MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Palestinians raise flag at Washington office.WASHINGTON – Palestinians on Tuesday raised their flag over the PLO diplomatic mission in Washington for the first time, as they push for international recognition that complicates the Obama administration's efforts to restart stalled Mideast peace talks.At a brief ceremony, the Palestinian's chief envoy to the United States, Maen Areikat, hoisted the red, green, white and black banner outside the PLO General Delegation office. He said he hopes the symbolic act would help win support for independence with or without a peace deal with Israel."We are proud to see the flag," Areikat said. "It's about time that this flag that symbolizes the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination and statehood is raised in the United States. We hope that this will help in the international efforts to provide recognition for the Palestinian state."The envoy acknowledged that the flag-raising has no practical effect for U.S. policy, but he said it was an "important, significant step" toward seeking recognition from the United States and others. He said he hoped the Obama administration would move to recognize Palestine as an independent state, something the U.S. has said it will not do until there is a negotiated peace deal with Israel.Palestinian statehood is "an international interest, a U.S. interest and in the interest of all the parties in the Middle East," Areikat said.The PLO office has had permission from the State Department to fly the flag since last August, when the mission was upgraded from a representative office to a general delegation, but had been awaiting permission from the building's owner before displaying it, he said.State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the flag-raising did not mean any change to the status of the Palestinian mission in Washington and repeated that the U.S. opposes any unilateral Palestinian move to establish statehood. But several other nations, notably in Latin America, have recently recognized Palestine, and the Palestinians are seeking broader support to bring statehood before the U.N. in September.Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denounced the flag-raising as a stunt."Raising this flag in D.C. is part of the Palestinian leadership's scheme to manipulate international acceptance and diplomatic recognition of a yet-to-be-created Palestinian state while refusing to directly negotiate with Israel or accept the existence of Israel as a democratic, Jewish state," she said in a statement.In the meantime, the Palestinians are continuing to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for ongoing settlement activity in the West Bank. That could be brought to the council as early as this week.Hmmmmmm......."They don't trust me because of my middle name"Among about a million other things.....YES!Read the full story here.

• HT:CompassDirect."The War on Christianity".Pakistani Police Allegedly Make Threats after Murdering Christian.KARACHI, Pakistan, January 18 (CDN) — Pakistani police are threatening the father of an 18-year-old Christian man whom officers raped, killed and threw into a sewer last week, according to area Christians. Christian residents of Akhter Colony, Karachi who pulled the body of Waqas Gill from the sewer on Jan. 11 protested an alleged police cover-up by placing the corpse in the middle of a street and chanting slogans against officers of Mehmoodabad police station. They said local officers kidnapped and sodomized Gill before shooting him dead on Jan. 9.The victim’s father, Pervez Gill, told Compass that four policemen on Jan. 6 abducted his son without a warrant and without making any charges. He said higher level police officials took notice of their Jan. 11 protest and reluctantly filed charges against the four policemen, two of them identified as Muhammad Amir Butt and Muhammad Adeel Khatak of the Mehmoodabad police station in Jamshaid Town, Karachi. The First Information Report is No. 38/11 under the murder laws of Section 302 of Pakistan Penal Code.“Police are now threatening us and other Christians of Akhter Colony that we have to retract the charges,” Gill said, nearly in tears. “Police registered a case against the culprits, but they have not filed it under the proper parts of the section, which weakens the case, and police have done everything possible to save their fellow policemen.”Gill said this police bias was the reason the other two officers named were still at large, with no action taken against them. Local Christian protestors said Muslim policemen unduly delayed an autopsy to protect fellow officers, on the assumption that Christians were socially and financially weak in the predominantly Sunni Islamic country. After the Jan. 11 protest, however, an autopsy was undertaken and showed that Gill was subjected to sexual assault, tortured, shot dead with police revolver bullets and thrown into a waste drainage line, they said. Sources said at least six other area Christian youths had been similarly killed.Christian Legislator Tahir Naveed Chaudhary condemned the killing, stating that Sindh Province police have started to imitate Punjab Province police’s discrimination and delays in autopsies and filing of charges against those who attack Christians. “Day by day, crimes against Christians are increasing, and rape or abuse of Christian women and girls has become a commonplace thing,” Chaudhary said. “Life of any of the Christians at any place in Pakistan is not safe.”Hmmmmm.........Outrage of the 'Christian' US President.........?Lets give them another Ten Billion Dollar?Read the full story here.

• Alabama Gov: Non-Christians 'Not My Brother'.Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told a church crowd just moments into his new administration that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned Tuesday whether he can be fair to non-Christians."Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday, his inauguration day, according to The Birmingham News.The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday called Bentley's remarks shocking."His comments are not only offensive, but also raise serious questions as to whether non-Christians can expect to receive equal treatment during his tenure as governor," said Bill Nigut, the ADL's regional director.Ashfaq Taufique, president of the Birmingham Islamic Society, told The Birmingham News he wasn't sure how Bentley's remarks were intended."Does it mean that those who according to him are not saved are less important than those who are saved?" Taufique said. "Does he want those of us who do not belong to the Christian faith to adopt his faith? That should be toned down. That's not what we need. If he means that, I hope he changes it. We don't want evangelical politicians. They can be whatever in their private life."Hmmmmm....Of course it's perfectly fine to call others un believers and kaffirs?We don't want anyone going around calling people brothers and sisters?Read the full story here.

