Currently viewing the tag: "Died"
Because of Islam’s nearly impossible demand of four witnesses (much more detail can be found here), the only thing that mattered was that Hena had sexual contact outside of marriage — consent be damned. This incident — this murder — happened in February, but it is noteworthy both that CNN has just run a report on it, and while they do attribute the punishment to Sharia, the report in its present form sidesteps the fact that the punishment comes directly from the Qur’an (24:2):
“The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.”
Why the omission, CNN? Readers want to know. “Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death,” by Farid Ahmed and CNN, March 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.
Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.
“Let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.”
Hena dropped after 70.
Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena’s family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.
Hena’s family hailed from rural Shariatpur, crisscrossed by murky rivers that lend waters to rice paddies and lush vegetable fields.
Hena was the youngest of five children born to Darbesh Khan, a day laborer, and his wife, Aklima Begum. They shared a hut made from corrugated tin and decaying wood and led a simple life that was suddenly marred a year ago with the return of Hena’s cousin Mahbub Khan.
Mahbub Khan came back to Shariatpur from a stint working in Malaysia. His son was Hena’s age and the two were in seventh grade together.
Khan eyed Hena and began harassing her on her way to school and back, said Hena’s father. He complained to the elders who run the village about his nephew, three times Hena’s age.
The elders admonished Mahbub Khan and ordered him to pay $ 1,000 in fines to Hena’s family. But Mahbub was Darbesh’s older brother’s son and Darbesh was asked to let the matter fade.
Many months later on a winter night, as Hena’s sister Alya told it, Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.
Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan’s wife heard Hena’s muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.
The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan’s house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.
Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.
How convenient. Khan seems to have been handed a punishment that was never intended to be carried out, while Hena bore the full brunt of the Qur’an’s penalty.
Yesterday, I wrote about Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) proposal to deny pregnant undocumented women access to prenatal care assistance. I argued that Walker’s position runs counter to his vehemently “pro-life” crusade. In the post, I also mentioned that when the state of Nebraska debated a similar proposal, anti-choice groups strongly opposed denying undocumented women prenatal care because it put “borders ahead of babies.”
It turns out that many of their worst fears have come true. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that preventing undocumented women from accessing prenatal care assistance has had “dramatic effects”:
The elimination one year ago of Medicaid funding for prenatal care for about 1,600 low-income women has had dramatic effects, doctors and health clinic administrators reported Wednesday. At least five babies have died. Women are traveling 155 miles to get prenatal care. Babies have been delivered at clinics, in ambulances and hospital emergency rooms. [...]
Andrea Skolkin, chief executive officer of One World Community Health Centers in Omaha, said that in the past year, only about half of uninsured women are receiving any prenatal care. The health center has more premature births to uninsured women, compared to insured women. Uninsured mothers were twice as likely to deliver through cesarean section, which is more expensive. [...] Four infants died in utero at the Columbus health center, she said. In the previous seven years, the clinic had never had an in utero death.
Nebraska state Sen. Kathy Campbell (R) has introduced a bill that would reinstate the prenatal care. “We need to be pro-life from cradle to grave, to err on the side of compassion and stay grounded in family values,” stated the Rev. Howard Dotson of Omaha’s Westminster Presbyterian Church who testified in support of the bill.
However, opposition to Campbell’s bill is largely ideological. “Our position is that we shouldn’t be spending any money for people who are here illegally,” stated Vivianne Chaumont, director of the state’s Medicaid division who testified in opposition to the bill. Dr. Caron Gray, from Creighton University Medical Center and clinics called Chaumont out, stating, “We can sit here and talk about costs as much as we would like, but I think we really need to be honest about what this is truly about … political beliefs and standing on what to do with immigration.”
Meanwhile, while Nebraska is forcing some women to watch their babies die due to lack of prenatal care assistance, another woman also had to experience the same “torture” because the state would not allow her to terminate her pregnancy even after doctors told her that her child would not live.
The perpetually anti-war Ed Schultz took his seat behind the desk at MSNBC studios Monday with the expressed mission of selling Barack Obama's air assault on Libya to his viewers.
