MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Pakistan: Doctor arrested on charge of blasphemy.Islamabad, Dec 12 (PTI) A doctor in Pakistan''s southern Sindh province was arrested on a charge of blasphemy after he threw the business card of a pharmaceutical representative named Mohammad Faizan into a dustbin.Faizan visited the doctor, Naushad Walyani, at his clinic in Hyderabad, the second largest city of Sindh, on Thursday.As Faizan handed Walyani his business card, the doctor threw it into a dustbin and rushed out of his clinic, Faizan claimed. Faizan returned to the clinic at 8 pm with his colleagues Mohammad Waqas and Mohammad Azam, and confronted the doctor.When asked about his action of throwing the card into the dustbin, Walyani kicked the dustbin and asked Faizan to take back his card. Faizan claimed the doctor''s actions amounted to an act of blasphemy and left the clinic.A group of pharmaceutical representatives went to the clinic on Saturday and beat up the doctor for allegedly uttering blasphemous remarks.They then handed Walyani over to police, who booked the doctor under the Blasphemy Act. Walyani rejected the charge of blasphemy while talking to the media.The doctor was later shifted from the police station to a more secure facility due to security concerns, officials said.Representatives of some religious parties and hardline groups too have complained to the police against the doctor.Hmmmm.....Welcome to A.D. 620?Read the full story here.

• HT:AtlasShrugs. Burka Blockade on Park Avenue.Ashura in New York......On an otherwise quiet Sunday morning, imagine our surprise when, in the driving rain, traffic was at a full stop. There was a sea of black burkas and coffins — yes, another shiny, happy Muslm parade.Unsuspecting New Yorkers were descended upon with calls for prayer, dawah and prosyltizing [sic] to Islam.Hmmm...."We don't want to take over your country"?Read the full "Story" here.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Ayatollah Boroujerdi, Why doesn't anyone hear about this guy? Why has no one outside of Iran ever heard of Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi? Ayatollah Boroujerdi has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since 2006.Boroujerdi, aged 50, is an heir to a distinguished Shia clerical family. He was born in Tehran and educated in the Shia religious center of Qom. Like his father, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Ali Kazemeyni Boroujerdi (1924-2002), Boroujerdi preaches the pre-Khomeini interpretation of Iranian Shiism, which calls for religion to be kept apart from politics. His health has been badly affected by the conditions of his imprisonment, yet he has continued, from his cell, to denounce the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Boroujerdi has become a consistent champion of secularism. He has declared, “the regime is adamant that either people adhere to political Islam or be jailed, exiled or killed. Its behavior is no different from that of Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar.”Boroujerdi and his group have lately issued a message to the world’s Jews, congratulating them on the Hanukkah holiday. Their knowledge of Jewish customs may be faulty – their statement confused Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights commemorating the liberation of the Jewish Temple from foreign dominance by the Maccabean revolt some 23 centuries ago with the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, which fell during September of this year. But their sentiments were manifestly sincere and clearly repudiated the anti-Jewish demagogy of Ahmadinejad.Boroujerdi’s own message describes the lights of Hanukkah as divine, specifying, “We celebrate the light (Hanukkah)… My belief about different religions and creeds in different countries is that any religious belief that brings us closer to the Source (God) is the truth. This force will lead humanity towards enlightenment. On this great day, (Hanukkah) we celebrate the unity among the believers of God’s light.” His disciples added, “All followers of Mr. Boroujerdi join in this celebration of light with all Jewish people around the world. With hope that the sunlight of truth will free us from the darkness of injustice and ignorance, we hope for a world full of peace and brotherhood among God’s children.”Why isn't the West sticking up for this man? Why is no one demanding his freedom?Hmmmm....Yes indeed why doesn't the West hear about him?Read the full story here.

• Breyer: Founding Fathers Would Have Allowed Restrictions on Guns.If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday.Breyer wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said historians would side with him in the case because they have concluded that Founding Father James Madison was more worried that the Constitution may not be ratified than he was about granting individuals the right to bear arms. Madison "was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. 'That can't happen,' said Madison," said Breyer, adding that historians characterize Madison's priority as, "I've got to get this document ratified."Therefore, Madison included the Second Amendment to appease the states, Breyer said.Since the Founding Fathers could not foresee the impact of modern day communications and technology, the only option is to take the values of the Founding Fathers and apply them to today's challenges."The difficult job in open cases where there is no clear answer is to take those values in this document, which all Americans hold, which do not change, and to apply them to a world that is ever changing," Breyer said. "It's not a matter of policy. It is a matter of what those framers intended."
  He suggested that those values and intentions mean that the Second Amendment allows for restrictions on the individual, including an all-out ban on handguns in the nation's capital.Hmmmm....Another step towards dictatorship has been made?Read the full story here.

