SADDAM DEAD

Good Riddance.

Predictably, the left-wingnuts are finding a way to turn this into a slam on President Bush. Hugh Hewitt has some great coverage of the response by the left.

And the editors of National Review Online have a great take on the execution of the Butcher of Baghdad. An excerpt...

The collapse of his dictatorship has created a social and political void, and a variety of hit men, as usual, are trying to make careers out of it. The only way to prevent their doing so is to introduce the rule of law and impose enough security that it has a chance to take. Saddam’s trial, for all its flaws, was an exercise in the rule of law. Justice is never perfect, especially when carrying an element of retribution. Much more important, though, this case is exemplary. Saddam’s trial and execution could yet be the building block of a future with hope in it for an Iraqi society and state at last free from his tyranny.

Morale of soldiers in Middle East high

Michael Yon has an excellent post on how the American perception of how the world views us is much different than the reality. And how the morale of soldiers over there is high--much higher than the MSM would have us believe. Yon's just arrived back in Kuwait, so I'm expecting some more great reporting on the war--NOT a bunch of drivel from mainstream journalists who rely on stringers to bring them their news. Here's an excerpt from his post:

This war is strange. I never hear soldiers worried about their own morale sagging. Contrary, the war-fighters here are more concerned to bolster the morale of the people at home. Here in Kuwait, where the dining facilities are bedecked in Christmas decorations, soldiers stream in from Iraq on convoys and stream back north along those bomb-laden roads. The service members here are not all rear-echelon people who never see fighting or blood. Yet their overall morale obviously is high. Few of them know I am a writer, and so they speak freely at the tables around me. In Qatar, from which I’d just departed, I spoke with troops taking 4-day R&R passes, some having just returned from the most dangerous parts of Iraq, and others heading straight back and their overall morale was also very high. The morale at war is higher than I have ever seen it at home; makes me wonder what they know that most Americans seem to be missing.

Air Force--A top 25 force in basketball

Irv Moss from the Denver Post has a great article on Air Force basketball.

...there's nothing prankish about this Air Force team. It already has victories of 69-68 over Long Beach State, 79-45 over Stanford, 84-46 over Colorado, 67-53 over Texas Tech and 94-58 over Wake Forest. The only loss was a 71-56 setback to Duke on Nov. 20.
Bzdelik has let his coaching and his players do the talking. His record in a season and a half is 36-8, including a school-record 24 wins last season.
While statistics explain why the Falcons are winning, Bzdelik has a more important reason to explain how they win. He quickly learned what his players' everyday life is like at Air Force, and he used it as an advantage on the basketball floor. His Falcons play as a team.
"Unselfishness is a way of life for them," Bzdelik said. "They have a serve-before-self attitude. They learn to sacrifice for a greater cause. That's a huge asset for a coach in a team sport. If you lined up our basketball team one-on-one with most of our opponents and played a one- on-one game, our record would be 1-11. Five guys working together pack a pretty powerful punch."

Read the entire article...

UPDATE: 22:07 PST Mark Kiszla from the Denver Post has his own article here.

Spiritual revolution in Middle East

Just ran across Joel C. Rosenberg's blog. In case you haven't heard of him, he has written some great novels, the first of which was "The Last Jihad". I guess that since I've only just finished reading this first one, I can't actually say the rest are great, but he did win "Best Novel of 2006" by the ECPA for "The Ezekiel Option". He's got a great post about how Christianity is spreading throughout the Middle East, even in those countries which are run by fundamentalist Islamic regimes.

Iraq: more than 5,000 new Muslim converts to Christianity have been identified since the end of major combat operations, with 14 new churches opened in Baghdad, and dozens of new churches opened in Kurdistan, some of which have 500 to 800 members. Also, more than 1 million Bibles shipped into the country since 2003, and pastors report Iraqis are snatching them up so fast they constantly need more Bibles.

