John C. Wright's Journal

Merely posting a link. This is from an article by Mark Steyn:

From the Office of the District Attorney in Philadelphia:

Viable babies were born. Gosnell killed them by plunging scissors into their spinal cords. He taught his staff to do the same.

This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale – and it barely makes the papers. Had he plunged his scissors into the spinal cord of a Democrat politician in Arizona, then The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and everyone else would be linking it to Sarah Palin’s uncivil call for dramatic cuts in government spending. But “Doctor” Kermit Gosnell’s mound of corpses is apparently entirely unconnected to the broader culture.

Why? Well, because it’s all about a woman’s “right to choose”. What women? Well, how about the misses Robyn Reid and Davida Johnson:

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Robyn Reid didn’t want an abortion. But when her grandmother forcibly took her to an abortion clinic one wintry day in 1998, Reid figured she’d just tell the doctor her wishes and then sneak away.

Instead, Kermit Gosnell barked: “I don’t have time for this!” He then ripped off her clothes, spanked her, wrestled her onto a dirty surgical stretcher, tied her flailing arms and legs down and pumped sedatives into her until she quit screaming and lost consciousness, she told the Daily News yesterday…

In 2001, Davida Johnson changed her mind about aborting her 6-month fetus after seeing Gosnell’s dazed, bloodied patients in his recovery room, she said. But in the treatment room, Gosnell’s staffers ignored her protests, smacked her, tied her arms down and sedated her into unconsciousness, she said. She awoke no longer pregnant.

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Hat tip to kmo for this horrifying newsflash:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-russia-antarctica-lake-idINTRE7135MB20110204

For 15 million years, an icebound lake has remained sealed deep beneath Antarctica’s frozen crust, possibly hiding prehistoric or unknown life. Now Russian scientists are on the brink of piercing through to its secrets.

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Only posting a link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-02-07-column07_ST_N.htm

I was looking up the name of some obscure minority to be the ruling power in a future century. My theory was that no Roman in the First Century could have imagined the world where the world would be dominated by an obscure cult from the province of Judea in one corner of the Empire would dominate the world, and by a language, people and culture springing from the Tin Islands near Thule from the opposite corner of the Empire, where the savages held back by Hadrian’s wall painted themselves blue with Woad, and burnt captives alive in wicker baskets. Likewise, the imperial and hegemonic powers of the future will springs from corners of the world currently obscure.

So for the most frivolous reason imaginable I became aware of the Copts.

Their two or three centuries of persecution as heretics from my Church were followed by twelve or thirteen centuries under the persecution as dhimmi infidels under the heel of the haughty Moslem conquerer.  As the fortunes of history turn, in some decades the Christian minorities rose to second-class citizenship status, in other falling to the status of slaves, livestock, or vermin to be eraticated.Their history is merely a long bloody record of genocide and hatred akin to that suffered by the Jews, and, in that part of the world, by the same hands.

And they are merely one of many Christian sects throughout the lands traditionaly and anciently Christian in North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Near East.

When I was an atheist, I was, of course, completely unaware of Christian persecutions in other lands, and floated along in happy ignorance, believing that most religious persecutions were by Christians against others, not by others against Christians. Now that I am awake, I have heard statistics claiming two-thirds of all crimes of violent oppression against religious minorities worldwide are performed against Christians. Far more have died in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century for professing the name of Christ than in the ancient world.

This is the age of martyrs.

Only Posting a Link! hattip: whswhs

Those who scoff at the heroism of characters in books, it is refreshing to see the real life models on which they are based.

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=27100

A lone soldier, armed with a khukuri knife, is riding a train when it is attacked by 40 robbers. They take jewelry, necklaces, cellphones, laptops–when when they start stripping an eighteen year old girl to rape her, she calls out to the soldier, “Help me, a sister!” and he rises, draws his kukri, kills three and wounds eight, and the others flee. They were armed with swords and (apparently) empty pistols.

His name is Bishnu Shrestha of Baidam. May this name live in glory.

For those of you don’t know what a kukri looks like: