MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Indonesia 5.7! More info here.

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• Sarah Palin Hits Another Bullseye: If Tea Partiers Were Terrorists, Obama Would Pal Around With Them.(BigGovernment).It is a time-honored tactic of radicals to accuse their enemies of what they do in order to convert a negative into a positive, as the master of political agitation Saul Alinsky taught.This explains the Left’s newfound interest in the lie that the Tea Party is comprised of “terrorists.”Unless you think petitioning the government for lower spending is somehow akin to flying airplanes into buildings, you’ve got to agree with Sarah Palin, whose recent salvos on the topic are dead-on.As President Obama and his merry band of Marxists continue driving America off a cliff, Palin (and columnist Charles Krauthammer) have been pushing back hard against the liberal talking point that Tea Party supporters are terrorists.Her comments came after Vice President Joe Biden, Congressman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), and their socialist buddies at MSNBC recently breathed new life into the “terrorist” smear. Because President Obama, who himself has ties to real, live terrorists, has not upbraided the vice president, we can safely assume he agrees with Biden. Said Palin on Fox News Channel:

Well, the president’s speech in Arizona as he asked folks to start ratcheting down the rhetoric was all talk. He wasn’t sincere in that. And that’s typical Barack Obama, unfortunately. That is typical of our president where it’s blah, blah, blah. You know, it’s all talk and no real action. Otherwise, he’d be on Biden and tell Biden to tone it down a little bit. Yeah, right. Independent patriotic Americans who desire fiscal sanity in our beloved nation being called terrorists, heck, Sean, if we were real domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn’t he? I mean, he didn’t have a problem palling around with a Bill Ayers back in the day when he kicked off his political career in Bill Ayers’ apartment and then, you know, shaking hands with [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez and saying, he doesn’t need any preconditions with meeting dictators or wanting to read U.S. Miranda rights to alleged suspected foreign terrorists. No, if we were all domestic terrorists, I think President Obama wouldn’t have a problem with us.Of course Palin, who has bigger cojones than most Republicans in Congress, is right.It’s time for a quick refresher course on all the terrorists and terrorism supporters President Obama is buddies with.As reported in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, Obama worked for ACORN, which until recently was America’s largest urban terrorist group. ACORN, along with its thug allies in SEIU who beat up opponents at town hall meetings, routinely uses violence, physical intimidation, and extortion in its long-running war against American businesses. Obama had such a mastery of agitation he taught Saul Alinsky’s subversion techniques at the University of Chicago.Obama’s political career was launched at a fundraiser held in the Chicago home of unrepentant Weather Underground bombers Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers, who to the present day refuses to renounce the use of violence to achieve political objectives, participated in a plot to bomb a military dance that would have killed hundreds of people if it had succeeded.As I note in Subversion Inc., informant Larry Grathwohl witnessed Weather Underground leaders planning to slaughter the one-tenth of the U.S. population they expected would turn out to be “diehard capitalists” incapable of reeducation. These are the kind of people the president of the United States calls friends.Obama and Ayers also sat together on the boards of the Woods Fund of Chicago and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where they funneled money to ACORN and other anti-American groups.Obama belonged to the church of Jeremiah Wright whose fiery anti-American sermons make even liberals wince. Wright blamed America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and accused the U.S. government of inventing the HIV virus “as a means of genocide against people of color.” And under Wright’s leadership, his church’s newsletter reprinted a terrorist political manifesto by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook.Obama accepted as a fundraising “bundler” Jodie Evans, a co-founder of Code Pink, a radical group that specializes in attacking wounded U.S. soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and makes no effort to conceal its ties to America-hating terrorists worldwide. Code Pink is also working with the Muslim Brotherhood which it hopes will succeed into transforming Egypt into an Islamofascist dictatorship.Obama welcomed Cornel West, an African-American studies professor at Princeton University, to his campaign team in 2008. West denounces his native land as racist and patriarchal. He has described himself as a “progressive socialist,” and has written that “Marxist thought is an indispensable tradition for freedom fighters.” He visited Venezuela in 2006 and praised the brutal government of leftist strongman Hugo Chavez.Obama also welcomed Robert Malley as a foreign policy advisor on his campaign staff. Malley was forced out after it was revealed that he had been meeting with the terrorist group Hamas, which has called for attacks on the United States.Obama was a friend and frequent dinner companion of Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American and former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) spokesman. Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama’s ill-fated congressional bid in 2000.All these terrorists and pro-terrorism activists have ties to President Obama and yet the Left and the media insist Tea Party supporters are the real terrorists.

