Fire is symbolic of the destruction of evil. Symbolically people who are burned alive are human sacrifices that are expiating evil from the community. Tainted victims are purified through fire. Fire is considered a powerful transformer of the negative to the positive. Because of such properties, fire is commonly found in purification rites throughout the world. In other cultures polluted persons may be required to walk around, jump over, or jump through fire. Historically, burning a person to death was reserved for the most threating evil, such as heresy or witchcraft and considered an extreme form of purification. In the context of honor killing the use of fire is not only symbolic but practical. Practical in Iraq because most of the homes do not have electricity so every house has a large supply of oil which makes it easier to conceal honor killings under the guise of suicide or kitchen accidents. In the context of the murder of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh fire is an Islamic purification ritual that serves vengeance and restores honor and purity to the community of believers.RTWT.
Islamist jihadists from different movements, countries, sects, and factions all emphasize the need to cleanse Islam of its impurities. Al Qaeda’s ideological belief is the purification of Islam through violent struggle. Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri have continually called on supporters to purify Muslim holy lands of infidels, un-Islamic beliefs, and practices. The Islamic State cleanses Islam of its impurities while protecting its territory in the same manner as Mexican cartels, using brutal tactics that are justified as vengeance.
The title of the video, Healing the Believers’ Chests, is a quote from the Quran: “Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you over them, heal the breasts of Believers.” (Qur’an 9:14). It was reported to mean ‘giving them pleasure’ – interpreted as a reference to achieving revenge. That is one interpretation, however healing is symbolic of purification, the title Healing the Believers’ Chests can be understood as cleansing the community of the contamination of impurity. Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh’s alleged crimes symbolically unleashed an epidemic of contagious evil. The function of the burning ritual is a communal act of expiation, expelling the contagious evil of an infidel enemy through fire. Having ISIS fighters participate and watch makes it a communal sacrificial ritual. Ritualizing the violence justifies it and makes it sacred. Once the transgressor is ritually killed the impurity is removed, the evil has been expelled, taboo has been ameliorated and justice is served. The body is immediately buried under the earth, another purifying element, restoring honor and purity.
Filming and disseminating the ritual killing strikes fear into the hearts of enemies and attracts new recruits. Similar to an arsonist that is fascinated with fire, disaffected young people will be attracted to this ritual burning. Like moths to a flame.
And so the method on how to kill Al-Kassasbeh was not some dreamed up concoction, but stemmed from Islam as the quest on how to execute him circulated the Muslim world. In the burning scene video (see 1:00 above) ISIS gave the Islamic edict straight from the top Islamic authority of Ibn Taymiyya’s jurisprudence:More.
“So if horror of commonly desecrating the body is a call for them [the infidels] to believe [in Islam], or to stop their aggression, it is from here that we carry out the punishment and the allowance for legal Jihad”...To desecrate the victim while alive is part and parcel of Islam in hope that people would convert through sheer fear or to repulse the enemy. The backdrop of the video is in Raqqa where over 20 ISIS terrorists met their fate by U.S. led coalition in which according to ISIS were burned alive. To ISIS, they followed the Quran “So whoever has assaulted you, then assault him in the same way that he has assaulted you.” (Q2:194)
My finger hovered over the ‘click’ button.Actually, there'd no reason to suspect a backlash in the Muslim world had Islamic State immolated a Christian American or an Israeli Jew.
I’d heard that ISIS had burned a young Jordanian pilot alive in a cage, and there were numerous people posting the snuff movie on social media.
I wanted to watch it.
To see for myself whether it really was, as many claimed, the ‘sickest video ever made’.
But I hesitated.
I don’t ‘need’ to see a man burned alive. Nobody ‘needs’ to see such an abomination.
It’s diabolical enough that it happened at all. Why compound the misery of that man’s life ending by acting as some kind of complicit voyeur?
Then I pressed click anyway.
I watched those murderous bastards light up a trail of petrol into a small cage, I watched as Lieutenant Moaz al-Kasabeh caught fire, and I watched as he screamed in horror and burned to death.
It was just as repulsive and sickening as I feared it would be. Truly the worst thing I have ever had to witness, and as a journalist for 30 years I’ve seen a lot of unpleasant things.
But I’m actually glad I watched it.
Glad I saw in real time, on professionally-crafted movie-quality video, exactly what these monsters are capable of.
Glad I know they have no limits, no humanity, no semblance of any kind of soul.
Glad I saw the undisguised joy in their evil little faces as they perpetrated such a despicable act on a fellow human being.
Glad they repeatedly switched the camera shot from blow-torch to their victim’s face so we can be under no illusion what utter sadists they are.
I’m glad about all this because it allows me to feel such uncontrollable rage that no amount of reasonable argument will ever temper it.
And that’s precisely what we all have to feel now towards ISIS and those who support its hideous activities.
We all have to feel the same kind of unquantifiable, collective horror everyone felt when the full scale of the Nazi concentration camps was revealed.
Hitler’s Nazis and ISIS share similar aspirations and values:
The extermination of vast numbers of people.
The pursuit of power through death and mayhem.
The ability and willingness to commit physical and mental torture and murder so depraved that it defies belief or reasoned understanding.
And as with the Nazis, the world must now come together to rout and destroy them.
The big question is how?
This is not a conventional enemy that operates with an army, air force or navy.
