MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Turkey's hopes run high for Hungary's EU term presidency.Turkish officials have expressed optimism about moving ahead with the country’s EU accession negotiations during the Hungarian term presidency despite a lack of progress under previous EU president Belgium.“Hungary has already taken its first step to support Turkey’s EU membership,” State Minister Egemen Bağış, Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, told daily Sabah on Sunday. “It will organize a ministerial summit for the candidate countries Jan. 13 in Hungary. Candidate countries, including Turkey, will come together for the first time since 2005.When asked about his expectations from the Hungarian term presidency, Bağış recalled a meeting he held last year with Hungarian President Pal Schmitt. “He told me: ‘Normally I do not meet with ministers. You are the first one in this category. There is a reason for this,’” Bağış said. “‘Your ancestors who ruled our country in the past did not intervene in either our religion or our language. They approached us with tolerance.’”According to Bağış, the Hungarian president promised to back Turkey’s EU bid just as Turkey supported Hungary’s NATO membership.Hmmmm.....Meanwhile some of the EU doubts if Hungary is even qualified to lead the EU.The European Union’s charter calls for respect for the rule of law, human rights, economic progress and media freedom. Some in Brussels are wondering whether Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country takes over the rotating EU presidency on Jan. 1, has read it. I guess the choice of your friends says a lot about one?Read the full story here.

• HT:AINA.Egyptian Security Guards Withdrew One Hour Before Church Blast, Say Eyewitnesses.The car explosion that went off in front of Saints Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria killed 21 and injured 96 parishioners who were attending a New Year's Eve Mass. According to church officials and eyewitnesses, there are many more victims that are still unidentified and whose body parts were strewn all over the street outside the church. The body parts were covered with newspapers until they were brought inside the church after some Muslims started stepping on them and chanting Jihadi chants (video showing dead bodies and limbs covered with newspapers in the street).According to eyewitnesses, a green Skoda car pull up outside the church shortly after midnight. Two men got out , one of them talked shortly on his mobile phone, and the explosion occurred almost immediately after they left the scene. On the back of the Skoda was a sticker with the words "the rest is coming" (video of car explosion and Muslims shouting "Allah Akbar").It was reported that the bomb, locally made, had 100KG of explosives in addition to having nails, glass and iron balls inside. The strength of it not only caused glass panes to be shattered in all the neighborhood, but also made body parts fly into the building's fourth floor, and to the mosque facing the church.There was no immediate claim of responsibility but officials hastily blamed either Al-Qaida or the Israeli Mousad of being behind the blast, but none of them mentioned the Egyptian state security which is viewed by Copts as the real culprit."Security should know that those who demonstrated are the hand of Al-Qaida in Egypt," said Hany el-Gezeiry, head of Copts4Egypt. "They should have arrested them to investigate who was behind them. They want to destroy Egypt from inside and the government kept quiet, giving them a free hand to do what they wanted. I believe Al-Qaida achieved what it wanted."El-Gezeiry asks why this Skoda vehicle was allowed to park in front of the church in an area cordoned off by security, when it was known that Al-Qaeda had already announced its intention of carrying out criminal acts against churches.Eyewitnesses confirmed that security forces guarding the church withdrew nearly one hour before the blast, leaving only four policemen and an officer to guard such a big church and nearly 2000 people attending the midnight mass. "Normally they would have waited until the mass was over," said el-Gezeiry. He also commented on the Muslim's schadenfreude at the massacre at the church, who were heard chanting "Allah Akbar."Nakhla said that he was preparing a complaint to be presented to President Mubarak asking for the resignation of Interior Minister Habib el Adly for failing in his duty of protecting the Copts, and for not telling the truth by saying that it was a suicide attack by one individual, when everyone could see the detonated car, just to clear his security personnel of the responsibility of letting the Skoda park in front of the church. "This 100KG bomb could not have been transported by one individual as the Interior Minister wants us to believe.""Is this a victory?" He asks. "Whoever saw this fire and people dying and body parts all over the place and could still chant 'Allah Akbar' is a terrorist.."On January 1, the funeral of the 21 people killed in the church massacre took place at St. Mina's Monastery in King Mariout, 50 km from Alexandria. It was attended by representatives of the President, Minsters, the governor of Alexandria, as well as nearly 10,000 Copts who traveled from Alexandria. After the funeral, the Copts, angry with the governor of Alexandria, shouted "resign" and "we do not want you.""Anyone who says that it was a foreign or Israeli plot is trying to play down the crime and is trying to clear those murderers of this massacre, and I consider them their accomplices," said Nakhla.Hmmmm.....He makes a very good case about the attack.Read the full story here.

