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WELCOME TO ISLAM: 82-Year-Old Saudi Languishing in Prison, Waiting to Be Blinded:

An 82-year-old Saudi man has been in prison for nearly seven years awaiting a court sentence to blind him after he was convicted of causing blindness to another man during a fight. The old man could be saved if pardoned by the victim.

During the fight in the southern Saudi town of Bisha, Wahair Al Harthi shot his adversary in the face, causing him to lose sight in both eyes.

The court found him guilty and ordered him to be “blinded” on tooth-for-tooth basis under Islamic law unless the victim accepts …

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Fourteen More People Killed by Boko Haram

Fourteen More People Killed by Boko Haram:

Members of Boko Haram have killed 14 pro-government youths an attack on the northeastern town of Bama, a local official who attended a mass funeral for the victims said on Monday.

Sunday’s attack was one of a spate of deadly assaults by the Boko Haram Islamist sect this month that raises doubts about whether a military offensive against it since May can succeed.

Local vigilante groups run by youth volunteers have been instrumental in helping the military capture Boko Haram members, but they have also made them a target for the insurgents, drawing civilians further into …

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New Book Details Gaddafi’s Sexual Abuse of Boys and Girls

New Book Details Gaddafi’s Sexual Abuse of Boys and Girls:

Colonel Gaddafi ordered the kidnap of schoolgirls who were then kept as sex slaves at compound, according to a book on the dictator.

One girl, named Soraya, was kidnapped when she was 15 and held for five years in a basement at his six-mile long fortress just outside Tripoli.

She says she was violently raped, beaten and abused on an almost daily basis and saw similar abuse of other girls and boys.

Her story and those of others who say they were raped by the despot are told in the book Gaddafi’s Harem: The …

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Assad: A Vietnam Scenario Awaits the U.S in Syria

Assad: A Vietnam Scenario Awaits the U.S in Syria:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned the United States on Monday, saying Washington will have to deal with another Vietnam scenario if it chooses to militarily intervene in the conflict-ravaged country after allegations that his regime has used chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb attack last week.

“Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day,” Reuters quoted Assad as saying in an interview published in a Russian newspaper on Monday.

While denying that the Syrian forces have used chemical weapons in …

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Saudi Decapitates Wife, Kills His Four Young Children

Saudi Decapitates Wife, Kills His Four Young Children:

A Saudi man used a knife to cut off his wife’s head before slitting the throats of his four children, aged between two and 11 years, in the most heinous crime in his area. He also had a son from a previous marriage who he killed at the same time.

Police said the woman and her children were brought dead to hospital in the southern province of Najran on Monday night after the husband severed her head and slit the throats of his three sons and one daughter.

The boys are aged between five and …

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In Tatters: Egypt’s Militants Seek Truce with Army

In Tatters: Egypt’s Militants Seek Truce with Army:

Two Egyptian militant groups have proposed a truce between the military and the ousted president’s Muslim Brotherhood group, in a move that highlights the extent to which Islamists have been weakened by a massive security crackdown.

The leaders of the Gamaa Islamiya and Islamic Jihad movements said Monday their initiative calls for supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi to cease street demonstrations if the military-backed government halts their moves against them.

The two groups, which waged an insurgency against the government in the 1990s but later renounced violence, want the army and Brotherhood to enter …

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Melbourne, Australia: Mosque Approved to be Built Next to Assyrian Christian Church

Melbourne, Australia: Mosque Approved to be Built Next to Assyrian Christian Church:

Residents have accused a north Melbourne Council of being insensitive and inflammatory after approving a permit for a mosque to be built next to an Assyrian Church.

Members of St Mary’s Ancient Church of the East in Coolaroo say a mosque in such close proximity to their church will result in re-triggered trauma and a volatile worshiping environment.

They say their church community is made up of refugees who survived persecution as religious minorities in war torn Iraq.

Australian Christians Senate candidate Vicki Janson says the Council hasn’t considered the mental health …

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American Pastor’s Appeal Rejected by Iranian Court

American Pastor’s Appeal Rejected by Iranian Court

An Iranian court has rejected an appeal by an American pastor to reduce his eight-year prison sentence, a human-rights group representing his family in the U.S. said Monday.

The decision by a two-judge panel on the Tehran Court of Appeals came Sunday, but the panel refused to provide Saeed Abedini’s lawyer with a copy of the ruling, the Idaho Statesman reported.

Abedini is of Iranian origin and had lived in Boise with his family since 2006. He has been jailed in Iran since last September on charges that he attempted to undermine state security by creating …

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Latest Syria: Kerry Accused of Fabricating Evidence/ Investigation Suggests ‘Rebels’ Used Chemical Weapons

Latest Syria: Kerry Accused of Fabricating Evidence/ Investigation Suggests ‘Rebels’ Used Chemical Weapons:

Testimony from victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.

Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.

