Open Letter on threat to religious freedom

I found this web surfing and think it should give us all a few things to think about.

by Bill Beckman Wednesday, April 30, 2008, Illinois Review: http://www.blognetnews.com/illinois/feed.php?channel=35

Pastors and Religious Leaders:
Below is a quote from a Canadian Human Rights Commission ruling explaining why Christian Horizons (CH), Ontario’s largest community living service provider of care to some 1400 severely disabled individuals, was found guilty of discrimination.

Michael Gottheil, Human Rights Tribunal adjudicator, delivered the guilty verdict against Christian Horizons (CH). First Gottheil states, “Christian Horizons accepts all persons into its programs regardless of cultural background or religious belief.”

What this means for Christian Horizons, writes Gottheil, is that because the charity provides for whoever is in need, and does not exclude non-Christians, CH cannot claim exemption from non-discrimination legislation. If only CH discriminated against non-Christians, and offered its services solely to Christians, then perhaps it would have a leg to stand on. If only Christian Horizons took care of a particular segment of Ontario’s citizens, instead of the whole citizenry without exception, then perhaps they would be eligible for government funding. But as it is, Christian Horizons is just too non-discriminatory, too humanitarian, too loving…that is, too darn Christian to fall under Section 24(1)(a) exemption, “which permits certain organizations to restrict hiring or give preference in employment to persons identified by one of the proscribed grounds of discrimination.” (in this case presumably based on religion).

As a result, on April 15, Michael Gottheil decided that Christian Horizons (CH) had discriminated against Connie Heintz (a former employee), and ordered CH to pay her $23,000, plus two years wages and benefits. The tribunal also ordered CH to bring its policies into compliance with the Ontario Human Rights Code, meaning that it must scrap its Lifestyle Morality Statement and comply with anti-discrimination employment legislation that forbids employers, whether Christian or not, from discriminating on the basis of “sexual orientation”. And, finally, the tribunal ordered CH employees to undergo state indoctrination in the form of so-called “human rights training.”

Anti Islamic Evangelist arrested on attempted arson charge

Ok, It looks to me like he was not planning arson but that’s why we have courts. They will decide guilt or innocence. Our loss is more basic – a brother in arms against the minions is now focused on other issues. We lose an ally and the minions get a brief rest.

Doctor Shorrosh was a prolific writer and his current troubles should not diminish his efforts to curb the spread of radical islam.

30 April, 2008, NBC15
(DAPHNE, Ala.) — A prominent Christian evangelist known around the world for his controversial writings about Islam and the Qur’an is in custody in the Baldwin County Correctional Center. Dr. Anish Shorrosh is charged with trying to burn down a condominium high-rise where he lived in Daphne.

He says he is from the hometown of Jesus, and claims to have preached the gospel in 82 different countries. But now, Dr. Anis Shorrosh is accused of putting dozens of his Daphne neighbors in danger.

The Christian evangelist has infuriated Muslims by questioning the Qur’an. Shorrosh claims fanatic Muslims tried to kill him on 3 different occasions. Tuesday night at the Loma Alta Condominiums in Daphne, Shorrosh was arrested, and is now facing charges of attempted arson.

Jailed Terrorist Ends Hunger Strike

Pussy…  Maybe he should have gone on that diet of sunlight Hira Ratan Manek claimed to be on…  Oh, wait, that was a hoax…  Never mind…

Jailed former professor ends hunger strike
By LARRY O’DELL AP Write
Virginia Wire

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) A former professor who pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a Palestinian terrorist group but has refused to testify before a grand jury in a related investigation has ended a nearly two-month hunger strike in a southeast Virginia jail, his supporters said Wednesday.

Sami al-Arian, 50, suspended his fast Tuesday after 57 days. The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace says family and friends urged the former University of South Florida computer science professor to resume eating after he collapsed last week in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail because of dangerously low blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

Attorneys for al-Arian also encouraged him to resume eating so federal authorities could not cite the hunger strike as a reason to further delay his deportation.

”He had lost almost 40 pounds and was experiencing serious physical consequences from the hunger strike,” al-Arian’s lawyer, Jonathan Turley, said in a telephone interview. ”The government indicated that it would not be able to deport him in his current chronic medical condition.”

