Archive for November, 2008

Liberal women will always hate Sarah Palin because she exposes the hypocrisy of the feminist agenda! Period.

Sarah Palin has no family fortune, no pol, no powerful elites which have propelled her to power. She epitomizes what a feminist should support. It is not at all curious that “they” hate her because she is not the product of their lobby.

She is charismatic, she is articulate (YES, she is), and her world view collides with everything those mindless minions of the decaying feminist culture promulgate.

Let’s face it, the “women’s groups” hate her,( they fear her), because she is pro life and she is a lifetime member of the NRA. ( God Bless her) Is there any lobby more hated than the NRA in left wing circles?

If Sarah Palin had an abortion, if she refused to cull predatory wolf packs, if she supported a ban on guns, she would be iconic to these very same women. They would have lifted her up to stellar heights rather than sabotaging her candidacy.

OH! and lest I forget, she is a Christian woman of faith. To her detractors there can be nothing more suspect than that.
For all these reasons I will support Sarah Palin unceasingly, with contributions and everything I can offer, all the days of my life.

Sue Masson
Miami, FL

BELFAST TELEGRAPH Nov.30
Mumbai photographer: I wish I’d had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back

Jerome Taylor talks to the photographer whose picture went around the world

Saturday, 29 November 2008
A gunman walks at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, hospitals and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India’s financial capital, killing people, taking Westerners hostage and leaving parts of the city under siege Thursday, police said. A group of suspected Muslim militants claimed responsibility. AP

Sebastian D’Souza

A gunman walks at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, hospitals and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India’s financial capital, killing people, taking Westerners hostage and leaving parts of the city under siege Thursday, police said. A group of suspected Muslim militants claimed responsibility. AP

* Photos More pictures

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* In Pictures: Massacre in Mumbai
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* Ten ‘commando killers’ caused ‘India’s 9/11′ in Mumbai
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* Kashmiri separatists prime suspects for Mumbai attacks
* Mumbai massacre: Inside room 2115 – ‘We climbed into the bath and hid’
* Patrick Cockburn: Pakistan is the root of the problem
* Mumbai massacre: ‘They shot the man standing next to me’
* Mumbai massacre: Terrorists used al Qaida blueprint
* Mumbai Massacre: ‘Put your hands up if you are British,’ gunmen tell terrified travellers
* India uncovers Hindu terror group that carried out bombings blamed on Islamists
* We were caught in Mumbai massacre
* Bloody Mumbai siege ended by elite troops
* ‘I lost my friend in Mumbai massacre’
* Irish woman in Mumbai hotel horror
* Mumbai gunmen ‘of British descent’
* Tycoon who described Mumbai horror named as British victim
* Mumbai: Experts play down al-Qa’ida link. Were killers home-grown?
* How Mumbai terror unfolded: They came by boat to kill
* Viewpoint: Mumbai’s cold-blooded fanatics
* Battle of Mumbai still rages
* Bloody Mumbai siege ended by elite troops
* ‘I lost my friend in Mumbai massacre’
* Irish woman in Mumbai hotel horror
* Mumbai gunmen ‘of British descent’
* Tycoon who described Mumbai horror named as British victim
* Mumbai: Experts play down al-Qa’ida link. Were killers home-grown?
* How Mumbai terror unfolded: They came by boat to kill
* Viewpoint: Mumbai’s cold-blooded fanatics
* Battle of Mumbai still rages
* Mumbai under siege as death toll tops 100
* Mumbai massacre: ‘They shot the man standing next to me’
* Mumbai massacre: Terrorists used al Qaida blueprint
* How Mumbai terror unfolded: They came by boat to kill
* Mumbai Massacre: ‘Put your hands up if you are British,’ gunmen tell terrified travellers
* India terror rampage: at least 80 dead in Mumbai
* India uncovers Hindu terror group that carried out bombings blamed on Islamists

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It is the photograph that has dominated the world’s front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India’s most vibrant city. Now it can be revealed how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him.

Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor at the Mumbai Mirror, whose offices are just opposite the city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji station, heard the gunfire erupt and ran towards the terminus. “I ran into the first carriage of one of the trains on the platform to try and get a shot but couldn’t get a good angle, so I moved to the second carriage and waited for the gunmen to walk by,” he said. “They were shooting from waist height and fired at anything that moved. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames using a telephoto lens. I think they saw me taking photographs but theydidn’t seem to care.”

The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D’Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back. “I first saw the gunmen outside the station,” Mr D’Souza said. “With their rucksacks and Western clothes they looked like backpackers, not terrorists, but they were very heavily armed and clearly knew how to use their rifles.

“Towards the station entrance, there are a number of bookshops and one of the bookstore owners was trying to close his shop,” he recalled. “The gunmen opened fire and the shopkeeper fell down.”

But what angered Mr D’Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything,” he said. “At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.”

As the gunmen fired at policemen taking cover across the street, Mr D’Souza realised a train was pulling into the station unaware of the horror within. “I couldn’t believe it. We rushed to the platform and told everyone to head towards the back of the station. Those who were older and couldn’t run, we told them to stay put.”

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D’Souza added: “I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera.”
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National Rifle Association in America is going to flippin’ LOVE this quote, “I wish I’d had a gun, not a camera.”

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Posted by Kai | 30.11.08, 20:21 GMT
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C’mon guys,

Do you really thing that the COPS in the USA would do anything different? hen they had the massacre in Columbine, the police hid outside until the bad guys killed themselves. They did the same thing at NIU and the large masacre at the university in the SE USA (the Name of the school escapes me at this time).

The one thing that is always the common factor in these masacres is that the terrorists are armed, the civilians are not, and our defenders in blue hide outside until its over. A few armed civilians could have/would have stopped this.

It is time to wake up. The only ones to benefits from gun control are the terrorist.

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Posted by Joe USA | 30.11.08, 19:21 GMT
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Zoom in Haifa:

You are correct. I have no idea about the difficulty in applying for a gun “license” in Israel, or anywhere else, for that matter. You see, I live in Alaska, where we do not have to apply for any “license” to carry weapons, concealed or open.

While I have no opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, I do know that the criminal use of firearms in Israel, according to UN data, is actually quite rare, media reports notwithstanding.

Cheers!

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Posted by Dean | 30.11.08, 18:53 GMT

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The armed police hid and did not fire on the terrorists! Where are the Gurkhas when you really need someone to do some serious fighting?

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Posted by Rich | 30.11.08, 18:28 GMT
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Why didint the police fire their guns? Were they under orders?

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Posted by Al | 30.11.08, 17:49 GMT
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First, the wanton slaughter of thousands of Christians in Orissa, India while the police did nothing and now this. India obviously does not protect its own citizens or visitors. Although most Indians I know are very nice people, the country is not a safe place.

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Posted by Mark U.S. | 30.11.08, 17:22 GMT
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My prayers and cnndolences to the people of India. I cannot judge the police, since I was not there. All the more reason for an armed citizenry.

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Posted by jajaj | 30.11.08, 17:03 GMT

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Dr. R.B. Phillips and Mike Kuyal, it is quite obvious thazt neither of you has ever been under fire. Believe me – if there had been armed US citizens at this incident, they would have either been shot or would have kept their heads down!
Where were all the armed citizens in the college shootings we read about in the USA? It is one thing walking along with your little pea shooter strapped to your waist, dreaming about doing a John Wayne against the bad guys and seeing well trained terrorists picking off targets!
Oh, and before you ask, yes, I have come under fire – in Belfast.

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Posted by Centaur | 30.11.08, 17:02 GMT
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India needs a Second Amendment. There would have been different results.

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Posted by condoractual | 30.11.08, 15:59 GMT
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I was in India many years ago
I wintessed an attack at a -Hindu Temple
100 Attackers at 1:00 Am at Night !
They had guns and Bombs (a lot) !
Our 3 Indian Guards ran and hid !
Be aware the terrorists had
Machine Guns and Bombs and Hand granades
Plus were highly trained and ready to die !!!
The Indian cops had only rifles ! (and families)
Im not saying they should have run away BUT
They didnt have a chance in Hell !
Its getting way out of control now
The Fanatics are going for broke !
-JMD–Moscow

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Posted by Jaya Madhava das | 30.11.08, 15:27 GMT
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I cant believe that the camera man would say that he wished he had a weapon instead of a camera. Talk about audacity, an armed citizen that could fight back, are you crazy.
“The only way I will give up my firearm, is if its hot and empty”.