It’s a disparate, amorphous entity whose tentacles spread wide around the Middle East.
Hard to track, thus hard to defeat.
But I believe ISIS made a big strategic error today.
Moaz al-Kasabeh was a devout Muslim.
He was the first high profile Sunni Muslim from a state involved in the US-led coalition ‘war’ effort to be executed.
By killing him in such a grotesquely barbaric way, ISIS should rouse the decent, civilized Muslim world as never before.
It’s easy to justify attacks on the West by screaming to young, impressionable poverty-ravaged minds that it’s ‘revenge’ for all the bombing campaigns in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It’s far tougher to justify the bestial immolation of a young Muslim man to other young Muslims...
Amman vows to step up role with international coalition fighting ISIS a day after video released of Jordanian pilot being executed by terror group.
There's nothing more childish than living in a fantasyland.Cowardly.
There's a famous painting of a pipe, by Belgian artist Rene Magritte. Under the pipe it says in French, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" — "This is not a pipe."
The average onlooker says, "of course that's a pipe!" But Magritte is challenging the viewer to acknowledge that, in fact, they are not looking at a pipe, but, more accurately, a painting of a pipe.
It's surrealism at its most annoying. Magritte was that know-it-all at the party who corrects your grammar during a fun game of beer pong: "It's with 'whom' am I playing next."
To the average person, it's pretty clear we're at war with Islamic extremists. Yet, to hear President Obama tell it, we are not technically at war, and even if we are, he wants you to believe religion has little to do with it.
He and his surrogates have repeatedly refused to say the words "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam" when describing our enemies in groups like Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS and Boko Haram, just to name a few.
His administration was caught flatfooted last week when White House spokesman Eric Schultz painfully strained to justify negotiating with Taliban, insisting it was not a terrorist group but "an armed insurgency."
Surreal indeed...
Peters sounded off on the terrorists who are seen in the video, saying, “Those terrorists are the people the president and Democrats don’t even want to waterboard.”Watch: "Peters: 'Murder of Pilot Is 'Better than the Best Sex' Jihadists Have Had...'"
“America needs to get serious," he said.
Peters called for a limited number of boots on the ground for a limited time.
“My God, ISIS is taking over the Middle East, and our president […] can’t even say Islamist terror.”
Russian military activity is at its highest level since the Cold War, destructive state-sponsored attacks on U.S. computer systems are on the rise and Islamic State is expanding into unstable parts of North Africa, the Pentagon's top intelligence official told Congress on Tuesday.Keep reading.
The warnings came against the grim backdrop of the release of a video that appeared to show a Jordanian military pilot being burned alive by his Islamic State captors, and a day after President Obama proposed reversing a five-year decline in military spending to help battle the Sunni Muslim extremists who control parts of Iraq and Syria.
Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the militant group Islamic State has steadily extended its reach despite near-daily U.S.-led coalition airstrikes that began in August. More than two dozen extremist groups around the world have merged with or pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and its ranks continue to swell with new recruits.
"With affiliates in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, the group is beginning to assemble a growing international footprint that includes ungoverned and undergoverned areas," Stewart, who took command of the Pentagon's spying arm last month, told the House Armed Services Committee in an annual review of national security threats.
The militant group's appeal apparently extends to Canada. Police there on Tuesday charged three men suspected of having ties to an Islamic State recruiting cell in Ottawa. The three reportedly were trying to travel to Syria and were not plotting an attack in Canada when they were arrested.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that Islamic State "has a fairly evangelical strain about it."
"They want to metastasize. They want to grow. They want to increase their influence," Kirby said. "We're watching it as closely as we can."...
The video of the burning of the Jordanian pilot is entitled, “Healing the Believers Chests.” That’s from the Qur’an: “Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you over them, heal the breasts of Believers.” (Qur’an 9:14) Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who years ago tried to murder students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the name of Islam and jihad, also referenced this verse when explaining his actions.
And then there is this story from Muhammad’s conquest of Khaybar: “Kinana b. al-Rabi`, who had the custody of the treasure of B. al-Nadir, was brought to the apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came (T. was brought) to the apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, ‘Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?’ he said Yes. The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr b. al-Awwam, ‘Torture him until you extract what he has,’ so he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad b. Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his brother Mahmud.” (Ibn Ishaq 515).
“King Abdullah of Jordan says pilot’s reported ISIL murder does not resemble Islam,” the Telegraph, February 3, 2015...
President Barack Obama expressed sympathy for the new Greek government as it seeks to rollback its strict bailout regime, saying there are limits to how far its European creditors can press Athens to repay its debts while restructuring the economy.FLASHBACK: "Greece Still Wants Free Lunch."
“You cannot keep on squeezing countries that are in the midst of depression. At some point there has to be a growth strategy in order for them to pay off their debts to eliminate some of their deficits,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria aired Sunday.
He said Athens needs to restructure its economy to boost its competitiveness, “but it’s very hard to initiate those changes if people’s standards of livings are dropping by 25%. Over time, eventually the political system, the society can’t sustain it.”
Mr. Obama expressed hope that an agreement would be reached so Greece can stay in the eurozone, saying, “I think that will require compromise on all sides.”...
The deficit would remain under $500 billion a year through 2018, but would rise to $687 billion by 2025, according to administration projections — though levels of red ink could still be considered manageable when measured against the size of the economy.And see the Hill, "President to unveil $4 trillion budget that busts spending limits."
