May G-d Avenge Their Blood!

 By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

You go to pick up your children from school.  A man on a moped stops, opens fire upon the students, then takes off.  A massacre has occurred.  And you know that the gunman will never be caught.  This is what happened today in Toulouse, France.

Rabbi Sandler of Kiryat Yovel in Jerusalem and his sons Aryeh, 6, and Gavriel, 3.5, were murdered in Toulouse Monday morning, as was 8 year-old Miriam Monsonegro, daughter of the director of Ozar HaTorah Toulouse, Yaacov Monsonego.

Binyamin Toati, Head of the France Desk of Bnei Akiva, told Arutz Sheva before the names were published that there are reports that the man who was killed is a rabbi who served as an Israel shaliach (emissary) at the school and that two of his children were killed with him.

French press reported that two children were among at least three people killed in a shooting outside a Jewish school. Two other children are reported fighting for their lives. The French news reports said the dead are a teacher and two children, and that two other children were badly wounded.

They said a man opened fire on people waiting at a school drop-off point and then fled on a motorcycle. The gunman used two weapons – one with a caliber of 9mm, the second with a caliber of 11.43 mm.France's Interior Ministry ordered increased surveillance around Jewish schools, and Interior Minister Claude Gueant said he will visit the school on Monday morning.

The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, said he was "horrified" by what happened in Toulouse. "I am bruised in my body and my soul," he added.

The shooting comes three days after three French paratroopers were shot dead by a man 30 km. from Toulouse. AP reported that two French paratroopers were shot in the town of Montauban, near Toulouse, on Friday, when a gunman on a black motorbike pulled up at a cash machine and opened fire. An 11.43 mm. weapon was used in that attack as well, according to the news reports.

Police saw a connection between those killings and to another deadly shooting of a soldier in Toulouse just over a week ago.

Source

I will wager you that the gunman in this case is a Muslim, is in the pay of Iran, and that this is the start of a reign of terror to the Jewish people.  In fact, former Counterterrorism Bureau chief Brig.-Gen. (res) Nitzan Nurielis warning Jewish institutions to beef up their security immediately.

Israelis and Jews around the world are under a growing threat from Islamic terrorists and need to demand that local authorities provide better security, former Counterterrorism Bureau chief Brig.-Gen. (res) Nitzan Nuriel said Monday, hours after a gunman killed four people outside of a Jewish school in France.

Nuriel told The Jerusalem Post that a coalition of jihadist organizations have made a decision to attack Israeli and Jewish targets wherever they may be without distinction. "They attack whoever they can and wherever security is lax," he said.

According to Nuriel, who stepped down from his post several months ago, Iran and terror groups are trying to deter Israel from taking action against them by carrying out these attacks overseas. He said it was possible that the attack against the school in France was not terror related, but he did draw a direct line between the recent spate of bombings plots in India Georgia, Thailand and Azerbaijan.

Nuriel urged Israelis who travel overseas to take extra precautions and to be more vigilant in the face of the terror threat.

"It makes no difference for the terrorist if the target is a representative of the Jewish Agency, an Israeli tourist or a local Jew," he stated.

When choosing accommodations abroad, Nuriel said that Israelis should not make the decision based solely on the quality of the hotel or hostel, but rather they should also take into consideration whether there is security at the facility or building.

Secondly, he said Israelis should not post pictures of their trips on Facebook and other social media websites, since photographs could then be used by terrorists to track them, as well as to identify targets frequented by large numbers of Israelis.

Source

I fear that this is just the start of terror attacks on Jews around the world.  And that these deaths are just the first of many more to come.

Ethicists Argue for Acceptance of After Birth Abortions

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

[Update- Susan] Ironically, the Journal is now defending it's position that there should be a "reasoned engagement," on murdering infants, while complaining that some people think it is just as "reasoned" to "engage" in discussion of whether the authors themselves are "worthy" of living after having proposed murdering babies. [End Update]

Hat tip to Iggymom

When is a child a person? At conception? Viability? Birth? In the last case it is none of the above. According to Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne if you don't want the child and give birth, you have the right to kill it.

Two ethicists working with Australian universities argue in the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so to should be the termination of a newborn.

Alberto Giubilini

Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne write that in “circumstances occur[ing] after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

The two are quick to note that they prefer the term “after-birth abortion“ as opposed to ”infanticide.” Why? Because it “[emphasizes] that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child.” The authors also do not agree with the term euthanasia for this practice as the best interest of the person who would be killed is not necessarily the primary reason his or her life is being terminated. In other words, it may be in the parents’ best interest to terminate the life, not the newborns.