America needs to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.Hmmmm.......Obama Gives New Grant to ACORN Violating Federal Law?Read the full story here.

• Goldman Sachs Drops A Bomb On Team Obama: Lowers GDP Growth To A Scant 2% To 2.5%, Ups Unemployment Rate Forecast To 9.25%.(Reuters) — After looking at today’s anemic unemployment report, Goldman Sachs drops this H-bomb on the Obama campaign:We have lowered our forecast for US real GDP growth further and now expect real GDP to grow just 2%-2½% through the end of 2012. Our forecast for annual average GDP growth has fallen to 1.7% in 2011 (from 1.8%) and to 2.1% in 2012 (from 3.0%). Since this pace is slightly below the US economy’s potential, we now expect the unemployment rate to be at 9¼% by the end of 2012, slightly above the current level.

2. Even our new forecast is subject to meaningful downside risk. We now see a one-in-three risk of renewed recession, mostly concentrated in the next 6-9 months. There are three specific issues that concern us. First, a worsening of the European financial crisis, and a failure of European policymakers to respond adequately, could lead to a further tightening of financial conditions and credit availability, which would worsen the economic outlook globally. Second, our forecast assumes that the payroll tax cut—currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2011—is extended for another year, but if that failed to happen the fiscal drag in early 2012 would increase significantly. Third, increases in the US unemployment rate have historically had a tendency to feed on themselves, and this could happen again.Read the full story here.

• Food stamp use rises to record 45.8 million.NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in May, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.The number of Americans using the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- more commonly referred to as food stamps -- shot to an all-time high of 45.8 million in May, the USDA reported. That's up 12% from a year ago, and 34% higher than two years ago.The program provides monthly benefits to low-income individuals and families, which they can use at stores that accept SNAP benefits.To qualify for food stamps, an individual's income can't exceed $1,174 a month or $14,088 a year -- an amount that is 130% of the national poverty level. The average food stamp benefit was $133.80 per person and $283.65 per household in May. The highest concentration of food stamp users were in California, Florida, New York and Texas -- where more than 3 million residents in each state received food stamps in May. Hmmmmm........"CHANGE"?Read the full story here.

• House Panel Approves Resolution Calling On Turkey To Return Christian Churches Confiscated During Ottoman Empire.(CNS News) – The House Foreign Affairs Committee recently voted 43 to one in support of a resolution that calls upon the Republic of Turkey “to safeguard its Christian heritage and to return confiscated church properties” – a step the Turkish Embassy described as “deeply regrettable.”The resolution (H.Res. 306), introduced by Reps. Edward Royce (R-Calif.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), cites the “Ottoman Empire’s oppression and intentional destruction of much of its ancient Christian populations, including over 2,000,000 Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Pontians, and Syrics,” and adds that Turkey “has been responsible for the destruction and theft of much of the Christian heritage within its borders.”The Ottoman Empire, from 1300 to 1922, was an Islamic-governed empire that covered much of southeastern Europe and parts of North Africa and the Middle East. In 1923, with the empire’s official dissolution, Turkey became one of its successor states.Aram Hamparian, director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told CNSNews.com that Turkey’s human rights violations “are far-reaching and widespread, having been extensively documented by the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many others.”He added, “The Turkish Government must sincerely accept responsibility for the genocidal crimes that led to the confiscation of these churches, and then work – in partnership with Christian churches, minority communities, and key stakeholders in the international community -- to restore their rightful ownership.”Hamparian noted that there were over 1,460 Armenian Christian church properties functioning prior to the Armenian Genocide in 1915 that have since been confiscated or destroyed, which would need to be returned to the Armenian Church. Additionally, he said there are church properties that would need to be returned to the Greek and Aramean (Syriac) churches.Hamparian added, “To our knowledge, the Obama administration has not weighed in on this resolution.”CNSNews.com contacted the White House press office several times for comment on this issue but did not receive any response before this story was posted. The Embassy of Turkey also did not comment before this story was posted.Hmmmm.......Obama wont upset his 'buddy' Erdogan.Read the full story here.