But the cost of financing the government's debt would spiral as the debt grows to more than $25 trillion by 2025 and interest rates rise. According to the projections. Interest costs would jump from $229 billion this year to $785 billion in 2025...
In the 2013-14 school year, 11.5% of students districtwide received waivers to avoid vaccination, said Ms. Pinsker, who noted that the district has encouraged immunization for students.Dang, that's one of the highest waiver rates I've seen. More kooks down Santa Monica way than even the ultra-entitled Marin-San Francisco elite-culture corridor.
San Francisco faces a challenge: promoting educational options without undermining classroom diversity.Hey leftists!
San Francisco faces a challenge: promoting educational options without undermining classroom diversity
Each January, parents across San Francisco rank their preferences for public schools. By June, most get their children into their first choices, and almost three-quarters get one of their choices.
A majority of families may be satisfied with the outcome, but the student assignment system is failing to meet its No. 1 goal, which the San Francisco Unified School District has struggled to achieve since the 1960s: classroom diversity.
Since 2010, the year before the current policy went into effect, the number of San Francisco’s 115 public schools dominated by one race has climbed significantly. Six in 10 have simple majorities of one racial group. In almost one-fourth, 60 percent or more of the students belong to one racial group, which administrators say makes them “racially isolated.” That described 28 schools in 2013–2014, up from 23 in 2010–2011, according to the district.
But the San Francisco Public Press has found the problem may be even more stark: If Asian and Filipino students are counted together — the standard used by the Census — together the number of racially isolated schools in the last school year rose to 39.
The drive toward racial isolation in the district parallels a larger trend in the city: With many wealthier families opting for private alternatives, the public school system is becoming racially and economically isolated from the city as a whole.
Why does it matter whether schools are diverse? One reason is academic performance. Recent studies from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, show that many students do much better on tests when placed in integrated classrooms, and that all kids are much less likely to grow up with racial stereotypes and prejudices. Far from being opposed to each other, excellence and diversity go hand in hand.
How did this resegregation of schools happen in a city where almost everyone from district leaders to parents supports the ideal of diversity?
Dramatic income inequality, shifting demographics, rising housing costs and the proliferation of language programs are fueling the trend. But the biggest culprit, say outside researchers and local education leaders, is the feature that defines the student assignment system: school choice.
The district provides parents with a dizzying amount of information about the schools. The application process requires time, language skills and access to technology — advantages that often come with education and financial resources. “Choice is inherently inequitable,” San Francisco Board of Education member Sandra Fewer said at a December meeting on student assignment. “If you don’t have resources, you don’t have choice.”
Orla O’Keeffe, the district’s policy director, said affluent, educated parents compete for the small number of seats at the highest-performing schools. Children from poor and working-class families, disproportionately black and Latino, often end up in underperforming schools.
The district currently has few tools to address the problem. “If you’ve got racially isolated choice patterns, then your capacity to create diversity using a choice mechanism is constrained,” O’Keeffe said. “There’s none of that in our system. It’s all about what families want.”
The choice system tries to make the schools diverse by giving more preference to students who live in neighborhoods with low average test scores, a proxy for measuring poverty. But some Board of Education members are acknowledging that mechanisms intended to promote diversity are flawed.
“The story of our efforts at student assignment is the story of unintended consequences,” said Rachel Norton, a board member since 2009. “In some ways, it’s a perfect mismatch of intent and results.”...
Journalist Seth Mnookin's new book, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear, explores the public health scare over vaccines and autism. The 1998 paper in The Lancet by British physician Andrew Wakefield that sparked the panic has long since been debunked and retracted, and Wakefield himself has been barred from practicing medicine and accused of fraud. But that hasn't stopped thousands of people from refusing to vaccinate their children out of fear that they could become autistic."Entitlement." That's so disgusting, but then regressive leftism is disgusting.
Mnookin warns of grave consequences. Recent outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, and other preventable infections have sickened thousands of children and killed more than a dozen in the United States. Vaccine rates are falling below the level needed to prevent an outbreak in a growing number of communities, including ones with wealthy, educated populations.
Last week, Mnookin spoke with ScienceInsider about why.
Q: There's a perception that vaccine refusal is especially common among affluent, well-educated, politically liberal parents—is there any truth to that?
S.M.: It's dangerous to make broad generalizations about a group, but anecdotally and from the overall data that's been collected it seems to be people who are very actively involved in every possible decision regarding their children's lives. I think it relates to a desire to take uncertainty out of the equation. And autism represents such an unknown. We still don't know what causes it and we still don't have good answers for how to treat it. So I think that fear really resonates.
Also I think there's a fair amount of entitlement. Not vaccinating your child is basically saying I deserve to rely on the herd immunity that exists in a population. At the most basic level it's saying I believe vaccines are potentially harmful, and I want other people to vaccinate so I don't have to. And for people to hide under this and say, "Oh, it's just a personal decision," it's being dishonest. It's a personal decision in the way drunk driving is a personal decision. It has the potential to affect everyone around you.
Q: But why liberals?
S.M.: I think it taps into the organic natural movement in a lot of ways.
I talked to a public health official and asked him what's the best way to anticipate where there might be higher than normal rates of vaccine noncompliance, and he said take a map and put a pin wherever there's a Whole Foods. I sort of laughed, and he said, "No, really, I'm not joking." It's those communities with the Prius driving, composting, organic food-eating people...
