MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Laura Bush on the Taliban and women's rights.The former first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, has said that women's rights in Afghanistan should not be sacrificed in any reconciliation with the Taliban.Mrs Bush has long championed Afghan women, and spoken out about the problems they face.A First lady for whom people especially women in need come first.Read and see the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Barack and Michelle's Mumbai darshan plans.US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit. To ensure fool-proof security, the President’s team has booked the entire the Taj Mahal Hotel, including 570 rooms, all banquets and restaurants."We feel your pain and please gives us some money and votes?Since his security contingent and staff will comprise a huge number, 125 rooms at Taj President have also been booked, apart from 80 to 90 rooms each in Grand Hyatt and The Oberoi hotels. The NCPA, where the President is expected to meet representatives from the business community, has also been entirely booked. The officer said, “Obama’s contingent is huge. There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One, which will be flanked by security jets. There will be 30 to 40 secret service agents, who will arrive before him. The President’s convoy has 45 cars, including the Lincoln Continental in which the President travels.” Since Obama will stay in a hotel that is on sea front, elaborate coastal security arrangements have been made by the US Navy in consonance with the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. “There will be US naval ships, along with Indian vessels , patrolling the sea till about 330-km from the shore. This is to negate the possibility of a missile being fired from a distance,” the officer said. The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savour Indian cuisine, but to ensure his food is not spiked.Hmmm....."La folie des grandeurs" strikes again?Read the full story here.Click here for comments. 

• Sikhs Lament Obama Plan to Bypass India Temple.Sikhs in the United States expressed their frustration Thursday that President Obama would skip a tentatively planned visit to their holiest site in India, while advocacy groups called on the White House to reconsider.“There’s a xenophobic trend in this country, where some people are calling him Muslim,” said Jasjit Singh, associate director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a Washington-based civil rights group. “If he gives in to this trend then effectively he’s emboldening them.”If Mr. Obama or anyone else visits the brick temple , the instructions are clear. Visitors must turn off their cellphones and remove their shoes.A box of orange bandanalike headscarves near the front door will satisfy the final instruction: “Please cover your head beyond this point.Hmmmm.....does not fit in his "outreach to Muslims"plan.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Far-right parties oppose EU membership for Turkey. Several far-right parties that oppose Turkish membership in the European Union said Saturday they will push for an EU referendum on the subject. Austrian Freedom Party chief Heinz-Christian Strache and members of Belgium's nationalist Flemish Interest Party, the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People's Party, among others, said Turkey has no place in Europe and that citizens should be allowed to weigh in on the matter. "We are all simply of the firm opinion that Europe would go dramatically astray if one starts taking in non-European countries as members," Strache said. "It would be the end of the European Union, it would be the beginning of a Euro-Asian-African union that would stand in complete opposition to the European peace project and therefore can't be allowed to happen."Morten Messerschmidt of the Danish People's Party, who also is a member of the European Parliament, said the parties would use the so-called citizens' initiative included in the EU's new Lisbon Treaty to "suggest to have a referendum from Romania to Denmark, from Italy to Finland ... on this topic of Turkish membership in order to consult not only the politically correct establishment within the European Commission but the average European."Perhaps they should include as a question:"should Turkey be removed from NATO"?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Saudi prince blasts US for not 'curbing' Israel.Well, here's a direct result of the Obama policy of bowing to foreign leaders. A Saudi prince has blasted the United States for not 'curbing' Israel. “It has failed to curb the brutal Israeli policy of collective punishment, arbitrary arrests and killings,” charged Prince Turki al- Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to the US and ex-director of Saudi intelligence.He also criticized American officials for not standing up to Israel, maintaining, “It is these officials who propose that the Netanyahu government should be rewarded for its intransigence rather than sanctioned.”This speech was two days after Congress was asked to approve $60 billion in arms sales to the Saudis. Some thanks the American taxpayer gets.Funny, I haven't seen this in the US media yet. I guess the Obama administration doesn't want this kind of embarrassment ten days before the elections. But it's a direct result of his policy of sucking up to third world dictators. Maybe NPR will report on it.....Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• G20 inks pact to avert trade war.The Group of 20 major economies agreed on Saturday to shun competitive currency devaluations but stopped short of setting targets to reduce trade imbalances that are clouding global growth prospects.the United States itself came under fire from Germany and China for the super-loose monetary policy stance it has adopted to try to breathe life into the sluggish U.S. economy.German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said he had made clear that easing was the wrong way to go."An excessive, permanent increase in money is, in my view, an indirect manipulation of the (foreign exchange) rate," he said.Developing countries are worried that Washington, by flooding the U.S. banking system with cash, is pumping up their asset prices and exchange rates, thus undermining the competitiveness of the export industries on which they rely for growth.China, among others, frets that the U.S. policy stance will debase the dollar, the lynchpin of the global economy.In a thinly veiled reference to the United States, the G20 statement said advanced countries, including those with reserve currencies, would be vigilant against excessive volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Revealed: Al Qaeda leader behind Ken Bigley killing escaped after British helicopter moments from capturing him ran out of fuel.An Al Qaeda leader went on to kill hundreds of people after British helicopter troops who were moments from capturing him ran out of fuel, it has been revealed.Soldiers desperately stalked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by air when his car was spotted around 60 miles south of Basra.They were just seconds from swooping on the militant leader whose gunmen were responsible for killing British hostage Ken Bigley in 2004.But after the chopper followed al-Zarqawi for 15 minutes it was forced to return to a British-run airbase to refuel.Troops later filed in on foot and raided buildings close to where Zarqawi's car had been but he was lost and the search was called off.The terrorist commander survived to launch a wave of revenge killings that lasted for half-a-year and bring Iraq to the brink of civil war before he was killed by American troops in 2006.Details of the blunder were recorded in secret military intelligence logs that have now been leaked to The Observer newspaper by whistle blowing site WikiLeaks.Read the full story here.Click here for coments.

• HT:TundraTabloids.Suspected Turkish Muslim terrorist arrested at Heathrow airport.A 30-year-old man on suspicion of terrorist crimes, was arrested on Friday by border police at the airport. On Saturday arrested the man in Attunda district court, reported Aftonbladet.The man is a Turkish citizen and has been an international wanted list on suspicion of crimes including terrorism, kidnapping and hostage-taking in Belgium.According to Aftonbladet, the man was arrested when he tried to flee to Sweden. The case was handled by SAPO and Belgium have asked the man extradited.TT:Where did the plane come from? If my information is correct as it came from Syria.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico.Just three days after the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the BP oil spill cleanup declared little recoverable surface oil remained in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River delta.The discovery, which comes as millions of birds begin moving toward the region in the fall migration, gave ammunition to groups that have insisted the government has overstated clean-up progress, and could force reclosure of key fishing areas only recently reopened.On Friday reports included accounts of strips of the heavily weathered orange oil that became a signature image of the spill during the summer. One captain said some strips were as much as 400 feet wide and a mile long.The captains did not want to be named for fear of losing their clean-up jobs with BP.Coast Guard officials Friday said a boat had been dispatched to investigate the sightings, but that a report would not be available until Saturday morning.However, Times-Picayune photojournalist Matt Hinton confirmed the sightings in an over-flight of West Bay.Robert Barham, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said if the sightings are confirmed by his agency, the area will be reclosed to fishing until it is confirmed oil-free again.Hmmmm......"I will not rest".Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• The Day the Earth Shook; China Dictates to G20 .China against current account limits: G20 source ... China has made clear it will not agree to a G20 communique that explicitly binds countries to limits on current account balances or any other form of rules on currency policy, a G20 source told Reuters on Friday. Finance officials from the Group of 20 leading nations started two days of meetings on Friday. A statement is expected on Saturday. The proposal to set a target of 4 percent of gross domestic product for current account surpluses and deficits came from the United States and appeared aimed at China's trade surplus.Dominant Social Theme: Please avert your gaze. Move along. We will try again in November.Conclusion: World domination was once so near that it might have seemed all the Anglo-American elite had to do was reach out to grab it. But now....Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:TheBrusselsJournal.Jihad By Vuvuzela.Muslim youth have discovered a new weapon to counter the dissemination of unwanted ideas: the vuvuzela. Pro-Palestinian activists used the African noise horn to try to silence a Jewish professor in Brussels.It happened last Thursday in Molenbeek, a predominantly Muslim borough of the Brussels capital region. Mouedden Mohsin, a Belgian-Moroccan publicist and radio presenter, had organized a series of intercultural sessions to improve the understanding between the Jewish and muslim communities in Brussels. Speaker of the evening, for an audience of immigrant youngsters, was professor Joël Kotek, an expert in anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. In a newsletter, professor Kotek aired his disappointment:I was shocked by the hate of the demonstrators. The least one can say is that the climate in Belgium is not favorable for this type of encounter. It's a time of black and white, of manicheism, not of dialogue."Islam a religion of peace".Read and see & hear the full story here.Click here for comments.