So passionate was the "Ed Show" host in supporting the President he several times showed video footage of downed Pan Am flight 103 while claiming that Moammar Gaddafi was responsible thereby justifying an attack on him over 22 years later (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
ED SCHULTZ: President Obama has decided on a more focused, realistic approach. He’s trying to give the rebels who want democracy a fighting chance at just that, and trying to stop Gaddafi, this is the human thing to do, from slaughtering his own people. Now aside from all the reasons for this mission, you will never convince me that Gaddafi didn’t have a hand in the Lockerbie bombing. You’ll never convince me that Gaddafi hasn’t supplied resources to terrorists. Given the fact that Americans died on that 747 over Lockerbie, I’m all for this mission. I think the President of the United States Barack Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt and our support.
Interesting defense. Readers are reminded that Pan Am 103 was downed in December 1988. That's a reason for going after Gaddafi now?
As for "slaughtering his own people" and supplying "resources to terrorists," the same was trued of Saddam Hussein. That hasn't stopped Schultz from repeatedly claiming that wasn't enough of a reason to invade 18 months after 9/11.
Why would these issues support attacks on Libya if they didn't support an Iraqi invasion eight years ago?
Alas, when MSNBCers like Schultz are defending politicians they support, facts and reason are irrelevant:
SCHULTZ: As a country we really don’t have much of a stomach for this right now, and a lot of us are torn because of what all of our needs are here at home. But remember, and this needs to be pointed out: there have been no lies told; no fear games have been played on the American people; intelligence hasn’t been cooked, and; there truly is a coalition of the willing.
"There have been no lies told."
I guess Schultz missed this report from Time magazine Monday:
As it turns out, Gaddafi hasn't done enough to justify humanitarian intervention—despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the administration and human rights organizations admit that reports of potential war crimes remain unconfirmed. Instead, interviews with senior administration officials show that the rehabilitators convinced Obama to go to war not just to prevent atrocities Gaddafi might (or might not) commit but also to bolster America's ability to intervene elsewhere in the future.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. The ability for the U.S. to muster international force to prevent thugs from killing innocent people is important. But the president and some of his advisers are so eager to rehabilitate the idea of preventive intervention that they're exaggerating the violence they say they are intervening to prevent in Libya. “The effort to shoe-horn this into an imminent genocide model is strained,” says one senior administration official. That's dangerous. Americans deserve an honest explanation when their leaders take them to war.
Well, apart from not getting it from Obama, they're certainly not going to get it from a shill like Schultz.
As for the "coalition of the willing," this is another falsehood the media have been shoving down Americans' throats since Friday. As Fox reported Monday, President Bush had double the partners entering Iraq as Obama has on this Libya mission.
But Schultz was on a roll, and he certainly wasn't going to let the truth interfere with his mission:
SCHULTZ: I have always believed that Gaddafi was a terrorist. Let’s look at the tape again of flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Do you need any more evidence? Has Gaddafi ever proven his innocence? […]
I’m with the President on this one, and I think if it is defined the way he says it is, limited in scope, this actually could be a situation where we don’t hear from Gaddafi for a long, long time.
Maybe so, but we haven't heard from Saddam Hussein for many years. I doubt Schultz sees that as a justification for that war.
In fairness to Schultz, he did invite on guests Monday evening that were opposed to this move by Obama, in particular Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.) who reiterated his claim from earlier in the day that this could actually be an impeachable offense by the President.
However, Schultz was resolute in his support even doing a segment later in the program wherein he rationalized the financial cost of the mission because it's a pittance of what we're spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. This of course assumed our roll ends as quickly as Obama and Schultz believe it will.
Add it all up, and it sure was interesting watching this devout anti-war liberal sell this military action to his viewers.
Appears to have worked, for his poll question Monday was, "Do you support military action against Libya?" At press time, almost 2/3 of respondents had said, "Yes."
Ed should be very proud of bringing that many anti-war liberals over to his way of thinking.
The perpetually anti-war Ed Schultz took his seat behind the desk at MSNBC studios Monday with the expressed mission of selling Barack Obama's air assault on Libya to his viewers.
