of the future on his TV broadcasts from his home in Lebanon. So, although Sabat had not done anything objectionable on his trip to Saudi Arabia, he was arrested, tried and convicted of witchcraft, and sentenced to death.

Here's the latest from the BBC on his situation:

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch has called on Saudi Arabia to overturn a death sentence given to a man convicted of practising witchcraft.

The organisation said Ali Sibat appeared to have been condemned because of psychic predictions he had made on Lebanese TV from his home in Beirut.

He was arrested during his pilgrimage to the Saudi city of Medina last year.

There is no legal definition of witchcraft in Saudi Arabia - a deeply conservative Muslim nation.

The country's religious authorities condemn any practices deemed un-Islamic, including horoscopes and fortune telling.

But BBC Arab affairs editor Sebastian Usher says there is still a thirst for such services in a country where widespread superstition survives under the surface of religious orthodoxy.

Human Rights Watch accused Saudi courts of "sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police".

"The crime of 'witchcraft' is being used against all sorts of behaviour, with the cruel threat of state-sanctioned executions," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East director.

Human Rights Watch also said reports in Saudi media suggested that two other people had been arrested for witchcraft in the past month.

In addition, a Saudi woman remains on death row after being sentenced for the same crime last year.

Sky News has more details about other cases:

Human Rights Watch says two other people have been arrested on similar charges in the last month alone.

It claims a lower court in Jeddah started the trial of a Saudi this month who was arrested by the religious police and said to have smuggled a book of witchcraft into the kingdom.

In another case the religious police are said to have arrested for "sorcery" and "charlatanry" an Asian man accusing him of using supernatural powers to solve marital disputes and induce others to fall in love.

In 2006 a Jeddah court convicted an Eritrean national Muhammad Burhan for "charlatanry" because he possessed a phone book that contained writings in the Tigrinya alphabet used in Eritrea.

Human rights campaigners claim prosecutors classified the booklet as a "talisman" and the court accepted that as evidence, sentencing him to 20 months in prison and 300 lashes.

Denver police arrest 32 in racially motivated assaults

2009-11-21T16:32:00.000-08:00

32 young black males are being held on $1 million bail each for a series of racially motivated assaults on whites and hispanics. The Denver Post reports:

The Denver Police Department arrested 32 men and juvenile boys after a months-long undercover investigation into what police said were racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver, including the LoDo entertainment district.

A task force composed of Denver police, the FBI and the Denver district attorney's office investigated 26 incidents in which groups of black males verbally harassed, assaulted and at times robbed white or Latino males, according to Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman.

All of the suspects are young black males, most of whom told police they were associated with either the Rollin' 60s Crips gang or the Black Gangster Disciples gang.

They are charged with varying counts of bias-motivated assault and, in some cases, robbery — all felony crimes.

There is a lot more in the article. I am posting this because it seems so politically incorrect to charge blacks with hate crimes laws.

masked gunman kills Russian priest who converted Muslims to Christianity

2009-11-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

The New York Times carried a Reuters report this morning that began :

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A masked gunman entered a church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticizing Islam, prosecutors and church officials said Friday.

The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country's growing Muslim minority of about 20 million.

The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in St Thomas Church in southern Moscow Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire with a pistol, a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General's office said.

"The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime," spokesman Anatoly Bagmet said.

Sysoyev had been previously threatened for his preaching to Muslims:

"I have received 10 threats via e-mail that I shall have my head cut off (if I do not stop preaching to Muslims)," Sysoyev stated on a television program in February 2008, according to Interfax. "As I see it, it is a sin not to preach to Muslims."

Kiril Frolov, the head of the Orthodox Experts Association, told Interfax news agency "Father Daniil ... has been periodically receiving e-mails which said he will be treated as 'infidel' if he did not stop polemics with Muslims," .

Russia is home to Europe's largest Muslim community and Islam is the country's second-biggest faith, something which Sysoyev was highly critical of Islam:

"Islam is far from being a religion in the way we understand it," he said in one of his video lectures posted on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJNPSyh4zFk&feature=related).

"Islam can be rather compared with projects like National Socialism or the Communist party seeking to create God's kingdom on Earth using humanly instruments," he added.

He also wrote books including "An Orthodox Response to Islam" and "Marrying a Muslim," in which he advised Russian women against taking a Muslim partner.

Read it all here.

Hat Tip: Women Against Shariah

Should this 14 year old get life without possibility of parole?

2009-11-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

This local story makes me very sad. As a Christian, I believe that people can be changed by Christ so that they are no longer rapists and murderers. But my observations of the way the world works leads me to believe this 14 year old should never be released from prison.

Affidavit: Teen says he molested and killed boy
A 14-year-old with a baby face told investigators he drowned his 4-year-old neighbor in a bathtub, then hid the body in a dryer because the child was going to reveal the teen molested him, according to an affidavit released when he appeared in court Wednesday.

Further into the article we learn:

The affidavit said Castro, a student at Mendota Junior High School, initially told police he knew nothing of the boy's disappearance. When investigators said the boy had been found in the dryer, the teen suggested someone had broken into the house and put him there.

Castro eventually told police he had enticed the dimpled, brown-eyed boy into his house across the street and sodomized him, the affidavit states. He said he killed Mercado after the child fell and hit his head, started crying, then threatened to tell his mother, the document states.

"Castro said he panicked and decided to kill the victim by drowning him in the bathtub," the affidavit says.

The teen, who is 5 feet tall and weighs 170 pounds, put Mercado's body over his shoulder and carried him to the dryer, hoping everything "would go away," the affidavit states.

Castro had been scheduled for arraignment as an adult on charges of first-degree murder, sodomy, child molestation, kidnapping and murder to silence a witness.

Marousek said after the hearing that she doubted the teenager understood the Miranda rights read to him by investigators, which could put his confession in doubt.

Earlier the teen had nodded without expression when Judge Jon Kapetan asked him if he understood the proceedings. Bail was set at $2.1 million.

California law says suspects 14 and older can be charged and tried as adults. About 20 percent of murders in the state are committed by people between the ages of 11 and 17.

Although this is a very disturbing story, I found the statistic that "about 20 percent of murders in the state are committed by people between the ages of 11 and 17" to be the most disturbing. I feel very confused. I would like to see the age of adulthood reduced to reflect the reality of out society. But if this is done for the criminal element, it could also be done for age of consent laws.

It Takes a Father

2009-10-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

Do children need fathers? The fatherless children quoted in the beginning of this Washington Post article seem to think so:

"Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?"

