MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Clashes follow Egypt church bombing.Clashes have flared in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria, following a car bombing blamed outside a Coptic Christian church that killed at least 21 people.Police and Christian men faced off late on Saturday afternoon, with reports of rubber-coated bullets and tear gas being fired at crowds of young men.Enraged Christians emerging from the Qiddissine church fought with police and stormed a nearby mosque, prompting fights and volleys of stone throwing with Muslims.Authorities blamed the incident on a suicide bomber but provided no evidence to back up their claim.Reporting for Al Jazeera, Nadia Abou El-Meg, a journalist in Alexandria, said: "This scene [of clashes] has been [witnessed] several times today. The protesters started gathering and throwing stones ... the police responded with tear gas."Tension is running very high and people are very angry ... We saw a lot of people weeping and screaming and asking why are they being attacked."The church has issued a statement which was also very angry, demanding justice, and criticising the performance of the government."More and more people are gathering as the night is falling. Many people are not buying this idea of the suicide bomber."The Copts are the biggest Christian community in the Middle East and account for up to 10 per cent of Egypt's 80m population.Hmmmm...Mr President?..What killing Christians in Egypt?...Got to finish my vacations first, then ask the Saudi King what to say.Read the full story here.

• HT:PajamasMedia.2010: The Year They Came for the Constitution.Recall 2010 as the year progressives went after the Constitution, and the year that same Constitution gave us the chance to vote out the would-be tyrants.I nearly spit out my coffee while reading a New York Times post-election day column titled “Tea Party Rooted in Religious Fervor for Constitution.” One nearly had to pity the Gray Lady’s desperation in running the column.Oh, my! These rough-around-the-edges provincials have gone and pulled off the biggest electoral tsunami since 1938 by running around touting the wonders of the U.S. Constitution and flagellating Democrats for running afoul of it. Oh, what to do? Why, frame these ignorant upstarts with the tar brush of religious fundamentalism, of course. That always works.What a load of pitiful poppycock.Every American who has the educational attainment of fourth grade civics understands that the U.S. Constitution is the very document to which every single elected federal official must swear a fealty oath. Every American past the fourth grade also knows that the entire armed forces of the United States serves to protect and defend that very document: not a president, not even the people, but the U.S. Constitution. We don’t call it the “supreme law of the land” for nothing, folks.What the New York Times and everyone else associated with the know-nothing media of the left fails to see is that 2010 is already widely known as the year the proverbial “they” came for the Constitution. It was the ninnies of the 111th Congress, led by Pelosi and Reid, that openly trashed our Constitution. It was the 111th Congress, whose flagrant disregard for the limits on their power lit the fires of Tea Parties all across the land.And sentient Americans who follow politics with even a modicum of scrutiny would think that Democrat pols, who’ve been around a long, long, long time, would at least know enough not to mock the U.S. Constitution in the glare of a rolling video camera or in front of meat-hungry press mongrels.
  Hmmmmm.....Only the fight for the "Land of the Free" aint over yet,far from it.Read the full story here.

• HT:GatewayPundit.Obama Releases Statement Following Deadly 1-1-11 Terror Attacks: Won’t Blame Islamic Radicals & Says Muslims Were Victims.A blood-spattered poster of Jesus Christ is seen inside the the Coptic Christian Saints Church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, Egypt Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011. A car exploded in front of the church early Saturday as worshippers emerged from a New Year’s Mass, killing at least 21 people according to officials, and sparking clashes between Christians and Muslims — a sign of the sectarian anger that has been arising with greater frequency in Egypt.Barack Obama today released a statement following the Islamic terrorist attacks targeting Christians in Egypt and innocents in Nigeria.The President would not blame “Islamic” radicals in his statement and said Muslims were also victims.Hmmmm....Makes me wonder who writes these statements his "Islamic"envoy Hussein?Or Hussein Obama himself"?Read the full statement & story here.

