Gang boss jailed for torturing French Jew to death
Reuters:
THE leader of a group that called itself a “gang of barbarians” was sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court for kidnapping and torturing a young Jewish man for more than three weeks before leaving him to die.
The gang abducted 23-year-old Ilan Halimi in 2006, unsuccessfully tried to extort a ransom for their captive, tortured him until he was close to death and then left him near a train station. He died shortly after he was found.
The case shocked France and turned a spotlight on anti-Semitic violence in the poor, multi-ethnic suburbs around many big French cities.
[...]
The anti-Christian bias in the White House
AT:
A brilliant scientist who discovered the gene that afflicts cystic fibrosis victims was recently named by the president to the post of Director of the National Institute of Health, the nation’s primary research lab.
Dr. Frances Collins’s accomplishment in finding the CF gene is compared to “the discovery of one disabled bulb in the entire American electric web.
Brilliant, able, and he would seem to be a perfect fit, right?
Marty Peretz at The New Republic:
So what’s wrong with Collins?
He is a practicing and believing Christian. It’s odd–isn’t it?–that this fact should make a scientific designee unfit or unsuited for a job. Soon we will hear the same about judicial nominees. The establishment mounted a sustained campaign in the Senate (and outside) against President Wilson’s nomination of Louis D. Brandies to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the candidate was Jewish, although some of his critics tended to be euphemistic rather than direct about their objections. Not so those who are against Collins.
The president must have anticipated this reaction. It is reassuring that he did not crumble in advance.
For a bunch of idealogues who profess tolerance as their hightest aim, animus by liberals toward believing Christians is getting out of control.
[...]
Too few are speaking out against this disease. Cowards. This same silence manifests itself when Jews are targeted. It is satanic. Soon Christian and Jews will be openly persecuted here in the western nations. We must stick together.
Rachel Corrie Meets Horst Wessel at SF’s Jewish Film Festival
By Abraham H. Miller, AT:
Rachel Corrie was the naïve Marxist and International Solidarity Movement member who went into Gaza to put her body on the line to keep open tunnels that supplied suicide bombers with the means to kill Israeli civilians. Standing for hours in front of an Israeli military bulldozer that was demolishing these tunnels and the structures that led to them, Corrie fell into a dirt pile, unseen by the bulldozer driver, and was buried alive as he drove over it.With some deceptive sequencing and distortion of photos, the ISM made it appear that the driver purposely drove over Corrie and crushed her. The Evergreen State University student subsequently took on the iconic status of a martyr. Her life, committed to facilitating the work of those who would take innocent lives, has become the source of poetry readings, an international play, and now, a documentary.
[...]
The American public remains resistant to big-government liberalism
by William Kristol:
The air is seeping out of the Great Liberal Hot Air Balloon. American liberals have been hoping, wishing, and praying–okay, maybe not praying–for over a quarter-century for an end to the ghastly interlude of conservative dominance ushered in by Ronald Reagan. Surely it was all a bad dream, a waking nightmare, a bizarre deviation from the preordained path of history.
With the Democratic congressional victories in November 2006, the nightmare seemed to be ending. And in November 2008, with the election of Barack Obama and increased congressional majorities, it seemed to be over. A new era had dawned.
But did it? Maybe we’re now experiencing a liberal interlude, not a liberal inflection point. After all, only six months into the new administration, even a talented hot air blower like President Obama, assisted by friendly gusts of wind from the media, is having trouble keeping the liberal blimp afloat.
[...]
A Palestinian struggle between bad guys and bad guys
Robert Fulford, NP:
The clouds that normally obscure events in the Middle East start to recede when Khaled Abu Toameh begins talking about the future of Palestinians and Israelis. This relationship, the key to his future life as an Israeli Arab, has been the subject of his journalism for more than two decades. What he’s learned contradicts beliefs held by much of the world, and differs sharply from what we expect from someone with his background.
He was in Toronto this week, talking to a few journalists. He’s a Muslim Arab, son of an Israeli Arab father and a Palestinian Arab mother. When he was studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he went to work for Al-Fajr (“The Dawn”), the Palestine Liberation Organization newspaper. He left when he realized it would never print anything but propaganda.
Hoping to be a real journalist, he began working with foreign reporters covering Israel. Eventually, he produced TV documentaries and wrote for Britain’s Sunday Times and other papers. For the last eight years, he’s been the Jerusalem Post’s specialist in Arab affairs. “I am an Arab Muslim and the only place I can write honestly is in a Jewish newspaper,” he says. Other Arab journalists envy his freedom.
