MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Republican Congressional Candidate Joel Pollak "President Obama has made it okay to hate Israel".Mr. Pollak, a soft-spoken, 33-year-old Orthodox Jew and Harvar- trained lawyer who has decided to throw his hat in the political ring for the very first time. "I grew up in a traditional home, but my parents and I became more observant Jews and I learned first-hand of the special significance that Israel holds for the Jewish people" says Pollak."I love Israel – not just because it is my religious homeland, and not just because of my family roots there, but also because of the principle that it represents. The State of Israel stands for the idea that an oppressed people can take control of its own destiny, and build freedom and prosperity with nothing more than faith and hard work. It is the same idea that built America. That is why our two countries are so close, and will remain so."Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Hardliners call for deaths of Surrey Muslims. Islamic extremists have started openly calling for the destruction of a controversial Muslim sect in a major escalation of sectarian conflict within British Islam, an investigation by The Independent has revealed. Members of the Ahmadiyya Community have seen a significant upsurge in threats and intimidation over the past four months, sparked by an extremist attack on two of their largest mosques in Pakistan earlier this year.Hardline Islamists in Britain have been distributing leaflets calling for the murder of AhmadiMuslims in Kingston-upon-Thames whilst mosques have been vandalised in Newham and Crawley. Preachers in south London have also been orchestrating a boycott of Ahmadi businesses and Ofcom has had to reprimand an Islamic satellite channel for repeatedly calling the sect "Wajib-ul Qatal" - an Arabic phrase used to describe those who digress from mainstream Islam that translates as "liable for death".One of the main differences with the Ahmadiyya Muslims and traditional Muslims is the fact that :"The word jihad is interchanged with the meaning of "Ijtihad" and primarily means to strive or exert to the fullest. This refers to striving against the evil of one's low desires and the peaceful propagation of Islam, with special emphasis on spreading the true message of Islam by the pen. As per prophecy, the Messiah rendered the concept of violent jihad unnecessary in modern times. They believe that the answer of hate should be given by love. Their khalifas said that "if anyone attacks us we must not attack him and should treat them with love and kindness"; this is called “Jihaad-e-Akbar” (The Greater Jihad)."Islam a religion of peace.Read the full story here.More on the Ahmadiyya here.Click here for comments.

• Islamic fundamentalists against church named after Mother Teresa.Plans to build a Catholic place of worship in Cikarang, some 60 kilometres east of Jakarta, is generating opposition among Muslim groups. At least six churches were attacked since last year. Several Protestant clergymen were also assaulted. The authorities have been criticised for failing to stem the wave of intolerance.Anti-Christian intolerance is raising its ugly head again. Islamic fundamentalist groups are increasingly trying to stop the construction of churches in areas where the Catholic Church is present. Government slowness in reacting to such phenomena has come under fire because it effectively adds more fuel to the flames of intolerance fanned by such groups.In recent weeks, Bekasi Regency has seen a number of episodes of intolerance directed at Christians from different confessions. Since 2009, at least six churches have been attacked and several Protestant clergymen have been the victims of assault.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Memri.TV Report on Religious Schools in Pakistan: Many Graduates Assume Prominent Positions among the Afghan Mujahideen and Taliban.A common mistake is to separate politics and religion.Islam is an comprehensive religion wich encompasses everything,it doesn't separate religion and politics .that's a Western concept.We as religious scholars we must engage in politics to implement religion and Sharia.Read and see the full story here.Click here for comments .

