MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Pakistan: Bhatti to present report to president in Aasia Bibi’s blasphemy case on Thursday.ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti will present his report to President Asif Ali Zardari in Aasia Bibi case today. He has also recommended changes in the Blasphemy Law, it has been learnt.“I will present a detailed report to the president today,” Shahbaz Bhatti told The Express Tribune. He said he investigated the matter in detail and also included his recommendations regarding the Blasphemy Law.Meanwhile, Ashiq Maseeh, husband of Aasia Bibi, along with his two daughters met the federal minister and requested him to convey the message of Aasia Bibi to the prime minister to request President Asif Ali Zardari for her mercy appeal.Shahbaz Bhatti told The Express Tribune that in the mercy appeal of Aasia Bibi, it was clearly written that allegations against her were baseless. Aasia Bibi wrote in her appeal that she had great respect for all prophets. She also revealed security concerns to the prime minister, Bhatti added.On the other hand, progressive political parties, student organisations and civil society condemned Aasia’s conviction and called for repeal of discriminatory laws.In separate statements, they asked the government to commute the sentence of Aasia Bibi and repeal all discriminatory laws including the blasphemy law enacted during military dictator Ziaul Haq.Workers Party Pakistan (WPP) President Abid Hassan Minto, general secretary Akhtar Hussain and central information secretary Asha Amirali, Ayub Malik of Awami Party Pakistan, Advocate Nisar Shah of Labour Party Pakistan and others in their separate statements said that Aasia Bibi’s case is the latest which proves just how oppressive the blasphemy and other laws are and how they completely violate the principle of equal citizenship for all religious minorities that is enshrined in the constitution.They said that Pakistani society had been cowed by those who claim to the defenders of the faith for far too long and if this latest democratic experiment is to succeed, then all progressive forces must have the courage to push for a repeal of all such laws and put a halt to the politicisation of religion that has brought the country to the precipice.They also pointed out that if the18th constitutional amendment was passed to redress the actions of military dictators then the same logic should be applied in the case of discriminatory laws. They also noted that the PPP has long prided itself as the vanguard of progressive forces in Pakistani politics but it has consistently compromised on progressive principles “for the sake of power.” However any further compromise will result in complete surrender to a brand of politics and social and cultural repression that will produce an irreversible slide and therefore, it is high time that the PPP take a stand in Aasia Bibi case.Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2010.Source.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Dutch government indirectly funding Electronic Intifadah. Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal is investigating charges made by NGO Monitor that an aid organization supported by the Dutch government funds The Electronic Intifada, a virulently anti-Semitic website run by Ali Abunimah, a close confidant of Barack Obama.The Dutch government has been funding the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, a Dutch aid organization that finances the Electronic Intifada website that, NGO Monitor told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, is anti-Semitic and frequently compares Israeli policies with those of the Nazi regime.And for those wondering how I dragged President Hussein Obama into this, let's go back to 2008 when no one paid attention. However, without losing a beat, an article has appeared on the ISM affiliated website Electronic Intifada (EI) by one of its co-founders, Ali Abunimah, in which Abumimah recounts his close past working relationship with Obama prior to the presidential campaign and how Abunimah believes Obama is merely giving lip service to the Jewish community to get elected, and that once in office he will work for the Palestinian cause. Abunimah lists himself and is mentioned in subsequent Obama articles in the mainstream press merely as a “Palestinian activist.” Abunimah insists that Obama will “come around” once elected.But Ali Abunimah is more than just some “Palestinian activist” based in Chicago, the same location as Reverend Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is, in fact, one of the founders of the fiercely anti-Semitic ISM Arab group Al Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition. Abunimah is a high level international leader of the ISM for the Arabs who travels extensively between Chicago, Europe and Ramallah.But Obama’s association with the ISM through his church and lobbying in Chicago goes even deeper than just his past links to Al Awda and Ali Abunimah. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the Trinity Union Church of Christ in Chicago, are both equally involved with the ISM.Since 2001, the ISM has been tasked by the PLO and other Arab irredentist groups with getting new generations of American college kids to consider democratic Israel as somehow a violator of human rights, all the while as the Palestinian Arabs who practice open anti-Semitism, honor killings, and the murders of their own people as well as Jews, as commendable practices.Hmmm...."They don't trust me because of my middle name"?Read the full treason story here.

