Get caught up with yesterday’s selections here: 33 Headlines Today That Know the Secret For Grabbing Your Attention
At Truth Revolt today, a new video from Ben Shapiro, sifting the numbers to find what percentage of Muslims worldwide believe in radical interpretations of their faith that include honor killings and death for apostates: The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority
More at Truth Revolt:
- A Hermaphroditic Snail Named to Honor Same-Sex Marriage
- Crowder: Real Rape vs “Rape Culture”
- Slate: Time To Fully Embrace Abortion As ‘Social Good’
- Teen Girl Cuts Off 10-Year-Old’s Fingers As Sacrifice To Satan
Via Drudge this morning:
- Professional Clowns Protest ‘AMERICAN HORROR STORY’ Murderous Character…
- Cops: Barber slashed customer’s throat…
Two lead stories juxtaposed at the New York Post:
Eleven stories at the Daily Mail today:
- Watching child porn does NOT make you a pedophile, says author John Grisham in bitter attack on US judicial system after a ‘buddy from law school’ was locked up
- Third law enforcement agency investigates Stephen Collins after he is accused of exposing himself to 13-year-old girl in 1983
- I blame myself for Peaches’ death, says Geldof: Boomtown Rats singer reveals he ‘goes over and over and over’ what he could have done to help his daughter
- ‘Oscar faces death if he goes to jail’: Prison gang leader ‘The General’ has ordered hit on athlete behind bars, claims Blade Runner’s lawyers
- Playboy model in ecstasy drug bust after flying into California on a private jet with more than 50,000 pills and 90 pounds of MDMA
- Man who murdered Hee Haw banjo-playing comedian David ‘Stringbean’ Akeman granted parole after 40 years
- Washington high school football student quits his team as he faces rape charges even though coaches told him he could continue playing
- Most decorated officer in state police history reaches plea agreement on gross sexual assault charges against child relative
- ‘We will chop off the heads of whoever you bring’: British ISIS fighter dares west to send ground troops in new video rant – despite fanatics being pushed back in Kobane
- Killer Queen and Another One Bites The Dust: Killer gigolo who cooked his transgender lover before slashing his own throat is farewelled at Queen-themed funeral as family remember a ‘loving young man’
- Police investigating the possibility that a father murdered his daughter by slashing her throat before killing himself – just days after she moved home to care for him following surgery
These two headlines next to each other:
- Embattled Seattle megachurch founder who called women ‘penis homes’ resigns amid accusations of bullying and financial corruption
- Multimillionaire mom on trial for death of her autistic son, eight, claims ex-husband put a contract on her life… but she didn’t tell police
And these two together:
- Prison camps? Torture? Human rights abuses? Not us says North Korea – and world’s most secretive regime tells UN ‘we have nothing to hide’
- Brazilian police crack open haul of child pornography on ‘dark internet’ and rescue six children from abuse
At The Blaze:
- How a ‘Ragtag Group of Volunteers’ — Including ‘Walking Dead’ Star — Brought Down Major Sex-Trafficking Ring & Helped Rescue 55 Victims
- The Shocking Reasons an Ex-Church Member Is Calling This Pastor a ‘Monster’
At The Huffington Post:
Two headlines juxtaposed:
Some crime headlines from the HuffPo main page:
- Milwaukee Cop Fired After Allegedly Shooting Man In Park
- 10-Year-Old Homicide Suspect: ‘I Killed That Lady’
At the Epoch Times:
Among the top 25 universities in the country, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, there was a 61 percent jump in reports of sexual assault from 2011 to 2013. The large increase was reported by Al Jazeera America’s flagship program, “America Tonight” based on an independent analysis of data.
The data they used is publicly available, but the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), which monitors the statistics, only has data through 2009 posted online.
What the numbers show is that at the nation’s most prestigious educational institutions, the number of reported sexual assaults went up dramatically. Though the overall numbers are still relatively low compared to the student populations—MIT reported assaults went from 7 to 17 —there seems to be a connection with the greater prominence on the national stage and the increase in reported assaults.
