There is a deeply troubling case out of New Hampshire where attorney Lisa Biron has been convicted on all eight counts of transportation of a minor with intent to commit criminal sexual activity, sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography. The jury took less than two hours to convict in a case with strong evidence and highly disturbing facts. Biron has been identified as an attorney with an anti-Gay Christian group.
Category: Religion
Despite an international outcry and effort to pay traditional “blood money” in the Saudi legal system, the Kingdom has cut the head off a Sri Lankan maid for allegedly smothering an infant child when the nanny was just 17. The maid was decapitated by a swordsman in Riyadh under the country’s Sharia based legal system.
I was interviewed this week for an article today on ChristianMingle.com. I previously published a blog article on the precarious line between false advertising and faith-based pitches at the company. My favorite fact from Paul Farhi’s article below is that ChristianMingle is an outgrowth of a Jewish dating site that has now branched out into other faiths and made a killing by bringing the goyim together.
Saudi Arabia has another case of a pedophilia dressed up as marriage. In the latest case, a 70-year-old man paid a family $17,500 in a dowry to purchase a 15-year-old girl as a bride. The girl proceeded to lock herself in the bedroom for two days in fear on their wedding night and then fled home to her family. The groom is now demanding that the girl be handed over to him or to get a refund from the family. [Update: a divorce has been issued in the “marriage” and the articles now report the man as 70 years old rather than 90 years old]
Continue reading “Seventy-Year-Old Saudi Man Marries 15-Year-Old Girl [Updated]”
An English woman, Sara Ege, 33, was sentenced to seventeen years in jail in England for beating to death her son and then burning his body to hide her crime. Ege committed the heinous crime after seven-year-old Yaseen failed to memorize the Koran by heart. The defense nevertheless described her as a “brilliant mother.”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell. guest blogger
On New Year’s Eve my wife and I saw the movie “Les Miserables”. We’d seen the musical on Broadway and had been enchanted by it. The music from it is superb and this musical fully deserves all the acclaim it has received through the years. As much as I loved the stage version of “Le Mis”, the movie took all of the greatness of the stage and added something to the mix that lifted it into subversive social commentary. That is what I’m going to write about, but first for those who are unfamiliar with either the source book, or the musical adaptation, a very brief synopsis is needed to set the scene.
The story begins after the French Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon. The Royal Dynasty has been restored to power and the freedoms of the Revolution have been lost. The protagonist of this work is Jean Valjean. He was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor because of the ramifications of his stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister. Imprisoned he is noticed by one of his Jailers, Javert, who notes Valjean for his almost super-human feats of strength. Valjean is paroled after serving his time and subsequently breaks parole. He is chased by Javert for the rest of the tale. The plot of the 1,900 page (in French) novel is summarized in detail at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables Details of the play and the movie are available here: http://www.lesmis.com/.
The ingredient added to the movie, which couldn’t have been done on stage were scenes depicting the abject poverty of the common people and the poor. With the visual nature of film and what will probably be Academy Award makeup, costuming and art direction, you can see a recreation of the life of the French lower classes in the 18th Century. These descriptions run true to the original novel which was so rich with detail. The book “Les Miserables” was intentionally revolutionary for its time as best summed up by the author Victor Hugo in the preface to the novel:
“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.”
Hugo’s eloquence above and its implications for our current time is the subject that I want to discuss. Continue reading ““Les Miserables” and the Shape of Things to Come”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
It was brutally cold in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on 23 December 1776 when Thomas Paine released the first in a series of sixteen papers entitled The American Crisis. The first paper, which starts out “These are the times that try men’s souls,” inspired a despondent George Washington who ordered it read to his entire army on Christmas night. Later that night the army crossed the Delaware River and the next day won a small but psychologically important victory at the Battle of Trenton. This was the first time Washington’s forces had defeated a regular army in the field and the victory helped secure Washington’s command.
Muhammad al-Arifi, a Wahhabi religious cleric, is being widely quoted on web sites like Salon as issuing a fatwa that allowed jihadists in Syria fighting the government to enter into “intercourse marriage” that has been taken as authorizing the rape of Syrian women. Al-Arifi is quoted as expressing concern that Saudis fighting with the opposition have not been with a woman in two years and must be allowed to take care of their “sexual problems.” [One supporter has insisted the fatwa was not issued].
