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It seems that the North Korean government likes to kidnap people from all over the world. I have written many times in this blog about the abduction of Japanese nationals by agents of the DPRK. We have known for a long time about the kidnapping of hundreds, and possible thousands of South Korean nationals by North Korean agents. Know we have this; Evidence grows that Thai woman abducted to North KoreaHong Kong (dpa) - The memoirs of a U.S. army deserter have added weight to the theory that three young women who went missing 27 years ago in Macau were spirited away to North Korea, a news report said Sunday.
The trio - Thai masseuse Anocha Panjoy and jewellery shop assistants Hong Leng-ieng and So Mio-chun - have not been seen since the evening July 2, 1978, after they accepted a dinner invitation from a wealthy Japanese man who called himself Mr Fukoda.
At the time it was thought the women could have been abducted and forced into prostitution or murdered on the high seas after being enticed on board ships.
However in his recently published memoirs, American Charles Jenkins, who spent 39 years in North Korea after deserting his unit in 1965, claimed to have met Thai national Anocha Panjoy during his time there.
Jenkins says he knew her well because she was married to fellow deserter Larry Abshier who died of a heart attack in 1983. He also produced a photograph of a beach scene with a woman in the background he claimed was Anocha.
In his book Kokuhaku (To Tell the Truth) he says he believed there were abductees from all over the world in North Korea.
The BBC has the news as well; N Korea 'kidnapped Thai woman'Thailand's government is investigating claims that a Thai woman missing since 1978 was kidnapped by North Korean agents and is now living there.
Relatives of the woman, Anocha Panjoy, were alerted to her possible fate by an article written by a US man who recently left North Korea.
Pyongyang has already "informally denied" abducting the woman, said Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkon.
And this should be interesting;The North Korean charge d'affaires to Thailand, Kim Chol-nam will discuss [lie about, ed.] the case with Nopadol Gunavibool, director general of the East Asia Department at the Foreign Ministry, later this week, according to the Bangkok Post.
It is unbelievable to me that there are Westerners, particularly Americans, who support this monsterous regime. See this, and this, and this.
Our Leftist Fifth Column wants to overthrow our Constitutionally elected government.
The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime
Every one of their basic statements is a lie.Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.
No one lied. There were many valid reasons to take Saddam down, WMD being only one. Everyone left™ and right thought he had them. To say that he never did, as the Left™ now does begs the question, what about Halabja? I suppose those thousands of people just had a bad mass allergy.
Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.
We are not openly torturing anyone. Sleep deprivation and loud music are not torture. Oh, and ripping up Korans is not torture either.
Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
If this idiot is writing about capturing illegal combatants on the battlefield, or nabbing people as they are caught trying to carry out terrorist acts is not "the merest suspicion". People found to be arrested in error are released.
Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.
Beneath discussion. And this idiot writes this in support of people who wish to impose a totalitarian Islamic Caliphate on all of us.
Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.
When?, Where?
Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.
How is this happening? Oh, it's not. Actually this would be impossible. Even assuming that we could get soft-headed American judges to rule against abortion, it is so popular in Europe that NO WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY IS REPRODUCING AT REPLACEMENT LEVELS.
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
Opinion, and an idiotic one at that.
People look at all this and think of Hitler and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
It is interesting that, in the cause of "freedom" they have no respect for elections. They accuse the President of wishing to set up a fascistic dictatorship when, in fact, it is they who wish to overturn an election and impose some other government. They are hypocrites and worse than despicable.
Read the list of endorsers. It is very interesting.
My hatred for the government of North Korea does not translate to support of an American military presence in South Korea. That force is so small that it would be little more than a speed bump during a North Korean invasion of South Korea, and they know that. While it would be exceptionally tragic for South Korea to be defeated in war and be governed by the murderers of North Korea, it would be better to preserve our forces in Japan to be used later, after the initial thrust of the DPRK, rather than lose them in a diplomatic and political exercise. As it stands now, our troops are there as an act of generosity to the people and government of South Korea. In fact, they are a hindrance to our ability to negotiate freely with the North Korean government because they are basically hostages to the murderer freak-boy Kim Jong-Il. The only benefit to the South Koreans is business. Most of which still want our money.