• They see Obama as a hostile, alien force - like Hitler or Pol Pot: The glamorous, gun-crazy women preparing to blow the President away.Kristi Noem, a Republican candidate for next month's elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, spent last weekend doing what she loves doing best - leading a party of hunters.Kristi is running in the state of South Dakota, a vast expanse of bleak, undulating prairie that is so thinly populated it has only one Congressional seat. Around here, the start of the pheasant-shooting season is a pretty big deal. For Kristi, however, pheasants are second-best.'This election is a referendum on what people want for the United States,' says Noem, chatting to the directors of a software firm in Sioux Falls.'You've heard the phrase " Washington is broken" a thousand times and it sometimes seems we don't have representative government any longer. So what can I do, so I don't get swallowed up by the machine? I can't make any guarantees. But if I go to Washington and don't do the things I've promised, you have my personal permission to throw me out in two years' time.'President Obama beware. As I hear it told in Castlewood, this woman is a straight shooter.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Muslim Sect Sees Struggle Through Christian Lens.NAJRAN, Saudi Arabia — Among the ruins on the edge of this ancient oasis city are deep trenches littered with bones. That, local people say, is all that remains of one of the great atrocities of antiquity, when thousands of Christians were herded into pits here and burned to death by a converted "Jewish ?"(The historian John of Ephesus describing these facts ,wrote about them years after the actual events and being a Christian the most probable enemy to Christianity would have been the Jews who "Killed Jezus")  tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith.The massacre, which took place in about A.D. 523, is partly shadowed by myth and largely unknown to the outside world. But it has become central to the identity of the people now living here, who mostly belong to the minority Ismaili sect of Islam. The Ismailis, widely reviled as heretics by Sunni Muslims both here and abroad, see the oppressed Christians of ancient Najran as their literal and figurative ancestors in a continuing struggle for recognition by the Saudi state. “This story means so much to us,” said Ali al-Hattab, a 31-year-old hospital worker and graduate student. “Our life and our struggle today comes from those martyrs who gave their lives for their beliefs.” The Saudi government does not take kindly to this analogy. Part of the site where the Christians are said to have been killed — including charred remnants from the fires — was buried and paved over years ago. In a small museum next to the ruins that is dedicated to the city’s ancient history, there is only one brief reference to the massacre. In part, this is a reflection of the deep hostility among Saudi conservatives toward any artifacts that predate the birth of Islam in the seventh century.But Najranis will brook no doubt about the story. They say it has been handed on from father to son ever since it happened. “These were among the first people to die for their beliefs,” said Salem al-Yami, a retired military officer here. “We believe that makes Najran a sacred city.”MFS : I'm sorry but i doubt about the being Jewish part of the tyrant.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• France: Baby dies, 10 hurt in fall from third-story window. Group plunge occurs after woman claims she's seen Satan, official says.Circumstances surrounding the early-morning incident were unclear and it wasn't known if the victims jumped on purpose or were forced to, the official said. There was no emergency, such as a fire, in the building at the time.An initial investigation suggested they jumped after one of the women involved became hysterical and started shouting she'd seen the devil, the official said."Lord forgive them cause they don't know what they do?"Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Refugeeresettlementwatch.Thirty arrested in Oklahoma food stamp fraud busts.Unfortunately the article only tells us about two of the thirty busted in the scam. Maybe they are the big fish—an Ethiopian immigrant ripped off US taxpayers to the tune of $1.2 million and the Pakistani got $650,000 before they were busted.Store owners Muluneh Zeleke and Muhammad Zahid are accused of defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of more than $1.8 million.The program is commonly referred to by its former food stamp program name.Zeleke, the 54-year-old owner of Z&Z Convenience Store at 2445 N Martin Luther King Ave. in Oklahoma City, is accused of conspiring with clerks and food stamp recipients to defraud the federal food stamp program out of more than $1.2 million.Also charged in a federal indictment was Zahid, 28, of Edmond, who was identified as the owner of Ghani Mart at 2719 NE 23 in Oklahoma City.Zahid, who was born in Pakistan, is accused of using an almost identical scheme to defraud the food stamp program out of more than $650,000. This is one more in a long and sorry line of these food stamp fraud busts and they all follow a similar pattern involving legal immigrants.