Francesca Minerva

The circumstances, the authors state, where after-birth abortion should be considered acceptable include instances where the newborn would be putting the well-being of the family at risk, even if it had the potential for an “acceptable” life. The authors cite Downs Syndrome as an example, stating that while the quality of life of individuals with Downs is often reported as happy, “such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

This means a newborn whose family (or society) that could be socially, economically or psychologically burdened or damaged by the newborn should have the ability to seek out an after-birth abortion. They state that after-birth abortions are not preferable over early-term abortions of fetuses but should circumstances change with the family or the fetus in the womb, then they advocate that this option should be made available.

The authors go on to state that the moral status of a newborn is equivalent to a fetus in that it cannot be considered a person in the “morally relevant sense.” On this point, the authors write:

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.


Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

Giubilini and Minerva believe that being able to understand the value of a different situation, which often depends on mental development, determines personhood. For example, being able to tell the difference between an undesirable situation and a desirable one. They note that fetuses and newborns are “potential persons.” The authors do acknowledge that a mother, who they cite as an example of a true person, can attribute “subjective” moral rights to the fetus or newborn, but they state this is only a projected moral status.

The authors counter the argument that these “potential persons” have the right to reach that potential by stating it is “over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being because, as we have just argued, merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence.”

And what about adoption? Giubilini and Minerva write that, as for the mother putting the child up for adoption, her emotional state should be considered as a trumping right. For instance, if she were to “suffer psychological distress” from giving up her child to someone else — they state that natural mothers can dream their child will return to them — then after-birth abortion should be considered an allowable alternative.

The authors do not tackle the issue of what age an infant would be considered a person.

Read the full story here

I suppose this is the next step by the left to "empower" a woman. Why should anyone be "burdened" or "saddled" with a child. The child has no value. It cannot ask work, dress itself, feed itself. It is nothing to these so-called ethicists. Ethics? These two don't know the meaning of the word. They feel as long as the "mother" doesn't want the child, she should have the right to kill it.

The American Declaration of Independence states this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Have we forgotten those words? Have we forgotten the simplest commandment of G-d:

Deuteronomy Chapter 5


16. Thou shalt not murder.

Why should a child, born into the world, be MURDERED for the reason that it is inconvenient for the woman. She should have thought of the consequences of her actions 9 months earlier when she decided to engage in sexual activity.

How a society treats the least and most helpless of its citizens shows how civilized, how mature it is. This goes against all the rules of society. But I fear it will be forced on us by those on the left. First the "mother" choosing to kill her child, then the government forcing women to kill their children. Especially those children who do not measure up to the government's idea of perfection.

Russia And China Veto UN Resolution On Syria

By Susan Duclos



Anyone remember the statement below?

"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace"--- Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared after her visit to Syria and her meeting with its dictator Bashir Assad, 2007

Many were outraged that Pelosi, as Speaker of the House at the time, would go to Syria against the wishes of the White House and talk with leaders of a country that sponsors terrorists.

2012- Now we have reports of over 200- 400 people being massacred by Assad and Barack Obama finally issuing a statement condemning what he calls an "unspeakable assault." Furthermore Obama demands Assad "step aside and allow a democratic transition to proceed immediately." Obama's statement continues "Yesterday the Syrian government murdered hundreds of Syrian citizens, including women and children, in Homs through shelling and other indiscriminate violence, and Syrian forces continue to prevent hundreds of injured civilians from seeking medical help."

Anyone think Assad is going to even give a thought to Obama's wishes? Both Russia and China vetoed a very watered down resolution that the 13 other members of the Security Council voted for.

Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a Western and Arab-sponsored U.N. resolution condemning Syria’s violent repression of anti-government demonstrators, throwing their prestige and power behind President Bashar al-Assad as he intensifies a military operation aimed at crushing the 10-month-old uprising.

The Russian and Chinese stance came as a blow to U.S. and European efforts to rally behind an Arab League plan that would require Assad to step down, making way for a democratically elected unity government with a leader commanding support from both the government and the opposition.

Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations expressed the United State's disgust for the Russia and China vetoes.

The council has “been held hostage by a couple of members,” she said, adding that “these members stand behind empty arguments and individual interests while seeking to strip” any resolution of meaningful terms.