• HT:JRosenberg.Medvedev makes historic trip to the epicenter,recognizes Palestinian state,avoids Israel,deepens alliance with Iran: Is this consistent with Bible prophecy?Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today began an historic Middle East tour. He is meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in the West Bank. Then he will meet with King Abdullah and other Jordanian leaders in Amman. While he canceled his scheduled visit to Israel, Medvedev did speak by phone with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday. The two are taking steps to deepen the alliance between their two countries and coordinate their Mideast policies. “Russia is ready for all cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Medvedev.Momentum for the Palestinians to unilaterally declare a state, or for the world to recognize the Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital even without a negotiated treaty with Israel, has been growing for the past year or so, as I explained a blog column in December. At the time, summer 2011 seemed to be the target. Now the September opening of the U.N. General Assembly may be the new target. According to veteran Israeli columnist Aluf Benn, “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are apparently planning to act in September, before the United States begins its presidential election year. At that time they will convene the United Nations General Assembly and pass ‘the recognition resolution.’ General Assembly resolutions are not binding, but Israel will find itself internationally isolated. The territories will be transformed from a bargaining chip into a burden.” In a different column, Benn also notes that “Abbas has been telling the world he has presented Netanyahu with detailed positions on all of the core issues and Netanyahu has not answered him, or has agreed to discuss only other matters. This is the Palestinian version of ‘there is no partner.’ The world believes him.” Enormous pressure is building on Netanyahu to divide the Land and divide Jerusalem. It would be a terrible mistake, but Israel’s enemies are trying to lure Netanyahu and his Cabinet into a honey trap, as it were, while the world isolates and delegitimizes Israel more and more.What’s particularly noteworthy about all of these trends is the central role Russia is playing, and the close relationship Moscow is developing with Iran and the Palestinians.Are recent trendlines — including the latest news reports out of Moscow and Tehran — consistent with the Bible prophecies found in Ezekiel 36-39 and the coming “War of Gog and Magog”? We will examine this question in detail at the 2011 Epicenter Conference and during The Joshua Fund Prayer & Vision tour of Israel in May. Please come with us and study these prophecies and current events for yourself. For now, consider the following.Hmmmm....If you're a religious person start praying?Read the full prophecy story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.Afghan girls training to box in 2012 London Olympics.If you happen to see veiled Muslim girls boxing for team Afghanistan in the 2012 Olympics, wonder if billions of your tax dollars and the lives of American men and women helped pay for it. Like the new constitutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will be sharia compliant.Afghan boxing coach Saber Sharifi (L) trains girls as they take part in a boxing training session around a small training room at the Kabul stadium, in Kabul on January 17, 2011. The first women’s boxing league started four years ago, coached by Saber Sharifi who is the Afghan men’s boxing coach. The young Afghan boxers, who are just beginning to learn the sport, are trained three times a week with the idea of putting together a real team for matches by end of 2011.Read and see the full story here.

• Tiny victims of latest Pakistan bombing after horse-drawn cart explodes outside school.A bomb on a horse-drawn cart exploded outside a school in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding 14 others, including children.One of the children was in critical condition, hospital official Sahib Gul said.The identity of the man killed in the attack in the main northwestern city of Peshawar was not immediately known.The blast, which also killed the horse, broke windows in the school.No one claimed responsibility, but Islamist militants will be the main suspects.Al-Qaida and Taliban extremists have bases close to Peshawar in Pakistan's border regions with Afghanistan.Hmmmm......"Islam is a great religion"Have you ever heard of any other Religion acting this way?Read the full story here.

• Bomb found along Martin Luther King Jr parade route.SEATTLE (Reuters) – The FBI is treating the investigation of an unexploded backpack bomb left along the parade route of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration as a possible case of domestic terrorism, an agency spokesman said on Tuesday.The unattended Swiss Army-brand backpack, with wires visible, was discovered Monday morning on a downtown bench by three city workers who notified police of the device about 30 minutes before the parade was scheduled to begin, the FBI said.The parade, attended by about 1,500 people, was quickly rerouted while city's bomb disposal unit was summoned and safely "neutralized the device," the FBI said.FBI agent Frank Harrill, an agency spokesman in Spokane, described the "improvised explosive device" as having a "very lethal design" capable of inflicting "multiple casualties."The device in the backpack was largely concealed by two T-shirts packed inside. The exact design and suspected strength of the bomb were not revealed.But Harrill said the proximity of the bomb in time and space to an annual parade held on the national holiday marking the birthday of slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was "inescapable."Asked whether investigators regard planting of the bomb as a potential case of domestic terrorism, he said: "It falls squarely within that arena and is being investigated as such, and clearly the timing and location of the device would trend in that direction."The FBI posted a bulletin seeking the public's help in the investigation and offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any individuals responsible for the bomb.Investigators also asked anyone who took photographs or video footage in the area where the pack was found during a three-hour period before the parade to contact the FBI.Read the full story here.HT:InfidelBloggers.

• HT:IslamInEurope.Netherlands: Facebook page for women who decide to stop wearing a hijab.Turkish woman Semra Çelebi no longer wears her headscarf. She says she doesn't need to in order to be a good Muslim. The decision was not an easy one. Semra recently started a Facebook page called I took off my hijab.Semra was ten years old when she first started wearing a headscarf. She was following the example of her younger sister, who attended an Islamic primary school. Semra herself went to a Christian school in the Dutch town of Barneveld. Her father, who is from a traditional Turkish family, believes women should wear headscarves. It took a little getting used to for Semra.Wearing a hijab became more and more a part of her religious identity. After all, God wants women to dress modestly. She defended her decision to wear the headscarf in debates and her quick tongue started to get her noticed.However, when Semra started studying law at Utrecht University she started to change her mind. She did internships in Sheffield, New York and Brussels, far away from her home town with its strict rules. After reading a number of books on the subject, Semra decided to stop wearing her headscarf.That was three years ago. And Semra still has to defend her identity, but this time as a Muslim woman without a headscarf. Her father does not approve and she gets negative reactions. But she refuses to give in. Recently she started a Facebook page to support women who decide to stop wearing headscarves.Within three weeks around 100 people had joined the page. Some girls write that they are afraid to stop wearing their headscarves because of the reactions they will get. One father stopped talking to his daughter for months. Semra says her Facebook page is not intended to encourage Muslims to stop wearing their headscarves."The important thing is that you make your own choices. That is not always easy. My choice was about wearing a headscarf, but it could about something else. A colleague told me his girlfriend's father ignored him for five years because he and his girlfriend lived together. That was his decision."Hmmmm....... “Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.”Read the full story here.

• Greece, Armenia 'butchered' by Turkey in past, Greek president says.Greece and Armenia were "butchered" by Turkey in their past, the Greek president told his Armenian counterpart Tuesday as he bemoaned a costly arms race with Ankara that helped create Greece's vast debts."We were butchered by the same barbarian," President Karolos Papoulias told his counterpart Serge Sarkisian, who began a three-day visit on Tuesday.He added that "many things have changed" since the early 20th century when the killings of Armenians and Black Sea Greeks occurred, and criticized a decades-old arms buildup that has cost Athens billions of euros.Greece says thousands of ethnic Greeks living on the southern shores of the Black Sea for centuries were massacred in Turkey during strife that accompanied the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Turkish state.Armenia charges that as many as 1.5 million of its kin were victims of genocide during World War I under the Ottoman Empire.Ankara rejects the "genocide" charge, countering that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian forces.Read the full story here.

• HT:LogisticsMonster.Video:Former FBI Chief Goes On Record About Chemtrails.Former FBI Chief Ted Gunderson Says Chemtrail Death Dumps Must Be Stopped.Former FBI Chief, Ted L. Gunderson, makes a statement regarding the chemtrail “death dumps”, otherwise know as air crap, on January 12, 2011. Ted says the following: “The death dumps, otherwise known as chemical trails, are being dropped and sprayed throughout the United States and England, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Europe. I have personally seen them not only in the United States, but in Mexico and in Canada. Birds are dying around the world. Fish are dying by the hundreds of thousands around the world. This is genocide. This is poison. This is murder by the United Nations. This element within our society that is doing this must be stopped. I happen to know of two of the locations where the airplanes are that dump this crap on us. Four of the planes are out of the Air National Guard in Lincoln, Nebraska. And, the other planes are out of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I personally have observed the planes that were standing still in Nebraska – Lincoln, Nebraska – at the Air National Guard. They have no markings on them. They are huge, bomber-like airplanes with no markings. This is a crime: a crime against humanity, a crime against America, a crime against the citizens of this great country. They must be stopped. WHAT IS WRONG WITH CONGRESS?Read and see the full story here.