• Healthcare repeal bill coming before Obama's annual address.The incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Sunday that Republicans will bring up a healthcare repeal measure before President Obama even delivers his annual address to Congress this month."As part of our pledge, we said that we would bring up a vote to repeal healthcare early," Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said on "Fox News Sunday." "That will happen before the president's State of the Union address.""We have 242 Republicans," he said. "There will be a significant number of Democrats, I think, that will join us. You will remember when that vote passed in the House last March, it only passed by seven votes."Upton said that leaders are counting on Democrats who voted against the massive healthcare reform package to do so again, along with greater GOP numbers and polling showing unpopularity of the bill among as many as 60 percent of Americans."I don't think we're going to be that far off from having the votes to actually override a veto," he said.Hmmmm....Oh what a beautiful day it will be!Read the full story here.

• Issa says Obama administration is 'one of most corrupt'administrations ever.The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was bullish in laying out his agenda for the new Congress under GOP control of the House. Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he would seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he would focus on wasteful spending over political persecutions.Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about reports that the White House is staffing up on lawyers to prepare for his oversight hearings, Issa said: "They're going to need more accountants.""It's more of an accounting function than legal function," Issa said. "It's more about the inspector generals than it is about lawyers in the White House. And the sooner the administration figures out that the enemy is the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending, not the other party, the better off we'll be." "I think [Holder] needs to realize that, for example, WikiLeaks, if the president says, 'I can't deal with this guy as a terrorist,' then he has to be able to deal with him as a criminal," Issa said on "Fox News Sunday." "Otherwise, the world is laughing at this paper tiger we've become. "He's hurting this administration," Issa said of Holder. "If you're hurting the administration, either stop hurting the administration or leave."Issa said he plans to lead bipartisan investigations on food and drug safety, as well as Medicare fraud."I couldn't help but think about the fact he has called this president the most corrupt in history," Cummings said.Hmmmm....Go get them Tiger!Read the full story here.

• 'Nostradamus' of Middle East predicts unprecedented crisis for Obama in 2011.The Middle East's answer to Nostradamus said that President Obama will be confronted with situations "never faced by previous presidents" in 2011.Michel Hayek, who delivered his predictions live on New Year's Eve from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International channel for the 26th year, drew millions of viewers throughout the Arab world. For his region, he predicted "there will be an assassination that will be hailed as the crime of the century, but the world will recover" and a "major disturbance or shake up in the waters at the Strait of Hormuz."Along with Obama unprecedented difficulties, Hayek predicted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be "caught on camera broken and devastated."In a tip to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, he predicted U.S. airports will also be targeted again by terrorists "due to unknown weak points." And he also predicted that Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates will jump into politics in 2011.Hmmmm....Hindu astrologers predict that somewhere between March 25Th and 05 May an event will influence the whole world.So now you have an approximate date of the events?Read the full story here.HT:HIDF.