It is time for us to go. Perhaps the world will learn something by watching what happens to South Korea once we leave. Western liberals and their leftist™ fellow travelers will celebrate, but their cruelty will be fully revealed. Ironically the defeat of South Korea would aid in the struggle against them elsewhere.
joshua has the story and pictures at onefreekorea
Signs of the Times: So This Is Why I Spent Four Years in Korea
The (now former) Korean Ambassador to the U.S., Hong Seok-hyun, disputes this.
Hong attributed such conceptions to an insufficient under- standing of changes sweeping Korea and the world at large, and to excessive focus on trivial incidents.
One major change in Korean society was that the decision-making process has become more complex, Hong said. Now dissenters need to be convinced, and the process takes longer as the democratization of Korean society progresses.
I have to say that that is pretty lame. The people in joshua's photos were not waiting for the opportunity to be convinced of anything.
Perhaps he fears the weakening of American support for our presence there, and rightfully so.
While the Japanese Government negotiates with madmen and mass murderers, a group of Japanese citizens take matters into their own hands.
Japanese to radio abductees in N. KoreaTOKYO, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- A Japanese citizens group will soon begin broadcast of a short-wave radio program for Japanese abductees living in North Korea.
The 30-minute Japanese-language program, "Shiokaze (Sea Breeze)," which will include messages from family members of abductees, will be broadcast daily at 11:30 p.m. starting in late November, the Asahi Shimbun reported Thursday.
The program will start with such messages as: "It won't be long. We will rescue you without fail." About 50 names of those believed to be held in North Korea will be announced each day.
With about 270 names on the list, the announcement of names will loop every five days.
The program also will tell listeners that many people in Japan are trying to rescue those snatched by North Korea, and that abductees should try -- with caution -- to send information to the outside world.
It is good to see the people acting independently of their government. This is a great American tradition and can only be done by people living in a free country.
More to follow on the story of Japanese (and others) abducted by North Korean agents.
That's what the liberals say. From the Independent Media Center; Paris is Burning: Racism and Repression Explode in Week of UprisingsAfricans living and working in Paris have been pushed into ghettoized suburbs of Paris (banlieue), where the state has withdrawn education, health, and other services, while increasing police presence, checkpoints, raids on sans-papiers and levels of oppression in general. This week the suburbs have exploded.
The trigger came on Thursday, October 27th, 2005, as a group of 10 highschool kids were playing soccer in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. When police arrived to do ID checks, the kids ran away and hid, because some of them had no ID. Three of the children hid in an electrical transformer building of EDF and were electrocuted. Two of them, Ziad Benn (17) and Banou Traoré (15), died; the third, Metin (21), was severely injured.
There it is, the fictitious "oppression" in a socialist country that does whatever it can to appease her Muslims - oh, wait! Who said they were Muslims? They are African high school kids.On Sunday, however, provocation turned into outrage as the women's prayer room at de Bousquets mosque was teargassed by police. As people stumbled out gasping for air, the policemen called the women "whores", "bitches" and other insults.
That's right. Women peacefully at prayer (just happens to be at a mosque) were teargassed by the police for absolutely no reason at all.
Yep, just like that.
The Left™ is a Fifth Column.
Charles had this yesterday from Mark Steyn's new column. I want to make one additional observation.Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. "By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night," I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: "French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest."
"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
Liberal appeasers in the United States would have the same thing occur here.
NOTE: I wrote this post a couple of days ago hoping that something would change. Silly me.
The riots in France are now well covered by the MSM (for my new readers that's MainStream Media) although you may notice that they avoid a certain fact, knowledge of which is not permitted under current thought control laws.
There is other news that you are not permitted to know. The American Thinker has it.It'’s not just Paris. Successive nights of riots have rocked parts of Århus, the second largest city in Denmark. Little to nothing has appeared in the English language press about the second front in the Eurabian intifada. Århus is home to an excellent Danish university, and is a place where I have spent some time. It is usually spelled "Aarhus" in English.
