MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Meet NATO's opt-out member.The quarrel between Ankara and NATO over the proposed missile-defense initiative suggests that Turkey is becoming the Alliance's "opt-out" member in operations in Muslim countries. The governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has so far refused to host the missile shield because it is directed against potential threats from two fellow Muslim countries—Syria and Iran. The AKP considers itself the defender of a politically defined "Islamic civilization" and has recently moved closer to Damascus and Tehran.Public perception of American support for the AKP will also help the party at next year's elections. Expect Turkey's governing party though to drag its feet before implementing any agreement. Moreover, according to media reports, it might demand a high price for its approval. Most importantly, Ankara might insist that the defense shield's radar information will not be shared with third countries – read: Israel.Whatever the ultimate outcome, for the first time since joining NATO in 1952, Turkey has challenged an Alliance initiative. And in doing so, the AKP is wearing a politicized religious identity and ideology on its sleeve. It has already signaled a future rift with NATO over Iran and Syria by removing these two countries from its "Red Book," Turkey's official policy paper defining foreign security threats. Given that Turkey is the only NATO member bordering Iran and Syria, viewed by the U.S. as ballistic missile threats to NATO, this is a troubling strategic shift.Under the AKP, Ankara will be the enfant noir of NATO. In the same way Greece opted out of and blocked NATO operations against criminal regimes in the Western Balkans, citing its "affinity with its Orthodox brothers," the AKP will use the "Islamic civilization" excuse to abstain from or hinder NATO operations in the "Muslim world."The AKP's objection to the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO secretary-general last year was a harbinger of troubles to come. Ankara objected to Mr. Rasmussen's appointment because of the way he "handled the cartoon crisis," demonstrating the party's Islamic weltanschauung.As NATO membership provides Turkey with crucial technology and political clout, it is unlikely the AKP is interested in ending the country's decades-old commitment to the Alliance. But particularly if the 2011 elections allow it to cement its rule, the AKP will increasingly use its NATO membership to undermine operations in the Muslim world and to defend its Manichean view of global politics.Hmmmm....Talk about the ennemy within.Read the full story here.

• HT:FormerMuslimsUnited.Conference on Apostasy, Sharia Law and Human Rights, 11 December 2010.To mark International Human Rights Day, the International Humanist and Ethical Union is co-sponsoring an all day conference on “Apostasy, Sharia Law and Human Rights” at Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, London, UK. The conference will highlight urgent cases, including Pakistani Asia Bibi who has received a death sentence for blasphemy, Palestinian Waleed Al-Husseini who has been arrested for criticising Islam, and campaigners in Iran charged with ‘enmity against God’, and demand their unconditional and immediate release.The conference is sponsored by Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Iran Solidarity, National Secular Society, One Law for All and South Place Ethical Society.The event will be dedicated to the Iran stoning case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.Read the full story here.

• S Korea holds live-fire navy drills. North Korea says naval exercises near disputed sea border show the South is "hell-bent" on war.South Korea has started a nationwide live-fire naval exercise, despite warnings from Pyongyang against staging what it describes as provocative drills in disputed waters off the divided peninsula."The drills have started," a spokesman for the South's military said on Monday.The exercises are scheduled to take place at 29 sites in seas near the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL).North Korea has said that the exercises, expected to last for a week, showed the South was "hell-bent" on setting off a war.Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Seoul, said the timing of the naval drills seems "rather inappropriate considering the way things have been here over the last two weeks".She said it is part of the South Korean government's efforts to "take more more forceful steps when it comes to dealing with North Korean provocation"."The previous defence minister was let go for failing to protect the country."But now South Korea has a new defence minister who is determined to show he is a man of his word. There are many expectations resting on his shoulders," she said.Read the full story here.