So passionate was the "Ed Show" host in supporting the President he several times showed video footage of downed Pan Am flight 103 while claiming that Moammar Gaddafi was responsible thereby justifying an attack on him over 22 years later (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
ED SCHULTZ: President Obama has decided on a more focused, realistic approach. He’s trying to give the rebels who want democracy a fighting chance at just that, and trying to stop Gaddafi, this is the human thing to do, from slaughtering his own people. Now aside from all the reasons for this mission, you will never convince me that Gaddafi didn’t have a hand in the Lockerbie bombing. You’ll never convince me that Gaddafi hasn’t supplied resources to terrorists. Given the fact that Americans died on that 747 over Lockerbie, I’m all for this mission. I think the President of the United States Barack Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt and our support.
Interesting defense. Readers are reminded that Pan Am 103 was downed in December 1988. That's a reason for going after Gaddafi now?
As for "slaughtering his own people" and supplying "resources to terrorists," the same was trued of Saddam Hussein. That hasn't stopped Schultz from repeatedly claiming that wasn't enough of a reason to invade 18 months after 9/11.
Why would these issues support attacks on Libya if they didn't support an Iraqi invasion eight years ago?
Alas, when MSNBCers like Schultz are defending politicians they support, facts and reason are irrelevant:
SCHULTZ: As a country we really don’t have much of a stomach for this right now, and a lot of us are torn because of what all of our needs are here at home. But remember, and this needs to be pointed out: there have been no lies told; no fear games have been played on the American people; intelligence hasn’t been cooked, and; there truly is a coalition of the willing.
"There have been no lies told."
I guess Schultz missed this report from Time magazine Monday:
As it turns out, Gaddafi hasn't done enough to justify humanitarian intervention—despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the administration and human rights organizations admit that reports of potential war crimes remain unconfirmed. Instead, interviews with senior administration officials show that the rehabilitators convinced Obama to go to war not just to prevent atrocities Gaddafi might (or might not) commit but also to bolster America's ability to intervene elsewhere in the future.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. The ability for the U.S. to muster international force to prevent thugs from killing innocent people is important. But the president and some of his advisers are so eager to rehabilitate the idea of preventive intervention that they're exaggerating the violence they say they are intervening to prevent in Libya. “The effort to shoe-horn this into an imminent genocide model is strained,” says one senior administration official. That's dangerous. Americans deserve an honest explanation when their leaders take them to war.
Well, apart from not getting it from Obama, they're certainly not going to get it from a shill like Schultz.
As for the "coalition of the willing," this is another falsehood the media have been shoving down Americans' throats since Friday. As Fox reported Monday, President Bush had double the partners entering Iraq as Obama has on this Libya mission.
But Schultz was on a roll, and he certainly wasn't going to let the truth interfere with his mission:
SCHULTZ: I have always believed that Gaddafi was a terrorist. Let’s look at the tape again of flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Do you need any more evidence? Has Gaddafi ever proven his innocence? […]
I’m with the President on this one, and I think if it is defined the way he says it is, limited in scope, this actually could be a situation where we don’t hear from Gaddafi for a long, long time.
Maybe so, but we haven't heard from Saddam Hussein for many years. I doubt Schultz sees that as a justification for that war.
In fairness to Schultz, he did invite on guests Monday evening that were opposed to this move by Obama, in particular Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.) who reiterated his claim from earlier in the day that this could actually be an impeachable offense by the President.
However, Schultz was resolute in his support even doing a segment later in the program wherein he rationalized the financial cost of the mission because it's a pittance of what we're spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. This of course assumed our roll ends as quickly as Obama and Schultz believe it will.
Add it all up, and it sure was interesting watching this devout anti-war liberal sell this military action to his viewers.
Appears to have worked, for his poll question Monday was, "Do you support military action against Libya?" At press time, almost 2/3 of respondents had said, "Yes."
Ed should be very proud of bringing that many anti-war liberals over to his way of thinking.