Egypt: some reports say 1 million Egyptians have trusted Christ over the past decade or so. The Egyptian Bible Society told me they used to sell about 3,000 copies of the JESUS film a year in the early 1990s. But last year they sold 600,000 copies, plus 750,000 copies of the Bible on tape (in Arabic) and about a half million copies of the Arabic New Testament. "Egyptians are increasingly hungry for God's Word," an Egyptian Christian leader told me. Last Christmas, I had the privilege of visiting the largest Christian congregation in the Middle East, which meets in an enormous cave on the outskirts of Cairo. Some 10,000 believers worship there every weekend. A prayer conference the church held in May 2005 drew some 20,000 believers.

Afghanistan: only 17 Muslim converts to Christianity before 9/11/01, but now more than 10,000. Dozens of baptisms every week.

Kazakstan: only 3 known Christians in 1990, but now more than 15,000.

Uzbekistan: no known Christians in 1990, but now more than 30,000.

Sudan: more than 1 million Sudanese have converted to Christianity just since 2000, and some 5 million have become Christians since the early 1990s, despite a radical Islamic regime and an on-going genocide that has killed more than 200,000. Seminaries are being held in caves to train pastors to shepherd the huge numbers of people coming to Christ. Why such a dramatic spiritual awakening? "People have seen real Islam, and they want Jesus instead," one Sudanese evangelical leader told me.

Iran: in 1979, there were only 500 known Muslim converts to Christianity, but today Iranian pastors and evangelical leaders tell me there are more than 1 million Iranian believers in Jesus Christ, most of whom meet in underground house churches.

He's got some more great stories in the rest of the post.

Terrorists are targeting Channel tunnel

The Observer is reporting that the CIA has informed the French that the threat of a terrorist attack on the Channel tunnel is "sky high".

According to the French sources, the plan was put together in Pakistan and is being directed from there. The plotters are believed to be Western Europeans, possibly Britons of Pakistani descent. The DGSE say that levels of 'chatter', the constant communication that takes place between militants, has not been so high since 2001. Last week Sir Ian Blair, the head of the Metropolitan Police, described 'the threat of another terrorist attempt' as 'ever present' adding that 'Christmas is a period when that might happen'.
'It is a far graver threat in terms of civilians than either the Cold War or the Second World War,' he said. 'It's a much graver threat than that posed by Irish Republican terrorism.'

American security sources told The Observer that the threat was 'sky high'.

The news of the threat to the Channel Tunnel comes as Eurostar trains transport record numbers of passengers heading home for Christmas and as fog continues to affect flights to and from the continent.

More than 8 million passengers travelled on Eurostar trains last year. Staff on the line went on strike earlier this year in protest at what they said were lax security arrangements.

'A successful attack on such an installation would be almost as spectacular as September 11', said one terrorist expert. 'Al-Qaeda and those they inspire are trying everything from low-level strikes to major attacks on critical infrastructure.'

Unfortunately, while counterterrorist agencies will hopefully foil any attacks against the tunnel and other transportation hubs and arteries in Europe, this report will most likely cause many travelers to choose a different means of travel or cancel travel entirely during the Christmas holiday. This means that the terrorists have already succeeded to a limited extent by causing us to change the way we behave. Hopefully, the majority of travelers will flip the terrorists a collective middle finger by continuing to use the tunnel.

More violence against house churches in China

More attacks against Christians in China. This time in Beijing, the site of the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympics. Wonder how much of this type of violence will be seen (and allowed to be reported) during the summer games. Here's the story.

A group of policemen and unidentified persons broke into the home of Xiu Ruibin, a house church missionary in Beijing, beat people in the house and destroyed the furniture. Before the attack two other church leaders were put under house arrest in Xiaoshan on the eve of the court trial of 8 Christian leaders “guilty” of having protested against the destruction of their church, this according to the China Aid Association (CAA), a US-based NGO fighting for religious freedom in China.
The CAA reports that a few days before the attack, some of Xiu’s former colleagues in Heilongjiang Province, who came to Beijing to complain to the central government about illegal actions of their local government, were physically attacked by unknown assailants.
Ms Xiu took them into her own home for their safety and to preach the gospel to them.

