What’s a carbon tax?

A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas). More to the point: a carbon tax is the core policy for reducing and eventually eliminating the use of fossil fuels whose combustion is destabilizing and destroying our climate.

A carbon tax is a way — the only way — to make users of carbon fuels pay for the climate damage caused by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If set high enough, it becomes a powerful monetary disincentive that motivates switches to clean energy across the economy, simply by making it more economically rewarding to move to non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency.

"Double Bind?"

How a secret Russian airlift helps Syria's Assad

Private Russian military contractors are being sent on clandestine flights to Syria, plane-tracking data shows. And a trail of documents reveals how aircraft from the West end up in the hands of those on U.S. blacklists.

Russian authorities have angrily denied that “Novichok,” a substance blamed by the British authorities for poisoning a former Russian military intelligence officer in the United Kingdom, has ever existed. But new evidence unearthed in Russia shows not only that an entire group of substances called Novichok did indeed exist, but that some was obtained by criminals after being produced in a government lab as late as 1994 — and has since killed at least two people.

The funds Hungary gets from the EU are channelled to Orban’s cronies

The funds Hungary gets from the European Union, say opposition politicians, are often channelled to Mr Orban’s cronies, including his son-in-law and the mayor of his home village, nurturing a new class of oligarchs. (They deny it.) The health-care and education systems are in decline, especially outside the capital. Hungary has the fifth-lowest life expectancy in the EU, at 76.2 years—lower than Albania’s 78.5

Czechs discover hidden film record of Stalin’s antisemitic show trial

For decades, events surrounding the revolutionary tribunal that resulted in the execution of Rudolf Slánský, general secretary of the Czechoslovak party, and 10 other defendants was shrouded in mythology – with most visual and verbal evidence apparently lost to posterity. But an event that has fascinated historians could soon be seen in graphic detail after footage and audio recording of the 1952 trial was found.

Dozens killed in suspected chemical attack on Syrian rebel enclave

Dozens of people have been killed in what local medics say was a toxic gas attack on the besieged town of Douma near Damascus. Videos and images showed bodies of dead children and other family members, some foaming at the mouth.

...

“There is no such thing as a good war and a bad war. Nothing, but nothing, can justify the use of such instruments of extermination on defenceless people and populations,” he said at the end of a Mass in St Peter’s Square.

La Mer

Spain Jails Catalan Leaders

The former chief of Catalonia's regional police and other regional security officials have been charged with sedition over their role in events leading last year to a banned independence referendum. ("sedition" is a fascist concept)

Marta Rovira, the head of the Catalan Republican Left party who was also summoned to the High Court, announced Friday she had left Spain to live in exile in Switzerland.

Oriol Junqueras, the former Catalan vice president, has been in prison since December.

A German court ruled that Catalan independence leader Puigdemont cannot be extradited to Spain on a charge of rebellion and ordered him to be released him on bail while it considers his return on a lesser charge

In a written statement, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, reiterated the Scottish government’s support for the “Catalan people to determine their own future”. 

“We will submit there are no guarantees of due process in Spain, of a right to a fair trial in a country where most members of the Catalan government are already in prison or in exile. If returned we submit she will be subjected to degrading and inhumane treatment by the Spanish authorities.”

The Right Of Self-Determination Should Be Enforced As Against A Claim Of Territorial Integrity When Doing So Will Advance The Fundamental Values Of The International Community

[in 1940 Gestapo handed over the President of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, to Franco's Fascist State - who had him executed.]

Mitsuko Uchida on Debussy

Boulez on "Jeux"

The Hell with Samba Beat

execution-style murder of a Rio de Janeiro councilwoman who was an outspoken critic of police killings of poor residents.

The death of a Brazilian community leader followed concerns about contaminated water around the aluminium plant.

There were 58,383 violent deaths in Brazil that year (2015), according a report by the Brazilian Forum for Public Security,

Brazilian lawmakers closed ranks to shield President Michel Temer from standing trial on obstruction of justice and corruption charges, sparing him in the second such case in just two months.

IT WAS a moment many Brazilians thought they would never see. On April 7th, after spending three days among his supporters in the headquarters of the metalworkers’ union in São Bernardo do Campo, a suburb of São Paulo, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s former president, handed himself over to the federal police.

On 10 March 1959

tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, rising up against China’s illegal invasion and occupation of their homeland. Every year thousands of Tibetans and their supporters take to the streets across the world to mark the anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day.

