Look how normal he appears.

Hair like a normal human. One nose, one mouth, two eyes — brown, not glowing red. A chest, with a heart within.

How deceiving the face of evil can be.

You are looking at a deceptively normal looking Nur-Pashi Kulayev, the only known surviving terrorist from the attack on a school in Belsan, Russia, when a Chechen Muslim terrorist action resulted in the deaths of 334 entirely innocent people, many of them children.

Despite his participation in the bloody Islamist action, Kulayev will live. He was sentenced to life in prison in May, and yesterday the Russian supreme court upheld the conviction and sentence.

I hope he goes to the coldest, darkest, most dangerous prison in all of Russia and lives out his days in fear that the next moment will be his last … and if it is, that the blade on the shiv is ragged, rough and just sharp enough to kill with a lot of pain.

If that happens, it will happen where no one sees it. Too bad. It would be nice if a grainy video of it could be aired on Al Jazeera for all the Islamists to see.

More here
Related Tags: Belsan, Chechnya, Russia, Foreign affairs, Terrorism, Islam

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What are the biggest complaints against Christians? In-your-face evangelism and “being told what to do,” of course.

So will Ed Begley Jr. do good or harm to environmentalism when the new reality show Living With Ed debuts on HGTV next month? More convicted — and convicting — than the most true-believing street preacher, Ed Begley Jr. is the evangelistic high priest of the greenie movement, and he’s getting an hour a week to sermonize to us.

LAT reports:

Ed Begley Jr.’s wife, Rachelle Carson, was freezing inside the couple’s 1,700-square-foot Home last week. “He’s like the Marquis de Sade,” she said of her energy efficiency-minded husband, who refused to turn on the natural gas despite plunging temperatures inside the Begleys’ Studio City house. “What about the warmth that I’m sending you right now, honey?” Begley asked. Carson smirked, and then embraced her husband.

Welcome to life at the Begleys. Next month, HGTV’s new reality show “Living With Ed” (sneak preview, Monday at 1 p.m.) will chronicle Begley’s often extreme environmental rules, which sometimes impede his actress wife’s desire to live more like her Hollywood peers.

In the pilot episode, for example, Begley times Carson with a stopwatch during what he considers a lengthy hot shower, reprimands her over not recycling properly and lectures her on how to save energy.

Begley brags about his $600 a year electric bill ($100 a year when he was single) — but how will that play to Americans who can’t afford the $100,000 or so it would take to make a home 90% solar like the Begley digs?

And will we respond favorably to scenes of Ed bicycling away on his stationary bike to generate the power to make his breakfast toast?

Will America think it’s fine to shivver in the winter and smell like a European in the summer, all in the name of less natural gas burned and shorter showers?

I don’t think so. Conservation is a good thing; people shouldn’t air condition their homes in the summer to meat-locker temperatures like Barbra Streisand does. But in too heavy a dose, in too preachy a tone, it reminds us too much of Jimmy Carter in his cardigan and Ralph Nader’s perennially sour expression.

No, in America “live with less” just doesn’t play well. We are a country that loves exploration and innovation. Rather than turn down the juice, we are driven to create the new and improved juice, and to use it for our expansion and comfort.

Begley’s fanatical environmentalism, while useful in a “how to save money” tidbit sort of way and no doubt amusing, is antithetical to what made America great — so hopefully, America will view Living with Ed as a comedy.

Related Tags: Environmentalism, Environment, Green, Begley

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“I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking.”
– Saddam Hussein

Saddam’s farewell (soon, please!) letter to his previously brutalized subjects tells us four things:

1. He has apparently admitted his rule was not fair, but rather, he ruled blindly and without thinking, since his was a government most certainly full of hate.
2. He still thinks he has influence among Iraqis — and he’s probably right on that one.
3. His followers aren’t listening. A letter from the Baathists also published today said, “The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime.”
4. The global gag reflex was tested this morning, and it still works.

Source: AP
Related Tags: Saddam, Saddam Hussein, Iraq, War on terror

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British and Iraqi forces raided a rogue police station in Basra and because the crimes unit housed there was “frankly, too far gone,” blew up the whole building.

British forces raided the headquarters of a rogue police unit in Basra on Christmas morning to free prisoners who were about to be executed.

Many of the 127 captives were found in a cramped and squalid cell at the headquarters of the serious crimes unit and showed signs of torture, officers said.

After the raid by 1,000 British and Iraqi troops, Royal Engineers laid charges and blew up the two-storey concrete building, known locally as the “station of death.”

The serious crimes unit is the same police division raided in September last year to free two SAS troopers who were about to be sold to insurgents.

Start counting … let’s see how long it takes the human rights activists and their friends in the media to congratulate the forces of good for putting an end to the torture that went on in this now destroyed building.

Breathe again, because you’ll never hear that praise. What you’ll hear, instead, is that our invasion of Iraq led to these rogue police departments — despite the fact that the station is now a pile of rubble and the surviving rogue police units are hunted and on the run.

But that doesn’t fool the people of Basra, who have been under the thumb of others for so long, who until the day before yesterday cowered under the threat of torture, but today are free.

What better symbol for the rightness of our effort could the people of Basra wish for than this: Freedom-loving forces from abroad coming to their town, planting explosives, and demolishing the house of death that once haunted their neighborhood and tortured their loved ones?

