I’m so glad we got our trip to Galveston out of the way between storms. With Gustav gearing up to be a category 5 hurricane, it won’t be much fun to be on the coast no matter where the thing makes landfall. I haven’t checked if New Orleans is still dead center in the projected paths, but it would be nice if nothing major gets hit.
Three militants awaiting execution for the 2002 Bali bombings plan to challenge the legality of death by firing squad, but it was unclear if the move would lead to a last-minute stay, their lawyer said Tuesday.
Mahendradatta, who goes by a single name, said he would file a petition next week at the Constitutional Court arguing that convicts who go before a firing squad sometimes do not die immediately, causing unnecessary suffering.
Come again? What about the 202 people they killed and the survivors? For all I care, the relatives of the victims are welcome to saw the terrorists heads off with a dull spoon.
It wouldn’t convince me. Being the skeptic that I am, all the tests the guy proposes would only demonstrate that something is capable of meeting the benchmarks…
Forcing a traveler to remover her nipple rings with pliers, having a guy with an artificial knee drop his pants in public, groping a girl with a prostetic leg, the list just goes on.
At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.
“She was yelling ‘I have power, I have power, I have power,” Perry said.
The way I see it, the TSA’s screening policies lack common sense, they hire staff that is either unsuitable for the job, poorly trained, or lacks supervision, and passengers are cowed into submission (perhaps deliberately so).
I don’t know what kind of dire emergency it would take to get me to voluntarily board a plane again—at least within the jurisdiction of the TSA.
THE parents of two girls who were repeatedly raped by a Melbourne priest are flying to Sydney from London to face Cardinal George Pell in time for Sunday’s World Youth Day final Mass.
Anthony Foster, whose daughters were raped by Kevin O’Donnell when they were in primary school, alleges Cardinal Pell stalled the family’s compensation claim against the Catholic Church when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
Earlier this year, the eldest daughter, Emma, took her own life after a long battle with drug addiction, which Mr Foster attributed directly to her rape as a schoolgirl. His second daughter, Katherine, who developed a heavy drinking habit, was hit by a drunk driver in 1999 and left physically and mentally disabled and requiring 24-hour care.
The co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, today responded to a question about Cardinal George Pell’s handling of a sexual abuse case by saying people are “dwelling crankily ... on old wounds”.
...
“Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying [and] delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people and the hope for us doing these sorts of things better in the future, as we saw last night, rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds.”
Unforgivable. The father effectively lost both of his daughter to predatory scumbags that were shielded by the Catholic Church and all this guy has to say is to get over it and call the father names?!
If something sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is and this applies to the reputation of the Amish, too. Humans are violent critters and if a group doesn’t display aggression towards the outside, then it’s either happening internally or it’s replaced by something equally unhealthy. I don’t know how hard it is to join the Amish, but I never expected it to be easy to leave them. While the Amish are not homogenous, their way of life seems designed to maintain control over adolescents and prevent them from leaving the fold and the practice of Rumspringa (cute name, “jumping around” to put it politely) is not officially sanctioned, but only tolerated in the Amish communities that have grown too large to keep the lid on.
I don’t know if abuse in Amish communities is a pervasive problem, a problem of the more conservative Amish only, or isolated to individuals and certain families. Having said that, they are a fundamentalistic cult that takes care of their own and it wouldn’t surprise me if the experiences of Ms. Bontrager are not exceptional. In her words:
The biggest negatives?
-The rape, incest and other sexual abuse that run rampant in the community
-Rudimentary education
-Physical and verbal abuse in the name of discipline
-Women (and children) have no rights
-Religion–and all its associated fear and brainwashing–as a means of control (and an extremely effective means at that)
-Animal abuse
These are pretty significant negatives, even with the provision that this is one former insider’s experience.
One connection I never made is that the spoken language of the Amish is derived from the German dialect spoken in the Palatinate, which is where I grew up. I haven’t located many sound samples of Amish and I don’t really care if Amish is a full-fledged language or not, but with a few slight vowel shifts, they sure sound like the people back home.
For the record, if I’d still live over ther, I would turn activist myself if a mega-mosque was planned in my neighborhood. Churches are bad enough already…
It’s a long article, but the summary says it almost all.
The planned construction of over 180 mosques in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society.
I don’t believe this is an unreasonable concern. It used to be that Muslims held their prayers in small venues, like residences and shops—and nobody cared. In recent times, between the Islamist terror, the demonstrable intolerance found in Muslim nations, and the debate about failed integration, I don’t see how the newly planned mega-mosques can be seen as anything but a means to further segregation and deliberately anti-integration. These mega-mosques are not like traditional Christian churches, which are basically places for worship and the occasional concert or other performance, but community centers that devote only a fraction of their space to actual worship. It is a bit odd that some planned locations are in areas where no Muslims are to be found close by; it is raising all kinds of red flags that some of the groups who want to build these mosques stonewall inquiries about their sources of funding, which were found to be Saudi Arabia (that paragon of human rights and tolerance) and other dubious groups.
There’s too much in the original article to quote, but I do like the closing paragraph:
Of course mosque construction should be allowed, the CDU members say, but land usage must be strictly restricted: “We suggest applying the standards that are in effect for the construction of new Christian religious buildings in Turkey.”
When Gary Crutchley started taking pictures of his children playing on an inflatable slide he thought they would be happy reminders of a family day out.
But the innocent snaps of seven-year-old Cory, and Miles, five, led to him being called a ‘pervert’.
The woman running the slide at Wolverhampton Show asked him what he was doing and other families waiting in the queue demanded that he stop.
One even accused him of photographing youngsters to put the pictures on the internet.
Mr Crutchley, 39, who had taken pictures only of his own children, was so enraged that he found two policemen who confirmed he had done nothing wrong.
It’s obvious that Mad Cow Disease has spread to humans. Here’s another example:
The Bavarian town of Amberg claims to have the world’s smallest hotel. At only 56 square meters (603 sq. ft.), the Eh’häusl is certainly tiny and it’s now open for business again after being extensively renovated. But despite its small size, the Eh’häusl has a long history: It’s been operating as a mini-hotel for freshly married couples for nearly three centuries.
Apparently the picture below was mistakenly printed in a Malaysian newspaper and a staffer got suspended (i.e. scapegoated) for it. Much mud-flinging all around. And now for the depiction that so offended the hyper-sensitive:
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