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Iran Is Said to Give Top Karzai Aide Cash by the Bagfull.One evening last August, as President Hamid Karzai wrapped up an official visit to Iran, his personal plane sat on the airport tarmac, waiting for a late-running passenger: Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan.The ambassador, Feda Hussein Maliki, finally appeared, taking a seat next to Umar Daudzai, Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff and his most trusted confidant. According to an Afghan official on the plane, Mr. Maliki handed Mr. Daudzai a large plastic bag bulging with packets of euro bills. A second Afghan official confirmed that Mr. Daudzai carried home a large bag of cash. “This is the Iranian money,” said an Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Many of us noticed this.”The bag of money is part of a secret, steady stream of Iranian cash intended to buy the loyalty of Mr. Daudzai and promote Iran’s interests in the presidential palace, according to Afghan and Western officials here. Iran uses its influence to help drive a wedge between the Afghans and their American and NATO benefactors, they say.The payments, which officials say total millions of dollars, form an off-the-books fund that Mr. Daudzai and Mr. Karzai have used to pay Afghan lawmakers, tribal elders and even Taliban commanders to secure their loyalty, the officials said.These are the kind of men the Obama administration deals with and for whom brave American soldiers die for?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:NewsRealBlog.“Jihad in The Backyard of The Nation’s Capital”.On Wednesday, Fairfax County, Va., approved a lease extension for the Islamic Saudi Academy, an elementary school run by the Saudi government. The extension allows the academy to remain in its current facilities, about 15 miles from Washington, D.C., until June 2012. Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, offered testimony reviewing concerns about extremist teachings in the ISA’s curriculum:“Until the 2008-09 academic year, ISA’s religious textbooks used Saudi government textbooks that teach that it is permissible, or even required, to kill those who leave Islam (which includes the majority of Muslims who reject Saudi Wahhabi doctrine), polytheists (which includes Shiite Muslims), Jews, homosexuals and others, and that militant jihad to spread the faith is a sacred duty. The State Department, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a top counter-terrorism official at the Treasury Department, Undersecretary Stuart Levey, and Congressman Frank Wolf have all recognized the link between such extremist education and violence and terror. Even a Saudi government panel concluded that the Saudi Ministry of Education’s Islamic curriculum promotes violence. In fact, one of the academy’s valedictorians, American born Ahmed Abu Ali, was convicted of giving material support to al Qaeda and conspiring to assassinate Pres. George W. Bush and in 2009 was sentenced to life imprisonment.”Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Fatwas issued: Saudis in Audis.You'll love this. Trust me. It's already gone viral (over 400,000 hits since Thursday).See the must see Video here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BigPeace.New Dept. of Homeland Security Advisor is an Islamist.DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s appointment of “de-radicalization” expert Mohamed Elibiary to the Homeland Security Advisory Council earlier this month has thus far drawn little attention from Congress or the media, despite his record of criticizing successful terrorism prosecutions and praising Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb.Read Elibiary’s criticism of a recent Supreme Court decision in favor of current material-support laws here.At a March 2010 hearing held by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, Elibiary appeared to perpetuate the message that Islam is under attack from the West. He criticized federal law enforcement for targeting “low-hanging fruit” and using “agent provocateurs” to infiltrate mosques."Hmmm....."They don't trust me because of my middle name?"Read the full conspiracy story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Refugeeresettlementwatch.Minnesota Council of Churches (maybe!) learns hard lessons about Islam.They don’t want to pray with you!In their neverending quest to show we are all one big happy religious interfaith community, maybe an occasional slap in the face from Muslims, like this one in Minnesota, will force a reality check. I don’t know how much more it will take to show the Christian Left that Muslims have a very different idea of how the relationship should work. Muslims shouldn’t be mingling with Christians and Jews in religious settings, right? And, absolutely no praying together!“Right now we’re in a survival mode to straighten things out,” said Adam, who has been fielding calls from as far away as London and Ethiopia. “At first we thought we would ignore it. Then we decided to respond.”She (one local woman) noted the irony that the people objecting to the multi-faith service are fellow Muslims — the people the organizers were trying to support.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Turkish ‘no’ to missile defense could spell crisis with West, says expert.A planned missile shield for Europe could deter Iran from pursuing its contentious nuclear and missile programs and Turkey’s refusal to join the US-backed defense system would put its ties with the West at risk, according to an expert on nuclear diplomacy.Turkey will soon have to make up its mind as NATO says it wants to finalize plans during its upcoming summit on Nov. 19-20. Officials from both the US and Turkey have denied any pressure from Washington on Ankara to agree to missile shield requests.But in the short run, Turkish participation in the system will cause problems in Ankara-Tehran ties. “Iranians would feel that they thought they had a reliable friend in Turkey but Turkey is not a reliable friend. In this sense, it could create some tensions between Turkey and Iran,” he said.He said the Western bloc will be in a “kind of cold war” with Iran which may erupt into a hot war in the next one or one-and-a-half years.