Logic & Sanity

Brittany Murphy dead at 32

Not that I've been closely following her life but I didn't see this one coming. She's anorexic, as this photo makes quite obvious - her had looks way too big for her body . Very sad.

 

Abortion

Regardless of where one stands on the abortion issue, this ad is powerful!

  Here's an exerpt from a troubling report from the picture editor at Mumbai Mirror who happened to take the photo on the left:

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."

 So there you have it. The Indian government has failed in protecting its citizens (and guests) and it has prevented them from acquiring tools to protect themselves. Here's an interesting post on gun ownership in India.

Saudi justice

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

Well, here's some advice - don't get raped in Saudi Arabia. If you still decide to - don't get into a car with an "unrelated male". On a serious note, though, where's the international outcry over this? Put some panties on a terrorists head and automatically Bush is Hitler, but when's the last time anyone protested in front of a Saudi embassy? Called King Abdullah Hitler? Surely 200 lashes is torture.

No good deed goes unpunished...

A new convert to Islam, fired with zeal to do a righteous act, had no idea that he would pay a heavy price for helping a sick woman, one that has landed him 50 days and counting behind bars.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice found him guilty for committing a crime: Being in the presence of a woman who is not a relative (a so-called “illegal state of seclusion”).
...
Ibrahim Mohammed Lawal, a Nigerian student of Islamic studies at Badiya Islamic Center in Riyadh, learned that his neighbor, a 63-year-old woman, was indisposed and needed medical attention. So he took her to various hospitals in Riyadh, including the Riyadh Medical Complex at Shumaisy, all of which refused to treat her. It was only after the intervention of Sheikh Fawaz, director of Badiya Islamic Center, that the Badiya Hospital admitted the case. Despite the charitable act Mohammed ended up in detention, accused of immoral behavior because he was neither married nor related by blood to the elderly woman.

Oops, time to unconvert. Aw, but you can't...

Fashion show in Iran

More here.

Europe goes down the drain

These are interesting days we are living in when a sober analysis of the Hamas vs. Fatah situation comes from the arab media and not from an American ex president.

And speaking of interesting days, Ali Mazrui notes, that during the first Rushdie affair, "the twelve members of the European Community temporarily withdrew their ambassadors from Tehran in the wake of the Ayatollah’s threat against Rushdie." Ofcourse no such reaction can be seen today. Further proof that Europe has no spine and no will. All these loud statements by the european leaders and organizations against US and Israel are nothing more then a way for them to assure the european populace that they are, and not the cowboy hillbilies, are the enlightened ones. The reality, ofcourse is far from that. Europeans, in all their sophistication, allowed for 2 World Wars and a Holocaust to happen. Even to this day, not only can one not rely on them to lift a finger to prevent another genocide, but one can be assured that they will be on the side of the perpetrators.

Boo hoo

"I feel bad because I would have gotten in if I was white," Nikita Rau lamented over her failed bid to attend the Mark Twain School, IS 239, in Coney Island, a magnet school for gifted students.

It turns out Mark Twain - unlike all but one other city public school - admits students according to racial quotas established in 1974 by a federal judge who ordered the school's desegregation.

Under those quotas - which originally were intended to boost minority enrollment - 60 percent of Mark Twain's student body is set aside for white students, while 40 percent is set aside for minorities.

Well, boo frigging hoo. I applied to half a dozen high schools and wasn't accepted to a single one (ended up going to my zone school), while the "minority" kids from my class, who were barely passing their classes, got into the schools that rejected me. For some reason the unfairness of the racial quotas make news only when the minorities are negatively affected.

UPDATE

Good for NY Post for reporting it how it is:

The racial quota that kept a young Indian-American girl out of an elite Brooklyn school apparently cuts both ways: An 11-year-old white boy failed to win admission to the school despite outscoring minorities on a science entry exam.

Everybody is a victim...

The commission that runs the Minneapolis airports in May began enforcing a new policy allowing it to revoke the licenses of drivers who refuse to ferry passengers carrying alcohol -- something that has happened to 4,854 travelers trying to get a cab at Minneapolis International Airport in the last five years.

"The increased penalties appear to have brought drivers into compliance," airport spokesman Patrick Hogan said of the policy -- a 30-day license suspension for a first infraction and a two-year license revocation for a second.

Although Hogan said the measure was implemented without incident, it has provoked outrage among some of the 900 cab drivers who work the airport. About three quarters of them are Somali, most of whom are Muslim.

"A few of them are really, really upset about it," said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in neighboring St. Paul. "They believe they have been forced into something against their faith, something against their religion."

Forced?? Didn't they choose to work as taxi drivers?

You breed 'em, we feed 'em

Guess what?

Mexicans are now estimated to be among the city’s top three immigrant groups, joining Dominicans, who are still No. 1, and Chinese. Mexicans began arriving in large numbers in New York only within the last 10 years, and most of them are here illegally. Lilian’s 19-year-old mother, Teresa Vazquez, came from the state of Puebla, where agricultural traditions encourage big families. Ms. Vazquez, a housecleaner married to a busboy, joined two brothers and a sister in New York two years ago and has another four siblings in Mexico.

..oh, and how about:

Census data show that Mexican immigrants in New York have the least schooling, the lowest per-capita income and the lowest rate of English proficiency of the city’s immigrant groups.

Yes! That's exactly what we want! Lots of uneducated, unskilled, low income law breakers having lots and lots of kids. Lets give them all amnesty!

Surprisingly, its the French who have the right idea.