Magic Statistics

The New York Sun headline reads: Korean Reds Targeting Christians.

A woman in her 20s executed by a firing squad after being caught with a Bible. Five Christian church leaders punished by being run over by a steamroller before a crowd of spectators who "cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed."

These and other "horrifying" violations of human rights and religious freedom in North Korea are reported in a new study by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, titled "'Thank You, Father Kim Il Sung': Eyewitness Accounts of Severe Violations of Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion in North Korea."

Lord, have mercy.

Read the whole thing.

via Christianity Today Weblog.

When it comes to crime, Europe is, on the whole, a more dangerous place to live than the United States. With the sole exception of homicide, violent crime rates are often as high in European countries as they are in America. Rates of property crime are generally lower in the US than in European countries. Europe can be called "A Continent of Broken Windows".

By the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rates at which English, Swedes, French, Italians, Spaniards, and Dutch reported being victims of nonviolent crimes was in the same neighborhood as American rates. These crimes, and violent ones as well, kept climbing into the 1990s. By the end of that decade, when the United States was finally getting a handle on its problem and U.S. rates were heading downward, European crime stabilized at its new, high rates.

The latest figures, scattered from 2000 to 2005, suggest that more assaults are committed per capita in England than in America, while Swedes, Norwegians, and Dutch experience roughly the same assault rates as Americans. Robberies (which involve force or the threat of force) are as common in England and the Netherlands as in the United States. Theft rates have surged ahead of the United States in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway. Separately, auto thefts are now a European specialty, with Scandinavians, Brits, French, and Italians worse off than Americans. And the U.S. burglary rate is now lower than those in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Britain.

Europe's claim to "social cohesion" seems to be a thing of the past.

Rising crime in Europe bears upon the recent study by Gregory Paul that purported to find correlation between religious belief and social pathologies, including crime. Mr Paul focused on the homicide rate, but if he had looked at the overall crime rate–or even the violent crime rate–he would not have been able to claim the results he did. For corroboration, see the in-depth analysis conducted by Foyle at Verum Serum.

I was alerted to the Weekly Standard article in an e-mail from Emil J. Posavac, Professor Emeritus, Loyola University of Chicago.

Our Prime Minister has apparently had a miraculous conversion experience. He's suddenly concerned with the religious beliefs of his fellow Canadians.

Prime Minister Paul Martin warned the three opposition leaders today that they could offend religious and ethnic groups by forcing an election over the holiday season.

Martin told reporters en route to this port city [Pusan, South Korea] for an Asian Pacific summit that the timetable he set for an election in March or April would allow Christians and Canadians of other religious faiths to celebrate their religious holidays without interruption from politicians knocking on their doors.

It's hard to believe this is the same Paul Martin who pushed the legalisation of same-sex marriage through Parliament over the loud objections of Canadian Christians. Will wonders never cease? Does this mean that PM PM will now call for the repeal of Bill C-38?

While we're waiting to see how that develops, we should note that Mr Martin prefers to delay an election until "March or April". Wait a minute: Isn't that when Christians celebrate Easter? I guess that just slipped the PM's mind. No doubt when next February rolls around, if the Liberal government survives that long, Mr Martin will want the election put off so as not to "offend" Canadian Christians during the holiest celebration of the Christian year. He will surely want the election held in, say, May or June.

Wait a minute: Isn't that when Christians celebrate Pentecost?

via Nealenews.