Fortunately, Hendrik, The Viking Observer, has translated in his blog a press account from Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper which has been the target of Muslim protests for publishing drawings of the prophet Muhammad.. A few excerpts:Rosenhøj Mall has several nights in a row been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. "This area belongs to us", the youths proclaim. Sunday evening saw a new arson attack. Their words sound like a clear declaration of war on the Danish society. Police must stay out. The area belongs to immigrants....
He calls himself 100 percent Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 19 years ago, and now out of work in Denmark. "The police has to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes down here".
A civil war is coming to France, and will eventually burn across all of Europe.
This news did not get much play in the U.S., so I missed it.
Carlo Maria Maria Giulini
This man was one of the very great conductors of the 20th Century and a huge influence on me. As child and later as a music student at Illinois Wesleyan University and then Southern Methodist University I studied his recordings to learn how to clearly interpret symphonic music.
As I hadn't heard any news of him for some time, I did an internet search on his name and discovered the above listed article.
This is a man whose musical skills dwarfed virtually all others. It is impossible to say too much about him.
When I was a First Class Petty Officer on USS Florida I had a very hard time establishing myself as a leader in my Division. I ultimately succeeded. During that time I received great solace from his recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (the greatest work of music ever written). I still have memorized every tempo and every balance of every voice, even in the most densely contrapuntal sections of his recording of that very complex work. His Mahler Symphony Number 1 in D Major is my paradigm of how Mahler is to be played. There is too much to write about here. His musical thinking was formative for me.
May he rest in very well deserved peace.
I don't go with the "Bush is Stupid" meme, but this arrived in my email, and it's funny.
George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The main man in China!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you, Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.
George: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you, or will you not, tell me the name of the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he's dead in the Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China.
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.
The Anchoress has this as does Cartago Delenda Est. I also found this on the USENET in a post by drahcir. The original, in Spanish, is from Sebastian Vivar Rodriguez at Gentiuno - gente del siglo XXI. The translator is unidentified.
CAUTION: The idea expressed here is illegal under current speech and thought control laws in most western countries.Europe died in Auschwitz
I was walking along Raval (Barcelona) when all of a sudden I understood that Europe died with Auschwitz. We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!
We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create. We burnt the people of the world, the one who is proclaimed the chosen people of God. Because it is the people who gave to humanity the symbolic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud...) and who is the origin of progress and wellbeing.
We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving in under the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallacious cultural relativism, opened it's doors to 20 million Muslims, often illiterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in places such as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social welfare.
We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition. We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better peaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the pride of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our children.
What a grave mistake that we made!!!
I cannot agree more.
For the BBC this is simply the result of an ongoing civil disturbance. "Militants" did this.
Via Little Green Footballs,
Three Indonesian girls beheadedThree girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia.
They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked.
This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Muslims and Christians.
A government-brokered truce has only partially succeeded in reducing the number of incidents in recent years.
Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.
It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive.
For liberals and the Left™ this is merely a local disturbance. The killing of Christians for the simple fact that they are Christians is perfectly understandable to them, even if the victims (true martyrs, no bomb vests required) are schoolgirls. According to the BBC and liberals in both Europe and America, the evils ones are those such as myself who would call this what it is, Islamic terrorism and part of an Islamic movement to exterminate Christians and Jews (and Hindus - Buddhists just have to wait for a few years, but they are on the list too).
The sea trials for USS Ohio have not occurred yet, so I have time for another post or two. I ran across this in the comments section at Little Green Footballs and thought I'd share it with you. Thanks go to Yank in the EU.
Paul Johnson nails it at Forbes.com. Anti-Americanism Is Racist EnvyAnti-Americanism is the prevailing disease of intellectuals today. Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome--a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes.
• First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy. The right of voters to elect more than 80,000 public officials, the length and thoroughness of electoral campaigns, the pervasiveness of the media and the almost daily reports by opinion polls ensure that government and electorate do not diverge for long and that Washington generally reflects the majority opinion in its actions.
