Who said China wasn’t dangerous?, religious offenses, Bangladesh cartoon arrest and other items

 

Iran’s interior minister said China renewed its support Friday for negotiations over his country’s disputed nuclear activities, and he warned that new U.N. sanctions could force Tehran to adopt “other means.”

 Mostafa Pour Mohammadi said he had reached a consensus on the issue in meetings in Beijing with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and senior foreign policy adviser Tang Jiaxuan. “The two sides agreed that other methods such as sanctions are inappropriate and ineffective,” Pour Mohammadi told reporters at the Iranian Embassy. Asked whether China had urged more active cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Pour Mohammadi replied, “It’s natural that our friends in other countries hope that talks conclude successfully.”

China’s official Xinhua News Agency quoted Yang as saying China supported a negotiated settlement and opposed the spread of nuclear weapons. “China would like to continue its efforts to push forward the peaceful resolution of Iran’s nuclear issue,” Xinhua quoted Yang as saying. China, one of five permanent veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, has urged Iran to cooperate with U.N. inspectors but has thwarted attempts by fellow permanent Security Council membersthe U.S., Britain and Franceto impose harsh U.N. sanctions on Iran.

Iran Says Chinese Give Support on Nukes

So China is supporting Iran. It makes sense.

Kouchner, after saying “the world must be prepared to go to war over Iran’s nuclear program” (what a brave French man I am! ), now he is saying that he “is ready to go to Teheran”, if he was invited and to “give the necessary time” for the International Agency for Atomic Energy verifies if they are fulfilling the aggreements.

Ahmadine-jihad in a clearly propgandist photo: I’m so good that I go to have a meal with some orphans… politicians are the same wherever the country you look at!!!!  (In the case of Ahmi there are some very distinctive qualities, that’s true ).

Ahmadinejad with some orphans on Ramadan’s 1st day.

All photos found at Kamangir.net.

Plateau has emailed me with some tips. Very important ones (thanks!  ). Ahmadeni-jihad has also promised to get rid of the Infidel’s influence at University (wow, the infidels, uuuhhhhhhhh…  ) mobilising a special militia to ensure it (well, both the Infidel and the influence… ) disappears:

The radical president refers to his “academic cleansing” plan as “The Second Great Islamic Cultural Revolution.” The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini closed the universities and launched the first “Great Islamic Cultural Revolution” in 1980. A committee created to “cleanse” academia purged more than 6,000 professors and lecturers, virtually destroying Iranian academia. Dozens of academics were executed as hundreds fled into exile. The committee also expelled thousands of students on charges of monarchist or leftist tendencies. It also censored or totally rewrote dozens of textbooks to conform to the Khomeinist ideology.

Iran also has an important place in WOT. The problem is the strategy built to fight terrorism, is mainly built to fight Al-Qaeda, but “is not prepared to fight Hizbollah“:

Ever since its start six years ago, the United States has been waging the War on Terror chiefly on the Sunni side of the religious divide within Islam. The principal targets have been Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

By contrast, the vision articulated by the president in his 2007 State of the Union Address is substantially broader. It encompasses not only Sunni extremists, but their Shi‘a counterparts as well. And, for the first time, it clearly and unambiguously identifies not just “terrorism” but a specific state sponsor — the Islamic Republic of Iran — as a threat to U.S. interests and objectives in the greater Middle East.

So far, however, this shift is still more rhetoric than reality. “Our strategy to combat terrorism is really only a strategy to combat Al-Qaeda”, Congressman Jim Saxton (R-NJ) pointed out in these pages not long ago. “We are not prepared to deal — in the event hostilities occur — with terrorist organizations that are built differently, like Hizballah.”

Related news: Iranian police takes vicious criminals to the state into custody. You know, very vicious ones…

Iran’s Internet restrictions. Read it all.

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From NYT:

“Even though we’ve prevented one terrorist attack, we know that there are still people in Denmark and abroad that have the capacity, the will and the ability to carry out terrorist attacks in Denmark,” Jakob Scharf, the head of Danish intelligence, said in an interview in his office here.

[…] With Europe again focused on the threat posed by terrorist plots, Denmark illustrates the powerful interplay between foreign agitation and domestic discontent. The country became a target of foreign Islamist terrorist groups two years ago after a conservative newspaper here published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, drawing worldwide attention. At home, the children of Muslim immigrants complain of job discrimination and integration problems, feeding the disenchantment of the small but growing Muslim population.

“In the schools, Danish teachers are always talking about democracy and human rights, but now they see what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan and what they did here with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad,” said Imran Shah, 31, who leads a youth group at a local mosque. “They ask themselves, is this a democracy or are they talking about double standards?”

Double standards?? I don’t know what they are teaching them to consider that “what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan” (why not in Iraq??) is against democracy and Human Rights. And about the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad:

1. it’s normal in democratic and free country to laugh and make jokes about beliefs. That way, no one thinks he/she is above the rest, and those jokes makes us question ourselves about our own ideas something that is extremely good.
2. Is someone of another religion asking to kill the cartoonists which draw that cartoons? I have not heard of any. And in any case, if there are, the own believers are going against them.

Some days ago, my friend Cruzcampo () from Spanish blog “How to be a right-winger and not die trying“, sent me this link:

In her speech, Griffin said: “A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”

Kathy Griffin poses backstage with her Emmy after her show ‘Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List’ won Outstanding Reality Program at the 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday. (Chris Pizzello/AP)

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-colour remark about Christ and proclaim: “This award is my god now!”

The comedian’s remarks were condemned Monday by Catholic League president Bill Donohue, who called them a “vulgar, in-your-face brand of hate speech.”

Well, he asked me what I thought about it. And I answered:

1st this speech speaks more about Kate Griffin than about the religion in itself. Looks like she is more happy because of telling others that they are wrong thanking Jesus because of an award, than because she has been awarded with it.

And secondly, paying attention to that kind of speech, made precisely to arouse criticism, is making her achieving his objective. If I would have been Bill Donohue -and I have a lot of respect for this guy, he is in the first front of the fight against Islamism- I would have said: “Hey, some Catholic Bishop has said some days ago that God can be called Allah. Why she did not say “This award is my Allah now?”. But not considering it as a matter of high importance. Certainly, it’s vulgar but I do not think this is “hate speech”, is more an idiot and inmature speech of someone who wants to attract attention.

So is there a double standard? Yes, but because people are so afraid of Muslim fundamentalism that they dare not say anything against them….

To continue with the subject: In Spain now, there is an exhibition in which late Pope John Paul II is pictured as the passive man in an homosexual trio, in pedophile attitudes, etc. The Ibiza’s Bishop has answered that “he condemns this as an offense to Catholics“, because the exhibition is held in a Catholic church, Santa María de Gracia (if it was not sufficient). So he has threatened the Major with legal measures to end the agreement to use that church to make exhibitions, as they have not fulfilled the terms of use.  He added that never “this Bishop or the Foundation -that manages the exhibition if the church- would have given permission for such an exhibition“. But the Culture responsible of City’s Majorship, has said “she would never use censorship against this…

I maintain my position: a) this people only want publicity and no risk: that’s why they are always touching the balls of Catholics but never of Muslims. b) the bad things here are two: first this is an exhibition paid with the money of all citizens including Catholics and secondly, that perversion of exhibiting these pictures in a Catholic Church is of very bad taste.

As Mª Luisa Cava de Llano, First Advisor to the Spanish Ombudsman Adjunta Primera del Defensor del Pueblo, says:

It’s not very much provoking or brave, pretend to offend the people who have been educated not only to forgive every time they are insulted but also to love the ones who offend them. What merit would there be if we would love only the people who do us some good?

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But not only Western cartoonists are been prosecuted, detained… just because of the humor they use in their cartoons: Bangladesh authorities arrest cartoonist.

* Boy, what is your name?

– My name is Babu.

* It is customary to mention Muhammed before the name.

* What is your father’s name?

– Muhammed Abu

* What’s this in your lap?

– Muhammed cat

😯

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladeshi authorities Tuesday arrested a cartoonist after drawings that Muslims said insulted their religion were published in a national newspaper, police and the government said.

A Home Ministry statement said Arifur Rahman’s sketches — titled “Name” — that came out Monday in a weekly supplement of the Prothom Alo — “hurt the religious sentiments of the people.”

[…] “This is a grievous offense, this is dangerous,” said Obaidul Huq, head cleric of the National Baitul Mukarram Mosque.

For saying what?? Muhammad cat?? Uuuuhhhh, what an offense!!  Look here, you’re all ridiculous. The problem is that you have power. If not, these stories would be good in a Groucho Marx’s movie.

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Other news:

1. Big Pharaoh (who is posting again!) is angry at Daily Kos’ gleeing over the death of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the Iraqi sheik who confronted Al-Qaeda and was killed because of that. Another crazy Western bunch of moobats!
2. Condolezza Rice is called “black snake” by Hamas’ TV. Hmm, yeah. I really think that Muslims get really impressed that she is sexy, intelligent -yes, she has screwed up sometimes, but she is intelligent-, is single (so, she has never married, no need of a man to be Secretary of State ), is a woman -very important fact- and is Black. Hmm, yeah, doh!! She is a liberated Western Black woman! What a danger!!!  

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Dialogue with Al-Qaeda?, EU Dhimmi Franco Frattini, Six Taliban Killed, AQ in Islamic Maghreb recruiting teenagers, Pakistani lawyers threaten w/ suicide bombing and NYT reporter freed in China

Some “experts on negotiation“, that Spanish Reuters edition qualifies as “cautious“, are asking why we don’t negotiate with Al-Qaeda (in Spanish), because “history shows that the extremist movements are better neutralised using negotiation and not force“.

Specially dedicated for them this video:

See how Hitler answered to negotiations?? This is what Annakin Skywalker, in Chapter II: The Attack of the Clones, before being Darth Vader, calls “aggresive negotiations“, so aggresive that in fact was WWII.

The article also states:

1. “There are also rational ingredients in Al-Qaeda, but it also attracts psycos” (Of course, every rational and normal human being is inclined to commit suicide bombing… ).
2. The negotiator, Jan Egeland, is a reknown anti-Israeli Norwegian, who claims having taken part in secret negotiations between Israel and PLO, Colombian “guerrilla leaders” (that is, FARC) and in Uganda (Lord’s Resistance Army: 20,000 children abducted to serve as soldiers or as sex toys, 12,000 killed directly by war, plus the non-accounted by desertification, illnesses…). All conflicts have been solutioned as you see.
3. “Al Qaeda is not an organization, it’s an idea“. You see? That’s why thinking is not good for your health, because ideas can kill you.
4. “Al Qaeda wants to restore the Muslim Global Caliphate“. How on earth can be restored something that has never existed before?

In the end they have to recognise that there are serious difficulties in negotiating with Al-Qaeda because of their goals (creating an Islamic Global Caliphate and convert everyone -including USA- to Islam) which of course is not very realistic and would imply that all the world’s Governments had to agree on the plan.

There is no place for another moonbat in this world…

Just this day AlQaeda has menaced Iraqi Sunnis…:

An al-Qaeda front group warns it will hunt down and kill Sunni Arab tribal leaders who cooperate with the U.S. and its Iraqi partners in the wake of the assassination of the leader of the revolt against the terror movement.

In a separate statement, the Islamic State of Iraq announced a new offensive during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting that began this week. The statement said the offensive was in honor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June 2006.

But hey, just put a little flower power in your life … And let’s dialogue!!

New cartoon of Mohammed the Dog: VH writes Mo’s Days of Summer. Al Qaeda has offered a bounty of $100.000 to kill artist (in their words, to “slaughter him like a lamb“). Let’s dialogue….

Stop this world; I’m getting out of it (Groucho Marx).

“War cannot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the other’s advantage“. Niccolo Machiavelli (I’m not a fan of him, but he was really a bright guy).

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But there are other idiotic moonbats around. Take for example EU Dhimmi Vice-President Commissioner Franco Frattini, the one who, in the midst of the Mohammed’s cartoons’ furore, stated in an interview to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, that EU will be writing down a code of conduct which “would encourage the media to show “prudence” when covering religion“. And he added:

“The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression,” he told the newspaper. “We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.”

Afterwards, he repented:

Mr Frattini thinks I misconstrued what he said. He has issued a stern press release, putting his side of the story….

Eeh, no, he just blamed the journalist.

Well, now he doesn’t want you to use Internet to search for “dangerous words, like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorist“… h/t Ignacio and la Frase Progre.

Internet searches for bomb-making instructions should be blocked across the European Union, the bloc’s top security official said on Monday.

Internet providers should also prevent access to any site giving instructions on how to make a bomb, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said in an interview.

“I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector … on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism,” Frattini told Reuters.

The EU executive is to make this proposal to member states early in November as part of a raft of anti-terrorism proposals.

So, if I search for “Armenian genocide” that means I want to make one myself. And if I search for “Islamic/Islamist terrorist” is that I am also one of them…. And searching for “Sex bomb” (remember the Tom Jones hit?) will also be forbidden.

Do they really think that someone who is in a terrorist cell doesn’t have any other preparation so he/she has to search in Internet how to do a bomb?

But it continues:

The Internet has taken on huge importance for militant groups, enabling them to share know-how and spread propaganda to a mass audience, as well as to link cell members.

Oh, yeah, and also it has a huge importance for anti-EU groups. Or more accurately to anti-this EU group, hasn’t it? So today we block terrorist and bomb and tomorrow we block information that we don’t want the people to know.

He is so damned politically correct that he does not use “terrorist” but “militant“…

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In France Rights groups slam plans for immigrant DNA tests h/t Hodja:

French rights groups and left-wing politicians Thursday slammed an amendment to a new immigration bill that would introduce DNA testing for would-be immigrants seeking to join their relatives in France.

The National Assembly’s legislative committee Wednesday approved an amendment that would offer long-term visa applicants the option of a DNA test to prove their family ties.

The amendment’s author Thierry Mariani, a deputy from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, says it aims to root out bogus visa requests, arguing that in parts of Africa up to 80 percent of identity papers submitted by applicants were fake.

He says the tests would be a voluntary way to speed up visa procedures for immigrants’ relatives.

But Socialist deputy George Pau-Langevin, the only black MP from mainland France, called the plans “unacceptable.” “This is a significant and unacceptable step in the violation of the right to a private family life, out of all proportion with the goal of fighting paperwork fraud,” she said. “Would we consider doing the same for French people?”

Right to a private family life??? This is just a measure whose aim is to prevent that people who do not belong to the same family, come to Europe claiming the right of reagroupment.

And what is more: the test is OPTIONAL. If you want, you do it and the process ends quicker. If you don’t, well, everthing is slower… Just your own decission, mate.

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Remember the South Koreans who were kept as hostages by the Talibans?

Afghan and US-led troops on Friday raided the hideout of a Taliban commander linked to the July abduction of 23 South Koreans, killing six militants, police said.

Taliban commander Abdullah Jan however escaped the raid in the southern province of Ghazni, provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai told AFP.

The US-led coalition confirmed there had been an operation in the province but said only that “several suspected militants” had been killed and one arrested.

“Abdullah Jan fled the raid but six of his associates were killed and an unknown number were detained by the coalition forces,” Ahmadzai told AFP.

The bodies of three of the dead were left at the site, he said.

The coalition said one person was detained in the operation in the Qarabagh district, the area where the South Korean aid workers were abducted on July 19.

Troops kill six Taliban linked to alleged SKorean abductor – Yahoo! News

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Some days ago I wrote that Al Qaeda had recruited teenagers for the suicide attacks and that they were educated to be like “little A-Zarqawis“. Well, over 50 have been recruited and trained by now:

The al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb between December and April recruited over 50 children aged under 16, the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper reported on Friday, quoting Algerian intelligence sources.
Police were alarmed that a 15-year-old suicide bomber carried out a deadly attack earlier this month in the Algerian port city of Dellys. The boy managed to pass unnoticed through security checks.
Radical imams have recruited to al-Qaeda around 15 under-16s from poor districts of the capital, Algiers, to join its fighters hiding in the mountains of Algeria, police said.
Police said the US-led war in Iraq was being used as pretext to radicalise youngsters in Algeria and persuade them to join militants. They said many had been given training in carrying out suicide attacks either in Iraq or in Algeria.
The al-Kalitius neighbourhood of the village ofBourama on the outskirts of southern Algiers is a particular ‘hotspot’ for Jihadi recruiters, according to police.
After being taken into the mountains, the youngsters have come into contact with Tunisian and Libyan militants and have been trained alongside them to carry out car and truck bomb attacks, police said.

Speaking of children abuse…. What outrage in the MSM and in NGO’s there is after knowing this?

