Saturday, November 25, 2006

Israel sees shale replacing oil

UPI reported The Israeli process for producing energy from oil shale will cut its oil imports by one-third, and will serve as a guide for other countries with oil shale deposits, according to one company..... Shahal estimated that the company's Negev Desert facility would begin full-scale production in three to four years, while other countries with oil shale deposits will need five to six years to reach production.

Another reason for the Arabs to hate Israel; they may have come up with something that will reduce demand for Arab oil.
Oil shale is limestone rock that contains hydrocarbons, or fossil fuels -- about 20 percent of the amount of energy found in coal. Using the rock as a raw material and coating it with bitumen, a residue of the crude oil refining process, the company can produce natural gas, fuel, electricity, or a combination of the three. Older technologies squeezed the hydrocarbon material out of the rock, with extremely high pressure and at high temperatures. According to Professor Ze'ev Aizenshtat, an oil shale expert, the Hom Tov process is more environmentally friendly than other methods of converting oil shale into energy. It also allows for more flexibility in the kind of fuel produced, produces less waste and operates at lower temperatures than other methods.... Because fewer refining processes are necessary with oil shale than with crude oil, the final product is a higher quality fuel at a lower price, Aizenshtat said. The company estimates it will consume 6 million tons of oil shale and 2 million tons of refinery waste each year, for an annual production of 3 million tons of product.

It would cost about $17 to produce a barrel of synthetic oil at the Hom Tov facility, meaning giant profit margins in a world of $45 to $60 per barrel crude. Yearly earnings are forecasted to be between $159 million and $350 million, Shahal said.... The United States also has a giant reserve, mostly in Colorado, and Hom Tov sees potential for its patented process there.


Bernie blogged Israel has come up with something that will sap the economic strength from the Arab countries and others with huge oil reserves, while improving the economies of the rest of the world. Every dollar we pay for Arab oil goes into Islamic schools to teach Muslims how to destroy the West. Our own moneys are being used to destroy us. Now, a new process to squeeze oil out of shale may finally end that addiction.

Read More...

Muslim banned from Mosque in Tulsa

NewsOK reported A Tulsa man says a letter to the editor got him kicked out of his church.

He does not attend a church. He attends a Mosque. If he started attending a church, they would probably kill him.
He says the letter published in the Tulsa World was anti al-qaede. But he say's members of his Mosque say it's anti-Muslim.
For more information see the video
Pamela Geller Oshry blogged Apparently a Tulsa Muslim wrote a letter to the editor in his local newspaper, the Tulsa World, after viewing the latest al qaeda tape. The letter got him kicked out of his mosque.The poor man said the letter was anti-Al Qaeda. He said he was disturbed by terrorists killing in the name of Islam. He called al quaeda leaders cowards for using young Muslims to carry out attacks.
I wish more Muslims were like him.
So they threw him out of the mosque and he has been threatened by fellow Muslims at the mosque. The only way he can come back to worship is if he must apologizes and "takes his article back." This is what is wrong with Islam. Religion of Peace. Where is CAIR?

Michael Bates blogged In his op-ed, Miftah mentioned that he, his wife, and their four children came to the U. S. in 2003 from Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border. He lost a dear friend who chose to follow al-Qaeda and fight against the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. Please keep the Miftah family in your prayers for safety. The Muslim engineers that I've known and worked with in Tulsa are much more like Jamal Miftah than those who ejected him from the mosque. These Muslims love America, they love the American way of life, and they are apologetic for the terrorism done in Islam's name. To them, jihad is the inward struggle to subdue the passions, not conquering the land of the infidel.

What he says about American mosques collecting aid for terrorism may well be true. For years, Irish social clubs in America collected money which, whether the donors knew it or not, went to fund the operations of Irish nationalist terrorist groups. Certainly the opposite is true: many American mosques have received capital and operating funds from Arabic Muslim groups who hold to strict Wahhabi Islam.

Read More...

Girl gang-raped for getting education

Terror-Watch.Net Forum reported After Mukhtaran Mai, a case of Mumtaz Mai has come to light in rural Pakistan, where women become victims of tribal warfare, family feuds or quite simply, male violence.
The News International on Saturday reported the case of one Mumtaz Mai and her daughter Ghazala Shaheen Bathi who were abducted, held in captivity and gang-raped for 12 days because daughter Ghazala dared to become educated.

What is wrong with a girl seeking to be educated.
Mukhtaran Mai, the tribal woman gang-raped in June 2002, was freed after the Pakistan Supreme Court intervened in her favour.
At least she is lucky she was not stoned to death for being raped, as happens in some Islamic countries.
The case raised protests and concern among civil societies across the world. While Mukhtaran Mai was a victim of a family feud and an act in retaliation to the rape of a girl her brother Shakur was alleged to have committed, the mother-daughter duo earned the wrath of the Mirali tribesmen when it became known that Ghazala had passed her Master's in Education from Bahauddin Zahariya University on August 25.
Something most people would be proud of.
The girl's father Mohammed Hussain, a retired armyman belonging to village Chak Sher Khan near Kabirwala in Multan, was also beaten up. As in Mukhtaran Mai's case, influential people are said to be involved in this case too. The newspaper report repeatedly hinted at the involvement of "a minister of state", but did not name him. When informed by the villagers, the local police acted after 12 days, only to help the accused. While three men managed to escape, the local villagers prevented the car carrying the two women from driving away.
Kabirwala's police chief Daud Hussain has been quoted as denying the incident. The police reportedly clarified that the two women had run away from their home "on their own". However, the newspaper said authorities in the local hospital confirmed that the two women had been raped.

After Mukhtaran Mai's case was taken up by human rights organisations in 2005, Canada offered to grant her citizenship. Mukhtaran Mai's visit to the US coincided with that of President Pervez Musharraf. Hackled by the media on the issue, an irritated Musharraf condemned women from his country who complained of being raped, only to earn citizenship of other countries.
Maybe the answer is to protect them in your own country.
Mukhtaran Mai remains a Pakistani citizen, involved in social work in Pakistan and using her "celebrity" status to help needy organisations in her country.

Read More...

Friday, November 24, 2006

Western Muslim Opinion On The War in Iraq

A western muslim, Eteraz blogged The Sunni militants' version of "insurgency" and "freedomfighting" is non-sensicial; they want not to fight the "occupier" but to kill the occupied.

