Free Republic

IRVINE, Calif. – Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door. They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair. But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid. Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home....

Christmas is being compromised in one New York town in the name of inclusivity. In the New York village of Armonk, officials have placed a menorah for the Jewish faith and the Islamic star and crescent for the Muslim faith alongside the town's Christmas tree. Bill Donahue of the Catholic League does not believe a Christmas tree correctly represents the Christian faith. Instead, he says the Christian religious symbol of this season should be a nativity scene. Last year, a Muslim resident in Armonk asked officials to display Islamic symbols so Muslims could be included in Christmas celebrations. This...

Gay Pride. Jewish Pride. Black pride. Hispanic Pride. Multiculturalism. Ethnic pride. Minority rights vs. tyranny of the majority. For a generation, America has been awash in the celebration of minorities and minorities celebration of themselves. Just recall Black is Beautiful or I am a woman, I am invincible. At the same time, the majority group in America -- white Christians -- has been allowed to celebrate very little. Rather, they have constantly been reminded of what they should be ashamed of -- their racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, and xenophobia -- real and alleged. But what about minority shame? Why does...

Americans, in general, have grown to become apathetic and cynical about what it means to be an American of faith and to have belief in God. And, either they have resolved themselves to the fact that our democratic republic has gone wrong and flipped or else they have just plain given over the entire nation to so-called hyphenated Americans who have crept into the fabric of the United States of America and rewoven the foundational structure. Could we be so blind that we cannot see? Enter Barack Hussein Obama and America’s Near Total Demise Obama is the man who said...

All-permeating "white-guilt" did not appear out of thin air. It has taken a sustained propaganda effort, a wide-ranging mobilization of education and culture, to inculcate and sustain self-loathing among American Caucasians. Like the Coca-Cola TM brand, white-guilt needs endless repetition to remain struck in the thought and behavioral processes of the masses. The movie Pathfinder, which I saw on cable, offers a vivid example of the sort of brainwashing intended to refresh the white-guilt TM brand in the thinking habits of young people in particular. Set around 900 AD, the film deals with Viking incursions into North America.  The Vikings...

Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s columnar wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline: “British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.” Indeed. And so it goes. This time round — Bombay — it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims “found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion.” ' Oh, I don’t know about that. In fact, you’d be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was “linked” to any religion,...

A JORDANIAN man slowly strangled his 16-year-old married sister, using wire and the girl's scarf, after she visited a female friend because he had to "cleanse family honour". After jailing the unidentified 20-year-old man for seven years, Judge Hassan Amayreh said: "It took him 30 minutes to strangle his sister to death with a metal wire and her own scarf." In such cases in Jordan, if family members drop charges against those who carry out the crime, a court usually commutes or reduces sentences. Amayreh said the brother "has confessed, and claimed that he killed his sister to cleanse his...

CLAREMONT, Calif. (KABC) -- There is a costume controversy in Claremont. The school board changed a decades-long tradition of students dressing up to celebrate Thanksgiving, and some parents are outraged. The tradition involves kindergarten students at Mountain View and Condit elementary schools. The kids usually dress up in costumes. Each school takes turns dressing up as pilgrims and Indians, and then join together for a Thanksgiving feast.This year, however, there is a big change. The school board decided to continue holding the feast, but they are not allowing the students to dress up. The board is concerned the Indian costumes...

Almost half of married Egyptian women have been physically abused by their husbands, a study by the government statistics centre said on Wednesday. The study by CAPMAS said that 47 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 reported being victims of domestic violence and seven percent said a spouse raped them, state news agency MENA reported. Domestic violence is punishable under Egyptian law, but police are reluctant to intervene in something that is considered a private matter, said an Egyptian women's rights activist.

What if Christians demanded the following: 1. If anyone around Christians at work or school eats pork then they would get fired or severely chastised because we believe that scarfing down pig really offends God (and of course his people). Yep, BLTs—according to our take on Christ’s commands—really ticks him off and therefore bacon should be banned. Not only that, but any food that has even trace amounts of Porky the Pig in it must be verboten and banished from our presence everywhere we go because we’re Christians, and Christians don’t dine on swine. This means Jell-O shots at Tu-Tu-Tango’s...