• HT:AhmadiyyaTimes.Pakistani clerics issue Apostasy decree against Gov. Taseer for helping blasphemy convict.LAHORE: Religious parties’ agitation against government’s efforts to release blasphemy convict Asia Masih to send her to the US and to amend blasphemy law gained momentum on Wednesday, while a party also issued an apostasy decree against Governor Salman Taseer.The THR also called a grand meeting of various religious parties in Lahore on Thursday (Today) to chalk out a future line of action. Addressing the protest demonstration outside the Governor’s House, TNRM leaders Alalam Razul Mustafa Naqshbandi, Ziaul Haq Naqshbandi, Raghib Hussian Naeemi, Pir Athar Qadri, Naeem Javed Noori, Mujahid Abdul Rasool, Mufti Masoodur Rehman and others announced observing Friday (tomorrow) as a countrywide protest day against the PPP government’s attempts to implement the western conspiracy against Islam.They also announced convening a religious assembly of the top Islamic scholars to issue a religious edict (Fatwa) against Salman Taseer and those elements in the country who were bent upon changing blasphemy laws and were not sparing any moment to condemn it.They also warned that all conspiracies against Islam would be foiled with a complete unity and determination. They later dispersed peacefully. THR leaders Maulana Ameer Hamza, Qari Yaqoob Sheikh and others asked why Pope Benedict did not raise his voice against the unjust conviction of Dr Aafia Siddiqi and the misuse of US laws to kill millions of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq but was concerned over the legal punishment to a single Christian woman convicted of blasphemy by a court.Meanwhile, Almi Jamaat Ahle Sunnat in an emergency meeting has issued a fatwa (Edict), declaring Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer as ‘apostate’ for raising his voice to free blasphemy convict Asia and implementing the western conspiracy against the blasphemy laws in the country. According to a press release, Salman Taseer will remain apostate till the time he seeks forgiveness for this great sin and shows repentance. The fatwa came in a meeting of the religious scholars at the office of Allmi Jamaat Ahle Sunnat with Sahibzada Allama Pir Syed Mustafa Asharf Rizvi in the chair.Hmmmm...Why would the US give Billions of Dollars to such a regime?Read the full story here.

• HT:AmericanThinker.TSA Groping and Obama's Black Revenge Narrative.The growing TSA groping scandal is another Obama political fiasco, almost a comical way for an American president to commit political suicide. TSA's groping of little kids and their moms instead of going for the bad guys who blew up the Twin Towers fits the narrative of radical black revenge. Now all the rich white folks are treated as police suspects. Let's see how they like it! Or as the hippies used to say, "Up against the wall, m-f!"The cops are the traditional target of radical Left scapegoating, and even more so for Black Leftists. Obama showed it when Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., himself a racial demagogue, was stopped by an interracial team of cops while breaking and entering into his own house at night. Gates immediately cried "police brutality!," and Obama immediately fell into line. Stupidly, in public. Obama paid a political price for that knee-jerk reaction, but he did not learn from it. So Obama hates the cops, even the ones who risk their lives to protect black communities all over the country. In the TSA he has found his perfect instrument of symbolic revenge. If you remember how Hillary Rodham Clinton treated men in uniform at the White House, no matter what the uniform was, you'll get the idea.Obama lives in a world of good and evil. The White Hats are evil, the Black Hats good in this Western B flick. As usual, the world of psychiatry has a name for this. It's called "splitting," and it's one of the common features of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which we know Obama suffers from. Splitting is the tendency to treat others as either all good or all evil. It's a sort of paranoid feature of NPD. Obama has NPD mixed with oppositional-defiant disorder, which is why he actually gives his opponents the fickle finger of fate, right in public where the press can take the pictures. Perhaps Obama is cursed with paranoid thinking; we don't really know. He might be fragile. We know he becomes painfully bored when he is not taking a victory lap, and that is also diagnostic of NPD.But Obama's inner circle know all that, because they've seen it, especially when Obama's fantasy world runs into reality. That's why Obama had to try to make nice to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for two whole years before figuring out what everybody else has known for thirty. French President Sarkozy has called Obama "aliené," which means "alienated from reality." I hope that's not true, but you can be sure that every intelligence agency and foreign ministry in the world has brought in squads of psychiatrists to figure it out. That may be why David Axelrod got out of the White House lickety-split when he realized American voters were catching on. So did Rahm Emmanuel. Michelle Obama seems strangely distant these days, going on separate vacations, and only Valerie Jarrett hangs on in the inner circle to protect the Emperor. Obama has become Richard Nixon. Well, the Left and the media have given us Barack Hussein Barry Soetoro Obama, the man without a stable identity, who has only his imaginary fiction to guide him through life. If they back off from the TSA groping scandal, expect more "dis the white folks" scandals, because that's what guides Obama's personal psychology. If you were wondering what Obama would do after his midterm losses, now you know the answer.Just pray it doesn't get worse.Read the full story here.

