MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Asia Bibi:battle continues to change the blasphemy law.The battle to amend the blasphemy law continues. Lahore High Court Bar Association general house yesterday unanimously adopted a resolution asking the federal government not to make any amendment in section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, which provides for death penalty or life imprisonment for blasphemy. The house resolved that no change should be made in the blasphemy law and federal government should not bow to international pressure in this regard. The resolution read that national and international media, eminent personalities have launched a propaganda campaign to compel the government to amend the blasphemy law. While waiting for the Lahore High Court to fix the date for the hearing of Asia Bibi’s appeal, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy, there are growing concerns that the woman may be victim of an attack. A total of 46 people were killed extra judicially in Pakistan during 1990-2010 following charges of blasphemy. The information obtained revealed that 28 of those killed were Christians and 24 were killed in the Punjab, the region where Asia Bibi lives.28 of the murdered people were Christians, 15 Muslims, two Ahmadis and one a Hindu. All these people accused, of crimes under the blasphemy laws, were either killed extra judicially or found dead in prison under dubious circumstances.Meanwhile, the Christians MPs of Punjab have made a silent protest outside Parliament because the Speaker of the Parliament Assembly Rana Iqbal Ahmed prevented them from taking the floor on the case of Asia Bibi, saying it was a "sensitive" argument. But later, when Ali Haider Noor Niazi of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, an Islamic religious party, spoke with great vehemence on the subject he was not stopped by the Speaker.
  Hmmmm....talk about "Interfaith dialog"?Read the full story here.

• 1 dead, 20 hurt in India blast.Foreigners among wounded after bomb detonated during Hindu ceremony.A bomb hidden in a metal canister exploded during a Hindu ceremony Tuesday, killing a baby and wounding 20 people, including four foreigners, in India's temple town of Varanasi. Police said the blast appeared to be a terrorist attack but would not say who they suspected. Later, a local Islamist group claimed responsibility for the explosion. The bomb was hidden in a milk container on the Sheetla Ghat, one of many stone staircases leading to the Ganges river, according to police official Brij Lal. The force of the explosion ripped away a metal railing and damaged stones up to 200 feet (60 meters) away, said a witness, Ramatama Srivastava.Read the full story here.