• Blame the Washington Bureaucracy for High Gas Prices.(Heritage).Americans are paying more for gasoline today than they were six weeks ago when President Obama released 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, 10 drilling rigs — more than one-third of the fleet — have left on Obama’s watch.This incomprehensible energy policy is not only costing Americans more money at the pump. Bureaucratic delays in Washington are also stunting job growth and adding to the budget deficit.As the Obama Administration pivots to a new jobs agenda — at least its seventh attempt to do so — it would be wise to review the policies that are slowing energy production. Thirty-four years to the day President Jimmy Carter created the Energy Department, it’s time for America to embrace a pro-energy agenda that boosts the economy, increases federal revenue and creates jobs.The most glaring example of Obama’s mismanagement is the decision to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on June 23. Heritage experts James Jay Carafano and Nick Loris outlined the limited circumstances under which the White House could release oil. None of these conditions were met in June, and the Administration itself backpedaled when questioned about the timing.And what did it accomplish? Aside from diminishing a vital national security asset, it didn’t reduce the price of gas. Americans were paying an average of $3.61 for regular unleaded on June 23, according to AAA. Today the average is $3.70.Six weeks later, it’s increasingly apparent that Obama took the action to bolster his dismal poll numbers, hurt by the sluggish economy and rising gas prices.If the President was serious about bringing down the cost of gas, he would instruct his Administration to reduce the bureaucratic red tape on energy projects in the Gulf of Mexico. A new report from Greater New Orleans Inc. revealed that the issuance of drilling permits is down 71 percent compared to the monthly average over the past three years.The decline isn’t for a lack of interest from energy producers. Two weeks ago the respected IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and IHS Global Insight revealed the potential for production if government simply approved the drilling permits.That additional oil would ease the pain on consumers’ wallets and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil — a matter that’s even more pressing in light of OPEC’s new leader, Rostam Qasemi, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander under U.S. and European Union sanctions.Then there’s the impact on federal, state and local governments. At a time when many are facing budget deficits, the money generated from royalty payments and taxes would add an extra $12 billion in revenue next year.The biggest upside might be the number of jobs created from the additional production. Those jobs aren’t just in Louisiana and Texas, either. They’re spread out across America, according the study. A total of nearly 230,000 new jobs — an amount that exceeds the size of General Motors — is forecast for 2012 if the pace of offshore energy development and permitting increases.As things currently stand, however, those jobs are a figment of Obama’s imagination. Worse still is the news that the Department of the Interior might let hundreds of Gulf of Mexico drilling leases expire, costing jobs and further decreasing production.“In 2011 alone, more than 300 offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico are due to expire,” Senator David Vitter (R-LA) announced yesterday. “If these leases are allowed to expire, they will revert to the federal government, killing jobs and cutting off potential revenue from exploration and production.”Vitter is vowing to block the nomination of Rebecca Wodder to serve as an Assistant Secretary in the Interior Department unless the Administration issues a blanket extension of the leases due to expire this year. The Administration would prefer to make a case-by-case decision on the leases–an unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle, according to Vitter.How will it end? By threatening to delay another Administration nominee, Vitter was able to speed the approval of drilling plans. He also blocked a nearly $20,000 pay raise for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. More must be done.The long-term implications are devastating otherwise. New exploration, which impacts oil supply in seven to 10 years, isn’t happening at a pace to keep up with demand.Americans, meanwhile, bear the brunt of the Obama Administration’s misguided decisions.Hmmmm.......Protect the leader at any cost?Read the full story here.

• Transgender training for TSA staff after agent 'fired for using women's toilet' wins payout.(Dailymail).A transgender TSA agent fired from her job at an airport for using the women’s toilet has received a five-figure pay-out from the agency.Ashley Yang was fired from her job at Los Angeles International Airport after allegedly being ordered to dress like a man and pat down men.She had informed human resources that a background check would reveal she was born male and had not undergone sex reassignment surgery.'I feel female - I don't think anyone considers me male,’ Ms Yang told In The Life.‘The hormones have given me a very female kind of look. It was obvious people perceived me as female because that's who I am.’Ms Yang has received back pay in addition to a five-figure award for pain and suffering as part of a civil rights settlement.'They told me the only way to work at checkpoints for females was I had to go through a complete transition,’ she told In The Life. ‘I'm like: "How do you define a complete transition"?'In addition to compensation, her settlement requires TSA managers based at the California airport to have transgender sensitivity training.A TSA spokesman said he cannot discuss details of her case because of privacy rules, but the manager training started this summer.Ms Yang says she now wants to use her story and lawsuit as a 'leverage' to help other transgender people in the future.Mara Keisling, of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told In The Life that the employment situation for many trans people is 'catastrophic'.‘We have an unemployment rate that's twice the national average. ‘When there's a recession and there are lay-offs the people who are most marginalised already in the workplace are the ones most likely to face additional scrutiny.'Hmmmm........TSA.....Transgender Secretive Anonymous?Read the full story here.