• "The War against Christmas"West Village YMCA axes Santa Claus for Frosty.He's a lost Claus. A politically correct West Village YMCA has fired Ol' St. Nick in favor of Frosty. Kids who once thrilled at sitting on Santa's lap at the 14th Street McBurney YMCA's wildly popular annual holiday luncheon will now suffer the icy embrace of a talking snowman and his sidekick, an anonymous penguin, at today's event. Forget about bringing a list or checking it twice -- Frosty doesn't take gift requests, and doesn't care if you're naughty or nice. YMCA officials, who say they are in the midst of "rebranding" the Young Men's Christian Association to "The Y," defended their decision. "It wasn't replacing; it was transitioning," said John Rappaport, executive director of the McBurney YMCA. "We realized that change is sometimes good, and that Frosty is a great winter character who would appeal to a broader number of kids." The decision to ditch Father Christmas came down from McBurney branch administration, not the Y's Chicago headquarters. A chilly reception greeted the news that the YMCA -- an organization founded to spread Christian values in 1844 -- was replacing the Christmas icon with a secular cartoon character. "Christmas is not about Jack Frost; it's not about snowmen," fumed Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. "We're not talking about some secular organization that has no religious roots. If they can't celebrate Christmas, then they should check out. What a bunch of cowards." Hmmm...How long before America realises that Christmas is under "siege"?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Iran Proposes: Oil at $100/Barrel.At an OPEC meeting in Ecuador, Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mir Kazemi said that his country, which will hold the OPEC presidency in 2011, proposes a crude oil price of $100/barrel. The proposal was supported by Libya, Venezuela, and Algeria.Hmmm....Remember a while back when discussing oil at $85/Barrel, i said "Lets talk again in Januari when Iran is head of the Opec"?Here we are 14 days before it's due!Source.More here.

• Venezuela acquires 1,800 antiaircraft missiles from Russia.Russia delivered at least 1,800 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Venezuela in 2009, U.N. arms control data show, despite vigorous U.S. efforts to stop President Hugo Chavez's stridently anti-American government from acquiring the weapons. The United States feared that the missiles could be funneled to Marxist guerrillas fighting Colombia's pro-American government or Mexican drug cartels, concerns expressed in U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and first reported in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.It had been unclear how many of the Russian SA-24 missiles were delivered to Venezuela, though the transfer itself was not secret. Chavez showed off a few dozen at a military parade in April 2009, saying they could "deter whatever aerial aggression against our country." A high-level Russian delegation told American officials in Washington in July of that year that 100 of the missiles had been delivered in the first quarter of 2009. Then earlier this year, Russia reported to the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms, which records the transnational sale of weaponry, that the deal totaled 1,800 missiles. The U.N. registry did not reveal the model of the delivered weaponry. But the American commander for military forces in Latin America, Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, publicly expressed concern this year that Venezuela was purchasing as many as 2,400 of the missiles, also called the IGLA-S. Matt Schroeder, a missile expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said the missiles are among the most sophisticated in the world and can down aircraft from 19,000 feet.Hmmm.....Iran....Hezbollah....Rocket facilities...getting ready for war with the USA?Iran blocks Midle East oil suplies,Venezuela blocks South American Oil.The USA has no domestic oil thanks to Obama,the death of America?Read the full story here.

• France's Le Pen faces lawsuit for Muslim 'occupation' claims.A French anti-racist group said on Sunday it planned to sue the daughter of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France."Comparing Muslims to an army of occupation is humiliating. To be treated like invaders, like fascists, that is just not possible," said Mouloud Aounit, head of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP).Le Pen said that there "ten to fifteen" places in France where Muslims prayed in the streets outside mosques when these were full.She said that "for those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it's about occupation, then we could also talk about it (Muslim prayers in the streets), because that is occupation of territory.""It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. It's an occupation," she said at the rally that was part of her bid to take over party leadership when her father steps down in January."There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs on local residents," the 42-year-old said.Hmmmm....What's the "definition' of occupied in the dictionary?And more important how do emergency vehicles get to their destination if the streets are blocked ?Read the full story here.