[...]
Sorrow over Jackson’s death epitomizes West’s dysfunction
By MICHAEL COREN:
Last Tuesday was a day of extraordinary solemnity and emotion. We remembered and recalled passing and loss and in so doing many of us shed a tear and said a prayer. Life never to be replaced, promise never to be fulfilled, greatness and goodness cut down in their prime.
No, no, no. Not the sordid little funeral of a sexually and ethnically confused pop star in California, but the anniversary of the mass slaughter of more than 50 people and the injuring of more than 700 in London in 2005.
We may also last Tuesday have asked ourselves how and why a world so bulging with wealth and privilege could, on that day as on every other day, have allowed 40,000 children to die of starvation in Africa and Asia, while boys and girls in Europe and the United States are bursting out of their clothes and fighting diseases brought on by obesity, greed and grotesque self-indulgent diets.
Now if any of you, any of you at all, think that there is no connection among violence, war, terror and suffering on the one hand and neurotic hero worship, false emotion and vicarious death thrills on the other, you are as closeted as someone hiding away in the inner sanctums of the Neverland Ranch.
[...]
Spooky spooks (have they nothing better to do with your tax dollars?)
19 hours 45 minutes and 52 seconds on my site? What on earth warrants all this attention from the thought stasi?
Quite of the day to make your day
“We’ve got news for the condom worshipers,” says Leslee Unruh, President of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, “abstinence education is not going away any time soon. Taxpayers will not tolerate their money being used for ideological latex-only programs and the molestation of their children’s minds and future.”
The lock-up-your-opponents bills of 2009?
by Ed Morrissey, HOT AIR:
Would Congress ever pass legislation that would allow the executive to determine at its own discretion whether political opponents had crossed the line into domestic terrorists and build camps in which to keep them? Sounds like something out of 20th-century totalitarian systems or dystopian fiction. Mark Tapscott says it’s not fiction, and he warns readers about an effort by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to do just that:[...]
Well if it works for thug regimes it ought to work for hope-n-changers.
When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.
Robert Reich:
The so-called “green shoots” of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.
Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions.
[...]
That’s where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.
Personally, I don’t buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn’t depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
[...]
My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can’t get back on track because the track we were on for years — featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere — simply cannot be sustained.The X marks a brand new track — a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can’t “recover” because it can’t go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come.
Honduras Can Be Saved from Communism: Interview with Head of Pro-Freedom Alliance in Latin America
By Cliff Kincaid, AIM:
This is the transcript of an interview conducted by Cliff Kincaid with Alejandro Peña Esclusa, president of UnoAmerica and the author of The Foro de São Paulo: A Threat to Freedom in Latin America. Peña Esclusa, a former Venezuelan presidential candidate and a prominent critic of the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela, has been spearheading opposition to the Sao Paulo Forum, a coalition of communist and leftist parties and terrorist movements in Latin America. With the end of the Cold War in 1989, it was believed by many that communism was on the wane. However, with Fidel Castro isolated in Cuba, he reached out to Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva of the Worker’s Party of Brazil, who would later become President of Brazil. An event was hosted in São Paulo, Brazil in 1990, the seat of Lula’s power, bringing together what came to be known as the São Paulo Forum.
UnoAmerica recognized the new Honduran government. Who and what does UnoAmerica represent?UnoAmerica is an Alliance of Latin-American Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), created to defend democracy and freedom, both currently in danger in our continent. We decided to recognize the new Honduran government because the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya was actually an impeachment. Zelaya wanted to change the Constitution, without the approval of the Supreme Court and the Congress, in order to stay illegally in power. As in all democratic governments, there are three branches of power in Honduras. In this case, the Executive wanted to stage a coup against the Constitution, and the other two powers (Legislative and Judiciary) did not let that happen. It is very simple.
[...]
Enduring Nonsense
By: Daniel Mandel, FrontPageMagazine.com:
The other week, responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech that envisaged creating a demilitarized Palestinian state, perennial Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak noted, “I told President Obama that solving the crises of the Arab and Muslim worlds goes through Jerusalem.” The week before, General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said, “Hezbollah’s justifications for existence will become void…if the Palestinian cause is resolved.”The notion that the Israeli/Arab conflict lies at the core of Middle Eastern problems has been popular among the political class for years:
[...]