• HT:DougRoss.Howard Dean Admits the Truth About Progressives: Overthrow of the U.S. Government Is Our Aim.It doesn't get any more plain than this interview with Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and chairman of the Democrat National Committee.We almost came back in New Hampshire, Karen Hicks, who ran Hillary’s campaign, she’s a disciple of Marshall Ganz who’s a disciple of Saul Alinksy, Marshall Ganz is probably the best theoretical organizer today, he influenced Obama’s campaign very heavily...Whether you know who Saul Alinsky is -- and what he stands for -- or not, Andrew McCarthy's description of his movement and its impact upon Obama bears repeating....the president is an Alinskyite, so steeped in the ideology of the seminal community organizer that he became a top instructor in Alinskyite tactics for other up-and-coming radicals......Alinksyites are fifth-column radicals. They have, in substance, the same goals as open revolutionaries: overthrowing the existing free-market republic and replacing it with a radical’s utopia. That’s why Obama could befriend such unrepentant former terrorists as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and take inspiration from Jeremiah Wright, a black-liberation theologist......But Alinskyites are more sophisticated, patient, and practical. They bore in, hollowing out the system from within, appropriating the appearance and argot of mainstream society. Their single, animating ambition is to overthrow the capitalist social order, which they claim to see as racist, corrupt, exploitative, imperialist, etc...In short, Alinsky supported violence and terror to achieve the overthrow of American society.And any person who runs under the banner of Alinsky should be disqualified from holding public office. They should be called precisely what they are: Communists.There is no possible way that an adherent of Alinsky can sincerely take a pledge to uphold the Constitution.Let me say that again, slowly, for the liberals: there is no valid method -- none whatsoever! -- for an Alinskyite to take a solemn oath to uphold the nation's highest law.The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Allowing Alinskyites into positions of power is akin to permitting Nikita Khrushchev to name members of the cabinet during the height of the Cold War.We need to call them what they are: Reds.Hmmm....now if he were against America would he have done anything different in the last two years?Read the full story here.

• Canadian resident sentenced to death in Iran, supporters allege abuse.TORONTO - An Iranian-born Canadian man has been sentenced to death in Tehran in a case his supporters say is rife with torture and human rights abuses.A website run by those campaigning for Saeed Malekpour's release from an Iranian prison says the 35-year-old was sentenced to death Saturday.Malekpour's supporters say an Iranian judge told his lawyer the death sentence was not his decision but one made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.Malekpour is a website developer who became a permanent Canadian resident in 2004.His supporters, including his wife who now lives in Richmond Hill, Ont., say he was arrested in Iran in October 2008 after a trip to visit his ailing father.He has been held in Tehran's Evin Prison in relation to a case of "Internet offences" linked to a program he made for what turned out to be an adult website.The charges against him include "taking action against national security by designing and moderating adult content websites," "agitation against the regime" and "insulting the sanctity of Islam." His supporters say Malekpour wasn't aware the program he made would be used for an adult website.Malekpour wrote an open letter to Iranian officials in March this year alleging forced confessions, torture which includes lashings, and physical abuse resulting in broken teeth and bodily infections.“Most of the time, the tortures were performed by a group," he wrote. "While I remained blindfolded and handcuffed, several individuals armed with cables, batons, and their fists struck and punched me."Malekpour said his mistreatment was aimed at forcing him to admit to a false confession before a camera, based on scenarios his interrogators were dictating.The group has also sent a petition to the House of Commons calling for Ottawa to appeal to the Iranian government and demand Malekpour's release.Does this mean he had a link to victoria's secret? Hmmm...do these people know of any other punishment but the death sentence?Read the full story here.

• HT:BacktoBasics.Video : Woman Strips Down to Her Lingerie, Gets TSA Pat Down Anyway—Twice .This bombshell wearing just black lace, a pearl necklace and a white dog is Tammy Banovac, a retired surgeon in a wheelchair. She got down to her lingerie while going through airport security and still got a pat down. Twice. Update:Turns out that Tammy Banovac posed naked for Playboy in 1997, when she was a dental surgeon in Oklahoma, under her maiden name Tammy Lynn Brewer.Dr. Banovac always refuses to go through the metal detector. She has to use a metal wheelchair and that means that she always gets a pat down no matter what. Lately, she says she feels violated because the pat downs have become increasingly invasive during the last few months. “If it happened anywhere else, it would have been sexual assault,” she declared to a local newspaper.She was so angry with the situation that she decided to change things. On November 30, the 52-year-old arrived to the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City en route to Phoenix, wearing just a trench coat. When it was time to pass through the check point, she took off her coat, stripping down to her black lace lingerie. She hoped that, by showing that she had nothing to hide, she would not be hand-searched.Sadly for her, things got worse: The perspicacious TSA agents wanted her to go through the metal detector, anyway. When she understandably refused, they decided to give her a pat down.At this point, the quick-witted TSA agents said they found traces of nitrate on her body. Banovac claimed that it was probably her medication or a result of a hunting day. However, since it’s obvious that the retired surgeon could be a secret Al-Qaeda terrorist carrying a bomb somewhere in her lace bra or panties, the astute TSA officials subjected her to a one-hour hand-search and interrogation. Yes, one hour.If this is not an example of everything that is wrong with the TSA, I don’t know what is.Read and see the full story here.