The Sunnis are not the only ones, the Shia are doing the same thing.
It is the most heinous and disgusting form of "resistance" I have ever seen in my life, or read about. Their strategy is: if we murder enough Iraqi elders, women and children, then the Americans will leave. I beseech Western Muslims to take heed of this. I know you are anti-war, and I know you wish that Americans left Iraq, and I know you think Bush is a liar. I think all these things.
I don't agree, do you think the Iraqis were better off under Saddam? In any event I do deplore the killing.
But please, for God's sake, can you at least recognize, that the strategy of "resistance" being employed by the militants is barbaric. I challenge any person to find me any instance in the history of Islam where murdering civilians as a way to resist an opponent was considered legitimate under Islam. There is no such event.
What about flying planes into buildings, killing nearly 3,000 innocent civilians?
The closest thing I can think of, is when the Mongols invaded Baghdad and used captive Muslims from other cities as human shields. Then, the beseiged Abbassids thought that in order to get to the Mongols they had no choice but to kill Muslims (Mongol archers used to hide behind Muslim women when attacking a city). But that is nothing like what is happening today.
A bomb can kill a lot more than an arrow.
First, because the civilians that are being killed by the insurgents are themselves Iraqi. The people they are killing in markets and mosques (mosques!) are not foreigners being used as human shields by the occupier. In fact, it is the insrgents who are largely the foreigners in Iraq (along with the Americans).
And not all of the insurgents are Sunni. There are Shia coming from Iran to kill Sunnis.
Second, with the Mongols, there was a consensus amongst all Muslims that Mongols were illegitimate invaders. The women and children that the insurgents are killing are not illegitimate invaders. Yet none of us say a single thing about their murder.

The "Islamic" thing for the insurgents would be to attack only military targets. If they cannot attack the military targets, then they have lost. These are the rules of Islamic Law. The Shariah doesn't say that "well, if you can't attack the military, go ahead and slaughter any one who comes across your way." That's not Islam. Please recognize that. That's nihilism. It has no honor. It is not Islamic.
And you should not kill ANY civilians. Not just civilians that are Muslim, but ANY civilians.

Read More...

The 751 No-Go Zones of France

Daniel Pipes blogged They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are convienently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations. What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not control.

There are 751 today, but they are growing, not shrinking. If France hopes to remain a country, where French values prevail, it MUST control ALL of its land.
They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassone to twelve in the heavily Muslim town of Marseilles, with hardly a town in France lacking in its ZUS. The ZUS came into existence in late 1996 and according to a 2004 estimate, nearly 5 million people live in them.

Comment: A more precise name for these zones would be Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule.

Read More...

Turkish Muslim wants Pope to say Islam peaceful

Yahoo! News Turkey's top Muslim official said on Thursday
Pope Benedict should state clearly during a planned visit to Turkey next week he believes Islam, like Christianity, to be a religion of peace

And if he does not say that, are you going to behead him, or just order your followers to burn buildings?
..... "I think the attitude the Pope should take is that neither Islam nor Christianity is a source of violence," said Ali Bardakoglu, who heads Ankara's Directorate General for Religious Affairs which controls Turkish imams and writes their sermons.
The Old Testament, and in a few cases the New Testament, include historical accounts of violence, and a few times in the Old Testament God told his people to make war against a particular group of people, but neither have God or his messenger telling people to make war on anyone that does not believe as they do. For example in the Quran 9:123 says O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).
"If they ask me if Christianity has been the cause of violence, I would say no, that is not so ... We believe all prophets sent by God, from Moses to Jesus and Mohammad, are messengers of compassion," he told Reuters in an interview.
In the early verses, when Mohammad was plagerizing Jewish and Christian texts, that may be true, but as Satan got control of him, and turned him into a warrior that led his followers to attack other countries, the latter violent verses came from Satan, not God.
Violence committed in the name of religion was the fault of fallible and misguided human beings, he said.
Such as the warrior Mohammad

Read More...

Thursday, November 23, 2006

In Memory of Lizzie’s “Troop Batteries”

MsUnderestimated blogged On the Montel Show today, one of his heroes he honored was a little girl named Lizzie, who died at the age of 13 on May 12, 2006. She suffered her whole life with cystic fibrosis, juvenile arthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis, yet her goals and dreams were to do something for the troops.

She learned that one of the things they needed were AA batteries, and she had a goal of sending them one million batteries. Her mother and grandmother are carrying on her goal, and if you go to her website you will see that they are a little more than halfway to her goal. 585,872 batteries were sent as of 11/20/06. Can you help increase that number?

Watch Lizzie’s story here. Montel adds the normal liberal jab at the war, and her mother tells him Lizzie had an answer for those that said that:

Lizzie always said “don’t talk to me about my politics; talk to me about my project. It has nothing to do with my politics. It has to do with my supporting the men and women who are over there doing something for me. If they get four little batteries from me, how excited will they be!? And then I know that I will have done one tinly little thing for them.”
Montel was put in his place by the words of a courageous little girl who is now an angel in heaven, welcoming home the soldiers killed in Iraq.

Read More...

Barber shop owner flees U.S.

SeattlePI reported Ruben Shumpert, who federal agents allege made his Rainier Valley barber shop a kind of "anti-American training ground for Muslims" where children were taught "how to shoot and fight the Americans," has telephoned the FBI to say he won't be going to prison anytime soon.

They were idiots for not taking his passport, but why did he call to tell them where he was?
Shumpert, who faces sentencing on federal counterfeiting and weapons charges, has fled to Somalia.
I suspect he will find living as a free man in Somalia to be less comfortable than living in a federal prison here in the USA.
A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Shumpert, who is also known as Amir Abdul Muhaimin, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Redkey said. He was to be sentenced Tuesday. Shumpert -- an African American convert to Islam -- was among more than a dozen, mostly African immigrants from Islamic countries arrested by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force two years ago on a mix of charges, including immigration fraud and bank fraud. Shumpert was never charged with any terrorism crimes, but court documents paint a picture of his barber shop at 7821 Rainier Ave. S. as a gathering place for adherents of radical Islam where he showed children videotapes of "fighting, shooting and killing with images on Shumpert's computer screen of al-Qaida and the Taliban." Shumpert had been free on personal recognizance
You mean he did not even have to put up his barber shop?
and was facing sentencing under a plea agreement when he fled the country, Redkey said. Shumpert called an FBI agent on the Joint Terrorism Task Force from Somalia, Redkey said. But he noted that the United States has no extradition treaty with Somalia. Somalia is considered a fertile breeding ground for radical Islamic terrorists by U.S. intelligence agencies. Redkey said Shumpert also likely is to be charged with failing to appear for his sentencing hearing, a separate felony.
Charge him whatever you want. You let him escape to Somalia.
A condition of Shumpert's release before sentencing was that he surrender his passport, said Redkey, who noted that in recent years, it has become more common for judges to allow defendants to turn in their passports after they are released from custody. Shumpert never surrendered his passport, Redkey said. Redkey said the U.S. Attorney's Office is reviewing the practice of allowing people out of custody before they surrender their passport.
Gee, you think that might be a good idea???
Riehl blogged They allow this guy to roam free on his own recognizance? No wonder he ends up in Somalia doing who knows what. And he knows America, so he'd be perfect for helping others there understand the ropes of navigating in the US without detection. Idiots. There's no other word for it. The court and the prosecutors involved with this are idiots. And they should be fired or impeached as appropriate.