Coyne’s Confusion: How a Prominent Scientific Atheist Can’t Agree With Himself About Metaphysical Naturalism
Evolution News and Views:
Advocates of Intelligent Design and others who practice skepticism toward the pomposities of much of modern Darwinism can be forgiven a little amusement when they see their detractors engaged in an internal squabble that highlights the philosophical absurdities of the scientistic rationalism that pervades much of modern Darwinism.
Ever since the publication of Jerry Coyne’s New Republic article, “Seeing and Believing,” the Darwinists have been engaged in a three-way tug of war over the issue of “accommodationism.” The gnawing and snarling has pitted three camps against each other in a contest over the right way to wage the PR war against the Intelligent Design movement for the hearts and minds of the scientifically naive.
[...]
Our Foreign Policy Neophyte
By Charles Krauthammer:
Obama, who seeks to banish nuclear weapons entirely, has little use for such prosaic contrivances. First, the Obama budget actually cuts spending on missile defense, at a time when federal spending is a riot of extravagance and trillion-dollar deficits. Then comes the “pause” (as Russia’s president appreciatively noted) in the planned establishment of a missile shield in Eastern Europe. And now the “Joint Understanding” commits us to a new treaty that includes “a provision on the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms.” Obama further said that the East European missile shield “will be the subject of extensive negotiations” between the United States and Russia.
Obama doesn’t even seem to understand the ramifications of this concession. Poland and the Czech Republic thought they were regaining their independence when they joined NATO under the protection of the United States. They now see that the shield negotiated with us and subsequently ratified by all of NATO is in limbo. Russia and America will first have to “come to terms” on the issue, explained President Dmitry Medvedev. This is precisely the kind of compromised sovereignty that Russia wants to impose on its ex-Soviet colonies — and that U.S. presidents of both parties for the last 20 years have resisted.
[...]
What good will “I told you so” be when the chickens come home to roost and this left-liberal fantasy ends in our destruction and the enslavement of millions?
MORE
Numbering the days of dictators
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST:
[...]
Just because the US is currently on vacation from its role as leader of the Free World doesn’t mean that other free people cannot do the right thing.
Somali Islamist hardliners behead 7 people for being “Christians”
Reuters:
Somalia’s hardline Islamist rebels beheaded seven people on Friday for being “Christians” and “spies” in the latest imposition of strict sharia, Islamic law, by the Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group, witnesses said.
Al Shabaab, which controls large tracts of south Somalia and parts of the capital Mogadishu, has carried out such executions before, but the beheadings on Friday were believed to be the largest number of killings at one time, Somalis say.
“Al Shabaab told us that they were beheaded for reasons they described as being Christian followers and spies,” said one relative, who gave his name only as Aden, after the killings in the south-central town of Baidoa.
[...]
The Audacity of Conceit
By Victor Volsky, AT:
Intelligent idiots, smart fools, multi-degreed morons – lots of monikers could describe a category of individuals dismayingly prominent in the ruling elites of the West. They are the people so divorced from reality, so engrossed in bookish pursuits that – for all their undoubted intellectual accomplishments and often as a direct consequence thereof – they invariably end up with egg on their faces whenever they try to engage in practical activities.
Worse yet, they idolize each other, sticking up for one another out of class solidarity.
[...]
Pope’s New Encyclical Speaks Against, not for One-World Government and New World Order
LifeSiteNews.com:
Newspapers, blogs, talk-shows on radio and television are full of discussion over Pope Benedict XVI’s supposed call for a “new world order” or a “one-world government.” These ideas are, however, neither based in reality nor a clear reading of the Pope’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the release of which yesterday spawned the heated discussion.
The Pope actually speaks directly against a one-world government, and, as would be expected from those who have read his previous writings, calls for massive reform of the United Nations. Confusion seems to have come from paragraph 67 of the encyclical, which has some choice pull-quotes which have spiced the pages of the world’s news, from the New York Times to those of conspiracy theorist bloggers seeing the Pope as the Anti-Christ.
[...]
RELATED:
Pope Endorses “World Political Authority”
Glenn Beck: Donut Baker Has Anti-C&T Reader Board. Gets no Stimulus Money
Well why would a lawmaker read the law he votes for? C’mon, don’t you know they have better things to do than discharge the responsibilities of their office? Tsk, tsk … you obviously just don’t understand how Washington works. Now, go back to your quaint little business and PAY YOUR TAXES!
Stephen Meyer on Jan Mickelson With Signature in the Cell
Evolution News and Views:
CSC Director Stephen C. Meyer recently appeared on Jan Mickelson’s talk show to discuss his new book, Signature in the Cell. Now you can download audio and listen in as Meyer discusses Francis Collins, Carl Sagan, the information embedded in DNA, and how arch-atheist Richard Dawkins anticipated the title of Dr. Meyer’s new book.