It is a critical time in Tibet. China continues to intensify its grip on Tibet by imposing severe limitations on freedom of expression and opinion, by detaining non-violent protesters without judicial process, and by interfering with cultural expression and religious tradition to the point where Tibetans believe their very existence as a people is at risk. In the past five years the situation has caused at least 150 Tibetans across the plateau, young and old, to set fire to their own bodies in protest against China’s rule.

Imagine being snatched from the street or even your home. You are loaded into a police car and driven to an unknown location. Your friends, colleagues and family don’t know where you are. Nor do you. 

Tibetan and European Women

Sonam Lhatso, a nun from Kardze County, Sichuan province, is serving a 10-year prison sentence after she took part in a protest against patriotic education sessions and forced denunciation of the Dalai Lama, on 14th May 2008.

She was arrested along with 50 fellow nuns from Pangri Nunnery and was subjected to beatings. According to some sources, she might be held in Mianyang Prison, Sichuan Province. The authorities have refused to confirm this, or provide any details about her wellbeing, despite appeals from her fellow nuns.

Yeshe Choedron is a retired medical doctor. She has been in prison since 2008, when she was arrested in Lhasa and later sentenced to 15 years in jail for “espionage”. Her arrest and imprisonment are believed to be linked to her participation in the 2008 protests and her human rights activism.

Yeshe Choedron is a mother and has not been able to see her children since her sentence. According to sources in Tibet, she is also in very bad health. She is believed to be in Drapchi Prison in Lhasa.

Bulgaria just refused to nationally apply the powerful European convention to fight violence against women. But that’s not all. It currently leads the EU - and the Union-wide process of ratifying the convention. Member states could vote to make Europe a safer place for all women as soon as in 2 weeks - but not if Bulgaria keeps resisting taking meaningful action - at home and at EU level. It now stands in the way of protecting 250 million women and girls: in Bulgaria, but also all across Europe.

A journalist was killed for investigating the Mafia in the EU

Kuciak had been working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), and the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) on what may have turned out to be a far more dangerous story: An investigation that delved into the infiltration into Slovakia of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia

Agricultural land in Slovakia ended up in the hands of families linked to the Italian ‘Ndrangheta – who then used it to benefit from EU farm subsidies.

Baltic countries are a major entry point into the western financial system for Russian cash. Last week the US Treasury accused Latvia’s third biggest bank of “institutionalised money laundering”. 

The time has come to ask whether membership in the European Union is still a quality assurance seal for democracy and the rule of law among member states. The bloc has clearly failed to enforce its stated values on its periphery. 

The Jokhang, also known as the Qoikang Monastery, Jokang, Jokhang Temple, Jokhang Monastery and Zuglagkang

A fire has hit the most important shrine in Tibetan Buddhism - the Jokhang Monastery

The Jokhang monastery is more than 1,000 years old and is listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Reports say that Chinese authorities quickly tried to block footage and images of the fire appearing on social media.

Beijing maintains tight control of news reports from Tibet, where Buddhist sites have been a focal point for separatist unrest in the past.

Foreign journalists are not able to enter Tibet without special permission.

Tibetan Year 2145

Bon Cham Dance

The Guilty Soul of Pope Francis

Francis, tormented perhaps by his own dark and secret history, has misunderstood who are the victims and who are the perpetrators in this Chilean story. Instead of following the example of the Good Samaritan and comforting the wounded bodies and souls of those violated by sexual abuse, he has sided with the priest, Barros, and the other prelates who not only did nothing to alleviate that suffering, but were part of the gang that beat the victims and robbed them of their dignity.

Libera Me (excerpt)

China puts Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk on trial for subversion

Wangchuk complained of a “systematic slaughter of our culture”.

“In politics, it’s said that if one nation wants to eliminate another nation, first they need to eliminate their spoken and written language,” he said.

In the Times’ stories Wangchuk notably says he wants to use Chinese law to build his case, and praised President Xi Jinping.

Beijing says it “peacefully liberated” Tibet in 1951 and insists it has brought development to a previously backward region.

But many Tibetans accuse the Chinese government of exploiting the region’s natural resources and encouraging an influx of China’s majority Han ethnic group that critics say is diluting the native culture and Buddhist faith.

Quarter of land will be drier under 2°C

More than a quarter of Earth's land surface will become "significantly" drier even if humanity manages to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the goal espoused in the Paris Agreement, scientists said on Monday (Jan 1).

Iranians against corruption and for women rights

In some demonstrations, women cast off their hijabs, defying the country's strict Islamic dress code. The protests have provided an opening for Iranian women to push for equal rights.

