MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Saudis stop Hamas men from reaching Syria.Ynet learns Saudi Arabia received information that senior Hamas, Islamic Jihad members arriving in Mecca from Gaza plan to head to Damascus. Their passports taken away, returned only after they get on Egypt-bound plane.Saudi Arabia has prevented senior members from Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), who had made the pilgrimage from Gaza to Mecca, to continue on to Damascus to meet the leaders of their organizations, a source within one of the organizations told Ynet on Friday. The source said that lately many senior members in Hamas and other organizations joined dozens of operatives including a group from the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades on a pilgrimage to Mecca which began in Egypt.The Saudi step was extremely surprising considering the strengthening relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria. The two countries are working together to avoid a crisis in Lebanon. Syrian President Basher Assad and Abdullah King of Saudi Arabia met in Beirut four months ago to discuss the security situation in Lebanon, and fears that the divided country would spiral towards a cycle of violence like the one it went through in May 2008. Assad and Abdullah represent Lebanon's two main factions: Syria supports the Shiite Hezbollah whereas Saudi Arabia is the patron of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the Sunni camp.Read the full story here.

• Breaking News.Plane Crash Sparks Inferno In Pakistani City Karachi.A cargo plane crashed into a residential area of Pakistan's largest city, sparking a huge blaze and causing at least 11 casualties.The aircraft came down in Karachi with eight crew on board, less than two minutes after taking off.All eight, including six Pakistanis, are thought to have died in the crash, with at least three casualties on the ground.Reporters at the scene said several buildings were on fire and loud explosions could be heard.The plane crashed in a housing complex for naval officers in the neighbourhood of Dalmai, it is reported.Local television reported the plane was an Ilyshin Il-89, a multipurpose cargo aircraft often used for ferrying humanitarian aid to developing countries.Read the full story here,more here and here.Update : Here.

• HT:Ted Belman .The History Channel sucks as history.The History Channel posts a reminder, Nov 29,1947. U.N. votes for partition of Palestine but their article is pure Arab propaganda and gives the lie to history.“Despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations votes for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state.”“The modern conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates back to the 1910s, when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory. The Jews were Zionists, recent emigrants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state. The native Palestinian Arabs sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state.”This is wrong historically on so many levels. At that time, the Arabs in Palestine were referred to as Arabs and not Palestinian Arabs. A huge percentage of the Arabs that were there had emigrated to the province known as Palestine because of the commercial activity of the Jews. They had no intention of setting up a “secular Palestinian state”. Another thing that the History Channel fails to mention is that during and after the war, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries and their land holdings and wealth accumulated over many hundreds of years, was confiscated. Most of these Jews went to Israel and were absorbed.Hmmm...perhaps time to change the name to "The MSM History Channel?Come to think of it who owns History Channel? Answer. General Electric.Read the full story here.

• U.S. warns world leaders that new WikiLeaks revelations will 'expose corruption between allies' and show what America REALLY thinks of its friends.World leaders were warned last night by America that damaging secrets about their nations were about to be laid bare.The documents include highly damaging and embarrassing communiques from U.S. embassies around the world, especially from London - revealing the truth behind the so-called 'special relationship' between the U.K. and the U.S. The U.S. ambassador to London made an unprecedented personal visit to Downing Street to warn that whistleblower website WikiLeaks was about to publish secret assessments of what Washington really thinks of Britain.The website is on the verge of revealing almost three million documents, including thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington from the American embassy in London.The bombshell leak is thought to include U.S. assessments of former British prime minister Gordon Brown’s personality and his prospects of winning the General Election, and secret discussions on the return of the Lockerbie bomber to Libya.Assessments of current Prime Minister David Cameron’s election chances and his private assurances to U.S. officials may also be included, Government sources believe. They fear they will emerge on Sunday in co-ordinated releases in newspapers in Britain, Germany and America.Read the full story here.

• Feds Seize Websites Suspected of Online Piracy.The U.S. government is shutting down websites suspected of copyrighted infringement or selling counterfeit goods as Congress debates a bill that would give feds more authority to do so.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Homeland Security Department, has seized more than 70 websites in recent days, according to the Wall Street Journal, and posted a notice saying that the domain name has been seized by ICE through court-ordered warrants. The notice also states penalties for willful copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit goods.Neither ICE nor Homeland Security responded to messages seeking comment. An ICE spokeswoman confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that the agency executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names but declined additional comment."As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time," she told the newspaper.Online publications, including TorrentFreak, first reported the seizures which began on Thursday when ICE agents raided facilities operated by a hip hop file-sharing site called RapGodFathers. Other seized sites that share music or sell goods include torrent-finder.com, timberlandlike.com, dvdsetsonline.com and handbagspop.com.But Wyden says the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, or COICA, is excessive."Deploying this statue to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile," he said during a hearing on digital trade. "If you don't think this thing through carefully, the collateral damage would be American innovation, American jobs, and a secure Internet."Wyden's opposition dooms the bill in this Congress and would force the next Congress convening in January to start from scratch.The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group, also opposes the bill, saying the collateral damage would be "enormous." The group said if the bill had passed a few years ago, YouTube might not exist today."There are already laws and procedures in place for taking down sites that violate the law," the group said in a statement on its website. "This act would allow the attorney general to censor sites even when no court has found they have infringed copyright or any other law."Hmmm....we are the Obamis Borg "Resistance is useless"?Read the full story here.

• HT:BloggerBase.The Islam You Want to Tolerate So Generously -- Won't Tolerate YOU.Video : Wafa Sultan.

• Lebanese PM Hariri on 'historic' visit to Iran.Saad Hariri arrives in Tehran for visit aimed at 'reconciling points of view with Hezbollah,' Lebanese official says. Visit comes in backdrop of UN tribunal's probe into Rafiq Hariri's murder. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri arrived in Iran on Saturday on a first official visit amid a tense political stand-off between his pro-Western camp and rival Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah. During his three-day visit, Hariri, accompanied by several ministers, will meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials, state media reported.Iran's ambassador to Beirut, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, told the official IRNA news agency Hariri's visit was "historic and very important."Hariri was welcomed to Tehran by first Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, and is expected to meet Ahmadinejad on Sunday, Iranian media said.Read the full story here.

• Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions.In the 20th century, this would have been a job for James Bond.The mission: Infiltrate the highly advanced, securely guarded enemy headquarters where scientists in the clutches of an evil master are secretly building a weapon that can destroy the world. Then render that weapon harmless and escape undetected.But in the 21st century, Bond doesn't get the call. Instead, the job is handled by a suave and very sophisticated secret computer worm, a jumble of code called Stuxnet, which in the last year has not only crippled Iran's nuclear program but has caused a major rethinking of computer security around the globe.Intelligence agencies, computer security companies and the nuclear industry have been trying to analyze the worm since it was discovered in June by a Belarus-based company that was doing business in Iran. And what they've all found, says Sean McGurk, the Homeland Security Department's acting director of national cyber security and communications integration, is a “game changer.”The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield,” says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet. Others have called it the first “weaponized” computer virus.Read the full story here.