“A couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant,” Rice said. She said Saturday’s action was even “more shameful” given Russia’s role in selling arms to Assad’s government.

France and Germany's representatives also expressed their dissatisfaction with the end result of the Security Council's vote.

I wonder if Pelosi still thinks the road to peace goes through Damascus and Assad?

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2011 Update on Clark Fish

There's continued to be a lot of interest in the story of Clark Fish on this site: I think folks can settle down now, though - he's not going anywhere. On August 2, 2010, Clark Fish was committed to the Arizona Department of Corrections to serve a life sentence for the murder of Elizabeth Anne Friedel.

Beth Friedel's family are the ones who had the grace to ask the prosecutor to shelve the death penalty for him this summer and offer him life without parole, otherwise he would likely still be facing execution for kidnapping, torturing, and killing her as he did...which he denied doing until he was actually convicted, only at which time his attorneys claimed the PTSD made him do it.

See, there's much more to Clark Fish than PTSD, as Beth Friedel's brother pointed out to me - so don't be fooled. Just donning a military uniform does not make one a hero to be exempted from the responsibility of his/her actions, either. As many soldiers well know, in fact, there are an awful lot of people who just pull out their uniforms to hide their own inadequacies, and wrap themselves in ribbons and medals the way that politicians wrap themselves in the flag. It's show.

Vets and others out there with PTSD that's messed up your lives - Clark Fish is no sympathetic martyr to identify with. Women - he's a wreck alright, but tormenting and taking the life of an innocent human being can take its toll on the mind and soul. Do not be sucked in by his victimized appearance. He may not be very brave, but he survived Maricopa County's jail so he's tough enough. He'll find his place in prison in time. Maybe he'll even get a grip on his rage and abusiveness and help teach other vets to do so as well so they don't re-offend. Stranger things have happened.

Clark's biographer got quite close to him over the course of his trial, which may have obscured some more deeply disturbing things about his crimes and defense, but you can easily find some pretty decent human beings who have endured unbelievable trauma and never turned around to hurt anyone in response. Rape survivors don't regularly go on a nut and kill creepy men because of their trauma; most children who were sexually molested do not grow up to be pedophiles; and the vast majority of soldiers who have been in combat and seen violence first-hand don't come back and re-enact it in our streets and libraries.

That said, it appears enough people want to know how to reach prisoner Fish now that he's out of Joe's jail and in prison that I should post it. The ADC link at the top should help you keep current if he gets moved - though once someone lands in SMU, it can be a good long time before they're able to climb out and get into a less-restrictive hole. Follow this link for policies you should be aware of if you want to correspond. Here is also the family & friends guidebook.

Clark A. Fish (ADC #255567)
ASPC-Eyman/SMU I
P.O. Box 4000
Florence, AZ 85132

As a final note, though, if you want to do something good for veterans caught up in the criminal justice system, look for your local veterans court, if you have one, or inquire at your closest homeless shelter or VA hospital. There are lots of traumatized souls behind and beyond the razor wire who could use help putting their lives back together, who have hurt only themselves. My bet is that they could use the kind of fan club that Clark Fish already has behind him, so please look before you leap with your good intentions.

Emily's Scents

An Erotic Sensibility?



I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too --
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

-Emily Dickinson

There's a fun book out called What the Nose Knows which explores all things smelly in an entertaining and informative way. Written by respected science writer Dr. Avery Gilbert, a section of the book is devoted to smell and creativity. Several paragraphs are about Amherst's Emily Dickinson and her nearly obessional devotion to flowery fragrances.



This near-recluse lived her entire life at the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was knowledgeable about botany and obsessed with flowers, of which she grew many kinds on the property and in an indoor conservatory. Cultivating flowers was a hobby for many women of her time, but unlike them Dickinson could not have cared less about showy scentless orchids.

Her exclusive passion was scented flowers. Her favorites make an impressive list: French marigold, mignonette, peony, primrose, Sweet Sultan, Sweet William, roses of various kinds, lilac, mock orange, honeysuckle, jasmine, heliotrope, and sweet alyssum. Dickinson was not into subtlety; she preferred the strong perfume of tropical jasmine and ripe "Bourbon" roses. Her conservatory was saturated in scent. Given the Victorian sensibilities of the time, these lush blossoms were considered too suggestive for the drawing room. Instead she placed pots of them in her bedroom and next to her writing desk. Not surprisingly, flowers are a major theme in her work; one in five of her poems refers to flowers in some way.