Oiseaux Exotiques

The end of net neutrality may be here

The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015, were intended to keep the internet open and fair. Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon were explicitly prohibited from speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps.

Le soleil des eaux

Clotilde Rosa (11/5/1930 – 24/11/2017)

Maria Clotilde Belo de Carvalho Rosa Franco (11 May 1930 – 24 November 2017) was a Portuguese harpist, music educator and composer.

...

In 1970 Rosa co-founded the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group (GMCL) with composer Jorge Peixinho

Tom Koopman after his concert in Faro

Thug who battered ex-wife with spiked bat walks free after Portuguese judges quote the Bible

The warped judges expressed "some understanding" for the attacker who believed his former wife cheated on him.

Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist

The journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her home.

Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday afternoon when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which blew the vehicle into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby field.

Spanish Terrorism Against Catalonia

Spanish riot police smashed their way into a polling station in Catalonia on Sunday as they sought to shut down a banned independence referendum and there were reports of officers firing rubber bullets in the regional capital Barcelona.

Uncontacted Tribe Killed By Gold Miners

The killings allegedly took place last month along the River Jandiatuba in western Brazil, but the news only emerged after the goldminers started boasting about the killings, and showing off “trophies” in the nearest town.

[others are criminals in many ways, often in the most blatant ways. The hell in samba fashion...]

In memoriam of Catalonia's terrorist attacks victims

Palm Oil and Gold

Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, which thrives in humid climates. The large majority of palm oil production occurs in just two countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, where huge swaths of tropical forests and peatlands (carbon-rich swamps) are being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations, releasing carbon into the atmosphere to drive global warming while shrinking habitats for a multitude of endangered species. 

The Brazilian president Michel Temer has abolished an Amazonian reserve the size of Denmark, prompting concerns of an influx of mineral companies, road-builders and workers into the species-rich forest. The dissolution of the Renca reserve – which spans 46,000 sq km on the border of the Amapa and Para states – was described by one opposition senator Randolfe Rodrigues of the Sustainability Network party, as the “biggest attack on the Amazon of the last 50 years”.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died

Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most famous pro-democracy advocates and political prisoners, just died in Chinese custody at a hospital. He was 61. He is the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in state custody since the days of Nazi Germany. 

[Liu Xia is a poet and photographer. She married Xiaobo in 1996 when he was imprisoned in a “reeducation through labor” camp. His “crime” then was to have urged the government to find a peaceful way to unite mainland China with Taiwan, that is, to do so without the dire threats commonly issued by the People’s Republic of China. Liu Xia visited her husband in prison after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. She was then placed under house arrest and deprived of a mobile phone, Internet access, and all but a tiny number of visitors. She was allowed out briefly in 2013 to attend the trial of her brother, Liu Hui—part of what human rights lawyers say is official retaliation against the family. She called out to a crowd of well-wishers: “Tell everybody that I’m not free.”]

Zoltán Kocsis (30 May 1952 – 6 November 2016)

Xenakis - 'Metaux'

The Panama Papers

A massive leak of documents exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies.

The leak also provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world. The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.

...

The documents make it clear that major banks are big drivers behind the creation of hard-to-trace companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other offshore havens. The files list nearly 15,600 paper companies that banks set up for clients who want keep their finances under wraps, including thousands created by international giants UBS and HSBC.

Documents from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database showed the relations of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, the politburo standing committee, had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm. They included relatives of Chinese president Xi Jinping. 

A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organisations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to this week’s highly sensitive revelations. 

The Portuguese Parliament 

has provoked outrage by failing to condemn the long prison sentences handed to the so-called Luanda book club, 17 dissidents convicted of political defiance against Angola’s government.

...

Dos Santos, 73, has been president since 1979 and has been accused of presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments, amassing a great fortune for himself, his family and friends, while two-thirds of his country lives below the poverty line.  

“If Angola was the front office of corruption, Portugal was the back office” [Well... it used to be the front office]

[On Portugal: it had more domestic violence fatalities than all Europe's terrorism victims in the last 10 years]

[Portugal's Siresp rescue network 'failed forest fire victims'] 

[Although the destruction wrought so far this year does not match the record 426,000 hectares destroyed in 2003, this year's fires have been the deadliest.]

["There are people setting fires, bad people. It is the only explanation that I can see, there is no other," said Maria Conceicao, another resident of Pucarica.] [few months later was Ophelia...]

[A falling tree has killed at least 13 people and injured 49 at a religious ceremony on the Portuguese island of Madeira.]