• HT:IslamtodayOregon.The Rapid Castration of the English Lion.When the open display of Islamic supremacism becomes a normal happening, and the previous shoutings from those opposed are reduced to platitudes and empty explanations, it is time to head for the hills. Londonstan may be in name only to some, not really on their radar screen and not something they think about, yet with the "no-go" zones popping up across England, the vitriol being spewed by such Islamic luminaries as Anjem Choudary and the brown-mosing for sharia law by Archbishop Rowan Williams the Islamization of England is happening as you read this.The examples of jihad in England are too numerous to mention here, but just to give an update on where her Majesty's land is quickly headed, I have two articles, each one another piece reflecting how, in the name of political correctness and the absolute belief that all cultures and peoples are of equal respect, the farther over we bend backwards to accomodate these values, the demands for us to bend further come with increased freuency and urgency.The result is, we break.Ibis hotels host islamic extremists' conference, despite protests A conference by anti-gay Islamic preachers went ahead at a London hotel last weekend, despite protests from human rights campaigners.Queen Mary University’s Islamic Society is to host controversial speaker Abu Usamah, who has called Jewish people the “enemy”.Now where would he ever get that idea? He must be an Islamophobe!Abu Usamah, who is an Imam at Green Lane Masjid in Birmingham, will address students on Wednesday in a lecture entitled: “Wives of the Prophet.”In 2007, footage of him was used in a Channel 4 documentary called Undercover Mosques. He was filmed saying Osama bin Laden is “better than a thousand Tony Blairs” and that non-Muslims are “liars”While these Islamists and jihadists preach their hatred of Western values and Jews, they stifle any criticisms of what they are doing by name-calling and demonizing their opponents. Any questioning of a Muslim's motive is verboten and unless you want to be branded a hater of Islam and Muslims, you better shut up.Read the full story here.

• HT:ForeignPolicy.Seymour Hersh unleashed.DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office. In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy. "Just when we needed an angry black man," he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, "we didn't get one." It quickly went downhill from there. Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the "Cheney-Bush years" and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration. He said that he was keeping a "checklist" of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and "rendition" of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing. He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative "crusaders" in the former vice president's office and now in the special operations community. Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'" "That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command." He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta." Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website."Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function." "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”Hmmmm......Not forgetting to mention that the Templars also adored a Skull said to belong to John The Baptist?Read the full story here.

• Teen dancer asked Berlusconi for 5 mn euros for her silence. Milan: The teenage Moroccan nightclub dancer whom Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi allegedly paid for sex, asked the premier for five million euros in exchange for her silence, according to tapped phonecalls.Karima El Mahgroug, now 18, and Berlusconi deny they had sex over several months in 2010 when she was 17. Berlusconi is being formally investigated over the case for allegedly having paid a minor for sex - a criminal offence in Italy. In an intercepted phone call in possession of prosecutors, El Mahroug says to a friend named as Poiana: "I have denied everything. I'm trying to save him (Berlusconi), so I can make some money out of this." "How much? Five million euros. My case is the most shocking one of all, it has overtaken D'Addario and Letizia," she says in another phone conversation with her ex-boyfriend Sergio Corsaro's mother.In another intercepted phonecall in late October 2010, El Mahroug is allegedly heard telling her ex-boyfriend: "We're not worried. Silvio is calling me all the time and has told me to appear deranged, to spout nonsense.""He says I'll give you whatever money you want, I'll shower you with gold, but it's important that you hide everything and don't say anything to anyone," she said. Read the full story here.

• HT:BigPeace.Iran Shuts Down Canadian Showing of ‘Iranium’ – Mystery Threats.This is still breaking so we anticipate updates later tonight or tomorrow morning.A showing of the documentary on Iran’s nuclear and world domination ambitions, “Iranium,” was planned to be shown tonight at 7 pm at the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa, Canada at the “Library and Archives” building (roughly equivalent to the U.S. National Archives). Following the showing, Iran expert and ex-CIA officer Clare Lopez – also the main editor of the Team B II book “Shariah – the Threat to America” – was scheduled to speak.Then on Monday, January 17, the organizers were told the event was to be canceled because there had been “complaints,” only to find there was one major complainant: the Embassy of Iran. And yesterday reportedly it required only a phone call from the office of the Canadian Minister of National Heritage James Moore to get the National Archives Theater to agree, in spite of Iran’s threats, to show the film and allow Clare Lopez to speak and moderate a discussion afterwards.Happy ending? Not yet. Not by a long shot.At 4:45 pm today, the Library and Archives Building was completely shut down, with all events canceled (and no prior notice), and and by 5:30 pm 3 police cars, 2 firetrucks and an ambulance all rushed to the scene. So no showing of “Iranium,” no speech by Lopez, and in fact, what appears to be a serious response to a serious threat.According to Ottawa’s National Post, “After receiving threats and two suspicious letters Tuesday, the National Archives of Canada cancelled the screening of a controversial documentary that critiques Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a move that has organizers questioning the national library’s autonomy.”According to archives spokeswoman Pauline Portelance, “Once we started to receive threats from the public and threats of public protest, we deemed the risk associated with the event was a little too high.”There were no actual protesters – merely threats of public protest. By the scheduled start time of 7 pm according to the Post “the letters were cleared and considered ‘not suspicious at all.’ ” But by then the entire event had been canceled.I’m outraged that in the capital of Canada the Iranians have been able to shut down a movie,” said the group’s president Fred Litwin. “Bad enough in Tehran, but in Ottawa?” Litwin is planning on rebooking the film at another venue and bringing Lopez back to Ottawa again as a speaker.Because every time Iran uses threats and intimidation to censor “Iranium” over the next year – for every hundred people who are cannot see it because it’s banned, fight back by bringing another thousand to the Iranium website.Hmmm.....Iran coming to a preview near you?Read the full story here.