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2008) — Non-white medical students are more likely to embrace orthodox medicine and reject therapies traditionally associated with their cultures. That is one finding from an international study that measures the attitudes of medical students toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). While seemingly counter-intuitive, white students view CAM more favorably than their non-white counterparts, the study authors say.CAM is the common, collective term that describes non-orthodox therapies considered not intrinsic to the politically dominant health system of a particular society or culture.Despite the growing popularity of CAM, many medical schools do not include CAM teachings within basic...

interesting, humorous

The children gather around “Miss Danielle” Buehner. “Good morning. Buenos dias," she welcomes the preschoolers. “Buenos dias, Miss Danielle,” they chime. In this class of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, the children come to learn social skills and practice their numbers, colors and thinking skills. They also come to learn a second language — Spanish. Of the 14 students enrolled in Irving Recreation Center’s dual language preschool, two live in Spanish-speaking homes, two have a bilingual parent, and another with Latino ethnicity was adopted into an Anglo home. All the rest are English-speaking youngsters whose previous exposure to the Spanish language...

A Paramus middle school student was sent home Friday after he came to school dressed up as Jesus for Halloween. For a few hours, Alex Woinski was the messiah of West Brook Middle School, but like the real Jesus, Woinski was condemned, so to speak. "Sort of like a new remake of what supposedly happened," Woinski told CBS 2. Decked out in sandals, a robe, fake beard and thorns, the 13-year-old joined 500 other students at his school's Halloween celebration, and on this day, he was the chosen one - to go home. "It was offensive to some students," Woinski...

A man accused of killing his neighbour carried the dead man's head on a bus before dumping it in a canal... The court heard Mohammed Boudjenane, 46, from Kilburn, north London, hit Lakhdar Ouyahia, 43, on the head with an object believed to be a claw hammer. Earlier he allegedly raped a woman at his flat and beat her after abducting her as she made her way to church. Mr Boudjenane told police he had been planning to kill the woman but released her when she agreed to marry him. "She was very fortunate to escape with her life," ......

"Out of one, many.” That was how Al Gore famously botched “E Pluribus Unum,” the motto chiseled on the great seal of the United States. Barack Obama’s Latin may not be any better than Gore’s — he did have to admit being an English-only kinda guy this summer . . . after complaining that Americans embarrass him with their lack of language proficiency. Understand this, though: If we hear the Democrats’ standard-bearer saying, “Out of one, many,” it won’t be a mistranslation. It will be a succinct statement of his ideology. It’s the “fundamental change” he has in mind for...

It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division. There is a Red one and a Blue one. For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the Right and Left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and Left share the same ends, I thought. That is not the case. For the...

While the state has seen demographic shifts in suburban school districts, the isolation and intense concentration of minority students in the 31 Abbott school districts is worse today than it was 20 years ago.  That's the basis for a "friend of the court" brief filed jointly by the New Jersey Black Issues Convention and the Hispanic Directors Association, two influential umbrella organizations. They are among nine groups challenging the state's overhaul of the school funding formula that guaranteed additional aid to the state's neediest districts. Locally, Paterson, Passaic and Garfield are classified as Abbott districts.   The court is scheduled...

President Bush will speak in a few minutes. Get to a TV and watch it, if you have the stomach for it.

UNC-Wilmington decided recently that the way to bolster its failing diversity program is to dump more money into it. Without any help from the Bush administration’s financial advisors, they have decided that rewarding failure is a good way to ensure success. That’s why they created a new Associate Provost of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion position. And that’s why they paid big bucks to Jose Hernandez to fill the slot. According to a university press release, the new tolerance czar will focus on four areas of “diversity and inclusion” including the following: Centro Hispano, the Multicultural Center, the African-American Cultural Center,...