• Bloodbath in Berlin as morning 'DIShonour killing sees jilted lover shoot mother and sister of ex-wife dead’.(DailyMail).A horrific scene unfolded in Berlin in broad daylight yesterday morning when a gunman fired a volley of shots into a car, killing two women and seriously injuring the man driving it.The execution-style massacre was carried out in the busy Wedding district of the city and was witnessed by horrified shoppers and commuters.Media reports suggest it may have been a so-called ‘Dishonour killing’, as the car apparently contained the 24-year-old ex-wife of the gunman, who survived the ordeal.The driver, despite being shot in the head and shoulder, also survived, but the woman’s mother, 45, and younger sister, 22, who were both sitting in the back seat with her, died.Police identified the alleged gunman as a 26-year-old Turk called Mehmet Y, who fled the scene. It’s believed he was married to the 24-year-old woman passenger for four months.A police spokesman told German newspaper Bild: ‘He fired at least seven, probably more, bullets.’The front passenger seat was occupied by a man who was unscathed by the attack, but the 24-year-old woman received hospital treatment for serious shock.The cold brutally of the shooting – and the fact that it took place in a busy area in daylight – has stunned Germany’s capital.A local who witnessed the gruesome aftermath told German news site thelocal.de: ‘I am stunned and shocked. The perpetrator simply ran away.’Wedding is a district that’s popular with Berlin’s Turkish community, which one neighbour described as ‘socially difficult’.Police are hunting the killer, who they warn could still be armed.Berlin suffered a spate of honour killings in 2005, when six Muslim women in the city were killed in the space of four months.Hmmmm.......Perhaps the Chairman of the OIC should focus more on the DIShonor murders committed by Turks?Read the full story here.

• Somali soldiers kill 7 amid food aid looting chaos.(TheStar).Somali government troops opened fire during a looting rampage at a World Food Program food distribution program in Mogadishu on Friday, killing at least seven famine refugees, witnesses said.Witnesses said that government soldiers triggered the chaos by trying to steal some of the food aid. Then refugees joined in, prompting some soldiers to open fire, the witnesses said.“It was carnage. They ruthlessly shot everyone,” said Abdi Awale Nor, a refugee at Mogadishu’s largest camp for those fleeing the famine, “Even dead bodies were left on the ground and other wounded bled to death.”Another refugee, Muse Sheik Ali, said soldiers first tried to steal some of the food aid, and other refugees began to take the food.“Then soldiers opened fire at them, and seven people, including elderly people, were killed on the spot. Then soldiers took the food and people fled from the camp,” he said.The country’s president and prime minister arrived at the camp later and planned to speak to journalists.The deadly chaos in the course of trying to feed the thousands of hungry refugees who have fled to Mogadishu from Somalia’s famine-struck south underscores the huge challenges international groups have in distributing food inside Somalia.Witnesses said two World Food Program trucks were delivering aid when the chaos broke out. WFP often tries to do what it calls “wet feedings,” in Somalia — giving out already made food like porridge — to limit the chances that it will be looted.More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid. The U.N. says 640,000 children in Somalia alone are acutely malnourished. The U.N. has declared five famine zones in Somalia, including the refugee camps of Mogadishu.“They fired on us as if we were their enemy,” said Abidyo Geddi, another refugee. “When people started to take the food then the gunfire started and everyone was being shot. We cannot stay here much longer. We don’t get much food and the rare food they bring causes death and torture.”Delivering aid inside Somalia — where the militant group Al-Shabab controls much of the south — is a huge challenge. Private militias — most of them politically connected — are competing to guard or even steal food as aid. There are at least four competing militias in government-controlled areas of Mogadishu.The gunmen roar around in pickup trucks and wage battle over the wages they can be paid to either guard the aid or the cash it will bring when it is stolen and sold. The insecurity amid famine echoes the situation in 1992 that prompted deployment of a U.S.-led multinational force to safeguard the delivery of food to Somalia’s starving.That international intervention collapsed in 1993 after two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and militias hired to protect the aid operations ended up looting vast amounts of food.Hmmmm.......Sounds different than a $ 38.500 a plate birthday dinner no?Read the full story here.