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And seeing that the suicide attacks are feared, what do you think Pakistani lawyers plan to do if colleagues are tortured? Exactly…

Peshawar High Court Bar Association President Abdul Latif Afridi on Thursday warned intelligence agencies and the army to avoid torturing lawyers or “face suicide attacks by lawyers at forces’ headquarters”.
At an emergency meeting, the PHCBA passed a resolution denouncing a report that intelligence agencies arrested Advocate Ghulam Nabi on Thursday night and tortured him at a detention cell. Afridi said that if the army and spy agencies did not change their attitude towards lawyers and citizens, the people would “ban the entry of military and agencies personnel to bazaars and main roads”. He said the lawyers would charge secret agencies under sections 6 and 7 of the Anti Terrorism Act as “they tried to terrify the entire lawyers’ community by torturing a lawyer”. The lawyers later staged a protest outside the corps commander house in Peshawar.

I do not like torture, but I also don’t like suicide bombings…

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NYT reported freed:

A Chinese journalist jailed while working for the New York Times has been released. Zhao Yan had been sentenced to three years in prison for fraud in August 2006. He was detained in 2004 on charges that included leaking state secrets. International human rights groups had severely criticised his imprisonment, saying the Communist Party was using secrecy laws to stifle news.

For a retrospective on Zhao Yan, see HRW:

July 2004
Zhao Yan writes a four-line note for the New York Times sketching out a reported conflict between President Hu Jintao and ex-President Jiang Zemin over senior military appointments.
September 7, 2004
The New York Times publishes an article predicting that former President Jiang Zemin will step down from his position of head of the military. A reference to political jockeying between Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao is included as background material in one of the final paragraphs of the article.

[…] October 5, 2005
The Washington Post reveals that Zhao’s case relies almost entirely on a copy of an internal New York Times memo obtained by the State Security Ministry, according to a confidential ministry document urging prosecutors to indict the researcher. It is unclear how the agents gained access to the memo, of which a copy is included in an inventory of evidence collected in the case. [Who gave that copy then? ]

But at the same time detains other two AFP reporters h/t Status of Chinese People:

The arrest of two Agence France-Presse reporters on 12 September is the latest in a string of cases of foreign journalists being obstructed in their work. They show that the less stringent regulations introduced in January are being applied erratically and only when less sensitive issues are involved. At least 32 foreign journalists have been detained or prevented by police from doing reports since January.

“The way the authorities have treated journalists from Agence France-Presse, the BBC World Service and other international news organisations in recent weeks do not bode well for the ability of the foreign media to work during the Olympic Games,” the press freedom organisation said.

“These are not unfortunate blunders,” Reporters Without Borders continued. “They are the result of a clear lack of goodwill on the part of the police, who refuse to let reporters travel and investigate freely. We call on the International Olympic Committee to intervene with the Chinese authorities to ensure that the rules introduced in January are finally respected.”

Just keep waiting…

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Sri Lanka kills Tamil tigers:

Sri Lankan soldiers killed 15 Tamil Tiger rebels in a clashes in the north and east of the island while six military personnel were also killed, the military said on Saturday.

The latest spike in violence in the country’s long-running civil war follows the launch of a new offensive by government forces to drive guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from the northwesterly Mannar area.

Just in case, Tamil Tigers are the “inventors” of suicide bombings. It’s said that Bin Laden copied them.

In 1987 the LTTE established the notorious Black Tigers, an elite unit of the LTTE responsible for conducting suicide attacks against political, economic and military targets,^[9] and launched its first suicide attack against a Sri Lanka Army camp, killing 40 soldiers, still its not conformed.

Of course, they are only “militants”…

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Other news:

1. Selling and drinking alcohol is still legal in Iraq, but since the rise of religious parties in this predominantly Muslim country, the trade has come under severe pressure. Aside from legal restrictions, many liquor shops have been bombed in the past four years. But the people still but it…
2. Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Austria for a three-day pilgrimage, saying Christianity was not just the legacy of Europe’s past but “the way to the future.”
3. Japanese Shinzo Abe’s resigned. The main reason of his decission is that the Liberal party’s candidate had different views about the way to conduct negotiations about the continuation of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force’s refueling operations in the Indian Ocean in support of the Global War on Terrorism. The front-runner to become Japan’s next prime minister vowed Saturday to extend his nation’s support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan. Ruling party veteran Yasuo Fukuda also said he would take a softer line with North Korea over its past abduction of Japanese nationals, a row that has threatened to upset negotiations over the communist country’s nuclear weapons.
4. Putin, again: British and Norwegian jets intercepted Russian military aircraft Friday after they breached NATO airspace close to the U.K. and Finland, defense officials said. So far!!! Surprise, surprise: Putin does not rule out presenting himself to 2012’s elections. But this is not hurting his sucessor’s perspectives… No…
5. After I wrote these last days about the Deobandi sect in Britain and its overwhelming influence there, we have some fresh news about Tablighi Jamaat and their London’s mega-mosque: “The mega-mosque complex would become a flagship for Tablighi Jamaat’s mission to indoctrinate Muslims with a hatred of the West and the kuffar [non-Mulims].” But wasn’t the Mega-mosque cancelled? But there is more: Irfan al Alawi, international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, says the missionary work of Tablighi Jamaat acts as “a recruitment agency for jihad” in Afghanistan, the occupied territories and Iraq. “They go around deprived areas of British towns and cities, knocking on doors and urging young Muslims to come to their gatherings,” he said.

Sent to Open Trackbacks by Dumb Ox.

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Islamism update: Finnish Islamic party, Canadian veiled women can vote, Talibanised UK, NK and Syria, Austrian plot (II) and other news

 

Europe’s first Islamic political party has formed in Finland. The Finnish Islamic Party plans to collect 5,000 signatures in order to qualify for official registration by the end of the year.

 Counting on support from the 55,000 Muslims living in Finland, the party anticipates some success in next year’s municipal elections as well as in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Party spokesman Abdullah Tammi acknowledged to reporters that to date the party has enrolled only a few dozen members.

The Finnish Islamic Party platform supports:

1.  a ban on alcohol sales,
2. the option for Muslim children to be excused from school music classes and outings to swimming pools,
3. legal status for ritual animal killing and male circumcision,
4. and the eventual introduction of shari’a law in Finland. Tammi added that the purpose of Sharia law was to prevent crime.

Catholic World News : Islamic party forms in Finland

Oh, yeah, a real interesting electoral program. You know, what I am anxious to know is what percentage of Finnish population is going to vote for this party. Without considering even that Finland has never been under Islamic rule before.

So is this our real future? h/t 2008 voter. (Go check VH’s post about Chechenyan leader enforcing Islamic Dress Code, something I wrote several months ago).

Wow, magnificent perspective, eh??

But don’t worry: according to Canadians, these veiled women can vote, even if they can’t be identified. Hmm, anyone considering that inside those vests can be anyone? (a woman who has voted already, a man…)

UK: Islamism: The Talibanization of Britain. I wrote about Deobandi sect some days ago but this article has more information -remember Deobandi sect runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1350 mosques-:

Though a popular inspiration for Pakistani extremists, the Deobandi ideology gains its name from a town in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. It is here at Deoband that the second largest Sunni seminary in the world exists, called the Darul Uloom (House of Knowledge). It was officially founded on May 30, 1866, by two clerics, shortly after the British had destroyed the last vestiges of the Moghul empire in 1857. Mohammad Qasim Nanautavi was the original leader of the seminary, assisted by Rasheed Ahmed Gangohi. Children as young as five enter the Darul Uloom and other Deobandi madrassas, and usually graduate when they are 25. 65,000 students had graduated from the Deoband Darul Uloom by 2001. Deobandis disapprove of Western “science” education, and frown on people who watch TV, unless they watch news channels. [Of course, that way they are going to get rid of Infidels better as they know everything about us… while here we even don’t know who they are ]

Women are regarded as intellectually inferior to males. On the subject of educating women, the Deoband believe that formal education for a girl should end at the age of eight . A Deobandi scholar, Abdul Basit Hamidi Qasmi, has argued that “worldly knowledge is not good for women and can be destructive for them”  [You know, pals, I feel the destruction that reading is bringing on me. What a moron!]. It is not surprising that even after their official “downfall” in 2001, the Afghan Taliban have killed people for educating girls.

At the Haqqania madrassa near Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province, both the 2,800 students and their principal refer to the seminary as the “University of Jihad”. The madrassa has been given donations by the Saudi kingdom, which is not surprising considering the similarities of Deobandi and Wahabbi ideologies. [What a surprise, isn’t it? Both are similar!  Who would have expected it?]. Mullah Omar did not complete his studies, but as one guide noted in 2001 that “we gave him an honorary degree anyway, because he left to do jihad and to create a pristine Islamic government.”

So wonderful hein? But continue reading:

The man regarded as the most influential of Britain’s Deobandis is Riyadh ul Haq. He has written two books, ‘The Salah of a Believer in the Quran and Sunnah’ and ‘The Causes of Disunity’. He was embroiled in a controversy last year, when he was due to talk to 1,000 young Muslims in Canada. Ul Haq was scheduled to address them at the Youth Tarbiyah conference, held in Toronto in early July. He had been invited by the Islamic Foundation of Toronto. He had also been booked to appear at the “Guidance” conference in Montreal in late June, and his itinerary had also included Hamilton, Ontario. His visit was cancelled when Monte Solberg, Canada’s immigration minister, decided that Ul Haq’s extreme opinions might incite terror and hatred.

[…] The campaign against Ul Haq’s visit to Canada had released extracts of his speeches, indicating a contempt for the West, for Jews, and women. In one speech, he had said: “Of the peoples of the Earth, the ones that hate Muslims the most, the ones who are bitterest of their enmity towards Muslims, the most unrelenting, unforgiving, are the Jews and the mushrikin (Hindus), idolaters in all their forms.”

Ul Haq – full name Abu Yusuf Riyadh Ul Haq – was born in Gujarat in 1971, and when he was aged 3 he had migrated with his family to Britain. He entered the Deobandi Darul Uloom Al-Arabbiyah Al-Islamiyyah at Bury, near Bolton in Lancashire, northern England, at the age of 13, and graduated in 1991. [Note: He was educated by Deobandi’s extremists IN BRITAIN] This seminary was founded in 1975 by Yusuf Motala, another extremist immigrant from Gujarat in India. Following his graduation, Ul Haq became the imam at Birmingham’s Central Mosque. He has since taught at the Madinatul Uloom Al-Islamiyyah in Kidderminster, which was also founded by Yusuf Motala.

[…] Ul Haq’s arguments that women are inferior to men still appear on the website of Birmingham Central Mosque. The Mosque website also has articles extolling the virtues of Deoband and also the extremist missionary group Tablighi Jamaat.

[…] Riyadh Ul Haq is opposed to Muslims forming friendships with non-Muslims, whom he refers to dismissively as “kuffaar”, claiming that the kuffaar exert an “evil influence“. The Times quotes from one of his sermons: “We are in a very dangerous position here. We live amongst the kuffar, we work with them, we associate with them, we mix with them and we begin to pick up their habits.”

The Mail quotes him as saying: “The Koran teaches Muslims not to follow in the footsteps of the Jews and the Christians, yet of our own choice we decide to live, act, work, behave, enjoy and play just like the kuffar…Allah has warned us in the Koran, do not befriend the kuffaar. The Jews and Christians will never be content with you until you follow their way.”

Ul Haq praises the Taliban, as they share the same ideology, and he is contemptuous of Christians, Jews and Hindus. He openly and frequently ridicules “moderate” Muslims as evidenced in a sermon against “Jewish Fundamentalism“. As they are classed as traitors by Ul Haq and his ilk, some moderate Muslims are understandably outraged by this aspect of Deobandi thinking.

Ul Haq also praises armed jihad. He said in July 2001: “And no one dare utter the ‘J’ word. The ‘J’ word has become taboo. The ‘J’ word can never be mentioned and if someone mentions it, even Muslims look at one another. So much is happening and yet we are expected to remain silent.”

 And this man has not been charged?

Reflections to be underlined:

Khaled Ahmed, an expert on Pakistani extremism, stated: “The UK has been ruined by the puritanism of the Deobandis. You’ve allowed the takeover of the mosques. You can’t run multiculturalism like that, because that’s a way of destroying yourself. In Britain, the Deobandi message has become even more extreme than it is in Pakistan. It’s mind-boggling.”

 Hipnotic multiculturalism…

But UK Government is going to oblige Catholic Church to ordain transsexuals. Now let’s see if they have guts and oblige also the Islamic Deobandis to respect women and be also “ordained” as imams… Oh, not that way, they have their own ways, you know, other culture. But Catholic Church? Damn it, very fundamentalists…

What a bunch of morons these politicians make!

But hey, do you know the last news?

According to reliable sources in the local police, a Pashtun army officer belonging to the elite Special Services Group, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the Pakistan Army’s commando raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, blew himself up during dinner at the SSG’s headquarters mess at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 km south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, killing 19 other officers.

Are you prepared for a nuclear suicide bomber? (just imagine if this officer would have had access to nuclear weapons….)

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Something a lot of people was worried about happened at last: North Korea has possibly given part of his nuclear devices to Syria. h/t Infidels are Cool:

Just recently North Korea stated they were dismantling their nuclear program. It seems it’s not just being dismantled, but rather “transferred” to Syria undercover. I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of deal has been made that led North Korea to suddenly come clean and disarm their nuclear program.

When I wrote about NK dismantling its nuclear program my comment was:

Now we have to wait to see if this is true or is a new strategy of Kim Jong-Il…

Seems that we know now what is NK’s strategy these days…

As ever One Free Korea has more on the topic:

 I cannot believe that North Korea would permanently give up all of its nuclear weapons or materials under any circumstance except the overthrow of Kim Jong Il’s regime.  I can believe they’re selling off excess materials that could prove cumbersome in the event of more robust inspections that move beyond the immediate vicinity of Yongbyon, the box within which they’ve been kept so far.

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I wrote yesterday about the Austrian plot where three people have been detained for belonging to Al-Qaeda. Well, another one, also belonging to the plot, has been detained in Canada. h/t LGF.

TORONTO — A man arrested northeast of Montreal for allegedly planning a terrorist bombing outside Canada could face additional charges depending on the results of a search at his home, the RCMP said Thursday.

Said Namouh, 35, was to appear in court this morning to face charges of conspiring to detonate an explosive device. The arrest of the landed immigrant coincided with three related arrests in Vienna, Austria.

The Quebecer is suspected of having links to the Global Islamic Media Front, an al-Qaeda propaganda network. Terrorism researcher Rita Katz, who has been tracking the group, said other Canadians are involved. “The Global Islamic Media Front is individuals that are spread around the world, and there are several of them in Canada,” she said.

[…] Police said the investigation had turned up no direct threat to Canada. But the case does appear to be linked to a threat distributed by the Global Islamic Media Front to bomb Austria and Germany.

In March, the GIMF issued an online video in Arabic with German subtitles that said Muslim “soldiers of God” would attack Germany and Austria unless the countries pulled their troops out of Afghanistan and withdrew from NATO.

Two Austrian men and a woman were arrested in Vienna on Wednesday in connection with the video. One of them is believed to be the head of the GIMF’s German operations, known by the handle Gharib al-Diyar.

Oh, yeah, but you know, well, Catholics, you must take part in Ramadan by Austrian Radio Vatican:

The obligation of all Catholics is to know and support other people’s religion. That’s why we have not only to know about Ramadan but also to help and give Muslims our company, in this great sacrifice of breakfast that begins now.

“We were invited by Muslims families to take part in the Ramadan’s party. The Catholic priest searched for 50 voluntary Christians to take part in the banquet.“

Man, this people are crazy!! Not going to ask about what they have been eating (or smoking) before.

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The reality of China’s Olympic Games:

1.25 million people had to move out from their homes by force due to construction projects for the Olympic stadiums. There are also incidents of forced-demolition of people’s property in Beijing, Shen Yang, Shanghai, and Qin Huang Dao, where other stadiums are constructed for the Olympic Games.

The government stops, detains and forcefully sends back the appealers with the excuse of building up good images for the cities.

It also detains the human rights activists, dissidents and writers who are not afraid to tell the truth.

The government also suppresses the freedom of belief.

Hu Jia said, the Beijing authorities think the human rights activists and their voices are the biggest threat to them before the Olympic Games. They’re trying to give the appearance of a harmonious society, so human rights advocates Gao Zhisheng and Chen Guangchen become their typical targets, as the authority wants to “kill one to warn a hundred”.

Specially Christians are being persecuted aggresively in some parts of China.