Posted by TH | 30.11.08, 15:
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Cynic – So you would say that the police acted in the correct manner in this instance – watching as innocents were blown away? The consequences of blowing the bad guys away is that more good guys would have lived. Is that such a bad thing? Your country’s sniveling PC attitude towards ‘bad guys’ and gun ownership has put your country in a precarious position with your minority population. When the small percentage of them who believes as these terrorists rise up, your police and citizenry will react as the Indians – as victims.

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Posted by Eric | 30.11.08, 15:03 GMT
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It’s unreal that they didnt fireback.

WTF?

This would never happen in the US south.

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Posted by Mike Kuyel | 30.11.08, 14:39 GMT
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If this was only 10 people, and the cops did not fire back initially, then india has serious serious problems with its security forces. If only 10 people then thats only 2 people at each place? Armed police hiding? Commandoes needing 3 days to clear out just a couple people?

Surely this must not be true.

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Posted by LH | 30.11.08, 14:23 GMT
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Maybe the cops remembered what happened to the two border patrol agents in texas who shot back and got 11 years in prison.

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Posted by bill | 30.11.08, 14:02 GMT
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It’s always better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

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Posted by Al | 30.11.08, 13:53 GMT
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Police everywhere are not there to protect you even when they are there. God bless the 2nd amendment.

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Posted by Ross Compton | 30.11.08, 13:51 GMT
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Is it being reported in the Indian media that their own armed police did not fire at the terrorists?

I’m surprised there’s only 3 comments to this story.

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Posted by Some Other Guy | 30.11.08, 13:29 GMT
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incredible story… and I thought the indian police acted competently? I hope this was an isolated case..

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Posted by nick p | 30.11.08, 13:26 GMT
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May I congratulate Jerome Taylor on the brilliant interview with Sebastian D’Souza.

As a former photographer based in the Far East I can understand the sentiments of Mr D’Souza.

It is over 35 years since I covered events in India and it looks as if nothing has changed.

If Jerome is still in touch with Mr D’Souza will he be kind enough to pass on my best wishes.

Yemeni Child Bride Honored At “Glamour” Gala
Reported by: RNS
Tuesday, Nov 11, 2008 @10:10am CST

(New York, NY) — A ten-year-old child bride from Yemen has been honored as one of “Glamour” magazine’s women of the year Monday night.

The “New York Daily News” is reporting that pint-sized Nujood Ali broke with tradition by demanding a divorce.

The girl was given up for marriage by her impoverished parents.

Although her 30-year-old groom had promised to wait until Ali was older before becoming intimate, he reportedly raped and beat her on their wedding night. When no one would take Ali to the courthouse to seek a divorce, she went on her own and sat there until a judge took notice.

Human rights lawyer Shada Nasser shared the “Glamour” award for helping Ali become the first child bride in Yemeni history to be granted a divorce. The two flew in for the posh Carnegie Hall gala. Among the other honorees were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Senator Hillary Clinton.

How nice, think I’ll post another:
najood2.jpg

(I have that same necklace.)

Yemeni child bride honored among Women of the Year
Mon Nov 10, 2008 9:54pm EST Email | Print | Share| Reprints | Single Page | Recommend (0) [-] Text [+] NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – A Yemeni child bride, who gained international renown after refusing to accept a forced marriage to a man nearly three times her age, on Monday received an award as a “Woman of the Year” alongside nine others.

The annual Women of the Year Awards, published by Glamour Magazine for the past 19 years and sponsored by L’Oreal, pay tribute to women who have made major contributions to entertainment, business, sport, fashion, science and politics.

Nujood Ali, who is now 10, was chosen for the award after her unusual story of rebellion against an arranged marriage made her an international celebrity, with her story highlighted by various magazines and TV networks.

Like many young girls in Yemen, where the majority are Muslim, Ali was pulled out of second-grade from her school in the capital Sanaa by her impoverished father and married to a man in his 30s. He beat and sexually assaulted her.

Under Yemeni law the minimum age of marriage is 15, according to the U.S. Department of State, but tribal customs and interpretations of Islam often override this and girls are married much earlier with bride-price payments widespread.

But rather than accept traditional custom, Ali went to court, got the help of a human rights lawyer and successfully filed for divorce in April this year.

“With the help of human rights lawyer Shada Nasser… Yemeni child bride Nujood Ali took the stand against her husband in court, and was granted a historic divorce,” said a statement about her award, presented at a ceremony in New York.

“Together Nasser and Ali are committed to saving other little girls from early marriage.”

Ali was also picked for the Women of the Year Fund Initiative, where one of the awardees is chosen as the basis for fund-raising for their project.

Other women to make the annual list were TV personality Tyra Banks for her charity that supports young women, Hillary Clinton for inspiring generations of women, and Chanel Chief Executive Maureen Chiquet for her role in international business.

Jane Goodall, best known for her ground-breaking work with chimpanzees, was awarded a lifetime achievement award for her humanitarian and environmental work while Australian actress Nicole Kidman was praised for her work with the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, beach volleyball duo Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, and artist Kara Walker also featured in the 2008 list.

The winners, featured in the December issue of Glamour magazine on the newsstands on Tuesday, were picked by an advisory board made up of past honorees ranging from Diane von Furstenberg to Nora Ephron to Queen Latifah.

menite security agent whom it said collaborated with the U.S. against Al-Qaeda.

Source: Al-Hayat, London, November 10, 2008

Political Development Forum Yemeni Female Media Forum National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms MENGOS: Middle East NGO Gateway RSF Article 19 International Freedom Of Expression Exchange Amnesty International: Yemen

*GOVERNMENTAL AND INTERNATIONAL*

UN Information Center Yemen Cental Statistical Organization US State Department, MENA Yemen Embassy (UK) links UNDP Fact Sheet – Yemen US Embassy: Sa’ana, Yemen Yemen Gateway: History of Yemen Arab Human Rights Index-Yemen UN Development Program: Yemen Millennium Challenge Ranking:Yemen Freedom House Ranking: Yemen CIA Factbook: Yemen Yemen Guide Yemeni Constiution

There have always been cheerful idiots in this country who believed that there would be no more war for us if everybody in America would only return into their homes and lock their front doors behind them.

HST: May 8, 1945
They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted their children, and murdered their loved ones. Our Armies of Liberation have restored freedom to these suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressors could never enslave.
*

Taliban murder US citizen, launch suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan
By Bill RoggioNovember 12, 2008 9:47 AM

Map of the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province. The government signed peace agreements in the red agencies/ districts (the military said Shangla was under Taliban control in October); purple districts are under de facto Taliban control; yellow regions are under Taliban influence.

The Taliban continue to press their terror campaign in Pakistan’s violence-wracked Northwest Frontier Province. Taliban fighters shot and killed a US citizen outside of his home in Peshawar, the provincial capital. In a separate attack, a Taliban suicide bomber struck outside of a high school in the neighboring district of Charsadda.

A Taliban team gunned down killed Steve Vance and his driver outside of Vance’s home in a so-called secure neighborhood in Peshawar “favored by diplomats and foreign aid workers close to the American Club,” Reuters reported.

The Taliban assassination squad was able to penetrate the security in Peshawar, scouted Vance’s home, and wait for him to leave his home. “As he was coming out of his home, the attackers opened fire on him and killed him along with his driver,” a senior police officer told the news agency.

Vance directed a “US government funded project to develop livelihoods in the tribal region.” Vance’s wife and five children live in Peshawar, but were not killed in the attack. The US has allocated more than $750 million to improve living conditions in Pakistan’s lawless, Taliban-controlled tribal agencies.

The Taliban conducted a similar attack in Peshawar in late August. A team of fighters ambushed and fired on the car carrying Lynne Tracy, the US Consulate’s principal officer, as she left her home in the same neighborhood in Peshawar. Tracy narrowly escaped the attack as her driver was able to dodge the roadblock put up by the Taliban fighters.

In Charsadda, a Taliban suicide bomber detonated at the entrance of a high school in the town of Machni. Seven Pakistanis, including five security personnel, were killed in the attack, Geo TV reported. The target of the attack appears to have been the security personnel. No students were reported to have been killed, but the school was damaged.

Today’s suicide attack followed yesterday’s a strike outside of a stadium in Peshawar. The target was Bashir Ahmed Bilour, the provincial Chief Minister. Bilour escaped the suicide attack, but two members of his security detail were killed. The Taliban took credit for the attack.