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class -- and was constantly distracting other students when he did -- shot back: "It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study."

Another student angrily challenged me: "You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us." When I did, not one hand went up.

The article raises the question in my mind whether we are asking teachers to do more than is reasonable and that we need to focus on re-educating men to be good fathers:

"The real problem," says Glenn Hopkins, president of Alexandria's Hopkins House, which provides preschool and other services to low-income families, "is that school superintendents don't realize -- or won't admit -- that the education gap is symptomatic of a social gap."

Hopkins notes that student achievement is deeply affected by issues of family, income and class, things superintendents have little control over. "Even with best teachers in the world, they don't have the power to solve the problem," he says. "They naively assume that if they throw in a little tutoring and mentoring and come up with some program they can claim as their own, the gap will close."

Some fathers are making the decision on their own to do a better job:

For Junior Bailey, a senior in my Advanced Placement English class, school has never been a foreign place, a fact he attributes to his dad. "He has always been on me; it's been hard to get away with much," Junior said. He also told me that hardly any of his friends have their fathers living with them. "Their mothers are soft on them, and they don't get any push from home."

On parents' night a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to see Junior's dad, Willie Bailey, a star on T.C. Williams's 1983 basketball team, walk into my classroom. Willie told me that after seeing how the guys he grew up with were affected by not having their dads around, he promised himself that he would be a real presence in his son's life.

With more parents like Willie Bailey, someday schools might realistically talk about closing the gap between students' potential and their performance.

Hat Tip: Titus One Nine

Somalia: Women whipped for wearing bras by Al-Shabaab Islamists

2009-10-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

Both Reuters and the Mail Online reported on Friday that women are being whipped for wearing bras because they are against Islam when they make the breasts look firmer than they naturally are.

As the Mail Online put it:

A hardline Islamist group in Somalia has begun publicly whipping women for wearing bras that they claim violate Islam as they are 'deceptive'.

The insurgent group Al Shabaab has sent gunmen into the streets of Mogadishu to round up any women who appear to have a firm bust, residents claimed yesterday.

The women are then inspected to see if the firmness is natural, or if it is the result of wearing a bra.

If they are found wearing a bra, they are ordered to remove it and shake their breasts, residents said.

Reuters put it this way:

Residents said gunmen had been rounding up any woman seen with a firm bust and then had them publicly whipped by masked men. The women were then told to remove their bras and shake their breasts.

Both articles carry this quote:

"Al-Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts," a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.

"They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women's chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat."

I would think that this demand that women remove their bras and shake their breasts would be against the modesty requirement of Islam. But the Reuters story includes a sad story about one man that sought to defend his sisters modesty:

Jailed for defending his sister

Abdullahi Hussein, a student in north Mogadishu, said his elder brother was thrown behind bars when he fought back a man who humiliated their sister by asking her to remove her bra.

"My brother was jailed after he wrestled with a man that had beaten my sister and forced her to remove her bra. He could not stand it," Hussein said.

Minneapolis: Harassment by Episcopal High School Students

2009-10-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

At least four recent students of the elite Episcopal High School named The Breck School have been caught for the latest in two years of harassment of a former Breck student, Caleb Dayton. Caleb had attended the Breck School since kindergarten, and the harassment began when he transferred to another elite school, Blake, in junior year. The acts of harassment are described by the New York Times:

The house, its owners say, was festooned in toilet paper. It was bombarded with eggs. Pumpkins were smashed. Human waste was deposited on the front stoop, grease was smeared on a car, tampons were left behind. All the while, they say, taunting notes and phone calls arrived.

The Breck School explains its affiliation with the Episcopal Church here:

Breck was founded in 1886 by, and is still affiliated with, the Episcopal Church. The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota chairs the Board and presides at the most important events of the year, such as Baccalaureate and Commencement. Breck often hosts the most important Diocesan events, such as the election of a new Bishop. Neither Breck nor the Diocese supports the other financially in any way.

The students learned the values of the ~~Roach Motel~~ Episcopal Church well: You can check out but you can never leave.

San Francisco: Teenager's Problems with Father Smoking Pot

2009-10-08T14:59:00.000-07:00

The Atlantic Monthly started a new feature a few months back, "What's Your Problem?" by Jeffrey Goldberg. Sort of like "Dear Abby", this includes questions from readers with Jeffrey Goldberg's advice. In the October issue, the column concluded with this exchange:

I’m in high school and my father smokes a lot of pot. He does it privately (in our living room), but I just found out that he buys his pot from one of my friends. My friend is in college, and he told everyone that he’s my father’s dealer. Should I tell my father to stop smoking pot, or to just stop buying from my friends?

J. P., San Francisco, Calif.

Dear J. P.,

What your father is doing is terribly selfish. It sounds as if you have more sense than he has. You must lay down the law: absolutely no buying illegal drugs from your friends. You are being raised in a catastrophically lenient household (has your father never heard the tragic story of Robert Downey Jr.?), and you’re going to have to be unequivocal. And by the way, how did he convince you that the living room is “private”?

I think this is terrible. J. P. asked, "Should I tell my father to stop smoking pot, or to just stop buying from my friends?" and Goldberg's answer seems to imply that he should "lay down the law: absolutely no buying illegal drugs from your friends." I hope Goldberg is just being funny. Otherwise I have no idea what the morality is here. Why is buying the illegal drug's from the child's friend somehow worse than using illegal drugs?

Afghan Women to Code Pink "We Need US Troops"

2009-10-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that Code Pink came to Afghanistan to meet with feminists and learned that the women in Afghanistan want US troops to protect them from the Taliban.

'Code Pink' rethinks its call for Afghanistan pullout
In Afghanistan, the US women's activist group finds that their Afghan counterparts want US troop presence – as well as more reconstruction.
By Aunohita Mojumdar | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Kabul, Afghanistan - When Medea Benjamin stood up in a Kabul meeting hall this weekend to ask Masooda Jalal if she would prefer more international troops or more development funds, the cofounder of US antiwar group Code Pink was hoping her fellow activist would support her call for US troop withdrawal.

She was disappointed.

Ms. Jalhal, the former Afghan minister of women, bluntly told her both were needed. "It is good for Afghanistan to have more troops – more troops committed with the aim of building peace and against war, terrorism, and security – along with other resources," she answered. "Coming together they will help with better reconstruction."