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Other recommended links:

Theo Spark: President quits. The speech that Bush should make the day he quits office. Marvellous post.  The final announcement: “Your new president is Nancy Pelosi. You deserve it” is priceless. Read it all.

China emerges as leader in cyberwarfare.

Read Full Post »

"’Radical’ changes for EU neighbours", China, Somalia, Bin Laden’s new hair color, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, homosexual paedophiles sheltering children, Pakistan and the Muslim Cinderella (+)

 Alarming news indeed:

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, on Monday outlined what it called “radical” changes to its relations with the countries that border on the union.

Addressing a conference that included ministers from the 16 neighbour countries and the 27 EU members, European Commission Vice President Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the Commission proposes to open up the European markets to workers, services and goods from the EU’s neighbours.

The Commission’s proposal calls for instance for better legal migration, a tougher approach to illegal immigration. In the area of energy, it tables the idea of regional energy partnership that would eliminate the need for the bilateral pacts currently in place with some countries.

EUX.TV – Brussels Minute: ‘Radical’ changes for EU neighbours h/t Millenium Notes.

So, they are going to open all the borders to mainly our Mediterranean brothers, just in case they were not crossing the Mediterranean fast enough. 😡

This is released about the same time in which a suicide bomber has blown up himself in Algeria, killing at least 22 people. The suicide attack aimed at President Bouteflika. When he saw he has been detected by the people around him, he exploded himself before the scheduled moment. (En español)

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From BBC:

Doctors in China have discovered 26 sewing needles embedded in the body of a 31-year-old woman.

They think they were inserted into Luo Cuifen’s body when she was a baby by grandparents upset she was not a boy.  😯

[…] The needles were discovered only when Ms Luo went to hospital complaining of blood in her urine. She was given a routine X-ray, which revealed the needles. Up until then she had been in good health.

Some of these needles have penetrated vital organs, such as the lungs, liver and kidneys. One has even broken into three pieces in the woman’s brain.

[…] But there is no way to confirm this theory, as the grandparents are now dead.

In many rural areas boys were – and still are – valued more highly than girls. One reason is that they can carry on the family name.

Well, the main reason is not that rubbish about the family name, but the one-child policy which favoured during a lot of time, the boys over the girls. The consequence is that there is a great disproportion between the percentage of women and men in China nowadays.

A problem aggravated with a return to an ancient past within China, when mistresses were normal in the higher circles:

Chinese anti-graft investigators have found that 90 percent of the country’s most senior officials brought down in corruption cases in recent years had kept mistresses, drawing a link between sex and misconduct.

Mistresses and “second wives” are common among government officials and businessmen in China and are often blamed for driving officials to seek money through bribes or other abuses of power.

A report by China’s top prosecutor’s office said that of 16 provincial-level officials punished for “serious” graft in the last five years, most were involved in “trading power for sex”, along with gambling, money-laundering and shady land sales to developers, the Beijing News said on Monday.

“Nearly 90 percent kept mistresses, some keeping several,” the paper said.

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In Somalia, while the insurgents (err, well, Al-Qaeda linked tipes…) and the Government are going to talk, one of the insurgents hideouts has been raided:

Nine people have been killed and 20 others seriously injured in Somalia’s capital during a raid on a house by government forces targeting insurgents.

Explosions and gunfire rocked Bakara market in Mogadishu as security forces battled insurgents defending the house thought to be sheltering their leader.

On Wednesday six people were killed during another raid against insurgents.

Mogadishu has seen a rise in violence since Ethiopian-backed government troops ousted Islamists last December

The UN refugee agency says some 400,000 people have fled the fighting in the capital in the past four months.

The BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says most of those injured during the fighting are civilians who were caught in the crossfire.

Transitional government forces have been carrying out operations against insurgents for the past two months, but this was the first time a house was targeted, our correspondent says.

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Bin Laden urges American to convert ( 😆 ). Well, I really feel that he is not cool enough no matters how much henna he uses… I mean, with that look, he is not going to be a masses’ idol:

It appears that a texture effect has been added over the entire image. Perhaps the intent is to hide what appears to me to be a very sickly man. The shoulders are pronouncedly slumped, as if he has lost all muscle tone.  It shows serious wasting which many times occurs in Alzheimer patients. (As if we didn’t already know that he was demented). The flesh of his face is sagging. I think this IS a new picture. In November of 2001 Salon.com  conjectured that Osama might be suffering from Marfan syndrome.

Well, perhaps for some leftists-Chomsky-lovers, and such… he is attractive.

(+) More on Bin Laden’s hairdresser’s work.

Characteristically, no one is picking up on the significance of the dye job. The Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence forbids men and women to dye their hair black “except when the intention is jihad…as a show of strength to unbelievers” (‘Umdat al-Salik e.4.4). Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in his The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, says essentially the same thing: “Some of the early Muslims, including some sahabah [companions of Muhammad] such as Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas, ‘Uqbah ibn ‘Amr, al-Hassan, al-Hussein, Jarir, and others permitted the use of black dye. Some scholars, on the other hand, do not consider the use of black dye as permissible except during time of war, when the enemy might be impressed by the fact that all the soldiers of the Muslim army look young.“

As I said, I am not impressed by his hairdresser’s work youthness..

What is significant though is that he thinks he is in war… Now, let’s see if the rest also begin realising we are in a war too…

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President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan) revived the possibility of an alphabet switch last fall, requesting that the Ministry of Education and Science examine the experiences of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which have all changed to Latin letters. The ministry’s proposed action plan is based primarily on the model used in Uzbekistan. It calls for a six-step program, outlining cost estimates for retraining the country’s workforce to read Latin script, and changing signs on streets and public buildings. The overall cost of switching is estimated at US$300 million.

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Turkmenistan’s role in energy:

The pipeline expansion, provided it actually comes into being, could deal a substantial blow to western interests in Turkmenistan. In particular, it has the potential to deter a long-held goal of the United States – construction of a Trans-Caspian Pipeline that would carry Central Asian energy to Azerbaijan, where it would be distributed to the West.

As one Pentagon official said prior to the announcement of the Russian-Turkmen pipeline agreement: “If there is a new Great Game being played in Central Asia, the most important part is Turkmenistan.”

Western officials in Turkmenistan, however, deny that they have “lost” anything to Russia. “We don’t see it as a zero-sum game, as Russia and other countries in the region do,” said one Western diplomat.

But the diplomat acknowledges that Russia has an advantage in dealing with Turkmenistan; that Moscow doesn’t make the same demands on human rights and democratization as do Washington and Brussels. “We would love to know the real reason [that Russia was awarded the pipeline deal], but that seems to be the logical explanation,” the diplomat said.

Another Western diplomat said a major factor was connected to the fact that Russia devotes more high level attention to Turkmenistan than does the United States or European countries. “When Berdymukhammedov calls the Kremlin, it’s [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who picks up the phone; when he calls Washington it’s a deputy assistant secretary of state. And the presidential level is where you get things done,” the diplomat said.

Exactly the same as China in Sudan, about HR and democratization… 😡

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Two maids beaten to death in Saudi Arabia, accused of practising “black magic” h/t NMJ:

The brutality of attacks on four Indonesian maids last month in the Saudi town of Aflaj shocked even the most hardened observers in this kingdom, where employers have a long history of mistreating their domestic workers.

Accused of practicing black magic on the son of their Saudi employers, these domestic helpers were beaten over a period of two days beginning Aug. 3. Siti Tarwiyah Slamet and Susmiyati Abdul Fulan were killed. Tari Tarsam and Ruminih Surtim survived, but were taken away by Saudi police from the hospital just days after being admitted once they were deemed well enough to be questioned.

Since then, seven Saudi males from the same family have been arrested and are under investigation. The Saudi government never officially informed the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh of the crime, and only after migrant groups and relatives of the maids held two demonstrations outside the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, did the Saudi ambassador to Indonesia issue a statement saying that authorities in Riyadh needed more time to complete their investigation before they could send the two surviving maids and the remains of the two slain women home.

😯 Speaking of transparency of the Government… And of inaction:

The brutal killings of these Indonesian domestic helpers occurred in an atmosphere of impunity fostered by government inaction,” says Nisha Varia, senior researcher in the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in New York. “Not only do the authorities typically fail to investigate or prosecute abusive employers, the criminal justice system also obstructs abused workers from seeking redress.”

Go and read it all: it’s shameful. And this people want to teach others morals and good behaviour??

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Hmm, more cowards. And who pays it? The people who are less strong… in this case the children:

A homo-sex-ual foster couple were left free to sex-ually abuse vulnerable boys in their care because social workers feared being accused of discrimination if they investigated complaints, an inquiry concluded yesterday.

G-ay couple left free to abuse boys – because social workers feared being branded hom-ophobic

… one of the first homo-se-xual couples in the country to be officially approved as foster parents.

With no previous convictions, they came across as respectable men who simply wanted to help boys with a variety of problems.

In reality, they were paed-ophiles, who repeatedly abused the children in their care.

My reaction was of 😯 at first, but after reading it entirely (and once I realize what had happened -af first, I could not believe my eyes) was of 😡

And please, go and see the photos. I have not posted them, because I do not want any reader killed after seeing them…

Not all homosexuals are like this, BUT if someone makes such acts must be stopped before it’s too late. What are going to be the consequences for the poor child, hein?

My Pet Jawa links to other case, as gruesome as this one:

Judge Christopher Critchlow heard last week that Howitt and Rae, lovers for more than 10 years, repeatedly sexually abused the tot over a four-year period – simulating sex acts with him and forcing him to have oral sex while he slept.

Look here, I don’t care the sexuality, the gender or whatever. We are very careful about not upsetting grown-ups, just in case they get offended. And the little boys? What happens with them? They get not offended, but raped. What is a bigger problem, then? ________________________________

In Pakistan:

Suspected Islamic militants in north-western Pakistan have beheaded two women they accused of being prostitutes, police say.

The bodies of the two women were found by villagers on the outskirts of the city of Bannu.

A note found on the bodies accused the women of “acts of obscenity”, a term that usually refers to prostitution.

The region is a known base for militants who want to impose their interpretation of Islamic law.

Police said the women were travelling in a three-wheeled vehicle when masked and armed men overpowered them and bundled them into a car.

Senior district police officer Dar Khattak told Reuters news agency it was the first time militants had directly targeted and killed women in the region.

The note read: “We have started doing this to end obscenity in the area.”

First, they even don’t know if the women were actually prostitutes.

But in case they were, prostitutes don’t make “acts of obscenity” alone, but with men (in a 99% of the cases…) and because the men pay for them to do such “acts”. So, if they really want to fight obscenity, just don’t use them. Oohh, yeah, I know, err, yes, well, then don’t blame prostitutes!! You, hypocrites… 😡

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Cinderella, Muslim style h/t Kate: “I’m not going to be able to contradict him. But this is a fairy tale come true” says the bride ( 😯 ). The bridegoom is already married and has five children. He belongs to Dubai Royal House. She is a hotel waitress. Both are Muslims.

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German terrorist plot, Jihad, China, Thompson runs, demonstrations on Muslim world, Chávez, scandal in F1 and Pavarotti

So, after 8 Islamist terrorists were arrested in Denmark (in 11 raided locations), now the target were US nationals in Germany:

THREE men arrested in Germany had formed a terror cell to carry out “massive” bomb attacks, among the biggest on German soil, authorities say. “They were planning massive attacks,” federal prosecutor Monika Harms told reporters today. She said the suspects had amassed vast amounts of the chemical needed to make the bombs used in the suicide attacks in London in 2005 which killed 56 people.

They planned to attack Frankfurt’s international airport along with the Ramstein Air Base, a key US military hub, Harms said. They also planned to hit and nightspots popular with Americans. “As possible targets for the attacks, the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans,” she said.

The trio had trained at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group, officials said. They had procured some 700kg of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. Officials said the 35-per cent solution of hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT. “This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s Federal Crime Office, told reporters.

Frankfurt airport terror plan ‘massive’ | Herald Sun

More about the plot in Yahoo.com:

The men — two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a “profound hatred of U.S. citizens” — allegedly obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.

[…] Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.

Islamic radicals “treat the whole Western world as their enemy,” said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.

Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer who is an analyst at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the radical ideology embraced by Islamic militants outweighs national loyalty, noting that many of those arrested in alleged European terror plots in recent years grew up here

A fourth man has been arrested in Lebanon in connection with the German plot to bomb trains and the Lebanese authorities have filed preliminary charges against another five Lebanese and a Syrian.

One of the three suspects (of this September’s plot) was arrested for spying on a U.S. military base in December but was released soon afterwards, federal police Chief Joerg Ziercke said. 😡

[…] German federal prosecutors in June charged a suspected mastermind behind a failed plot to bomb two passenger trains using bombs packed in suitcases last year which failed to explode because of faulty detonators.

Six Lebanese men are currently standing trial in Lebanon over the plot, which  targeted trains in western Germany.

[…] Germany’s elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a town of some 900 people in central Germany, officials said. The third suspect fled out a bathroom window but was caught about 300 yards away, they said.

The suspects were taken before a judge in closed sessions Wednesday at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe and ordered held pending trial.

Prosecutors said the three — identified only as Fritz Martin G., 28; Adem Y., 28; and Daniel Martin S., 21 — first came to the attention of police when one or more of them carried out surveillance of U.S. military facilities in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in late 2006.

Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives — as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.

In diluted form hydrogen peroxide is commonly used in hair coloring and as a disinfectant, but the more than 1,500 pounds obtained by the suspects could have made a bomb with the explosive power of some 1,200 pounds of dynamite, officials said.

😯 /irony on/ But no, you’re thinking very wrongly of these bastards peaceful and loving and caring guys. They perhaps wanted to begin a hairdresser’s business, so they needed a lot of hair coloring… /irony off/ 😈

But that is not the only news coming from Germany today:

German technology has made it into an Iranian nuclear power plant despite an export ban. Prosecutors are investigating the case and the German Foreign Ministry is concerned about the damage to Germany’s credibility.

Dmitry S. is one of those Russian businessmen with a knack for quick deals. A native Uzbek and Russian citizen, he has just completed a major deal in Moscow for beef shipments from Brazil. In his last deal, he supplied half of Siberia with CD players and TVs from Berlin.

But Dmitry S.’s deals are not always so trouble-free. A deal involving industrial equipment attracted the attention of prosecutors and customs investigators to S., who has been doing business in German for more than a decade. The electromagnetic brakes, switchgear, spring elements and special cables that the 46-year-old businessman bought up in Germany between 2001 and 2004 were bound for the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr — a central project in the nuclear program of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Dmitry S. case has since evolved into more than just an ordinary criminal case. Indeed, it touches on highly sensitive international political issues. Proliferation experts working for German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have shown a keen interest in the investigations by prosecutors in Potsdam, near Berlin. And this is not just because, once again, a number of German companies, working hand-in-hand with foreign dealmakers, are suspected of circumventing export bans.

This is marvellous, hein? And the control on weapons, on materials of double use (military and non-military) or their components, where it is???

And by the way, is there any liaison with Putin?

The case’s true political explosiveness lies in the structure of the business relationships it involved. The Potsdam prosecutors now believe that they can prove that Dmitry S. and his now-liquidated Berlin company, Vero Handels GmbH, were involved in the acquisition of illegal material from Germany on behalf of the partially state-controlled Russian nuclear company Atomstroiexport (ASE) — material intended for export to Iran. “It looks as if Putin’s nuclear firm deliberately violated German law,” says one investigator.

Hmm, this does not look any good. Chinese Army hacking computers AND Russian public corporations lying to the same hacked Government about deals with Iran… It puzzles me extremelly… 

Anyway, read this post by Debbie about the link between China, Russia and Iran.

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The Jihad’s objectives: Jihad demands the killings of infidels or their subjugation under Islamic law. Read it all.

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Anyway, in China they are very worried about the bath houses and massage parlours, because of the “growing sex trade“. But, well, they should be happy about it, because the abortions focused mainly on female fetuses (and infanticide on girls) have saved the Chinese environment. [Well, no, not really, China has one of the most poluted atmospheres in the world h/t China Digital Times…].

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And, at last, ex-Law and Order Fred Thompson is running. 😆 I would like to see the expression in Zapatero’s face if he wins… Dumb OX has written a very funny post about this. 😆

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The Hillary Clinton’s fundraiser, Mr. Hsu, has failed to appear in court after the Judge set him for bail reduction hearing. An extraordinary judicial decision, as Fausta notes, considering that he has been a fugitive from the law these last fifteen years:

Hsu turned himself in to authorities last week after more than 15 years on the run from a felony conviction of grand theft. He admitted to defrauding investors of $1 million in a bogus investment scam.

He failed to appear in court for sentencing on that 1991 conviction, a revelation that prompted high profile Democrats — including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — to return thousands of dollars donated by Hsu.