Pete Carroll’s confounding last-minute play call Sunday night will be dissected, debated and mocked for as long they play Super Bowls. It might have been prodded by a sneaky-brilliant decision by Bill Belichick.Interesting.
With 1 minute, 6 seconds seconds left and the Seahawks down by four points, Marshawn Lynch rumbled to the 1-yard line on first down. The Patriots possessed two timeouts, and the Seahawks had one left. The clock ticked down, and at first it appeared odd for Belichick not to exhaust one of his timeouts. With the Seahawks on the doorstep, New England needed to conserve seconds for a desperation drive in response.
Belichick’s choice to not use a timeout, though, made life more difficult for the Seahawks by complicating their play-calling options. It may have even convinced them to throw their ill-fated pass on second down.
Imagine Belichick had called a timeout in hopes of saving seconds for Tom Brady. The Seahawks would have had enough time to hand off the ball three times without fear of the clock running out, particularly because they had a timeout of their own.
But with Belichick allowing the clock to tick, Seattle’s calculus became more complex, especially as they used almost the entire play clock...
FOR the last week, liberal journalists have been furiously debating whether a new political correctness has swept over the American left. The instigator of this argument was New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, normally a scourge of Republicans, whose essay on what he dubbed “the new P.C.” critiqued left-wing activists for their zeal to play language cop, shout down arguments and shut down debate outright.
It will surprise absolutely nobody that I think the phenomenon that Chait describes is real. But I come not to judge but to explain — because whether you like or loathe the “P.C.” label, the rise of a more assertive cultural left is clearly one of the defining features of the later Obama years. This assertiveness is palpable among younger activists, on campus and online; it’s visible in controversy after controversy, from Ferguson to campus rape. And it’s interesting to think about exactly where it’s coming from.
The first source, probably, is disappointment with other forms of left-wing politics. A decade ago, the left’s energy was focused on Iraq; in President Obama’s first term, it was divided between his quest for a new New Deal and Occupy Wall Street’s free-form radicalism. But now the antiwar movement is moribund, Occupy has gone the way of the Yippies and it’s been years since the White House proposed a new tax or spending plan that wasn’t D.O.A.
What’s more, despite all the books sold by Thomas Piketty, the paths forward for progressive economic policy are mostly blocked — and not only by a well-entrenched Republican Party, but by liberalism’s ongoing inability to raise the taxes required to pay for the welfare state we already have. Since a long, slow, grinding battle over how to pay for those commitments is unlikely to fire anyone’s imagination, it’s not surprising that cultural causes — race, sex, identity — suddenly seem vastly more appealing.
The second wellspring is a more specific sort of disillusionment. Call it post-post-racialism: a hangover after the heady experience of electing America’s first black president; a frustration with the persistence of racial divides, even in an age of elite African-American achievement; and a sense of outrage over particular tragedies (Trayvon Martin, Ferguson) that seem to lay injustice bare.
Post-post-racial sentiment is connected to economic disappointments, because minorities have fared particularly poorly in the Great Recession’s aftermath...
The biggest TV show of the year delivered on all fronts Sunday: laughs, tears, controversy, music, dance – and a heck of a football game.Keep reading.
Nothing in American culture is quite like the Super Bowl, an unofficial national holiday that about one-third of the country celebrates by watching four-plus hours of television together.
Super Bowl XLIX proved worthy of the attention, thanks mostly to the seesaw battle between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, won by New England, 28-24, and a nearly flawless performance by NBC Sports.
So many years we spend Monday morning talking about the commercials or the halftime show, but much postgame chatter this year will be about New England rookie Malcolm Butler’s game-saving goal-line interception or Seahawks receiver Jermaine Kearse’s improbable catch seconds earlier. Both plays were perfectly captured by NBC’s cameras, allowing us to drop our jaws again and again with the replays.
The visual image that will stick the longest may well be NBC’s sideline reporter Michele Tafoya chasing after Butler to score a post-game interview, as the unlikely hero ran off, seemingly overwhelmed by the moment.
When you have a song called “Roar,” you put a lion in your concert. When you have a song called “Firework,” you arrange for some pyrotechnics.More.
And when you’re playing the Super Bowl halftime show, as Katy Perry did Sunday night, you bring every other bit of spectacle you can think of — whether it’s mentioned in one of your songs or not.
Headlining the biggest gig in pop, Perry crammed a full-scale production into her 12 1/2 minutes on (and above) the field of the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., beginning with her entrance astride a gold lion about three stories tall and ending with a regal wave from the moving platform that made the 30-year-old singer look like a shooting star.
But Perry, who appeared to be singing live, also brought real vocal power to her performance as well as the surprising dash of humility required to give over a sizable portion of her time to her special guest, Missy Elliott.
In all, it was the kind of pop extravaganza that even the NFL’s crusty classic-rock contingent could love...
TOKYO — When Islamic State militants posted a video over the weekend showing the grisly killing of a Japanese journalist, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted with outrage, promising “to make the terrorists pay the price.”More.
Such vows of retribution may be common in the West when leaders face extremist violence, but they have been unheard of in confrontation-averse Japan — until now. The prime minister’s call for revenge after the killings of the journalist, Kenji Goto, and another hostage, Haruna Yukawa, raised eyebrows even in the military establishment, adding to a growing awareness here that the crisis could be a watershed for this long pacifist country.