These cases go beyond premonition or a vague intuitive feeling—the people involved reported having a clear vision of a loved one and thus learning of the loved one’s death. In these cases it seems the people could not have known of the deaths through normal means.
Here’s a selection of cases from dozens compiled by Dr. Bruce Greysonat the University of Virginia in his 2010 paper “Seeing Dead People Not Known to Have Died,” published by the American Anthropological Association.
Dr. Greyson wrote: “Cases of this kind provide some of the most persuasive evidence for the survival of consciousness after bodily death.”
At Patheos:
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From Thomas Kidd: “Does the Bible Prohibit Revolution?“
My graduate students and I recently read James Byrd’s terrific Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution. This book is a treasure trove of information about how the Patriots and Loyalists actually used the Bible during the Revolution. The most surprising fact I learned from the book is that Romans 13 – in which Paul commands submission to the “higher powers” – was the most commonly cited biblical text in Revolutionary America. This passage, alongside a similar passage in I Peter 2, are precisely the texts I might have imagined that Patriots would have avoided. How does one “honor the king” while engaging in revolution?
These passages would seem, on a plain reading, to have prohibited Christians from participating in the American Revolution. Indeed, some former Patriot leaders such as Savannah pastor John Zubly withdrew when they realized that the protests against British taxes were likely to morph into violent revolution, which Zubly believed was not an option for Christians.
But instead of avoiding Romans 13 and I Peter 2, Patriot pastors (to their credit) took them on frequently and directly. They usually replied to Loyalist critics that the command to submit was never unconditional – just as it is not unconditional in marriage, in church, or in any other social setting. The Bible was replete with stories of resistance against unjust rulers. Even Peter and Paul routinely confronted and flouted the authority of Jewish and Roman officials, saying that they must obey God rather than man.
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Also from Patheos, from John Beckett: “The Dark Side of Druidry”
I can’t rain fire down on my enemies, but if you think that means magic is useless you haven’t been paying attention to one of the core messages of this blog.
Our friends the Witches have a saying “a Witch who cannot hex cannot heal.” Victor Anderson, co-founder of the Feri tradition, said “White magic is poetry. Black magic is anything that actually works.”
There is a dark side to Druidry, a side that’s not about hugging trees and telling Irish stories. It’s a side many modern Druids prefer to ignore in their practices and actively deny to the non-Pagan world. The dark side of Druidry is scary, it can be dangerous, and it carries more responsibility than many of us prefer to accept.
The thesis of this ongoing series, restated: the manifestations of stories of murder and sex in modern media and the emotional satisfaction that comes from wallowing in them mirrors the ancient ritual invocations of the Canaanite gods Ba’al and Astarte, the masculine and feminine in the extreme. Here they are as depicted in Douglas Rushkoff’s Testament series, issue 6:
Page 43 of This Is My God by Herman Wouk describes the stark difference between the Biblical and the Pagan depictions of creation:
Updated: Over at the PJ Tatler by Raymond Ibrahim:
Muhammad and Islam’s Sex Slaves
One little-known story is especially eye-opening:
During Muhammad’s jihad on the Jews of Khaybar, he took for himself from among the spoils of war one young woman, a teenager, Safiya bint Huyay, after hearing of her beauty. (Earlier the prophet had bestowed her on another Muslim jihadi, but when rumor of her beauty reached him, the prophet reneged and took her for himself.)
Muhammad “married” Safiya hours after he had her husband, Kinana, tortured to death in order to reveal hidden treasure. And before this, the prophet’s jihadis slaughtered Safiya’s father and brothers.
While Islamic apologists have long tried to justify this account—often by saying that Muhammad gave her the honor of “marriage” as opposed to being a concubine and that she opted to convert to Islam—they habitually fail to cite what Islamic sources record, namely Baladhuri’s ninth century Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (“Book of Conquests”).
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