• THE TRUTH ABOUT TWITTER: Half Of Twitter Users Never Listen To A Word Anyone Else Says.The recent Pew study about Twitter usage revealed a few interesting things.First, only 8% of American adults use Twitter. This is more evidence that, despite its enormous popularity among tech and media folks--and its massive global user numbers--Twitter has yet to go mainstream.Second, fully half of these Twitter users basically never listen to a word anyone else says. In other words, half of Twitter users use Twitter as a sort of digital closet that they go into once in a while to mutter to themselves, with no one else listening.Third, less than a quarter of Twitter users, meanwhile, or 2% of American adults, are heavy Twitter users, using Twitter the way many tech and media folks do: Obsessively checking it several times a day to watch the news go by.If Twitter's goal is to become the world's biggest media company, these trends need to change. More people need to start using Twitter to consume media, not just tout it or create it. The service's user growth is phenomenal, but it's hard to build a big business around people talking to themselves.Hmmmm....Perhaps the real objective is to keep track of people?Read the full story here.

• HT:RightSideNews.The Jihad Against America is Increasing.Muhammad, the self-proclaimed prophet of Allah, died in 632 AD. As historian James Carroll notes in his forthcoming book about Jerusalem, “The next year, only two years after the Byzantine Christians had reconquered Jerusalem…a mounted force of Bedouin fighters who revered the Prophet’s memory invaded the Byzantine-controlled territory of Palestine, near Gaza.” They called themselves Muslims.A recent survey taken in Islamic countries by the Pew Research foundation revealed that a majority in the Muslim world still favor cutting off hands for theft, stoning people to death for adultery, and insist that Islam play a major role in politics. What many in the West still fail to understand is that the grip of Islam and its seventh century mindset remains fully intact for many of the more than a billion Muslims worldwide.The resurgence of a militant Islam threatens to drag the entire world back to an era of barbarity and ignorance banished by Western civilization, the enlightenment, and the spread of Democracy. The brief period of tolerance for other faiths exhibited during the Islamic conquest of Spain was the exception, not the rule.In our era it was George W. Bush who thwarted Muslim dreams of world domination. Following 9/11 it was his resistance that protected Americans against further attacks during his two terms in office.“According to open-source reports, between 2001 and 2008, U.S. agencies stopped one or two terror attempts a year. However, from 2009 until today, the government has been uncovering one or two cases a month, a troubling growth in jihadist activities.”It should be lost on no one that the increase coincides with the advent of the Obama administration and his absurd claims that America is not a Christian nation or that Muslims played any role in its history other than as Barbary pirates.It is folly to think that America will not continue to be subject to terror attacks, but the Obama administration has largely refused to publicly confront this reality except in the form of the intrusive and objectionable airport pat-downs and scans. If a commercial airliner is bombed, it will surely have begun its flight in a foreign airport.Incredibly, Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security recently announced that Ari Alikhan, who DHS identified as “a devout Muslim”, as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and swore in Kareem Shora, another “devout Muslim” born in Damascus, Syria, as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.How crazed is this? Or are we meant to wait until President Obama is voted out of office until we can begin to feel safe anywhere in America?Hmmm....Would the UK bookies take a bet that he converts to Islam as soon he's out of the White House and what would be the odds?Read the full story here.

• Iranian students threaten to destroy Esther's tomb. Protestors in Hamadan warn 'Zionist leaders' they'll 'destroy lowly murderers' mausoleum if Al-Aqsa mosque assaulted in any way'.A group of extremist Iranian students threatened to destroy the mausoleum of Queen Esther and Mordechai should Israel cause damage to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Ynet reported Sunday. According to tradition, the tomb is located in the western Iranian city of Hamadan. The students, who rallied at Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamadan, said in a statement, "We, the student basijis... warn Zionist regime leaders if they assault the Al-Aqsa mosque in any way we will destroy the tomb of these lowly murderers." Iranian news agencies said the protestors are members of the student basij, or hardline Islamist militia.The shrine in Hamadan commemorates Esther, a young Jewish woman who married Achaemenid King Xerxes five centuries before Christ, and convinced him to allow Jews to settle freely in the Persian empire.Iran has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East -- 20,000 to 25,000 by different estimates -- after Israel, and the shrine is visited by many pilgrims every year.Iran also houses in the western town of Shush the tomb of Jewish prophet Daniel, who according to biblical tradition, survived the lions' den.
  Hmmmm.....Sometimes,just sometimes you really wonder why Israel doesn't nuke them to kingdom come.Read the full story here.