• Malaysia pulled up for 'Caning Epidemic'.Kuala Lumpur: Caning in Malaysia has "hit epidemic proportions" with thousands of people subjected every year to beatings which leave permanent physical and mental scars, Amnesty International said on Monday."In every case that we examined, the punishment amounted to torture, which is absolutely prohibited under any circumstances."Amnesty said that since 2002, when parliament made immigration violations subject to caning, tens of thousands of migrant workers and foreigners seeking asylum had undergone the punishment."In Malaysian prisons specially trained caning officers tear into victims' bodies with a meter-long cane swung with both hands at high speed," it said."The cane rips into the victim's naked skin, pulps the fatty tissue below, and leaves scars that extend to muscle fibre. The pain is so severe that victims often lose consciousness."Amnesty said that prison officers were paid a bonus for each stroke, enabling them to double their income by administering the punishment.Malaysia is 61 % Muslim.Read the full story here.

• The Netherlands - Sex abuse in Muslim families goes unreported.Four Dutch-Moroccan women, Rabea, Zohra, Ibtisam and Saïda, were all sexually abused by members of their families: their fathers, uncles, brothers or cousins.After years of silence, they have decided to speak out because they know that many other Muslim women suffer the same fate. A care worker: “Taboos, secrecy, silence, shame and a closed community are almost a recipe for sexual abuse.”The idea of ‘family honour’ meant that Rabea, Zohra, Ibtisam and Saïda kept their mouths shut. Now they are telling their stories to try and break the taboo surrounding sexual abuse in Muslim families. They no longer see themselves as victims. Their mission is to help other women who are in trouble now.Their stories are individual but share much common ground. They were all around four or five when someone in their family started abusing them. The girls all kept silent because of threats, but also for fear of bringing ‘dishonour’ on the family. They didn’t even consider going to the police. Even now, they think that would be going too far.Rabea was abused as a little girl by her father. She became caught up in herself and grew defiant.“It’s so unnatural. If you’re beaten up at school or on the street, you go to your parents or your teacher. But this is your father. That goes against everything you believe in. I didn’t know how to talk about it and to whom I could turn. I was in danger of ending up in prostitution, but that didn’t happen luckily. Other people’s support and my belief in Jesus Christ helped to give me strength in the end."Zohra, Rabea, Ibtisam and Saïda are not alone. There are more indications of sexual abuse in Islamic families. A crisis centre in Friesland takes in victims of honour-related violence. Half of them turned out to be sexually abused by a relative. Most of them have a Moroccan or Turkish background, some of them are Iraqi, Afghan or Kurd.Hmmmm....Obama "Islam is a great religion".Read the full story here.

• Clinton: Saudi Arabia funding terror.Principal American ally described in diplomatic cables revealed by WikiLeaks as source of terror funding.Even US allies in the Arab world continue to fund terror organizations, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed in a cable posted Monday by WikiLeaks. The document, written last December, said that citizens in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are the main funders of various organizations including al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Lashkar e-Taiba and others.In another cable, the US embassy in Riyadh reports that the finance minister told the Saudi intelligence services about a visit of three senior Taliban members who were coming to the country to raise funds. The Saudis said they knew nothing of the visit. Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, who managed affairs during the absence of King Abdullah who went to the US for an operation, said it was a case of poor judgment and not support for terror.Hmmm...poor judgement ..yeah !Read the full story here.

• HT:CommentaryMagazine.The Myth of Jewish-Only Roads.Helen Thomas is at it again.“I can call a president of the United States anything in the book,” she said at an anti-Arab-bias workshop in Detroit, “but I can’t touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank. No American would tolerate that — white-only roads.”She’s right that no American would tolerate white-only roads. Israelis, likewise, would never tolerate roads for Jews only. That’s why such roads don’t exist.There are also, by the way, Palestinian roads in the West Bank that Israelis can’t use.I don’t know if Helen Thomas knows this and is lying or if she’s just an ignoramus. What I’ll bet she doesn’t know is that Arab residents of Jerusalem can use both the Israeli roads and the Palestinian roads. They’re the only people who live in the area who can do this. (Foreigners also are allowed to use both.)This doesn’t remotely line up with her narrative of perfidious Zion. But it’s true.Hmmm....." Lies only"?Read the full story here.