• Muslim "artist" sparks outrage with angelic tribute to 7/7 suicide bombers.A Muslim artist has sparked outrage with his depiction of the ripped-apart bus destroyed in the 7/7 terror attacks.The artwork shows four angels flying above the bombed number 30 bus - the same number of Al Qaeda terrorists who took part in the atrocity which left 52 commuters dead and maimed hundreds more on London's transport network.Also seen are scores of ghostly souls shooting from the bus, which was travelling through Tavistock Square when it was devastated by suicide bomber Hasib Hussain.The artist has also used photo trickery to write the message 'Outright terror... bold and brilliant' on the side of the bus.Sickeningly, the £3,500 artwork, called Age of Shiva, is on display just one mile from where the 13 innocent commuters were killed as they travelled on the bus through central London.The timing couldn't be worse for the artwork, which has gone on show during the long-awaited inquests into the attacks.Hmmm...why the need to "Immortalise" their madness,just like the Ground Zero mosque?Read the full story here.

• U.S. aircraft carrier races towards Korea as North fires fresh shells and warns South: 'We are on the brink of war'.Fresh artillery shots were fired over Korea today hours after the North warned that the peninsula is on ‘the brink of war’.Several blasts were heard from the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, which was devastated by an attack by the Communist regime on Tuesday.No shells landed in the South, but they were fired just after the top U.S. military commander in the region, toured the island – seven miles from the border - to survey the damage.General Sharp said the attack on Yeonpyeong island was a clear violation of an armistice signed in 1953 at the end of the three-year Korean War. The island of military bases and a civilian population of 1,300 lies about 50 miles from South Korea's western port of Incheon, but only seven miles from North Korean shores.Four South Koreans - two marines and two civilians - were killed in the hour-long skirmish on Tuesday after North Korea unleashed a hail of artillery on Yeonpyeong.Washington and Seoul also ratcheted up pressure on China, North Korea's main ally and biggest benefactor, to restrain Pyongyang.Without criticizing the North, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao responded by calling on all sides to show ‘maximum restraint’ and pushed again to restart the six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs in exchange for aid.Hmmm....North Korea is only a minor example of what will happen with Iran (Turkey), Obama can't do anything but bully Israel.Read the full story here.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Change! 'Further withdrawal of traditional British support for Israel'.This one seems to have escaped the media this week - at least here in Israel.Queen Elizabeth visited Abu Dhabi this week and is heading to Oman from there. We knew that much already. What we may not have known is the context for this visit: An abandonment of what little support for Israel that Britain maintained and a hard shift to toeing the Arab line. British foreign policy will change to reflect Arab concerns over the Middle East peace process as part of the Coalition's efforts to seal a strategic agreement with the Gulf during the Queen's visit to the region.Whitehall officials said Foreign Secretary William Hague's decision to reach out to Gulf states in an effort to secure better diplomatic and trade ties meant Britain had to "take on board" Arab foreign policy goals.If you're all getting the impression that the only one left on Israel's side is God, that's probably the impression you're supposed to be getting. Isn't it great when every country thinks it's a superpower? Aren't you glad that President Obama did away with the idea of American exceptionalism?Read the full story here.

• British intelligence blamed over Taliban impostor.President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff says British authorities brought a fake Taliban commander into sensitive meetings with the Afghan government. Agents have paid the man several hundred thousand dollars, convinced he was a top militant with the authority to negotiate with US and Afghan officials on behalf of the insurgents, say Afghan officials.British intelligence agents were responsible for promoting an impostor who they believed was a senior Taliban commander key to the Afghan peace process, according to reports on Friday.It is now believed that the man whom they believed to be senior Taliban figure Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was in fact either a minor rebel or simply a conman who ran a shop in the Pakistani city of Quetta."It should have been the Afghans themselves who should have pointed out the almighty cock-up," a source told the British newspaper. "Sometimes NATO doesn't know one bearded, turbaned Taliban leader from another."Hmmm....don't tell me Karzai did not know what went on?Read the full story here.