Today, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is holding hearings in the House Homeland Security Committee singling out the Muslim American community for supposedly aiding and abetting terrorism. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Congress’s first elected Muslim, rebuked King’s unjustified focus on the Muslim community during his own remarks at the hearing. He reminded the hearing that a number of Muslims have worked to defend the United States from terrorism, and referenced the story of Muhammad Hamdami, a 23-year-old Muslim first responder who died on September 11th saving people trapped in the World Trade Center, and was later smeared due to his Islamic faith. The congressman broke down into tears by the end of his statement, moved by the story of Hamdami, who “was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans”:
ELLISON: Let me close with a story, but remember that it’s only one of many American stories that could be told. Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a 23-year-old paramedic, a New York City police cadet and a Muslim American. He was one of those brave first responders who tragically lost their lives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks almost a decade ago. As The New York Times eulogized, “He wanted to be seen as an all-American kid.” [...] Mr. Hamdani bravely sacrificed his life to try and help others on 9/11. After the tragedy some people tried to smear his character solely because of his Islamic faith. Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was in league with the attackers only because he was Muslim. It was only when his remains were identified that these lies were fully exposed. Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be defined as a member of an ethnic group or a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow citizens. I yield back.
Watch it:
Hamdami’s mother, Talat Hamdani, is at the hearings today. She works with September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which opposes the hearings.
Every so often, a guest will come to town and want a tour of The Washington Post. I try to oblige, but I know that I disappoint them. “Here is where the reporters sit,” I’ll say, gesturing across the vast fifth floor. But they’ll look out and see nothing but people at cubicles. “And here is where the cafeteria is,” I’ll say, pointing at a salad bar. But they’ve already seen what a salad bar looks like. A salad bar didn’t bring down Richard Nixon.
The one part of the tour that never disappointed was David Broder’s office. Initially, I thought it was because it was so visually striking. The compact space was packed from the floor to the ceiling with the notes, research, memorabilia and assorted other detritus of a lifetime spent reporting. It looked like 60 years of reporting crammed into a six-by-six box. It was exactly what people were looking to see when they came to the Post.
Then we refurbished the fifth floor and the office was cleaned out — but my guests had the same slightly awed reaction. It didn’t matter that it looked like every other office on earth. It was David Broder’s office. It was where David Broder worked. And that was enough. The interior of the Washington Post building may not look like much, but David Broder’s name on the door meant something to each and every person I brought by it. David Broder meant something to each and every person I brought by.
David Broder died today. He was 81, and still working. Dan Balz’s memories of him are much more worth reading than mine. But I keep thinking back to the last time I saw him: It was in October, when the Hudson Institute presented Gov. Mitch Daniels with its Herman Kahn award. I was lost in one of those crowded ballrooms where almost everyone looks anxious and uncertain, like they don’t know who to talk to or where to go. Or maybe that was just me. Then I ran into Broder. He was there to kick the tires of a possible presidential contender, and he was graciously greeting the stream of people who were walking up to shake his hand, slap his back, ask his thoughts. He listened a lot more than he spoke. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. I just hung back to watch. The best way to not be lost, I figured, was to watch him.
10 Great Shows That Died After One Season
What’s Going On At Uproxx
10 Great Shows That Died After One Season
What’s Going On At Uproxx
Darkness falls.
In Culture of Corruption, I exposed Team Obama’s big lie about its commitment to public disclosure and openness in government.
Liberals balked. “How can you possibly make such a judgment so early on in the presidency?” they squawked.
After the book was published, the White House’s selective transparency and subversion of disclosure rules and regs continued apace.
Democrats played hide-and-seek on the Hill.
President Obama cut endless backroom deals and cut C-SPAN out.
The White House carved out a Coffee House loophole to keep lobbyist meetings off the books.
And, finally, the White House press corps started complaining about lack of access.
Now, this today from Politico:
Caught between their boss’s anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds – and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.
It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs collected on visitors to the White House and later released to the public.
…Obama’s administration has touted its release of White House visitors logs as a breakthrough in transparency, as the first White House team ever to reveal the comings and goings around the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.
The Jackson Place townhouses are a different story.
There are no records of meetings at the row houses just off Lafayette Square that house the White House Conference Center and the Council on Environmental Quality, home to two of the busiest meeting spaces. The White House can’t say who attended meetings there, or how often. The Secret Service doesn’t log in visitors or require a background check the way it does at the main gates of the White House.
…It’s not only Jackson Place. Another favorite off-campus meeting spot is a nearby Caribou Coffee, which, according to the New York Times, has hosted hundreds of meetings among lobbyists and White House staffers since Obama took office.
And administration officials recently asked some lobbyists and others who met with them to sign confidentiality agreements barring them from disclosing what was discussed at meetings with administration officials, in that case a rental policy working group.