Rethinking their position

Code Pink, founded in 2002 to oppose the US invasion of Iraq, is one of the more high-profile women's antiwar groups being forced to rethink its position as Afghan women explain theirs: Without international troops, they say, armed groups could return with a vengeance – and that would leave women most vulnerable.

Though Afghans have their grievances against the international troops' presence, chief among them civilian casualties, many fear an abrupt departure would create a dangerous security vacuum to be filled by predatory and rapacious militias. Many women, primary victims of such groups in the past, are adamant that international troops stay until a sufficient number of local forces are trained and the rule of law established. (Read more about Afghan women's concerns here.)

During their weeklong visit here, in which they met with government officials, politicians, ministers, women activists, and civil society groups, the small team of Code Pink members had hoped to gather evidence to bolster their call for US troop withdrawal within two years, and capitalize on growing anxiety back home about the war.

While the group hasn't dropped its call for a pullout, the visit convinced them that setting a deadline isn't in Afghanistan's interests, say Ms. Benjamin and fellow cofounder Jodie Evans.

"We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline," says Benjamin. "That's where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, 'If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We'd go into civil war.' A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that."

Code Pink says it will continue to oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan – a move facing heated debate in Washington – and advocate for more funding for aid and humanitarian projects instead.

The group's visit coincided with a "peace trialogue" organized last week by the Delhi Policy Group that brought together women of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Some participants of the meeting, who have traditionally seen demilitarization as a key to peacebuilding, also faced strong opposition from local activists when they tried to include demilitarization in a statement published at the end of the gathering.

"In the current situation of terrorism, we cannot say troops should be withdrawn," Shinkai Karokhail, an Afghan member of Parliament and woman activist, told them. "International troop presence here is a guarantee for my safety."

Hat Tip: The Two Malcontents

Obama appointed activist “inspired” by NAMBLA supporter to protect the nation’s children

2009-10-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

Zombie's blog today provides some very interesting research showing that Kevin Jennings, Obama's Safe Schools Czar, praised Harry Hay, a leading advocate for Man-Boy Love. Zombie found Harry Hay to be so linked to NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association) that he was unable to find information about any NAMBLA conference which Harry Hay didn’t attend. Zombie found that Harry Hay gave appearances at and gave speeches at every known NAMBLA conference, and spoke out publicly in NAMBLA’s defense, and wrote a blurb for a NAMBLA books. So why was Kevin Jennings praising Harry Hay?

Read Zombie's blog post here.

Prop 8 Backers Must Release Strategy Documents to Opponents

2009-10-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article this morning that has huge ramifications for anyone opposing same-sex marriage. Communications that indicate prejudice against homosexuals may be used to over-rule laws against same-sex marriage.

Judge to Prop. 8 backers: Turn over your papers

(10-02) 18:10 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge has ordered sponsors of California's Proposition 8 to release campaign strategy documents that opponents believe could show that backers of the same-sex marriage ban were motivated by prejudice against gays.

Plaintiffs in a federal suit seeking to overturn Prop. 8 - two same-sex couples, a gay-rights organization and the city of San Francisco - contend that the measure's real purpose was to strip a historically persecuted minority group of rights held by the majority.

If the courts find that the ballot measure was motivated by discrimination, they could strike it down without having to decide whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry.

"The intent or purpose of Prop. 8 is central to this litigation," Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker declared Thursday in requiring backers of the November 2008 measure to give the opposing side their internal campaign communications.
Backers' argument

A day earlier, Prop 8's sponsors told Walker in a court filing that their opponents' claim of anti-gay motivation is legally irrelevant.

In a final round of arguments seeking to uphold the measure without a trial, defenders of the ballot measure said California voters were entitled to amend their Constitution to preserve the traditional, male-female definition of marriage for numerous reasons - including a belief that "extending marriage to same-sex couples carries a risk of weakening the institution of marriage."

Because there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it wouldn't matter if the plaintiffs could show that Prop. 8 "was also accompanied by irrational attitudes such as animus," or prejudice against lesbians and gays, said attorney Charles Cooper.

The initiative, approved by 52 percent of the voters, overturned the state Supreme Court's May 2008 ruling that gave gays and lesbians the right to marry in California. The state court upheld Prop. 8 as a valid state constitutional amendment in May but also ruled that 18,000 same-sex couples who married before the election were legally wed.

Walker has scheduled an Oct. 14 hearing in San Francisco on whether to dismiss the suit or let it go to trial in January.
Judge looks for bias

In previous rulings, Walker has said the constitutionality of Prop. 8 is not an open-and-shut legal question but could depend on a variety of factors, including whether backers were biased against gays and lesbians.

He amplified that view Thursday in ordering Prop. 8's sponsors to disclose documents, including notes and e-mails between campaign officials and consultants, that discussed their strategy and the message they wanted to send to the voters.

Although "voters cannot be asked to explain their votes," Walker said, a ballot measure's authors and strategists can be scrutinized to see what their motives were.

He cited a magazine article last year by the heads of the public relations firm that managed the Prop. 8 campaign in which they discussed their strategy, including plans to show how advocates of same-sex marriage would indoctrinate schoolchildren. Walker said the article undermined the campaign's insistence that its strategy discussions were confidential.
Bad precedent?

Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for the Prop. 8 sponsors, said Friday it was unprecedented to allow "the losing side of a campaign to pry into the most intimate strategy discussions of the winning side."

"This will make any citizen group think twice before attempting a ballot initiative," Pugno said. He said his clients might ask a federal appeals court to intervene.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Theodore Boutrous, said Walker's order would allow them to see whether the justifications Prop. 8's defenders are now claiming for the measure were part of the campaign or after-the-fact rationales.

"Our position is not dependent on the notion that everyone who voted for Proposition 8 was acting out of bad motives," Boutrous said. He said the plaintiffs would look for "evidence that bolsters our argument that Proposition 8 was irrational and disfavors a group in a way that's unconstitutional."

Pew Poll Confirms Support for Abortion Has Declined

2009-10-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

New Pew Poll results from August confirm the March 2009 Pew poll results showing a decline in support for Abortion. A clear majority, over 50%, answered in 2008 that they thought abortion should be legal in all/ most cases. Now this year less than 50% have answered legal in two polls in two polls in a row:

August 2009

Illegal 45
Legal 47

March 2009

Illegal 44
Legal 46

Late October 2008

Illegal 40
Legal 53

Mid October 2008

Illegal 36
Legal 57

August 2008

Illegal 41
Legal 54

New York Times Editorial: The Polanski Case

2009-09-30T10:17:00.001-07:00

I am just delighted to see that the editorial board of the New York Times gets it right on the Polanski issue:

Editorial
The Polanski Case

Roman Polanski was arrested on Saturday at the Zurich airport on an American-issued warrant. But to hear the protests from the French, the Poles and other Europeans, you might have thought the filmmaker was seized by some totalitarian regime for speaking truth to power.