• HT:DanielGreenfield.Why Airline Security Doesn't Work .There are three stages to coping with a threat. First you have to recognize the threat. Second, you have to formulate a plan for dealing with the threat. Third, you have to implement the plan.So far we haven't even made to the first stage. We haven't recognized the threat. At the airline security level, we insist that the threat is completely random. Anyone at all could be a terrorist. There's no specific ideology or countries that are sources of terrorism. Instead terrorism is like some sort of disease. Anyone at all could be a carrier. And so we have to watch out for everyone. All the time. And like those hunters, we're either on alert all the time or we're completely apathetic. We're either security manic or security depressive. We go from letting everyone pass to strip searching everybody. There's no rational approach to danger, because we don't have a rational plan. We just go from 0 to 60 every time there's a new threat.The problem isn't knives or bombs. It's Muslim terrorists. The knives or bombs are just some of the tools they use. But it's the terrorists who are the threat, not the tools. By now we know that explosives can be smuggled in liquid containers and shoes and powder and body cavities and countless other ways. Even if everyone actually flew naked and without luggage, there would still potentially be a way to blow up a plane, including surgical implants. The TSA has not actually stopped a single act of terrorism. All it has done is inconvenience and humiliate travelers.Saddled with a political taboo against identifying Muslim terrorists as the threat, security agencies have been left with no choice except to focus on the tools. If we don't know anything about the attacker, then we have to think about the weapons. But from a security standpoint, it's not possible to reliably interdict a weapon before it's used. Not when the weapon can be almost anything at all.Right now our security setup is blind, deaf and dumb. It's three little monkeys in a row. One who can't see any evil. One who can't hear any evil. And one can't speak out and identify any evil. Only when it can see, hear and speak-- will we have any shot at fighting the terrorists, instead of terrorizing our own.Read the full story here.

• STARTING POINT: Can being a Muslim be a main identity for a society?Once again, Turkey is about to face another Emir Kusturica incident with the Indian writer V.S. Naipaul. The European Writers Parliament, or EWP, a large international literary event, is hosting Naipaul in Istanbul from Thursday to Saturday.However, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s invitation to speak at an Istanbul literary event has prompted controversy due to the author’s critical statements about Islam. Daily Zaman writer Hilmi Yavuz was the first to mention the event in his column. He wrote that Naipaul said Muslim people were retarded and could not do anything rational. Later on, many other columnists such as Ahmet Hakan from daily Hürriyet and Bülent Somay from daily Radikal wrote about Naipaul and on what kind of writer he is. While Yavuz wrote that it is not possible to have a dialogue with Naipaul (because Napiul has already made up his mind about Muslims), Somay said Naipaul was a colonial intellectual just like Salman Rushdie, Amin Maalouf and Hanif Kureishi. Then, a number of Turkish writers invited to the European Writers Parliament have announced they will boycott the event in protest of Naipaul’s participation. “Islam has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples,” Naipaul, a Nobel laureate, said in 2001. “To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, ‘My ancestral culture does not exist, it does not matter.’”Turkey has seen the same thing with Kusturica and it was once again Muslim identity at stake. Once again an identity crisis has become the main problem in Turkey.Hmmm...Once again Turkey shows it's allegiance lays with her religion and in a very radical way,get Turkey out of NATO before they become a second Iran!Read the full story here.