Looking Back on the Life of Barack Obama (satire)
By Daniel Greenfield, CFP:
(CNN) Celebrity News Network – Now with More Holograms! – August 13, 2038
He was the first black President of the United States, and he also became its last President when in 2019, after his term in office had been extended indefinitely by HR:0666 or “The Hope and Faith in Obama’s Everlasting Presidency Act” (Holo-Link), he was forced to leave office because the government had run out of money to pay for itself.
Though he lived a very public life, few could agree on even the basic facts of his life, such as where he was born, who his father was, or what his real name was, or even what race and gender he was. For a man who spent most of his life before the camera, his death leaves us with few answers about who Barack Obama (Holo-Link) really was. Obama himself did not help matters by using multiple names, multiple birthplaces and even passports.
[...]
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has a history of ideologically charged investigations
By Hans A. von Spakovsky, NRO:
There’s no shortage of opinion on whether Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio has done anything wrong. Almost ignored, however, are the Justice Department lawyers investigating him. Yet their conduct raises serious questions — namely, have their liberal bias and apparently unethical tactics caused fundamental flaws in their investigation?
[...]
Arizona is on the front lines of the immigration crisis confronting the American Southwest. As thousands of illegal immigrants flood across the border — many engaging in violent and drug-related crimes, choking the local court systems and otherwise imposing heavy economic costs on Arizona communities — Arpaio has been a visible force in local enforcement of federal immigration laws.
Not surprisingly, Arpaio has incurred the wrath of those on the left who oppose immigration enforcement in general, and especially local enforcement of federal immigration laws. Many would like to see the 287(g) program terminated. Unfortunately, the Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section (SPL), which initiated the investigation of Maricopa County, appears hell-bent on aiding these groups’ efforts. SPL has a bad track record enforcing poorly defined and constitutionally questionable legal standards, and it has already been accused of unethical conduct in this case.
[...]
And guess which Obama apparatchik [Secretary of Homeland Security] used to be the governor of Arizona? Yes, that icon of sheer, breathtaking ignorance, Janet – “the 9/11 terrorists came across Canadian border “- Napolitano, that’s who (and I only just scratched the surface of this woman’s obtuseness). Arpaio is already way behind the eight ball. Good luck sheriff.
Left for Life
By: Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, FrontPageMagazine.com:
Quick, what’s the capital of Honduras? Probably fewer than 10 percent of Americans could answer that question prior to the recent news that Honduran President Mel Zelaya was sent packing to Costa Rica by the Honduran military. While it’s too early to say whether the so-called “coup” will stick, or whether Zelaya, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez a few years ago, can regain power, it isn’t too early to assess Barack Obama’s response. In fact, Obama’s reaction has been most illuminating, and may indeed be one of the defining moments of his presidency.[...]
Gaia worshipping Chicken Littles losing credibility fast
Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick
James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book. [...]
Obama plummets to minus 8 Presidential Approval Index (updated)
Thomas Lifson, AT
The American public awakens to the disaster that is the Obama presidency. Rasmussen’s Daily Presidential Approval Index shows 38% of the public strongly disapproves and only 30% strongly approve of Obama’s handling of his job.With the economy crashing despite the promises made over the stimulus package, the public is turning negative:
[...]
Awww … what’s a narcissist to do?
Welcome to the Socialist States of America
Father Raymond J. De Souza, NP:
At the airport here in Omaha, Warren Buffet greets all arriving passengers. The celebrated investor doesn’t do it in person, but a large billboard of him is the first thing you see upon arrival in his home town. Few cities have a money manager as their local hero. The virtues of Warren Buffet’s approach — look for good fundamentals, seek value where others overlook it, be patient and aim for the long term — are not just an investment philosophy, but indicative of a the general attitude people like to think they have in the Great Plains — thrifty, careful, farsighted, self-reliant.
To the extent that Middle America thinks about Canada — which is not very much — it’s the softer, spendthrift, statist neighbour to the north. It’s not unusual to hear us described as socialist, or at least some of our programs. So it would be a surprise to most Americans, and perhaps Canadians too, to realize that the United States could learn something from Canada about how to run a less statist economy.
[...]
