MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• HT:Iowahawk.Barack, Can We Talk?Barack, can we, uh, talk for a few minutes?Oh, nothing. It's just that it just seems we haven't had a chance to talk for a while. I mean, I know we've both been busy for the past year or so. You with your fundraisers and golfing and stuff, and me with all those appointments at the unemployment office. But you know I think it's important in a relationship like ours to keep the lines of communication open.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Pakistan: 4 more Christian villages deliberately flooded.Four Christian and Hindu villages in the southeastern Pakistani province of Sindh have been deliberately flooded, leaving over 2,800 families homeless.“The waters came as a result of an artificial diversion, built to save the agricultural estates belonging to powerful landowners who convinced-- and some say in a corrupt manner-- local officials to divert the course of water and save their land,” the Fides news agency reported.“Once again the strength of the powerful crushes the poor,” said the head of the village of Jati. “We Christians and Hindus in this area of Sindh are treated like animals; we do not receive any recognition from the government.”The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended that the US State Department place the Pakistan on its list of “countries of particular concern” because of egregious violations of religious freedom. The State Department has disregarded the recommendation.I wonder why hmmm..... Mr president?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Firebrand televangelist sets up Christian centre to 'combat evil Ground Zero mosque proposal'.An outspoken preacher with a history of anti-Islamic rhetoric has launched a Christian centre next to the former World Trade Center - as a direct response to plans for a mosque nearby.In a statement that brands Islam as a religion of 'violence and hatred', televangelist Bill Keller has launch his so-called '9/11 Christian Centre' in a hotel conference room directly opposite the Ground Zero site.The move is certain to inflame the already intense debate over the Park Place mosque scheme, which has divided the nation.In a statement on the centre's website, Keller dramatic says: 'How do you battle the darkness? With the light.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• US envoy Oren: Hizbullah has 15,000 rockets on border.Ambassador says Islamist group amassing arsenal in southern Lebanon with long enough range to hit Eilat."The Syrian-Iranian backed Hizbullah poses a very serious threat to Israel...Hizbullah today now has four times as many rockets as it had during the 2006 Lebanon war. These rockets are longer-range. Every city in Israel is within range right now, including Eilat," he said.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• German held by U.S. troops planned Europe attacks: report.A German Islamist held by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and interrogated since July has revealed details of planned attacks on targets in Germany and Europe, a news weekly reported Saturday.Without naming its sources, Der Spiegel said U.S. troops had identified Ahmad S. as a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who had worked on recruiting new members in Germany.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Video : Byron York from the Washington Examiner explains on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" the politics behind the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.Click here for comments.

• Little yellow mosque heads for Canadian Arctic!A small mosque being shipped to the Arctic to serve a growing Muslim population in Canada's far north will travel 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) over land and water.The number of Muslims in Inuvik, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the Northwest Territories, has grown steadily in recent years to about 80 and they no longer fit in an old three-by-seven-meter (10-by-23-feet) caravan used until now for prayers.The congregation could not afford to build a new mosque in the town, where prices for labor and materials are substantially higher than in southern parts of Canada(Must be real cheaper shipping it 4.000km?), said project leader Ahmad Alkhalaf.It should be ready to welcome worshippers -- largely Sunni Muslim immigrants from Sudan, Lebanon and Egypt who moved to Canada's far north in search of jobs and economic opportunities -- in early November, he said.The facility will also double as a Muslim community center, he said.I'm just wondering how do these immigrants make a living there in the middle of nowhere?Answer as a cabdriver!Now I've seen it all!Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Trial delay for NY Muslim man charged with beheading wife.A judge said Friday that the psychiatrist for Muzzammil Hassan (Moo-ZAHM'-mel HAH'-sahn) can testify that he had been diagnosed as a battered spouse who'd been physically and emotionally abused by his wife.That's like Hulk Hogan claiming to be abused by Minny Mouse?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Islamic Group Asks Army to Deny 'Traitor' GI's Request for Conscientious Objector Status.An American Muslim organization is asking the U.S. Army to deny a Muslim soldier’s request for conscientious objector status, accusing him of treason and urging the military to punish him to the full extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) says Abdo's claim is “patently false.”"Muslims serve with distinction throughout the United States Military and AIFD sees Abdo’s traitorous public assertions as a slap in the face to all American Muslims especially those Muslims who fight in our armed forces for the liberty and freedom guaranteed by the American Constitution," the group said in a statement it issued on Friday.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:GatesofVienna.Immensely popular PVV party fails to negociate a goverment.For the last few weeks, Geert Wilders’ party (De Partij Voor de Vrijheid, or PVV) has been negotiating with the two “center-right” parties, the VVD and the CDA, on the formation of a minority governing coalition. The idea has been that a CDA/VVD coalition would enjoy PVV support, thereby allowing it to govern.While negotiations dragged on, the PVV’s popularity in the Netherlands has increased. The most recent polls show it gaining as many as seven seats if elections were to be held again, going from 24 to 31. In some polls it is the most popular party in the country.This has given Mr. Wilders and his party a very strong negotiating position. But now comes word that the negotiations for a government have failed, and have been called off.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Radical Islam is world's greatest threat - Tony Blair.Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today.He made the remark in a BBC interview marking the publication of his memoirs.Mr Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified - including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.Mr Blair, who led Britain into war in Afghanistan and Iraq, denied that his own policies had fuelled radicalism. Asked about the argument that Chechens, Kashmiris, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans were resisting foreign occupation, he said Western polices were designed to confront radical Islamists because they were "regressive, wicked and backward-looking".Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Presidential Memorandum– Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Resulting from Flooding in Pakistan.Obama said the money would be used "for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs... resulting from recent devastating flooding in Pakistan."Hmmm only for Muslims or for Christians and Hindus also?Read full story here.Click here for comments.