• Unsolved mystery: Anonymous $10,000 donation at World Trade Center site.Charities are receiving fewer donations, thanks to the lingering effects of the recession. Happily, there are exceptions. One of the more intriguing ones occurred recently in New York City, when an anonymous person placed $10,000 in cash into a 9/11 donation box at the World Trade Center site.An article from the Associated Press explains that officials found the cash (99 $100 bills and five $20 bills) on Tuesday night. Because the bills were all "crisp and unfolded," officials think they came from the same person between the hours of 5 p.m. (when the box was last checked) and 7 p.m. (when the site closed). The memorial, when finished, will consist of two sunken pools where the Twin Towers once stood. Experts believe it will be completed by next year.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Vets stand guard over Christian flag in NC town.KING, N.C. – The Christian flag is everywhere in the small city of King: flying in front of barbecue joints and hair salons, stuck to the bumpers of trucks, hanging in windows and emblazoned on T-shirts.The relatively obscure emblem has become omnipresent because of one place it can't appear: flying above a war memorial in a public park.The identity of the resident who complained about the flag, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, has not been made public. But the state chapter of the ACLU has no problem with the vigil."We were concerned when the city was sponsoring the Christian flag, but we don't have any concern with veterans groups displaying the flag," legal director Katy Parker said. "We think it's great the city is offering citizens a chance to express their opinions."The protesters, though, aren't satisfied with the vigil. They're planning an Oct. 23 rally in support of their ultimate goal, which is for the city to restore the Christian flag to the permanent metal pole on the memorial.The Rev. Kevin Broyhill, pastor at Calvary Baptist, donated the flag now flying at the vigil. But Broyhill thinks having it returned permanently to the memorial is a losing legal strategy. He wants the city to transfer the memorial to a veterans group, which would make it private land. "Right now, the judges on the Fourth Circuit Court are very liberal," he said. "This battle's already been fought in court."For veterans who say they're honoring the sacrifices of fallen comrades or Christians who say they're defending their faith, though, such a compromise seems like a sellout. "That's an easy out," said Eugene Kiger, who has been part of the vigil since the beginning. "The people here saw what was happening and said, 'Somebody has stood up. It's time to stand up with them.'Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Memri.Saudi Sheik Sa'd Al-Breik On Human Rights In Islam And In The West, Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia).Read and see the whole thing here.Click here for comments.

• Hizbullah behind primary school headscarf tension.As girls in the provinces of Mersin and Adana tried to attend schools with their headscarves on, Hizbullah, a fundamentalist terrorist organization, has been found to be behind their attempts.T.Y., who tried to attend classes wearing her headscarf in Adana, has a father who is the head of the Mustazaf-Der’s Adana branch, shut down for its Hizbullah ties. Meanwhile, Hüseyin Çelik, the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) deputy chairman, warned of provocations regarding the headscarf issue. Hizbullah has been found to be behind shady events and been linked to people who are being tried in the Ergenekon investigation.Hizbullah’s main target, say intelligence sources, is the AK Party. Despite the Islamic background of the ruling party, its pro-Western policies are disliked by the group.Hmmm.....Hizbullah......Iran ....Erdogan?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Wulff asks for more religious freedoms after Tarsus mass.German President Christian Wulff took part in a religious ceremony at a church-turned museum in southern Turkey on Thursday, following which he reiterated his earlier calls for more religious freedoms for Christians in Turkey.Wulff attended together with his wife. “No one should be afraid of different cultures and religions. They should in fact be seen as enriching,” Wulff said. Noting that they did everything they can to provide Muslims in Germany the best conditions for them to practice their religion, Wulff said they are expecting some legal arrangements from Turkey in reciprocity.“We think that religious freedoms are a fundamental right and hope the final steps will be taken and some legal changes will be made to ensure Christians in Turkey have all of their religious freedoms and exercise their religions properly,” he noted.Responding to another question, Wulff stated that in discussing the reopening of the St. Paul Church with his counterpart Abdullah Gül, that what they wish for is not limited to one or another church but to ensure the religious freedoms of all Christians. “We long for all Christian churches to be opened to religious ceremonies if their communities wish it. This is applicable here too,” Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:IslaminEurope.France: Riots 'outbursts of hate and anti-French racism'.A reader sent me two more articles which point the finger at North-African Muslim youth.Ivan Rioufol, of Le Figaro, wrote the following on his blog (FR): All students are obviously not rioters. But the rioters of the past few days - and Wednesday morning again in the center of Lyon - are indeed students. They are, mainly, from the ghettos. The hooded people aren't marching to defend retirement at 60, or even the welfare system which enticed their parents or grandparents. They're there to battle the Republic, its culture and it's most visible symbols: the security forces, the schools. That's why a school was burned down in Mans. The scenes of urban guerrilla warfare that they're reproducing are very similar to the images of the intifada of the young Palestinians confronting the Israeli forces. Comparisons are misleading, but these ethnic insurrections of youth who are often of Muslim culture, also reject the state seen as a colonizer and oppressor. These wild people, each time more intrepid and organized, remind us of the failure of their integration.