Too suggestive for the drawing room? You mean the flowers made you horny? He says she kept them by her bed and writing desk so perhaps that helps explain the erotic tension many scholars have noted in her work. Gilbert, however, quoting several passionate passages from Dickinson's poems, goes even further:



This casts a sinister new light on the poet's album of of pressed flowers, lovingly preserved in the Emily Dickinson room of the Houghton Rare Book Library at Harvard. Scholars celebrate it as a beautiful record of her passion for flowers. I think the album is a creepy thing - it houses the trophies of a serial killer.

I think Dr. Gilbert is getting a bit carried away there and reading too much into too little, but it's still an interesting notion. The whole book is full of such unexpected insights about the role of aromas in our lives. I recommend it.

Did you know that in 1987 a flower was named after Emily Dickinson? This website describes it as "One of the few variegated Hostas with fragrant lavender flowers. An irregular creamy margin on a medium green leaf." Here's a photo:



Kesey and Rand

I stumbled upon an interesting essay in the Los Angeles Times that makes comparisons between the work of Ken Kesey and Ayn Rand.



The journals that Kesey kept while composing his books detail how serious he was about the craft of writing, and how good. He poured every chaotic impulse and vision he had into "Cuckoo's Nest" and "Notion" but found ways to keep the basic storylines clear and simple. In "Cuckoo's Nest," the "wild goose" renegade Randle P. McMurphy rolls into the mental ward like Shane coming to town and is at once set in opposition to Big Nurse Ratched who, if not exactly the villain of the fable, is certainly the representative of society's cruel and oppressive forces. In "Notion," our first clue about the logger Hank Stamper is given by an arm that Stamper has affixed to a pole in his yard, a dead man's arm with defiant middle finger sticking upward. Both books are set in Kesey's native Oregon, and both have the same blunt plot motor that served Ayn Rand in "The Fountainhead": the guy who just refuses to give in.



Rand uses the device to tell her favored story about the triumph of the individual will, while Kesey takes it in a diametrically opposed direction. The resistance of McMurphy and Hank Stamper is glorious but destroys them and brings death to others. Thus a dilemma is raised: Does America want brute individualism or the comfort and suffocation of social order? Kesey's life tells us which side he came down on, but in his fiction he didn't answer the question; instead, he explored its ambiguities in dramatic and shattering ways. Kesey's subject was "the great wild American hollow, which is scarier than hell."

Rough Justice

Even by Springfield standards it was a terrible and senseless crime - a 20 year old pizza delivery person named Corey Lind was brutally murdered while out on a delivery. Arrested was Alex Morales, who told police three different versions of what happened, each more incriminating than the last. Here's what he looked like when arrested.



Here's a photo by David Molnar of what he looked like when he appeared in court.



However Morales showed up with more than just a haircut and a new suit. He also had a whole new alibi he thought would get him off the hook. According to the Springfield Republican:

Taking the stand in his own defense, Morales testified he had first met Lind, of Chicopee, about 2 1/2 weeks before the day of the slaying. Morales stated he was walking home from work and Lind stopped and asked him if he knew where a certain address was located. Lind, delivering pizza, gave him a ride home that night and four or five other nights, he told the jurors.

Morales testified that he wanted a ride from Truman Circle home to Massasoit Street in the early morning hours of Dec. 8 and that he called Domino's to order a pizza in the hopes that Lind would be the delivery person and would give him a ride.

One of the first questions defense lawyer Alan J. Black posed to Morales was if he had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child. Morales said he had been sexually abused by an older brother for nearly two years when he was 7 years old.

In his testimony, Morales said Lind asked if he wanted to hang out together and Lind drove to Monson in search of a field where Morales said he had gone to with his girlfriend.

Morales said that as they were sitting in Lind's car in the field, Lind moved close to him and put his hand on his leg. He told the jury he then "freaked out" in part because of his childhood sexual abuse.

Morales testified he got out of the car and thought Lind was coming after him and yelling at him, perhaps with a knife, so took his own knife and kept swinging it, cutting Lind.

Asked repeatedly by Black why he didn't tell police that he was acting in self-defense after an unwanted advance, Morales kept saying he was scared and he didn't want to talk about his own childhood sexual abuse or what he alleges were Lind's advances.



So it would be okay for Morales to have killed Lind if it could be proven that the person murdered was gay? I don't know which is more contemptible, that the defense lawyer even allowed his client to take the stand with such a story, or that it was thought that it might work. But of course, it's perfectly acceptable to defend your manhood by killing a queer if he makes a pass at you. Especially if a faggot bothered you when you were young.