It is this feature that intellectuals--especially in Europe--find embittering. They know they must genuflect to democracy as a system. They cannot openly admit that an entire people--especially one comprising nearly 300 million, who enjoy all the freedoms--can be mistaken. But in their hearts these intellectuals do not accept the principle of one person, one vote. They scornfully, if privately, reject the notion that a farmer in Kansas, a miner in Pennsylvania or an auto assembler in Michigan can carry as much social and moral weight as they do. In fact, they have a special derogatory word for anyone who acts on this assumption: "populist." A populist is someone who accepts the people's verdict, even--and especially--when it runs counter to the intellectual consensus (as with capital punishment, for example). In the jargon of intellectual persiflage, populism is almost as bad as fascism--indeed, it's a step toward it. Hence, the argument goes, the U.S. is not so much an "educated democracy" as it is a media-swayed and interest-group-controlled populist regime.
The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy. Italy and Germany have had democracy only since the late 1940s; Spain, since the 1960s. France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes. Elements of the French system are being imposed throughout the EU, even in countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have long practiced democracy with success. In a French-style pseudodemocracy, intellectuals have considerable influence, at both government and street levels. In a true democracy, intellectuals are no more powerful than their arguments.
This is only one of three arguments that Mr. Johnson presents and really explains why the U. S. is the greatest country in the world. Go read the rest of the article for more.
I thank God that I was blessed to be born an American.
I will not be posting for a couple of weeks. I will be leaving soon to ride USS Ohio's (SSGN 726) sea trials. Of course I cannot say when they are, but we will leave soon.
+Photi
From Mission Network News (old news, but I just found it), Faith-based groups urge the United Nations to fight bias against all faiths.International (MNN)--It began as a quiet campaign from the Vatican, but grew to a clamor that has been picked up by Non-Government Organizations, human rights groups and Christians.
Church leaders are pushing the United Nations to recognize 'Christianophobia' as an evil equal to anti-Semitism or 'Islamophobia'. Persecution of Christians may have been heightened because of the war on terrorism, however, it has always existed.
Documentation from human rights watchdog groups details a fervent campaign in many countries to stamp out Christianity.
Baptist World Alliance's Wendy Ryan wants believers in the West to pay attention, saying it's more than a human rights issue. "If there's a lack of religious freedom in any one place, it has an impact on every place. The person in the local pew should be really concerned that if freedoms are lacking in other parts of the world, who knows? There could come a day where we might have to fight for our freedoms."
Ryan explains religious freedom, which includes the right to evangelize, is deteriorating. Take, for example, believers in places like Saudi Arabia. The Christians there are free to meet, but not to share what they believe. A similar scenario repeats itself in countries like China, Indonesia and Eritrea.
"We are mindful," Ryan says, "that there are restraints and the question then comes, if you are in a position where you are free to meet, but you are not free to openly share the Gospel, what do you do? That is a part of religious freedom, and that's something for which we also fight."
I'll write later about how some of these groups "evangelize" in countries that are already Christian (Protestant evangelizing in Russia and Eastern Europe is a sore spot with me), but any effort to fight anti-Christian (and anti-Jewish) persecution is good and very much needed. Helping in that effort is something that the United Nations will not do.
Piracy has never gone away. Indonesian waters have long been the most pirate infested waters in the world. Now the coast of Somalia has joined Indonesia as a region for mariners to avoid. Pirates are not like the cute Jack Sparrow character played by Johnny Depp. These are human scum who know no law or morality. They usually kill everyone they come across.
There is only one cure for piracy. Every Navy in the world should be involved in killing pirates.
Pirates hijack ship off Somalia.Pirates have seized a cargo ship off the coast of Somalia, local officials have confirmed.
They said the Maltese-registered ship, Pagania, was attacked late on Wednesday as it sailed from South Africa to Europe with a cargo of iron ore.
The hijackers are reportedly demanding a $700,000 (£394,000) ransom for the release of the ship and its crew, all believed to be Ukrainian.
More than 20 ships have been seized or attacked in the area since March.
The International Maritime Bureau - which records such attacks - has recently advised ships "to keep as far away as possible from the Somali coast".
A UN-chartered ship carrying food aid to tsunami victims in northern Somalia, the MV Semlow, was released this month, after being held by hijackers for 100 days.
See the related linked included with the article.