“Japan has not seen this Western-style expression in its diplomacy before,” Akihisa Nagashima, a former vice minister of defense, wrote on Twitter. “Does he intend to give Japan the capability to back up his words?”
As the 12-day hostage crisis came to a grim conclusion with the killing of Mr. Goto, the world has suddenly begun to look like a much more dangerous place to a peaceful and prosperous nation that had long seen itself as immune to the sorts of violence faced by the United States and its Western allies...
It is an indisputable fact that carbon emissions are rising—and faster than most scientists predicted. But many climate-change alarmists seem to claim that all climate change is worse than expected. This ignores that much of the data are actually encouraging. The latest study from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that in the previous 15 years temperatures had risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit. The average of all models expected 0.8 degrees. So we’re seeing about 90% less temperature rise than expected.Right.
Facts like this are important because a one-sided focus on worst-case stories is a poor foundation for sound policies. Yes, Arctic sea ice is melting faster than the models expected. But models also predicted that Antarctic sea ice would decrease, yet it is increasing. Yes, sea levels are rising, but the rise is not accelerating—if anything, two recent papers, one by Chinese scientists published in the January 2014 issue of Global and Planetary Change, and the other by U.S. scientists published in the May 2013 issue of Coastal Engineering, have shown a small decline in the rate of sea-level increase.
We are often being told that we’re seeing more and more droughts, but a study published last March in the journal Nature actually shows a decrease in the world’s surface that has been afflicted by droughts since 1982.
Hurricanes are likewise used as an example of the “ever worse” trope. If we look at the U.S., where we have the best statistics, damage costs from hurricanes are increasing—but only because there are more people, with more-expensive property, living near coastlines. If we adjust for population and wealth, hurricane damage during the period 1900-2013 decreased slightly.
At the U.N. climate conference in Lima, Peru, in December, attendees were told that their countries should cut carbon emissions to avoid future damage from storms like typhoon Hagupit, which hit the Philippines during the conference, killing at least 21 people and forcing more than a million into shelters. Yet the trend for landfalling typhoons around the Philippines has actually declined since 1950, according to a study published in 2012 by the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate. Again, we’re told that things are worse than ever, but the facts don’t support this.
This is important because if we want to help the poor people who are most threatened by natural disasters, we have to recognize that it is less about cutting carbon emissions than it is about pulling them out of poverty...
GLENDALE, Ariz. – And then it broke. The magic bubble that Seattle had been living under, the immortal elixir, the string of amazing finishes, the incredible touch of Russell Wilson and decision making of Pete Carroll — it all ended in a blink, the most unlikely of plays, a forced pass by Wilson to Ricardo Lockette with just 20 seconds left that was snatched at the goal line by New England's Malcolm Butler.More.
And suddenly, the Patriots were Super Bowl champions. It happened so fast, I'm not sure the Patriots believed it themselves. Tom Brady, still reeling from watching a ridiculous circus catch by Seattle's Jermaine Kearse moments earlier — one that looked like the final dagger to the Pats' hopes — suddenly threw his hands in the air and screamed. So did every New England fan.
And so, for that matter, did every Seattle fan. Because a team with Marshawn Lynch in the backfield, a team that only needs one yard to score a championship-winning touchdown, should not be knifing a pass into coverage in the most crowded part of the field.
But the Seahawks did. And they paid for it. Final score: 28-24.
Champ, dethroned.
In an incredible finish to an incredible Super Bowl, it was a bad call and a bad pass that left the biggest mark. And if, upon hearing the names Lockette and Butler, you said, "Who?" well, you're not alone.
But it was that kind of Super Bowl. These two teams, the best in the business, were so adept at taking away each other's strength, it left the stage vacant for the second-tier guys.
Or in some cases, the end of the bench...
Feel like I just watched the NFL version of the #Royals-#Athletics wild-card game. Wow.
— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) February 2, 2015GLENDALE, Ariz. — The last time the New England Patriots played a Super Bowl in the Arizona desert, it was a most unlikely hero that made the play of the game, a play that broke the Patriots’ backs.Well, I still can't believe the finish.
This time the Patriots returned to the desert for Super Bowl XLIX, and it was again a most unlikely hero that made the play of the game, this time the play that delivered Lombardi Trophy No. 4 to New England.
The Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks, 28-24, to reclaim the title of NFL champions thanks to an interception in the end zone by undrafted rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler.
Facing second-and-goal from the 1, the Seahawks made the stunning decision to pass rather than hand it off to power back Marshawn Lynch. Russell Wilson threw right into traffic, and Butler, who a little more than a year ago was playing for West Alabama, stepped in front of Ricardo Lockette for the play of his young career.
The Patriots become the sixth franchise in NFL history to win at least four Super Bowls, joining the Steelers, Cowboys, Giants, Packers, and 49ers.
The Patriots are also the first team to come back from a 10-point, second-half deficit in the Super Bowl to win.
The game-winning touchdown came with 2:02 to play, a 3-yard Tom Brady-to-Julian Edelman strike, Brady looking to his most-trusted receiver when it mattered most. Edelman finished the game with nine receptions for 102 yards and a TD.