[While studying in Aveiro (Portugal), Ms. Antunes said, she experienced the pressure herself when she refused to join a hazing ritual that required simulating sexual intercourse, as well as licking yogurt from a boy’s lap. Her mother complained to the university, but no action was taken.]

[The Portuguese court’s decision “ignored the physical and psychological importance of sexuality for women’s self-fulfillment and other dimensions of women’s sexuality”, the European court said.]

[Defense officials in Portugal say they are compiling a list of weapons and ammunition stolen from the national armory in a brazen daytime raid.]

[The Portuguese internal affairs minister said she was concerned about the theft of 50 pistols from the national police premises,]

[Portugal's dark history, or a just a slice of it...]

In memoriam of Brussels' terrorist attacks victims

Losar

Losar is Tibetan for New Year. The Tibetan calendar is based on Tibetan astrology, a synthesis of Indian and Chinese astrology. The Tibetan calendar is lunar, which means it follows the cycles of the moon, so the New Year begins on a new moon.

Pierre Boulez (26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016)

Islamic State claims Paris attacks

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for a coordinated assault by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people at locations across Paris that President Francois Hollande said amounted to an act of war against France.

In the worst attack, a Paris city hall official said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos launched an assault on the building. Dozens of survivors were rescued, and bodies were still being recovered on Saturday morning.

Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, the official said, including an apparent double suicide bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.

The assaults came as France, a founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks.

It was the worst such attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, in which 191 died.

The FBI has said it is now investigating the San Bernardino shooting in the US state of California as a "terrorist" attack, adding that it had uncovered new evidence.

David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, also said the attackers tried to destroy evidence - crushing two cell phones and throwing them in a rubbish bin.

Upon reading the original source documents of Islam—the Quran, hadith, biographies, and histories—one is struck by the casual and matter-of-fact way that Muhammad and his Muslims traffic in violence and bloodshed.

What fascinates the jihadis ... is “pure revolt”, and this includes kicking against their parents’ tightly bound geographical and linguistic communities. The European jihadis who go to Syria and Iraq speak French or English peppered with badly pronounced Qur’anic Arabic and are surprisingly indifferent to the old colonial struggles and injustices

Several suicide bombers were found with women’s underclothes in their pockets, for the virgins they would meet in paradise

THE Barcelona terror attack has increased the divisions between the Spanish and Catalonian administrations with either side blaming the other for failings in the run-up to the killings.

In a propaganda video released by the SITE Intelligence Group Wednesday, an ISIS member describes the Barcelona perpetrators as "our brothers," while another threatens "Spanish Christians" and promises to return the country to the "land of the Caliphate."

Document Exposes Intensification of State-sanctioned Religious Repression in Troubled Tibetan County

Chinese authorities have intensified anti-religious campaigns by systematically converting Tibetan monastic institutions into Chinese government offices and the monastic population into Chinese Communist Party members in Diru (Ch: Biru) County in Nagchu (Ch: Naqu) Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), in Kham province.

These campaigns, implemented by the local County government and party through a new regulation, has severely curtailed the right to freedom of religion and belief of local Tibetans, particularly the monastics many of whom have been expelled and punished, as the authorities exercise absolute control over the functioning and administration over religious institutions.

TCHRD recently obtained a copy of Document no. 224 issued by the Diru County government on 19 September 2015 that calls for the intensification and deepening of the campaign to purge and reform religious institutions. The document contains a set of regulations divided into three chapters, 24 sections and 74 articles and has been circulated among relevant County, Township/town level offices, Monastery Management Committees, relevant management committees, monastic and village based permanently stationed cadres.

The regulation identifies and targets 24 activities through which religious institutions (monasteries, temples and hermitages) will be “purged and reformed” in Diru County. For instance, the Chinese authorities will keep an account of all monastic properties, and retain the sole authority to decide over their storage and repair. The authorities will monitor and control religious gatherings and ceremonies restricting local Tibetans from organizing or participating in important religious rituals.

Chinese authorities in Tibet have ordered the destruction of houses built in traditional style in three counties outside the regional capital Lhasa, with their replacement by Chinese-style dwellings scheduled for completion in five years, according to a local source.

Demolition and construction will begin in 2016 in Tagtse (in Chinese, Dazi), Lhundrub (Linzhou), and Maldro Gongkar (Mozhugongka) counties, located outside Lhasa city, a resident of the area told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

“We are being forced to accept and support the plan without any choice,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Seriously?