• HT:AhmadiyyaTimes.Exploding misconceptions: Alleviating poverty may not reduce terrorism but could make it less effective.“EXTREMELY poor societies…provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism and conflict.” So said Barack Obama, arguing in favour of more development aid to poor countries. Mr Obama is not alone in regarding economic development as a weapon against terrorism. Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, has called development “an integral part of America’s national security policy”. The idea that poverty could be associated with terrorism is not implausible. If acts of terror are committed by people with little to lose, then it is reasonable to expect them to be carried out disproportionately by poor, ill-educated people with dismal economic prospects.Some terrorists certainly fit this profile. Yet the ranks of high-profile terrorism suspects also boast plenty of middle-class, well-educated people. The would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shehzad, boasts an MBA and is the son of a senior Pakistani air-force officer.Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who stands accused of lighting a makeshift bomb on a transatlantic flight in the so-called “underwear plot”, had a degree from University College, London, and is the son of a rich Nigerian banker. The suspected suicide-bomber in this week’s attacks in Stockholm had a degree from a British university. Are well-heeled terrorists representative or are they exceptions to the rule?Social scientists have collected a large amount of data on the socioeconomic background of terrorists. According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation compared the characteristics of suicide-bombers recruited by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and Gaza with those of the general adult male Palestinian population. Nearly 60% of suicide-bombers had more than a high-school education, compared with less than 15% of the general population. They were less than half as likely to come from an impoverished family as an average adult man from the general population. Mr Krueger carried out a similar exercise in Lebanon by collecting biographical information for Hizbullah militants. They too proved to be better educated and less likely to be from poor families than the general population of the Shia-dominated southern areas of Lebanon from which most came.The finding that more educated terrorists are deadlier may mean, however, that economic conditions can influence terrorism’s effectiveness. Using data on all Palestinian suicide-attackers between 2000 and 2006, Esteban Klor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Messrs Benmelech and Berrebi show in a new paper that the skill level of the average terrorist rises when economic conditions are poor. They reckon that high unemployment enables terror organisations in Palestine to recruit more educated, mature terrorists. So better economic conditions could blunt the effectiveness of terror attacks by reducing the average quality of the talent that terrorist organisations are able to recruit.Hmmmm....So much for the Obama "Wisdom" on Terrorisme.Read the full story here.

• HT:IMRA.Obama team launches regime change project on pages of Haaretz? U.S. furious at Barak for exaggerating his role in peace process.The U.S. administration is furious with Defense Minister Ehud Barak over the stalled peace talks, sources have told Haaretz. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama's senior advisers say that for more than a year and a half Barak misled them about his persuasive powers with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the peace process.The Americans will continue working with Barak on security issues, but he will no longer receive special treatment.A senior Israeli official, who requested anonymity, told Haaretz about his recent hour-long meeting with a senior U.S. official who detailed the reasons Clinton and the White House are so disappointed with Barak.The accusations were confirmed over the past few days by four other sources close to the situation, all of whom requested anonymity.The Israeli official said his U.S. interlocutor stressed that the infuriation with Barak reached as high as Obama and Clinton.This came after Barak reached an understanding with Washington over extending the settlement construction freeze by three months in exchange for a written pledge of diplomatic and military guarantees in September.Barak promised that Netanyahu would approve the deal, but did not deliver the goods."We put all our money on him a year and a half ago," the Israeli official quoted his U.S. colleague as saying. "The entire administration bet on Barak because he said he could nudge Netanyahu toward an agreement with the Palestinians, but he deceived us and led us down the garden path."According to the U.S. official, as soon as Netanyahu formed his government, the White House decided to open all its doors to Barak, and Obama took the unusual step of meeting with him there."He charmed us with his intelligent analyses; the president listened to Barak like a student with his teacher and trusted him, but he didn't meet any of his promises over the peace process and the building freeze," the official told the Israeli.The latter said he left the meeting "in shock .... I almost burst into tears." Barak's last visit to Washington, two weeks ago, was depicted as the watershed in Barak-Washington ties. The brevity of Clinton's meeting with him at the Saban Forum last month - 15 minutes - was intended to signal Barak's loss in status.The U.S. official said Barak's disappointing behavior evoked a sense of deja vu in Washington, especially at the State Department, recalling his failures as prime minister in the peace talks at Shepherdstown and Camp David.Barak's office said in a statement on Saturday that he maintains continuous ties at the top of the U.S. administration, detailing Barak's meetings with Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates."We lost our hope in this coalition," the U.S. official told the Israeli. "We simply have no more expectations."Hmmmm......On the other hand a lot of Americans have lost faith in this administration.Read the full story here.