Brady, the first quarterback to start six Super Bowls and chosen as the game’s most valuable player (for the third time), set a slew of records: his 37 completions (he was 37 for 50 for 328 yards, 4 touchdowns and 2 interceptions) are a Super Bowl record, his 13 Super Bowl touchdown passes put him past his childhood idol, Joe Montana (11), and he became the first quarterback in league history with 50 touchdowns in his postseason career...
Any football fans old enough to remember the 1980s are old enough to remember the idea that Super Bowls were lousy football games. Blowouts were the norm for much of the 1980s and 1990s, with scores like 38-9, 46-10, 55-10 and 52-17.What do you think? More at the link.
But blowouts are now the exception. Even after last year’s 43-8 romp by the Seahawks over the Broncos, five of the last seven — and 10 of the last 17 — Super Bowls have been decided by a touchdown or less.
It’s not just based on what is happening during the games, either. Heading into the Super Bowl, the matchups have looked more competitive in recent years than in the past. Justin Wolfers has noted that this year’s game, between the Seahawks and the Patriots, is one of the few without a clear favorite according to oddsmakers (and oddsmakers have an impressive track record).
The point spread set by many bookies is 1 point, in favor of the Patriots. (Some other prediction markets list the Seahawks as a slight favorite.) Only two other Super Bowls — Dolphins-Redskins, in 1973; and 49ers-Bengals, in 1982 — have had such narrow spreads. This year’s game is also the seventh in a row with a spread of a touchdown or less.
What explains the trend?...
TOKYO — Japan reacted with sorrow and outrage on Sunday to the posting by the Islamic State of a video purporting to show the grisly killing of the journalist Kenji Goto, bringing an end to a hostage standoff that has horrified this usually tranquil nation.After all this time, why everyone keeps saying the "apparent" beheading is beyond me. There's pretty much nothing "apparent" about it.
Gripped by anger and disbelief, Japan has so far shown support for the strong line taken by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who did not meet the hostage takers’ initial demands on Jan. 20 for a $200 million ransom, pledging not to yield to terrorism. Mr. Abe strongly condemned the murder claim made in the video released early Sunday, saying Japan “will cooperate with the international community and make the terrorists pay the price.”
“I’m outraged by the despicable terrorist act, and I will never forgive the terrorists,” Mr. Abe told reporters on Sunday at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo.
For now, the Japanese public seems to be united in grief and a desire to show support for Mr. Abe and other leaders. However, political analysts have said that as the shock wears off, there will be more questioning of how Mr. Abe’s government handled the crisis, which began with the appearance online of a video from the militant group threatening the lives of two Japanese hostages, Mr. Goto and Haruna Yukawa. In that first video, the group called the country’s pledge of $200 million to help shore up the government of Iraq and to assist refugees in Turkey, Syria and Lebanon a “foolish decision” and called for a ransom of the same amount.
The group dropped the ransom demand after releasing a video online days later showing the decapitated body of Mr. Yukawa, a 42-year-old adventurer. The militants changed tack, offering to swap Mr. Goto for Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman on death row in Jordan for a deadly bombing there 10 years ago. This seemed to offer hope that a way would be found to secure Mr. Goto’s release.
Those hopes came crashing down over the weekend, when another video appeared showing Mr. Goto kneeling in an orange jumpsuit in what appeared to be a dry riverbed. Next to him stood a masked militant who spoke while waving a knife, which he then apparently used to cut off Mr. Goto’s head.
While the video had yet to be confirmed as authentic on Sunday, the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said the government had no reason to believe it was not real. He said Japan had had no contact with the militants, suggesting that the nation was relying almost entirely on Jordan to handle the fate of the hostages. During the 10-day hostage standoff, Japan said it was trying to establish communication with the militants via local tribal and religious leaders, but apparently to no avail.
The gruesome images helped feed an outpouring of sympathy for Mr. Goto, 47, a veteran journalist who entered Islamic State-held territory in Syria in late October in a doomed effort to rescue Mr. Yukawa, who had been captured in August, according to Mr. Goto’s mother. Local television stations showed clips from Mr. Goto’s reports out of Syria, Iraq and other conflict zones, where he often reported on the plight of children and other noncombatants.
“My son’s final act was to go to Syria to help a fellow Japanese,” Mr. Goto’s mother, Junko Ishido, said Sunday. “Please understand his kindness and courage.”...
Maybe Marshawn Lynch got it right.Still more.
Perhaps the stubbornly silent Seattle Seahawks running back, who donned sunglasses, pulled his ball cap low and frustrated reporters by saying next to nothing all week, actually made an astute statement about Sunday's matchup with the New England Patriots at University of Phoenix Stadium.
After all, these Super Bowl XLIX story lines speak for themselves:
• The Seahawks are looking to become the first franchise to repeat as Super Bowl champions in a decade. The last team to do it? The Patriots, in 2003 and '04.
• This game pits two of the NFL's brilliant defensive coaches, Seattle's Pete Carroll and New England's Bill Belichick. At least publicly, the two reside at the opposite ends of the enthusiasm spectrum, with Carroll ready to jump out of his skin, and Belichick receding into his hoodie.
But there's more. Carroll coached the Patriots from 1997 to '99, before his tremendous run at USC. He was fired in New England, and the man who replaced him was Belichick.
This week, Carroll said Patriots owner Robert Kraft "really was a good partner to work with back in the day. He gave me an opportunity that I will always be grateful for. He also sent me out the door too, and I remember that."