• HT:BigPeace.‘Mainstream’ Islamist Group Wants ‘Global Caliphate’ and Islamist America.The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is preaching a global Caliphate and Islamic Shari’a law over America to its members, according to the 2010 ICNA Member’s Hand Book. This is a very different message than the group’s public outreach efforts, and contradicts claims that the organization is a tolerant, mainstream Islamic group.As the hand book spells out, the organization’s ultimate goal is “the Establishment of Islam” as the sole basis of global society and governance. It also encourages members to deceive people in its proselytizing campaign to help fulfill this goal. This aim is one that ICNA has been actively pursuing as the group has set its sights on America’s constitutional separation of religion and state.As the hand book explains, ICNA doesn’t just believe that religion is a private affair. “Establishment of the Religion” extends beyond the individual and family and into the society, state, and world. “These words [Establishment of the Religion] include not only practicing the religion in individual and collective life and propagating its true teaching to others, but also striving to make this Deen [religion] a way of life for all,” the hand book reads.ICNA’s charter is even more explicit. It calls for the “establishment of the Islamic system of life” in the world, “whether it pertains to beliefs, rituals and morals or to economic, social or political spheres.”For ICNA, this means being the American branch of a global phenomenon that they refer to as the ‘Islamic Movement.’ The 2010 Hand Book notes, branches of this movement “are active in various parts of the world to achieve the same objectives. It is our obligation as Muslims to engage in the same noble cause here in North America.”Working in an ‘Islamic Movement’ culminates in an Islamic super-state, the Caliphate, the hand book says. Believers have an obligation to strive to reestablish a collective body of Muslims worldwide, organized into the super-state under the direction of a Caliphate and Islamic law. The group wants “the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah in accordance with the laws of shari’ah.”Hmmm....."We don't want to take over your country"Yeah whatevah!!Read the full Al-taqiyya a.k.a. The art of lying story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.Muslim Brotherhood front group trains airport screeners to be sharia compliant.Connie Hair at Human Events has more on the Islamist-infiltrated faction known as the TSA (Total Submission to Allah).The four trainers taught the TSOs how to properly handle a Quran and discussed the different ways Muslim women and men choose to cover or dress. For example, the TSOs learned if a woman wears hijab and needs a secondary screening she should be screened in a private area by a female TSO officer.In 1986, MPAC was formed as a political action arm of one of the largest Wahhabi mosques in America, the Islamic Center for Southern California.As the Center for Security Policy’s Team B II report entitled “Sharia: The Threat to America” notes, “The founders of the Islamic Center for Southern California are Hassan Hathout and his brother Maher Hathout. The late Hassan Hathout was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement. The two brothers Maher spent time in an Egyptian prison during the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities there, led by the Brotherhood’s founder Hassan Al Banna. MPAC’s own publication, The Minaret, has proudly called Hassan a ‘companion of’ and Maher ‘a close disciple of’ Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna.Maher Hathout also founded and is currently a senior advisor for MPAC. He and others at MPAC also currently work for and maintain a close relationship with the Islamic Center of Southern California.Hathout was also on the board of directors and a member of the American Muslim Council (AMC) from 1993 to 1997. AMC was founded by the al Qaeda financier and Hamas operative Abdurahman Alamoudi who is currently serving 23 years in prison for funding terrorist groups including al Qaeda.“Edina Lekovic is MPAC’s Communications Director. Previously, Lekovic was editor of the magazine Al-Talib when it editorialized that Osama bin Laden was a freedom fighter and warrior for Allah, who should be defended by Muslims. Al-Talib is the magazine published by the UCLA chapter of the Muslim Student’s Association. … The MSA was the first Muslim Brotherhood organization established in the United States.Hmmmm....What is this homeland security doing i wonder,exept spying on the tea party?Read the full conspiracy story here.

• Wow. So, Obama got a little testy. He really doesn’t like when his base challenges or questions.Wow. I'm actually a bit shocked. What I learned from this train wreck of a press conference is that it's not Rahm, folks. It's him. He actually believes this shit. He actually thinks that a head of state caving into the demands of terrorists, pardon me, "hostage takers," is a virtue. And he freely admits it. Wow. He actually believes this shit. He actually believes that his penchant for caving, his fear and loathing of fighting for anything he claims to believe in, is a virtue. It's absolutely shocking. And finally, he's itching for a fight? No he's not. And the Republicans know it. He just freaking admitted that if they take hostages, he's going to cave. I'm speechless. Did nobody in the White House think of telling him that the President of the United States doesn't admit that official American policy is to cave to hostage takers, lest they take even more hostages in the future? Dear Lord. He won't fight. He never fights. I'm sorry, but it's open season on this guy now. He is congenitally unable to fight for anything, and considers it a badge of honor. Good luck with that in 2012.Wow. So, Obama got a little testy. He really doesn't like when his base challenges or questions him. But, we don't think he tries. Or as Glenn Greenwald tweeted: The most intense passion Obama exhibits is when he gets to explain why the Left is so misguided: he really lights up; it's inspiringUPDATE:@ 2:55PM FROM JOHN: Dear God. He's serious. He actually thinks that fighting is useless, it's only symbolic, it gets you nothing. Dear God. He then went on to say that this reminds him of the fight over the public option. No shit, Sherlock. It sure does. Oh this is good, now he's saying that the NYT editorial page doesn't "permeate" across America. Excuse me, but you just admitted that the entire country was on your side. Now you're claiming that old "I'm powerless" cop out again. Good God.Hmmm...the guy clearly needs a vacation?Read the full debacle here.HT:Alwyn.