Jonah Leher (207, pp. 141-142) proposes that the 1913 riot at the first performance of Stravinky's "Rite of Spring" was caused by the effect of unfamiliar sounds on certain neurons which, when overstimulated, precipitate a flood of dopamine that can, in turn, produce symptoms resembling those of schizophrenia. Irving Massey in The Neuronal Imagination (Preface)

Jailed Saudi blogger awarded Europe's rights prize

Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger jailed and lashed for allegedly insulting Islam last year, has been awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize.

"[The blogger is an] unusually courageous and ... exemplary man [who is facing punishment that] objectively can only be described as brutal torture," Schulz said on Thursday. Badawi, 31, was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam.

The Portuguese like the crooks because they do the same (when they can)

Portugal has this culture of keeping everything quiet and secret. It doesn't do to rock the boat, and so outrageous things continue to happen here and nobody does anything about them.

The latest piece of idiocy has a government minister claiming there is very little or no corruption in Portugal. That is printed in our local paper as a straight-faced piece, and no comment made. Extraordinary! Anywhere else the wretched woman would be torn to shreds for making such an outrageous statement. But not in Portugal.

This is the country where government ministers and various rich people have been using kids from the orphanages as sex toys. This is the country where EU money poured in over the border with no restrictions, and government hangers-on, and all their friends were lapping it up and turning it into speed boats, and luxury mansions in Brazil. 

Monster's kingdom

When a condemned killer said the woman he and others brutally gang-raped on a New Delhi bus was responsible for what had happened to her, his comments were shocking in their callousness and lack of remorse. But the underlying view has wide acceptance in India.

Alexander Litvinenko and Karl Marx’s stepchildren

In November 2006, Litvinenko, by then a British citizen, met two other FSB officers in a London hotel, and they took tea together. Litvinenko’s tea was laced with polonium-210, an extremely rare element. He died a slow and painful death. The two agents, Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, slipped back to Russia, where the former is a member of parliament and the latter a businessman. Owen’s report pointed the finger not just at Lugovoy and Kovtun, but at the Russian president who, Owen wrote, “probably” authorized the murder.

“We regret that a purely criminal case has been politicized and has darkened the general atmosphere of our bilateral relations,” Maria Zhakarova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said primly in response to the report.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the reports findings were a grave matter and that further action would be taken against Russia on top of the sanctions already imposed. But, Cameron added, the UK would have to continue “some sort of relationship” with Russia. Right away, a chorus of realists – cynics, if you prefer – said, “You bet it will.”

The UK is the biggest investor in Russia – largely through the energy company BP, which has invested $16 billion in the country through its 20 percent stake in the Russian state’s oil corporation, Rosneft. It’s a troubled relationship: Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft, is banned from travelling to the West. But Bob Dudley, head of BP, sits on the Rosneft board

Beethoven - Piano Sonata no. 32, op.111 - Sviatoslav Richter

Tibet protesters’ ‘heavy handed’ arrest in UK!

Apart from arresting them on Oct 20 for protesting against the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping with waving of Tibetan flags, the Met Police of UK’s capital London have raided the homes of Tibetan women Sonam Choden (31) and Jamphel Lhamo (33) and charged them with conspiracy to protest under the country’s Public Order Act 1986. London-based Chinese democracy activist Shao Jiang, a survivor of the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre and who was also arrested on Oct 20, too had his home raided.

Jonathan Stewart Vickers (October 29, 1926 – July 10, 2015)

Maria Friderike Radner (1 January 1981 – 24 March 2015)

The latest blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades

They are only the latest blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades. It’s the same ideology that sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for a decade under a death sentence for writing a novel, then killed his Japanese translator and tried to kill his Italian translator and Norwegian publisher. The ideology that murdered three thousand people in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The one that butchered Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam, in 2004, for making a film. The one that has brought mass rape and slaughter to the cities and deserts of Syria and Iraq. That massacred a hundred and thirty-two children and thirteen adults in a school in Peshawar last month. That regularly kills so many Nigerians, especially young ones, that hardly anyone pays attention.

Most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.

“The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous,” Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for poorly armed civilians in a defence group that fights Boko Haram, told the Associated Press.

He said the civilian fighters gave up on trying to count all the bodies. “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now,”.

&

Do not let compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law—if you believe in God and the Last Day—and ensure that a group of believers witnesses the punishment. (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Quran, New York: Oxford UP, 2004)

A newly released audio message from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) features a top official in the group, Harith al Nadhari, praising the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo earlier this week.

On perversion

A perverse structure remains perverse even when the acts associated with it are socially approved