Obama lied, transparency died, Part 989.
See, I told you so.
Stellar work by Glen McGregor of the blog afewtastefulsnaps as he recently made public, for the first time, the official report from various Ontario agencies of the mysterious death of former NHL player and donut shop mogul Tim Horton in 1974.
For those of you out there who are unaware, Tim Horton was Hall of Fame NHL player with the Leafs and Rangers, Penguins and Sabres in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s. In 1964, he started a chain of donut shops that has since grown to nearly 3,000 stores around the world. Most of the locations are in Canada and the U.S.
Horton died in a horrific single-car accident in in 1974 yet despite his celebrity, until McGregor obtained the ancient crash report from the Archives of Ontario, the details of Horton’s death remained somewhat fuzzy.
From McGregor:
I found a loophole in Ontario’s Freedom of Information law that allowed me to get a copy of his autopsy. Under Ontario law, the privacy exemption that keeps information like autopsies from public view expires 30 years after the subject’s death. That meant Horton’s file was no longer covered by privacy provisions as of Feb. 21, 2004.
It took more than a year before I finally got the file sent to me via the Archives of Ontario. I wrote a story based on the autopsy in 2005 (Citizen links expire after three months, so this will have to do).
Police have long maintained alcohol was not a factor in Horton’s fatal accident, but from the official police account and toxicology report obtained by McGregor, we can now indisputedly confirmed that Horton was twice over the legal limit when he died.
But the 61-page report reveals details well beyond Horton’s blood alcohol level.
In the early morning hours of February 21, 1974, Horton was driving from Toronto to his home in Buffalo following a Sabres-Leafs game at MLG, (more…)
An update on this story. The tragic and disturbing details of Hena Begum’s last days demand reporting not only because her punishment of lashes for alleged adultery was straight out of the Qur’an (24:2), but because of that verse’s specific injunction to Muslims to suppress any natural aversion to human suffering in carrying out this cruel and unusual punishment.
Qur’an 24:2 insists: “Let not compassion move you.” This is Sharia. “Bangladesh girl bled to death after lashing say doctors,” from BBC News, February 9:
A Bangladeshi girl who was publicly whipped for an alleged affair with a married man bled to death, according to a fresh post-mortem examination.
Doctors in Dhaka found multiple injuries on the body of Hena Begum, the deputy attorney general told the BBC.
The High Court ordered her body to be exhumed and taken to the capital after a local autopsy recorded no injuries.
Miss Begum died in hospital six days after last month’s beating, which has caused shock in Bangladesh and abroad.
Police have opened a murder investigation.
The doctors who carried out the initial investigation have been summoned to explain their findings in the High Court on Thursday.
The second post-mortem examination was carried out by a team of doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
“Multiple injuries were found. The girl died because of bleeding,” deputy attorney general Altaf Hossain told the BBC Bengali service.
Cousin arrested
Hena Begum, also called Hena Akter, was buried on 31 January. She was 14.
A week earlier, she had received about 80 lashes in her village of Chamta in Shariatpur district, about 90km (56 miles) from Dhaka.
A village court consisting of elders and clerics had accused her of having an affair with a fellow villager and cousin, Mahbub Khan. Her family say she was innocent of the accusations.
Mr Khan was also found guilty - of rape - by the village council and sentenced to be lashed, but he managed to escape during his punishment.
Police have named him as the main accused in the case. They said on Wednesday he had been arrested near Dhaka.
Correspondents say he could face rape or even murder charges if the courts find that his actions ultimately led to his cousin’s death.
Four others including a Muslim cleric have also been arrested in connection with the death.
The High Court stepped in following local media reports that there had been a deliberate attempt to cover up the case in Shariatpur…
Former American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker made teachers’ unions what they are today. He was hard-nosed defender of teachers’ rights, but he also came clean about public school performance.
In the making of “Kids Aren’t Cars,” I unearthed a 25-year old PBS interview with Shanker. His indictment of the public education system was stunning.