• Iran Nuclear Talks: A Widening Chasm.There seems to have been a little progress during the two days of meetings in Geneva, but where's the emphasis? How "little" and how much "progress"?The emphasis has to be on "little." In many ways, it appears that the two sides are even further apart than in October 2009 when they last met. There's no concrete plan on the table. In October 2009, there was a deal which would have given something Iran had wanted -- higher enriched uranium for its medical reactor in Tehran -- in exchange for suspending enrichment, the kind of thing the United States and other members of the Security Council wanted to see. The administration set very low expectations for this round, and I suspect the outcome is even lower than it expected.I gather that the Iranians kept insisting there's no point talking about their enrichment program unless the United States and the other powers lift the economic sanctions, right?The Iranian negotiator has already said that at the meeting in January in Istanbul, Iran will not discuss its uranium enrichment program. That pulls the rug out from underneath the efforts even before they begin.The United States has gone to great lengths to try to reassure Israel that it's doing what it can, and to try to convince Israel to give the United States more time. But there will be people who criticize the diplomacy and the fact that the Iranians are simply playing diplomatic dodge ball, that time is on their side, and they can simply stall if that's what they want to do. Show up for these talks, nothing happens, and they agree to another round.The common statement used to be, "We're worried that Iran wants to have the potential, the ability to build nuclear weapons, not necessarily to build them."That's the Japan model. The issue is whether Iran is looking for the Japan model, or the Pakistan model. The Japan model is a capability to assemble a weapon if and when they face a threat. And the Pakistan model is to build bombs and have them ready for whatever purpose. That's one of the many big questions that have to be answered. But the truth is we know less about Iran's program, what they do and don't have, than we did about Saddam Hussein's program in Iraq.Hmmmm.....What we do know is "The apocalyptic worldview of Iran’s present rulers".Twelvers believe the 12th imam will emerge from hiding when the world has fallen into chaos and civil strife. Ahmadinejad has stated that the main mission of the Islamic revolution “is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th imam, the Mahdi.”Read the full story here.

• U.N. Commemorating 10th Anniversary of 9/11 by Holding Pro-Islamic, Anti-Israel Hate-Fest.It’s perverse. It’s inexcusable. And it’s business as usual in Turtle Bay.September 2011, you see, also marks the 10th anniversary of the Durban Conference on Racism, a weeklong farce that accused Israel of being the world’s most racist nation and sought to undermine its very right to exist.So last month Yemen sponsored a resolution calling for the anniversary meet-up. The idea is to create a forum for yet another round of Israel-bashing hate speech.In a sane world, such a party would be ridden out of town.At the UN, the resolution passed 121 to 19, with 35 abstentions.Canada is fighting back by boycotting the coming “hatefest,” which it says scapegoats Israel and “promotes racism rather than combats it.” If only the United States were just as blunt.“My delegation regrets that this resolution contains elements that require us to vote no,” said a US diplomat, who noted that he was “deeply troubled” that New York would be the venue.Troubled ain’t the half of it.There’s only one reason the new conference will convene in New York in September 2011: to rub salt in the city’s wounds, to dance on the city’s graves.Participants at the original conference, which ended three days before 9/11, openly celebrated Islamic terrorism.Durban I became what Holocaust refugee and former Rep. Tom Lantos described as “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.”Canada has taken yet another brave and public step in defiance of the UN. The US needs to do more than simply follow suit.This anti-Semitic bash should not be held on US shores, least of all as the city observes another solemn 9/11 anniversary.If only the Obama administration would announce its own boycott and then do everything in its power to end this farce.The key words there: “if only.”Hmmmm....I think it's pretty obvious to every american patriot who's aproving this?Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different.The real-life Da Vinci Code: Historians discover tiny numbers and letters in the eyes of the Mona Lisa.Art historians are probing a real-life Da Vinci Code style mystery after discovering tiny numbers and letters painted into the eyes of the artist's enigmatic Mona Lisa painting.Leonardo Da Vinci's 500-year-old Renaissance masterpiece has long been steeped in mystery with even today, the true identity of the woman with the alluring smile still far from certain.The painting also featured in the Dan Brown blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, which was turned into a 2006 film starring Tom Hanks, in which his character interprets secret messages hidden in the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci's other works including The Last Supper.Today Silvano Vinceti, president of the Committee, said: 'To the naked the symbols are not visible but with a magnifying glass they can clearly be seen.'In the right eye appear to be the letters LV which could well stand for his name Leonardo Da Vinci while in the left eye there are also symbols but they are not as defined.Mr Vinceti, who has travelled to Paris to examine the painting in the Louvre gallery where it is on display, explained that in true Dan Brown style they were put onto the mystery after fellow committee member Luigi Borgia discovered a musty book in an antique shop.The 50-year-old volume describes how the Mona Lisa's eyes are full of various signs and symbols and he added: 'We are only at the start of this investigation and we hope to be able to dig deeper into this mystery and reveal further details as soon as possible.Hmmmm....."They are are the mirrors of the soul"?Read the full story here.