LGF blogged Wow. Talk about flying under the media radar. Here’s a story that’s only bubbling up to the surface now because the would-be jihadi in question fled to Somalia—after being released on “personal recognizance”—and called the FBI to brag. Another success story for the FBI. But they apparently have plenty of resources to hassle bloggers when CAIR complains.

Robert Spencer blogged I hope the people who met Shumpert at his barber shop are being watched closely. And did he ever attend any area mosque? What is taught there? What did they think of Shumpert? Of course, if approached now they will say they always abhorred him, but did they contact authorities about his jihadist tendencies?

Read More...

What Can I Do to Make Your Flight More Uncomfortable?

Ann Coulter wrote on Human Events Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

ROF, LMAO My sentiments exactly.
Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" -- coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died.
A very good point.
Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn't perform was the signing of last wills and testaments.
And video taping them.
After boarding, the imams did not sit together and some asked for seat belt extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets and no checked baggage. Also they were Muslims. The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of irony? The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to bathe.
ROF, LMAO ROFL 7

Read More...

Happy Thanksgiving


I give thanks to God for living in this wonderful country, and for the sacrifice of our Armed Forces who are making the ultimate sacrifice to protect us all, and I pray that it will always be legal for me to do so.

Read More...

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Ahmadinejadised

Iran Focus reported Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the world is "rapidly becoming Ahmadinejadised" and global leaders have started following in his footsteps, press reports said Tuesday.

Does this mean the world is going crazy????

Read More...

Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer clarifies several points:

  1. Islam is not a race. One does not become a racist by opposing the jihad ideology.
    And anyone that says Muslims must not be offended by what people say about their faith, should consider what many secularists say about Christans, and we did not fly any planes into buildings, or riot after a few cartoons are piblished.
  2. I do not wish to drive all Muslims into the sea.
    Although many muslims want to do exactly that with Jews (Israel)/
  3. I have never said that the only good Muslim is an ex-Muslim.
  4. I have never said that Muslims want to kill all Jews and Christians.
    They may be happy with forced conversion or subjigation.
  5. I do not single out the jihadist interpretation of Islam and anoint it as the only legitimate interpretation. As I have pointed out many times, all the orthodox sects and schools of jurisprudence teach violent jihad. I would love to highlight mainstream peaceful Islamic sects that are regarded as orthodox by other Muslims. Unfortunately, such sects do not exist. Courageous sincere individual reformers are deeply appreciated and to be applauded, but they are just that -- individuals.
  6. It is false that by pointing out how jihadists use the Qur'an and Islamic teaching, I am encouraging and legitimizing those jihadists or pushing moderate Muslims to become jihadists. In fact, they do not listen to me. More importantly, it is incumbent upon moderates to refute the jihad ideology if they can. But if I can find holes in the moderates' presentations, jihadists will find ten more. And so those moderate constructions will prove useless to do what must be done: convincing Muslims to be peaceful.
  7. Tabari says Aisha was nine when Muhammad consummated his marriage with her. That he says more about Aisha doesn't mean that somewhere he contradicts this assertion.

Read More...

Keep John Bolton in the UN

Please click here to sign a petition to keep John R. Bolton as the Permanent U.S. Representative to the UN. History will judge John R. Bolton in parity with equally outspoken intellects such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

If you can afford to spend $20 you can click here and send a blast fax message to the 55 Republican Members of the United States Senate and President Bush

Read More...

Muslim lawmaker rages after being served pork

The Manila Times reported A Muslim lawmaker on Monday night raged at a catering crewmember of a Chinese restaurant for serving her food with pork.

What did she order? And why did she order a dish containing pork?
Rep. Faysah Dumarpa of Lanao del Sur reportedly slapped the crewmember, Virginia Fernando Altamirano, and held a bread knife at her.
Assault and battery because of pork.
Altamirano, 36, has filed a complaint against Dumarpa with the Quezon City police.
I hope he goes to jail, and that all they serve is ham sandwiches.
“It is forbidden in Islam for a believer to eat pork or its derivatives. To do so is a grievous sin. An intentional consumption of such meat would hinder me from gaining entrance to paradise.
Then you should be careful of what you eat.
Beyond dietary concerns, this is a matter of faith,” Dumarpa said in a letter to Ramon Sy, head of the Shangri-La Finest Chinese Cuisine, which caters for congressmen during sessions at the South Lounge in the House of Representatives. Dumarpa said she “felt betrayed” and “grossly insulted” by being served food containing pork. “I assumed your [catering] crew purposely caused that by intentional concealment of the fact herein set forth. If it was not at all intentional, then there must have been gross negligence on their part.”
Since when is a restaurant supposed to be aware of the religion of each of its customers, and what dietary laws their religion requires, and whether they observe those dietary laws?
Dumarpa even demanded that Sy fire the crewmen, and that only halal foods be made available in the South Lounge.
Or why not post a sign saying no Muslims allowed.
Another Muslim legislator, Anak Mindanao party-list Rep. Mujiv Hataman, said the House leadership should take responsibility for the gaffe. “This indicates lack of religious and cultural sensitivity even within the House of Representatives itself,” Hataman said in a text message.
Now the House leadership is responsible for what its members eat????
To prevent a repetition of the incident, Hataman suggested that the House consider putting up a separate lounge for Muslim legislators and visitors of Congress.
And alternative to the proposed apartheid lounge, would be to post a sign saying if you don't like what we serve, don't eat here.

Read More...

Burqa Bandits

TheStar reported Abdul Rasheed Khalid was alone in his Brampton jewellery store filling the display cases with yellow gold rings and necklaces when two people, one wearing a head-to-toe black burqa, appeared outside his locked door. "Salamu alaikum," the 58-year-old store owner said after pushing the entry buzzer, believing them to be a Muslim couple. There was no reply, and seconds later the pair — both males — forced him at gunpoint to the back office where he was bound with duct tape and hit several times. Then his store was cleaned out.