Hmmm,  I would like to see what would have happened if this would have been made by any republican. You know, I haven’t seen this very underlined on Spanish press, but the Craig’s scandal… oh, yeah…

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Yemen: You could be punished by a slogan:

Demonstrations that began in May are continuing in Yemen as the regime takes increasingly repressive and violent measure to quell dissent.

Security forces made mass arrests of demonstrators, prompting more demonstrations. A new law criminalizes slogans. A newspaper is facing terrorism charges for reporting war news in the Sa’ada War. A top member of the Yemeni Socialist Party has been “seized” by security forces.

Interesting development. Normal people in Yemen -don’t think at first it’s the most developed society..- are demonstrating

demanding the release of more than 200 veterans and their sympathizers detained for protesting earlier this month, a police official said.

The protesters are mostly southern Yemeni veterans who lost their jobs after a defeat by northern forces in a civil war 13 years ago.

So, basically they have been jobless for 13 years because they lost a civil war. And now they are detained for demonstrating!! And when others protest that, they are also imprisoned!! 😯

Don’t know what happens today with the demonstrations:

Prominent Saudi reformist Abdullah Al Hamed and his brother brother have been ordered to appear in court on charges including inciting protests by women.

Wow, what a danger, eh? Women demonstrating… by themselves. Oops…

But the best is why they were demonstrating -well, trying to…-: because they want a man to be tried or released from prison. Charges? After the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he was imprisoned for calling for a constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia!

Yes, that’s right. Saudi bombers spreading everywhere, but people calling for democracy are imprisoned on terrorist charges. Pfrrrrrrrrrrrtttttt!

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“Chávez is a danger for democracy“, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa says. Link in Spanish.

He stated that [Chávez] has a “messianic vocation” and blamed his attitude on the petrodollars, which he uses in an irresponsible manner to spread his bolivarian phylosophy, de-stabilising a Hispanic-American democratic Governments“.

He also distinguished between the nearly-dictatorial (or fully-dictatorial as @€#€@# Castro’s brothers) and the democratic left in the area.

But Chávez maybe also a danger for another freedom (yeah, one more, looks impossible… but ): the freedom to name your children as you wish. Now they are going to obliged to choose between 100 names if a new law passes through Parliament. Yeah, I know some of the names are a little bit critizable:

Software searches of the voter registry find more than 60 people of voting age with the first name Hitler, including Hitler Adonys Rodríguez Crespo; eight Hochiminhs, among them Hochiminh Jesús Delgado Sierra; and six Eisenhowers, including Dwight Eisenhower Rojas Barboza.

Who can name Hitler to his son? I would be horrified…

But this measure is a little idiot. I mean, you can forbid that people name their children after famous people. But you cannot impose a list to choose from there.

Another thing is the discrimination this future law makes: the Indians and the foreigners are excluded from the measure. I understand about foreigners -they normally are ruled by the laws of their own country-. But Indians? What happens?? Are they different from the rest?

Then they would say that they have been discriminated and bla, bla, bla…. So, now they are discriminating the non-Indians. 😯

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A little bit of motor sport:  (in Spanish here)

It began innocuously enough with what looked like a patch of soap powder sprinkled across the floor below the two Ferraris awaiting Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa for this year’s Monaco grand prix. From this unlikely starting point it accelerated into arguably the biggest scandal in recent formula one history, possibly blighting Lewis Hamilton’s efforts to win his first British grand prix at Silverstone on Sunday [poor guy who has to ask for help to his daddy against Fernando Alonso… :twisted:, well, if you’re English, err, well, I’m Spanish, 😆], potentially jeopardising the careers of two respected engineers and forcing the McLaren-Mercedes team into such a humiliating corner that they offered up their world championship-leading MP4-22 to a detailed examination by the FIA ruling body in an effort to prove that no element stolen from Ferrari had been incorporated into its design.

The crisis reached its peak on Tuesday morning when Ferrari sacked their British engineer Nigel Stepney on suspicion of industrial espionage and a few hours later McLaren suspended their chief designer, Mike Coughlan, after hundreds of drawings and other technical data relating to this year’s Ferrari F2007 were allegedly found at his home in Surrey. It is understood that Coughlan acquiesced in the search and no legal compulsion had to be sought.

😯

(By the way, in Iran the racing Queen Sedigh has been banned from entering the stadium for the national competitons. What happens, ayatollahs? Do you think she was going to win again? Well, yes… 😡 ).

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Pavarotti has died.

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Beslan, China on hacking, 100th birthday for helicopters, Nike campaign, Ireland, Martyrs’ Monument, Iran and other items (+)

I forgot to write about the Beslan’s anniversary. So I’m linking to Pastorius’ post at IBA about it.

Chechneyan Muslims (with connection to Al Qaeda) stormed an elementary school in Beslan, Chechneya, taking over 1,100 teachers and students hostage. During the ensuing standoff with police, the Jihadis raped young girls, shot teachers, strung the entire school with explosives, and forced children to drink urine.

From the comments:

Beslan is not in Chechya, but in Ingushetia. It is a small autonomous district populated by related but different people, chrystian by their faith.

RIP. And let’s see if Putin learns something…

Infidels are Cool has also another very good post on the subject.

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China denies hacking Pentagon’s computers:

“Some people make groundless accusations against China” that its military attacked the Pentagon, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing.

“China has all along been opposed to and forbids criminal activities undermining computer networks, including hacking,” she said. “China is ready to strengthen cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in countering Internet crimes.”

The Financial Times report said the Pentagon was still investigating how much information was stolen, but cited an unnamed person as saying that most of it was probably unclassified.

[…] The Pentagon warned earlier this year that China’s army is emphasizing hacking as an offensive weapon. It cited Chinese military exercises in 2005 that included hacking “primarily in first strikes against enemy networks.”

The Associated Press reported in July that the State Department was trying to recover from large-scale network break-ins affecting operations worldwide. The hackers appeared to target the department headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea, it was reported.

However, experts have said that China is home to a large number of insecure computers and networks that hackers in other countries could use to disguise their locations and launch attacks.

Well, it’s a good way to disguise an attack from other people, such as terrorists… BUT for China is a golden oportunity: not only they can claim they are innocent, but they can do it and blame others! AND they have been trained for that…

Also UK has complained because the caring and loving and peaceful Taliban are using Chinese-made weapons. This is the most laughable line in all the article: The authorities in Beijing have promised to carry out an investigation. Bet they will say they are sold without permission?

(+) It appears that UK computers have also being hacked from China. What is happening here???

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This year helicopters are 100 years old. See the image gallery from CNETNews.com. The first helicopter was something like this:

In 1907, only a few years had passed since the Wright brothers’ first flight, and automobiles had yet to make much headway against horse-drawn carriages. In France, a number of tinkerers were trying out another novel mode of mechanical locomotion: the helicopter. Well, something vaguely resembling modern helicopters, anyway. But the contraptions did count as the first successful steps, however brief, along the way to manned flight powered by rotary wings. And that makes 2007 the centennial of the helicopter.

Designs by Maurice Leger, Jacques and Louis Breguet, and Paul Cornu all got off the ground in 1907–just barely, and for just a very few seconds. These earliest machines also tended to require steadying from people on the ground. Cornu’s craft, shown here, got airborne in November of that year for as long as 20 seconds at an altitude, if you can call it that, of somewhere between knee-high and eye level. It featured two rotors at opposite ends of the airframe that turned in opposite directions to balance out the torque.

Caption text by Jonathan Skillings, staff writer, CNET News.com Credit: Branger/Getty Images

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New Nike’s marketing campaign. “Being Spanish is not an excuse, it’s a responsibility“.

Just wait and see: all the nationalists from all the autonomous Communities, which call themselves “historic“, are going to boicot Nike…, calling it a “remnant of imperialistic Spain“. 😈

[the man in the picture is Spanish tennis-player Rafael Nadal…]

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Ireland to allow police to wear turbans?

If the uniform requirements of the Garda Reserve were to be waived for a Sikh officer, then they would have to be waived for everyone else who pleaded cultural or religious custom. Male Jewish officers would be allowed to wear the yamulke instead of the cap; female Muslim officers (if their husbands allowed them out) would wear the veil instead of the cap; some might even cover their uniforms with a burqa. Buddhist members (although I’m not sure if their beliefs would allow them to join a force which might be required to use even limited violence against violence) would be able to wear a yellow robe. The possibilities are numerous, and while they might make for a more colourful air around the Phoenix Park and Harcourt Square, it would be the end of uniformity and the discipline it both implies and requires.

Even more to the point, it would further endorse our skewed version of multi-culturalism. The idea of having people of various cultural traditions and ethnic minorities in our defence and garda forces is to ensure integration, not reinforce difference.

I hope they are not revising their previous policy about the uniform…

As Steve says:

Britain opened that Pandora’s Box many years ago when Sikhs were first allowed to ride motorbikes without crash helmets and to work on building sites without hard hats. Their heads are no harder than anyone else’s but health and safety, it seems, took second place to religious feeling.

This reflects our peculiar attitude to cultural minorities which, as I have said before, is a legacy of the Empire. The British establishment would prefer to do deals with the leaders of minority groups than ask them to integrate.

The Met, with its fourteen different minority pressure groups and its concessions to religious demands, is hardly a model to emulate either.

Bad thing altogether. A uniform, as its name says, is to make everyone being the same, to uniform, make all of them of one form, whaever their background. 👿

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from the Persecution Blog: the Martyr’s monument:

More than 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith since 33 AD. This year an estimated 160,000 believers will die at the hands of their oppressors and over 200 million will be persecuted, arrested, tortured, beaten or jailed. In many nations it is illegal to own a Bible, share your faith, change your faith or allow children under 18 to attend a religious service.

Here is a photo of the monument:

1. See more photos of the monument here.

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More on Iran: Haleh Esfandiari leaves Iran. by Vicki. But as she says:

Continued prayers for the other Iranian-Americans still detained in Iran: Ali Shakeri and Kian Tajbakhsh, who are still imprisoned, and Parnaz Azima, who is free on bail but is being prevented from leaving Iran.

From FFDB:

Iran President Ahmadinejad states he has “PROOF” that the United States will NOT attack Iran.

But, not to be seen as WEAK, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls the United States and West names – “drunken and arrogant” and says that Iran would never yield to Western pressure over its nuclear program.

And this is how Iran could inflict pain on Western countries:

Other interesting fact: new Head of the Revolutionary Guard IS one of the Iranian who kidnapped US Nationals on Nov 4th, 1979.

The appointment of somebody who was involved in taking US hostage, as the commander of a 200,000 strong military force can be interpreted as a provocation in the current cold war between Tehran and Washington. The important question to ask is: how long before such provocations turn into open confrontation? With the massive breakdown in communications and trust between both sides, one could be forgiven for fearing the worst.

Some quotes from Jafari here. Just read them: peaceful, loving guy…

Meanwhile, the former Head of the Revolutionary Guard has stated: “There are 200,000 vulnerable American forces in the region and we have information about all their bases”. 😯

Ayatollah Mojtahedi. “I wish I was a chick“. 😯 He says that then, all the taxis would stop when he wants one.

Ahmadinejad:

“Iran’s telecommunication service should transfer the message of our revolution across the whole world….He said it’s vital that we complete this network of communication and from inside these networks, love, hope, faith and modesty should be suggested and the message of Islamic revolution should be transferred througout the world.”

😯

Do you remember Khatami shaking hands with a young lady in Italy and the following scandal? Well, he has a legal suite awaiting for him at court. 😀

And lastly, a link to laugh about Ahmadinejad:

Hi, my name is Mahmoud Admadinejad. I know it is hard to pronounce so you guys can just call me “Spanky.” After all that is what my Iranian school yard chums nicknamed me.
Listen, I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I’m not all that bad of a guy. Sure the Bush administration is out to paint me as a tyrant and a fascist, but hey, we all know he is really the evil one. Right? Good, now that we have the pleasantries aside, I have some important things to talk about with you, the American people.
If you’ve been too busy ogling scantily clad women in the streets of your American cities you might not have noticed that I’ve been spending some time with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But our alliance isn’t about taking over the West or usurping America’s place in the world, and it isn’t even about how good “Vladi” looks without his shirt off.
Umm, not that I’ve noticed or anything…I just…err…we were just attending this Democratic debate and well…don’t ask, don’t tell.

😆 Just read it all…

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Other interesting posts to read:

Terrorist attack hits Pakistan. by Sheik Yermami.

5000 new rifles, but no milk from Venezuela. by John Lilyea.

The Dying Soar of a Syphilitic Hunchback. by Scipio. About Russian situation. A very interesting post, really.

Danish police arrest suspected terrorists. by Astute Bloggers.

Abortions on demand in the UK. by David Vance. “in some cases, with the procedure just being carried out by a nurse“. 😯 And the health of the mother how is protected is these cases? -the unborn, well, I even don’t mention that little detail. But as abortions are mostly done to protect the mothers’ health…-.

His “Crime”? He wasn’t a Muslim. by Jeremayakovka. WARNING! Extremely graphic image of this slaughter in Southern Thailand. 😦 😡

Last but not least, to laugh a bit, read this post by Kate. 😆

Read Full Post »

Chinese hackers on Pentagon, Sudan, Microsoft, Che’s hair, desecration of cemeteries, photos, Iran, Jihadi “love”, censorship, SIOEC and Muslim clerics vs kisses

Some days ago I wrote about Chinese hackers on German computers, now it’s on US Pentagon’s computers:

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.

Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.

One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence…trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.

China Military Hacked Into Pentagon « Status of Chinese People

😯

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So now, NYT is worried about Arabs kiling Arabs in Sudan…:

Some of the same Arab tribes accused of massacring civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan are now unleashing their considerable firepower against one another in a battle over the spoils of war that is killing hundreds of people and displacing tens of thousands.

In the past several months, the Terjem and the Mahria, heavily armed Arab tribes that United Nations officials said raped and pillaged together as part of the region’s notorious janjaweed militias, have squared off in South Darfur, fighting from pickup trucks and the backs of camels. They are raiding each other’s villages, according to aid workers and the fighters themselves, and scattering Arab tribesmen into the same kinds of displacement camps that still house some of their earlier victims.

United Nations officials said that thousands of gunmen from each side, including some from hundreds of miles away, were pouring into a strategic river valley called Bulbul, while clashes between two other Arab tribes, the Habanniya and the Salamat, were intensifying farther south.

Darfur’s violence has often been characterized as government-backed Arab tribes slaughtering non-Arab tribes, but this new Arab-versus-Arab dimension seems to be a sign of the evolving complexity of the crisis. What started out four years ago in western Sudan as a rebellion and brutal counterinsurgency has cracked wide open into a fluid, chaotic, confusing free-for-all with dozens of armed groups, a spike in banditry and chronic attacks on aid workers.

No, honey, this is just racism, because the Arabs from the North are white while the Arabs on the South are Black. (By the way, they are not Arabs, they are Muslims…)

By the way, Ban Ki-Moon is in Sudan to press for new talks:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is in Sudan to “give a push” for a new round of talks to end the four-year regional conflict and mobilize support for the speedy deployment of a new 26,000-member peacekeeping force, a top U.N. official said Monday.

Ban was expected to have dinner with President Omar al-Bashir before heading to southern Sudan on Tuesday to assess implementation of the 2005 agreement that ended a separate 21-year civil war between Sudan’s Muslim government in the north and the mostly Christian southern rebels.

He was then due Wednesday in Darfur to visit a camp for some of the 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict there, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives.

“It is important to move on several fronts,” Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, told reporters traveling with Ban. This is why the secretary-general has come to Sudan at this time, he said.

After his behaviour with NK, I don’t quite consider him really pushing for anything anywhere…

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Microsoft copying Google:

This week, it plans to turn that strategy upside down, making available free software that connects its Windows operating system to software services delivered on the Internet, a practice increasingly referred to as “cloud” computing. The initiative is part of an effort to connect Windows more seamlessly to a growing array of Internet services.

The strategy is a major departure for Microsoft, which primarily sells packaged software for personal computers. With this new approach, Microsoft hopes to shield its hundreds of millions of software customers from competitors like Google and Salesforce.com, which already offer software applications through the Internet.

Microsoft’s new Windows Live software suite includes an updated electronic mail program, a photo-sharing application and a writing tool designed for people who keep Web logs.

The new service is an indication that Microsoft plans to compete head-on against archrival Google and others, and not only in the search-engine business where it is at a significant disadvantage. Instead, Microsoft will try to outmaneuver its challengers by becoming the dominant digital curator of all a user’s information, whether it is stored on a PC, a mobile device or on the Internet, industry executives and analysts said.