• HT:LogisticsMonster.Obama Signs New Executive Order; Congress Officially Irrelevant.Are you ready kids? (Whenever I say this to the RedLemur, he knows it’s gonna be bad…)Barry Soetoro, current resident of the White House, has signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to review regulations and produce a plan for changes to the current regulations based on the best science available.Bye-bye Congress.Read and see the full story here.

• Turkey cannot be regional leader, says Armenia.Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has accused Turkey of bringing normalization efforts to a deadlock by using strong-arm tactics and voiced opposition to its perceived efforts to take on a leadership role in the region. Sarksyan, addressing a session of the Greek Cypriot parliament during a visit, also declared support for Greek Cyprus, another regional rival of Turkey, in its dispute with Ankara over the fate of the island. The Armenian leader signed a series of cooperation agreements with Greek Cyprus during his visit on Monday and proceeded to Greece on Tuesday for talks on expanding ties.Greece, too, has problematic ties with Turkey despite a process of rapprochement that has been underway for more than a decade. The two countries are at odds over territorial rights in the Aegean and Cyprus, where Turkey maintains 35,000 troops to protect the island's Turkish population, once victims of an ethnic cleansing campaign at the hands of the Greek Cypriots in the 1960s and early 1970s.Sarksyan said Turkey “destroyed” the process. “With its contradictory posture, inconsistent statements and groundless manipulation of the [Turkish-Armenian normalization] process, Turkey destroyed it,” he said. “Turkey backed away from its commitments and not only failed to ratify the signed protocols but also reverted to its old positions adopted before the process.”The Armenian leader also denounced the Turkish government's assertive foreign policy as “neo-Ottoman” imperialist designs aimed at forcing Turkey's neighbors into submission. "A country that, since Armenia gained independence, closed our border on various pretexts and is trying to blackmail my people cannot aspire to regional leadership," Sarksyan said."What did the Ottoman Empire bring to the people under its yoke other than massacres, oppression and tyranny? Does anyone long for Ottomanism, giving some reason to try to deliver neo-Ottomanism?" asked Sarksyan.He lauded the Greek Cypriot parliament for being one of the first legislatures to pass in 1982 a resolution recognizing the genocide claims and expressed his country's solidarity with the Greek Cypriots in their conflict with Turkey. “Armenia has never accepted and will never accept any attempt to partition brotherly Cyprus,” Sarksyan was quoted as saying by Armenian news portal Azatutyun. “We have never come and will never come to terms with the occupation of this friendly country's north,” he said, referring to the Turkish military presence in northern Cyprus, which has been run by a Turkish Cypriot state since 1983.“Armenians and Cypriots are not only friends and brothers, but also natural allies, and we are faithful to that alliance,” he said.Hmmmm......Now this is spoken as a President.Read the full story here.

• HT:PlancksConstant.Rulers of Islamic Countries Fear Unrestrained Islam.No one knows the evil power of Islam as well as the governments in secular Muslim nations. Sadly, most Americans and Europeans mistakenly assume Islam is a religion. Leaders in Muslim countries know better - they know Islam is a political and military system bent on world domination.For example: Egypt, a country where Islam is the state religion and 90% of her inhabitants are Muslim, severely represses Islamic political parties because they understand that those parties would destabilize the country by instituting Shariah law and dismantling everything modern (or western) in the country 1, perhaps even destroying all traces of the ancient Egyptian culture as devout Muslims have done in the past to the native artifacts of the cultures they conquered. While western countries struggle with the morality of banning the hijab, secular Muslim-majority countries have no such qualms; as I pointed out in my article If Muslim Countries Can Ban the Veil Why Can`t Infidels?: Egypt, 90% Muslim, was smart enough to ban the niqab in schools as being backward and demeaning to women. Turkey, 99.8% Muslim, and Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, ban the wearing of the veil in their public schools. Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Syria and others who suppress Islamic parties know that wearing the veil is the first sign that devout Muslims are gearing up to take over the country.Read and see the full story here.

