You can't even benchmark a language. You can only benchmark a particular implementation of a language and a particular usage of that language, both of which are highly sensitive to change (use a different language implementation or a different programmer, and BAM! all the numbers change).

Can we please, please let this thread die?

This should satisfy your benchmark source request, and it should give you an ample number of languages to do additional comparisons.
http://shootout.alio...rg/u32/java.php

First Java7 has vastly improved from Java6 but that's 5 years of updated given in 1 version.

Java 7 beats C++ and C in the the K-Nucliotide benchmark by 4 to 5 seconds.
http://shootout.alio...=java&lang2=gcc
Java 7 beats C++ in the fasta benchmark by ~1 second but loses to C by .1 seconds
http://shootout.alio...=java&lang2=gpp

C flat out wins or nearly ties vs C++ in everything except the K-Nucliotide test
http://shootout.alio...g=gcc&lang2=gpp

C when written properly beats C++ hands down.
The drawback of C is really that some more complex tasks are a pain to write without objects.

Java's main drawback is usually memory, but it's not as bad as most people think. Sure you have some where the Binary-Tree test ends up with Java taking nearly 5x the amount of memory C does, and on even small tests it still has to load a 10-15 meg virtual machine. However, somethings like the reverse complement test it takes nearly the same amount of memory as C does.

Java also attracted every programmer who was incapable of managing memory properly in C and C++ so there are a lot of bad memory structures out their in Java because at least it doesn't do the delayed crash thing C and C++ does when you mess with the memory the wrong way. Just because java has a garbage collector doesn't mean you can ignore memory, but that's what a lot of Java programmers do.