• Sunday's game will be played on the same field where the 2007 Patriots saw their perfect season go poof. They brought an 18-0 record into that game against the New York Giants, and left trying to come to grips with a shocking 17-14 defeat.
"I think over the years we've gotten some tough losses, and obviously we made it in '07 and '11, those were challenging games," said New England quarterback Tom Brady, referring to consecutive Super Bowl losses to the Giants. "They came down to the wire and we lost.
"I don't think those things discouraged me at all. They just reemphasized how hard and challenging it is to get to this point, and how challenging it is to win this game."
• Here's to unheralded quarterbacks. Seattle's Russell Wilson was a third-round pick, and Brady was a sixth-round afterthought. Now, Brady is about to start his sixth Super Bowl — more than any other quarterback in NFL history — and is one ring away from tying San Francisco's Joe Montana, his boyhood idol, and Pittsburgh's Terry Bradshaw with four.
"He's the best," Patriots defensive tackle Vince Wilfork said of Brady. "That's my opinion. Everybody has an opinion. I think he's the best, and I'm glad he's my teammate."
Should they wind up lifting back-to-back Lombardi Trophies, the Seahawks will have knocked off two of the greatest passers in league history on the biggest stage: Peyton Manning and Brady.
• While the Seahawks sing the praises of the 12th Man — the legions of fans who make Seattle games locomotive loud when opposing offenses are on the field — the Patriots spent the week trying to avoid talk about another 12: the minimum 121/2 pounds to which a football must be properly inflated.
The NFL is investigating whether New England played with improperly deflated footballs — ones easier to throw and catch — in its 45-7 blowout of Indianapolis in the AFC championship game...
PARIS—French police have questioned an 8-year-old boy after he allegedly made comments in support of terrorists, part of a controversial crackdown on extremist propaganda in the wake of this month’s deadly attacks in the capital.More.
Police in the French city of Nice said Thursday that they have questioned a boy and his father to determine how the boy picked up what they describe as “alarming statements” in support of the gunmen who killed 12 people in a terrorist attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7.
“I’m with the terrorists,” the boy—identified only as Ahmed—said in class discussions, according to Sefen Guez Guez, a lawyer for the family. He says the boy didn’t understand the meaning of the word “terrorist” and described the decision to refer him to police as “total insanity.”
The father and son weren’t held by police.
The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the boy’s alleged remarks, which police say is continuing, underscores the challenge France faces in balancing free speech with combating terrorism. Last fall, the government increased penalties for condoning or inciting terrorism by moving the provision from a less-enforced press law into the national penal code to stem terrorist recruitment in France.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo, and another two days later at a kosher grocery in Paris, have pushed the government to heighten its efforts—which free-speech advocates have criticized as being too heavy-handed at times. Between the Jan. 7 assault on the magazine and Jan. 26, prosecutors opened 144 criminal cases on charges of supporting or inciting terrorism, which have so far led to 16 prison sentences, the French justice ministry said. Including instances where suspects have also been charged with other crimes, such as drunken driving, the number rises to 234 cases.
French stand-up comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala has been ordered to stand trial next month on criminal charges of being an apologist for terrorism, after he appeared to liken himself to Amedy Coulibaly, one of the gunmen in the Paris attacks. “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly,” the comedian posted to his Facebook page days afterward.
“My client’s comments aren’t, by far, an endorsement of terrorism,” Jacques Verdier, Mr. M’Bala M’Bala’s lawyer has said, adding that his client had been “harassed by French authorities.”
In another instance, 34-year-old Kamal Belaidi was sentenced to a four-year jail term on charges including drunken driving and for praising the killing of the three police officers in the Paris terror attack and shouting “Allahu akbar” at the scene of a car accident in the northern French town of Valenciennes, local prosecutors said.
Schools have been a particular battleground.
A video posted online early Sunday morning that shows what appears to be the beheaded corpse of Islamic State group hostage Kenji Goto has left his family and friends speechless and in anguish.Poor bastard.
Goto’s 78-year-old mother, Junko Ishido, was barely able to speak as she read from a prepared statement to express her grief.
“Kenji has passed away. I am at a loss for words, facing such a regretful death,” she said late Sunday morning at her home in Koganei, western Tokyo. “The only thing I can do now is to shed tears of deep sorrow.”
She added, however, that she believes such feelings of pain should not lead to a chain of hatred.
“I strongly hope we can hand down Kenji’s wish of creating a society without war and saving children’s lives from war and poverty,” she said, referring to the work of the 47-year-old freelance journalist.
Goto’s older brother, Junichi Goto, 55, told NHK that he appreciated all the efforts made to rescue his sibling, including those of the Japanese government, the people of Japan and others all over the world.
“As a brother, I had hoped Kenji would come back safe and thank everyone himself, so this is extremely regrettable,” he said.
“I am proud of the work he has done in the past, but I think the action he took this time was indiscreet,” he added.
Junichi Goto said although he was preparing for the worst, he had hoped the negotiations would somehow work out and his brother would come back alive.
“The Islamic State group has been showing off its power and expanding its influence by taking away the lives of my brother and many other people,” he said. “Such actions are anti-social and unacceptable.”
Shoichi Yukawa, the 74-year-old father of Haruna Yukawa, 42, who was being held with Goto, told reporters Sunday morning he feels sorry for Goto’s death.