Both Peshawar and Charsadda are “settled” districts of the Northwest Frontier Province, outside of the tribal areas ruled by the Taliban. The Taliban have extended their influence and control into the settled districts in an effort to expand their Islamic Emirate.

The Taliban have a strong presence in districts of Swat, Shangla, Dir, Hangu, Bannu, and Tank. The rest of the districts have a strong Taliban presence. The Pakistani military has launched operations to retake Swat and the Bajaur tribal agency. But the military is engaged in brutal fighting and has made little progress in retaking the regions. The military has used scorched-earth tactics and has threatened tribal groups with violence if they did not oppose the Taliban.

The government indicated it has no intention of taking on the Taliban strongholds of North and South Waziristan. The US military has been conducting strikes in these two tribal agencies in an effort to disrupt al Qaeda and the Taliban’s vast network of training camps and support locations.

EDITOR’S NOTE- The above is from www.longwarjournal.com

EVERYWHERE Western values and civilization is under attack. Mombai is just the most recent example.
Make no mistake it was India’s link to the West and Western values that was put under the gun.
Too many in the West, crippled by moral relativism,nihilism, narcissism and curious self loathing, have reacted with self criticism, apologies and apathy. Exactly the WRONG reaction.
Western civilization has given women our best shot at self empowerment, equality and security. Most of the world’s other cultures oppress, suppress and hinder women’s full development. If Western civilization disappears it will take with it the progress for women of three thousand years.
Let’s look back in history about how we should be reacting.
In that vein I ask you to read the following poem by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle.

The Private of the Buffs

Sir Francis Hastings Doyle

LAST night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaff’d, and swore:
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never look’d before.
To-day, beneath the foeman’s frown, 5
He stands in Elgin’s place,
Ambassador from Britain’s crown,
And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, lowborn, untaught,
Bewilder’d, and alone, 10
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through him 15
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seem’d,
Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam’d,
One sheet of living snow; 20
The smoke, above his father’s door,
In gray soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doom’d by himself, so young?

Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel 25
He put the vision by.
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die.
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent, 30
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets, of iron fram’d;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untam’d, 35
The strong heart of her sons.
So, let his name through Europe ring—
A man of mean estate,
Who died, as firm as Sparta’s king,
Because his soul was great. 40

U.K. MAIL-SUNDAY NOV.30
Women who have an abortion are three times more likely to develop a drug or alcohol addiction and 30 per cent more likely to have mental disorders compared with other women, research has revealed.

The evidence from two studies comes as the number of women having an abortion in England and Wales exceeded 200,000 for the first time last year.

More abortions – 57,000 – were carried out on women aged 20 to 24 than any other age group. However, there were 4,400 on the under-16s.

Anxiety and drug abuse are the most common mental problems after an abortion, according to a study of 500 women published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Professor David Fergusson, who led the research, said the findings had ‘important implications’ – because more than 90 per cent of British abortions were authorised on the grounds that keeping an unwanted baby would cause the mother mental health problems.

He said: ‘This evidence clearly poses a challenge to the use of psychiatric reasons to justify abortion. There is nothing in this study that would suggest that the termination of pregnancy was associated with lower risks of mental health problems than birth.

‘For some women, abortion is likely to be a stressful and traumatic life event which places them at a modestly increased risk of a range of common mental health problems.’

But his team at the University of Otago, New Zealand, said the overall effect of abortion on mental health was small. They estimate it is responsible for between 1.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent of disorders.

A second study shows that women who lose a baby by the age of 21 – either through an abortion or a miscarriage – are three times more likely to develop a drug or alcohol problem than others.

Researcher Kaeleen Dingle, of the University of Queensland, Australia, said: ‘Abortion and miscarriage are stressful life events that have been shown to lead to anxiety, sadness and grief and, for some women, serious depression and substance use disorders.’

The Royal College of Psychiatrists called the evidence ‘inconclusive’.

But pro-life campaigners claim it shows women should be warned of all the risks of abortion.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the Alive And Kicking Campaign, said: ‘If there is any risk to the woman’s mental health, she should be assessed by someone who is properly qualified and made aware of those risks.’

Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, admitted abortion could cause a huge amount of stress and anxiety but added: ‘Abortion does not necessarily cause the problem. It can be linked to other events in their life.’

FUN80006
Wednesday November, 2008 Vol. XI No.III

Are we having fun Yet?
Ok- I am blowing my top and God only knows what my fingertips may come up with this time- all I know is I have just about had it with this nonsense! I have only one two part question concerning when enough is enough!

The TV – the papers – the radio – still blaming Hillary – poor Obama – I am sick of it and we want her in his cabinet? Why so he can beat her up till they all get tired of it – or find another women they like beating up better?

It is obvious that the Dem Party, Obama, the Obots and the media will never tire of using Hillary as their favorite whipping post so my question is when will she tire of taking it and when will we tire of idolizing her for standing there and accepting it?

I want you to know that I am sick and tired of getting my teeth kicked in by Hillary supporters every time I mention this as if I must put her before country, that would be tantamount to treason for me.

While I wholly heartedly supported Hillary as my candidate and as a woman and a human being, I am disappointed in what she has chosen – yes chosen– to allow the DNC to force her to do – or do to her.

Furthermore, I would not want to see her as SOS because I believe she would be serving at Obama’s pleasure and subordinate to him rather than as an elected representative of the people of NY. I don’t think this would be in the best interest of the country any more that supporting Obama or the DNC this year was in the best interest of the country.

As SOS she would be subject to carry out all his wishes and liable for all his mistakes – she would ultimately be humiliated by his foolishness and could be drummed out of politics with no where to go.

Hillary was a stellar candidate who was forced out of first place by a corrupt DNC and I will never forgive the Party for what they did and I just can not get over the fact that they took this proud women and made her do for him what no male candidate ever was forced to do – step down and not only support him but lay her self open and vulnerable to feminine scorn for his sake!

She not only went above and beyond – leaving her debt aside but went about raising money for a man who already raised an obscene amount of money on his own and whose campaign bragged about that unendingly for the entire campaign season.

Finally, the agony that resulted for millions of women who had looked up to Hillary and through her had finally summoned up the strength to stand up and fight for the first time in their lives – who watching her — forced to submit to the DNC — with a smile work for the party and the man who battered her may very well have set women in politics back another 24 years.

Whatever the reasons Hillary had to dissolve back into her party and to back what millions of us agree was the illegitimately selected candidate and whatever her reason for voraciously campaigning for and getting 75% of her supporters to concede and vote against democracy – is not mine to judge- but it is mine to refuse to follow suit or to justify or to honor.

I will not, for any reason, support a party or a candidate that abrogated the democratic process or anyone who would support any who did. If you think I am wrong fine but I did not say it first – argue with Susan B Anthony – she did. “No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her” ~Susan B Anthony 1872
What I will say is,when we ask our soldiers to risk their lives for our freedom – it is democracy that they are risking their lives for – not party politics and not sexist politics and not racial politics. No- they lay down their lives for Democracy and nothing less!

SEOUL (Reuters) – Nov 27- South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday demanded a popular actress who tried to overturn the country’s law that criminalizes adultery be thrown in jail for a year and a half for having an affair, local media reported.

South Korean enacted its adultery law more than 50 years ago to protect women who had few rights in the male-dominated society but critics say now it is a draconian measure no longer fit for a country with an advanced civil and family court system.

Actress Ok So-ri’s case has created a sensation in South Korea after she admitted to an affair with a singer and called on the country’s Constitutional Court to overturn the statute that can send a person to jail for up to two years for adultery.

“The accuser (her husband) wanted a severe sentence,” prosecutors said in court as to why they are seeking 18 months in jail for Ok, Yonhap news agency reported. Prosecutors were not available for comment.

Ok’s lawyers were also not immediately available for comment but they have said in a petition to Constitutional Court: “The adultery law … has degenerated into a means of revenge by the spouse, rather than a means of saving a marriage.”

Last month, the Constitutional Court said adultery damaged the social order and therefore was a criminal offence.

It is rare for courts to jail adulterers but that has not stopped several thousand angry spouses from filing criminal complaints each year.

Critics have said a better compromise might be to allow spouses just to sue for compensation in civil court.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun; Editing by Nick Macfie)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Many states have criminal laws against adultery but obviously they are not enforced or the jails would be filled mostly with politicians.

INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC – STEPHEN REA

They had had enough, watching their not-yet-teenage sons armed with weapons, incited to kill. Seeing their daughters raped and terrorized. Being raped, beaten, threatened.

A testament to the determination and wisdom of a group of Liberian women who banded together in 2003 to stop a civil war and bring peace to their West African nation, Pray the Devil Back to Hell is at once inspiring and horrific.

Inspiring, because it shows what people can do, people resolved to bring about change. After years of horror and carnage, a coalition of Liberia’s women, Christians and Muslims alike, rallied together, organized and undaunted, using their numbers and their message to bring about change.

And horrific because of that carnage: the blood-soaked streets, the hundreds of thousands murdered, perpetrated by tribal warlords and a dictator – Charles Taylor – gone mad.

Directed by Gini Reticker with clarity and concision, Pray the Devil Back to Hell combines archival footage, BBC radio news feeds, and newspaper reports with on-camera interviews with key leaders of the female movement. Leymah Gbowee speaks with eloquence about her dream to assemble wives and mothers in a church to pray for peace, and how that first meeting spread to larger protests.

These crowds of women, dressed in white T-shirts, camped in front of a government palace and refusing to budge, are heartening to behold. Bridging the same cultural and religious divide that provided the excuse for a civil war, Gbowee’s group and a like-minded team of Muslim women combined forces with a unified goal: remove the guns and bring on the peace.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a remarkable documentary about a remarkable, and historic, movement.

Taliban bombs Pakistani Catholic girls’ high school
- OneNewsNow – 11/24/2008 11:20:00 AMBookmark and Share

a_Compass Direct logoISTANBUL – Taliban militants bombed a Catholic-run girls’ school in Pakistan’s war-torn Swat Valley as part of a larger effort to subvert women’s status in society through Islamic law, locals say.

On Wednesday the Islamic terrorist group bombed the Convent Girls’ School in Sangota, run by the Presentation Sisters, a Catholic religious order that has opened girls’ schools around the world. Militants have threatened the school frequently for offering education to females.

No one was injured in the attack. The school had closed a few months earlier due to deteriorating security in Swat, a source told Compass. Students and faculty left in July following threats.

“The Taliban said, ‘We have asked you so many times to close down the school but you are not listening. We are going to set it on fire,’” said Yousef Benjamin, a Lahore-based peace activist.

Militants had already attacked or blown up and forced the closure of many girls’ schools in Swat, said Cecil Chaudhry, executive secretary of All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. They told the nuns they would destroy their school if it weren’t closed. Following the bombing the militants ransacked the school’s adjoining convent.

The high school enrolled approximately 1,000 female students, nearly 95 percent of them Muslim.

The Santoga school has faced threats from Islamic extremists before. It closed its doors in September 2007 after received a threatening letter from extremists that demanded all teachers and female students wear the burqa. The letter claimed the faculty was working to convert Muslim students to Christianity.

The Taliban has not singled out the school for its Christian ties but instead wants to clamp down on all girls’ schools, which they believe encourage female participation in society, government officials claim.

In the last two years it has indiscriminately targeted more than 150 public and private girls’ schools in northwest Pakistan.

“For them it doesn’t matter if it’s a Christian school, government school or a private school,” Benjamin said. “Last week I was in [the northern city of] Peshawer and the Taliban told women to not even go to the market.”

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1994 to 2001. They severely curtailed women’s rights, barring females from education, employment or traveling outside of their homes without a male relative.

“A few years ago the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not even allow women to be seen outside their houses, and that’s the version of Islam the Taliban promotes,” Chaudhry said.

Located near the Afghanistan border, Swat has been a flash point between the country’s security forces and Islamic militants. The area used to be a thriving tourist haven with hotels and a ski resort but came under complete control of Taliban militants in September 2007.

Government security forces cleared out the Taliban from the valley in recent months, but the area came under their control once again three weeks ago.

With their re-asserted control, the Taliban has forced all Swat residents to live according to their strict lifestyle guidelines, whether Muslim or Christian.

Men have grown beards and adopted Islamic dress. Women are required to wear burqas and sit in the back seat of their own vehicles. Advertisements cannot feature pictures of women.

“The Taliban wants to create a culture of terror, insecurity and they want to impose a self-created system of sharia [Islamic law] inspired by the system in Afghanistan,” said Shabhaz Bhatti, a National Assembly member from the Punjab province and chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance.

The 70 or so Christian families scattered in the valley occupy the lower class, working as laborers and street sweepers.

Since July 2007, militants and followers of Muslim cleric Maulana Fazlullah have pressured the tiny community of Christians to accept Islamic law.

Political motives

Islamic militants have stepped up attacks across Pakistan in recent weeks. Last Thursday (Oct. 9) a suicide bomber injured eight people in an attack on an Islamabad police station. In September another suicide bomber killed 50 people at the Marriott Hotel.

Motivations for the surge in attacks could be political as well as religious. Pakistani forces have been cracking down on militants in the nation’s tribal areas as the government has resolved to fight domestic terrorism.

The Pakistani military launched a three-week-long air strike operation in Afghanistan in August and killed more than 400 Taliban militants. Pakistan declared a cease-fire in September during Ramadan.

The militant attacks could also be in retaliation to recent U.S. bombings against Taliban targets within Pakistan, a source told Compass.

Inter-Services Intelligence Director Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Pakistan’s parliament on Wednesday (Oct. 8) that the Taliban had gained complete control over certain districts of the country. The military has attempted to regain control in a bitter struggle that has claimed the lives of 1,368 troops since 2001, according to the Pakistani Daily Times.

While Christians are worried about their safety, they stress that the Taliban is a threat to all Pakistanis, regardless of religion.

They urged fellow Christians to pray for the surging violence within the country to ebb.

“We ask a special prayer for peace in our country and that the terrorist elements who believe in violence would not succeed in killing innocent people,” Bhatti said. “Pray for Pakistani Christians – may God protect them and give them courage to remain strong in their faith and witness.”

“OneNewsNow”, “OneNewsNow.com”, and the “OneNewsNow World” logo, are Trademarks of the American Family News Network – All Rights Reserved

OneNewsNow.com – A Division of American Family News Network
Christian beheaded for converting from Islam Nov.16

NAIROBI, Kenya – Among at least 24 aid workers killed in Somalia this year was one who was beheaded last month specifically for converting from Islam to Christianity, among other charges, according to an eyewitness.

Muslim extremists from the al Shabab group fighting the transitional government on Sept. 23 sliced the head off of Mansuur Mohammed, 25, a World Food Program (WFP) worker, before horrified onlookers of Manyafulka village, 10 kilometers (six miles) from Baidoa.

The militants had intercepted Mohammed and a WFP driver, who managed to escape, earlier in the morning. Sources close to Mohammed’s family said he converted from Islam to Christianity in 2005.

The eyewitness, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said the militants that afternoon gathered the villagers of Manyafulka, telling them that they would prepare a feast for them. The people gathered anticipating the slaughter of a sheep, goat or camel according to local custom.

Five masked men emerged carrying guns, wielding Somali swords and dragging the handcuffed Mohammed. One pulled back Mohammed’s head, exposing his face as he scraped his sword against his short hair as if to sharpen it. Another recited the Quran as he proclaimed that Mohammed was a “murtid,” an Arabic term for one who converts from Islam to Christianity.

The Muslim militant announced that Mohammed was an infidel and a spy for occupying Ethiopian soldiers.

Mohammed remained calm with an expressionless face, never uttering a word, said the eyewitness. As the chanting of “Allah Akubar [God is greater]” rose to a crescendo, one of the militiamen twisted his head, allowing the other to slit his neck. When the head was finally severed from the torso, the killers cheered as they displayed it to the petrified crowd.

The militants allowed one of their accomplices to take a video of the slaughter using a mobile phone. The video was later circulated secretly and sold in Somalia and in neighboring countries in what many see as a strategy to instill fear among those contemplating conversion from Islam to Christianity.

Unconfirmed reports indicated that a similar incident took place in Lower Juba province of Somalia in July, when Christians found with Bibles were publicly executed. Their families fled to Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, and such killings are forcing other Christians to flee to neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Somalis attacking Somalis
Somali refugees to Kenya include Nur Mohammed Hassan, in Nairobi under U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees asylum. In spite of the protection, two weeks ago five Somali Muslims broke into Mohammed Hassan’s house and beat him and his family, he told Compass.