• Erdoğan slams Israel, calls for integration with Arab world.Israel's disproportionate use of force against civilians, along with Turkey's firm will to integrate with Arab countries despite epithets of an “axis shift in foreign policy,” were the two main themes of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's messages delivered during a two-day official visit to Lebanon. On Thursday, the second day of his visit, when he was accompanied by a full delegation that included several ministers of his cabinet, Erdoğan received a leadership award granted by the Beirut-based Union of Arab Banks (UAB). “What can be more natural than that?” Erdoğan asked in his speech at an award ceremony at the UAB headquarters as he recalled that, in the past few years, Turkey has engaged in “strategic dialogue” with both the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).“Believe me. Those who start and continue a debate of axis shift by misinterpreting our rapprochement with Arab countries are driving an evil-minded campaign. Actually, they are envy of our solidarity; their aim is something else,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.“You commit piracy in the Mediterranean, you launch state terror in the Mediterranean, you bloodthirstily slaughter my nine innocent citizens who were taking food to babies and then you expect us to keep silent. We will not keep silent,” Erdoğan said.Referring to Israel’s violent acts in Lebanon and Gaza, Erdoğan on Wednesday said that nobody should have doubts that Turkey will continue calling “a murderer a murderer” in the name of peace and justice.Hmmmm...while you're at it how do you call the Armenian Genocide?Committed by Turkey on women,children ,babies and men?Get Turkey out of NATO before they drag NATO in a war!Read the full story here.

• HT:IMRA.180,000 Palestinians Treated in Israeli Hospitals This Year. Thanks to efficient cooperation between the Israeli and the Palestinian sides, tens of thousands of Palestinians patients benefit from treatments in Israeli hospitals each year .Humanitarian dilemmas are a recurring issue in the Judea and Samaria region. A terrorist fires at IDF soldiers, is shot and gets wounded. Is an IDF medic to be called to treat him? A building is about to collapse in the heart of Ramallah. Does the IDF enter? Does it jeopardize its soldiers’ lives, or does it call the International Red Cross and risk losing precious time?To Israel, the answer to these questions is clear. According to Division Medical Officer, Lt. Col. Michael Kassirer, “The treatment of the Palestinian population is first and foremost a moral and professional obligation for every one of us.” Do we treat them? There is no question about it. But what happens in the long run and how? Where do international organizations fit in? How will an independent Palestinian medical body be established and how does coordination between bodies happen in life? These are the real questions.In order to start answering these questions, a special conference on the topic of humanitarian medicine was held on Monday (Nov. 22), atHadassah Medical Center at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Commanders and medics attended in order to speak and learn, from the most senior, IDF Chief Medical Officer and the Commander of Judea and Samaria Division, to the 19-year-old paramedics serving with the battalions in the region.The work is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There will always be medical incidents. Health is not something one can impose a curfew on or demand to freeze. “I am available around the clock. Even on Shabbat, even at 3 a.m. if needed. There is a constant contact between me and the doctors on both sides, the ambulance drivers and the patients themselves.”And, unbelievable though it may sound, because of desire and will, it is working. Last year, 180,000 Palestinian citizens entered Israel to receive treatment. 3,000 emergency patients were transferred from Israeli to Palestinian ambulances using the “back to back” method, without warning. “Ultimately, this is a rewarding experience. There is frustration, of course there is. But on the other hand, there are people who see me on the street or in hospitals, hear my name and say ‘You saved my son’s life’. When you get home in the end of the day and examine your life, you know that you saved lives. You know you did a lot of good.”Read the full story here.

• HT:NewsRealBlog.Al-Kotel Al-Ma’aravi?The Muslims – not the Islamists – mean to take over every Jewish site in Jewish Israel. And the United Nations means to assist them.The Palestinian Authority has recently issued a new and particularly brazen report in which it declares that the Kotel (Western Wall), the outer wall of the Jewish Temple complex which was first built by the Jewish King Solomon in 960 BCE, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, rebuilt again by Jews in 515 BCE – more than a millennium before the rise of Islam – is not really a Jewish site.It is now, purportedly, a Muslim holy site.The report states: “Jews did not worship at the Wailing Wall at any time until the Balfour Declaration of 1917…nor can any Muslim, or Arab, or Palestinian give up a single stone or piece of dust from the Wailing Wall or other holy places because that would be a concession on the Temple Mount.” Not only is this claim part of crass Islamic revisionist history – the Muslims are fast destroying the archeological evidence as well.Just a minute. There is a well-known photo of religious Jewish men and women seen praying at the Kotel in 1905 – before the Balfour Declaration. And, there are two thousand years of stories told by both Jewish and non-Jewish travelers who visited Jerusalem either to pray at the Kotel or to visit the site where they saw Jews at prayer in that exact spot.This Muslim take-over of the holy sites of other religions is all part of a pattern; it is one that precedes the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948 and the post-1967 war of self defense which Israel was forced to fight and which it won in six days. The first alleged West Bank “settlements” in “Palestinian” territory” dated back to 1975.In the seventh century, Muslims began destroying both pagan and Christian holy sites as well as living pagan and Christian human beings across the Arab Middle East, and into North Africa and central Asia. They have never stopped this bloody reign of terror, this carnage and pillage, which continues today. Muslims began their destruction of Hindu and Buddhist holy sites as well as of living Hindu and Buddhist human beings a century later. Forced conversion was often the only way to survive.The handwriting is on the sky for all who can see. Where once the Jewish Temples proudly stood, we now have the al-Aqsa Mosque. Are the Muslim supremacists soon going to call the Kotel below “Al Kotel Al-Ma’aravi?Hmmm...Interfaith dialog at it's best...."It's mine ,all mine"?Read the full story here.

