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Magdi Khalil of Coptic Solidarity: treatment of Meriam is typical of Shariah Law
June 13, 2014 — xanthippaUPDATE: Senator Cruz adds his voice:
If you have not of the plight of Dr. Mariam Ibrahim, blame the media who are unwilling to bring to light the worst kinds of suffering women must endure under Sharia.
An educated MD, she was raised Christian by her Christian mother – and married a Christian man.
But, because her father (who had abandoned the family when she was little) was a Muslim, under Sudan’s Sharia-based legal system, she is officially a Muslim. And while a Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman, a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man.
Why?
It all goes back to Sharia.
Sharia states that under no circumstances may a non-Muslim be in a position of power and/or dominance over a Muslim. (This, by the way, includes employment – which is why, in Sharia-compliant countries, non-Muslims may only hold the lowest levels of jobs in every profession, because they are not permitted to attain a higher rank than the lowest Muslim in the same workplace.
Sharia also states that a husband is in a position of power and dominance over his wife – she must obey him and submit to his will in every way. Therefore, if the husband were non-Muslim, and his wife were a Muslim, that would put the husband, a non-Muslim, in a position of power and dominance over a Muslim – the wife.
Which is why a Muslim woman is, under Sharia, strictly forbidden from marrying a non-Muslim man.
Back to Mariam…
Mariam’s crime is that she married a non-Muslim, and she is a Muslim by the virtue of her father having been a Muslim (there is no right to convert under Sharia – if your father, whether he raised you or not, was a Muslim, then under Sharia, you and your children will also be Muslims….any conversion is not only legally not recognized, it is punishable by death.
As such, her marriage is not legally recognized. But, mote than that – she is, according to Sharia, committing adultery every time she has relations with her not-legally-recognized husband.
For this crime of adultery, she has been sentenced to 100 lashes and then death.
Mariam – and her toddler son – were unceremoniously dumped into prison…a prison with a high mortality rate for toddlers and infants.
It gets worse…
When Mariam was tossed into prison to await her sentence, she was heavily pregnant – and gave birth to a daughter in prison, chained to the ground…
Atrocious!!!
But, really, not all that unusual… That IS Sharia!!!
The twist to this story is that Mariam’s husband and the father of her children is an American citizen – which, of course, makes his children also American citizens.
Yet, the US Embassy personnel in Sudan is unwilling to lift a finger to help the father, the mother or the children…
What was it that Obama said about not leaving anyone ‘behind’?
What about ‘no child left behind’?
Oh, but let Magdi Khalil have his say on this:
Please, don’t forget Dr. Mariam Ibrahm!
Why Benghazi Matters…
June 12, 2014 — xanthippaFrom Bill Whittle:
From Stefan Molyneaux:
I could say more, but, at this point, what difference would it make?!?!?
Thunderf00t: Solar Roadways, IMPORTANT QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS!
June 10, 2014 — xanthippaThis is a follow up to Thunderf00t’s first criticism of this hair-brained idea for a ‘solar-powered roadways’.
Predictably, pretty, shiny roadways appeal to many people and they didn’t really appreciate the reason for Thunderf00t’s criticism, thinking him a bit of a luddite… Actualy, Thunferf00t is a real-life super-smart scientist, advancing the leading edge of scientific discovery.
Which is precisely why he is criticizing the ‘LED road markings in the daytime’ and glass-surfaced roads…
But, let’s go to the video and let Thunderf00t answer some of these accusations himself:
UPDATE: Here are some more answers fromThunderf00t:
John Baglow vs Connie Fournier, Mark Fournier and Roger Smith: the ‘FULL TRIAL’, day 7, part 5
June 8, 2014 — xanthippaDay 1 part 1 and part 2 , Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4 part 1 and part 2 of this trial were covered in March, 2014 (write-ups by me at links).
Day 5 was going to be written up later, but…. As I was writing up the background needed to accurately portray the events of day 7 (parts 4 and up), I realized that I am describing much of the material that came out on day 5 and that a separate write up would be redundant.