• World's Largest Mezuzah.Jewish passengers arriving at Israel's Ben Gurion airport can now enter the country with a blessing. The world's largest mezuzah, a Jewish artifact containing Hebrew verses of a prayer from the Torah, was placed at the entry point.Read the full story here.Click here for comments .

• Paris mosque slams burger chain's Muslim outreach.Note to big companies hoping to tap into France's lucrative but long-neglected Muslim consumer market: Pitfalls may await, and not only in the form of complaints from the far-right.As of this week, 22 outlets of popular French fast food chain Quick are serving burgers it says respect Islamic dietary law. And while many Muslims are delighted, the powerful main Paris Mosque complained Thursday that Quick's criteria aren't all-encompassing enough, and that the operation is meaningless.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• National Catholic Reporter Attacks Newt Gingrich For “Spreading Hysteria”.In yet another mind-blowing editorial in support of the Ground Zero mosque, the Hezbollah-loving National Catholic Reporter (NCR) has gone on the attack against Catholicism’s newest high profile convert, Newt Gingrich. Hide the children! Newt Gingrich is promoting “hysteria”!It’s difficult to fathom how the editors of a publication that whitewashes Hezbollah could attack Newt Gingrich and claim that they are defending “reason“.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Video:The Nazi Culture of Islam in the Arab Middle East.

• Park51 and the Charge of “Islamophobia”.The recent and growing controversy over the plan to build a thirteen-storey mosque near Ground Zero has, once again, concentrated public attention on the fact and nature of Islam. Is it, as its adherents claim, a "religion of peace," a bringer of benefits to mankind, a harbinger of a better world, a faith which, according to President Obama, accentuates "the dignity of all human beings"? Or, on the contrary, is it something entirely different, not so much a religion as a political ideology grounded in an incendiary and hortative arsenal of texts, primarily the Koran but also the hadith, the sirah and the theological ruminations of Islamic thinkers and jurists from earliest times to the present?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Drug supply dries up, postponing executions.Lacking enough of the anesthetic essential to the cocktail of lethal drugs administered during executions, several US states are being forced to postpone the procedure until early next year.At the heart of the drug supply problem is Hospira, the only pharmaceutical company that produces the anesthetic sodium thiopental."We are working to get it back on the market and we anticipate we will by 2011," an Hospira spokesman said.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• From Hiding, Indonesian Defends Free Expression.Hiding out with a two-year jail sentence hanging over his head and vigilantes vowing to track him down, the editor of Indonesia’s defunct version of Playboy magazine, Erwin Arnada, insists he was never in the pornography business.The men’s magazine, which began publication in 2006, was relatively tame, and conspicuously free of nudity. But faced with violent protests by hard-line Muslim groups, it soon folded, while Mr. Arnada fended off a succession of criminal charges. The group has been blamed for a series of violent protests and forced closures of Christian churches this year as well as a campaign against the minority Islamic sect Ahmadiyah, which was declared “deviant” by a government decree in 2008. Mr. Yudhoyono has so far stayed silent after his religious affairs minister, Suryadharma Ali, said last month that Ahmadiyah should be disbanded.Islam and tolerance?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Calls For Release Of Iranian Rights Activist Ahead Of Trial.There have been calls for the release of Iranian human rights activist Shiva Nazar Ahari, ahead of the scheduled start of her trial on September 4.On September 1, the American Islamic Congress named Ahari the recipient of its first Advocate Behind Bars award.The award is given to outstanding civil-society activists who have demonstrated leadership, had an exceptional impact, and are unjustly imprisoned.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.