“Judicial lynching,” said Jack Lang, the former French culture minister. “Absolutely horrifying,” echoed the current French culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand. “Provocation!” shouted Andrzej Wajda and other Polish filmmakers. From across Europe, nearly 100 representatives of the entertainment industry, including Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders, signed a petition declaring themselves “dismayed” by the arrest — and especially that it happened when the Zurich Film Festival was to honor Mr. Polanski.

But hold on a moment. After being indicted in 1977, didn’t Mr. Polanski, now 76, confess to having sex with a 13-year-old girl after plying her with Quaaludes and Champagne? Didn’t he flee the United States when the plea bargaining seemed to fall apart, raising the prospect of prison time? Isn’t there a warrant for his arrest?

There was something strange about the Swiss deciding to arrest the director now, after having let him freely move in and out of the country for three decades. And a 2008 documentary by Marina Zenovich, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” raised some troubling questions about the bizarre way a celebrity-hungry judge in California, Laurence Rittenband, handled the case.

Yet where is the injustice in bringing to justice someone who pleads guilty to statutory rape and then goes on the lam, no matter how talented he may be?

In Europe, the prevailing mood — at least among those with access to the news media — seemed to be that Mr. Polanski has already “atoned for the sins of his young years,” as Jacek Bromski, the chief of the Polish Filmmakers Association, put it, and that any justice system that would pursue so great a filmmaker for so long “lacks equity and humanity,” as Mr. Lang said.

We disagree strongly, and we were glad to see other prominent Europeans beginning to point out that this case has nothing to do with Mr. Polanski’s work or his age. It is about an adult preying on a child. Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty to that crime and must account for it.

(My bold added at the end there.)

Palestinian TV: Furry Bear Teaches Children to Slaughter Jews

2009-09-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

Palestinian Media Watch explains:

The bear puppet host, Nassur, of a Hamas children's TV program used different words for “slaughter” to describe how to rid Israel of Jews.

First the bear explains that all Jews must be “erased from our land.” Later in the conversation he adds, "We want to slaughter them, Saraa, so they will be expelled from our land.” He repeats, “…We’ll have to [do it] by slaughter."

He first uses the Arabic expression for “slaughter,” “Nidbah-hom,” and later on uses the word “Shaht.”

The following is the transcript from the children’s program Tomorrow's Pioneers:

Nassur: “There won't be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They'll be erased.”
Saraa: “Chased away.”
Nassur: “And just like we will visit the Qaaba [in Mecca]... everyone will visit Jerusalem.”
[Seven-year old Palestinian child on phone tells how his father, a member of the Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades, “died as a Shahid (Martyr).”]
Nassur to child on phone: “What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?”
Child on phone: “I want to kill them.”
Saraa: “We don't want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land.”
Nassur: “We want to slaughter (Nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?”
Saraa: “Yes. That's right. We will expel them from our land using all means.”
Nassur: “And if they don't want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter.” (Shaht)

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

San Francisco: Buddhist monks lead prayers at Episcopal Grace Cathedral

2009-09-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Grace Cathedral seems to be getting in to the act late on having Buddhist monks come in to make prayer mandalas, but the San Francisco Chronicle thought it was news. What interests me is the way the activity is spun as cultural preservation rather than religious indoctrination.

Mandalas grace Grace Cathedral

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, September 26, 2009

Protractors and pencils in hand, four Tibetan monks silently drew precise lines on a table inside Grace Cathedral.

They flew to San Francisco from Nepal to build intricate sand Shi-tro mandalas - ancient Tibetan circular artworks that symbolize peaceful awareness.

Notice how the story lede is promoting the claim these are merely artworks of a particular culture although the practitioners are clearly representatives of a particular religion. A simple google search on "Shi-tro" brings up the fact that this mandala image is a "path to enlightenment" and provides other spellings Zhi khro, and Xi tro, shi khro, and xi khro. Wikipedia has interesting information about Shi-tro under the spelling Zhitro which clearly associates the mandala practice with Buddhist religious teaching.

But the SF Chronicle seems to shift back and forth between acknowledging this is Buddhist religious practice and treating this as a cultural artwork activity:

Using metal cones similar to a cake decorator's funnel, they carefully tapped colorful grains of sand into the pattern they had drawn.

The delicate artwork will take about 65 hours to complete, and on Sunday, in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the monks will sweep the mandalas away. They will cast the sand into the bay to remember that everything is impermanent, and so that the prayers the lamas made while creating it will live on in the currents.

For master mandala-maker Lama Thogme, 47, who has created innumerable mandalas, it's his first invitation to make one inside a Christian church.

"It's very meaningful," he said through an interpreter. "Doing this shows that no matter what your religious tradition, we all share a common fiber, a common purpose of peace."

The lamas are being aided by middle school students from San Francisco and Oakland who have participated in a dharma summer camp run by the nonprofit Tools for Peace in Tehachapi (Kern County), which is sponsoring the goodwill visit along with the American Foundation for Tibetan Cultural Preservation.

OK, finally we learn who is behind this. Obviously, Tools for Peace and the Tibetan Cultural Preservation are promoting a Buddhist path to peace. But actually we never learn who in the Episcopal Church is behind this. And then skipping down to the end of the article, in the second to last paragraph, we learn there will be a fundraiser at Grace Cathedral regarding this:

Today, longtime Tools for Peace supporter singer k.d. lang will join the lamas at a gala fundraiser at the cathedral.

Is this a fundraiser for the Episcopal Church? No, searching on line we can find that this is a fundraiser for the Buddhist organization:

k.d lang will perform inside Grace Cathedral for a fundraiser to benefit Tools for Peace, a program that empowers youth and adults through training in motivation, mindfulness, meditation and compassion in camps, classrooms and workshops in California.

Is this Legal -- Teaching elementary school children to sing praises to Obama?

2009-09-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine the outcry from liberals if, when Bush was president, some school teacher had done something similar regarding him?

This was filmed around June 19, 2009 at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, NJ.