• The Latest On The Mysterious insurance.aes256 File.But WikiLeaks hasn't been on its own, and an equally massive counterattack is in the offing. There has arisen over Twitter a groundswell of online support in both very peaceful and very destructive ways. On the one hand, there have been the #imwikileaks and #imassange trends, the Twitter equivalent of a sit-in, but the likes of which have not been seen since the postelection troubles in Iran during the summer of 2009 (there is speculation that Twitter is censoring all WikiLeaks-related trends, which the company denies. This is to say nothing of the virus-like duplication of the WikiLeaks site itself, with as many as 507 mirror sites.On the other hand, though, Operation Payback, a hacktivist wing of the secretive Anonymous meme-movement, began launching its own wave of DDOS assaults against PayPal and PostFinance. Rumors have it that the Jester has also been "taken out," electronically speaking, as his Twitter has fallen silent. And then early this week there emerged the threat from Assange himself that he would reveal the password for insurance.aes256 -- the contents of which his lawyers says would be the informational equivalent of a "thermo-nuclear device."Hmmm... i don't think it will be released so quickly,first "They" want to know what he knows.Read the full story here.

• Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths.WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly.They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.Hmmm...."And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free".John 8:32.Read the full story here.

• Photo ID required: More Christmas shopping delivery chaos as UPS ups security.In a move that could delay Christmas shopping delivery further, courier firm UPS has announced that photo identification will be required from customers shipping packages at retail locations across the globe.Just a month after explosives made its way on to one of the company's planes, UPS has said the instruction is part of an ongoing security review.The new rules to will apply at The UPS store, Mail Boxes Etc. locations and other registered shipping outlets.The announcement, part of a bid to enhance security at UPS, could bring misery to Christmas shoppers hoping to get presents delivered to and within the UK on time.With the big freeze returning to Britain, snowy weather and bad driving conditions are set to jepordise deliveries in the run up to Christmas. Haulage firms have warned that the delivery of Christmas presents brought online could be threatened by the snow, winds and freezing fog. With the rising popularity of online shopping and current delays and backlogs already caused by the bad weather will lead to delivery chaos in the remaining weeks of December.Hmmm...Merry Christmas or will it be "Cast Away"?Read the full story here.

• HT:BigPeace.Security Nightmare: Chinese Government Has Microsoft Windows Source Codes.This is extremely unsettling. The Chinese government has the keys to the kingdom as far as software information is concerned. And they were essentially given it through a Microsoft tech program designed to improve the software. Only problem? The Chinese government used it to search for vulnerabilities in Windows to penetrate U.S. government computers. They managed to “slurp up” 50 megabytes of government emails as a result.“The Chinese government may have used its access to Microsoft source code to develop attacks that exploited weaknesses in the Windows operating system, according to a US diplomatic memo recently published by Wikileaks.Hmmm.....What else are we not being told?Read the full story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.Video : Church destroyed by jihad left out of 9/11 renewal.Gigantic, sharia-compliant, taxpayer funded mosques run by taxpayer funder and government supported Islamists at Ground Zero. But a church destroyed by Muslims not getting approval to rebuild. Why? Full story at Church left out of 9/11 renewal.Hmmmm...Can't they get taxpayers money from the fund?Read the full scandal story here.

• Judge Tosses Suit Aimed at Keeping Al-Awlaki Off Hit List.WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit aimed at preventing the United States from targeting U.S.-born anti-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on a capture-or-kill hit list. U.S. District Judge John Bates said in a written opinion that al-Awlaki's father does not have the authority to sue to stop the United States from killing his son. But Bates also said the "unique and extraordinary case" raises serious issues about whether the United States can plan to kill one of its own citizens without judicial review. Al-Awlaki has urged Muslims to kill Americans. He also has been linked to last year's shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound flight last Christmas. He is believed to be hiding in Yemen and has issued videos online repeatedly calling for Muslims to kill Americans.Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush and Army veteran, seemed tempted to take on the legal issues but said he must dismiss the case because Anwar al-Awlaki did not bring the suit. "The serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day or another nonjudicial forum," he wrote. Bates said the case raised "vital considerations of national security and of military and foreign affairs." Among them, he wrote, were why courts have authority to approve surveillance of Americans overseas but not their killing and whether the president can order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without "any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization.Hmmmm....Judge-Jury and executioner?Read the full story here.