To the jury's credit they quickly returned with a guilty verdict, showing they gave the "I only killed a queer" defense little credence. But just the fact that such a defense was even attempted shows that we still live in a society where there are those who feel that even murder is justified as long as the victim is gay.

I don't want to sound mean about it, but I hope that in prison Morales is introduced to gay sex - and not in a gentle way.

Today's Video

Okay boys and girls, the word for today is SUBVERSIVE.

Danny Croteau

A Flashback



Joanne Wade is a true-crime writer who has made a career out of writing about notorious Western Mass murders. Her first book A Thread of Evidence was a thinly fictionalized account of the notorious Chapin murder case, which shocked the city in the 1950's, back when Springfield was still innocent enough to be shocked by crime.

Now Wade has another book No Tomorrows, featuring true life essays on murdered children, which includes a section on Springfield's most infamous unsolved murder, the slaying of Danny Croteau.

It also includes other unsolved child murder mysteries, such as Agawam's Lisa Ziegert. The book doesn't have much in the way of new material regarding these cases, but it is still fascinating to have all the information on these crimes, dribbled out by the media over the years, all collected in one place. Nothing would be better than to have this book jog someone's memory in a way helpful to solving these mysteries.

Many times when I tell people that I knew Danny Croteau there is a pregnant pause, as if they expect me to follow that revelation with some pearl of insight into his murder. If so, then they are always disappointed because I have no insights to offer. For one thing I didn't know Danny that well. He lived in 16 Acres and I in ol' Pine Point, so our paths may not even have crossed at all except that the Boy Scout troop I belonged to was a joint troop of boys from both my church, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and Danny's which was called Saint Catherine. Danny also attended Our Lady of the Sacred Heart school, which was just a half a block from where I grew up. In fact the most famous picture of him, the one they always run with news accounts, is of Danny posing for a portrait in his OLSH uniform, as shown in the background of the picture below of Danny's parents.



The media always likes to refer to Danny as "an altar boy" but I never knew that about him when he was alive. It would have made no impression on me if I did, lots of kids were altar boys, it was the sort of thing your parents would push you to do and had no real significance. I think the media likes to describe him as an altar boy because it makes the crime seem that more heinous - "Altar Boy Brutally Murdered!" is a catchy headline. From what I remember of Danny he was much more of a hellion than an altar boy, smoking cigarettes and experimenting with marijuana and alcohol even at a very young age. I think this picture more accurately captures his impish and mischievous character:



I sometimes wonder whether I would remember Danny at all if he hadn't been murdered. I was older than him, and he and his friends were dismissed by us older scouts as "the little kids." When I try to recall who the other little kids were I can't do so well, which makes me think that it was Danny's death, and it's violent manner, that burned him permanently into my memory. Danny was the first person in my age group to die, and certainly he was the first person I knew who had been murdered. I can't tell you what my emotions were at the time, I try to remember but it's a blank. The code we lived by as boys would not have allowed any outward display of emotion and we were all pretty much encouraged to bury whatever feelings we had.

Danny's was a very inconvenient murder in many ways, which is why I think it was never solved. For one thing, the only suspect was a Catholic priest, Rev. Richard Lavigne, in an era when the moral authority of the church was never questioned. Lavigne was also a political figure, a leftist priest typical of the time who fought for left-wing causes in the name of "social justice." Therefore the local liberals always wanted the Rev. Lavigne front and center at all their political rallies, his priestly collar providing proof of the moral superiority of their cause. Now all those good Democrats, some of whom went on to play prominent roles in Springfield politics, all behave as if they never knew him.

I also knew Father Lavigne, but there was nothing unique about that. To be a Catholic boy in Springfield of a certain age meant that you were certain to meet Father Lavigne. Frankly, I thought nothing bad about him at the time and can offer no insights into whether or not he was Danny's murderer.

However I will repeat what I always vow whenever I think about Danny Croteau, which is that if there is any justice in this world, then somebody, someday is gonna pay for that crime.



On the Street

A well-known crossguard sent me these early morning pics of her post in Springfield.




Happy Day

Today I went to the UMass Renaissance House to groove to the view.



Big billowy clouds passed majestically overhead.



It was beauty that made ya wanna jump!



Today's Video

Last month I ran into J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. on the streets of Northampton.



Here's the grey-haired man as fair haired boy at UMass in 1986.