Damon & DeNiro speak on the military

Again, we have a liberal TV talk show host (Chris Matthews) interviewing a couple of liberal guys who make millions to pretend to be something they're not (Robert DeNiro and Matt Damon), asking them questions which they are wholly incapable of answering knowledgably.

Monday, the aforementioned actors were on Hardball to promote their new movie about the CIA, "The Good Shepherd". Here's a bit of the transcript, beginning with a question from someone in the audience...

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Meghan Wright, I‘m from Richmond, Virginia and I was just—this question is both for Mr. DeNiro and Mr. Damon. I was just wondering, would either of you go to war right now? Not right now, I guess, but—would you go to war if you were asked?

DENIRO: Well that‘s such a complex question.

(LAUGHTER)

DENIRO: I ...

MATTHEWS: If you were drafted?

DENIRO: Well, I don‘t know, that‘s another thing about the draft and so on, if it ever would come up again. I mean, I was for going to Iraq originally and then I saw, I realized that when you—we went in and we didn‘t know how to like deal with it once we were there.

We just thought they‘d all cheer us and we‘d be out and then they‘d want democracy. We‘re dealing with—we were just talking about before—the thousands of years old cultures that have all their in-fighting, whatever. I mean, we can‘t come in unless we have a real plan or strategy and I never thought that.

DAMON: There is this great book that just came out about that called “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” That‘s definitely a book worth reading, just about that.

We kind of blundered in there with the best intentions, but nevertheless without a plan. So, but in terms of your question, I agree with Bob that it‘s a complex question. It would depend on certain situations. I mean, I don‘t think that it‘s fair, as I said before that it seems that we have a fighting class in our country that‘s comprised of people who have to go for either financial reasons or you know, I don‘t think that that is fair. And if you‘re going to send people to war, if we all get together and decide we need to go to war, then that needs to be shared by everybody, you know. And if the president has daughters who are of age, then maybe they should go to.

(APPLAUSE)

It was nice how DeNiro sidestepped the question about the draft. She asked if he'd go to fight if asked to by his country, and he couldn't answer it! No, instead he goes into whether we should have gone into Iraq. And I'm not sure what in the world Matt Damon is talking about. A "fighting class"??? Tell me, Matt, exactly how do you define the fighting class? If you refer to those Americans who have set aside any ambition to make millions of dollars for the sake of serving their nation, willingly going to foreign lands and risking limb and life, then I would have to agree with your definition.

Something tells me, though, that he has a much different idea in mind. "...people who have to go for either financial reasons or..." Huh? So we in the military are so poor before joining that we join to raise our level of living? Ha! If this is what he thinks, Mr. Damon has no clue. While he made millions pretending to be a soldier in "Saving Private Ryan", real soldiers who face real bullets make less in a year than he makes in a month. Has he not heard the stories of the Reservists who are serving on active duty who have taken huge cuts in pay while being absent from their non-military jobs?

Mr. Damon, the members of the military have joined voluntarily. We come from all backgrounds, all levels of society, all ethnicities. Please know that we are not forced to serve. Contrary to popular opinion in today's society, fame and fortune are not the only things in life that matter.

Nominees for picture of the year

The U.S. is in the middle of a 6-nation summit in South Korea to discuss the way ahead for dealing with North Korea. These photos were taken by the AP of South Koreans protesting the regime of Kim Jong Il. Now if only that sentiment will carry on into the North...

Cuban pastor cleared of all charges

Stacy Harp reported Friday on Persecution Blog that all charges of trafficking in illegal immigrants have been dropped against an evangelical pastor in Cuba.

On Tuesday, December 13, a Cuban court absolved Rev. Carlos Lamelas of all charges of trafficking in illegal immigrants.

In a statement Lamelas expressed concern that the Cuban government would look for a way to punish him. His lawyer told him that he might be required to pay a fine for the “falsification of documents”.

Lamelas was arrested in a police raid at his home on February 20. The evangelical pastor was in jail for more than four months, before being unexpectedly released from the Villa Marita Detention Center on June 26.

Thank you to all who prayed for and wrote to Pastor Lamelas.