Wednesday’s Flight 93 Memorial Blogburst

Congressman Ramstad comes out in opposition to the Flight 93 memorial

Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN) gave a House speech this month, supporting Mr. Burnett’s opposition to the crescent design. The speech is entered in the Congressional Record here, along with supporting statements from Tom Burnett Sr. (father of murdered Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.).

That makes two Congressmen now who have come out publicly against the crescent memorial. (Tom Tancredo took the lead last November, asking the Park Service to choose a completely new design.)

News coverage revs up confrontation at this Saturday’s public meeting

Ramstad’s speech, and our ongoing petition drive, netted a full width banner headline on the front page of the Somerset Daily American, with the story continuing full width on an inside page as well. This high profile local news coverage should make for an interesting Memorial Project meeting at the Somerset County Courthouse this Saturday. Several critics will be speaking during the public comment period, and the first batch of petitions will be delivered in bulk (over 5000 signatures to date, 4700 online and 500 on paper).

The Daily American article includes lots of powerful language from Mr. Burnett and other critics of the crescent design, along with some remarkably disingenuous evasions from the usual defenders. Most egregious is Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93, who tries to pretend that the criticisms of the design are all about Mr. Burnett trying to get an undemocratic “do over” after failing to stop the Crescent of Embrace design when he served on the design competition jury.

While on the jury, Mr. Burnett only complained about the giant Islamic shaped crescent and the minaret-like Tower of Voices. No one on the jury, including Mr. Burnett, knew anything about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent; or about the placement of the 9/11 date in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag; or about the 44 glass blocks on the flight path; or about the fact that the Tower of Voices turns out to be a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial.

Not that the jury is beyond reproach. It was bizarre for these family members and design professionals to plant a bare naked crescent and star flag on the graves of our murdered heroes, but given everything that the jurors did NOT know, this configuration at least COULD have been an accident. What came out after the design was selected is absolute proof of terrorist memorializing intent, with every Islamic and terrorist memorializing feature being repeated in the Tower of Voices portion of the memorial.

Al-Qaeda Terrorist Re-Captured

This update a previous post HERE

Suspected killer of French tourists arrested

NOUAKCHOTT (AFP) — The suspected killer of four French tourists in Mauritania, who escaped from Nouakchott’s main courthouse earlier this month, has been recaptured, police said Wednesday.

Sidi Ould Sidna, 21, who had been on the run since April 2, was arrested Wednesday between 3:00 am and 5:00 am (0500 GMT) with at least two other Islamic combatants in the Arafat district of the capital, police said.

He is believed to belong to a group close to Al-Qaeda’s north African branch and is one of several people suspected of killing the tourists on December 24 and the main suspect in an attack on the Israeli embassy on February 1 which was claimed by Al-Qaeda.

Two police officers, a clerk and Ould Sidna’s brother have been charged with involvement in his escape.

Since his escape Ould Sidna has evaded recapture on several occasions.

Obama’s Web of Lies Begin to Unravel

It really doesn’t matter to me if Barack Obama was or was not a Muslim. That’s not the point. Just the fact that Barack Obama outright lies about his Muslim childhood should be enough to give one pause when considering his character for the position of Commander in Chief.  If that makes me a bigot, then so be it!  I really don’t give a spit.

For further reading, Murphy Klasing, over at his blog has been tracking some interesting lies told by Obama and Hillary.

Barack Obama’s Muslim Childhood
By: Daniel Pipes, The Bulletin
04/30/2008

As Barack Obama’s candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate’s integrity.

Mr. Obama asserted in December, “I’ve always been a Christian,” and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. “The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam.” In February, he claimed: “I have never been a Muslim … other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for four years when I was a child [Indonesia, 1967-71] I have very little connection to the Islamic religion.”

“Always” and “never” leave little room for equivocation. But many biographical facts, culled mainly from the American press, suggest that, when growing up, the Democratic candidate for president both saw himself and was seen as a Muslim.

Mr. Obama’s Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (1936-1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama Jr. Only Muslim children are named “Hussein.”