Lyrics
========
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

segue to

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say "hooray!"
Hooray Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)

Hat Tip The Two Malcontents

Census Reports 28% Decline in Number of Gay Couples in USA

2009-09-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

There is a new AP story out about newly released census numbers for same-sex couples. The numbers are:

2005 -- 780,000 same sex couples, 390,000 considered themselves spouses
2006 -- 780,000 same sex couples, 390,000 considered themselves spouses
2007 -- 753,618 same sex couples, 341,000 considered themselves spouses
2008 -- 563,743 same sex couples, 150,000 considered themselves spouses

(It appears the numbers for 2005 and 2006 were estimates and now the census is collecting real data.)

Notice that:

1) The percent of same-sex couples who consider their relationship to be akin to marriage has gone down from 50% with the 2005-6 estimates, to 45% in 2007 and now to only 27% in 2009. The comparable number for heterosexual couples, according to the Census Bureau, is 91%. The suggests to me that the same-sex couples are self reporting that their relationships are not "just like" heterosexual couples.

2) The total number of same-sex couples has gone down 28% in a four year period. This suggests that the early estimated numbers were too high or that something has caused a net reduction in the total number of same-sex couples.

Of course, that is not the way the AP article is framed, but those are the actual numbers in the story. The AP story seems to be written focusing on the actual number of gay marriages and civil unions versus the the number who consider their relationships akin to marriage and provides an un-sourced explanation in the fourth paragraph that seems to me to be written to support the "gay rights" talking points:

Analysts said the disparities are probably a reflection of same-sex couples in committed relationships who would get married if they could in their states. The numbers are also an indicator of the count to come in the 2010 census, a tally that could stir a state-by-state fight over same-sex marriage, gay adoption and other legal rights.

But when I look at the numbers, I am thinking that the demand for same-sex marriage in the USA has been significantly overestimated, perhaps to support the cause of "gay rights". Alternatively, it could be that the emphasis on same-sex marriage has caused a significant break-up of gay couples in the USA. If most do not view their relationships as akin to marriage, perhaps the new pressure by one of the partners to marry or form a legal domestic partnership is leading to break-ups.

Carrie Prejean at the Value Voters Summit

2009-09-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am sorry that the only videos that I could find of Carrie Prejean at the Value Voters Summit were on a website that labels this "Comedy". Well, it does demonstrate what she is saying about being mocked. Anyway, I think she is terrific.

Even the Los Angeles Times recognized that Carrie Prejean gave a good talk:

It’s easy to make fun of beauty queens -- their plastic smiles, their bottle-blond tresses, their dreams for world peace. But Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California whose declaration that marriage should be between a man and woman earned her the vilification of some in the gay rights community, provided an unanticipated emotional highlight at a conference of Christian conservatives in Washington today.

In a heartfelt talk that moved some in the crowd to tears, Prejean recounted for the 1,700 activists gathered for the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington how distressing it was to go from shoo-in for Miss USA to not only losing, but being reviled and mocked for the answer on gay marriage she gave to pageant judge Perez Hilton, the celebrity gossip blogger.

Hat Tip: Elizabeth Evans at Get Religion

The Trouble with Burqas

2009-09-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

As well as the obvious feminist complaints, burqas provide cover for male criminals with weapons. As the Wall Street Journal reports on recent events in Pakistan:

ISLAMABAD -- Islamic militants clad head-to-toe in women's burqas attempted to attack an oil-storage facility in Karachi, raising fears that insurgents are fleeing northwestern Pakistan and infiltrating the nation's main business hub.

Three gunmen disguised as women tried to enter the high-security terminal used by oil companies late Monday night, Waseem Ahmed, the city police chief, told Pakistani television on Tuesday. Police say they suspect the assailants disguised themselves as women to try to slip past security checkpoints.

Pakistani police officers examined weapons and ammunition left behind by attackers in Karachi, Pakistan, on Tuesday.

When stopped by security guards, the militants opened fire, killing one guard. The assailants fled during a gun battle, leaving behind the burqas, purses and hand grenades.

"We suspect they wanted to carry out a big terrorist attack which our prompt police action thwarted," said Mr. Ahmed in an interview with Geo TV Pakistan.

Pakistan imports foreign oil through the Karachi port, and stores it there before transporting it throughout the country. An attack on the port facility could have threatened the fuel supply for the country's industry and transport, just as Pakistan's economy is struggling to recover from the global downturn and security woes at home.

Later Tuesday, police arrested four men suspected of involvement in the attack. During a raid on a house in Karachi, where the arrests took place, police found additional burqas, women's handbags and weapons, Mr. Ahmed said in the television interview.

Police say the arrested men are suspected of having links to the militant group led by Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader who was killed last month in a U.S. missile attack in South Waziristan. A large number of militants from Waziristan and other areas fleeing army attacks have been taking sanctuary in Karachi -- the capital of Sindh province -- according to Zulfikar Mirza, the Sindh provincial home minister.

China: Gay Men Assert Right to Congregate in Public Park

2009-09-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Now even China is reporting problems with gay men having sex in park restrooms. This text below is from the middle of an AP article written from the perspective of gay rights:

But as those cities showed signs of being more tolerant, Guangzhou authorities were starting to crack down in People's Park — a shady oasis of trees and gazebos in the middle of the muggy, traffic-congested city. The park is popular with youngsters who play badminton or retirees practicing their ballroom-dancing moves to stereos blasting out tunes like "Sukiyaki," the Japanese ballad that became a hit in the U.S. in the 1960s.

For years, the park has also been a favorite hangout for gay men, especially among the young or working-class who can't afford the bars and restaurants around town that cater to the community. The men — many dressed in tank tops and tight jeans — stroll around the park or sit together on a long line of stone benches. Nearby is a public restroom, where some men have sex — a source of much of the friction with the police.

I wish gay rights activists would come up with a solution to this problem of sex in public restrooms. They usually act as if this is all about homophobia, when it is usually about this kind of obnoxious behavior. But I guess they want parks around the world to follow the lead of the park in Amsterdam that just gave up and designated areas where gays have sex.

How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays

2009-09-14T17:55:00.001-07:00

This article from the Guardian tells about how Iraqis are infiltrating gay internet sites to identify homosexuals and then torturing and killing them. I feel a little confused. I am a conservative Christian and I do think that homosexual behavior is against the Bible, against God's Word. However, I am appalled to read of people who would take the idea that homosexual behavior is against God's law to commit evil acts against homosexuals.

EPT 13 – Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

“It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

The deputy leader of the group, which is based in Baghdad, explained its campaign using a stream of homophobic invective. “Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts,” he told the Observer. “We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God’s forgiveness before they are killed.”