And people wonder why some countries are considering outlawing the burqa.

Read More...

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

An Islamic bond would be a golden opportunity for the US

Marc Chandler wrote at FT.com The US Treasury should consider issuing a dollar-denominated Islamic bond or sukuk - an act that would signal respect for Islamic law

You must be insane. Why on earth should the US Treasury "show respect for Islamic law". Muslims in the US should show respect for US law.
and people and implicitly acknowledge the limitations of military and political strategies. A sukuk issued as a way to fund US assistance in rebuilding Lebanon, for example, might be the way to start.
Considering that Hezbollah is trying to overturn the current Lebanon government, and Syria is killing Christian legislators, I think we need to hold off any aid to Lebanon, until we find out who is going to get the money.
The US has traditionally been a leader in financial innovation, one of its critical comparative advantages. Financial instruments compliant with Muslim law, or sharia, are a relatively new and growing market,
As I understand Sharia law, they cannot charge interest, which means financial instruments that cannot charge interest may be new, but I can't imagine it is a growing market.
the significance of which others such as the UK and Japan already sense.

Read More...

Muslim scholar calls for airline boycott

StarTribune reported One of the Muslim scholars removed from a US Airways flight on Monday today called for imams around the country to boycott the airline after employees refused to sell him new tickets for his flight home.

I suspect only Muslims will respond to his call, but if they do, then US Airways should be the safest airline in the country, and other airlines may begin doing the same thing, so they will be boycotted by the Muslims too.
On Monday, Omar Shahin and five other imams had gone to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to fly home to Phoenix after attending a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation. Shahin is president of the group.

Read More...

Not talking back to Nonie Darwish

Kesher Talk blogged Forty years ago the leaders of a revolutionary movement

Communism
which had already killed millions of people in its quest for utopia gave a talk at a university, and students and faculty listened with respect. Then they verbally demolished the speakers, not by shouting them down or insulting them, but with repeated knowledgeable soft-spoken questions which exposed the weaknesses in the speakers' arguments.

Last week at Brown University, the cutting edge of the Ivy League, a speaker was canceled. Muslim students were too afraid of her to attend her talk and try - if they disagreed - to expose any weakness in her arguments. Unfortunately, this kind of cowardice and repression is is all too prevalent in Muslim organizations, especially on campuses. But in this case the Brown chapter of Hillel - the international Jewish campus organization - and the Brown women's center joined with the Muslim student organization in refusing her a forum. The Hillel Rabbi supported that decision....

This controversy has already created a stir, because the main page of the Brown Hillel website carries a letter from Rabbi Eisenberg defending her decision. The letter is one vague feel-good sentence after another, and it's hard to figure out just what happened and what her position is. She applauds Darwish and praises Brown Hillel for supporting Israel advocacy on campus and bringing in controversial speakers. But then she casts Darwish as too controversial, because her writings criticize Islam,
Do Jews object if they hear someone criticize Islam?
and Jewish students would be offended if the Muslim student group brought in a Jewish speaker who demeaned Judaism.
Would they riot, and burn buildings, and cut people's heads off.
Then she praises the Brown administration for helping to bring Darwish to Brown. Does that mean Darwish is going to speak after all?

BTW is this the same Brown Administration which capriciously suspended the campus Christian organization this year?
Probably. Schools rarely worry about offending Christians.
I have some questions, not just for Rabbi Eisenberg but for all Brown student and faculty:
1) Does the Brown Muslim student group have the same compunctions about bringing in a Jewish speaker who criticizes Judaism?
2) If they planned to bring one in and the Jewish students protested, would the Muslim students defer to them?
3) Has a Jew ever been silenced on a college campus for misrepresenting or denigrating Judaism?
4) Is the problem just that Darwish criticizes Islam, or that she compares it unfavorably to Judaism? For example, this appreciation of the self-reflection demanded during the High Holidays, contrasted with the shame/honor imperative of the Islam she grew up with. Is it that Darwish criticizes the Arab Middle East, or that she defends Israel?
Probably both.
5) Is it an acceptable stance at a university supposedly committed to the free flow of ideas for either group to have veto power over the others' invited speakers? Whatever happened to reasoned disagreement? If Darwish is saying things that aren't true or are unfair, let the Muslim students attend her speech and respectfully ask her tough questions.
That would be interesting to see. A proper, peaceful debate about the differences between Judiasm and Islam.
In addition to posting her tribute to Jewish culture, Kesher Talk has written before about Nonie Darwish here and here and here.

Read More...

Dollar Coins Again

NYT reported The United States Mint is unveiling four designs for one-dollar coins today, featuring likenesses of the first four presidents.

Does the Mint just not get it. We don't want dollar coins. We did not want Susan B. Anthony dollar coins. We did not want Sacagawea dollar coins. And we are not going to want Dollar Coins that change Presidents every few months. I know they may last longer than dollar bills, but we want dollar bills.
They begin a series that is to last a decade and portray every deceased president. The first coin, displaying George Washington on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other, will go into circulation in mid-February, in time for Presidents’ Day. After that, coins with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will be issued at three-month intervals. Four more will appear, in order of each president’s service, every year until 2016. Designs are based on presidential medals made previously by the Mint and on portraits in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where today’s unveiling takes place.

Read More...

Pelosi team tries to steer Democrats to the center

Boston Globe reported Anxious to

pretend to
chart a centrist course with Democrats' new majority in Congress, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top deputies are busily working in private and public to rein in the liberal ambitions of some senior party heavyweights --including proposals to reinstate the military draft and end the Pentagon's ban on gays in uniform. Pelosi has urged House Democrats, including incoming committee chairmen, to use the first weeks of next year's congressional term to focus exclusively on proposals on which the party is unified and legislative goals that are within reach, according to Pelosi allies and aides.
One week is about all it will take, and then the extreme left wing will begin crying for attention, and Pelosi will have to become a cat herder to keep them in line.
Yesterday, Pelosi and the incoming House majority leader, Representative Steny Hoyer, quashed talk of reinstating the draft one day after Representative Charles Rangel said he will file a bill to make that happen. Rangel, a New York Democrat, is in line to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful posts in Congress.
Maybe Pelosi should quash that, to establish how powerful she is, and give the Black Caucus something to really howl about, and they might forget trying to get her to shoot herself in the foot by making an Impeached Judge Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Read More...

Why don't moderate Muslims speak out

NYPost reported Muslims are often accused of not speaking out sufficiently against terrorism. Nonie Darwish knows one reason why: Their fellow Muslims won't let them.

