Celibacy, Spanish style

A man in Salamanca, Spain whacked hacked off his own Unit so that he would "stop sinning".

A man cut off his own penis and threw it in a toilet ‘so he would stop sinning’.

The 30-year-old was recovering in the Hospital Clinico Universitario in Salamanca in western Spain.

Doctors said his condition was ‘stable’ and he was not in danger of losing his life.

[ ... ]

The newspaper said it was not known if the man’s penis could be sewn back.

There was also a suggestion he may be suffering from psychological problems.

Gee...d'ya think?

Sarkozy talking out of both sides of his mouth

While the media (and more than a few blogs) make much out of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's apparent alignment with American interests, he's off equipping and training Libya's armed forces.

France intends to sell military hardware to Libya and train up its special forces as part of a confidential defence accord struck with Tripoli last month, a French newspaper reported Wednesday.

Le Canard Enchaine, an investigative and satirical weekly, published a facsimile of the agreement, which was announced following the release of six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with the AIDS virus, but whose details were kept under wraps.

The accord was followed days later by the announcement of military contracts with European defence firm EADS, forcing President Nicolas Sarkozy to deny that France traded a promise of arms sales for the medics' release.

[ ... ]

It also mentions the "possibility of carrying out joint military manoeuvres" and the "training of special military units, special forces and border patrol units".

[ ... ]

Following the lifting of a European arms embargo in 2004, the Canard Enchaine reported that Libya was planning to acquire fighter and transport jets, border surveillance equipment, a full range of military vehicles, ships and air defence systems.

Ain't that just dandy.

Belgian court upholds suppression of free speech

A group opposed to the Islamization of Europe has had their 11 September demonstration quashed by the Belgian government. The group, known as Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE) had been advised earlier this month that their demonstration would be banned, and an appeals court this week upheld the ban.

An appeals court has upheld the ban of an anti-Islam protest planned for 11 September in Belgium's capital, six years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The organisers - an alliance of Europeans opposed to the ''Islamisation'' of Europe - failed to prove the ban causes them ''irreparable damage,'' the Council of State, an administrative appeals court, ruled late Wednesday.

Brussels Mayor Freddy Thielemans banned the demonstration on 9 August fearing it would disturb public order and calling the Stop Islamisation of Europe alliance an inflammatory group.

[ ... ]

Since 2001, Thielemans has approved more than 3,500 demonstrations in the Belgian capital and banned six, including the one of SIOE which calls itself 'an alliance of people across Europe with the single aim of preventing Islam becoming a dominant political force in Europe.'

And that's where the pressure has to be applied...not on Islam the religion, but on Islamism, the political-military movement.

Pre-paid calling cards purchased with stolen credit card numbers...in Saudi Arabia

Here's a disturbing little story from Arab News involving a rash of purchases of pre-paid calling cards for Saudi Telecom company SAWA using stolen credit card numbers.

A comment appeared recently on a consumer-products-review website resellerratings.com from a credit card holder in the US state of Virginia who claims that Citibank recently called him about a suspicious transaction earlier this month: Two $80 purchases for Saudi Telecom SAWA prepaid calling cards.

“Citibank was only able to tell me the charge was made via telephone or web and that a card was not swiped,” he wrote.

“Searching on the Internet I found another person who was the victim of fraud with the same charges only a few days before me.”

“Same thing happened to me,” replied another post on the same forum.

“Hi, same thing happened to me,” replied yet another post. “I emailed my concerns via the ‘Contact Us’ page on stc.com.sa.”

Then another post appeared from a credit card holder in Mexico saying the same thing happened to him for one $80 charge to a card issued at a Mexican bank!

The consumer advocacy website Consumerist.com pointed out that these charges don’t seem to be a result of stolen card numbers.

“There’s seems to be no correlation between vendors victims used their cards with, perhaps pointing to a breach at the credit card company level,” said a post on the popular US website.

Now why, if you had a list of valid credit card numbers, would you squander your larceny on pre-paid calling cards?

I checked resellerratings.com, and sure enough, I found this thread in their forums. The number of people who've been hit with charges from STC SAWA is alarming, and not just because of the widespread fraud. This sounds like a jihadi operation to acquire a large number of untraceable calling cards, which can typically be used world-wide.

And we fart more, too

Not only are men oppressive patriarchs and every one of us a potential rapist, but now the Swedish Foreign Ministry concludes that men are worse for the environment than women.

Men are worse for the environment than women, spending more on petrol and eating more meat, both of which create greenhouse gas emissions. These are the conclusions of a new report by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

"Three out of four cars in Sweden are today driven by men. Around ten percent of all drivers, mainly main, account for 60 percent of car journeys," report author Gerd Johnsson-Latham told Svenska Dagbladet.

It was not made immediately clear what the Swedish Foreign Ministry (compare to our State Department) was doing studying the environment, instead of, say, their equivalent of the EPA.

Power of snobbery

In a moment of weakness tonight, I caught myself watching a portion of Power of Ten, a summer fill-in game show hosted by Drew Carey in which contestants try to guess Americans' opinions on, well, just about everything. Hey, the remote was out of arm's reach, and I was really trying to finish James Lee Burke's latest book, The Tin Roof Blow Down.

One of the contestants tonight was a gentleman from LA, who was doing fairly well until faced with guessing what percentage of Americans would be willing to adopt a baby of a different race. He was quick to say that he, of course, would have no problem doing so, nor would anybody he knows. But, to paraphrase, he said something about living in LA where people don't have such hang-ups. Drew encouraged his bigotry by making some comment about "people in Idaho". I knew right then the guy was going to blow it and guess too far on the low side. I wasn't disappointed. The number came in at around 60%.