• Russia Rebuffed on Missile Offer .Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have rebuffed a proposal from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to unite Russia's missile defenses with those of the West, said diplomats and NATO officials.At a closed-door meeting with NATO leaders in Lisbon Saturday, Mr. Medvedev suggested uniting a missile shield being built by the 28 allies with Russia's own missile defense system.People attending the summit said President Barack Obama and other leaders diplomatically rejected the Russian leader's proposal, saying the issue should be looked at by the countries' technical experts. The experts will look at ways the two systems can cooperate and report to a meeting of NATO and Russian defense ministers in Brussels in June.NATO diplomats said the Medvedev proposal goes way beyond what the alliance envisages, which is cooperation and information sharing between two systems rather than a single system. "We're looking at two different systems linked up," said a NATO spokeswoman.Mr. Medvedev's told a news conference afterward that his proposal was for "sectoral missile defense." Russian officials later said Mr. Medvedev proposed that Russia and NATO countries would be responsible for shooting down missiles flying over their own territories and Russia would destroy missiles headed for NATO territory.Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, said in an interview with the Russian website Vzglyad that Mr. Medvedev's proposal "goes much further than NATO's fantasies" of limited cooperation.Mr. Rogozin "tweeted" from the summit that the Russian approach was "reminiscent of two knights who, defending themselves from attackers, stand back-to-back."Hmmm...Ambassador Rogozin has the right idea,but where has chivalry gone? Read the full story here.

• Labour's Muslim Baroness Uddin booted out of Lords claimed £40,000 AFTER expenses fiddle came to light.Shamed Labour peer Baroness Uddin carried on claiming thousands of pounds a month in expenses after she was exposed as a cheat, it was revealed yesterday.Lady Uddin, the first female Muslim peer, was able to pocket almost £40,000 in expenses last year even after it was revealed she had fiddled the system to claim money from the taxpayer.In an unprecedented punishment last month, Lady Uddin was booted out of the Lords for 18 months and ordered to repay £125,000. She claims she is now too poor to repay a penny.Lady Uddin was exposed as a cheat on May 3 last year, after it was reported that she had never been seen at her designated ‘main home’ in Kent. The small flat in Maidstone allowed her to claim £174 a night while she was actually living at her family home in London, provided by a housing association.Other claimants included two Labour peers who have served recent jail terms.Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, who was jailed for 12 weeks last year for dangerous driving, claimed a total of £55,434. Lord Watson of Invergowrie, who was sentenced to 16 months for arson, claimed £38,078.Read the full story here.

• Small acts of resistance.The “tourists” (as South Africans used to call them in deliberate mockery of their attempts to terrorize everybody, and as George W. Bush also called them because he didn’t speak English very well) are always seeking to blow up our airplanes. Why else would we employ hundreds of thousands of people to stand around in airports and go through our baggage?True, they haven’t actually caught anybody trying to board a plane with a bomb in the nine years since 9/11. Many terrorist plots were nipped in the bud by good intelligence work on the ground, but the few who did try to carry bombs onto aircraft (the shoe bomber, the underpants bomber, etc.) got through “airport security” and were only defeated by their own incompetence.However, common sense and a grasp of irony do not figure prominently in the job description for airport security personnel. That’s why we are all conditioned, while going through airport security, to avoid making remarks that even refer to the reason for all these searches.So what can be done?Read the full story here.