• NYC Taxi Drivers Urged to Use Racial Profiling in Passenger Pickups.The federal government refuses to profile airline passengers, but New York City taxi drivers are being urged to profile potential passengers before giving them rides.Following an attack on a New York taxi driver, the head of the city's taxi-drivers' union is urging cabbies to "profile your passengers; it's very important." Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, gave that advice at a press conference Saturday outside the hospitial where the cabbie is in serious condition, the New York Post reported."I don't care about racial profiling. You know, sometimes it is good we are racially profiled, because the God's honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics," said Mateo, who is Hispanic and has a black father. "So if you see suspicious activity, you know what? Don't pick that person up."Read the full story here.

• U.S.: Accused Mexico Hit Boy Is American.A 14-year-old boy known as "El Ponchis" and accused of participating in four beheadings for a Mexican drug cartel is an American citizen, the U.S. State Department said Monday."We have confirmed the boy's U.S. citizenship but can't say anything more about the boy's situation in the absence of a (provisional arrest warrant) signed by at least one of the parents," Gini Staub, spokeswoman for the State Department, told CNN.Morelos Gov. Marco Adame Castillo has said the boy was born in San Diego, California, and Mexican officials were researching whether he has dual nationality. A U.S. Embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to embassy policy, said earlier that American officials had not confirmed his citizenship.A judge in Mexico had ruled Sunday the boy would be tried under a state juvenile law that carries a maximum of just three years in prison if convicted.Many youths have been used by drug cartels, but the story of El Ponchis may be the most shocking. A YouTube video that emerged a month ago sparked talk of a child hit man -- said by some to be as young as 12."I participated in four executions, but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me," the boy said when he was handed over to the federal prosecutor Friday.Authorities identified the curly haired suspect only by his first name, Edgar.Despite apparently being born in the United States, he grew up in a poor, urban neighborhood packed with businesses near the city of Cuernavaca, where the people who knew him said everyone called him El Ponchis since he was 4, although no one knew why.Hmmm...learned his "trade" in Mexico?How many more like him come back to the USA?Read the full story here.

• Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the Democratic Party left him before he left the party. Like many progressive supporters of Barack Obama, I'm beginning to have the same feeling about this president. Consider what we've seen since the shellacking Democrats took in the fall elections. The stakes are much higher than the distant election. The president has suggested unconvincingly that he'd prefer to be a successful one-term president than a two-term president who didn't get anything done. But there are other alternatives. If the president continues on his current course, we're looking at a failed one-term presidency that the nation cannot afford.This isn't about conventional politics. This is simply about the fate and future of our country. This president has a clear and imperative historic mandate. If he shirks it, he risks more than failing to get reelected. He risks a failed presidency.Hmmmm....just look at the debt and unemployed of the country and you know the answer!Read the full story here.

• Russia must train experts on Islam in Caucasus - Kremlin envoy.Russia should open a secular university in North Caucasus to train teachers and experts on Islam, the Kremlin's envoy to the region Alexander Khloponin said."We need this secular university on Islamic studies in Caucasus today...because we do not have experts to teach the basics of this religion," he told a meeting of children's rights ombudsmen in North Caucasus on Monday.Khloponin believes that this measure would help prevent religious conflicts in the region."Today, when we see prayer rooms in dormitories of universities in Stavropol [southern Russia], for example, and do not understand the literature their students are reading - we then should not be surprised that we have [religious] clashes on the streets," he said.Read the full story here.

• HT:TheDailyBeast.The Real Lesson of Pearl Harbor.On the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks, Flags of Our Fathers author James Bradley explains how the U.S. under Teddy Roosevelt first meddled in Asian affairs—and why we’re playing a dangerous game in doing so again.I always assumed that my father—John Bradley—had raised two American flags on the island of Iwo Jima because of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor 69 years ago today. But unbeknownst to my dad, 88 years before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy had eyed Iwo Jima as a potential staging area for naval operations aimed at China.In 1853, U.S. Navy warships entered the North Pacific with the largest show of naval power the area had ever seen. The three neighboring countries—Japan, Korea, and China—had been at peace with one another for centuries. The Navy’s goal in 1853 was to make Japan into what a Japanese prime minister later called “America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific” in order to compete for influence in nearby China. The pretext given to the American public was that the Navy was on a humanitarian mission to halt mistreatment of American whalers shipwrecked on Japanese shores.Read the full story here.