Many people, liberals mostly, who live in the big metropolitan areas like LA, New York, Chicago, etc., look down on Middle America as a bunch of bigoted half-wits who can't possibly be as broad-minded as the "progressive elite" of the big cities.

I chuckled with satisfaction as the guy went down in flames.

Saudi life laid bare

In our latest installment of this continuing topic, we have two more cases of sexual abuse of immigrant domestic workers by their employers masters.

A Filipino domestic helper allegedly raped by her employer’s sons was rescued by members of the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ABS-CBN Middle East News Bureau reported yesterday.

[ ... ]

Rosa said she was raped by one of her employer’s sons last June 14, 2006. The incident was repeated in November.

[ ... ]

The victim said that on the second incident, the other sons of her employer gang raped her. She said one of her rapists took footage of the crime through his cellular phone.

Meanwhile, the report said the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah is continuing to search for another Filipina named Melissa, who was similarly allegedly raped by her employer’s son and videotaped on a cell phone.

The record of Saudi families' treatment of their immigrant domestic help does not reflect very well on Saudi society.

Confirmed: George Bush greener than Al Gore

For all of Al Gore's preening about how environmentally conscious he is, he's not exactly walking the walk. This mail's been floating around the Internet since around March, and the good people at Snopes say it's true:

LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South.

HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.


So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."

Hat tip to my buddy Jason B. for sending me the e-mail.

'How persistent can a failed ideology be?'

Such an excellent question posed by Nima Sanandaji in Sweden's The Local. Mr. Sanandaji, of the Swedish pro-free market think-tank Captus, takes a look at students' perceptions of communism and what they're being taught.

A recent study by polling company Demoskop, commissioned by the 'Upplysning om Kommunismen' (Knowledge about Communism) association, showed that Swedish students have a skewed view of the history of communism. Few are aware of the massive loss of life caused by followers of this ideology, and 90 percent of Swedish students aged 15-20 do not even know what a gulag was.

A recent opinion piece in Biblioteksbladet magazine (a periodical for Swedish librarians) denounced the government's plan to spread knowledge to students about the horrors of communism.

In the article, two school librarians write that informing students about the crimes of communism would be wrong as it would risk making the pupils' views more right-wing.

Former foreign correspondent Kjell Albin Abrahamsson, who has spent many years reporting from the former communist countries in Europe, reacted strongly to the piece.

Writing in tabloid Expressen, Abrahamsson points out how strange it is for two librarians to be so keen to preserve students' support for socialism that they are are not willing to acknowledge the crimes of communism. He notes that a Russian government commission has admitted that the country's former communist rulers killed 32 million people.

Support for communism, both hidden and visible, is still quite prevalent among many groups of intellectuals, such as journalists, librarians and those writing in the culture pages of the daily papers. Indeed, outright supporters of communism can be found not only in the Swedish Left Party but also in the Green Party and in the ranks of the influential Social Democrats.

One symptom of this tendency is the widely believed myth among Swedes that Cuba is a relatively prosperous welfare state, offering a decent quality of life and fantastic healthcare to its citizens. Few bother to question the official statistics from a communist country where thousands of citizens have lost their lives whilst attempting to escape on rafts to the United States. Cuba might have gone from being the richest country in Central American to being the second poorest due to Castro's rule – but this has not stopped Swedish intelligentsia from spreading a positive view of his policies.

Similarly, Swedish journalists seem more interested in pointing out that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is a morally superior socialist standing up to the vile Americans, than looking at his dubious moves towards a socialist planned economy and authoritarian rule.

Time to go have my blood pressure checked.

Sea piracy ends well for sailors

I posted back in June about the Danish ship Danica White which was hijacked off the coast of Somalia and five of her sailors held for ransom by the pirates.

The story ended well for the five sailors and their families, but not so well for Danish prestige in dealing with piracy.

An 83-day nightmare is over for five Danish sailors whose ship was taken hostage by Somalian pirates after the ship’s owner paid an undisclosed sum for its release.

[ ... ]

The pirates originally demanded DKK 8 million for the ship’s release, but its owners, H. Folmer & Co of Copenhagen, had indicated they were only willing to pay DKK 1.9 million. Neither Folmer & Co nor the Foreign Ministry would comment on the final amount paid.

No matter. Nothing changes the fact that these dirtbags profited from an act of sea piracy and got away with it unchallenged.

Hizb ut-Tahrir in Denmark crosses the line (finally)

Denmark is a pretty tolerant state, but the Islamic supremacy group may have finally worn out their welcome there.

At their annual hate-fest in Copenhagen, HuT members had some, ahem, stern words for the West, and for Jews in particular:

‘The Caliphate can arrive in an hour, two months or two years from now,’ said Fadi Abdullatif, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s president, who owns a previous conviction for publicly urging his members to kill Jews. ‘We are working for a Caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and from Khazakhstan to Saudi Arabia.’

The union of nations under a common Islamic law could be created by force if necessary, according to another of Hizb ut Tahrir’s leaders, Atta bin Khalil. Khalil also told those in attendance to ‘continue their state of war against the Jewish nation’.

A third speaker at the congress, Emir Shamil, said that ‘heads may roll’ in the recreation of the Caliphate.

No word on whether Denmark would be included in Hizb ut-Tahrir's fantasy Caliphate.

Vacation

I meant to post something before leaving, but I'm on vacation for the next week or so. I'll be back in more or less full operation on 27 August.

Thought for the week

I happened to notice this posted outside a church here in Fredericksburg, VA today. Very appropriate, I think, in this age of pervasive victimhood.

"It is as much a Christian duty to avoid taking offense as it is to avoid giving offense."

Brilliant.