Day 7 part 1 is here, part 2 is here and part 3 is here – sorry about having had to chop this up, it seems my original write up was too long for WordPress to format correctly.
Part 4 left off just as Dr. Baglow explained that he had produced email communication for discovery from the period that he believed ‘the comments’ had disappeared from his old blog, but not the period that the defense claims the comments ‘had been disappeared’, because he simply thought they were not observant enough to notice that the materials they need for their case had disappeared months earlier…
This had actually come out on Connie’s cross of Dr. Baglow on day 6 – but the background had to be explained in order for my report on the events of day 7 to make sense.
As a result of the now defined and testified to difference between the two time periods under discussion, Connie Fournier asked the judge to direct Dr. Baglow to produce the emails they had actually asked for instead of the ones he thought they ought to have.
Which the judge did.
…and which Dr. Baglow had indeed produced – on the morning of the 7th day in court….long after Mr. Bow’s cross examination had finished so he cannot even be cross examined as to the content within them. And Dr. Baglow cannot testify to anything about Mr. Bow’s side of the conversation, as he is not Mr. Bow.
Nice, non?
OK, so Dr. Baglow had finally disclosed the emails from the requested time period on the morning of the 7th day of court….and he even visibly hedged when describing the emails, saying these are the emails from this time period ‘that he thought were relevant’ – immediately raising in me the question whether there were others that the defense might deem relevant but he did not and so they would not have been disclosed…but I guess that is just my literal Aspie mind!!!
It was during Dr. Baglow’s cross examination by Connie Fournier regarding these late-disclosed-emails (which she had only 50 minutes to review before having to cross examine him on them!!!) that I reflected on Dr. Baglow’s past as a high-ranking member of PSAC (that’s pronounced P. S. A. C. – Dr. Baglow is not fond of the usual ‘Pee-sack’ pronunciation and testified so in court earlier), a behemoth of a public sector union. I could juxt picture him in labour negotiations, sticking to his line, appearing reasonable and affable (he can be incredibly charming), and making the most unreasonable labour demands sound like reasonable, middle-of-the-road compromises.
Aside:
This is, again, my literal Aspie mind at work here, but…it seems to me that if a group of organizations has to specifically be exempted from being charged under the racketeering laws, then they are (by definition) a form of legalized racketeering.
Now had we had a market system (instead of the fascistic crony-capitalism system we actually have now – and I am using the word fascistic in its core meaning: the collusion of government, big business and big labour against the rest of society), this would be self-correcting in the private sector: if the labour unions raise labour costs to an unsustainable level, the company goes bankrupt and a correction occurs.
But, in the public sector, unsustainable labour costs get passed down to the taxpayer until the society itself becomes bankrupt and collapses.
That is why I consider public sector union to be the cancer which is weakening our society and hastening its demise.
And, I say this as someone who had been a member of both a private and public sector unions…I’ve see the rot from the inside!!!
In my defense, I was young and when I learned the truth, I took a lower-paying non-unionized job…and felt the cleaner for it! After all, we Aspies like the laws to apply to everyone equally… As my favourite philosopher of the 20th century once said: a person’s a person, no matter how small!
In other words, I was admiring Dr. Baglow’s self control and ability to be completely non-pulsed and to appear relaxed even as clear contradictions to his sworn testimony were pointed out. I could certainly not handle it with such grace…
But, not Dr. Baglow!
Cool as a cucumber, he stuck to his line that all the comments had disappeared in November 2010 and he was positively baffled that the defendants could access them as late as March and/or April 2011! Not only could he not explain that discrepancy to them, he would have been glad had someone could explain it to him – after all, he testified, he is technologically quite ignorant…
When Madam Justice Polowin had a question about IP addresses, Dr. Baglow was very helpful to the court and correctly explained in great detail some very technical aspects of how the internet protocol worked – he spoke with the ease of an expert going over familiar ground and I was very impressed.