See also;
Murders by pirates 'on the rise'
Rise in Murders, Kidnappings at Sea Makes Piracy a Top Naval Priority WorldwideThe Nigerian naval escorts were of no help to Americans Ryne Hathaway or Denny Fowler. The pirates who attacked their boat on the Olero Creek in Nigeria's Western Delta State April 23 gunned them down, along with five Nigerians.
Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, the pirates had drawn near the Americans'’ vessel -- possibly using military-style dress as a ruse -- and demanded that the escorts throw down their arms. The escorts refused and the pirates opened fire. Hathaway and Fowler, both Texans, had gone to Nigeria in April as contractors for ChevronTexaco Corp. to assess the feasibility of resuming drilling operations that had been shut down due to escalating tribal violence.
Weeks later in the Strait of Malacca, a narrow channel between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula notorious for violent attacks on shipping, the Indonesian transport Ikan Murni was boarded by two dozen pirates armed with automatic weapons. Waiting near Berhala Island, the pirates fired on the ship and boarded. Twelve crewmembers jumped overboard and were later picked up by local fisherman.
The pirates, believed to be Aceh separatists [who want an Islamist state, btw - ed.] in Indonesia, kidnapped the ship'’s master and another crewmember, and abandoned the ship. They demanded a substantial ransom for crewmembers'’ release, but authorities decline to say whether a ransom was paid. The owners of the Ikan Murni hired a tugboat to bring the ship back to shore, according to an account in "Tale of a Modern Pirate Gang" by piracy expert Mark Bruyneel.
Lawlessness on the High Seas
These incidents, and hundreds more like them each year, help explain why international piracy has become a top priority for military and police officials from Southeast Asia to Africa and the United States.
"The seas are unpoliced and unregulated and, therefore, attractive to those who want to exploit or abuse them," said U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon R. England. Speaking in July at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., England said, "On average, more than one ship each day is attacked, robbed, hijacked or sunk."
The effort to kill all pirates should be global. In fact there is significant international cooperation in this mission, mostly by the Americans, the Australians, the British, and others who have not given up on themselves (count the French out).
Of course, the UN in its effort to support all that is evil, covers for the pirates in the MV Semlow case, Somali pirates 'not looting aid'The UN has denied reports from local residents that pirates who seized a ship carrying tsunami aid to Somalia have started looting the food.
"Our contacts in the region assure us that the vast bulk... of rice aboard the MV Semlow has not been taken ashore," the UN's Robert Hausser said.
Weeks of talks have failed to secure the release of the ship and its crew.
Of course, the piece quoted at the top of this post reports that they have been released. Sadly, no pirates were killed.
In addition to my degrees in music, I decided in the late 1980's to pursue a degree in electronics engineering. While I had to abandon that program as Uncle Sam decided to send my back to sea, I did finish all of the "flunk-out" courses. These generally had a 55-65% attrition rate. These are the calculus, physics, statics, and dynamics courses. I did well, with a B+ to A average, but in the 15 years since then, I have forgotten it all. This has been bothering me for some time. I took, and did well at, four semesters of calculus up to and including multi-variable calculus, differential equations with complex variables, linear algebra, advanced engineering mathematics (which by then was easy), and much more. I worked very hard and learned to enjoyed working out the problems as puzzles.
I am starting again. What got me going was actually a series of equipment failures. My trusty old HP 32S calculator died on me a few months ago and I had to replace it with an HP 33S. Probably the best "basic" calculator in the world.
I also had an advanced calculator that I used after I completed the calculus courses. This got me through the calculus-based physics courses. It was the HP 48SX. It is now gone, and I had to replace it with an HP 49g+, which is the most powerful calculator in the world.
The plan is, use only a No.2 Mirado, a legal pad, and the HP 33S for the numeric stuff for now. As I get back into the calculus, I'll use the HP 49g+ to check my answers. Then, when I get into the statics, dynamics, physics, and circuit theory the 49g+ will be fully employed.
One of my mathematics professors called me a "mathematical pit bull" then. I plan on getting that back.
It's easy to tell that we are in that happy season celebrated by Muslims worldwide. Charles Johnson has a whole series of stories on these celebrations.