That is one way of having only your voice heard.
Darwish, who comes from Egypt and was born and raised a Muslim, was set to tell students at Brown University about the twisted hatred and radicalism she grew to despise in her own culture. A campus Jewish group, Hillel, had contacted her to speak there Thursday.But the event was just called off.
I can understand the Muslims not wanting her to appear for a Jewish group, but why not invite her to appear for them, and offer to debate her.
Muslim students had complained that Darwish was "too controversial." They insisted she be denied a platform at Brown, and after contentious debate Hillel agreed. Weird: No one had said boo about such Brown events as a patently anti-Israel "Palestinian Solidarity Week." But Hillel said her "offensive" statements about Islam "alarmed" the Muslim Student Association, and Hillel didn't want to upset its "beautiful relationship" with the Muslim community.
They were letting them live.
Plus, Brown's women's center backed out of co-sponsoring the event, even though it shares Darwish's concerns about the treatment of women. Reportedly, part of the problem was that Darwish had no plans to condemn Israel for shooting Arab women used by terrorists as human shields, or for insufficiently protecting Israeli Arab wives from their husbands.
So women's groups only care about certain things done to women?????
In plugging their ears to Darwish, Brown's Muslim students proved her very point: Muslims who attempt constructive self-criticism are quickly and soundly squelched - by other Muslims.

Read More...

Limitations of Socially Driven News

The Mu Life blogged A number of my friends from Digg pointed out a story to me today that epitomizes several very important limitations to socially driven news. The following story made it to the front-page of Digg.com within 2 and a half hours of being submitted, and as I am writing this piece (3 and a half hours after being on the front-page), the story is still on the front-page of Digg

The story was a fake story, claiming there was a big PlayStation3 recall, and that a spokesman from Sony claimed the XBox was technocogically more advanced than the playstation. The guy posting the fake story told how he did it here.

Read More...

Democrats Plan Series of Votes on Ethics Reforms

WaPo reported Despite divisions among Democrats over how far to go in revising ethics rules, House leaders plan a major rollout of an ethics reform bill early next year to demonstrate concern about an issue that helped defeat the Republicans in the midterm elections. But they will do it with a twist: Instead of forwarding one big bill, Democrats will put together an ethics package on the House floor piece by piece, allowing incoming freshmen to take charge of high-profile issues and lengthening the time spent on the debate. The approach will ensure that each proposal -- including banning gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists as well as imposing new controls on the budget deficit -- is debated on its own and receives its own vote.

That way Democrats can vote for several items, and safely vote against others, and if they arrange things properly they can defeat everything, while claiming they voted for the reform. If you really believe in Ethics Reform, put it in one big bill. If someone wants to kill part of it, let them move to take it out, and get a recorded vote on that.
That should garner far more media attention for the bill's components before a final vote on the entire package.

Read More...

Britain must choose US or Europe

Daily Mail reported Segolene Royal will try to force Britain to choose between being America's closest ally or being at the heart of Europe if she becomes French president, says a close aide.

Europe is going to be overtaken by the Muslims in a generation. Britain certainly has major problems, but if they choose Europe they are doomed too.
Her foreign affairs adviser Gilles Savery, a French MEP, unveiled proposals for a new EU treaty, to replace the failed EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters.
But it was approved by others. So she wants to replace one treaty with another, that maybe her people will approve. She certainly sounds like she is dealing from a position of strength.
He stressed that if Britain refuses to back the new drive towards a more powerful EU, France, Germany Spain and Italy could join forces to create a "quartet" to lead Europe.
And if they do join, will it be a quintet? And will the smaller countries just go along?
He said: "Great Britain is absolutely indispensable to the European Union. It is a great nation, a global power. " But the question the English have to answer is - do the English consider the English Channel to be wider than the Atlantic? "We on the Continent have the right to deplore the fact that Great Britain appears to consider the Channel wider."
Britain certainly fought more wars across the Channel than across the Atlantic, and the US has bailed Britain out more times than Europe has.

Read More...

A bid to bring the female voice to Islamic law

CSM reported For centuries, devout Muslims have looked to the fatwa - an opinion based on religious reasoning of a learned individual or committee - for direction on how to resolve moral dilemmas ranging from the mundane to the sublime. And for centuries, Muslim women have conceded the ground, for the most part, to the men who issue these opinions. That's beginning to change. Meeting in New York over the weekend, Muslim women from 25 countries began laying groundwork for the first international all-female council formed to issue fatwas.

If Islam is ever to be moved from the 8th century to the 21st century, this is the way it would have to happen, and I wish these women the best, but I doubt that the men will put up with it.
Their idea: to ensure that women's perspectives on Islamic law become part of religious deliberation in the Muslim world - particularly on issues such as domestic violence, divorce, and inheritance.
Where Sharia law considers a woman to at best count as half a man (the word of two women is considered the same as the word of one man) to at worst just a piece of property.
"There's this growing sense on the part of literate Muslim women ... that there is a vital need for women to confront the Islamic tradition and to work on a par with men in interpreting the sources," says Ann Mayer, an expert in Middle Eastern law at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. "Otherwise you end up with a very sexist bias in the readings."

The number of women officially sanctioned to issue fatwas is hard to pin down, but certainly tiny. The emergence of such women, known as muftias, usually makes headlines: A religious school in India installed three in 2003, and the Turkish government last year hired two assistant muftias, its first. Governments and schools try to license who can issue fatwas, but Islam stipulates only certain prerequisites, such as knowledge of the Koran and Arabic. As a result, the ranks of unofficial authorities are deeper and the barriers to women surmountable. Whether the opinions of a women's council will carry any weight, especially in conservative cultures, is another matter.
Does the expression "a snowball's chance in hell" come to mind. Or perhaps "pigs fly".

Read More...

Jihadis and whores

Spengler wrote in Asia Times Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian "tourists" entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world's fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in Iranian women explains Iran's predicament.

I am not sure about what he is saying, but it is interesting, and certainly does not paint the Iranians in a good light.
To understand Iranian politics, cherchez les femmes: the fate of Iranian women sheds light on the eccentricity of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. By Spengler's Universal Law of Gender Parity, the men and women of every place and every time deserve each other. A corollary to this universal law states that the battered Iranian whore is the alter ego of the swaggering Iranian jihadi....

One does not have to destroy an opponent's military forces to defeat him. Russia collapsed without a single shot fired when Mikhail Gorbachev and his generals understood that they could not compete with Ronald Reagan's United States. The Islamic world also has been defeated, by a globalized economy in which the US dominates the top, and China blocks entry at the bottom. As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran's population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today's soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them.