• CNN Arabic readers choose Turkish PM as 'Man of Year'.Turkey's prime minister has been named "Man of the Year" by readers of CNN Arabic's website.According to the Dubai-based, Arabic-language news portal, 74 percent of readers voted for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, carrying him to the top position in the ranking.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad followed Erdoğan on the list, getting 20 percent of the vote.The CNN Arabic website said Erdoğan had been given the "Man of the Year" title thanks to his recent success in diplomacy.Hmmmm......"The Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers." will be more likely the reason.Read the full Ottoman Empire revival story here.

• HT:JawaReport.Pallywood Lives!A Palestinian woman dies under questionable circumstances and, of course, the Joos are the blame...The Israeli military said Sunday it was investigating the death of a Palestinian woman overcome by tear gas fired by soldiers at a West Bank protest. ...Contradictory accounts were given of the circumstances surrounding the death Saturday of the 36-year-old protester, Jawaher Abu Rahmeh, a day after she inhaled the gas at the weekly demonstration against Israel's West Bank separation barrier in the village of Bilin.Tear gas is meant to be a non-lethal crowd control method and is used routinely by Israeli troops at protests. But doctors say the gas can kill on rare occasions if a victim has a pre-existing condition.Mohammed Abu Rahmeh, a relative of the woman, said she had suffered from asthma since she was a child. Rateb Abu Rahmeh, a doctor and a spokesman for the Bilin protesters, said she had a "weak immune system." Her parents said she was healthy and did not have asthma.Dr. Mohammed Eideh, who treated Abu Rahmeh in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, said she died of "respiratory failure and then cardiac arrest" caused by tear-gas inhalation. He said he did not know if she had a pre-existing condition.Did this woman die from the tear gas? It's possible. People do inadvertently die from non-lethal means of defense. Or was her 'respiratory failure' due to a more nefarious act?Hmmm....According to unknown source"The dead woman was pregnant. She died at home hours after leaving the hospital ! She was stabbed in the back.Bleeding to death from the Bertrofritonaum ! Ruptured renal artery of left kidney.No gas or shit! Apparently "family honor" killing.Read the full story here.

• HT:IDFSpokesperson.Photos Document Violence During Bilin Riot This Weekend.Contrary to Palestinian claims that yesterday’s riot in Bil’in was non-violent, the following photographs taken by security forces prove that it was in fact a violent riot similar to the other riots that occurred this weekend.Approximately 250 rioters had gathered in Bil’in, hurling rocks at security forces, who responded with riot dispersal means. The village area was declared a closed military zone in order to prevent the violent riot from escalating and the entry and exit of the village for residents continued as usual.Similar violent riots occurred this weekend in Dir Nizam, Ni’lin, Beit Ummar, Budrus, and Arak Burin in which rioters hurled rocks at security forces, and in Umm Salamuna where rioters attempted to block a main road. An IDF soldier was lightly wounded from a rock that was hurled at his face during the Ni’lin riot.Read and see the full story here.

• HT:HIDF.Forcibly conversion of Meghwal Hindu family in Chachro district Pakistan.This family was induced and pressurized for conversion otherwise they will lose their lives. The family converted forcibly by Mufti Adam Samejo who is the Muhtmam of Madrasa Chhachro. This is clarified that except two the remaining family members are minor age and they don’t know about the Islam. In Tharparker the majority is of the non-muslims and the Taliban’s are actively playing role of inducement.The Muhtamam and other influential are giving them to meet with their relatives. They kept this family in room of madrasa.Read and see the full story here.

• And now for something completely different!More than 1,000 dead birds fall from sky.It was raining birds over an Arkansas town.The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said the he birds showed physical trauma, and she speculated that "the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail."The commission said that New Year's Eve revelers shooting off fireworks in the area could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress.Robby King, a wildlife officer for the agency, collected about 65 dead birds, which will be sent for testing to the state Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and the National Wildlife Health Center lab in Madison, Wis.Rowe said that similar events have occurred elsewhere and that test results "usually were inconclusive." She said she doubted the birds were poisoned.Hmmmm...."The Truth is Out There"?Read the full story here.