House church attacked in China

Lest anyone think that China has softened in its stance against Christianity, the Christian Newswire is reporting that police in Shanghai attacked a house church less than 2 weeks ago.

China Aid Association was just informed that December 9th, 2006 a house church in Changqiao, Shanghai was attacked by the local police. A brother named Wang Mingwei was taken to the police station, along with some church belongings. CAA is investigating the event and trying to acquire more details.

Photo: Brother Wang Weiliang

In the same article, on a different incident:

CAA learned that the Xiaosha intermediate People's 10th Court, Hangzhou City has scheduled a trial for the famous Xiaoshan case at 8am, December 22, 2006, more than 4 months after the Dangshan church was demolished by the local government. Eight Christians: Shen Chengyi, Shen Zhuke (female), Wang Weiliang, Feng Guangliang, Ni Weimin, Guo Lijun, Shen Jianjian, Luo Bingliang, will stand trial on charges of inciting a crowd to resist law enforcement. Six of the eight Christians are currently detained in the detention center. Shen Jianjian and Luo Baoliang are out on bail pending trial.

December 8, 2006, family members of the eight Christians received indictments from the Xiaoshan Prosecutor, Hangzhou City.

CAA also learned that Brother Zan Aizong, the ex-chief of the Hangzhou reporter station of Chinese Ocean Newspaper, who was fired because he criticized the Xiaoshan event, has brought a lawsuit against the Internet Supervising Division of the Hangzhou PSB, which placed him in custody for 7 days on the charge of disturbing the public order by spreading rumors on the Internet. The Shangcheng District People's Court has accepted his lawsuit and will try it December 19, 2006. Brother Zan Aizong had just returned to Hangzhou following a short visit to US.

Remember to keep these brothers and sisters in Christ in your prayers. For more info on the persecuted church, visit Persecution Blog.

Democrats praying?

The recent brain surgery on Democratic Senator Tim Johnson from South Dakota has made me think that the Democrats have prayed more in this past week than in the last 10 years. If, God forbid, Senator Johnson didn't make it through the procedure or recovery, the Democrats would lose a seat in the Senate after the Republican South Dakota governor filled it with a Republican. This would result in a 50-50 split. The cynical side of me thinks they prayed more for the Senate seat than for Senator Johnson...

Looks like he's probably going to be alright.

Iranian Students Speak Out

Some Iranian university students disrupted a speech being given by the country's dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A report by the "semi-official" Fars news agency stated that

"Some students chanted radical slogans and inflamed the atmosphere of the meeting"

Nice bias, there, in favor of the dictator. Breitbart.com has the story...

Iranian students have disrupted a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a prestigious Tehran university, setting fire to his picture and heckling him.

"Some students chanted radical slogans and inflamed the atmosphere of the meeting" at the Amir Kabir University, said the semi-official Fars news agency on Monday, which is close to Ahmadinejad.

"A small number of students shouted 'death to the dictator' and smashed cameras of state television but they were confronted by a bigger group of students in the hall chanting: 'We support Ahmadinejad'," it said.

It was the latest in a series of student demonstrations in recent days, the first time in least two years that such protests have taken place on this scale at Iranian universities.

Ahmadinejad responded by describing those students chanting the slogans as an "oppressive" minority.

"A small number of people who claim there is oppression are creating oppression and do not let the majority hear (my) words," he said.

I have a bad feeling about what's in store for those students. Something tells me they're going to pay dearly for these expressions of free speech.

Christians attacked for not "reconverting" to Hinduism

Le Journal Chretien tells of how two men in the Madhya Pradesh state in India, who converted to Christianity four years ago, were attacked for not turning back to Hinduism.

Ostracized by their village for the past year, two converts of a church in Madhya Pradesh state’s Shahdol district have been beaten for their refusal to return to the Hindu fold.
Santu Prasad Barmaia and Kunjan Prasad Barmaia, both farmers and members of a Gospel for Asia church in Paralia village, were attacked by a group of 12 villagers on October 19.