But, I digress…
Once the comments had stopped being visible (for whatever reason and at whatever time period) on the internet, the defense had asked for them in disclosure.
From what I understand, after a lot of hum-ing and haw-ing, a TEXT file with tens of thousands of comments, interspersed with code and completely devoid of context (i.e. missing such details like which posts they were in response to, other comments in their thread and their position in that thread – these had been completely stripped out).
As it was a text file, it was not possible to convert it to an actually usable format….
Dr. Baglow explained that they had submitted the comments in that format ‘in order to help the defense’…
Aside: an unimportant observation… Whenever Dr. Baglow is about to say something particularly patronizing or obfuscating – especially to Connie Fournier – he takes a moment, tilts his head back, glares down his nose at Connie, and only then speaks. I have no idea why, but it is a definite pattern…
It seems that Connie Fournier had not considered this to ‘be helpful’ and thought it an attempt at sabotaging the defense – and she objected to it.
From what I gather, she objected most vociferously!
It then (if I understood Dr. Baglow correctly) still took Dr. Baglow/Mr. Bow a couple of weeks to produce the comments in a format that was sortable and workable with. Indeed, Connie Fournier had produced a sample page showing how the comments (as Disqus files) were sortable and searchable.
Now that I have explained a little bit about the background of ‘the comments’, I can return to Connie’s cross of Dr. Baglow.
Connie had singled out one email in particular – dated, if I am not mistaken (please correct me if I am), April 3rd, 2011 – that appeared to be a ‘test comment’….since the word ‘test’ or ‘testing’ appeared on it and it had the identifier of having come either from Dr. Baglow himself or from someone who had his administrative identifiers. Once she established the date of the comment, entered the content, and demonstrated the identifier, Dr. Baglow claimed to have absolutely zero idea of how this could possibly have happened.
He was positively baffled – and looked up to the ceiling as he asserted so.
Well, well, well…
It seems that in one of the emails between the two of them – but only disclosed on the morning of the 7th day of the originally 3-day court hearings – Dr. Baglow had sent Mr. Bow his administrative id and password.
And the email came just before the time/date stamp of the ‘test comment’ from, I believe, April 3rd, 2011…
Now, if the plaintiff and his IT guy were testing the appearance of comments in 2011, why would they believe them to have disappeared in November of 2010?!?!?
As they say – the plot thickens!!!
Before the significance of the ‘gotcha’ could sink in on all present, Dr. Baglow laughed heartily and in a jovial manner informed all in the courtroom that he had since changed this password!
Madam Justice Polowin smiled indulgently and assured him that she has no intentions of using that password to access his blog…
I must admit, the deflection was skillfully executed – and again, in my mind, I was picturing Dr. Baglow sitting at a labour negotiations table.
Let me end here. There is very little more to come – some more of my observations and, perhaps, something about the pleasant conversations Dr. Baglow and I have enjoyed during some of the breaks.
John Baglow vs Connie Fournier, Mark Fournier and Roger Smith: the ‘FULL TRIAL’, day 7, part 4
June 7, 2014 — xanthippaDay 1 part 1 and part 2 , Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4 part 1 and part 2 of this trial were covered in March, 2014 (write-ups by me at links).
Day 5 was going to be written up later, but…. As I was writing up the background needed to accurately portray the events of day 7 (parts 4 and up), I realized that I am describing much of the material that came out on day 5 and that a separate write up would be redundant.
Day 7 part 1 is here, part 2 is here and part 3 is here – sorry about having had to chop this up, it seems my original write up was too long for WordPress to format correctly.
Following the break (more about that later), Connie Fournier had a chance to cross examine Dr. Baglow regarding some emails he had JUST disclosed to her that morning. If this seems confusing (given that this has been dragging on for years), let me back up a lot and paint the situation:
One of the ‘bones of contention’ – and a source of huge frustration to the Fourniers – was the disclosure of emails between Dr. Baglow’s technical specialist, Mr. Bow, and Dr. Baglow during the time period when the comments from his old blog had disappeared from visibility on the internet.