There have been missteps, sure, but our path is true, our motives are right, and our efforts and sacrifices are appreciated by most Iraqis.

Related Tags: Iraq, War in Iraq, Basra

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Feeling every one of my now 56 years this morning because of a cold that won’t give up, I trudged downstairs to check the news and found this gift in my in-box:

Court: Execute Saddam Within 30 Days

Iraq’s highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence for Saddam Hussein in his first trial and said it must be carried out within 30 days. The sentence “must be implemented within 30 days,” chief judge Aref Shahin. “From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation.”

Hussein was not toppled, captured, tried by a newly democratic Iraqi government and convicted because we pulled out our military or set firm dates for withdrawing or launched investigations into Halliburton’s contracts. It was accomplished from a position of strength, militarily and willfully.

Happy as I am to see Saddam almost gone — a Nobel Peace Prize for GW, anyone? — the better birthday present would be a return of that position of strength, through resolve behind a plan for victory in Iraq.

Related Tags: Iraq, War in Iraq, Saddam, Hussein

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Unrepentent car junkies will enjoy spending a chuckling Christmas day moment with The Truth About Car‘s review of Santa’s Sleigh. It’s a lot of fun:

Slide into the driver’s seat and take hold of the reigns. The seating position is high and visibility unsurpassed. The naturally aspirated 16-nostril power plant producing an impressive 8cp (caribou power) comes to life with a buck, snort and lurch. To keep Santa on schedule, the acceleration is lightning fast and top speed is immeasurable. This sporty little bucket really flies. The front-hoof drive configuration delivers exceptional traction on or off-road, even over icy surfaces.

Related Tags: Christmas, Santa

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Today’s beautiful Christmas morning image — one that hints at a manger in the bent-over, snow-laden, lighted tree in the foreground; the kings, angels, shepherds, Joseph and Mary represented in the tall tree; all in a pool of hopeful, growing light against a black, dark world — is the homepage screen of Ask.com this morning.

It’s complete with a “Merry Christmas” message, with Christmas underlined, both as emphasis and as a link. The link page leads with:

Related Tags: Christmas, Secularism, Christianity, Google, Ask

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Vlad Putin has repeatedly said he will “respect” the Russian constitution and step down as required in 2008.

Why should we believe that … unless the Russian constitution allows the murder of novelists and ex-spies who oppose the Prez, unless it allows the capture of business assets of Pres opponents, etc., etc., yes?

Well, it turns out Vlad may be scheming toward a post-presidency strategy that can be best described as “limited constitutional respect:”

“He will not leave,” Sergei Stepashin, head of Russia’s accounting chamber, was quoted as saying in the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily Saturday. “I think he will find the kind of formula in which he would step down, but stay on.”

Stepashin, a former prime minister, secret services chief and KGB veteran, suggested that Putin’s post-Kremlin future could be modelled loosely on that of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who in the 1990s was widely considered to retain backroom power despite his retirement.

Ah, there’s a fine role model for you.

Asked what sort of options Putin might consider, Stepashin answered: “Lots. Party leader, head of parliament, government, a new state council.”

Stepashin is fine with all this; he told Agence Press France in the interview that he sees leadership changes problematic for Russia, where Putin’s “work is going well.” Translation: Stepapshin was selected to send up the trial balloon.

Unfortunately, becuase Putin’s work is “going well,” those who don’t share Stepashin’s assessent may not be too likely to share their concerns.

hat-tip: Brietbart
Related Tags: Putin, Russia, Foreign affairs

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If you want to read the best quick write-up of the escalating Ethiopia-Somalia war, go to Junk Yard Blog. No other accounts, I guarantee you, will incude a Wrath-of-God-spittin’ C-130.

hat-tip: memeorandum
Related Tags: Ethiopia, Somalia

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E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post is not a man I often agree with, but today he focuses on Allen Dwight Callahan’s book, “The Talking Book: African-Americans and the Bible,” and I find myself nodding in agreement.

Callahan’s book details the particular resonance of Christianity to slaves — the Exodus of the slave Jews with God’s hand leading them, the firm placement of slave and master on the same spiritual plane, and of course the suffering of Christ.

Dionne ends his column:

Callahan cites the words of an old Negro spiritual:

Poor little Jesus boy

Made him to be born in a manger.

World treated him so mean

Treat me mean, too.

The poor, the outcasts, the slaves: If Jesus spoke to anyone, it was to them, and they have responded to him through the centuries. The African-American religious tradition is a blessing to all because it requires us to remember that Jesus of Nazareth really did revolutionize the world.

Did he ever, right down to the hard, self-indulgent, unthinking soul that used to live in my breast.

But for whatever reason, less than 1000 years after Christ walked the Earth, Islam arose, spreading a belief system that was in many ways antithetical to Christ’s teachings and the lessons we learn from the Old Testament.

Why didn’t Jesus similarly revolutionize that part of the world?

What a shame He did, because in Libya and Iran and Sudan to elsewhere throughout most of the Arab world, men and women are not at all unlike the old Negro who wrote that spiritual — treated mean by the unfair, ruthless societies fate born them into. How liberated they could be if Christ transformed them, and Christianity transformed their nations.

There’s a big prayer for this Christmas season.

Related Tags: Christianity, Islam, Christmas, Slavery

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