The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977. Seeking to address complaints from anti-poverty activists and housing advocates about banks allegedly discriminating against minority borrowers and "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, the CRA decreed that banks had "an affirmative obligation" to meet the credit needs of victims of discrimination in borrowing. To add a government stick to the process, the CRA decreed that federal banking regulators would consider how well banks were doing in meeting the goal of more multiculturalism in loaning when considering requests by banks...

Tory warning on multiculturalism British multiculturalism has left a "terrible" legacy which has allowed extremists to flourish, shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve has warned. A type of "cultural despair" has led "long-term inhabitants" and newer arrivals to feel alienated and unsure of UK values, he told the Guardian. Mr Grieve, speaking on the eve of the Conservative Party conference, argued this had led to support for extremism. He also warned against downplaying Britain's Christian heritage. Mr Grieve told the Guardian: "We've actually done something terrible to ourselves in Britain.

Some City Council members are urging the state to add two Muslim holidays to the school calendar, calling it a matter of religious freedom and fairness. But their efforts appeared headed for failure, as long as Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in control of schools and the state legislature continues to stall a bill that would make the holy days official days off. The debate on the issue continued at a packed meeting of the City Council's Committee on Education today, where several Muslim students testified about their desire to observe their religion without missing valuable classroom instruction. Estimates of the...

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest...

"A nine-year-old girl has the same sexual capacities like a woman of twenty and over". Thus reads a fatwa issued by Skeikh Mohamed Ibn Abderrahmane Al-Maghraoui, according to Moroccan daily 'Aujourd'hui Le Maroc'. This immediately sparked off a hot debate, with most of the public opinion absolutely against this stance which is a permit for paedophilia, many say, among other things. Among the various stances against the fatwa (in the Islamic culture, a decree of religious character issued by Islamic experts which regulates issues of topical character), the daily reported those of extremist MP Abdelbari Zamzami and the president of...

All pupils aged between 11 and 14 will be taught about the slave trade and the British empire when term begins next month to help them understand modern-day issues such as immigration. The two subjects, aimed at highlighting the influence of ethnic minorities, will join the two world wars and the Holocaust as periods that must form part of the history syllabus. Schoolchildren will learn about the roles of William Wilberforce, the MP who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who drew attention to the horrors of the trade after buying his freedom and...

Just thought I would post t this as a reminder of multiculturalism in action. The UK did it's annual celebration of culture with it's 'Notting Hill Carnival' last week, and which inevitably, as it does every year, ended up in a riot. Click picture for video of footage Allegedly Conservative Mayor, Boris Johnson said: "I have watched the Notting Hill Carnival go from strength to strength each year to become an internationally acclaimed event, Nothing beats the sounds of the steel pans, the aroma of delicious Caribbean food and the dazzling colours of the costume parade." What Mr Johnson forgot...

Am I Diverse Enough? by: Deborah Lambert, August 25, 2008 When Andrew Quinio graduated from Berkeley in May 2008, one of his proudest achievements had to be serving as editor-in-chief of the California Patriot, the conservative campus magazine. However, in a recent column on mindingthecampus.com, Andrew noted that it was impossible to reflect on his four years at Berkeley without thinking of the word “diversity.” While the goal was supposedly a climate of “cultural tolerance and understanding,” Berkeley “appeared to encourage a divisive culture of victimhood and entitlement.” For example, “housing students by race seemed . . . an odd...

If any evil forces were lurking Friday night along the Bangor waterfront, Hassan Hakmoun drove them away and called down healing spirits that blanketed the American Folk Festival crowd at the Railroad Stage. “Feel the spirit,” he told the crowd, “and pray for the world to become one.”

The famous writer Roger Kimball has issued a challenge: Name the silliest argument to be offered by a serious academic in the last 25 years and to be taken up and be gravely masticated by the larger world of intellectual debate. A leading contender is Global Warming. Kimball's own entry is Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis. Kimball's rules of the contest: "I'll collect proposals for the next week or two and then announce the winner. (The decision, from which there is no appeal, will be determined by a committee staffed, overseen, and operated entirely by me.)" This tournament reminds...