The attack took place in the morning, when the two were on their way to their fields, a local Christian requesting anonymity told Compass. Both men suffered internal injuries.

Police have not arrested the culprits, the source said, in spite of the fact that the victims named them in a complaint filed at the Amarkantak police station.

Police officials could not be reached for comment.

The source explained that villagers were angry with the Christians for declining to participate in Hindu rituals since receiving Christ four years ago. “The villagers had been persistently putting pressure on them to ‘reconvert’ to Hinduism,” he said.

He added that in the past year villagers have refused to allow the two men, the only Christians in the village, to take water from the hamlet’s common well to pressure them to return to Hinduism. In spite of their limited resources, the Christians dug their own well.

“Earlier, some miscreants vandalized a Hindu temple in the village and the blame fell on the Christians,” the source said. “Later, however, police investigation revealed that they had not done it. Yet the villagers continued to treat them with contempt.”

Please remember these two brothers in your prayers.

Air Force's Historic Season

Finally, national sports writers are starting to notice Air Force basketball. 9-1, Air Force has beaten two Big 12 teams, a Pac-10 team, and an ACC team. ESPN.com's Andy Glockner has a great article about the secret behind Air Force's success (hint--it has something to do with teamwork--gasp!) and the history that Air Force is creating with it's great start. Not just in its 9-1 record, but in how it has won those games.

According to stats guru Ken Pomeroy, since the 1999-2000 season, there is only one other team from outside the "Big Six" conferences with at least two wins by that margin over Big Six schools. New Mexico also beat Colorado this season, by 41, and thrashed Mississippi last season by 53, but both of those wins were home games in the Lobos' intimidating Pit. Overall, there have been only two seasons since 1999-2000 (before this current one) in which there were at least three total wins of that margin involving a non-major school over a Big Six team.

Furthermore, if you look across all teams – Big Six or not – in that same time frame, there have been only 15 cases of a team having at least three wins by 30 points or more over BCS-league competition in one season. All 15 teams were at least at-large worthy and 13 of those teams got a top-four seed in that season's NCAA Tournament. Nine of them were No. 1 seeds. Only one of the 15 (Kansas last season) didn't win at least one NCAA Tournament game.

This year's non-conference schedule and results should silence the critics who complained last March when Air Force made the NCAA tournament despite a weak non-conference schedule.

Assyrian Christians in Iraq--no voice, no protection

Michelle Vu reports in The Christian Post on a protest held Monday outside the White House by Christians trying to bring attention to the plight of Assyrian Christians in Iraq. Although most religious and ethnic groups are suffering in Iraq, Vu reports that this tiny segment of the Iraqi population is especially vulnerable.

“This should be a priority because Assyrian Christians are the indigenous people of Iraq and many people don’t know that,” explained Paul Isaac, one of the rally’s organizers. “Because of their small population, weak status, and lack of regional support they have no one to protect them from all the violence.”

Isaac pointed to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) report statistic that although Assyrians comprise only five percent of Iraq’s population, they make up nearly 40 percent of the refugees fleeing Iraq. He said that although all the ethnic and religious groups are suffering in Iraq, “it is clear that the Assyrian Christians are suffering by far the most…and they really have no one to protect them…”

In addition to the troubling Assyrian refugee statistic, there has been a rise in reports of persecution of Assyrian Christians in Iraq. Recently, in October, a 14-year-old boy near Mosul died by a crucifixion-murder. In the same month, Father Paulis Iskander was beheaded in Mosul.

For more information on the Christians of Iraq, visit ChristiansofIraq.com. For much more information on the persecution of Christians around the world, visit The Voice of the Martyrs. And as always, remember our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in your prayers.

Illegal aliens arrested while working in secure area of airport

LaShawn Barber has a great post about a company, TC Drywall, that had been hired to hang drywall in a secure area of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. How do we know about this? 6 workers from TC Drywall were arrested. All are illegals from Mexico. My favorite passage from LaShawn:

What’s especially irritating to me is having to go through mind-numbingly inane security lines with Transportation “Safety” Administration employees (whose methods of screening are inconsistent across different airports) where I have to take off my shoes, sweater or jacket, and submit myself to random searches and pack “liquids” in containers no larger than three ounces in quart-sized plastic bags, knowing illegal aliens — people who pose the real security risk, for crying out loud! — are working in areas I’d be arrested for venturing into accidentally…it’s madness!