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Top prosecutor should withdraw anti-scarf remarks, apologize to nation, says Şahin.Arrows of criticism have rained down upon Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya after an anti-headscarf statement he made, with Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Şahin urging the top prosecutor to withdraw his statement and offer apologies to Parliament and the Turkish nation for attempting to place himself above national and parliamentary will.In the statement, the top prosecutor argued that the free use of the headscarf at universities would damage secularism. He also said the Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor's Office is entitled to investigate whether the actions of political parties are in violation of the independence of the state, sovereignty of the nation, democratic and secular republican principles, human rights and the principle of equality, implicitly threatening the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) with a “closure case.”According to constitutional law expert Professor Ergun Özbudun, attempts to stop the transformation of Turkey into a more democratic country are doomed to fail. “And we all know what the reason for this is.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.US troops in Afghanistan forbidden from defending themselves.I guess the United States has decided to implement the Goldstone Report recommendations for itself. Either that, or they like the Israeli 'strategy' of turning the other cheek which was how we handled rocket fire from Gaza until December 2008. You see, the Obama administration has forbidden US troops from defending themselves against Taliban rocket fire. They're afraid of civilian casualties.If Obama orders US troops to commit suicide, do they have to follow the orders? If US troops are ordered to commit suicide, do Israeli troops have to get similar orders?But give the Obama administration credit for one thing: They're implementing the Goldstone Report. They can't win a war this way, and at least it's not American civilians who are taking casualties, but it's going to be hell on military recruitment if this insanity continues.Hmmmm....who likes Christian God fearing brave men to be slaughtered?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Obama will be visiting Pakistan in 2011.A White House statement said: "President (Obama) explained that he would not be stopping in Pakistan during his trip to Asia next month, and committed to visiting Pakistan in 2011, as well as welcoming (Pakistani) President (Asif Ali) Zardari to Washington."A country President Obama knows well it seems.A Schoolfriend speaking about their highshool time:Former classmate Dean Ando, who spent many hours on the basketball court with Obama and knew him since the fifth grade, says that Punahou was probably the best possible place for Obama in Hawaii. Though an exclusive school it was egalitarian in the sense that anyone with academic skills, regardless of ethnicity, would be respected for their accomplishments.Indeed his friends observed that there was more to Obama than just sports. He had an intellectual side. In a comment published in the Punahou Bulletin, his classmate, Greg Orme said, "He had a worldly view. He would talk about people in Pakistan and was a lot more aware of Middle East politics than anybody I knew. He was following conflicts around the world and talked about it all the time. He read a lot on his own, too -- books on philosophy. So we'd talk about world politics or existentialism."And of course he visited Pakistan before see here and here.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Former President Bill Clinton's card with nuke codes went missing for months, new book asserts.Former President Bill Clinton lost the biscuit - a card with the codes needed to launch a nuclear attack - and couldn't find it for months, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has revealed."At one point during the Clinton administration," Gen. Hugh Shelton recalled, "the codes were actually missing for months. That's a big deal - a gargantuan deal," he told ABC World News.Bubba's scary blunder is described in Shelton's just-published memoir, "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior."It was the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke."He thought he just placed them upstairs," Patterson recalled.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Chicago sheriff says no to enforcing foreclosures.CHICAGO - Two of the largest U.S. mortgage servicers have said they will resume home foreclosures, but a big-city sheriff has news for them: he won't enforce their foreclosure evictions.The sheriff for Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago, said on Tuesday he will not enforce foreclosure evictions for Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase and Co. and GMAC Mortgage/Ally Financial until they prove those foreclosures were handled "properly and legally.""I can't possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can't say for sure everything was done properly," Dart said in the statement."I need some kind of assurance that we aren't evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks. Until that happens, I can't in good conscience keep carrying out evictions involving these banks," he added.