The violence against Iraqi gays is a key test of the government’s ability to protect vulnerable minority groups after the Americans have gone.

Dr Toby Dodge, of London University’s Queen Mary College, believes that the violence may be a consequence of the success of the government of Nouri al-Maliki. “Militia groups whose raison d’être was security in their communities are seeing that function now fulfilled by the police. So their focus has shifted to the moral and cultural sphere, reverting to classic Islamist tactics of policing moral boundaries,” Dodge said.

Homosexuality was not criminalised under Saddam Hussein – indeed Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s was known for its relatively liberated gay scene. Violence against gays started in the aftermath of the invasion in 2003. Since 2004, according to Ali Hali, chairman of the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group, a London-based human-rights group, a total of 680 have died in Iraq, with at least 70 of those in the past five months. The group believes the figures may be higher, as most cases involving married men are not reported. Seven victims were women. According to Hali, Iraq has become “the worst place for homosexuals on Earth”.

The killings are brutal, with victims ritually tortured. Azhar al-Saeed’s son was one. “He didn’t follow what Islamic doctrine tells but he was a good son,” she said. “Three days after his kidnapping, I found a note on my door with blood spread over it and a message saying it was my son’s purified blood and telling me where to find his body.”

She went with police to find her son’s remains. “We found his body with signs of torture, his anus filled with glue and without his genitals,” she said. “I will carry this image with me until my dying day.”

Police officers interviewed by the Observer said the killings were not aimed at gays but were isolated remnants of the sectarian violence that racked the country between 2005 and 2006. Hamizi’s group, however, boasts that two people a day are chosen to be “investigated” in Baghdad. The group claims that local tribes are involved in homophobic attacks, choosing members to hunt down the victims. In some areas, a list of names is posted at restaurants and food shops.

The roommate of Haydar, 26, was kidnapped and killed three months ago in Baghdad. After Haydar contacted the last person his friend had been chatting with on the net, he found a letter on his front door alerting him “about the dangers of behaving against Islamic rules”. Haydar plans to flee to Amman, the Jordanian capital. “I have… to run away before I suffer the same fate,” he said.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Shia militia known as the Mahdi army may be among the militants implicated in the violence, particularly in the northern part of Baghdad known as Sadr City. There are reports that Mahdi army militias are harassing young men simply for wearing “western fashions”.

A Ministry of Interior spokesperson, Abdul-Karim Khalaf, denied allegations of police collaboration. “The Iraqi police exists to protect all Iraqis, whatever their sexual persuasion,” he said.

Hashim, another victim of violence by extremists, was attacked on Abu Nawas Street. Famous for its restaurants and bars, the street has become a symbol of the relative progress made in Baghdad. But it was where Hashim was set on by four men, had a finger cut off and was badly beaten. His assailants left a note warning that he had one month to marry and have “a traditional life” or die.

“Since that day I have not left my home. I’m too scared and don’t have money to run away,” Hashim said. – Guardian

Hat Tip: Women Against Shariah

Honoring the Day with an Enya Remix

2009-09-11T12:37:00.001-07:00

Hat Tip Quid Nimis

Honoring the Day with U2

2009-09-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

Indonesia: Aceh Province to Stone Adulterers Under Islamic Law

2009-09-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

From AFP:

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Indonesia's staunchly Muslim Aceh province is set to enforce a strict form of Islamic criminal law, including stoning to death married adulterers, a lawmaker said on Wednesday.

"Unmarried people who commit adultery will be caned one hundred times and married persons will be stoned to death," Raihan Iskandar, a provincial lawmaker from the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party, told AFP.

Aceh, where separatists had been fighting the Indonesian government since 1976 until a peace deal in 2005, has so far only partially adopted sharia law, which requires modest Muslim dress codes, mandatory prayers five times a day, fasting and the giving of alms to the poor.

Sharia was implemented under a broad autonomy package granted by the central government in 2001 to pacify the hardline Muslim region's demand for independence.

"This bill only focuses on ethical issues which include consumption of alcohol, gambling, committing adultery and raping," Iskandar said.

Aceh's provincial parliament was scheduled to pass the new law Monday, he added. Crimes such as murder, robbery and corruption will not fall under the new law in Aceh, located at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.

Nearly 90 percent of Indonesia's 234 million people are Muslim, most of whom practise a moderate form of the religion.

Hat Tip Islam In Action

Hamas Complains, So U.N. School Will Not Teach Gaza Students About Holocaust

2009-09-03T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems like the people in Gaza will not be able to understand the point of view of the Israelis if they are not taught about the genocide of six million European Jews during World War II. Hmmm, maybe that's the point. CNS News reports:

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), operates more than 600 schools in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, with around 200,000 children enrolled in Gaza.

Early this week, a Hamas refugee committee wrote to the agency, complaining about what it said were plans to teach children in Gaza about the Holocaust.

“[We] refuse to let our children be taught this lie created by the Jews and intensified by their media,” the letter read, according to the Palestinian news agency, Ma’an.

“First of all, [the Holocaust] is not a fact, and secondly, those who added it to the curriculum intended to mess with our children’s emotions.”

But a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Farhan Haq, told a briefing in New York Tuesday that, according to UNRWA, “the Holocaust is not included in the curriculum in Gaza.”

“In Gaza, as in all fields where UNRWA works, UNRWA utilizes the curriculum of the host countries as its core curriculum,” Haq said.

There's more here.

Hat Tip Islam in Action who got it from Munz'z Place

MoveOn.org healthcare activist bites off finger of counter-demonstrator

2009-09-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

There was a demonstration for health care organized my MoveON.org on one side of the street and a small counter demonstration on the other side of the street. One of the pro-health care demonstrators came over to the counter demonstration and got in a fight with an old man protesting health care. Here is how the Los Angeles Times reports it:

Healthcare activist bites off finger of counter-demonstrator, authorities say
September 3, 2009 | 10:29 am
Authorities are searching for a healthcare reform activist today who they said bit off the finger of a 65-year-old counter-demonstrator during a fight at a MoveOn.org rally in Thousand Oaks.

“It all started with their difference in philosophy over healthcare reform,” said Senior Deputy Eric Buschow of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

The incident occurred about 7 p.m. Wednesday at a “We Can’t Afford to Wait Vigil” organized by affiliates of the activist group MoveOn.org, which drew supporters of President Obama’s healthcare plan, Buschow said. The rally also attracted several counter-protesters, he said.