• HT:PajamasMedia.Political Correctness Kills: Study Shows How Terrorists Infiltrate U.S. Government.There is a very important — one might even say life-and-death — distinction that should be made in considering U.S. counterterrorism policy. Certainly, U.S. forces have had many successes in stopping intended terrorist attacks against the United States. Yet there have also been a number of failures. How to distinguish what made the difference?Hesham Islam has been an especially powerful figure: the senior advisor for international affairs for Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and the Pentagon’s point-man for Muslim outreach. When one officer wrote a good study of revolutionary Islamist ideology, Islam campaigned to get him fired. Other officials told me that Islam tried to push them out also.Islam’s autobiography on a Defense Department site contained clear contradictions and omissions, while his own academic work was rather shockingly radical. His father had worked for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, while Islam claimed that he had survived a ship sinking that apparently never happened.This study doesn’t include many other cases, most notably that of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood terrorist, where the Army’s negligence was responsible for the tragedy. At the time, I called Hasan the first terrorist to give an academic lecture with Power Point — to an Army audience — explaining his intention to commit a terrorist attack. Since then, things haven’t improved, including the Army’s report that didn’t even dare to talk about jihad.Let’s be clear. There should be no witch-hunt of Muslims. This is about applying the same kind of scrutiny to Muslims that anyone else gets. The truth: bureaucrats are afraid to follow clear leads and point out obvious problems, lest their careers be injured by accusations of Islamophobia.Hmmmm....we all know who's the reason for the lax aproach to the Muslim extremists.Read the full story here.

• HT:BigGoverment.Me & Mrs. Sherrod — And The $1.25 Billion Pigford II Black Farmers’ Settlement.I stumbled on the Pigford story in my defense of the Tea Party, so it’s a sweet irony that the Pigford story is exactly the kind of mess that makes the Tea Party so necessary. Politicians and trial attorneys bonded together to rip off the taxpayer, and even those farmers that were discriminated against were royally screwed.Let me be clear, our investigation convincingly leads us to believe the USDA practiced discrimination against black farmers. Those wrongs must be rectified. But Pigford is wrought with a grotesque amount of fraud, while the truly aggrieved were mostly left high and dry.The Pigford tale is about government run amok. It is also an indictment of the American media that is so blinded by ideology that it missed the big story yet again because taking out a political enemy was far more expedient. And furthermore it is why the American people need the Tea Party and new media as a checks and balances on corrupt politicians and their corrupt journalist counterparts.Today will be the first of many days that BigGoverment.com will release information, testimony and documents to make the case that, at the very least, the American taxpayer (and ESPECIALLY those legitimately discriminated-against black farmers) need a full accounting of the Pigford I and II settlements.Hmmmm....Something tells me ,this is going to smell bad!Read the full story here.

• The Pigford Shakedown: How the Black Farmers’ Cause Was Hijacked by Politicians, Trial Lawyers & Community Organizers — Leaving Us With a Billion Dollar Tab.A MUST READ!Read the full story here.

• Two more Christians murdered overnight in Baghdad. The killings prompt exodus. Some 500 families fleeing from Baghdad and Mosul to the north. That might not hold up to the influx of refugees. Meanwhile, the government promises 400 dollars in aid to every family that leaves.An Christian elderly couple was killed in their home last night: the latest in a long series of bloody episodes involving Christians. According to the little information so far provided by an Interior Ministry spokesman gunmen broke into the couple in the neighbourhood of Baladiyat, a predominantly Shiite area . Hikmat Sammak and his wife, Samira had sold their house in Baghdad and gone to live in Ainkawa-Erbil in the north. Two days ago, they had returned to Baghdad to complete the transaction and sell their furniture. During the night the criminals broke into their home, bound them and stabbed them to death. Today, their bodies have been transferred to the monastery of St. Matthew at Ba Ashika for burial.Hmmmm....now they pay Christians to leave,like they did at first with the Jews in the 1930's?Read the full story here.