Continue reading “Saudi Imam Reportedly Issues Fatwa Allowing Jihadists To Rape Women In Syria”
The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) has filed a lawsuit with the Internal Revenue Service that raises an interesting question. The group challenges the government’s different treatment of religious and non-religious non-for-profit organizations. While tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations must file a detailed application form, fee and annual information to obtain and maintain their tax-exempt status, churches and other religious organizations are exempted from the requirement to file the reports and fees. The lawsuit alleges that the added expensive and detailed paperwork is a form of discrimination against non-religious groups.
Continue reading “Group Challenges Different Treatment By IRS of Religious and Non-Religious Groups”
There is rising concern in Zanzibar that it is poised to be the next the next country to fall to extreme Islamic rule. While long a favorite for tourists for its beaches and resorts, the Saudi-based Wahhabi movement has established hundreds of schools and programs with money from Saudi Arabia and Dubai. The result is rising criticism of what Suleiman Ali, director of Radio Al-Noor, called the outbreak of “social freedoms.”
Continue reading “Islamic Leaders Denounce Outbreak of “Social Freedoms” In Zanzibar”
I suppose the good news for the Church of Scientology is that Belgium is no longer calling it a cult. The bad news is that it has moved on to calling is a criminal organization in a comprehensive set of charges ranging from extortion to fraud to privacy breaches to the illegal practice of medicine. The charges follow years of investigation into labor contracts that led to raids on Church properties in 2008. In 2009, Scientology was convicted of fraud in Paris and fined almost $1 million.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell. Guest Blogger
Mythology can be seen as the social glue of diverse groups. It is the accumulation of tales, beliefs, moral strictures and mores that gives a specific population a sense of homogeneity, allowing it to exist with synergy. This is true of nations, ethnic groups, religions and even political movements. One of the defining conditions in our nation is that we are one of the most diverse on this planet when it comes to religions and ethnicities. All of our original thirteen states came into existence via individual peculiarities of settlers, religious sects, slavery, climate and the spoils system of colonialism. About a third of the citizens of those thirteen colonies, of the nascent United States, chafed under foreign domination and engendered a rebellion against the British Empire’s exploitation. Among that fractional populace, there fortunately resided a group of the colonies wealthiest citizens and greatest minds. The rebellion succeeded and a decade later a government emerged created by the novelty of a Constitution delineating how it was to be run.
As improbable as the rebellion against the world’s greatest power might have seemed, the ongoing success of this enterprise is even more of an improbability. From the beginning most citizens saw themselves as attached more to their individual states, than to the Federal Government. The subsequent history of this country is well-known, but what I think often gets missed is that the history as we know it is mostly a creation of an American mythology, which has given consistency to this diverse enterprise and served to inculcate waves of immigrants into seeing themselves as part of America. While a nation’s mythology may serve it as “social glue” it can also contain within it seeds of social dysfunction. What follows is my take on the American Myth of the “Rugged Individualist” and why though it may have had initial utilitarian value; it has become cancerous within our country and may lead to the disintegration of America as we know it. Continue reading ““Rugged Individualism””
Best wishes to everyone celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah. Continue reading “Merry Christmas!!!”
It appears that “debonding” is now both a permissible legal as well as dental procedure. The Iowa Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling on Friday that a dentist, Fort Dodge Dr. James Knight, could fire an assistant due to an “irresistible attraction.” Melissa Nelson was fired because Knight and his wife viewed her as a threat to their marriage. Justice Edward Mansfield wrote for a unanimous court that such a firing does not violate the Iowa Civil Rights Act even if the employee does not engage in flirtatious behavior.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Lost in the headlines about the Fiscal Cliff and the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was the gubernatorial appointment to the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jim DeMint. Sen. DeMint was arguably the Tea Party’s Senator and his impending departure from the Senate to accept the position to head up the Heritage Foundation would have left a gaping hole in the Tea Party’s influence in the Senate. There is nothing to worry about because South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley named Tea Party Congressman Tim Scott to replace DeMint in the Senate. Rep. Scott was just elected to the House of Representatives in 2010 and has already made a big name for himself in the Tea Party world by suggesting that President Obama should be impeached if Obama attempted to go around the House of Representatives during the last debt ceiling fiasco! Continue reading “The Latest Tea Party Darling”