“You could do things that are absolutely wrong, you can have huge dropout rates, you can have kids who are leaving without knowing how to read, write, count or anything else and what do you do next year? Do the same as you did this year and the following year and the following year…”
And when Shanker – again, 25 years ago – rattled off achievement statistics, the host challenged him:
Shanker: When it comes to the highest levels of reading, writing, mathematics or science – that just means being able to read editorials in the New York Times…or write an essay of a few pages…or do a mathematical equation, not calculus…the number of kids who are about to graduate who are able to function at that level, depending on whether you’re talking about reading, writing, math science – 3 percent, 4 percent…
Host: Oh, come on!
Shanker: No! 5 percent. That’s it.
Does anyone honestly believe our education system – which has had billions of dollars more each year dumped into – is better now than it was in 1986?
Anyone??
Shanker was straight with the public – even if he didn’t see teacher quality and accountability as part of the solution.
If only current AFT President Randi Weingarten and National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel would be as candid. But I’m not holding my breath. The AFT and the NEA have presided over the decline of public education in America, and they know it. But if the union leaders admit to that, well, it would undermine their call for ever greater levels of “investment.”
But in the wake of “Waiting for Superman,” Weingarten and Van Roekel are acquiescing to the public outcry for accountability, and taking rhetorical baby steps toward reform, such as maybe one day making student achievement a tiny sliver of a teacher’s overall performance evaluation. Maybe.
The teacher unions are walking contradictions. They portray themselves as experts in education policy, but somehow never manage to deliver the goods. They claim to elevate the teaching profession, yet bend over backward to defend the worst among them, including a Michigan teacher deemed to be a danger to herself and others.
The sad truth is that the AFT and the NEA have an agenda that revolves around accumulating as much money and power as possible for themselves and their political surrogates. The teacher unions are a collection of far-left progressives who use the honored title of “teacher” to conceal their radical political agenda. How else to explain why the Rhode Island chapter of the NEA would participate in a rally for same-sex marriage? What does that possibly have to do with education?
Back to Shanker. Even though he ardently defended teachers, he was genuinely concerned about the quality of education being given to America’s school children. Can the same be said of Randi Weingarten and Dennis Van Roekel?
Consider this quote from social writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer and decide for yourself: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
The family of John Wheeler III, the former Republican appointee who worked on behalf of Vietnam veterans, is offering a $ 25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest after the state medical examiner’s office said Wheeler died of blunt force trauma.
The Associated Press reported that family attorney Colm F. Connolly told the News Journal of Wilmington that the family is desperate for more information about his death.
Wheeler’s body was found in a Delaware landfill earlier this month in a load of trash that was dumped at the Wilmington landfill on the morning of Dec. 31. Wheeler was reportedly tied to an arson at his neighbor’s home. Video showed him wandering around a parking lot without shoes shortly before his death.
The inconsistencies that have plagued the Palestinian narrative of how Jawaher Abu Rahma died have now been traced to the fact that Abu Rahma died from a Palestinian doctor’s misdiagnosis:
An IDF investigation has found that Jawaher Abu Rahma, who PA leaders accused Israel of killing, actually died due to a doctor’s mistake. The PA had claimed that Abu Rahma died after inhaling tear gas as PA rioters clashed with Israeli soldiers near the Samaria separation/security barrier.
The investigation found that Rahma was not at the demonstration, but was in a house nearby. Initial PA reports had implied that she was at the demonstration; however, when pictures of the protest did not show her presence, it was then reported that she had been overcome by tear gas at home.
However, the IDF found that Rahma was not taken to a hospital during or immediately after the protest, but only later in the day.
Once in the Ramallah hospital, Rahma was given unusually high doses of Atropine, a drug whose uses include countering nerve gas or speeding up a dangerously slow pulse. The drug apparently caused her death, investigators said.
Documents received by the IDF also provided additional evidence for the theory that Rahma had been seriously ill prior to the demonstration, possibly with cancer.
IDF commanders planned to meet last week with PA officials to brief them on the ongoing investigation. However, the PA canceled the meeting. PA leaders continue to claim that the IDF caused Abu Rahma’s death, and to label the death a war crime.
Considering that the media can always be counted upon to accept whatever story the Arabs provide, there is no reason for them not to distort the facts to create their own narrative.Since the Palestinian Arabs are not held accountable, they will be able to continue to claim the IDF is guilty of a war crime long after the truth has been made known.
Technorati Tag: Abu Rahma.