• HT:Imra.Hamas: Israel planning to demolish Aqsa Mosque.Al Qassam website- Occupied Jerusalem -Col. Yoram Lev-Ran, the Commander of the Jerusalem district of the Home Front Command, has warned that a disaster might befall the holy Aqsa Mosque and that the old Marwani Mosque might collapse soon.He told an Israeli weekly published on Friday that a collapse would happen, but the only "question is when? And how many will be killed and injured?"Lev-Ran said that an emergency plan is always present when prayers in Ramadan are offered, adding the Home Front Command and the police are always on the alert.Observers believe that Lev-Ran's statement is only a test balloon to check the Arab reaction, adding that the demolition of the Aqsa was taken a while ago by the Israeli decision makers but was awaiting the proper time for implementation.Land caved in near the Aqsa Mosque and in occupied Jerusalem as a result of the Israeli excavations and tunnels dug underneath the holy site.Hmmm.....It's a Zionist plot ,and the leader is known.Read the full story here.

• Suicide Blasts Kill Dozens in Pakistan.PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Two suspected suicide bombers killed at least 40 people in an attack at the office compound of a senior government official in an area along Pakistan's Afghan border Monday, officials said. "The blasts destroyed many rooms in the compound and our reports are 40 people were killed and many wounded," a senior security official in the region said. Amjad Ali Khan, the top government official in the Mohmand region who appeared to be the target of the attack, earlier told Reuters by telephone that it appeared to be a suicide attack. "There were two bombers. They were on foot. The first blew himself up inside the office of one of my deputies while the second one set off explosives when guards caught him."Read the full story here.

• PM: İmam-hatip graduates snubbed many years.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said graduates of religious imam-hatip schools had faced discrimination and humiliation for long years, during comments at the opening ceremony of the sixth congress of the Association of İmam-Hatip Graduates (ÖNDER) on Sunday. Erdoğan, who himself is also an imam-hatip graduate, said he has always been proud of attending an imam-hatip school and sending his children to them. “I will carry the pride of being an imam-hatip graduate till I breathe my last breath,” he noted. According to Erdoğan, some university teachers had snubbed graduates of imam-hatip schools for long years. “They called us ‘dead washers’ and ‘villagers.’ They said we would never become doctors, governors or lawyers. They said we would not be able to become even the head of neighborhood. But thank God, we trusted our nation and country. Dismay was not able to reach us,” he stated.Hmmm...did i not talk about the PM his Iman-hatip background a couple of weeks ago?Ah yes: As the name suggests, they were originally founded in lieu of a vocational school to train government employed imams; after madrasas in Turkey were abolished by the Unification of Education Act as a part of Atatürk's reforms.A pitty Attaturk left these remaining,but once an Imam always an Imam Mr PM?Read the full story here.

• HT:NewZeal.Rationing Proposed at Cancun.The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference is currently being held in Cancún, Mexico. It runs from 29 November to 10 December. It has been stated that 194 countries are represented at the conference - which probably covers every country in the World."In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years. This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars. Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s. This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has traveled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture. “The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” he said."I hate to think what they intend to do to "disbelievers" who dare to speak out and say that production and consumption are good things, essential for our well-being and human progress.Capitalism is about abundance and life. Socialism is about rationing and death. That's the bottom line.Read the full story here.

• HT:DougRoss.Secret U.S. Space Plane Glides Back to Earth--And, Thankfully, Even the WikiLeaks Crackpots Don't Know What It Was Doing.On Friday, December 3, 2010, the unmanned X-37B space plane glided back to Earth and landed in California after 220 days in orbit about our planet.The U.S. Air Force developed this secretive mission with the Orbital Test Vehicle 1 (OTV-1), better known as the X-37B space plane.It is a robotic winged craft, with no humans onboard, that looks somewhat similar to the more familiar space shuttles Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery.The X-37B space plane is about nine meters (29 feet) in length, has a wingspan of about four meters (14 feet), and has a height of approximately three meters (9.5 feet).It has a mass of about 5,000 kilograms (or a weight on Earth of about 11,000 pounds).About two of the vehicles could be lined up and placed into the cargo bay of the space shuttle.It landed on a runway at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, at approximately 1:16 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST), after its first trip into space.The exact mission and goals of the mission have been kept secret. However, speculation swirls that its mission was to spy on various countries on Earth not on the best of terms with the United States.A second X-37B has been developed, which is called OTV 2. Its first test flight is projected in early 2011.Hmmm....."Rods from God." Read the full story here.