“I have heard that Mr. Goto went to save my son. I feel deeply sorry for his family,” he said. “Mr. Goto is a very respectable person. I feel so regrettable that I can think of nothing else to say.”
Yukawa is believed have been executed on or before Jan. 24.
Freelance photojournalist Naomi Toyoda, who worked with Goto in Jordan in 1996, was overcome with grief because he had been trying to save his friend since the hostage crisis began on Jan. 20.”It’s devastating,” Toyoda said Sunday. “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t rescue him.”
Toyoda, who had earlier released two statements through the Japan Visual Journalist Association pleading for Goto’s release in English, Arabic and Japanese, said he is angry at both the Islamic State groupand the Japanese government.
“Tell me, what has the government been doing after all this time? Can it swear that it did its absolute utmost to negotiate with (the captors)? Did it really mean it when it said it will save him? I’m angry, disappointed and exasperated.”...
On a film set in Leimert Park, an actor playing rap mogul Suge Knight angrily peeled out of a parking lot in a Jeep. The film, "Straight Outta Compton," tells the origin story of N.W.A and its famed members, including Ice Cube and Dr. Dre.More.
The fictional reenactment on the set late last fall took on eerie overtones this week after Suge Knight's arrest on suspicion of homicide. Police allege he ran over two men with his truck, killing one, Thursday following an altercation in connection with the film.
Knight's character has only a minor role in the film, with the parking lot scene depicting a pivotal, early '90s moment in Dr. Dre's business relationship with Knight, one of rap's most feared players.
Dr. Dre and Ice Cube are both producers on the Universal Pictures film, but Knight was not involved, director F. Gary Gray said during the shoot in September. When asked if the former record label exec had ever visited the set as many former associates and N.W.A group members had, the otherwise talkative Gray gave one flat answer: "No."
The history between Knight and Dr. Dre (a.k.a. Andre Romelle Young) is one of success and tragedy. Dre and Knight co-founded Death Row Records after N.W.A's demise in the early '90s.
The label launched such rap luminaries as Snoop and later signed Tupac Shakur, as well as mainstream chart topper MC Hammer.
Dr. Dre became one of the most respected producers in hip hop because of much of the work he did in that time period.
But Death Row also became the center of controversy, as Knight had numerous run-ins with the law over his business tactics. In 1996, he was sent to prison for nearly five years after the brutal beating of a rival of rapper Shakur's at a Las Vegas hotel; the beating occurred just hours before Shakur suffered fatal gunshot wounds.
Dr. Dre left Death Row in 1996, going on to break artists such as Eminem and 50 Cent, and eventually founded the multimillion-dollar headphones company Beats by Dre. Death Row Records went bankrupt, and Knight lost relevance for most in the music industry...
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Their children have been sent home from school. Their families are barred from birthday parties and neighborhood play dates. Online, people call them negligent and criminal. And as officials in 14 states grapple to contain a spreading measles outbreak that began near here at Disneyland, the parents at the heart of America’s anti-vaccine movement are being blamed for incubating an otherwise preventable public-health crisis.Granola-crunching, 'Whole Foods' leftists, the lot of them. Fucking morons.
Measles anxiety rippled thousands of miles beyond its center on Friday as officials scrambled to try to contain a wider spread of the highly contagious disease — which America declared vanquished 15 years ago, before a statistically significant number of parents started refusing to vaccinate their children.
In recent days, new measles cases popped up in Nebraska and Minnesota, New York and Marin County in California. Officials around the country reported rising numbers of patients who were seeking shots, as well as some pediatricians who were accepting nonvaccinated families but were debating changing their policies. The White House urged parents to listen to the science that supports inoculations.
In Arizona, health officials warned that 1,000 people could have been exposed to measles and urged anyone displaying symptoms to avoid this weekend’s Super Bowl events in the Phoenix area. In a small planned community where one family became ill after visiting Disneyland, store windows were lined with measles alerts, and a sign on the Pinal County office building warned: “Stop! Measles is in our county!” and asked people with symptoms to wear masks before entering.
But here in California, anti-vaccine parents whose children have endured bouts of whooping cough and chickenpox largely defended their choice to raise their children on natural foods, essential oils and no vaccinations.
“There is absolutely no reason to get the shot,” said Crystal McDonald, whose 16-year-old daughter was one of 66 students sent home from Palm Desert High School for the next two weeks because they did not have full measles immunizations.
After researching the issue and reading information from a national anti-vaccine group, Ms. McDonald said she and her husband, a chiropractor, decided to raise their four children without vaccines. She said they ate well and had never been to the doctor, and she insisted that her daughter was healthier than many classmates. But when the school sent her home with a letter, Ms. McDonald’s daughter was so concerned about missing two weeks of Advanced Placement classes that she suggested simply getting a measles inoculation.
“I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ “ Ms. McDonald said. “I said, ‘I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.’ “
The anti-vaccine movement can largely be traced to a 1998 report in a medical journal that suggested a link between vaccines and autism but was later proved fraudulent and retracted. Today, the waves of parents who shun vaccines include some who still believe in the link and some, like the Amish, who have religious objections to vaccines. Then there is a particular subculture of largely wealthy and well-educated families, many living in palmy enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco, who are trying to carve out “all-natural” lives for their children...