“I am worried that Iran will just pretend to be engaged in negotiations, not really make a significant offer. Meanwhile it will continue to increase the amount of low-enriched uranium to the point where some other country -- Israel -- will say it is too much and decide military action is necessary,” he said. Iran's current low-enriched uranium stockpile stands at 3,000 kilograms, according to Fitzpatrick, an amount sufficient to produce two nuclear weapons. If this stockpile increases further to become enough for the production of four to five weapons, or Iran continues its enrichment program, Israel would think it is too much and could thus attack. The conflict could then spill over as Iran retaliates and the US steps in to defend Israel.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BacktoBasics.D.C. eligibility rally boldly blasts Obama as ‘fraud’.A rally today at the U.S. Capitol pulled no punches in declaring President Barack Obama an “imposter” and “fraud” who should resign before a constitutional crisis of his own making rips apart the nation.The rally was called by Philip Berg, a Pennsylvania attorney who runs the ObamaCrimes.com website and was the first to sue over allegations Obama is constitutionally ineligible to occupy the Oval Office.“The main thrust of the rally,” Berg told WND, “was to get out the continuing message that Obama is a phony, a fraud, an imposter, and [his eligibility to serve as president] is the biggest hoax committed against the U.S. in 234 years.”Berg believes there is enough evidence, both hard and circumstantial, to justify an investigation into whether or not Obama is a “natural-born citizen” as required by the Constitution to serve as president. Berg is looking for a court with “the guts” to demand Obama provide proof of his eligibility.Berg’s is not the only one who has challenged Obama’s residency in the White House. A case is developing involving Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, who has questioned the legitimacy of the orders in the U.S. military under a president whose eligibility is under question.Another case being handled by California attorneys Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation and Orly Taitz is on behalf of another presidential candidate and challenges Obama’s inclusion on the ballot.Yet another claims Congress failed to perform its constitutional obligations to investigate Obama.There’s even been a series of discussions about impeachment.Read the full story here.Related and a MUST READ : Hawaii Dems button-lipped on Obama eligibility status
  here.Click here for comments.

• Nisar Ahmed The first teacher banned for life for being useless.A teacher who is judged to be incapable of ever improving his work has become the first to be banned for life from the classroom due to incompetence. Nisar Ahmed will never reach 'requisite standards' of teaching and cannot work in state schools again, a panel ruled. The General Teaching Council for England found the 46-year-old guilty of serious professional incompetence and said there was a risk that pupils would be seriously disadvantaged if he was ever allowed to return to lessons.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:EmergingCorruption.Your URGENT CALL TO ACTION by ACORN whistle blower, Anita MonCrief.VOTER FRAUD is alive, well, running rampant in Harris Country, Texas and voter fraud fighter, Anita MonCrief, needs your help in stopping it! She has a team of citizen journalists ready to go to nationally expose all the sleazy tactics of the Left as they desperately try to steal yet another election, up to and including a coordinated effort by the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice to harass honest poll watchers!Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BacktoBasics.Wanted a Kamikaze Congress for a Banzai Counterattack.During World War II when the no-longer sleeping giant was pounding on Japan’s door their do-or-die military began Kamikaze attacks against our ever growing fleets in the Pacific. The Kamikaze pilots flew planes filled with bombs into American ships as the first and only honorable expression of the term suicide bomber. During America’s island-hopping advance through the Japanese Empire the combination of courageous marines and naval supremacy led to defeat for the fanatically loyal Japanese. In many cases instead of surrender the last of the defenders launched a Banzai Counterattack. This was the earthbound equivalent of the airborne Kamikaze. A final charge into the face of overwhelming odds meant to either change the game in one decisive blow or to at least die honorably for a sacred cause.Unless the Progressives are able to pull an election out of their hat the coming midterms have the feeling of an approaching hurricane. The tide, as measured by polls, is going so far out it looks like a tsunami of indignation is about to send a tidal surge of newly elected self-proclaimed Conservatives with a mandate to reverse the Progressive trajectory. A trajectory which has America aimed like a laser at the dust-bin of History. These newly elected heroes, many of whom have come from nowhere to defeat long-serving Progressive icons, will have been hired by the voters to not only drain the swamp of Federal corruption but to turn the swamp back into the seed bed of liberty and opportunity.The hour is late and the night is dark. Our Progressive President aided and abetted by the democrat-controlled Congress of Pelosi and Reid have delivered the wealth of the nation and the power to rule into the hands of a professional bureaucracy willing to legislate through regulations, to rule through politically correct guidelines, and the desire to control our every move. This may be the charge of the Light Brigade into the valley of doom for it’s not enough to return to the spending of the Progressive Bush (either of them) or the Progressive Clinton. No, we need to face the austerity our credit financed binge has purchased. We need to dismantle the entitlement superstructure constructed upon the re-interpreted foundation of the Constitution.