That is why it is folly to approach Iran as a prospective negotiating partner, and meaningless to offer the clerical government security guarantees, for the threat to its security arises from within. Once a people has determined to extinguish itself, nothing will prevent it from doing so.
This seems to say that Iran is in the same problem that Europe is in, except that in Europe's case it will be overtaken by a higher Muslim birth rate. This seems to indicate that Iran will destroy itself, but it does not say who will replace it.
There is no doubt as to the demographic data, which come from the demographers of the United Nations.
Of course we trust everything the UN says.
But it is one thing to read the statistics, and quite another to consider the millions of intimate decisions that together sum up to national suicide.... The clerical regime vacillates between repressing prostitution and sanctioning it through "temporary marriages", an arrangement permitted under Shi'ite jurisprudence. In the latter case the Muslim clergy in effect become pimps, taking a fee for sanctioning several "temporary marriages" per women per day.

Read More...

Monday, November 20, 2006

Anti-immigrant backlash

NPR reported An anti-immigrant backlash, bordering on xenophobia, is sweeping across Europe. Sentiments once associated with ultra right-wing parties are becoming mainstream. Many taboos are being broken -- nowhere more starkly than in Denmark -- the erstwhile poster child of the welcoming and nurturing welfare state.

And why do you think that is happening.
Earlier this year, that haven of solidarity and liberalism was shaken by violent protests and deaths in the Muslim world over cartoons of Mohammed that were published in a Danish paper. Suddenly, Danes began to see their own Muslim immigrants as a threat to their national identity.
They woke up.
The cartoon crisis hit hard in the Copenhagen commune of Christiania, a bastion of the counterculture where freedom of speech is the paramount value.

Read More...

Al-Muhajir's Evil Presence

Nibras Kazimi editorialized in New York Sun The bad guys are now celebrating the Democratic Party's sweep of Congress in the belief that the American electorate has pronounced its verdict on the grand visions of the neoconservatives — the fall guys for what is hyperbolically called the "catastrophe in Iraq." The most compelling example of this jubilation has been the audio message released by the current head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the elusive Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who read the election results as a victory for his dark cause. At this stage, as the Democrats articulate their plan for Iraq, they need to ponder why evil men are hailing their anti-war talking points.

As if they care. They foolishly think that they can negotiate with someone with a sword, about to cut their head off.
Middle Eastern autocracies and the American bureaucracies that deal with them share a similar dislike for change in any form. Taking out Saddam Hussein meant bestowing equal rights upon the Shiite and Kurdish underdogs and beginning a democratic experiment — one that would be a model for all the despots in the region and empower other restless minorities, or so the neoconservatives thought.
The fespots in the area thought they were right, which is why they did everything they could to prevent it.
To jihadists such as al-Muhajir, resurgent Shiism and the allure of freedom for Arab and Muslim youth are stumbling blocks to their drive to establish a caliphate, one that is propelled by sectarian hatred and nihilist frustration with the ossified order. The tyrants and terrorists found a convenient echo chamber within American partisan politics in their effort to snuff out the new Iraq and turn it into an embarrassment for President Bush. The Democrats may not as yet have a real plan to fix Iraq, but al-Muhajir is brimming with ideas: Al Qaeda is grooming a caliph to do war against the heretical Persians, turn the Mediterranean into an Islamic lake, kill more American soldiers, and generally win the war on terror for the side of the bad guys.
Just as the heretical Persions seek to develop atomic weapons, letting them take over not only Iraq, but also the holy places (Saudia Arabia. with Mecca and Medina).
Beyond the theatrics of denouncing Mr. Bush as "the stupidest president the nation of slaves and drugs [America] had ever known" and threatening to blow up the White House, al-Muhajir's message is important on many practical counts. He positions Al Qaeda as the defender of Sunnis not only in Iraq, but also across the region in facing down the Shiite menace. He warns that Mr. Bush's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have enabled the Persians, that is to say the Iranians, to expand the writ of the Shiite "heresy" into these traditionally Sunni domains, and beyond, to Syria and Lebanon. Al-Muhajir even takes the rising stardom of Shiite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to task by referring to him derisively as "Nasr-Al-Lat," literally, the Victory of Lat, with Lat being a pre-Islamic pagan deity, implying that Nasrallah is not a Muslim.

But what is most surprising in al-Muhajir's message is his belief that what he perceives as America's imminent military retreat from Iraq has brought an end to one of the "phases of jihad." This is an occasion for al-Muhajir to herald a new phase: the establishment of the caliphate. Al-Muhajir pledges allegiance to the hitherto unheard of " Abu Omar al-Baghdadi." The glaring hint that he is indeed Al Qaeda's candidate for the job of caliph is al-Muhajir's insistence on highlighting al-Baghdadi's Hashemite pedigree — a traditional must-have for any would-be caliph.

Read More...

HRW's opinion of Saddam trial

BBC News reported The trial of Saddam Hussein was so flawed that its verdict is unsound, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch says.

What sort of trial did they want? Do they disagree with the trial, or the verdict? Do they oppose hanging him? While it might be better to do unto him as he did unto others, that would be much more cruel and unusual.
HRW said "serious administrative, procedural and substantive legal defects" meant the 5 November trial for crimes against humanity was not fair. The Iraqi government has dismissed the report, telling the BBC that the trial was both "just and fair". The ex-Iraqi leader has two weeks to lodge an appeal but his lawyer claims he has been blocked from doing so.
The appeal is automatic under Iraqi law.

Read More...

Make Love, Not War

wcbstv reported The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose immodest goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace. "The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank.

Sounds like a leftist mind to me. But would you not then want a cigarette, which would contribute to Lung Cancer.
It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."

Allah Pundit blogged To jam the Islamofascist hate signal? To rain love vibes down on Darfur? To melt the icy heart of Kim Jong-Il with pure, concentrated bliss? Nah. To stop Bush from attacking Iran

Mark Noonan blogged Here we have such a large swath of leftism - the obsession with sex; the unwillingness to fight for what is right; the pointless gesture which won't change anything but makes a leftist feel good about himself, the worn-out attempt to outrage traditional morality, the psuedo-science of the half-educated...

If the people of the left, as a whole, would put half as much engergy in to real world activities as they do on self-absorbed claptrap like this, half the problems of the world would be solved in a week. A short message to the left: Get your head out of the clouds and do something useful today.