• Texas Law Would Make it a Crime to Enforce ObamaCare, Punishable by 5 Years in Jail.Don’t mess with Texas…Texans take their rights seriously.A bill that has been prefiled for the 2011 state legislative session creates penalties of up to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in jail for anyone guilty of the “felony” of attempting “to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule or regulation” of Obamacare, the president’s plan that effectively nationalizes the health-care decision making process.The plan by Texas Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, effectively would nullify the federal health care legislation in his state.At least, that is what the bill that “relates to federal health care legislation” says.Hmmmm...."Remember the Alamo".Read the full story here.

• California's delightful double standard: no ID required for voting--but those who buy a box of ammo will get fingerprinted.California officials have resisted common sense voter ID rules for years, most recently hampering the introduction of a ballot initiative last month.But starting on 1 Feb. 2011, Californians wishing to buy ammo will be treated like common criminals. Fingerprinting and record-keeping of the purchase will be required -- to buy a box of ammo!...the double standard is glaringly obvious. When we ask that voters produce identification as they cast a ballot — which would be a reasonable and necessary precaution against the very real and serious crime of election fraud — they tell us no, that’s un-American and racist. But it’s okay to pointlessly harass gun owners who are exercising a legal and Constitutionally-protected activity...Here’s what will happen as the law kicks in. Gun owners will be hurrying to buy ammunition prior to the deadline. In order to get exactly what they want, in the quantities they want, in the time allowed, they will order from out of state. (That’s what I’ve done.) So we’ll see a short-term spike in purchasing…but much of the sales volume will slip away from in-state vendors. Then, after the deadline passes, California retailers will see sales drop precipitously...California should change its slogan to "Where law-abiding citizens are treated like illegal immigrants -- and vice versa"!Read the full story here.

• HT:AhmadiyyaTimes.UK: Channel 4 News Investigates | Islamist Hate Books Inquiry Call.Works by Zakir Naik as well as other banned Islamist leaders, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Al-Faisal and Bilal Philips, are available to borrow across London’s libraries.Counter-terror thinktanks call for inquiry into public library stocks after a Channel 4 News investigation finds hundreds of books written by radical Islamist preachers, writes Johnny McDevitt.Among the authors was the first person to be banned from entering the country by the Coalition Government earlier this year.Works by Zakir Naik as well as other banned Islamist leaders, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Al-Faisal and Bilal Philips, are available to borrow across London’s libraries.Indian televangelist Naik was barred from entering the country in June, after Home Secretary Theresa May uncovered comments attributed to him, which she said represented "unacceptable behaviour".Egyptian Qaradawi was excluded in 2008, when the Home Office said it would not tolerate the presence of those who seek to justify acts of terrorist violence.During his previous visit in 2004, Qaradawi defended suicide attacks on Israelis as "martyrdom in the name of God", during a BBC interview.Several books authored by Indian national Zakir Naik, mostly in Urdu, were obtained by a Channel 4 News reporter at Southall library in Ealing, west London.In Universal Brotherhood, Naik writes about the dangers of alcohol, saying: "Every 12th or 13th person you come across in America has committed incest…and in almost all the cases, takes place under the state of intoxication."Naik was banned from entering the UK by Home Secretary Theresa May in June.Among the nine comments, 44-year-old Naik - a televangelist for the satellite channel Peace TV - had called for any Muslim who changes religion to face the death penalty."If a Muslim becomes a non-Muslim and propagates his/her new religion, then it is as good as treason. There is a ‘death penalty’ in Islam for such a person," he said in an interview several years ago.The Muslim Council of Britain, which branded the exclusions of Naik and Qaradwi "serious errors of judgement," called for caution about the removal of their books."Libraries remain sources of information through which debate and ideas are shaped on a range of issues," it said.A copy of The Fundamentals of Tawheed by Philips - another Jamaican-born convert to Islam - was loaned from Watney Market library in Tower Hamlets.The book says "un-Islamic government must be sincerely hated and despised".Philips, a Canadian citizen, has previously written that Aids shows homosexuality is evil and dangerous to society.He has also argued that a woman is obliged to give herself to her husband and that the husband may not be charged with rape.Hmmmm....the real question is on what did they base their books?Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different.Electric-eel Xmas lights? What a bright idea!An aquarium in Japan has come up with a novel — not to mention eco-friendly — way to power the lights on their Christmas tree this year: the ­electric eel.The resident eel is housed in a special tank, which contains two aluminium panels.These act as electrodes, ­harnessing the 800 watts of electricity the eel generates every time it moves and directing it down a wire and straight into the lights on the 6ft 6in tree.Hmmmm....Now that's an eelectrifying idea!Read the full story here.