Well, this is not a surprise…

Brian Hall, general manager for Microsoft’s Windows Live services, said, “We’re taking the communications and sharing components and creating a set of services that become what we believe is the one suite of services and applications for personal and community use across the PC, the Web and the phone.”

The Windows Live service — which will be found at www.live.com — includes new versions of the company’s Hotmail and Messenger communications services as well as Internet storage components. Microsoft executives said there were roughly 300 million active users each on the Hotmail and Messenger services, with some overlap.

The software release will offer PC users the option of downloading a set of the services with a single Unified Installer program, or as separate components. The individual services are Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Windows Live OneCare Family Safety, a computer security program.

We will see…

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Shameful:

Gustavo Villoldo, 71, was involved in Guevara’s capture in the jungles of Bolivia, according to unclassified U.S. records and other documents. He plans to auction the hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago.

“It’s time for me to put the past behind and pass these on to someone else,” said Villoldo, also a veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

The scrapbook also holds a map used to track down Guevara in Bolivia, photos of Guevara’s body, intercepted messages between Guevara and his rebels and a set of Guevara’s fingerprints taken before his burial.

let’s party afterwards.

Now if you understand Spanish, and want to vomit afterwards, read this interview by moderate centered and objective El País, “the independent diary of the morning“, to Adelaida Guevara, daughter of Ché (thanks Kate for finding it…). And then speak about “the imperialistic Spain in Cuba“. Buaff…

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tiberge writes about the desecration of some French Christian cemeteries with no one raising their voices and no important MSM reporting about it:

Satanic inscriptions in English and swastikas were discovered on Friday in ten vaults of a cemetery in Toulouse (…) Several graves were covered with the words “Damned the Christ” or with swastikas, while flower pots were turned over and signs pointing to various sections of the Terre-Cabade cemetery were damaged,” according to an AFP report.

Elentir writes that in Spain some far-leftist vandals desecrated the cemetery of Paracuellos -where the victims of Communists in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War are buried- and a fascist web published a map of red (=communist) toombs and monuments to desecrate and destroy them.

What surprise me of this people is that they attack the dead. They should see the Dead of Lord of the Rings… You know: “This path is guarded by the Dead. The dead do not suffer the living to pass“. 😈 And this people so brave with the poor dead people were going to run at a huge speed. 😈

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Now for some photos: This is the Bolivarian Embassy in Peru before and after Chávez. And this is the new Bolivarian 5-star hotel in Caracas. 😈 I wonder what the grand-daughter of its owner would think of the move…

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From Demediacratic Nation:

Provisional Friday Prayer Leader of Tehran Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani sermonizing before a standing room only congregation said:

“US administration is propagating a certain version of Christianity that is not based on Jesus Christ (PBUH) teachings, but after securing Zionists’ interests. 😯 [US administration is propagating a version of Christianity not based on Jesus Christ?? Well, then, how would you call that? 😉 ].

Based on this mentality, the Jews must gather in Palestine and then in the course of a revolution two thirds of them to get killed, and the remainder should see the reappearance of Jesus (PBUH).

Therefore, they are after gathering the entire Jews of the world in Palestine, which is definitely a move with political and Satanic roots, but the idea is put forth in the framework of an idea behind the hope for reappearance of Messiah. US President George W. Bush is the standard bearer of that mentality. That man is loathed to an extent in the United States today that the mentality he supports, too, has very limited number of supporters.”

Hey, this man should write script or something. What an imagination!! Heh. 😈

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You can also read this post from Red Alerts:

The second YouTube video in as many months where a fairly young guy argues for marrying children based on Islamic values. His argument is straight from the undergraduate liberal arts textbook. He’s preaching moral moral relativism, the flip side of social science doctrine to view cultures without your inherent ethnocentrism. His argument is that since our (westerners) ethics aren’t universally accepted, it isn’t “ethical” to judge other cultures using our moral compass, but we should use the morals and ethics of the society we’re judging to judge them.

[…] Watch to be disgusted, it’s in two parts so settle in. Vid one starts slow, but the last three minutes will make any feminist worth their salt go ballistic. It’s also the verbatim argument made by Jihadi Pervert one who was from California. Odd that the someone from Canada would be repeating the same tripe. It’s almost as if their being self radicalized by hanging around a jihadi propaganda outlet.

And watch the videos inside… 😡 You know, just like the female professor I wrote about yesterday about FGM.

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About censorship to Atlas Shrugs, read 1389 Blog: she has been clasified as “Violence/Hate/Racism blog by SonicWALL, a site of rating for blogs.

Anyway, she has had as ever a beautiful response from readers. Blogpower!

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Announcement from Vigilant Freedom / 910 Blog:

Baron Bodissey of The Gates of Vienna is seeking assistance in producing a Counter-jihad Calendar. Each month of the calendar will feature pictures of famous scenes from various countries under threat from Islamisation, along with a series of links for anti-Islamist blogs in those countries. The following countries will be represented: Britain, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Greece, India, Australia, and the USA. Search your blogrolls for your favorite blogsites which focus on the Islamist threat in these countries, and forward them to Baron at vigilantfreedom dot com.

I’m doing a list on Spanish anti-Jihadi sites. If you’re Spanish and you have an anti-Jihadi blog, you can write a comment in this post with the link and your name so I can forward the complete list in a fortnight. According to Baron this is a summary of what this calendar is about:

The calendar was started to supplement the SIOE demonstration at the EU Parliament in Brussels on September 11th, 2007, to protest the ongoing Islamization of Europe.
SIOE asked me to help with graphics and logos for their efforts, and I was glad to comply. In the process I decided to launch a parallel enterprise, one which fits in with the Brussels demo but which will continue afterwards. I call it the “Counterjihad Calendar Project”, and it will include an iconic image of a notable Western monument for each of the twelve months.
One of the themes of the SIOE rally is “Enough is enough!” With the help of people from the various countries involved, versions of the slogan in nine different European languages were created.
Bearing in mind what has happened to Cordoba Cathedral in Spain, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and an uncountable number of Hindu temples in India, I wanted to associate a well-known Western building or monument on each page of the calendar. I’ve finished seven months, and have five more to go.
Since our focus at Gates of Vienna is not just on Europe, but on the ongoing Islamization of the entire civilized world, the countries on the calendar will include India, the USA, and Australia.
Some of the monuments used in the images will be well-known to everyone; others will be familiar mainly to the citizens of the countries involved. If all goes well, when the last month is ready, I’ll create a wall calendar that will be sold at our Café Press store.

The kinds of sites I want are those that spend a least 25% of their time posting about Muslim and jihad-related issues. I want to exclude anti-Semitic sites or those that hate Israel, and antything that is truly racist. The issue is the religion and ideology of Islam, and not race.

Thanks for your collaboration.

By the way, please, enter the name of your blog or of someone who has give you express permission. I do not want that later some bloggers complaint about being in the Calendar without their express consentment.

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And now, something pleasant: Let the Kissing begin by Angel. Je:

SARAJEVO (AFP) — Organisers of an event in which almost 7,000 couples kissed simultaneously in a Bosnian town on Saturday said their effort deserved a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Bosnia claims world kissing record
Mus-lim clerics in Tuzla called for a boycott of the event, arguing it was not in line with Mus-lim tradition.

“it doesn’t appear in the Quran!!” Bwahahahaha!! Must be because there are no boys kissing old men… 😦

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China’s influence spreads, Nebraska’s university affair, Lebanon’s Nahr El-Bahred, futures’ markets and Brian de Palma

As I have posted before, Chinese influence in the world is spreading, something that, with its present state about Human Rights, is far from good. From Yahoo:

For years, China’s booming economy touched daily life in the West most visibly through the “made-in-China” label on everything from clothes to computers. But now, economic growth is giving rise to something more that can’t be measured just by widgets and gadgets — a shift in China’s balance of power with the rest of the world.

China’s reach now extends from the Australian desert through the Sahara to the Amazonian jungle — and it’s those regions supplying goods for China, not just the other way around. China has stepped up its political and diplomatic presence, most notably in Africa, where it is funneling billions of dollars in aid. And it is increasingly shaping the lifestyle of people around the world, as the United States did before it, right down to the Mandarin-language courses being taught in schools from Argentina to Virginia.

China, like the United States, is also learning that global power cuts both ways. The backlash over tainted toothpaste and toxic pet food has been severe, as has the criticism over China’s support for regimes such Sudan’s.

To understand why China’s influence is increasingly pushing past its borders, just do the math.

When 1.3 billion people want something, the world feels it. And when those people in ever increasing numbers are joining a swelling middle class eager for a richer lifestyle, the world feels it even more.

If China’s growth continues, its consumer market will be the world’s second largest by 2015. The Chinese already eat 32 percent of the world’s rice, build with 47 percent of its cement and smoke one out of every three cigarettes.

Continue reading…

Related news.

China farmer Activist Arrested for Advocating “No Olympics, But Human Rights”.

China passes law censoring Disaster and Accidents Coverage.

Related posts:

Ban Ki-Moon: The main cause of Darfur problems is….

China launches Nigerian satellite.

Sudan, the UN ambassador, the rebels: why it is necessary a general denounce of the silence of the MSM on the Darfur crisis?

Chinese PM launches Africa tour

China’s oil policy

Chinese new arsenal

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More about Nebraska’s University affair:

Officials of the Omaha, Nebraska archdiocese are expressing a growing impatience with the Jesuit-run Creighton University, the Associated Press reports.
Although university officials this week cancelled plans for a campus lecture by Anne Lamott, a novelist who is an advocate of legal abortion and euthanasia, archdiocesan leaders remained unhappy with the direction of the university, the news service revealed in an August 31 report.
[…]In announcing a mutual agreement to cancel the lecture, Creighton had said that Lamott’s views on suicide and euthanasia had only recently come to the attention of school officials. But the novelist’s agent told Associated Press a quite different story, saying that the school had deliberately asked Lamott to avoid those issues during her lecture.

The lecture was cancelled thanks to blogpower! Je. 😆

There is another important initiative for the pro-life movement: a Mexican church has presented the Declaration of Human Rights of the Unborn:

The declaration, which contains ten principles that state that the unborn have the right to be recognized as individuals of the human race, will be delivered to the Mexican Congress in support of an amendment to the constitution.

Congresswoman Beatriz Garcia Reyes, who was present at the signing, said the initiative could bear “much fruit,” and she rejected the idea that such proposals to defend life should only occur when politically expedient. The unborn and their rights should always be defended, she added. She also called for legislative reform in order to define the unborn as an individual and a person under the law.

I like the idea, even if our establishment doesn’t.

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Even if looks like the Nahr El Bared’s crisis in Lebanon has ended, it is far from it. Last post from Blacksmiths of Lebanon shows us the hard reality:

They left booby-trapped TVs and radios on, so that when soldiers went to turn them off, they would explode… They also played recordings of crying babies, which lured soldiers into buildings and rooms which would then be detonated.

😯 😯 Yeah, I know than in love and in war nothing is forbidden (or something like that), but this… this is treacherous…

And:

Naharnet has just reported that

Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza on Thursday ordered police to launch an investigation into a video game about the storming of Premier Fouad Saniora’s government compound and the killing of all the ministers.

Sympathetic and peaceful the video game, eh???

Just read the entire post.

Last news are that the “Militant held camp has fallen to Lebanese Army“:

Hours after the army killed 32 militants and captured at least 15 others as they tried to break out of the Nahr el-Bared camp, only occasional gunfire could be heard inside.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the last stronghold of Fatah Islam militants fell later in the day to the army, which captured five wounded militants in their hideout.

Celebratory gunfire erupted in nearby villages as soon as the news spread. Dozens of residents took to the streets of Mohammara, waving Lebanese flags and honking their horns as troop convoys poured into the area with soldiers flashing victory signs.

The army, which said it lost five soldiers in the recent violence, was not ready to formally declare an end to fighting in the camp, large parts of which have been destroyed by army bombardments in the months long siege. The military said three soldiers were killed in Sunday’s fighting and two on Saturday, raising to 158 the total number of troops killed in the conflict.

A military statement early Sunday said troops were attacking the remaining militant strongholds inside Nahr el-Bared and “chasing the fugitives outside the camp” who had staged “a desperate attempt to flee.” It called on Lebanese citizens to inform the nearest army patrol of any suspected militants in their area, but gave no specifics on casualties except saying “a large number” had been killed or captured.

We will see what happens next here.

You can read more in Tears for Lebanon.

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Futures’ markets are following the same evolution than they had before 9-11. Is this a sign of something? h/t Barcepundit. Pastorius has written a very clear post at IBA about the matter.

The blogosphere and options trading desks have been rife with speculation about these trades, which are unusually large bets that the market will make a huge move in the next month. Some entity, or entities, has taken a large position on extremely deep in the money S&P 500 options, both puts and calls, that won’t pay off unless the market undergoes an extremely large price move between now and the options’ expiration on Sept. 21.

Fast forward to the present day, and we have the same type of trading that took place in the days that preceded the 9/11 attacks – but on a larger scale. Nearly $1 billion of “put options” have been purchased, basically betting that Standard and Poor’s 500 index will fall significantly by the third Friday in September. A large number of these options have also been purchased calling for 50% decline by September 21, 2007. For example, a 5% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be the current equivalent of about 670 points. A decline of 11% would equal about 1,470 points in today’s market. Obviously, larger drops, such as a 50% decline, would cause an unprecedented market collapse. Money would be made for the purchaser(s) of the put options – but the same purchaser(s) stand to lose over $1 BILLION in the investment if the market remains relatively static through September 21, 2007.

And let’s see: we have the real state lending problems…

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Lastly, you can read about the new film of Brian de Palma by Roger L. Simon:

Meanwhile, what used to take a lot of my time has a way of encroaching on my present reality. Apparently, someone I used to know…Brian DePalma… may have resurrected his career, seemingly scoring a hit at the Venice Film Festival with his new film “Redacted.” The subject is a particularly gruesome real-life rape case, concerning a 14-year old Iraqi girl raped by US servicemen who also murdered her family.

Now I don’t know the details of this case. (Some of the servicemen involved have been given long sentences and it sounds truly hideous.) Yet, according to Reuters, the film is halfway between documentary and fiction. This to me is a highly suspect form, especially when based on recent events (2006), which are more verifiable than most. You would think the truth would be enough.

But what interests me more is Brian’s selection of material and his intention, as he states it, to stop the war. “The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war,” he said.

That is why I am sick of generalizations. We cannot make one lonely incident as if it were what has been happening every day. And that is why I can’t stand people who are not balanced enough in their judgement, not seeing both what is good and what is bad, and then trying to make others think like them. You know, Brian de Palma, it’s very sad for me but I only have seen two of your films (The untouchables of Elliot Ness, a very good film, very different from this one , and Mission: Impossible, -though better than the two sequels: in the second, they totally messed up the Sevilla’s Easter processions and the Valencia’s Fallas, which have nothing to do- [I had mistaken the second for the first 😳 😀 ]). And really, with this kind of marvellous introduction of good judgement and balanced statements, I’m also not going to see this. Cause as lawhawk writes, you cannot make us going to the cinema:

Director Brian DePalma has unveiled his latest movie, which is nothing less than a character assassination of all US troops based on a heinous criminal acts by a unit of US soldiers. Those soldiers have been tried and convicted for their crimes by the US military, but DePalma sees no problem with using the incident to further his anti-war, anti-military, and anti-US views. [and anti-common sense… that is the worst of all…].

That’s completely within his perogative. He can produce any movie he wants – he just can’t make you go see it.

I have no interest in seeing the movie. I only wonder why he didn’t bother to make a movie showing what al Qaeda was doing to Iraqis on a daily basis – the kidnappings, mass murders, and the beheadings. Are those not sufficient to churn stomachs, or was the international audience going to salivate more over an anti-war/anti-US movie than one that shows the true evil of al Qaeda and might actually justify a continued US presence in Iraq to eradicate the al Qaeda operating there?

Showing what al Qaeda was doing to Iraqis? And then some people call me “innocent”… Well, lawhawk, with all due respect, that is to be candid. Hollywood’s doing a good film blaming the real people who are to blame? No, of course not: they could be a terrorist target! Just imagine George Clooney or similar feeling himself really hunted by those militants, freedom fighters and men of peace. Huh! Of course not.

By the way, that thing about the international audience: the 16 Spanish films who have raised more money, have raised less than Spiderman in Spain. But the Spanish Government is going to make Spanish taxpayers pay € 85 millions to produce the usual garbage: pro-communism, against the Catholic Church and the right-wingers and about the Spanish Civil War (of course, all the right-wingers were warmongers, genocidal types and sadistic killers, while the commumists-socialists were peaceful, art-loving types, who could not kill a fly… 👿 ). But they are not considering the 10 million people who voted PP on 2004, some of then did not agree (and do not agree) with Iraqi war but certainly do not agree either with the MSM about the coverage there.