TC Drywall's website is currently down for "technical reasons".

Another interesting tidbit from LaShawn's post is at the top, about a landscaping company in Boston which hires illegal aliens. Oh, and, as the Boston Globe reports, this company has done work for Mitt Romney for the past 10 years. It appears that he never inquired of the company's owner as to the legal status of the workers. Could become an issue which causes Romney to back out of his run for the Presidency. We'll see. Hopefully, this story becomes huge so that it finally shows the politicians that we are serious about cracking down on illegal immigration and the employers who hire illegal aliens.

The Nativity Story--"The dumbest movie I've ever seen"

We decided to take the family to the local theater to see "The Nativity Story". I'd heard some good things about it, and I wasn't disappointed. The script pretty much stuck to the work on which it was based, the Bible. Since the Gospel accounts of the Christmas story don't include everything that happened, we have to guess at some of the things that were said and done. One especially moving moment was when Joseph and Mary were talking to each other about their fears during their travel to Bethlehem. After Mary wonders when they will first be able to tell that Jesus is God, Joseph admits being apprehensive, saying, "I'm afraid that I won't have anything to teach him." Another touching scene is when Mary bathes Joseph's feet as he sleeps by the river after many days of traveling to Bethlehem.

There were several times during the movie when I was moved to tears. So it was with surprise when I stood up to leave at the end that I heard a lady (in her 60's) a few rows back say to her friends in a not-so-soft voice, "That was the dumbest movie I've ever seen!" I couldn't believe my ears. My first reaction was irritation. But that soon turned to feeling sorry for her. I'm not sure what she had been expecting since the title of the movie is pretty clear about what the movie is all about. Then I felt good, because the story of Christ's birth is really meant for people exactly like her. She couldn't have been in a better place for that 1 hour and 41 minutes. A seed was planted in her heart. Someday I hope that seed is watered and begins to grow.

UPDATE: Here's an interview with Catherine Hardwicke on the making of The Nativity Story. Turns out that Keisha Castle-Hughes, the 16-year-old actress who plays Mary, is pregnant by her 19-year-old boyfriend. Not exactly a perfect parallel to Mary, but at least she has chosen to have the baby.

Hmmm...what's wrong with this picture?

Alright, here's another entry for the PC Idiocy files. According to Tom Breen, an AP writer, in the Chicago Tribune, it appears that the community's "holiday display" in St. Alban's, West Virginia, is missing a few main characters. In a scene which has a manger, shepherds, a guiding star, camels, and a palm tree, the town has left out Mary, Joseph, and oh, yeah, the baby Jesus.

The parks superintendent said Jesus was left out because of concerns about the separation of church and state. But Mayor Dick Callaway said it was done for purely technical reasons: "It's not easy to put a light-up representation of a baby in a small manger scene, you know."

Huh? Sounds like a cop-out to me. And the mayor's answer doesn't explain why Mary and Joseph didn't make it into the scene. I tend to believe the parks superintendent's answer. Why even put up the display if you're not going to have Mary, Joseph, and Jesus?

According to an article in The Charleston Daily Mail, the park superintendent stated:

"You could call it a manger," he said. "We call it a place for the animals. It looks like two things coming up on the sides with a roof-like structure. What it looks like depends on your imagination. We have never had a baby Jesus or a Mary, a Joseph or wise men."

Visiting the display, Melinda Ashby got it right.

Ashby, 35, called the scene one of the dumbest she's ever seen in her life.

"I asked ‘where is the baby Jesus?' I was told that it is a desert scene and to use my imagination," she said. "I would be less offended if the manger scene had not been there at all. Jesus is the reason for the season."

Well said.

Oh, and to give credit where credit is due, the photo was taken by Craig Cunningham.