• "Life or Death in Iran's Prisons".Fatemeh Salbehi, Convicted of Murder at the Age of 16, Faces Execution.HRANA – During a rushed court session, a 16-year-old high school student was charged with murder and sentenced to death. Her sentence was then confirmed by the Supreme Court.Fatemeh Salbehi – born in November 1991 – accused of murdering her husband, Hamed Sadeghi, was pronounced guilty.On Mohammad Mostafaie’s weblog it reads, “In 2007, when Fatemeh was only 16 years old, Hamed Sadeghi married her. He was approximately 30 years old, which means he is twice her age.”Fatemeh and Hamed were distant relatives but had not met before their marriage. Hamed’s mother proposed to Fatemeh’s family and they accepted. Fatemeh then got married to Hamed.One spring day in May 2008, Hamed was found dead in his house while Fatemeh, like any other day, had gone to school. Since his body was found in the house, Fatemeh was arrested, imprisoned, and charged with murder.In the initial interrogations –which were done without a lawyer, just like other interrogations in Iran – Fatemeh made some contradictory statements. She [first] confessed to the murder, but then said two people broke into their home and killed her husband.Considering the pressures imposed on any defendant during the interrogations and the fact that Fatemeh was only a 16-year-old school girl, it is unclear how much of her initial statements are true and how much were [said] to free her from the pressures of interrogation.Later on during her trial, Fatemeh did not confess to the murder, but branch 5 of the Criminal Court in the Fars province convicted her of murder anyway. The verdict confirmed by the Supreme Court may be executed at any moment.The Shiraz Court of Justice ignored the fact that the defendant was a teenager under the age of 18 years at the time [of being charged] and sentenced her to death; [an act that is] against the universal standards of human rights to which Iran claims to be committed to. From a legal standpoint, Iran is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Therefore, the Iranian government is obliged to observe the law on the prohibition of hanging convicted children. The two mentioned constitutions clearly prohibit the death penalty for persons under the age of 18 at the time the crime was committed.Even if we assume that this young girl murdered her husband in cold blood and then left his body at home to go to school like any other day, she must be examined by a psychotherapist to determine her mental status. And should she be proven to have mental issues, her death sentence would be void.There is room for so many questions. How could the court come to a decision about the life of a 16-year-old girl in a two hour trial? Why didn’t the court try to find out the details of the case? Why didn’t anyone ask Fatemeh about her motives for murdering her husband? Is the relationship between the court officials and the murdered person worth more than a young girl’s life? Has the judge made the verdict out of revenge?The marriage of young girls under the age of 18 is an ongoing phenomenon in Iran. It starts from as early as the age of nine and ten. This phenomenon, which includes the physical and mental torture of girls, is never properly voiced. These young children silently bear the pain of physical and sexual violence, of being raped by elderly men every night. In some cases, they explode and tragically kill their husbands. Such occurrences have unfortunately been so frequent that it is now considered a social phenomenon.But aren’t these little girls victims of a horrible crime? Their only refuge is their parents who put them up for sale. They get raped and beaten by their husbands. They find no shelter or support within their societies. Aren’t they victims who face dead ends and commit crimes out of desperation?Many of these girls who are forced into marriage tolerate the violence and the pain of an unwanted relationship. They get pregnant, raise their kids, and continue living. But they will probably remember their sexual relationship as their most bitter memory. Some [of the girls] may [even] commit suicide. Some others may end their lives in the most distressing way: by setting themselves on fire. And some will choose to commit the crime of murdering their husbands.Society watches while many of these silent victims commit horrible crimes and kill their husbands in dreadful ways. And yet not a single step is taken to support these victims to prevent such tragedies. Why is a girl, who is too young to have a driving licence or to vote and participate in the social and political affairs of her country, forced into marriage? And if this has to be, why doesn’t she have the right to choose her own partner in life?Hmmmm....Iran is Turkey's best friends,who wants such people in Europe?Read the full story here.

• Russian Orthodox Church Wants A Dress Code.A senior spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church has proposed the introduction of a dress code for all Russian men and women.Well, mostly women.In a short article published on the Interfax news agency's website, Vsevolod Chaplin, the church's chief liaison with secular society, states that no culture has ever considered appearances a private affair and calls for the introduction of nationwide rules of clothing, following the example of school and corporate dress codes.The article was written in response to an open letter to the Orthodox partiarch from a group of Russian activists appalled by Chaplin's December 2010 remarks putting the blame for sexual assault on rape victims' immodest dress. Defying the group's call for a public apology, Chaplin reiterates his view that a woman who wears a skimpy dress and lots of makeup -- "like a clown" -- can only attract "a drunken idiot" and says he hopes to see the day when indecently dressed individuals will be escorted out of public spaces -- with the exception of brothels or strip bars, he notes.Chaplin, who wears a traditional black priestly frock, does not specify the lengths, sizes, or colors of acceptable clothing items; nor does he say whether the proposed dress code should be enforced by religious or secular authorities.Veteran Russian human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva scorned Chaplin's idea. "It's all nonsense. People should dress as they like. Next they'll be telling women not to wear lipstick," she told Interfax.Hmmmm.....OMG.... they're really getting close to Iran?Read the full story here.