• Somalia's Islamists appear divided on blocking famine aid.(MSN).NAIROBI, Kenya — International aid desperately needed by starving Somalis is ready to be shipped, but leaders of an Islamist insurgency blocking its delivery show few signs of lifting their ban, aid workers and diplomats said. The deadlock continued even as Washington on Tuesday night softened its line on aid for Islamist-held territory in Somalia. Agencies who take food to these areas no longer risk prosecution if any US-funded supplies fall into the militants’ hands, as was previously demanded by strict anti-terror laws at the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.Planeloads of food have already been sent to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where sections controlled by the globally recognized government are seeing handouts to the most affected people. But great swathes of the rest of southern Somalia remain off limits to the main agencies, including the UN’s World Food Programme.The problem is that Al Shabab, Somalia’s Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist group, has repeatedly denied that there is a famine in their territory, and refuses help from what they have termed “Christian organizations” with “hidden agendas.” Al Shabab’s spokesman was not immediately available for comment. But diplomats and aid workers in Nairobi privately say that its leadership, gathered around a global jihadist agenda, was still “strictly against” aid from groups it has already banned. At the same time, the sources said, there was a “very active and contested debate” going on within moderates in the organization as to whether the blanket opposition to aid should be removed.Already UNICEF, the UN’s children’s agency, has landed an aid airplane at a Shabab-controlled airfield in the southern Somali city Baidoa – the first time it had approval to do so in two years. Its officials on the ground had made quiet approaches to local Shabab commanders to clear the flight. Those commanders lie on the Islamists’ moderate wing, made up of “pragmatists” with a more local agenda aimed simply at ousting the government in Mogadishu, rather than carrying out calls for global jihad. Other agencies still trying to take food and supplies into Somalia were said to be testing approaches to other “pragmatists” within Al Shabab, an analyst said on Wednesday. “I think the momentum is now with the people [in Al Shabab] who are saying let the aid agencies come in because of the gravity of the situation,” says Rashid Abdi, Horn of Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group. “The clan elders are also putting on a lot of pressure, saying we cannot let our people die, if you continue on this crazy path we will rise up against you.” Approving deliveries is now very clearly a life or death decision, with senior aid officials warning that famine is “likely” to expand beyond the two Somali regions where it has already been declared.Hmmmm.......Ramadan is also a time of intensive worship, reading of the Qur'an, giving charity, purifying one's behavior, and doing good deeds. Read the full story here.

• "Tirez les premiers messieurs les Taliban"?Taliban Statement: Most Islamic Battles, Like the Conquest of Spain, were Fought During Ramadan.(Memri).A statement issued by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban's shadow government) has stressed that most Islamic battles were waged during the holy month of Ramadan, and that the Taliban "are accelerating their jihadi activities."The Taliban statement added, "The mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate that are holding their position on the frontline of jihad against infidels have made a strong commitment that they will celebrate this month of affection and devotion with their tireless jihadi efforts." The month of Ramadan began yesterday.Hmmmmmm......I think that answers the US command their illusions questions about Ramadan ceasefires?Read the full story here.

• How to Fight a Blood Libel.(SultanKnish).It's a long way from Arizona to Oslo to Tel Aviv, but all three places have been the sites of major blood libels against the right. And a reminder of what to do in these situations.2011 has seen the launch of two major blood libels aimed at the American and European right. The Breivik shootings and the Giffords bullseye. In both cases, the left tried to politicize an unstable man's shooting spree to silence and intimidate the political opposition. But my own experience goes back to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. A blood libel on an epic scale. There are common lessons to be drawn from all these events.Each event played out in three phases. Shock media coverage that splattered the full details everywhere, followed by calls for the right to accept moral responsibility for the killer's actions. In the final phase, the right atones by practicing self-censorship so that, "nothing like this can ever happen again."But let's follow a different path instead. A guide to how to handle these situations.Read the full story here.