An outstanding speech by the reincarnate Thomas Paine.

BATON ROUGE -- Some call it a blood sport. Others call it a way of life. But whatever the view, as of Friday cockfighting will be illegal in Louisiana, the last state in the nation to outlaw it. Those on both sides of the battle to end the spectacle that pits roosters with razor-sharp gaffs on their feet in a fight to the death, concede that the law will not eliminate the practice, but only send it deeper into the shadows. "You will have people saying they are going to keep fighting their roosters, " despite the law, said Chris...

----snip Villanueva was reportedly shooting dice with friends in Henri Bourassa Park in the ethnically-diverse borough when police attempted to make a routine arrest. Montreal police say about 20 youths then surrounded them -- several of them reportedly rushing at police. ----snip Villanueva's death triggered an angry and violent response Sunday night. Vehicles were set on fire and there was widespread looting and violence targeting police and emergency service workers. One police officer was shot in the leg, while another officer and an ambulance technician received minor injuries. The technician was struck in the head with a bottle, said CTV...

One third of whites claim they are victims of racism Last updated at 10:16am on 12.08.08  A growing number of white people believe they are the victims of racial prejudice in Britain, official research has found. Almost one in three - 29 per cent - said they now expected to be treated worse than other races by key public services.  And the number of whites claiming to have been refused a job or discriminated against at work for reasons of race has doubled in the last five years, according to the Government study.   Flashback: Riots in Burnley, Lancs, 2001 when...

The UN Deforms Education by: Deborah Lambert, August 11, 2008 “It’s not easy being three years old,” said Mike McNally, writing on Pajamas Media, adding that with potty training, play dates, and learning to feed yourself, life can be a constant challenge. A case in point is the fact that British tots will soon be subjected to “lessons on human rights and multiculturalism, in between finger-painting sessions and nap time.” It’s all part of the “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,” a plan to develop “Rights Respecting Schools” not only in elementary schools, but at the nursery...

FORT WALTON BEACH - It's happened again. A Fort Walton Beach police officer found a sixth decapitated pygmy goat early Wednesday at the intersection of Holmes Boulevard and Memorial Drive. "This animal had been killed very close to the time it was put on the ground," said Dee Thompson, director of animal services for the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society. Thompson said feces were found at the scene, which is common when an animal dies. She also said the preservation of the crime scene leads her to believe the officer happened up on the black and white goat relatively soon after...

Well, can it? Before you answer, take a look at the short VIDEO, available on YouTube by Dale Hurd. Hurd begins with the by-now-familiar news that Britain's top judge and the Archbishop of Canterbury have both publicly declared themselves in favor of instituting some elements of sharia law in Britain. Hurd also notes that British authorities have been bending over backwards to cater to Muslim sensitivities. In Scotland, over a police advertisement which portrayed a cuddly puppy called Rebel, Islamic authorities declared the advertisement "offensive" and police officials fell over themselves apologizing for their insensitivity. He also notes how unevenly...

Deadly diversity in Afghanistan Posted: July 16, 2008 1:00 am Eastern By Matt Sanchez © 2008 If you haven't noticed, there is another war going on, in Afghanistan, and it's heating up. According to the 2008 Pentagon Report on Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, "The Taliban regrouped after its fall from power and have coalesced into a resilient insurgency."

By now, many conservatives have heard of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions thanks to the decision by three CHRCs to investigate hate crimes complaints against Maclean’s magazine for printing -- among other things -- excerpts from conservative writer Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. While two of the complaints against Maclean’s have been dismissed, the CHRCs continue their jihad against their fellow citizens who dare to offend certain protected minorities. One of their ongoing cases is the investigation of a newspaper for publishing a cartoon of a Muslim woman dressed in a burqa even though the woman does, in fact, wear...

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed that in the 1930s, when she was busy remaking the idea of culture, the notion of cultural diversity was to be found only in the 'vocabulary of a small and technical group of professional anthropologists'. Today, everyone and everything seems to have its own culture. From anorexia to zydeco, the American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has observed, there is little that we don't talk about as the product of some group's culture. In this age of globalisation many people fret about Western culture taking over the world. But the greatest Western export is not...

