Carroll’s Lessons in Captivity

Iraq

Jill Carroll spent 82 days in the captivity of Iraqi insurgents, after which she was miraculously released. She has been documenting the nightmare online at the Christian Science Monitor. This once-naïve American young woman will not be putting herself in such a predicament anytime soon.

One of the observations she shares in her reports is that the “movement … included children and mothers, whole families who exhibited ardent devotion to their brand of Islam – and to chilling brutality.â€? (Ignore the CSM’s politically correct obeisance to the idea that the bad guys have hijacked, rather than heeded, Islam.)
Carroll relates how her captor boasted that his wife, Um Ali (mother Ali), pregnant with her fourth child, wanted to become a suicide bomber. “Later I was told,� writes Carroll, “that this was the only way women could be part of the mujahideen [sic]. The men could have the glory of fighting in battle. Women got to blow themselves up.�

As the evening progressed, and as she joined the women in picking at the food scraps the men had magnanimously tossed them after they feasted royally–she also discovered that the women (only under hijacked Islam, of course) don’t get to eat much.
Nor do seventy Chippendale dancers await them in hell, after “martyrdom.�

Updated: Remember Reno!

America, Criminal Injustice, Government, Justice, Law

“Back in the day, the law was intended as a bulwark against government abuses. It has now become an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the “greater good”—the founders’ Blackstonian view of the law has been supplanted by a Benthamism that encourages ambitious prosecutors to discard a defendant’s rights. Add the aggravating circumstances of a highly militarized federal law enforcement that shares the judiciary’s contempt for the Rights of Englishmen, and is abetted by a public dimmed by statist schools and media—and one has a recipe for disaster. A mouthful maybe, but something to ponder as another prosecutorial team gathers steam, this time in Utah, where the state, feds in tow, has been pursuing Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints…”

The excerpt is from this week’s WND column, “Remember Reno!.” Comments are Welcome.

Update: Quite a few conservative, as opposed libertarian, readers wrote in to lambaste me for what they perceived as my taking up the cause of Warren Jeffs, the polygamist. Some embellished by asserting—no evidence was provided—that Jeffs, in addition to servicing all those wives of his, also sodomized many boys. But most egregious, as one reader contended, was Jeffs’ reputation for not liking blacks and their music. “This makes him extra evil,” my reader complained.

Let me be clear: I don’t take up causes; I try my best to work from principle and fact to arrive at the truth. I know; anathema in our partisan, fiction-based society.
None of the aforementioned accusations are in the indictment. Hating blacks or Jews is no crime, either—at least not in a free society, something conservatives are doing their utmost to sunder.
My points in the column, I believe, were exactly right in that they addressed evidence; not fiction or hearsay—the same stuff upon which the sexual abuse contagion was based in the 1980s (also elaborated on in “Remember Reno!”).
Since we have moved to being a fiction rather than a fact-based society, my readers’ positions don’t surprise.

Suri Num-Num

Hollywood

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt? Go back to Namibia. Look at the child of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. What an adorable poppet with her shock of black hair and her lovely blue eyes. Truly a gorgeous little girl.

American masses can’t stand a non-conformist. Since I blogged, in “Cruise and the Shamans,” about the actor’s heroic stand against the “The psychiatric peanut gallery,” I learned from Professor Jeffrey A. Schaler that Cruise indeed is a principled devotee of Thomas S. Szasz’s works. What a shame he went and apologized to the silly Brooke Shields for trying to get her to clear her head instead of doping it up.

The photographs of the bonny baby were obviously also in the same vein—an attempt to ward off another Paramount mishap and ensure the Cruise brand remains bankable. Oh well, bully for baby Cruise; she’s one beautiful bundle.

Letter of the Week: Prosecutors on the Make

America, Free Speech, Government, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Religion

James Huggins writes:

David Koresh was living in peace and bothering nobody, as I recall. That family up on Ruby Ridge in Idaho was living in peace and bothering nobody. Richard Jewell down in Atlanta was living in peace and bothering nobody. What do they, and no doubt many others, have in common? They were all a little weird and a lot “different.” Therefore, all were fair game for media assassination and perfect targets for ambitious prosecutors and federal officers.

Remember, prosecutors are politicians and are usually using their jobs as stepping stones to higher elected office. Ranking police officers are political hacks who owe their jobs to politician bosses. People who are not perceived positively by the public, such as white supremacists, religious fanatics, good ol boy rednecks, or rich white boy college students in a black town are perfect grist as these elected swine grind their way upward to better things. The only trouble is that it is not against the law to be a white supremacist, religious fanatic, good ol boy redneck or a rich white boy. Aren’t they protected by the constitution just like your average Muslim Jihadist or illegal Mexican migrant?

I don’t know too much about Mr. Jeffs. I am against polygamy and against older men having their way with young girls. But, in this day and time I would have to look long and hard at the evidence before automatically condemning any person on the say-so of a prosecutor.

As far as the Muslims are concerned, if they are practicing polygamy in this country, I’m sure they won’t be hindered. The big mistake these fundamentalist Mormons made was not publicly supporting Al-Qaeda and actively demonstrating for open borders with Mexico.

—James Huggins

Further reading: “‘Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” And “Patricide & Prosecutorial Misconduct“