• HT:Politico.Muslim groups nervous about King hearings.American Muslim leaders, who have struggled to present a clear public voice or organize politically in the decade since Sept. 11, are increasingly apprehensive about the direction Rep. Pete King will take when he convenes hearings next month on the threat posed by radical Islam in America. King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, plans to focus on the Times Square bombing attempt and the Fort Hood shooting, both involving American-born Muslims, as well as other incidents and on what he sees as the failure of Muslim leadership to combat extremism.His upcoming hearings have caused deep concern and consternation among various Arab and Muslim advocacy groups across the country that fear King’s witness list will help define, for the purposes of the American public conversation, which Muslim leaders are legitimate and which should be regarded as extremists. “You can definitely say overall the hearings are seen with great apprehension, suspicion and distaste — sometimes sorrow,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islam and Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles. “These hearings have a history of stigmatizing whole groups of people.” King insists that the goal of his hearings is not to stigmatize Muslims but to confront the threat of homegrown terrorism and to explore the role of Muslim leaders in dealing with it.King aims, he said, to call retired law enforcement officials and people with “the real life experience of coming from the Muslim community.” Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in the House and a critic of the hearings, will likely be a minority witness, according to both King and the Minnesota Democrat. The focus, King said, will be on — among other topics — reported complaints from Somali Muslims that the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other groups discouraged them from talking to the authorities about young men who left to fight for the Islamist cause in Somalia and on cases like that of the imam who — while ostensibly cooperating with the FBI — allegedly tipped off a would-be subway bomber off as investigators closed in.Possible witnesses, according to King, include Dutch critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser is a sharp critic of leading American Muslim groups, whose agenda he calls “Islamist.”Hmmmm....Torquemada seen nodding in approval?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheAmericanDream.Trade With China?: 25 Facts That Prove The China Is Kicking Our Rear Ends.Do you believe that trade with China is a good thing? Well, you might not be so sure after you read the 25 facts listed below. The truth is that China is kicking our rear ends all over the planet. When it comes to world trade, China is absolutely dominating the United States. Have you wondered why the U.S. economy cannot produce nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore? Have you wondered why so many thousands of factories have been closing down? Have you wondered why it seems like America is getting poorer? Well, the answers are below. Of course both major political parties continue to insist that "globalism" is a good thing and that what we are experiencing now is just a period of "adjustment" as we are merged into the new global economic order. Our corrupt politicians will continue to sell you the same tired lies over and over and over as thousands more U.S. factories and millions more U.S. jobs continue to be shipped overseas. So will you keep buying the lies of our corrupt politicians or will you believe the facts that are right in front of your face?The following are 25 facts that show just how badly China is whipping our butts in the arena of global trade right now.Read the full story here.

• House panel eyes reforms in U.N.New majority targets funding.The new Republican majority in the House is poised to revive some old battles over the U.S. government's financial contribution to the United Nations, vowing once again to use the power of America's purse to force what it calls needed reforms at the world body.New House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen told The Washington Times that she plans to use the threat to withhold U.S. dues payments to force U.N. officials to cut costs and clean up the organization's image, a sharp break from the approach and political rhetoric used when Democrats ran the House."The majority of our members are on board to reform the corrupt and mismanaged U.N. and get a much better return for our dollars," the Florida Republican said in an interview. "Cutting the budget is not enough, because you need to reform the monster, you need to reform the beast, and if you don't get fundamental reform, you are still rewarding a corrupt, mismanaged agency."Before the Obama administration came to power, the issue of U.S. "arrears" to the U.N. was a long-running battle on Capitol Hill and a diplomatic sore spot for the State Department, which argued the U.S. failure to pay its dues undercut other foreign-policy goals.Hmmm....Can't see it happening with this "President" perhaps the next one?Read the full story here.

• HT:Aina.The Return of Moqtada Al-Sadr.When notorious Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr recently returned to Iraq from self-imposed exile in Iran, he was warmly greeted by his Shiite supporters. Yet, for those who had been subjugated to the brutal sectarian violence unleashed by al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, his reappearance has stoked fears over the long-term survival of Iraq's fledgling democracy.Further feeding into this concern has been the specter of Iran's hand in orchestrating al-Sadr's return to Iraq. As it has demonstrated in Lebanon with Hezbollah, its Shiite proxy terrorist organization, Iran has proven quite experienced in using such proxies to bring down democratic governments.Al-Sadr's own genocidal history was exhibited from 2004-2008 when he waged a terrifying war against US coalition forces and wreaked unspeakable acts of ethnic cleansing and mass murder upon the Iraqi people. By the time he fled to Iran in 2007 during the height of the American surge, he had earned the infamous distinction as Iraq's most prolific killer.While much of al-Sadr's time in Iran is shrouded in mystery, he was reported to have been mentored by a bevy of Iranian hard-line clergymen, including Ayatollah Kazem Haeri and Ayatollah Mohammed-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, the latter being the spiritual mentor of Iranian President Ahmadinejad.Unfortunately, not everyone was convinced of al-Sadr's new image as a moderate peacemaker. That skepticism was best summed up by one man who said of al-Sadr and his religious-civic organization, Mumahidoon: "They shave their mustaches and leave their beards long … we call them the Taliban. His return back to Iraq will have nothing to do with strengthening the security and stability because their thoughts are based on the opposite of that."First, al-Sadr's holds a strong political hand, evidenced by his political party winning 40 out of 325 parliamentary seats in the March 2010 election. Moreover, eight of his allies have been given seats in Maliki's cabinet.Second, al-Sadr holds lethal clout as well. Although his Mahdi Army--which once had an estimated 60,000 fighters--was disbanded in 2008 as part of a ceasefire agreement with the Iraqi Army, it was replaced with a reportedly more elite force, the Promised Day Brigade (PDB). While it is unknown how many fighters are in the PDB or their effectiveness, al-Sadr has never shied away from using military force to achieve his political aims.Finally, al-Sadr enjoys a long and deadly working relationship with both his Iranian benefactors and with Hezbollah, one begun when al-Sadr and members of his Mahdi militia went to Teheran to receive military training in 2004. It was at that time al-Sadr adopted the Hezbollah organizational model. Like Hezbollah, there is fear that al-Sadr hopes to morph his movement from a pure terrorist outfit into a quasi-political organization, one with a well-financed armed component.It was the first concrete sign that al-Sadr was truly back. As the Iraqi people have unfortunately learned the hard way, that's a terrifying prospect.Hmmmm.....Why is the US allowing him to wander around freely after what he has done in the past?Read the full story here.