Mona blogged In these times of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and worry about the situation in Iran as well as NoKo, it is important to do everything we can to bring about peace. But what, you might ask, can we little people do? What hard choices, what dread sacrifices can we make, to bring calm and harmony to a violence-torn world? Happily, and for those who have the mettle for it, there is this: In 33 days we can join with other concerned human beings worldwide, and, either alone or with the partner (including companion animals, let us not be speciests) of our choice, we can, er, feel the Earth move in unison. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Read More...

Israel orders killing of Hamas politicians

Times Online In a desperate attempt to stop the barrage of rockets fired by Hamas at Israeli villages, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, has ordered his security chiefs to target the Islamic movement’s political leadership.

Good. This is the one thing they fear, that they themselves will be killed. They don't mind if Israel responds and kills innocent civilians, and they don't mind the death of someone stupid enough to blow himself up, but they are worried when they find out Israel is targeting them.
According to Israeli security sources, a decision to assassinate leading Hamas politicians was taken by Olmert and his defence minister, Amir Peretz. Early yesterday Israeli missiles struck Hamas targets in Gaza, including a charity run by the group.

Read More...

Ayatollah who backs suicide bombs aims to be Iran's next spiritual leader

Telegraph reported An ultra-conservative Iranian cleric who opposes all dialogue with the West is a frontrunner to become the country's next supreme spiritual leader. In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state.

Let him show us what he likes. Let him blow himself up.
Considered an extremist even by fellow mullahs, he was a fringe figure in Iran's theocracy until last year's election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fellow fundamentalist who views him as his ideological mentor. He is known to many Iranians as "Professor Crocodile" because of a notorious cartoon that depicted him weeping false tears over the jailing of a reformist journalist.
I still think the way to handle Iran is to take out someone like this nut case, making it look like Ahmadinejad did it, then take out two of Ahmadinejad's people, and let them kill each other in revenge.
Mr Mesbah-Yazdi and his supporters will attempt to tighten the fundamentalists' political stranglehold next month, by standing in elections for the Assembly of Experts, an 86-strong group of theologians that would be responsible for nominating a replacement for Ayatollah Khamenei, whose health is rumoured to be ailing. Opposing them will be a coalition of moderate conservatives led by Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, and members of the increasingly marginalised reformist movement, who have formed an alliance to prevent what both groups fear is a drift towards political extremism.
A drift towards political extremism

Read More...

Al-Qaeda's airport bomb plot

The Observer reported A convicted al-Qaeda bomb-maker serving a jail sentence in Northern Ireland carried out dummy runs for a potential terrorist plot at Dublin and Knock airports, The Observer can reveal. Last Tuesday the expelled Islamist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed was seen exhorting young British Muslims in an online broadcast from Beirut to target Dublin because he incorrectly believed US troops used the airport as a transit centre on the way to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just because it is not true, does not mean the airports should not be bombed, at least that is what these stupid Jihadis think. Their "Allah" (Satan) loves death and distruction, and he has a special place prepared for them.
Now it has emerged that key al-Qaeda bomb-making expert Abbas Boutrab visited both Dublin and Knock airports. Information on the airports was found at his north Belfast flat three years ago, according to evidence at his trial in Belfast Crown Court last November.

Read More...

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Rep. Rangel will seek to reinstate draft

Yahoo! News Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars and to bolster U.S. troop levels insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

If he is stupid enough to propose it, it will prove that Democrats are likely to get us in a worse situation than Iraq.
"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.
Mant in the administration have children that have voluntered for service.

Read More...

Muslim Mac attack

Herald Sun reported McDonald's latest bid to attract more customers -- Muslim fast-food lovers -- has caused uproar among customers. The fast-food chain has introduced halal products at two Melbourne restaurants, significantly boosting sales. However some non-Muslim customers are furious they were not told their hamburger meat was slaughtered and blessed in accordance with Islamic rules laid down in the Koran.

They should offer both versions, and put the halal versions in a Kids Meal with a little plastic Jihadi Sword.
McDonald's consulted Muslim leaders before introducing halal products at its Brunswick East and St Albans stores. Halal meat is from animals that have been killed facing Mecca and blessed using the name of Allah.
Do they then behead the cow?
Brunswick East store assistant manager Nicholas Yacoub said the move had attracted a surge of new customers. "It has pretty much doubled our sales," Mr Yacoub said. The store does not tell drive-through customers about the change and has only one small sign inside advertising the move. Coburg resident Miriam McLennan was stunned to discover the hamburger she bought from the Brunswick East store was blessed. "Just as a Muslim would not want to eat anything that isn't halal . . . I should have my rights to eat normal, ordinary food that hasn't been blessed," she said.
And you should not have to wear a nijab either.
A Catholic Church spokesman said non-Muslims deserved to know if the food was halal before buying. But he said there was no biblical reason for Christians to avoid halal food.
Really? Killing the animal in the name of Allah?
A McDonald's spokeswoman said customers who did not want halal food should buy from any of its other stores.
It might be safer to just go to Burger King.

Read More...

Ideology is Al Qaeda’s Achilles’ heel

Daily Times reported The United States could discredit Al Qaeda in the Muslim world by challenging its violent Islamist ideology and muzzling its leading proponents, an independent report released on Thursday said.

The 364-page study, published by the RAND Corp think tank, described Al Qaeda’s Islamist ideology of violent resistance as a “global revolutionary creed” akin to the Marxism-Leninism philosophy that the West defeated with “a robust political warfare” campaign during the Cold War. “If the ideology is countered and discredited, Al Qaeda and its universe will wither and die,” concluded the two-part study, entitled “Beyond Al Qaeda” and funded by the Air Force. “It follows that a comprehensive US strategy needs to move beyond the boundaries of conventional counterterrorism theory and practice, and address these ideological and political factors,” it said.

The study’s authors recommended the Bush administration expand “decapitation strategies” to include ideologues, holding up as examples decisions by British and Indonesian authorities to either jail or deport hard-line Muslim clerics. “Preventing Al Qaeda’s ideological mentors from continuing to provide theological justification for terrorism could expedite the movement’s ideological deterioration,” they concluded.

I agree we should do whatever we can.
Much of the research in the RAND study was completed in 2004 but has never been released. The authors updated the data to reflect developments in Iraq, the Middle East, Chechnya, Southeast Asia and Somalia. “The importance of ideology has become even more evident. The passage of time has only reaffirmed and reinforced it,” said lead author Angel Rabasa, RAND senior policy analyst.

Read More...

Islamic Jihad in Indonesia

Atlas Shrugs blogged The price for being a Christian.... in Indonesia...and soon to be Malaysia (reported in the local daily news yesterday and today.) Death for abandoning (lapsing) Muslims and for Christians who preach in Malay.