Even more background information is needed, or this will not make any sense. And, I admit freely that my understanding is limited and I apologize for any errors I make. If you spot them, please, let me know and I will publish the correction!!! I’d rather be corrected than stay in error any day!!!
Dr. Baglow used to have ‘blogspot’ host his blog – which meant that the word ‘blogspot’ would appear in the middle of his blog’s address. Online, he had befriended Mr. Bow, who does some IT stuff as his hobby – and Mr. Bow eventually convinced Dr. Baglow to have his blog moved over to Mr. Bow’s server. Not only would he get a better service, Mr. Bow would get him an address for his blog that would not contain the server name on it.
Aside: why he would go about it in such a complicated manner is beyond me. All he had to do to get a domain name for his blog without the word ‘blogger’ in it (a few dollars a year) and use a pointer, so that the ‘non-blogger-name-displaying address would be visible and the ‘blogger’ bit be hidden: no migrating or headaches from lost comments necessary! But, of course, that would not bring Mr. Bow income for hosting the site, so, perhaps, he might not have mentioned this easy alternative…
For quite some time after Dr. Dawg’s blog had been ‘migrated over’ to the new server (with all the posts but without the old comments, which were in a difficult format), the old blog and all the comments for the posts were still visible on the internet.
According to Connie Fournier, that is – something Dr. Baglow bitterly disputes.
Connie Fournier and Barbara Kulaszka (BK), Mark Fournier’s lawyer, were looking through these comments on the old blog because they believed that much of the material they needed for their defense was contained in these very comments. According to my understanding (highly imperfect) of what Connie Fournier claims, she and BK were in the very process of looking at them one fine day in the spring of 2011 when suddenly, all these comments went ‘poof!’ and disappeared.
Or, perhaps, were disappeared…
If they ‘had been disappeared’ by the plaintiff or his agents at his direction (as opposed to just ‘disappeared’), it seems to me that this would be a very bad thing indeed…. Something called ‘despoliation’ – or, if I understand, willful destruction of evidence.
Dr. Baglow, of course, most vigorously maintains that the comments had NOT ‘been disappeared’ but simply were not visible on the new site due to a technical glitch and, as far as he is aware, they had also disappeared (not ‘been disappeared’) from the old blog, which he insist on calling ‘the transitional blog’ but admits it is identical to the old blog, except for the colourscheme…..and, of course, it lacks the comments.
As Dr. Baglow had had his blog moved from blogger to Mr. Bow’s server in November 2010, he insists that all comments also disappeared (due to said technical glitch – which was endlessly gone over and over on day 5 of the case – and since I am explaining it here, it now seems redundant to write that day up separately…) in November 2010.
Ms. Fournier insists she was browsing through them online in the spring of 2011. I am not certain of the exact dates, but the 30th of March and 3rd of April 2011 kept coming up as the timeframe when the comments were visible online and when they disappeared.
Or were disappeared.
Not my call….
So, in discovery, the defense asked for all the emails between Dr. Baglow and Mr. Bow from this time period to be disclosed (I am not certain of how it was phrased, but, I cannot help but have an impression that spring 2011 was specifically mentioned).
Dr. Baglow had indeed disclosed a slew of emails between himself and Mr. Bow – but from November/December 2010. When questioned about why he had disclosed emails from the wrong time period, Dr. Baglow became nastily condescending and said (and I am paraphrasing) that he just thought the defendants were too stupid to realize when the comments had disappeared, so he had thought to help them and provided them with the emails from the ‘right’ time period.
And he stuck to that line.
At least, that is my most humble recollection and my most imperfect understanding of the events and the testimony regarding them. If I got something wrong, it is not intentional and I would respectfully request that if you can, please do let me know so that I may correct my posts. Thank you.
More coming soon!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 