“On Oct. 14 five Muslims entered my house around 10 o’clock in the night and forced us out after beating us indiscriminately,” Mohammed Hassan said, adding that the youngest of his eight children suffers from a liver disease. “Thank God the police arrived immediately and saved our lives. For two days now we have been sleeping outside in the cold. We have been receiving police security, but for how long will this continue?”

Mohammed Hassan now lives in Eastliegh, Nairobi with his wife and children. He had fled Mogadishu after Muslims murdered his sister, Mariam Mohammed Hassan, in April 2005, allegedly for distributing Bibles in the capital.

“We are nowadays no better than our fellow Somali Christians inside Somalia who are killed like dogs when discovered to be Christians,” Mohammed Hassan said. “We are not safe living here in Eastleigh. The Muslims killed my sister in Mogadishu, and now they are planning to kill me and my family.”

The last three years in Nairobi, he said, he has suffered many setbacks at the hands of other Somali immigrants.

“Indeed the situation for the Muslim Christians in Kenya and Somalia is disastrous and horrifying – we are risking our lives for choosing to follow Christ,” he said. “My family is in danger. No peace, no security. We are lacking the basic necessities of life.”

One of the most dangerous countries in the world, Somalia is subject to suicide bombings, sea piracy and routine human rights violations. Islamic militants object to foreign troop intervention, especially those from neighboring Ethiopia. Christians and anyone sympathetic to Western ideals are targeted, with foreign aid workers especially vulnerable in the past year.

Aid groups have counted 24 aid workers, 20 of them Somalis, who have been killed this year in Somalia, with more than 100 attacks on aid agencies reported. In their strategy to destabilize the government, the Islamic militants target relief groups as the U.N. estimates 3.2 million Somalis (nearly a third of the population) depend on such aid.

Somali Islamic clerics such as Ahlsunna Waljamea have condemned the killing of aid workers in Somalia.

“OneNewsNow”, “OneNewsNow.com”, and the “OneNewsNow World” logo, are Trademarks of the American Family News Network – All Rights Reserved

L.A. TIMES – NOV25
CONGRESSWOMAN FIRST UNWED MOM IN CONGRESS

Sanchez is 39 and divorced, and early this year, her doctor told her that “if your intention is to become a mother, I wouldn’t put it off.” So she and Sullivan didn’t. They haven’t yet set a wedding date. As he told me, “We have the rest of our lives to get engaged and married — we don’t have the rest of our lives” for Sanchez to become pregnant.”

BELOW IS A REPORT FROM A WASHINGTON RADIO STATION. I WOULD LIKE TO ASK OUR READERS TO CHECK OUT THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES AND FIND OUT THE EXTENT OF CHILDREN INVOLVED IN COMMERCIAL SEX. THEN PLEASE REPORT BACK TO US AT WOMEN’S WATCH,INC. (www.wiminswatch.org) or helfyre@wiminswatch.org
Thank you for advocating for women and their children and helping us to do so.
Helfyre

Sex Trafficking of Children is Local, Non-Profits Say
Sabri Ben-Achour WAMU 88.5 FM

November 19, 2008 – Sex trafficking of children is often thought of as a problem abroad, but several nonprofits say it’s happening right here. When Andrea Powell and volunteers with nonprofit FAIR fund started going into DC schools last year to educate teens about sexual violence and exploitation, they asked the students if they knew anyone under 18 who was involved in sexual commerce. Seventy percent of the kids raised their hands. When they dug further, they found several instances of kids in classes who were being exploited. They found youth exchanging sex for a place to stay, a ride to school, even cell phone minutes. Often, it’s girls – and sometimes boys – who’ve run away, are homeless or don’t have a stable family. One strategy that Powell’s group is working on is training adults in regular contact with vulnerable kids – anyone from teachers to 711 employees – to identify bad situations before they get worse. They’re also raising money for a group home called Courtney’s House for victims of child sex trafficking in the district.

Public executions for schoolgirl acid attackers [Girls doused in acid in Afghanistan]
New 11:54AM Wednesday Nov 26, 2008
Jerome Starkey

* Girls doused in acid in Afghanistan

A terrorist cell accused of squirting acid in schoolgirls’ faces has been rounded up in southern Afghanistan.

The country’s President, Hamid Karzai, called for the perpetrators to face public executions. Police arrested 10 Taleban militants, and “several” have already confessed, according to the Kandahar governor, Rahmatullah Raufi.

They are accused of squirting acid from water pistols at three groups of female students and their teachers as they walked to class in Afghanistan’s volatile second city.

At least 15 women were injured. One of the victims, a teacher called Nuskaal, who was burnt through her burkha, said yesterday: “If these people are found guilty, the government should throw the same acid on them. Then they should be hanged.”

Several girls were sent to hospital with severe facial burns. One teenager couldn’t open her eyes for days. The attacks sparked condemnation from around the world.

The UN described the attacks as a “hideous crime”. The US First Lady, Laura Bush, called them “cowardly”.

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Mr Raufi said the men were paid by senior Taleban commanders in Pakistan to carry out the attacks on 12 November. He said they will face trial in an open court as soon as the police investigation is complete.

An official at the Interior Ministry in Kabul said the suspects were Afghan exiles who had been living in Pakistan’s volatile tribal areas.

A Taleban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, insisted yesterday that Taleban militants were not involved in the attacks. Kandahar was the spiritual home of the hardline Taleban regime, and it was their capital until they were removed from power in 2001.

When they ruled Afghanistan, girls were banned from going to school. There are now almost two million girl students across the country.

Capital punishment has widespread popular support in Afghanistan, and it is enshrined in the country’s constitution, which incorporates sharia law.

Last year President Karzai ordered almost a dozen snap executions of death row prisoners, in an attempt to bolster support among Afghans unhappy at rising crime.

washingtonpost.
Anti-Prostitution Initiative Taken to D.C. Schools

By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2008; B01

The day’s lesson in a Coolidge High School history class in Northwest Washington was the degrading names pimps have for the girls and women whose bodies they exploit.

Exhibit A was rapper 50 Cent’s “P-I-M-P,” a club anthem that is an ode to the art of a male luring a female into prostitution with promises of a glamorous life under his protection. In the song, as in life, it’s a ruse to enrich him.

The point of the exercise — run by a group that typically fights sex trafficking in foreign countries — was to highlight the intractable problem of child prostitution.

For four years, there has been a concerted effort in the District to break up prostitution networks and enhance services for youths rescued from the streets. A task force of local and federal law enforcement and nongovernmental agencies has upended child-prostitution operations.

But there’s no illusion that the crime has gone away.

“There is still a market for young girls,” said Bradley Myles, deputy director of the Polaris Project, which seeks to stop human trafficking.

The scope of the problem is difficult to measure. The D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force, which investigates adult and child prostitution, found 32 cases in the past year of teenage girls being coerced into sex for money by older men. Fewer than a dozen of those cases resulted in full-scale criminal investigations, authorities say.

Anecdotal evidence from police, prosecutors and groups that deal with troubled youths suggests a larger problem in the District. A national study funded by the U.S. Justice Department in 2001 estimated that as many as 300,000 runaways and otherwise homeless youths under 18 were sexually exploited.

That’s one reason the Fair Fund has taken its message about trafficking and abusive relationships to District classes for the second school year.

The group typically works in Serbia, Bosnia, Russia and Kenya. But last year it signed an agreement with school officials to go into six high schools: Bell Multicultural, McKinley Tech, Woodson, Coolidge, School Without Walls and Anacostia. The schools were chosen, in part, based on police reports of family and domestic violence in neighborhoods that funnel students to the schools, said Andrea Powell, Fair Fund’s executive director. This year, the program is continuing informally.

Powell founded Fair Fund five years ago and has developed a curriculum that warns students about human trafficking. Since November 2007, Powell and three other workers have reached 820 students, trained dozens of teachers and received 56 notes from students, many of them anonymous, seeking help. Some said they were raped by their fathers or know of teenagers involved in prostitution. A few said they were homeless.

Police and advocates say some juveniles trade sex for a place to stay or food.

The students “raise all these issues of teen violence, dating violence and homelessness,” said Powell, 29. “One boy said he was hungry. All of these are risk factors for sexual exploitation.”