• Toronto - Another honour killing in our midst and the silence is deafening.(TorontoSun).Shaher Bano Shahdady was just 21, a young mother who wanted to live her Canadian life as a free Canadian woman. And for that, she was strangled to death in front of her toddler.From the Baloch region of Pakistan, she came to Toronto as a little girl. At 14, her father, Mullah Abdul Ghafoor, sent her back to Pakistan to study at a religious fundamentalist madrassa and a few years later she was forced into an arranged marriage with her first cousin.But her precious son was her ticket back home.Complications in her pregnancy allowed her to return to Toronto. Her baby was born with a serious heart defect that eventually required a transplant, but at least she was back in Canada. Shahdady was a devoted mother, her friends say, and while she lived with her strict religious family in Scarborough, she managed to escape through Facebook where she chatted with friends and administered a Baloch entertainment page that had 6,000 members.She began to change, friends say. Shahdady no longer wanted to wear a burka that covered her face and body but would don just the hijab head scarf instead. She’d registered at the Adult Learning Centre to work on her high school diploma this fall and was hoping to one day realize her dream of becoming a doctor.“All her friends were finishing college or university and getting good jobs and she felt she was being left behind,” explains family friend Zaffar Baloch. “She wanted to throw away the veil and live an ordinary independent life of a woman.”But she had to sponsor her husband here and his arrival in May forced her back into the cage she had struggled so long to escape. He wanted her to wear a burka, to stay away from Facebook, to put aside any plans she had of resuming a secular education.“She rebelled,” explains Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. “With the help of social services, she got an apartment for herself and her son. She was leaving her husband and asking for a divorce. How dare she? It would dishonour everyone.”She and her son moved out July 1. After just three weeks of freedom, she was dead.Between 1 and 2 a.m. on July 22, neighbours in the building at 3131 Eglinton Ave. E. heard the shrill screaming of a child that went on for 15 minutes. And then silence. More than 15 hours later, Shahdady’s distraught father discovered his 2-year-old grandson alone in the apartment with his daughter’s dead body. She had been strangled on her bed.Her estranged husband Abdul Malik Rustam, 27, turned himself in to police the next morning. He’s been charged with first-degree murder.“Absolutely, it was an honour killing,” contends Fatah. “This is the fundamental issue here that no one wants to address. Nobody wants to tell Muslim men that women are not their possessions. It’s about women’s sexuality and men who say they own the franchise to it.”Toronto Police refuse to confirm that. Maybe all the facts aren’t in yet. Or maybe it’s just not politically correct. “She decided to separate from the marriage and it’s alleged that he killed her,” says spokesman Tony Vella.“This was clearly an honour killing,” the American Friends of Balochistan said in a statement. “No woman deserves to die in the way Shaher Bano Shahdady died.”Hmmmmm.......There is no honor in murder.Read the full story here.

Toronto synagogue site of anti-Semitic vandalism.(CTV).A synagogue in the city's northeast end was the target of anti-Semitic graffiti. Staff members of Beth Tikvah Synagogue on Thursday found the words "Islam will rule" and a swastika spray-painted on the exterior of their building. According to a press release published by the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, police have been contacted and measures were taken to increase the security at the synagogue. Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Canadian Jewish organization said in a statement that the primary concern is the safety of the staff and its congregants. "We will remain vigilant in the wake of this disturbing and offensive event."Read and see the full story here.

• Risk of Suicide Greater for Turkish-German Women.(Spiegel).The number of attempted suicides is five times as high among young Turkish-German women than their ethnic German counterparts. In a state of limbo between two cultures, they often succumb to despair. Sema, a 27-year-old woman who tried to commit suicide twice, is a case in point.Berlin has about 170,000 residents of Turkish descent. For several months last summer, life-sized posters were displayed in subway stations and on advertising columns. They included a hotline telephone number and one sentence, written in both German and Turkish: "End your silence, not your life!"Meryam Schouler-Ocak , the physician-in-chief at the psychiatric clinic of Berlin's highly respected Charité hospital, is behind the poster campaign. Her office is in the St. Hedwig hospital, not far from the café where Sema is sitting.Schouler-Ocak is of Turkish origin. She has been hearing young Turkish women's stories for years. And ever since she saw the numbers corresponding to the stories, she has also been doing something about it.Young German women of Turkish origin, she says, are five times as likely to attempt to commit suicide as non-immigrant women of the same age, and they are twice as likely to succeed.During the poster campaign, Schouler-Ocak gathered all the information she could find. She found some information in the medical literature, but not much. At a hospital in Frankfurt, she learned that it was often young women of Turkish origin who tried to commit suicide.But what were the reasons?Schouler-Ocak and some of her colleagues put together a proposal for a project and secured the support of the Ministry of Education and Research. She staffed the hotline that was listed on the posters with two women who were also from immigrant backgrounds. She had interviews conducted and obtained additional data from emergency rooms in Berlin and Hamburg. Schouler-Ocak plans to analyze the data by the end of the year.The reasons why young women of Turkish descent try to commit suicide extend beyond the much-reported issues of arranged marriages, honor killings and threats from the family. Sometimes the process starts out harmlessly, quietly and without any violence. Schouler-Ocak is now well aware of this.The problem affects young women who were born in Germany and are in fact well integrated into German society, but still face pressures associated with their origins.Sema is still in psychological treatment, and she is taking her medication. She walks around in the streets a lot these days, she says. "I want to have a life, too," she says. "It's not so bad," say Sema's aunts whenever she asks for their opinion.Sema says that she has an image in her head. In it, the mother, the father and the child are standing next to each other. The mother and the father go to work. The mother and the father save money and go on vacation. It's an image of a German family.Read the full story here.

