Magic Statistics

According to a fact-finding investigation by the All-India Christian Council (AICC), the violence that swept Orissa state beginning on Christmas Eve was the worst ever experienced by Christians in India.

The investigators also found indications that the violence was deliberate and co-ordinated.

“It is beyond doubt that the violence was premeditated, preplanned, and the work of a well-disciplined group to ensure simultaneous eruptions across the district within hours of the first incident, and to sustain it for five days despite the presence of the highest police officers in the region,” said Christian leader and human rights activist Dr. John Dayal, who returned from a fact-finding visit to Kandhamal.

“The great human tragedy and violence against Christians was waiting to happen,” Dayal told Compass. “It was part of a great conspiracy, and the guilty are identified and known. The tragedy will repeat again unless urgent steps are taken.”
. . .
“This was the first time that such a large number of Christian villagers were displaced and had to live in refugee camps after their houses were burnt,” said Dayal, secretary general of the All India Christian Council. “This is the first time in history since the Independence [in 1947] that an estimated 3,000 Christian men, women and children are forced to live in two refugee camps, eating boiled rice not fit for human consumption because of the quantity of sand and grit, and living in the cold without toilets, precious little medical care and no woolens.”

Of the 650,000 people living in Kandhamal district, about 100,000 are Christian, most of them Dalits.

The AICC’s full report is posted here.

Previous related posts:

• Church in Orissa, India, undergoing “authentic Calvary”
• Hundreds of Christians flee to jungle to escape violence
• Anti-Christian violence in India enters third day
• “Worst ever Christmas” for Christians in Orissa, India

After four years of glorious Anglican subversion, the Classical Anglican News Net (CaNNet) Empire was brought down last November by a malicious hacker who wiped out the main server and off-site backups.  Only today is the full story reported. Mike Daley and Webelf Binky, the hard-working, dedicated, and inspirational masterminds behind CaNNet, tell the cautionary tale.

A malicious hacker had gained root access (to this day we still don’t know how) to the main CaNNet server and wiped out both the live production server and the off-site backups. With the main server administrator still recovering from a devastating illness and finances running low, there was little strength left to draw upon other than to consider the possibility that we may need to shut down. The bottom had fallen out. Congratulations whoever you are, you won this one.

That was not the first time that scheming enemies had tried to destroy CaNNet.

[O]n we pressed with the firm belief that what we were doing was changing the face of how Anglicans thought about their church and themselves.

The First Stealth-Nuke

Then came the crash. It was bound to happen sooner or later and happen it did. A hacker who has since been traced to an Anglican office took us out for several days. With the generous help of a few godly programmers throughout the world we picked ourselves up, brushed off the dirt and we were back online.

That was then and this, unfortunately, is now.  Mike and Binks still aren’t certain whence the final fatal attack originated.  Maybe the same Anglican adversary, maybe not.

In retrospect, it looks like the CaNN servers had been under semi-constant attacks for a long period– whether from the same ‘Anglican office’ or not, we don’t know for sure.

But God knows.  For this small-minded act of high-tech vandalism, as for all evil great and small, there will be a judgment.

British Muslim teenager Shafilea Ahmed (at right) was 17 when she vanished in September 2003.  Her decomposed body was found six months later next to a river in Sedgwick, Cumbria, 260 miles northwest of London.

Shortly before her disappearance, while visiting Pakistan with her family, she drank bleach rather than accept an arranged marriage.

An inquest into her death is now being conducted.

A TEENAGE girl whose badly decomposed body was found on a riverbank had most likely been smothered or strangled, an inquest has heard today.

Dr Alison Armour told an inquest in Kendal, Cumbria, it was "not credible" Shafilea Ahmed died of natural causes.
. . .
She was said to have told friends she was afraid she would be forced into marriage, the inquest heard.

Police, who released song lyrics written by Shafilea which referred to a clash of cultures and her family's preoccupation with "honour", launched a murder inquiry when her body was discovered close to the flooded River Kent at Sedgwick, near Kendal, in February 2004.

Dr Armour said that the body was too decomposed to establish the precise cause of death.

Shafilea’s father Iftikhar Ahmed testified that he was “surprised” when she went missing.

Mr Ahmed, and his wife Farzana, 41, were arrested in December 2003 on suspicion of their daughter's kidnap but were never charged and have vehemently denied any involvement in the death.

Several other family members from the Bradford area were arrested on suspicion of interfering with the investigation but never charged.

The inquest continues.

The new secretary general of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) thinks the West should emulate the model of Muslim relations followed by the countries of his organisation  Is he hallucinating?

Southeast Asia can teach the West how to reconcile with Muslims, the new secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said Tuesday in his first public appearance.

"Come here and see how we manage," said Surin Pitsuwan, a Muslim former academic and one-time Thai foreign minister.

"Can we convince the West…that the road to reconciliation between the West and the Muslim world runs through Southeast Asia?"

The answer, he said, is "yes."

Right!  The south of Surin Pitsuwan‘s own country of Thailand is beset by Muslim rebels who blow up people several times a month.

Likewise, Muslims in other members of ASEAN—Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia—are not as uniformly peaceable as the secretary general implies.

Previous related posts:

• Malaysian media forbidden to report debate over Islamic state
• Lina Joy loses bid for legal recognition of religious conversion
• Indonesian Christians arrested for praying for Muslims
• Beheaded Christian girls were Ramadan trophies

Nurses Working Extended Shifts, Are Tired At Work And Sleep Little Likely To Drive Drowsy — Science Daily, 31 December 2007

Whitehorse man wins breathalyzer challenge, claiming too 'cheap' to be impaired — CBC News, 8 January

N.W.T.'s only reindeer herd is missing — CBC News, 8 January