During the rally at Lynn Road and Hillcrest Drive, near the Oaks Mall, the two men got into a heated argument and began fighting.

“At which point, one man bit off the left pinky of the other,” Buschow said.

The injured demonstrator then drove himself to Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center about a mile away, he said.

Ilyse Hogue, director of political advocacy and communications for MoveOn.org, called the incident “a regrettable act of violence” in a statement released this morning.

“While we do not have any more facts about what happened than what we saw in press accounts, MoveOn condemns violence in all forms,” Hogue said. “We support the Ventura County sheriff’s investigation into the situation. It is in our firm hope that this event does not detract from the tens of thousands who were out peacefully making their voices heard for health care reform and a public option.”

Authorities said they are looking for a white male in his late 40s or 50s who was last seen wearing black shorts and a black shirt.

“We’re still trying to figure out who was the aggressor,” Buschow said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Ventura Sheriff’s Department at (805) 494-8201.

Iran: Imam describes Islam's rewards for raping of virgin prisoners

2009-09-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

From Israel National News we learn that the personal Imam of Ahmadinejad says that raping virgin female prisoners is equivalent to religious pilgrimage: raping a virgin woman before execution brings the rapist spiritual rewards equivalent to a pilgrimage to Mecca, but if there is no execution decree the rapist receives rewards equivalent to a pilgrimage to Karbala.

In the wake of a series of publications worldwide regarding the rape and torture of dissident prisoners in Iran's jails, supporters of Ahmadinejad gathered with him in Jamkaran, a popular pilgrimage site for Shi'ite Muslims on the outskirts of Qom, on August 11, 2009. According to Iranian pro-democracy sources, the gathered crowd heard from Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad himself regarding the issue.

According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), an independent Israeli intelligence analysis organization, Mesbah-Yazdi is considered Ahmadinejad's personal spiritual guide. A radical totalitarian even in Iranian terms, he holds messianic views, supports increasing Islamization, calls for violent suppression of domestic political opponents, and, according to the ITIC, "declared that obeying a president supported by the Supreme Leader was tantamount to obeying God."

At the Jamkaran gathering, Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad answered questions about the rape and torture charges. The following text is from a transcript alleged by Iranian dissidents to be a series of questions and answers exchanged between the ayatollah and some of his supporters.

Asked if a confession obtained "by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure" was "valid and considered credible according to Islam," Mesbah-Yazdi replied: "Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih ("Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists", or the regime of Iran's mullahs) is permissible under any condition." The ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances.

"Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."

This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?"
One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners.

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

A related issue, in the eyes of the questioners, was the rape of virgin female prisoners. In this instance, Mesbah-Yazdi went beyond the permissibility issue and described the Allah-sanctioned rewards accorded the rapist-in-the-name-of-Islam:

"If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala."

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: "What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?"

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women - ed.] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."

As I recall, it is not permitted in Islam for a virgin to be executed. So in the case of virgin women sentenced to execution, the rape is necessary for the execution to be Shariah compliant.

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

Kidnapper, Child Molester Claims to Hear Voice of God

2009-08-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle article begins:

Phillip Craig Garrido was already known as an oddball who said he could channel the voice of God through a makeshift box, but on Thursday, the eccentricity took on an aura of horror.

The registered sex offender who had served two stints in jail already has just been found to have kidnapped an eleven year old girl and held her captive in a compound in the backyard of this house for 18 years, fathering two children while he lived in the main house with his wife and mother. Midway through the article we get a paragraph about his claim to hear the voice of God:

The neighbors and other acquaintances said Garrido conducted religious revivals in a tent, claimed to hear the voices of angels and God, and said he had developed a device through which he could control sound with his mind. He propounded this all in a business he called "God's Desire."

This reminds me of the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz.

Berkowitz subsequently claimed that he was commanded to kill by a demon who possessed his neighbor's dog.

I am very glad Phillip Garrido didn't kill the Jaycee Lee Dugard. I would like to know more about people who commit criminal acts and also claim to hear the voices.

On another note, the information in the news article would seem to indicate that there may still be two little girls missing. Erika Pratt, 25, who stayed next door to the Garrido house two years ago and observed the people in the hidden compound

said people came and went from the property, but the core group consisted of two girls about 4 years old, one girl about 11, another girl about 15 and a young woman about 25. They were all blond, she said.

However, the police report that the only people found at the compound at the time of the arrest were Jaycee Lee Dugard, now 29, and her 11 and 15 year old daughters. So, where are the two little girls? That is the untold story here.

Saudi Arabia: 10 Year Old Bride Returned to 80 Year Old Man

2009-08-26T13:14:00.000-07:00

AL-LAITH, AUGUST 25 - A 10-year-old bride was returned last Sunday to her 80-year-old husband by her father who discovered her at the home of her aunt with whom she has been hiding for around 10 days. A Saudi local newspaper said the husband, who denies he is 80 in spite of claims by the girl's family, accused the aunt of meddling in his affairs. "My marriage is not against Shariah. It included the elements of acceptance and response by the father of the bride," he said. He added that he had been engaged to his wifés elder sister and that this broke off as she wanted to continue with her education. "In light of this, her father offered his younger daughter. I was allowed to have a look at her according to Shariah and found her acceptable," he said. Maatouq Al-Abdullah, a member of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), said there is no system in place regulating the marriage of young girls, something that he said results in adverse psychological, health and social effects. "Such marriages are considered a gross violation of charters on the rights of children, which the Kingdom has signed and which set the age of adulthood at 18," he added.

From here

Hat Tip Women Against Shariah

Iran: Rape of Boys Held in Prison for Demonstrating

2009-08-22T16:39:00.001-07:00

This is from the reputable Times On Line which carries Ruth Gledhill:

Iranian boy who defied Tehran hardliners tells of prison rape ordeal
The 15-year-old boy sits weeping in a safehouse in central Iran, broken in body and spirit. Reza will not go outside — he is terrified of being left alone. He says he wants to end his life and it is not hard to understand why: for daring to wear the green wristband of Iran’s opposition he was locked up for 20 days, beaten, raped repeatedly and subjected to the Abu Ghraib-style sexual humiliations and abuse for which the Iranian regime denounced the United States.

“My life is over. I don’t think I can ever recover,” he said, as he recounted his experiences to The Times — on condition that his identity not be revealed. A doctor who is treating him, at great risk to herself, confirmed that he is suicidal, and bears the appalling injuries consistent with his story. The family is desperate, and is exploring ways of fleeing Iran.