• HT:McClatchydc.2011 looks grim for progress on women's rights in Iraq.The tension between the two sides bubbled over last month in Kadhmiyah, a section of northern Baghdad, where local Islamist leaders erected a provocative display outside a major Shiite shrine. It shows four mannequins wearing the hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering for women, while behind four mannequins with uncovered heads are laced with burns, shackled in chains and have red strands lapping at their feet to simulate a fiery afterlife.The message to women is clear: Dress modestly, or burn in hell.When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki introduced what he called a national partnership government two weeks ago, he included allies and adversaries, Arabs and Kurds, Shiite Muslims and Sunnis. One group, however, was woefully underrepresented. Only one woman was named to Maliki's 42-member cabinet, sparking an outcry in a country that once was a beacon for women's rights in the Arab world and adding to an ongoing struggle over the identity of the new Iraq.Whether this fledgling nation becomes a liberal democracy or an Islamist-led patriarchy might well be judged by the place it affords its women.Hmmmmm......Islam and women rights?Read the full story here.

• HT:Investors.EPA Rules Will Trump Your Rights.Environment: Ignoring both Congress and the voters, the Environmental Protection Agency starts the new year governing by decree with job-killing regulations. Take a deep breath, but if you exhale you're a polluter.Cap-and-trade is dead, long live cap-and-trade in the form of regulations promulgated in the coming year by what George Orwell might call the Ministry of Environment. It claims that the Clean Air Act and a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 let the EPA regulate carbon dioxide as a planet-warming pollutant.Oh, and remember those high-speed electric trains in China that have people like the New York Times' Tom Friedman cooing over how green China is? James Fallows, writing in the Atlantic, quotes a Chinese official as saying they are being built to move passenger trains out of the way of coal trains.As it turns out, much of China's domestic coal is far inland away from urban centers. High-speed trains, as such, have nothing to do with being "green." Far from it. They enable China to use more coal — not less.As Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, related on a YouTube video: "Lisa Jackson, Obama's EPA administrator, admitted to me publicly that EPA based its action today (issuing its finding) in good measure on the findings of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious, independent analysis to see whether they were true."We hope the incoming Republican House will deal rapidly with what is bad regulation based on junk science.Hmmmm.....Look at Europe what the "Green" parties made of it, so many regulations that businesses can't even implement them!Read the full disaster story here.

• Violence as Pakistan strikes over blasphemy law.Violence flared Friday as police and protesters clashed during a mass protest strike that closed businesses across Pakistan over a bid to end the death penalty for blasphemy.Police said protesters near the home of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari in the financial hub of Karachi pelted stones as they shouted slogans including "We'll sacrifice our lives -- we'll save the sanctity of the Prophet".Teargas shells were fired to disperse them, while normally busy town centres turned quiet across the Muslim country, AFP reporters said, following a move to amend a law which permits death sentences for those found to have blasphemed.Conservative religious groups called for a national strike after thousands of Islamists rallied in major cities last week against any change to the law, which rights campaigners say encourages Islamist extremism.The strike went ahead despite a categorical announcement by deputy information minister Samsam Bokhari on Thursday that the government had no intention of amending the controversial law.Police official Naseer Tanoli told AFP the protesters were going to join the main rally in the town but had tried to pass the President's home en route."We asked them to use a different route we had assigned for it. But they refused and pelted stones on the police, which forced us to use teargas," Tanoli said, adding that the demonstrators had dispersed.Around 5,000 people rallied in the city, carrying placards and banners inscribed with anti-government and anti-US slogans with some chanting "Death to America".Hmmmm.....Perhaps the Obama administration should give a couple of Billion Dollars more to them?Read the full story here.