Mr. Obama’s Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Mr. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of The New York Times: “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post, reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that “all the relatives of Barry’s father were very devout Muslims.”

The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that “documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim” while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of The Chicago Tribune confirms that Mr. Obama was “listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school.” A blogger who goes by “An American Expat in Southeast Asia” found that “Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name ‘Barry Soetoro’ serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry’s religion was listed as Islam.”

When Pissed off, Bush Uses that Forbidden Word, ‘Jihadists’

Yesterday, I found it interesting that the President, when clearly agitated and in rare oratory form, used the verboten term ‘Jihadists’ in defiance of the Government’s Newspeak guidelines.

P.S. – When confronted by an annoying reporter, you can almost see President Bush thinking to himself, “look, bitch! You only get one follow-up question!”

Illiterate ‘Witch’ to be Executed by Saudis

H/T – Matamoros

Pleas for condemned Saudi ‘witch’
By Heba Saleh
BBC News

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

‘Undefined’ crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih’s conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.

When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest.

Putin and his Cronies Afraid of Satire and Mockery

Some people just have no sense of humor…

“Above all else, the Devil cannot stand to be mocked.” – C.S. Lewis

No laughing matter: Cartoons and the Kremlin

Mikhail Zlatkovsky has been lampooning Russian leaders since the days of perestroika. But he has discovered that satire permitted by Gorbachev and Yeltsin is dangerous under Putin. By Shaun Walker

The Independent
Wednesday, 30 April 2008

With his easily recognisable features, his omnipresence in every area of Russian politics and foreign policy, and his penchant for withering, snappy one-liners, Vladimir Putin is a cartoonist’s dream. At the beginning of his eight-year reign, he was launching a bloody war in Chechnya and promising to “waste” terrorists; as it draws to a close he is denying rumours of secret plans to marry a 24-year-old gymnast, and telling journalists to keep their “snotty noses and erotic fantasies” out of his private life. There’s plenty of material for even the most unimaginative cartoonist to have a field day.

There’s only one problem for Russian cartoonists, however – they’re not allowed to draw him. Mikhail Zlatkovsky is perhaps the most famous cartoonist in Russia, with his sketches appearing daily in Novye Izvestia newspaper and a history of political cartoons and existential artwork dating back to the 1970s. He was the first Russian cartoonist to draw Mikhail Gorbachev, and actively caricatured Boris Yeltsin. He has also drawn Stalin, although the cartoon that he did as a teenager in 1959 took until 1988 to be published.

When Yeltsin named Mr Putin as acting president on New Year’s Eve 1999, Zlatkovsky drew the ailing Yeltsin dredging a mermaid-tailed Putin out of the sea and putting a crown on his head. Putin became a regular feature of Zlatkovsky’s cartoons. But the new President was officially inaugurated on 7 May 2000, and the next day, Zlatkovsky’s editor at Literaturnaya Gazeta, where he then worked, came into the newsroom, fresh from a Kremlin reception.

“He said to me, ‘Misha, we’re not going to draw Putin any more,'” recalls Zlatkovsky. “The young lad is very sensitive.” From that day onwards, Zlatkovsky has not had another cartoon of Mr Putin published. Nowadays, the only cartoons of the Russian leader to appear in the Russian press are those that depict him in a positive, or even heroic light.

As Mr Putin’s rule went on, says Zlatkovsky, the number of taboo subjects increased – ministers, Kremlin aides, Chechnya and top military brass all became off limits. Recently a cartoon depicting Alexy II, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, propmpted a phone call from the patriarchate and a strong request never to draw him again.

[See Article HERE]

U.S. State Department to Iran: Knock it off – or else!

H/T Matamoros

“Hostile” Iran Sparks U.S. Attack Plan

Pentagon Wary Of Tehran’s Expanding Nuclear Program And Alleged Support Of Iraqi Insurgents

(CBS) A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the “increasingly hostile role” Iran is playing in Iraq – smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

“What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and women inside Iraq,” said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

U.S. officials are also concerned by Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf as well as Iran’s still growing nuclear program. New pictures of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant show the country’s defense minister in the background, as if deliberately mocking a recent finding by U.S. intelligence that Iran had ceased work on a nuclear weapon.