• Islamic Group Claims to Hoist al-Qaida Flag in Sinai.(InvestigativeProject).In a scene resembling an Islamist version of the post-apocalyptic film "Mad Max," dozens of kaffiyeh-covered young men ride into the heart of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on motorcycles and in the beds of pickup trucks into El-Arish. Although they may not be there to pillage and plunder, the al-Qaida flag waved by one militant heralds a dangerous new development.The video was posted on YouTube last week and followed by a statement Tuesday from a group claiming to be the newest branch of al-Qaida. The statement said that al-Qaida of the Sinai Peninsula promised to transform the dusty backwater of the Sinai into a new Islamic Emirate. It also called for Islam to be the only source of legislation in its new state, and demanded that Egypt's military revoke agreements signed with Israel.The group also demanded military support for its brethren in the Gaza Strip, where al-Qaida inspired militants have pushed for harsher application of Islamic law and open war with Israel.Mosques in El-Arish received demands that Sinai be recognized as an independent Islamic state following recent clashes between gunmen and police, the paper reported. The same militants are suspected of blowing up a natural gas pipeline to Israel, which represents a rare symbol of economic cooperation in the cold peace between Egypt and its Jewish neighbor.Mabrouk may be right in saying that the militants aren't really al-Qaida. An official statement from the al-Qaida branch has not appeared on popular jihadi forums like Hanein.info, which instead posted news stories about the group from Arabic media. A post on Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum, an up-to-date and well-known forum for English-speaking jihadists, stated that the new group was simply the "Youth of Islam," following the title given to them in their YouTube video post.There has been no recognition of the new branch from al-Qaida's central division in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Where al-Qaida affiliates have typically been formed by senior militants who fought with the core leadership, as was the case with al-Shabaab in Somalia and AQAP in Yemen, there are few signs that the Sinai branch has the credentials to claim a legitimate connection.But the lack of any formal membership in al-Qaida may have little effect on the group's potential for terrorism against Westerners, Israelis, and even Egyptians.With as many as 400 members, according to Egyptian daily al-Hayyat, the group has already carried out "a number of attacks against [Egyptian] security forces in the Sinai city of El Arish."Tourism in the region presents the biggest opportunity for the branch to strike Westerners. The Sinai Peninsula has been a popular tourist destination for nationals from Europe and Israel, who enjoyed warm, sandy beaches and friendly locals. Israelis have even ignored travel warnings from their government, and a new study shows that they rank concerns of a hostile reception by locals much higher than the threat of terrorism.Militants from the region have already wreaked economic havoc, targeting a natural gas pipeline to Israel and its Arab neighbors for the fifth time since the beginning of the year. The repeated bombings have disrupted supplies to Israel, Syria, and especially Jordan, which is highly dependent on the supplies for electricity. The Israel Electric Corporation also announced it was forced to pursue other methods to produce electricity, with a price tag of 3-3.5 billion Israeli Shekels [roughly $1 billion U.S.] in emergency funds from the government.The potential for the movement of armed religious fundamentalists between Gaza, the Sinai, and the Arab world also exists. Claiming more than 11,000 members, Gaza's Jund Ansar Allah declared an emirate in the territory in April 2010.While it's unclear if Hamas' suppression of these groups has worked - or merely pushed them underground - Salafist forces remain an annoyance and even a threat to Hamas' rule.Read the full story here.