But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using …

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http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/ Incredible! Even as United States Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen and Coastguardsmen continue to be sacrificed in Afghanistan for a failed understanding of that culture, we are speeding toward the likelihood of doing the same in Syria. Yes; the Administration has repeated the mantra; ‘no boots on the ground’ until I can hardly sleep without […]

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/aug/27/engelhard-salinger-back-and-pbs-has-got-him/ NEW YORK, August 27, 2013 — The theme of despair runs throughout literary and even biblical history. So J.D. Salinger, who excelled in writing about the melancholy of human existence, mainly so in The Catcher in the Rye, was not the first to approach the topic of futility. Raised as a rich kid in […]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/27/why-the-world-thinks-jewish-blood-is-cheap/ While visiting Israel this week, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide grudgingly admitted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to Israeli-Palestinian talks “sounds increasingly credible.” As proof, he cited Israel’s release of 26 Palestinian murderers earlier this month. But he immediately downplayed the move’s significance: While it was a “first sign,” he said, it […]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/how-putin-does-it/ When Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia after Boris Yeltsin’s resignation on New Year’s Eve, 1999, the retired KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin, then already living in or around Washington, was asked about the former KGB lieutenant-colonel. “Never heard of him,” Kalugin answered. The youngest chief of counterintelligence in Soviet history, Kalugin may have […]

http://torahmusings.com/2013/08/can-conservative-religion-survive-gay-marriage/ I. Orthodox Judaism and Gay Marriage A leading Catholic writer, my friend and former colleague Joseph (Jody) Bottum, shocked the conservative world last week with the publication of an argument for Catholic acceptance of gay marriage. Jody’s essay in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal is wrong on many counts but sounds an alarm we […]

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/st-debaters-say-about-israel-and-the-jews/ The Israeli Debating League is heading home from this year’s European Universities Debating Championship in Manchester. The annual “Euros” tournament brings together hundreds of students from across Europe to argue about thorny issues for which they have only fifteen minutes to prepare. This year, over two hundred teams battled over the motion: “This House Believes that Israel […]

http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/08/the-next-aliyah/

I feel very fortunate that such distinguished figures as Daniel Johnson, David Pryce-Jones, Walter Laqueur, and Hillel Halkin accepted Mosaic’s invitation to respond to my essay on the European Jewish future, and that Annika Hernroth-Rothstein gave permission to publish her personal letter about the severe dislocations of Jewish life in her country. From other places around Europe I received additional messages sounding similar notes to hers, some of them equally shattering. Nor is there room here to list and thank all those who mentioned or recommended my article in blogs and on social media.

I could only wish my conclusions were sunnier—and that, if European Jews are news today, the news were good news. Unfortunately, a mere seven decades after the Holocaust, the prospect of stormy times is not to be taken lightly. However one may finally come down on the facts and arguments marshaled in my essay, I am deeply grateful that at least they are being discussed.

Daniel Johnson’s deeply sympathetic comment begins with an anecdote about a Ukrainian-German Jewish student who encounters anti-Semitism for the first time at . . . the London School of Economics. I love that anecdote, which says so much. I also echo Johnson’s disappointment with Karl Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister who, despite his family’s heroic stance under the Nazis and his own affection for the Jewish people, has not only succumbed to repeating anti-Israel clichés but dismisses reports of anti-Semitism in 21st-century Europe. I met Prince Schwarzenberg several years ago and will never forget something he said about his father: upon learning shortly after the 1938 Anschluss that the Nazis had forbidden access by Jewish children to Vienna’s public parks, the elder Schwarzenberg opened his own palatial gardens to them.

Johnson nevertheless lists some “cautious reasons” for optimism, some of which are well founded. Indeed, given the intensity of anti-Israel campaigns throughout Europe, one marvels at the pro-Israel resilience shown by large sectors (from 25 to 50 percent in polls, depending on the questions asked) of public opinion. Israel is admired as the home of “Silicon Wadi,” as a beacon of contemporary culture (Israeli movies are very popular in France), even as a haven of human rights (especially when it comes to gays); all this offsets the boycott sentiment to some degree. Another important sign is the election in Rome of the philo-Semitic Pope Francis. While Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are not as entrenched in Europe as they used to be, they are still the main religious force on the continent and may yet undergo a revival in the face of an increasingly assertive Islam. That they should exert a positive rather than a negative influence when it comes to Jews and Israel is certainly of relevance.

http://www.romirowsky.com/13664/peace-vs-unrwa The John Kerry-Martin Indyk negotiating team needs to come to terms with the fact that the crux of the Middle East conflict is rooted in the Palestinian “Right of Return,” the collective demand claiming a legal and moral right for Palestinian refugees, and more importantly, for their descendants from around the world, to return […]

It is confusing to read the various prescriptions from arm chair strategists for solving the problems of Syria and Egypt.

To those who want military intervention- from killing Assad to drones and military strikes and so on. What would you all say of a doctor that attempts to cure typhus by giving the patient smallpox?

Also, what kind of intervention? We don’t fight to win since the Korean war. Oops, I almost forgot “Operation Urgent Fury” which ousted a communist led coup in Grenada in 1983. And that “epic” battle was fought just two days after America did a “cut and run” after the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, when Arab terrorists detonated truck bombs. The death toll was 241 American servicemen,representing the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.

And who would be left to rule those nations? The barbarian is dead….long live the barbarian?

Hard questions and hard answers.