Muslim Double Standards
Tarek Fatah, NP:
This week, more than 100 Muslims have died and thousands more have been arrested in China. Yet not a peep of protest has been heard on the streets of Cairo, Karachi or Tehran. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it seems, is too busy imprisoning and herding Iranian Muslims to jail to hear the outcry in Xinxiang, while Egyptian religious leader, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has also ignored the persecution of the Uighurs. China, after all is the trusted ally of the Arab world.
This is not the first time the so-called ummah has shrugged off the massacre of fellow Muslims.
[...]
The Dumbing Down of Democracy
By DANIEL HENNINGER, WSJ:
The pivotal foreign policy event so far in the Obama presidency was not this week’s summit with Russia. It was instead that rarest of all events: Barack Obama’s silence.
When the people of Iran filled the streets of their country demanding a fair election, the U.S. clutched for a week. Uncertain of whether U.S. interests lay with the nuke-building ayatollahs or the democracy-seeking population, the Obama team essentially mumbled sweet nothings through the first days of the most extraordinary world event in this young presidency’s term. That moment of hesitation, when a genuine and strategically useful democratic moment needed support, could prove costly.
When the Group of Eight nations tried to shape a response to the Iranian government’s repression, Russia knew what to say about Iran.
“No one is willing to condemn the election process,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “because it’s an exercise in democracy.”
Behold the official dumbing down of democracy.
[...]
Suppressing climate skeptics
Lorne Gunter, National Post:
If you visit drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures– the site of a scientist who, for 30 years, has used satellites to monitor global temperature — you will see that as of the end of June, the Earth is no warmer than it was in 1979. Over the past three decades, the Earth’s temperature has been above average some of the time and below average some of the time. Now it is right on the 30-year average.
Indeed, while 1998 was the warmest or second-warmest year on record, no year since has been as warm. And while there have been more warm years than cool ones in the past decade-and-a-half, the trend, since at least 2003, has been downward.
And — this is the one I really like — according to climatedepot.com,since Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth in October 2006, the Earth’s temperature has lost 0.74F, almost exactly the amount the UN’s climate panel claims was gained in the entire 20th century. The latter stat is apropos of nothing. As a correlation of Al Gore’s bombast vs. worldwide temperature averages, it is pure fluke. But you can bet that if there had been a similar rise in the past 33 months, the headlines would be blaring that the end of the world was near. Yet such a precipitous drop-off elicits nothing more than a little blog chatter.
Forgetting Sarah Palin
By Ann Coulter, WND:
The peculiarly venomous hatred of Palin is driven by women of the left and their whipped consorts. All that needs to happen is for a feminist to overhear two Nation readers saying, “I hate to admit it, but Palin is kind of hot” and …WHAT??????????? YOU CALL THAT HOT? I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW WE’VE GOT A MEGA-SUPER HOTTIE IN DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. AND NEED I REMIND YOU AGAIN OF THE RAW SEX APPEAL OF RACHEL MADDOW?
Democrats are a party of women, and nothing drives them off their gourds like a beautiful Christian conservative. (How much money has that other beautiful born-again, Carrie Prejean, been forced to spend on lawyers to respond to liberal hysteria?)
So the motives are clear, but the money is not. Who is paying the rent for the losers filing all these frivolous complaints against Palin?
[...]
The alphabet of life
By DAVID KLINGHOFFER, J’Post:
WITH DNA, there is, in one sense, less there than meets the eye. But in another sense, there is much more. For if DNA can’t entirely account for the way bodies are put together, there remains something deeply suggestive about the fact that curled at the heart of every cell there lies a code. How did it get there?
A staple of media coverage of DNA is the story, repeated endlessly, about some scientist or other who’s the latest to synthesize molecular precursors of DNA (or its genetic partner, RNA), thus purportedly showing how biological information could have arisen on Earth unaided. The problem with these demonstrations is that they always depend on intelligent guidance, that of the scientist in his lab, thus suggesting the very opposite lesson of the one intended.
In another new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne), my colleague Stephen Meyer, a Cambridge University-trained philosopher of science, reminds us of the failure of every avenue by which science has tried to explain the origin of the genetic information required for the first life. Explanations depending on unguided material processes alone usually founder on a chicken-or-the-egg paradox: notably, that “specified information in DNA codes for proteins, but specific proteins are necessary to transcribe and translate the information on the DNA molecule.”
DNA acts like a computer code, or like a language consisting of letters and words, arranged in specific sequences to accomplish a specific task or convey a specific meaning. As Dr. Meyer observes, the only kind of source we know of that can produce a “functionally integrated information-processing system” like that in the cell is an intelligent source.
[...]
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