So, when the film-makers are going to consider that there are other people to see international films? Without considering that this is not something new of this year, but has been the normal situation for a lot of years. And of course, if you have to choose between Lord of the Rings saga and some crap with the subject considered above, the decision is simple. Specially with the prices the cinema halls have these days… 😈

[Oh, and the Spanish film which raised more money was a film of animation “Pérez, el ratoncito de tus sueños” –Pérez, the mouse of your dreams-. There is a legend told to children in Spain: each time a little boy loses one of his first teeth, he/she must put it under his pillow. And the little mouse Pérez will come and give him a coin. So, you see, nothing political, just a pleasure to see…].
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Now playing: Dolores O’Riordan – October
via FoxyTunes

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Opium in Afghanistan, HR group sues Yahoo over China, Italy, Spain, Islamism, Turkey, terrorism, Greek fires (+), Israel and Pastorius’ reflections

As I wrote some months ago:

Opium production in Afghanistan has soared to record levels, with an increase on last year of more than a third, the United Nations has said.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says the amount of opium produced there has doubled in the last two years. It says Helmand province is now the biggest single drug-producing area in the world, surpassing whole countries such as Colombia. Afghanistan now accounts for more than 93% of the world’s opiates.

Despite billions of dollars of aid and tens of thousands of international troops, the report says 193,000 hectares of opium poppies are being grown in Afghanistan.

[…] The report says growing opium poppies is now closely linked to the insurgency and the instability in the south. And what is to be done? The report recommends more determined efforts to bring that security. It urges the government to get tough on corruption, which it says is driving the drugs trade and it lists poor governance, a weak judiciary and failing eradication programmes for these new frightening record levels.

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World Organization for Human Rights has sued Yahoo! over its policy in China: Look at Yahoo!’s hypocrisy:

Yahoo is being sued by the World Organization for Human Rights for sharing information about its users with the Chinese government. The information has led to the arrests of writers and dissidents. One journalist cited in the case was tracked down and jailed for 10 years for subversion after Yahoo passed on his e-mail and IP address to officials.

In its 40-page response to the lawsuit, filed with a federal court in San Francisco, Yahoo acknowledged releasing information to the Chinese government. But it argued that there was little connection between the information the firm gave and the ensuing arrests and imprisonment of its users.

[…] But Morton Sklar of the World Organization for Human Rights said the company had failed to meet its ethical responsibilities. “Even if it was lawful in China, that does not take away from Yahoo’s obligation to follow not just Chinese law, but US law and international legal standards as well, when they do business abroad,” he said.

Barely, Yahoo! claims this is a merely political case. 😡

At the same time, Angela Merkel reminds China the West would like to see progress on freedom of the press and Human Rights’ matters (where it has not progressed really):

“The world will be looking at China to a greater extent than it has in past years,” Merkel said. “And people will also be looking at how China presents itself in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”

Chinese critics of Beijing welcomed Merkel’s remarks.

“Unlike her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel does not run and hide from this topic,” former university professor and dissident Liu Xiaobo told Deutsche Welle. “She tells it like it is. The pressure she’s put on the Chinese government has already had significant effect.”

Well done, Merkel!

It’s logical, by the way, Merkel’s position. Looks like that the Chinese Government has hacked Merckel’s chancellery and three other Berlin ministries h/t Barcepundit.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, discovered the hacking operation in May, the magazine reported in its new edition, published Monday.

The Chinese government has vehemently denied the report, with the Chinese Embassy in Berlin describing the accusation of state-controlled hacking as “irresponsible speculation without a shred of evidence.”

But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured Merkel that measures would be taken to “rule out hacking attacks.” During a news conference in Beijing on Monday, Merkel didn’t comment on the specific allegation but said it was important that “common rules of the game” were observed in a globalised economy.

Well, there has been reports before about industrial spying on Canada, also vehemently denied by China. And on Australia, where they have targeted exiled dissidents.

So worried about foreign lands and yet China is searching for 8 kgs of “missing” uranium. Take a little more care about things which are really dangerous and stop targeting dissidents and foreign governments… 😡

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In Italy, a mother pregnant of two daughters, went to a clinic to see the state of both fetuses. In the clinic, she was informed that one of them has Down Syndrome so she asks for the abortion of that fetus. In the operation, the fetuses change places and the healthy one is finished. After that, she asked again for the abortion of the unhealthy one, which was done by injecting a solution of digoxine. This method which causes a cardiac stop, is used only in grown-up fetuses, while in this case, they were in the 30th week of pregnancy. The scandal in Italy is great. For a link in English, click here.

Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has already condemned the abortion of the twins:

L’Osservatore Romano reported: “Two girls have died, assassinated as a consequence of selective abortion. A radical decision has brought about another abortion, that of the little sister that still had life.” No one “has the right to eliminate another life. No person has the right to take the position of God. Not for any motive.”

But that’s not all. In Spain, as I wrote days before, there is a “problem“: doctors working in public health system are not practising abortions as they think it’s a matter of conscience and have objected. Some leftist MSM -specially world-known as very objective El País– began saying that people had a lot of problems to get themselves an abortion, with statements like: “They told me abortion was a crime“, “Leny and Fátima had succeeded in achieving their right (¿? Really didn’t know that was a right) to have an abortion in private clinics paid with public money” or “I had to go to have it to another Autonomous Community“.

There are three causes for legal abortion in Spain: rape, grave illnesses of the fetus or grave danger for the physical or psychological health of the mother. More than 98% of all the abortion held in Spain use this last cause.

So the Spanish Ombudsman, Enrique Múgica, has begun an investigation about the “great difficulties to have a free-willing interruption of pregnancy practised in the public health system“. He also asks to “adopt the pertinent measures to let the users have the guarantee the attention in the Community of residence and in the main hospitals of the National Health System“. So how are they going to do that? Are they going to hire pro-abortion doctors? Or are they going to make pro-life ones make abortions against their conscience and will? I really have a bad feeling about this…

Meanwhile, the Spanish Schools’ Council has passed a resolution by which the State can educate the children on affective-sexual matters without any consentment from parents ( 😯 ). But at the same time, “it rejected to include Cervantes in the minimum required to pass Literature, the Catholic Kings in History and the inversion of €1000 millions in the infants’ education from o-3 years-old (which was in the PSOE’s electoral program) and to liberalise the prices of the books (as stated in the Law passed in the terms requested in this respect from the Culture’s Ministry)”.

Regarding immigration, Zapatero denies it (hmm…) but French Prime Minister maintains that he is totally repented from the immigrants’ regularization.

Zapatero spoke yesterday about the statements of French PM, François Fillon, about the content of the summit between both of them last July in Madrid, to contradict his ally and ask for an immediate rectification which has not happened and most probably, won’t in the future. Fillon has stated that Zapatero admitted then that the regularization of more than 600.000 immigrants in 2005 was an error of which he repented “bitterly” and that he won’t make more in the future (repentance and modification of behaviour: we’re on the right track! Eehh, no, not quite). The President contradicted yesterday French PM, insisting on all the good things that his policy of open borders have brought and said that France was going to “make things clear because it was all probably a bad interpretation”. Sources near Fillon assured EL MUNDO that «there hasn’t been nor there is going to be any rectification in any way». The more similar to tinging his words, was some statements made by the entourage of the French PM, according to which Fillon understands that Zapatero supported the policy of “papers for all” because “he had no options… because of circumstances” (there is always another option, even if it’s very difficult or harder to follow. And in this case, there is). It is not clear if Zapatero has or hasn’t a communication problem or of interpreters when he has to speak about his analysis and compromises over immigration, as Zaplana (PP, center-right) laughed about yesterday, but it is clear that the President puts at risk again the diplomatic relations between France and Spain, because of the massive regularization which affected all Europe because of its awful “calling” effect.

Look here, I do not know who is responsible for this misunterstanding. But if he is not a total idiot -and I don’t think he is, he is just convinced he is going to save Spain from fascism (¡!), yeah I know…-, he knows he was stupid enough to let a lot of immigrants without any kind of control (not even medical, and there are illnesses which did not existed in Spain, which have appeared afterwards). Border control is not a characteristic of being a fascist, it’s just a consequence of common sense. Does Spain need immigrants? I really don’t know, but it’s possible. But what is certain is that we need some kind of immigrants, not every immigrant in the world. Ergo, select them according to the needs here and their qualifications -if we need truck drivers and the people who come are cookers, they are going to be jobless… with all the dangers that implies-. So, please, stop blaming others for your own bad policies’ results, move your ass and begin working on something more profitable than in denying what it’s clear as clean water: it was a HUGE ERROR.

[A friend of mine told me: With all my heart aching, I have to acknowledge that I trust more Fillon than Zapatero… Ejem].

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Christianity’s greatest menace:

Christians around the world suffer daily because of their faith, and it seems the persecution is intensifying.

CBN News looks at the top two offenders– North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Countries that persecute Christians usually fall into two camps: those with communist governments and those where Islam as the dominant religion.

That is: where there is no freedom, no respect for Human Rights…

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Looks like that Chávez has bought both the military and the Majors from… Evo’s paradise:

One of the accomplices of Hugo Chávez, the head of one ghost Ministry of all that Venezuela has nowadays, has stated to Venezuelan press that Hugo Chávez’s regime has given $6 millions to pay Bolivian military. Meanwhile, the sheepy Bolivian President, Evo Morales, has been photograpphed while giving money checks to Bolivian majors who are Venezuelan friends. The shameless says: “Chávez gave me the money to give it away“.

They do not refer to woodcutters. I wonder if this has something to do with it h/t Kate. 😈

But Chávez wants also to infiltrate himself in other weak South-American democracies, like Ecuador or Paraguay. In the latter, the so-called “Yearly operative Planning of the Foreign Relations Ministry of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” (wow, what a name 😯 ), reveals that he wants to give “Bolivarian indoctrination” to Armed Forces, energetic firms, students and peasants; even it speaks of the recruitment of young doctors from rural areas.

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USA and Europe: Another terrorist attack inevitable. h/t Extreme Centre: Newsweek interviews Redd, Head of the US National counterterrorism center. An excerpt:

Tell us about the threat that emerged earlier this year.
We’ve got this intelligence threat; we’re pretty certain we know what’s going on. We don’t have all the tactical details about it, [but] in some ways it’s not unlike the U.K. aviation threat last year. So we know there is a threat out there. The question is what do we do about it? And the response was, we stood up an interagency task force under NCTC leadership. So you have all the players you would expect: FBI, CIA, DHS, DIA, DoD, the operators—the military side comes into that—participating in an integrated plan, but integrated in a much more granular and tactical way than we’ve ever done before. This is my 40th year in government service, 36 in uniform and almost four as a civilian. This is revolutionary stuff, and it is affecting the way we do business.

Earlier this summer, there was talk that people were picking up chatter that reminded them of the summer before 9/11. The Germans basically said this is like pre-9/11. They said, “We are very worried.” What do you make of this?
We have very strong indicators that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the West and is likely to [try to] attack, and we are pretty sure about that. We know some of the precursors from—

Attack Europe?
Well, they would like to come West, and they would like to come as far West as they can. What we don’t know is…if it’s going to be Mark Hosenball, and he’s coming in on Flight 727 out of Karachi, he’s stopping in Frankfurt, and he’s coming on through with his European Union passport, and he’s coming into New York, and he’s going to do something. I mean, we don’t have that kind of tactical detail. What we do have, though, is a couple of threads that indicate, you know, some very tactical stuff, and that’s what—you know, that’s what you’re seeing bits and pieces of, and I really can’t go much more into it.

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Yesterday I wrote about Abdulah Gül’s being named new Turkish President. Today I read dissapointing news from French PM Sarkozy:

If this essential inquiry on the future of our Union is undertaken by the 27 member nations, France will not oppose the negotiations between the EU and Turkey that are to take place in the months and years to come,” said the French president addressing the 15th Conference of Ambassadors.
These new discussions must, he stressed, “be compatible with the two visions of future relations between Europe and Turkey, i.e., membership in the EU, or as close an association as possible.”

French blogger Tiberge writes commenting this:

It isn’t clear what Nicolas Sarkozy means by a “close association”, but it is clear that he accepts Turkey as much more than a trading partner or a tourist attraction. A close association implies an alliance, with attendant loyalties and military implications.

With Islamist Gül in the Presidency? Uuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyyyy, Sarko….

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More about Greek fires: from NYT:

“Up the hill, workers were preparing the grave for Athanasia Karta-Paraskevopoulou, a 35-year-old teacher, and the four children she shielded as the flames closed in on them: Angeliki, 15; Maria, 12; Anastassia, about 10; and Constantinos, 5. They had been on vacation from Athens”.

Requiescat in Pace. She was brave enough and she died to protect these children, while they were waiting for rescue. Unluckily, it ended in a very sad way.

And it is more worrying as:

The danger had by no means passed. In the village of Grillos, just over a ridge from here on the western peninsula, a couple who own a restaurant watched in tears as flames advanced from three directions while fire trucks spewed water in the flames’ path.

“All we need is one of those,” said one owner, Iannis Drakopoulos, 72, as a Russian plane carrying an industrial-sized water bucket passed. “If he dropped it here, it would all have been fine.”

In Artemida and here in Makistos, the flames were already out, and Monday was instead a day for tallying the damage and preparing to bury the dead.

[…] The descriptions from people who saw it were the same: flames moving at an unimaginable rate and no one apart from the police to help.

[…] The fire reportedly came over a ridge first to Makistos, a village of 60 homes. Antonios Kokkaliaris, 80, a farmer, said he had been reading his newspaper, underlining parts he liked, when he heard the bell in St. John’s church ring. “I went out and I saw the flames before me and people running,” he said. He could not leave, he said, because his wife, Koula, 82, is severely disabled. “I told her, ‘Stay put, we’re going to fight this out.’ I grabbed onto the hose and I started dousing left, right and center.”

The town emptied, with only him, a herdsman and Mr. Dimopoulos with his wine staying behind. Mr. Kokkaliaris managed to douse his home, and two next door, well enough that the fires howled past, leaving his house intact.

But when it was over, he did not feel relief.

“I was disappointed, honestly,” he said, “because not only was there no one to help me, there was no one in sight. ‘Am I just standing here alone? What happened to all my townspeople? What is the purpose of life if I am all alone?’ ”

I can only say: 😯 A brave old man.

But we continue:

The region normally produces 10,000 tons of oil, but nearly all the olive trees are now destroyed, along with countless livelihoods. Charred donkeys and chickens litter ruined farms.

“This village is literally wiped out,” Ms. Bammi said. “It’s not just those who have been killed. Those who are left have no fields to work in, no olive trees. They have nothing to look forward to.”

It is already a tragedy. And if finally it’s proved they did that with mobile phones, well, the punishment for these bastards must be … great.

More from the Astute Bloggers:

DAY 4 of deadly fires: Fires rage in Greece as SEVEN PEOPLE CHARGED WITH ARSON.
They remain nameless. Why? Those depraved savages set a country on fire, the public deserves to know no matter who it is. I have searched all news sources. Any Atlas readers have a clue?

Well, can it be because they can be charged with terrorism? I really don’t know. Seems strange to me too.

(+) If you want to read a magnificent post about the political consequences of the Greek fires, just go over to Cassandra’s blog.

The other usual suspects in the EU are exploiting the crisis to call for more integrated emergency cooperation, in other words: continued deepening of federal structures. Strangely, among the first countries to send fire-fighters and airplanes were Israel and Switzerland; both countries aren’t EU members.

The press from hell continues: “‘The village of Artimeta in the Peloponnese has become known as the ‘crematorium’, says the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant who is in the village near the town of Olympia.” I have serious doubts about this piece of atheist cynicism! Considering the fact that Greece is 96% Orthodox, a Christian denomination prescribing interment, I ‘d be surpised if most Greeks even know what a crematorium is, as the first is still to be build; it’s highly unlikely that local Greeks would describe a much loved village in such terms!

😯

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Chaim writes that “More than 5000 Kassam rockets have been fired at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip which Israel abandoned to the PLO two years ago, the Sharon government brutally throwing thousands of Jews out of their homes“. Very critical of Olmert as ever:

Israel’s government, as any other government, has an obligation to defend its people. As long as Ehud Allmerde and his cohorts are running at the top they are going to do little more than a few symbolic gestures to make it look like they are defending Israelis. Rather, they seem obsessed with appeasement. Obsessed with a policy that invariably has failed miserably time and again. They seem intent on giving everything up to the terrorists, little realizing that the more they give, the less they get and the more is demanded!