Indonesia. An Islamic democracy. Is Islam compatible with democracy? These pictures were forwarded to me from a friend who knows a Christian in Indonesia......I cannot reveal too much or I will jeopardize the lives of those that smuggled these pics out. I am running them beneath the fold as they are too graphic to run on the main page. I am running them so the world will know and see that Indonesians are NOT the friend of anyone who is not Muslim.


Michelle Maulkin blogged The AP tries to play down the jihadist rage in Indonesia:

Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation and has more Muslims than any other in the world, with some 190 million mostly moderate believers.
Yeah, right, no worries. There are only 19 million of them who support violent jihad. Remember?
Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali as defending the faith...
Islam must be a pretty sick "faith" if people bomb people and behead people to "defend it". That sounds to my like something that supporters of Evil (Satan) would do.
..."Jihad that has been understood partially and practiced with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims," the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement.

"They approved the bombings conducted ... in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam," it added, saying the percentage of such support "is very significant."


blogged Indonesian radicals are calling for the assassination of President Bush. The "Religion of Peace" promotes its "values" once again!

Read More...

If you want it, earn it

Jay Tea blogged on Wizbang On Friday, I tossed off a quick piece that ended with a link to the number of Nobel Prizes that have been awarded to Jews. I'm not sure why I chose that particular yardstick, but I did.

I found it an interesting piece of information, and in fact bookmarked it for possible future use.
Later that day, Ken McCracken of willisms.com (with whom I was privileged to co-blog over there for about a month or so) wrote a piece that took the same notion, and ran like hell with it. Showing the research chops and insight that are required to share a page with Will Franklin, Ken found an interview with an Iraqi "researcher" who is extremely upset with the disproportionate numbers of Nobel Prizes awarded to Jews vs. Muslims.
167 Jews vs 4 Arabs, and all four of them are considered traitors to Islam.
According to what Samir 'Ubeid says, the Nobel Prizes should not be awarded strictly on merit. They should have quotas on them, to make sure that all peoples, all faiths, are appropriately represented.
Accoreding to the Nobel Foundation Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each prize consists of a medal, personal diploma, and a cash award. In other words, as the old Smith Barney ads used to say: We make money the old-fashioned way. We EARN it. If Arabs think they are not getting enough Nobel Prizes, perhaps they should stop spending so much time killing Jews (not likely to get them the Nobel Peace Prize), but study, and develop something worthwhile. I know they developed the Arabic Number System, but they did that before they invented Islam. What have they done RECENTLY that would earn them a Nobel Prize.
I suppose to him, that in 1989 the Prize should not have gone to J. Michael Bishop and Harold E. Varmus for their work in retroviral oncogenes (which has something fairly important to do with cancer research), but perhaps to Dr. Mohammed Durka-Durka Jihad for his ground-breaking work in the application of electrical stimuli to various portions of the human anatomy, and its consequent effect on human memory. ("If we apply the proper voltage to the genitalia for the right amount of time, the subject suddenly remembers their treasonous acts and will freely admit to them.") Perhaps Dr. Jihad can split the prize with Dr. Bishop, since he's not Jewish.
Arabs are seldom willing to split anything with anyone. They certainly are not willing to accept the two state solution in the middle east, for example. They are greedy basterds who want it all for themselves, even though they have not earned it.
You know, we've pretty much trashed the notion of "social promotion" in our schools, and are moving back towards actually requiring the students to achieve measurable progress before they advance out of a grade. But like a bad penny, it seems that this idea has not died the death it so richly deserves, but has merely moved on. I have very little respect for the "soft" prizes,
I agree, particularly the Nobel Peace Prize, which is usually awarded as a jab against the USA.
but the "hard" ones -- especially chemistry, physics, and medicine -- really ought to stand out. And Samir 'Ubeid's notion of cheapening them just so his (and, by extension, his fellow Muslims') feelings don't get bruised just irritates the hell out of me.
Their feelings seem very easily bruised.
You want a Nobel Prize, Mr. 'Ubeid? Feel free to earn one.

Read More...

Democrats Split on How Far to Go With Ethics Law

NYT After railing for months against Congressional corruption under Republican rule, Democrats on Capitol Hill are divided on how far their proposed ethics overhaul should go.

When it was Republicans raking in the money, they wanted to go all they way. But now that they see they might get rich, they are having second thoughts.
Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, mindful that voters in the midterm election cited corruption as a major concern, say they are moving quickly to finalize a package of changes for consideration as soon as the new Congress convenes in January. Their initial proposals, laid out earlier this year, would prohibit members from accepting meals, gifts or travel from lobbyists, require lobbyists to disclose all contacts with lawmakers and bar former lawmakers-turned-lobbyists from entering the floor of the chambers or Congressional gymnasiums.
That is just for show. They need to make it a criminal act to insert an earmark into a bill.
None of the measures would overhaul campaign financing or create an independent ethics watchdog to enforce the rules. Nor would they significantly restrict earmarks, the pet projects lawmakers can anonymously insert into spending bills, which have figured in several recent corruption scandals and attracted criticism from members in both parties. The proposals would require disclosure of the sponsors of some earmarks, but not all.
They should not only disclose ALL earmarks, but they should make it more difficult to insert them (like maybe require a separate vote for each earmark).
Some Democrats say their election is a mandate for more sweeping changes, and many newly elected candidates — citing scandals involving several Republican lawmakers last year — made Congressional ethics a major issue during the campaign. After winning the House on election night, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, promised “the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”
When she really means the most honest, most open, and most ethical Democratically controlled Congress in the 21st century.

Read More...

Muslim leader sent funds to Irving

Observer reported One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place.

Sounds like the President of Iran.
Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain's largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund.

Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website. He headed his mail to Irving with a quotation attributed to the philosopher John Locke: 'All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle.'

Read More...

Al-Qaeda's "Best assets" prime UK timebomb

Telegraph reported British Muslims volunteering to fight against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are being sent back to Britain to become al-Qaeda "sleeper" agents, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. MI5 agents believe that young Asian men, who have been trained to take part in the so-called "global jihad" in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, are now regarded as too valuable an asset to be used fighting British and American troops.

Britain, and really all of Europe, need to keep a close eye on people, whether citizens or not, that come back from the middle east to see if they can identify those sleeper cells. These nutcases are too stupid to come back and just become good citizens; they will not be able to resist trying to recruit others for their cells, and preaching Jihad.
MI5 and MI6 are working on the assumption that they are being ordered to return to their communities in Britain with instructions to establish secret, autonomous cells and to conduct independent terrorists operations without any direct input from al-Qaeda's high command.

Read More...