Globe Trot 11.14

The Family Research Council with The Voice of the Martyrs today sponsored a webcast highlighting “The Threat to Religious Liberty Around the World.” Worth catching it now or in recorded format with this month’s varied commemorations of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

The Dalits, or untouchables, of India are in the midst of unprecendented conversion to Christianity, I’m told, and three colonies of Dalits in Tamil Nadu face unprecedented persecution as a result.

Radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, accused of being a key al-Qaeda operative in Europe, was freed from an English prison Tuesday after a British court used human rights laws to block his deportation to Jordan to face terrorism charges.

Iraq may free a Hezbollah terrorist captured by British forces in Iraq in 2007. Ali Musa Daqduq was one of the last detainees the United States handed over to Iraq as the United States withdrew in December 2011. U.S. military prosecutors say Daqduq helped to organize a January 2007 raid in Karbala that killed five American soldiers,

Forbes columnist Bill Frezza has an important piece on how to live in these United States, now that it’s an entitlement democracy rather than a constitutionally limited republic. Frezza, a self-professed libertarian, admits to voting … for Romney. Here’s an excerpt:

“Heeding the cry, Forward!, an electoral majority happily voted for itself unlimited benefits that will supposedly be paid for by a productive minority—even as the nation careens toward bankruptcy and said productive minority starts eyeing the exits. With demographic changes reinforcing a permanent ethnic tribalism that abjures the melting pot, the likelihood that our country will ever recover its founding values has vanished as thoroughly as our respect for the dead white men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to make our way of life possible.”

Upcoming: A report on that other catastrophe, and the odd timing of Gen. David Petraeus’ resignation as director of the CIA.