Police fury as bosses tell them to 'celebrate' gipsies By Stephen Wright Last updated at 9:19 AM on 12th July 2008 Denise Milani: The Metropolitan Police director urges officers to observe 'Gipsy Roma Traveller History Month'Their arrival in the capital is said to have led to a huge rise in thieving and prompted the creation of a specialist police squad to tackle their sinister activities. Yet in a move which has caused disbelief amongst rank and file officers, Scotland Yard has asked staff to 'celebrate' the contribution of Roma gipsies to 'London's culture and diversity.' In a notice posted on...

Writing in Human Events, Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer observes that, “[t]hree years after the July 7, 2005, jihad terror attacks in London, the jihad in Britain is stronger than ever. It is not proceeding by means of more terrorism, but by stealth and by the preemptive surrender of all too many British officials.” He explains: The stealth jihad is a deeply-rooted, well-funded and wide-ranging effort to impose Islamic law, Sharia, upon the non-Muslim populations of Western countries. In England, and in America, it sometimes takes the form of an effort to win acceptance for Sharia law by portraying it as...

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon. County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts. Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office. Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole." That prompted Judge Thomas Jones,...

Customers ask Wal-Mart stores to remove book Beloved by Mexicans for his dim wits, street smarts and playful disposition, long-running comic book character Memín Pinguín — a little black boy whose face resembles a monkey — is at it again. His zany adventures chronicled in a hugely popular book series for decades are up for sale at your neighborhood Wal-Mart store in the Libros en Español section, right next to the store's cadre of African-American books. The latest issue: Memín para presidente. By Shawnedria McGinty's American standards, the image was shocking. The African-American woman who was shopping at the store...

Last week in Denver, almost all the values of the post-1960s Left were exhibited in one act. It happened on the Denver mayor's most important day -- the one in which he was to deliver his annual State of the City Address. The day was to begin with the singing of the National Anthem by the black jazz singer Rene Marie. But Ms. Marie had, by her own admission, long had other plans. Instead of the National Anthem, she sang "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," a song written in 1899 and often referred to today as the Black National Anthem....

A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. Chaudhry Rashid, wearing a red jumpsuit and shackles around his ankles, went before Chief Judge Daphne Walker at the Clayton County Magistrate Court where he was arraigned on a murder charge. The 54-year-old, who is of Pakistani descent, kept his head down as charges were read, and appeared to have difficulty understanding instructions from the judge, possibly the result of a language barrier. His two sons were also in attendance, watching their father from seats in the rear of the courtroom, joined...

‘Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth’s promise. No more,” Diana West writes in her book, The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. West is worried that “eternal youth” is “fatal” and recently took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez. Kathryn Jean Lopez: You note that more adults watch the Cartoon Network than CNN. Surely, you’ve seen Jack Cafferty. Is this really a problem? Diana West: Not if that were the only statistic...

Toddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists by a Government-sponsored agency. The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care. This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food. The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age. It alerts playgroup leaders...

WASHINGTON -- Just in time for Independence Day, a conservative think tank has delivered a controversial report questioning whether America's national identity is eroding under the pressure of population diversity and educational slackness. The threat outlined by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in its report, "E Pluribus Unum" strikes me as a bit exaggerated. But at a time when Barack Obama and John McCain find themselves debating the "patriotism issue," having a coherent discussion of this matter -- and this short pamphlet is admirably written and well-researched -- is a useful contribution. The takeoff point for the argument is...

Wha-h-h-h? This has to go down as one of the stranger non sequiturs from a pundit of national standing. Responding to a study that concludes that burgeoning multiculturalism threatens national unity, David Broder takes solace in the fact that 34 years ago, the American body politic booted Richard Nixon from office. In his column of today, One Nation No More?, Broder comments on the study, E Pluribus Unum, recently released by the The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.