• Three dead and scores injured after passenger plane explodes in fireball on Russian runway after emergency landing.A Russian passenger jet carrying 124 people caught fire as it taxied down a snowy runway in Siberia and then exploded on Saturday, killing three people and injuring 43, including six who were badly burned, officials said.Most of the passengers and crew were evacuated before the explosion, though people on board described a chaotic scene as as the burning plane filled up with thick, black smoke and panicked passengers rushed through flames to escape.Emergency services spokesman Vadim Grebennikov said the fire, which began in one of the engines as the plane taxied for takeoff, caused a powerful blast that destroyed the Tu-154 aircraft and spread flames across 1,000 square meters (11,000 square feet).Grebennikov said 10 people were seriously injured, including six who were badly burned and four who suffered broken bones or other trauma. Most of the other injured passengers sought treatment for poisoning after inhaling toxic fumes.The plane, which belonged to the regional Kogalymavia airline, was flying from the western Siberian town of Surgut to Moscow.Among the passengers were members of the Russian pop group Na-Na, who described the panic on board the plane.He added that flight attendants tried to calm the passengers, but the flames began to spread, especially after one of the passengers opened an emergency exit and air rushed in.The plane quickly filled up with smoke that was black and acrid from burning plastic, Rymarev said.Another member of the group, Vladimir Politov, said some people were so desperate to get out that they ran right through the flames, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.He said all the members of the pop group, which was popular in Russia in the 1990s, got out through an emergency exit over a wing and none of them was hurt.All three engines on the Tu-154 are located in the back of the aircraft. The fire on Saturday appeared to have started in the engine mounted over the rear of the plane.The Tu-154 has been the workhorse of the Soviet and post-Soviet civilian aviation industry, first entering service in the 1970s. Read the full story here,more here.

• HT:RobertShepherd.New Year slaughter of Christians in Egypt shows we’re all in it together against Islamism.It will be interesting to observe the international response following last night’s slaughter of at least 21 Christians by Islamists outside a Church in Alexandria, Egypt. If it had been the other way around (heaven forfend that it had been carried out by Jews) there would have been mass protests around the world, condemnations from leading politicians and, given that this comes on the heels of other such massacres, could well have ended up with a resolution at the United Nations.But don’t hold your breath. The politically correct multi-culturalism that holds sway across Europe and increasing sections of the United States (I hardly need mention the UN) dictates that we must always beware of enflaming Muslim sensitivities. The great diversionary spectre of “Islamophobia” silences all that go before it.Hmmmm......“I was for the possibility of bridging the gap between the east and the west but recently I have changed my mind on this issue, especially since the west wants to impose its values and traditions on us,”Sheikh Qaradawi.To me it reads like a declaration of war and since then Christians have been much more under attack!.Read the full story here.

• HT:ScotiaBank.US gold closes up 30 pct, silver adds 84 pct in '10. U.S. gold futures finished 2010 strong, with gains of more than 1.0 percent on Friday, that contributed to its 30 percent advance this year, its biggest increase since 2007, driven higher by economic uncertainty and accommodative monetary policies. For the year, gold advanced 29.7 percent, its biggest annual gain in three years, marking a record of 10 straight yearly increases.Spot silver swept higher for an 83 percent gain on the year. It was the second-best performer among precious metals, and reached a 30-year peak of $30.92.Read the full story here.

• HT:.TechnologyReview.Home Internet with Anonymity Built In.A router that runs the Tor software prevents Web tracking.Many political activists, nonprofits, and businesses use an anonymity system called Tor to encrypt and obscure what they do on the Internet. Now the U.S.-based nonprofit that distributes Tor is developing a low-cost home router with the same privacy protection built in. The Tor software masks Web traffic by encrypting network messages and passing them through a series of relays (each Tor client can also become a relay for other users' messages). But using Tor has typically meant installing the software on a computer and then tweaking its operating system to ensure that all traffic is routed correctly through the program."We want to make anonymity something that can happen everywhere, all the time," says Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor project developer. "When you are connected to a router with Tor inside, all your traffic goes through Tor without you changing your system at all. It makes it simple to use."Hmmmm.....The protection against Big Brother FCC?Read the full story here.