• FRENCH striker Nicolas Anelka has branded his fellow countrymen small-minded racists.He insists he has had 'nothing but trouble' in France but that soccer fans there have a false impression of him.Born in Versailles, Muslim-convert Anelka traces his family connections to Guadeloupe."People in France have a false picture of me. Everything I have achieved has been abroad. I am not 'made in France' - that's the place I have had nothing but trouble.""That is why I never wanted to sing the Marseillaise, the national anthem, when I played for France. Had they insisted that I did, I would have refused and quit the team."Hmmm....Monsieur Le President...votre reponse svp?"Read the full story here.

• Mysterious fireball streaking across the sky leaves onlookers bewildered.A mysterious fireball that lit up the sky over Atlanta has left onlookers bewildered as to what it could have been.Charsign Raymond, 39, of Clarkston, was visiting a friend's home in Stone Mountain when his friend's wife saw the unidentified object streak across the sky.'She ran in and said, "Look, you've all got to see this"', Mr Raymond recalled.Mr Raymond managed to capture the double-barrelled ball of fire falling towards the ground on his camera.DeKalb County Police Department said they had no reports of fireballs hitting the county recently and have offered no explanations as to what it could be.A neighbour who also witnessed the unexplained sighting said she thought it was a meteor about 10 times larger than any she'd ever seen before.A second streak zoomed across the sky just seconds later.The strange incident happened around 5.30pm on November 28. Just two days earlier an unexplained explosion rocked Villa Rica west of Atlanta.People in three counties - Carroll, Douglas and Haralson - complained about hearing a loud boom late on November 26.Police officers and firefighters responded to the Mirror Lake neighbourhood but found nothing.Hmmmm....all this equipment to monitor the sky and nothing?Yeah whatevah!Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Video - TV Report on Girl Surfers in Gaza.Hmmm....No Zionist sharks in the waters there?Read and see the full story here.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Another Zionist shark found ! I know that some of you may have doubts that the sharks really are Zionists. I am about to resolve those doubts for you. A picture of one of the sharks has been found. This shark is definitely a Zionist.See morning post for the first sighting of a Zionist shark.Read and see the full story here.

• HT:TheDailyBeast.Walmart's Women Go to War.Can the largest sex-discrimination case in history get a fair hearing before the Roberts court? Michelle Goldberg on how conservative judicial activism threatens women’s rights.The fate of the largest sex discrimination case in history, against the largest employer in the United States, now rests with a Supreme Court given to right-wing judicial activism. Walmart, the world’s biggest company, is currently facing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of thousands of women who, the suit claims, have been paid less than male colleagues and routinely passed over for promotions. The company is arguing that these women don’t constitute a class, and that if they want to sue, they have to do so individually. So far, courts have ruled against Walmart. But yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Walmart’s appeal. Its ruling could have profound effects not just on the women of Walmart, but on the ability of all women to seek redress for sex discrimination. There is reason to be very worried.Read the full story here.

• Video : The Admiral Gorshkov (Vikramaditya) aircraft carrier is like new.Russia is completing the modernization of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier which has been renamed the Vikramaditya. The ship will be transferred to the Indian Navy in 2012.Read and see the full story here.

• And now for something completely different!The world's first Christmas cards are about to arrive after 167 years... at auction.More than 750 million Christmas cards will be sent this year, but when the first ever greeting cards were launched in London in 1843 the response was anything but enthusiastic.In fact, of the 1,000 originally printed, on a handful sold, probably because they cost a hefty one shilling, and it was many years before the tradition took a foothold.Now, three of 18 cards produced167 years ago and still known to exist are to be auctioned in New York on Friday and they are expected to fetch as much as £10,000 each.Read the full story here.