Reza is living proof of the charges levelled by Mehdi Karoubi, one of the opposition’s leaders, that prison officials are systematically raping both male and female detainees to break their wills. The regime has accused Mr Karoubi of helping Iran’s enemies by spreading lies and has threatened to arrest him.

The boy’s treatment also shows just how far a regime that claims to champion Islamic values is prepared to go to suppress millions of its own citizens who claim that President Ahmadinejad’s re-election was rigged.

Reza’s ordeal began in mid-July when he was arrested with about 40 other teenagers during an opposition demonstration in a large provincial city. Most were too young even to have voted. They were taken to what he believes was a Basiji militia base where they were blindfolded, stripped to their underwear, whipped with cables and then locked in a steel shipping container. That first night Reza was singled out by three men in plain clothes who had masqueraded as prisoners. As the other boys watched, they pushed him to the ground. One held his head down, another sat on his back and the third urinated on him before raping him.

That is just the beginning. The whole article is here.
Hat Tip Women Against Shariah

The Reality of Same Sex Marriage

2009-08-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

This is from the advice column from the most recent edition of a free weekly, East Bay Express, that is available at many retail stores and coffee shops in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, i.e., especially Berkeley and Oakland. The column is the syndicated Savage Love and the questions and answers do address sexuality issues in some detail. Dan Savage is gay, married his partner in Vancouver in 2005 and he and his partner have one adopted son. He is a strong advocate for same-sex marriage.

I am posting these two selections because of the discussion of adding additional sexual partners to a same-sex marriage:

I'm 35, gay, and in a six-year relationship. My husband — not really, here in Tennessee, but I call him that anyway — is 38, and we have a great relationship. We have been monogamous up till now but are open to inviting select others into our bed. This was prompted by a friend we recently made whom we both find attractive and who has expressed an interest in us both. He is 24, cute, and just starting out in Gaydom. We don't expect anything long-term, just a nice, mellow friend-with-benefits scenario.

Any suggestions as to issues we might want to discuss up front?

Good Gay Guys

Tell the 24-year-old not to expect anything long-term, GGG, and let him know that while you will be treating him like a piece of meat, you will also be treating him like a human being. Make sure he understands that his presence in your lives — and your bed — is meant to be fun and temporary. You two get to spice it up with some strange; he gets to benefit from your wisdom, experience, and cocks. And tell him that while he'll have a blast with you two, he shouldn't pass on a date with a potential boyfriend, should one appear on the scene — but so long as you three are friends-with-benefiting-it-up, you would like to be informed about any other sexual contacts he might have.

Then show him the ropes, teach him about sexual safety, encourage him to open up to you guys about anything he's ever wanted to try, help him find his place in Gaydom, and when it comes to an end — as it will and should — make an effort to remain friends.

And directly below was this one. I assume the juxtaposition of these two was deliberate.

I am a gay male. A couple of months ago, I developed a friendship with a gay married couple. We hit it off great — I really enjoy their company. Then they took me aside and "invited" me into their marriage, and so now I'm in one of those "polyamorous" groups. I have never been in one before.

I thought I would be able to open myself up to both of them, but for some reason I can't seem to feel love for them both at the same time. I've always seen myself as a strict-monogamy kind of guy. I thought a three-way would be fun, but when I'm with two guys, I feel like I'm just a piece of meat. I am probably not making much sense, but I would like some advice, if you could, please. I feel inadequate because I can't feel comfortable in this relationship.

Feel Like A Prude

So ... after knowing you for two months, this couple essentially proposed to you, inviting you "into their marriage," and you accepted. Hmm. Exit this marriage at once, FLAP. Not because you're a prude — clearly you're open to trying new things — but because at two months, they were idiots to propose and you were an idiot to accept.

Backing up: Trying something and not liking it doesn't mean that you're a prude, FLAP, it only means that "it" either wasn't for you or that you tried "it" with the wrong person(s). I suspect the latter in this case. If these guys, after two months, had invited you to hang out with them, to roll around with them, to drop by twice a week for a leisurely spit roasting, I suspect you would've had a better experience, FLAP. Inviting you over to be treated like a piece of meat — and a human being — would've been honest. All you could really be at two months is a piece of meat and a friend-with-benefits; you couldn't be a husband and in love with both of them equally. Their unreasonable expectations, and your attempt to live up to them, ruined what could've been a nice little affair.

From here.

Was that International ANSWER at the Episcopal Gen Con Integrity Booth?

2009-08-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

Over at Stand Firm Greg Griffith has posted a video of a discussion at the Integrity booth at the Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim. Watching the video, I thought I might have recognized the discussion moderator. Is it Rebecca Gordon, the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) PhD student who promoted communist International Answer events?

Rebecca Gordon attends an Episcopal Church in the Mission District of San Francisco although she still identifies herself as Jewish. I would not be surprised if she belongs to Integrity as she has been in a long term lesbian relationship. I believe her lesbian partner maybe also be the woman with whom she filed the ACLU law suit regarding the federal "No Fly" lists, Jan Adams.

The anti-war paper they run is called War Times and ain an early issue Rebecca was promoting International ANSWER. Rebecca started Seminarians for Peace and had them attending International ANSWER organized events. International ANSWER is a communist front organization run by members of the Workers World Party and other Marxist-Leninists.

Rebecca got an M.Div. from the Unitarian School associated with the GTU, Starr King, and is now a Ph.D. candidate at the GTU in Ethics and Social Theory. She says “In my dissertation,” she said, “I’m focusing on what happens to our national character when we’re encouraged to develop attitudes or tendencies to react violently to events like the September 11 attacks.” and “In my dissertation, I want to look at whether there are places in U.S. society where people are being formed in the kind of virtues that would allow us to say no to the official intentions. One of the theses is the Episcopal Church and its liturgical and sacramental practices. If you belong to a liturgical Christian church, essentially, in every Sunday’s eucharist you are retelling the story of someone who was tortured to death for political reasons. In the process of eating and drinking, we say we’re constituting ourselves as the body of Christ--that tortured body. Then we are sent out into the world to be that body and to resist the logic of torture.”

Hillary Clinton: We Have a Right to Disagree with Any Administration

2009-08-11T13:13:00.001-07:00

Hillary Clinton says "I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration that somehow you're not patriotic. And we should stand up and say 'We are Americans and we have a right to disagree with any administration.'"

Thank you, Hillary Clinton.

Hat Tip Islam in Action