These risk factors are outlined in a new report, co-authored by Powell, titled “Pathways Into and Out of Commercial Sexual Exploitation.” It is based on in-depth interviews with 60 adolescent male, female and transgender youths, half in the District and half in Boston, conducted since 2006. The juveniles interviewed were between 14 and 18, and all were involved in or vulnerable to the sex trade.

In the Justice Department-funded report, one runaway told researchers that she took along a coloring book when she left home. Another told this story: “I spent the night over their house and they took me to this other man’s house and then that’s when . . . um . . . we was over there and I had sex with that man and then he let me stay in his house for the rest of three weeks or whatever. He was really nice.”

The preliminary report calls for better of training of law enforcement personnel beyond those in specialized units devoted to youths, more emergency and transitional shelter for prostituted children and providing domestic youths with the kinds of relocation, health care and reintegration services more commonly used to combat international trafficking.

Teens involved in commercial sex are easily manipulated, said Michelle Zamarin, an assistant U.S. attorney who heads the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force.

“They look like adults,” but they think like children, Zamarin said. “When you talk to these children and listen to their logic, you realize the maturity at 15 is still a child. They believe this person loves them.”

Technological advances are working against the police, said Sgt. Morani Hines, a 17-year D.C. police veteran who heads the department’s human trafficking unit. Because of the government’s focus on child trafficking, street traffic of minors has moved to Web sites including Craigslist, which includes ads for sexual services in hotels and private homes.

That makes it more important, he said, to reach children in other ways.

One way is to make teachers, counselors and social workers aware of what to watch for. Another is to go directly to students. Fair Fund initially targeted health classes but this school year branched into English, history and social studies classes.

During the session in the Coolidge High history class, 20 students were surrounded by graffiti-like slogans painted in large red letters on the walls. One proclaimed: “Freedom is not Free.” Students were given glitter, feathers and glue to create images of a pimp and a prostitute. Some drew the glamorized images they have seen in rap videos: pimps in fancy clothes and nearly nude girls.

Others drew more disturbing images. One girl wrote a tale of horror:

He beats her because she didn’t make enough money.

She realizes the truth and begins to fear for her life.

She runs away. He finds her and kills her.

The images and words sparked debate.

Wife Shooting Suspect Captured :Nov.25

The search for a man who allegedly drove cross-country, confronted his estranged wife at her church, and then murdered her, has ended, according to reports. Authorities captured Joseph M. Pallipurath in Georgia Tuesday morning. Pallipurath’s wife, Reshma James, had fled from Sacramento to New Jersey to live with relatives. She said her husband—whom she wed in an arranged marriage—had abused her. Due to a restraining order, Pallipurath could not confront his wife at her home, so he arrived at the church at the conclusion of services. He is alleged to have shot two other men in the head during the encounter, one of whom, Dennis John Malloosseril, died on Monday.

Read it at The New York Times

On Greta Van Sustern’s Fox Cable Show tonight Joran Van der Sloot confessed to selling 17 year old Natalie Holloway to a “mystery man” for $10,000 who took her away with him on a boat. This is the first time Van der Sloot who was the last person seen with the Holloway girl the night she disappeared, told anyone what he says really happened to her. Holloway was on her senior high school class trip to Aruba when she went missing. No body has ever been found. Whether or not this is true it does high light the growing slave trade in young women who are sold into the commercial sex trade. The world and the world’s leaders and politicians turn a blind eye as this human catastrophe grows.
Take time to read the statistics below. Natalie Holloway may be one of them.

The following are statistics from Make Way Partners for your information:

Human Trafficking Statistics
Make Way Partners, 2008

-There are at least 30 million victims of modern day slavery in the world today (US Trafficking in Persons Report).

-Each year it is estimated that there are 1 million new victims of human trafficking (The US Department of State).

-Estimates as high as 80% of trafficking victims are women and over – 50% in slavery are children (US Government).

-Human Trafficking generates approximately $9.5 billion each year. It is second only to drug trafficking in international crime (US Trafficking in Persons Report).

-“…Experts say that at any given time, some 2.5 million people are being trafficked …” (http://www.makewaypartners.org/effects.html)

-The USA is the number one country of destination for trafficked victims. The land of the free and the brave has become the receiving country for sex-slaves and forced manual workers. Run-away or kidnapped children are also sold and exploited within our borders and Internet child pornography or solicitation is thriving. (http://www.makewaypartners.org/effects.html)

-A child goes missing every 40 seconds in the USA.
That is more than 2,000 a day and more than 800,000 every year.
Another estimated 500,000 disappear without being reported.
For most, these bodies are never found.
What happens to them? (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)

-Rising tide of human trafficking by Americans against other Americans – between 1.3 and 2.8 million runaways and homeless youths living on America’s streets are one of the most at risk populations for exploitation. (PR Newswire)

-1 in 7 teenagers in the USA run away from home. Living on the streets, one out of every three teens will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. And the longer they are gone, the more likely they are to engage in “survival sex.” After three months away from home, 90 percent of children will turn to sex. (National Incidence Studies of Missing, Runaway and Throwaway Children)

All of these statistics are from May Way Partners, January 16, 2008

Make Way Partners
PO Box 26367
Birmingham, AL 35260

From The Daily Beast – November 24,2008

News we missed while at the gym over the weekend: An Islamic council in Malaysia has issued a fatwa against Yoga, according to Reuters. Why yoga? According to the news service, it “uses Hindu prayers and encourages a union with God that is blasphemous.” “There are other ways to get exercise and a peace of mind,” the Islamic council’s chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, said Saturday. “You can go cycling, swimming and eat less fatty food.” Just be sure to dress properly when you do: The same council recently issued a fatwa banning women from wearing pants, lest they become “tomboys.”

Read it at YNet News

CNSNews.com
Darwin Got It Wrong and It’s Not What You’re Thinking
Monday, November 24, 2008
By Alan Caruba

Charles Darwin got it wrong. This is not to disparage the man. Science is an ever evolving process and scientific theories are subject to being replaced by newer knowledge. Most certainly, Darwin (1809-1882) got everyone thinking about evolution, but the problem is that evolution is not a slow process. It happens very fast.

Indeed, Darwin’s friend, the famed biologist, Thomas Huxley, supported aspects of Darwin’s theory, but didn’t believe that evolution was gradual. Then, too, Darwin had to contend with those who believe that Noah built an ark and put two of all the creatures of the Earth on it. Religion is a great comfort, but it is no substitute for science.

I first became acquainted with Robert W. Felix through his book, Not by Fire, but by Ice, that pointed out that the Earth is on the cusp of a new ice age. Insofar as the Earth is now fully a decade into a new cycle of cooling, one that could last several decades or evolve into a new, full blown ice age, Felix not only got it right, but, in the course of writing his book, discovered an even more frightening scenario.

Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps: The True Origin of the Species is Felix’s new book and, were it not for fans like myself and others, it is not likely to make it to the cover of leading news magazines or become a segment on “Sixty Minutes.” It will be largely ignored by the mainstream news media for the same reason they ignored his first book. Enthralled by the bogus “global warming” hoax, the mainstream media will find his new book equally appalling for its presentation of facts that run contrary to their ignorance.

Felix is far from alone in this view that new species are not the result of a long accretion of changes. The late paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) popularized that field of science with articles and books. Gould noted, “Gradualism is not a fact of nature. Most new species appear with a bang, not a protracted crescendo.” Fossil records demonstrate that a species remains unchanged for millions of years before abruptly disappearing, “only to be replaced just as rapidly with a species that is, though clearly related, substantially different. Nature does take leaps.”

Felix’s great talent comes both in his ability to read and absorb the writings of scientists from different fields of study, and in his ability to explain complex issues to people like myself. I always remind readers that, while I am a science writer, I am not a scientist. Felix is a science writer and one who brings a great deal of passion to his quest to understand the history of the Earth and the life that appears to distinguish it from others in our galaxy.

While researching ice ages for his previous book, he became intrigued by a phenomenon that always coincides with them, magnetic reversals. In addition to mass extinctions of species that always accompanied magnetic reversals, Felix and others noticed that new species replaced them. For example, human beings are, in the long history of the Earth, 4.5 billion years, are “blindingly new”, having existed a mere 200,000 years.

“Mass extinctions,” writes Felix, “have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet. Almost identical, each extinction was abrupt, each was extensive, and each was caused by some temporary, unexplainable event.”