RoP Strikes in Thailand
Holland Fears RoP
Death Cult Child Abuse
Danish Muslims Seethe, Protest, Threaten
The Palestinian Peace Process
Nothing like celebrating the one's most holy season by killing Jews, Americans, and other infidels more than one would during the rest of the year.
Our enemies on the Left™ like to accuse Charles and others (such as myself) of being Islamophobes (whatever the hell that is). We just report news, we don't make it. It would be nice if the MSM would report the news too.
Modern bioethics is probably the area in which the liberal culture of death is most clear. I have posted on the before in posts about Peter Singer here and here.
Medical Ethicist Describes Holland's Inevitable Progress from Mercy Killing to Murder:(AgapePress) - Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics of the National Right to Life Committee, says the Netherlands is no longer sliding down a slippery slope, but rather has fallen off a moral cliff as the medical community in that nation expands its euthanasia practices. He notes that the Dutch government intends to expand its euthanasia guidelines to include so-called "mercy killing" of children with spina bifida or other disabilities, as long as the parents consent.
This development is horrifying, though not surprising, Balch contends, because once a price is placed on human life, the price goes down. "In the Netherlands, although they started with purely voluntary euthanasia for people who were dying," he says, "they moved very rapidly to individuals who were not dying but were disabled."
Soon after that, the head of the Powell Center says, doctors in the Netherlands started euthanizing "individuals who were neither dying nor disabled but who were simply old and, in fact, lonely. They moved on to depressed patients, then they moved into cases where the patient hadn't given consent at all."
For instance, Balch asserts, the pro-euthanasia doctors in the Netherlands have now moved on to euthanizing the elderly in nursing homes and even killing children without parental consent. He says it is obvious that arguments about physician-assisted death being the patient's choice are no longer relevant. Instead, he insists, it has come to be about a determination of who is fit to live.
This is not only a European issue. This debate is occurring in the U.S. also, and those of us who love life are losing.
Islam has a problem with soccer and anything identifiably Western.
Fatwa from 2003: Soccer is Forbidden Except When Played as Training for Jihad [footnotes removed, see original article - ed.]"One of the anti-soccer fatwas was published in full in Al-Watan on August 25, 2005. According to other sources it had been issued by Sheikh 'Abdallah Al-Najdi.
The fatwa declared that it is only permissible to play soccer when its rules are different than the accepted international rules. This was based on a hadith [Prophetic tradition] which forbids Muslims to imitate Christians and Jews. The fatwa read:
"1. Don't play soccer with four lines [surrounding the field], since this is the way of the non-believers, and the international soccer rules require drawing [these lines] before playing.
"2. One should not use the terminology established by the non-believers and the polytheists, like: 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick,' 'goal,' and 'out of bounds.' Whoever pronounces these terms should be punished, reprimanded, kicked out of the game, and should even be told in public: 'You have come to resemble the non-believers and the polytheists, and this has been forbidden.'
"3. If one of you falls during the game and breaks his hand or his foot, or if the ball hits his hand, he shall not say 'foul' and shall not stop playing because of his injury. The one who caused his injury shall not receive a yellow or a red card, but rather the case shall be judged according to Muslim law in the case of a broken bone or an injury. The injured player shall exercise his rights according to the shari'a, as [is stated] in the Koran, and you must testify together with him that so-and-so tripped him up intentionally.
"4. Do not set the number [of players] according to the number of players used by the non-believers, the Jews, the Christians, and especially the vile America. In other words, 11 players shall not play together. Make it a larger or a smaller number.
"5. Play in your normal clothing, or in pajamas, or something like that, but not in colorful pants and numbered jerseys. Pants and jerseys are not appropriate clothing for Muslims. They are the clothing of the non-believers and of the West, and therefore you must be careful not to wear them.
"6. Once you have fulfilled [these] conditions and rules, you must play the entire game with the intention of improving your physical fitness for the purpose of fighting Jihad for Allah's sake and preparing for the time when jihad is needed. One should not waste time in celebrating a false victory.