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• PBS Sends Senior Editor As Presenter To CAIR Conference On ‘Defaming Islam’.The news about NPR firing Juan Williams is opening the eyes of many in the media and public to the extraordinary rules of censorship that CAIR, other Muslim Brotherhood groups, and the “Establishment Left” impose to restrict free speech. But it’s not just NPR that responds to CAIR’s political pressure which may in itself be a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. On October 9, 2010 – less than two weeks before NPR fired Williams on October 21 – the federally-funded sister agency Public Broadcasting System (PBS) sent Joel Schwartzberg, Senior Editor of PBS Interactive to be a presenter at the CAIR Leadership Conference preceding their 16th annual national banquet. If Schwartzberg presented on his own initiative, he and PBS owe the public an explanation for his identification with PBS Interactive in the CAIR program, which gave the impression he was there as an official representative of the agency.Hmmmm.....Sharia law coming to a newspaper in your neigbourhood?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BacktoBasics.When Unauthorized Pledges of Allegiance Attack.This just made my weekend. It pretty much sums up “taking back control of your country” in under a minute.The left-leaning League of Women Voters got a surprise when American patriots refused to acquiesce to the omission of the Pledge of Allegiance from a recent debate forum dealing with high level political office in America. Watch as the audience stands to recite the pledge, although the moderator said it would not be included in the program.Read and see the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BigPeace.Clash of Civilizations: Europe vs. Islam.Udo Ulfkotte, a German author, talks about the clash between Islamic and European culture. Ulfkotte was an editor of Germany’s influential daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and has gone through quite a spiritual journey. Raised in a Christian family, he became an atheist in his youth. He lived in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan and converted to Islam. He has now abandoned Islam and returned to Christianity. and his comments are quite stunning. It’s worth watching the whole interview.Read and see the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:JiDaily.Under Islam.In the two decades following the establishment of the state of Israel, approximately 850,000 Jews were forcibly driven out of Arab lands. Their expulsion marked the beginning of the end of 2,500 years of Jewish life in North Africa, the greater Middle East, and the Persian Gulf. Until recently, their story has been largely unrecognized and untold in the English-speaking world. That is the task undertaken by the British historian Martin Gilbert, known for his multi-volume biography of Winston Churchill and many works on Jewish history, in his new book, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands.Throughout, he poses one question to his material: was the Jewish minority protected, or persecuted? When Muslim rulers treated their Jews as a "protected people," the Jews, he shows, repaid the favor by contributing immensely to Muslim culture and society. When the Jews were persecuted, not only they but the society they lived in suffered. By proceeding in this fashion, Gilbert succeeds in exploding the myth, manufactured by Islamic ideologues and peddled by left-wing apologists, to the effect that pre-modern Jews always lived harmoniously with their Muslim hosts. Sometimes this was the case; often it was not.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BacktoBasics.Report: Michelle Obama to Meet With Commercial Sex Workers in India.The last ballot will have barely been cast on election day when the Obamas will be on their way out of the country. It’s in the president’s selfless, humble nature to not want to be a distraction to the Democrat victory celebrations here and instead focus on world issues.While in India, it’s being reported that Michelle “my sneakers could feed your family for a year” will meet with representatives of commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO. And finally, from the “everybody in the world is gonna love us if we elect Obama” department:The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savour Indian cuisine, but to ensure his food is not spiked.Hmmm.....name at least one Roman Emperor who was afraid of being poisoned....Well, the Roman emperor Nero (AD 37-68) showed a great interest in poisons.And there's of course Stalin who trusted nobody when it came to his food.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• The Decline and Fall of Islamic Jewry.Western travelers, almost unanimously, confirm the impression that the period from the end of the 18th into the second half of the 19th century was the lowest point in the existence of the Jews in the Muslim lands. At first most of these travelers were Christians, since few European Jews were willing or able to undertake journeys in Muslim countries. In time, however, a few daring spirits ventured into these lands and added their testimony to that of their Christian predecessors.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.