Permit me to pause at this point and note the vanity and idiocy of those who demand that humans must conserve every species on Earth, no matter the cost involved. This nation has spent billions via the Endangered Species Act. In a similar fashion, the notion that humans are responsible for a non-existent “global warming” is the justification for measures that will wreck the economies of nations and cause untold losses of human life thanks to famines that should be avoided.

The next time you hear or read the word “environmentalist”, you should also hear and read “fascist” for the core of the environmental movement is the belief that human beings are “a cancer” on the Earth and should be reduced to a minimum.

The real threat to life on Earth are magnetic reversals, as revealed by magnetostratigraphy, the study of the magnetic properties of ancient layers of sediment (strata) now hardened into rock. Major reversals “appear to occur in sync with ice ages” and other measurements of time. “And it happens fast!” says Felix.

The Earth is at the end of a cyclical interglacial period. Such periods are about 11,500 years in length and it has been 11,500 years since the last ice age. That portends that another magnetic reversal is due as well.

Though decried as “deniers”, those of us who have been skeptical of the claims of Al Gore and the legion of global warming charlatans, the real deniers are those refuse to acknowledge the facts put forth and explained in Felix’s new book.

Those who would have you dramatically alter your lifestyle, by ending the use of oil, natural gas, and coal for energy, by installing thousands of wind turbines and miles of solar panels, are willfully ignoring the signs that the Earth is poised to enter a new age in which life as we know it—including our own—will be dramatically changed and to a large extent even exterminated.

There is nothing humans can do about this.

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OneNewsNow.com –
Ireland facing ‘Roe v. Wade’ of Europe?
Charlie Butts and Marty Cooper – OneNewsNow – 11/24/2008 5:30:00 AMBookmark and Share

baby ultrasoundIreland’s ban on abortion is being challenged before the European Court of Human Rights in what is being called a “pivotal case.” The Family Research Council and Alliance Defense Fund are defending the country’s right to life and have presented a brief to the court.

LifeNews.com reports three Irish women were refused abortions in Ireland and traveled to Britain to obtain them. They have filed a lawsuit against Ireland, hoping to overturn the country’s pro-life laws that ban abortion, except to save the life of the mother. One of the ladies claims she had an ectopic pregnancy and needed an abortion, while another one was taking chemotherapy when she became pregnant.

The Irish Family Planning Association is defending the women, but Bill Saunders of Family Research Council (FRC) believes it would be wrong for the court to rule against Ireland. “It’s a promotion of abortion, kind of undermining any resistance to it, even if it’s democratic,” he contends.

The citizens of Ireland voted to ban abortion, and Saunders says that was partly on the basis of religious convictions. “The Irish people are Christians, and they know abortion is wrong, and so they prohibit it in their constitution,” he adds.

According to Saunders, the court ought to recognize the will of the people, but it could impose abortion anyway. “We hope that won’t happen, and that’s what we’re arguing to the court is that you should really stay out of this,” he points out. “Democracy is about people making decisions in conformity with their beliefs and what they think is most important, and it’s not for the courts to get involved and tell them they have to change their law.”

Similarly, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) chief counsel Benjamin Bull calls the case “pivotal” to both Europe and America, calling it the “Roe v. Wade of Europe.” He notes that the U.S. Supreme court now “looks across the ocean” more frequently at other countries when considering its own legal battles.

Bull is looking forward to defending Ireland’s abortion ban to guarantee protection and life to hundreds of pre-born children. He says the people of Ireland have spoken, and no one “should be allowed to decide that an innocent life is worthless.”

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More Madness in Somalia‏
FROM: R.A. DAVIS
HELFYRE this story mentions Aisha, the stoning victim.

Islamist rebels whip 32 dancers in Somalia
Sat 15 Nov 2008, 13:19 GMT

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Islamist insurgents whipped 32 people in Somalia on Saturday after arresting them for taking part in a traditional dance in rebel-held territory south of the capital Mogadishu.

Fighters enforcing a strict form of sharia law have been slowly advancing on the city, raising the stakes in their two-year rebellion and undermining fragile U.N.-brokered peace talks to end 17 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.

Last month, they stoned to death a young woman accused of adultery in the rebel-controlled southern port of Kismayu.

Islamist spokesman Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow said those arrested had been warned several times against dancing.

“We arrested 25 women and seven men who were dancing near Balad (town). We released them after whipping them. We warned them many times, but they wouldn’t listen,” he told Reuters.

“The dancing of men and women together is illegal and totally against Islam. We neither killed them nor injured them, but only whipped them according to the Islamic law,” Adow said.

rest of story at:

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4AE06Y.html

View Co-Host Calls Homeschoolers ‘Demented’
By Jonquil Frankham
11/21/2008

LifeSiteNews

“A lot of them are demented when they’re homeschooled.”
NEW YORK, N.Y. (LifeSiteNews) – In a pair of squabbles with conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, The View’s Joy Behar labeled homeschoolers “demented” and Sarah Palin an “airhead.”

In a discussion about various education options for the daughters of president-elect Barack Obama, Behar advocated schooling the girls in the White House, rather than sending them to public or private schools. She joked, however, that rather than homeschooling the kids, a small school with other kids should be run out of the White House.

At that point Hasselback interjected that she thought homeschooling could be a good thing, whereon Behar turned to her and said, “A lot of them are demented when they’re homeschooled.”

As Hasselback attempted to explain some of the advantages of homeschooling to her colleague, Behar shot back, “They’re afraid of children, they learn to be afraid of other children.”

Behar, who has also called Rush Limbaugh a “terrorist,” also dismissed Sarah Palin as an “airhead.” Her remarks followed a discussion of Newsweek and Time Magazine’s comparison of Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Hasselbeck pointed out that the fact Obama is reading up on Lincoln earns him nothing but praise, while if Palin were caught doing the same, it would be seen as “cramming.” Behar dismissed her, saying “we all know that the woman is an airhead, so let’s not even go there.”

Homeschooling advocates charge that Behar’s remarks about homeschooling show a considerable lack of knowledge about the institution and about the achievements of children who are educated in this fashion.

Richard Sousa, Senior Associate Director and Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution and specialist in K-12 education, observed in a June 2007 article that homeschooling children, on average, score way above the national average “in every subject and at every grade level.”

Sousa calls America’s public school system “substandard,” and says that “despite promises of reform and improvement from politicians, public school boards, school administrators, and unions, the results have either been maintaining the status quo or actually worsening.” A 2006 Harris poll demonstrated that less than 20% of American adults think their nation’s education is “very good” or “excellent.”

Homeschooling, said Sousa, is a natural reaction against the failing school systems.

According to Sousa, homeschoolers now make up the largest “school reform initiative,” more popular than charter schools and private schools. While the number of American homeschoolers is debated, Sousa places it at about 3% of the entire school-age population. This is significant, says Sousa, when one considers that in the 2002 National Geographic Bee, “four of the ten finalists were homeschooled, including the winner,” and in the 2003 National Spelling Bee, “homeschooled children took two of the top seven spots.”

Chris Matthews, Misogynist, on the Ellen de Generes Show Nov. 20
November 19, 2008
by The New AgendacloseAuthor: The New Agenda Name: The New Agenda
Email: violetsocks@gmail.com
Site: http://thenewagenda.net

Matthews Gropes Ellen

We have heard that Chris Matthews, Misogynist, of MSNBC’s Hardball, will be the guest of Ellen de Generes on her show on November 20.

We hope that Ellen won’t throw Mr. Hardball a softball. We hope she will ask him about his sexism.
Here are some questions for Ellen to ask:

Why does Chris feel that he must interrupt and comment on women’s appearances?

Why is he so obsessed with Senator Clinton?

What is that tingle up his leg thing?

What is his view of journalistic ethics and media bias?

Why is it his duty as a news opinion-meister to help make the Obama administration successful, as he has stated?

Is he going to run for the Senate in PA?

Does he think we can stop him?

Please write to Ellen and tell her what you think of Chris Matthews, Misogynist appearing on her show. Consider forwarding the above questions to her, and urging her to hold his feet to the fire in the way a journalist ought to. We know Ellen’s not a real TV journalist, but neither is Chris Matthews, Misogynist, and yet he pretends to be.

You might even think about writing one or two of the Ellen show’s sponsors to tell them what it means to you to see misogynists like Chris on your favorite tv shows, and how that makes you feel about their products.