• Report: Pakistani spy agency rushed Mullah Omar to hospital.Mullah Omar, the elusive, one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, had a heart attack Jan. 7 and was treated for several days in a Karachi hospital with the help of Pakistan's spy agency, according to a private intelligence network run by former CIA, State Department and military officers.The intelligence network, operating under the auspices of a private company, “The Eclipse Group,” said its source was a physician in the Karachi hospital, which was not identified in the report, who said he saw Omar struggling to recover from an operation to put a stent in his heart.“While I was not personally in the operating theater,” the physician reported, “my evaluation based on what I have heard and seeing the patient in the hospital is that Mullah Omar had a cardiac catheter complication resulting in either bleeding or a small cerebral vascular incident, or both.”U.S. officials said they could not immediately verify the report."No one on this end has heard this," said a U.S. official from Kabul. "It doesn't mean it's not true -- we just have no information to confirm or dispute these facts."A spokesman at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.The report said Omar was “rushed” to the hospital on Jan. 7 by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “The ISI rushed him to a hospital in Karachi, where he was given heparin [an anticoagulant] and operated on,” the Eclipse report said. “After 3-4 days of post-operative care in the hospital, he was released to the ISI and ordered to take absolute bed rest when at home for at least several days.”The physician who was the source for the report said that, “After the operation, there seemed to be some brain damage with Mullah Omar having slurred speech.”“His post hospital course is consistent with this type of outcome,” the physician added. “Three-four days in hospital is consistent with cardiac catheterization and or cardiac stent placement. Bed rest and aphasia [difficulty speaking] post-catheterization could be from a bleeding complication.” Citing a separate source in the Quetta shura, the Taliban governing council on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, the Eclipse report said “Mullah Omar is continuing to improve and his speech is clearing.” It also said the ISI was keeping the Quetta shura “informed” about Omar’s recovery at “an ISI ‘guest house’ in Karachi under ISI guard.”Hmmmm.....Next they're going to say he's covered by the Obamacare program?Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different!Monk arrested after trying to board flight with bones of missing nun in his luggage.A Cypriot monk caught at a Greek airport with the skeletal remains of a nun in his baggage told authorities he was taking the relics of a saint back to his monastery. The monk, 42, was detained with two accomplices at Athens airport on Monday after a skull and bones were discovered wrapped in a sheet during a security check.While the monk claimed the remains were those of a saint, police said the skeletal remnants actually belonged to a woman who died four years ago.She was not a saint in the Greek or Cypriot Orthodox Churches, but had once been a nun at a Cypriot convent, police said.It is believed the three men dug up the nun's remains following a memorial service at an Athens cemetery.The Cyprus Mail said a 42-year-old Cypriot monk, a 54-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at Athens International Airport as they tried to board a flight to Cyprus with the remains in a suitcase.The newspaper quoted police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos as saying the trio 'claim they took the remains of the woman, whom they consider a saint, to bury them in Cyprus'. Revering the skeletal remains of saints is common in the Greek Orthodox tradition.‘It appears to be the work of charlatans with a financial interest - that is what I suspect,’ Cyprus's Archbishop Chrysostomos told journalists when asked about the monk's tale.Archbishop Chrysostomos, the leader of Cyprus’ Orthodox Christian church, condemned the theft as a sacrilege.The monk, and the two people with him, were freed on bail after being charged with theft and desecrating the dead, a misdemeanour in Greece.The monk was also suspended from his monastic duties at the Kykkos Monastery for three months for going away without leave, Cypriot police said.Hmmmm......Awol....and in female company?Read the full story here.