"7. Do not play for 45 minutes, as is the practice among the Jews, the Christians, and in all of the countries of non-belief and atheism. This is also the length of time that is accepted in the soccer clubs of those who have strayed from the righteous path. You must be different than the non-believers, depart from their path, and not imitate them in anything.
"8. Do not play in two parts [i.e. halves], but rather in one part or in three parts, so as to be different than the sinful and rebellious, the non-believers and the polytheists.
"9. If neither side has defeated the other and neither side has inserted the ball between the posts, do not waste further time [in an extension] or in 'penalty kicks' until someone has won, but rather leave [the field] immediately, since this kind of victory is precisely an imitation of the non-believers and [adoption] of the international soccer rules.
"10. Do not appoint someone who follows the players around and is called 'a referee', since, after canceling the international rules such as 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick' and so on, there is no need for his presence. Moreover, his presence is an imitation of non-believers, Jews and Christians, and constitutes adoption of the international [soccer] rules.
"11. In the course of the game it is forbidden for groups of youth to gather and watch, since if you are gathering for the sake of sports activity and physical fitness, as you claim, why should they be looking at you? You must make them participate [in order to improve] their physical fitness and prepare for jihad; or else say to them, 'Go propagate Islam and seek out moral corruption in the marketplaces and in the press [in order to correct it], and leave us to improve our physical fitness.'
"12. When you finish playing, be careful not to talk about the game, and not to say 'we play better than the opponent,' or 'so-and-so is a good player,' etc. Moreover, you should speak about your body, its strength and its muscles, and about the fact that you are playing as [a means of] training to run, attack, and retreat in preparation for [waging] jihad for Allah's sake.
"13. If one of you inserts the ball between the posts and then starts to run so that his companions will run after him and hug him, like the players in America and France do, you should spit in his face, punish him, and reprimand him, for what do joy, hugging, and kissing have to do with sports?
"14. You must take the three posts or iron rods which you use to construct [the goal], and into which the ball is kicked, and replace them with just two instead of three. In other words, take out the cross-post or rod… so that [the goal] will not be similar to what is customary among the non-believers, and in order to violate the despotic international soccer rules.
"15. Do not do what is known as 'substitution' – that is, putting in a player in place of a player who has been disqualified – since this the custom of the non-believers in America and elsewhere."
The good news is, Saudi authorities and the Press are now telling their citizens that not all fatwas are issued by people qualified or knowledgeable enough to do so. In fact, this fatwa is criticized as unIslamic (a common fig leaf) and dangerous to youth for both religious and non religious reasons.
In this article the discussion of this fatwa follows. Go and read the entire thing. Perhaps the Saudis are finally getting a clue (but I doubt it).
And, read footnote [4].
This is something that liberal westerners have serious trouble understanding.
From the First Congregational Church of Rome:It seems a papal commission reached a result that Pope Paul VI did not desire,"--so the Pope simply overruled the experts who were qualified on this subject [artificial contraception] . . . . . This is not the only way Vatican methods run parallel with those of Washington. Rome too is now ruled from the margins. Most Catholics hold views different from the Pope’s on many matters."
Er, come again? When the Vatican is being run by the Pope it is being ruled "from the margins"? At the Roman "center," then, would be papal commissions endorsing the majority will?
One wonders how many readers—how many Catholic readers, forsooth--skim over flabbergasting stuff like this and think, "Yeah—right! What makes the Pope think he has the right to run the Church?" Apparently the author expects it.
What is obvious to Orthodox Christians is sadly lost in this liberal, godless culture. The Orthodox Church and, for the most part, the Roman Catholic Church are the preservers of the original faith, having defended it against the many terrible heresies of the first four centuries. We have the witness of the early Saints and Holy Fathers to teach us, and our Priests and Bishops to transmit that teaching to us. The Church teaches us how to live a holy life. Secular liberalism cannot.
God doesn't change. He is what he is, and the way to personal sanctification is what it is, regardless of how a democratically conducted poll would have it.
We learn from our Bishops, our Priests, our monastics, and other holy people how to be holy. How to stengthen our spiritual lives (this has nothing to do with any kind of emotionalism). How to be closer to God.