Olmert spoke on Tuesday 28th with Mahmoud Abbas to “agree on measures against terrorism“. As I linked yesterday, this policy is not going to bring them any good.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders are building themselves shelters to protect them in case of attack. Everyday’s tale…

Also, on related news, the Israeli government’s tourism ministry has reached an agreement to cooperate with the Vatican’s new charter-flight service for pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the Ynetnews agency has reported.

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And now for the thinking post of the day. Pastorius has written it -the scene of Patton is priceless-:

[…] you have to ask yourselves, do you want a world which is ruled by men, or by women?
Hmm???
Obviously, rationality is not arbitrated by force.

Read it all. It’s worth it. (Chauvinist males: this post is not very recommended for you 😈 ).

Read Full Post »

World’s going nuts, Pro-lifer attacked, India’s sex-selective abortions and new terrorist attack, Moroccan Islamists,Children’s forced work in Haiti, Iranian new bombs, religious persecution in China and Uzbekistan, Musharraf, H. Clinton’s on terrorism and some Catholic news

Hmm, these are the kind of news that make me vomit. How on earth people can be sooooo brute???? I’m going to name this kind of news “World’s going nuts” 😡

A security video from an apartment hallway shows at least 10 witnesses ignored a woman’s cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors in Minnesota said.

The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the woman was assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

Police said they responded to a call of drunken behavior and found Somali immigrant Rage Ibrahim, 25, and a woman lying unconscious in the hallway early Tuesday. The woman’s clothing had been pulled up and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh, according to the criminal complaint.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Crime Center.

Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding, according to Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, who spoke on Ibrahim’s behalf.

FOXNews.com – Cops: Tape Shows at Least 10 Witnesses Ignoring Minnesota Woman’s Cries for Help During Sexual Assault – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

“Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding“. Yeah, right. And I believe that.

More about this here: It should be noted that this Jamal slug was convicted of lying to immigration officials and should have already been deported. Law was not fulfilled and a woman was attacked. The every-day’s tale… 😡

And father of 7-Year-Old Boy accused of biting Son’s Toes. He bited his son “hard enough to cause deep bruising and crack his toenails“. My goodness, the world is going nuts… 😡

From Life Site.Net:

A peaceful pro-life witness was violently assaulted outside an abortion site on Tuesday. Police responded late to his 911 after he was beaten by an unknown visitor to the clinic.
Early on Tuesday morning August 21, three Rockford pro-lifers-Ken Plez, Pat Brady and Kevin Rilott-were praying quietly in front of the Northern Illinois Women’s Center (abortuary) for an end to abortion. A large white truck pulled into the clinic parking lot, and without setting foot on the clinic property, Rilott approached and tried to talk to the people inside.
In a detailed account of the event Rilott described how the pro-choice man got out of his truck and approached him, saying, “You shouldn’t be here, you’re upsetting my wife.” He then began to hit Rilott in the chest, ribs, and stomach. Rilott did not strike back at the man, but managed to call 911. As he was being beaten, he begged for immediate police assistance.
He told his pro-abortion attacker that the police were on the way, but the man said he didn’t care. The assaulter also said that “after he bonded out” he would come back and get him. After breaking Rilott’s sign, the man then went into the abortion clinic.

In India, sex-selective abortions are rocketing. The reason?

A large portion of the Indian population believes that male children enable families to survive and ensure that their parents will be taken care of. Female children are considered a burden for whom parents will have to shell out expensive dowries, which leads many to elect to abort them.

On the other hand, a 2001 census revealed that there were 927 girls for every 1000 boys among children younger than age 7, as opposed to 945 in 1991. Last month, police discovered thirty bags full of aborted and newborn babies in a well near a clinic in eastern India.

Meanwhile, a huge explosion in India has killed at least 44 people. According to CNN, “militants” were responsible for it:

“These are things that will not be openly discussed … we can comment when the investigation is complete,” Home Secretary Shivraj Patil said at a news conference in Hyderabad.

In earlier news conferences, local officials placed the blame squarely on Islamic militants.

“Available information points to Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups being behind the blasts,” Y.S.R. Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state told reporters. The minister earlier said “this is definitely terrorist activity,” and urged everyone to stay calm.

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Moroccan Islamists support pragmatism (well they are going to present themselves to the elections, so it’s better for them to seem moderate. Link in Spanish):

The Party of Justice and Development (PJD), the main Islamist party in the oposition, is going to present a program in which the daily worries of the voters will be the first objective instead of religion in the campaign for the parliamentary elections of September 7th, according to its leader.

Experts consider it’s possible the party will obtain more MPs and could be the main group in an election where more than 30 parties will concur to.

Observers see the result as a measure of the level of disillusion with the liberal and laic elites who have been in charge in Morocco for the last 50 years.

The Parliament only has limited powers in the North African country, where the King Mohammed VIth, controlls all the main sectors from the Army to the religious affairs, and can name the Prime Minister and “veto” laws.

Some analysts say that in any case the elections will help to revitalise some aspects of the body of the governing elite.

“Our agenda is inspired without doubt in our Islamic surrounding, but in an Islamic surrounding linked to the voters’ needs”, told Reuters the PJD’s leader, Abdelilah Benkiran.

[…] “Frankly, the citizens won’t vote for us if we go to the elections to impose the veil on women, the bears on men and to all the people to make them go to the mosque”, he added.

Just let them take power. After four or five years, we speak about this.

About children abuse: Kids forced into domestic servitude in Haiti:

Evans Antoine wakes at 7 a.m. and dusts himself off from his night on the floor. While other children in his middle-class neighborhood overlooking the Haitian capital head to school, the 15-year-old puts on toeless sneakers and gets to work washing dishes, scrubbing floors and running errands at the market. He also works in the yard and sometimes wields a scythe in the family’s fields.

There is little reward for his toil, except for food and a roof over his head. And often, the quality of his work isn’t good enough; his caretakers sometimes hit him with a switch or slap him on the back of the scalp. Once they tied his hands and put a bag over his head before beating him with a stick.

This has been his life for the past three years.

Read it all. Specially interesting is this paragraph: “Haiti revolted against French colonial rule and became the first “black republic” in 1804. With newly emancipated slaves in power, it also became the first nation to outlaw slavery. Dependent on coffee and sugar, however, Haiti kept the plantation system after the revolution, requiring “mandatory labor” of many citizens. The masters were no longer white, but working conditions improved only marginally“.

The proof that changes sometimes don’t change anything really. Just another people step on charge.

More news from Iran: as ever not very promising:

Iran vowed Sunday to use a new 2,000-pound “smart” bomb against its enemies and unveiled mass production of the new weapon, state television reported.

The government first announced development of the long-range guided bomb Thursday, saying it could be deployed by the country’s aging U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 fighter jets.

“We will use these (bombs) against our enemies when the time comes,” Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on state television Sunday.

Iran often announces new weapons for its arsenal, but the United States maintains that while the Islamic Republic has made some strides, many of these statements are exaggerations.

In China they continue with their magnificent view of Human Rights:

A prominent bishop of the underground Catholic Church in China was arrested on August 23, apparently to prevent him from distributing the Pope’s message to the Church in China.

Bishop Jia Zhiguo of the Zheng Ding diocese was taken into custody on Thursday morning, the US-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reports.

The bishop’s arrest came after several days of tight surveillance in his residence. The Cardinal Kung Foundation reports that visitors to the bishop’s home were held and interrogated by police before being released.

But religious persecution does not only exist in China. In Uzbekistan:

When seven police officers with a video camera raided his home on Sunday morning, 29 July, Nikolai Zulfikarov was away. But this did not stop prosecutors launching a criminal case to punish him for “illegally” organizing a religious community, with a possible sentence of five years’ imprisonment. The small Baptist congregation that meets in his home in the eastern Namangan Region refuses on principle to apply for state registration. One local Baptist told Forum 18 News Service that prosecutors wanted to sentence Zulfikarov immediately, but now there is “total silence”. He added that “it is not clear if this means they will abandon the attempt or if they are moving stealthily behind the scenes”.

More worrying news for Musharraf:

Another defeat for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan’s Supreme Court has narrowed the options for the U.S.-allied military leader as he seeks to extend his rule.

Thursday’s ruling that his arch rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted in a 1999 coup, can return from exile leaves the general vulnerable at home and abroad ahead of crucial elections.

Talks with another ex-prime minister on a pact that would keep Musharraf in office are proving tough. And U.S. impatience with his failure to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds near the Afghan border is growing.

Driven by a clamor for the restoration of democracy, the military-led government has responded with calls for national reconciliation.

But Musharraf “is hardly talking from a position of strength,” the Dawn newspaper said in a weekend editorial. Talks with his opponents “must have a one-point agenda: a truly free and fair general election.”

In Brussels they are forbidding Sept 11th’s demonstration against Islamic terrorism, and yet they are letting a Pro-Hizbullah group’s demonstration:

The Arab-European League (AEL), a pro-Hezbollah organization of Arab immigrants in Belgium and the Netherlands, is rallying its members to march in Brussels on 11 September “against Islamophobia and racism in Europe.” The AEL demonstration is a response to the request by the Danish-British-German organization Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) for permission to demonstrate on 9/11 in front of the European Union’s buildings in Brussels against the introduction of Sharia laws in Europe.

Two weeks ago the SIOE demonstration was banned by Freddy Thielemans, the mayor of Brussels. According to Mr Thielemans the SIOE demonstration is a criminal offence because it “incite[s] to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia. [This] is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by the European legislation.”

Of course, Hizbullah’s members are peaceful, respectful of other people’s lifes and caring. As I said, the world’s going nuts…

Hillary Clinton’s remarks about terrorism are just very similar to the ones made by James Clayburn about Iraq:

“There are circumstances beyond our control, and I think I am better able to handle things I have no control over,” she said. “It’s a horrible prospect to ask yourself ‘What if? What if?’ But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world,” she said. “So I think I’m the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well.”

Nigeria: From Gateway Pundit: Angry Muslim Mob Storms Prison to Lynch Homosexuals. A prison guard has been injured. Will all the Gay Pride’s organisers say something about this? Eehh, no, that’s only said if they are Christian and preferably Catholics the ones who critisize the right to marry. That is an offense grade A. But if fundamentalist Muslims do it, ehh, welll, then it’s only an offense grade Z, at the most…

More about HuT and the Global Caliphate: Hyscience. And it’s not the only group claiming for it: specially in Internet, this kind of ideas are proliferating.

Ten people arrested in Russia over Politovskaya’s death.

70% of Iraqi suicide terrorists are Saudis. And Iraqis protest about this:

More photos on the link.

And now for some Catholic news:

Pope Benedict XVI explains last Sunday’s Gospel:

The way to eternal life is narrow because it is demanding, requires commitment and denial of one’s own selfishness, Pope Benedict XVI said today in his Sunday angelus address. He was referring to today’s Gospel in which Jesus calls on his followers to strive to enter the “‘narrow gate’ to eternal life, because many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able”.

“What does the ‘narrow gate’ mean?”, the Pope asked pilgrims gathered in the courtyard of his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. “Why do many not succeed in entering through it? Is the way reserved for just a few elect?”

The Pope said it is often a trap and a temptation to interpret this passage as a reference to religious practice as a source of privilege or security. But in reality, “the message of Christ is actually quite the opposite”, the Pope explained. “All can enter eternal life, but for everyone, the door is narrow. They are not privileged. The path to the eternal life is open to all, but it is narrow because it’s demanding, asks for commitment, abnegation, and the mortification of selfishness”.

As a result of the stress and lack of tranquility of modern life:

More and more Italians, tired from the routine and noise of the city, are opting to spend their vacations in monasteries and convents that offer them a time of reflection and contact with nature.

Many religious communities—even cloistered convents–have opened their doors to young people and families to join in their daily life of prayer and activities, as well as to listen to their concerns and provide them spiritual guidance.

I think I’m going to book a holiday like that… when I have time for it! 😆

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UAE, UK plots, Malaysia, UK Government, Islamic terrorism, Larisa Arap, Spain, Greek and Turkish elections, Iran, China, Pakistan and France (+)

 

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday. Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time. “In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children,” the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying. “After that I will stop marrying. I have to have at least three more marriages to hit the century.

UAE father of 78 eyes new brides for century target | Oddly Enough | Reuters.com

Just take care: heart attacks at this age are normal! 😈

Remember the London and Glasgow plots? Well:

An Australian court has overturned a government decision to revoke the visa of an Indian doctor who was accused, but later cleared, of involvement in the failed car bomb attacks on London and Glasgow.

The court’s decision was a bitter blow for the federal government, which has been criticised by civil rights groups and lawyers for its bungled arrest and subsequent release of Dr Mohamed Haneef in July.

I wrote about Lina Joy some months ago and her conversion to Christianity in Muslim Malaysia. Well:

Malaysia’s highest civil court has dismissed a Muslim woman’s appeal to be officially recognized as having converted to Christianity. In a defining decision for the multi-religious society, the court ruled against Lina Joy’s appeal to have her new faith reflected on her identity card, a move rights groups called a “backward step” for Malaysia.

The UK Government has announced that he will monitor blogs (h/t EURSOC) and has blocked “almost one third of British military exports to Israel this year, citing possible threats to regional stability and fears the equipment might facilitate human rights violations”. “, because, as we all know, only Israel commits Human Rights violations . Some people has united to ask UK Government that the British Army protect the endangered species throughout the world (h/t Croydonian). The problem that they don’t solve is how they are going to do that.

From Semanal Digital:

According to a poll published by Financial Times, 32% of Spanish people are afraid of a new indiscriminated terrorist attack in the next months. A greater fear than in other countries such as USA, the most menaced country in the world, where the oercentage reduces to 30%. The most fearful are the British, with a 52% conisdering it as a real possibility.

[…] The poll, that the newspaper makes to obtain the perception Western societies have about Muslims, also reveals that a 23% of Spanish people sees as a menace for national security the presence of Muslims in their country.
A percentage that rises in the cases of United Kingdom, where 37% of the citizens agrees with that; Italy, 30% or Germany, with a 28%. But in France (20%) and, curiously, United States (21%) they don’t identify easily Muslim with terrorist.
But for nearly 35% of Spanish people Muslims are subject of unjustified prejudices, not as higher as in France (more than half of the population has prejudices against them); Italy (48%), USA (47%) and Uniter Kingdom (39%).

More about Islamic terrorism:

The last incident with Islamic terrorism – the kidnapping of an airplane in Turkey with a happy ending- shows again the turbulent hostility and warmongering of the Islamic fundamentalism upon the West. The presence, rising and penetration of Islam in Western countries has grown to be a real truth, as sustains Pedro Martínez Montávez in El reto del Islam (The challenge 0f Islam), but in a undesirable political and religious acting that pretends to be, at the same time, the coactive incrporation of a whole civilization. 

In El escándalo del Islam (The scandal of Islam), José María Gironella says that the Islam has reborn in the last third of the XXth century with a character that we can consider of defiance and insecurity. The Empire of Islam, instead of decreasing, “has reborn with a fervour that experts consider as worrying” [no, it is not worrying, it’s simply the result of not fulfilling the Law as it should be. And we only will take that into account when it will be too late and the solutions to adopt to cure the problem will be tood drastic and not very agreeable…].

Russian journalist Larisa Arap, that belongs also to the United Civil Front, whose leader is the ex-world chess champion Kasparov, and who had been committed to a psychiatric hospital because of denouncing a case of children sexual abuse, has been freed.

Carina Mejías, PP speaker in the Catalan Parliament:

Q: Will you speak Castillian (Spanish…) as speaker in Parliament?

A: I have always done it. I speak in Catalan or Castillian considering the person I speak to and I will never change that.

Q: About this subject, you sustain that there is no freedom in Catalonia. Why?
Q: In Catalonia there is no freedom because you can’t choose the language your sons are educated in and the language you use in the publicity of your shop. If there are sanctions, there is no freedom. There is an absolute interventionism in the subject of the language.

Paolo informs that there are going to be elections also in Greece with a very little margin between right and left.

Politique arabe de la France denounces that there have been 118 executions only in a month in Iran.

A massacre like this, that we have denounced in this columns, can’t but reinforce out idea of a fascist nature of the regime in particular and of the Islamist movement in general. The fool people of Libé and Nouvel Obs can’t be happy about this, but the truth is what it is: ignoring this nature, the Western progressives aren’t doing but reinforcing the alienation of the Arab and Muslim masses and the inhibition of all hope for democrats in these propulations. The result is before our eyes: the election does not exist but between nationalism and islamism. It does not exist any democratic  alternative which can be deemed as really democratic.