• HT:NorthEast Intelligence.Financial jihad at Ground Zero.Prepare to be righteously outraged.As if it isn’t enough that slumlord and terrorist apologist Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his cadre of associates are rubbing salt in a still-gaping American wound through his plans to erect an iconic symbol of Islamic conquest in the shadows of the former World Trade Center, the Cordoba Initiative (as it was once known) is asking you, the American taxpayer, to subsidize it.An application for a $5 million in federal grant money was reportedly made on or about November 5, 2010 with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) by Sharif El-Gamal, the developer of the Ground Zero mosque and Rauf associate.The LMDC was formed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks by former Governor Pataki former Mayor Giuliani to help plan the rebuilding and revitalization of Lower Manhattan. It is a joint State-City corporation governed by a 16-member Board of Directors, half appointed by the Governor of New York and half by the Mayor of New York.The grant application was submitted under the Lower Manhattan Community and Cultural Enhancement Program that is administered by the LMDC. That program was established “to provide up to a total of $17 million in grants through a competitive process to not-for-profit and government organizations engaged in cultural or community programs or projects.” The “Ground Zero mosque project is asking for nearly a third of the available money. Will they get it? Some of it? All of it? It’s indeed possible, according to research and interviews I’ve conducted this week.In addition to the LMDC grant money, the Cordoba Initiative is actively pursuing additional public funding. As reported by Reuters in an article on August 27, 2010, a spokesman for New York City Comptroller John Liu said that the Islamic Center “could qualify for tax-free financing,” and that Liu “is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.” Rauf, El Gamal and the mosque’s backers are attempting to raise at least $70 million in tax-exempt debt to build the center.Hmmm...a man who's considered as a slumlord, is about to get a huge sum taxpayer money for building a Mosque that 70 % of New Yorkers don't want there in the first place?Read the full story here.

• Canadians bristled at intrusive airport searches, complaint records show.OTTAWA - Bras were revealed, artificial joints probed and flesh squeezed, prompting scores of complaints last year from disgruntled Canadians subjected to physical searches at airports across the country.Records obtained by The Canadian Press show the furor over intrusive screening patdowns is not limited to the United States, where angry travellers have openly objected to new security measures.A 56-year-old woman travelling with her husband through Calgary in June 2009 objected to the thorough physical search a female screening officer gave her in front of other passengers."I have no doubt the woman knows my cup size and the size of my underwear," she wrote."She felt my body from top to bottom, running her fingers along the underwire of my bra and feeling my breasts, all in full view of every passenger and employee in the area. And she seemed to take great delight in doing so."It was degrading, embarrassing and humiliating.""On one occasion, five men from the field crew were standing around watching the women passengers who were being patted down," complained another woman who travels frequently. "Is there any way that this additional invasion of privacy can be limited?"Larocque said there are signs at screening points noting the option of privacy. "I don't think that the screeners will automatically offer the private search.Read the full story here.

• Russia - Powerful Su-25 strike aircraft to stage triumphant comeback?The Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant (UUAZ) in Eastern Siberia could resume production of Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot strike aircraft on orders from the Russian Defense Ministry and the United Aircraft Building Corporation. How likely is the country's Defense Ministry to purchase them? What are their strengths and where could they be used? That's what this article considers.It was in Ulan-Ude on November 23 that the CEO of the United Industrial Corporation Oboronprom, Andrei Reus, first raised the possibility that the plant might put the Su-25 back into production (http://vtinform.ru/vti/142/50092.php). Reus gave no indication of specific deadlines but stressed that the Defense Ministry was backing the project. "Rosoboronexport says the warplanes have a good export potential," he added.So far, there have been no official reports of any plans to purchase the Su-25UB/UBM under the 2011-2020 state rearmament program.It took new wars to revive the reputation of these strike aircraft. For Russia, this meant the two Chechen campaigns, the five-day Russian-Georgian conflict and combat operations in Central Asia. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq prompted the United States to draw the same conclusion.Armored close air-support planes flew numerous combat missions during all of these conflicts and proved more effective than any other fixed-wing aircraft or helicopter.Consequently, both Moscow and Washington virtually simultaneously decided to upgrade their strike aircraft. While retaining their main specifications, these planes will benefit from new equipment enabling them to operate at night, in bad weather and to fire high-precision weapons. This modernization is possible thanks to a technological revolution: electronic systems today are significantly smaller than they were 30-40 years ago.These new revamped strike aircraft will retain the traditional features on which their reputation was built. After major upgrade they will be fit for use in just about any situation.Read the full story here.