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Cafe owner ordered to remove extractor fan because neighbour claimed 'smell of frying bacon offends Muslims'.Today mother-of-seven Mrs Akciecek said she plans to appeal against the decision.She said: 'I just think it's crazy. Cetin's friends actually visit the shop, they're regular visitors, they're Muslim people, they come in a couple of times a week.'I have Muslim people come in for cheese toasties. Cetin cooks the food himself, he cooks the bacon.Mr Webb-Lee said: 'The vent is 12 inches from my front door. Every morning the smell of bacon comes through and makes me physically sick.'I have a lot of Muslim friends. They refuse to visit me anymore because they can't stand the smell of bacon.'Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:StricktlyRight.Conference facility caves to pressure from Islamic groups, bans Mark Steyn from speaking.Strictly Right sent out a press release earlier today to Canadian media with some rather startling news about the upcoming Mark Steyn speech in London, Ontario that we’re putting together. Mark Steyn will be speaking on November 1st in a speech entitled “Head for the Hills: Why everything in your world is doomed.” Apparently, London-area Muslims didn’t like that idea too much.It’s interesting that a government-run business decided that freedom of speech was no longer a concept to be upheld, and even more interesting is the fact that the Muslim community in London is applying pressure to a company to not entertain a speaker when only a day earlier they made a statement to the press saying that they didn’t care about Steyn speaking and wouldn’t do anything to counter it, (except “charity work.”)Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Muslims speak out against NPR’s political correctness.While a Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), was instrumental in getting National Public Radio (NPR) to fire Juan Williams, some Muslims are speaking out against succumbing to the censorship of political correctness.Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, took issue with those who wrap themselves in feel good sensitivity, while denying the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslim.Indeed, the threat is real enough even for Fatah, a liberal Muslim, who looks at women in burkas with skepticism. “I am scared when I see women in burkas, how do I know what is behind that?” Fatah said, noting that many Muslims share his concerns.Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, echoed Fatah and Jasser. Schwartz told TheDC that he and his organization opposed NPR’s reaction to Williams’ comments.“Mr. Williams spoke to this reality in an understated, candid way. He did not express hatred or incite violence against Muslims. He should not have been dismissed.”Hmmm........racing to the barricades for damage control?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Eastwood Doesn't Think Obama's "Governing".Actor and director Clint Eastwood talks to Katie Couric about President Obama's politics, his presidency and his willingness "to take a chance on losing.“Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.”Clint Eastwood".Read and see the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.UN envoy slams 'settlement' construction.UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry has slammed Israel for resuming 'settlement' construction over the last three and a half weeks. In a statement, Serry called the AP report "alarming." He said settlement construction is "illegal under international law" and "will only further undermine trust."Something tells me that "They don't trust me because of my middle name"might consider to vote in favor of a Palestinian state at the U.N.You can hear him coming a mile away.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Iran Joins High-level Afghan Talks. Iran Participates For First Time In High-level Talks On Afghanistan. Iran took part in a high-level meeting on Afghanistan on Monday after the United States said it has no problem with its participation.Qanezadeh described the meeting as "fruitful," and said Iran believes in a "regional" solution for Afghanistan, one supported by the international community. The biggest problems in Afghanistan for Iran, he said, are "insecurity, drug trafficking and the presence of foreign forces."Meaning ....Obama get out!The fallen and wounded soldiers thank you. "They don't trust me because of my middle name?"Read the full treason story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Evidence: Turkish government helped plan Guerilla Flotilla; Turkey denies it.Information recovered from the laptop computers of passengers on the Mavi Marmara shows extensive involvement by the Turkish government (including Prime Minister Erdogan and other senior government officials) in the planning of the 'Guerilla Flotilla,' including preparing for a scenario where IDF soldiers land on the decks by rappelling down from helicopters. The Turkish government denies that it was involved.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Iran, trying to skirt sanctions, attempts to set up banks worldwide.Iran is secretly trying to set up banks in Muslim countries around the world, including Iraq and Malaysia, using dummy names and opaque ownership structures to skirt sanctions that have increasingly curtailed the Islamic republic's global banking activities, U.S. officials say.The Treasury Department has blacklisted 16 Iranian banks for allegedly supporting Iran's nuclear program and terrorist activities; other countries have followed suit with their own measures. Tehran's search for new banking avenues is a sign of the growing effectiveness of the sanctions, U.S. officials said.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.