And if we continue like that, there are not going to be much more alternatives in Europe…

Good news from Iran:

A leading Iranian-American academic jailed in May during a visit to Tehran has told Iranian TV she is “very happy” after being freed on bail.

Haleh Esfandiari, 67, who is accused of spying, was released for a bail of 3bn rial ($320,000; £160,000), the official state news agency Isna reported.

Ms Esfandiari, who works for a research institute in Washington, was jailed while visiting her 93-year-old mother.

Iranian media accused her of spying for the US and Israel.

The BBC’s Pam O’Toole says the Iranian authorities appear highly suspicious of attempts by the Bush administration to promote democratic change in Iran.

From the country where the Olympic Games will be held:

 A Woman’s Breasts Disfigured and Infected from Severe Electric Shock Torture in Masanjia Labor Camp– shocked me, even though I knew how brutal the torture is happening in China labor camp, I can not imagine this kind of inhuman crime can happening in today’s modern world!

Warning: It is recommended that children and those with delicate sensitivities refrain from viewing these photos. Photo 1 , Photo 2

Here’s the excerpt of the story:

“At first, they kept Ms. Wang in isolation. Two collaborators monitored her. She was denied sleep and forced to stand still in the corner of the room. The next day, she had to sit on a chair with her hands tied behind her back to the back of the chair. At night, they had her wear a motorcycle helmet.

“The guards kept chopsticks and a basin of cold water ready to use, and whenever Ms. Wang closed her eyes, they poured water over her and hit the helmet hard with the chopsticks. “Two guards from Benxi, holding electric batons, shouted, “We will see who is tougher!” The two men tore Ms. Wang’s shirt open and shocked her breasts with two electric batons for 30 minutes.

“Afterwards, they made her stand still for the entire night. The next morning, guard Guo Tieying asked Ms. Wang nastily whom she would follow. Ms. Wang replied, “I will follow the teachings of Falun Gong.”

“Guo Tieying immediately brought in two guards and several collaborators to torture her. They tore a bed sheet into strips and tied her legs in a cross-legged position (with legs double-crossed, as in the ‘full lotus’ position). Next they handcuffed her arms behind her back and tied her upper body to her legs, making Ms. Wang look like a ball. Then they suspended her in the air by the handcuffs, with her hands still behind her back. “She suffered excruciating pain from this torture for seven hours.

It does not shock me that the Chinese peasants ask for more Human Rights instead of having the Olympic Games.

From Catholic World News: Pakistani Christians joined with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and other religious groups in an August 11 demonstration in Lahore, demanding equal rights for minority groups, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports.

Two young Christian girls in Pakistan were recently kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, and married to strangers, the AsiaNews service report. Respecting women’s freedom…

Burma’s Junta continues to target opposition members.

Five North Koreans have entered the Indonesian Embassy in Vietnam, apparently seeking asylum in South Korea, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Comical news of the day:

There are rules of shari’a in everything. We have counted almost 70 rules about how to urinate and defecate. In contrast, how do those beasts in the West answer the call of nature? They stand in front of other people, in toilets at airports and other public places. They do not care about covering their private parts. Even their underwear is colored and not white, so it can conceal all that filth. We are a nation that has long known the meaning of cleanliness, what to do when nature calls, and what the rules of hygiene are. The others, to this day, live like beasts. To this day, many of them are not circumcised, even though the World Health Organization has advised to circumcise people as a treatment for AIDS, because it has been scientifically proven that circumcised people are less susceptible to AIDS, and are less likely to spread it than uncircumcised people.

Idiot news of the week (at least):

From France: French pedophile, given viagra in prison, rapes 5 year old boy upon release! The doctor who prescribed the viagra said he did not know why he was in prison, although A psychiatrist who examined him for the court hearing in 2004 said that he had a “homosexual paedophile perversion causing a danger of a crime”. The psychiatrist added that Evrard was “barely readaptable”. My comment: how on earth this man was released? AND how on earth a prison doctor prescribes something without considering the medical and delictive history of the imprisoned guy? So Sarkozy (even if he does not act trully well in other things) has announced that a new law will make recidivists choose between chemical castration or life imprisonment. I think it would be a good measure.

In Spain, the Spanish Director of Prisons, applying the Equality Law, has obliged female guards of prisons to serve in wings where there are men condemned for sexual crimes. In the Prison of Puerto III (Puerto de Santa María – Cádiz), a woman had to attend a wing alone with 90 of these “guys”, throughout a whole day, while a man guard was in wing where there are no imprisoned guys! The woman has presented a complaint because she was sexually harrased. [My comment: I am the first who asks for equality but this Law was an error since it was considered. It is a law that obliges Firms’ Board of Directors to have the same amount of woman that of men, so they are going to be changed on next two years. Results? Women on Boards of Directors are going to be considered as idiots with no personal quailifications to be there, but their own sex.

There is other thing though. In a country so chauvinistic in  a lot of respects as Spain is, this is the kind of law that will continue that topic. I mean, men -and some women 👿 – would think “if a woman must be helped to reach certain rates, isn’t it a proof of their inferiority or at least, of their real place is at home, cleaning and sweeping the floor?” Just let everyone, whatever their sex, religion, cultural and social origins, etc. develop by themselves, giving them the means to reach their top and things would be better, not perfect, but at least, better].

I update the post, because there something to say. US friend John Lyllea from This ain’t hell, has written an introduction to our new group Liberty Alliance. Mike and I were going to speak about how to introduce the group one of this days, but as he has done it, just go over and read it. This is not the official launching of the group, though. When we launch it, we will announce it, and the collaboration between all the blogs which have accepted the challenge will begin.

Thanks for the compliments, John, but I’m sure my readers will also learn a lot from you.

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Chinese ultra-capitalism

Christian Science Monitor has run two very important reports on China and its relationship with Sudan, something I had written about in the past:

In Sudan, China focuses on oil wells, not local needs.

Sudan’s oil production averages 536,000 barrels a day, according to estimates by the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Other estimates say it is closer to 750,000 barrels a day. And there is an estimated 5 billion-barrel reservoir of oil beneath Sudan’s 1 million-square-mile surface, almost all of it in the south of the country, an area inhabited mainly by Christian and animist black Africans who fought a 21-year civil war against the Arab-dominated Muslim government of the north.

The vast majority of this oil, 64 percent, is sold to China, now the world’s second-largest consumer of oil. And while neither Khartoum, China, nor Petrodar release any statistics – this is generally believed to be an oil deal worth at least $2 billion a year.

China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is the majority shareholder in both Petrodar and the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, two of the biggest oil consortiums in Sudan.

CNPC has invested billions in oil-related infrastructure here in Paloich, including the 900-mile pipeline from the Paloich oil fields to the tanker terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, a tarmac road leading to Khartoum, and a new airport with connecting flights to Beijing.

But they have not invested in much else here.

Locals live in meager huts, eating peanuts with perch fished out of the contaminated Nile. There is no electricity. A Swiss charity provides healthcare. An American aid group flies in food and mosquito nets. Most children do not go to school. There is no work to be found. Petrodar, for one, has its own workers – almost all of whom are foreigners (mostly Chinese, Malaysians, and Qataris) or Sudanese northerners. The consortium hires Paloich residents only rarely, for menial jobs.

h/t Desde el Exilio.

And remember the Sudanese genocide in Darfur? Well, err:

How China’s support of Sudan shields a regime called ‘genocidal’

Mercenaries are scooping up contracts here. Arms dealers are flying in and out on the daily flight from Nairobi, Kenya. And the rebels, theoretically out of work, are training full time on the dunes around Juba, South Sudan’s self-proclaimed capital.

Up north, in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, weapons arsenals are filling up, talk is tough, and clear signals are being sent out that the resource-rich south will never be allowed to be independent.

More than two years after the north-south peace agreement, and four years before the expected southern referendum on secession – it’s a matter of time, say observers, before the fragile calm blows up, reigniting the 21-year civil war that left 1.5 million dead.

“It’s a lull in which both sides are regrouping for the new war,” says a Canadian UN military observer stationed in South Sudan, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the Darfur crisis that has killed more than 200,000 and displaced more than 2.5 million in western Sudan continues to rage unabated, helping Sudan earn the top spot on Foreign Policy magazine’s “Failed State Index” for the second year in a row.

The Chinese are as much to blame for this situation as anyone, say critics, and not so much because of their economic policies but because of political ones.

Beijing has “a vested interest in the continuation of a low level of insecurity. It keeps the other major investors out,” charges the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) in a report. The report argues that China welcomes the absence of real peace in Sudan as enhancing its business opportunities, whatever the cost to southern Sudanese civilians: “There is [on the part of the Chinese] an almost total disregard for the human rights implications of their investments.”

This is unacceptable to leaders of the semiautonomous south who say they won’t sit idly by while revenue from Chinese drilling in their oil fields goes mostly to the Arab-dominated government in the north.

“This peace is ugly,” says Daniel Deng Moyndit, a former rebel who now chairs the Government of South Sudan’s parliamentary security committee. “They [Khartoum government officials] are not serious … and any state is entitled to defense in anticipation of aggression.”

Despite this, “China doesn’t want another government in charge,” adds a Khartoum-based humanitarian aid worker, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They’re used to dealing with this government.”

While pockets of South Sudan are seeing some economic benefits from the shaky peace, the region in general is shortchanged. The main sore point has to do with years of underdevelopment and a perception that oil revenues are not being shared fairly.

Under the peace deal between north and south, oil profits are to be shared: 50 percent to the south, 48 percent to the north, and 2 to the specific oil-producing areas. But many in South Sudan say this agreement is not being implemented fairly.

Read both. They are very important.

And while this happens, our King and Queen do not suspend their visit to China to pay respects to the fallen because they are “strenghening ties with the Asian giant“.

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Chinese authorities plan destruction of revered Marian shrine

 After destroying a Buda in Tibet (right), now Chinese authorities want to dynamite revered Catholic shrine

Government officials in China’s Henan province have called for the destruction of the sanctuary of Our Lady of Carmel, the AsiaNews service reports. A government decree has ruled that the Marian sanctuary, and the pilgrimages that have brought over 40,000 pilgrims there annually, are evidence of “illegal religious activity.”

The Henan government plans to raze the sanctuary, bar pilgrimages to the site, and destroy the celebrated statue of Our Lady of Carmel that is revered by Catholics there. To discourage faithful Catholics from organizing sit-ins on the site to protect the shrine, authorities have scheduled military exercises in the area.

The sanctuary was built in the first years the 20th century, has been revered by Chinese Catholics for 100 years. It was nearly destroyed during World War II, rebuilt, then ravaged again by the Red Guard movement of the 1960s. Nevertheless the shrine continues to draw Catholic pilgrims.

Catholic World News : Chinese authorities plan destruction of revered Marian shrine

Last news about China:

China’s changing nuclear posture.

Chinese villagers riot over stricter population-control.

China plans new rockets.

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Ban Ki-Moon: The main cause of Darfur problems is…

Daimnation!: The root cause of the violence in Darfur

According to the new UN Secretary, it’s all about global warming [excerpts out of sequence]:Two decades ago, the rains in southern Sudan began to fail. According to U.N. statistics, average precipitation has declined some 40 percent since the early 1980s. Scientists at first considered this to be an unfortunate quirk of nature. But subsequent investigation found that it coincided with a rise in temperatures of the Indian Ocean, disrupting seasonal monsoons. This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming.

It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought. Until then, Arab nomadic herders had lived amicably with settled farmers. A recent Atlantic Monthly article by Stephan Faris describes how black farmers would welcome herders as they crisscrossed the land, grazing their camels and sharing wells. But once the rains stopped, farmers fenced their land for fear it would be ruined by the passing herds. For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out. By 2003, it evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today…

At this point, nothing surprises me about this man at all. But Darfur conflict is mainly an ethnic and religious conflict in which the Government, arming and unleashing the Janjaweed militias, has caused an ethnic and religious cleasing of, firstly, the non-Muslims (Christians and Animists) and of the Black Muslims, afterwards, when the first ones were virtually exterminated. Of course, the huge sea of oil under Darfurian soil has also have something to do with it, specially for China, who is aggresively exploiting it. Hmm, no more blood for petrol!! Eeh, no, it’s China, all for the people…

But of course, for Ban Ki-Moon, the most important reason of all, is the climate change induced, to some extent, by man. Of course, the extent of this man’s influence is not even measured…

Alex de Waal is one of the most important experts on the Horn of Africa: Chasing Ghosts: Alex de Waal on the rise and fall of militant Islam in the Horn of Africa (2005):

Khartoum had been saved from certain military defeat when its adversaries fell out among themselves. In May 1998, Eritrea and Ethiopia went to war over their disputed border, and a couple of months later Ugandan and Rwandan troops fought each other in the occupied Congolese city of Kisangani. As the attempt to found an Islamic state was running into the sand, so was the rival left-wing project of revolutionary militarism. The guerrillas-turned-governments in the four ‘frontline states’ were, like the Sudanese leaders, concerned only with staying in power.

This parallel is more than a neat coincidence. The radical Islamists and their regional enemies shared ideological fervour and organisational discipline. Both believed that enduring problems of state and society could be overcome by revolutionary change; and, as this failed, both reverted to simple power politics. Like other political creeds, jihadist Islamism is shaped by the contours of local politics – and sometimes it vanishes into the landscape.

The demise of grand ideology in the Horn did not mean the end of violence or militancy. Various ideologies have emerged from the ruins of the Islamic state project. Most are regional or tribal. In Darfur and Chad, Arab supremacism took over. Leaders of the infamous Janjawiid militia adhere to the philosophy of Qoreish, according to which the lineal descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and his Qoreish tribe are entitled to rule Muslim lands. This supposedly gives the Arabic-speaking Saharan Bedouin of the Juhayna confederation the right to dominate all the land between the Nile and Lake Chad. While US Special Forces chase a handful of jihadists in the mountains of the central Sahara, they have overlooked this vicious and archaic ideology, which has spread far more havoc just a few miles to the south.

Jihad in Sudan? What Jihad in Sudan? by Robert Spencer – HUMAN EVENTS

For a decade Khartoum has waged what the regime itself calls a jihad against Christians and tribalists in the South. A 1992 fatwa issued by a group of pro-Khartoum Sudanese imams declared: “An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.” This allowed for the murder of Christians and animists in the south; now it has been turned against the Muslims of Darfur, whose Islam doesn’t measure up to Khartoum’s hardline standards. Yet Annan has never acknowledged that what is going on in Sudan is a jihad. And this is just one manifestation of the by-now inescapable fact that the United Nations is damaged beyond repair. The Islamic states maintain an unbreakable solidarity. The only exception to their unwillingness to condemn other Muslim states came when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Kuwait.Meanwhile, the Europeans and Chinese have oil interests in Sudan that dovetail nicely at the UN with the Islamic bloc’s determination to repel any criticism. France, the most energetic opponent of UN sanctions against the Khartoum regime, is heavily invested in Sudan through its oil giant ElfTotal. 

The emperor has no clothes, but Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights and
Oxfam are still paying enthusiastic obeisance. A perusal of each of their websites demonstrates that they criticize the UN only with extreme reluctance and in the most muted tones. In a startling recrudescence of the old “white man’s burden” mentality, they tend to focus more anger at the United States and Western Europe for failing to stop killings than at the murderers themselves. And above all, they won’t describe the conflict as what it really is: a jihad, another example of the crying need for large-scale reform within Islam.

Well, Sarkozy has apparently changed the French ideas in this respect, firstly, calling for a Chinese intervention in the crisis, something very dificult to achieve considering the Chinese practices in Sudan. And secondly, by making Darfur, one of his priorities.

[En español]

Technorati Tags: Darfur, Ban Ki-Moon, climate change, UN, Arab supremacism, Jihad, Sudan, Horn of Africa

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Intelligence: China Supplying Terrorists In Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan

Power Line: Intelligence: China Supplying Terrorists In Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan

New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran. Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.
According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.
U.S. Army specialists suspect the weapons were transferred within the past three months.
The Bush administration has been trying to hide or downplay the intelligence reports to protect its pro-business policies toward China, and to continue to claim that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism. U.S. officials have openly criticized Iran for the arms transfers but so far there has been no mention that China is a main supplier.

If this is confirmed they are indeed dangerous news. But why it does not surprise me?… And then there are people who speaks openly about ending weapons’ embargo to China…

Sent to Open Trackbacks: to Dumb Ox, Pirate’s Cove, Woman Honor Thyself, Blue Star Chronicles, Nuke’s News and Views, Demediacratic Nation, The Amboy Times.

Technorati Tags: China, Taliban, Afghanistan, Islamism, Iraq, Iran

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