• Family of albino Muslims terrorised after one of them marries a Christian man.(DailyMail).A family of albino Muslims are being terrorised by bigots because their daughter married a man from another religion. The so-called 'honour' retribution has included smashed windows at their Coventry home, vandalised cars and death threats. Now, head of the family Aslam Parvez has made a plea to the culprits to end the hatred.'We're a good family and have done nothing wrong yet we're being punished in the name of honour,' he said. Aslam Parvez, 53, blames members of the Muslim community who believe the family have been dishonoured by his daughter's marriage. The hate campaign started five months ago when a national magazine published an article on albinos which featured Naseem, who no longer lives in Coventry and has little contact with her family. It revealed how she has married a Christian, goes to church and is expecting her second child with her husband.Mr Parvez says copies of the article were quickly spread maliciously, and were posted on walls near their house and through the doors of Muslim homes in the community. Mr Parvez says he has received numerous death threats and has spent hundreds of pounds installing security cameras around his house. He has now stopped going to mosque and says he may be forced to flee the city with his wife Shameem Akhtar, 55, three sons Mohammed, 17, Haider, 28, Gulam, 30, and daughters Muqadas, 26 and Musarat, 19. Mr Parvez called the police last week and officers are investigating the issue.'We want it to stop now,' Mr Parvez said in a direct appeal to the culprits. 'We've had enough of all these bad things. We're not a bad family and have done nothing wrong. 'We're being punished for our daughter's decision. We just want to live our lives in peace. 'I'm a good religious man. Look at your own lives before you judge us. 'I know deep in my heart that I am a good man. God will judge you for what you've done to us.'Mr Parvez was born in Pakistan and moved to Coventry at the age of 10 to join his family. He later met and married his Shameem, who is also an albino. Their six children inherited their parents' condition, which causes an absence of pigmentation and partial sightedness. Mr Parvez says their condition has meant they have been subjected to ridicule, but recent events have made their lives unbearable.'I've always had it bad,' Mr Parvez said. 'I was called names when I went to school and then when I went to work. 'You get funny looks in the street but you get used to it.'We've dealt with discrimination all our lives. This has made us feel 10 times worse.'A Coventry Police spokesman said they received an allegation from the family on July 20 and are investigating the matter. Mandy Sanghera, a social worker and Coventry expert in honour violence, is supporting the family. She said: 'This family is already vulnerable because of their condition and have clearly been affected by honour violence against them. 'They don't deserve it. They need the support of the community not to be alienated by them. I urge those responsible for doing this to stop.'Hmmmm.....The 'religion of peace'.Read the full story here.

• Brussels: Muslim woman attacked for having relationship with non-Muslim.(IslaminEurope).Via Nieuwsblad (Dutch):A Muslim woman (34) from the Brussels suburb of Schaarbeek was attacked Wednesday night for having a relationship with a non-Muslim.The woman left her residence with her partner at 8:30pm, when three youth turned up and started punching her. The three ran off. They were chased by a witness, who manged to catch Mohammed (19) and call the police.The young man was taken for questioning, where he told the police that he attacked the woman because she was having a relationship with a non-Muslim and he couldn't accept that.According to Brussels parliamentarian Fouad Ahidar (sp.a) This is not the first time Muslim women are attacked for having a relationship with a non-Muslim, but such attacks are often kept quiet."In the media we don't often hear of it, but the reality is completely different. Such violence does indeed occasionally happen. I do want to emphasize that this is not an act of faith. Those are extreme youth who clearly had bad upbringing.""Moreover it surprises me that such a thing can happen during Ramadan. Right now a Muslim must have a lot more respect for other people. I myself am married to a Flemish woman, but we've never been accosted about it. I hope that these youth will be punished harshly."Read the full story here.

• Should We Snatch Pakistan’s Nukes?(BigPeace).Given the growing anxiety in security circles about the future of Pakistan, it should not be surprising that plans have been developed to snatch Pakistan’s nukes should the country fall into chaos, or under the influence of Islamists. Indeed, there are some reports that the U.S. special forces are conducting drills to do just that, should it become necessary.But this isn’t like 24. This would be an amazingly difficult operation. Where precisely are the nukes? According to Pakistani nuclear scientist Pervez Hoodboy, ”They are said to be hidden in tunnels under mountains, in cities, as well as regular army force and army bases.”But he warns,” A U.S. snatch operation could trigger war; it should never be attempted. An American attack on Pakistan’s nuclear production or storage sites would be extremely dangerous and counterproductive,” the physicist said. “By comparison the bin Laden operation [into Abbottabad] involved only minor risks. Even if a single Pakistani nuke (out of roughly 100) escapes destruction, that last one could be unimaginably dangerous.”There are so many unknowns with this type of operation. Will the nukes be dispersed? How well defended? How will we transport them? What are the implications if we attempt to destroy them? No easy answers. And yet, an Islamist Pakistan with nukes? Talk about a nightmare.So if a crisis erupts, what will it be: snatch operation, or no snatch operation?Hmmmmm......."To Snatch or not to snatch,that is the question.Read the full story here.