Dear President-elect Obama,

I’m writing to you as a resident of the District of Columbia, where you’ll soon be moving with your two lovely children. I would like to respectfully request that you seriously consider sending your kids to DC public schools—and not a charter school, either, but a full-on traditional neighborhood public school. I realize that you’ve already taken some flack for ensconcing your daughters in a private institution in Chicago. I don’t intend to pile on. I understand that choosing a school is fraught with anxiety and it’s the most private of decisions. But you are a public figure, so I think it’s fair to ask that you give the public schools a boost of confidence by electing to send your kids to one.

Full disclosure: I send one of my children to public school, and the White House is within the same school boundary as my own home. After 5th grade, my kids would attend the same school as yours. So I have a vested interest in where your kids end up, as any school that lands the president’s kids is likely to see a host of improvements. But my self-interest aside, whatever happens with your administration, you could at least leave a lasting impact on hundreds of poor, mostly minority kids languishing in schools that routinely fail to teach them to read simply by sending your kids to public schools.

Bill Clinton greatly disappointed city residents when he and Hillary Clinton opted to send Chelsea to the tony Sidwell Friends School. His argument at the time was that he and Hillary wanted to protect their daughter’s privacy, an argument some found disingenuous, given that private schools are crawling with the children of the media elite who rarely, if ever, set foot in DC’s crappy public facilities. City residents were immensely disappointed that the leader of the free world did not seize the opportunity to help improve one of the nation’s worst school systems, without having to spend a dime.

One of the major problems with the city’s schools is that they’ve been all but abandoned by middle-class parents who can use their political clout to hold schools to higher standards and to demand sufficient resources for them. Right now, DC schools are at a critical turning point. Some middle class families, particularly with very young kids, are starting to come back into the system, which holds great promise for the future of education in the city. But keeping those families—and convincing more to do so—is a major challenge. The arrival of the Obama girls in a DC public school would send a powerful message to other nervous yuppie parents: your kids will be ok here—come join us! Those parents can be a major force for good that, unlike tax cuts, does have a trickle down effect on lots of kids whose parents don’t know how to write grant proposals or lobby Congress. And imagine the turnout for PTA meetings should Michelle join!

While the prospect of throwing your kids into the maw of public school is something that can definitely keep you up at night (believe me, I’ve been there), you should take heart in the fact that you wouldn’t be the first president to do it. Jimmy Carter sent Amy to Stevens Elementary School downtown, and she seemed to emerge unscathed. Stevens was closed this summer and consolidated with Francis Junior High to create the Francis-Stevens Educational Campus, the pre-K through 8thgrade facility near Dupont Circle where, technically, your kids would go. There are no school performance test scores available yet for the reconstituted school, but the building was recently rehabbed and now sports a lovely new playground. True, it’s a far cry from Sidwell, but it’s closer to the White House and, like Sidwell, it has a tennis court. Compared with Sidwell’s $28,000 annual tuition (plus $5,000 for aftercare), it’s a real bargain, too.

Still, I’d be a hypocrite if I said you should send your kids to Francis when I myself have serious reservations about eventually sending my own kids there. Its junior high predecessor was pretty dreadful; many of its 9th graders looked old enough to vote. So I can see where you might balk at the idea. But Francis isn’t your only option. DC actually has a number of very good schools. Thompson Elementary, also not far from the White House, is an up-and-coming school housed in a brand new building and features a Chinese immersion program. The city might even cut you some slack and give you a coveted spot at Oyster Elementary, the award-winning Spanish bilingual school in Woodley Park where schools chancellor Michelle Rhee sends her kids. (Si se puede!)

Rhee, in fact, has said she hopes to persuade you to send your kids to DC public schools. (Please don’t respond by making her Secretary of Education, as some rumors have suggested you might do; DC needs her, and she’s just getting started.) Her motivation is plainly obvious. She needs the PR. DC schools have such a bad rep that our own mayor, who has made education reform his signature issue, refuses to send his kids to one, so luring in the Obama girls would be an enormous coup.

I’m not asking you to sacrifice your children’s education and well being for a good cause. I firmly believe that your kids can receive a perfectly good education in public school here. It takes some work, but it can be done. Besides, private school no more guarantees future success than public school guarantees failure (case in point: Al Gore III, a graduate of the prestigious St. Alban’s). Regardless of which public school you pick, your family’s mere presence in the building would force the school bureaucracy to rise to the occasion. And think about this: For four—or maybe eight—years, your kids will live inside the White House bubble. What better way to give them a daily reality check than to send them to school with regular folks?

Here’s hoping we see you at math night.

UPDATE: At Barack Obama’s first press conference as president-elect, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet asked whether Obama would be sending his children to private or public schools in Washington. He replied that no decision has yet been made and that he and Michelle would be “scouting out schools.”

Posted by Stephanie Mencimer on 11/07/08 at 8:55 AM | Comments (130) | Email | Print

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Planned Parenthood responds to O’Malley
Email|Link|Comments (167) Posted by Michael Paulson November 20, 2008 03:26 PM

Planned Parenthood today sent along a response to criticism of the organization from Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston. O’Malley had singled out the organization in a post-Election Day interview with me about abortion and politics; the cardinal said that Obama “is possibly in the pocket of Planned Parenthood, which in its origins was a very racist organization to eliminate the blacks, and it’s sort of ironic that he’s been co-opted by them.”

The Planned Parenthood response does not address O’Malley’s critique, but rather alleges that the cardinal is out of step with Catholics (a suggestion O’Malley in some ways might not dispute — he has repeatedly said that the some of the church’s teachings are “countercultural,” and that the church could do better persuading rank-and-file Catholics of its teachings; however, he also has pointed out that weekly communicants are more often in agreement with church teachings than less frequent church attenders.)

Here is the Planned Parenthood response, from Dianne Luby (right), the president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts:

DianneLuby.jpg

“It diminishes Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s credibility when he attacks President-elect Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood for views and services his own members overwhelmingly support. He and several of the other participants at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops are eager to jump into politics, as we saw recently with their comments about President-elect Obama’s position on abortion. If Cardinal O’Malley is going to opine on politics, and the bishops are planning to discuss lessons learned from last week’s election, it would be good for them to understand why their messages didn’t stick with their primary audience.

President-elect Obama’s success stems from his ability to propose solutions that reflect the reality of issues faced by the American people. According to estimates by the Catholic Bishops of the United States, 92% of married Catholics use some form of birth control. And a 2006 poll conducted by RKM Research and Communications revealed that 72% of Catholic voters in the Commonwealth support comprehensive sex education – which includes information about abstinence, condoms and birth control – in our public schools.

These are issues that the Catholic Church and Cardinal O’Malley have repeatedly refused to acknowledge as a mainstream part of health and education in our society. Perhaps Cardinal O’Malley should spend less time sharing political opinions and more time listening to the reality of life for his own constituency.

The Catholic Church has an opportunity to reconnect with their members around these issues. Cardinal O’Malley in a recent interview in Baltimore said, “We want to do all that we can to reduce the number of abortions.” President-elect Obama succeeded with voters by highlighting messages about preventing unintended pregnancy and reducing the need for abortion. At Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, we share that belief and would welcome the opportunity to work with Cardinal O’Malley towards this goal.

For more than eighty years Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts has been a trusted healthcare provider and advocate for affordable care. We provide high quality, affordable services to those in need, including birth control, cancer screenings and sexual health education. In fact, 70% of our services are related to preventative care, not abortion.

Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts offers comprehensive sex education programs that focus on abstinence but also on prevention. We think that abstinence is the right goal for young teens, but we live in the real world and we know that this isn’t always the case. It is important to provide young people with the tools and information they need to make good decisions and enter into healthy relationships. Our programs empower parents to be the primary sexuality educators of their children in order to keep them safe and healthy, goals for parents that are certainly shared by the Catholic Church.

Cardinal O’Malley and the bishops have a lot of work to do in order to reconnect with their members. The constitutional right to abortion has always been a very private decision between a woman, her physician, her family and her clergy. It appears from exit polls during this most recent election cycle, that Cardinal O’Malley is out of step with most voters on this very personal decision. The American public has re-asserted why they do not agree by defeating anti-choice referendums in California, Colorado, and South Dakota.

President-elect Obama bridged differences across party and religious lines to resounding success. We must all follow his example, by changing the focus from what divides us to our shared goals of reducing abortion and decreasing risky behavior among young people.”

Obviously this is an emotional issue for many people; please feel free to offer your own thoughts here, but these comments are monitored (by me) so if you want anyone to see your comment, no obscenities, and try to keep the name-calling in check.